| The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | The Mekons |
| Cover: | The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen.jpeg |
| Studio: | The Manor, Shipton-on-Cherwell, Oxfordshire |
| Label: | Virgin |
| Producer: | Bob Last |
| Next Title: | The Mekons |
| Next Year: | 1980 |
The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen is the debut album by the Mekons, released in 1979.
The music of the Mekons' debut is aggressively primitive. Most of the songs are built on one or two chords, and each is "propelled by Jon Langford's herky-jerky, somewhat arrhythmic drumming".[1]
Many lyrics are political and, like those of their friends in Gang of Four, far left, but with "a more literary approach".[1]
The album's name and cover are an allusion to the infinite monkey theorem, that states that a monkey hitting random keys on a typewriter will eventually type a text such as the works of William Shakespeare. The title almost, but not quite, reproduces the line "The quality of mercy is not strain'd," spoken by Portia in The Merchant of Venice.