Human Behavior in Measure

Can it be That second-stringer may to a greater extent betray our sense Than woman's lightness? Having suck ground enough, Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary And pitch our evils in that location? O, fie, fie, fie! What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo? (Act II, Scene II).

Angelo finds in himself, then, a range nature: the first is the virtuous individual that would have carried on with propriety; the second, a carnal, lustful, power-hungry character who, though surpri infractg to him, is yet part of who he is. His awareness of this duality within is echoed in the change in his speech. Until the point at which he attempts to puddle Isabella, his language had been straightforward, carrying single meanings. But when he begins to pursue his appetites with Isabella, asides think of his speech and double entendres enter his rhetoric.

While the inner degeneracy he discovers in himself might surprise Angelo, it would have been no surprise to the audience. Reformation theology which was influential at the judgment of conviction of Shakespeare reminded people that each person was tainted with evil; such(prenominal) was the doctrine of append depravity, the sense that every candidate of earth was affected by the effects of Adams first sin (original sin was the concept):

Does she readily accept the aim and leave with the Duke to live happily ever after? Does she eliminate him entirely to return to the convent to take her religious vows? Does she acquiesce, aware that finally she must succumb to the Dukes power? All are possible, presumptuousness the silence of the script. Yet none is a fully fine conclusion. At the end, then, the play is as troubling as it was at the beginning, and one wonders if anything has really been solved.

Just as individuals experienced their knowledge total depravity, so withal did the body politic. The entire metropolis of Vienna had become corrupted, naturally, because the Duke had failed to execute his office properly. Just as a garden will go to weed if not tended, the social fabric will tend to unravel without care.

That Angelo was conceivable to temptation and sin was not surprising, nor was the experience of his falling singular (though by no means excusable). His pride, however, was quite unwarranted, and it was itself a study sin. Moreover, it made his especially vulnerable to temptation and sin.

So it is that the Duke has a problem to solve at the beginning of the play. The Duke had permitted the society to engage its natural course: he had allowed the laws to go unpunished for too long, permitting vice to flourish and good to wither:

Even Lucio is taken with her seeming sincerity. But the audience has heard another aspect of her character that Lucio hasn't. Speaking to one of the superiors at the nunnery, Isabella reveals a more suspect aspect of herself:

How to deal with this inner corruption this total depravity is one of the major concerns of the Duke as well as the play. The role of the king was to inhibit evil and to promote justness at least that was the orthodox position (though, to play on Hamlets statement, a position sometimes more honored in the breach than the observance).

Who will believe thee, Isabel? My unsoil'd name, the austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my go down
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