"Measure for Measure": chiasmus, justice, and mercy

Style, Winter, 2001 by Ira Clark

1. Chiasmus, Antimetabole, Commutatio, Permutatio, Counterchange

Ye haue a figure which takes a couple of words to play with in a verse, and by making them to chaunge and shift one into others place they do very pretily exchange and shift the sence.

(Puttenham 208)

'tis true 'tis pity, And pity 'tis, 'tis true-a foolish figure.

(Hamlet 2.2.98-99)

Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern. Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.

(2.2.33-34)

I "pretty" and my saying "apt"? Or I "apt" and my saying "pretty"?

(LLL 1.2.18-19)

The use serueth properlie to praise, dispraise, to distinguish, but most commonly to confute by the inuersion of the sentence.

(Peacham)

The goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness.

(MM 3.1.182-83)

That we were all as some would seem to be--Free from our faults, or faults from seeming free.

(3.1.293-94)

And let the subject see, to make them know

That outward courtesies would fain proclaim Favours that keep within.

(5.1.14-16)

Ignominy in ransom and free pardon
Are of two houses; lawful mercy
Is nothing kin to foul redemption.
           (2.4.112-14)

There is an enormous difference in mental travail between passing through the facile reversible chiasmus of pleonasm, virtual identity, or opposition and parsing the complex, conflicted, multiple relationships that chiasmus may demand. In 1589, Renaissance rhetorician George Puttenham (above) captures the figure's easy showiness in his claim that chiasmus can "very pretily exchange and shift the sence." In those three memorably familiar examples of chiasmus from Hamlet and Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare exemplifies its facile wittiness. Then, however, Henry Peacham complicates Puttenham's assessment when he includes among the uses of chiasmus "to distinguish, but most commonly to confute by the inuersion of the sentence." Peacham indicates the work that can be involved in processing chiasmus: its facile "exchange" and "shift" may require us to stop short for being "confuted" and then have to redefine the terms and rethink the relationships between them in inversion." It is Measure for Measure that, above, provides examples of chiasmus compelling us to stop, to puzzle over definitions and relationships, to focus on difficulties--not merely on the definitions, the omissions, the substitutions, but especially on the complex relationships suggested far beyond simple identity, opposition, and substitution involved in chiastic exchanges. Given these complications, we must ask, In what ways can this figure be used? In what ways did Shakespeare use the scheme? And what are the consequences? What can chiasmus do for fun, for memorable aphorism, for such complex thought as analyzing the relationship of justice to mercy?

The kind of linguistic-rhetorical study practiced by Sister Miriam Joseph in creating an anatomy and catalog (Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language) and by M. M. Mahood in examining the dramatic effects of punning (Shakespeare's Wordplay) is undergoing revival and revision both in Keir Elam's elaborated analyses of staged rhetoric in Shakespeare's Universe of Discourse. Language-Games in the Comedies and in Patricia Parker's dizzying interpretive intensifications and expansions of punning into cultural criticism in Shakespeare from the Margins. Language, Culture, Context. In contrast to Elam and Parker, I shall apply techniques such as theirs to a relatively overlooked but intriguing scheme in order to ask that critics, in their analyses and interpretations, pay heed to schemes in the ways we already consider tropes. (1) To this end, I first consider some of the ways chiasmus has been employed. Moving from simple to complex uses, from traditional to recent analyses with familiar illustrations, I shall foc us on analyses of examples in Shakespeare. In particular, not only shall I look at an application of the scheme as a reinforcement of justice in 2Henry IV but, finally, I shall examine how this so-called figure of words functions in Measure for Measure, a play in which Shakespeare extensively employs it and wherein it consistently demands that we focus on the complex, problematic difficulties in multiple relationships that have troubled critics for generations and that are supposed to be governed by the symbiosis between justice and mercy. To conclude, I shall suggest that the chiasmic formulation of those relationships in Measure for Measure means that our attempts to resolve them, which have proved to be unsatisfying, must necessarily remain unsatisfied. In short, chiasmus compels us to face their intractability.

2. Memorability, Reversibility, Opposition, Complexity

Polonius demonstrates how chiasmus can be used primarily for display, as when, artlessly, he proposes to seek "the cause of this effect--Or rather say "the cause of this defect,/ For this effect defective comes by cause./Thus it remains, and the remainder thus" (2.2.102-05). He dresses out his doubled chiasmus in the sententious, pointed, or curt style and various forms of correction and punning. Such witty display and joking likely provide the primary motive in Shakespeare's most extensive use of the figure. Just as Dr. Mardy Grothe, in Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You and her Web site (http://www.chiasmus.com/mailinglistarchives.html), features comedians and media pundits, so Shakespeare uses chiasmus most obviously for attractive comic wit. In her study, Sister Miriam Joseph (81) calls attention to Shakespeare's typical appreciation in the verbal sparring in Twelfth Night. There, when Cesario tries to correct Feste, Feste, a prolific purveyor of chiasmus, congratulates himself: "So thou mayst s ay the king lies by a beggar if a beggar dwell near him, or the church stands by thy tabor if thy tabor stand by the church.[...] A sentence is but a cheverel glove to a good wit, how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward" (3.1.7-12). Likewise, Keir Elam (254) points to how, in Love's Labour's Lost, Mote expresses his exorbitant appreciation of his own witty usage of the figure in his repeating it: "These betray nice wenches that would be betrayed without these, and make them men of note--do you note, men" (3.1.17-19). Elam (256) also points to how Antipholus of Syracuse exhibits his clout and trickery in The Comedy of Errors when he parries Dromio of Syracuse's sarcastic thanks for a beating: "for this something that you gave me for nothing": "I'll make amends next, to give you nothing for something" (2.2.50-53).