“The terms for common justice”: Performing and Reforming Confession in Measure for Measure

Abstract

This essay aims to extend recent critical interest in the theatrical presence of religious confession in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Whilst the traditions of confession in drama are recognized, the presence of confession on stage does not make the play necessarily nostalgic for the pre-Reformation era. The play, I argue, dramatizes a multiplicity of ways in which both individuals and communities deal with the problem of sin in a post-Reformation context of doctrinal plurality. As the performance of, and allusions to, various modes of confession are presented in productive juxtaposition a dramatic dialogue emerges that critiques their respective approaches to ethical evaluation and in so doing their capacity to expose hypocrisy, to save lives, spiritual and temporal, and to restore communal harmony.