se is _Measure for Measure_. If ever
there was an insoluble problem in casuistry, it is that which
Shakespeare has here chosen to present to us. Isabella is forced to
choose between what we can only describe as two detestable evils. If she
resists Angelo, and lets her brother die, she recoils from an act of
self-sacrifice; and, although we may coldly approve, we cannot admire or
take pleasure in her action. If, on the other hand, she determines at
all costs to save her brother's life, her sacrifice is a thing from
which we want only to avert the mind: it belongs to the region of what
Aristotle calls to _miaron_, the odious and intolerable. Shakespeare,
indeed, confesses the problem insoluble in the fact that he leaves it
unsolved--evading it by means of a mediaeval trick. But where, then, was
the use of presenting it? What is the artistic profit of letting the
imagination play around a problem which merely baffles and repels it?
Sardou, indeed, presented the same problem, not as the theme of a whole
play, but only of a single act; and he solved it by making Floria Tosca
kill Scarpia. This is a solution which, at any rate, satisfies our
craving for crude justice, and is melodramatically effective.
Shakespeare probably ignored it, partly because it was not in his
sources, partly because, for some obscure reason, he supposed himself to
be writing a comedy. The result is that, though the play contains some
wonderful poetry, and has been from time to time revived, it has never
taken any real hold upon popular esteem.

The second glaring instance of a blind-alley theme is that of _Monna
Vanna_. We have all of us, I suppose, stumbled, either as actors or
onlookers, into painful situations, which not even a miracle of tact
could possibly save. As a rule, of course, they are comic, and the agony
they cause may find a safety-valve in laughter. But sometimes there
occurs some detestable incident, over which it is equally impossible to
laugh and to weep. The wisest words, the most graceful acts, are of no
avail. One longs only to sink into the earth, or vanish into thin air.
Such a situation, on the largest possible scale, is that presented in
_Monna Vanna_. It differs from that of _Measure for Measure_ in the fact
that there can be no doubt as to the moral aspect of the case. It is
quite clear that Giovanna ought to sacrifice herself to save, not one
puling Claudio, but a whole city full of men, women, and children. What
she does