SOURCE: Lanier, Gregory W. “Physic That's Bitter to Sweet End: The Tragicomic Structure of Measure for Measure.” Essays in Literature 14, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 15-36.

In the following essay, Lanier presents a structural analysis of Measure for Measure, seeing in its divided form “a juxtaposition of two dramatic modes, tragedy and comedy, carefully poised to create a cohesive, resonant unity.”

In 1949 E. M. W. Tillyard bisected Measure for Measure into potentially tragic verse and dissolutely comic prose; some years earlier G. Wilson Knight asserted that the symbolic sequence of transgression, judgment, and redeeming mercy provides an innate structural integrity.¹ This polarity in critical responses has proved to be nearly as enduring as the play itself. Cynthia Lewis provides a short summary of this division in her recent article:

Readers who, like Harriett Hawkins, find the play's ending “not only aesthetically and intellectually unsatisfying, but personally infuriating,” usually see Measure for...