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FRANCISCA: |
It is a man's voice. Gentle Isabella, |
Turn you the key, and know his business of him; |
You may, I may not; you are yet unsworn. |
When you have vow'd, you must not speak with men |
But in the presence of the prioress: |
Then, if you speak, you must not show your face, |
Or, if you show your face, you must not speak. |
He calls again; I pray you, answer him. |
ISABELLA: |
Peace and prosperity! Who is't that calls |
LUCIO: |
Hail, virgin, if you be, as those cheek-roses |
Proclaim you are no less! Can you so stead me |
As bring me to the sight of Isabella, |
A novice of this place and the fair sister |
To her unhappy brother Claudio? |
ISABELLA: |
Why 'her unhappy brother'? let me ask, |
The rather for I now must make you know |
I am that Isabella and his sister. |
LUCIO: |
Gentle and fair, your brother kindly greets you: |
Not to be weary with you, he's in prison. |
ISABELLA: |
Woe me! for what? |
LUCIO: |
For that which, if myself might be his judge, |
He should receive his punishment in thanks: |
He hath got his friend with child. |
ISABELLA: |
Sir, make me not your story. |
LUCIO: |
It is true. |
I would not--though 'tis my familiar sin |
With maids to seem the lapwing and to jest, |
Tongue far from heart--play with all virgins so: |
I hold you as a thing ensky'd and sainted. |
By your renouncement an immortal spirit, |
And to be talk'd with in sincerity, |
As with a saint. |
ISABELLA: |
You do blaspheme the good in mocking me. |
LUCIO: |
Do not believe it. Fewness and truth, 'tis thus: |
Your brother and his lover have embraced: |
As those that feed grow full, as blossoming time |
That from the seedness the bare fallow brings |
To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb |
Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry. |
ISABELLA: |
Some one with child by him? My cousin Juliet? |
LUCIO: |
Is she your cousin? |
ISABELLA: |
Adoptedly; as school-maids change their names |
By vain though apt affection. |
LUCIO: |
She it is. |
ISABELLA: |
O, let him marry her. |
LUCIO: |
This is the point. |
The duke is very strangely gone from hence; |
Bore many gentlemen, myself being one, |
In hand and hope of action: but we do learn |
By those that know the very nerves of state, |
His givings-out were of an infinite distance |
From his true-meant design. Upon his place, |
And with full line of his authority, |
Governs Lord Angelo; a man whose blood |
Is very snow-broth; one who never feels |
The wanton stings and motions of the sense, |
But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge |
With profits of the mind, study and fast. |
He--to give fear to use and liberty, |
Which have for long run by the hideous law, |
As mice by lions--hath pick'd out an act, |
Under whose heavy sense your brother's life |
Falls into forfeit: he arrests him on it; |
And follows close the rigour of the statute, |
To make him an example. All hope is gone, |
Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer |
To soften Angelo: and that's my pith of business |
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