Discuss the presentation of marriage betrothals in the ‘problem’ plays Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well

Shakespeare’s presentation of marriage in Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well is one of many issues that audiences throughout the years have deemed ‘problematic’ (Frederick Boas, 1895), yet it displays a very real complexity in the contention between the law and the church, consent and contract, or even the specifics between de futuro and de praesenti betrothals that faced engaged couples in Elizabethan England. John Wasson writes that ‘many scholars have observed that the title of Measure for Measure is a misnomer: Angelo does not get his just deserts, his injustice being answered with mercy’. What both plays seem to enforce is equity over retribution— the Duke says ‘shame to him [the judge] whose cruel striking / Kills for faults of his own liking!’ (3.2), suggesting that true justice must be impartial. It is hard for the audience, however, to be impartial and perhaps a true judge like the Duke requires a little moral dubiosity in order to be impartial to Angelo’s actions. The sense of resolution comes with the fulfilment of contracts, and the plays’s ‘comic’ endings are defined by the marriages, but Shakespeare never resolves the underlying unsettlement— after all, a reader can’t ignore Isabella’s silence and lack of verbal consent to the Duke’s proposal, ‘give me your hand and say you will be mine’.