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

your thief.

       [Re-enter PROVOST.]

       PROVOST.

       Are you agreed?

       CLOWN. Sir, I will serve him; for I do find your hangman is a more penitent trade than your bawd; he doth oftener ask forgiveness.

       PROVOST. You, sirrah, provide your block and your axe tomorrow four o’clock.

       ABHORSON.

       Come on, bawd; I will instruct thee in my trade; follow.

       CLOWN. I do desire to learn, sir; and I hope, if you have occasion to use me for your own turn, you shall find me yare; for truly, sir, for your kindness I owe you a good turn.

       PROVOST.

       Call hither Barnardine and Claudio.

       [Exeunt CLOWN and ABHORSON.]

       One has my pity; not a jot the other,

       Being a murderer, though he were my brother.

       [Enter CLAUDIO.]

       Look, here’s the warrant, Claudio, for thy death:

       ‘Tis now dead midnight, and by eight tomorrow

       Thou must be made immortal. Where’s Barnardine?

       CLAUDIO.

       As fast lock’d up in sleep as guiltless labour

       When it lies starkly in the traveller’s bones:

       He will not wake.

       PROVOST.

       Who can do good on him?

       Well, go, prepare yourself. But hark, what noise?

       [Knocking within.]

       Heaven give your spirits comfort!

       [Exit CLAUDIO.]

       By and by!—

       I hope it is some pardon or reprieve

       For the most gentle Claudio.—Welcome, father.

       [Enter DUKE.]

       DUKE.

       The best and wholesom’st spirits of the night

       Envelop you, good provost! Who call’d here of late?

       PROVOST.

       None, since the curfew rung.

       DUKE.

       Not Isabel?

       PROVOST.

       No.

       DUKE.

       They will then, ere’t be long.

       PROVOST.

       What comfort is for Claudio?

       DUKE.

       There’s some in hope.

       PROVOST.

       It is a bitter deputy.

       DUKE.

       Not so, not so: his life is parallel’d

       Even with the stroke and line of his great justice;

       He doth with holy abstinence subdue

       That in himself which he spurs on his power

       To qualify in others: were he meal’d

       With that which he corrects, then were he tyrannous;

       But this being so, he’s just.—Now are they come.

       [Knocking within—PROVOST goes out.]

       This is a gentle provost: seldom when

       The steeled gaoler is the friend of men.—

       How now? what noise? That spirit’s possess’d with haste

       That wounds the unsisting postern with these strokes.

       [PROVOST returns, speaking to one at the door.]

       PROVOST.

       There he must stay until the officer

       Arise to let him in; he is call’d up.

       DUKE.

       Have you no countermand for Claudio yet,

       But he must die tomorrow?

       PROVOST.

       None, sir, none.

       DUKE.

       As near the dawning, Provost, as it is,

       You shall hear more ere morning.

       PROVOST.

       Happily

       You something know; yet I believe there comes

       No countermand; no such example have we:

       Besides, upon the very siege of justice,

       Lord Angelo hath to the public ear

       Profess’d the contrary.

       [Enter a Messenger.]

       DUKE.

       This is his lordship’s man.

       DUKE.

       And here comes Claudio’s pardon.

       MESSENGER. My lord hath sent you this note; and by me this further charge, that you swerve not from the smallest article of it, neither in time, matter, or other circumstance. Good morrow; for as I take it, it is almost day.

       PROVOST.

       I shall obey him.

       [Exit Messenger.]

       DUKE.

       [Aside.] This is his pardon, purchas’d by such sin,

       For which the pardoner himself is in:

       Hence hath offence his quick celerity,

       When it is borne in high authority:

       When vice makes mercy, mercy’s so extended

       That for the fault’s love is the offender friended.—

       Now, sir, what news?

       PROVOST. I told you: Lord Angelo, belike thinking me remiss in mine office, awakens me with this unwonted putting-on; methinks strangely, for he hath not used it before.

       DUKE.

       Pray you, let’s hear.

       PROVOST. [Reads.] ‘Whatsoever you may hear to the contrary, let Claudio be executed by four of the clock; and, in the afternoon, Barnardine: for my better satisfaction, let me have Claudio’s head sent me by five. Let this be duly performed; with a thought that more depends on it than we must yet deliver. Thus fail not to do your office, as you will answer it at your peril.’ What say you to this, sir?

       DUKE.

       What is that Barnardine who is to be executed in the afternoon?

       PROVOST. A Bohemian born; but here nursed up and bred: one that is a prisoner nine years old.

       DUKE. How came it that the absent duke had not either delivered him to his liberty or executed him? I have heard it was ever his manner to do so.

       PROVOST. His friends still wrought reprieves for him; and, indeed, his fact, till now in the government of Lord Angelo, came not to an undoubtful proof.

       DUKE.

       It is now apparent?

       PROVOST.

       Most manifest, and not denied by himself.

       DUKE. Hath he borne himself penitently in prison? How seems he to be touched?

       PROVOST. A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless, of what’s past, present, or to come; insensible of mortality and desperately mortal.

       DUKE.

       He wants advice.

       PROVOST. He will hear none; he hath evermore had the liberty of the prison; give him leave to escape hence, he would not: