“Mortality and mercy in Vienna / Live in thy tongue and heart.” (Measure for Measure, I.i). With these words, the Duke delegates supreme power to his deputy Angelo, a man renowned for moral uprightness. But can any person be trusted with the power of life and death over another? What all-too-human motives and machinations lurk behind the claims we make on others in the name of law, morality, religion… or love? All is in doubt in this, the darkest of Shakespeare's comedies.
In Measure for Measure, we visit a city that has gone astray, where everything seems to be a matter of life or death, and where life is sometimes offered only on terms so shameful that death can seem to be the better option. Governors and governed alike are disturbingly poised between a law code that prescribes death even for minor transgressions, and a kind of mercy that seems only to give license to further crime.
Against this stark and strange backdrop, the play examines issues closer to home. It looks acutely into the tangled relationship in Western thought of law, morality and religion, asking to what extent individuals or societies can hope to reform themselves through any of these institutions, and indeed, whether such a grand reformation is even desirable. At the same time, it explores the conventional idea (whose philosophical heritage runs back to Plato) that only those who can govern their own passions are fit to govern society. Does this idea of rule by a moral elite have any validity in practice, or does it only serve as a cloak for darker truths about human nature?
Learning outcomes
- To gain a critical understanding of the themes of mortality and mercy in Measure for Measure, and of how those themes have shaped the play’s interpretation in criticism and in production.
- To understand some key ideas about law, governance and human nature explored in the play.
- To be able to discuss the reading in class and to contribute usefully to general debate about the issues of the course.
