Critic Quotes M4M

Themes and overall play

‘The play has the whiff of both sexual licence and political intrigue’

Bates and Rasmussen (2022)

‘The comic underworld in Measure for Measure is a critical mirror in which we recognise, inverted, the structures and assumptions central to the plays serious action’

1- Gibbons (1991)

‘Comedy in this play is distorted and strained by the use of the grotesque so that (…) its exuberant energies remain disruptive and dark’

2- Gibbons (1991)

‘______ argues that Shakespeare asks a ‘fundamental’ question in Measure for Measure which is: ‘Is any man or woman fit to sit in judgement on a fellow human being’

John Mortimer (1982)

The play is more true to life as it involves ‘a justice based on a more delicate appreciation of the true condition of men and things’

1- Walter Pater (1839-94)

The play demonstrates ‘the tyranny of nature and circumstance over human action’

2- Walter Pater (1839-94)

‘Our feelings of justice are grossly wounded by Angelo’s escape’

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1827)

The comic characters ‘Create a mockery of the state’s attempt to enforce moral standards’

Holly Williams (21st century)

The dark elements of the play ‘torture it into a comedy’

Charlotte Lennox (18th century)

‘A sophisticated play about nothing’

Barbara Everett (20th century)

‘It is about flawed people, about how human nature is essentially flawed’

‘It is a play that accentuates just how crude and inappropriate are the human institutions of the law’

Nunn (1991)

The play is ‘exhibiting the real state of sublunary nature’, i.e. it is representative of real life, which combines the tragic and comic, good and bad.

Samuel Johnson (1765)

He did not like the main characters, saying ‘our sympathies are repulsed and defeated in all directions’

William Hazlitt (1817)

The play ‘dramatises ‘an exercise in authoritarian repression’

Dollimore (1985)

Champion the play’s lack of moral certainty

Harriet Hawkins and Cedric Watts (1980s)

Thought the play’s ambiguity is one of its strengths

L.C. Knights (1987)

Shakespeare develops character by constantly asking the audience to contrast the behaviour of one character in favour of another

Frye (1950)

The play is ‘a cynical satire about the inconvenience of over-zealous authoritarianism for a city audience’

Stuart Hampton-Rees (2007)

Shakespeare asks us to question ‘Is it possible or advisable to regulate sexual behaviour through the courts?”

Eisaman Maus (2008)

PRODUCTION

It is sometimes ‘guilty of excess’ in comedy however also ‘buoyant’ and ‘anchored in a specific world’ that ‘leaves you pondering the eternal conflict between implacable justice and enlightened mercy’

Billington (2015) discussing Dromgoole’s production of the play

PRODUCTION

Described as ‘some sort of light-hearted comedic romp’ that left her feeling ‘patronised’

Gardner (2004) on Dove’s production

PRODUCTION

Described as ‘capturing’ the ‘dizzying corruption of power’ and being relevant to 21st century politics with an image of George Bush flashing up on the screen at the line ‘sanctimonious pirate’ and prisoners wearing Guantanamo Bay orange.

Billington (2004) on Mcburney’s production of the play

PRODUCTION

Set after the 2017 me too movement. He describes the play as a ‘thriller’ and sets it in Vienna ‘Freud’s heartland’ to emphasise the characterisation of sexually repressed characters and focus on the male abuse of power rather than who has the right to judge

Doran discussing his 2019 production of the play