# Measure for Measure — Character guide

> Key figures in Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare.

- [Duke Vincentio](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/duke_vincentio.md): He opens the play by appointing Angelo deputy and quietly vanishing, telling Escalus he loves the people but cannot stomach their loud applause. That taste for watching rather than being watched defines him: he would rat
- [Lord Angelo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/lord_angelo.md): Angelo arrives with a reputation for cold purity — Lucio calls his blood 'very snow-broth' — and the Duke praises him as a man whose life reads like an open book. Given absolute power, he enforces the forgotten statute a
- [Isabella](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/isabella.md): Isabella is about to enter the sisterhood of Saint Clare when Lucio arrives with news that Claudio is condemned and only her eloquence might move Angelo. She goes reluctantly, doubting her own power, but her plea for mer
- [Claudio](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/claudio.md): Claudio has done what half of Vienna has done quietly for years — slept with the woman he intends to marry — but Angelo picks his case to make an example. From his cell he sends Lucio to fetch Isabella, pinning his last 
- [Lucio](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/lucio.md): Lucio opens the play trading bawdy jokes with two gentlemen and Mistress Overdone, then volunteers to fetch Isabella when Claudio is arrested. He presents himself to her as a reformed gossip who reveres her as 'a thing e
- [Escalus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/escalus.md): The Duke names Escalus 'first in question' but places him beneath Angelo, and Escalus accepts the demotion with the patience of a man who knows his own worth. When Angelo insists on enforcing the letter of the law, Escal
- [Mariana](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/mariana.md): Mariana belongs to the play's hidden ledger of wrongs: a gentlewoman whose brother Frederick and whose fortune both sank with one ship, taking her marriage with them. Her enduring grief and her stubborn claim to a pre-co
- [Provost](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/provost.md): The Provost runs Vienna's prison at the moment its dormant laws wake up hungry, and he is the one who must lead Claudio to a death he privately doubts is just. His tension is professional obedience against evident compas
- [Pompey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/pompey.md): Pompey serves Mistress Overdone in the suburbs until the morality crackdown shuts the brothels, then talks his way into Abhorson's trade to escape a whipping. His running argument that bawdry and hanging are both 'myster
- [Mistress Overdone](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/mistress_overdone.md): A brothel keeper in Vienna who is arrested under Angelo's new strict laws.
- [Elbow](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/elbow.md): A simple-minded constable who brings Pompey and Froth before the judges.
- [Barnardine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/barnardine.md): A drunken prisoner who refuses to be executed on schedule.
- [Abhorson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/abhorson.md): The grim executioner who takes Pompey as his assistant.
- [Friar Peter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/friar_peter.md): A friar who assists the Duke in his disguise and the final revelations.
- [Juliet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters/juliet.md): Claudio's beloved, pregnant with his child, for which he is sentenced to death.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/measure_for_measure_se/characters