ISABELLA.
O worthy Duke,
You bid me seek redemption of the devil.
Hear me yourself, for that which I must speak
Must either punish me, not being believed,
Or wring redress from you. Hear me, O hear me, here!
ANGELO.
My lord, her wits, I fear me, are not firm.
She hath been a suitor to me for her brother,
Cut off by course of justice.
ISABELLA.
By course of justice!
ANGELO.
And she will speak most bitterly and strange.
ISABELLA.
Most strange, but yet most truly will I speak.
That Angelo’s forsworn, is it not strange?
That Angelo’s a murderer, is’t not strange?
That Angelo is an adulterous thief,
An hypocrite, a virgin-violator,
Is it not strange and strange?
DUKE.
Nay, it is ten times strange.
ISABELLA.
It is not truer he is Angelo
Than this is all as true as it is strange.
Nay, it is ten times true, for truth is truth
To th’ end of reckoning.
DUKE.
Away with her. Poor soul,
She speaks this in th’ infirmity of sense.
ISABELLA.
O Prince, I conjure thee, as thou believ’st
There is another comfort than this world,
That thou neglect me not with that opinion
That I am touched with madness. Make not impossible
That which but seems unlike. ’Tis not impossible
But one, the wicked’st caitiff on the ground,
May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute,
As Angelo; even so may Angelo,
In all his dressings, characts, titles, forms,
Be an arch-villain. Believe it, royal Prince,
If he be less, he’s nothing; but he’s more,
Had I more name for badness.
DUKE.
By mine honesty,
If she be mad, as I believe no other,
Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense,
Such a dependency of thing on thing,
As e’er I heard in madness.