William Shakespeare - Ultimate Collection: Complete Plays & Poetry in One Volume. William Shakespeare

There is a devilish mercy in the judge,

       If you’ll implore it, that will free your life,

       But fetter you till death.

       CLAUDIO.

       Perpetual durance?

       ISABELLA.

       Ay, just; perpetual durance; a restraint,

       Though all the world’s vastidity you had,

       To a determin’d scope.

       CLAUDIO.

       But in what nature?

       ISABELLA.

       In such a one as, you consenting to’t,

       Would bark your honour from that trunk you bear,

       And leave you naked.

       CLAUDIO.

       Let me know the point.

       ISABELLA.

       O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake,

       Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain,

       And six or seven winters more respect

       Than a perpetual honour. Dar’st thou die?

       The sense of death is most in apprehension;

       And the poor beetle that we tread upon

       In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great

       As when a giant dies.

       CLAUDIO.

       Why give you me this shame?

       Think you I can a resolution fetch

       From flowery tenderness? If I must die,

       I will encounter darkness as a bride

       And hug it in mine arms.

       ISABELLA.

       There spake my brother; there my father’s grave

       Did utter forth a voice! Yes, thou must die:

       Thou art too noble to conserve a life

       In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy,—

       Whose settled visage and deliberate word

       Nips youth i’ the head, and follies doth emmew

       As falcon doth the fowl,—is yet a devil;

       His filth within being cast, he would appear

       A pond as deep as hell.

       CLAUDIO.

       The precise Angelo?

       ISABELLA.

       O, ‘tis the cunning livery of hell

       The damned’st body to invest and cover

       In precise guards! Dost thou think, Claudio,

       If I would yield him my virginity

       Thou mightst be freed?

       CLAUDIO.

       O heavens! it cannot be.

       ISABELLA.

       Yes, he would give it thee, from this rank offence,

       So to offend him still. This night’s the time

       That I should do what I abhor to name,

       Or else thou diest tomorrow.

       CLAUDIO.

       Thou shalt not do’t.

       ISABELLA.

       O, were it but my life,

       I’d throw it down for your deliverance

       As frankly as a pin.

       CLAUDIO.

       Thanks, dear Isabel.

       ISABELLA.

       Be ready, Claudio, for your death tomorrow.

       CLAUDIO.

       Yes.—Has he affections in him

       That thus can make him bite the law by the nose

       When he would force it? Sure it is no sin;

       Or of the deadly seven it is the least.

       ISABELLA.

       Which is the least?

       CLAUDIO.

       If it were damnable, he, being so wise,

       Why would he for the momentary trick

       Be perdurably fined?—O Isabel!

       ISABELLA.

       What says my brother?

       CLAUDIO.

       Death is a fearful thing.

       ISABELLA.

       And shamed life a hateful.

       CLAUDIO.

       Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

       To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;

       This sensible warm motion to become

       A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

       To bathe in fiery floods or to reside

       In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;

       To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,

       And blown with restless violence round about

       The pendent world; or to be worse than worst

       Of those that lawless and incertain thought

       Imagine howling!—‘tis too horrible!

       The weariest and most loathed worldly life

       That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment

       Can lay on nature is a paradise

       To what we fear of death.

       ISABELLA.

       Alas, alas!

       CLAUDIO.

       Sweet sister, let me live:

       What sin you do to save a brother’s life

       Nature dispenses with the deed so far

       That it becomes a virtue.

       ISABELLA.

       O you beast!

       O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!

       Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?

       Is’t not a kind of incest to take life

       From thine own sister’s shame? What should I think?

       Heaven shield my mother play’d my father fair!

       For such a warped slip of wilderness

       Ne’er issued from his blood. Take my defiance:

       Die; perish! might but my bending down

       Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed:

       I’ll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,—

       No word to save thee.

       CLAUDIO.

       Nay, hear me, Isabel.

       ISABELLA.

       O fie, fie, fie!

       Thy sin’s not accidental, but a trade:

       Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd:

       ‘Tis best that thou diest quickly.

       [Going.]

       CLAUDIO.

       O, hear me, Isabella.

       [Re-enter DUKE.]

       DUKE.

       Vouchsafe a word, young sister, but one word.

       ISABELLA.

       What is your will?

       DUKE. Might you dispense with your leisure, I would by and by have some speech with you: