Shakespeare is a master of suspense, when he wants to be, or isn't he always? A Duke of Vienna leaves his city and his deputy, Angelo (what a name for a twisted mind) in charge. But he comes back in disguise to check upon Angelo and he finds out that the man is corrupt and uses power to his own advantage, even trying to seduce a nun by sending her brother to the block where he would be beheaded at the strange time of four o'clock in the morning. But the Duke prevents the execution of that brother Claudio and comes back in time afterwards to sort things out. Shakespeare is a master at making us believe it will not go through and every step to the truth is immediately countered with two steps down the abyss, till the very last moment when the deputy is completely fooled out of countenance by the Duke coming back under his disguise – as a monk mind you – and reveals the villainy of his deputy when this deputy orders the Duke disguised as a monk to be sent to prison pending execution. Though everything looks really bleak till the end of the fourth act, the fifth act brings some relief but at the end of it only, though Shakespeare brilliantly prepares it with Isabella's cry for justice: "Justice, O royal Duke! Vail your regard / Upon a wrong'd- I would fain have said a maid! / O worthy Prince, dishonour not your eye / By throwing it on any other object / Till you have heard me in my true complaint, / And given me justice, justice, justice, justice." An opening single cry first and then a closing quadruple cry, which brings these "justice" cries to five: the diabolical disruptive pentacle, that the Duke double further on, along with Isabella, to ten to make the truth stronger, more unavoidable, with six words on each side and five identical making the sixth one all the more powerful. "Duke: Nay, it is ten times strange? / Isabella: Nay, it is ten times true." And the truth of a well balanced decision will come from the Duke, this time like a final decree: "Duke: 'An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!' / Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; / Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure. / Then, Angelo, thy fault's thus manifested, / Which, though thou wouldst deny, denies thee vantage. / We do condemn thee to the very block / Where Claudio stoop'd to death, and with like haste. / Away with him!" But Shakespeare being Shakespeare he manages to sort things out in a final ruling, as square a ruling as square can be. Mariana is married to Angelo and she is the happiest woman when Angelo is pardoned and escapes the block. Isabella is reunited to her brother Claudio. Lucio's slandering against the Duke sends him at first to prison to be whipped and then hanged, because he had called the Duke "a fool, a coward, one all of luxury, an ass and a madman", a diabolical pentacle of insults, but the Duke yields to popular demand and pardons the slandering provided he marries a prostitute this very Lucio had mishandled, which is equal to death in Lucio's words: "Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, / whipping, and hanging" which is another formal square though "marrying" is equaled to the three others: "pressing to death", "whipping", "hanging". And finally the Duke is moving towards his own marriage with Isabella. Four couples are reunited, even if one is brother and sister and another is a slanderer and a prostitute. And three marriages in that square ending. This production adds a detail at the end that does not seem to be in the tale which is the coming to the forefront of a woman and a newborn baby that is at once acknowledged by Claudio which makes a fourth real marriage, but I would have preferred the Shakespearian ending that is somewhere slightly awry and hence a big tongue in a big cheek like the final ternary speech of the Shrew when finally tamed into marriage and obedience.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" is one of Shakespeare's darker comedies and has some decent musings on life, love and duty. It concerns the Duke of Vienna (Kenneth Colley), who decides to temporarily abdicate his throne and his place he puts the sinister Angelo (Tim Pigott-Smith). When Angelo decides to put a man to death for pre-marital sex, his sister Isabella (Kate Nelligan) pleads for his life. Angelo agrees one condition: she must surrender her virginity to him...Tim Pigott-Smith is well-cast as Angelo, and his frightened yet lusty eyes easily convey his character's torn emotions. Kenneth Colley is excellent as the Duke, who disguises himself as a monk and arranges a happy ending for Isabella. Colley has a strong command of the language and propels the story along seemingly without effort. Christopher Strauli is Claudio, the condemned man and Yolande Palfrey is very pretty as his betrothed Juliet.What irritates about this admittedly well-produced adaptations is their insistence on traditional costume and setting. Combined with 80s TV lighting, it really makes Shakespeare look like acquired taste rather than the vital playwright that he was and still is. The comics in this play, dandy Lucio (John McEnery) and the rustics led by Pompey (Frank Middlemass) get dialogue that sounds unexpectedly contemporary. Lucio describes women as "punks" and Pompey gets a wonderful bit of dialogue about his "bum". Derogatory insults, I know, but how well exchanges like this have played in a contemporary setting...I enjoyed watching this version of the play, regardless of the limitations imposed on it by the period in which it was filmed and would recommend renting it for those looking for a cheaper alternative to Shakespeare at the theatre.

Originally listed as one of William Shakespeare's comedies, Measure for Measure is now relegated to the status of being a "problem" play, meaning either that it doesn't fit into any box or that its content and message is a problem for orthodox interpreters of William Shakespeare's biography. Whether or not the play is a comedy, a problem play, or a tragi-comedy, it is a powerful work and one of Shakespeare's best. In the late 1970s, BBC and Time-Life produced the only filmed version of Measure for Measure in their series of 37 Shakespeare's plays. Although I have not seen more than a handful of BBC, Time-Life productions, this production stands out for the quality of the acting and the impeccable direction by Desmond Davis.Kenneth Colley is an appealing Vincentio, Duke of Vienna, who, dissatisfied with the corruption in the city, announces that he plans to visit Poland, handing over governing to his chief deputy, the rigidly puritanical Angelo, convincingly performed by Tim Piggot-Smith, who will be assisted by his wise counselor Escalus (Kevin Stoney). To observe how the city will fare, however, Vincentio travels to a monastery where he is provided with a hooded monk's robe which allows him to return to Vienna disguised as a priest, keeping his face partially covered by his hood.Taking over the reins of government, Angelo proceeds to enforce every statute, closing the houses of prostitution and arresting Claudio, a young nobleman (Christopher Strauli), for fornication by getting his lover Juliet (Yolanda Vazquez) pregnant, even though he had agreed to marry her. Under Angelo's order, he is to be executed in three days. On hearing the news, Claudio's friend Lucio (John McEnery) tells Claudio's sister, Isabella (Kate Nelligan), who is studying to be a nun, to go to Angelo and use all her power to convince Angelo to spare her brother's life.While Isabella, as portrayed by Nelligan, is cold and aloof, she is also intelligent and attractive, telling Angelo that "it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." The hypocritical Angelo falls for Isabella, offering to go to bed with her in exchange for Claudio's life. Meanwhile, the "meddling" priest sets it up so that Isabella can escape the humiliation of having to sleep with Angelo by substituting Mariana (Jacqueline Pearce) in a bed-trick to be performed in the pitch-black night.Mariana is Angelo's former lover whom he had agreed to marry but backed out because "her reputation was disvalued in levity", though no details are provided. Duke Vincentio (still disguised as a friar) tells Mariana she will commit no sin by sleeping with Angelo because "he is your husband on a pre-contract." While Measure for Measure borrows from Cinthio's Epitia and Promos and Cassandra by George Whetstone, the play is a profoundly autobiographical work. If the Oxfordian theory is correct, the play speaks to a poignant episode in Oxford's life when, upon his returning home after his trip to Italy in 1576, his mind was poisoned by his cousin Henry Howard and his receiver, Rowland Yorke, both Catholics and enemies of the Protestant regime, to the effect that his wife Anne Cecil had been unfaithful to him.They told him that the daughter Anne had just given birth to could not be his since the last time he had slept with her was twelve months ago in October. Indeed, Oxford had not been told that his wife was pregnant until March and word of the baby's birth was not given to him until September, not by his wife but by her father, William Cecil. As a result of Anne's suspected infidelity, Oxford was estranged from his wife for over five years and only later in life became remorseful, reconciling with Anne and accepting Elizabeth Vere as his daughter. As far as the bed-trick is concerned, two separate sources recorded that de Vere conceived his first child by unknowingly sleeping with his wife when he thought he was with a mistress.One story circulated in The Histories of Essex in 1836 that Anne had been substituted by her father William for one of the Earl's mistresses when the Earl was in a drunken state. Whether this story is true or not (how anyone, no matter how dark it is nor how drunk they are could not know who they are sleeping with boggles the mind), Shakespeare was apparently able to see its dramatic potential, using the bed trick as a device in both Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well. Likewise, in play after play, the male protagonist conceives a strong animosity toward a devoted wife, imagining her unfaithful to him on flimsy grounds, only to be later overwhelmed with remorse: Imogen in Cymbeline, Hermoine in The Winter's Tale, and Desdemona in Othello.In Measure for Measure, Vincentio and Angelo may represent two sides of the author's character, the noble and good-natured Duke, and the judgmental and unforgiving Angelo. It is a self appraisal in which the author does not escape indictment, though his misdeeds are eventually forgiven - as they were in life (but only after he was imprisoned in the Tower like Claudio for impregnating courtesan Anne Vavasour). While the themes eventually play out to everyone's advantage, the getting there is where the genius lies and the final act of Measure for Measure is every bit as moving and poetic as any of Shakespeare's well-known tragedies.

In "Measure for Measure," Shakespeare gives us no character as an entry point to this acid discussion of justice vs. mercy, religious faith and hypocrisy. Virginity, assaults thereon and reputations at stake are once again pivotal questions. The low comedy characters, often tedious irrelevancies in other plays, are here in the bordello trade, and for once their stories resonate with the main narrative.We must consider "Measure for Measure" as a comedy, since all the characters live and many of them marry at the end, yet we as an audience are not really allowed to get comfortable at the twisty conclusion. The dramatic resolution is strangely prolonged and the aftertaste is a queasy one. I doubt this is the favorite play of all that many admirers of the Bard.That being said, this video is a very satisfying production. The director, Desmond Davis, keeps the pace up at all times - there is no flagging of energy or movement. The visuals are unfamiliar compared to others in the series that deliberately reference Old Master paintings. Yet the images are uniformly precise, effective and gratifying to behold.A word of admiration for the tracking shots of characters walking down the endless streets of Vienna. The television studio configuration is often the set constructed at one end and the camera observing at the other. However, for this day's shooting, the street set was constructed in a circle hugging the four walls of the studio, with cameras and cast walking around inside it. Nicely done.The cast is almost uniformly satisfying. Kate Nelligan, who has been known to be dreary on some occasions, brings off perfectly the goodness and persuasiveness of Isabella, without ever becoming sanctimonious or annoying. Tim Pigott-Smith excels as the predatory hypocrite Angelo, an ancestor of his memorable Captain Merrick in "The Jewel in the Crown." John McEnery as the loudmouth dandy Lucio, Frank Middlemass and Adrienne Corri as the bawds deserve special mention. A highlight is Christopher Strauli's finely calibrated jailhouse speech, in which Claudio first commends his sister's decision not to save his life by giving in to sexual blackmail, and gradually decides that he loves living enough that perhaps she should disgrace herself after all.A major theme in the whole BBC series is bringing Shakespearian speech down to conversational volume for TV, after centuries of ritualized shouting in theaters. Kenneth Colley as the manipulative Duke almost takes it too far, as his language sometimes descends to liquid baritoning at the expense of diction. He also moves his head too much for the camera, eyes rolling and skull oscillating from side to side. According to Susan Willis's book, Colley was the 32nd actor approached for the part, the first choice being Alec Guinness, but then you can't always get what you want. Between extended rehearsal schedules and unimpressive money, casting this whole series must have been a mammoth exercise in frustration.However, these are minor annoyances in the scheme of things. All in all, major cheers for an excellent production of a disquieting play.