M4M: Critic Quotes

Question 1

‘Life runs strongly and gladly through her veins’ ~ Edward Dowden about Isabella

Answer 1

‘Holding a hollow sculpture of virtue to hide inside of’ ~ Irene McGarrity about Isabella

Question 2

‘Isabella stands for sainted purity’ ~ G Wilson Knight

Answer 2

‘A stage Duke, not a real person’ ~ W W Lawrence

Question 3

‘His disguise must not be taken too seriously’ ~ Wilbur Dunkel about the Duke

Answer 3

‘Shakespeare’s sympathy for scoundrels’ ~ L C Knights

Question 4

‘The function of Lucio is to keep us informed and to unite the characters’ ~ Wilbur Dunkel

Answer 4

‘Marriage is the public and measured answer to a private and immoderate sin’ ~ Stacy Magdenz

Question 5

‘He was placed in a position calculated to actualise his worst potentialities’ ~ F R Leavis about Angelo

Answer 5

‘There was strand of loathing for sexuality in any form’ ~ William Empson

Question 6

‘Social forms were being undermined by new forces’ ~ L C Knights

Answer 6

‘We are left hungry and thirsty for some wholesome single grain of righteousness’ ~ Swinburne about minor characters

Question 7

‘A gesture as immense as handing of the reins of power to a young and relatively inexperienced Angelo must go hand in hand… with some sort of physiological crisis… an act of desperation… a passionate desire to put things right’ ~ Daniel Massey RSC 1983

Answer 7

‘Seemed to be in the midst of a deep personal crisis about the value of life itself’ ~ Roger Allam RSC

‘Felt as if I was subjecting them… to some kind of ordeal by fire. The sequence as a whole had the ritual of purification’ ~ Roger Allam

Question 8

‘Measure for measure is the most painful or rather the only painful work by Shakespeare’ ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Answer 8

‘Every reader feels some indignation when Angelo is spared’ ~ Dr Johnson

Question 9

‘The Duke is more absorbed in his plots than… welfare of the state’ ~ William Hazlitt

Answer 9

‘Innocent not naive’ ~ Paola Dionisotti RSC 1978