SCENE IV. A Room in ANGELO’S house.

       [Enter ANGELO.]

       ANGELO.

       When I would pray and think, I think and pray

       To several subjects. Heaven hath my empty words;

       Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,

       Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,

       As if I did but only chew his name;

       And in my heart the strong and swelling evil

       Of my conception. The state whereon I studied

       Is, like a good thing, being often read,

       Grown sear’d and tedious; yea, my gravity,

       Wherein—let no man hear me—I take pride,

       Could I with boot change for an idle plume,

       Which the air beats for vain. O place! O form!

       How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,

       Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls

       To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood:

       Let’s write good angel on the devil’s horn,

       ‘Tis not the devil’s crest.

       [Enter Servant.]

       How now, who’s there?

       SERVANT.

       One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you.

       ANGELO.

       Teach her the way.

       [Exit SERVANT.]

       O heavens!

       Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,

       Making both it unable for itself

       And dispossessing all the other parts

       Of necessary fitness?

       So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons;

       Come all to help him, and so stop the air

       By which he should revive: and even so

       The general, subject to a well-wished king

       Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness

       Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love

       Must needs appear offence.

       [Enter ISABELLA.]

       How now, fair maid?

       ISABELLA.

       I am come to know your pleasure.

       ANGELO.

       That you might know it, would much better please me

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

       ISABELLA.

       Even so?—Heaven keep your honour!

       [Retiring.]

       ANGELO.

       Yet may he live awhile: and, it may be,

       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,

       Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted

       That his soul sicken not.

       ANGELO.

       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 heaven’s image

       In stamps that are forbid; ‘tis all as easy

       Falsely to take away a life true made

       As to put metal in restrained means

       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.

       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 stain’d?

       ISABELLA.

       Sir, believe this,

       I had rather give my body than my soul.

       ANGELO.

       I talk not of your soul; our compell’d sins

       Stand more for number than for accompt.

       ISABELLA.

       How say you?

       ANGELO.

       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?

       ISABELLA.

       Please you to do’t,

       I’ll take it as a peril to my soul

       It is no sin at all, but charity.

       ANGELO.

       Pleas’d you to do’t at