Shakespeare has imagined one of the men who were the bitterest enemies of his art and his calling invested with absolute power, and using it to proceed against immorality with cruel rigour. The first step is his attack on common prostitution, which he persuades himself he can exterminate. This vain imagination is repeatedly ridiculed. "What shall become of me?" says Mistress Overdone. "Come; fear not you: good counsellors lack no clients." In the Act ii. sc. I we read:—
"Escalus. How would you live, Pompey? by being a bawd? What do you think of the trade, Pompey? is it a lawful trade?
"Pompey. If the law would allow it, sir.
"Escal. But the law will not allow it, Pompey; nor it shall not be allowed in Vienna.
"Pomp. Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the youth of the city.
"Escal. No, Pompey.
"Pomp. Truly, sir, in my poor opinion, they will to't then."
And Lucio (iii. 2) also ridicules Angelo's severity as fruitless:—
"Lucio. A little more lenity to lechery would do no harm in him: something too crabbed that way, friar.
"Duke. It is too general a vice, and severity must cure it.
"Lucio. Yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great kindred: it is well allied; but it is impossible to extirp it quite, friar, till eating and drinking be put down. They say, this Angelo was not made by man and woman, after this downright way of creation: is it true, think you?"
But besides taking strict proceedings against actual debauchery, Angelo revives an old law which has long been in disuse—according to the Duke for fourteen, according to Claudio for nineteen years—making death the punishment of all sexual commerce without marriage; and by this law young Claudio is condemned to death for his relation to Juliet.
It was an innocent relation. He says (i. 3):—
"She is fast my wife
Save that we do the denunciation lack
Of outward order: this we came not to,
Only for propagation of a dower
Remaining in the coffer of her friends."
But this avails nothing. An example is to be made. It is in vain that even the highly respectable Provost feels compassion for him, and says (ii. 2):—
"All sects, all ages smack of this vice, and he
To die for it!"
The young men of the town cannot explain this insane severity in any other way than by the supposition that Lord Angelo is a man with "snow-broth" in his veins in place of blood.