"Our City's Institutions"

It might seem that these lines, taken from their context, have done much to shape some recent critical approaches to Measure for Measure. There has been a widespread, if wistful, conviction that a jewel exists to be found, that a single shining solution to longcanvassed problems of play's interpretation lies ready for taking. There has also been a marked anxiety that this jewel might be missed, trodden beneath layers of forgotton knowledge and decayed assumptions, and never thought of. No other of plays has provoked more anxious fossicking among extrinsic and sometimes extraneous materials. Predictably, most common source of solutions, or, at least, of that which might be said to furnish the problem of a problem play' has been Bible.2 To Shakespeare, Arthur C. Kirsch reminds us, the Bible was not simply an eschatological document but a revelation of human as well as divine truths, and it is precisely relationship between two that Measure for Measure is about.3 Some commentators have passed beyond Matthew's rendering of Sermon on Mount or St. Paul's epistle to Romans to a survey of contemporary religious doctrine.4 Features of Puritan thought, such as Ramist disjunctive syllogism5 or Calvinist championing of individual conscience against authority6 or, contrariwise, Shakespeare's sympathy with Roman Catholic institutions7 have all been presented as important keys to meaning. The most recent full length study of play, Darryl Gless's Measure for Measure, Law, and Convent, contains an exploration of an impressive array of materials belonging to the play's immediate intellectual background. These range from familiar

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• Shakespeare, Law, and Marriage

  Open Access•B J Sokol, Mary Sokol•Shakespeare, Law, and Marriage•2003

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