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Measure for Measure

By William Shakespeare

 Justice: Sacred or Profane?

 “Law without equity, tho’ hard and disagreeable, is much more desirable for the public good, than equity without law, which would make every judge a legislator and introduce most infinite confusion as there would then be almost as many different rules of action laid down in our courts as there are differences . . . in the human mind.”

                                                                                                Blackstone

             This quotation seems to me to distill a truth about a word which Blackstone conspicuously did not use: Justice. The significance of his omission, which was surely not accidental, can be seen when we consider two Shakespearean plays, first, The Merchant of Venice and second, the play which is the subject of the instant meditation, Measure for Measure.

             “Justice” is a word copiously used by characters in both plays, and used by them just as carelessly we still use it today, meaning almost inevitably with a vague understanding that justice is sacred. And yet, when the stakes are great, invoking justice when we really mean either “law” or “equity” leads to a muddle. In that sense, law and equity are secular, not sacred. Justice, as Shakespeare knew, is sacred, but ineffable and therefore a problem.    

 Neither a Shakespearean scholar nor even an avid fanatic, I have always been fascinated by the “justice” problem in Shakespeare’s plays, particularly as it is touched on in Measure for Measure. But these reflections have always been colored by some of Shakespeare’s other works, particularly the subplot in The Merchant of Venice where justice plays an equally prominent but distinctively different role.

            In The Merchant, Portia reminds us that justice is hard, immutable, and beyond human manipulation. No man wishes to face it unadulterated because in its course “none of us shall see salvation.” Our only hope is mercy which itself only “seasons” justice as it “droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.” Without modifying that, however, Measure for Measure is Shakespeare’s second look at justice from the familiar perspective of flawed and clumsy self-interested and self-important humans.

             Although each the two plays I have just mentioned teeters on the edge of credibility, underlying both is that demotic understanding of the nature of justice and sin, with very little consideration of the broader principles of justice left to us by thinkers in a different vein. Both plays repeatedly use the word “justice” and for dramatic purposes each puts a human life at stake. On the other hand, neither of them deals directly with criminal law. In The Merchant, Shylock presents himself as a private agent seeking revenge (which he calls justice) in collecting on a defaulted civil debt. For his part, the Duke in Measure for Measure has pusillanimously selected a figurehead to reestablish his own reputation by enforcing what seems to have been a civil prohibition against premarital sex.

             To keep myself focused, at first I had best introduce my conclusion, or rather thesis, which is that Measure for Measure is actually not about justice as a virtue at all. The play is not highly poetic, it gives no indication of a published (much less respected) positive law, there is no trial, and the characters are motivated by their own selfishness tricked out as something they are pleased to call “justice.” [1]

             A so-called “problem” play, Measure for Measure was apparently written much later than the Merchant of Venice, when it could be argued that Shakespeare’s magnificent powers had matured even further. But insofar as its catalyst is the world’s most popular flaw, I soon noticed that the story nevertheless also eliminates love from its active ingredients. Measure for Measure makes far more use of hypocrisy and even sarcasm than any of Shakespeare’s other plays. Its somewhat hectic plot is propelled by deceptions and ethical compromises which gives it a much less serious tone than The Merchant of Venice, which itself also grapples but more soberly with the abstract requirements of justice among men. Both plays, in their own way, illustrate the confusion in even defining justice, the ultimate virtue.

             1. Synopsis.

 Although Measure for Measure is not widely known, even to summarize its detailed plot could be tedious. Instead, therefore, what follows as an introduction is a savagely edited synopsis.

From its very beginning, the play speedily sketches the characters and puts before us a colorful but unlikely plot from which it never strays; everyone dissembles and is on the lookout for his or her distinct standing in the community. And although everyone in Measure for Measure is obviously a Christian, the question of sin is little more than a pretext and each of them soon enough acts only according his or her own welfare. There’s not a character in it who isn’t eventually shown to be flawed[2].

                 There are three main characters. First is the feckless Viennese Duke who, after 14 ineffective years presiding over this evidently wanton city, decides to go on an incognito furlough[3], impulsively putting temporary authority in the second central character, Angelo, whom he assumes will do a better job. Angelo, a courtier and possibly a family member, is portrayed as an intelligent, humorless, puritan with an impeccable resume. Third, we have Isabella, a young virginal postulant at the local convent who soon enough betrays a stubbornness worthy of Antigone. There is also a fourth character named Claudio, something of a pawn in the plot; he is Isabella’s older brother, imprisoned for fornication, obviously at Angelo’s order, and later condemned to die.

 A dissolute character named Lucio[4] enlists Claudio’s younger sister Isabella to beg Angelo to commute the sentence. She tries, but instead Angelo propositions her as a trade. She refuses. Hearing of this, the Duke returns, concocts a plot with Isabella by which she would, secretly using a substitute, agree to the seduction. In a way, the scheme sort of works, Angelo is humiliated, and the Duke proposes to marry Isabella. The end.

 For anyone who has read this far but is unfamiliar with Measure for Measure, at the bottom of this monograph, I have furnished a scene-by-scene recitation of the evidence which I have relied on.  But what immediately follows is my conclusion about what it all means.

 2. Justice.

             Shortly after I began this essay I realized I had the wolf by the ears. What was I doing considering justice, particularly in the context of this play? Attempting to give justice a meaning in the wide scheme of things is the ultimate mission of deep thinkers who have wrestled with the problem for millennia. So it is obviously stupid of me to try to extrapolate anything new from a single dramatic work, even if it was written by a genius. But here I am, and only writing for myself, so I’ll plunge on.

 (a) Distributive Justice. Without trying to be scientific or dogmatic, it is surely the case that justice as dealt with by Shakespeare in both plays has two faces, both of which present definitional problems.  Scholars and thinkers generally assume that justice is a virtue, not a secular commodity to be distributed by mere men or their agencies. Portia comes closest to this when in The Merchant she says that in the course of justice none of us shall see salvation. For his part, even after his colossal dialectic struggles, Socrates (who didn’t deal with salvation) seems never to have come to a satisfactory definition. The pious may have recourse to Scriptural recommendations: modified restraint (“an eye for an eye”) or abject pacificism (“whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also”). Aristotle’s formulation is that whatever else it is, justice furnishes equal rewards for equal contributions—an argument for meritocracy which is now quite a bit out of fashion. By contrast, everyone today seems to have heard that justice requires “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”[5]

 (b) Secular Justice. But Measure for Measure is no more concerned with justice on that philosophical level than is The Merchant of Venice. Both deal with the collateral subject of secular justice which has immediate relevance to our daily lives. Yes, it is noble and perhaps even virtuous to seek, expect, and demand justice in day-to-day life; indeed that is the explicit mission of the municipal law[6]. But when entangled with our personal injuries, nobility will normally recede. Instead, our natural instinct is to seek either restorative or retributive justice specifically in reference to ourselves.

 Shorn of nobility, Shylock’s motives are obviously retributive and completely unrelated to the personal injury he claims to have suffered. But that is not the problem of Measure for Measure. There, retribution plays no role at all. If Claudio is to die, it is obviously not in retribution for the harm he has supposedly done to Juliet, his willing partner. As for Isabella’s hollow plea for “justice, justice, justice, justice,” it is premised on a dual deceit: she makes the plea in anger (not a virtue but a vice) on behalf of Mariana who with Isabella’s advance approval was consciously pretending to be Isabella for Mariana’s own private motives also unrelated to the nobility of justice. Again, no victim -- unless it is the now sexually-satisfied Angelo.

 And so absent a wounded party -- and therefore no basis for retribution -- in the secular realm, what is there even to restore? In Measure for Measure Shakespeare has only used Justice as a vehicle illustrating the commonplace problem of reputation.

 So we are left with the title, Measure for Measure, the Duke’s banal and superficial solution to the justice problem, smugly uttered after he has failed at every other effort to fill his social role. In the context of periodic disputes between mortal men, what I have called secular justice is little more than a platitude, a weak recommendation to a society which has no apparent written law. It is indeed what Blackstone warned against in the quotation with which I introduced this private venture of mine: an untethered stab at equity.

 4. Internal Evidence.

 In this final segment, I have set down the many elements of Measure for Measure which gave birth to my foregoing interpretation. As for research, I did nothing except fall back occasionally on my early education. I have seen only one or two productions of the play, have read the text with close attention, but I have read no commentaries that I recall. For anyone who reads this and wants to take up arms, there is my defense. 

             (a) The Setup. In the opening scene of Measure for Measure, Shakespeare plays two of his favorite cards. First, the Duke and Escalus, his principal adviser, come on stage in the midst of a conversation, suggesting a certain momentum already begun offstage, specifically that the Duke has already decided to slip out of town unannounced.

 From his first words, the Duke is neither peremptory nor otherwise particularly duke-like. His opening lines are simply his explanation to Escalus in response to what was obviously the older man’s offstage astonished reaction to the Duke’s hare-brained announcement that he has decided to go underground. And the reason the Duke gives? He has decided, he says, that he is not exactly fit for his office, at least for the indistinct project that he has in mind. Whatever that project is -- he doesn’t say -- the Duke has simply concluded that he has been too lax and so has apparently decided that his temporary replacement will set things right.

 Shakespeare’s next move is to accelerate the momentum -- and surprise us in the bargain -- when the Duke also abruptly announces that it is Angelo whom he has picked as his vicar, even though the few lines he has just spoken have prepared us to hear that Escalus will be the choice. Angelo is then summoned, enters without flourish, speaks a few smooth words of greeting, and then listens to the Duke’s overblown recitation of his supposed virtues culminating in his immediate appointment. The Duke then waives away the perfunctory demurral and directly departs.

 This hasty launching of the story is certainly a long way from the scene of vague ennui which opens The Merchant of Venice. For its part, Measure for Measure never seems to stop for breath. From the outset it bids fair to be more than a comedy, but rather a comic farce, introduced by another favorite Shakespearean device: a plot set in motion by someone pressed by sudden events. “Here, even here, on this bank and shoal of time”: men challenged at a moment’s notice to test their mettle. And yet in this scene nothing has been decided, no program announced. The scene just ends with a line or two exchanged between Escalus and Angelo, both puzzled about what they are supposed to do.

 Without pause, the story then shifts to an indecent conversation in the streets a day or two later, conducted by Lucio. He refers to a recent “proclamation” and “a speech” that all bawdy houses in Vienna’s suburbs are to be torn down. Claudio is brought on stage under arrest, being publicly paraded through the city as an example[7]. When he asks why he is being so humiliated, he is told that it is being done by the special order of Angelo[8] and Claudio is to be hanged in three days. The boy’s response, cynical and almost resigned, admits that that his fault had been the result of “too much liberty.”

“Thus can the demi-god, Authority,/Make us pay down for our offense by weight /The                 words of heaven; On whom it will, it will –/On whom it will not, so. Yet still ‘tis just.”

 He adds in mitigation that he and his mistress would have married by now but the dower has not yet come through.

             (b)  The Plot. Counting on Isabella’s youth and innocence, Lucio then successfully persuades her to intercede with Angelo. She agrees, goes to his house, and is admitted. This will be their first confrontation.

 (i) A Man of the Cloth. And yet we are momentarily left hanging, because the next scene, again begun in mid-sentence, takes us back to the Duke. This time he enters cloaked as a priest, brushing off a mild suggestion made offstage by a friar (who has obviously agreed to give him the costume) that by taking this disguise, the Duke is possibly evading his own transgressions of the flesh[9]. No, says the Duke, he has only witnessed such things, and then breaks off that thought to lament that his unobserved decrees which had been intended to curb the “headstrong steeds” of Vienna have gone unenforced, “and liberty plucks justice by the nose.” There is no indication that he has even heard about Claudio or the death penalty sentence.

             His remark about justice is not intended as a Socratic observation. Justice for the Duke is simply obedience to the prohibitions of positive law[10] -- and he has failed even at managing that. (He seems to have been Duke for most of Claudio’s young life.) Further, he explains that it would jeopardize his reputation even further if he were suddenly to try to enforce his own laws. As a new face, Angelo will surely do that more effectively. And yet, the Duke suggests that he also intends that this will be a test for Angelo, to see if the newly conferred power actually corrupts that seemingly cold and uncorruptible man. The Duke has calculated that if he is protected by his own disguise as a holy man, he, like the audience, will just watch from the shadows to see if Angelo passes the test.

                                     (ii) The Debates. Act 2 opens with Angelo and Escalus conversing in what my copy of the play identifies as “a court of justice.” First, hoping to mitigate Claudio’s death sentence, Escalus ineffectually urges the young man’s overall good character and family connections, as though this were a reasonable consideration in dealing with men’s crimes. When this approach utterly fails, Escalus then ventures a different tactic, implying that Angelo too must have been tempted at one time by his own base desires. Unlike the Duke’s response when facing this suggestion, Angelo’s response is yes, but to have been tempted is not to fall. And anyway, Angelo seems to say that justice is indifferent and almost accidental in any individual case. When the scene ends several minutes later, Escalus reflects philosophically that maybe Angelo is right in that “mercy is not itself that oft looks not so;/ Pardon is oft the nurse of second woe.” As I earlier said that the Duke’s first expression of justice had hardly been Socratic, so here, Escalus’s resignation is not what Portia had in mind.

 In The Merchant, Portia’s demarche was her famous invocation of the Christian virtue of mercy, which Isabella, Claudio’s sister, also hits upon in Measure for Measure when she confronts Angelo the second time. In this early confrontation, however, she cannot shake Angelo’s debating points; but neither does she give ground. The debate is a preliminary sparring match ending in a draw. And yet whereas Portia was confident, in the first round Isabella is not able to and does not ever argue her brother’s innocence. Instead, one after another she brings out reasons to commute her brother’s death penalty.

 She opens with an appeal to Angelo’s self-regard[11]. When this is unsuccessful, she then asks him to imagine his own situation if God were to judge him with no opportunity for repentance. This too misfires. It is not himself, Angelo says, but the law which is at work. When she points out that her brother’s lapse is a common fault, he merely says that enforcing a law from its outset curtails such widespread disregard. She urges pity and he responds that that would dilute the wider good that uniform enforcement brings. She resorts to sarcasm:

             “ . . . . man, proud man,/Dressed in a little brief authority,/Most ignorant of what he’s most   assured –/His glassy essence – like an angry ape,/Plays such fantastic tricks . . .”

Finally, when he asks her why she is berating him with “sayings,” she appeals to his conscience:

             “ . . . . ask your heart what it doth know/That’s like my brother’s fault. If it confess/A natural guiltiness such as is his,/Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue/Against my brother’s life.”

 On neither side are these arguments foolish nor are they unfamiliar. Angelo, in fact, almost admits to himself in an aside that she may be right that those who, like himself, are in authority are able to evade punishment for the vices that all others are subject to simply by virtue of their position.[12]

             As their conversation breaks off, he says that he will think about what she has said and he tells her to return the next day. And then, once she leaves, Angelo, who has just met each of Isabella’s grounds with a perfunctory ease, is struck by her earnestness and innocence. In his reverie, while giving little thought to the merit of what she has said, instead he is perplexed and eventually astonished by his reaction and what it has done to him. He is sexually attracted to her because of her purity.

            (iii) The Proposition. Measure for Measure is a cynical play. By the time of their next meeting, Angelo is well past whatever scruples he may have felt. His thoughts are now strictly carnal. He is intent on a seduction. He opens the conversation roughly by reminding her that Claudio must die. “Under your sentence?” Yes, he says, and this would appear to end any further negotiation.  . . . But, perhaps, he adds, it would be possible to delay the execution.

 This scene (plus the absence of any trial) is the crux of the play.

 Although we (and Angelo) would now expect Isabella at least to ask what he has in mind, she doesn’t do so. Instead, she refuses to take the bait and only continues to insist that Claudio -- whose sin she has never denied – should have an appropriate period of repentance before he dies for it. This forces Angelo to play his ace. All sin is sin, he says, whatever the form -- fornication, murder, what you will. But if you think otherwise, he continues, would you trade your own body for the life of your brother, trading as it were a supposed smaller sin to excuse punishment for one which is by consensus worse? And so we learn that Angelo is inept both as a seducer and negotiator.

 And Isabella? Here is what we now see. Hard as adamant, she first ignores this taunt, but then, even more inflexibly, says,

 “Better it were a brother died at once/Than that a sister, by redeeming him,/Should die forever.”

She would choose Claudio’s death rather than “yield [her] body up to shame.”

             She thus turns the debate upside down. Instead of rejecting Angelo’s proposition that sin is monolithic, she accepts it for her own negotiation purposes. She makes her own imminent shame the essence of Angelo’s proposition (though it was not part of his offer). “Sign me a present pardon for my brother,” she says, or she will broadcast his proposition to all the world. The battle between them is no longer on holy ground.

  Shame and honor are concepts frequently dealt with by Shakespeare[13]. Though traveling companions, they are not identical to sin. Shame bespeaks sin, of course, but it has no role in heaven or hell; it is a condition of living people. For decent people, shame is a great guardrail against an indecent sin – a matter of amour propre, of self-respect. And for those who do commit an abhorrent sin, the shame of it, upon becoming known to others, can be horrible, even if the sin is falsely charged, for even then it becomes a matter of reputation.

 But the weapon fails her. Angelo is impervious to shame. His own reputation and position, he points out, will prevent anyone from believing any such charge by Isabella. He gives her a day to think it over -- or, enlarging the stakes -- he will actually prolong her brother’s execution with torture.

 (iv) Platitudes and Dissimulation. Meantime in the prison, the Duke, still disguised as a priest, comes to console Claudio about the death sentence[14]. He delivers a lengthy, but pro forma, disquisition on why death need not be feared because after all it comes to all of us, and anyway it is only a prolonged sleep which really cannot be too bad. Claudio replies, “I humbly thank you./To sue to live, I find I seek to die; And seeking death, find life.”[15]

 The Duke pretends to leave, and Isabella enters to report on her interview with Angelo. The Duke eavesdrops. Claudio, whose interest seems to have picked up in the interim, asks her outright if he is still to die. But . . . she temporizes. When honor is at the stake, she says, one must welcome death. Well, yes, if necessary, he agrees that he would surely die like a man. Ah, she praises his virtue, comparing it to that of their late, equally noble father. Still he doesn’t know what she’s driving at. But now, she allows, he actually could escape death -- but only by doing the unthinkable, i.e. sacrificing his honor. Then she tells him of Angelo’s proposition, assuring him that if it were simply her life that was required it would be better. “Thank you,” he responds.

 In fact, Claudio’s stoicism now evaporates. His calm and supposed resignation completely vanish. He is frightened. With heat, he tells his sister that sins are not indivisible and eternal – unlike death which is quite permanent. “What sin you [Isabella] do to save a brother’s life/Nature dispenses with the deed so far/That it becomes a virtue!” Sin becomes a virtue.

 Ha! Sin “becomes a virtue.” Isabella erupts. She calls him a coward and a wretch. “Take my defiance! Die! Perish! . . . . I’ll pray a thousand prayers for thy death.” She completely abandons her earlier thought that Angelo has reason to pardon Claudio. “Thy sin’s not accidental, but a trade[16]. Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd” (echoing Escalus: “Pardon is oft the nurse of second woe.”)

 The Duke now makes himself known. Inept as always and without any basis whatsoever he assures Claudio that Angelo has just been testing his sister with no genuine evil intent –except, admittedly, Angelo certainly does still intend Claudio’s death, so prepare to die. With these words of comfort, the Duke leaves Claudio and then privately accosts Isabella to whom he now reveals (in prose) a fantastic plan to solve all problems. It involves both another woman, Mariana, one supposedly jilted by Angelo in the past, and the “bed trick,” well known in the theatre of that period. Yes, in the past Angelo had once foresworn an impending marriage because Mariana’s dowry had not come through. Worse, Angelo had then simply walked away from the engagement by falsely attributing it to Mariana’s alleged “dishonorable” behavior.

 Somehow this scheme is sufficient to persuade Isabella to accept the Duke’s reckless plan -- one which requires deception all around[17]. First Isabella must enlist Mariana’s participation which she does. (Like everyone else, Mariana’s motives might be plausible, but are not precisely exemplary.) Like two thieves rehearsing their plot, the Duke and Isabella then contrive the bed trick. She will tell Angelo she agrees to his seduction if it is accomplished in a dark and private place. But at the critical moment, Mariana will actually stand in for her and the result will surely be that the tricked but satiated Angelo will then send an immediate pardon of Claudio. This being the Duke’s plan, naturally it doesn’t work. In fact, Angelo has already sent orders to the prison that Claudio’s execution must go forward immediately and that his head be brought to Angelo in proof[18].

 More lies. The Duke has a different prisoner’s head sent to Angelo. When Isabella reappears, the Duke tells her that Claudio has already been executed, adding in the way of comfort that the missing Duke (i.e. himself) is completely informed and will soon be back in town to set things right. “Trust not my holy order if I pervert your course.” And thus we move to Act V, where everyone on stage – as the audience well knows – is speaking in falsehoods. It is the culmination of a farce.

 The Duke’s fantastical plot must be now consummated, which it is, at the gates of the city[19].  Isabella begins by deliberately playing her prearranged part of violated virgin confronting Angelo and demanding that the newly-returned Duke levy “justice, justice, justice, justice” (based, of course on a deception she has contrived with the Duke). But to her horror, the Duke then departs from their script, feigns not to believe her story, and orders her taken away. Since he surely must have larger purposes, the audience might now begin to recall those earlier hints in the story that virtue frequently travels in disguise. In any event, though it takes a while before the revelation is made, the Duke does eventually identify himself and for the first time in the story he looks and speaks the way a duke should, “like power divine.” Angelo instantly confesses all and begs death[20].

 But the Duke has not yet fully played out his scheme. Instead, he peremptorily orders that Angelo marry Mariana forthwith (which then occurs offstage). Isabella now returns and the Duke reminds her (again falsely) that Claudio is dead, adding that she should get used to it. Moreover, he allows that although the shotgun marriage to Mariana might mitigate Angelo’s attempted seduction, Angelo has still gone unpunished for Claudio’s supposed death, compounded by Angelo’s having ordered the young man’s execution be expedited. Therefore, he intones, “the mercy of the law” still demands Angelo’s death. 

 "Haste still pays haste, leisure answers leisure;/Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.”

What could he have possibly meant by this? He orders that Angelo be taken away for execution! Unless the Duke has concluded that Claudio has not been executed notwithstanding the urgency of Angelo’s earlier order, this non sequitur is simply in service of the elaborate scheme he is enacting[21].

             Fortunately Shakespeare does not deal in messages. His metier is problems -- and anyway even now the plot has not yet been resolved. Remember we are considering an Elizabethan comedy which to conclude must have a marriage.[22] And so it is here. Though Angelo has been exposed as a self-confessed cad and worse, Mariana is willing to overlook such peccadillos (his “little bad”). Therefore, when perhaps in earnest, the Duke explains that his plan has saved her reputation as a chaste woman leaving her a suitable candidate for a better marriage, Mariana begs Isabella (!) to join her in a plea of mercy to the Duke that he commute the sentence so that she and Angelo may live together happily ever after as man and wife. And Isabella actually joins the party, allowing that after all, after all Angelo had not been a bad sort before he met her, that he never did pull off her seduction, and anyway that her brother had no more than justice requires. Angelo adds that he is still sorry and that his death is the only solution. 

             If this isn’t already too much, Claudio is brought on stage in a hood to be revealed to Isabella and abruptly pardoned of his fornication by the Duke who, in the same sentence asks Isabella to marry him. Notably, she does not respond[23]. He then orders Lucio to marry a woman that he got pregnant, following which the scoundrel will be whipped and hanged (though the erratic Duke remits the sentence 4-5 lines later).

             Did I say the play was cynical?

 FOOTNOTES

[1] In the Venice of the Merchant, the city’s commercial laws are published an inviolable. They are accepted by each of the characters and central to the reputation and prosperity of the city. Hence Shylock’s ace is a trial. Vienna, by contrast, is presented as a lawless city; what temporal law there is proceeds by fiat, and there is no semblance of procedural adjudication, and certainly not a trial.

[2] The pregnant Julia could be an exception, but she plays no role.

[3] He disguises himself as a priest stationed in the local prison from which position he begins to meddle -- ineptly – in the drama he has set in motion.

[4] Lucio’s name obviously suggests “Lucifer” as Angelo’s suggests “angel.” No doubt this is an intentional signal by the playwright; it is not intended to be subtle. For that matter, the name “Isabella” or “Isabel” derives from the Hebrew, “God is my oath.”

[5] To all these reflections, modern American Constitutional law has added “substantive justice,” less derived from philosophical principle, however, than it is a procedural feint, derived from transient political pieties.

[6] In today’s world we also have a neologism, “social justice.” It lacks any helpful definition, however, except as a way for the self-righteous to describe themselves as claiming to thirst after it. If it does have any use, it is as a more palatable alternative to overtly quoting Marx’s slogan.

[7] This is the play’s second instance of a party being subjected to widespread shame. The first was the Duke’s own self-disgust at being seen as an ineffectual leader.

[8] There has been no suggestion that it was done upon the order of the Duke and we have never told that that the bordello proclamation, whoever made it, has also extended to punishing fornication.

[9] A trifle, perhaps, but Lucio later is even more specific when he repeatedly slanders the Duke. In any event the Duke answers the priest saying, “No . . . holy father, throw away that thought. Believe not that the dribbling dart of love can pierce a complete bosom.” (Critic’s note: Tell it to Isabella at the end of the play.)

[10] So was it for Shylock. The flaw of legal positivism is that as the law periodically -- and inevitably –changes, so does the popular idea of justice if the two concepts are conflated. When the people detect that a law is inconstant or silly, they will begin to flout it.

[11] Presently, self-regard becomes Isabella’s own motivation.

[12] Shylock had no such second thoughts, though Antonio’s place in the Christian community did him no harm. 

[13] “O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. The meat it feeds on. Farewell the tranquil mind; farewell content.” Othello, Act II, scene 3.

[14] In fact, we don’t know how he has learned of this sentence, and he is still obviously ignorant of Isabell’s attempt to intercede with Angelo.

[15] For myself, here is where I would lose my grip on philosophy.

[16] As though she herself had not already just sampled the trading business.

[17] Of course, the Duke’s taking a disguise in Act 1, scene 1 had already been a dissimulation. Indeed, he is still in disguise as he proposes this new artifice.

[18] This obviously underlines Angelo’s villainy, but a scene or two later Angelo suggests another latent motive: Claudio’s pre-fornication life had been so “riotous” that if he had simply been charged with fornication but then pardoned, Claudio’s shame might have led him to take revenge on Angelo himself.

[19] I.e. though he has returned as Duke, he is not yet quite in state.

[20] On reading this line, it struck me that perhaps Shakespeare was making a gesture in the direction of The Bacchae, but I am unable to make the case.

[21] Macbeth has spied the problem: “. . . . we but teach bloody instructions, which being taught, return to plague the inventor. This even-handed justice commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips.” Act I, scene 7.

[22] It has been pointed out by others and definitely noticed by me that virtually every impending marriage in Shakespeare is problematic, pace the Macbeth family.

[23] In fact, she has no more lines in the play.