The damned'st body to invest and cover
In prècise guards."
Isabella had before characterised Angelo—
"This outward-sainted deputy is yet a devil:"
and the Duke afterwards says:
"Oh, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side."
In Much Ado about Nothing (Act I. Sc. 1.), Benedick says:
"The body of your discourse is sometimes guarded with fragments, and the guards are but slightly basted on neither."
That the epithet "precise" is peculiarly applicable to the assumed sanctity of Angelo, the poet has decided in Act I. Sc. 4., where the Duke describes him thus: