50 Fun Facts About Measure for Measure

In which city, ruled by the absent Duke Vincentio, does Shakespeare set Measure for Measure?

Vienna is an odd home for a play full of Italian names, and some scholars argue the action was moved there from Italy when the text was later revised.

What disguise does Duke Vincentio wear to spy on his deputy Angelo in Measure for Measure?

A friar can go anywhere, so the Duke visits the prison, counsels the condemned Claudio and quietly steers the whole plot from under his hood.

What does Angelo demand from Isabella in return for sparing her brother Claudio in Measure for Measure?

Her virginity is the price, and Isabella refuses, declaring that her chastity matters more than her brother's life.

In Measure for Measure, the head sent to Angelo in place of Claudio's belonged to what kind of criminal?

A pirate named Ragozine had died of fever in the prison that morning, and he happened to be Claudio's age with the same colour of beard.

How does Isabella answer in the text when Duke Vincentio proposes marriage at the end of Measure for Measure?

She says nothing: Shakespeare gives her no reply at all, so every production has to decide for itself what her silence means.

Despite its executions and blackmail, Measure for Measure was first printed under which heading?

Comedies was the label and it has stuck, though one condemned man's speech on dying has been compared with the soliloquies of Hamlet.

Which actress played Isabella opposite John Cazale's Angelo at the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1976?

Meryl Streep headed a cast that also had Sam Waterston as the Duke and Jeffrey Tambor in one of the comic parts.

Which German composer based his early opera Das Liebesverbot on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure?

Richard Wagner conducted the 1836 premiere himself, and after it flopped the second performance was cancelled when a fist fight broke out backstage.

The title Measure for Measure echoes a verse about judging others in which book of the Bible?

Matthew records the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus warns that people will be judged by the same standard they apply to others.

According to Isabella in Measure for Measure, it is excellent to have whose strength but tyrannous to use it?

A giant's strength is her image for Angelo's new power, thrown at him moments after he tells her that her brother dies tomorrow.

Which jilted fiancée of Angelo secretly takes Isabella's place at a night-time meeting in Measure for Measure?

Mariana still loves Angelo long after he dropped her, and the swap in the dark binds him to the marriage he had refused.

For which offence, long left unpunished under Duke Vincentio, is Claudio sentenced to death in Measure for Measure?

Fornication carried death under an old statute nobody had enforced, and Claudio was engaged to the woman, lacking only the legal formalities.

What is Isabella preparing to become when her brother Claudio is arrested in Measure for Measure?

A nun in the making, she is about to join the sisterhood of Saint Clare and has just said she wishes its rules were stricter.

What punishment does Duke Vincentio finally impose on the gossip who slandered him throughout Measure for Measure?

Marriage to a prostitute, the mother of his abandoned child, is the sentence, and he protests that it is as bad as whipping and hanging.

Which hard-drinking prisoner in Measure for Measure flatly refuses to be executed on the day appointed?

Barnardine has spent nine years in the prison, often too drunk to care, and swears he will not die that day for any man's persuasion.

In Measure for Measure, who tells Isabella 'our doubts are traitors' as he urges her to plead with Angelo?

Lucio, the play's loosest tongue, gives its most quoted advice, adding that doubts make us lose the good we might win by fearing to attempt.

Which pimp in Measure for Measure bears the surname Bum and the first name of a great Roman general?

Pompey is teased for it in court, where the magistrate says his backside is the greatest thing about him, which makes him Pompey the Great.

Which constable in Measure for Measure muddles his words, calling two arrested men 'notorious benefactors'?

Elbow means malefactors, as Angelo drily points out, and he goes on to tell the court that he detests his wife before heaven.

Which brothel keeper in Measure for Measure is said to have had nine husbands?

Mistress Overdone was, her servant jokes, overdone by the last of them, and she is hauled off to prison when the brothels are shut.

Angelo abandoned his fiancée in Measure for Measure after her dowry was lost in what kind of disaster?

A shipwreck drowned her brother Frederick, a famous soldier, along with the dowry he was carrying, and Angelo promptly dropped her.

Measure for Measure reached print only in 1623, in which famous collection of Shakespeare's plays?

The First Folio is the only early text of the play, which sat unprinted for nearly twenty years after its first recorded performance.

Which label, coined by the critic F. S. Boas in 1896, is often given to Shakespeare's Measure for Measure?

Problem play was a term borrowed from the social dramas of Ibsen, and Boas used it for Shakespeare works that sit uneasily between laughter and darkness.

The earliest recorded performance of Measure for Measure, in 1604, fell on which date in the Christmas season?

St Stephen's Night is 26 December, so the first audience on record watched this tale of lust and beheading the day after Christmas.

Measure for Measure draws on a tale by which Italian writer, whose story collection also gave Shakespeare Othello?

Cinthio told the story as a bleak tragedy, in which the sister is forced to give in and her brother is killed anyway.

Some scholars argue that which Jacobean playwright revised Measure for Measure after Shakespeare's death?

Thomas Middleton is the candidate of Gary Taylor and John Jowett, who see his style in patches of the text, though others call the idea an unproven hypothesis.

Which Victorian poet wrote an 1830 poem about the lonely wait of Angelo's jilted fiancée from Measure for Measure?

Alfred Tennyson ends his poem before the lover ever returns, and its despairing heroine went on to inspire a painting by John Everett Millais.

Which Russian poet reworked the plot of Measure for Measure into his 1833 verse tale Angelo?

Alexander Pushkin had started out translating the play, then turned it into a narrative poem with only a little dialogue left in.

Which Aldous Huxley novel takes its title from a line Isabella speaks to Angelo in Measure for Measure?

Ape and Essence borrows from her attack on proud man, whose glassy essence makes him play tricks before heaven like an angry ape.

Which German playwright's Round Heads and Pointed Heads began life as an adaptation of Measure for Measure?

Bertolt Brecht turned it into an anti-Nazi parable set in a land called Yahoo, whose rulers pit round heads against pointed heads.

Which actor stars as the Duke in the 2019 Australian film of Measure for Measure, set in a Melbourne housing block?

Hugo Weaving leads a loose modern retelling dedicated to its co-writer Damian Hill, who died two days before filming was due to start.

Which actress played Isabella for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962, opposite Marius Goring's Angelo?

Judi Dench took the part in a staging directed by John Blatchley, one of a long line of famous names to have played Claudio's sister.

Which English actor played Angelo in Peter Brook's 1950 Measure for Measure at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre?

John Gielgud played the deputy opposite Barbara Jefford's Isabella, and the pair repeated their roles for a BBC radio version that same year.

Which actress alternated the roles of Isabella and Angelo with Jack Lowden in a 2018 Measure for Measure in London?

Hayley Atwell and Lowden traded the two parts in Josie Rourke's gender-reversal production at the Donmar Warehouse, so each played both abuser and victim.

A Restoration rewrite of Measure for Measure borrowed the lovers Beatrice and Benedick from which play?

Much Ado About Nothing supplied the sparring couple for William Davenant's The Law Against Lovers, in which Benedick becomes Angelo's brother.

Which diarist saw a Restoration adaptation of Measure for Measure in 1662 and judged it a good play, well performed?

Samuel Pepys was especially taken with the singing and dancing of the young actress who played a little sister invented for the new version.

Charles Gildon's adaptation of Measure for Measure wove in scenes from which Henry Purcell opera?

Dido and Aeneas plays out in pieces while Angelo watches, and the evening closes with an epilogue from Shakespeare's ghost, who complains about constant rewrites.

Which other Shakespeare play, alongside Measure for Measure, turns on a woman secretly swapped into a man's bed?

All's Well That Ends Well has Helena take another woman's place in a darkened bedchamber to claim her own reluctant husband, Bertram.

Duke Vincentio's sudden return to fix everything in Measure for Measure is often described as which plot device?

Deus ex machina fits because the Duke reappears like a god from above and settles every character's fate within a single final scene.

Which prison official in Measure for Measure suggests sending a dead prisoner's head to Angelo instead of Claudio's?

The Provost runs the prison and openly pities Claudio, so he risks his post to help the disguised Duke deceive Angelo.

What is the trade of Abhorson, who insists in Measure for Measure that his work is a 'mystery'?

Executioner is his proud calling, and he complains that taking on a pimp as his assistant will discredit the craft.

What name does Duke Vincentio go by while watching his deputy in disguise in Measure for Measure?

Lodowick is the alias, and in the last act the Duke hears this meddling stranger blamed for everything before coming back hooded to be unmasked.

In Measure for Measure, Angelo's abandoned fiancée lives in seclusion at what kind of dwelling near Saint Luke's?

A moated grange is all Shakespeare says of the place, yet the phrase stuck so firmly that a later poet and a painter each built a famous work around it.

Where does Angelo believe Duke Vincentio has travelled after handing over power in Measure for Measure?

Poland is the story the Duke himself put about, while the town gossips guess he is with the Emperor of Russia or away in Rome.

Which 1578 play by George Whetstone gave Shakespeare much of the plot of Measure for Measure?

Promos and Cassandra was a two-part drama meant for reading, and Whetstone was the one who lightened a grim Italian story with clowning.

According to the condemned Claudio in Measure for Measure, the miserable have no other medicine but only what?

Hope is all he has left, and he adds in the same breath that he hopes to live yet is prepared to die.

Isabella's attack on 'man, proud man' in Measure for Measure says he is dressed in a little brief what?

Authority that is little and brief is her jab at Angelo, a mere stand-in ruler who is already sending her brother to the block.

Which wise old lord in Measure for Measure reflects that some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall?

Escalus is Angelo's level-headed second-in-command, and he says it in an aside after failing to talk him out of executing Claudio.

What does Duke Vincentio finally do with the prisoner who refused to be executed in Measure for Measure?

He pardons him, forgiving all his earthly faults and handing him to a churchman for advice, even though the man is a convicted murderer.

Which actor had a small role in a 1973 Broadway Measure for Measure and played its Duke twenty years later?

Kevin Kline shared the 1973 stage with Patti LuPone and David Ogden Stiers, then led the 1993 revival opposite Andre Braugher's Angelo.

Asked why he is under arrest in Measure for Measure, Claudio blames 'too much' of what?

Liberty, he says, turns to restraint the way overeating leads to a fast, a rueful joke from a man being marched to prison.