Measure for Measure is Shakespeare getting sick of the Woke Progressives of his day, the "pelting petty officer [who] would use heaven for thunder, nothing but thunder."
He went after the type through Malvolio in Twelfth Night. In Measure for Measure, he makes the minor issue the major one. What happens when a preachy, label-happy, " I know how poeple should behave about everything moral" is left in charge of a community. Unlike Malvolio, Angelo is initially ego-less and well-meaning, until he proves utterly hypocritical (it's okay when I do it). Whatever the initial motivations, the end result is legalism, parsing the meaning of words at the level of pronouns in order to punish violators.
The interpretations--and villains--of Shakespeare's play are endless. For instance, there is an all-male version in which the discouraged behavior is gay marriage. I wasn't able to track down a copy, but I suspect that it would capture the wild disguises and violent implications and pointed criticism in a way a modern audience would quickly grasp.
And, really, the underlying analogy could be almost anything.
The controversial relationship for playgoers is the magnanimous Duke and Isabella, the novice nun. She leaves the convent to save her brother. The Duke asks her to marry him at the end. She replies with silence. "Silence" was consent for Elizabethans but Shakespeare never keeps his heroines silent. So the character's silence here is a deliberate choice.
Is she consenting against her will? Consenting because she knows she'd make a lousy nun? Not truly consenting but unwilling to turn down yet another power-play? Happy to consent but not wanting to admit as much? Overwhelmed? Conflicted?
At the end of the BBC version, Isabella accepts the Duke outstretched hand. He waits patiently for her decision, and she appears to consider and then make a thoughtful choice.
However, the moment is still fraught with questions: Is Shakespeare saying that there is a time and place for chastity? Or is he suggesting that the Duke (and Isabella) are still putting on a play for the populace? Or is he doing--with transparent effort--what he is supposed to do as the playwright?
Measure for Measure is one of his Shakespeare's problem plays, so I suppose an ambivalent end is allowed.
