『자에는 자로』: 섹슈얼리티와 법의 갈등, 그리고 결혼의 문제

Measure for Measure: Conflict between Sexuality and Law, and the Problem of Maniage

In Measure for Measure Shakespeare probes uncomfortably deep into the sexual instinct of human being, and dramatizes conflict between sexuality and law as it generates sexual degradation. The play records a concealed, well-guarded perversion as a psychological nightmare. Angelo, who is the main victim of warped view of sexuality, finds his rigid sexual restraints exploded from within. With his case the play makes it clear that what is desired is precisely what is most strictly tabooed, and the taboo perversely intensifies the yearning. Thus, the play dramatizes the felt experience of characters helplessly caught up in tragic situations caused by conflict between sexuality and law. But the attempt to resolve tragic dilemma through the Duke makes the play problematic. The Duke is an "observer," a voyeur, and a ghostly figure without plausible sexual desire. By his "bed-trick," he used illegitimate sexuality to enforce legitimate marriage. But marriages which the Duke enforces on the character as an amnesty and a punishment erase the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate, chaste and unchaste, wife and punk. Thus, the marriage which the Duke enforces becomes a culmination of the play's unsolved tension between sexuality and the moral order. And the proposed marriage of the Duke to Isabella intensifies the prevailing mood of barrenness rather than copiousness. Marriages and formal happy ending only suggest that marriage is only one solution, at best temporary, for a recurring human problem. The issue raised in the play precludes a satisfactory resolution, even taking apart from the stability, equity and reciprocity epitomized in its own title. That is why Measure for Measure has been regarded as a "problem play."