The Divided World of Vienna

Abstract

As we approach what is surely the unpleasantest of Shakespeare’s comedies, we can happily disengage ourselves from much of the discussion and controversy it has engendered. Measure for Measure is a play where it is easy to confuse moral and dramatic aspects, and they are not both, or both equally, our present concern. If we ask, ‘Was it right of Isabella to value her chastity above the life of her brother?’, or ‘Was the bed-trick devised by the Duke a defensible expedient in the circumstances?’, we are probably asking moral questions with theological and jurisprudential implications, which the play provokes but refuses to answer. We may also be thinking that the heroine should necessarily be seen as admirable, morally speaking. But we need not assume that either Isabella or her secret protector, the Duke, should be entirely admirable. It is more important that they should be credible in terms of the story. There has been a general tendency in the past to idealise Shakespeare’s comedy heroines indiscriminately, but it would be an exaggeration to call either Rosaline (of Love’s Labour’s Lost) or Hero or Helena or Isabella a paragon of sense and goodness.¹