SOURCE: "A Trial: Make-Believe Confounds Reality," in Measure For Measure: Casuistry and Artistry, The Catholic University of America Press, 1990, pp. 116-43.

In the following essay, Seiden analyzes the trial scene in Measure for Measure, arguing that the theatricality, trickery, and game playing of the play's final scene "creates an exhilarating and satisfying climax that the whole play has been designed to achieve. "Furthermore, Seiden states that the Duke 's role-playing in the mock trial "makes a mockery of justice. "

All the world's a stage,
 And all the men and women merely players.
 They have their exits and their entrances,
 And one man in his time plays many parts.
 (As You Like It, II.vii.l39ff.)

In The Merchant of Venice, written about ten years before Measure for Measure, Shakespeare had discovered the exciting dramatic device of the courtroom trial in which the law, mated, it would seem...