Primary work

William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

"'A play Caled Mesur for Mesur' by 'Shaxberd' was performed at court, for the new King James I, by 'his Maiesties plaiers' on December 26, 1604. Probably it had been composed that same year or in late 1603. The play dates from the very height of Shakespeare's tragic period, three years or so after Hamlet, contemporary with Othello, shortly before King Lear and Macbeth. This period includes very little comedy of any sort, and what there is differs markedly from the festive comedy of the 1590s. [...] Measure for Measure, perhaps the last such comedy from the tragic period, illustrates most clearly of all what critics usually mean by 'problem comedy' or 'problem play.'

Its chief concern is not with the triumphs of love, as in the happy comedies, but with moral and social problems: 'filthy vices' arising from sexual desire and the abuses of judicial authority." (414)

-Bevington, David. ["Introduction to Measure for Measure."] In Shakespeare's Comedies. By William Shakespeare.  Ed. David Bevington. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 414-7. Print.