Measure For Measure Secular Justice Analysis

In Act II, Scene 2 of Measure for Measure, the circumstance is that Angelo and Isabella are negotiating about the death penalty that Isabella’s brother is going to receive the next. They are having this conversation because Isabella is pleading for Claudio’s life on his behalf. If her pleas fail to change Angelo’s mind, then her brother will perish. Isabella’s position on mercy in the secular justice system is that Isabella is for mercy. While, Angelo’s view is against mercy in the secular justice system The following statement present mercy in the Vienna secular justice system: “It is the law, not I [who] condemn your brother:/Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son, /It should be thus with him: he must die tomorrow” (2.2.86-88). In other words, Angelo is saying that he will not give mercy to Claudio because broke the law. He would do that even if he was a friend, son, or brother to him. As for Isabella, her opinion is in Measure for Measure: “Yes; I do think that you might pardon him, /And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy” (2.2 56-57). Strictly speaking, she is saying to Angelo that he has the power to give her brother mercy and she knows it. With this, Isabella also states that giving no one suffers in the prosses. …show more content…
What the word secular means is “of or relating to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal” (“Secular”). By way of explanation, secular means relating ideas without religious powers. In the play Measure for Measure, Isabella has another justice system that she follows, and that is God’s law. Having the knowledge that Isabella follows God’s law, it does not change my opinion on that there is mercy in the secular justice system. She does not change my position because people run the secular justice system and people is the only one who can understand the circumstances of