Measure for Measure 5.1 379-391 "You are pardoned Isabel. And now, dear maid, be you as free to us… "

Measure for Measure
5.1 379-391
DUKE You are pardoned Isabel.
And now, dear maid, be you as free to us…
That life is better life, past fearing death,
Than that which lives to fear. Make it your comfort,
So happy is your brother.

In this passage the Duke is speaks to Isabella after revealing himself as the Duke. In the first line the Duke appears to not have given up his role as the friar and makes himself into a God-like figure by saying that Isabella is forgiven. Isabella does not care if the Duke forgives her because she is nun; rather she cares if God forgives her. However the Duke sees himself as God, or an absolutist ruler such as James I. The Duke is clearly mocked for associating himself with God because he does not even get Isabella’s name right, shortly before he marries her. Shakespeare is critiquing James I because like the Duke, he believed that he was God on earth.
James I tried to portray himself as a God as an attempt to help create a sense of nationalism after the Death of Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth had also used this tactic and made herself into a Virgin Mary-like figure after the break from the Catholic Church in 1588. She was worshiped by the people as a substitution for their loss of identity from breaking away from the church, and effectively created a sense of Nationalism. However James I was not successful in aligning himself with God, to create Nationalism under his reign.
In Measure for Measure, the Duke attempts to do the same thing, he tries to align himself with religion to create nationalism. In the beginning of the play we see that Vienna is lacking a sense of nationalism because all of the citizens are either going into a nunnery (Shakespeare often associated nunneries with death), in a farm outside town, or in jail. Shakespeare plays with the idea of an absolute monarch bringing a sense of nationalism to their people. He also shows that God and the monarchy are not the same, and gives a critique to James I.

Haley Shoemaker, Section 1D