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,
Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother’s life.
Angelo
[Aside] She speaks, and ’tis
Such sense, that my sense breeds with it. Fare you well.
Isabella
Gentle my lord, turn back.
Angelo
I will bethink me: come again tomorrow.
Isabella
Hark how I’ll bribe you: good my lord, turn back.
Angelo
How! bribe me?
Isabella
Ay, with such gifts that heaven shall share with you.
Lucio
[Aside to Isabella] You had marr’d all else.
Isabella
Not with fond shekels of the tested gold,
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.
Angelo
Well; come to me to-morrow.
Lucio
[Aside to Isabella] Go to; ’tis well; away!
Isabella
Heaven keep your honour safe!
Angelo
[Aside] Amen:
For I am that way going to temptation,
Where prayers cross.
Isabella
At what hour to-morrow
Shall I attend your lordship?
Angelo
At any time ’fore noon.
Isabella
’save your honour!
Exeunt Isabella, Lucio, and Provost
Angelo
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!
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
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
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?
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,
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite. Even till now,
When men were fond, I smiled and wonder’d how.
Exit
SCENE III. A ROOM IN A PRISON.
Enter, severally, Duke Vincentio disguised as a friar, and Provost
Duke Vincentio
Hail to you, provost! so I think you are.
Provost
I am the provost. What’s your will, good friar?
Duke Vincentio
Bound by my charity and my blest order,
I come to visit the afflicted spirits
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.
Provost
I would do more than that, if more were needful.
Enter Juliet
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
Than die for this.
Duke Vincentio
When must he die?
Provost
As I do think, to-morrow.
I have provided for you: stay awhile,
To Juliet
And you shall be conducted.
Duke Vincentio
Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry?
Juliet
I do; and bear the shame most patiently.
Duke Vincentio
I’ll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience,
And try your penitence, if it be sound,
Or hollowly put on.
Juliet
I’ll gladly learn.
Duke Vincentio
Love you the man that wrong’d you?
Juliet
Yes, as I love the woman that wrong’d him.
Duke Vincentio
So then it seems your most offenceful act
Was mutually committed?
Juliet
Mutually.
Duke Vincentio
Then was your sin of heavier kind than his.
Juliet
I do confess it, and repent it, father.
Duke Vincentio
’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,—
Juliet
I do repent me, as it is an evil,
And take the shame with joy.
Duke Vincentio
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
Juliet
Must die to-morrow! O injurious love,
That respites me a life, whose very comfort
Is still a dying horror!
Provost
’Tis pity of him.
Exeunt
SCENE IV. A ROOM IN ANGELO’S HOUSE.
Enter Angelo
Angelo
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,
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,
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
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?
Servant
One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you.
Angelo
Teach her the way.
Exit Servant
O heavens!
Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,
Making both it unable for itself,
And dispossessing all my other parts
Of necessar
y fitness?
So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons;
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
How now, fair maid?
Isabella
I am come to know your pleasure.
Angelo
That you might know it, would much better please me
Than to demand what ’tis. Your brother cannot live.
Isabella
Even so. Heaven keep your honour!
Angelo
Yet may he live awhile; and, it may be,
As long as you or I; yet he must die.
Isabella
Under your sentence?
Angelo
Yea.
Isabella
When, I beseech you? that in his reprieve,
Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted
That his soul sicken not.
Angelo
Ha! fie, these filthy vices! It were as good
To pardon him that hath from nature stolen
A man already made, as to remit
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.
Isabella
’Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth.
Angelo
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?
Isabella
Sir, believe this,
I had rather give my body than my soul.
Angelo
I talk not of your soul: our compell’d sins
Stand more for number than for accompt.
Isabella
How say you?
Angelo
Nay, I’ll not warrant that; for I can speak
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?
Isabella
Please you to do’t,
I’ll take it as a peril to my soul,
It is no sin at all, but charity.
Angelo
Pleased you to do’t at peril of your soul,
Were equal poise of sin and charity.
Isabella
That I do beg his life, if it be sin,
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.
Angelo
Nay, but hear me.
Your sense pursues not mine: either you are ignorant,
Or seem so craftily; and that’s not good.
Isabella
Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,
But graciously to know I am no better.
Angelo
Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright
When it doth tax itself; as these black masks
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.
Isabella
So.
Angelo
And his offence is so, as it appears,
Accountant to the law upon that pain.
Isabella
True.
Angelo
Admit no other way to save his life,—
As I subscribe not that, nor any other,
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
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?
Isabella
As much for my poor brother as myself:
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.
Angelo
Then must your brother die.
Isabella
And ’twere the cheaper way:
Better it were a brother died at once,
Than that a sister, by redeeming him,
Should die for ever.
Angelo
Were not you then as cruel as the sentence
That you have slander’d so?
Isabella
Ignomy in ransom and free pardon
Are of two houses: lawful mercy
Is nothing kin to foul redemption.
Angelo
You seem’d of late to make the law a tyrant;
And rather proved the sliding of your brother
A merriment than a vice.
Isabella
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,
For his advantage that I dearly love.
Angelo
We are all frail.
Isabella
Else let my brother die,
If not a feodary, but only he
Owe and succeed thy weakness.
Angelo
Nay, women are frail too.
Isabella
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.
Angelo
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,
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.
Isabella
I have no tongue but one: gentle my lord,
Let me entreat you speak the former language.
Angelo
Plainly conceive, I love you.
Isabella
My brother did love Juliet,
And you tell me that he shall die for it.
Angelo
He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love.
Isabella
I know your virtue hath a licence in’t,
Which seems a little fouler than it is,
To pluck on others.
Angelo
Believe me, on mine honour,
My words express my purpose.
Isabella
Ha! little honour to be much believed,
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.
Angelo
Who will believe thee, Isabel?
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,
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;
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,
Say what you can, my false o’erweighs your true.
Exit
Isabella
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;
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 fallen by prompture of the blood,
Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour.
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:
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
ACT III
SCENE I. A ROOM IN THE PRISON.
Enter Duke Vincentio disguised as before, Claudio, and Provost
Duke Vincentio
So then you hope of pardon from Lord Angelo?
Claudio
The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope:
I’ve hope to live, and am prepared to die.
Duke Vincentio
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,
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
Are nursed by baseness. Thou’rt by no means valiant;
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