Henry Oliver: evaluation

Transcript context

…How does this relate to James I? This is put on for his court, right? We know it was performed for him at court. We know it wasn’t otherwise hugely popular because there was no quarto. It was perhaps written with him in mind more than in other ways. The idea of measuring yourself that I mentioned earlier—that’s quite a common idea in Shakespeare’s England. There’s a morality play, for example, where Mercy says, “Measure yourself ever, beware of excess.” Obviously, the Puritans love to measure themselves. But self-judgment can’t be the basis of public policy, and then we have this king now who’s very interested in these ideas of justice and law. There was a sermon delivered when James became king, and there’s a section in the sermon about the duties of a prince who represents God. One of them is the execution of just judgment by which all must be measured. So, I think Shakespeare is taking up a theme that is current at court and which we know James is interested in: how to deal with religious tension, how to deal with sexual behavior south of the river. I think he’s basically saying, at the end of the day, the king’s going to come in and impose the law, and that’s just how it should be. That’s a plausible reading which the king could take away from it during a performance, right? There’s a line in Measure for Measure that suggests the Duke maybe is not inclined toward women, which is possibly a reference to James, who had an affair with the Duke of Buckingham, in addition to possible other affairs with men.…

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