In the many critical essays written on Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure between 1940 and 1980, a number of different perspectives are taken. These perspectives vary from the laws of marriage and society to Jungian archetypal characters to religious allegory. All points made are valid and can be easily supported by the text and the cultural context in which it was written. When reading such essays, one’s view of the characters and play as a whole will change. Some critics believe the Duke to be the central character of the play, while others see him as being a nonessential character, having very little influence on the people of his dukedom. These critics will find Angelo and Isabella to be more central figures in this play and dwell on their motivations and faults. The audience may be influenced by these opposing views but must choose between them on their own accord.

Measure for Measure is considered a “problem play” of Shakespeare’s, along with Troilus and Cressida and All’s Well That Ends Well, as well as a “dark comedy,” having been written during Shakespeare’s darker days, amidst revisions of Hamlet and just before Othello. Early critics avoided the problems in Measure for Measure by defending Isabella’s character and giving her no fault in the play, or by considering it to be allegorical. It is easy to place the characters into traditional religious positions: the Duke would be considered equivalent to God or Providence; Angelo would “stand for …the old law before Christian liberty and… Morality,” “Isabella is Mercy as well as Chastity,” and Claudio and Juliet “represent unregenerate mankind” (Tillyard 128-9). The critics that came after these (in the 1940s) purposely went in the opposite direction, claiming that the style of the play changes halfway through. Before Act III, scene i, the play could be considered a tragedy with no solution in sight but, afterwards, the Duke reenters and solves all the problems. The first half is also very poetic, while the second half contains very few poetic lines although it has more rhymed lines. The Duke’s part in the play also changes “from the old folk motive of the sovereign in disguise mixing with his people” to “the conventional stage character of the plot-promoting priest” (Tillyard 133). The changes in the play at this point in the text present one of the “problems” that the earlier critics attempted to avoid.

In Wylie Sypher’s 1950 essay “Shakespeare as Casuist: Measure for Measure,” Angelo’s situation is compared to Hamlet’s. In Hamlet’s case, the tension he experiences is internal, but Angelo’s tension is made public. He is faced with upholding the law while his feelings (his lust for Isabella) contradict the law. The fact that Hamlet’s struggle is mainly within the character and Angelo’s is manifested in a situation on display for the public distinguishes the difference between a tragedy and a comedy. Sypher claims that the characters in Measure for Measure are stereotyped in order to present the moral problem. The audience is then required to reflect on the moral choices of the characters as Shakespeare, through the Duke, makes the punitive decisions for them.

Twenty-two years later, Alex Aronson provides a Jungian perspective on the character of Angelo. Similar to Sypher’s comparison of internal tension in Hamlet to the public tension of Measure for Measure, Aronson demonstrates the “split personality” of Angelo between his private and public personae: “What Shakespeare portrays in this play, then, is man’s inability to live up to the mask he has assumed before the world” (Aronson 127). Angelo is chosen as Deputy to the Duke because of his Puritan views, yet when he is put in the position to enforce those views, Isabella enters and, without being conscious of it, tempts him with her chastity. He then falls short of his expectations as a leader though he fulfills his expectations as a man. This makes the audience question their own private and public personae and how their “inner voice” can contradict their social expectations, much like in Angelo’s case.

Aronson also explores the personalities of Angelo and Isabella, or rather lack of personalities, in his book. He claims, “Both Angelo and Isabella hide their incomplete, crippled personalities behind a pose of chastity and self control” (Aronson 131). They put on “masks” of stereotyped members of society in order to make a personality for themselves. Angelo presents himself as a straight-laced, controlling man with very high moral standards and Isabella is in the process of becoming a nun, begging for more rules and regulations to mold her into that particular stereotype. The tension of public versus private life then catches up with them and they must face their private desires to display them publicly.

An essay by Terence Eagleton, just a few years earlier, views the play in a similar fashion: as an “opposition between law and passion” (Eagleton 66).However, in this essay, the public versus private situation is not as much moral as it is legal. Most people would view laws as being “negative restraints” on society though they provide “communication” between the people and guide them to act appropriately in order to function as a community. The laws were devised to protect women from being unmarried and pregnant, as is Juliet’s situation. Although Claudio and Juliet have exchanged vows between each other, they have not done so publicly and thus are still considered to be breaking the law. This is where the moral question would come in: why kill a man who is fully prepared to marry and bring up a child with the woman he loves, leaving his lover pregnant and alone (exactly what the law was attempting to avoid)? This is how one’s view of Angelo can become confused. He is a man trying to uphold the law (the reason why he was put in the position of power), yet by doing so he puts a woman in the position that the law was built to avoid. That he is very strong-willed in his decision can be seen as a positive thing but we question why he is so strong-willed in this particular situation. He needs to make an example of someone and Claudio just happened to come in at the wrong time. The audience is left to question Angelo’s motivation.

Envisioning the characters of Angelo and Isabella as struggling to find their true Selves changes the audience’s interpretation of the play. It no longer is about the laws and the situation, as earlier critics focused, but, instead, it is about the characters themselves. The play then becomes a story about people trying to find their place in society, which is a problem that everyone struggles with.

In an essay in 1980, Raymond Powell focused on the role of the Duke. He claims that the Duke could be considered God-like in an allegorical interpretation, but, avoiding the biblical allusions, he is at the least obviously separate from the rest of the characters. He has the greatest influence on his people and looks out for the good of all. In Vienna, a “city of extremes,” there are the people, such as Mistress Overdone, who love gratuitous sex and disobey the laws, and there are the people, such as Isabella, who abstain from sex and follow the laws without questioning them. These two worlds collide in this play and the Duke intervenes in the end to make decisions for the people. The rebels end up in jail and those that look as if they have a chance to reform and become less extreme in their beliefs are reformed. Marriage in the end of Measure for Measure is used as both a punishment and as reward. The only truly happy marriage is that of Claudio and Juliet (Powell 120). This point forces the audience to question the idea of marriage, or at least Shakespeare’s view of marriage.

Critics have opposing views about which character is the central figure of this play. The Duke has “more lines to speak than Isabel and Angelo combined” (Schanzer 112), but he is hidden in the background for the first half of the play. Yet both Angelo and Isabella are characters who lack personality and cling to rules and regulations to fulfill their lives; they do not make any true actions during the play: Isabella does not actually sacrifice her virginity to save her brother, Angelo does not actually have sex with Isabella or end up killing Claudio. Both could be considered pawns in the situation, being manipulated in order for characters such as Claudio and the Duke to get their way. There is no correct way to view the characters in Measure for Measure; they are simply meant to make the audience think, questioning their own moral choices.

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