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Measure for Measure / The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] cover

Measure for Measure / The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.]

Chapter 70: Sources
By William Shakespeare
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About This Book

The play follows a ruler who temporarily delegates authority to a strict deputy charged with enforcing moral laws, triggering a crisis when the deputy condemns a young man for sexual transgression. The condemned man’s sister, a novice, pleads for mercy and confronts the deputy, who offers a coercive bargain; the ruler, disguised as a friar, observes and orchestrates a counterplan that reveals hypocrisy. The action combines a substitution in a private encounter, legal hearings, and comic episodes to untangle punishments and settlements. Central concerns include the tension between justice and mercy, the abuse of power, sexual morality, and public versus private conduct.

Sources

The general Preface (e-text 23041) discusses the 17th- and 18th-century editions in detail; the newer (19th-century) editions are simply listed by name. The following editions may appear in the Notes. All inset text is quoted from the Preface.

Folios:
F1 1623; F2 (no date given); F3 1663; F4 1685.

“The five plays contained in this volume occur in the first Folio in the same order, and ... were there printed for the first time.”

Early editions:
Rowe 1709
Pope 1715

“Pope was the first to indicate the place of each new scene; as, for instance, Tempest, I. 1. ‘On a ship at sea.’ He also subdivided the scenes as given by the Folios and Rowe, making a fresh scene whenever a new character entered—an arrangement followed by Hanmer, Warburton, and Johnson. For convenience of reference to these editions, we have always recorded the commencement of Pope’s scenes.”

Theobald 1733
Hanmer (“Oxford edition”) 1744
Warburton 1747
Johnson 1765
Capell 1768; also Capell’s annotated copy of F2
Steevens 1773
Malone 1790
Reed 1803

Later editions:
Singer, Knight, Cornwall, Collier, Phelps, Halliwell, Dyce, Staunton