A Room in a Prison. | |
| |
Enter DUKE, disguised as a friar, and PROVOST. | |
| Duke. Hail to you, provost! so I think you are. | |
| Prov. I am the provost. What’s your will, good friar? | 4 |
| Duke. Bound by my charity and my bless’d order, | |
| I come to visit the afflicted spirits | |
| Here in the prison: do me the common right | |
| To let me see them and to make me know | 8 |
| The nature of their crimes, that I may minister | |
| To them accordingly. | |
| Prov. I would do more than that, if more were needful. | |
| Look, here comes one: a gentlewoman of mine, | 12 |
| Who, falling in the flaws of her own youth, | |
| Hath blister’d her report. She is with child, | |
| And he that got it, sentenc’d; a young man | |
| More fit to do another such offence, | 16 |
| Than die for this. | |
| |
Enter JULIET. | |
| Duke. When must he die? | |
| Prov. As I do think, to-morrow. | 20 |
| [To JULIET.] I have provided for you: stay a while, | |
| And you shall be conducted. | |
| Duke. Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry? | |
| Juliet. I do, and bear the shame most patiently. | 24 |
| Duke. I’ll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience, | |
| And try your penitence, if it be sound, | |
| Or hollowly put on. | |
| Juliet. I’ll gladly learn. | 28 |
| Duke. Love you the man that wrong’d you? | |
| Juliet. Yes, as I love the woman that wrong’d him. | |
| Duke. So then it seems your most offenceful act | |
| Was mutually committed? | 32 |
| Juliet. Mutually. | |
| Duke. Then was your sin of heavier kind than his. | |
| Juliet. I do confess it, and repent it, father. | |
| Duke. ’Tis meet so, daughter: but lest you do repent, | 36 |
| As that the sin hath brought you to this shame, | |
| Which sorrow is always toward ourselves, not heaven, | |
| Showing we would not spare heaven as we love it, | |
| But as we stand in fear,— | 40 |
| Juliet. I do repent me, as it is an evil, | |
| And take the shame with joy. | |
| Duke. There rest. | |
| Your partner, as I hear, must die to-morrow, | 44 |
| And I am going with instruction to him. | |
| God’s grace go with you! Benedicite! [Exit. | |
| Juliet. Must die to-morrow! O injurious love, | |
| That respites me a life, whose very comfort | 48 |
| Is still a dying horror! | |
| Prov. ’Tis pity of him. [Exeunt. | |