2.4 Isabella and angelo

Question 1

A: How now, fair maid?

Answer 1

I: I am come to know your pleasure.

Question 2

A: That you might know it would much better please me

Than to demand what ’tis. Your brother cannot live.

Answer 2

I: Even so. Heaven keep your Honor.

Question 3

A: Yet may he live a while. And it may be

As long as you or I. Yet he must die.

Answer 3

I: Under your sentence?

Question 4

A:Yea.

Answer 4

I: When, I beseech you? That in his reprieve,
Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted
That his soul sicken not.

Question 5

A: 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 restrainèd means
To make a false one.

Answer 5

I: ’Tis set down so in heaven, but not in Earth.

Question 6

A: 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?

Answer 6

I: Sir, believe this:

I had rather give my body than my soul.

Question 7

A: I talk not of your soul. Our compelled sins

Stand more for number than for accomnt.

Answer 7

I: How say you?

Question 8

A: 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?

Answer 8

I: Please you to do ’t,
I’ll take it as a peril to my soul,
It is no sin at all, but charity.

Question 9

A: Pleased you to do ’t, at peril of your soul,

Were equal poise of sin and charity.

Answer 9

I: 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.

Question 10

A: Nay, but hear me.
Your sense pursues not mine. Either you are
ignorant,
Or seem so, crafty, and that’s not good.

Answer 10

I: Let me be ignorant and in nothing good,

But graciously to know I am no better.

Question 11

A: 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 receivèd plain, I’ll speak more gross:
Your brother is to die.

Answer 11

I: So.

Question 12

A: And his offense is so, as it appears,

Accountant to the law upon that pain.

Answer 12

I: True.

Question 13

A: 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?

Answer 13

I: 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.

Question 14

A: Then must your brother die.

Answer 14

I: And ’twere the cheaper way.
Better it were a brother died at once
Than that a sister, by redeeming him,
Should die forever.

Question 15

A: Were not you then as cruel as the sentence

That you have slandered so?

Answer 15

I: Ignomy in ransom and free pardon
Are of two houses. Lawful mercy
Is nothing kin to foul redemption.

Question 16

A: You seemed of late to make the law a tyrant,
And rather proved the sliding of your brother
A merriment than a vice.

Answer 16

I: 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.

Question 17

A: We are all frail.

Answer 17

I: Else let my brother die,
If not a fedary but only he
Owe and succeed thy weakness.

Question 18

A: Nay, women are frail too.

Answer 18

I: 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.

Question 19

A: 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.

Answer 19

I: I have no tongue but one. Gentle my lord,

Let me entreat you speak the former language.

Question 20

A: Plainly conceive I love you.

Answer 20

I: My brother did love Juliet,

And you tell me that he shall die for ’t.

Question 21

A: He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love.

Answer 21

I: I know your virtue hath a license in ’t
Which seems a little fouler than it is
To pluck on others.

Question 22

A: Believe me, on mine honor,

My words express my purpose.

Answer 22

I: Ha! Little honor 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.

Question 23

A: 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.

Answer 23

I: 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 honor
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