William Shakespeare - The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Bound by my charity and my bless’d 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, sentenc’d: a young man

More fit to do another such offence

Than die for this.

DUKE.

When must he die?

PROVOST.

As I do think, tomorrow.—

[To JULIET.] I have provided for you; stay awhile

And you shall be conducted.

DUKE.

Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry?

JULIET.

I do; and bear the shame most patiently.

DUKE.

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.

Love you the man that wrong’d you?

JULIET.

Yes, as I love the woman that wrong’d him.

DUKE.

So then, it seems, your most offenceful act

Was mutually committed.

JULIET.

Mutually.

DUKE.

Then was your sin of heavier kind than his.

JULIET.

I do confess it, and repent it, father.

DUKE.

‘Tis meet so, daughter: but lest you do repent

As that the sin hath brought you to this shame,—

Which sorrow is always toward 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.

There rest.

Your partner, as I hear, must die tomorrow,

And I am going with instruction to him.—

Grace go with you!

DUKE.

Benedicite!

[Exit.]

JULIET.

Must die tomorrow! O, injurious law,

That respites me a life whose very comfort

Is still a dying horror!

PROVOST.

‘Tis pity of him.

[Exeunt.]

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 sear’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 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 the 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-wished 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!

[Retiring.]

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.

Pleas’d 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 enshielded beauty ten times louder

Than beauty could, displayed.—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 desir’d of such a person,

Whose credit with the judge, or own great place,

Could fetch your brother from the manacles

Of the all-binding 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 suppos’d, 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’d wear as rubies,

And strip myself to death, as to a bed

That longing have been sick for, ere I’d yield

My body up to shame.

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