Etudes Anglaises N.65 - T.3/2012

Ann LECERCLE : Much virtue in the comma; your comma is the only p(e)acemaker: prolegomenon to Measure for MeasureMeasure for Measure (1604) is Shakespeare's last comedy: it juxts Othello and precedes-just-King Lear and Macbeth; it is also the comedy which, after the festive and variously flamboyant specimens of the genre, analyzes "desire per se" (Adelman). Such is the resulting analysis that it-seemingly ipso facto-put a stop to Shakespeare's writing comedy per se. At this moment, too, Elizabethan theatre in the round (all the world's a stage. . .) is about to be challenged by Jacobean perspective theatre (. . . under the eye of the governor). All of which places the focus in the play on the-here exemplary-tension in representation between, notably, the Symbolic in its different expressions and the Imaginary (the law as paltry scarecrow, the Puritan as self-serving pimp. . .). The article considers two crucial effects of this juncture: “the Sense of an Ending” (Kermode) and the config