Measured Endings: How Productions from 1720 to 1929 Close Shakespeare’s Open Silences in Measure for Measure

Summary

I am even willing to believe that the marriages that conclude Measure for Measure were not irresponsibly cobbled together because the dramatist needed a happy ending, but are appropriately disturbing at the end of a disturbing play.

(E. A. J. Honigmann, 'Shakespeare as a Reviser', p. IO)

In the Preface to his edition of Shakespeare's plays, and even as he vigorously defended the playwright against attacks by other neo-classical critics, Samuel Johnson nonetheless also offered his own survey of Shakespeare's weaknesses. Among the better-known provocative remarks is his assessment of the endings of the plays:

It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his work, and in view of his reward, he shortened the labour, to snatch the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented.

That Measure for Measure, in particular, was taken to be an example of Shakespeare's tendency to 'remit his efforts', and that these failures created problems about the ending of the play symptomatic about larger issues of genre, plot, and character is testified to by Charlotte Lennox's often-quoted criticism:

The comic Part of Measure for Measure is all Episode, and has no Dependence on the principal Subject, which even as Shakespear has managed it, has none of the Requisites of Comedy, great and flagrant Crimes, such as those of Angelo, in Measure for Measure, are properly the Subject of Tragedy, the Design of which is to shew the fatal Consequences of those Crimes and the Punishment that never fails to attend them. The light Follies of a Lucio may be exposed, ridiculed and corrected in Comedy.