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From ‘Measure for Measure’, Act III. Scene 1
DUKE. Be absolute for death; either death or life | |
| Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life: | |
| If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing | |
| That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art, | |
| Servile to all the skyey influences, | 5 |
| That dost this habitation, where thou keep’st, | |
| Hourly afflict. Merely, thou art death’s fool; | |
| For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun, | |
| And yet run’st toward him still. Thou art not noble: | |
| For all th’ accommodations that thou bear’st | 10 |
| Are nurs’d by baseness. Thou art by no means valiant; | |
| For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork | |
| Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep, | |
| And that thou oft provok’st; yet grossly fear’st | |
| Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself; | 15 |
| For thou exist’st on many a thousand grains | |
| That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not; | |
| For what thou hast not, still thou striv’st to get, | |
| And what thou hast, forget’st. Thou art not certain; | |
| For thy complexion shifts to strange effects, | 20 |
| After the moon. If thou art rich, thou’rt poor; | |
| For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, | |
| Thou bear’st thy heavy riches but a journey, | |
| And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none; | |
| For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, | 25 |
| The mere effusion of thy proper loins, | |
| Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, | |
| For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age; | |
| But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep, | |
| Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth | 30 |
| Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms | |
| Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich, | |
| Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, | |
| To make thy riches pleasant. What ’s yet in this | |
| That bears the name of life? Yet in this life | 35 |
| Lie hid moe thousand deaths: yet death we fear, | |
That makes these odds all even.
CLAUDIO. I humbly thank you. | |
| To sue to live, I find I seek to die, | |
| And, seeking death, find life: let it come on…. | |
| Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; | 40 |
| To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; | |
| This sensible warm motion to become | |
| A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit | |
| To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside | |
| In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; | 45 |
| To be imprison’d in the viewless winds, | |
| And blown with restless violence round about | |
| The pendant world; or to be worse than worst | |
| Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts | |
| Imagine howling: ’tis too horrible! | 50 |
| The weariest and most loathed worldly life | |
| That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment | |
| Can lay on nature is a paradise | |
| To what we fear of death. | |
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