Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

living immorally, an example. Isabella is Claudio’s sister, and as Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure progress,
he hints to Isabella that there is a way to save her brother, and it includes Isabella having sexual intercourse
with him.
The Duke in disguise, as another character architects a string of events to produce “his desired”
outcome. Dollimore believes, “the play discloses corruption to be an effect less of desire than authority itself. It also
shows how corruption is downwardly identified—that is, focused and placed with reference to the low-life „licence‟; in
effect, and especially in the figure of Angelo, corruption is displaced from authority to desire and by implication from the
rulers to the ruled” (Dollimore 176). Dollimore sees a disparity to the widely accepted view of Measure for
Measure‟s themes of love and desire and law versus oppression; but rather he views Angelo’s harsh
prosecution a way that authoritarian personalities like Angelo can oppress and control subordinates without
human intervention such as the type displayed in the character of the Duke.
Why did Angelo not temper his authoritarian judgment in light of the “human condition”? Claudio
and Juliet in essence were married yet they had not participated in a formal ceremony. In spite of that we
observe Angelo was eager to break the same law Claudio was imprisoned for violating, with Claudio’s own
sister Isabella. Had Isabella decided to give her virginity in order to save her brother, which she did agree to
“in term” at the posturing of the Duke who was in disguise, Angelo would have taken advantage of her.
Consider the law against fornication; although Angelo did not have sex with Isabella, he still violated the
law that he was adamant in enforcing and had condemned Claudio to die for. The Duke’s intervention
created the scene for the “infamous bed trick”, that would be the basis of Angelo’s harsh rebuke at the plays
end. Angelo believed he had slept with Isabella but in fact he had not. Nonetheless, even when the
arrangement is made and Angelo, unwittingly, does the “deed” or so he thinks with Isabella, yet he does not
pardon Claudio as it was agreed.
Angelo believed that even though he had not upheld the law he was in a sense above the law
because it was his duty to enforce it. Angelo’s soliloquy in Act II of Measure for Measure gives us insight in to
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