Angelo sentences Claudio to death for fornication — then offers his sister Isabella, a novice nun, her brother’s life for her body. A “comedy” by Folio classification; a moral pressure-cooker by experience.
This is the darkest of the so-called problem plays, and Isabella–Angelo scenes are among the most electric two-handers Shakespeare wrote. The ending resolves the plot and resolves nothing else; directors have been arguing with its final silence for a century.
Measure for Measure on screen
1Measure for Measure (1979)
TV film · dir. Desmond Davis
BBC Television Shakespeare
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