SOURCE: Swann, Charles. “Lucio: Benefactor or Malefactor?” Critical Quarterly 29, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 55-70.

In the following essay, Swann examines the ambivalent ideological function of Lucio at the close of Measure for Measure, particularly in relation to the authoritarian figure of the Duke.

ELBOW

… I do lean upon justice, sir, and do bring in here before your good honour two notorious benefactors. 

(Measure for Measure, II.i. 48-50).

In a recent piece, ‘Transgression and surveillance in Measure for Measure’, Jonathan Dollimore dismissed the blandness of one kind of interpretation of the play adequately represented by J. W. Lever in the preface to his edition of the Arden Shakespeare:

‘Not only are the tensions and discords wrought up to an extreme pitch, threatening the dissolution of all human values, but a corresponding and extraordinary emphasis is laid upon the role of true authority, whose intervention alone supplies the equipoise needed to...