First Gentleman in Measure for Measure

The First Gentleman appears briefly in Act 1, Scene 2, as one of two courtiers accompanying Lucio through the streets of Vienna. He is a minor but memorable figure in the opening movement of the play, serving as both a foil to Lucio’s more acidic wit and a representative of the leisured nobility whose sexual freedoms are about to be curtailed by Angelo’s strict enforcement of dormant laws. Though he speaks only twelve lines, he participates fully in the bawdy banter that establishes the play’s world of casual vice and moral laxity before the intervention of the new deputy.

In his exchanges with Lucio and the Second Gentleman, the First Gentleman displays the quick tongue and playful obscenity characteristic of courtly conversation. He trades jokes about disease, seduction, and the corruption of virtue—topics that seem harmless enough in the anarchic atmosphere of the duke’s absence. When Lucio makes a cutting remark about him being “full of error,” the First Gentleman responds with spirited self-defense, claiming he is “sound” despite the insinuations. His language is crude but clever, full of sexual puns and classical references that mark him as educated and socially accomplished. He is neither villainous nor especially sympathetic; he is simply a young man of his class, enjoying the freedoms that the city’s lax enforcement has permitted.

The First Gentleman’s fleeting appearance serves a crucial dramaturgical purpose. His presence, along with Lucio’s, helps establish that Vienna under the absent duke has become a place where pleasure goes unchecked and law is merely decorative. The courtiers’ easy acceptance of brothels, bastards, and casual fornication creates the backdrop against which Angelo’s sudden severity will become truly shocking. By the time the First Gentleman exits the play—never to return—the legal and moral landscape has been transformed utterly, and the freedoms he took for granted are being systematically eliminated. His twelve lines capture, in miniature, the old Vienna that Angelo is determined to destroy.