Abstinence and Orgy in Measure for MeasureMany existing views of Measure for Measure seem intriguing but incomplete. They might reinforce our perception of this play as fragmented and confusing, because they do not integrate the seemingly contradictory perspectives presented in the play's Vienna and generated by Vincentio's mysterious action. Notice how the following different interpretations illustrate the conflicts: the extreme view proposed by Roy Battenhouse that the Duke represents God (Rossiter 108-28); Elizabeth Marie Pope's modified position that the Duke is a successful magistrate with divinely delegated powers ("Renaissance" 66-82), almost consistent with Eliade's version of a receding sky god replaced by a local delegate (see Eliade 52); the attack on the senseless “mystification” of Vincentio by Clifford Leech (69-71); and Wylie Sypher's concomitant understanding that the Duke's Vienna is only an arbitrary and chaotic place where passion and abstinence change places indifferently (262-80). What is missing in such interpretations of Measure for Measure is the isolation of the grounds of control: that of trial by temptation – or “analysis,” as the play and contemporary religious treatises call it; and classic concepts of controlled chaos. Understanding these ideas will not resolve all the necessary ambiguities, but can provide a coherent approach to watching or directing this confusing drama. To analyze Vincentio as a self-proclaimed "assayman" is to explore the chaotic world of Vienna, transformed by Vincentio's incompetence into a predatory disorder. To return to Eliade, the duke may have assumed the role of demiurge and then faded away, giving way to a lesser divinity (40, 50-52) in Angelo - a character signifying...... middle of paper . ....n UP, 1966.Knight, G. Wilson. The Wheel of Fire: Essays on the Interpretation of Shakespeare's Dark Tragedies. London: Oxford UP, 1930. Leech, Clifford. "The 'Sense' of measure for measure." Shakespeare Survey 3 (1950): 69-71. Pope, Elizabeth Marie. Paradise regained: tradition and the poem. 1947. New York: Russell and Russell, 1962.---. “The context of the Renaissance, measure for measure”. Shakespeare Survey 2 (1949): 66-82. Rossiter, AP Angel with Horns and other Shakespeare lectures. Ed. Graham Floor. London: Longmans, Green, 1961. Shakespeare, William. William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Ed. Alfred Harbage. 1969. Baltimore: Penguin, 1971. Sypher, Wylie. “Shakespeare as Casuist: Measure for Measure”. The Sewanee Review 58 (1950): 262-80. Taylor, Thomas. Combat and conquest of Christ. Cambridge, 1618.