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Justice, Mercy, and Dialectical Genres in Measure for Measure and Promos and Cassandra

This essay draws on both the social history of early modern law and a wide range of primary legal texts to examine the reproduction of justice, mercy, and equity in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and George Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra. Specifically, justice, mercy, and equity can be understood as interdependent elements of a single discourse that sought to reform subjects by producing both fear of punishment through the enforcing of strict laws, and love of authority through the granting of mercy. This essay explores how these terms were used by early modern English authority figures discursively and in practice, arguing that although a belief in the logic of justice and mercy was pervasive, both this discourse and its instruments of authority were actively reshaped by different (at times conflicting) social groups in a process that practically negotiated governance at the local level. Shakespeare's experiments with genre in Measure for Measure—discussed in comparison to Promos and Cassandra, the play's main source—participate in this process by appropriating the discourse of justice and mercy in a way that formally resists its logic and its application to the theater. (J. C. H.)