SOURCE: Chedgzoy, Kate. “Tortured into a Comedy.” In William Shakespeare: Measure for Measure, pp. 58-68. Tavistock: Northcote House, 2000.

In the following essay, Chedgzoy explores Measure for Measure's status as a “problem play,” examining stagings of the drama, particularly its final scene, from the seventeenth to the late-twentieth century.

Measure for Measure, along with some other Shakespeare plays that date from the first few years of the seventeenth century, is often referred to as a ‘problem play’: All's Well That Ends Well and Troilus and Cressida are the other plays most often included in this curious category. At times, this designation seems to indicate little more than a desire to tidy away Shakespeare's plays into neatly classified and labelled boxes—a desire that is frustrated by the diversity of the plays, and by the complex and inventive ways in which Shakespeare experimented with dramatic genre. But it is...