Boethius Book Club, Episode 3: Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure
One of Shakespeare’s less familiar masterpieces is Measure for Measure. This is a serious play, certainly not a comedy, and yet it ends happily without a full complement of corpses on the stage. It was written about 1605, during the same period in which he composed his greatest works. In Measure for Measure Shakespeare takes up serious moral and political questions: the nature of justice, the quality of rulers, and, perhaps most significantly, the debate over marriage that raged between, on the one hand, Catholics and Anglicans, and, on the other, Calvinists. It is not too much to say that this play has more to say about our current marriage crisis than any 1000 books and pamphlets produced by movement conservatives.
There are innumerable student editions available in paperback or online (Just don’t read the introductions!), and there is also a 1979 BBC production that can be ordered from Netflix. There is also, though I have never heard it, an early Wagner opera based on the play, Das Liebesverbot.
Recorded: December 17, 2015
Original Air Date: July 19, 2016
Show Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes
Show Guest(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming
Show Host(s): James Easton
Boethius Book Club℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2016. All Rights are Reserved.