Shakespeare's MeasurefibrMeasure was written in the shadow of the Puritan challenge to the extant civil and religious authority. The play can thus be read as an explication of the consequences of Puritanism for family law and life. It shows the outcome of the adoption of a death penalty for fornication in terms of three couples of different social class and gender attitudes: Lucio/Mistress Overdone (john/prostitute), Claudio/Juliet (affianced), and Angelo/Marianna (engagement abandoned). Whatever the intention of its framer/s, the statute acts not only on those who engage in meretricious relationships (Lucio/Mistress Overdone) but "overcaptures" by entangling those (Claudio/Juliet and Angelo/Marianna) who are or have been pre-contracted as well. The situations of the three couples, all fully developed characters in their own rights, are like law-school hypotheticals considering the effect of the over inclusive possibilities that could be encountered in enforcing compliance with the dictates of a family-law statute that would outlaw all fornication on penalty of death, The audience would have been aware of customary marital and pre-marital practices and their accepted legal and ecclesiastical outcomes; the play presents an in terrorem account of how Puritan ideology and practice might differ.