Measure for Measure

Posted April 18, 2010 * Comments(2)

I can’t believe that even the Duke, an elderly man who early in the play thought of retirement, reveals that he too, is a virtual child molester in proposing marriage to a teenage Isabella. In reading Measure for Measure, I can see that those who enforce the laws against sexual corruption are often expressing their own sexual corruption.

Solange Escobar.

2 Comments so far

  1. rforbes on April 20th, 2010

    Isabella is a teenager? Wow did not notice that. I don’t know that age is really focused on in this play, but many of Shakespeare’s plays involve romances of people who aren’t close to the same age.

  2. Solange Escobar on April 23rd, 2010

    The play mentions that Isabella is a novice, a “new member of a religious community of vowed women who has commenced formation and is in a process of initiation into the life and mission of the community” (Dictionary). This process is called the novitiate. “In the early times, nuns taught Christian education to orphans and young girls brought by their parents, and especially girls intending to embrace a religious life” like Isabella. (Google Origin and history of nun/novice). That’s why I am assuming that Isabella is a teenager.