Lucio
Lechery?
Claudio
Call it so.
Provost
Away, sir! you must go.
Claudio
One word, good friend. Lucio, a word with you.
Lucio
A hundred, if they’ll do you any good.
Is lechery so look’d after?
Claudio
Thus stands it with me: upon a true contract
I got possession of Julietta’s bed:
You know the lady; she is fast my wife,
Save that we do the denunciation lack
Of outward order: this we came not to,
Only for propagation of a dower
Remaining in the coffer of her friends,
From whom we thought it meet to hide our love
Till time had made them for us. But it chances
The stealth of our most mutual entertainment
With character too gross is writ on Juliet.
Lucio
With child, perhaps?
Claudio
Unhappily, even so.
And the new deputy now for the duke —
Whether it be the fault and glimpse of newness,
Or whether that the body public be
A horse whereon the governor doth ride,
Who, newly in the seat, that it may know
He can command, lets it straight feel the spur;
Whether the tyranny be in his place,
Or in his emmence that fills it up,
I stagger in:— but this new governor
Awakes me all the enrolled penalties
Which have, like unscour’d armour, hung by the wall
So long that nineteen zodiacs have gone round
And none of them been worn; and, for a name,
Now puts the drowsy and neglected act
Freshly on me: ’tis surely for a name.
Lucio
I warrant it is: and thy head stands so tickle on thy shoulders that a milkmaid, if she be in love, may sigh it off. Send after the duke and appeal to him.
Claudio
I have done so, but he’s not to be found.
I prithee, Lucio, do me this kind service:
This day my sister should the cloister enter
And there receive her approbation:
Acquaint her with the danger of my state:
Implore her, in my voice, that she make friends
To the strict deputy; bid herself assay him:
I have great hope in that; for in her youth
There is a prone and speechless dialect,
Such as move men; beside, she hath prosperous art
When she will play with reason and discourse,
And well she can persuade.
Lucio
I pray she may; as well for the encouragement of the like, which else would stand under grievous imposition, as for the enjoying of thy life, who I would be sorry should be thus foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack. I’ll to her.
Claudio
I thank you, good friend Lucio.
Lucio
Within two hours.
Claudio
Come, officer, away!
Exeunt
SCENE III. A MONASTERY.
Enter Duke Vincentio and Friar Thomas
Duke Vincentio
No, holy father; throw away that thought;
Believe not that the dribbling dart of love
Can pierce a complete bosom. Why I desire thee
To give me secret harbour, hath a purpose
More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends
Of burning youth.
Friar Thomas
May your grace speak of it?
Duke Vincentio
My holy sir, none better knows than you
How I have ever loved the life removed
And held in idle price to haunt assemblies
Where youth, and cost, and witless bravery keeps.
I have deliver’d to Lord Angelo,
A man of stricture and firm abstinence,
My absolute power and place here in Vienna,
And he supposes me travell’d to Poland;
For so I have strew’d it in the common ear,
And so it is received. Now, pious sir,
You will demand of me why I do this?
Friar Thomas
Gladly, my lord.
Duke Vincentio
We have strict statutes and most biting laws.
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds,
Which for this nineteen years we have let slip;
Even like an o’ergrown lion in a cave,
That goes not out to prey. 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 mock’d than fear’d; 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.
Friar Thomas
It rested in your grace
To unloose this tied-up justice when you pleased:
And it in you more dreadful would have seem’d
Than in Lord Angelo.
Duke Vincentio
I do fear, too dreadful:
Sith ’twas my fault to give the people scope,
’Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them
For what I bid them do: for we bid this be done,
When evil deeds have their permissive pass
And not the punishment. Therefore indeed, my father,
I have on Angelo imposed the office;
Who may, in the ambush of my name, strike home,
And yet my nature never in the fight
To do in slander. And to behold his sway,
I will, as ’twere a brother of your order,
Visit both prince and people: therefore, I prithee,
Supply me with the habit and instruct me
How I may formally in person bear me
Like a true friar. More reasons for this action
At our more leisure shall I render you;
Only, this one: Lord Angelo is precise;
Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses
That his blood flows, or that his appetite
Is more to bread than stone: hence shall we see,
If power change purpose, what our seemers be.
Exeunt
SCENE IV. A NUNNERY.
Enter Isabella and Francisca
Isabella
And have you nuns no farther privileges?
Francisca
Are not these large enough?
Isabella
Yes, truly; I speak not as desiring more;
But rather wishing a more strict restraint
Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare.
Lucio
[Within] Ho! Peace be in this place!
Isabella
Who’s that which calls?
Francisca
It is a man’s voice. Gentle Isabella,
Turn you the key, and know his business of him;
You may, I may not; you are yet unsworn.
When you have vow’d, you must not speak with men
But in the presence of the prioress:
Then, if you speak, you must not show your face,
Or, if you show your face, you must not speak.
He calls again; I pray you, answer him.
Exit
Isabella
Peace and prosperity! Who is’t that calls
Enter Lucio
Lucio
Hail, virgin, if you be, as those cheek-roses
Proclaim you are no less! Can you so stead me
As bring me to the sight of Isabella,
A novice of this place and the fair sister<
br />
To her unhappy brother Claudio?
Isabella
Why ’her unhappy brother’? let me ask,
The rather for I now must make you know
I am that Isabella and his sister.
Lucio
Gentle and fair, your brother kindly greets you:
Not to be weary with you, he’s in prison.
Isabella
Woe me! for what?
Lucio
For that which, if myself might be his judge,
He should receive his punishment in thanks:
He hath got his friend with child.
Isabella
Sir, make me not your story.
Lucio
It is true.
I would not — though ’tis my familiar sin
With maids to seem the lapwing and to jest,
Tongue far from heart — play with all virgins so:
I hold you as a thing ensky’d and sainted.
By your renouncement an immortal spirit,
And to be talk’d with in sincerity,
As with a saint.
Isabella
You do blaspheme the good in mocking me.
Lucio
Do not believe it. Fewness and truth, ’tis thus:
Your brother and his lover have embraced:
As those that feed grow full, as blossoming time
That from the seedness the bare fallow brings
To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb
Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry.
Isabella
Some one with child by him? My cousin Juliet?
Lucio
Is she your cousin?
Isabella
Adoptedly; as school-maids change their names
By vain though apt affection.
Lucio
She it is.
Isabella
O, let him marry her.
Lucio
This is the point.
The duke is very strangely gone from hence;
Bore many gentlemen, myself being one,
In hand and hope of action: but we do learn
By those that know the very nerves of state,
His givings-out were of an infinite distance
From his true-meant design. Upon his place,
And with full line of his authority,
Governs Lord Angelo; a man whose blood
Is very snow-broth; one who never feels
The wanton stings and motions of the sense,
But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge
With profits of the mind, study and fast.
He — to give fear to use and liberty,
Which have for long run by the hideous law,
As mice by lions — hath pick’d out an act,
Under whose heavy sense your brother’s life
Falls into forfeit: he arrests him on it;
And follows close the rigour of the statute,
To make him an example. All hope is gone,
Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer
To soften Angelo: and that’s my pith of business
’Twixt you and your poor brother.
Isabella
Doth he so seek his life?
Lucio
Has censured him
Already; and, as I hear, the provost hath
A warrant for his execution.
Isabella
Alas! what poor ability’s in me
To do him good?
Lucio
Assay the power you have.
Isabella
My power? Alas, I doubt —
Lucio
Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt. Go to Lord Angelo,
And let him learn to know, when maidens sue,
Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel,
All their petitions are as freely theirs
As they themselves would owe them.
Isabella
I’ll see what I can do.
Lucio
But speedily.
Isabella
I will about it straight;
No longer staying but to give the mother
Notice of my affair. I humbly thank you:
Commend me to my brother: soon at night
I’ll send him certain word of my success.
Lucio
I take my leave of you.
Isabella
Good sir, adieu.
Exeunt
ACT II
SCENE I. A HALL IN ANGELO’S HOUSE.
Enter Angelo, Escalus, and a Justice, Provost, Officers, and other Attendants, behind
Angelo
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.
Escalus
Ay, but yet
Let us be keen, and rather cut a little,
Than fall, and bruise to death. Alas, this gentleman
Whom I would save, had a most noble father!
Let but your honour know,
Whom I believe to be most strait in virtue,
That, in the working of your own affections,
Had time cohered with place or place with wishing,
Or that the resolute acting of your blood
Could have attain’d the effect of your own purpose,
Whether you had not sometime in your life
Err’d in this point which now you censure him,
And pull’d the law upon you.
Angelo
’Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
Another thing to fall. I not deny,
The jury, passing on the prisoner’s life,
May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two
Guiltier than him they try. What’s open made to justice,
That justice seizes: what know the laws
That thieves do pass on thieves? ’Tis very pregnant,
The jewel that we find, we stoop and take’t
Because we see it; but what we do not see
We tread upon, and never think of it.
You may not so extenuate his offence
For I have had such faults; but rather tell me,
When I, that censure him, do so offend,
Let mine own judgment pattern out my death,
And nothing come in partial. Sir, he must die.
Escalus
Be it as your wisdom will.
Angelo
Where is the provost?
Provost
Here, if it like your honour.
Angelo
See that Claudio
Be executed by nine to-morrow morning:
Bring him his confessor, let him be prepared;
For that’s the utmost of his pilgrimage.
Exit Provost
Escalus
[Aside] Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all!
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall:
Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none:
And some condemned for a fault alone.
Enter Elbow, and Officers with Froth and Pompey
Elbow
Come, bring them away: if these be good people in a commonweal that do nothing but use their abuses in common houses, I know no law: bring them away.
Angelo
How now, sir! What’s your name? and what’s the matter?
Elbow
If it Please your honour, I am the poor duke’s constable, and my name is Elbow: I do lean upon justice, sir, and do bring in here before your good honour two notorious benefactors.
Angelo
Benefactors? Well; what benefactors are they? are they not malefactors?
Elbow
If it? please your honour, I know not well what they are: but precise villains they are, that I am sure of; an
d void of all profanation in the world that good Christians ought to have.
Escalus
This comes off well; here’s a wise officer.
Angelo
Go to: what quality are they of? Elbow is your name? why dost thou not speak, Elbow?
Pompey
He cannot, sir; he’s out at elbow.
Angelo
What are you, sir?
Elbow
He, sir! a tapster, sir; parcel-bawd; one that serves a bad woman; whose house, sir, was, as they say, plucked down in the suburbs; and now she professes a hot-house, which, I think, is a very ill house too.
Escalus
How know you that?
Elbow
My wife, sir, whom I detest before heaven and your honour,—
Escalus
How? thy wife?
Elbow
Ay, sir; whom, I thank heaven, is an honest woman,—
Escalus
Dost thou detest her therefore?
Elbow
I say, sir, I will detest myself also, as well as she, that this house, if it be not a bawd’s house, it is pity of her life, for it is a naughty house.
Escalus
How dost thou know that, constable?
Elbow
Marry, sir, by my wife; who, if she had been a woman cardinally given, might have been accused in fornication, adultery, and all uncleanliness there.
Escalus
By the woman’s means?
Elbow
Ay, sir, by Mistress Overdone’s means: but as she spit in his face, so she defied him.
Pompey
Sir, if it please your honour, this is not so.
Elbow
Prove it before these varlets here, thou honourable man; prove it.
Escalus
Do you hear how he misplaces?
Pompey
Sir, she came in great with child; and longing, saving your honour’s reverence, for stewed prunes; sir, we had but two in the house, which at that very distant time stood, as it were, in a fruit-dish, a dish of some three-pence; your honours have seen such dishes; they are not China dishes, but very good dishes,—
Escalus
Go to, go to: no matter for the dish, sir.
Pompey
No, indeed, sir, not of a pin; you are therein in the right: but to the point. As I say, this Mistress Elbow, being, as I say, with child, and being great-bellied, and longing, as I said, for prunes; and having but two in the dish, as I said, Master Froth here, this very man, having eaten the rest, as I said, and, as I say, paying for them very honestly; for, as you know, Master Froth, I could not give you three-pence again.
Froth
No, indeed.
Pompey
Very well: you being then, if you be remembered, cracking the stones of the foresaid prunes,—
Froth
Ay, so I did indeed.
Pompey
Why, very well; I telling you then, if you be remembered, that such a one and such a one were past cure of the thing you wot of, unless they kept very good diet, as I told you,—
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