Measure for Measure

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Measure for Measure takes its name from the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 7 provides the phrase: judge as you wish to be judged, and expect the same measure returned. Shakespeare wrote the play in 1603 or 1604. Its first recorded performance took place at the English court on the 26th of December 1604. The title promises a reckoning. The play delivers one, though not the kind that leaves its audience with clean hands. A man named Angelo is given authority over an entire city and discovers what that authority can be turned toward. A novice nun named Isabella stands at the centre of what follows. Her silence at the play's close is one of the questions this text has put to every audience for four centuries.

• 2. The World Angelo Rules

  ›

  Lucio and a group of soldiers walk along a Vienna street in the play's opening, trading banter about religion, prostitution, and venereal disease. They are hoping war breaks out with Hungary, which would bring them work. Mistress Overdone, who runs a nearby brothel, interrupts to scold them. Her employee Pompey arrives with news: Angelo has issued a proclamation ordering every brothel in the suburbs torn down. The Provost then leads Claudio past the group in custody. The charge is fornication. Claudio and his lover Juliet were betrothed but had not completed the legal formalities of marriage when Juliet became pregnant. On that technicality alone, Angelo has sentenced Claudio to death.

  Lucio, Claudio's friend, described in the play as a "fantastic," rushes to find Claudio's sister Isabella and urges her to plead with Angelo. She quickly obtains an audience. As she and Angelo exchange arguments, his desire for her overrides his stated principles. He offers a private bargain: he will spare Claudio's life if Isabella yields to him her virginity. Isabella refuses and threatens to expose him publicly. Angelo is unmoved. No one will believe her, he says, given his reputation. She visits Claudio in prison and advises him to prepare for death. Claudio begs her to reconsider. Isabella refuses him too, arguing that sacrificing her virtue would corrupt both their souls regardless of the earthly life it might save.

  Vincentio, operating under the alias Friar Lodowick, arranges two deceptions. The first involves Mariana, a woman Angelo had previously been betrothed to and then abandoned when her dowry was lost at sea. Isabella agrees to Angelo's terms but sends Mariana to the meeting in her place. The encounter takes place in darkness and silence. Angelo believes he is with Isabella. He then sends an order to the prison to execute Claudio regardless.

  Barnardine, a prisoner selected to provide a substitute head, refuses to cooperate in his drunken state. A solution arrives from elsewhere: a pirate named Ragozine, of similar appearance to Claudio, has just died of fever in the prison. His head is sent to Angelo. Vincentio's public return forces everything into the open. Isabella and Mariana publicly petition him against Angelo, who denies all accusations. When Vincentio reveals himself, Angelo is exposed as a liar. He is compelled to marry Mariana and then sentenced to death. Both women plead for his life; the Duke relents. Claudio is brought forward alive. Lucio had repeatedly slandered the Duke to the disguised friar, not knowing they were the same man. For this, he is ordered to marry Kate Keepdown, a woman he had impregnated and abandoned. The Duke then proposes to Isabella. On some readings of the law, Mariana's night with Angelo constituted the consummation of their old betrothal and therefore their marriage; that same interpretation would also make Claudio and Juliet's union legally complete.

• 3. Genre, Text, and Authorship

  ›

  Claudio's speech has been favourably compared to the soliloquies of tragic heroes, including Prince Hamlet. "Ay, but to die, and go we know not where..." speaks of death with a directness that comedy rarely attempts. The play shares features with Shakespeare's other comic works: wordplay, irony, and the substitution of one character for another at critical moments. Alongside these features sit executions prepared for in careful detail and soliloquies of genuine dread. A dead pirate's head serves as a required plot mechanism. Because of this tonal ambiguity, critics have grouped Measure for Measure with a set of Shakespearean works they call the problem plays.

  Gary Taylor and John Jowett's Shakespeare Reshaped, 1606-1623, presents stylistic evidence that Thomas Middleton revised parts of the play after Shakespeare's death. They argue Middleton also changed the setting from its original Italy to Vienna. Braunmuller and Watson, examining the same argument, characterised it as an intriguing hypothesis rather than a fully proven attribution. David Bevington proposes a different explanation: the quality of the surviving text reflects the work of Ralph Crane, a professional scrivener. Crane is associated with some of the First Folio's most reliable transcriptions, including The Tempest. Lines 8-9 in most editions preserve a garbled sentence in the Duke's opening speech, accepted by scholars as a settled textual defect. The missing original cannot be recovered because the First Folio is the only surviving source.

  Vincentio's reappearance to resolve all conflicts was later identified as an early use of the deus ex machina in English literature. The device is accurate as labelled: a superior authority descends upon the situation and dispenses judgment the plot's internal logic alone could not have delivered. Peter Meilaender has argued that biblical references structure much of the play, with themes of sin, restraint, mercy, and rebirth linking Measure for Measure to the Gospel tradition. The play's own statement of its governing tension appears in a line spoken during the action: "Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall."

• 4. Sources and Scripture

  ›

  Giambattista Cinthio's collection Gli Hecatommithi, first published in 1565, contains the story Shakespeare worked from. Cinthio called it "The Story of Epitia." Shakespeare knew the collection well; it also supplied the source material for Othello. Cinthio's original is an unmitigated tragedy: the Isabella figure is forced to sleep with the Angelo figure, and her brother is killed regardless. Cinthio later produced a play version of the story with small differences, which Shakespeare may also have encountered.

  George Whetstone's two-part closet drama Promos and Cassandra, published in 1578, is the play's other main source. Whetstone drew directly on Cinthio but adapted the story by adding comic elements absent from the Italian original. The bed trick and the head trick both enter the story through Whetstone. What neither Cinthio nor Whetstone provides is an analogue for Angelo's demand that Claudio's severed head be brought specifically to him.

  Giuseppe Leone's 2016 essay identifies that demand as a borrowing from Matthew 14:1-12. In the play, Angelo orders the head brought "for my better satisfaction," a phrase Leone reads as expressing pleasure in the exercise of power through a tangible token. The demand for John the Baptist's head serves the same function in Matthew's text: Herodias' daughter requests it publicly, and Herod Antipas' prior oath compels his compliance. In Cinthio's and Whetstone's versions, the dead man's head is simply delivered to his sister; neither perpetrator shows any interest in obtaining or viewing it. Their satisfaction in those sources comes entirely from the sister's mistreatment. Leone argues that this departure from the literary predecessors, combined with the concurrence with Matthew's text, builds a strong case for the Gospel as a direct influence. The script Shakespeare assembled from these materials would go on to trouble and inspire cultures far beyond the one that first received it.

• 5. On Stage

  ›

  Sir William Davenant was the first to adapt Measure for Measure for Restoration audiences. He inserted Benedick and Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing and retitled the result The Law Against Lovers. Samuel Pepys saw the hybrid play on the 18th of February 1662. His diary records it as "a good play, and well performed." He was especially taken by the young actress playing Viola, a character Davenant created as Beatrice's sister. Davenant also reformed Angelo, reducing him to a figure who tests Isabella's chastity rather than genuinely exploiting it. The production ended in triple marriage and did not succeed on stage. Charles Gildon returned to Shakespeare's original text in a 1699 production at Lincoln's Inn Fields, retitled Beauty the Best Advocate. Gildon cut all the low-comic characters and integrated scenes from Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas into the action. He also wrote a partly facetious epilogue in which Shakespeare's ghost complains of the constant revision of his work. John Rich presented a version closer to Shakespeare's original in 1720.

  Adelaide Neilson's appearances as Isabella in the 1870s provoked a public outcry. The subject matter was judged too controversial for respectable Victorian audiences. The Oxford University Dramatic Society found it necessary to edit the text for its February 1906 production; Gervais Rentoul played Angelo and Maud Hoffman played Isabella. Oscar Asche and Lily Brayton used the same edited text when they staged the play at the Adelphi Theatre that same month. William Poel took an opposite approach. He produced the play in 1893 at the Royalty Theatre and again in 1908 at the Gaiety in Manchester; both productions used Shakespeare's uncut text with minimal alterations, and Poel performed Angelo himself. Poel's staging stripped away scenery and used no fixed location. The swift, musical delivery of speech he insisted upon set the standard for pace and continuity in modern productions. His work also marked the first sustained attempt to give the play a modern psychological and theological reading.

  Charles Laughton played Angelo at the Old Vic Theatre in 1933. Peter Brook directed a 1950 production at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre with John Gielgud as Angelo and Barbara Jefford as Isabella. John Houseman and Jack Landau directed the play in 1957 at the Phoenix Theatre in New York, with Nina Foch and Richard Waring in the lead roles. Jerry Stiller appeared in the minor role of Barnardine. The 1962 Royal Shakespeare Company production, directed by John Blatchley, starred Marius Goring as Angelo and Judi Dench as Isabella. The play has been produced on Broadway only once, in a 1973 production also directed by Houseman. Kevin Kline appeared in the small role of Friar Peter; Patti LuPone took two minor parts. The 1976 New York Shakespeare Festival production drew a notable cast. Sam Waterston played the Duke, Meryl Streep played Isabella, and John Cazale played Angelo. Michael Rudman staged an all-black cast production at London's National Theatre in 1981. He restaged the concept at the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1993, with Kevin Kline as the Duke, Andre Braugher as Angelo, and Lisa Gay Hamilton as Isabella.

  Robert Falls directed a 2013 production at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, set in a seedy 1970s Times Square. The theatre company Cheek by Jowl staged a Russian-language version between 2013 and 2017, developed with the Pushkin Theatre in Moscow and the Barbican Centre in London. Declan Donnellan directed and Nick Ormerod designed it. Josie Rourke's 2018 production at London's Donmar Warehouse introduced a gender-reversal structure: Jack Lowden and Hayley Atwell alternated in the roles of Angelo and Isabella. The Royal Shakespeare Company's 2025 production, directed by Emily Burns, dispensed with the comic subplots. Isis Hainsworth played Isabella, Adam James the Duke, Oli Higginson Claudio, and Tom Mothersdale Angelo. At least one reviewer noted the production's underlining of the play's contemporary political relevance. The play's endurance on stage has run in parallel with a persistent life in other forms.

• 6. Lives Beyond the Stage

  ›

  Alfred Tennyson's poem "Mariana," published in 1830, drew on the character of Mariana from the play, tracing her long wait for an absent lover. Alexander Pushkin began translating Measure for Measure into Russian but transformed the material into a poetic tale he called Angelo, published in 1833. The result was not dramatic in form; Pushkin arrived at a generally non-dramatic narrative with embedded dialogue.

  Richard Wagner used the play as the basis for his opera Das Liebesverbot, writing the libretto himself. Bertolt Brecht's Round Heads and Pointed Heads began as a direct adaptation of Measure for Measure. Thomas Pynchon's early short story "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" takes its title from a line in the play. Aldous Huxley returned to the text twice. In Eyeless in Gaza, the character Mr Beavis experiences a "tingling warmth" while listening to Mrs Foxe read aloud the play's final scene. Huxley's 1948 novel Ape and Essence takes its title from Isabella's line in act 2 scene 2: "his glassy essence, like an angry ape." Joyce Carol Oates' short story "In the Region of Ice" uses the dialogue between Claudio and his sister. She parallels that plea with an exchange between a student named Allen Weinstein and his teacher, Sister Irene. Lauren Willig's 2011 novel Two L is based directly on the play.

  The 1979 BBC television version, directed by Desmond Davis and shot on videotape, is generally considered a faithful rendition of the text. Kate Nelligan played Isabella, Tim Pigott-Smith played Angelo, and Kenneth Colley played the Duke. It was broadcast in the United States on PBS as part of the BBC Television Shakespeare series. A 1994 television adaptation set in the present day starred Tom Wilkinson, Corin Redgrave, and Juliet Aubrey. Bob Komar directed a 2006 version set in the present-day British Army. A 2015 film, M4M: Measure for Measure, changed Isabella's character from female to male. It was the first adaptation to incorporate homosexual interactions in the role. The 2004 musical Desperate Measures, with book and lyrics by Peter Kellogg and music by David Friedman, placed the play's central argument in song. Paul Ireland's 2019 Australian film, set in contemporary Melbourne, placed it in the present day on the other side of the world. The argument travels.