Measure for Measure - Critical Quotes

Terms in this set (19)

'Isabella's preoccupation with her chastity shows "spiritual arrogance" '

G Wilson Knight

'Isabella stands for sainted purity'
'Isabella has no real affection for Claudio'

Edward Dowden (Victorian Puritan)

'Life runs strongly and gladly through her veins'

'Promoted more by an adolescent girl's fears of the world than by genuine violation'

'Angelo is...the most contemptible kind of hypocrite'

'Holding a hollow sculpture of virtue to hide inside of'

'Her ego is not strong enough to differentiate itself from her sexual purity'

Carolyn E. Brown

Psychoanalytic viewpoint: (Isabella & the Duke) 'Repressed sexuality is a dominating element in their relationship'

Linda McFarlane

'Isabella's no win situation and limited choices - matrimony or chaste monasticism - offered to her as a woman, possibly echo during her notorious silence after the Duke's proposal of marriage'

Alberto Cacicedo

'The use of marriage as a means of limiting feminine freedom and denying autonomy in the repressive and highly gendered society of Shakespeare's Vienna'

'Grand inconsistency between the ethic of government and the ethic of refraining from judgement'

'It is possible to view Angelo as a good Machiavellian ruler, who retains a certain integrity throughout the play'

'The duke is frivolous and cannot be taken seriously as a satisfactory hero'

'The comic plot initiated by Lucio was intended to balance the quasi - tragic plot initiated by Angelo'

Alexander Leggatt

'The substitutions in the play either fail to achieve their intended purpose or are in some other way unsatisfying... the substitutions are both revealing and fascinating by incomplete'

'Angelo and Isabella could be considered pawns in the situation, being manipulated in order for characters such as Claudio and the Duke to get their way'

'The characters in Measure for Measure are simply meant to make the audience think, questioning their own moral choices'

'Both Angelo and Isabella hide their incomplete, crippled personalities behind a pose of chastity and self - control'

'The Duke is more absorbed in his own plots than anxious for the welfare of the state'

'The play is based on James I but intended to be a sly, subversive attack on the monarch'

'We should see ourselves in Angelo'

'The Duje is vain, interested in image mongering'

Josephine Waters Bennett

'Isabella's flaws arise from her inexperience'

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