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 2
Scene 1
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; and 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,–
FROTH All this is true.
POMPEY Why, very well, then,–
ESCALUS Come, you are a tedious fool: to the purpose. What
was done to Elbow’s wife, that he hath cause to
complain of? Come me to what was done to her.
POMPEY Sir, your honour cannot come to that yet.
ESCALUS No, sir, nor I mean it not.