Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the third in an eight-week sequence on the plays of Shakespeare. It concerns the “problem play” Measure for Measure, a sexual dystopia on the themes of death and justice. We consider the nature of the problem play as a potential genre, the relationship of Shakespeare to Christianity and the Gospels, the drama’s proto-Freudian depiction of repression and desire, the relationship in the play between the “two bodies”—spiritual and physical—of God, the political sovereign, and the artist, and, finally, begin to discuss Ted Hughes’s Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:
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