Shakespeare and The Quality of Mercy...

You know I really became enamored with this quote when I first heard it about 20 years ago. My father used to recite it by heart. His version was interesting, because in it, mercy was enthroned in the hearts of men, not kings. I actually like that version better. IAE the following is the standard version.

Yeah, and then I saw the play to "The Merchant of Venice" on video. Lawrence Olivier is really the best. The more recent one leaves out the quote "how far that little candle throws his beams". That's one the best quotes, isn't it. Anyway in HS we had to study the plays. Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and the Tempest. But this time I encountered one on my own, which I think was much better.

The quote goes into all the reasons why we should show mercy. Shakespeare supposedly based it on De Clementia a two volume hortatory essay written in AD 55–56 by Seneca the Younger, a Roman Stoic philosopher. Also Portia recited. Since Portia was a woman, she had to attend the trial disguised as a man, to save her friend's life. Also since she is addressing the villain Shylock, they say she only goes into selfish reasons why we should be merciful. I don't think that's true. I think the reasons she gives are timeless and universal.

"The quality of mercy is not strain'd,—
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest,—
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings,—
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,—
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself,—
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore...
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy,—
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy."

SHAKESPEARE's "The Merchant of Venice" (1596)

[Note. "Strain"d"="constrained, compelled".]

 

Also I don't know if you understand the meaning of the quote. She's addressing the villain Shylock. And she tells him in the course of justice, even the prosecution should pray for mercy. For a number of reasons of course, not the least of which is because you might find yourself on the other end of justice no matter who you are (see the play).

 

to me, the greater mercy is to not deprive people of their own thoughts, nor tell them what to pretend.
not that generosity isn't wonderful and good too.
the problem is with beliefs telling people what to think, depriving them of the comfort of the wonders of divers possibility, that the words of others,
impinging on their minds, obscuring and even hiding entirely, this diversity of a universe that does not begin and end with our own species,
nor words, however well intended.

an infant is not born with words hiding from itself, all the diversity of all it can explore.
the indifference of the mineral universe is not biased. granted it holds dangers as well as blessings.
yet it is only in our worlds, not our mineral universe, that strangeness is condemned.

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(the offense of shakespeare is that he did not see beyond the distorting vale of beliefs with which he was familiar)