Writer's Techniques (OCR A-Level English Literature): Revision Notes
Writer's Techniques
Shakespeare employs a wide range of literary and dramatic techniques in Measure for Measure to explore themes of justice, mercy, morality, and corruption. Understanding these techniques will help you analyse how the play creates meaning and achieves its dramatic effects.
Language and diction
Verse and prose
Shakespeare uses different forms of speech to distinguish characters and situations, creating variation in tone and style throughout the play.
Blank verse
Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter, giving speech a formal and elevated quality. Noble characters like the Duke and Angelo predominantly speak in blank verse, which lends authority and dignity to their words. This form reflects their social status and the seriousness of the matters they discuss. The regular rhythm creates a sense of control and order, which is particularly ironic when Angelo speaks in blank verse whilst wrestling with immoral desires.
The use of blank verse creates a rhythmic pattern that elevates the language of noble characters, while the shift to prose marks changes in social status or dramatic mood. This technique allows Shakespeare to create distinct vocal identities for different characters and situations.
Prose
Lower-status characters and comic figures like Pompey and Lucio typically speak in prose. This form of speech is also used in more informal, intimate, or comedic scenes. Prose adds realism and variety to the play, making these characters feel more earthy and grounded compared to the noble figures. The shift between verse and prose can signal changes in mood, status, or the nature of the conversation.
Imagery and metaphor
Shakespeare's use of imagery creates vivid pictures that reinforce the play's central themes.
Light and dark imagery
The contrast between light and darkness runs throughout the play, reflecting the themes of morality, justice, and corruption. This imagery often reveals the gap between appearance and reality. Angelo's inner corruption is frequently contrasted with his outward appearance of purity and virtue, like a dark soul hidden beneath a bright exterior. This technique helps the audience understand the hypocrisy at the heart of Angelo's character.
Angelo's Hypocrisy
The light and dark imagery is particularly powerful when applied to Angelo, whose outward brightness (his reputation for virtue) conceals inner darkness (his corrupt desires and abuse of power). This visual contrast makes his moral fall more dramatic and highlights the play's central theme of appearance versus reality.
Religious and legal imagery
Shakespeare weaves together religious and legal language to underscore the play's exploration of justice, mercy, and morality. Isabella, particularly, uses religious language and imagery that highlights her moral and spiritual dilemmas. Her speech is filled with references to heaven, sin, and salvation, emphasising the religious framework through which she views the world. This religious imagery contrasts with the legal language used in discussions of law enforcement, creating tension between divine mercy and earthly justice.
The tension between religious imagery (mercy, forgiveness, salvation) and legal imagery (judgment, punishment, law enforcement) reflects the play's central conflict. Isabella embodies the religious perspective, while Angelo initially represents strict legal justice, creating a powerful dramatic opposition.
Symbolic language
Symbols of authority
The Duke's disguise and symbols like the substituted head in the plot highlight themes of authority and governance. These symbols question what authority really means and who has the right to wield it. The Duke's friar's habit becomes a symbol of hidden power and manipulation, allowing him to exercise control whilst appearing powerless.
Chastity and corruption
The contrast between Isabella's purity and the corruption surrounding her emphasises the moral conflicts at the heart of the play. Isabella's chastity becomes both a symbol of virtue and a source of conflict, as Angelo's lust for her represents the corruption of authority and the vulnerability of innocence.
Structure and plot devices
Problem play structure
Measure for Measure is classified as a problem play because it blends elements of comedy and tragedy whilst dealing with complex moral and ethical issues that resist simple resolution.
Blending of genres
The play combines comic scenes (particularly those involving Pompey, Lucio, and other low-life characters) with tragic elements (such as Claudio's death sentence and Isabella's moral crisis). This mixing creates an unsettling tone where laughter exists alongside serious moral questions. The audience is never quite sure whether to expect a happy or tragic ending, which reflects the ambiguity of the moral issues presented.
The Problem Play Genre
Problem plays challenge audiences by refusing to provide simple moral answers. The blend of comedy and tragedy in Measure for Measure creates deliberate discomfort, forcing viewers to grapple with complex ethical questions rather than enjoying straightforward entertainment.
Five-act structure
Shakespeare follows the traditional five-act structure:
- Acts build tension progressively
- Each act contributes to the development and resolution of central conflicts
- The structure allows for careful pacing of revelations and plot twists
Dramatic irony
Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something that the characters do not. This technique creates tension and highlights the play's themes of deception and disguise.
The Duke's Secret Identity
We know that the Duke has not truly left Vienna but is observing events in disguise as Friar Lodowick. This knowledge makes us view scenes differently from how the other characters view them. When Angelo and Isabella interact, believing they are alone with the Friar, we know the Duke is witnessing and manipulating events, creating dramatic tension as we wait for the truth to be revealed.
Substitution and disguise
These are key plot devices that drive the action and underscore themes of justice and mercy.
The bed trick
Mariana takes Isabella's place in Angelo's bed. This substitution resolves Isabella's dilemma whilst exposing Angelo's hypocrisy. The device raises questions about identity, consent, and the ends justifying the means.
The bed trick is a controversial device that creates ethical ambiguity. While it saves Isabella and exposes Angelo, it also involves deception and raises questions about consent and female agency. This moral complexity is characteristic of the problem play genre.
The Duke's disguise
The Duke's disguise as Friar Lodowick allows him to manipulate events and characters whilst remaining hidden. This deception enables him to test his subjects, gather information, and ultimately engineer the play's resolution. The disguise raises questions about the ethics of his manipulation and the nature of legitimate authority.
Characterisation techniques
Complex characters
Shakespeare develops multifaceted characters whose moral ambiguities reflect the play's themes. These are not simple heroes or villains but complex individuals with contradictory qualities.
Duke Vincentio
The Duke is a complex figure who manipulates events from behind the scenes, embodying both justice and mercy. His methods are questionable - he deceives his subjects and plays with their lives - yet his intentions seem benevolent. This complexity makes it difficult to judge him simply as good or bad.
The Duke's Moral Ambiguity
The Duke operates in a moral gray area. While he ultimately restores order and dispenses justice, his methods involve extensive deception and manipulation. This raises questions about whether good ends justify questionable means and whether his benevolent dictatorship is truly just governance.
Angelo
Angelo is a hypocritical and morally rigid character whose fall from grace highlights the play's exploration of human frailty and corruption. He begins as the epitome of strict morality but quickly succumbs to lust and abuse of power. His character demonstrates that outward virtue can mask inner corruption.
Soliloquies and asides
These dramatic techniques provide insight into characters' inner thoughts and moral dilemmas, allowing the audience to understand motivations that remain hidden from other characters.
Angelo's soliloquies
Angelo's soliloquies reveal his internal struggle with his lust for Isabella and his hypocritical nature. We witness his self-awareness and moral corruption, making him a more complex figure than he would be if we only saw his public face. These private moments show him battling with desires that contradict his public image of strict morality.
Angelo's Internal Conflict
In his soliloquies, Angelo acknowledges his hypocrisy, stating that he condemns others for the very sins he now desires to commit. These speeches reveal his self-awareness, making him a more tragic and complex figure rather than a simple villain. We see him struggle against his desires even as he succumbs to them.
Isabella's soliloquies
Isabella's soliloquies offer a window into her moral and spiritual conflicts, particularly regarding her chastity and her brother's life. Through these speeches, we understand the genuine anguish of her impossible choice between her religious vows and her brother's survival.
Dynamic interactions
The interactions between characters, especially in moments of moral or ethical conflict, are pivotal to the play's dramatic tension.
Isabella and Angelo
The confrontations between Isabella and Angelo are charged with moral and sexual tension, highlighting the power dynamics at play. Angelo holds power over both Isabella's brother's life and over Isabella herself through his position of authority. These scenes are electric with conflict as Isabella must negotiate with a man who abuses his power whilst trying to maintain her moral integrity.
Power and Vulnerability
The Isabella-Angelo scenes demonstrate how institutional power can be weaponized against the vulnerable. Angelo's authority as deputy gives him control over life and death, which he attempts to leverage for sexual exploitation. This abuse of power is central to the play's critique of corrupt authority.
Dramatic techniques
Irony and paradox
Shakespeare employs irony and paradox to underscore the play's themes of justice, morality, and hypocrisy.
Angelo's paradox
The central paradox of Angelo's character is his strict enforcement of morality laws whilst succumbing to immoral desires himself. He sentences Claudio to death for fornication whilst attempting to coerce Isabella into the same sin. This paradox reveals the dangers of excessive moral rigidity and the hypocrisy that can lurk behind an appearance of virtue.
The Hypocrite's Paradox
Angelo's situation embodies the proverb "judge not, lest ye be judged." His fall demonstrates that those who judge others most harshly may be concealing their own failings. The paradox highlights how moral absolutism can breed hypocrisy, as human nature inevitably conflicts with impossible standards of perfection.
Symbolism and motifs
Disguise and deception
These central motifs drive the plot and highlight themes of appearance versus reality. Nearly every major character engages in some form of deception, whether through disguise, false promises, or hidden motives. This pattern suggests that truth is difficult to access and that authority often relies on manipulation.
The pervasiveness of disguise and deception in the play creates a world where nothing is quite as it seems. The Duke's disguise, the bed trick, Angelo's false virtue, and various characters' hidden motives all contribute to an atmosphere of uncertainty and moral ambiguity.
Justice and mercy
These opposing concepts are explored through the actions and decisions of the Duke, Angelo, and Isabella. The play questions whether strict justice or compassionate mercy is the better approach to governance and morality. The tension between these principles drives much of the dramatic conflict.
Catharsis and resolution
Catharsis
The resolution of the play's conflicts provides a sense of catharsis, as justice is ultimately served and mercy is granted. The audience experiences relief when the Duke's schemes are revealed and wrongs are righted. However, this catharsis is complicated by the ambiguous nature of the ending.
Complex resolution
The play's ending leaves some questions unresolved, reflecting its status as a problem play and inviting the audience to ponder the moral issues presented. Isabella's silence in response to the Duke's marriage proposal, for instance, leaves her fate and feelings uncertain. This ambiguity prevents easy answers and encourages continued reflection.
The Unresolved Ending
Unlike traditional comedies that end with clear resolutions and marriages, Measure for Measure leaves key questions unanswered. Isabella's silence when proposed to by the Duke is particularly striking - does she accept? Does she refuse? This uncertainty maintains the play's moral complexity even as it provides dramatic closure.
Sound and rhythm
Alliteration and assonance
Shakespeare uses alliteration (repetition of consonant sounds) and assonance (repetition of vowel sounds) to enhance the musicality and emotional impact of the dialogue.
The rhythmic quality of Isabella's speeches, created through these sound devices, emphasises her moral fervour and emotional intensity. These techniques make her language memorable and powerful, reflecting the strength of her convictions. The sound patterns create a musical quality that elevates the language beyond ordinary speech.
Sound as Characterisation
The use of alliteration and assonance in Isabella's speeches creates a heightened, almost religious quality to her language. This musical, rhythmic speech distinguishes her from other characters and reinforces her connection to spiritual and moral purity. The sound patterns make her arguments more persuasive and emotionally resonant.
Stagecraft and theatricality
Visual spectacle
Shakespeare's stage directions and descriptions create powerful visual spectacles that enhance the dramatic impact and underscore the play's exploration of authority and justice.
Public scenes
The Duke's public trials and the various scenes of disguise create visually striking moments. The revelation of the Duke's true identity, for instance, would be a dramatic visual moment on stage. These public spectacles demonstrate the theatrical nature of authority and justice.
The play's climactic scenes are deliberately theatrical, with the Duke orchestrating elaborate reveals and confrontations. This theatricality within the play highlights how authority itself is performative - rulers must stage their power through public displays and ceremonial acts.
Use of props and costumes
Props and costumes play a significant role in the play's theatricality, especially in scenes of disguise and substitution.
The Duke's friar's habit
The Duke's religious costume is essential to his disguise and symbolises the deception at the heart of his scheme. The costume allows him to move freely and gather information, but it also raises questions about the abuse of religious authority.
The bed trick
The bed trick involving Mariana relies on darkness and substitution. Whilst this happens offstage, it is a key plot element that drives the resolution. The device symbolises themes of deception and the replacement of one woman with another, raising questions about female identity and agency.
Key Points to Remember:
- Shakespeare uses verse for noble characters and prose for lower-status characters, creating variety and reflecting social hierarchy
- Light and dark imagery and religious/legal language reinforce themes of morality, justice, and corruption
- The problem play structure blends comedy and tragedy, leaving moral questions unresolved
- Disguise and substitution are central plot devices that drive the action and explore appearance versus reality
- Soliloquies reveal characters' inner conflicts, particularly Angelo's hypocrisy and Isabella's moral dilemmas
- The play's complex resolution provides catharsis whilst leaving some questions unanswered, encouraging audience reflection
- Dramatic irony, created by the Duke's disguise, generates tension as the audience knows more than the characters
- Power dynamics between characters, especially Isabella and Angelo, reveal the dangers of corrupt authority