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Dec. 5th, 2005 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ricardienneSo, today at lunch I was reading City Of God and I came across this passage, from Book IV, Chapter 24:
We call [rulers] happy when… they are slow to punish, quick to forgive; when they punish, not out of private revenge, but only when forced by the order and security of the republic, and when they pardon, not to encourage impunity, but with the hope of reform; when they temper with mercy and generosity the inevitable harshness of their decrees.
We call those happy who are all the more disciplined in their lusts just because they are freer to indulge them; who prefer to curb the waywardness of their own passions rather than to rule the peoples of the world…
It's funny: doesn't that touch just about every thematic point of Measure for Measure? (Heh. All I need to do now is tie in Harry Potter, Richard III, or both, right?) We've got the importance of mercy, the importance of reluctantly punishing, the importance of being more in control of your passions the more power you have (*coughAngelocough*).
But the last part also echoes Escalus's comment that the duke was "One that, above all other strifes, contended especially to know himself." (n.b. Latin prof. was ranting about those who use 'that' to refer to people the other day… wonder if he knows that Shakespeare did it? Probably.)
And I think perhaps the line about pardoning "not to encourage impunity, but with the hope of reform" could perhaps be taken to solve some of the problems of the end. In the beginning of the play, the duke has been pardoning by default, just because he can't bring himself to be mean (or something). That has been "to encourage impunity." But at the end, none of the pardons are completely free. There is the need to reform. Claudio will marry Juliet; Lucio will marry the prostitute whom he got pregnant; Angelo has married Mariana, and will (presumably) become a nicer, less uptight guy. Even Barnardine is pardoned but sent off into the care of a friar. So yes, I suppose that Shakespeare's duke, as strictly written, illustrates one of these happy rulers. Mark Rylance's interpretation, however, did not, and was much more interesting and amusing!
Today was a good day for laughing in class. In Heroic Age, the professor told us that we could all go and practice our Skarphedin moves on the iced-over path from the Campus Center. He promised extra credit to anyone who could, after stopping to tie his (her) shoe, slide along the ice and knock someone's molars out.
Come to think of it, today was a good day for random extra-credit offers, as well. In Latin, he told us that it would be an automatic "A" for anyone who turned in a paper carved into stone. (This was during of a 20 minute digression on Wikipedia, copyright law, and the preservability of various forms of media, which ended in his warning us that sooner or later the world would descend anew into a period where learning was the provenance of only a very select few (!!!) and that he hoped for our sakes that it was either after our times, or that we were among that elite.) I still haven't decided whether or not to sign up for his FYSEM section next semester. It would probably be really interesting, but he made it sound like it will be really rigorous and unorthodox…
We call [rulers] happy when… they are slow to punish, quick to forgive; when they punish, not out of private revenge, but only when forced by the order and security of the republic, and when they pardon, not to encourage impunity, but with the hope of reform; when they temper with mercy and generosity the inevitable harshness of their decrees.
We call those happy who are all the more disciplined in their lusts just because they are freer to indulge them; who prefer to curb the waywardness of their own passions rather than to rule the peoples of the world…
It's funny: doesn't that touch just about every thematic point of Measure for Measure? (Heh. All I need to do now is tie in Harry Potter, Richard III, or both, right?) We've got the importance of mercy, the importance of reluctantly punishing, the importance of being more in control of your passions the more power you have (*coughAngelocough*).
But the last part also echoes Escalus's comment that the duke was "One that, above all other strifes, contended especially to know himself." (n.b. Latin prof. was ranting about those who use 'that' to refer to people the other day… wonder if he knows that Shakespeare did it? Probably.)
And I think perhaps the line about pardoning "not to encourage impunity, but with the hope of reform" could perhaps be taken to solve some of the problems of the end. In the beginning of the play, the duke has been pardoning by default, just because he can't bring himself to be mean (or something). That has been "to encourage impunity." But at the end, none of the pardons are completely free. There is the need to reform. Claudio will marry Juliet; Lucio will marry the prostitute whom he got pregnant; Angelo has married Mariana, and will (presumably) become a nicer, less uptight guy. Even Barnardine is pardoned but sent off into the care of a friar. So yes, I suppose that Shakespeare's duke, as strictly written, illustrates one of these happy rulers. Mark Rylance's interpretation, however, did not, and was much more interesting and amusing!
Today was a good day for laughing in class. In Heroic Age, the professor told us that we could all go and practice our Skarphedin moves on the iced-over path from the Campus Center. He promised extra credit to anyone who could, after stopping to tie his (her) shoe, slide along the ice and knock someone's molars out.
Come to think of it, today was a good day for random extra-credit offers, as well. In Latin, he told us that it would be an automatic "A" for anyone who turned in a paper carved into stone. (This was during of a 20 minute digression on Wikipedia, copyright law, and the preservability of various forms of media, which ended in his warning us that sooner or later the world would descend anew into a period where learning was the provenance of only a very select few (!!!) and that he hoped for our sakes that it was either after our times, or that we were among that elite.) I still haven't decided whether or not to sign up for his FYSEM section next semester. It would probably be really interesting, but he made it sound like it will be really rigorous and unorthodox…
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Date: 2005-12-06 04:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 08:14 pm (UTC)