II. 2.
100 Ang. I show it most of all when I show justice;

For then I pity those I do not know,

Which a dismiss’d offence would after gall;

And do him right that, answering one foul wrong.

Lives not to act another. Be satisfied;

105 Your brother dies to-morrow; be content.

Isab. So you must be the first that gives this sentence.

And he, that suffers. O, it is excellent

To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous

To use it like a giant.

110 Isab. Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne’er be quiet,

For every pelting, petty officer

Would use his heaven for thunder.

Nothing but thunder! Merciful Heaven,

115 Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt

Split’st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak

Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man,

Drest in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,

120 His glassy essence, like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,

Would all themselves laugh mortal.

Lucio. [Aside to Isab.] O, to him, to him, wench! he will relent;

He’s coming; I perceive’t.

Isab. We cannot weigh our brother with ourself:

Great men may jest with saints; ’tis wit in them.

But in the less foul profanation.

130 Isab. That in the captain’s but a choleric word,

Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

Isab. Because authority, though it err like others.

135 Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself,

That skins the vice o’ the top. Go to your bosom;

Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know

That’s like my brother’s fault: if it confess

A natural guiltiness such as is his,

140 Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue

Against my brother’s life.

Ang.

[Aside] She speaks, and ’tis

Such sense, that my sense breeds with it. Fare you well.

Isab. Not with fond shekels of the tested gold,

II. 2.
150 Or stones whose rates are either rich or poor

As fancy values them; but with true prayers

That shall be up at heaven and enter there

Ere sun-rise, prayers from preserved souls,

From fasting maids whose minds are dedicate

To nothing temporal.

Ang.

[Aside] Amen:

For I am that way going to temptation,

Where prayers cross.

Isab.

At what hour to-morrow

Shall I attend your lordship?

Ang.

From thee,—even from thy virtue!

What’s this, what’s this? Is this her fault or mine?

The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?

Ha!

165 Not she; nor doth she tempt: but it is I

That, lying by the violet in the sun,

Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,

Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be

That modesty may more betray our sense

170 Than woman’s lightness? Having waste ground enough,

Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,

And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!

What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?

Dost thou desire her foully for those things

II. 2.
175 That make her good? O, let her brother live:

Thieves for their robbery have authority

When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,

That I desire to hear her speak again,

And feast upon her eyes? What is’t I dream on?

180 O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,

With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous

Is that temptation that doth goad us on

To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,

With all her double vigour, art and nature,

185 Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid

Subdues me quite. Ever till now,

When men were fond, I smiled, and wonder’d how. Exit.

Duke. Bound by my charity and my blest order,

I come to visit the afflicted spirits

5 Here in the prison. Do me the common right

To let me see them, and to make me know

The nature of their crimes, that I may minister

To them accordingly.

10 Look, here comes one: a gentlewoman of mine,

Who, falling in the flaws of her own youth,

Hath blister’d her report: she is with child;

And he that got it, sentenced; a young man

More fit to do another such offence

15 Than die for this.

Prov.

As I do think, to-morrow.

I have provided for you: stay awhile, To Juliet.

And you shall be conducted.

Duke. I’ll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience,

And try your penitence, if it be sound,

Or hollowly put on.

Duke. So, then, it seems your most offenceful act

Was mutually committed?

30 Duke. ’Tis meet so, daughter: but lest you do repent,

As that the sin hath brought you to this shame,

Which sorrow is always towards ourselves, not heaven,

Showing we would not spare heaven as we love it,

But as we stand in fear,—

35 Jul. I do repent me, as it is an evil,

And take the shame with joy.

Duke.

There rest.

Your partner, as I hear, must die to-morrow,

And I am going with instruction to him.

Grace go with you, Benedicite! Exit.

40 Jul. Must die to-morrow! O injurious love,

That respites me a life, whose very comfort

Is still a dying horror!

Ang. When I would pray and think, I think and pray

To several subjects. Heaven hath my empty words;

Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,

Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,

5 As if I did but only chew his name;

And in my heart the strong and swelling evil

Of my conception. The state, whereon I studied,

Is like a good thing, being often read,

Grown fear’d and tedious; yea, my gravity,

10 Wherein—let no man hear me—I take pride,

Could I with boot change for an idle plume,

Which the air beats for vain. O place, O form,

How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,

Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls

15 To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood:

Let’s write good angel on the devil’s horn;

’Tis not the devil’s crest.

Enter a Servant.

How now! who’s there?

Ang. Teach her the way. O heavens!

20 Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,

Making both it unable for itself,

And dispossessing all my other parts

Of necessary fitness?

So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons:

II. 4.
25 Come all to help him, and so stop the air

By which he should revive: and even so

The general, subject to a well-wish’d king,

Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness

Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love

Must needs appear offence.

Enter Isabella.

30 How now, fair maid?

Ang. That you might know it, would much better please me

Than to demand what ’tis. Your brother cannot live.

35 Ang. Yet may he live awhile; and, it may be,

As long as you or I: yet he must die.

Isab. When, I beseech you? that in his reprieve,

40 Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted

That his soul sicken not.

Ang. Ha! fie, these filthy vices! It were as good

To pardon him that hath from nature stolen

A man already made, as to remit

45 Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven’s image

In stamps that are forbid: ’tis all as easy

Falsely to take away a life true made,

As to put metal in restrained means

To make a false one.

Ang. Say you so? then I shall pose you quickly.

Which had you rather,—that the most just law

Now took your brother’s life; or, to redeem him,

Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness

As she that he hath stain’d?

55 Isab.

Sir, believe this,

I had rather give my body than my soul.

Ang. I talk not of your soul: our compell’d sins

Stand more for number than for accompt.

Ang. Nay, I’ll not warrant that; for I can speak

60 Against the thing I say. Answer to this:—

I, now the voice of the recorded law,

Pronounce a sentence on your brother’s life:

Might there not be a charity in sin

To save this brother’s life?

Isab.

Please you to do’t,

65 I’ll take it as a peril to my soul,

It is no sin at all, but charity.

Ang. Pleased you to do’t at peril of your soul,

Were equal poise of sin and charity.

Isab. That I do beg his life, if it be sin,

70 Heaven let me bear it! you granting of my suit,

If that be sin, I’ll make it my morn prayer

To have it added to the faults of mine,

And nothing of your answer.

Ang.

Nay, but hear me.

Your sense pursues not mine: either you are ignorant,

II. 4.
75 Or seem so, craftily; and that’s not good.

Isab. Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,

But graciously to know I am no better.

Ang. Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright

When it doth tax itself; as these black masks

80 Proclaim an enshield beauty ten times louder

Than beauty could, display’d. But mark me;

To be received plain, I’ll speak more gross:

Your brother is to die.

85 Ang. And his offence is so, as it appears,

Accountant to the law upon that pain.

Ang. Admit no other way to save his life,—

As I subscribe not that, nor any other,

90 But in the loss of question,—that you, his sister,

Finding yourself desired of such a person,

Whose credit with the judge, or own great place,

Could fetch your brother from the manacles

Of the all-building law; and that there were

95 No earthly mean to save him, but that either

You must lay down the treasures of your body

To this supposed, or else to let him suffer;

What would you do?

Isab. As much for my poor brother as myself:

II. 4.
100 That is, were I under the terms of death,

The impression of keen whips I’ld wear as rubies,

And strip myself to death, as to a bed

That longing have been sick for, ere I’ld yield

My body up to shame.

105 Isab. And ’twere the cheaper way:

Better it were a brother died at once,

Than that a sister, by redeeming him,

Should die for ever.

Ang. Were not you, then, as cruel as the sentence

110 That you have slander’d so?

Isab. Ignomy in ransom and free pardon

Are of two houses: lawful mercy

Is nothing kin to foul redemption.

Ang. You seem’d of late to make the law a tyrant;

115 And rather proved the sliding of your brother

A merriment than a vice.

Isab. O, pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out,

To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean:

I something do excuse the thing I hate,

120 For his advantage that I dearly love.

Isab.

Else let my brother die,

If not a feodary, but only he

Owe and succeed thy weakness.

II. 4.
125 Isab. Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves;

Which are as easy broke as they make forms.

Women!—Help Heaven! men their creation mar

In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail;

For we are soft as our complexions are,

And credulous to false prints.

130 Ang.

I think it well:

And from this testimony of your own sex,—

Since, I suppose, we are made to be no stronger

Than faults may shake our frames,—let me be bold;—

I do arrest your words. Be that you are,

135 That is, a woman; if you be more, you’re none;

If you be one,—as you are well express’d

By all external warrants,—show it now,

By putting on the destined livery.

Isab. I have no tongue but one: gentle my lord,

140 Let me entreat you speak the former language.

Isab. My brother did love Juliet,

And you tell me that he shall die for it.

145 Isab. I know your virtue hath a license in’t,

Which seems a little fouler than it is,

To pluck on others.

Ang.

Believe me, on mine honour,

My words express my purpose.

Isab. Ha! little honour to be much believed,

II. 4.
150 And most pernicious purpose!—Seeming, seeming!—

I will proclaim thee, Angelo; look for’t:

Sign me a present pardon for my brother,

Or with an outstretch’d throat I’ll tell the world aloud

What man thou art.

Ang.

Who will believe thee, Isabel?

155 My unsoil’d name, the austereness of my life,

My vouch against you, and my place i’ the state,

Will so your accusation overweigh,

That you shall stifle in your own report,

And smell of calumny. I have begun;

160 And now I give my sensual race the rein:

Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite;

Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes,

That banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother

By yielding up thy body to my will;

165 Or else he must not only die the death,

But thy unkindness shall his death draw out

To lingering sufferance. Answer me to-morrow.

Or, by the affection that now guides me most,

I’ll prove a tyrant to him. As for you,

170 Say what you can, my false o’erweighs your true. Exit.

Isab. To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,

Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,

That bear in them one and the self-same tongue,

Either of condemnation or approof;

II. 4.
175 Bidding the law make court’sy to their will;

Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite,

To follow as it draws! I’ll to my brother:

Though he hath fall’n by prompture of the blood,

Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour,

180 That, had he twenty heads to tender down

On twenty bloody blocks, he’ld yield them up,

Before his sister should her body stoop

To such abhorr’d pollution.

Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die:

185 More than our brother is our chastity.

I’ll tell him yet of Angelo’s request,

And fit his mind to death, for his soul’s rest. Exit.

Claud. The miserable have no other medicine

But only hope:

I’ve hope to live, and am prepar’d to die.

5 Duke. 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,

Servile to all the skyey influences.

10 That dost this habitation, where thou keep’st,

Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death’s fool;

For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun,

And yet runn’st toward him still. Thou art not noble;

For all the accommodations that thou bear’st

15 Are nursed by baseness. Thou’rt by no means valiant;

For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork

Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,

And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear’st

Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;

20 For thou exist’st on many a thousand grains

That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;

For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get.

And what thou hast, forget’st. Thou art not certain;

For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,

III. 1
25 After the moon. If thou art rich, thou’rt poor;

For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,

Thou bear’st thy heavy riches but a journey,

And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none;

For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,

30 The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,

For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age.

But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep,

Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth

35 Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,

Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,

To make thy riches pleasant. What’s yet in this

That bears the name of life? Yet in this life

40 Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear,

That makes these odds all even.

Claud.

I humbly thank you.

To sue to live, I find I seek to die;

And, seeking death, find life: let it come on.