Measure for Measure

Shakespeare is always surprisingly relevant… always. But, I have been haunted for the past three years by the wildly contemporary resonances of Measure for Measure. In our never-ending search for great leaders, we see people rise and fall constantly. We build up a potential leader with lots of hype (especially anywhere near an election year) and then tear him down at the slightest hint of imperfection. Or in some cases, the person tears himself down with a genuine misstep. Or the cover is blown when we discover he preaches one thing while doing the complete opposite. Watch out for YouTube, friends!

The road to leadership is treacherous these days, and we don’t have many people who can walk it with grace, dignity and competence. So, I’m fascinated by a play that examines the challenges and complexities of leadership. I guess other people are fascinated as well because many theaters have been producing this play of late.

Measure for Measure presents some vivid examples of bad leadership: leader as ostrich (head in the sand), leader as dictator and leader as hypocrite. In a way, the play lands on the worst kind of leadership: the hypocrite, the morally unsound passing moral judgment on everyone around himself. Have we seen this kind of leader proliferating in America over the past few years, or has it always been like this? You don’t have to look very far to see these guys – they’re in the news at least once a week. Whether it is in business, politics or religion, these guys are out there in droves. I wonder if Shakespeare made the same observation in his time.

Shakespeare took the title of the play from a passage in the Geneva Bible from The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7:1-2:

Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measures ye
Mete, it shall be measured to you againe.

To me, that sounds like good advice: “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” But what should we think about the second half of the Sermon? What happens when a corrupt leader comes to judgment? If a leader puts someone to death for a certain crime and then commits that same crime, is it right to put that leader to death? Is “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” the right way to enact revenge? Sholom Aleichem’s character of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof responds to this question by saying: “Very good, and that way the whole world will be blind and toothless.” Whatever you may believe, there is no denying that the challenges of governance are enormous and complex. I guess that’s why we’ll always be looking for great leaders.

– Risa Brainin, Director
Measure for Measure