Measure for Measure

Your first 4 to 5 page (1000 to 1,250 words) essay will be an exercise in close reading of an important passage in Measure for Measure which you will then connect to other key passages that amplify and deepen the theme or question you develop. Choose early. You’ll want to take notes for documentation as you reread. Your paper should have an arguable thesis—shoot for a level two or three thesis Be prepared to defend your thesis and show reasonable progress when you confer with me on that date.

Examine all of the “partial marriages” in the play—Claudio and Juliet’s, Angelo and Mariana’s, Elbow and his wife’s, Lucio and Mistress Keepdown’s, Isabella and the Church’s, Isabella and the Duke’s. What larger commentaries about marriage might Shakespeare be exploring through all of these largely unconsummated (either sexually, civilly, spiritually) matches? How might it be significant that the marriages the Duke orders at the end are not yet realized at the end of the play?