“Must he needs trouble me in’t,—hum!—’bove all others?
He might have tried Lord Lucius and Lucullus;
And now Ventidius is wealthy too,
Whom he redeem’d from prison: all these
Owe their estates unto him.”
The servant immediately replies,—
“My lord,
They have all been touch’d and found base metal, for
They have all denied him.”
Isabella, too, in Measure for Measure (act ii. sc. 2, l. 149, vol. i. p. 324), most movingly declares her purpose to bribe Angelo, the lord-deputy,—