Vincentio the Duke

Duke
Escalus.
Escalus
My lord.
Duke

Of government the properties to unfold
Would seem in me t’ affect speech and discourse,
Since I am put to know that your own science
Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice
My strength can give you.

For you must know,
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Angelo,
There is a kind of character in thy life,
That to th’ observer doth thy history
AlliterationFully unfoldHyperbaton. Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so properAnastrophe as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
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My holy sir, none better knows than you
How I have ever lov’d the life removed,
And held in idle price to haunt assemblies
Where youth, and cost, witless bravery keeps.
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We have strict statutes and most biting laws
(The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds),
Which for this fourteen years we have let slip,
Even like an o’ergrown lion in a cave,
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,
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Vincentio, the 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,
That dost this habitation where thou keep’st
Hourly afflict. Merely,
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The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good; the goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness; but grace, being the soul of your complexion, shall keep the body of it ever fair.
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Lucio
Sir, I know him, and I love him.
Vincentio, the Duke
Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.
Lucio
Come, sir, I know what I know.
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Escalus
What news abroad i’ th’ world?
Vincentio, the Duke
None, but that there is so great a fever on goodness, that the dissolution of it must cure it. Novelty is only in request, and, as it is, as dangerous to be ag’d in any kind of course, as it is virtuous to be constant in any undertaking.
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Enter Mariana, and Boy singing.

Take, O take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn,
And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn.
But my kisses bring again, bring again,
Seals of love, but sealed in vain, sealed in vain.
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Vincentio, the Duke
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,
Isabella
Is it not strange? And strange?
Vincentio, the Duke
Nay, it is ten times strange.
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