Measure For Measure

The second act of Measure for Measure heavily relies on irony, indicating the troubling fact that seemingly positive desires can lead a person into sin and death, while desiring death can strangely lead a soul toward eternal life and salvation. In the confrontation between Isabella and Angelo and in Vincentio’s brief encounter with Juliet, Shakespeare suggests that The Problem of Hypocrisy is related to the natural human inclination toward romantic desire. While romantic love is not necessarily an evil thing—and is, in fact, necessary to sustain the human race—it can easily lead a person astray or compromise their salvation. However, strict laws meant to curb sexual temptation appear inevitably doomed to fail due to the innate condition of human nature.

In Angelo and Isabella’s first conversation, Isabella urges Angelo to spare her brother Claudio from his execution on the grounds that all men are tempted by sexual desire and therefore mortal judges must be merciful to avoid hypocrisy. While God might be able to judge humanity for sexual sins without being guilty of them, Isabella suggests that no human judge can do the same, reflecting the difference between Earthly and Divine Justice. Angelo has thus far been portrayed as a man who is entirely unmoved by his bodily desires, but he is ironically tempted into sin by Isabella. While Isabella is attempting to teach him reason and Christian virtues, Angelo laments that her good qualities have worsened rather than improved his moral condition. He asks himself, “Dost thou desire her foully for those things / That make her good?” (II.2.948-949). This line exposes his disbelief at the ironic condition of his fall into sin.

As Angelo reflects on his sexual desire for Isabella, he suggests that his own admiration for modesty and goodness is being turned against him. While most men are tempted by women who dress and speak provocatively, such as the sex workers and brothel owners that he has been persecuting under the law, Isabella attracts him precisely because of her lack of sin. He laments:

Most dangerous

Is that temptation that doth goad us on

To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,

With all her double vigour, art and nature,

Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid

Subdues me quite (II.2.955-960).

Ironically, it is Isabella’s virtue that puts her in danger of losing her virginity and compromising her salvation. Through this, Shakespeare complicates the problem of sexual morality, showing that the problems of Viennese society could not be solved by having women behave more modestly—since sexual desire is a natural condition of all humans on earth, no laws and no civic regulations seem able to curb the abusive or predatory sexuality of men like Angelo or Lucio.

The perspectives of female characters in Measure for Measure reveal the paradoxical condition of their lives—while they are not at risk of execution like Claudio, they still view love as a form of death while death becomes the only path to eternal life in heaven. When Juliet visits Claudio in prison, she complains to the disguised Vincentio that the comforts of love have led to impending death for Claudio and grief for her. She employs verbal irony, complaining that her love has given her life, meaning her unborn child, and yet that very same comfort “is still a dying horror” (II.3.1012). While love creates new life through pregnancy, it also destroys life through its sinful nature. Similarly, Isabella complains that in order to save her brother’s life, she would have to essentially kill her soul’s chance at salvation. Ironically, she states that she would prefer to be threatened with execution rather than sexual coercion, saying:

[W]ere I under the terms of death,

The impression of keen whips I’d wear as rubies,

And strip myself to death, as to a bed

That longing have been sick for, ere I‘d yield

My body up to shame. (II.4.1125-1130)

The blurring boundary between love and death for women indicates the unsolvable problem of legislating sexual morality. While sex is necessary to produce life, it also can end the soul’s immortal life. Death is therefore paradoxically preferable to being forced into a sexual relationship because it at least preserves the immortal life of the soul in heaven. For Juliet and Isabella, earthly justice places them in an impossible position.