Should a woman submit to rape in order to save her brother’s life? Can the law command respect when the person enforcing it is himself corrupt? How much power should religion be allowed within the state? Measure for Measure poses these searching questions, and although it closes like a comedy, with reconciliations, forgiveness and marriages, it has long been counted among Shakespeare’s problem plays. The drama probes the difficulty of striking the right balance between judicial severity and mercy, sexual repression and decadence, political vigilance and social manipulation – tensions that remain strikingly topical, and are given immediacy here through vivid character-conflicts and memorably intense poetry. It stands as one of Shakespeare’s most probing and powerful works, edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex.
ISBN 13: 9781853262517
Author: William Shakespeare
