Where the Duke Fixes What He Broke

Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of my favorites.

I always prefer a happy ending. (Still planning my unauthorized happy-ending version of Othello, which no one is asking for but I really want.) And this is a comedy where things work out. (Sorry for the spoilers. But you've had 400 years.) But I like it for the themes as well, the ideas behind the story, because they're a little subversive in the best kind of way.

Angelo, left in charge while the duke is away, really intends to be morally upright. He thinks he is justified in having Claudio put to death for sex outside marriage, for sleeping with Juliet (not that one). But before the end of the play, he is plotting to sleep with Claudio's pretty sister. Not just that, he's willing to extort her, promising to save her brother, even while planning to kill Claudio anyway. This is one of those mote-in-my-eye-a-beam-in-yours situations, where "justice" is only visited on the powerless.

In the backstory, Angelo has broken off an engagement with a good woman because her family lost their money. He's not condemned for this, because even though it's pretty bad it's not illegal. He's a letter-of-the-law guy. He wants justice, not mercy, though in the end it's mercy that saves him.

Angelo gets forgiven in the end a bit too easily, IMO, but that's a convention in these kinds of plays, and it's also modeling the idea that everyone's a sinner, a screwup, and deserves some mercy. He marries the woman he left, who still wants him, somehow, and isn't put to death for all the stuff he did. (Mercy can also be a bit chaotic and unreliable. Not sure if that's meant to be a theme, but it's in there.) But from all this we can learn that it doesn't pay to try to crack down too hard on private sexual morality; that's doomed to fail. Not just that--the play suggests that outside forces (church and state both, perhaps?) imposing morality in a legalistic way is wrong from the start.

We also see the duke showing bad judgment throughout the play, and it allows the reader or viewer to question the supposed wisdom of our rulers. He trusts unreliable people like Angelo, putting the people of his realm at risk, and his switch from lenient to severe does no one any good. He helps orchestrate a happy ending, yes, but a lot is in disarray, people are harmed by it, and the fault is his. He is very angry with Lucio for slandering him, making that seem bigger than Angelo's extortion of sexual favors, showing how those in power exaggerate harm done to them and minimize harms done to regular people, even when they're supposedly good guys like this duke. Did he even think about why he'd had a guy like Barnardine in jail for so long? Pretty casual, Duke. Do better.

I read this somewhat recently, but this time I read it out of the No Fear edition. As always, the play is more comprehensible and more enjoyable as a result. (I end up reading almost all of it twice, but that's okay.) The play is well worth reading (and seeing), and if you do read it, definitely get the No Fear version.

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