Context: The Duke has just entered a friary after leaving his responsibilities as Duke in the hands of Angelo and Escalus. He is explaining his reasoning and intentions for doing so to Friar Thomas, and asking for Friar Thomas’s help in hiding him.
• In this passage exists the tension that the Duke understands between justice and mercy under the law. The Duke indicates that he has in fact shown too much mercy as “We have strict statures and most biting laws /…/Which for this fourteen years we have let slip,” and that as a result he is unable to uphold justice as “our decrees, / Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead.”
• However, even though the Duke states that he has shown too much mercy, he does not advocate a sort of unfeeling justice either. In fact, he rhetorically identifies himself as the ruler with a father figure. Moreover, as a father he is “fond” of his children/subjects, and thus shows mercy by simply not enforcing the law and instead only using “it” as a threat in order to keep his children in-line. He has “bound up the threat’ning twigs of birch, / For terror, not to use.” At the same time, the word fond also means foolish and the foolish father/ruler has not shown an appropriate amount of justice, and hence “[Becomes] more mock’d than fear’d.”
• The question of balancing justice and mercy that is implicit in this confessional passage, and the Duke’s struggle with this question indicates the Duke’s limitations as a ruler. That is, the Duke is both a person and an institution, and he thus understands human emotions and desires but also needs to maintain respect for the “office of kingship” (I think Professor Cunningham described this as the individual body meeting and clashing with the Body Politic). The deeper question for Shakespeare is, then, what makes a good ruler? (Which I think is also important in the historical context as the Elizabethan Era had just closed and the accession of James I had just taken place).
Jannifer Heiner
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Measure for Measure.
Act I. Scene 3. Line 23-27
Serafima Krikunova
In this scene, the Duke reveals his motivations for disguising himself to the Friar. Through an extended metaphor, the Duke draws several parallels between the challenges of parenting and ruling a nation. He explains that when “fond fathers,/ Having bound up the threat’ning twigs of birch,/Only to stick it in their children’s sight/ For terror, not to use, in time the rod/ Becomes more mocked than feared.” (L.23-27) Here, Shakespeare accurately identifies the futility of threats that are never satisfied and the subsequent obstacles to ruling effectively for both fathers and political leaders alike. This metaphor also carries an implicit third level of religious significance for the play as the Duke’s reasoning can be applied to justify God’s punishment of disobedient souls. During the period in which Shakespeare wrote, the ‘Master of Revels’ concern with representing religious issues in theatre, most likely motivated the effort to conceal this issue within political discourse. Shakespeare calls the attention to this theme with the Duke’s telling choice of disguise. The playwright makes a strategic switch as the religious issue is masked by the political, while the Duke dresses as the Friar.
The character’s confession of his reasoning for disguise is a common device in Shakespeare’s plays. In King Lear, the Earl of Kent defends his honorable intentions for disguising himself after being banished. In Othello, Iago shares his plot to mask his villainous motives in the guise of honorable service. Paradoxically, Shakespeare demands the reader or audience to trust these characters as they confess their fraudulence, which is precisely the mechanism of theatre itself.
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