Measure for Measure (Vol. 33) | David Thatcher (essay date 1995)
David Thatcher (essay date 1995)
SOURCE: "Mercy and 'Natural Guiltness' in Measure for Measure" in Texas Studies in Language and Literature, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3, Fall, 1995, pp. 264-84.
[In the following essay, Thatcher examines Isabella's concept of "natural guiltiness" and contends that it is not a logical argument for clemency.]
In one of Shakespeare's major sources for Measure for Measure, George Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra (1578), Promos, the judge who corresponds to Angelo, condemns a man for a crime he himself has committed. This condemnation is regarded by the Isabella figure, Cassandra, as compounding one crime with yet another. When Promos propositions her, she is outraged: "And may it be, a Iudge himself, the selfe same fault should vse, / For which he domes an others death, O crime without excuse."1 King Lear, the image of a miscreant in his mind's eye, expresses similar outrage:
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