Measure for Measure is a play about knowledge: what people know, what people think they know, and what people do not know. Perhaps all of Shakespeare's comedies are about knowledge to a certain extent, given the mistaken identities and misunderstandings typically corrected in their conclusions. But I will argue that in Measure for Measure Shakespeare fully and carefully explores human knowledge, particularly its limits and failures, as exemplified in Mariana's striking description of Angelo as one “Who thinks he knows that he ne’er knew my body, / But knows, he thinks, that he knows Isabels” (5.1.207–8). The play repeatedly stages assertions or assumptions of knowledge that are then undermined or revealed to be false. In so doing, it offers a critique of King James's claims about the secret and quasi-divine knowledge of the monarch. And by dramatizing the limits of human knowledge, the play calls into question the human ability to make judgments and render justice.

Measure for Measure, performed before the new King James I in December of 1604, was probably written earlier that year or in late 1603. Its composition dates from the early days of James's reign; thus, the play has often been analyzed in terms of its engagement with the new king's style and ideology of rule. An older critical approach reads Measure as specifically designed to flatter the new king, an approach critic Richard Levin mocks as the “King James Version” of the play.