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9780813207162 Academic Inspection Copy

Measure for Measure

Casuistry and Artistry
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Seldom encountered in published literary criticism but frequently found in the classroom are those outbursts in which students express their deepest feelings about the characters, ideas, and values found in a play. Professor Seiden, drawing on many years of teaching and studying Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure", deploys his training and insight to explore each one of the characters and all of the implications of their actions to the greatest possible depth and makes it, as he says, "his play". The essential tragi-seriousness of the play with its unhonoured commitment to tragic irrevocability poses questions large enough to make the study fascinating and important, questions about secular law, Christian ethics, politics, and human sexuality. It is nothing, says the author, if not casuistical. He has chosen to examine this aspect in the Kierkiegaardian spirit of self-examination, leading to the reflections of the experimental moralist by plumbing the depth of the characters and the situations caused by their actions. The work is divided into 14 chapters in which the author examines the critical issues of the play, among them the Duke as a politician, a diseased mind, forensic justice, the jailhouse and whorehouse, Lucio, Vincentio, Isabella's choice, and Isabella and Antigone. When appropriate, he extends the study by comparing "Measure for Measure" with other plays. Notes, a bibliography and indices complete the volume, which should be useful to actors, directors, and theatre workshops as well as to the general reader.
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