SOURCE: Tucker, Kenneth. Review of Measure for Measure. Shakespeare Newsletter 53, no. 2 (summer 2003): 43-5.

In the following review, Tucker finds director Sean Holmes's 2003 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Measure for Measure, set in the dreary, war-torn Vienna of the early mid-twentieth century, a compelling interpretation of one of Shakespeare's most challenging plays.

Measure for Measure is notoriously one of Shakespeare's most difficult plays to understand, if not indeed to perform. Conflicting critical estimates have competed for dominance. Victorians and some later critics tended to view it as a rank failure, the result possibly of Shakespeare's taking a wrong turn on his dramaturgic road. Some have found it a comedy as traditional as As You Like It, albeit misunderstood. Others have seen it as a deliberate cynical parody of an orthodox comedy, a product of Shakespeare's disillusionment. Others have found it a challenging work, brimming with intellectual subtleties. Much of...