1    When I would pray and think, I think and pray
2    To several subjects. Heaven hath my empty words;
3    Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,
4    Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,
5    As if I did but only chew his name;
6    And in my heart the strong and swelling evil
7    Of my conception. The state, whereon I studied
8    Is like a good thing, being often read,
9    Grown fear'd and tedious; yea, my gravity,
10   Wherein--let no man hear me--I take pride,
11   Could I with boot change for an idle plume,
12   Which the air beats for vain. O place, O form,
13   How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,
14   Wrench awe from fools and tie the wiser souls
15   To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood:
16   Let's write good angel on the devil's horn:
17   'Tis not the devil's crest.
Enter a Servant
18   How now! who's there?

19   One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you.

20   Teach her the way.
Exit Servant
21   O heavens!
22   Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,
23   Making both it unable for itself,
24   And dispossessing all my other parts
25   Of necessary fitness?
26   So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons;
27   Come all to help him, and so stop the air
28   By which he should revive: and even so
29   The general, subject to a well-wish'd king,
30   Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness
31   Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love
32   Must needs appear offence.
Enter ISABELLA
33   How now, fair maid?

34   I am come to know your pleasure.

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

37   Even so. Heaven keep your honour!

38   Yet may he live awhile; and, it may be,
39   As long as you or I yet he must die.

40   Under your sentence?

41   Yea.

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

45   Ha! fie, these filthy vices! It were as good
46   To pardon him that hath from nature stolen
47   A man already made, as to remit
48   Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven's image
49   In stamps that are forbid: 'tis all as easy
50   Falsely to take away a life true made
51   As to put metal in restrained means
52   To make a false one.

53   'Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth.

54   Say you so? then I shall pose you quickly.
55   Which had you rather, that the most just law
56   Now took your brother's life; or, to redeem him,
57   Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness
58   As she that he hath stain'd?

59   Sir, believe this,
60   I had rather give my body than my soul.

61   I talk not of your soul: our compell'd sins
62   Stand more for number than for accompt.

63   How say you?

64   Nay, I'll not warrant that; for I can speak
65   Against the thing I say. Answer to this:
66   I, now the voice of the recorded law,
67   Pronounce a sentence on your brother's life:
68   Might there not be a charity in sin
69   To save this brother's life?

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

73   Pleased you to do't at peril of your soul,
74   Were equal poise of sin and charity.

75   That I do beg his life, if it be sin,
76   Heaven let me bear it! you granting of my suit,
77   If that be sin, I'll make it my morn prayer
78   To have it added to the faults of mine,
79   And nothing of your answer.

80   Nay, but hear me.
81   Your sense pursues not mine: either you are ignorant,
82   Or seem so craftily; and that's not good.

83   Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,
84   But graciously to know I am no better.

85   Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright
86   When it doth tax itself; as these black masks
87   Proclaim an enshield beauty ten times louder
88   Than beauty could, display'd. But mark me;
89   To be received plain, I'll speak more gross:
90   Your brother is to die.

91   So.

92   And his offence is so, as it appears,
93   Accountant to the law upon that pain.

94   True.

95   Admit no other way to save his life,--
96   As I subscribe not that, nor any other,
97   But in the loss of question,--that you, his sister,
98   Finding yourself desired of such a person,
99   Whose credit with the judge, or own great place,
100  Could fetch your brother from the manacles
101  Of the all-building law; and that there were
102  No earthly mean to save him, but that either
103  You must lay down the treasures of your body
104  To this supposed, or else to let him suffer;
105  What would you do?

106  As much for my poor brother as myself:
107  That is, were I under the terms of death,
108  The impression of keen whips I'ld wear as rubies,
109  And strip myself to death, as to a bed
110  That longing have been sick for, ere I'ld yield
111  My body up to shame.

112  Then must your brother die.

113  And 'twere the cheaper way:
114  Better it were a brother died at once,
115  Than that a sister, by redeeming him,
116  Should die for ever.

117  Were not you then as cruel as the sentence
118  That you have slander'd so?

119  Ignomy in ransom and free pardon
120  Are of two houses: lawful mercy
121  Is nothing kin to foul redemption.

122  You seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant;
123  And rather proved the sliding of your brother
124  A merriment than a vice.

125  O, pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out,
126  To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean:
127  I something do excuse the thing I hate,
128  For his advantage that I dearly love.

129  We are all frail.

130  Else let my brother die,
131  If not a feodary, but only he
132  Owe and succeed thy weakness.

133  Nay, women are frail too.

134  Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves;
135  Which are as easy broke as they make forms.
136  Women! Help Heaven! men their creation mar
137  In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail;
138  For we are soft as our complexions are,
139  And credulous to false prints.

140  I think it well:
141  And from this testimony of your own sex,--
142  Since I suppose we are made to be no stronger
143  Than faults may shake our frames,--let me be bold;
144  I do arrest your words. Be that you are,
145  That is, a woman; if you be more, you're none;
146  If you be one, as you are well express'd
147  By all external warrants, show it now,
148  By putting on the destined livery.

149  I have no tongue but one: gentle my lord,
150  Let me entreat you speak the former language.

151  Plainly conceive, I love you.

152  My brother did love Juliet,
153  And you tell me that he shall die for it.

154  He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love.

155  I know your virtue hath a licence in't,
156  Which seems a little fouler than it is,
157  To pluck on others.

158  Believe me, on mine honour,
159  My words express my purpose.

160  Ha! little honour to be much believed,
161  And most pernicious purpose! Seeming, seeming!
162  I will proclaim thee, Angelo; look for't:
163  Sign me a present pardon for my brother,
164  Or with an outstretch'd throat I'll tell the world aloud
165  What man thou art.

166  Who will believe thee, Isabel?
167  My unsoil'd name, the austereness of my life,
168  My vouch against you, and my place i' the state,
169  Will so your accusation overweigh,
170  That you shall stifle in your own report
171  And smell of calumny. I have begun,
172  And now I give my sensual race the rein:
173  Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite;
174  Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes,
175  That banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother
176  By yielding up thy body to my will;
177  Or else he must not only die the death,
178  But thy unkindness shall his death draw out
179  To lingering sufferance. Answer me to-morrow,
180  Or, by the affection that now guides me most,
181  I'll prove a tyrant to him. As for you,
182  Say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true.

183  To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,
184  Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,
185  That bear in them one and the self-same tongue,
186  Either of condemnation or approof;
187  Bidding the law make court'sy to their will:
188  Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite,
189  To follow as it draws! I'll to my brother:
190  Though he hath fallen by prompture of the blood,
191  Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour.
192  That, had he twenty heads to tender down
193  On twenty bloody blocks, he'ld yield them up,
194  Before his sister should her body stoop
195  To such abhorr'd pollution.
196  Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die:
197  More than our brother is our chastity.
198  I'll tell him yet of Angelo's request,
199  And fit his mind to death, for his soul's rest.