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?
ISABELLA.
O, ’tis the cunning livery of hell
The damned’st body to invest and cover
In precise guards! Dost thou think, Claudio,
If I would yield him my virginity
Thou mightst be freed?
CLAUDIO.
O heavens, it cannot be.