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In 1922, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, in the preface to his edition of Measure for Measure, asked, ''What is wrong with this play?'' summing up a centuries-old attitude. In 1765, in his ''Prefaces to Shakespeare,'' Dr. Johnson declared that ''there is perhaps not one of Shakespeare's plays more darkened than this by the peculiarities of its Author.'' He wrote that ''the light or comick part is very natural and pleasing, but the graver scenes, if a few passages be excepted, have more labour than elegance.'' And ''the plot,'' he wrote, was ''rather intricate than artful.'' In 1818, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote in his Lectures and Notes on Shakspere that Measure for Measure was a ''hateful work, although Shakspere's throughout,'' that it was ''painful'' because ''the pardon and marriage of Angelo not merely baffles the strong indignant claim of justice--(for cruelty, with lust and damnable baseness, cannot be forgiven, because we cannot conceive them as being morally repented of); but it is likewise degrading to the character of woman.''

The year before, in 1817, in Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, William Hazlitt gave a more thorough account than Coleridge of what many throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries would continue to find unsettling about Measure for Measure. Granting that the play is ''full of genius as it is of wisdom,'' Hazlitt found, ''[y]et there is an original sin in the nature of the subject, which prevents us from taking a cordial interest in it. . . . our sympathies are repulsed and defeated in all directions.'' There is something repulsive in ''Isabella's rigid chastity.'' The duke ''is more absorbed in his own plots and gravity than anxious for the welfare of the state.'' Claudio's transgression is of a nature, despite his amiability, ''which almost preclude[s] the wish for his deliverance. Mariana is also in love with Angelo, whom we hate.'' And the ''principle of repugnance seems to have reached its height in the character of . . . Barnardine.''

Twentieth-century critical responses to nineteenth-century subjectivity tried to explain away the difficulties which offended critics, who had objected to the licentious aspects of the play and to what was considered its too liberal acts of forgiveness. Critics also felt called upon to defend the play against the sort of repugnance Hazlitt expressed for the rigidity of its presentation of virtue, as represented by Isabella and Angelo. Angelo's failing, critics like George L. Geckle have asserted, is not his austere puritanism but a combination of faults. He is ''a man sadly lacking in self-knowledge'' who is guilty of an ''assault against 'sacred chastity''' and of breaking a ''promise to Isabella to spare Claudio's life in return for her favors.''

In place of subjective readings, twentiethcentury critics marshaled historical, religious, and philosophical scholarship in hopes of understanding the play by understanding its historical, religious, and philosophical contexts. Often the play was seen as an allegory. In 1931, W. W. Lawrence, in Shakespeare's Problem Comedies argued that ''The duke in Measure for Measure combines the functions both of State and Church in his person. As Duke, he is supreme ruler . . . as Friar, he represents the wisdom and adroitness of the Church . . . advising stratagems so that good may come out of evil.''

In his essay ''Theological Exegesis'' (1966), however, David Stevenson argued the ideologically imposed interpretations of Christian critics: '' . . . all attempts to make Measure for Measure into an analogue of religious doctrine, or into some kind of religious allegory or parable, heavily restrict and contain its inferential power and thereby diminish its ability to communicate.'' Stevenson's book marks a return by writers on Measure for Measure to character analysis and structural analysis, to consideration of how characters represent human beings and confront human problems and how the parts of a play interact with each other to form a central set of meanings. Rather than seeing characters representing particular humors, aspects, or ideas, Stevenson sees them as complex persons with living, conflicting characteristics, faults, virtues, confusions, and vacillations.

In 1972, in ''Theatrical 'Trompe L'Oeil' in Measure for Measure,'' Jocelyn Powell argues that ''the variety of the play's structure is held together by a pattern of images which move between word and action.'' In ''Isabella's Choice,'' (1994), Karl F. Zender considers Measure for Measure in terms of the interplay of Isabella's character and the genre of Romanic Comedy, weighing the effect each has on the other, and arguing that Measure for Measure is the culmination of Shakespeare's attempts to write in that genre. He sees Isabella as a transitional figure who tends towards such tragic figures as Cordelia, in King Lear, who, he argues, openly asserts female independence over male authority. In Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, 1998, Harold Bloom offers a reading of Measure for Measure that can appeal to lay readers by concentrating on the complexities and contradictions of the characters themselves as persons with the same depths as actual human beings.

The return to humanist criticism, did not, however, preclude a return to historical and contextual criticism. Rather than the early and mid-twentieth-century focus on conforming the figures in the play to ideas and beliefs found in the Renaissance, the new historical readings attempt to see how historical influences affected the way Shakespeare used historical events and beliefs to think about history and character. Rather than making Measure for Measure conform to Jacobean or Christian doctrine, Stephen Cohen, in ''From Mistress to Master: Political Transition and Formal Conflict in Measure for Measure,'' for example, argues that the play represents, and comments upon, the transition from the rule of the virgin queen, Elizabeth, to the patriarchal King James, who represented himself as divinely appointed. Also focusing on the historical context, Maurice Hunt, in ''Being Precise in Measure for Measure, ''considers the connotations of the word ''precise'' during the years preceding the composition of Measure for Measure--its positive, its negative, and its puritanical echoes, and the meanings constituted by its various uses in the play, as well as how the varying use of the word reflects on the characters who use it or about whom it is used.

Bibliography:

1) Bloom, Harold, ''Measure for Measure'' in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Riverhead Press, 1998.

2) Cohen, Stephen, ''From Mistress to Master: Political Transition and Formal Conflict in Measure for Measure,'' in Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts, Vol. 41, No. 4, Fall 1999, pp. 431-64.

3) Evans, Bertrand, ''Like Power Divine: Measure for Measure,'' in Shakespeare's Comedies, Clarendon Press, p. 219.

4) Geckle, George L., ''Introduction,'' in Twentieth Century Interpretations of ''Measure for Measure,'' edited by George L. Geckle, Prentice-Hall, 1970, pp. 6, 9.

5) Hunt, Maurice, ''Being Precise in Measure for Measure,'' in Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, Vol. 58, No. 4, Summer 2006, pp. 243-67.

6) Knight, G. Wilson, ''Measure for Measure and the Gospels,'' 1930, revised, 1949, in Twentieth Century Interpretations of ''Measure for Measure,'' edited by George L. Geckle, Prentice-Hall, 1970, pp, 36, 49.

7) Lawrence, W. W., ''The Duke from Measure for Measure,'' in Shakespeare's Problem Comedies, 1931, reprinted in Twentieth Century Interpretations of ''Measure for Measure,'' edited by George L. Geckle, Prentice-Hall, 1970, pp. 103-104.

8) Pope, Elizabeth M., ''The Renaissance Background of Measure for Measure,'' 1949, reprinted in Twentieth Century Interpretations of ''Measure for Measure,'' edited by George L. Geckle, Prentice-Hall, 1970, pp. 50-72.

9) Powell, Jocelyn, ''Theatrical 'Trompe L'Oeil' in Measure for Measure,'' in Shakespearean Comedy, edited by Malcolm Bradbury and David Palmer, Edward Arnold, 1972, p. 183.

10) Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, and J. Dover Wilson, eds., Measure for Measure, in The Achievement of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, edited by David Lloyd Stevenson, Cornell University Press, 1966, p. 65.

11) Shakespeare, William, Measure for Measure, edited by S. Nagarajan, Signet Classics, 1964.

12) Stevenson, David L., The Achievement of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Cornell University Press, 1966, pp. 65, 73, 111.

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