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.

Ang. She speaks, and 'tis

Such sense, that my sense breeds with it.- -Fare you well.
Isab. Gentle my lord, turn back.

Ang. I will bethink me :-Come again to-morrow.

Isab. Hark, how I'll bribe you: Good my lord, turn back.
Ang. How! bribe me?

Isab. Ay, with such gifts, that heaven shall share with you.
Lucio. You had marr'd all, else.

Isab. Not with fond shekels of the tested* gold,

Or stones, whose rates are either rich, or poor,
As fancy values them: but with true prayers.
That shall be up at heaven, and enter there,
Ere sunrise; prayers from preservedt souls,
From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.

Ang. Well: come to me

To-morrow.

Lucio. Go to; it is well; away.

Isab. Heaven keep your honour safe!

Ang. Amen: for I

Am that way going to temptation,

Where prayers cross.

Isab. At what hour to-morrow

Shall I attend your lordship?

Ang. At any time 'fore noon.

[Aside to ISABELLA.

Aside.

Isab. Save your honour! [Exeunt LUCIO, ISAB., and PROV.

Ang. From thee; even from thy virtue !

What's this? what's this? Is this her fault, or mine?

The tempter, or the tempted, who sins most? Ha.

Not she; nor doth she tempt: but it is I,

That lying by the violet, in the sun,

Do, as the carrion does, not as the flower,

Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be,
That modesty may more betray our sense

Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough,
Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,

And pitch our evils there ? O, fie, fie, fie!
What dost thou ? or what art thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her foully, for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live:
Thieves for their robbery have authority,

When judges steal themselves. What? do I love her,
That I desire to hear her speak again,

And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on ?
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,

* Attested, stamped.

↑ Preserved from the corruption of the world.

* See 2 Kings x. 27.

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 wonder'd how.

SCENE III.-A Room in a Prison.

Enter DUKE, habited like a Friar, and PROVOST.'
Duke. Hail to you, provost! so, I think you are.
Prov. I am the provost: What's your will, good friar?
Duke. Bound by my charity, and my bless'd order,
I come to visit the afflicted spirits

Here in the prison: do me the common right

To let me see them; and to make me know

The nature of their crimes, that I may minister

To them accordingly,

Prov. I would do more than that, if more were needful.
Enter JULIET.

Look, here comes one; a gentlewoman of mine,

Who falling in the flames of her own youth,
Hath blister'd her report: She is with child
And he that got it, sentenced: a young man
More fit to do another such offence,

Than die for this.

Duke. When must he die?

Prov. As I do think, to-morrow.

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.

[Exit.

[To JULIET.

Duke. I'll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience, And try your penitence, if it be sound,

Or hollowly put on.

Juliet. I'll gladly learn.

Duke. Love you the man that wrong'd you?

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

Duke. So then, it seems, your most offenceful act

Was mutually committed?

Juliet. Mutually.

Duke. Then was your sin of heavier kind than his.
Juliet. I do confess it, and repent it, father,

Duke. "Tis meet so, daughter: But lest you do repent,
As that the sin hath brought you to this shame,-

Which sorrow is always toward ourselves, not heaven;
Showing, we'd 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.

* Spare to offend heaven.

Your partner, as I hear, must die to-morrow,
And I am going with instruction to him.-
Grace go with you! Benedicite!

Juliet. Must die to-morrow! O, injurious love,

That respites me a life, whose very comfort

Prov. 'Tis pity of him.

Is still a dying horror!

[Exit.

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV-A Room in ANGELO's House.

Enter ANGELO.

Ang. When I would pray and think, I think and pray

To several subjects: heaven hath my empty words;
Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,
Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,

As if I did but only chew his name;

And in my heart, the strong and swelling evil
Of my conception: The state, whereon I studied,
Is like a good thing, being often read,
Grown fear'd and tedious; yea, my gravity,
Wherein (let no man hear me) I take pride,
Could I, with boot,* change for an idle plume,
Which the air beats for vain. O place! O form!
How often dost thou with thy case,t thy habit,
Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls
To thy false seeming? Blood, thou still art blood:
Let's write good angel on the devil's horn,
'Tis not the devil's crest.

O heavens!

Why does my blood thus muster to my heart;
Making both it unable for itself,

And dispossessing all the other parts

Of necessary fitness?

So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons,

Come all to help him, and so stop the air

By which he should revive: and even so

The general, subject to a well-wish'd king,

Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness
Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love
Must needs appear offence.

How now, fair maid?

Enter ISABELLA.

Isab. I am come to know your pleasure.

[Exit SERV

Ang. That you might know it, would much better please me, Than to demand what 'tis. Your brother cannot live.

Isab. Even so ?-Heaven keep your honour!

[Retiring.

+ People.

Ang. Yet may he live awhile; and, it may be, As long as you, or I: Yet he must die.

Isab. Under your sentence?

Ang. Yea.

Isab. When, I beseech you? that in his reprieve, Longer, or shorter, he may so be fitted,

That his soul sicken not.

Ang. Ha! Fie, these filthy vices! It were as good To pardon him, that hath from nature stolen

A man already made, as to remit

Their saucy sweetness, that do coin heaven's image
In stamps that are forbid: 'tis all as easy
Falsely to take away a life true made,

As to put mettle in restrained means,
To make a false one.

Isab. "Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth.
Ang. Say you so? then I shall pose you quickly.
Which had you rather, That the most just law
Now took your brother's life; or, to redeem him,
Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness,
As she that he hath stain'd?

Isab. Sir, believe this,

I had rather give my body than my soul.

Ang. I talk not of your soul: Our compelled sins Stand more for number than accompt.

Isab. How say you?

Ang. 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 charity in sin,
To save this brother's life ?

Isab. Please you to do't,

I'll take it as a peril to my soul,

It is no sin at all, but charity.

Ang. Pleased you to do't, at peril of your soul,

Were equal poise of sin and charity.

Isab. 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.

Ang. Nay, but hear me:

Your sense pursues not mine: either you are ignorant,

Or seem so, craftily; and that's not good.

Isab. Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,

But graciously to know I am no better.

Ang. Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright, When it doth tax itself: as these black masks Proclaim an enshield* beauty ten times louder Than beauty could, display'd.-But mark me;

* Enshielded, covered.

To be received plain, I'll speak more gross:
Your brother is to die.

Isab. So.

Ang. And his offence is so, as it appears
Accounted to the law upon that pain.*
Isab. True.

Ang. Admit no other way to save his life
(As I subscribet 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 let him suffer;
What would you do?

Isab. As much for my poor brother, as myself:
That is, Were I under the terms of death,

The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies,
And strip myself to death, as to a bed

That longing I have been sick for, ere I'd yield
My body up to shame.

Ang. Then must your brother die.
Isab. And 'twere the cheaper way:
Better it were, a brother died at once,
Than that a sister, by redeeming him,

Should die for ever.

Ang. Were not you then as cruel as the sentence That you have slander'd so?

Isab. Ignomy§ in ransom, and free pardon,

Are of two houses: lawful mercy is

Nothing akin to foul redemption.

Ang. You seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant:

And rather proved the sliding of your brother

A merriment than a vice.

Isab. O, pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out,

To have what we'd have, we speak not what we mean;
I something do excuse the thing I hate,

For his advantage that I dearly love.

Ang. We are all frail.

Isab. Else let my brother die,

If not a feodary,|| but only he,
Owe, and succeed by weakness.

Ang. Nay, women are frail too.

Isab. 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.**