Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Tuesday, January 16th, 2024.

Today, we are continuing in the week's special theme of verse from Shakespeare,

particularly from the plays of Shakespeare. Today, we have a speech from

Measure for Measure, the vastly underrated Measure for Measure, part comedy, part tragedy,

all gold, measure for measure.

At the beginning of the play, the Duke of Vienna announces that he's leaving town and puts his lieutenant, his second in command, Angelo, in charge of the affairs in Vienna while he's gone.

And then he doesn't actually leave.

He immediately returns in disguise as a friar.

But believing he is gone, Angelo begins to enact new laws, which throw some of Vienna's

residents into turmoil.

One of those is Claudio, who stands to lose his life after falling afoul of one of Angelo's

new laws.

He's facing down the death penalty

if some unlikely circumstances don't unfold pretty quickly for him.

But the Duke in the guise of the friar

comes to Claudio and gives him the following speech to help him steal his nerves and summon up his resolve.

One of the things I love about this speech is that it serves as a nice counterpoint to one of Shakespeare's more famous speeches, Hamlets to be or not to be.

In fact, in this same scene, Claudio gives a brief monologue or brief speech that really echoes some of the same ideas and themes as Hamlet's to be or not to be speech.

And then the Duke offers this as a kind of counter to that.

Which is great because as wonderful as the to be or not to be speech is when Hamlet gives it,

he's not really in the greatest place, psychologically, spiritually.

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