ist's fully matured powers.
An unfaltering equilibrium is maintained in the treatment of plot and
characters alike.

Cinthio made the perilous story of 'Measure for Measure' the subject not
only of a romance, but of a tragedy called 'Epitia.' Before Shakespeare
wrote his play, Cinthio's romance had been twice rendered into English by
George Whetstone. Whetstone had not only given a somewhat altered
version of the Italian romance in his unwieldy play of 'Promos and
Cassandra' (in two parts of five acts each, 1578), but he had also freely
translated it in his collection of prose tales, 'Heptameron of Civil
Discources' (1582). Yet there is every likelihood that Shakespeare also
knew Cinthio's play, which, unlike his romance, was untranslated; the
leading character, who is by Shakespeare christened Angelo, was known by
another name to Cinthio in his story, but Cinthio in his play (and not in
his novel) gives the character a sister named Angela, which doubtless
suggested Shakespeare's designation. {237} In the hands of Shakespeare's
predecessors the tale is a sordid record of lust and cruelty. But
Shakespeare prudently showed scant respect for their handling of the
narrative. By diverting the course of the plot at a critical point he
not merely proved his artistic ingenuity, but gave dramatic dignity and
moral elevation to a degraded and repellent theme. In the old versions
Isabella yields her virtue as the price of her brother's life. The
central fact of Shakespeare's play is Isabella's inflexible and
unconditional chastity. Other of Shakespeare's alterations, like the
Duke's abrupt proposal to marry Isabella, seem hastily conceived. But
his creation of the pathetic character of Mariana 'of the moated
grange'--the legally affianced bride of Angelo, Isabella's would-be
seducer--skilfully excludes the possibility of a settlement (as in the
old stories) between Isabella and Angelo on terms of marriage.
Shakespeare's argument is throughout philosophically subtle. The poetic
eloquence in which Isabella and the Duke pay homage to the virtue of
chastity, and the many expositions of the corruption with which unchecked
sexual passion threatens society, alternate with coarsely comic
interludes which suggest the vanity of seeking to efface natural
instincts by the coercion of law. There is little in the play that seems
designed to recommend it to the Court before which it was first
performed. But the two emphatic referenc