Why Does Shakespeare Use Language In Measure For Measure

Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure uses words to both confuse and represent the religious and sexual struggles of the characters. We can see this in act two, scene four of the play. This conversation between Angelo and Isabella shows how the characters use language to convey their ideas, to each other and against each other, and how sexual and religious influences are undercurrents throughout, especially for Isabella.
Starting at the end of Angelo’s second big monologue, we can see at once how he uses sexualized religious images and how they reveal him. The end of his monologue reads, “You must lay down the treasures of your body / To this supposed, or else let him suffer” (lines 96-97). The image of Isabella laying down her body at once

She does not subjugate herself to Angelo. She uses his metaphors and imagery against him. She says, “Th’ impression of keen whips I’d wear as rubies / And strip myself to death, as to a bed / […] ere I’d yield / My body up to shame.” (101-2). Keen usually means sharp in the way of intelligence and in reference to objects. Keen can also mean an Irish funeral song that involves intense wailing, and a person full of desire. The keen whips could be a reference to the Christian practice of whipping oneself in order to feel the pain that Jesus Christ felt. She could be suggesting this form of punishment would be used on her, not as a religious practice, but as a judicially induced pain stemming from her rejecting Angelo. This is another reason she uses keen. She is implying that her screams of pain stemming from the whips would make a funeral song. The advent of this painful screaming image illuminates how the line could also be a sexual reference. The impression of keen whips could be Angelo, as a person full of desire, and his phallic member, as the whip. In the act of taking her virginity, one can see where the screaming image would come