JUSTICE AND JUDGMENT

JUSTICE AND JUDGMENT

1. On the one hand, the play warns that men and women don't necessarily have the right to pass judgment on their fellow human beings. At the same time, Measure for Measure suggests that a person who commits a crime (or sins), should be made to pay – either by making some sort of restitution or by suffering an amount that's commensurate with the suffering he or she has caused.

2. Measure for Measure promotes mercy and temperance rather than an "eye for an eye" system of justice

   • Measure for Measure acknowledges that social problems related to the sex industry exist, it also argues that sex (and morality in general) cannot and should not be regulated by the government.

3. "So to enforce or qualify the laws As to your soul seems good." - the Duke to Angelo

   • Still, the Duke is also giving Angelo the power of flexibility – he can "enforce or qualify the laws" as he sees fit. In other words, the Duke is giving Angelo the freedom to hand down death sentences or to be merciful – it's up to Angelo, who should do what seems right in his "soul."

4. "And liberty plucks justice by the nose; The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart Goes all decorum." the Duke

5. "When evil deeds have their permissive pass And not the punishment. Therefore indeed, my father, I have on Angelo imposed the office; Who may, in the ambush of my name, strike home, And yet my nature never in the fight To do in slander." The Duke about Angelo

   • Duke confesses that he's afraid of punishing his subjects who don't obey the laws of the land because it would make him a tyrant. So, he's going to let Angelo do all of his dirty work for him.

6. "'Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth"

   • When Angelo says that fornication and murder are equally "filthy vices," Isabella notes that divine law forbids them both equally but, according to earthly law, murder is worse.
   • Isabella's remark that the laws in "heaven" are at odds with the laws created by man "on earth" remind us that secular law and religious law aren't always compatible in Measure for Measure.

7. "Thus can the demigod Authority Make us pay down for our offence by weight The words of heaven; on whom it will, it will; On whom it will not, so; yet still 'tis just."

   • When Claudio is being led to prison, he wonders at the way humans take it upon themselves to be administrators of God's "heaven[ly]" laws.

8. In The Duchess of Malfi, justice fails completely as a force for good; instead, it is corrupted into a tool for Ferdinand and the Cardinal. The rules that govern their world are perverse and immoral, so the justice they seek to enact inherently becomes perverse and immoral itself. Delio prepares the audience for this in the first act, when he says of Ferdinand,

   • "Then the law to him Is like a foul black cobweb to a spider: He makes it his dwelling, and a prison To entangle those shall feed him."
   • The law, which should uphold peace and fairness, is instead a “foul” trap that Ferdinand uses to benefit himself.