"my free drift
Halts not particularly, but moves itself
In a wide sea of wax: no levell'd malice
Infects one comma in the course I hold;
But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,
Leaving no tract behind."
He held that view throughout his creative life, as a great poet must. At the time during which this play was written his thought was more rigidly kept to the just survey of life than at any other period. Creative art has been so long inglorious that the practice and ideas of supreme poets have become incomprehensible to the many. This play is a great hint of something never, now, to be made clear. Those who count it a mark of Shakespeare's littleness expose their own.
Measure for Measure.
Written. 1603-4 (?)
Produced. (?)
Published. 1623.
Source of the Plot. The story is founded on an event that is said to have taken place in Ferrara, during the Middle Ages. Shakespeare took it from a collection of novels, the Hecatomithi, by Giraldi Cinthio; from the play, The rare Historie of Promos and Cassandra, founded on Cinthio's novel, by one George Whetstone, and from Whetstone's prose rendering of the story in his book The Heptameron of Civil Discourses.
The Fable. The Duke of Vienna, going on a secret mission, leaves his power in the hands of Angelo, a man of strict life.
Angelo enforces old laws against incontinence. He arrests Claudio and sentences him to be beheaded. Claudio's sister, Isabella, pleads with Angelo for her brother's life. Being moved to lust, Angelo tempts Isabella. He offers to spare Claudio if she will submit to him. Claudio begs her to save him thus. She refuses.
The Duke returns to Vienna disguised, hears Isabella's story, and resolves to entrap Angelo. He causes her to make an appointment to that end. He causes Mariana, a maid who has been jilted by Angelo, to personate Isabella, and keep the appointment. Mariana does so.