Measure For Measure

Angelo is the antagonist of Measure for Measure. He is a courtier in Vienna who is appointed to the position of Governor when the Duke temporarily leaves the city. Prior to the beginning of the play, he was engaged to marry a woman named Mariana. While their marriage contract was already settled, Angelo refused to go through with the wedding after Mariana’s brother and family wealth were lost in a shipwreck, making her unable to pay the agreed-upon dowry.

Angelo’s reputation is as a particularly morally upstanding and honest man who will interpret the laws strictly and enforce them without exception. After he is put in power by Vincentio, Angelo begins to jail and execute men who engage in sex outside of marriage and he destroys the brothels that have flourished in the suburbs outside of the city. His name means “angel,” hinting at his holy reputation.

Throughout the plot of the play, Angelo comes to realize his own hypocrisy as he experiences sexual temptation for seemingly the first time. Lucio describes his temperament as completely immune to normal bodily desires, implying that he might not even be fully human. Lucio calls him “a man whose blood / Is very snow-broth” (I.4.411-412), referring to his cold disposition. In Early Modern science, temperature of the blood was affiliated with the four humors—substances in the body that supposedly determined personality. The cold humors were melancholy and phlegm, and these personality types were associated with sobriety, sadness, intellectuality, and old age. By calling Angelo’s blood cold, Lucio suggests that his physical body inclines Angelo toward the “profits of the mind, study and fast” (I.4.414) rather than the lusts of the body.

After Angelo meets Isabella, he finds himself sexually attracted to her in a way that he never was to other women. While he knows that his desire is morally wrong, he persists in his plan to coerce her into sex, offering to spare her brother Claudio from execution if she will secretly come to his house and have sex with him. He does not offer to marry her and he still orders her brother’s execution to prevent him from seeking vengeance. Throughout this scheme, Angelo believes he is safe from consequences due to his powerful position and secure reputation. He says to himself, “my authority bears of a credent bulk / That no particular scandal once can touch / But it confounds the breather” (IV.5.2334-2336). While Vincentio initially plays into this expectation, pretending not to believe Isabella’s accusation because it sounds so outlandish, he eventually confirms her testimony by revealing that he was the friar who gave her advice.

Once Angelo realizes that Vincentio knows his secret sins, he immediately confesses and begs for execution. Mariana is able to convince Vincentio to spare his life, advocating that Angelo should remain her husband and learn to become a better man. By the end of the play, Mariana and Angelo are officially married and survive the play. 

Isabella is the secondary protagonist of Measure for Measure. She is the sister of Claudio and a close childhood friend of his fiancée, Juliet. She is known for her purity and her prowess at making reasonable and persuasive arguments.

At the beginning of the play, she is about to join a convent of nuns. Shakespeare establishes that she is a truly pious and very committed Christian when she asks one of the sisters about the freedoms granted to nuns, telling her, “I speak not as desiring more; / But rather wishing a more strict restraint / Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare” (I.4.351-353). The votarists of Saint Clare were followers of Clare of Assisi and they were a monastic order in the Franciscan tradition. Often called the “Poor Clares” during the Middle Ages, the order was known for enforcing more extreme poverty for its nuns, while other convents had grown richer and more luxurious. Isabella’s interest in joining this order suggests that she wishes to give up all worldly pleasures and she favors a fairly severe interpretation of Christian morality.

Throughout the play, Isabella inadvertently attracts the attention of Angelo and Vincentio. Angelo laments that Isabella has done nothing to inspire lust, such as dressing provocatively or speaking flirtatiously. He admits to himself,

it is I

That, lying by the violet in the sun

Do as the carrion does, not as the flower

Corrupt with virtuous season (II.2.939-942).

This metaphor describes Angelo as rotten “carrion” that covers up the sweet smell of a “flower,” Isabella. While Isabella is held up as a paragon of moral goodness throughout the play, modeling herself off of the female saints and martyrs of the past, her behavior also mirrors the strict and uncompromising interpretation of the law seen in Angelo. She exhibits little compassion for her brother, Claudio, and only attempts to persuade Angelo to spare him with Lucio’s encouragement. When she believes Claudio to be dead, she declares that she does not seek revenge for his death because he did indeed commit the crime that he was executed for. While Isabella is not a hypocrite, she is very similar to Angelo in her approach to justice.

At the end of the play, Duke Vincentio proposes marriage to Isabella. While this appears to align with the play’s comedic ending, Isabella never verbally reacts to this offer of marriage, having no more dialogue for the rest of the play. This creates ambiguity surrounding her character at the end. While it might seem like a happy ending for her, as marrying a duke would significantly raise her social status, it would prevent her from joining a convent as she had wished to do. Throughout the play, Isabella has been exploited by powerful men who wished to have sexual access to her, and while she has managed to prevent Angelo from succeeding, she has no way to refuse Vincentio. Isabella represents the epitome of a virtuous woman, while her story exhibits how women are exploited sexually even when they do nothing that could be seen as tempting or seductive.