Critical Interpretations
Individual Critics
• Samuel Johnson (1765):
o ‘I believe the reader feels some indignation when we find [Angelo] spared’
o ‘Amid the general corruption… Isabella’s mind is not even stained with one unholy
thought’
o ‘Of this play, the light or comic part is very natural and pleasing, but the grave scenes have
more labour than elegance’
• S.T. Coleridge (1808 – 19):
o ‘Isabella herself contrives to be unamiable… Claudio is detestable’
o ‘The pardon and marriage of Angelo not merely baffles the strong indignant claim of
justice… but is likewise degrading to the character of women’
• William Hazlitt (1817) – ‘The Duke is more absorbed in his own plots and gravity than the
welfare of the state’
• F.S. Boas (1896) – cites ‘Measure for Measure’ as a ‘problem play’
• E. N. W. Tilyard (1900) – Victorians hated Isabella, ‘this smug, self-righteous virgin’
• Terence Eagleton (1943) – ‘This is a play which celebrates mercy’
• Jonathan Dollimore (1948):
o ‘The people are exploited… an exercise is authoritarian repression’
o ‘Authorities fear of the threat posed by any deviancy’
• G. Wilson Knight (1949):
o ‘The Duke’s sense of human responsibility is delightful throughout. He is kindly father,
and the rest are his children’
o ‘Isabella is the very symbol of religious purity’
• Carolyn Brown (1988) – ‘Both Isabella and the Duke profess to be the epitomes of morality
and chastity, yet engage in unethical, sexually charged acts’
• Leah Marcus (1990):
o ‘In the last act, the Duke himself becomes the law’
o ‘The Duke’s style of intervention is associated, not with the common law, but with
ecclesiastical jurisdiction’
o ‘There were contemporaries who would have agreed with Angelo that death was not an
excessive penalty for fornication, but they were the same zealots who were most vehement
against the theatre’
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, • Andrew Sanders (1994):
o ‘As the title suggests, Measure for Measure offers a series of juxtapositions rather than
coalescences’
o ‘Measure for Measure is a play of dark corners, hazy margins, and attempts at rigid
definition’
o ‘Isabella’s passionate and articulate defence of the concept of mercy in Act II is
Shakespeare’s most probing statement about the difficulty and consequences of
judgement’
• Nicholas Marsh (1998):
o ‘Isabella presents the audience with the Goddess/Whore dilemma – she is a heroine,
representing chastity and morality… she displays double standards with Mariana and
Claudio’s sins’
o ‘A battleground for critics… cold and masochistic… chaste and moral… or possessing
selfish double standards’
• Harold Bloom (1998) - ‘Vincentio indeed is what Lucio calls him: ‘the duke of dark
corners,’ addicted to disguises, surveilling his citizens, sadistic teasings, and designs
duplicitous’
• Stephen Greenblatt (1998) – ‘Controlling entrances and exits, stage managing the scenes
he’s in, the Duke can be seen as a cipher for Shakespeare’
• Juliet Dusinbeere (2003) – ‘Shakespeare challenges the gender stereotyping and present
women who are eloquent and as rational as men’
• Kiernan Ryan (2003):
o The Duke represents a society that ‘secures power by strategies of surveillance and
repression’
o ‘The play is a textbook example of the transitional moment between medieval justice – all
spectacle and public deterrence – and the modern surveillance state’
• Marian Cox (2005):
o ‘Angelo has to learn to moderate the exercise of power as well as accept that he is only
human’
o Angelo tells Isabella ‘My false overweighs your true’ – ‘he is boasting that his words have
greater weight… suggesting the scales are always loaded in favour of vice’
• Angela Stock (2006) – regarding Isabella’s silence ‘it’s a dissident action constituted not in
speech but in the language of her body’
• Stuart Hampton-Reeve (2007):
o ‘A pragmatic improviser? Shakespeare quite clearly shows the Duke inventing plots on the
hoof’
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Individual Critics
• Samuel Johnson (1765):
o ‘I believe the reader feels some indignation when we find [Angelo] spared’
o ‘Amid the general corruption… Isabella’s mind is not even stained with one unholy
thought’
o ‘Of this play, the light or comic part is very natural and pleasing, but the grave scenes have
more labour than elegance’
• S.T. Coleridge (1808 – 19):
o ‘Isabella herself contrives to be unamiable… Claudio is detestable’
o ‘The pardon and marriage of Angelo not merely baffles the strong indignant claim of
justice… but is likewise degrading to the character of women’
• William Hazlitt (1817) – ‘The Duke is more absorbed in his own plots and gravity than the
welfare of the state’
• F.S. Boas (1896) – cites ‘Measure for Measure’ as a ‘problem play’
• E. N. W. Tilyard (1900) – Victorians hated Isabella, ‘this smug, self-righteous virgin’
• Terence Eagleton (1943) – ‘This is a play which celebrates mercy’
• Jonathan Dollimore (1948):
o ‘The people are exploited… an exercise is authoritarian repression’
o ‘Authorities fear of the threat posed by any deviancy’
• G. Wilson Knight (1949):
o ‘The Duke’s sense of human responsibility is delightful throughout. He is kindly father,
and the rest are his children’
o ‘Isabella is the very symbol of religious purity’
• Carolyn Brown (1988) – ‘Both Isabella and the Duke profess to be the epitomes of morality
and chastity, yet engage in unethical, sexually charged acts’
• Leah Marcus (1990):
o ‘In the last act, the Duke himself becomes the law’
o ‘The Duke’s style of intervention is associated, not with the common law, but with
ecclesiastical jurisdiction’
o ‘There were contemporaries who would have agreed with Angelo that death was not an
excessive penalty for fornication, but they were the same zealots who were most vehement
against the theatre’
31
, • Andrew Sanders (1994):
o ‘As the title suggests, Measure for Measure offers a series of juxtapositions rather than
coalescences’
o ‘Measure for Measure is a play of dark corners, hazy margins, and attempts at rigid
definition’
o ‘Isabella’s passionate and articulate defence of the concept of mercy in Act II is
Shakespeare’s most probing statement about the difficulty and consequences of
judgement’
• Nicholas Marsh (1998):
o ‘Isabella presents the audience with the Goddess/Whore dilemma – she is a heroine,
representing chastity and morality… she displays double standards with Mariana and
Claudio’s sins’
o ‘A battleground for critics… cold and masochistic… chaste and moral… or possessing
selfish double standards’
• Harold Bloom (1998) - ‘Vincentio indeed is what Lucio calls him: ‘the duke of dark
corners,’ addicted to disguises, surveilling his citizens, sadistic teasings, and designs
duplicitous’
• Stephen Greenblatt (1998) – ‘Controlling entrances and exits, stage managing the scenes
he’s in, the Duke can be seen as a cipher for Shakespeare’
• Juliet Dusinbeere (2003) – ‘Shakespeare challenges the gender stereotyping and present
women who are eloquent and as rational as men’
• Kiernan Ryan (2003):
o The Duke represents a society that ‘secures power by strategies of surveillance and
repression’
o ‘The play is a textbook example of the transitional moment between medieval justice – all
spectacle and public deterrence – and the modern surveillance state’
• Marian Cox (2005):
o ‘Angelo has to learn to moderate the exercise of power as well as accept that he is only
human’
o Angelo tells Isabella ‘My false overweighs your true’ – ‘he is boasting that his words have
greater weight… suggesting the scales are always loaded in favour of vice’
• Angela Stock (2006) – regarding Isabella’s silence ‘it’s a dissident action constituted not in
speech but in the language of her body’
• Stuart Hampton-Reeve (2007):
o ‘A pragmatic improviser? Shakespeare quite clearly shows the Duke inventing plots on the
hoof’
32
