Explainer

Creed

Theatre

20 April 2023

7 min read

How Shakespeare seasoned justice with mercy

As Shakespeare’s birthday approaches, Anthony Baker explores how the playwright let two ancient enemies fight it out on stage – justice and mercy.

Anthony Baker

Anthony is a theology professor at Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas.

A line illustration of a theatrical play scene showing a crowd waiting on standing and sitting judges to make a decision

A scene from Measure for Measure, The Spirit of the Plays of Shakspeare (sic), Howard (1828-33).

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

In order to act with mercy toward someone, must I forgo a sense of justice? If I decide to act justly, have I decided to leave mercy behind? These are questions of philosophers and theologians. They also provide some of the thickest philosophical and theological ponderings of William Shakespeare.

A studied contemplation of mercy and justice does not, of course, originate with the Elizabethan playwright. For as long as humans have pondered how to order their civic spaces, they have puzzled over the demands of each. Around 500 B.C.E, Rabbi Yehudah is recorded as having said that God spends three hours a day on a throne of justice before getting up and crossing over to a throne of mercy, on which he spends an equal length of each day. 200 years later, when Plato devoted his most famous dialogue to the question of justice, he gave only the slightest nod to mercy, acknowledging that the just ruler would need a reputation for generosity.

Though many of Shakespeare's plays notice the interaction, or lack of interaction, of these two qualities (The Tempest and nearly all of the history plays, for instance), he penned two for what seems to me the explicit purpose of letting these two ancient enemies fight it out on stage. I'll focus on one of these and return briefly below to the other.

Justice Unbound

The first, Measure for Measure, takes its title from a line from Jesus' sermon on the mount. This is a signature move of the Bard, to take a religiously charged line, doctrine, or even person, and make theater out of them. While some have argued that this was all he was doing with religion or theology, I have suggested that he is doing more. He is mining the depths of faith language to see if he can find gems that we might be missing if we only pay attention to the identity politics of Reformation era England. "Grace is grace despite of all controversy," one character in this play says. That could be the tagline for Shakespeare's theological interventions.

We see Shakespeare having some of his typical fun with religion in Measure for Measure. The Duke of Vienna gives away his power in order to go abroad, as he claims, for a piece of international politics. In fact, he sneaks back into the city immediately, now disguised as a friar (a member of a religious order like the Franciscans). He tells the friar who lends him the robes that he is doing this because he has made an irresponsible practice of letting the city's "strict laws and biting statues slip." He has, that is to say, been more of a merciful father than a just ruler. He doesn't want to unbind this "tied-up justice" himself, since he fears this would cause his people to question his integrity. ("But you've always been so merciful before now!") So, he contrives a plan to deputize one of the nobles, Lord Angelo, to be the hammer of justice in his stead. He also hints that there are other reasons for his disguise. I'll come back to that bit of foreshadowing.

Angelo immediately finds an episode in need of his firm hand. A gentleman named Claudio has got his girlfriend, Julietta, pregnant. There are in fact circumstances that seem worth considering: the two are engaged and are only waiting for her to receive her dowry - arranged before they go to church. But Angelo will not hear of clemency. He is severe, one noble remarks. This is as it should be, a wise old Lord responds. "Mercy is not mercy that oft looks so," he says, perhaps angling gently at a critique of the Duke's mode of operation.

Justice only deals with what it can see, in other words. We pick up a jewel on the ground only when it catches the light; buried or soiled, we walk right past it or even trample it.

Merciless Secrets

At this point in the play we have our two adversarial qualities in neat, separate containers. One container, called The Duke, is only merciful. But this container must be removed from the state so the other, called Angelo, can display its contents of merciless justice.

But, as this is Shakespeare, things quickly begin to get messy. Angelo turns out to be hiding secrets. The old Lord, having hinted that the Duke is over-merciful, now suggests that Angelo is being a bit hard on Claudio. He cautiously suggests that, had time and place given opportunity, Angelo himself might have come to the wrong side of the law. Angelo's response says more, perhaps, than he means to:

"What's open made to justice,/ That justice seizes."

Justice only deals with what it can see, in other words. We pick up a jewel on the ground only when it catches the light; buried or soiled, we walk right past it or even trample it.

This is our first hint of Shakespeare's subversion of the polarized containers. Listening to Antonio's speech, we've begun to wonder if, lacking the slightest trace of mercy, justice doesn't in fact begin to look a little unfair.

And then we see Angelo acting on his theory. Claudio's sister comes to him to beg for her brother's life. Angelo is quickly captivated by her beauty, and soon offers her a deal. If she will meet him for sex in the garden—secretly of course, so that the crime cannot be "unjust"— he will let Claudio free.

This offer obviously shows the rot in his theory of justice, as he is forming a contract, a just bond, around blackmail and rape. But it also ruins mercy, since his proposed pardon of Claudio is not merciful at all, but simply the meeting one end of a "just" bargain.

The Kiss

Our neat containers have nearly dissolved around their contents. "Mercy is not mercy that oft looks so," but justice is not justice that only looks so. Justice as merciless as Angelo's turns out to be unjust, in the same way that mercy without justice turns up bereft of mercy. This is why the Duke left, and it's why Angelo fails as his deputy.

But the Duke has returned, and now we begin to see what his secret purposes are. He goes to visit Claudio for confession and counsel, and also goes to Claudio's sister for comfort and advice. Here is one of the delightful places where Shakespeare plays with religious stereotypes. The "controversy" of grace that I mentioned above, is for Shakespeare's audience an all-too familiar one, over whether God saves us through our works, and so through a contractual justice, or through grace, which is to say through an act of unearned mercy. The Catholic Church was generally (though not often accurately) associated with the former, the Protestants with the latter. But here it's a Catholic friar (or at least a disguised one!) who enters as the personified mercy.

The Duke/friar devises a plan, and it nearly goes as awry as the more famous friar's plan in Romeo and Juliet. Which is to say that our comedy nearly becomes a tragedy. I won't give away the ending, if you've forgotten or never made it through. But I'll offer a hint: the Duke, on his return, is no longer an embodiment of unjust mercy as he was before. Now he sees clearly that true mercy is just, and true justice is mercy. The two must kiss, as the Psalm puts it. His clever idea for a resolution is all about allowing mercy and justice to exchange a kiss.

When Mercy Seasons Justice

The more familiar play in which Shakespeare lets us watch the battle of justice and mercy is The Merchant of Venice. Here we find the story of maybe the strangest contract made since the dawn of commerce: if a merchant defaults on his loan, the moneylender will claim an entitlement to "a pound of flesh." Is this mutually agreed-upon contract unjust, or simply merciless?

The religious fun is rampant in this play as well. The lender is a Jew and the merchant is a Christian. But the Jew's strict call for commercial exactitude gets tempered by his excessive love for his daughter, and the Christian's supposed reputation for grace is in fact an excuse to practice favoritism. Eventually we have on stage such a confusion of religious stereotypes that someone asks which character is which.

Well, the poor merchant can't pay, as we knew already at the moment he made the foolish contract. And so, Portia, this play's mercy persona, comes—also in disguise—from the fairytale land of Belmont with a clever trick to save her beloved merchant. While her solution involves a highly questionable interpretation of the law, she manages to persuade the ruling authority.

As Portia is making her case, she offers one of the most explicitly theological speeches in all of Shakespeare's works. Earth's rulers might think they are most godlike when they enact the law with authority, she says. But "mercy is above this sceptered sway." In fact, mercy is "an attribute of God himself." She concludes, much as the Duke concludes, that "earthly power doth then show likest God's/ When mercy seasons justice."

In plays like these we see displayed one of his most enduring gifts to us: the ability to play with the familiar and make it strange and new.

Shakespeare, had he indeed been "for all time" as a contemporary put it, would be celebrating his own 459th birthday this week. In plays like these we see displayed one of his most enduring gifts to us: the ability to play with the familiar and make it strange and new. He gives us philosophical and religious figures and themes, and then just as we assume we know who and what they are, he surprises us by showing what sort of dish you can make if you but swirl the ingredients.

Our best efforts at justice, whether of the personal or political sort, must be seasoned by mercy. Our acts of mercy, if not ultimately just acts, will turn out to be merciless. Would we have noticed this if no one had had let it happen on stage in front of us?

Explainer

Creed

Seven Deadly Sins

Sin

17 July 2023

7 min read

Envy: jealousy’s evil cousin

In the second of a series on the Seven Deadly Sins, Roger Bretherton investigates the psychological and moral impact of envy on its victims.

Roger Bretherton

Roger is a Clinical and Coaching Psychologist.

Illustration generated by Dan Kim using Midjourney

The victims of envy

One of my favourite exercises to facilitate with large groups of people is called, ‘You at Your Best’. I introduce them to a list of positive qualities of character (wisdom, gratitude, kindness, self-control, bravery etc.) and then get them to pair up with someone they have never met. They tell a story of them at their best. When, in the past week, have they behaved in a way that was admirable? When did they surprise themselves with presence of mind or wisdom in action? It is a short exercise. It only takes six minutes. They tell the story, and the other person spots the strengths of character they hear in it.

Most of the stories aren’t that exceptional – a problem solved at work, a small kindness shown to family, an awkward but necessary moment of truth – but invariably the room becomes deafeningly voluble as people share their finest moments with a receptive audience. It is amazing how energised people become when given permission to talk about living close to their ideals. Within minutes people who had previously never met are gabbling away to each other like long lost relatives. Strangers have become friends. Outsiders feel included. No one wants to stop.

The hardest part of the exercise was to admit to a time when they were strong, kind, wise, brave, or honest.

When I finally manage to reign in the raucous joy of connecting people, I’m curious to know how they found the exercise. Almost always someone will say that they found it unnerving to talk positively about themselves. The hardest part of the exercise was to admit to a time when they were strong, kind, wise, brave, or honest. They noticed a kind of internal barrier to their willingness to voice their own virtues. It feels socially dangerous or ethically wrong to say good things about themselves out loud. Their social conditioning tells them that bad things will happen to them if they do.

When someone voices a sentiment like this – a nervousness to acknowledge the goodness they contribute to the world – it is not an expression of humility or modesty. More likely, at some point, perhaps for a prolonged period time, the very things that are best and most beautiful about them, have been attacked and criticised. I’m pretty sure I’m dealing with a victim of envy.

The misdirection of envy

Envy is greatly misunderstood in our time. It was once named among the seven deadly sins. Deadly because, when unchecked, it has the capacity to possess a human being entirely, to become their modus operandi, to subtly pollute every thread of relationship with which they have contact. Sin because… well, as a way of being, it poisons any prospect of joyful human community for those who are beholden to it.

To make matters worse, we are often unclear about the terminology, particularly the difference between jealousy and envy. But the distinction is crucial. To be jealous is to protect and defend what is ours. Most obviously demonstrated in sexual or romantic relationships, jealousy is the instinct to protect the boundaries of a precious relationship, to view anything that threatens our commitment to those we love, as a temptation to be resisted. Sure, it can be over-played, it can become possessive or confining, but if our partner never shows jealousy, never expresses frustration at the things that spoil or reduce the quality of our shared intimacy, we are likely to wonder if they care at all. Advocates of the sexual revolution have been predicting the demise of sexual jealousy since the 1960s. They view it as a holdover from our evolutionary origins, no longer necessary in the contemporary world, past its sell-by-date and soon to be dispensed in the era of free-love. But rumours of the death of sexual jealousy have been greatly exaggerated. Our hardwired instinct to hang onto love still hangs on. Most of us feel that a relationship entirely stripped of jealousy is a relationship stripped of love.

Envy sees the strength, talent, or goodness of others as a threat and, if we can’t own them, vows to destroy them.

The psychological contours of envy are similar, but darkly different. If jealously wishes to cling to what is good; envy aims to destroy it. If to be jealous is to preserve what is ours; to be envious is to resent others for having what is theirs. Sometimes we don’t even want the things we envy, we just can’t bear the thought of someone else having them. Envy sees the strength, talent, or goodness of others as a threat and, if we can’t own them, vows to destroy them. It is the message behind every honour killing, the mantra of every domestic abuser: if I can’t have you, nobody can. It is the ethos of the competitive workplace in which others’ success is our failure - with every colleague who succeeds something inside of us dies.

But this isn’t how envy is usually portrayed. Looking at the pop-culture definitions of envy that surround us, we could be forgiven for thinking envy is a bit of a laugh. Harmless, desirable, even good. Hardly a deadly sin, nowhere near the toxic desire to destroy the unique beauty of the other, more like the branding of our favourite nail salon, or eau de perfume. We are immersed in propaganda for envy-lite: the cheeky and indulgent desire to make other people wish they were us.

But perhaps the main reason envy is so bad, the reason it consistently ends up on these ancient lists of how not to be, is that it has no end game.

There can only be ONE

We are subject to a misdirection. As every totalitarian propagandist knows, the best way to make people malleable is not to present them with a clear thesis with which they can argue, but to drown them in so much inconsequential information, so much white noise, that they can no longer discern what really deserves their attention. We are made to look in the wrong direction. Spotting the minor envies but completely oblivious to the major envies that act as invisible killers in our social water supply. We spot the envies we can laugh at while passing by the envies that leak into everyday life undetected, like carbon monoxide. We strain out the gnats but swallow the camel.

Envy in its most deadly form is often too familiar to be noticed. Ever since Cain killed Abel, the most damaging expressions of envy have been found in families. Siblings compete against one another for the limited resource of parental affection and devise a surprisingly innovative set of chess moves designed to gain approval. Some families resort to an ever-shifting set of alliances and betrayals, like a royal court, a game of musical chairs in which the aim is not to land in the blame seat when the music stops. Other families, especially larger families, resolve the issue by carving out unique turf for each child. We recognise these stereotypes: the cool one, the funny one, the clever one, the spiritual one, the naughty one. The Spice Girls were not the first to realise that a one-word identity can help us stand out from the crowd. It works fine, until we run into someone else who has aligned themselves with the same brand.

Sit-coms are filled with the comedic fallout that occurs when people meet their doppelganger in the workplace. There can be only One - one boss, one comedian, one intellectual, one golden boy, one damsel in distress- and envious war engulfs the boardrooms, staffrooms, and multistorey carparks in which Two meet. If we ever notice the green-eyed monster arising within us, we would do well to ask ourselves: what is the turf I thought was mine that this person is trespassing upon? If we can detach ourselves from the desire to destroy our competitor, and reflect on that question, we’ll come to realise that we were always much more than the fistful of traits that defined us in our family.

No end game

But perhaps the main reason envy is so bad, the reason it consistently ends up on these ancient lists of how not to be, is that it has no end game. There is no better future into which envy would deliver us, it simply aims to negate or nullify whatever threatens our ego at any given moment. If only X were not like that, goes the logic of envy, then everything would be okay. But envy is a myopic state, it can see no further than the restoration of a self-centred status quo. It contributes nothing to the thriving life of joy and love usually associated with the de-centring of the self.

The comparison with jealousy is again illustrative. Ultimately, a jealous act – in friendship or marriage or the workplace – when performed skilfully, is an act of hope. It values what is and holds the belief that the world will be better for everyone if the goodness we know now can be nurtured and preserved into the future. It requires not just an opposition to that which would spoil what is good, but gratitude for the good we already have. Jealousy enjoys, appreciates, and savours the beauty that is already present and aspires to magnify its legacy. Envy despises what is and can conceive no other response than burning it to the ground.

The celebration of envy when taken to its logical conclusion, is the pursuit of a fiction, an impossible fantasy that can never be realised. It invites us to imagine nullifying the strength of all others, so the entire world revolves around us, the only star before an obsequious audience, coerced into adoration. Envy partakes of a cynical philosophy of non-existence, and this is what make it a deadly sin. Not that it is naughty but fun, but that it is pointless and empty.