The ‘Meaning’ of Measure for Measure

Summary

The nineteen-twenties, distrustful of ‘enthusiasm’, strove to see Shakespeare as above all the practical dramatist, led to the choice and the manipulation of his stories, to his manner of theatrical speech and character-presentation, by the stage-conditions of his time and the passing fashion of dramatic taste. This approach strengthened our understanding of Elizabethan stage-technique, and it was a useful corrective to the heavily romanticized Shakespeare of earlier years. But when the student of stage-conditions set up as the complete interpreter, the limitations of the approach were obvious enough. The poetic and the dramatic power were only foster-children of the industrious apprenticeship to the stage: the heart of the matter was not to be weighed in a Shakespeare laboratory.