Product Description

Since the rediscovery of Elizabethan stage conditions early this century, admiration for Measure for Measure has steadily risen. It is now a favourite with the critics and has attracted widely different styles of performance. At one extreme, the play is seen as a religious allegory; at the other, it has been interpreted as a comedy protesting against power and privilege. Brian Gibbons focuses on the unique tragi-comic experience of watching the play, the intensity and excitement offered by its dramatic rhythm, the reversals and surprises which shock the audience even to the end. His introduction considers how the play’s critical reception and stage history have varied according to prevailing social, moral and religious issues, which have remained highly sensitive. This updated edition contains a new introductory section by Angela Stock, which describes recent stage, film and critical interpretations, and an updated reading list.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #212710 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Customer Reviews

A Readable Edition of a Complex Play
This was the first play that, when I was required to read it for A-level English, really got me excited about Shakespeare. It has genuinely laugh out loud moments (no, I wouldn't have believed it either), then some of the most terrifying, moving speeches in the whole canon.

Every character is interesting, from the repressed and cruel manipulator Angelo, to Isabella, a kind of anti-heroine, who discovers power in a patriarchal society through an exaggerated (and sometimes eroticised) purity. After Isabella's brother Claudio is unfairly sentanced to death for impregnating a woman before marriage, Angelo tries to use his power over her brother's fate to convince Isabella to have sex with him. But both he and Claudio have underestimated the novice nun's seemingly inhuman zealousness. As Claudio begs for his life in prison, Isabella rebuffs him with the famous line: "more than our brother is our chastity".

It is also a good introduction if you have previously struggled with the bard - not as confusing as some of the comedies, or as unremittingly hard-going as the tragedies can seem when one is not used to translating the language.

And just a last note on this (Cambridge) edition - it's excellent. The introduction and notes are thorough and enlightening - but at the same time, not every variation of langauge in the different quartos is analysed in depth. While this must be vital for scholors at a higher level, to the everyday reader it can have a somewhat swamping effect.