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William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Likely the most influential writer in all of English literature and certainly the most important playwright of the English Renaissance, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England. The son of a successful middle-class glove-maker, Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582, he married an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind and traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright. Public and critical success quickly followed, and Shakespeare eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part owner of the Globe Theater. His career bridged the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 1558–1603) and James I (ruled 1603–1625); he was a favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James granted Shakespeare’s company the greatest possible compliment by endowing them with the status of king’s players. Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to Stratford, and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At the time of Shakespeare’s death, such luminaries as Ben Jonson hailed him as the apogee of Renaissance theatre.
Shakespeare’s works were collected and printed in various editions in the century following his death, and by the early eighteenth century his reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in English was well established. The unprecedented admiration garnered by his works led to a fierce curiosity about Shakespeare’s life; but the paucity of surviving biographical information has left many details of Shakespeare’s personal history shrouded in mystery. Some people have concluded from this fact that Shakespeare’s plays in reality were written by someone else–Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford are the two most popular candidates–but the evidence for this claim is highly circumstantial, and the theory is not taken seriously by many scholars.
In the absence of definitive proof to the contrary, Shakespeare must be viewed as the author of the 37 plays and 154 sonnets that bear his name. The legacy of this body of work is immense. A number of Shakespeare’s plays seem to have transcended even the category of brilliance, becoming so influential as to affect profoundly the course of Western literature and culture ever after.
Background on Measure for Measure
Shakespeare is believed to have written Measure for Measure in 1603 or 1604, and it was probably first performed in 1604. Shakespeare’s most likely source for the play was a story called “The Story of Epitia” from a 1565 book called Gli Hecatommithi, written by an Italian writer who used the name “Cinthio,” but whose actual name was Giovanni Battista Giraldi. Gli Hecatommithi also contains a story that was Shakespeare’s source for Othello, which he probably wrote in 1603, about the same time he wrote Measure for Measure. Cinthio’s “The Story of Epitia” had been adapted into the play Promos and Cassandra by English dramatist George Whetstone in 1578, and there is evidence that Shakespeare would have been familiar with that work as well, since Measure for Measure borrows plot points that appeared in Whetstone’s adaption but were not in Cinthio’s original story.
Measure for Measure is often considered a comedy, which may be slightly misleading. Whereas traditional Shakespearean comedies all end with happy marriages, the unions at the end of this play are notably fraught. In the cases of both Angelo and Lucio, marriage is framed as a punishment. As for the Duke, he proposes to Isabella using terms that are disturbingly similar to Angelo’s earlier, sexually coercive proposition. Notably, Isabella never responds to the Duke’s proposal, suggesting an even more profound subversion of the conventions of comedy. Recognizing these unusual features, alongside its occasional expressions of bitterness and cynicism, some critics consider the play a particularly “dark” comedy.
Alternatively, some critics prefer to call Measure for Measure a “problem play” for the way it brings up a difficulty and then seeks to solve it. More specifically, a problem play conventionally begins with some event or individual that challenges the normative laws of a society, which in turn leads to some form of chaos that must be conquered to establish a new order. From a certain perspective Measure for Measure does follow such an arc. Angelo enforces an existing law against fornication that has not conventionally been enforced, and this act instigates a great deal of moral panic. This panic is ultimately calmed when the Duke returns and inaugurates a new order, one that establishes a more balanced perspective on justice that allows for neither absolute liberty nor absolute restriction. From another perspective, however, the difficulties in this play lie primarily in misunderstandings and hidden identities, not in the real moral questions of the play. No character seems seriously to reconsider his or her beliefs about freedom, justice, sexual relationships, or morality. As such, a truly new moral order never comes into existence.
However audiences might choose to categorize Measure for Measure, it is certainly unique in Shakespeare’s canon.
