Open Silences in Shakespeares Measure for Measure :: Shakespeare Measure for Measure

How Productions from 1720 to 1929 Close Shakespeares Open Silences in verse for MeasurePrologue Playtext. Performance. and Open Silences In the Preface to his version of Shakespeares plays, and even as he vigorously defended the playwright against attacks by other neo-classical critics, Samuel Johnson nonetheless also offered his receive survey of Shakespeares weaknesses. Among the more well-known and provocative remarks is his assessment of the destinations of the plays It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected. When he frame himself near the end of his work, and in view of his reward, he shortened the labour, to take the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his disaster is improbably produced or imperfectly represented. Preface, in Sherbo VII 71-72. That Measure for Measure, in particular, was taken to be an example of Shakespeares tendency to remit his efforts, and that these failures created problems about the ending of the play symptomatic about larger issues of genre, is testified to by Charlotte Lennoxs often quoted reflection The comic Part of Measure for Measure is all Episode, and has not addiction on the principal unresolved, which even as Shakespeare has managed it has none of the Requisites of Comedy. Great and rank Crimes, such as those of Angelo, in Measure for Measure, are properly the Subject of Tragedy, the Design of which is to show the fatal Consequences of those Crimes and the Punishment that never fails to attend them. The white Follies of a Lucio may be exposed, ridiculed and corrected in Comedy. That Shakespeare made a wrong Choice of his Subject, since he was resolved to torture it into a Comedy, appears by the low Contrivance, absurd Intrique, and improbable Incidents he was obliged to introduce in order to bring about three or four Weddings quite of the one good Beheading, which was the Consequence naturally expected . Lennox, I 27, quoted in Vickers, 4 112. As we shall see, these strictures reappear in at least one interlingual rendition of the play, namely in Francis Gentlemans commentary on the play in the 1773 edition (Bells edition) examined below. In this presentation, and concentrating on the issues raised by Johnson, rather than the wider issues raised