LUCIO.
It was a mad fantastical trick of him to steal from the state and usurp the beggary he was never born to. Lord Angelo dukes it well in his absence. He puts transgression to’t.
DUKE.
He does well in’t.
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?
DUKE.
How should he be made, then?
LUCIO.
Some report a sea-maid spawned him; some, that he was begot between two stockfishes. But it is certain that when he makes water, his urine is congealed ice; that I know to be true. And he is a motion ungenerative; that’s infallible.
DUKE.
You are pleasant, sir, and speak apace.
LUCIO.
Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the rebellion of a codpiece to take away the life of a man! Would the Duke that is absent have done this? Ere he would have hanged a man for the getting a hundred bastards, he would have paid for the nursing a thousand. He had some feeling of the sport; he knew the service, and that instructed him to mercy.
DUKE.
I never heard the absent Duke much detected for women; he was not inclined that way.