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From £32.99

Duke Vincentio, Sex and the Law

By: John Hardy

From £32.99

Regarded as a problem play, Measure for Measure dramatizes King James’s view that justice should be tempered with mercy. Its themes of sex and the death penalty are treated with an ambiguity that pleased the king, while allowing Shakespeare’s own response to differ.

Long regarded as a problem play, Measure for Measure has provoked much critical disagreement. Staged during James I’s first Christmas at Whitehall, it was doubtlessly…
From £32.99
From £32.99
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Long regarded as a problem play, Measure for Measure has provoked much critical disagreement. Staged during James I’s first Christmas at Whitehall, it was doubtlessly written to further his patronage of Shakespeare’s acting company the King’s Men. Dramatizing James’s view that justice should be tempered with mercy, its theme involved fornication, or sex without a church wedding, which was not unrelated to the dramatist’s own past. Duke Vincentio, intended as a surrogate for James, wished to see the guilty punished with the death penalty, but Shakespeare’s use of ambiguity, in permitting varied interpretations, ensured that the play, as a Christmas comedy, would have pleased King James while allowing Shakespeare’s own response to have been different from the king’s.

John Hardy completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford, UK, after being elected a “Prize Fellow” of Magdalen College in Oxford. A Queensland Rhodes Scholar, he retired from Bond University (Australia) as Emeritus Professor, where he had been Professor of Humanities, and Foundation Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Previously he had been Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto, Canada, and held chairs at the University of New England, Australia, and the Australian National University. During the 1980s he was Secretary of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has contributed to or edited more than a dozen books including three major works of literary criticism: Reinterpretations: Essays on Poems by Milton, Pope and Johnson; Jane Austen’s Heroines: Intimacy in Human Relationships; and Shakespeare’s Great Tragedies: Experiencing their Impact.

Hardback

  • ISBN: 1-0364-1120-6
  • ISBN13: 978-1-0364-1120-6
  • Date of Publication: 2024-09-16

Paperback

  • ISBN: 1-0364-5151-8
  • ISBN13: 978-1-0364-5151-6
  • Date of Publication: 2025-06-13

Ebook

  • ISBN: 1-0364-1121-4
  • ISBN13: 978-1-0364-1121-3
  • Date of Publication: 2025-06-13
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Subject Codes:

  • BIC: D, DDS, DS
  • THEMA: D(5PX-GB-S), DDA, DS
105

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