Measure for Measure

SCENE IV. A room in Angelo’s house.

Enter Angelo and Escalus.

ESCALUS.
Every letter he hath writ hath disvouched other.

ANGELO.
In most uneven and distracted manner. His actions show much like to madness; pray heaven his wisdom be not tainted. And why meet him at the gates and redeliver our authorities there?

ESCALUS.
I guess not.

ANGELO.
And why should we proclaim it in an hour before his entering, that if any crave redress of injustice, they should exhibit their petitions in the street?

ESCALUS.
He shows his reason for that: to have a dispatch of complaints, and to deliver us from devices hereafter, which shall then have no power to stand against us.

ANGELO.
Well, I beseech you, let it be proclaimed.
Betimes i’ th’ morn I’ll call you at your house.
Give notice to such men of sort and suit
As are to meet him.

ESCALUS.
I shall, sir. Fare you well.

[Exit.]

ANGELO.
Good night.
This deed unshapes me quite, makes me unpregnant
And dull to all proceedings. A deflowered maid;
And by an eminent body that enforced
The law against it! But that her tender shame
Will not proclaim against her maiden loss,
How might she tongue me! Yet reason dares her no,
For my authority bears so credent bulk
That no particular scandal once can touch
But it confounds the breather. He should have lived,
Save that his riotous youth, with dangerous sense,
Might in the times to come have ta’en revenge
By so receiving a dishonoured life
With ransom of such shame. Would yet he had lived.
Alack, when once our grace we have forgot,
Nothing goes right; we would, and we would not.

[Exit.]