A Room in ANGELO’S House. | |
| |
Enter ANGELO. | |
| Ang. When I would pray and think, I think and pray | |
| To several subjects: heaven hath my empty words, | 4 |
| 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 | 8 |
| 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, | 12 |
| 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 a we from fools, and tie the wiser souls | 16 |
| 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. | 20 |
| How now! who’s there? | |
| Serv. One Isabel, a sister, | |
| Desires access to you. | |
| Ang. Teach her the way. [Exit Servant. | 24 |
| O heavens! | |
| Why does my blood thus muster to my heart, | |
| Making both it unable for itself, | |
| And dispossessing all my other parts | 28 |
| Of necessary fitness? | |
| So play the foolish throngs with one that swounds; | |
| Come all to help him, and so stop the air | |
| By which he should revive: and even so | 32 |
| 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. | 36 |
| |
Enter ISABELLA. | |
| How now, fair maid! | |
| Isab. I am come to know your pleasure. | |
| Ang. That you might know it, would much better please me, | 40 |
| Than to demand what ’tis. Your brother cannot live. | |
| Isab. Even so. Heaven keep your honour! | |
| Ang. Yet may he live a while; and, it may be, | |
| As long as you or I: yet he must die. | 44 |
| Isab. Under your sentence? | |
| Ang. Yea. | |
| Isab. When, I beseech you? that in his reprieve, | |
| Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted | 48 |
| 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 | 52 |
| 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 | 56 |
| To make a false one. | |
| Isab. ’Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth. | |
| Ang. Say you so? then I shall pose you quickly. | |
| Which had you rather, that the most just law | 60 |
| 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? | |
| Isab. Sir, believe this, | 64 |
| 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. | |
| Isab. How say you? | 68 |
| Ang. 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: | 72 |
| Might there not be a charity in sin | |
| To save this brother’s life? | |
| Isab. Please you to do’t, | |
| I’ll take it as a peril to my soul; | 76 |
| It is no sin at all, but charity. | |
| Ang. Pleas’d 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, | 80 |
| 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. | 84 |
| Ang. Nay, but hear me. | |
| Your sense pursues not mine: either you are ignorant, | |
| Or seem so craftily; and that’s not good. | |
| Isab. Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good, | 88 |
| 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 | |
| Proclaim an enshield beauty ten times louder | 92 |
| Than beauty could, display’d. But mark me; | |
| To be received plain, I’ll speak more gross: | |
| Your brother is to die. | |
| Isab. So. | 96 |
| Ang. And his offence is so, as it appears | |
| Accountant to the law upon that pain. | |
| Isab. True. | |
| Ang. Admit no other way to save his life,— | 100 |
| As I subscribe not that, nor any other, | |
| But in the loss of question,—that you, his sister, | |
| Finding yourself desir’d of such a person, | |
| Whose credit with the judge, or own great place, | 104 |
| 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 | 108 |
| To this suppos’d, or else to let him suffer; | |
| What would you do? | |
| Isab. As much for my poor brother, as myself: | |
| That is, were I under the terms of death, | 112 |
| Th’ impression of keen whips I’d wear as rubies, | |
| And strip myself to death, as to a bed | |
| That, longing, have been sick for, ere I’d yield | |
| My body up to shame. | 116 |
| Ang. Then must your brother die. | |
| Isab. And ’twere the cheaper way: | |
| Better it were a brother died at once, | |
| Than that a sister, by redeeming him, | 120 |
| Should die for ever. | |
| Ang. Were not you then as cruel as the sentence | |
| That you have slander’d so? | |
| Isab. Ignomy in ransom and free pardon | 124 |
| Are of two houses: lawful mercy | |
| Is nothing kin to foul redemption. | |
| Ang. You seem’d of late to make the law a tyrant; | |
| And rather prov’d the sliding of your brother | 128 |
| 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, | 132 |
| For his advantage that I dearly love. | |
| Ang. We are all frail. | |
| Isab. Else let my brother die, | |
| If not a feodary, but only he | 136 |
| Owe and succeed thy weakness. | |
| Ang. Nay, women are frail too. | |
| Isab. Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves, | |
| Which are as easy broke as they make forms. | 140 |
| 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. | 144 |
| 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; | 148 |
| 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, | 152 |
| By putting on the destin’d livery. | |
| Isab. I have no tongue but one: gentle my lord, | |
| Let me entreat you speak the former language. | |
| Ang. Plainly conceive, I love you. | 156 |
| Isab. My brother did love Juliet; and you tell me | |
| That he shall die for’t. | |
| Ang. He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love. | |
| Isab. I know your virtue hath a licence in’t, | 160 |
| Which seems a little fouler than it is, | |
| To pluck on others. | |
| Ang. Believe me, on mine honour, | |
| My words express my purpose. | 164 |
| Isab. Ha! little honour to be much believ’d, | |
| And most pernicious purpose! Seeming, seeming! | |
| I will proclaim thee, Angelo; look for’t: | |
| Sign me a present pardon for my brother, | 168 |
| Or with an outstretch’d throat I’ll tell the world aloud | |
| What man thou art. | |
| Ang. Who will believe thee, Isabel? | |
| My unsoil’d name, the austereness of my life, | 172 |
| 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; | 176 |
| 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 | 180 |
| 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, | 184 |
| 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. | |
| Isab. To whom should I complain? Did I tell this, | 188 |
| 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 curt’sy to their will; | 192 |
| Hooking both right and wrong to th’ 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, | 196 |
| That, had he twenty heads to tender down | |
| On twenty bloody blocks, he’d yield them up, | |
| Before his sister should her body stoop | |
| To such abhorr’d pollution. | 200 |
| 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. | 204 |
