‘… another comfort’: Virginity and Emotion in Measure for Measure

Abstract

In the last scene of Measure for Measure comes a moment of great stress for Isabella, when the Duke affects not to believe her evidence on the grounds that she is mad. She says: Oh Prince, I conjure thee as thou believ’stThere is another comfort than this worldThat thou neglect me not with that opinionThat I am touched with madness: make not impossibleThat which but seems unlike. (5.1.48–51)1 ‘Conjure’ may have a special appropriateness here, meaning not merely to ‘appeal earnestly to’ someone (5.1.48.n), but ‘… [t]o entreat (a person to some action) by putting him upon his oath, or by appealing to something sacred’.2 Isabella, not officially under oath herself, reminds the Duke that as a Christian prince he is sworn to respect a higher power, and one whose ways are ‘other’ than this world’s. Specifically, she says, God gives another kind of ‘comfort’ (‘strength’, ‘happiness’ or ‘consolation’)3 from that in worldly understanding; what looks mad and impossible to ‘opinion’ here is seen differently in heaven.4