I hadn't read a Shakespeare play in so long, and this was so much fun. I like to read Shakespeare out loud because it helps me to better understand the Early Modern English, and I got so into this one, especially in the later acts, where we get some great monologues (an excellent one about how life is basically just the "sirrah" of death) and the bulk of the action.

In Measure for Measure, the main plot is that the Duke is "going away" but really disguising himself as a friar to observe his town and make sure that his second and third in command do the right thing and are the people they seem to be in his presence. He gives them full reign to act in his stead, and then, he steps back to see if Angelo and Escalus can enforce the laws that have gone by the wayside because of lack of enforcement. A second main plot is that Claudio has been arrested for fornication--his girlfriend is pregnant. Fornication is against the law, but everyone has gotten away with it until now. Enter Angelo, who condemns Claudio to die for his crime.

The play is interesting in its exploration of justice, of the concept of "seems," and of the concept behind the title phrase, "measure for measure." The idea that I see most prevalent is that we all sin and make mistakes, and there are some sins that are so common as to be more forgivable than others. There are ways to make some crimes right that don't involve absolute justice. In other words, there's some room to navigate the law and not interpret it so strictly that it becomes its opposite: unjust and unfair. Also, the themes reminded me of Antigone because there are people arguing passionately for Claudio's release (most notably his sister, Isabella), claiming that what he did was wrong but not worthy of death, and then, Angelo (Creon) arguing that he has to do his job and fulfill the law, or nobody will take it seriously.

Even with the serious themes and the threat of death looming over Claudio, the play is funny. I didn't like the humor I know that Pompey brought to the play because I didn't get it but also because I thought it was overdone, but Lucio's lines made me laugh, especially at the end, and the Duke has some great one-liners, too. Also, the fact that the Duke is disguised as a friar but people talk to him about the Duke makes for some funny moments (like Lucio accusing the Duke of being a womanizer, and the Duke, as the Friar, saying, "I know the Duke as I know myself").

Overall, I really enjoyed this play. It made me think and made me laugh, and there's not much more I can ask for in a great work of literature. I enjoyed my foray back into Shakespeare so much that I've decided to read Love's Labour's Lost next. I strongly recommend this play as it's fairly easy to read and straightforward but still complex enough to be suspenseful and interesting, and it's really funny but also thought-provoking. This is definitely up there with my favorite Shakespeare plays!

Probably my favourite Shakespeare I have read so far!!

Really quite originally explores the very traditional issues of justice and equality, showing how no one's completely free from 'sinful' desires and temptations. Lord Angelo's terrible! Isabella's admirable! The innuendos laughable! A comedy without romance carrying the storyline... though I thought there finally won't be any unrealistic crazy romances that drastically end the play in a marriage, in the end there were still more than one of such crazy marriages... That disappointing and perplexing ending lowered a potentially 5-star read to 4 stars for me!! I didn't like how the promising build-up of strong characters arguing passionately for justice (i.e. Isabella) crumbles into silence in the end, and some characters just seriously confuse me in what they really think about justice and their intentions (i.e. the aghkjhfgl DUKE). It's all quite a mess in the end, which hurts not only the characterisation but also the big issue about justice it so cleverly set up in a plot - is justice all an act for the powerful to deceptively but emptily gain even more power and respect?

n  n

'An Angelo for Claudio, death for death'!
Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;
Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.


Mariana by John Everett Millais (1851).

1.tPlot type  Comedy
1)tShadow of darkness
2)tPressure of darkness
3)tEverything comes to light

2.tClaudio is sentenced to death for fornicating (having sexual intercourse) with his girlfriend and getting her pregnant. He is headed for the chopping block if someone doesn't intervene on his behalf.  Conflict

3.tIsabella, Claudio's sister, who is about to become a nun leaves the nunnery to save his brother. She plead with Angelo to have mercy.  Complication


4.tAnglo prepositions Isabella.  Climax
Angelo gets all hot and bothered by Isabella virtue and says he will set free Claudio only if Isabella agrees to sleep with him. But she immediately refuses (saying she would rather die) and Angelo gives him time to think.

5.t The Duke thinks of a plan. Disguised as a Friar, he finds out about Angelo's hypocritical behaviour.  Suspense
Comes up to a plan: Isabella should agree to sleep with Angelo, but she will send Angelo ex-fiancé (Mariana) to sleep with him. So Angelo will be forced to marry Mariana; Isabella remains virgin, and Claudio will be free. All's well that ends well!

6.tBed trick; Angelo thinks he's slept with Isabella, but in fact, it was Mariana in place of her. At last, Angelo reneges on the deal and orders Claudio to be put to death anywhy. Because he was afraid of Claudio getting revenge.  Dénouement

7.tEverybody's getting hitched. The Duke finally reveals his Identity and makes everything clear. Claudio is set free and now he can marry Juliet. Angelo is forced to marry Mariana and the Duke himself propose Isabella.  Conclusion

“O, 'tis excellent
To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant”

I want to thank Judi Dench's recent biography for finally pushing me to pick up Measure for Measure, or otherwise this 'problem play' could've languished on my TBR for much longer. Which would be a great shame, because there is a lot of meat and thought to this fascinating and grim story.

Themes like morality, hypocrisy, justice, revenge, and mercy have featured in other Shakespeare plays: Hamlet, The Winter's Tale and Othello to name a few. But they sound anew thanks to our leading lady Isabella, a cold and clever maiden, who is forced to step out of the shadows and plead for justice in a town overrun with corruption and sin.
Seeing Isabella move through the play and hold on to her faith feels like watching a sailor fighting the tide: an almost impossible task. Her brother Claudio's gruesome speech about death, the Duke (in disguise) keeping her in the dark about her brother's execution, and then there is the horrific scene between her and Angelo...

n  
ISABELLE
To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,
Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,
That bear in them one and the self-same tongue,
Either of condemnation or approof;
Bidding the law make court'sy to their will:
Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite,
To follow as it draws! n

To distract from the fact that the author is pointing strong fingers at the (English?) government, Shakespeare put plenty of lighthearted scenes in the story as well. I'm sure the audience had a great laugh with Pompey enjoying his new role as a hangman, and seeing heedless Lucio get his comeuppance from the Duke.
But Act V brought back a bitter taste in my mouth: seeing two women plead for justice in public and not being believed (and almost thrown in jail!), and then later having to argue to save the man who brought them both so much pain...I know it shows the great power of mercy, but the scene broke my heart.

It's not a play that gets performed a lot in my country or abroad, but I hope to see it live someday. Not just for the themes, but so see women like Isabella, Juliet, and Mariana, bent but not broken, get their (semi) happy ending.

This was so fun

I didn't even realize this was a Shakespeare play when I saw the lectures titled "Measure for Measure" on the Great Courses audiobook I'm listening to. Even the ones I hadn't read, I still had a general sense what they were about. I'd never heard of this one, so unlike every other play on that lecture series, I went into this blind.

And...it's not terrible. I know the sense of justice was extremely different back then, and boy does that make me grateful to be alive now. Like, being made to marry someone who jilted you so that he could be forgiven of his sins is not my idea of husband material, just between you and me. This is taking shotgun wedding to a whole new extreme. And the ploy the duke played on Angelo, who makes Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame look like a saint, was pretty smart, but also extremely problematic in how it was implemented and then resolved.

And how blind are all these characters to not realize who everyone is? Superman would be jealous of how easily these people disguise themselves. Geez!

I did like the Duke though, for the most part, and Isabella quite a lot. Once again, the lead female saves the show. I was disappointed in Angelo's arc though. He didn't deserve mercy. And what happened to Mistress Overdone and the boy? I think I either missed that or it's assumed that Angelo's sentences for them weren't borne out.

Only appreciated it after being shown the RSC production (indubitably a work of art.) however, plot has a unsatisfying & unsettling conclusion, I guess mimicking how things work in Real Life.

Character rankings
#1 Escalus
#2 Barnardine (Murderer)
#Somewhere In Between Angelo (Harasser)
#Last Duke (Supposed Moral Figure)

If your most likeable character is a murderer and ur least likeable is the one executing Justice, Vienna shld check itself before it wrecks itself.

4.2/5 stars — did alexandre dumas read this before writing the count of monte cristo, I NEED to know… I want to read a million essays on this play tbh. also the characters got 3 stars because isabella is 5 stars and pretty much everyone else is trash.

Plot: 4/5
Characters: 3/5
Pacing: 5/5
Writing: 5/5
Enjoyment: 4/5

The last of Shakespeare’s comedies and I get the distinct impression that he was already done with that genre and somehow got convinced to do “just one more.” As part of my goal to see all of Shakespeare’s plays performed, I attended a screening of Measure for Measure, filmed in Stratford, England. If you struggle with Shakespeare, I can’t recommend highly enough that you see performances of his works, rather than try to read them. In this production, I appreciated how well they used the stage, the scenery, costumes, dance, and music. The actor who played Elbow and Barnardine was shaped like a cannonball, but was remarkably light on his feet and extremely agile. At one point, he amazed the audience by tumbling across the stage (as Elbow). The actor who played the Duke took some cues from John Cleese, who he reminded me forcibly of while “blessing” people and reciting religious invocations while pretending to be a friar.

Why do I think that Shakespeare was done with comedies? Well, the ending is happy, as required, but it felt artificial and contrived. The marriage between the Duke and Isabella just feels wrong—what happened to her strong religious vocation? Same issue with the marriage of Angelo & Mariana. Why would an eligible woman want to marry a man who rejected her when her dowry went missing and was so cold and unfeeling? Why on earth would she want to sleep with him, fooling him into thinking that she is Isabella? And yet, she happily complies with the Duke/Friar’s subterfuge and then willingly marries the man.

But the part of the play that resonated the most strongly with me was the point where Angelo has tried to make a bargain with Isabella, her virginity for the life of her brother. When she threatens to reveal his true nature to the world, he turns to her and says:

“Who will believe thee, Isabel? My unsoil’d name, th’ austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i’ th’ state, Will so your accusation overweight, That you shall stifle in your own report, And smell of calumny.”

A cold shiver went down my back, and I couldn’t help but see Jian Ghomeshi in my mind’s eye, telling the women who he punched and mistreated, “I’m a celebrity. Do you think that anyone will believe you?” My God, this play was first performed at court in 1604 and here we are in 2016, and men are still saying this to the women whom they abuse! Its still “he said, she said” even in courts of law, as we continue to watch men get away with these crimes.

Anyone who thinks that Shakespeare is out of date hasn’t ever attended his plays. He deals with universal human issues that everyone can identify with.

actually a good book! always found shakespeare hard to get through but this play was surprisingly engaging and fun. lots of good comedy (Not as lame as Midsummer's) and debates about virtue and ethics and morality. anyway, Character Pairings that Should Be Canon:

Barnadine x Duke (the duke pardons him from death, and even proposes to isabelle to disguise his obvious affection)
Lucio x Claudio (there is zero chemistry between him n juliet)
Escalus x Isabella (escalus is too nice not to be married off)
Pompey x Elbow (theres tension there...)

that is all

Not my favorite play by shakespeare but it does open the door for a lot discussion and the sharing of opinions since it revolves around a moral dilemma and deals a lot with the social issues of its time.

My fav Shakespeare play!! It reads like hot goss but it’s also so thematically enticing and eerily relevant