Mercy and grace and gravity

[Gary Webb]

I’ve always loved the Duke’s line in Act 3 Scene 1: 
“Be absolute for death; either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
Servile to all the skyey influences,
That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun
And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art not noble;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st
Are nursed by baseness. Thou'rt by no means valiant;
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get,
And what thou hast, forget'st. Thou art not certain;
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the moon. If thou art rich, thou'rt poor;
For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear's thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,
For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age,
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid moe thousand deaths: yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even.”

Almost stoic... It reminds me of Rev. Cherrycoke’s intro on Chapter 4 in M&D: “Had it proved of any help that the Rev’d had tried to follow the advice of Epictetus, to keep before him every day death, exile, and loss, believing it a condition of his spiritual world as given. 

I also love the language... very stark and idiosyncratic, a vein Milton would soon inhabit...


Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 19, 2019, at 3:41 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> We know Shakey's Measure for Measure went deep enough into young Pynchon
> that he used a famous line from it for a story influenced/inspired? by it.
> What a play, as I reread and it was a youthful fave of mine too. What it
> means to be human, argues one reader. A study of evil, says another.
> Nihilistic, says Harold Bloom.
> A parable of Jesus' mysterious teachings, says another. So many readings of
> ambiguity that a famous passage is IN Empson's *Seven Types of Ambiguity. *
> 
> And there is this: a linking of mercy and grace early. Act 2 scene 2.
> Isabella
> "Become them with one half so good a grace/ as mercy does", in her first
> pleading for her brother's life. I might argue P's grace resonates in these
> lines
> 
> Angelo, whose blood is snow-broth until he desires the forbidden, who can
> spare her brother's life: Act 2 scene 4:
> ..."Yea, my gravity/ Wherein--let no man hear me--I take pride, "
> 
> That is all.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l