Measure For Measure

1 Enter Angelo.
2 ANGELO.
3 When I would pray and think, I think and pray
4 To several subjects. Heaven hath my empty words,
5 Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,
6 Anchors on Isabel. Heaven in my mouth,
7 As if I did but only chew his name,
8 And in my heart the strong and swelling evil
9 Of my conception. The state whereon I studied
10 Is, like a good thing being often read,
11 Grown sere and tedious; yea, my gravity,
12 Wherein—let no man hear me—I take pride,
13 Could I with boot change for an idle plume
14 Which the air beats for vain. O place, O form,
15 How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,
16 Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls
17 To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood.
18 Let’s write good angel on the devil’s horn.
19 ’Tis not the devil’s crest.
20 [_Knock within._]
21 How now, who’s there?
22 Enter Servant.
23 SERVANT.
24 One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you.
25 ANGELO.
26 Teach her the way.
27 [_Exit Servant._]
28 O heavens,
29 Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,
30 Making both it unable for itself
31 And dispossessing all my other parts
32 Of necessary fitness?
33 So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons,
34 Come all to help him, and so stop the air
35 By which he should revive. And even so
36 The general subject to a well-wished king
37 Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness
38 Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love
39 Must needs appear offence.
40 Enter Isabella.
41 How now, fair maid?
42 ISABELLA.
43 I am come to know your pleasure.
44 ANGELO.
45 That you might know it, would much better please me
46 Than to demand what ’tis. Your brother cannot live.
47 ISABELLA.
48 Even so. Heaven keep your honour.
49 ANGELO.
50 Yet may he live a while. And, it may be,
51 As long as you or I. Yet he must die.
52 ISABELLA.
53 Under your sentence?
54 ANGELO.
55 Yea.
56 ISABELLA.
57 When, I beseech you? That in his reprieve,
58 Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted
59 That his soul sicken not.
60 ANGELO.
61 Ha! Fie, these filthy vices! It were as good
62 To pardon him that hath from nature stolen
63 A man already made, as to remit
64 Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven’s image
65 In stamps that are forbid. ’Tis all as easy
66 Falsely to take away a life true made
67 As to put metal in restrained means
68 To make a false one.
69 ISABELLA.
70 ’Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth.
71 ANGELO.
72 Say you so? Then I shall pose you quickly.
73 Which had you rather, that the most just law
74 Now took your brother’s life; or, to redeem him,
75 Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness
76 As she that he hath stained?
77 ISABELLA.
78 Sir, believe this:
79 I had rather give my body than my soul.
80 ANGELO.
81 I talk not of your soul. Our compelled sins
82 Stand more for number than for accompt.
83 ISABELLA.
84 How say you?
85 ANGELO.
86 Nay, I’ll not warrant that, for I can speak
87 Against the thing I say. Answer to this:
88 I, now the voice of the recorded law,
89 Pronounce a sentence on your brother’s life.
90 Might there not be a charity in sin
91 To save this brother’s life?
92 ISABELLA.
93 Please you to do’t,
94 I’ll take it as a peril to my soul;
95 It is no sin at all, but charity.
96 ANGELO.
97 Pleased you to do’t at peril of your soul,
98 Were equal poise of sin and charity.
99 ISABELLA.
100 That I do beg his life, if it be sin,
101 Heaven let me bear it. You granting of my suit,
102 If that be sin, I’ll make it my morn prayer
103 To have it added to the faults of mine,
104 And nothing of your answer.
105 ANGELO.
106 Nay, but hear me.
107 Your sense pursues not mine. Either you are ignorant,
108 Or seem so, crafty; and that’s not good.
109 ISABELLA.
110 Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,
111 But graciously to know I am no better.
112 ANGELO.
113 Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright
114 When it doth tax itself, as these black masks
115 Proclaim an enshield beauty ten times louder
116 Than beauty could, displayed. But mark me;
117 To be received plain, I’ll speak more gross.
118 Your brother is to die.
119 ISABELLA.
120 So.
121 ANGELO.
122 And his offence is so, as it appears,
123 Accountant to the law upon that pain.
124 ISABELLA.
125 True.
126 ANGELO.
127 Admit no other way to save his life—
128 As I subscribe not that, nor any other,
129 But, in the loss of question, that you, his sister,
130 Finding yourself desired of such a person
131 Whose credit with the judge, or own great place,
132 Could fetch your brother from the manacles
133 Of the all-binding law; and that there were
134 No earthly mean to save him but that either
135 You must lay down the treasures of your body
136 To this supposed, or else to let him suffer,
137 What would you do?
138 ISABELLA.
139 As much for my poor brother as myself.
140 That is, were I under the terms of death,
141 Th’ impression of keen whips I’d wear as rubies,
142 And strip myself to death as to a bed
143 That longing have been sick for, ere I’d yield
144 My body up to shame.
145 ANGELO.
146 Then must your brother die.
147 ISABELLA.
148 And ’twere the cheaper way.
149 Better it were a brother died at once
150 Than that a sister, by redeeming him,
151 Should die for ever.
152 ANGELO.
153 Were not you then as cruel as the sentence
154 That you have slandered so?
155 ISABELLA.
156 Ignominy in ransom and free pardon
157 Are of two houses. Lawful mercy
158 Is nothing kin to foul redemption.
159 ANGELO.
160 You seemed of late to make the law a tyrant,
161 And rather proved the sliding of your brother
162 A merriment than a vice.
163 ISABELLA.
164 O, pardon me, my lord. It oft falls out,
165 To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean.
166 I something do excuse the thing I hate
167 For his advantage that I dearly love.
168 ANGELO.
169 We are all frail.
170 ISABELLA.
171 Else let my brother die,
172 If not a feodary but only he
173 Owe and succeed by weakness.
174 ANGELO.
175 Nay, women are frail too.
176 ISABELLA.
177 Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves,
178 Which are as easy broke as they make forms.
179 Women?—Help, heaven! Men their creation mar
180 In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail;
181 For we are soft as our complexions are,
182 And credulous to false prints.
183 ANGELO.
184 I think it well.
185 And from this testimony of your own sex,
186 Since I suppose we are made to be no stronger
187 Than faults may shake our frames, let me be bold.
188 I do arrest your words. Be that you are,
189 That is, a woman. If you be more, you’re none.
190 If you be one, as you are well expressed
191 By all external warrants, show it now
192 By putting on the destined livery.
193 ISABELLA.
194 I have no tongue but one. Gentle my lord,
195 Let me intreat you speak the former language.
196 ANGELO.
197 Plainly conceive, I love you.
198 ISABELLA.
199 My brother did love Juliet,
200 And you tell me that he shall die for ’t.
201 ANGELO.
202 He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love.
203 ISABELLA.
204 I know your virtue hath a license in’t,
205 Which seems a little fouler than it is,
206 To pluck on others.
207 ANGELO.
208 Believe me, on mine honour,
209 My words express my purpose.
210 ISABELLA.
211 Ha! Little honour to be much believed,
212 And most pernicious purpose! Seeming, seeming!
213 I will proclaim thee, Angelo, look for’t.
214 Sign me a present pardon for my brother
215 Or with an outstretched throat I’ll tell the world aloud
216 What man thou art.
217 ANGELO.
218 Who will believe thee, Isabel?
219 My unsoiled name, th’ austereness of my life,
220 My vouch against you, and my place i’ th’ state
221 Will so your accusation overweigh
222 That you shall stifle in your own report,
223 And smell of calumny. I have begun,
224 And now I give my sensual race the rein.
225 Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite;
226 Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes
227 That banish what they sue for. Redeem thy brother
228 By yielding up thy body to my will;
229 Or else he must not only die the death,
230 But thy unkindness shall his death draw out
231 To ling’ring sufferance. Answer me tomorrow,
232 Or, by the affection that now guides me most,
233 I’ll prove a tyrant to him. As for you,
234 Say what you can, my false o’erweighs your true.
235 [_Exit._]
236 ISABELLA.
237 To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,
238 Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,
239 That bear in them one and the self-same tongue
240 Either of condemnation or approof,
241 Bidding the law make curtsy to their will,
242 Hooking both right and wrong to th’ appetite,
243 To follow as it draws! I’ll to my brother.
244 Though he hath fall’n by prompture of the blood,
245 Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour
246 That, had he twenty heads to tender down
247 On twenty bloody blocks, he’d yield them up
248 Before his sister should her body stoop
249 To such abhorred pollution.
250 Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die.
251 More than our brother is our chastity.
252 I’ll tell him yet of Angelo’s request,
253 And fit his mind to death, for his soul’s rest.
254 [_Exit._]