“Gods by Office”: The ruler in Measure for Measure

Abstract

King James I’s Basilikon Doron and The Trewe Law of Free Monarchies, originally published in Edinburgh, were reprinted in London in the year of his coronation there (1603). This essay explores the relationship between these two treatises on government and the ruler in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, the first of his ‘Jacobean’ plays. Maintaining the absolutist principle of divine right, James emphasised that “Monarchie is the trew paterne of Diuinitie”. At his coronation, the Bishop of Winchester examined this view in his sermon: “Princes cannot be Gods by nature, being framed of the same metal, and in the same moulde, that others are; It folweth directly, they are gods by Office...” Comparing Nature to the striker of coins in the mint – a traditional image – the Bishop asserted that however god-like the secular power of a prince, by nature he is merely a fallible creature of flesh and blood. Basilikon Doron designates “False coine” an “unpardonable” crime. The processes involved in reproducing a coin appear repeatedly in the imagery of Measure for Measure. “Coining” – Nature’s plenitude – is linked to the concept of “temperance” or “moderation”, the “measure” of the play’s title. James declares this his “cardinal rule” for kingship in Basilikon Doron. In Measure for Measure Shakespeare has constructed its exact opposite, pitting the extreme ascetic zeal of Isabella against that falsely professed by Angelo. Subverting the notion of absolute authority, Shakespeare’s final synthesis suggests that the good ruler will understand human frailty and treat it with compassion.