In this provacative commentary on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Marc Shell focuses on the play's basic themes of sexual extremism, exchange, and political order. At the cruz of the play, he notes, the novice nun Isabella accuses her brother Claudio: "Is't not a kind of incest, to take life/From thine own sister's shame?" In a virtuoso analysis that extends his earlier work on philosophical and literary economies, Shell shows exactly how Claudio's request is a kind of incest.
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