the time during which this play was written his thought was more rigidly
kept to the just survey of life than at any other period. Creative art
has been so long inglorious that the practice and ideas of supreme poets
have become incomprehensible to the many. This play is a great hint of
something never, now, to be made clear. Those who count it a mark of
Shakespeare's littleness expose their own.

_Measure for Measure._

_Written._ 1603-4 (?)

_Produced._ (?)

_Published._ 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ The story is founded on an event that is said
to have taken place in Ferrara, during the Middle Ages. Shakespeare
took it from a collection of novels, the _Hecatomithi_, by Giraldi
Cinthio; from the play, _The rare Historie of Promos and
Cassandra_, founded on Cinthio's novel, by one George Whetstone,
and from Whetstone's prose rendering of the story in his book _The
Heptameron of Civil Discourses_.

_The Fable._ The Duke of Vienna, going on a secret mission, leaves
his power in the hands of Angelo, a man of strict life.

Angelo enforces old laws against incontinence. He arrests Claudio
and sentences him to be beheaded. Claudio's sister, Isabella,
pleads with Angelo for her brother's life. Being moved to lust,
Angelo tempts Isabella. He offers to spare Claudio if she will
submit to him. Claudio begs her to save him thus. She refuses.

The Duke returns to Vienna disguised, hears Isabella's story, and
resolves to entrap Angelo. He causes her to make an appointment to
that end. He causes Mariana, a maid who has been jilted by Angelo,
to personate Isabella, and keep the appointment. Mariana does so.

He contrives to check Angelo's treachery, that would have caused
Claudio's death in spite of the submission.

Lastly he reveals himself, exposes Angelo's sin, compels him to
marry Mariana, pardons Claudio, and makes Isabella his Duchess.

This play is now seldom performed. It is one of the greatest works of
the greatest English mind. It deals justly with the case of the man who
sets up a lifeless sentimentality as a defence against a living natural
impulse. The spirit of Angelo has avenged itself on Shakespeare by
becoming the guardian spirit of the British theatre.

In this play Shakespeare seems to have brooded on the fact that the
common prudential virtues are sometimes due, not to virtue,