Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure"

by Cedric Watts

Paperback

Published January 30, 1986

About the author

Cedric Watts (1937 - 2022) was an English literary scholar. He served in the Royal Navy, took a B.A. at Cambridge University, and was an Emeritus Professor of English at Sussex University. He published twenty-six critical and scholarly books, including The Deceptive Test (1984) and Literature and Money (1990), and edited twenty-one plays by Shakespeare. His Final Exam: A Novel earned Ian McEwan's praise.

An internationally renowned and prolific scholar of the writings of Joseph Conrad, he played a leading role in Conrad studies as editor, critic and biographer.

Watts' biography of the Scottish writer, adventurer and friend of Conrad, R.B. Cunninghame Graham, rancher in South America, co-founder of the Scottish Labour Party and of the Scottish National Party, drew attention to an important but hitherto neglected figure, while his full-length study Literature and Money revived a largely neglected topic.

Reviews

[Dina Kaidir]

I re-read this after reading Martin Lings' Shakespeare in the Light of Sacred Art, where he explains that compared to Shakespeare's other plays, Measure for Measure presents more clearly the dangers of the spiritual path.

Generally known as 'a problem play' (the editor's words) that has not always received the appreciation it deserves.

With fresh eyes, this is an excellent, 'intelligent, eloquent and moving' exploration of important issues of politics, religion, morality and death in a social arena, not one of abstract discourse.

As the play unfolds, the characters 'deliberate, jest, quarrel, suffer and learn.' Just like ourselves.

A wonderful read about fallen souls striving 'for completion by the addition of faults,'.... 'subsequently purified and transformed into virtues.'

'They say best men are moulded out of faults.'

I thoroughly enjoyed that :)