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Well, let her be admitted.
See you the fornicatress be removed:
Let have needful, but not lavish, means;
There shall be order for't.
Provost:
God save your honour!
ANGELO:
Stay a little while.
You're welcome: what's your will?
ISABELLA:
I am a woeful suitor to your honour,
Please but your honour hear me.
ANGELO:
Well; what's your suit?
ISABELLA:
There is a vice that most I do abhor,
And most desire should meet the blow of justice;
For which I would not plead, but that I must;
For which I must not plead, but that I am
At war 'twixt will and will not.
ANGELO:
Well; the matter?
ISABELLA:
I have a brother is condemn'd to die:
I do beseech you, let it be his fault,
And not my brother.
Provost:
ANGELO:
Condemn the fault and not the actor of it?
Why, every fault's condemn'd ere it be done:
Mine were the very cipher of a function,
To fine the faults whose fine stands in record,
And let go by the actor.
ISABELLA:
O just but severe law!
I had a brother, then. Heaven keep your honour!
LUCIO:
ISABELLA:
Must he needs die?
ANGELO:
Maiden, no remedy.
ISABELLA:
Yes; I do think that you might pardon him,
And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy.
ANGELO:
I will not do't.
ISABELLA:
But can you, if you would?
ANGELO:
Look, what I will not, that I cannot do.
ISABELLA:
But might you do't, and do the world no wrong,
If so your heart were touch'd with that remorse
As mine is to him?
ANGELO:
He's sentenced; 'tis too late.
LUCIO:
ISABELLA:
Too late? why, no; I, that do speak a word.
May call it back again. Well, believe this,
No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.
If he had been as you and you as he,
You would have slipt like him; but he, like you,
Would not have been so stern.
ANGELO:
Pray you, be gone.
ISABELLA:
I would to heaven I had your potency,
And you were Isabel! should it then be thus?
No; I would tell what 'twere to be a judge,
And what a prisoner.
LUCIO: