Okay, so this is the third of five lectures approaching Shakespeare.

This week I'm talking about measure for measure.

What I want to try to do this week is to show that the play insistently demands that we ask what kind of play is it, what genre is it?

And as usual, to try and show some of the different ways we can

approach that question, what kind or genre of play is measure for measure. I think I've been trying

to say throughout this series that answers to questions about Shakespeare's plays are often less

interesting than the questions themselves

and that more substantially the fact

that we ask those questions is really

intrinsic to the play

a part of its address to us, not

just an obstacle we need to get round.

However, notwithstanding all that, there is actually

quite a simple answer to the question of what kind or genre of play Measure for Measure is.

And that answer comes from the book we heard about last week, the collected edition of Shakespeare's plays gathered together by his fellow actors John Hemming and Henry Condell in 1623 as the first folio.

Last week I mentioned that Heming and Condal's description of how previously works by Shakespeare had entered print

was in fact economically motivated.

It was an attempt to discredit previous publications in order to make the current

rather expensive and rather belated volume more saleable. We might read a similar agenda into

that book's title, Master William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies,

an attempt to use three genres to suggest breadth, fun for all the family, but those three

genres which have been established by the title of the first folio and by its catalogue page

...