Measure for Measure 8

Some Shake-Speare / Bacon parallels in Measure for Measure (8)

Shake-Speare:

Duke:  “ . . ;for we bid this be done, when evil deeds have their permissive pass and not the punishment”.

Measure for Measure, 1.3.37

“Tis necessary he should die;” for “Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.”

Timon of Athens, 3.5.3

Bacon:

“He who shows mercy to his enemy  denies it to himself”.

De Augmentis, 6.3. Antitheta

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Shake-Speare:

Lucio: “He (Angelo) ... hath pick’d out an act under whose heavy sense your brother’s life fall into forfeit”.

Measure for Measure, 1.4.62-64

Angelo: “Your brother is a forfeit of the law”. Measure, 2.2.71

Angelo: “It is the law not I condemns your brother”. Measure, 2.2.80

Isabel: “My brother had but justice In that he did the thing for which he died”. Measure, 5.1.445

(Why does Angelo make the above statements to Isabel? Surely to show her that his judgment was contained within the compass of the law.)

Bacon:

“Nor should a man lose his life without first knowing that he had forfeited it”.

Aphorism 39

Aphorism 46: “As that law is the best which leaves least to the discretion of the judge, so is that judge the best who leaves least to himself”. (De Augmentis, 8.3. and Aristotle, Rhet. I. I.)

Bacon: “The judge as long as his judgment was contained within the compass of the law was excused; the subject knew by what law he was to govern himself, and his actions; nothing was left to the judge’s discretion (Life and Letters, 3. Pp. 331-2)