Long regarded as a problem play, Measure for Measure has provoked much critical disagreement. Staged during James I's first Christmas at Whitehall, it was doubtlessly written to further his patronage of Shakespeare's acting company the King's Men. Dramatizing James's view that justice should be tempered with mercy, its theme involved fornication, or sex without a church wedding, which was not unrelated to the dramatist's own past. Duke Vincentio, intended as a surrogate for James, wished to see the guilty punished with the death penalty, but Shakespeare's use of ambiguity, in permitting varied interpretations, ensured that the play, as a Christmas comedy, would have pleased King James while allowing Shakespeare's own response to have been different from the king's.
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Product Details
Dimensions: 148 x 212mm
Publication Date: 01 Nov 2024
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Publication City/Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
ISBN13: 9781036411206
About John Hardy
John Hardy completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford UK after being elected a Prize Fellow of Magdalen College in Oxford. A Queensland Rhodes Scholar he retired from Bond University (Australia) as Emeritus Professor where he had been Professor of Humanities and Foundation Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Previously he had been Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto Canada and held chairs at the University of New England Australia and the Australian National University. During the 1980s he was Secretary of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has contributed to or edited more than a dozen books including three major works of literary criticism: Reinterpretations: Essays on Poems by Milton Pope and Johnson; Jane Austen's Heroines: Intimacy in Human Relationships; and Shakespeare's Great Tragedies: Experiencing their Impact.