We started with the scales of justice and returned to them when Shylock had them in hand to collect his forfeiture. Our discussion has never been far removed from settling accounts, determining the price of wrongs and the value of debts and obligations incurred. The notion of getting even, of restoring balance, so crucial to the idea of justice, necessitates measuring. The metaphors are insistent. Thus justice is “meted” out, which is the Germanic word for “to measure.” And “measure for measure” is but another way of stating the law of the talion, abstracting it from its biblical concrete eyes and teeth and generalizing it. And the talion loses none of its ominousness for such generalization; it even hints at ever more dandyish ways of striking the balance.

Justice required measuring and meting that was meet, but meetness meant accepting a certain practical roughness. Portia was overprecise and picayune expressly to deny justice. Rough justice can thus be rough in more than one sense. To us “rough justice” means unofficial revenges taken out on the body; that kind of justice was rough because it contemplated pain, fear, and blood as part of the payback, the roughness serving as both a just means and a just end. But justice also meant that roughly getting it right was to get it right plain and simple.