The magisterial achievement of Measure for Measure is also its nemesis: it provokes intolerance. By mirroring virulent desires in its characters, it mediates similar desires to the offstage spectators (audiences and readers).¹ Often, as soon as critics note the intolerance displayed by certain of the play's characters, the critics themselves become intolerant.² This critical intolerance signals the influential role played by "desire": a category by which I refer to motivational impulses in humans, including forces of repulsion as well as attraction. Desire includes both erotic or binding emotions such as love, pity, and affection and violent or alienating emotions such as fear, hate, and disdain. While the play portrays sexual desire, it privileges intolerance as a dominant form of desire that is both represented in its action and reproduced by its performance. At times, characters and critics alike attempt to eliminate a surplus of desire through the selection of a victim, animate or inanimate. Far from purging spectators of desire according to the Aristotelian ideal, therefore, the play contaminates them with fear and, more often, pitilessness.

One especially useful framework for analyzing this affective power of Measure is provided by René Girard's work on mimesis. While Girard's hypothesis, which extends far beyond the concerns of this article, has been expounded in relation to Shakespeare, it has not been applied at length to Measure, nor has it found a fully favorable reception among Shakespeare scholars. In his review of Girard's A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare (1991), Robert Adams (New York Review, 16 July 1992, 51-52) finds it both "an old-fashioned book" and a book with "a fresh slant" and "a fresh angle"—appropriate metaphors for the theme of mimetic, triangular relationships. However, according to Adams, the book pays "relatively little attention" to Measure for Measure (among other neglected plays), it gives little attention to critical commentaries and hurts itself methodologically by resorting to a "two-play-two-audience" theory.³

Picking up Adams's gauntlet, I would like to adapt certain Girardian insights and apply them to Measure in a manner that answers Adams's objections. My argument neither neglects the play's critical commentaries nor relies upon a dual-audience theory. Whether my use of Girard satisfies Adams's reservations, the theory of mimetic desire fits the play better than any psychological theory yet applied. It is at once broad enough to account for responses of dramatic characters and human spectators, yet specific enough to remain faithful to the thematic fields of the play itself. Girard's conception of monstrous doubling (i.e., that subjects who define themselves in opposition to each other increasingly resemble each other in the most negative ways) provides a rationale for the irrational behavior of the characters. Furthermore, the theory closely links the play's title (taken from Christ's Sermon on the Mount) to the play's action. It helps us understand how and why the play redefines judgment as desire and justice as forgiveness.

Because Girard's work is often misunderstood, the theory as I adapt it merits some introduction.⁴ Following the third book of Things Hidden from the Foundation of the World, Girard's magnum opus, I refer to the study of intersubjective mental conflicts as "interdividual psychology."⁵ The major premise of interdividual psychology is that human desires result from human relationships instead of the reverse. Desire thus understood is model-oriented, and its mode of communication is imitational (or mimetic). This approach runs contrary to object-oriented theories, such as Freudianism (which privileges the mother as an object of desire). According to this model-oriented theory, both objects of desire and types of desire are determined by the subject's relationships within his or her society. Therefore, in the drama of human life, objects and types of desire shift constantly within the web of social relations. For obvious reasons, such a psychological perspective lends itself readily to the analysis of drama, a genre formulated to represent the flux of human conflict. Because interdividual psychology assumes that external, relational conflicts precede and structure inner, psychical conflicts, it provides the basis for a character analysis that explicitly focuses on visible, audible events rather than on invisible, postulated instinctual entities.

The primary paradigm of mimetic desire describes the bonds among the model, disciple, and object. The individual who exhibits a desire functions as a model who, for whatever reason, impresses the disciple as imitable. The disciple who unknowingly imitates that desire attempts to appropriate either the same object as the model (which turns the model into a rival) or the same sort of object (which makes the disciple a double of the model in certain respects). If we ask how the disciple recognizes a desire as such in the first place, Charles Peirce's categories prove useful. The signs that make a model's desire evident may be nondiscursive, either through an index, such as a woman's pregnancy that attests to a man's (previous) desire for her, or through an icon, such as a nun's habit that suggests that the Church has laid claim to that woman. Or the evidence may be discursive, through full symbolicity, such as Angelo's statement of desire, "Plainly conceive, I love you" (2.4.140).⁶ In these examples, the man, the Church, and Angelo function as models. Generally the mediation utilizes both modes of communication, discursive and nondiscursive, and most often the disciples remain ignorant of the sources of their desires.

Desire creates conflict. On one hand, mediated desire masks its source, convincing the disciple that his or her desire is original and necessary, an authentic extension of the "inner self or, in Renaissance terms, "soul." On the other hand, the desire, being borrowed, leads the disciple into the path of the model. Upon colliding, the two subjects perceive each other as rivals. Violence follows. In the interval during which the model becomes a rival, the type of desire motivating the disciple alter What began as a desire for a given object becomes a desire for reprisal. This stage of violent interaction marks the movement from "acquisitive mimesis" to "conflictive mimesis."⁷ According to this schema, conflictive mimesis occurs when the importance of gaining the object is superseded by the importance of supplanting the model-obstacle.

However, in Measure's array of sexual propositions, the disciple and the object are often identical. No sooner is an acquisitive intention expressed than conflict occurs. Thus appropriative desires carry their own violence, however subtle it may appear. For example, Isabella (rightly) interprets Angelo's "I love you" as a form of extortion that entails rape. Therefore, she opposes and alters the desire rather than endorsing it—but this reaction does not free her from Angelo's influence as a model. An unwilling "disciple" in Isabella's situation fiercely struggles to escape the model yet reciprocates the model's gestures and words until the two relate as enemy twins. In such situations, the emotional intensity easily escalates; misunderstandings abound; and each rival feels the injustices of the other impinging upon his or her own course of desire.

This self-blinding reciprocity pervades the play and its spectators' reactions. While it is a form of conflictive mimesis, it constitutes a specific type of imitation that involves a developed moral consciousness—as is hinted by the play's title. Only creatures who have obtained a definition of "righteousness" can be swept away by self-righteousness. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, this consciousness is traceable to the Jewish reception of the Law and gains fairly clear articulation during David's reign. By way of parable, Nathan rebukes David for adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband. David, however, fails to recognize himself as the greedy shepherd. Instead, he condemns the shepherd, saying he should die. Nathan then unveils the allegory, telling David, "You are the man!" Judging another, David actually judges himself and soon regrets his failure to show mercy (2 Sam. 11-12). The psychological implications of inadvertently judging oneself further unfold in the Sermon on the Mount: "Ivdge not, that ye be not iudged. For with what iudgement ye iudge, ye shal be iudged, and with what measure ye mette, it shal be measured to you againe" (Matt. 7:1-2, Geneva version). The violence or mercy one directs to others inescapably affects one's self.

Building on this perspective, my argument interprets "judgment" as a kind of desire that distorts reality and at the same time reveals itself through ethical statements. Judgment is the imitative moment during which one character distances and/or differentiates him- or herself from another.⁸ The moment is imitative because it would not occur apart from another character, and it distorts reality by exaggerating existing differences or creating imaginary ones. As the protagonist judges (differentiates) with increasing passion, he or she inevitably perceives the rival as a sort of monster yet at the same time begins to speak and act like the rival. This doubling, this hallucinatory self-righteousness, is the punishment that Christ's injunction threatens. By using the passive voice ("ye shal be iudged" and "it shal be measured to you againe"), the sermon refuses to designate an external agency of judgment. It insinuates that judgment, measurement, punishment, and reward are all self-reflexive. Because these judgments structure relationships according to binary oppositions, they lend themselves to formulaic, antithetical expressions, the locus classicus of which belongs to the Pharisee in Christ's parable: "I thanke thee that I am not as other men" (Luke 18:11). In English, the future tense and the subjunctive voice better intimate an unrealized intention of moral superiority. Thus, for my purposes, echoes of the Pharisee's statement, such as "I'll never be like that person" or "I would never do that," adequately capture the psychological implications, and such echoes can be heard throughout Measure.

Because judgments are overdifferentiating, exclusionary evaluations, they constitute a form of negative desire, a desire by which one seeks to distance him- or herself from an object (and its model). Judgment persuades the subject that he or she is above or beyond the transgression or personality type being judged. The actual act of passing judgment assures the subject that he or she is establishing that distance. Ironically, the subject who passes judgment becomes absorbed with the other. Thus the subject will experience erratic behavior and emotions but will not identify them with their source precisely because the subject has (over)differentiated him- or herself from that source. Through its dialogue, Measure tersely mocks this act of overdifferentiation. What is said of Lucio and a Gentleman applies to all: "There went but a pair of shears between" the characters, although they cannot see their similarities (1.2.27). When Abhorson complains that Pompey "will discredit our mystery," the Provost replies: "Go to, sir, you weigh equally: a feather will turn the scale" (4.2.26-29). Such is the fate of most of the characters. At the moment they articulate their unlikeness to other characters, they are most similar: a feather will turn the scale.

Outside of purely comic situations, this overdifferentiation ultimately leads toward victimization. The victim, in this context, deflects attention from the disparity between what the victimizer claims to be and what the victimizer is. Of course, the victim can be either the rival or a third party. Only forgiveness can arrest a situation of escalating rivalry and eventual victimage. Put differently, forgiveness turns even deadly serious situations toward comic ends. An act of forgiveness breaks the bond of reciprocity by focusing on similarities between the rivals and halting the desire for differentiation. True to the etymology of the word (αΦιημι) translated "forgiveness" the Mount (Matt. 6:12, 14-15), forgiveness requires the offended individual to untie or release the enemy. Otherwise, the two remain tied together through reciprocity. Overriding all differences, forgiveness alone admits the mutual need for mercy. This need for mercy is mutual, not because all moral offenses are equally destructive or equally malicious—nor even because both parties are offenders—but because the refusal to offer mercy subjects the offended party to an unwanted model which will continue to mediate unwanted desires, mostly for revenge. All offenses must be forgivable in order to break the chain of reciprocity.

To stress the seductive dynamic of judgment that structures the play, I conclude this theoretical sketch by remarking on the conventional readings of Measure as they have privileged external agencies of judgment over internal ones. Although the title of this play, Measure for Measure, is often remarked upon, the judicial and theological dimensions generally obscure the psychological.⁹ The mention of the Sermon on the Mount and its injunction for listeners to "Iudge not" conjures up images either of a divine judge enforcing his laws or of an earthly vicar enforcing them with divine authority. In both cases, that of the juridical state and that of the vindictive god, transcendental powers intervene in human affairs to establish justice. According to my reading, Measure ultimately supplants such agencies of justice, as well as the conception of justice as a fair distribution of punishment. Even in the final act of the play, when Duke Vincentio is perceived as a "power divine," he refuses to mete out punishment according to the crime. Nothing in his actions executes such "justice," just as nothing in the biblical injunction insists on an external judge. The "measure" he applies to Angelo is one of mercy, whereas the reciprocal "measure" demanded by Angelo (and many critics, including Johnson and Coleridge)¹⁰ is a death for a death. The lack of severity in Duke Vincentio, therefore, shifts the focus from external judgment to internal, interdividual judgment.

If the above assumptions are correct, Measure for Measure assigns the source of judgment and vindictiveness to humans, not to institutions or to a divine power. The immanence of reciprocal human relationships precludes the need of a transcendental power. Instead of a divine judge who threatens judgment, human relationships enforce the threat. Thus, the reciprocity of judgment that governs Measure's characters (and spectators) can be accounted for in strictly psychological terms. This human proclivity toward judgment and against forgiveness is registered in a failure among critics to understand "measure for measure" as a neutral descriptor, one that is as accurate in describing merciful, loving transactions as in describing vilifying, vindictive ones. These critics, who insist on poetic justice, understand "measure for measure" the only Sermon in its punitive on sense. For example, Charlotte Lennox writes, "Thus it should have been, according to the Duke's own Judgment to have made it Measure for Measure; but when Angelo was pardoned, and restored to Favour, how then was it Measure for Measure?"¹¹ Similarly, William Lawrence writes, "The title 'Measure for Measure' is, however, contradicted by the final decisions of the Duke, who concludes that mercy should temper justice, and that the strict letter of the law should not be enforced."¹² Finally, Jocelyn Powell considers "measure" as applicable to only "the judicial deputy, who metes out measure for measure."¹³ As I hope to show, the play offers a broader concept of "measure for measure," one by which characters are punished or rewarded according to their own standards.