As we discussed in a recent post, Measure for Measure invites its audience to think about the ways that “our doubts are traitors” standing in the way of positive action. Though she is hesitant at first, heroine Isabella must overcome her own doubts and plead with Duke Angelo for her brother’s life.
In this exchange from Act II, Scene 1, the Duke insists that the young man must be punished for his crime. (Listen below.) Isabella, though, makes her appeal with a mixture of reason and emotion. She asks the Duke to imagine himself in her brother’s place — and to appreciate the latter’s benevolence: “If he had been as you, and you as he / You would have slipp’d like him; but he, like you / Would not have been so stern.” Which is to say — as Isabella conveys — mercy born of understanding could mean the difference between life and death.
The stakes are at their very highest here, but they find a more everyday parallel in a teacher’s own negotiation of difficult situations. As educators, we aim to know “the rules” of everything from the classroom to the playground, and we try to instil their importance in our students. But like the Duke, we are often faced with moments when it is more important to open our eyes to a student’s unique circumstances than to follow blindly the rules of crime-and-punishment.
We earn respect from our students so that we can run our classrooms and teach them as best we can. But like the Duke, sometimes we must learn that, in Isabella’s words, “No ceremony that to great ones longs [ . . . ] become[s] them with one half so good a grace / as mercy does.”
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