Measure For Measure Critical Lens Essay

Recently on the internet, there has been a meme circling around. It starts with a person about to engage in something ridiculous, such as shaving their eyebrows, cutting their hair, etc. However, they stop at the last second, turning to the camera to say, “Don’t ever judge a book by its cover.” Though this meme is purely for entertainment purposes, the concept of making unfair judgements has been around for generations. Consequently, ample authors use the theme of not judging others in their works. For example, in Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare, the character Isabella argues that, “We cannot weigh our brother with ourself” (2.2.156). This quote can be interpreted in quite a few different ways, but the two that are the most prominent are that you cannot compare the actions of one human being to another, and that the only person you have the right to judge is yourself. Foremost, the actions of one man cannot be evaluated on the basis of the actions of another man. This can be seen as the classic “you know my name, but not my story” scenario. In this world, there are people from all different backgrounds and experiences. The doings of one man from one background may be considered moral, but if another man does the same thing in a different context, it can be immoral. For example, in Measure for Measure,
In Measure for Measure, Angelo tries to condemn men for their immoral actions, when he is just as guilty, if not more, than they are. This creates moral implications for him as he tries to put a man to death for a crime Angelo commits himself. In the real world, we must not view ourselves as superior to others because we feel that they are wrong. We must first remove the wrongdoings from our own lives before we are capable of pointing them out in