Embodied Acts and the Question of Intention in Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies

Christopher Crosbie
North Carolina State University

When Isabella pleads for Angelo’s life at the end of Measure for Measure, she doubly invokes the deputy’s intentions as reason for exculpation.  Arguing that, at first, “a due sincerity governed his deeds” and that, later, even at his worst, “his act did not o’ertake his bad intent,” Isabella figures intention – whether instantiated or unrealized – as crucial for evaluating Angelo’s actions.  Frequently dismissed as mere casuistry, Isabella’s speech sits uneasily within distinct ethical systems.  A performance redolent of deontological ethics, Isabella’s plea relies heavily on a consequentialist epistemology, one that seems – particularly given the nature of Angelo’s vices – to run counter to Christian notions of transgression.  Taking Measure for Measure as a starting point and gesturing outward to other problem comedies, this essay will examine Shakespeare’s use of intention as a mechanism for reimagining the standards of moral evaluation in an era dominated by Aristotelian virtue ethics.

Selected Works

Beauregard, David N. Virtue’s Own Feature: Shakespeare and the Virtue Ethics Tradition. Newark: U of Delaware P, 1995.

Coodin, Sara.  “What’s Virtue Ethics Got to Do With It? Shakespearean Character as Moral Character.” Shakespeare and Moral Agency. Ed. Michael D. Bristol. New York: Continuum, 2010.

Holbrook, Peter. “Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Classical Reason.” Shakespeare and Renaissance Ethics. Ed. Patrick Gray and John D. Cox. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014. 261–283.

Strier, Richard. “Shakespeare against Morality.” Reading Renaissance Ethics. Ed. Marshall Grossman and Theodore B. Leinwand. New York: Routledge, 2007. 206–225.

Brief Bio:

I'm an Associate Professor of English at North Carolina State University and specialize in early modern English drama with a particular interest in intellectual history.  My previous work, which has focused on a wide range of philosophical issues in early modern literature, has appeared in journals such as Shakespeare Quarterly, English Literary Renaissance, Renascence, Renaissance Papers, and Arthuriana, as well as in multiple edited collections.  This SAA paper marks a turn to a more sustained inquiry into the synthesis of Christian and classical ethical theories in early modern English culture.