Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare
Act 2 - Scene 4
A room in ANGELO’s house.
Angelo : When I would pray and think, I think and pray
[p]To several subjects.
Heaven hath my empty words;
[p]Whilst my invention, hearing not my
tongue,
[p]Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,
[p]As if I did but
only chew his name;
[p]And in my heart the strong and swelling
evil
[p]Of my conception. The state, whereon I studied
[p]Is like a
good thing, being often read,
[p]Grown fear'd and tedious; yea, my
gravity,
[p]Wherein--let no man hear me--I take pride,
[p]Could I with
boot change for an idle plume,
[p]Which the air beats for vain. O
place, O form,
[p]How often dost thou with thy case, thy
habit,
[p]Wrench awe from fools and tie the wiser souls
[p]To thy
false seeming! Blood, thou art blood:
[p]Let's write good angel on the
devil's horn:
[p]'Tis not the devil's crest.
[p][Enter a
Servant]
[p]How now! who's there?
Servant : One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you.
Angelo : Teach her the way.
[p][Exit Servant]
[p]O heavens!
[p]Why does my
blood thus muster to my heart,
[p]Making both it unable for
itself,
[p]And dispossessing all my other parts
[p]Of necessary
fitness?
[p]So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons;
[p]Come
all to help him, and so stop the air
[p]By which he should revive: and
even so
[p]The general, subject to a well-wish'd king,
[p]Quit their
own part, and in obsequious fondness
[p]Crowd to his presence, where
their untaught love
[p]Must needs appear offence.
[p][Enter
ISABELLA]
[p]How now, fair maid?
Isabella : I am come to know your pleasure.
Angelo : That you might know it, would much better please me
[p]Than to demand
what 'tis. Your brother cannot live.
Isabella : Even so. Heaven keep your honour!
Angelo : Yet may he live awhile; and, it may be,
[p]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,
[p]Longer or shorter, he
may be so fitted
[p]That his soul sicken not.
Angelo : Ha! fie, these filthy vices! It were as good
[p]To pardon him that
hath from nature stolen
[p]A man already made, as to remit
[p]Their
saucy sweetness that do coin heaven's image
[p]In stamps that are
forbid: 'tis all as easy
[p]Falsely to take away a life true
made
[p]As to put metal in restrained means
[p]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.
[p]Which had you rather,
that the most just law
[p]Now took your brother's life; or, to redeem
him,
[p]Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness
[p]As she that he
hath stain'd?
Isabella : Sir, believe this,
[p]I had rather give my body than my soul.
Angelo : I talk not of your soul: our compell'd sins
[p]Stand more for number
than for accompt.
Isabella : How say you?
Angelo : Nay, I'll not warrant that; for I can speak
[p]Against the thing I
say. Answer to this:
[p]I, now the voice of the recorded
law,
[p]Pronounce a sentence on your brother's life:
[p]Might there
not be a charity in sin
[p]To save this brother's life?
Isabella : Please you to do't,
[p]I'll take it as a peril to my soul,
[p]It is no
sin at all, but charity.
Angelo : Pleased you to do't at peril of your soul,
[p]Were equal poise of sin
and charity.
Isabella : That I do beg his life, if it be sin,
[p]Heaven let me bear it! you
granting of my suit,
[p]If that be sin, I'll make it my morn
prayer
[p]To have it added to the faults of mine,
[p]And nothing of
your answer.
Angelo : Nay, but hear me.
[p]Your sense pursues not mine: either you are
ignorant,
[p]Or seem so craftily; and that's not good.
Isabella : Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,
[p]But graciously to know I
am no better.
Angelo : Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright
[p]When it doth tax itself;
as these black masks
[p]Proclaim an enshield beauty ten times
louder
[p]Than beauty could, display'd. But mark me;
[p]To be received
plain, I'll speak more gross:
[p]Your brother is to die.
Isabella : So.
Angelo : And his offence is so, as it appears,
[p]Accountant to the law upon
that pain.
Isabella : True.
Angelo : Admit no other way to save his life,--
[p]As I subscribe not that, nor
any other,
[p]But in the loss of question,--that you, his
sister,
[p]Finding yourself desired of such a person,
[p]Whose credit
with the judge, or own great place,
[p]Could fetch your brother from
the manacles
[p]Of the all-building law; and that there were
[p]No
earthly mean to save him, but that either
[p]You must lay down the
treasures of your body
[p]To this supposed, or else to let him
suffer;
[p]What would you do?
Isabella : As much for my poor brother as myself:
[p]That is, were I under the
terms of death,
[p]The impression of keen whips I'ld wear as
rubies,
[p]And strip myself to death, as to a bed
[p]That longing have
been sick for, ere I'ld yield
[p]My body up to shame.
Angelo : Then must your brother die.
Isabella : And 'twere the cheaper way:
[p]Better it were a brother died at
once,
[p]Than that a sister, by redeeming him,
[p]Should die for
ever.
Angelo : Were not you then as cruel as the sentence
[p]That you have slander'd
so?
Isabella : Ignomy in ransom and free pardon
[p]Are of two houses: lawful
mercy
[p]Is nothing kin to foul redemption.
Angelo : You seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant;
[p]And rather proved the
sliding of your brother
[p]A merriment than a vice.
Isabella : O, pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out,
[p]To have what we would
have, we speak not what we mean:
[p]I something do excuse the thing I
hate,
[p]For his advantage that I dearly love.
Angelo : We are all frail.
Isabella : Else let my brother die,
[p]If not a feodary, but only he
[p]Owe and
succeed thy weakness.
Angelo : Nay, women are frail too.
Isabella : Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves;
[p]Which are as easy
broke as they make forms.
[p]Women! Help Heaven! men their creation
mar
[p]In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail;
[p]For we
are soft as our complexions are,
[p]And credulous to false prints.
Angelo : I think it well:
[p]And from this testimony of your own
sex,--
[p]Since I suppose we are made to be no stronger
[p]Than faults
may shake our frames,--let me be bold;
[p]I do arrest your words. Be
that you are,
[p]That is, a woman; if you be more, you're none;
[p]If
you be one, as you are well express'd
[p]By all external warrants,
show it now,
[p]By putting on the destined livery.
Isabella : I have no tongue but one: gentle my lord,
[p]Let me entreat you speak
the former language.
Angelo : Plainly conceive, I love you.
Isabella : My brother did love Juliet,
[p]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,
[p]Which seems a little fouler
than it is,
[p]To pluck on others.
Angelo : Believe me, on mine honour,
[p]My words express my purpose.
Isabella : Ha! little honour to be much believed,
[p]And most pernicious purpose!
Seeming, seeming!
[p]I will proclaim thee, Angelo; look for't:
[p]Sign
me a present pardon for my brother,
[p]Or with an outstretch'd throat
I'll tell the world aloud
[p]What man thou art.
Angelo : Who will believe thee, Isabel?
[p]My unsoil'd name, the austereness of
my life,
[p]My vouch against you, and my place i' the state,
[p]Will
so your accusation overweigh,
[p]That you shall stifle in your own
report
[p]And smell of calumny. I have begun,
[p]And now I give my
sensual race the rein:
[p]Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite;
[p]Lay
by all nicety and prolixious blushes,
[p]That banish what they sue
for; redeem thy brother
[p]By yielding up thy body to my will;
[p]Or
else he must not only die the death,
[p]But thy unkindness shall his
death draw out
[p]To lingering sufferance. Answer me to-morrow,
[p]Or,
by the affection that now guides me most,
[p]I'll prove a tyrant to
him. As for you,
[p]Say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true.
Isabella : To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,
[p]Who would believe me? O
perilous mouths,
[p]That bear in them one and the self-same
tongue,
[p]Either of condemnation or approof;
[p]Bidding the law make
court'sy to their will:
[p]Hooking both right and wrong to the
appetite,
[p]To follow as it draws! I'll to my brother:
[p]Though he
hath fallen by prompture of the blood,
[p]Yet hath he in him such a
mind of honour.
[p]That, had he twenty heads to tender down
[p]On
twenty bloody blocks, he'ld yield them up,
[p]Before his sister should
her body stoop
[p]To such abhorr'd pollution.
[p]Then, Isabel, live
chaste, and, brother, die:
[p]More than our brother is our
chastity.
[p]I'll tell him yet of Angelo's request,
[p]And fit his
mind to death, for his soul's rest.
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Next: Act 3 - Scene 1
