The Catholic Lawyer

The Bawd and the Bard: Mercy Tempers Strict Statutory Application in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure

By: C.M.A. McCauliff

An exploration of Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure about Viennese
society in which a ruling Duke revives a law criminalizes premarital sex and
imposes the death penalty. The author maintains that an examination of the
play “allows us to look inferentially at the hypocrisies in our ways of dealing
with property, marriage, and premarital sex.”