『자에는 자로』에 나타난 관객 반응 연구

Abstract

This paper aims to study the audience's response in the problem play, Measure for Measure. It does not permit its audience to become emotionally involved to any extent. Characters' inconsistencies and contradictions prevent the audience from identifying with them. Instead, this play frequently reminds audience that he or she is the only observer of these perplexing characters. Likewise, the obvious display of thematic issues tends to de-emphasize emotional involvement. Measure for Measure initially draws the attention of the audience, but after the opening act of the play, the audience's relationship to the play begins to change. The audience's expectations, based on its assumption that this play is romance, are soon frustrated during the second or the third act. A new identity does not emerge to serve as a guideline for directing the audience's anticipations. The audience cannot reconcile the Duke's inclination for manipulation and his questionable morals with the role of the conventional Disguised Ruler of romance. The most distinctive form which distinguishes this play from other comedies is that the final scene of the play is open-ended. The play frustrates the audience's expectations by ending inconclusively. The audience leaves the theater without the comfort of a genuine resolution often because the seemingly happy endings seem to be only mechanical results of the plot. Marriage, for example, is usually the most satisfactory comic conclusion in romance. But the marriages at the end of Measure for Measure produce the opposite effect on the audience. The ending of Measure for Measure leaves the audience disconnected, so the audience remains in a state of indecision. The audience leaves the theater unable to solve the dilemma of the play's ending. In a sense, the play continues to involve the audience with the play precisely because it lacks the solution. Shakespeare keeps the audience concerned with the dilemma which the play causes after the audience leaves the theater. Thus this play, Measure for Measure, is Shakespeare's highly experimental one.