Act 3, Scene 2

The Street before the Prison.

[Enter DUKE, as a Friar; to him, ELBOW, CLOWN and Officers.]
Elbow
1401 Nay, if there be no remedy for it, but that you will needs buy
1402 and sell men and women like beasts, we shall have all the world
1403 drink brown and white bastard.
Duke Vincentio
1404 O heavens! what stuff is here?
Pompey
1405 'Twas never merry world since, of two usuries, the merriest was
1406 put down, and the worser allowed by order of law a furred gown
1407 to keep him warm; and furred with fox on lamb-skins too, to
1408 signify that craft, being richer than innocency, stands for the
1409 facing.
Elbow
1410 Come your way, sir.—Bless you, good father friar.
Duke Vincentio
1411 And you, good brother father. What offence hath this man made
1412 you, sir?
Elbow
1413 Marry, sir, he hath offended the law; and, sir, we take him to be
1414 a thief too, sir; for we have found upon him, sir, a strange
1415 picklock, which we have sent to the deputy.
Duke Vincentio
1416 Fie, sirrah, a bawd, a wicked bawd;
1417 The evil that thou causest to be done,
1418 That is thy means to live. Do thou but think
1419 What 'tis to cram a maw or clothe a back
1420 From such a filthy vice: say to thyself—
1421 From their abominable and beastly touches
1422 I drink, I eat, array myself, and live.
1423 Canst thou believe thy living is a life,
1424 So stinkingly depending? Go mend, go mend.
Pompey
1425 Indeed, it does stink in some sort, sir; but yet, sir, I would
1426 prove—
Duke Vincentio
1427 Nay, if the devil have given thee proofs for sin,
1428 Thou wilt prove his. Take him to prison, officer;
1429 Correction and instruction must both work
1430 Ere this rude beast will profit.
Elbow
1431 He must before the deputy, sir; he has given him warning:
1432 The deputy cannot abide a whoremaster: if he be a whoremaster,
1433 and comes before him, he were as good go a mile on his errand.
Duke Vincentio
1434 That we were all, as some would seem to be,
1435 Free from our faults, as faults from seeming free!
Elbow
1436 His neck will come to your waist, a cord, sir.
Pompey
1437 I spy comfort; I cry bail! Here's a gentleman, and a friend of
1438 mine.
[Enter LUCIO.]
Lucio
1439 How now, noble Pompey? What, at the wheels of Caesar! Art thou
1440 led in triumph? What, is there none of Pygmalion's images, newly
1441 made woman, to be had now, for putting the hand in the pocket
1442 and extracting it clutched? What reply, ha? What say'st thou to
1443 this tune, matter, and method? Is't not drowned i' the last rain,
1444 ha? What say'st thou to't? Is the world as it was, man? Which
1445 is the way? Is it sad, and few words? or how? The trick of it?
Duke Vincentio
1446 Still thus, and thus! still worse!
Lucio
1447 How doth my dear morsel, thy mistress? Procures she still, ha?
Pompey
1448 Troth, sir, she hath eaten up all her beef, and she is herself in
1449 the tub.
Lucio
1450 Why, 'tis good: it is the right of it: it must be so: ever your
1451 fresh whore and your powdered bawd—an unshunned consequence:;
1452 it must be so. Art going to prison, Pompey?
Pompey
1453 Yes, faith, sir.
Lucio
1454 Why, 'tis not amiss, Pompey. Farewell; go, say I sent thee
1455 thither. For debt, Pompey? or how?
Elbow
1456 For being a bawd, for being a bawd.
Lucio
1457 Well, then, imprison him: if imprisonment be the due of a bawd,
1458 why, 'tis his right: bawd is he doubtless, and of antiquity,
1459 too: bawd-born. Farewell, good Pompey. Commend me to the prison,
1460 Pompey. You will turn good husband now, Pompey; you will keep
1461 the house.
Pompey
1462 I hope, sir, your good worship will be my bail.
Lucio
1463 No, indeed, will I not, Pompey; it is not the wear. I will pray,
1464 Pompey, to increase your bondage: if you take it not patiently,
1465 why, your mettle is the more. Adieu, trusty Pompey.—Bless you,
1466 friar.
Duke Vincentio
1467 And you.
Lucio
1468 Does Bridget paint still, Pompey, ha?
Elbow
1469 Come your ways, sir; come.
Pompey
1470 You will not bail me then, sir?
Lucio
1471 Then, Pompey, nor now.—What news abroad, friar? what news?
Elbow
1472 Come your ways, sir; come.
Lucio
1473 Go,—to kennel, Pompey, go:
[Exeunt ELBOW, CLOWN, and Officers.]
Lucio
1474 What news, friar, of the duke?
Duke Vincentio
1475 I know none. Can you tell me of any?
Lucio
1476 Some say he is with the Emperor of Russia; other some, he is in
1477 Rome: but where is he, think you?
Duke Vincentio
1478 I know not where; but wheresoever, I wish him well.
Lucio
1479 It was a mad fantastical trick of him to steal from the state and
1480 usurp the beggary he was never born to. Lord Angelo dukes it well
1481 in his absence; he puts transgression to't.
Duke Vincentio
1482 He does well in't.
Lucio
1483 A little more lenity to lechery would do no harm in him:
1484 something too crabbed that way, friar.
Duke Vincentio
1485 It is too general a vice, and severity must cure it.
Lucio
1486 Yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great kindred; it is well
1487 allied: but it is impossible to extirp it quite, friar, till
1488 eating and drinking be put down. They say this Angelo was not
1489 made by man and woman after this downright way of creation:
1490 is it true, think you?
Duke Vincentio
1491 How should he be made, then?
Lucio
1492 Some report a sea-maid spawned him; some, that he was begot
1493 between two stock-fishes.—But it is certain that when he makes
1494 water, his urine is congealed ice; that I know to be true. And
1495 he is a motion ungenerative; that's infallible.
Duke Vincentio
1496 You are pleasant, sir, and speak apace.
Lucio
1497 Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the rebellion of a
1498 codpiece to take away the life of a man! Would the duke that is
1499 absent have done this? Ere he would have hanged a man for the
1500 getting a hundred bastards, he would have paid for the nursing a
1501 thousand. He had some feeling of the sport; he knew the service,
1502 and that instructed him to mercy.
Duke Vincentio
1503 I never heard the absent duke much detected for women; he was not
1504 inclined that way.
Lucio
1505 O, sir, you are deceived.
Duke Vincentio
1506 'Tis not possible.
Lucio
1507 Who, not the duke? yes, your beggar of fifty;—and his use was to
1508 put a ducat in her clack-dish: the duke had crotchets in him.
1509 He would be drunk too: that let me inform you.
Duke Vincentio
1510 You do him wrong, surely.
Lucio
1511 Sir, I was an inward of his. A shy fellow was the duke: and I
1512 believe I know the cause of his withdrawing.
Duke Vincentio
1513 What, I pr'ythee, might be the cause?
Lucio
1514 No,—pardon;—'tis a secret must be locked within the teeth and
1515 the lips: but this I can let you understand,—the greater file of
1516 the subject held the duke to be wise.
Duke Vincentio
1517 Wise? why, no question but he was.
Lucio
1518 A very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow.
Duke Vincentio
1519 Either this is envy in you, folly, or mistaking; the very stream
1520 of his life, and the business he hath helmed, must, upon a
1521 warranted need, give him a better proclamation. Let him be but
1522 testimonied in his own bringings forth, and he shall appear to
1523 the envious a scholar, a statesman, and a soldier. Therefore you
1524 speak unskilfully; or, if your knowledge be more, it is much
1525 darkened in your malice.
Lucio
1526 Sir, I know him, and I love him.
Duke Vincentio
1527 Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.
Lucio
1528 Come, sir, I know what I know.
Duke Vincentio
1529 I can hardly believe that, since you know not what you speak.
1530 But, if ever the duke return,—as our prayers are he may,—
1531 let me desire you to make your answer before him. If it be
1532 honest you have spoke, you have courage to maintain it: I am
1533 bound to call upon you; and, I pray you, your name?
Lucio
1534 Sir, my name is Lucio; well known to the duke.
Duke Vincentio
1535 He shall know you better, sir, if I may live to report you.
Lucio
1536 I fear you not.
Duke Vincentio
1537 O, you hope the duke will return no more; or you imagine me too
1538 unhurtful an opposite. But, indeed, I can do you little harm:
1539 you'll forswear this again.
Lucio
1540 I'll be hanged first! thou art deceived in me, friar. But no
1541 more of this. Canst thou tell if Claudio die to-morrow or no?
Duke Vincentio
1542 Why should he die, sir?
Lucio
1543 Why? for filling a bottle with a tun-dish. I would the duke we
1544 talk of were returned again: this ungenitured agent will
1545 unpeople the province with continency; sparrows must not build
1546 in his house-eaves because they are lecherous. The duke yet
1547 would have dark deeds darkly answered; he would never bring them
1548 to light: would he were returned! Marry, this Claudio is
1549 condemned for untrussing. Farewell, good friar; I pr'ythee pray
1550 for me. The duke, I say to thee again, would eat mutton on
1551 Fridays. He's not past it; yet, and, I say to thee, he would
1552 mouth with a beggar though she smelt brown bread and garlic.
1553 Say that I said so.—Farewell.
[Exit.]
Duke Vincentio
1554 No might nor greatness in mortality
1555 Can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny
1556 The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong
1557 Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?
1558 But who comes here?
[Enter ESCALUS, PROVOST, BAWD, and Officers.]
Escalus
1559 Go, away with her to prison.
Mistress Overdone
1560 Good my lord, be good to me; your honour is accounted a merciful
1561 man; good my lord.
Escalus
1562 Double and treble admonition, and still forfeit in the same kind?
1563 This would make mercy swear and play the tyrant.
Provost
1564 A bawd of eleven years' continuance, may it please your honour.
Mistress Overdone
1565 My lord, this is one Lucio's information against me: Mistress
1566 Kate Keepdown was with child by him in the duke's time; he
1567 promised her marriage: his child is a year and a quarter old
1568 come Philip and Jacob; I have kept it myself; and see how he
1569 goes about to abuse me.
Escalus
1570 That fellow is a fellow of much license:—let him be called
1571 before us.—Away with her to prison. Go to; no more words.
[Exeunt BAWD and Officers.]
Escalus
1572 Provost, my brother Angelo will not be altered, Claudio must die
1573 to-morrow: let him be furnished with divines, and have all
1574 charitable preparation: if my brother wrought by my pity it
1575 should not be so with him.
Provost
1576 So please you, this friar hath been with him, and advised him for
1577 the entertainment of death.
Escalus
1578 Good even, good father.
Duke Vincentio
1579 Bliss and goodness on you!
Escalus
1580 Of whence are you?
Duke Vincentio
1581 Not of this country, though my chance is now
1582 To use it for my time: I am a brother
1583 Of gracious order, late come from the see
1584 In special business from his holiness.
Escalus
1585 What news abroad i' the world?
Duke Vincentio
1586 None, but that there is so great a fever on goodness, that the
1587 dissolution of it must cure it: novelty is only in request; and
1588 as it is as dangerous to be aged in any kind of course as it is
1589 virtuous to be constant in any undertaking. There is scarce truth
1590 enough alive to make societies secure; but security enough to
1591 make fellowships accurst: much upon this riddle runs the wisdom
1592 of the world. This news is old enough, yet it is every day's news.
1593 I pray you, sir, of what disposition was the duke?
Escalus
1594 One that, above all other strifes, contended especially to know
1595 himself.
Duke Vincentio
1596 What pleasure was he given to?
Escalus
1597 Rather rejoicing to see another merry, than merry at anything
1598 which professed to make him rejoice: a gentleman of all temperance.
1599 But leave we him to his events, with a prayer they may prove
1600 prosperous; and let me desire to know how you find Claudio
1601 prepared. I am made to understand that you have lent him
1602 visitation.
Duke Vincentio
1603 He professes to have received no sinister measure from his judge,
1604 but most willingly humbles himself to the determination of
1605 justice: yet had he framed to himself, by the instruction of his
1606 frailty, many deceiving promises of life; which I, by my good
1607 leisure, have discredited to him, and now he is resolved to die.
Escalus
1608 You have paid the heavens your function, and the prisoner the
1609 very debt of your calling. I have laboured for the poor gentleman
1610 to the extremest shore of my modesty; but my brother justice have
1611 I found so severe that he hath forced me to tell him he is indeed
1612 —justice.
Duke Vincentio
1613 If his own life answer the straitness of his proceeding, it shall
1614 become him well: wherein if he chance to fail, he hath sentenced
1615 himself.
Escalus
1616 I am going to visit the prisoner.
1617 Fare you well.
Duke Vincentio
1618 Peace be with you!
[Exeunt ESCALUS and PROVOST.]
Duke Vincentio
1619 He who the sword of heaven will bear
1620 Should be as holy as severe;
1621 Pattern in himself to know,
1622 Grace to stand, and virtue go;
1623 More nor less to others paying
1624 Than by self-offences weighing.
1625 Shame to him whose cruel striking
1626 Kills for faults of his own liking!
1627 Twice treble shame on Angelo,
1628 To weed my vice and let his grow!
1629 O, what may man within him hide,
1630 Though angel on the outward side!
1631 How may likeness, made in crimes,
1632 Make a practice on the times,
1633 To draw with idle spiders' strings
1634 Most pond'rous and substantial things!
1635 Craft against vice I must apply;
1636 With Angelo to-night shall lie
1637 His old betrothed but despis'd;
1638 So disguise shall, by the disguis'd,
1639 Pay with falsehood false exacting,
1640 And perform an old contracting.
[Exit.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1401wordplay
“buy and sell men and women like beasts”
Elbow muddles his meaning: he means that Pompey 'procures' (sells the use of) people's bodies for prostitution, but his phrasing ('buy and sell men and women like beasts') also accidentally captures a precise legal and moral truth — the trade in human beings for sex was compared by moralists to cattle-dealing. 'Drink brown and white bastard' follows: 'bastard' is a sweet Spanish wine, but the pun on illegitimate children (the product of Pompey's trade) is fully intentional.
historical The bawdy-houses of Vienna (and the London stews)historical The constable and the night watch
TLN 1405historical topical
“of two usuries, the merriest was put down”
Pompey argues that there are two kinds of 'usury' — lending money at interest and selling sex — and that the law has suppressed the jollier trade (prostitution) while letting the more miserable one (money-lending) continue, even rewarding it with a fine fur-lined gown (the dress of wealthy merchants and lawyers). 'Usury' — charging interest on a loan — was controversial in Elizabethan England and sometimes illegal; Pompey sardonically compares both trades as equally exploitative.
historical The bawdy-houses of Vienna (and the London stews)
TLN 1416cultural context
“Fie, sirrah, a bawd, a wicked bawd”
The Duke, disguised as a friar, rebukes Pompey in rhyming verse — a formal, elevated register that stands out from the prose around it. 'Sirrah' is a term of address used to inferiors or social subordinates; from a friar to a bawd it signals contempt. The Duke is performing the moral authority of his holy disguise, but there is irony: he is the ruler whose own lax governance let the city's vice run unchecked for nineteen years.
historical The disguised ruler
TLN 1434rhetorical device
“That we were all, as some would seem to be, Free from our faults”
The Duke speaks an aside — a comment to himself or the audience, unheard by Elbow and Pompey. The couplet is a compressed chiasmus: 'free from our faults' means genuinely virtuous; 'faults from seeming free' means vices that merely look innocent. The Duke is commenting on Angelo, who appears spotless but is not. This is the play's central irony stated in miniature: the gap between seeming and being.
TLN 1436wordplay
“His neck will come to your waist, a cord, sir”
Elbow predicts that Pompey will eventually be hanged — 'his neck will come to a cord' (a hangman's rope). But 'cord' also means the knotted rope-belt worn around the waist by Franciscan friars as part of their habit. Elbow is talking to a friar and does not realize the double meaning. The joke sets the friar's holy rope against the criminal's noose.
TLN 1439classical allusion
“at the wheels of Caesar! Art thou led in triumph?”
Lucio compares Pompey, being marched off by Elbow's officers, to a captive tied to the back of a Roman general's chariot in a triumphal procession. Roman triumphs were victory parades awarded by the Senate; conquered enemies and prisoners walked in chains behind the victorious general's wheel-mounted chariot. The allusion is comic — Pompey the bawd is cast as a conquered king, and Elbow becomes a conquering Caesar.
historical The Roman Triumph
TLN 1440classical allusion
“none of Pygmalion's images, newly made woman”
Lucio asks whether there are no more prostitutes available — no 'Pygmalion's images, newly made woman.' In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion was a sculptor who carved a perfect ivory woman; he fell in love with his statue and Venus brought it to life. 'Newly made woman' plays on the prostitute's role of performing manufactured desire, and 'putting the hand in the pocket and extracting it clutched' is a bawdy euphemism for paying for sex.
TLN 1448historical topical
“she hath eaten up all her beef, and she is herself in the tub”
Pompey reports that Mistress Overdone has spent all her money ('eaten up all her beef' — her stock-in-trade, slang for female flesh) and is now 'in the tub' herself: the sweating-tub was the standard treatment for syphilis. Mercury vapour was applied in a sealed wooden tub, causing sweating thought to purge the disease. The 'powdered bawd' Lucio mentions at line 1457 uses the same image: preserved (pickled) meat and a body 'cured' by the tub.
historical The bawdy-houses of Vienna (and the London stews)
TLN 1460wordplay
“you will keep the house”
Lucio congratulates Pompey on going to prison with the mock-compliment that he will 'keep the house' — a phrase meaning both 'stay indoors' (in a prison) and 'manage a household,' the respectable duty of a husband. 'Turn good husband' (just before) similarly means both 'become a thrifty man' and, sardonically, 'settle down and run a domestic establishment' — which, as a bawd, Pompey has already been doing, but in a brothel rather than a home.
TLN 1463archaic vocab
“it is not the wear”
'Not the wear' means not the current fashion — literally, not what people are wearing. Lucio refuses to bail Pompey by saying that bailing bawds is simply not in vogue. He then compounds the cruelty: he will 'pray to increase your bondage' — that is, he will pray for Pompey's sentence to get longer, not lighter. 'If you take it not patiently, why, your mettle is the more' means that if Pompey cannot bear his imprisonment calmly, that only shows he is made of harder (more rebellious) stuff.
TLN 1508historical topical
“put a ducat in her clack-dish”
A clack-dish was a wooden begging bowl with a lid that beggars, and especially lepers and people with venereal disease, clattered (clacked) to announce themselves so that people could give money without touching them. Lucio claims the Duke was in the habit of giving money to a diseased beggar woman — meaning he paid for sex with women of the lowest sort. 'Crotchets' on the same line means whims or eccentric habits.
TLN 1511archaic vocab
“I was an inward of his”
'Inward' here means an intimate, a close confidant — someone privy to another's private life and secrets. Lucio claims to have been the Duke's close friend. The irony is devastating: he is telling this to the Duke himself, disguised as a friar, while slandering that same Duke as a drunkard and lecher. Everything Lucio reveals as an 'inward' is fabrication.
TLN 1519rhetorical device
“the very stream of his life, and the business he hath helmed”
The Duke, still disguised, defends himself in the third person using an extended nautical metaphor: his life is a 'stream' he has 'helmed' (steered, from the ship's helm). 'Testimonied in his own bringings forth' means judged by his own deeds and achievements. The self-defense is ironic and comic — the Duke is arguing that Lucio cannot know the Duke as well as the Duke (disguised as a friar) does.
TLN 1545cultural context
“sparrows must not build in his house-eaves because they are lecherous”
Sparrows were proverbially associated with lechery in Elizabethan culture — a belief derived from classical natural history, where Pliny describes them as exceptionally libidinous. Lucio jokes that Angelo is so hostile to sex that he would ban sparrows from nesting in his house eaves purely on moral grounds. The image perfectly encapsulates Angelo's absurd extremism: even wild birds are a threat to his self-imposed purity.
historical The 'precise' Puritan
TLN 1555rhetorical device
“back-wounding calumny The whitest virtue strikes”
Alone after Lucio departs, the Duke shifts from prose to a formal rhyming soliloquy. 'Calumny' means slander or false accusation. 'Back-wounding' means that slander wounds the target from behind, without warning or defence — a cowardly blow. 'What king so strong / Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?' asks what power can gag slander: none, the couplet implies. The speech generalizes the Duke's personal humiliation into a maxim about the vulnerability of the powerful to reputation damage.
TLN 1568historical topical
“come Philip and Jacob”
The Feast of Saints Philip and James (Jacob) fell on 1 May in the Church calendar. Mistress Overdone is calculating the age of Lucio's illegitimate child — 'a year and a quarter old come Philip and Jacob' means the child will be fifteen months old when that feast day arrives, placing the birth in late January or early February. The saints' day is used as a common calendar marker, as people regularly reckoned time by church festivals.
TLN 1583historical topical
“Of gracious order, late come from the see In special business from his holiness”
The Duke, maintaining his friar disguise with Escalus, says he belongs to a 'gracious order' (a religious order of monks or friars) and has recently come from the 'see' — the papal seat of authority in Rome — on business from 'his holiness' (the Pope). The fiction deepens the irony: the Duke is inventing a mission from Rome to explain his presence, in a play set in a Catholic duchy where the Pope's authority is unquestioned.
historical The disguised rulerhistorical Shrift: the sacrament of confession
TLN 1619biblical allusion
“He who the sword of heaven will bear Should be as holy as severe”
In the Duke's closing soliloquy, 'the sword of heaven' is the biblical image of divine justice — God's sword as the instrument of righteous punishment. In Romans 13:4 Paul writes that the ruler 'beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God to take vengeance on him that doeth evil.' The Duke applies this to Angelo: the man who wields power to punish should himself be as holy as he is severe; Angelo fails both standards — he is neither holy nor legitimately severe.
biblical 'With what measure ye mete': the title from the Sermon on the Mount
TLN 1630wordplay
“Though angel on the outward side”
The pun on Angelo's name is the play's most sustained wordplay. 'Angel on the outward side' means appearing angelic — pure, bright, incorruptible — while concealing inner corruption. The name 'Angelo' literally means 'angel' (Latin angelus, from Greek angelos, messenger), and the Duke's soliloquy turns on the gap between the name and the man. An 'angel' was also an Elizabethan gold coin worth about ten shillings, whose golden surface could conceal base metal — adding a third layer of meaning about false value.
TLN 1636cultural context
“With Angelo to-night shall lie His old betrothed but despis'd”
The Duke announces the bed-trick: Mariana, Angelo's original betrothed, will take Isabella's place in the dark and sleep with Angelo, fulfilling their old betrothal contract. Angelo 'despised' Mariana — broke off their engagement — when her dowry was lost at sea. In law, a pre-contract (a formal betrothal) was considered binding; sexual consummation between two contracted parties was morally and legally different from casual fornication. The bed-trick turns Angelo's extortion against him: he will get what he demanded, but from the woman he is already obligated to.
historical The bed-trickhistorical A woman's honour: chastity and the double standard