Portia’s famous speech to Shylock in Act IV of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is undoubtedly one of the most sublime passages on “the quality of mercy” in all of literature. Yet it goes without saying that many of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, from Hamlet to Macbeth to King Lear, are chock-full of the opposite of mercy — cruelty, ruthlessness, vengeance. You could say that the bulk of his tragedies and histories are primarily about mercilessness; about what happens when we abandon mercy in our quest for power, revenge, or control; about our unwillingness or inability to treat others as flawed children of God who need love and patience as much as we do.
Nevertheless, the 37 (or so) plays that Shakespeare penned with goose feather quill between 1590 and 1613 still offer plenty of stirring examples of mercy, and not just among the comedies. After more than 400 years, his oeuvre remains an almost inexhaustible well of inspiration, and many of my own favorite Shakespearean scenes — the ones my moral imagination keeps coming back to — are those of the greatest displays of mercy. Here are examples from nine of his plays.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595–6)
You might not expect this beloved romantic comedy, the most often performed of all of Shakespeare’s plays, to have much substance to show us about mercy, but if mercy is simply “compassion or forgiveness shown to someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm” (Merriam-Webster), then it does indeed abound. Like so many Shakespearean comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream ends not only with a slew of weddings but with a kind of universal large-heartedness, in which all wrongs are forgiven and everything seems to work out well for just about everyone. But it takes a while to get there.
At the outset, no one is being terribly merciful. Yet after many twists and turns, Oberon, king of fairies, finally takes pity on the cast of delirious humans and enlists the fairy Puck to set right the whole mess (which they helped create), clearing the way for a joyous triple marriage. But there’s a broader lesson here as well: that love itself is a kind of mercy. As this play makes clear, to love another is to have compassion on a flawed and often pathetic person. In fact, love transfigures the beloved. As Helena says early on, “Things base and vile, holding no quantity [a.k.a. value] / Love can transpose to form and dignity.” And that’s what happens in this play: these silly, overdramatic, sexually charged teenagers all end up hopelessly bonded together in love, and not because any of them are worthy of such devotion, but because the fairies (gods?), in their mercy, finally sprinkled “love juice” in the eyes of the right characters at the right time.
As You Like It (1599–1600)
Like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It is a whimsical forest-centered comedy that begins with numerous interlocking conflicts—in this case romantic, familial, and political—and concludes with a dizzying array of reconciliations and marriages. By play’s end, it seems like just about everyone here is eager to join the “country copulatives.” This time, a whopping four couples are married (“Cupid have mercy!”), even prompting an appearance from Hymen, the god of marriage, who proclaims to all that there is great “mirth in heaven / When earthly things, made even, / Atone together.”
But perhaps the play’s most memorable act of mercy transpires between Orlando and his older brother Oliver. As the oldest, Oliver inherited his family’s wealth and property from their late parents and was tasked with caring for his younger brother. Inexplicably, however, Oliver “hates nothing more” than his indigent younger brother and seeks every means to bring about Orlando’s downfall—attempting to injure him, to burn down his lodgings with him inside, and eventually to murder him outright.
One day, while pursuing Orlando in the forest of Arden, Oliver stops for a nap. By chance, Orlando happens upon his sleeping brother, and first scares away a deadly snake he sees “wreathed” around Oliver’s neck. Then, bizarrely, a lioness appears, intent on attacking the still sleeping Oliver. Though inclined to flee, Orlando’s “kindness, nobler ever than revenge” compels him to stay and sacrifice his own body to fight off the lion, again saving his villainous brother. At last, the two brothers reconcile through this show of grace, which also has the effect of inducing a miraculous conversion in Oliver. “’Twas I, but ’tis not I,” the repentant brother intones.
Henry V (1598–9)
Apart from romantic comedies, the first decade of Shakespeare’s writing career was marked by an abundance of history plays, among which no comic character stands out more than that gloriously grotesque reprobate, Sir John Falstaff, who is featured in three plays—Henry IV, Part I; Henry IV, Part II; and The Merry Wives of Windsor—and mentioned in a fourth, Henry V. In the rare waking moments when Falstaff is not stone drunk in some ramshackle tavern, bellowing and chasing prostitutes, he is usually out with his risible gang of fellow lowlifes scheming some criminal plot. His only claim to fame is as the on-and-off drinking pal of the wayward Prince Hal, who is forever shirking his royal responsibilities.
Yet for all his flaws, when Falstaff’s comeuppance does finally come at the close of Henry IV, Part II, it feels especially cruel. Prince Hal has become king, and Falstaff believes he has it made. But in the play’s final scene, the new king tears him to shreds: “I know thee not, old man. / […] How ill white hairs become a fool and jester. / […] [T]he grave doth gape / For thee thrice wider than for other men.” Claiming to have “turned away my former self,” the king banishes Falstaff “on pain of death.”
This rebuke makes for a very somber end to Henry IV, Part II, and if you hoped Falstaff might make a comeback in Henry V, you’d be disappointed. By the opening of Henry V, Falstaff is dead, leaving us to ask: Is there no mercy to be had for this most lovable rake? Well, in small measure, there is. In Act II, Scene III, a few of Falstaff’s old cronies have gathered at his favorite tavern, the Boar’s Head. Though Falstaff was surely a difficult patron, the innkeeper Mistress Quickly describes how she cared for him as he lay dying, and pronounces a brief, touching eulogy: “Nay, sure, he’s not in hell! He’s in Arthur’s / bosom, if ever man went to Arthur’s bosom.” Presumably, she means Abraham’s bosom, but we get the gist. “He / made a finer end, and went away an it had been any / christom child [i.e., like a child at baptism],” she says, even crying out to God as he breathed his last. In some small way, this feels like an act of mercy on the part of Shakespeare himself, nevertheless welcoming dear old Sir John back into the fold.
Hamlet (1600–1)
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is Shakespeare’s longest and perhaps most famous play, and about as tragic as it gets. At nine deaths, it trails only Titus Andronicus (14), Richard III (11), and King Lear (10) for the total body count of named characters.
So where’s the mercy? Well, first there’s this strange deus ex machina experience Hamlet has with the pirates. After Hamlet secretly orchestrates the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, his ship is attacked by pirates and Hamlet alone is taken captive. These improbable pirates, who Hamlet later lauds as “thieves of mercy,” decide not in fact to kill him, but instead to swiftly deliver him back home to his native Denmark, supposedly in exchange for later favors from the prince. This bizarre and pivotal reversal, alongside Hamlet’s ruminations in the graveyard, seem to spark a softening in his heart and outlook that continues until his eventual demise.
Of course, the play still ends in a bloodbath, but it is one tinged more with regret and forgiveness than vengeance. Perhaps most notably, after Hamlet and Laertes have both mortally wounded one another, the two seek to make amends. With his dying breath, Laertes, who had blamed Hamlet for the deaths of his father and sister, instead releases him: “Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet. / Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee, / Nor thine on me.” And Hamlet returns this gesture, saying, “Heaven make thee free of it. I follow thee.”
King Lear (1605–6)
Though as bitter and brutal as Hamlet, King Lear likewise contains pivotal acts of mercy — like scant pearls within its dark shell — that make possible the belated reconciliations that occur at the play’s end. The narrative revolves primarily around two mirroring family dramas, that of King Lear and his three daughters, and that of the nobleman Gloucester and his two sons.
Ultimately, it is only as men robbed of their wealth and senses, and banished to the wilds, that these two tragic fathers both find the aid of Good Samaritans. Lear, for his part, is trailed onto the heath by his faithful Fool, soon joined by Kent, Gloucester, and Edgar — the latter disguised as a homeless lunatic. Together, the four help guide and care for Lear through his stormy descent into madness. Similarly, when Gloucester himself is cast out sightless to stumble towards Dover, it is his loyal son Edgar, still disguised, who touchingly guides and consoles him. Most memorably, when Gloucester reaches the very depths of despair and begs Edgar to help him commit suicide, Edgar plays along but tricks Gloucester into surviving the attempt and regaining his will to live — trifling, he says, “with his despair / […] [in order] to cure it.” He convinces Gloucester that he jumped off a cliff the length of “ten [ship] masts” but was saved by a miracle of the gods.
In both cases, these kindnesses help the fathers survive long enough to be reconciled each to their lone remaining loyal child — who, in Lear’s case, is nevertheless executed at the hands of the French. Notably, this ending was so tragic that for over a century, King Lear was most often performed according to a 1681 adaptation in which the loyal Cordelia lives. If only!
Coriolanus (1607–8)
Caius Marcius Coriolanus was a legendary Roman general of the 5th century BC, the early days of the Roman Republic. Inspired by this legend, as one source describes it, Coriolanus is “a full-throttle war play that revels in the sweat of the battlefield.”
A fantastically successful general, Coriolanus gains great acclaim and is given his surname for his singular heroism in the battle for Corioles. Yet as a man, he is ruthless, proud, inflexible, irascible, and full of contempt for the common people. When the patricians convince Coriolanus to pursue a political career and seek the consulship, Rome’s highest elected office, these flaws come to haunt him. The crowds turn on him, and Coriolanus is banished from Rome. Cast out, disillusioned, and filled with hate, he joins his former enemies the Volscians, and makes plans to enact his revenge. Before long, he and the Volscian army are marching towards Rome, burning everything in their path. “We are all undone,” laments Menenius. “[T]here is no more mercy / In him than there is milk in a male tiger.”
But at the last moment, something astonishing happens. The immovable man is moved to mercy by the intervention of his mother. Hearing her desperate pleas, Coriolanus breaks down in tears, crying: “[M]other, mother! / What have you done? Behold, the heavens do open, / The gods look down, and this unnatural scene / They laugh at. O my mother, mother! O! / You have won a happy victory to Rome.” Thus Coriolanus relents, and Rome is spared. But he does so knowing it may cost him his life, and indeed, returning among the Volscians, he is soon torn to pieces.
Measure for Measure (1604–5)
In the early 1600s, Shakespeare began to write more plays that were not simply comedies or tragedies, but some tonally complex mixture of the two. These plays have been grouped together by scholars in various ways under various headings, including as “tragicomedies,” “comedies of forgiveness,” “problem plays,” and “post-tragic plays.” Measure for Measure is often included in these categories and is a fascinating, if challenging tale for the issues it raises at the interplay of law and grace.
The story takes place in Vienna, where the strict, self-righteous Lord Angelo sets about trying to address the city’s moral licentiousness. First, Angelo arrests the young gentleman Claudio, whose fiancée Juliet is pregnant, sentencing him to death for sex out of wedlock. Then he issues a proclamation shutting down the city’s brothels. Isabella, soon-to-be-nun and sister to Claudio, gets word of her brother’s impending execution and rushes to the city to meet with Angelo and beg for mercy. All her entreaties fall on deaf ears until Angelo finds himself strangely attracted to her. At their next meeting, he offers her a deal: “You must lay down the treasures of your body” in exchange for your brother’s life. Appalled, she refuses in despair. In the final act, with everyone believing Claudio to be dead, Angelo’s misdeeds are exposed, and the Duke calls for Angelo’s execution. “[T]he law cries out / […] ‘An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!’”
Yet, here we see the play’s most extraordinary act of mercy. First, Angelo’s formerly jilted lover Mariana pleads that Angelo’s life be spared. The Duke rejects these entreaties, until Isabella—who still believes her brother is dead—intervenes. “Most bounteous sir,” she says, “Look, if it please you, on this man condemn’d, / As if my brother lived.” At last, Angelo is freed, Claudio reappears, and a parade of weddings can now take place.
The Tempest (1611–2)
The mercy that we see on display in The Tempest, one of Shakespeare’s last plays, is a strange and uncomfortable sort, for it is both highly self-serving — bestowed as part of a larger scheme involving all manner of magic and manipulation — but also moving and by no means inevitable. Prospero, the protagonist and former Duke of Milan, lives on a deserted Mediterranean island. Like his enslaved sprite Ariel, he also possesses magical powers that allow him to exert control over other characters.
In the first scene, Prospero orchestrates a shipwreck that leaves the survivors — Prospero’s old enemies — scattered around the island. We soon learn that the crash is part of Prospero’s cunning plan of revenge. By the end of Act IV, after toying with his guests like puppets, Prospero muses, with self-congratulation, that “At this hour / Lie at my mercy all mine enemies.” But does he thus proceed to enact his just revenge? Not really. Instead, Prospero reveals himself in the final act with mercy and conciliation: “I do forgive / Thy rankest fault; all of them.”
Of course, Prospero’s mercy isn’t all-encompassing or unqualified: He deals mercifully with one slave but not the other, and there is no question that his own fortunes will be restored at his brother’s expense. Yet, when he could have done anything to his duplicitous rivals, he nevertheless chose to forgive them. In his final soliloquy, seeming to recognize his own need, he even asks mercy of the audience: “[M]y ending is despair, / Unless I be relieved by prayer, / Which pierces so that it assaults / Mercy itself and frees all faults. / As you from crimes would pardon’d be, / Let your indulgence set me free.”
The Winter’s Tale (1610–1)
While the first half of The Winter’s Tale takes the tone of a grim tragedy eerily reminiscent of Othello, this late comedy’s final unexpected twist — one of Shakespeare’s great “recognition scenes” — ultimately saves us from a redux of Othello’s despair. The play centers around King Leontes of Sicilia, whose murderous jealousy turns him against his wife Hermione and their two children. Only when his family is presumed dead does Leontes at last realize the error of his ways. At the end of Act III, he breaks down in grief and promises to spend the rest of his days in penitent mourning.
Mercifully, the play doesn’t end there. Sixteen years pass. The audience learns that Leontes’ daughter Perdita did not in fact die, but was raised by a lowly shepherd family in Bohemia. Leontes has remained as penitent as ever, unable to “[d]o as the heavens have done, forget [his] evil.” Yet, when he reunites with his lost daughter Perdita, the gloomy mood suddenly shifts. As onlookers describe it: “[T]hey looked as they had heard of a world ransomed […] such a deal of wonder is broken out within this hour that ballad-makers cannot be able to express it!” It’s a beautiful reversal.
But the play still holds one more miracle. In the final scene, through a long trick arranged by Hermione’s friend Paulina, Hermione reappears in the flesh, throwing her arms around her husband in an act of joyous forgiveness. Despite — or perhaps because of — all that has been lost between them, it’s a wondrous and satisfying reunion. And yet, it’s clear that this act of public restoration was only possible through the return of Perdita, which enabled Hermione to forgive Leontes. In truth, the reunion feels more mystical than human in its origins, a gift from the gods. It’s a moment that thus evokes Tolkien’s gospel-infused concept of the eucatastrophe — “the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’,” which “does not deny the existence of […] sorrow and failure [but] denies universal final defeat […] giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” And that, somehow, feels like the greatest mercy of all.
