Measure for Measure and Liberalism

Abstract

The streets of Vienna are odoriferous. They carry the stench of crime and licence. They exude a knowingness that reeks of excess and decadence. The denizens of the streets have all been there a long time. They talk with nasty familiarity of sexual illness and rape. One of their number is sentenced to death and they joke about it, supplying a kind of Hell’s Angels’ sympathy for a comrade who has gone down fighting the good fight. Lurking beneath the surface of this jaded world is a potential for violence and destruction that has been kept in check by a liberal ruler who understands full well the capacity for absorption and appropriation which his leniency possesses. Permission and permissiveness have bred soft dissatisfaction in the city, while they have allowed it to increase without apparent danger to the state. The streets are inhabited by madams, pimps, johns, and whores who live on the edge of the law, aware of its elasticity and essentially free to flout it at will.