Measure for Measure 6 - Power and Place, Laws that Sleep/slip

Some Shake-Speare / Bacon parallels in Measure for Measure (6)

Shake-Speare:

Duke: I have deliver'd to Lord Angelo,. . . My absolute power and place here in Vienna.

Measure for Measure,1.3.13

Bacon:

“. . .good thoughts are little better than good dreams except they be put in act, and that cannot be without power and place”.

Essay “Of Great Place”

Note: See the Parallel on "Power and Place" for further elaboration on this connection.

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Shake-Speare:

Duke to Friar:  “We have strict statutes and most biting laws, The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds, which for this fourteen years we have let slip (sleep)”;

Measure for Measure, 1.3.19

(Note: modern editions keep ‘slip’ which we think is wrong and should be ‘sleep’, not just because Bacon also mentioned sleeping laws, but because of previous references to laws in the play as “drowsy and neglected” and as having “hung by th’ wall so long that nineteen zodiacs have gone round and none of them been worn”).

Bacon:

“Nevertheless I would not have you headstrong, but heartstrong.”

Life and Letters, 7. P. 104

The Duke will be testing to see whether Mercy seasons Justice. He’s also curious to see if power will change Angelo’s natural disposition.

“Therefore let penal laws, if they have been sleepers of long, or if they be grown unfit for the present time, be by wise judges confined . . .”

Essay “Of Judicature”