"Measure for Measure" - On Justice, Law and The Death Penalty

Now, as fond fathers,
Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch,
Only to stick it in their children's sight
For terror, not to use, in time the rod
Becomes more mocked than feared; so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;
And liberty plucks justice by the nose;
The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum.
Measure for Measure, 1. 3

We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch and not their terror.
Measure for Measure, 2. 1

Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?
Measure for Measure, 2. 2

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.
Measure for Measure, 2. 2

The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.
Measure for Measure, 2. 2

O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.
Measure for Measure, 2. 2

The miserable have no other medicine,
But only hope.
Measure for Measure, 3. 1

Be absolute for death; either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art.
Measure for Measure, 3. 1

If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride,
And hug it in mine arms.
Measure for Measure, 3. 1

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world.
Measure for Measure, 3. 1

The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
Measure for Measure, 3. 1

Measure for Measure, William Shakespeare.