Sex and Morality in Measure for Measure

Sex, Morality, and Consequences in Measure for Measure

Para1Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure centers on the theme of sexual misconduct, specifically when sexual conduct is socially unacceptable. Throughout the play, characters wrestle various attitudes toward illicit activities such as prostitution and fornication. Their struggles reflect the general anxiety of the time period regarding sexual morality and how it should be regulated.

Sexual Conduct Laws in Context

Para2During the early modern period, both church and state fought for control over how and who should regulate sexuality and impose punishment for transgression. Often, parishes had bishops or other church officials who dealt with moral offenses in the ecclesiastical court system. The lowest level of ecclesiastical court was the Archdeaconry Court, which was nicknamed the bawdy court since it dealt with crimes such as fornication, prostitution, or public lewdness. But early modern English people who broke the laws against sexual misconduct often faced punishment in the civil legal system too. Treatment of these offenses were stratified not only by the type of court by also by the offender’s social status. Certain moral offenses such as prostitution were heard by local justices of the peace while cases of adultery among the nobility were seen by the Court of High Commission.

Pre-Marital Sex

Para3Those accused of fornication, what the modern period might call premarital sex, could not always escape punishment by marrying. Children born too soon after a marriage could cause the parents to face punishment as it could be proven the child was conceived before the marriage took place, although couples who chose to marry usually avoided this stigma.
Para4Punishment for sexual misconduct typically involved a fine and/or public humiliation. Parents who conceived illegitimate children could be publicly whipped until blood was drawn. Violent sexual crimes like rape were almost always a capital offense for the attacker, the harsh exception to the punishment by humiliation for most sexual crimes.
Para5Puritan writer Richard Greenham spoke directly to handfasted or betrothed couples to keep themselves chaste until the marriage be sanctified by the public prayers of the church; for otherwise many marriages have been punished of the Lord for the uncleanness that hath been committed betwixt the contract and the marriage. Likewise, Puritan minister William Gouge denounced the unwarrantable and dishonest practice of couples who take liberties after a contract to know their spouse, as if they were married.
Para6Despite this social stigma and occasional legal consequences, up to one-third of brides in England’s early modern period may have been pregnant at the time the marriage was solemnized. Correlation between marriage dates and christening dates of a couple’s first child indicate that premarital sex was likely widespread. As an example, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway had to obtain a special license to marry quickly due to her pregnancy, and their first child Susanna was born about six months later. Because betrothal (engagement) was considered a binding promise, many couples may have consummated their relationship.

Adultery as a Felony

Para7Measure for Measure, explores the movement growing in England to more strictly regulate sexual misconduct. While frowned upon the early decades of the 17th century, by 1650, after many years of Puritans fighting to return to Old Testament punishments for sexual misconduct, adultery was briefly considered a felony punishable by death. The early inklings of this Puritan campaign is reflected in the character Angelo’s handling of Claudio and Juliet’s fornication prior to marriage.

Morality and Sexual Misconduct in Measure for Measure

Para8In Measure of Measure, a young gentleman named Claudio has impregnated his fiancée Juliette before their impending marriage. Claudio claims that their pre-contract is equal to marriage:
Upon a true contract, I got possession of Juliet’s bed.
You know the lady; she is fast my wife,
Save that we do the denunciation lack
Of outward order. This we came not to
Only for propagation of a dower
Remaining in the coffer of her friends,
From whom we thought it meet to hide our love
Till time had made them for us. But it chances
The stealth of our most mutual entertainment
With character too gross is writ on Juliet.
(1.2.140–150)
However, the newly-appointed acting regent, Angelo, hands down a severe punishment when the pregnancy is discovered. Much of the play’s subsequent action hinges on Angelo’s harsh sentence.
Para9Claudio is sentenced to execution the morning after his imprisonment, his death an example to the city at large. Angelo has no interest in showing mercy to Claudio, even after the imprisoned man’s sister Isabella, who is on the verge of entering a convent, appeals to Angelo for her brother’s pardon. During the time that Isabella pleads to Angelo, he finds himself overcome by growing lust for her and finally agrees to pardon Claudio if she will sleep with him, then secretly leaves Claudio’s death sentence to stand rather than facing possible revenge.
Para10Isabella, distraught, informs her brother that she cannot get a pardon granted. Although she’d be willing to die for him, she will not subject her body to shame by fornicating with Angelo. Claudio, in an act of desperation and perhaps the ultimate selfishness, asks Isabella to reconsider and to save his life because surely such a sin could be forgiven if done to save her brother’s life. Isabella is upset and denies Claudio’s request:
Oh you beast!
Oh, faithless coward! Oh, dishonest wretch!
Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?
Is’t not a kind of incest, to take life
From thine own sister’s shame? What should I think?
Heaven shield my mother played my father fait!
For such a warped slip of wilderness
Ne’er issued from his blood. Take my defiance,
Die, perish! Might but my bending down
Reprieve thee from they fate, it should proceed.
I’ll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,
No word to save thee.
(3.1.138–149)
Para11Although Angelo is eventually caught and punished for his political and sexual misdeeds, the story of Measure for Measure shows the enticements and harsh reality of sexual misconduct in the early modern period.

Key Print Sources

Greenwood, Cynthia. How Measure for Measure’s Bawdy Court Ethos Puts the Canon Law Revisions of 1604 on Trial. Reflections on Medieval and Renaissance Thought, edited by Darci N. Hill, Cambridge Scholars, 2017, pp. 138–151.
O’Harae, Alison. Which Model? Whose Measure? Sexuality, Morality and Power in Measure for Measure and Basilicon Doron. Philament, vol. 1, no. 1, Sept. 2003.
Zender, Karl F. Isabella’s Choice. Philological Quarterly, vol. 73, no. 1, 1994, p. 77.

Key Online Sources

Best, Michael. Sex and Morality. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/plays/measure%20for%20measure/mmsex.html. Accessed 9 Nov. 2018.
Court of High Commission. Oxford Reference. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095935794. Accessed 11 Nov. 2018.
Friedberg, Harris. Policing Sex: The Bawdy Courts. English 205: Wesleyan University. http://hfriedberg.web.wesleyan.edu/engl205/wshakespeare/policingsex.htm. Accessed 9 Nov. 2018.

Prosopography

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Rachel Rich

Rachel Rich was a student at Utah Valley University.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title Sex and Morality in Measure for Measure
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source
By Rachel Rich, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status published, peer-reviewed
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globablink Research Internship
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