APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/shakespear/measure/MEASURE

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        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


        DRAMATIS PERSONAE


VINCENTIO       the Duke. (DUKE VINCENTIO:)

ANGELO  Deputy.

ESCALUS an ancient Lord.

CLAUDIO a young gentleman.

LUCIO   a fantastic.

        Two other gentlemen.
        (First Gentleman:)
        (Second Gentleman:)
        Provost.


PETER   (FRIAR PETER:)  |
                |  two friars.
THOMAS  (FRIAR THOMAS:) |


        A Justice.

VARRIUS:

ELBOW   a simple constable.

FROTH   a foolish gentleman.

POMPEY  servant to Mistress Overdone.

ABHORSON        an executioner.

BARNARDINE      a dissolute prisoner.

ISABELLA        sister to Claudio.

MARIANA betrothed to Angelo.

JULIET  beloved of Claudio.

FRANCISCA       a nun.

MISTRESS OVERDONE       a bawd.

        Lords, Officers, Citizens, Boy, and Attendant.
        (Servant:)
        (Messenger:)


SCENE   Vienna.




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT I


SCENE I An apartment in the DUKE'S palace.


        [Enter DUKE VINCENTIO, ESCALUS, Lords and
        Attendants]

DUKE VINCENTIO  Escalus.

ESCALUS My lord.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Of government the properties to unfold,
        Would seem in me to affect speech and discourse;
        Since I am put to know that your own science
        Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice
        My strength can give you: then no more remains,
        But that to your sufficiency [           ]
        [                  ] as your Worth is able,
        And let them work. The nature of our people,
        Our city's institutions, and the terms
        For common justice, you're as pregnant in
        As art and practise hath enriched any
        That we remember. There is our commission,
        From which we would not have you warp. Call hither,
        I say, bid come before us Angelo.

        [Exit an Attendant]

        What figure of us think you he will bear?
        For you must know, we have with special soul
        Elected him our absence to supply,
        Lent him our terror, dress'd him with our love,
        And given his deputation all the organs
        Of our own power: what think you of it?

ESCALUS If any in Vienna be of worth
        To undergo such ample grace and honour,
        It is Lord Angelo.

DUKE VINCENTIO                    Look where he comes.

        [Enter ANGELO]

ANGELO  Always obedient to your grace's will,
        I come to know your pleasure.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Angelo,
        There is a kind of character in thy life,
        That to the observer doth thy history
        Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings
        Are not thine own so proper as to waste
        Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
        Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
        Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
        Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
        As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd
        But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends
        The smallest scruple of her excellence
        But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
        Herself the glory of a creditor,
        Both thanks and use. But I do bend my speech
        To one that can my part in him advertise;
        Hold therefore, Angelo:--
        In our remove be thou at full ourself;
        Mortality and mercy in Vienna
        Live in thy tongue and heart: old Escalus,
        Though first in question, is thy secondary.
        Take thy commission.

ANGELO  Now, good my lord,
        Let there be some more test made of my metal,
        Before so noble and so great a figure
        Be stamp'd upon it.

DUKE VINCENTIO  No more evasion:
        We have with a leaven'd and prepared choice
        Proceeded to you; therefore take your honours.
        Our haste from hence is of so quick condition
        That it prefers itself and leaves unquestion'd
        Matters of needful value. We shall write to you,
        As time and our concernings shall importune,
        How it goes with us, and do look to know
        What doth befall you here. So, fare you well;
        To the hopeful execution do I leave you
        Of your commissions.

ANGELO  Yet give leave, my lord,
        That we may bring you something on the way.

DUKE VINCENTIO  My haste may not admit it;
        Nor need you, on mine honour, have to do
        With any scruple; your scope is as mine own
        So to enforce or qualify the laws
        As to your soul seems good. Give me your hand:
        I'll privily away. I love the people,
        But do not like to stage me to their eyes:
        Through it do well, I do not relish well
        Their loud applause and Aves vehement;
        Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
        That does affect it. Once more, fare you well.

ANGELO  The heavens give safety to your purposes!

ESCALUS Lead forth and bring you back in happiness!

DUKE    I thank you. Fare you well.

        [Exit]

ESCALUS I shall desire you, sir, to give me leave
        To have free speech with you; and it concerns me
        To look into the bottom of my place:
        A power I have, but of what strength and nature
        I am not yet instructed.

ANGELO  'Tis so with me. Let us withdraw together,
        And we may soon our satisfaction have
        Touching that point.

ESCALUS I'll wait upon your honour.

        [Exeunt]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT I


SCENE II        A Street.


        [Enter LUCIO and two Gentlemen]

LUCIO   If the duke with the other dukes come not to
        composition with the King of Hungary, why then all
        the dukes fall upon the king.

First Gentleman Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of
        Hungary's!

Second Gentleman        Amen.

LUCIO   Thou concludest like the sanctimonious pirate, that
        went to sea with the Ten Commandments, but scraped
        one out of the table.

Second Gentleman        'Thou shalt not steal'?

LUCIO   Ay, that he razed.

First Gentleman Why, 'twas a commandment to command the captain and
        all the rest from their functions: they put forth
        to steal. There's not a soldier of us all, that, in
        the thanksgiving before meat, do relish the petition
        well that prays for peace.

Second Gentleman        I never heard any soldier dislike it.

LUCIO   I believe thee; for I think thou never wast where
        grace was said.

Second Gentleman        No? a dozen times at least.

First Gentleman What, in metre?

LUCIO   In any proportion or in any language.

First Gentleman I think, or in any religion.

LUCIO   Ay, why not? Grace is grace, despite of all
        controversy: as, for example, thou thyself art a
        wicked villain, despite of all grace.

First Gentleman Well, there went but a pair of shears between us.

LUCIO   I grant; as there may between the lists and the
        velvet. Thou art the list.

First Gentleman And thou the velvet: thou art good velvet; thou'rt
        a three-piled piece, I warrant thee: I had as lief
        be a list of an English kersey as be piled, as thou
        art piled, for a French velvet. Do I speak
        feelingly now?

LUCIO   I think thou dost; and, indeed, with most painful
        feeling of thy speech: I will, out of thine own
        confession, learn to begin thy health; but, whilst I
        live, forget to drink after thee.

First Gentleman I think I have done myself wrong, have I not?

Second Gentleman        Yes, that thou hast, whether thou art tainted or free.

LUCIO   Behold, behold. where Madam Mitigation comes! I
        have purchased as many diseases under her roof as come to--

Second Gentleman        To what, I pray?

LUCIO   Judge.

Second Gentleman        To three thousand dolours a year.

First Gentleman Ay, and more.

LUCIO   A French crown more.

First Gentleman Thou art always figuring diseases in me; but thou
        art full of error; I am sound.

LUCIO   Nay, not as one would say, healthy; but so sound as
        things that are hollow: thy bones are hollow;
        impiety has made a feast of thee.

        [Enter MISTRESS OVERDONE]

First Gentleman How now! which of your hips has the most profound sciatica?

MISTRESS OVERDONE       Well, well; there's one yonder arrested and carried
        to prison was worth five thousand of you all.

Second Gentleman        Who's that, I pray thee?

MISTRESS OVERDONE       Marry, sir, that's Claudio, Signior Claudio.

First Gentleman Claudio to prison? 'tis not so.

MISTRESS OVERDONE       Nay, but I know 'tis so: I saw him arrested, saw
        him carried away; and, which is more, within these
        three days his head to be chopped off.

LUCIO   But, after all this fooling, I would not have it so.
        Art thou sure of this?

MISTRESS OVERDONE       I am too sure of it: and it is for getting Madam
        Julietta with child.

LUCIO   Believe me, this may be: he promised to meet me two
        hours since, and he was ever precise in
        promise-keeping.

Second Gentleman        Besides, you know, it draws something near to the
        speech we had to such a purpose.

First Gentleman But, most of all, agreeing with the proclamation.

LUCIO   Away! let's go learn the truth of it.

        [Exeunt LUCIO and Gentlemen]

MISTRESS OVERDONE       Thus, what with the war, what with the sweat, what
        with the gallows and what with poverty, I am
        custom-shrunk.

        [Enter POMPEY]

        How now! what's the news with you?

POMPEY  Yonder man is carried to prison.

MISTRESS OVERDONE       Well; what has he done?

POMPEY  A woman.

MISTRESS OVERDONE       But what's his offence?

POMPEY  Groping for trouts in a peculiar river.

MISTRESS OVERDONE       What, is there a maid with child by him?

POMPEY  No, but there's a woman with maid by him. You have
        not heard of the proclamation, have you?

MISTRESS OVERDONE       What proclamation, man?

POMPEY  All houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be plucked down.

MISTRESS OVERDONE       And what shall become of those in the city?

POMPEY  They shall stand for seed: they had gone down too,
        but that a wise burgher put in for them.

MISTRESS OVERDONE       But shall all our houses of resort in the suburbs be
        pulled down?

POMPEY  To the ground, mistress.

MISTRESS OVERDONE       Why, here's a change indeed in the commonwealth!
        What shall become of me?

POMPEY  Come; fear you not: good counsellors lack no
        clients: though you change your place, you need not
        change your trade; I'll be your tapster still.
        Courage! there will be pity taken on you: you that
        have worn your eyes almost out in the service, you
        will be considered.

MISTRESS OVERDONE       What's to do here, Thomas tapster? let's withdraw.

POMPEY  Here comes Signior Claudio, led by the provost to
        prison; and there's Madam Juliet.

        [Exeunt]

        [Enter Provost, CLAUDIO, JULIET, and Officers]

CLAUDIO Fellow, why dost thou show me thus to the world?
        Bear me to prison, where I am committed.

Provost I do it not in evil disposition,
        But from Lord Angelo by special charge.

CLAUDIO Thus can the demigod Authority
        Make us pay down for our offence by weight
        The words of heaven; on whom it will, it will;
        On whom it will not, so; yet still 'tis just.

        [Re-enter LUCIO and two Gentlemen]

LUCIO   Why, how now, Claudio! whence comes this restraint?

CLAUDIO From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty:
        As surfeit is the father of much fast,
        So every scope by the immoderate use
        Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue,
        Like rats that ravin down their proper bane,
        A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die.

LUCIO   If could speak so wisely under an arrest, I would
        send for certain of my creditors: and yet, to say
        the truth, I had as lief have the foppery of freedom
        as the morality of imprisonment. What's thy
        offence, Claudio?

CLAUDIO What but to speak of would offend again.

LUCIO   What, is't murder?

CLAUDIO No.

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]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT I


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]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT I


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
        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]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


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; 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.

POMPEY  Sir, but you shall come to it, by your honour's
        leave. And, I beseech you, look into Master Froth
        here, sir; a man of four-score pound a year; whose
        father died at Hallowmas: was't not at Hallowmas,
        Master Froth?

FROTH   All-hallond eve.

POMPEY  Why, very well; I hope here be truths. He, sir,
        sitting, as I say, in a lower chair, sir; 'twas in
        the Bunch of Grapes, where indeed you have a delight
        to sit, have you not?

FROTH   I have so; because it is an open room and good for winter.

POMPEY  Why, very well, then; I hope here be truths.

ANGELO  This will last out a night in Russia,
        When nights are longest there: I'll take my leave.
        And leave you to the hearing of the cause;
        Hoping you'll find good cause to whip them all.

ESCALUS I think no less. Good morrow to your lordship.

        [Exit ANGELO]

        Now, sir, come on: what was done to Elbow's wife, once more?

POMPEY  Once, sir? there was nothing done to her once.

ELBOW   I beseech you, sir, ask him what this man did to my wife.

POMPEY  I beseech your honour, ask me.

ESCALUS Well, sir; what did this gentleman to her?

POMPEY  I beseech you, sir, look in this gentleman's face.
        Good Master Froth, look upon his honour; 'tis for a
        good purpose. Doth your honour mark his face?

ESCALUS Ay, sir, very well.

POMPEY  Nay; I beseech you, mark it well.

ESCALUS Well, I do so.

POMPEY  Doth your honour see any harm in his face?

ESCALUS Why, no.

POMPEY  I'll be supposed upon a book, his face is the worst
        thing about him. Good, then; if his face be the
        worst thing about him, how could Master Froth do the
        constable's wife any harm? I would know that of
        your honour.

ESCALUS He's in the right. Constable, what say you to it?

ELBOW   First, an it like you, the house is a respected
        house; next, this is a respected fellow; and his
        mistress is a respected woman.

POMPEY  By this hand, sir, his wife is a more respected
        person than any of us all.

ELBOW   Varlet, thou liest; thou liest, wicked varlet! the
        time has yet to come that she was ever respected
        with man, woman, or child.

POMPEY  Sir, she was respected with him before he married with her.

ESCALUS Which is the wiser here? Justice or Iniquity? Is
        this true?

ELBOW   O thou caitiff! O thou varlet! O thou wicked
        Hannibal! I respected with her before I was married
        to her! If ever I was respected with her, or she
        with me, let not your worship think me the poor
        duke's officer. Prove this, thou wicked Hannibal, or
        I'll have mine action of battery on thee.

ESCALUS If he took you a box o' the ear, you might have your
        action of slander too.

ELBOW   Marry, I thank your good worship for it. What is't
        your worship's pleasure I shall do with this wicked caitiff?

ESCALUS Truly, officer, because he hath some offences in him
        that thou wouldst discover if thou couldst, let him
        continue in his courses till thou knowest what they
        are.

ELBOW   Marry, I thank your worship for it. Thou seest, thou
        wicked varlet, now, what's come upon thee: thou art
        to continue now, thou varlet; thou art to continue.

ESCALUS Where were you born, friend?

FROTH   Here in Vienna, sir.

ESCALUS Are you of fourscore pounds a year?

FROTH   Yes, an't please you, sir.

ESCALUS So. What trade are you of, sir?

POMPHEY Tapster; a poor widow's tapster.

ESCALUS Your mistress' name?

POMPHEY Mistress Overdone.

ESCALUS Hath she had any more than one husband?

POMPEY  Nine, sir; Overdone by the last.

ESCALUS Nine! Come hither to me, Master Froth. Master
        Froth, I would not have you acquainted with
        tapsters: they will draw you, Master Froth, and you
        will hang them. Get you gone, and let me hear no
        more of you.

FROTH   I thank your worship. For mine own part, I never
        come into any room in a tap-house, but I am drawn
        in.

ESCALUS Well, no more of it, Master Froth: farewell.

        [Exit FROTH]

        Come you hither to me, Master tapster. What's your
        name, Master tapster?

POMPEY  Pompey.

ESCALUS What else?

POMPEY  Bum, sir.

ESCALUS Troth, and your bum is the greatest thing about you;
        so that in the beastliest sense you are Pompey the
        Great. Pompey, you are partly a bawd, Pompey,
        howsoever you colour it in being a tapster, are you
        not? come, tell me true: it shall be the better for you.

POMPEY  Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live.

ESCALUS How would you live, Pompey? by being a bawd? What
        do you think of the trade, Pompey? is it a lawful trade?

POMPEY  If the law would allow it, sir.

ESCALUS But the law will not allow it, Pompey; nor it shall
        not be allowed in Vienna.

POMPEY  Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the
        youth of the city?

ESCALUS No, Pompey.

POMPEY  Truly, sir, in my poor opinion, they will to't then.
        If your worship will take order for the drabs and
        the knaves, you need not to fear the bawds.

ESCALUS There are pretty orders beginning, I can tell you:
        it is but heading and hanging.

POMPEY  If you head and hang all that offend that way but
        for ten year together, you'll be glad to give out a
        commission for more heads: if this law hold in
        Vienna ten year, I'll rent the fairest house in it
        after three-pence a bay: if you live to see this
        come to pass, say Pompey told you so.

ESCALUS Thank you, good Pompey; and, in requital of your
        prophecy, hark you: I advise you, let me not find
        you before me again upon any complaint whatsoever;
        no, not for dwelling where you do: if I do, Pompey,
        I shall beat you to your tent, and prove a shrewd
        Caesar to you; in plain dealing, Pompey, I shall
        have you whipt: so, for this time, Pompey, fare you well.

POMPEY  I thank your worship for your good counsel:

        [Aside]

        but I shall follow it as the flesh and fortune shall
        better determine.
        Whip me? No, no; let carman whip his jade:
        The valiant heart is not whipt out of his trade.

        [Exit]

ESCALUS Come hither to me, Master Elbow; come hither, Master
        constable. How long have you been in this place of constable?

ELBOW   Seven year and a half, sir.

ESCALUS I thought, by your readiness in the office, you had
        continued in it some time. You say, seven years together?

ELBOW   And a half, sir.

ESCALUS Alas, it hath been great pains to you. They do you
        wrong to put you so oft upon 't: are there not men
        in your ward sufficient to serve it?

ELBOW   Faith, sir, few of any wit in such matters: as they
        are chosen, they are glad to choose me for them; I
        do it for some piece of money, and go through with
        all.

ESCALUS Look you bring me in the names of some six or seven,
        the most sufficient of your parish.

ELBOW   To your worship's house, sir?

ESCALUS To my house. Fare you well.

        [Exit ELBOW]

        What's o'clock, think you?

Justice Eleven, sir.

ESCALUS I pray you home to dinner with me.

Justice I humbly thank you.

ESCALUS It grieves me for the death of Claudio;
        But there's no remedy.

Justice Lord Angelo is severe.

ESCALUS It is but needful:
        Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so;
        Pardon is still the nurse of second woe:
        But yet,--poor Claudio! There is no remedy.
        Come, sir.

        [Exeunt]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT II


SCENE II        Another room in the same.


        [Enter Provost and a Servant]

Servant He's hearing of a cause; he will come straight
        I'll tell him of you.

Provost Pray you, do.

        [Exit Servant]

                                  I'll know
        His pleasure; may be he will relent. Alas,
        He hath but as offended in a dream!
        All sects, all ages smack of this vice; and he
        To die for't!

        [Enter ANGELO]

ANGELO                    Now, what's the matter. Provost?

Provost Is it your will Claudio shall die tomorrow?

ANGELO  Did not I tell thee yea? hadst thou not order?
        Why dost thou ask again?

Provost Lest I might be too rash:
        Under your good correction, I have seen,
        When, after execution, judgment hath
        Repented o'er his doom.

ANGELO  Go to; let that be mine:
        Do you your office, or give up your place,
        And you shall well be spared.

Provost I crave your honour's pardon.
        What shall be done, sir, with the groaning Juliet?
        She's very near her hour.

ANGELO  Dispose of her
        To some more fitter place, and that with speed.

        [Re-enter Servant]

Servant Here is the sister of the man condemn'd
        Desires access to you.

ANGELO  Hath he a sister?

Provost Ay, my good lord; a very virtuous maid,
        And to be shortly of a sisterhood,
        If not already.

ANGELO                    Well, let her be admitted.

        [Exit Servant]

        See you the fornicatress be removed:
        Let have needful, but not lavish, means;
        There shall be order for't.

        [Enter ISABELLA and LUCIO]

Provost God save your honour!

ANGELO  Stay a little while.

        [To ISABELLA]

                You're welcome: what's your will?

ISABELLA        I am a woeful suitor to your honour,
        Please but your honour hear me.

ANGELO  Well; what's your suit?

ISABELLA        There is a vice that most I do abhor,
        And most desire should meet the blow of justice;
        For which I would not plead, but that I must;
        For which I must not plead, but that I am
        At war 'twixt will and will not.

ANGELO  Well; the matter?

ISABELLA        I have a brother is condemn'd to die:
        I do beseech you, let it be his fault,
        And not my brother.

Provost [Aside]  Heaven give thee moving graces!

ANGELO  Condemn the fault and not the actor of it?
        Why, every fault's condemn'd ere it be done:
        Mine were the very cipher of a function,
        To fine the faults whose fine stands in record,
        And let go by the actor.

ISABELLA        O just but severe law!
        I had a brother, then. Heaven keep your honour!

LUCIO   [Aside to ISABELLA]  Give't not o'er so: to him
        again, entreat him;
        Kneel down before him, hang upon his gown:
        You are too cold; if you should need a pin,
        You could not with more tame a tongue desire it:
        To him, I say!

ISABELLA        Must he needs die?

ANGELO                    Maiden, no remedy.

ISABELLA        Yes; I do think that you might pardon him,
        And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy.

ANGELO  I will not do't.

ISABELLA                          But can you, if you would?

ANGELO  Look, what I will not, that I cannot do.

ISABELLA        But might you do't, and do the world no wrong,
        If so your heart were touch'd with that remorse
        As mine is to him?

ANGELO                    He's sentenced; 'tis too late.

LUCIO   [Aside to ISABELLA]  You are too cold.

ISABELLA        Too late? why, no; I, that do speak a word.
        May call it back again. Well, believe this,
        No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
        Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
        The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
        Become them with one half so good a grace
        As mercy does.
        If he had been as you and you as he,
        You would have slipt like him; but he, like you,
        Would not have been so stern.

ANGELO  Pray you, be gone.

ISABELLA        I would to heaven I had your potency,
        And you were Isabel! should it then be thus?
        No; I would tell what 'twere to be a judge,
        And what a prisoner.

LUCIO   [Aside to ISABELLA]

                Ay, touch him; there's the vein.

ANGELO  Your brother is a forfeit of the law,
        And you but waste your words.

ISABELLA        Alas, alas!
        Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once;
        And He that might the vantage best have took
        Found out the remedy. How would you be,
        If He, which is the top of judgment, should
        But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
        And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
        Like man new made.

ANGELO                    Be you content, fair maid;
        It is the law, not I condemn your brother:
        Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son,
        It should be thus with him: he must die tomorrow.

ISABELLA        To-morrow! O, that's sudden! Spare him, spare him!
        He's not prepared for death. Even for our kitchens
        We kill the fowl of season: shall we serve heaven
        With less respect than we do minister
        To our gross selves? Good, good my lord, bethink you;
        Who is it that hath died for this offence?
        There's many have committed it.

LUCIO   [Aside to ISABELLA]           Ay, well said.

ANGELO  The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept:
        Those many had not dared to do that evil,
        If the first that did the edict infringe
        Had answer'd for his deed: now 'tis awake
        Takes note of what is done; and, like a prophet,
        Looks in a glass, that shows what future evils,
        Either new, or by remissness new-conceived,
        And so in progress to be hatch'd and born,
        Are now to have no successive degrees,
        But, ere they live, to end.

ISABELLA        Yet show some pity.

ANGELO  I show it most of all when I show justice;
        For then I pity those I do not know,
        Which a dismiss'd offence would after gall;
        And do him right that, answering one foul wrong,
        Lives not to act another. Be satisfied;
        Your brother dies to-morrow; be content.

ISABELLA        So you must be the first that gives this sentence,
        And he, that suffer's. O, it is excellent
        To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
        To use it like a giant.

LUCIO   [Aside to ISABELLA]   That's well said.

ISABELLA        Could great men thunder
        As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,
        For every pelting, petty officer
        Would use his heaven for thunder;
        Nothing but thunder! Merciful Heaven,
        Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
        Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
        Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man,
        Drest in a little brief authority,
        Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
        His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
        Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
        As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
        Would all themselves laugh mortal.

LUCIO   [Aside to ISABELLA]  O, to him, to him, wench! he
        will relent;
        He's coming; I perceive 't.

Provost [Aside]  Pray heaven she win him!

ISABELLA        We cannot weigh our brother with ourself:
        Great men may jest with saints; 'tis wit in them,
        But in the less foul profanation.

LUCIO   Thou'rt i' the right, girl; more o, that.

ISABELLA        That in the captain's but a choleric word,
        Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

LUCIO   [Aside to ISABELLA]  Art avised o' that? more on 't.

ANGELO  Why do you put these sayings upon me?

ISABELLA        Because authority, though it err like others,
        Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself,
        That skins the vice o' the top. Go to your bosom;
        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]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT II


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]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT II


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 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,
        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]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


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;
        For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
        Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,
        And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear'st
        Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;
        For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
        That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
        For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get,
        And what thou hast, forget'st. Thou art not certain;
        For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
        After the moon. If thou art rich, thou'rt poor;
        For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
        Thou bear's thy heavy riches but a journey,
        And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none;
        For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
        The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
        Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,
        For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age,
        But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
        Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth
        Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
        Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,
        Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
        To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this
        That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
        Lie hid moe thousand deaths: yet death we fear,
        That makes these odds all even.

CLAUDIO I humbly thank you.
        To sue to live, I find I seek to die;
        And, seeking death, find life: let it come on.

ISABELLA        [Within]  What, ho! Peace here; grace and good company!

Provost Who's there? come in: the wish deserves a welcome.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Dear sir, ere long I'll visit you again.

CLAUDIO Most holy sir, I thank you.

        [Enter ISABELLA]

ISABELLA        My business is a word or two with Claudio.

Provost And very welcome. Look, signior, here's your sister.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Provost, a word with you.

Provost As many as you please.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Bring me to hear them speak, where I may be concealed.

        [Exeunt DUKE VINCENTIO and Provost]

CLAUDIO Now, sister, what's the comfort?

ISABELLA        Why,
        As all comforts are; most good, most good indeed.
        Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven,
        Intends you for his swift ambassador,
        Where you shall be an everlasting leiger:
        Therefore your best appointment make with speed;
        To-morrow you set on.

CLAUDIO Is there no remedy?

ISABELLA        None, but such remedy as, to save a head,
        To cleave a heart in twain.

CLAUDIO But is there any?

ISABELLA        Yes, brother, you may live:
        There is a devilish mercy in the judge,
        If you'll implore it, that will free your life,
        But fetter you till death.

CLAUDIO Perpetual durance?

ISABELLA        Ay, just; perpetual durance, a restraint,
        Though all the world's vastidity you had,
        To a determined scope.

CLAUDIO But in what nature?

ISABELLA        In such a one as, you consenting to't,
        Would bark your honour from that trunk you bear,
        And leave you naked.

CLAUDIO Let me know the point.

ISABELLA        O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake,
        Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain,
        And six or seven winters more respect
        Than a perpetual honour. Darest thou die?
        The sense of death is most in apprehension;
        And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
        In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
        As when a giant dies.

CLAUDIO Why give you me this shame?
        Think you I can a resolution fetch
        From flowery tenderness? If I must die,
        I will encounter darkness as a bride,
        And hug it in mine arms.

ISABELLA        There spake my brother; there my father's grave
        Did utter forth a voice. Yes, thou must die:
        Thou art too noble to conserve a life
        In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy,
        Whose settled visage and deliberate word
        Nips youth i' the head and follies doth emmew
        As falcon doth the fowl, is yet a devil
        His filth within being cast, he would appear
        A pond as deep as hell.

CLAUDIO The prenzie Angelo!

ISABELLA        O, 'tis the cunning livery of hell,
        The damned'st body to invest and cover
        In prenzie guards! Dost thou think, Claudio?
        If I would yield him my virginity,
        Thou mightst be freed.

CLAUDIO O heavens! it cannot be.

ISABELLA        Yes, he would give't thee, from this rank offence,
        So to offend him still. This night's the time
        That I should do what I abhor to name,
        Or else thou diest to-morrow.

CLAUDIO Thou shalt not do't.

ISABELLA        O, were it but my life,
        I'ld throw it down for your deliverance
        As frankly as a pin.

CLAUDIO Thanks, dear Isabel.

ISABELLA        Be ready, Claudio, for your death tomorrow.

CLAUDIO Yes. Has he affections in him,
        That thus can make him bite the law by the nose,
        When he would force it? Sure, it is no sin,
        Or of the deadly seven, it is the least.

ISABELLA        Which is the least?

CLAUDIO If it were damnable, he being so wise,
        Why would he for the momentary trick
        Be perdurably fined? O Isabel!

ISABELLA        What says my brother?

CLAUDIO Death is a fearful thing.

ISABELLA        And shamed life a hateful.

CLAUDIO Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
        To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
        This sensible warm motion to become
        A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
        To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
        In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
        To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
        And blown with restless violence round about
        The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
        Of those that lawless and incertain thought
        Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!
        The weariest and most loathed worldly life
        That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
        Can lay on nature is a paradise
        To what we fear of death.

ISABELLA        Alas, alas!

CLAUDIO           Sweet sister, let me live:
        What sin you do to save a brother's life,
        Nature dispenses with the deed so far
        That it becomes a virtue.

ISABELLA        O you beast!
        O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!
        Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?
        Is't not a kind of incest, to take life
        From thine own sister's shame? What should I think?
        Heaven shield my mother play'd my father fair!
        For such a warped slip of wilderness
        Ne'er issued from his blood. Take my defiance!
        Die, perish! Might but my bending down
        Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed:
        I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,
        No word to save thee.

CLAUDIO Nay, hear me, Isabel.

ISABELLA        O, fie, fie, fie!
        Thy sin's not accidental, but a trade.
        Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd:
        'Tis best thou diest quickly.

CLAUDIO O hear me, Isabella!

        [Re-enter DUKE VINCENTIO]

DUKE VINCENTIO  Vouchsafe a word, young sister, but one word.

ISABELLA        What is your will?

DUKE VINCENTIO  Might you dispense with your leisure, I would by and
        by have some speech with you: the satisfaction I
        would require is likewise your own benefit.

ISABELLA        I have no superfluous leisure; my stay must be
        stolen out of other affairs; but I will attend you awhile.

        [Walks apart]

DUKE VINCENTIO  Son, I have overheard what hath passed between you
        and your sister. Angelo had never the purpose to
        corrupt her; only he hath made an essay of her
        virtue to practise his judgment with the disposition
        of natures: she, having the truth of honour in her,
        hath made him that gracious denial which he is most
        glad to receive. I am confessor to Angelo, and I
        know this to be true; therefore prepare yourself to
        death: do not satisfy your resolution with hopes
        that are fallible: tomorrow you must die; go to
        your knees and make ready.

CLAUDIO Let me ask my sister pardon. I am so out of love
        with life that I will sue to be rid of it.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Hold you there: farewell.

        [Exit CLAUDIO]

        Provost, a word with you!

        [Re-enter Provost]

Provost What's your will, father

DUKE VINCENTIO  That now you are come, you will be gone. Leave me
        awhile with the maid: my mind promises with my
        habit no loss shall touch her by my company.

Provost In good time.

        [Exit Provost. ISABELLA comes forward]

DUKE VINCENTIO  The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good:
        the goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty
        brief in goodness; but grace, being the soul of
        your complexion, shall keep the body of it ever
        fair. The assault that Angelo hath made to you,
        fortune hath conveyed to my understanding; and, but
        that frailty hath examples for his falling, I should
        wonder at Angelo. How will you do to content this
        substitute, and to save your brother?

ISABELLA        I am now going to resolve him: I had rather my
        brother die by the law than my son should be
        unlawfully born. But, O, how much is the good duke
        deceived in Angelo! If ever he return and I can
        speak to him, I will open my lips in vain, or
        discover his government.

DUKE VINCENTIO  That shall not be much amiss: Yet, as the matter
        now stands, he will avoid your accusation; he made
        trial of you only. Therefore fasten your ear on my
        advisings: to the love I have in doing good a
        remedy presents itself. I do make myself believe
        that you may most uprighteously do a poor wronged
        lady a merited benefit; redeem your brother from
        the angry law; do no stain to your own gracious
        person; and much please the absent duke, if
        peradventure he shall ever return to have hearing of
        this business.

ISABELLA        Let me hear you speak farther. I have spirit to do
        anything that appears not foul in the truth of my spirit.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful. Have
        you not heard speak of Mariana, the sister of
        Frederick the great soldier who miscarried at sea?

ISABELLA        I have heard of the lady, and good words went with her name.

DUKE VINCENTIO  She should this Angelo have married; was affianced
        to her by oath, and the nuptial appointed: between
        which time of the contract and limit of the
        solemnity, her brother Frederick was wrecked at sea,
        having in that perished vessel the dowry of his
        sister. But mark how heavily this befell to the
        poor gentlewoman: there she lost a noble and
        renowned brother, in his love toward her ever most
        kind and natural; with him, the portion and sinew of
        her fortune, her marriage-dowry; with both, her
        combinate husband, this well-seeming Angelo.

ISABELLA        Can this be so? did Angelo so leave her?

DUKE VINCENTIO  Left her in her tears, and dried not one of them
        with his comfort; swallowed his vows whole,
        pretending in her discoveries of dishonour: in few,
        bestowed her on her own lamentation, which she yet
        wears for his sake; and he, a marble to her tears,
        is washed with them, but relents not.

ISABELLA        What a merit were it in death to take this poor maid
        from the world! What corruption in this life, that
        it will let this man live! But how out of this can she avail?

DUKE VINCENTIO  It is a rupture that you may easily heal: and the
        cure of it not only saves your brother, but keeps
        you from dishonour in doing it.

ISABELLA        Show me how, good father.

DUKE VINCENTIO  This forenamed maid hath yet in her the continuance
        of her first affection: his unjust unkindness, that
        in all reason should have quenched her love, hath,
        like an impediment in the current, made it more
        violent and unruly. Go you to Angelo; answer his
        requiring with a plausible obedience; agree with
        his demands to the point; only refer yourself to
        this advantage, first, that your stay with him may
        not be long; that the time may have all shadow and
        silence in it; and the place answer to convenience.
        This being granted in course,--and now follows
        all,--we shall advise this wronged maid to stead up
        your appointment, go in your place; if the encounter
        acknowledge itself hereafter, it may compel him to
        her recompense: and here, by this, is your brother
        saved, your honour untainted, the poor Mariana
        advantaged, and the corrupt deputy scaled. The maid
        will I frame and make fit for his attempt. If you
        think well to carry this as you may, the doubleness
        of the benefit defends the deceit from reproof.
        What think you of it?

ISABELLA        The image of it gives me content already; and I
        trust it will grow to a most prosperous perfection.

DUKE VINCENTIO  It lies much in your holding up. Haste you speedily
        to Angelo: if for this night he entreat you to his
        bed, give him promise of satisfaction. I will
        presently to Saint Luke's: there, at the moated
        grange, resides this dejected Mariana. At that
        place call upon me; and dispatch with Angelo, that
        it may be quickly.

ISABELLA        I thank you for this comfort. Fare you well, good father.

        [Exeunt severally]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT III



SCENE II        The street before the prison.


        [Enter, on one side, DUKE VINCENTIO disguised as
        before; on the other, ELBOW, and Officers with POMPEY]

ELBOW   Nay, if there be no remedy for it, but that you will
        needs buy and sell men and women like beasts, we
        shall have all the world drink brown and white bastard.

DUKE VINCENTIO  O heavens! what stuff is here

POMPEY  'Twas never merry world since, of two usuries, the
        merriest was put down, and the worser allowed by
        order of law a furred gown to keep him warm; and
        furred with fox and lamb-skins too, to signify, that
        craft, being richer than innocency, stands for the facing.

ELBOW   Come your way, sir. 'Bless you, good father friar.

DUKE VINCENTIO  And you, good brother father. What offence hath
        this man made you, sir?

ELBOW   Marry, sir, he hath offended the law: and, sir, we
        take him to be a thief too, sir; for we have found
        upon him, sir, a strange picklock, which we have
        sent to the deputy.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Fie, sirrah! a bawd, a wicked bawd!
        The evil that thou causest to be done,
        That is thy means to live. Do thou but think
        What 'tis to cram a maw or clothe a back
        From such a filthy vice: say to thyself,
        From their abominable and beastly touches
        I drink, I eat, array myself, and live.
        Canst thou believe thy living is a life,
        So stinkingly depending? Go mend, go mend.

POMPEY  Indeed, it does stink in some sort, sir; but yet,
        sir, I would prove--

DUKE VINCENTIO  Nay, if the devil have given thee proofs for sin,
        Thou wilt prove his. Take him to prison, officer:
        Correction and instruction must both work
        Ere this rude beast will profit.

ELBOW   He must before the deputy, sir; he has given him
        warning: the deputy cannot abide a whoremaster: if
        he be a whoremonger, and comes before him, he were
        as good go a mile on his errand.

DUKE VINCENTIO  That we were all, as some would seem to be,
        From our faults, as faults from seeming, free!

ELBOW   His neck will come to your waist,--a cord, sir.

POMPEY  I spy comfort; I cry bail. Here's a gentleman and a
        friend of mine.

        [Enter LUCIO]

LUCIO   How now, noble Pompey! What, at the wheels of
        Caesar? art thou led in triumph? What, is there
        none of Pygmalion's images, newly made woman, to be
        had now, for putting the hand in the pocket and
        extracting it clutch'd? What reply, ha? What
        sayest thou to this tune, matter and method? Is't
        not drowned i' the last rain, ha? What sayest
        thou, Trot? Is the world as it was, man? Which is
        the way? Is it sad, and few words? or how? The
        trick of it?

DUKE VINCENTIO  Still thus, and thus; still worse!

LUCIO   How doth my dear morsel, thy mistress? Procures she
        still, ha?

POMPEY  Troth, sir, she hath eaten up all her beef, and she
        is herself in the tub.

LUCIO   Why, 'tis good; it is the right of it; it must be
        so: ever your fresh whore and your powdered bawd:
        an unshunned consequence; it must be so. Art going
        to prison, Pompey?

POMPEY  Yes, faith, sir.

LUCIO   Why, 'tis not amiss, Pompey. Farewell: go, say I
        sent thee thither. For debt, Pompey? or how?

ELBOW   For being a bawd, for being a bawd.

LUCIO   Well, then, imprison him: if imprisonment be the
        due of a bawd, why, 'tis his right: bawd is he
        doubtless, and of antiquity too; bawd-born.
        Farewell, good Pompey. Commend me to the prison,
        Pompey: you will turn good husband now, Pompey; you
        will keep the house.

POMPEY  I hope, sir, your good worship will be my bail.

LUCIO   No, indeed, will I not, Pompey; it is not the wear.
        I will pray, Pompey, to increase your bondage: If
        you take it not patiently, why, your mettle is the
        more. Adieu, trusty Pompey. 'Bless you, friar.

DUKE VINCENTIO  And you.

LUCIO   Does Bridget paint still, Pompey, ha?

ELBOW   Come your ways, sir; come.

POMPEY  You will not bail me, then, sir?

LUCIO   Then, Pompey, nor now. What news abroad, friar?
        what news?

ELBOW   Come your ways, sir; come.

LUCIO   Go to kennel, Pompey; go.

        [Exeunt ELBOW, POMPEY and Officers]

        What news, friar, of the duke?

DUKE VINCENTIO  I know none. Can you tell me of any?

LUCIO   Some say he is with the Emperor of Russia; other
        some, he is in Rome: but where is he, think you?

DUKE VINCENTIO  I know not where; but wheresoever, I wish him well.

LUCIO   It was a mad fantastical trick of him to steal from
        the state, and usurp the beggary he was never born
        to. Lord Angelo dukes it well in his absence; he
        puts transgression to 't.

DUKE VINCENTIO  He does well in 't.

LUCIO   A little more lenity to lechery would do no harm in
        him: something too crabbed that way, friar.

DUKE VINCENTIO  It is too general a vice, and severity must cure it.

LUCIO   Yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great kindred;
        it is well allied: but it is impossible to extirp
        it quite, friar, till eating and drinking be put
        down. They say this Angelo was not made by man and
        woman after this downright way of creation: is it
        true, think you?

DUKE VINCENTIO  How should he be made, then?

LUCIO   Some report a sea-maid spawned him; some, that he
        was begot between two stock-fishes. But it is
        certain that when he makes water his urine is
        congealed ice; that I know to be true: and he is a
        motion generative; that's infallible.

DUKE VINCENTIO  You are pleasant, sir, and speak apace.

LUCIO   Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the
        rebellion of a codpiece to take away the life of a
        man! Would the duke that is absent have done this?
        Ere he would have hanged a man for the getting a
        hundred bastards, he would have paid for the nursing
        a thousand: he had some feeling of the sport: he
        knew the service, and that instructed him to mercy.

DUKE VINCENTIO  I never heard the absent duke much detected for
        women; he was not inclined that way.

LUCIO   O, sir, you are deceived.

DUKE VINCENTIO  'Tis not possible.

LUCIO   Who, not the duke? yes, your beggar of fifty; and
        his use was to put a ducat in her clack-dish: the
        duke had crotchets in him. He would be drunk too;
        that let me inform you.

DUKE VINCENTIO  You do him wrong, surely.

LUCIO   Sir, I was an inward of his. A shy fellow was the
        duke: and I believe I know the cause of his
        withdrawing.

DUKE VINCENTIO  What, I prithee, might be the cause?

LUCIO   No, pardon; 'tis a secret must be locked within the
        teeth and the lips: but this I can let you
        understand, the greater file of the subject held the
        duke to be wise.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Wise! why, no question but he was.

LUCIO   A very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Either this is the envy in you, folly, or mistaking:
        the very stream of his life and the business he hath
        helmed must upon a warranted need give him a better
        proclamation. Let him be but testimonied in his own
        bringings-forth, and he shall appear to the
        envious a scholar, a statesman and a soldier.
        Therefore you speak unskilfully: or if your
        knowledge be more it is much darkened in your malice.

LUCIO   Sir, I know him, and I love him.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with
        dearer love.

LUCIO   Come, sir, I know what I know.

DUKE VINCENTIO  I can hardly believe that, since you know not what
        you speak. But, if ever the duke return, as our
        prayers are he may, let me desire you to make your
        answer before him. If it be honest you have spoke,
        you have courage to maintain it: I am bound to call
        upon you; and, I pray you, your name?

LUCIO   Sir, my name is Lucio; well known to the duke.

DUKE VINCENTIO  He shall know you better, sir, if I may live to
        report you.

LUCIO   I fear you not.

DUKE VINCENTIO  O, you hope the duke will return no more; or you
        imagine me too unhurtful an opposite. But indeed I
        can do you little harm; you'll forswear this again.

LUCIO   I'll be hanged first: thou art deceived in me,
        friar. But no more of this. Canst thou tell if
        Claudio die to-morrow or no?

DUKE VINCENTIO  Why should he die, sir?

LUCIO   Why? For filling a bottle with a tundish. I would
        the duke we talk of were returned again: the
        ungenitured agent will unpeople the province with
        continency; sparrows must not build in his
        house-eaves, because they are lecherous. The duke
        yet would have dark deeds darkly answered; he would
        never bring them to light: would he were returned!
        Marry, this Claudio is condemned for untrussing.
        Farewell, good friar: I prithee, pray for me. The
        duke, I say to thee again, would eat mutton on
        Fridays. He's not past it yet, and I say to thee,
        he would mouth with a beggar, though she smelt brown
        bread and garlic: say that I said so. Farewell.

        [Exit]

DUKE VINCENTIO  No might nor greatness in mortality
        Can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny
        The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong
        Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?
        But who comes here?

        [Enter ESCALUS, Provost, and Officers with MISTRESS OVERDONE]

ESCALUS Go; away with her to prison!

MISTRESS OVERDONE       Good my lord, be good to me; your honour is accounted
        a merciful man; good my lord.

ESCALUS Double and treble admonition, and still forfeit in
        the same kind! This would make mercy swear and play
        the tyrant.

Provost A bawd of eleven years' continuance, may it please
        your honour.

MISTRESS OVERDONE       My lord, this is one Lucio's information against me.
        Mistress Kate Keepdown was with child by him in the
        duke's time; he promised her marriage: his child
        is a year and a quarter old, come Philip and Jacob:
        I have kept it myself; and see how he goes about to abuse me!

ESCALUS That fellow is a fellow of much licence: let him be
        called before us. Away with her to prison! Go to;
        no more words.

        [Exeunt Officers with MISTRESS OVERDONE]

        Provost, my brother Angelo will not be altered;
        Claudio must die to-morrow: let him be furnished
        with divines, and have all charitable preparation.
        if my brother wrought by my pity, it should not be
        so with him.

Provost So please you, this friar hath been with him, and
        advised him for the entertainment of death.

ESCALUS Good even, good father.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Bliss and goodness on you!

ESCALUS Of whence are you?

DUKE VINCENTIO  Not of this country, though my chance is now
        To use it for my time: I am a brother
        Of gracious order, late come from the See
        In special business from his holiness.

ESCALUS What news abroad i' the world?

DUKE VINCENTIO  None, but that there is so great a fever on
        goodness, that the dissolution of it must cure it:
        novelty is only in request; and it is as dangerous
        to be aged in any kind of course, as it is virtuous
        to be constant in any undertaking. There is scarce
        truth enough alive to make societies secure; but
        security enough to make fellowships accurst: much
        upon this riddle runs the wisdom of the world. This
        news is old enough, yet it is every day's news. I
        pray you, sir, of what disposition was the duke?

ESCALUS One that, above all other strifes, contended
        especially to know himself.

DUKE VINCENTIO  What pleasure was he given to?

ESCALUS Rather rejoicing to see another merry, than merry at
        any thing which professed to make him rejoice: a
        gentleman of all temperance. But leave we him to
        his events, with a prayer they may prove prosperous;
        and let me desire to know how you find Claudio
        prepared. I am made to understand that you have
        lent him visitation.

DUKE VINCENTIO  He professes to have received no sinister measure
        from his judge, but most willingly humbles himself
        to the determination of justice: yet had he framed
        to himself, by the instruction of his frailty, many
        deceiving promises of life; which I by my good
        leisure have discredited to him, and now is he
        resolved to die.

ESCALUS You have paid the heavens your function, and the
        prisoner the very debt of your calling. I have
        laboured for the poor gentleman to the extremest
        shore of my modesty: but my brother justice have I
        found so severe, that he hath forced me to tell him
        he is indeed Justice.

DUKE VINCENTIO  If his own life answer the straitness of his
        proceeding, it shall become him well; wherein if he
        chance to fail, he hath sentenced himself.

ESCALUS I am going to visit the prisoner. Fare you well.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Peace be with you!

        [Exeunt ESCALUS and Provost]

        He who the sword of heaven will bear
        Should be as holy as severe;
        Pattern in himself to know,
        Grace to stand, and virtue go;
        More nor less to others paying
        Than by self-offences weighing.
        Shame to him whose cruel striking
        Kills for faults of his own liking!
        Twice treble shame on Angelo,
        To weed my vice and let his grow!
        O, what may man within him hide,
        Though angel on the outward side!
        How may likeness made in crimes,
        Making practise on the times,
        To draw with idle spiders' strings
        Most ponderous and substantial things!
        Craft against vice I must apply:
        With Angelo to-night shall lie
        His old betrothed but despised;
        So disguise shall, by the disguised,
        Pay with falsehood false exacting,
        And perform an old contracting.

        [Exit]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT IV


SCENE I The moated grange at ST. LUKE's.


        [Enter MARIANA and a Boy]

        [Boy sings]

        Take, O, take those lips away,
        That so sweetly were forsworn;
        And those eyes, the break of day,
        Lights that do mislead the morn:
        But my kisses bring again, bring again;
        Seals of love, but sealed in vain, sealed in vain.

MARIANA Break off thy song, and haste thee quick away:
        Here comes a man of comfort, whose advice
        Hath often still'd my brawling discontent.

        [Exit Boy]

        [Enter DUKE VINCENTIO disguised as before]

        I cry you mercy, sir; and well could wish
        You had not found me here so musical:
        Let me excuse me, and believe me so,
        My mirth it much displeased, but pleased my woe.

DUKE VINCENTIO  'Tis good; though music oft hath such a charm
        To make bad good, and good provoke to harm.
        I pray, you, tell me, hath any body inquired
        for me here to-day? much upon this time have
        I promised here to meet.

MARIANA You have not been inquired after:
        I have sat here all day.

        [Enter ISABELLA]

DUKE VINCENTIO  I do constantly believe you. The time is come even
        now. I shall crave your forbearance a little: may
        be I will call upon you anon, for some advantage to yourself.

MARIANA I am always bound to you.

        [Exit]

DUKE VINCENTIO  Very well met, and well come.
        What is the news from this good deputy?

ISABELLA        He hath a garden circummured with brick,
        Whose western side is with a vineyard back'd;
        And to that vineyard is a planched gate,
        That makes his opening with this bigger key:
        This other doth command a little door
        Which from the vineyard to the garden leads;
        There have I made my promise
        Upon the heavy middle of the night
        To call upon him.

DUKE VINCENTIO  But shall you on your knowledge find this way?

ISABELLA        I have ta'en a due and wary note upon't:
        With whispering and most guilty diligence,
        In action all of precept, he did show me
        The way twice o'er.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Are there no other tokens
        Between you 'greed concerning her observance?

ISABELLA        No, none, but only a repair i' the dark;
        And that I have possess'd him my most stay
        Can be but brief; for I have made him know
        I have a servant comes with me along,
        That stays upon me, whose persuasion is
        I come about my brother.

DUKE VINCENTIO  'Tis well borne up.
        I have not yet made known to Mariana
        A word of this. What, ho! within! come forth!

        [Re-enter MARIANA]

        I pray you, be acquainted with this maid;
        She comes to do you good.

ISABELLA        I do desire the like.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Do you persuade yourself that I respect you?

MARIANA Good friar, I know you do, and have found it.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Take, then, this your companion by the hand,
        Who hath a story ready for your ear.
        I shall attend your leisure: but make haste;
        The vaporous night approaches.

MARIANA Will't please you walk aside?

        [Exeunt MARIANA and ISABELLA]

DUKE VINCENTIO  O place and greatness! millions of false eyes
        Are stuck upon thee: volumes of report
        Run with these false and most contrarious quests
        Upon thy doings: thousand escapes of wit
        Make thee the father of their idle dreams
        And rack thee in their fancies.

        [Re-enter MARIANA and ISABELLA]

                          Welcome, how agreed?

ISABELLA        She'll take the enterprise upon her, father,
        If you advise it.

DUKE VINCENTIO                    It is not my consent,
        But my entreaty too.

ISABELLA        Little have you to say
        When you depart from him, but, soft and low,
        'Remember now my brother.'

MARIANA Fear me not.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Nor, gentle daughter, fear you not at all.
        He is your husband on a pre-contract:
        To bring you thus together, 'tis no sin,
        Sith that the justice of your title to him
        Doth flourish the deceit. Come, let us go:
        Our corn's to reap, for yet our tithe's to sow.

        [Exeunt]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT IV


SCENE II        A room in the prison.


        [Enter Provost and POMPEY]

Provost Come hither, sirrah. Can you cut off a man's head?

POMPEY  If the man be a bachelor, sir, I can; but if he be a
        married man, he's his wife's head, and I can never
        cut off a woman's head.

Provost Come, sir, leave me your snatches, and yield me a
        direct answer. To-morrow morning are to die Claudio
        and Barnardine. Here is in our prison a common
        executioner, who in his office lacks a helper: if
        you will take it on you to assist him, it shall
        redeem you from your gyves; if not, you shall have
        your full time of imprisonment and your deliverance
        with an unpitied whipping, for you have been a
        notorious bawd.

POMPEY  Sir, I have been an unlawful bawd time out of mind;
        but yet I will be content to be a lawful hangman. I
        would be glad to receive some instruction from my
        fellow partner.

Provost What, ho! Abhorson! Where's Abhorson, there?

        [Enter ABHORSON]

ABHORSON        Do you call, sir?

Provost Sirrah, here's a fellow will help you to-morrow in
        your execution. If you think it meet, compound with
        him by the year, and let him abide here with you; if
        not, use him for the present and dismiss him. He
        cannot plead his estimation with you; he hath been a bawd.

ABHORSON        A bawd, sir? fie upon him! he will discredit our mystery.

Provost Go to, sir; you weigh equally; a feather will turn
        the scale.

        [Exit]

POMPEY  Pray, sir, by your good favour,--for surely, sir, a
        good favour you have, but that you have a hanging
        look,--do you call, sir, your occupation a mystery?

ABHORSON        Ay, sir; a mystery

POMPEY  Painting, sir, I have heard say, is a mystery; and
        your whores, sir, being members of my occupation,
        using painting, do prove my occupation a mystery:
        but what mystery there should be in hanging, if I
        should be hanged, I cannot imagine.

ABHORSON        Sir, it is a mystery.

POMPEY  Proof?

ABHORSON        Every true man's apparel fits your thief: if it be
        too little for your thief, your true man thinks it
        big enough; if it be too big for your thief, your
        thief thinks it little enough: so every true man's
        apparel fits your thief.

        [Re-enter Provost]

Provost Are you agreed?

POMPEY  Sir, I will serve him; for I do find your hangman is
        a more penitent trade than your bawd; he doth
        oftener ask forgiveness.

Provost You, sirrah, provide your block and your axe
        to-morrow four o'clock.

ABHORSON        Come on, bawd; I will instruct thee in my trade; follow.

POMPEY  I do desire to learn, sir: and I hope, if you have
        occasion to use me for your own turn, you shall find
        me yare; for truly, sir, for your kindness I owe you
        a good turn.

Provost Call hither Barnardine and Claudio:

        [Exeunt POMPEY and ABHORSON]

        The one has my pity; not a jot the other,
        Being a murderer, though he were my brother.

        [Enter CLAUDIO]

        Look, here's the warrant, Claudio, for thy death:
        'Tis now dead midnight, and by eight to-morrow
        Thou must be made immortal. Where's Barnardine?

CLAUDIO As fast lock'd up in sleep as guiltless labour
        When it lies starkly in the traveller's bones:
        He will not wake.

Provost                   Who can do good on him?
        Well, go, prepare yourself.

        [Knocking within]

                      But, hark, what noise?
        Heaven give your spirits comfort!

        [Exit CLAUDIO]

                                  By and by.
        I hope it is some pardon or reprieve
        For the most gentle Claudio.

        [Enter DUKE VINCENTIO disguised as before]

                       Welcome father.

DUKE VINCENTIO  The best and wholesomest spirts of the night
        Envelope you, good Provost! Who call'd here of late?

Provost None, since the curfew rung.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Not Isabel?

Provost           No.

DUKE VINCENTIO                    They will, then, ere't be long.

Provost What comfort is for Claudio?

DUKE VINCENTIO  There's some in hope.

Provost It is a bitter deputy.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Not so, not so; his life is parallel'd
        Even with the stroke and line of his great justice:
        He doth with holy abstinence subdue
        That in himself which he spurs on his power
        To qualify in others: were he meal'd with that
        Which he corrects, then were he tyrannous;
        But this being so, he's just.

        [Knocking within]

                        Now are they come.

        [Exit Provost]

        This is a gentle provost: seldom when
        The steeled gaoler is the friend of men.

        [Knocking within]

        How now! what noise? That spirit's possessed with haste
        That wounds the unsisting postern with these strokes.

        [Re-enter Provost]

Provost There he must stay until the officer
        Arise to let him in: he is call'd up.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Have you no countermand for Claudio yet,
        But he must die to-morrow?

Provost None, sir, none.

DUKE VINCENTIO  As near the dawning, provost, as it is,
        You shall hear more ere morning.

Provost Happily
        You something know; yet I believe there comes
        No countermand; no such example have we:
        Besides, upon the very siege of justice
        Lord Angelo hath to the public ear
        Profess'd the contrary.

        [Enter a Messenger]

                  This is his lordship's man.

DUKE VINCENTIO  And here comes Claudio's pardon.

Messenger       [Giving a paper]

        My lord hath sent you this note; and by me this
        further charge, that you swerve not from the
        smallest article of it, neither in time, matter, or
        other circumstance. Good morrow; for, as I take it,
        it is almost day.

Provost I shall obey him.

        [Exit Messenger]

DUKE VINCENTIO  [Aside]  This is his pardon, purchased by such sin
        For which the pardoner himself is in.
        Hence hath offence his quick celerity,
        When it is born in high authority:
        When vice makes mercy, mercy's so extended,
        That for the fault's love is the offender friended.
        Now, sir, what news?

Provost I told you. Lord Angelo, belike thinking me remiss
        in mine office, awakens me with this unwonted
        putting-on; methinks strangely, for he hath not used it before.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Pray you, let's hear.

Provost [Reads]

        'Whatsoever you may hear to the contrary, let
        Claudio be executed by four of the clock; and in the
        afternoon Barnardine: for my better satisfaction,
        let me have Claudio's head sent me by five. Let
        this be duly performed; with a thought that more
        depends on it than we must yet deliver. Thus fail
        not to do your office, as you will answer it at your peril.'
        What say you to this, sir?

DUKE VINCENTIO  What is that Barnardine who is to be executed in the
        afternoon?

Provost A Bohemian born, but here nursed un and bred; one
        that is a prisoner nine years old.

DUKE VINCENTIO  How came it that the absent duke had not either
        delivered him to his liberty or executed him? I
        have heard it was ever his manner to do so.

Provost His friends still wrought reprieves for him: and,
        indeed, his fact, till now in the government of Lord
        Angelo, came not to an undoubtful proof.

DUKE VINCENTIO  It is now apparent?

Provost Most manifest, and not denied by himself.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Hath he born himself penitently in prison? how
        seems he to be touched?

Provost A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully but
        as a drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless
        of what's past, present, or to come; insensible of
        mortality, and desperately mortal.

DUKE VINCENTIO  He wants advice.

Provost He will hear none: he hath evermore had the liberty
        of the prison; give him leave to escape hence, he
        would not: drunk many times a day, if not many days
        entirely drunk. We have very oft awaked him, as if
        to carry him to execution, and showed him a seeming
        warrant for it: it hath not moved him at all.

DUKE VINCENTIO  More of him anon. There is written in your brow,
        provost, honesty and constancy: if I read it not
        truly, my ancient skill beguiles me; but, in the
        boldness of my cunning, I will lay myself in hazard.
        Claudio, whom here you have warrant to execute, is
        no greater forfeit to the law than Angelo who hath
        sentenced him. To make you understand this in a
        manifested effect, I crave but four days' respite;
        for the which you are to do me both a present and a
        dangerous courtesy.

Provost Pray, sir, in what?

DUKE VINCENTIO  In the delaying death.

Provost A lack, how may I do it, having the hour limited,
        and an express command, under penalty, to deliver
        his head in the view of Angelo? I may make my case
        as Claudio's, to cross this in the smallest.

DUKE VINCENTIO  By the vow of mine order I warrant you, if my
        instructions may be your guide. Let this Barnardine
        be this morning executed, and his head born to Angelo.

Provost Angelo hath seen them both, and will discover the favour.

DUKE VINCENTIO  O, death's a great disguiser; and you may add to it.
        Shave the head, and tie the beard; and say it was
        the desire of the penitent to be so bared before his
        death: you know the course is common. If any thing
        fall to you upon this, more than thanks and good
        fortune, by the saint whom I profess, I will plead
        against it with my life.

Provost Pardon me, good father; it is against my oath.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Were you sworn to the duke, or to the deputy?

Provost To him, and to his substitutes.

DUKE VINCENTIO  You will think you have made no offence, if the duke
        avouch the justice of your dealing?

Provost But what likelihood is in that?

DUKE VINCENTIO  Not a resemblance, but a certainty. Yet since I see
        you fearful, that neither my coat, integrity, nor
        persuasion can with ease attempt you, I will go
        further than I meant, to pluck all fears out of you.
        Look you, sir, here is the hand and seal of the
        duke: you know the character, I doubt not; and the
        signet is not strange to you.

Provost I know them both.

DUKE VINCENTIO  The contents of this is the return of the duke: you
        shall anon over-read it at your pleasure; where you
        shall find, within these two days he will be here.
        This is a thing that Angelo knows not; for he this
        very day receives letters of strange tenor;
        perchance of the duke's death; perchance entering
        into some monastery; but, by chance, nothing of what
        is writ. Look, the unfolding star calls up the
        shepherd. Put not yourself into amazement how these
        things should be: all difficulties are but easy
        when they are known. Call your executioner, and off
        with Barnardine's head: I will give him a present
        shrift and advise him for a better place. Yet you
        are amazed; but this shall absolutely resolve you.
        Come away; it is almost clear dawn.

        [Exeunt]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT IV


SCENE III       Another room in the same.


        [Enter POMPEY]

POMPEY  I am as well acquainted here as I was in our house
        of profession: one would think it were Mistress
        Overdone's own house, for here be many of her old
        customers. First, here's young Master Rash; he's in
        for a commodity of brown paper and old ginger,
        ninescore and seventeen pounds; of which he made
        five marks, ready money: marry, then ginger was not
        much in request, for the old women were all dead.
        Then is there here one Master Caper, at the suit of
        Master Three-pile the mercer, for some four suits of
        peach-coloured satin, which now peaches him a
        beggar. Then have we here young Dizy, and young
        Master Deep-vow, and Master Copperspur, and Master
        Starve-lackey the rapier and dagger man, and young
        Drop-heir that killed lusty Pudding, and Master
        Forthlight the tilter, and brave Master Shooty the
        great traveller, and wild Half-can that stabbed
        Pots, and, I think, forty more; all great doers in
        our trade, and are now 'for the Lord's sake.'

        [Enter ABHORSON]

ABHORSON        Sirrah, bring Barnardine hither.

POMPEY  Master Barnardine! you must rise and be hanged.
        Master Barnardine!

ABHORSON        What, ho, Barnardine!

BARNARDINE      [Within]  A pox o' your throats! Who makes that
        noise there? What are you?

POMPEY  Your friends, sir; the hangman. You must be so
        good, sir, to rise and be put to death.

BARNARDINE      [Within]  Away, you rogue, away! I am sleepy.

ABHORSON        Tell him he must awake, and that quickly too.

POMPEY  Pray, Master Barnardine, awake till you are
        executed, and sleep afterwards.

ABHORSON        Go in to him, and fetch him out.

POMPEY  He is coming, sir, he is coming; I hear his straw rustle.

ABHORSON        Is the axe upon the block, sirrah?

POMPEY  Very ready, sir.

        [Enter BARNARDINE]

BARNARDINE      How now, Abhorson? what's the news with you?

ABHORSON        Truly, sir, I would desire you to clap into your
        prayers; for, look you, the warrant's come.

BARNARDINE      You rogue, I have been drinking all night; I am not
        fitted for 't.

POMPEY  O, the better, sir; for he that drinks all night,
        and is hanged betimes in the morning, may sleep the
        sounder all the next day.

ABHORSON        Look you, sir; here comes your ghostly father: do
        we jest now, think you?

        [Enter DUKE VINCENTIO disguised as before]

DUKE VINCENTIO  Sir, induced by my charity, and hearing how hastily
        you are to depart, I am come to advise you, comfort
        you and pray with you.

BARNARDINE      Friar, not I    I have been drinking hard all night,
        and I will have more time to prepare me, or they
        shall beat out my brains with billets: I will not
        consent to die this day, that's certain.

DUKE VINCENTIO  O, sir, you must: and therefore I beseech you
        Look forward on the journey you shall go.

BARNARDINE      I swear I will not die to-day for any man's
        persuasion.

DUKE VINCENTIO  But hear you.

BARNARDINE      Not a word: if you have any thing to say to me,
        come to my ward; for thence will not I to-day.

        [Exit]

DUKE VINCENTIO  Unfit to live or die: O gravel heart!
        After him, fellows; bring him to the block.

        [Exeunt ABHORSON and POMPEY]

        [Re-enter Provost]

Provost Now, sir, how do you find the prisoner?

DUKE VINCENTIO  A creature unprepared, unmeet for death;
        And to transport him in the mind he is
        Were damnable.

Provost                   Here in the prison, father,
        There died this morning of a cruel fever
        One Ragozine, a most notorious pirate,
        A man of Claudio's years; his beard and head
        Just of his colour. What if we do omit
        This reprobate till he were well inclined;
        And satisfy the deputy with the visage
        Of Ragozine, more like to Claudio?

DUKE VINCENTIO  O, 'tis an accident that heaven provides!
        Dispatch it presently; the hour draws on
        Prefix'd by Angelo: see this be done,
        And sent according to command; whiles I
        Persuade this rude wretch willingly to die.

Provost This shall be done, good father, presently.
        But Barnardine must die this afternoon:
        And how shall we continue Claudio,
        To save me from the danger that might come
        If he were known alive?

DUKE VINCENTIO  Let this be done.
        Put them in secret holds, both Barnardine and Claudio:
        Ere twice the sun hath made his journal greeting
        To the under generation, you shall find
        Your safety manifested.

Provost I am your free dependant.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Quick, dispatch, and send the head to Angelo.

        [Exit Provost]

        Now will I write letters to Angelo,--
        The provost, he shall bear them, whose contents
        Shall witness to him I am near at home,
        And that, by great injunctions, I am bound
        To enter publicly: him I'll desire
        To meet me at the consecrated fount
        A league below the city; and from thence,
        By cold gradation and well-balanced form,
        We shall proceed with Angelo.

        [Re-enter Provost]

Provost Here is the head; I'll carry it myself.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Convenient is it. Make a swift return;
        For I would commune with you of such things
        That want no ear but yours.

Provost I'll make all speed.

        [Exit]

ISABELLA        [Within]  Peace, ho, be here!

DUKE VINCENTIO  The tongue of Isabel. She's come to know
        If yet her brother's pardon be come hither:
        But I will keep her ignorant of her good,
        To make her heavenly comforts of despair,
        When it is least expected.

        [Enter ISABELLA]

ISABELLA        Ho, by your leave!

DUKE VINCENTIO  Good morning to you, fair and gracious daughter.

ISABELLA        The better, given me by so holy a man.
        Hath yet the deputy sent my brother's pardon?

DUKE VINCENTIO  He hath released him, Isabel, from the world:
        His head is off and sent to Angelo.

ISABELLA        Nay, but it is not so.

DUKE VINCENTIO  It is no other: show your wisdom, daughter,
        In your close patience.

ISABELLA        O, I will to him and pluck out his eyes!

DUKE VINCENTIO  You shall not be admitted to his sight.

ISABELLA        Unhappy Claudio! wretched Isabel!
        Injurious world! most damned Angelo!

DUKE VINCENTIO  This nor hurts him nor profits you a jot;
        Forbear it therefore; give your cause to heaven.
        Mark what I say, which you shall find
        By every syllable a faithful verity:
        The duke comes home to-morrow; nay, dry your eyes;
        One of our convent, and his confessor,
        Gives me this instance: already he hath carried
        Notice to Escalus and Angelo,
        Who do prepare to meet him at the gates,
        There to give up their power. If you can, pace your wisdom
        In that good path that I would wish it go,
        And you shall have your bosom on this wretch,
        Grace of the duke, revenges to your heart,
        And general honour.

ISABELLA                          I am directed by you.

DUKE VINCENTIO  This letter, then, to Friar Peter give;
        'Tis that he sent me of the duke's return:
        Say, by this token, I desire his company
        At Mariana's house to-night. Her cause and yours
        I'll perfect him withal, and he shall bring you
        Before the duke, and to the head of Angelo
        Accuse him home and home. For my poor self,
        I am combined by a sacred vow
        And shall be absent. Wend you with this letter:
        Command these fretting waters from your eyes
        With a light heart; trust not my holy order,
        If I pervert your course. Who's here?

        [Enter LUCIO]

LUCIO   Good even. Friar, where's the provost?

DUKE VINCENTIO  Not within, sir.

LUCIO   O pretty Isabella, I am pale at mine heart to see
        thine eyes so red: thou must be patient. I am fain
        to dine and sup with water and bran; I dare not for
        my head fill my belly; one fruitful meal would set
        me to 't. But they say the duke will be here
        to-morrow. By my troth, Isabel, I loved thy brother:
        if the old fantastical duke of dark corners had been
        at home, he had lived.

        [Exit ISABELLA]

DUKE VINCENTIO  Sir, the duke is marvellous little beholding to your
        reports; but the best is, he lives not in them.

LUCIO   Friar, thou knowest not the duke so well as I do:
        he's a better woodman than thou takest him for.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Well, you'll answer this one day. Fare ye well.

LUCIO   Nay, tarry; I'll go along with thee
        I can tell thee pretty tales of the duke.

DUKE VINCENTIO  You have told me too many of him already, sir, if
        they be true; if not true, none were enough.

LUCIO   I was once before him for getting a wench with child.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Did you such a thing?

LUCIO   Yes, marry, did I       but I was fain to forswear it;
        they would else have married me to the rotten medlar.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Sir, your company is fairer than honest. Rest you well.

LUCIO   By my troth, I'll go with thee to the lane's end:
        if bawdy talk offend you, we'll have very little of
        it. Nay, friar, I am a kind of burr; I shall stick.

        [Exeunt]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT IV


SCENE IV        A room in ANGELO's house.


        [Enter ANGELO and ESCALUS]

ESCALUS Every letter he hath writ hath disvouched other.

ANGELO  In most uneven and distracted manner. His actions
        show much like to madness: pray heaven his wisdom be
        not tainted! And why meet him at the gates, and
        redeliver our authorities there

ESCALUS I guess not.

ANGELO  And why should we proclaim it in an hour before his
        entering, that if any crave redress of injustice,
        they should exhibit their petitions in the street?

ESCALUS He shows his reason for that: to have a dispatch of
        complaints, and to deliver us from devices
        hereafter, which shall then have no power to stand
        against us.

ANGELO  Well, I beseech you, let it be proclaimed betimes
        i' the morn; I'll call you at your house: give
        notice to such men of sort and suit as are to meet
        him.

ESCALUS I shall, sir. Fare you well.

ANGELO  Good night.

        [Exit ESCALUS]

        This deed unshapes me quite, makes me unpregnant
        And dull to all proceedings. A deflower'd maid!
        And by an eminent body that enforced
        The law against it! But that her tender shame
        Will not proclaim against her maiden loss,
        How might she tongue me! Yet reason dares her no;
        For my authority bears of a credent bulk,
        That no particular scandal once can touch
        But it confounds the breather. He should have lived,
        Save that riotous youth, with dangerous sense,
        Might in the times to come have ta'en revenge,
        By so receiving a dishonour'd life
        With ransom of such shame. Would yet he had lived!
        A lack, when once our grace we have forgot,
        Nothing goes right: we would, and we would not.

        [Exit]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT IV


SCENE V Fields without the town.


        [Enter DUKE VINCENTIO in his own habit, and FRIAR PETER]

DUKE VINCENTIO  These letters at fit time deliver me

        [Giving letters]

        The provost knows our purpose and our plot.
        The matter being afoot, keep your instruction,
        And hold you ever to our special drift;
        Though sometimes you do blench from this to that,
        As cause doth minister. Go call at Flavius' house,
        And tell him where I stay: give the like notice
        To Valentinus, Rowland, and to Crassus,
        And bid them bring the trumpets to the gate;
        But send me Flavius first.

FRIAR PETER     It shall be speeded well.

        [Exit]

        [Enter VARRIUS]

DUKE VINCENTIO  I thank thee, Varrius; thou hast made good haste:
        Come, we will walk. There's other of our friends
        Will greet us here anon, my gentle Varrius.

        [Exeunt]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT IV


SCENE VI        Street near the city gate.


        [Enter ISABELLA and MARIANA]

ISABELLA        To speak so indirectly I am loath:
        I would say the truth; but to accuse him so,
        That is your part: yet I am advised to do it;
        He says, to veil full purpose.

MARIANA Be ruled by him.

ISABELLA        Besides, he tells me that, if peradventure
        He speak against me on the adverse side,
        I should not think it strange; for 'tis a physic
        That's bitter to sweet end.

MARIANA I would Friar Peter--

ISABELLA        O, peace! the friar is come.

        [Enter FRIAR PETER]

FRIAR PETER     Come, I have found you out a stand most fit,
        Where you may have such vantage on the duke,
        He shall not pass you. Twice have the trumpets sounded;
        The generous and gravest citizens
        Have hent the gates, and very near upon
        The duke is entering: therefore, hence, away!

        [Exeunt]




        MEASURE FOR MEASURE


ACT V


SCENE I The city gate.


        [MARIANA veiled, ISABELLA, and FRIAR PETER, at their
        stand. Enter DUKE VINCENTIO, VARRIUS, Lords,
        ANGELO, ESCALUS, LUCIO, Provost, Officers, and
        Citizens, at several doors]

DUKE VINCENTIO  My very worthy cousin, fairly met!
        Our old and faithful friend, we are glad to see you.


ANGELO  |
        |  Happy return be to your royal grace!
ESCALUS |


DUKE VINCENTIO  Many and hearty thankings to you both.
        We have made inquiry of you; and we hear
        Such goodness of your justice, that our soul
        Cannot but yield you forth to public thanks,
        Forerunning more requital.

ANGELO  You make my bonds still greater.

DUKE VINCENTIO  O, your desert speaks loud; and I should wrong it,
        To lock it in the wards of covert bosom,
        When it deserves, with characters of brass,
        A forted residence 'gainst the tooth of time
        And razure of oblivion. Give me your hand,
        And let the subject see, to make them know
        That outward courtesies would fain proclaim
        Favours that keep within. Come, Escalus,
        You must walk by us on our other hand;
        And good supporters are you.

        [FRIAR PETER and ISABELLA come forward]

FRIAR PETER     Now is your time: speak loud and kneel before him.

ISABELLA        Justice, O royal duke! Vail your regard
        Upon a wrong'd, I would fain have said, a maid!
        O worthy prince, dishonour not your eye
        By throwing it on any other object
        Till you have heard me in my true complaint
        And given me justice, justice, justice, justice!

DUKE VINCENTIO  Relate your wrongs; in what? by whom? be brief.
        Here is Lord Angelo shall give you justice:
        Reveal yourself to him.

ISABELLA        O worthy duke,
        You bid me seek redemption of the devil:
        Hear me yourself; for that which I must speak
        Must either punish me, not being believed,
        Or wring redress from you. Hear me, O hear me, here!

ANGELO  My lord, her wits, I fear me, are not firm:
        She hath been a suitor to me for her brother
        Cut off by course of justice,--

ISABELLA        By course of justice!

ANGELO  And she will speak most bitterly and strange.

ISABELLA        Most strange, but yet most truly, will I speak:
        That Angelo's forsworn; is it not strange?
        That Angelo's a murderer; is 't not strange?
        That Angelo is an adulterous thief,
        An hypocrite, a virgin-violator;
        Is it not strange and strange?

DUKE VINCENTIO  Nay, it is ten times strange.

ISABELLA        It is not truer he is Angelo
        Than this is all as true as it is strange:
        Nay, it is ten times true; for truth is truth
        To the end of reckoning.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Away with her! Poor soul,
        She speaks this in the infirmity of sense.

ISABELLA        O prince, I conjure thee, as thou believest
        There is another comfort than this world,
        That thou neglect me not, with that opinion
        That I am touch'd with madness! Make not impossible
        That which but seems unlike: 'tis not impossible
        But one, the wicked'st caitiff on the ground,
        May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute
        As Angelo; even so may Angelo,
        In all his dressings, characts, titles, forms,
        Be an arch-villain; believe it, royal prince:
        If he be less, he's nothing; but he's more,
        Had I more name for badness.

DUKE VINCENTIO  By mine honesty,
        If she be mad,--as I believe no other,--
        Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense,
        Such a dependency of thing on thing,
        As e'er I heard in madness.

ISABELLA        O gracious duke,
        Harp not on that, nor do not banish reason
        For inequality; but let your reason serve
        To make the truth appear where it seems hid,
        And hide the false seems true.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Many that are not mad
        Have, sure, more lack of reason. What would you say?

ISABELLA        I am the sister of one Claudio,
        Condemn'd upon the act of fornication
        To lose his head; condemn'd by Angelo:
        I, in probation of a sisterhood,
        Was sent to by my brother; one Lucio
        As then the messenger,--

LUCIO   That's I, an't like your grace:
        I came to her from Claudio, and desired her
        To try her gracious fortune with Lord Angelo
        For her poor brother's pardon.

ISABELLA        That's he indeed.

DUKE VINCENTIO  You were not bid to speak.

LUCIO   No, my good lord;
        Nor wish'd to hold my peace.

DUKE VINCENTIO  I wish you now, then;
        Pray you, take note of it: and when you have
        A business for yourself, pray heaven you then
        Be perfect.

LUCIO   I warrant your honour.

DUKE VINCENTIO  The warrants for yourself; take heed to't.

ISABELLA        This gentleman told somewhat of my tale,--

LUCIO   Right.

DUKE VINCENTIO  It may be right; but you are i' the wrong
        To speak before your time. Proceed.

ISABELLA        I went
        To this pernicious caitiff deputy,--

DUKE VINCENTIO  That's somewhat madly spoken.

ISABELLA        Pardon it;
        The phrase is to the matter.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Mended again. The matter; proceed.

ISABELLA        In brief, to set the needless process by,
        How I persuaded, how I pray'd, and kneel'd,
        How he refell'd me, and how I replied,--
        For this was of much length,--the vile conclusion
        I now begin with grief and shame to utter:
        He would not, but by gift of my chaste body
        To his concupiscible intemperate lust,
        Release my brother; and, after much debatement,
        My sisterly remorse confutes mine honour,
        And I did yield to him: but the next morn betimes,
        His purpose surfeiting, he sends a warrant
        For my poor brother's head.

DUKE VINCENTIO  This is most likely!

ISABELLA        O, that it were as like as it is true!

DUKE VINCENTIO  By heaven, fond wretch, thou knowist not what thou speak'st,
        Or else thou art suborn'd against his honour
        In hateful practise. First, his integrity
        Stands without blemish. Next, it imports no reason
        That with such vehemency he should pursue
        Faults proper to himself: if he had so offended,
        He would have weigh'd thy brother by himself
        And not have cut him off. Some one hath set you on:
        Confess the truth, and say by whose advice
        Thou camest here to complain.

ISABELLA        And is this all?
        Then, O you blessed ministers above,
        Keep me in patience, and with ripen'd time
        Unfold the evil which is here wrapt up
        In countenance! Heaven shield your grace from woe,
        As I, thus wrong'd, hence unbelieved go!

DUKE VINCENTIO  I know you'ld fain be gone. An officer!
        To prison with her! Shall we thus permit
        A blasting and a scandalous breath to fall
        On him so near us? This needs must be a practise.
        Who knew of Your intent and coming hither?

ISABELLA        One that I would were here, Friar Lodowick.

DUKE VINCENTIO  A ghostly father, belike. Who knows that Lodowick?

LUCIO   My lord, I know him; 'tis a meddling friar;
        I do not like the man: had he been lay, my lord
        For certain words he spake against your grace
        In your retirement, I had swinged him soundly.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Words against me? this is a good friar, belike!
        And to set on this wretched woman here
        Against our substitute! Let this friar be found.

LUCIO   But yesternight, my lord, she and that friar,
        I saw them at the prison: a saucy friar,
        A very scurvy fellow.

FRIAR PETER     Blessed be your royal grace!
        I have stood by, my lord, and I have heard
        Your royal ear abused. First, hath this woman
        Most wrongfully accused your substitute,
        Who is as free from touch or soil with her
        As she from one ungot.

DUKE VINCENTIO  We did believe no less.
        Know you that Friar Lodowick that she speaks of?

FRIAR PETER     I know him for a man divine and holy;
        Not scurvy, nor a temporary meddler,
        As he's reported by this gentleman;
        And, on my trust, a man that never yet
        Did, as he vouches, misreport your grace.

LUCIO   My lord, most villanously; believe it.

FRIAR PETER     Well, he in time may come to clear himself;
        But at this instant he is sick my lord,
        Of a strange fever. Upon his mere request,
        Being come to knowledge that there was complaint
        Intended 'gainst Lord Angelo, came I hither,
        To speak, as from his mouth, what he doth know
        Is true and false; and what he with his oath
        And all probation will make up full clear,
        Whensoever he's convented. First, for this woman.
        To justify this worthy nobleman,
        So vulgarly and personally accused,
        Her shall you hear disproved to her eyes,
        Till she herself confess it.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Good friar, let's hear it.

        [ISABELLA is carried off guarded; and MARIANA comes forward]

        Do you not smile at this, Lord Angelo?
        O heaven, the vanity of wretched fools!
        Give us some seats. Come, cousin Angelo;
        In this I'll be impartial; be you judge
        Of your own cause. Is this the witness, friar?
        First, let her show her face, and after speak.

MARIANA Pardon, my lord; I will not show my face
        Until my husband bid me.

DUKE VINCENTIO  What, are you married?

MARIANA No, my lord.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Are you a maid?

MARIANA No, my lord.

DUKE VINCENTIO  A widow, then?

MARIANA Neither, my lord.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Why, you are nothing then: neither maid, widow, nor wife?

LUCIO   My lord, she may be a punk; for many of them are
        neither maid, widow, nor wife.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Silence that fellow: I would he had some cause
        To prattle for himself.

LUCIO   Well, my lord.

MARIANA My lord; I do confess I ne'er was married;
        And I confess besides I am no maid:
        I have known my husband; yet my husband
        Knows not that ever he knew me.

LUCIO   He was drunk then, my lord: it can be no better.

DUKE VINCENTIO  For the benefit of silence, would thou wert so too!

LUCIO   Well, my lord.

DUKE VINCENTIO  This is no witness for Lord Angelo.

MARIANA Now I come to't my lord
        She that accuses him of fornication,
        In self-same manner doth accuse my husband,
        And charges him my lord, with such a time
        When I'll depose I had him in mine arms
        With all the effect of love.

ANGELO  Charges she more than me?

MARIANA Not that I know.

DUKE VINCENTIO  No? you say your husband.

MARIANA Why, just, my lord, and that is Angelo,
        Who thinks he knows that he ne'er knew my body,
        But knows he thinks that he knows Isabel's.

ANGELO  This is a strange abuse. Let's see thy face.

MARIANA My husband bids me; now I will unmask.

        [Unveiling]

        This is that face, thou cruel Angelo,
        Which once thou sworest was worth the looking on;
        This is the hand which, with a vow'd contract,
        Was fast belock'd in thine; this is the body
        That took away the match from Isabel,
        And did supply thee at thy garden-house
        In her imagined person.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Know you this woman?

LUCIO   Carnally, she says.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Sirrah, no more!

LUCIO   Enough, my lord.

ANGELO  My lord, I must confess I know this woman:
        And five years since there was some speech of marriage
        Betwixt myself and her; which was broke off,
        Partly for that her promised proportions
        Came short of composition, but in chief
        For that her reputation was disvalued
        In levity: since which time of five years
        I never spake with her, saw her, nor heard from her,
        Upon my faith and honour.

MARIANA Noble prince,
        As there comes light from heaven and words from breath,
        As there is sense in truth and truth in virtue,
        I am affianced this man's wife as strongly
        As words could make up vows: and, my good lord,
        But Tuesday night last gone in's garden-house
        He knew me as a wife. As this is true,
        Let me in safety raise me from my knees
        Or else for ever be confixed here,
        A marble monument!

ANGELO                    I did but smile till now:
        Now, good my lord, give me the scope of justice
        My patience here is touch'd. I do perceive
        These poor informal women are no more
        But instruments of some more mightier member
        That sets them on: let me have way, my lord,
        To find this practise out.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Ay, with my heart
        And punish them to your height of pleasure.
        Thou foolish friar, and thou pernicious woman,
        Compact with her that's gone, think'st thou thy oaths,
        Though they would swear down each particular saint,
        Were testimonies against his worth and credit
        That's seal'd in approbation? You, Lord Escalus,
        Sit with my cousin; lend him your kind pains
        To find out this abuse, whence 'tis derived.
        There is another friar that set them on;
        Let him be sent for.

FRIAR PETER     Would he were here, my lord! for he indeed
        Hath set the women on to this complaint:
        Your provost knows the place where he abides
        And he may fetch him.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Go do it instantly.

        [Exit Provost]

        And you, my noble and well-warranted cousin,
        Whom it concerns to hear this matter forth,
        Do with your injuries as seems you best,
        In any chastisement: I for a while will leave you;
        But stir not you till you have well determined
        Upon these slanderers.

ESCALUS My lord, we'll do it throughly.

        [Exit DUKE]

        Signior Lucio, did not you say you knew that
        Friar Lodowick to be a dishonest person?

LUCIO   'Cucullus non facit monachum:' honest in nothing
        but in his clothes; and one that hath spoke most
        villanous speeches of the duke.

ESCALUS We shall entreat you to abide here till he come and
        enforce them against him: we shall find this friar a
        notable fellow.

LUCIO   As any in Vienna, on my word.

ESCALUS Call that same Isabel here once again; I would speak with her.

        [Exit an Attendant]

        Pray you, my lord, give me leave to question; you
        shall see how I'll handle her.

LUCIO   Not better than he, by her own report.

ESCALUS Say you?

LUCIO   Marry, sir, I think, if you handled her privately,
        she would sooner confess: perchance, publicly,
        she'll be ashamed.

ESCALUS I will go darkly to work with her.

LUCIO   That's the way; for women are light at midnight.

        [Re-enter Officers with ISABELLA; and Provost with
        the DUKE VINCENTIO in his friar's habit]

ESCALUS Come on, mistress: here's a gentlewoman denies all
        that you have said.

LUCIO   My lord, here comes the rascal I spoke of; here with
        the provost.

ESCALUS In very good time: speak not you to him till we
        call upon you.

LUCIO   Mum.

ESCALUS Come, sir: did you set these women on to slander
        Lord Angelo? they have confessed you did.

DUKE VINCENTIO  'Tis false.

ESCALUS How! know you where you are?

DUKE VINCENTIO  Respect to your great place! and let the devil
        Be sometime honour'd for his burning throne!
        Where is the duke? 'tis he should hear me speak.

ESCALUS The duke's in us; and we will hear you speak:
        Look you speak justly.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Boldly, at least. But, O, poor souls,
        Come you to seek the lamb here of the fox?
        Good night to your redress! Is the duke gone?
        Then is your cause gone too. The duke's unjust,
        Thus to retort your manifest appeal,
        And put your trial in the villain's mouth
        Which here you come to accuse.

LUCIO   This is the rascal; this is he I spoke of.

ESCALUS Why, thou unreverend and unhallow'd friar,
        Is't not enough thou hast suborn'd these women
        To accuse this worthy man, but, in foul mouth
        And in the witness of his proper ear,
        To call him villain? and then to glance from him
        To the duke himself, to tax him with injustice?
        Take him hence; to the rack with him! We'll touse you
        Joint by joint, but we will know his purpose.
        What 'unjust'!

DUKE VINCENTIO                    Be not so hot; the duke
        Dare no more stretch this finger of mine than he
        Dare rack his own: his subject am I not,
        Nor here provincial. My business in this state
        Made me a looker on here in Vienna,
        Where I have seen corruption boil and bubble
        Till it o'er-run the stew; laws for all faults,
        But faults so countenanced, that the strong statutes
        Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop,
        As much in mock as mark.

ESCALUS Slander to the state! Away with him to prison!

ANGELO  What can you vouch against him, Signior Lucio?
        Is this the man that you did tell us of?

LUCIO   'Tis he, my lord. Come hither, goodman baldpate:
        do you know me?

DUKE VINCENTIO  I remember you, sir, by the sound of your voice: I
        met you at the prison, in the absence of the duke.

LUCIO   O, did you so? And do you remember what you said of the duke?

DUKE VINCENTIO  Most notedly, sir.

LUCIO   Do you so, sir? And was the duke a fleshmonger, a
        fool, and a coward, as you then reported him to be?

DUKE VINCENTIO  You must, sir, change persons with me, ere you make
        that my report: you, indeed, spoke so of him; and
        much more, much worse.

LUCIO   O thou damnable fellow! Did not I pluck thee by the
        nose for thy speeches?

DUKE VINCENTIO  I protest I love the duke as I love myself.

ANGELO  Hark, how the villain would close now, after his
        treasonable abuses!

ESCALUS Such a fellow is not to be talked withal. Away with
        him to prison! Where is the provost? Away with him
        to prison! lay bolts enough upon him: let him
        speak no more. Away with those giglots too, and
        with the other confederate companion!

DUKE VINCENTIO  [To Provost]  Stay, sir; stay awhile.

ANGELO  What, resists he? Help him, Lucio.

LUCIO   Come, sir; come, sir; come, sir; foh, sir! Why, you
        bald-pated, lying rascal, you must be hooded, must
        you? Show your knave's visage, with a pox to you!
        show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged an hour!
        Will't not off?

        [Pulls off the friar's hood, and discovers DUKE
        VINCENTIO]

DUKE VINCENTIO  Thou art the first knave that e'er madest a duke.
        First, provost, let me bail these gentle three.

        [To LUCIO]

        Sneak not away, sir; for the friar and you
        Must have a word anon. Lay hold on him.

LUCIO   This may prove worse than hanging.

DUKE VINCENTIO  [To ESCALUS]  What you have spoke I pardon: sit you down:
        We'll borrow place of him.

        [To ANGELO]

                     Sir, by your leave.
        Hast thou or word, or wit, or impudence,
        That yet can do thee office? If thou hast,
        Rely upon it till my tale be heard,
        And hold no longer out.

ANGELO  O my dread lord,
        I should be guiltier than my guiltiness,
        To think I can be undiscernible,
        When I perceive your grace, like power divine,
        Hath look'd upon my passes. Then, good prince,
        No longer session hold upon my shame,
        But let my trial be mine own confession:
        Immediate sentence then and sequent death
        Is all the grace I beg.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Come hither, Mariana.
        Say, wast thou e'er contracted to this woman?

ANGELO  I was, my lord.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Go take her hence, and marry her instantly.
        Do you the office, friar; which consummate,
        Return him here again. Go with him, provost.

        [Exeunt ANGELO, MARIANA, FRIAR PETER and Provost]

ESCALUS My lord, I am more amazed at his dishonour
        Than at the strangeness of it.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Come hither, Isabel.
        Your friar is now your prince: as I was then
        Advertising and holy to your business,
        Not changing heart with habit, I am still
        Attorney'd at your service.

ISABELLA        O, give me pardon,
        That I, your vassal, have employ'd and pain'd
        Your unknown sovereignty!

DUKE VINCENTIO  You are pardon'd, Isabel:
        And now, dear maid, be you as free to us.
        Your brother's death, I know, sits at your heart;
        And you may marvel why I obscured myself,
        Labouring to save his life, and would not rather
        Make rash remonstrance of my hidden power
        Than let him so be lost. O most kind maid,
        It was the swift celerity of his death,
        Which I did think with slower foot came on,
        That brain'd my purpose. But, peace be with him!
        That life is better life, past fearing death,
        Than that which lives to fear: make it your comfort,
        So happy is your brother.

ISABELLA        I do, my lord.

        [Re-enter ANGELO, MARIANA, FRIAR PETER, and Provost]

DUKE VINCENTIO  For this new-married man approaching here,
        Whose salt imagination yet hath wrong'd
        Your well defended honour, you must pardon
        For Mariana's sake: but as he adjudged your brother,--
        Being criminal, in double violation
        Of sacred chastity and of promise-breach
        Thereon dependent, for your brother's life,--
        The very mercy of the law cries out
        Most audible, even from his proper tongue,
        'An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!'
        Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;
        Like doth quit like, and MEASURE still FOR MEASURE.
        Then, Angelo, thy fault's thus manifested;
        Which, though thou wouldst deny, denies thee vantage.
        We do condemn thee to the very block
        Where Claudio stoop'd to death, and with like haste.
        Away with him!

MARIANA                   O my most gracious lord,
        I hope you will not mock me with a husband.

DUKE VINCENTIO  It is your husband mock'd you with a husband.
        Consenting to the safeguard of your honour,
        I thought your marriage fit; else imputation,
        For that he knew you, might reproach your life
        And choke your good to come; for his possessions,
        Although by confiscation they are ours,
        We do instate and widow you withal,
        To buy you a better husband.

MARIANA O my dear lord,
        I crave no other, nor no better man.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Never crave him; we are definitive.

MARIANA Gentle my liege,--

        [Kneeling]

DUKE VINCENTIO                    You do but lose your labour.
        Away with him to death!

        [To LUCIO]

                  Now, sir, to you.

MARIANA O my good lord! Sweet Isabel, take my part;
        Lend me your knees, and all my life to come
        I'll lend you all my life to do you service.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Against all sense you do importune her:
        Should she kneel down in mercy of this fact,
        Her brother's ghost his paved bed would break,
        And take her hence in horror.

MARIANA Isabel,
        Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me;
        Hold up your hands, say nothing; I'll speak all.
        They say, best men are moulded out of faults;
        And, for the most, become much more the better
        For being a little bad: so may my husband.
        O Isabel, will you not lend a knee?

DUKE VINCENTIO  He dies for Claudio's death.

ISABELLA        Most bounteous sir,

        [Kneeling]

        Look, if it please you, on this man condemn'd,
        As if my brother lived: I partly think
        A due sincerity govern'd his deeds,
        Till he did look on me: since it is so,
        Let him not die. My brother had but justice,
        In that he did the thing for which he died:
        For Angelo,
        His act did not o'ertake his bad intent,
        And must be buried but as an intent
        That perish'd by the way: thoughts are no subjects;
        Intents but merely thoughts.

MARIANA Merely, my lord.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Your suit's unprofitable; stand up, I say.
        I have bethought me of another fault.
        Provost, how came it Claudio was beheaded
        At an unusual hour?

Provost It was commanded so.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Had you a special warrant for the deed?

Provost No, my good lord; it was by private message.

DUKE VINCENTIO  For which I do discharge you of your office:
        Give up your keys.

Provost                   Pardon me, noble lord:
        I thought it was a fault, but knew it not;
        Yet did repent me, after more advice;
        For testimony whereof, one in the prison,
        That should by private order else have died,
        I have reserved alive.

DUKE VINCENTIO  What's he?

Provost His name is Barnardine.

DUKE VINCENTIO  I would thou hadst done so by Claudio.
        Go fetch him hither; let me look upon him.

        [Exit Provost]

ESCALUS I am sorry, one so learned and so wise
        As you, Lord Angelo, have still appear'd,
        Should slip so grossly, both in the heat of blood.
        And lack of temper'd judgment afterward.

ANGELO  I am sorry that such sorrow I procure:
        And so deep sticks it in my penitent heart
        That I crave death more willingly than mercy;
        'Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it.

        [Re-enter Provost, with BARNARDINE, CLAUDIO muffled,
        and JULIET]

DUKE VINCENTIO  Which is that Barnardine?

Provost This, my lord.

DUKE VINCENTIO  There was a friar told me of this man.
        Sirrah, thou art said to have a stubborn soul.
        That apprehends no further than this world,
        And squarest thy life according. Thou'rt condemn'd:
        But, for those earthly faults, I quit them all;
        And pray thee take this mercy to provide
        For better times to come. Friar, advise him;
        I leave him to your hand. What muffled fellow's that?

Provost This is another prisoner that I saved.
        Who should have died when Claudio lost his head;
        As like almost to Claudio as himself.

        [Unmuffles CLAUDIO]

DUKE VINCENTIO  [To ISABELLA]  If he be like your brother, for his sake
        Is he pardon'd; and, for your lovely sake,
        Give me your hand and say you will be mine.
        He is my brother too: but fitter time for that.
        By this Lord Angelo perceives he's safe;
        Methinks I see a quickening in his eye.
        Well, Angelo, your evil quits you well:
        Look that you love your wife; her worth worth yours.
        I find an apt remission in myself;
        And yet here's one in place I cannot pardon.

        [To LUCIO]

        You, sirrah, that knew me for a fool, a coward,
        One all of luxury, an ass, a madman;
        Wherein have I so deserved of you,
        That you extol me thus?

LUCIO   'Faith, my lord. I spoke it but according to the
        trick. If you will hang me for it, you may; but I
        had rather it would please you I might be whipt.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Whipt first, sir, and hanged after.
        Proclaim it, provost, round about the city.
        Is any woman wrong'd by this lewd fellow,
        As I have heard him swear himself there's one
        Whom he begot with child, let her appear,
        And he shall marry her: the nuptial finish'd,
        Let him be whipt and hang'd.

LUCIO   I beseech your highness, do not marry me to a whore.
        Your highness said even now, I made you a duke:
        good my lord, do not recompense me in making me a cuckold.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Upon mine honour, thou shalt marry her.
        Thy slanders I forgive; and therewithal
        Remit thy other forfeits. Take him to prison;
        And see our pleasure herein executed.

LUCIO   Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death,
        whipping, and hanging.

DUKE VINCENTIO  Slandering a prince deserves it.

        [Exit Officers with LUCIO]

        She, Claudio, that you wrong'd, look you restore.
        Joy to you, Mariana! Love her, Angelo:
        I have confess'd her and I know her virtue.
        Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness:
        There's more behind that is more gratulate.
        Thanks, provost, for thy care and secrecy:
        We shill employ thee in a worthier place.
        Forgive him, Angelo, that brought you home
        The head of Ragozine for Claudio's:
        The offence pardons itself. Dear Isabel,
        I have a motion much imports your good;
        Whereto if you'll a willing ear incline,
        What's mine is yours and what is yours is mine.
        So, bring us to our palace; where we'll show
        What's yet behind, that's meet you all should know.

        [Exeunt]