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 4
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 necessary 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,