ISABELLA.
Yes, brother, you may live.
There is a devilish mercy in the judge,
If you’ll implore it, that will free your life,
But fetter you till death.
CLAUDIO.
Perpetual durance?
ISABELLA.
Ay, just; perpetual durance; a restraint,
Though all the world’s vastidity you had,
To a determined scope.
CLAUDIO.
But in what nature?
ISABELLA.
In such a one as, you consenting to’t,
Would bark your honour from that trunk you bear,
And leave you naked.
CLAUDIO.
Let me know the point.
ISABELLA.
O, I do fear thee, Claudio, and I quake,
Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain,
And six or seven winters more respect
Than a perpetual honour. Dar’st thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle that we tread upon
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.
CLAUDIO.
Why give you me this shame?
Think you I can a resolution fetch
From flowery tenderness? If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride
And hug it in mine arms.
ISABELLA.
There spake my brother! There my father’s grave
Did utter forth a voice. Yes, thou must die.
Thou art too noble to conserve a life
In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy,
Whose settled visage and deliberate word
Nips youth i’ th’ head, and follies doth enew
As falcon doth the fowl, is yet a devil.
His filth within being cast, he would appear
A pond as deep as hell.
CLAUDIO.
The precise Angelo?