Measure for Measure and Christian Doctrine of the Atonement

Abstract

A recent editor of Shakespeare describes Measure for Measure as “strange and puzzling,” “the despair of commentators.” No play, it would seem, has met with estimates more conflicting. Even common sense (in the person of Samuel Johnson) has voiced disapproval; and the insight of Coleridge, which so often probes deeper, has registered here a pained dislike. Complaints against either the play's subject, its plot, its hero, or its heroine have been heard from critics as eminent as Hazlitt, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, and Sir Edmund Chambers. In opposition to the disparagers, however, there has appeared within the last century a strain of favorable criticism, lately almost enthusiastic. The rehabilitation may be said to have begun when certain Victorian commentators proclaimed Isabella a sweetly noble heroine, defying Mrs. Lennox's judgment of her as a “mere Vixen.” Yet these same Victorians disapproved the Duke; so that the recent and brilliant apology for the Duke by G. Wilson Knight, comparing the Duke's words and deeds with those of Jesus Christ, has come as a remarkable advance in the reappreciation of the play. At the same time W. W. Lawrence, by his study of medieval custom and analogue, has helped recommend the play's action and enhance its theatrical plausibility. Despite these defenses there are critics who continue to read Measure for Measure as a portrait of disillusionment,‘ negation, and the playwright's supposed cynicism. But two recent Annual Lectures before the British Academy take up boldly the opposite view. C. J. Sisson declares that “Far from being rotten, the play is sound to the core, and profoundly Christian in spirit”; and the late R. W. Chambers acclaims it as embodying a philosophy “more definitely Christian than that of The Tempest.” Appearing the same year as Professor Chambers’ spirited essay is C. J. Reimer's Marburg dissertation, in which we find repeated with emphasis Louis Albrecht's earlier high estimate of the play: it reveals, say these German scholars, the “Hauptzüge der Shakespeareschen Weltanschauung”—namely, a Christian faith not dogmatic or ecclesiastical but Biblical and evangelical. Finally, there has been in recent months a flurry of essays exploring the play's ethical nature. D. A. Traversi calls Measure for Measure “uncompromisingly moral”; F. R. Leavis finds in it a “fineness of ethical and poetic sensibility” which makes it “one of the very greatest of the plays”; and Miss M. C. Bradbrook offers the suggestion to regard it as “something resembling the medieval Morality.” Out of this welter of criticism one truth clearly emerges: that in this instance Shakespeare's work has abundantly justified its teasing title by becoming a “measure” for critics.