MEASURE FOR MEASURE

by Shakespeare · Cluster: Ottava Rima

Abstract

A ‘problem play’ / tragicomedy set in Vienna where the deputy Angelo’s hypocritical demand for Isabella’s chastity in exchange for her brother’s life probes justice and mercy, power and corruption, sin, chastity and forgiveness.

Capitoli / Chapters

• Act I, Scene 1
• Act I, Scene 2
• Act I, Scene 3
• Act I, Scene 4
• Act II, Scene 1
• Act II, Scene 2
• Act II, Scene 3
• Act III, Scene 1
• Act IV, Scene 1
• Act IV, Scene 2
• Act IV, Scene 3
• Act IV, Scene 4
• Act IV, Scene 5
• Act IV, Scene 6
• Act V, Scene 1

Connections

Topoi: World Upside Down, Memento Mori Archetypes: Corrupt Official, Tyrant, Innocent Motifs: Concealment Hidden Identity, Death, City Themes & Concepts: Justice Right and Wrong, Mercy, Power and Corruption, Lust Sexual Desire, Appearance vs Reality, Deception, Guilt, Mortality, Grace and Redemption, Sin and the Fall, Temptation, Conscience Forms & Genres: Problem Play, Tragicomedy, Verse Drama, Blank Verse Historical References: Bible, Christianity Characters: Vincentio the Duke, Angelo, Isabella, Claudio, Lucio, Mariana, Escalus, Pompey

Testo integrale / Full text

MEASURE FOR MEASURE BY SHAKESPEARE, ADAPTED BY THOMAS MIDDLETON Measure for Measure, first printed in the 1623 Folio, was performed at court on 26 December 1604. Plague had caused London’s theatres to be closed from May 1603 to April 1604; the play was probably written and first acted during this period. Dislocations and other features of the text as printed suggest that it may have undergone adaptation after Shakespeare’s death. Someone—perhaps Thomas Middleton, to judge by the style—seems to have supplied a new, seedy opening to Act I, Scene 2; and an adapter seems also to have altered 3.1. 517-4.1.63 by transposing the Duke’s two soliloquies, by introducing a stanza from a popular song, and supplying dialogue to follow it, and by adding other short passages. We print the text in what we believe to be its adapted form; a conjectured reconstruction of Shakespeare’s original version of the adapted sections is given in the Additional Passages. The story of a woman who, in seeking to save the life of a male relative, arouses the lust of a man in authority was an ancient one that reached literary form in the mid sixteenth century. Shakespeare may have known the prose version in Giambattista Cinzio Giraldi’s Gli Ecatommiti (1565, translated into French in 1583) and the same author’s play Epitia (1573, published in 1583), but his main source was George Whetstone’s unsuccessful, unperformed two-part tragicomedy Promos and Cassandra, published in 1578. Shakespeare’s title comes from St Matthew’s account of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount: ‘with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again’. The title is not expressive of the play’s morality, but it alerts the spectator to Shakespeare’s exploration of moral issues. His heroine, Isabella, is not merely, as in Whetstone, a virtuous young maiden: she is about to enter a nunnery. Her brother, Claudio, has not, as in Whetstone, been accused (however unjustly) of rape: his union with the girl (Juliet) he has made pregnant has been ratified by a betrothal ceremony, and lacks only the church’s formal blessing. So Angelo, deputizing for the absent Duke of Vienna, seems peculiarly harsh in attempting to enforce the city’s laws against fornication by insisting on Claudio’s execution; and Angelo’s hypocrisy in demanding Isabella’s chastity in return for her brother’s life seems correspondingly greater. By adding the character of Mariana, to whom Angelo himself had once been betrothed, and by employing the traditional motif of the ‘bed-trick’, by which Mariana substitutes for Isabella in Angelo’s bed, Shakespeare permits Isabella both to retain her virtue and to forgive Angelo without marrying him. Although Measure for Measure, like The Merchant of Venice, is much concerned with justice and mercy, its more explicit concern with sex and death along with the intense emotional reality, at least in the earlier part of the play, of its portrayal of Angelo, Isabella, and Claudio, creates a deeper seriousness of tone which takes it out of the world of romantic comedy into that of tragicomedy or, as the twentieth-century label has it, ‘problem play’. Its low-life characters inhabit a diseased world of brothels and prisons, but there is a life-enhancing quality in their frank acknowledgement of sexuality; and the Duke’s manipulation of events casts a tinge of romance over the play’s later scenes. Measure for Measure’s subtle and passionate exploration of issues of sexual morality, of the uses and abuses of power, gave it a special appeal in the later part of the twentieth century. Each of the ‘good’ characters fails in some respect; none of the ‘bad’ ones lacks some redeeming quality; all are, in the last analysis, ‘desperately mortal’ (4.2.148). THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY Vincentio, the DUKE of Vienna ANGELO, appointed his deputy ESCALUS, an old lord, appointed Angelo’s secondary

CLAUDIO, a young gentleman JULIET, betrothed to Claudio ISABELLA, Claudio’s sister, novice to a sisterhood of nuns

LUCIO, ‘a fantastic’ Two other such GENTLEMEN FROTH, a foolish gentleman MISTRESS OVERDONE, a bawd POMPEY, her clownish servant A PROVOST ELBOW, a simple constable A JUSTICE ABHORSON, an executioner BARNARDINE, a dissolute condemned prisoner MARIANA, betrothed to Angelo A BOY, attendant on Mariana FRIAR PETER FRANCESCA, a nun VARRIUS, a lord, friend to the Duke Lords, officers, citizens, servants

Measure for Measure

Atto 1, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter the Duke, Escalus, and other lords DUKE Escalus.
ESCALUS	My lord.
DUKE	Of government the properties to unfold Would seem in me t’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 this: 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 practice hath enriched any That we remember. He gives Escalus papers There is our commission, From which we would not have you warp. (To a lord) Call hither, I say bid come before us, Angelo. Exit lord (To Escalus) 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, dressed 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.
(didascalia)	Enter Angelo
DUKE	Look where he comes.
ANGELO	Always obedient to your grace’s will, I come to know your pleasure.
DUKE	Angelo, There is a kind of character in thy life That to th‘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 touched 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 1 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 stamped upon it.
DUKE	No more evasion. We have with leavened and prepared choice Proceeded to you; therefore take your honours.
(didascalia)	Angelo takes his commission
DUKE	Our haste from hence is of so quick condition That it prefers itself, and leaves unquestioned 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 th’ 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	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. Though 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.
(didascalia)	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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 1, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Lucio, and two other 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. 16
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. 20
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 pilled, 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? 40
SECOND GENTLEMAN	Yes, that thou hast, whether thou art tainted or free.
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Overdone
LUCIO	Behold, behold, where Madam Mitigation comes! I have purchased as many diseases under her roof as come to—45
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.
FIRST GENTLEMAN	(to Mistress Overdone) 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, Signor 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 Madame 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.
(didascalia)	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.
(didascalia)	Enter Pompey
MISTRESS OVERDONE	How now, what’s the news with you?
POMPEY	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 not you. 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.
(didascalia)	A noise within
MISTRESS OVERDONE	What’s to do here, Thomas Tapster? Let’s withdraw!
(didascalia)	Enter the Provost, Claudio, Juliet, and officers; Lucio and the two Gentlemen
POMPEY	Here comes Signor Claudio, led by the Provost to prison; and there’s Madame Juliet.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Mistress Overdone and Pompey
CLAUDIO	(to the Provost) Fellow, why dost thou show me thus to th’ 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 bonds of heaven. On whom it will, it will; On whom it will not, so; yet still ’tis just.
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 raven down their proper bane, A thirsty evil; and when we drink, we die.
LUCIO	If I 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.
(didascalia)	The Provost shows assent
CLAUDIO	Lucio, a word with you.
LUCIO	A hundred, if they’ll do you any good.
(didascalia)	Claudio and Lucio speak apart
LUCIO	Is lechery so looked 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	Unhapp’ly 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 eminence that fills it up— I stagger in. But this new governor Awakes me all the enrolled penalties Which have, like unscoured armour, hung by th’ wall So long that fourteen 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 thy 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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Lucio and gentlemen at one door;
(didascalia)	Claudio, Juliet, Provost, and officers at another

Atto 1, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter the Duke and a Friar
DUKE	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	May your grace speak of it?
DUKE	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 a witless bravery keeps. I have delivered to Lord Angelo— A man of stricture and firm abstinence— My absolute power and place here in Vienna; And he supposes me travelled to Poland— For so I have strewed it in the common ear, And so it is received. Now, pious sir, You will demand of me why I do this.
FRIAR	Gladly, my lord.
DUKE	We have strict statutes and most biting laws, The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds, Which for this fourteen 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 threat’ning twigs of birch Only to stick it in their children’s sight For terror, not to use, in time the rod More mocked becomes than feared: 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	It rested in your grace To unloose this tied-up Justice when you pleased, And it in you more dreadful would have seemed Than in Lord Angelo.
DUKE	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 th‘ambush of my name strike home, And yet my nature never in the fight T’allow 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 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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 1, Scena 4

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Isabella, and Francesca, a nun
ISABELLA	And have you nuns no farther privileges?
FRANCESCA	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!
(didascalia)	ISABELLA to Francesca
LUCIO	Who’s that which calls?
FRANCESCA	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 vowed, 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. Lucio calls within He calls again. I pray you answer him.
(didascalia)	She stands asidel
ISABELLA	Peace and prosperity! Who is’t that calls? She opens the door.
(didascalia)	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	‘Tis 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 enskied and sainted By your renouncement, an immortal spirit, And to be talked 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	Someone with child by him? My cousin Juliet?
LUCIO	Is she your cousin?
ISABELLA	Adoptedly, as schoolmaids 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—mysetf being one— In hand and hope of action; but we do learn, By those that know the very nerves of state, His giving 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 picked 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’s 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 makes 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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Isabella and Francesca at one door,
(didascalia)	Lucio at another door

Atto 2, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Angelo, Escalus, and servants; a Justice
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 attained th’effect of your own purpose— Whether you had not sometime in your life Erred in this point which now you censure him, And pulled 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 knows the law That thieves do pass on thieves? What’s open made to justice, That justice seizes. ’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 judgement 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?
(didascalia)	Enter Provost
PROVOST	Here, if it like your honour.
ANGELO	See that Claudio Be execute by nine tomorrow morning. Bring him his confessor, let him be prepared, For that’s the utmost of his pilgrimage.
(didascalia)	Exit Provost
ESCALUS	Well, heaven forgive him, and forgive us all! Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall. Some run from brakes of vice, and answer none; And some condemned for a fault alone.
(didascalia)	Enter Elbow, Froth, Pompey, and officers
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? Welll 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	(to Angelo) 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 therefor?
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	(to Escalus) Sir, if it please your honour, this is not so.
ELBOW	Prove it before these varlets here, thou honourable man, prove it.
ESCALUS	(to Angelo) 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 threepence; 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 threepence 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. no
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 fourscore pound a year, whose father died at Hallowmas—was’t not at Hallowmas, Master Froth?
FROTH	All Hallow 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. (To Escalus) 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.
(didascalia)	Exit Angelo
ESCALUS	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	(to Escalus) 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 is 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? (To Elbow) Is this true?
ELBOW	(to Pompey) O thou caitiff, O thou varlet, O thou wicked Hanniball I respected with her before I was married to her? (To Escalus) If ever I was respected with her, or she with me, let not your worship think me the poor Duke’s officer. (To Pompey) Prove this, thou wicked Hannibal, or I’ll have mine action of battery on thee.
ESCALUS	If he took you a box o’th’ 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	(to Froth) 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. (To Pompey) What trade are you of, sir?
POMPEY	A tapster, a poor widow’s tapster.
ESCALUS	Your mistress’s name?
POMPEY	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.
(didascalia)	Exit Froth
ESCALUS	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 spay 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 is 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 threepence 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 whipped. So for this time, Pompey, fare you well.
(didascalia)	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’s not whipped 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 the 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.
(didascalia)	Exit Elbow with officers
ESCALUS	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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 2, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter the 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.
(didascalia)	Exit Servant
PROVOST	I’ll know His pleasure; maybe 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!
(didascalia)	Enter
PROVOST	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 judgement 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.
(didascalia)	Enter Servant
SERVANT	Here is the sister of the man condemned 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.
(didascalia)	Exit Servant
ANGELO	See you the fornicatress be removed. Let her have needful but not lavish means. There shall be order for’t.
(didascalia)	Enter Lucio and Isabella
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 condemned 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 condemned 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	(to Angelo) 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 touched 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 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 slipped 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 judgement 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	Tomorrow? 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) 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 th‘edict infringe Had answered 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 raw, or by remissness new conceived And so in progress to be hatched 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 dismissed offence would after gall, And do him right that, answering one foul wrong, Lives not to act another. Be satisfied. Your brother dies tomorrow. Be content.
ISABELLA	So you must be the first that gives this sentence, And he that suffers. 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 never 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 gnarlèd oak Than the soft myrtle. But man, proud man, Dressed 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 makes 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	(aside to Isabella) Thou’rt i’th’ 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 advised 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’th’ 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. (To Isabella) 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 marred all else.
ISABELLA	Not with fond shekels of the tested gold, Or stones, whose rate are either rich or poor As fancy values them; but with true prayers, That shall be up at heaven and enter there Ere sunrise, prayers from preserved souls, From fasting maids whose minds are dedicate To nothing temporal.
ANGELO	Well, come to me tomorrow
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 prayer is crossed.
ISABELLA	At what hour tomorrow Shall I attend your lordship?
ANGELO	At any time fore noon.
ISABELLA	God save your honour.
ANGELO	(aside) From thee; even from thy virtue. Exeunt Isabella, Lucio, and Provost 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. Ever till now When men were fond, I smiled, and wondered how.
(didascalia)	Exit

Atto 2, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter at one door the Duke, disguised as a friar, and at another door the Provost
DUKE	Hail to you, Provost!—so I think you are.
PROVOST	I am the Provost. What’s your will, good friar?
DUKE	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.
(didascalia)	Enter Juliet
PROVOST	Look, here comes one, a gentlewoman of mine, Who, falling in the flaws of her own youth, Hath blistered 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	When must he die?
PROVOST	As I do think, tomorrow. (To Juliet) I have provided for you. Stay a while, 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 wronged you?
JULIET	Yes, as I love the woman that wronged 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. 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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt
PROVOST	2.4 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; God 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 seared 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 in 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 now the devil’s crest.
(didascalia)	Enter Servant
ANGELO	How now? Who’s there?
SERVANT	One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you.
ANGELO	Teach her the way.
(didascalia)	Exit Servant
ANGELO	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-wished king Quit their own part and, in obsequious fondness, Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love Must needs appear offence.
(didascalia)	Enter
ANGELO	Isabella How now, fair maid?
ISABELLA	I am come to know your pleasure.
ANGELO	(aside) That you might know it would much better please me Than to demand what ’tis. (To Isabella) Your brother cannot live.
ISABELLA	Even so. Heaven keep your honour.
ANGELO	Yet may he live a while, 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 God’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 moulds, 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 stained?
ISABELLA	Sir, believe this. I had rather give my body than my soul.
ANGELO	I talk not of your soul. Our compelled sins Stand more for number than for account.
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, 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 desired 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 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, Th’impression of keen whips I’d wear as rubies, And strip myself to death as to a bed That longing have been sick for, ere I’d yield My body up to shame.
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 slandered so?
ISABELLA	Ignominy in ransom and free pardon Are of two houses; lawful mercy Is nothing kin to foul redemption.
ANGELO	You seemed 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 federy, 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 expressed 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 outstretched throat I’ll tell the world aloud What man thou art.
ANGELO	Who will believe thee, Isabel? My unsoiled name, th‘austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i’th’ 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 ling‘ring sufferance. Answer me tomorrow, 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.
(didascalia)	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 selfsame tongue Either of condemnation or approof, Bidding the law make curtsy to their will, Hooking both right and wrong to th’appetite, To follow as it draws! I’ll to my brother. Though he hath fall’n 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’d yield them up Before his sister should her body stoop To such abhorred 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.
(didascalia)	Exit

Atto 3, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter the Duke, disguised as a friar, Claudio, and the Provost
DUKE	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	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 th’accommodations that thou bear’t 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 provok‘st, 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 striv’st 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’st 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 in this That bears the name of life? Yet in this life Lie hid more 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	(to Claudio) Dear sir, ere long I’ll visit you again.
CLAUDIO	Most holy sir, I thank you.
(didascalia)	Enter Isabella
ISABELLA	My business is a word or two with Claudio.
PROVOST	And very welcome. Look, signor, here’s your sister.
DUKE	Provost, a word with you.
PROVOST	As many as you please. The Duke and Provost draw aside
DUKE	Bring me to hear them speak where I may be concealed. They conceal themselves
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. Tomorrow 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. Dar’st 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 flow’ry 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’th’ head and follies doth enew 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 precise Angelo?
ISABELLA	O, ‘tis the cunning livery of hell The damnedest body to invest and cover In precise guards! Dost thou think, Claudio: If I would yield him my virginity, Thou might’st 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 tomorrow.
CLAUDIO	Thou shalt not do’t.
ISABELLA	O, were it but my life, I’d 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 th’ 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 dilated spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprisoned 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 played 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 that thou diest quickly. She parts from Claudio
CLAUDIO	O hear me, Isabella.
DUKE	(coming forward to Isabella) Vouchsafe a word, young sister, but one word.
ISABELLA	What is your will?
DUKE	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 a while.
DUKE	standing aside with Claudio 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 assay of her virtue, to practise his judgement 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 falsify 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	Hold you there. Farewell.
(didascalia)	Claudio joins Isabella
DUKE	Provost, a word with you.
PROVOST	(coming forward) What’s your will, father?
DUKE	That now you are come, you will be gone. Leave me a while with the maid. My mind promises with my habit no loss shall touch her by my company.
PROVOST	In good time. Exit with Claudio
DUKE	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	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	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	She should this Angelo have married, was affianced to her 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	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	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	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 hear, 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	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.
(didascalia)	Exit
(didascalia)	Enter Elbow, Clown, and officers
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	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 on lambskins too, to signify that craft, being richer than innocency, stands for the facing.
ELBOW	Come your way, sir.—Btess you, good father friar.
DUKE	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	(to Pompey) 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	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	That we were all as some would seem to be- Free from our faults, or faults from seeming free.
ELBOW	His neck will come to your waist: a cord, sir.
(didascalia)	Enter Lucio
POMPEY	I spy comfort, I cry bail. Here’s a gentleman, and a friend of mine.
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 clutched? What reply, ha? What sayst thou to this tune, matter, and method? Is’t not drowned i’th’ last rain, ha? What sayst 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	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	And you.
LUCIO	Does Bridget paint still, Pompey, ha?
ELBOW	(to Pompey) Come your ways, sir, come.
POMPEY	(to Lucio) You will not bail me then, sir?
LUCIO	Then, Pompey, nor now.—What news abroad, friar, what news?
ELBOW	(to Pompey) Come your ways, sir, come.
LUCIO	Go to kennel, Pompey, go.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Elbow, Pompey, and officers
LUCIO	What news, friar, of the Duke?
DUKE	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	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. 361
DUKE	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	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	How should he be made, then?
LUCIO	Some report a sea-maid spawned him, some that he was begot between two stockfishes. 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 ungenerative; that’s infallible.
DUKE	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	I never heard the absent Duke much detected for women; he was not inclined that way.
LUCIO	O sir, you are deceived.
DUKE	’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 crochets in him. He would be drunk too, that let me inform you.
DUKE	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	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	Wise? Why, no question but he was.
LUCIO	A very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow.
DUKE	Either this is 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. 410
DUKE	Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.
LUCIO	Come, sir, I know what I know.
DUKE	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	He shall know you better, sir, if I may live to report you.
LUCIO	I fear you not.
DUKE	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 tomorrow or no?
DUKE	Why should he die, sir?
LUCIO	Why? For filling a bottle with a tundish. I would the Duke we talk of were returned again; this 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	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?
(didascalia)	Enter Escalus, the Provost, and Mistress Overdone
DUKE	But who comes here?
ESCALUS	(to the Provost) 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. Provost, my brother Angelo will not be altered; Claudio must die tomorrow. 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 th’entertainment of death. Exeunt Provost and Mistress Overdone
ESCALUS	Good even, good father.
DUKE	Bliss and goodness on you.
ESCALUS	Of whence are you?
DUKE	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’th’ world?
DUKE	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 inconstant in any undertaking. There is scarce truth enough alive to make societies secure, but security enough to make fellowships accursed. 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	What pleasure was he given to?
ESCALUS	Rather rejoicing to see another merry than merry at anything 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	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	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	Peace be with you. Exit Escalus 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 Make my practice on the times To draw with idle spiders’ strings Most ponderous and substantial things? Craft against vice I must apply. With Angelo tonight shall lie His old betrothed but despised. So disguise shall, by th’ disguised, Pay with falsehood false exacting, And perform an old contracting.
(didascalia)	Exit

Atto 4, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Mariana discoveredwith a Boy singing
BOY	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, though sealed in vain, sealed in vain.
(didascalia)	Enter the Duke, disguised as a friar
MARIANA	Break off thy song, and haste thee quick away. Here comes a man of comfort, whose advice Hath often stilled my brawling discontent. Exit Boy I cry you mercy, sir, and well could wish io 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	’Tis good; though music oft hath such a charm To make bad good, and good provoke to harm. I pray you tell me, hath anybody enquired for me here today? Much upon this time have I promised here to meet.
MARIANA	You have not been enquired after; I have sat here all day.
(didascalia)	Enter
MARIANA	Isabella
DUKE	I do constantly believe you; the time is come even now. I shall crave your forbearance a little. Maybe I will call upon you anon, for some advantage to yourself.
MARIANA	I am always bound to you.
(didascalia)	Exit
DUKE	Very well met, and welcome. What is the news from this good deputy?
ISABELLA	He hath a garden circummured with brick, Whose western side is with a vineyard backed; And to that vineyard is a planked 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	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	Are there no other tokens Between you ’greed concerning her observance?
ISABELLA	No, none, but only a repair i’th’ dark, And that I have possessed 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	’Tis well borne up. I have not yet made known to Mariana A word of this.—What ho, within! Come forth!
(didascalia)	Enter Mariana
DUKE	(To Mariana) I pray you be acquainted with this maid. She comes to do you good.
ISABELLA	I do desire the like.
DUKE	(to Mariana) Do you persuade yourself that I respect you?
MARIANA	Good friar, I know you do, and so have found it.
DUKE	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	(to Isabella) Will’t please you walk aside?
(didascalia)	Exeunt
MARIANA	Mariana and Isabella
DUKE	O place and greatness, millions of false eyes Are stuck upon thee; volumes of report Run with their false and most contrarious quest Upon thy doings; thousand escapes of wit Make thee the father of their idle dream, And rack thee in their fancies.
(didascalia)	Enter Mariana and Isabella
DUKE	Welcome. How agreed?
ISABELLA	She’ll take the enterprise upon her, father, If you advise it.
DUKE	It is not my consent, But my entreaty too.
ISABELLA	(to Mariana) Little have you to say When you depart from him but, soft and low, ‘Remember now my brother’.
MARIANA	Fear me not.
DUKE	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 tilth’s to sow.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 4, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter the 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. Tomorrow 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 tomorrow 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—
POMPEY	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.
(didascalia)	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	(to Abhorson) You, sirrah, provide your block and your axe tomorrow, four o’clock.
ABHORSON	(to Pompey) 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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Abhorson and Pompey
PROVOST	Th’one has my pity; not a jot the other, Being a murderer, though he were my brother.
(didascalia)	Enter Claudio
PROVOST	Look, here’s the warrant, Claudio, for thy death. ’Tis now dead midnight, and by eight tomorrow Thou must be made immortal. Where’s Barnardine?
CLAUDIO	As fast locked up in sleep as guiltless labour When it lies starkly in the travailer’s bones. He will not wake.
PROVOST	Who can do good on him? Well, go prepare yourself.
(didascalia)	Knocking within
PROVOST	But hark, what noise? Heaven give your spirits comfort! Exit Claudio
(didascalia)	Knocking again
PROVOST	By and by! I hope it is some pardon or reprieve For the most gentle Claudio.
(didascalia)	Enter the Duke, disguised as a friar
PROVOST	Welcome, father.
DUKE	The best and wholesom’st spirits of the night Envelop you, good Provost! Who called here of late?
PROVOST	None since the curfew rung.
DUKE	Not Isabel?
PROVOST	No.
DUKE	They will then, ere’t be long.
PROVOST	What comfort is for Claudio?
DUKE	There’s some in hope.
PROVOST	It is a bitter deputy.
DUKE	Not so, not so; his life is paralleled 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 mealed with that Which he corrects, then were he tyrannous; But this being so, he’s just.
(didascalia)	Knocking within
DUKE	Now are they come.
(didascalia)	The Provost goes to a door
DUKE	This is a gentle Provost. Seldom when The steeled jailer is the friend of men.
(didascalia)	Knocking within
DUKE	(To Provost) How now, what noise? That spirit’s possessed with haste That wounds th’unlisting postern with these strokes.
PROVOST	There he must stay until the officer Arise to let him in. He is called up.
DUKE	Have you no countermand for Claudio yet, But he must die tomorrow?
PROVOST	None, sir, none.
DUKE	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 Professed the contrary.
(didascalia)	Enter a Messenger
PROVOST	This is his lordship’s man.
(didascalia)	DUKE And here comes Claudio’s pardon.
MESSENGER	(giving a paper to Provost) 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.
(didascalia)	Exit Messenger
DUKE	(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 borne in high authority. When vice makes mercy, mercy’s so extended That for the fault’s love is th’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	Pray you let’s hear.
PROVOST	(reading the letter) ‘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	What is that Barnardine, who is to be executed in th’afternoon?
PROVOST	A Bohemian born, but here nursed up and bred; one that is a prisoner nine years old.
DUKE	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	It is now apparent?
PROVOST	Most manifest, and not denied by himself.
DUKE	Hath he borne 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	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	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	In the delaying death.
PROVOST	Alack, 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	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 borne to Angelo.
PROVOST	Angelo hath seen them both, and will discover the favour.
DUKE	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 anything 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	Were you sworn to the Duke or to the deputy?
PROVOST	To him and to his substitutes.
DUKE	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	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. (Showing a letter) 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	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, th’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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 4, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	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, nine score 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 Threepile the mercer, for some four suits of peach-coloured satin, which now peaches him a beggar. Then have we here young Dizzy, and young Master Deepvow, and Master Copperspur and Master Starve-lackey the rapier and dagger man, and young Drop-hair that killed lusty Pudding, and Master Forthright the tilter, and brave Master Shoe-tie 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. 19
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	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.
(didascalia)	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. Enter the Duke, disguised as a friar
ABHORSON	(to Barnardine) Look you, sir, here comes your ghostly father. Do we jest now, think you?
DUKE	(to Barnardine) 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	O sir, you must; and therefore, I beseech you, Look forward on the journey you shall go.
BARNARDINE	I swear I will not die today, for any man’s persuasion.
DUKE	But hear you—
BARNARDINE	Not a word. If you have anything to say to me, come to my ward, for thence will not I today.
(didascalia)	Exit
DUKE	Unfit to live or die. O gravel heart! After him, fellows; bring him to the block.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Abhorson
DUKE	and Pompey
(didascalia)	Enter Provost
PROVOST	Now, sir, how do you find the prisoner?
DUKE	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 Ragusine, 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 Ragusine, more like to Claudio?
DUKE	O, ’tis an accident that heaven provides. Dispatch it presently; the hour draws on Prefixed 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	Let this be done: Put them in secret holds, both Barnardine and Claudio. Ere twice the sun hath made his journal greeting To yonder generation, you shall find Your safety manifested.
PROVOST	I am your free dependant.
DUKE	Quick, dispatch, and send the head to Angelo.
(didascalia)	Exit Provost
DUKE	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.
(didascalia)	Enter the Provost, with Ragusine’s head
PROVOST	Here is the head; I’ll carry it myself.
DUKE	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.
(didascalia)	Exit
ISABELLA	(within) Peace, ho, be here!
DUKE	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.
(didascalia)	ISABELLA within Ho, by your leave!
(didascalia)	Enter Isabella
DUKE	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	He hath released him, Isabel, from the world. His head is off and sent to Angelo.
ISABELLA	Nay, but it is not so.
DUKE	It is no other. Show your wisdom, daughter, in your close patience.
ISABELLA	O, I will to him and pluck out his eyes!
DUKE	You shall not be admitted to his sight.
ISABELLA	(weeping) Unhappy Claudio! Wretched Isabel! Injurious world! Most damned Angelo!
DUKE	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 tomorrow—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	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 tonight. 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. (Giving the letter) 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.
(didascalia)	Enter Lucio
DUKE	Who’s here?
LUCIO	Good even. Friar, where’s the Provost?
DUKE	Not within, sir.
(didascalia)	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 tomorrow. 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	Sir, the Duke is marvellous little beholden 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 tak’st him for.
DUKE	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	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	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	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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 4, Scena 4

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	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’th’ 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.
(didascalia)	Exit Escalus
ANGELO	This deed unshapes me quite, makes me unpregnant And dull to all proceedings. A deflowered 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 off a credent bulk, That no particular scandal once can touch But it confounds the breather. He should have lived, Save that his riotous youth, with dangerous sense, Might in the times to come have ta’en revenge By so receiving a dishonoured life With ransom of such shame. Would yet he had lived. Alack, when once our grace we have forgot, Nothing goes right; we would, and we would not. Exit

Atto 4, Scena 5

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter the Duke, in his own habit, and Friar Peter
DUKE	These letters at fit time deliver me. 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 Flavio’s 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	It shall be speeded well.
(didascalia)	Exit
(didascalia)	Enter Varrius
DUKE	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!
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 4, Scena 6

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	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.
(didascalia)	Enter Friar Peter
MARIANA	I would Friar Peter—
ISABELLA	O, peace; the friar is come.
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 ent’ring; therefore hence, away. Exeunt

Atto 5, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter at one door the Duke, Varrius, and lords, at another door Angelo, Escalus, Lucio, citizens, and officers
DUKE	(to Angelo) My very worthy cousin, fairly met. (To Escalus) Our old and faithful friend, we are glad to see you.
ANGELO	and ESCALUS Happy return be to your royal grace.
DUKE	Many and hearty thankings to you both. We have made enquiry 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	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.
(didascalia)	They walk forward.
(didascalia)	Enter Friar Peter and Isabella
FRIAR PETER	Now is your time. Speak loud, and kneel before him.
ISABELLA	(kneeling) Justice, O royal Duke! Vail your regard Upon a wronged—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	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, hear!
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.
(didascalia)	ISABELLA standing
ANGELO	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	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 th‘end of reck’ning.
DUKE	Away with her. Poor soul, She speaks this in th’infirmity of sense.
ISABELLA	O prince, I conjure thee, as thou believ‘st There is another comfort than this world, That thou neglect me not with that opinion That I am touched 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	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	Many that are not mad Have sure more lack of reason. What would you say?
ISABELLA	I am the sister of one Claudio, Condemned upon the act of fornication To lose his head, condemned 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	(to Lucio) You were not bid to speak.
LUCIO	No, my good lord, Nor wished to hold my peace.
DUKE	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	The warrant’s for yourself; take heed to’t.
ISABELLA	This gentleman told somewhat of my tale—
LUCIO	Right.
DUKE	It may be right, but you are i’the wrong To speak before your time. (To Isabella) Proceed.
ISABELLA	I went To this pernicious caitiff deputy—
DUKE	That’s somewhat madly spoken.
ISABELLA	Pardon it; The phrase is to the matter.
DUKE	Mended again. The matter; proceed.
ISABELLA	In brief, to set the needless process by, How I persuaded, how I prayed and kneeled, How he refelled 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	This is most likely!
ISABELLA	O, that it were as like as it is true!
DUKE	By heaven, fond wretch, thou know‘st not what thou speak’st, Or else thou art suborned against his honour In hateful practice. 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 weighed thy brother by himself, And not have cut him off. Someone hath set you on. Confess the truth, and say by whose advice Thou cam’st here to complain.
ISABELLA	And is this all? Then, O you blessed ministers above, Keep me in patience, and with ripened time Unfold the evil which is here wrapped up In countenance! Heaven shield your grace from woe, As I, thus wronged, hence unbelievèd go.
DUKE	I know you’d fain be gone. An officer! To prison with her. An officer guards Isabella Shall we thus permit A blasting and a scandalous breath to fall On him so near us? This needs must be a practice. Who knew of your intent and coming hither?
ISABELLA	One that I would were here, Friar Lodowick.
(didascalia)	Exit, guarded
DUKE	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	Words against me? This’ a good friar, belike! And to set on this wretched woman here Against our substitute! Let this friar be found.
(didascalia)	Exit one or more
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	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 villainously; 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	Good friar, let’s hear it.
(didascalia)	Exit Friar Peter
DUKE	Do you not smile at this, Lord Angelo? O heaven, the vanity of wretched fools! Give us some seats.
(didascalia)	Seats are brought in
DUKE	Come, cousin Angelo, In this I’ll be impartial; be you judge Of your own cause. The Duke and Angelo sit.
(didascalia)	Enter Friar Peter, and Mariana, veiled
DUKE	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	What, are you married?
MARIANA	No, my lord.
DUKE	Are you a maid?
MARIANA	No, my lord.
DUKE	A widow then?
MARIANA	Neither, my lord.
DUKE	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	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	For the benefit of silence, would thou wert so too.
LUCIO	Well, my lord.
DUKE	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 th’effect of love.
ANGELO	Charges she more than me?
MARIANA	Not that I know.
DUKE	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	(unveiling) My husband bids me; now I will unmask. This is that face, thou cruel Angelo, Which once thou swor’st was worth the looking on. This is the hand which, with a vowed contract, Was fast belocked 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	(to Angelo) Know you this woman?
LUCIO	Carnally, she says.
DUKE	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.
(didascalia)	MARIANA kneeling before the Duke Noble prince,
ANGELO	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 forever be confixèd 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 touched. 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 practice out.
DUKE	(standing) Ay, with my heart, And punish them even 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 sealed 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. Escalus sits
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	(to one or more) Go, do it instantly.
(didascalia)	Exit one or more
DUKE	(To Angelo) 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.
(didascalia)	Exit Duke
ESCALUS	Signor 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 villainous 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 one or more (To Angelo) 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. Enter Isabella, guarded
ESCALUS	(to Isabella) Come on, mistress, here’s a gentlewoman denies all that you have said.
(didascalia)	Enter the Duke, disguised as a friar, hooded, and the Provost
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	(to the Duke) Come, sir, did you set these women on to slander Lord Angelo? They have confessed you did.
DUKE	’Tis false.
ESCALUS	How! Know you where you are?
DUKE	Respect to your great place, and let the devil Be sometime honoured fore 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	Boldly at least. (To Isabella and Mariana) 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 unhallowed friar, Is’t not enough thou hast suborned 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 th’ Duke himself, to tax him with injustice? Take him hence; to th’ rack with him. We’ll touse you Joint by joint—but we will know his purpose. What, ‘unjust’?
DUKE	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’errun 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 th’ state! Away with him to prison.
ANGELO	What can you vouch against him, Signor Lucio? Is this the man that you did tell us of?
LUCIO	’Tis he, my lord.—Come hither, goodman Bald-pate. Do you know me?
DUKE	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	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	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	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 giglets too, and with the other confederate companion.
(didascalia)	Mariana is raised to her feet, and is guarded
ESCALUS	The Provost makes to seize the Duke
DUKE	Stay, sir, stay a while.
ANGELO	What, resists he? Help him, Lucio.
LUCIO	(to the Duke) 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? He pulls off the friar’s hood, and discovers the Duke.
(didascalia)	Angelo and Escalus rise
DUKE	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. (To one or more) Lay hold on him.
LUCIO	This may prove worse than hanging.
DUKE	(to Escalus) What you have spoke, I pardon. Sit you down. We’ll borrow place of him.
(didascalia)	Escalus sits
DUKE	(To Angelo) Sir, by your leave.
(didascalia)	He takes Angelo’s seat
DUKE	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 looked 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	Come hither, Mariana. (To Angelo) Say, wast thou e’er contracted to this woman?
ANGELO	I was, my lord.
DUKE	Go, take her hence and marry her instantly. Do you the office, friar; which consummate, Return him here again. Go with him, Provost.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Angelo, Mariana, Friar Peter, and the
DUKE	Provost
ESCALUS	My lord, I am more amazed at his dishonour Than at the strangeness of it.
DUKE	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 Attorneyed at your service.
ISABELLA	O, give me pardon, That I, your vassal, have employed and pained Your unknown sovereignty.
DUKE	You are pardoned, 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 brained 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.
(didascalia)	Enter Angelo, Mariana, Friar Peter, and the Provost
DUKE	For this new-married man approaching here, Whose salt imagination yet hath wronged 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 stooped 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	It is your husband mocked 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 enstate and widow you with all, To buy you a better husband.
MARIANA	O my dear lord, I crave no other, nor no better man.
DUKE	Never crave him; we are definitive.
MARIANA	Gentle my liege—
DUKE	You do but lose your labour.— Away with him to death. (To Lucio) Now, sir, to you.
MARIANA	(kneeling) 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	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	He dies for Claudio’s death.
ISABELLA	(kneeling) Most bounteous sir, Look, if it please you, on this man condemned As if my brother lived. I partly think A due sincerity governed 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 perished by the way. Thoughts are no subjects, Intents but merely thoughts.
MARIANA	Merely, my lord.
DUKE	Your suit’s unprofitable. Stand up, I say.
(didascalia)	Mariana
(didascalia)	and Isabella stand
DUKE	I have bethought me of another fault. Provost, how came it Claudio was beheaded At an unusual hour?
PROVOST	It was commanded so.
DUKE	Had you a special warrant for the deed?
PROVOST	No, my good lord, it was by private message.
DUKE	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	What’s he?
PROVOST	His name is Barnardine.
DUKE	I would thou hadst done so by Claudio. Go fetch him hither. Let me look upon him.
(didascalia)	Exit Provost
ESCALUS	I am sorry one so learned and so wise As you, Lord Angelo, have still appeared, Should slip so grossly, both in the heat of blood And lack of tempered judgement 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.
(didascalia)	Enter Barnardine and the Provost; Claudio, muffled, and Juliet
DUKE	Which is that Barnardine?
PROVOST	This, my lord.
DUKE	There was a friar told me of this man. (To Barnardine) Sirrah, thou art said to have a stubborn soul That apprehends no further than this world, And squar‘st thy life according. Thou’rt condemned; 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. (To Provost) 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. He unmuffles Claudio
DUKE	(to Isabella) If he be like your brother, for his sake Is he pardoned; 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 quick’ning 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 whipped.
DUKE	Whipped first, sir, and hanged after. Proclaim it, Provost, round about the city, If any woman wronged 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 finished, Let him be whipped and hanged.
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	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	Slandering a prince deserves it.
(didascalia)	Exit
DUKE	Lucio
(didascalia)	guarded
DUKE	She, Claudio, that you wronged, look you restore. Joy to you, Mariana. Love her, Angelo. I have confessed 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 shall employ thee in a worthier place. Forgive him, Angelo, that brought you home The head of Ragusine for Claudio’s. Th’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. (To all) So bring us to our palace, where we’ll show What’s yet behind that’s meet you all should know.
(didascalia)	Exeunt
ADDITIONAL PASSAGES	The text of Measure for Measure given in this edition is probably that of an adapted version made for Shakespeare’s company after his death. Adaptation seems to have affected two passages, printed below as we believe Shakespeare to have written them. A. 1.2.0.1-116 A.2-9 (‘… by him’) are lines which the adapter (whom we believe to be Thomas Middleton) evidently intended to be replaced by 1.2.56-79 of the play as we print it. The adapter must have contributed all of 1.2.0.1-83, which in the earliest and subsequent printed texts precede the discussion between the Clown (Pompey) and the Bawd (Mistress Overdone) about Claudio’s arrest. Lucio’s entry alone at 1. 40.1 below, some eleven lines after his re-entry with the two Gentlemen and the Provost’s party in the adapted text, probably represents Shakespeare’s original intention. In his version, Juliet, present but silent in the adapted text both in 1.2 and 5.1, probably did not appear in either scene; accordingly, the words ‘and there’s Madam Juliet’ (1.2.107) must also be the reviser’s work, and do not appear below.
(didascalia)	Enter Pompey and Mistress Overdone, meeting
MISTRESS OVERDONE	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 not you. 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.
(didascalia)	A noise within
MISTRESS OVERDONE	What’s to do here, Thomas Tapster? Let’s withdraw!
(didascalia)	Enter the Provost and Claudio
POMPEY	Here comes Signor Claudio, led by the Provost to prison. Exeunt Mistress Overdone and Pompey
CLAUDIO	Fellow, why dost thou show me thus to th’ 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 bonds of heaven. On whom it will, it will; On whom it will not, so; yet still ’tis just.
(didascalia)	Enter Lucio
LUCIO	Why, how now, Claudio? Whence comes this restraint? B. 3.1.515-4.1.65 Before revision there would have been no act-break and no song; the lines immediately following the song would also have been absent. The Duke’s soliloquies ‘He who the sword of heaven will bear’ and ‘O place and greatness’ have evidently been transposed in revision; in the original, the end of ‘O place and greatness’ would have led straight on to the Duke’s meeting with Isabella and then Mariana.
ESCALUS	I am going to visit the prisoner. Fare you well.
DUKE	Peace be with you. Exit Escalus O place and greatness, millions of false eyes Are stuck upon thee; volumes of report Run with their false and most contrarious quest Upon thy doings; thousand escapes of wit Make thee the father of their idle dream, And rack thee in their fancies.
(didascalia)	Enter Isabella
DUKE	Very well met. What is the news from this good deputy?
ISABELLA	He hath a garden circummured with brick, Whose western side is with a vineyard backed; And to that vineyard is a planckèd 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	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	Are there no other tokens Between you ’greed concerning her observance?
ISABELLA	No, none, but only a repair i’th’ dark, And that I have possessed 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	’Tis well borne up. I have not yet made known to Mariana A word of this.—What ho, within! Come forth!
(didascalia)	Enter Mariana
DUKE	(To Mariana) I pray you be acquainted with this maid. She comes to do you good.
ISABELLA	I do desire the like.
DUKE	(to Mariana) Do you persuade yourself that I respect you?
MARIANA	Good friar, I know you do, and so have found it.
DUKE	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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Mariana and Isabella
DUKE	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 Make my practice on the times To draw with idle spiders’ strings Most ponderous and substantial things? Craft against vice I must apply. With Angelo tonight shall lie His old betrothed but despised. So disguise shall, by th’ disguised, Pay with falsehood false exacting, And perform an old contracting.
(didascalia)	Enter
DUKE	Mariana
(didascalia)	and Isabella
DUKE	Welcome. How agreed?
ISABELLA	She’ll take the enterprise upon her, father, If you advise it.
OTHELLO	Othello was given before James I in the Banqueting House at Whitehall on I November 1604. Information about the Turkish invasion of Cyprus appears to derive from Richard Knolles’s History of the Turks, published no earlier than 30 September 1603, so Shakespeare probably completed his play some time between that date and the summer of 1604. It first appeared in print in a quarto of 1622; the version printed in the 1623 Folio is about 160 lines longer, and has over a thousand differences in wording. It seems that Shakespeare partially revised his play, adding, for example, Desdemona’s willow song (4.3) and building up Emilia’s role in the closing scenes. We base our text on the Folio as that seems to represent Shakespeare’s second thoughts. Shakespeare’s decision to make a black man a tragic hero was bold and original: by an ancient tradition, blackness was associated with sin and death; and blackamoors in plays before Shakespeare are generally villainous (as is Aaron in Titus Andronicus). The story of a Moorish commander deluded by his ensign (standard-bearer) into believing that his young wife has been unfaithful to him with another soldier derives from a prose tale by the Italian Giambattista Cinzio Giraldi first published in 1565 in a collection of linked tales, Gli Ecatommiti (The Hundred Tales). Shakespeare must have read it either in Italian or in a French translation of 1584, he may have looked at both. Giraldi tells the tale in a few pages of compressed, matter-of-fact narrative interspersed with brief conversations. His main characters are a Moor of Venice (Othello), his Venetian wife (Desdemona), his ensign (Iago), his ensign’s wife (Emilia), and a corporal (Cassio) ‘who was very dear to the Moor’. Only Desdemona is named. Shakespeare’s invented characters include Roderigo, a young, disappointed suitor of Desdemona, and Brabanzio, Desdemona’s father, who opposes her marriage to Othello. Bianca, Cassio’s mistress, is developed from a few hints in the source. Shakespeare also introduces the military action between Turkey and Venice—infidels and Christians—which gives especial importance to Othello’s posting to Cyprus, a Venetian protectorate which the Turks attacked in 1570 and conquered in the following year. In the source, Othello and Desdemona are already happily settled into married life when they go to Cyprus; Shakespeare compresses the time-scheme and makes many changes to the narrative. Othello, a great success in Shakespeare’s time, was one of the first plays to be acted after the reopening of the theatres in 1660, and since that time has remained one of the most popular plays on the English stage.
THE PERSONS OF THE	PLAY OTHELLO, the Moor of Venice DESDEMONA, his wife Michael CASSIO, his lieutenant BIANCA, a courtesan, in love with Cassio IAGO, the Moor’s ensign EMILIA, Iago’s wife A CLOWN, a servant of Othello The DUKE of Venice BRABANZIO, Desdemona’s father, a Senator of Venice GRAZIANO, Brabanzio’s brother LODOVICO, kinsman of Brabanzio
SENATORS	of Venice RODERIGO, a Venetian gentleman, in love with Desdemona MONTANO, Governor of Cyprus A HERALD A MESSENGER Attendants, officers, sailors, gentlemen of Cyprus, musicians