Measure For Measure Part 2 - The Characters

Part 2 begins with the dark patterns of imagery in the play to examine the play’s close proximity to tragedy. It goes on, however, to discuss how the lead characters of Isabella and the Duke function as political protestors or activists undertaking a quest for social reform. This episode culminates in an analysis of how the play adopts a “transcendental perspective,” one that steps outside the human political realm in order to perceive new solutions to its problems, and how that transcendental perspective is enacted in the play’s stunning final scene, which devises new, more life-giving ways of meting out mercy and justice and of redressing crimes “measure for measure.”