ABSTRACT
An account of the ‘sources’ of Measure for Measure ought to explain where so prominent and significant an addition comes from. Reference to ‘the sources of Measure for Measure’ inevitably summons up those versions of the ‘monstrous ransom’ story – especially George Whetstone’s and Giraldi Cinthio’s — with which Shakespeare was familiar and which have been exhaustively studied by previous investigators. Yet it is by means of the disguised duke structure that Shakespeare transformed the monstrous-ransom plot into the play we have, and both external circumstance and internal detail provide extremely strong evidence that Shakespeare’s disguised duke derives immediately from John Middleton’s and John Marston’s practice. In terms of external likelihood, then, it is completely to be expected that both of the earlier disguised duke plays would have influenced Measure for Measure; in terms of direct evidence, each shares likenesses with Shakespeare’s play that coincidence can hardly explain.
