SOURCE: ‘“Craft Against Vice’: Morality Play Elements in Measure for Measure,” in Shakespeare Studies, Vol. XIV, 1981, pp. 229-48.

In the following essay, Winston traces elements of the Tudor morality play in Measure for Measure, seeing the figure of Lucio as associated with allegorical “Vice.”

One of the most rewarding areas of recent research in Renaissance drama has been the continuing development of a new methodology of theater history which relates Shakespeare's plays and those of his contemporaries to preexistent drama, but neither to trace their sources nor to reduce them to some predetermined, neat, allegorical meaning. Rather, this approach explores the overtones and undercurrents of which the playwright and his audience would have been aware because of their previous experience of drama, and it examines how these additional levels alter the significance of characters, plot, and theme. Such critics as Bernard Spivack, David Bevington, Robert Weimann, Alan Dessen...