Professor Doebler on mercy and justice-

(Should you wish, you may

sample some Elizabethan music while reading. 

'T'would be fitting.)

I learned my Shakespeare from a lovingly eccentric professor at Arizona State University, a tall and gangly "intellectual" named John Doebler. I liked him very much. I was a brand new graduate student then, and the whole experience of university education was more than a bit scary. Intellectually, I was far from the fortress of the faith I'd inherited through the generations and experienced myself, the somewhat strange heritage of Dutch Calvinism.

For some time Shakespeare we underwent check tests every morning because, he explained clearly and almost guiltily, his students had to learn how to read The Bard, and the only way to do that properly was to pick up the little things vitally important to the story's telling. 

John Doebler

I had the undergrad education I needed to enter the university, I had the incentive to succeed at attaining an advanced degree, but I'd never read anyone or anything with the kind of minute attention I had no choice but to give to the plays we read in those first weeks of Shakespeare I. 

I loved it. These few lines from "The Merchant of Venice" appeared in yesterday's Writers Almanac. I cut and pasted them here because I'd never thought of them as a poem. It's a courtroom speech by a character named Portia, who happens, in Shakespearean fashion, to be disguised as a man, a lawyer, arguing for mercy for her client.  

I loved the speech then, in grad school, and loved it even in high school. It's nothing but beautiful, as unfeigned righteousness should be beautiful. 

The quality of mercy is not strained;

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 thronèd 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.

Professor Doebler taught with great emotion, I remember, because we were, of course, forever walking on holy ground. He was an Anglican, fittingly so. For some reason I couldn't decipher, I remember a story he told in order to explain the conflict ever manifest between the strictures of justice and impulses of mercy--between head and heart.

People say Queen Elizabeth the First had learned as a child to distrust emotions, "feelings," amply displayed in a demeanor that seemed more than a bit callous. Her great strength was a stony carriage that many felt bespoke her lack of a beating heart.

At one point in her life, she ordered her distant cousin's execution by signing whatever document would bring about Mary's death--she was beheaded. Whether the story is true or not, this denouement is what Professor Doebler wanted us to understand about the delicate balancing the twin energies of justice (living by the letter of the law) and mercy (showing compassion and/or forgiveness) required. 

Amazing that I remember this, but for some reason I'll never forget it. People claimed that when "the Virgin Queen" signed the warrant to put her cousin to death, Professor Doebler said, she cried, she actually shed a tear. She didn't break out and bawl, but the court could not help but note that a single tear ran down the Queen's cheek. That tear was enough for the nation to witness the mercy verifiable in their iron-hearted queen.

Mary Queen of Scots, earlier welcomed back into England from Scotland, had been part of the plot to kill Elizabeth I. Justice, at the time, meant she be punished by public execution. Elizabeth I was carrying out the justice demanded by the treasonous behavior of her cousin. But the Queen cried when she signed the order. That tear bespoke mercy. Thus, justice and mercy shown as "an attribute to God himself."

Professor Doebler loved that story, as did I apparently. I've never forgotten it. 

Tomorrow: Portia in high school