Key ideas from Henry Oliver

• Measure for Measure explores whether mercy can exist in human government - 'the quality of mercy is very strained' unlike in The Merchant of Venice
• Isabella gets a terrible outcome despite the play's Christian framework - forced marriage without consent while Angelo faces lesser consequences
• Shakespeare experiments with substitutions and body tricks to avoid actual rape, asking if artifice can reconcile erotic and political tensions
• Second Act succeeded because people want serious answers about late blooming, not just 'resilience and stamina' platitudes
• Atlas Shrugged works as 'maybe the best genre novel ever written' with first-rate dialogue despite philosophical objections
• The Faerie Queene and Bleak House represent the most underrated great works - 'top 10 work of all time' and 'best novel in English'