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A Monastery | |
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Enter DUKE and FRIAR THOMAS. | |
| Duke. No, holy father; throw away that thought: | |
| Believe not that the dribbling dart of love | |
| Can pierce a complete bosom. Why I desire thee | 5 |
| To give me secret harbour, hath a purpose | |
| More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends | |
| Of burning youth. | |
| Fri. T. May your Grace speak of it? | |
| Duke. My holy sir, none better knows than you | 10 |
| How I have ever lov’d the life remov’d, | |
| And held in idle price to haunt assemblies | |
| Where youth, and cost, and witless bravery keeps. | |
| I have deliver’d to Lord Angelo— | |
| A man of stricture and firm abstinence— | 15 |
| My absolute power and place here in Vienna, | |
| And he supposes me travell’d to Poland; | |
| For so I have strew’d it in the common ear, | |
| And so it is receiv’d. Now, pious sir, | |
| You will demand of me why I do this? | 20 |
| Fri. T. Gladly, my lord. | |
| Duke. We have strict statutes and most biting laws,— | |
| The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds,— | |
| Which for this fourteen years we have let sleep; | |
| Even like an o’ergrown lion in a cave, | 25 |
| That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers, | |
| Having bound up the threat’ning twigs of birch, | |
| Only to stick it in their children’s sight | |
| For terror, not to use, in time the rod | |
| Becomes more mock’d than fear’d; so our decrees, | 30 |
| Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead, | |
| And liberty plucks justice by the nose; | |
| The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart | |
| Goes all decorum. | |
| Fri. T. It rested in your Grace | 35 |
| T’ unloose this tied-up justice when you pleas’d; | |
| And it in you more dreadful would have seem’d | |
| Than in Lord Angelo. | |
| Duke. I do fear, too dreadful: | |
| Sith ’twas my fault to give the people scope, | 40 |
| ’Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them | |
| For what I bid them do: for we bid this be done, | |
| When evil deeds have their permissive pass | |
| And not the punishment. Therefore, indeed, my father, | |
| I have on Angelo impos’d the office, | 45 |
| Who may, in the ambush of my name, strike home, | |
| And yet my nature never in the sight | |
| To do it slander. And to behold his sway, | |
| I will, as ’twere a brother of your order, | |
| Visit both prince and people: therefore, I prithee, | 50 |
| Supply me with the habit, and instruct me | |
| How I may formally in person bear me | |
| Like a true friar. Moe reasons for this action | |
| At our more leisure shall I render you; | |
| Only, this one: Lord Angelo is precise; | 55 |
| Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses | |
| That his blood flows, or that his appetite | |
| Is more to bread than stone: hence shall we see, | |
| If power change purpose, what our seemers be. [Exeunt. | |
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