The first of these is _Measure for Measure_. If ever
there was an insoluble problem in casuistry, it is that which
Shakespeare has here chosen to present to us. Isabella is forced to
choose between what we can only describe as two detestable evils. If she
resists Angelo, and lets her brother die, she recoils from an act of
self-sacrifice; and, although we may coldly approve, we cannot admire or
take pleasure in her action. If, on the other hand, she determines at
all costs to save her brother's life, her sacrifice is a thing from
which we want only to avert the mind: it belongs to the region of what
Aristotle calls to _miaron_, the odious and intolerable. Shakespeare,
indeed, confesses the problem insoluble in the fact that he leaves it
unsolved--evading it by means of a mediaeval trick. But where, then, was
the use of presenting it? What is the artistic profit of letting the
imagination play around a problem which merely baffles and repels it?
Sardou, indeed, presented the same problem, not as the theme of a whole
play, but only of a single act; and he solved it by making Floria Tosca
kill Scarpia.
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