Extract

IN 2023, THE CAMBRIDGE International Examination Board decided to prescribe Measure for Measure and Simon Armitage’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as texts for study on one of its papers. They weren’t set for comparative study, of course: their historical settings, generic conventions, and value systems could hardly be more different, and Shakespeare didn’t know the poem, although the memory of Gawain seems to have survived into his time.1 Yet, having been prompted to return to the original, medieval, Sir Gawain, I found myself pursuing a comparison. When we recall Escalus urging Angelo, ‘Let us be keen, and rather cut a little / Than fall and bruise to death’ (II. i. 5-6), or hear the Duke declare that ‘He who the sword of heaven will bear / Should be as holy as severe’ (III. i. 518-19)2 – or when we compare the roles played in both poem and play by beheading, troth-breach, unattainable ideals, and tests of virtue – we may conclude that the matter is worth further consideration.

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