The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare (moboreader .TXT) 📕

SCENE IV.

A nunnery

Enter ISABELLA and FRANCISCA

ISABELLA. And have you nuns no farther privileges?

FRANCISCA. 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!

ISABELLA. Who’s that which calls?

FRANCISCA. 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 vow’d, 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.

He calls again; I pray you answer him. Exit FRANCISCA ISABELLA. Peace and prosperity! Who is’t that calls?

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. It is 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 talk’d 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 embrac’d.

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. Some one with child by him? My cousin Juliet?

LUCIO. Is she your cousin?

ISABELLA. Adoptedly, as school-maids 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, myself being one, In hand, and hope of action; but we do learn, By those that know the very nerves of state, His givings-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 pick’d 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 censur’d him

Already, and, as I hear, the Provost hath A warrant for his execution.

ISABELLA. Alas! what poor ability’s in me To do him good?

LUCIO. Assay the pow’r you have.

ISABELLA. My power, alas, I doubt!

LUCIO. Our doubts are traitors,

And make 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. Exeunt

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ACT II. Scene I.

A hall in ANGELO’S house

Enter ANGELO, ESCALUS, a JUSTICE, PROVOST, OFFICERS, and other ATTENDANTS

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 coher’d with place, or place with wishing, Or that the resolute acting of our blood Could have attain’d th’ effect of your own purpose Whether you had not sometime in your life Err’d in this point which now you censure him, And pull’d 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’s open made to justice, That justice seizes. What knows the laws That thieves do pass on thieves? ‘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 judgment 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?

PROVOST. Here, if it like your honour.

ANGELO. See that Claudio

Be executed by nine tomorrow morning; Bring him his confessor; let him be prepar’d; For that’s the utmost of his pilgrimage. Exit PROVOST

ESCALUS. [Aside] Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all!

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall; Some run from breaks of ice, and answer none, And some condemned for a fault alone.

Enter ELBOW and OFFICERS with FROTH and POMPEY

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! Well-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. 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, pluck’d 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 therefore?

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 accus’d 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. Sir, if it please your honour, this is not so.

ELBOW. Prove it before these varlets here, thou honourable man, prove it.

ESCALUS. Do you hear how he misplaces?

POMPEY. Sir, she came in great with child; and longing, saving your honour’s reverence, for stew’d 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 three pence; 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 three pence again-FROTH. No, indeed.

POMPEY. Very well; you being then, if you be rememb’red, cracking the stones of the foresaid prunes-FROTH. Ay, so I did indeed.

POMPEY. Why, very well; I telling you then, if you be rememb’red, 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.

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-hallond 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; I’ll take my leave, And