SOURCE: Goddard, Harold C. “Power in Measure for Measure.” In Modern Critical Interpretations: William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, edited by Harold Bloom, pp. 25-43. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.

In the following essay, originally published in 1951, Goddard interprets Measure for Measure as a study in the corrupting effects of power and self-righteousness on character.

“Would you know a man? Give him power.” History sometimes seems little else than an extended comment on that ancient maxim. Our own day has elucidated it on a colossal scale. Measure for Measure might have been expressly written to drive home its truth. It is little wonder, then, that the play of Shakespeare's in which the word “authority” occurs more often than in any other should have an extraordinary pertinence for a century in which the word “authoritarian” is on so many lips. The central male figure of the drama is one of...