I To modern audience the notion expressed in Measure for Measure that being reduced to state of despair can result in heavenly comforts (IV.iii.l109) sounds paradoxical if not downright contradictory; like the imprisoned Claudio sentenced to die, we might well ask What's the comfort? (III.i.53).' yet the words come from the ruler of Vienna, who combines political power and religious authority. To his mind this painful spiritual condition is highly desirable. And his view is scarcely idiosyncratic: the benefits that can come out of despair are hard to overestimate, for the belief that losing hope in one's salvation can be necessary first step to gaining it is confirmed in the Articles of the Church of England and in the sermons of influential English clergymen in the late sixteenth century. In Renaissance thinking, despair can produce two opposing spiritual states. On the one hand, unqualified despair, doubting God's power to grant remission for one's sins and demonstrating lack of faith, results in eternal damnation. But on the other hand, qualified despair can be positive, marking the very start of one's spiritual recovery.2 According to Susan Snyder, both Luther and Calvin found a kind of self-despair as prerequisite to salvation, and, no doubt with their encouragement, Protestant sermons stressed the need for fallen humanity, aware of its unworthiness, to be reborn through the experience of positive despair to complete