Uneven. A strange comedy (one of the "problem plays") at once very dark (the plot is trying to get death-row prisoner pardoned) and very comic (rulers disguised as monks, jokes about whores).

As it is Shakespeare, there are of course moments of sublime beauty. Here's a little "to be or not to be," five years later:

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

The play concerns Claudio, who is sentenced to death for fornication ["All sects, all ages smack of this vice; and he
To die for't!"] by Angelo, the strict right-hand man [Some report a sea-maid spawned him; some, that he
was begot between two stock-fishes. But it is
certain that when he makes water his urine is
congealed ice; that I know to be true: and he is a
motion generative; that's infallible.] who, in the Duke's absence, is to rule Vienna. The first two acts are a kind of debate between strictness and leniency. At first this is interesting food for thought, but it gets so repetitive that it loses its luster. On the one hand is the fallacious argument that everyone does it so it's okay; on the other is Angelo's "Condemn the fault and not the actor of it?" The law hasn't been enforced in years and is now "more mocked than marked." Angelo wants to make Claudio an example so that the laws will be obeyed again.

Interestingly, I'm told that the Hussites in Prague were a lot like Angelo--all mortal sins were capital...thereby sending people immediately to hell. An interesting concept. Hus is a hero...to people who don't believe in what he believed; he's only a hero for hating the Catholic Church [and Catholic clergy are in a lot of Shakespeare plays, always in positive roles...what gives?].

The problem is not that Angelo is strict, though, but that he is a hypocrite--he doesn't even believe all his good moral talk about abstinence. He tells Claudio's sister (a nun) that the only way to save Claudio's life is to give him her virginity. This is what hypocrisy is: not believing what you preach; it's one thing to try and fail, another to not even try.

The play has some qualities from Merchant of Venice--Isabella gives a lot of "the quality of mercy" like speeches which aren't as good. The subplot with Elbow and Lucio was hard to follow since it's all archaic wordplay--this is the case with a lot of lesser Shakespeare plays. Another Shakespearean thing is the humorous names (like Nick Bottom): Abhorson, Elbow, Mistress Overdone [a whore, definitely overdone lol], Pompey [called Pompey the Great for his large bottom], Froth, Kate Keepdown (another whore), Rash, Caper, Dizy, Starve-Lackey, Copperspur, Pudding, Forthlight, Shooty, etc. Very funny since they're all either whores or...the kind of guys who go to whores.

Anyway, Isabella starts off as a supplicant for mercy, but when the Duke returns she begs for justice (V.i.)--an interesting way of teasing out the tension between these two virtues. And Shakespeare's usual dramatic irony of the Duke in disguise (a trope dating back as far as human literature) is always a pleasure.

As for flaws, the whole Ragozine thing is a deus ex machina joke. And also the play seems to endorse deception as a morally justifiable means so long as the ends are good.