Measure For Measure

1 Enter Duke and Friar Thomas.
2 DUKE.
3 No, holy father, throw away that thought;
4 Believe not that the dribbling dart of love
5 Can pierce a complete bosom. Why I desire thee
6 To give me secret harbour hath a purpose
7 More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends
8 Of burning youth.
9 FRIAR THOMAS.
10 May your Grace speak of it?
11 DUKE.
12 My holy sir, none better knows than you
13 How I have ever loved the life removed,
14 And held in idle price to haunt assemblies
15 Where youth, and cost, a witless bravery keeps.
16 I have delivered to Lord Angelo,
17 A man of stricture and firm abstinence,
18 My absolute power and place here in Vienna,
19 And he supposes me travelled to Poland;
20 For so I have strewed it in the common ear,
21 And so it is received. Now, pious sir,
22 You will demand of me why I do this?
23 FRIAR THOMAS.
24 Gladly, my lord.
25 DUKE.
26 We have strict statutes and most biting laws,
27 The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds,
28 Which for this fourteen years we have let slip,
29 Even like an o’ergrown lion in a cave
30 That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers,
31 Having bound up the threat’ning twigs of birch,
32 Only to stick it in their children’s sight
33 For terror, not to use, in time the rod
34 Becomes more mocked than feared: so our decrees,
35 Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead,
36 And liberty plucks justice by the nose,
37 The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
38 Goes all decorum.
39 FRIAR THOMAS.
40 It rested in your Grace
41 To unloose this tied-up justice when you pleased;
42 And it in you more dreadful would have seemed
43 Than in Lord Angelo.
44 DUKE.
45 I do fear, too dreadful.
46 Sith ’twas my fault to give the people scope,
47 ’Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them
48 For what I bid them do; for we bid this be done
49 When evil deeds have their permissive pass
50 And not the punishment. Therefore, indeed, my father,
51 I have on Angelo imposed the office;
52 Who may in th’ ambush of my name strike home,
53 And yet my nature never in the fight
54 To do in slander. And to behold his sway,
55 I will, as ’twere a brother of your order,
56 Visit both prince and people. Therefore, I prithee,
57 Supply me with the habit, and instruct me
58 How I may formally in person bear
59 Like a true friar. Moe reasons for this action
60 At our more leisure shall I render you;
61 Only, this one: Lord Angelo is precise;
62 Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses
63 That his blood flows or that his appetite
64 Is more to bread than stone. Hence shall we see,
65 If power change purpose, what our seemers be.
66 [_Exeunt._]