SOURCE: "Measure for Measure and the Art of Not Dying," in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 26, No. 1, Spring, 1984, pp. 74-93.

In the following essay, Spinrad examines the correlation between the prison imagery in Measure for Measure and the concept of death as an escape from the prison of life.

In many ways, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure may be considered a culmination of the Morality tradition that extends from Pride of Life to Doctor Faustus: a tradition that poses the moment of death as an understanding of life, offers the soul a last chance on earth to choose salvation or damnation, and dispatches the soul accordingly. But in Measure for Measure, the soul is not dispatched. And in this respect, Shakespeare's "problem" play mirrors the "problem" of life itself: that even though death offers the perfection of salvation to an imperfect world, we are often afraid to...