Measure for measure as a problem play :
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A problem play deals with various moral and social problems central to the play and such issues remain unanswered by the author. “Measure for Measure” was grouped as a comedy in the First Folio( 1623) since the chief criteria for comedy then was a happy ending and no death. But the emotional perplexity and unresolved but unavoidable issues make it more than a mere comedy. F.S. Boas solved the difficulty by reclassifying “Measure for Measure” as a problem play in 1896, grouping it with “Troilus and Cressida ” and “All’s Well That Ends Well”.
The first chief problem is the conflict between law and mercy. Angelo, the deputy of the Duke Vincentio, is a very strict executor of rules. He decides to give Claudio a death penalty in charge of fornication. Claudio has impregnated Juliet before completing all technicalities of official marriage. His sister Isabella, a novice nun, pleads to Angelo for mercy on his brother’s life. Her request and slander – “Man, proud man, / Drest in a little brief authority” – can’t break his resolution to enforce law that has been long asleep. The problem is that whether law should consider mercy or not and if yes, then how much.
The next problem is that of physical and spiritual purity. Angelo asks Isabella to surrender her virginity in exchange of her brother’s life. She becomes trapped between sisterly affection and chastity, between the purity of afterlife and the necessity of mortal life. She ultimately decides to save her soul and prepares her brother for the upcoming execution but this again raises the problem about her choice : the priority between virginity and brother’s life. Angelo is also tossed between his official responsibility and sensuality. His stronghold on the just application of law is most violated in his desire to ravish Isabella.
Forced marriage creates another problematic issue in this play. The Duke orders Angelo to marry Mariana and Lucio to marry Kate Keepdown, a local prostitute whom he has impregnated. But it is uncertain how far Angelo or Lucio will prove a good husband since they had no mind to marry. The problem is whether an unwanted marriage can be beneficial to the couple and the society at large.
The Duke’s forgiving both Angelo and Lucio with no penalty except forced marriage is the subject of another crucial problem in the play. Coleridge and Swinburne think this act to be an outrage on the principles of justice. The final happy ending is both relieving and amusing but the crime is too serious to be pardoned. How properly justice is to be meted out is a striking question in this play and remains unanswered throughout. Moreover the initial societal problems at the time of the Duke’s departure are also unsolved at the end. The bed trick and the head trick designed by the Duke make the means of solutions themselves problematic and secretive.
The most dramatical problem is that of the final silence of Isabella at the marriage proposal from the Duke. Since she speaks nothing it is generally taken for her consent but silence can signify denial also. Isabella’s desire to be a nun and the request from such an authority as the Duke confront each other and the result is a tense silence. This symbolises the struggle between social power and individual freedom and this marriage reinforces the very alignment of sexuality and masculine power she has been trying to challenge.
Therefore, the play is correctly called a problem play since it holds up the fact that the struggle to find a moral course in a corrupt world is as pressing now as four hundred years ago. Every action is linked to the solution of the previous problem and the reason of the next one. Indeed “one section of the play mirrors the other, it is in accepting the prism as a whole that its meanings emerge”( ” The Empty Space” by Brook).
