Allan Bloom, "Measure for Measure," in Love and Friendship, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 1993.

Excerpt:

“Measure for Measure is another play that is dominated by a priest’s plot, but, unlike the plot in Romeo and Juliet, this equally contrived solution to a problem works. The happy result makes us laugh. The solution to sexual problems is comic both because it is so improbable and because coping reasonably with these desires somehow makes them look ridiculous. Perhaps the plot works because the priest is not really a priest but a genuine political ruler who uses the cloak of religion to hide himself and his designs. Political wisdom seems to require some such religious coloring in order to make itself acceptable to the unwise subjects. Certainly this false friary escapes the law’s narrow concentration on men’s deeds by using the Church’s capacity to get inside men’s thoughts.

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