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COMMENTARY
May 23, 2007
Double trouble
There has been no recognition scene at the end of a little court event that has just played out in Missouri. In that respect, it cannot quite be classed as a comedy, as Shakespeare certainly classed the Comedy of Errors, and Plautus the Menaechmi before him. Both of those plays turn on the identities of identical twins, long separated, but suddenly brought together after a lapse of time and twists of coincidence.Plautus’ play is the easier to follow. In order to augment the farcical possibilities, Shakespeare adds a couple of slaves for the respective twins, who are themselves also identical twins, and endows the two master twins with the same delightful name, Antipholus. The slaves are both called Dromio. One is amazed that Shakespeare is able to resolve the confusion at all, when all parties reach Ephesus on the same day, putting one of the Antipholuses (the one just arrived from Syracuse, with which Ephesus is at war) under a death sentence. But then, because he is Shakespeare, he further adds the dramatic background of the relationship between Aemilia and Aegeon -- mother and father to the two Antipholuses -- also separated by shipwreck. The former has since taken holy vows and become an abbess -- so what is her status now? He also develops the theme of lunacy, for no twin begins with a knowledge of his “other.” It is as if our Will were out to prove he could skate circles around the ingenuity of the ancient Roman comedian. I once found myself informally advising, or at least drinking with, a producer proposing to “update” the Comedy of Errors for the contemporary stage. I remember suggesting that a paternity suit should come into it somewhere. This has finally happened, in that law case in Missouri. Two brothers, Raymon and Richard Miller, are respectively the father and uncle of a little girl, age three. But which is which? Their mother admits to having slept with both, on the same day. She named Raymon the father, so that local authorities might demand child-support payments from him. Raymon, naturally, challenged this in court. The conventional modern way to sort this out is by DNA testing. But as the two gentleman (I use this term loosely) are effectively clones, the tests came back with a 99.9 per cent certainty that each man was the father. Missouri is not a place like Ontario, however, where a judge may assign multiple paternity at his own convenience, in defiance of nature. I often think the media are taxed beyond their capacities in trying to select and report important world and national news, yet generally better at tabloid coverage. Not so, this time. Scratch my head, but I can make no sense of the conclusion of the case, in any of the reports I have consulted, from that of ABC News to that of the Guardian in England -- of what was decided, let alone how or why. Raymon seems to have lost, for he announces he will press on to the Supreme Court, if they will take the case (I sure hope they won’t). So I will tell you what I’d have done, had I been the judge. Paternity being indivisible, but the evidence splitting into two exactly balancing halves, I would have left Raymon carrying the can. My principle would have been, “a mother is the best judge of who is the father of her child,” and this one, a certain Holly Marie Adams, has been fairly consistent in preferring Raymon. There being nothing else to choose between the two brothers. Is that justice? Well, justice of a kind. I would probably also lecture the court on the impossibility of securing absolute justice on this earth, and the need, therefore, to absorb a little bad luck from time to time. I would even point out that “fairness” and “justice” come, sometimes, into direct conflict, and are at all other times quite different. Fairness is especially suspect, for the word means too many things in too many languages. It could have been worse, had this been a criminal case. One of the twins could have committed a rape -- or a murder or some other capital crime. In the absence of unmistakeable forensic evidence, the standard now being “reasonable doubt,” a judge would be compelled to release both, to the certain detriment of the community. The only alternative being, to hang both as a precaution -- a judgement not available in any of the world’s more civilized jurisdictions, though extra-judicially feasible supposing a state of war. (It was genius in Shakespeare to raise the stakes as he did in the Comedy of Errors, by positing just such a state of war.) There is a moral to today’s column. In case any uncertainty remains, let me repeat it. There is no absolute justice in this world, and people should learn to live with that. David Warren
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