Measure for Measure

The title is an illusion to the sermon on the mount.

• "Our doubts are traitors / And make us lose the good we oft might win / By fearing to attempt."

2.1: "Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall."

2.2: "Thieves for their robbery have authority / When judges steal themselves."

2.4: Say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true.

5 They say best men are molded out of faults, / And, for the most, become much more the bette

Thoughts are no subjects, / Intents but merely thoughts

Its a play about public choice: systems humans build to measure and judge each other — law, religion, authority, merit, chastity — are all operated by human beings who are subject to the same appetites and failures they are trying to govern

Measure for measure turns out to be not a law of the universe but a human aspiration, imperfectly applied by imperfect hands, arriving at outcomes that satisfy no fully consistent principle.