Measure for Measure

SCENE IV. A nunnery.

Enter Isabella and Francisca, a Nun.

ISABELLA.
And have you nuns no farther privileges?

FRANCISCA.
Are not these large enough?

ISABELLA.
Yes, truly; I speak not as desiring more,
But rather wishing a more strict restraint
Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare.

LUCIO.
[Within.] Ho! Peace be in this place!

ISABELLA.
Who’s that which calls?

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 vowed, 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.

[Exit Francisca.]

ISABELLA.
Peace and prosperity! Who is’t that calls?

Enter Lucio.

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.
’Tis 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 enskied and sainted
By your renouncement an immortal spirit,
And to be talked 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.
Someone 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 picked 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
’Twixt you and your poor brother.

ISABELLA.
Doth he so
Seek his life?

LUCIO.
Has censured him already;
And, as I hear, the Provost hath a warrant
For’s execution.

ISABELLA.
Alas, what poor ability’s in me
To do him good?

LUCIO.
Assay the power you have.

ISABELLA.
My power? Alas, I doubt.

LUCIO.
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt. Go to Lord Angelo,
And let him learn to know, when maidens sue,
Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel,
All their petitions are as freely theirs
As they themselves would owe them.

ISABELLA.
I’ll see what I can do.

LUCIO.
But speedily.

ISABELLA.
I will about it straight;
No longer staying but to give the Mother
Notice of my affair. I humbly thank you.
Commend me to my brother. Soon at night
I’ll send him certain word of my success.

LUCIO.
I take my leave of you.

ISABELLA.
Good sir, adieu.

[Exeunt.]