Measure for Measure: Key Quotes

Measure for Measure: Key Quotes

Waage (image/jpeg)

Act 1: Scenes 1 & 2

Scene 1'We have with special soul elected him our absence to supply' 'To th'observer doth thy history fully unfold''Mortality and mercy in Vienna live in thy tongue and heart' 'Let there be more test made of my metal, before so noble and so great a figure be stamped upon it''No more evasion''I love the people, but do not like to stage me to their eyes'

Scene 2'Behold, where Madame Mitigation comes!''Thy bones are hollow; impiety has made a feast of thee''There's one yonder arrested and carried to prison, was worth five thousand of you all''All houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be plucked down''Good counsellors lack no clients: though you change your place, you need not change your trade''From too much liberty, my Lucio''Our natures do pursue, like rats that ravin down their proper bane, a thirsty evil; and when we drink we die''She is fast my wife''Mutual entertainment''Nineteen zodiacs have gone round, and none of them been worn; and for a name now puts the drowsy and neglected act freshly on me''There is a prone and speechless dialect such as move men; beside, she hath prosperous art'

Act 1: Scenes 3 & 4

Scene 3'Believe not that the dribbling dart of love can pierce a complete bosom''The aims and ends of burning youth''How I have ever loved the life removed''Lord Angelo - a man of stricture and firm abstinence''The rod becomes more mocked than feared''Liberty plucks Justice by the nose, the baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart goes all decorum''Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them for what I bid them do''Scarce confesses that his blood flows; or that his appetite is more to bread than stone.'Hence we shall see if power change purpose'

Scene 4'Have you nuns no farther privileges? ... I speak not as desiring more, but rather wishing a more strict restraint''If you speak, you must not show your face; or if you show your face, you must not speak''Tis my familiar sin''I hold you as a thing enskied and sainted''Those that feed grow full ... blossoming time ... teeming foison ... plenteous womb''Lord Angelo; a man whose blood is very snow broth; one who never feels the wanton stings and motions of the sense; but doth rebate and blunt his natural edge''What poor ability's in me to do him good?'When maidens sue, men give like gods'

Act 2: Scenes 1& 2

Scene 1'We must not make a scarecrow of the law''This gentleman, whom I would save ... whom I believe to be most straight in virtue''Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, another thing to fall''Let mine own judgement pattern out my death''Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall''I never come into any room in a tap-house, but I am drawn in''Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the youth of the city?''You'll be glad to give out a commission for more heads''I shall follow it as the flesh and fortune shall better determine''Lord Angelo is severe'

Scene 2 'I have seen when, after execution, judgement hath repented o'er his doom''Dispose of her to some more fitter place ... See you the fornicatress be removed; let her have needful but not lavish means''There is a vice that I most do abhor, and most desire should meet the blow of justice; for which I would not plead, but that I must; for which I must not plead, but that I am''If he had been as you, and you as he, you would have slipped like him, but he like you would not have been so stern''Even for our kitchens we kill the fowl of season''The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept ... Now 'tis awake''But man, proud man, dressed in a little brief authority''Go to your bosom, knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know that's like my brother's fault''I'll bribe you ... How! Bribe me? ... with such gifts that heaven shall share with you''For I am going that way to temptation'

Act 2: Scenes 2, 3 & 4

Scene 2 (continued)'The tempter, or the tempted, who sins most?''Lying by the violet in the sun, do as the carrion does, not as the flower, corrupt with virtuous season''Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary and pitch our evils there?''Dost thou desire her foully for those things that make her good?''Thieves for their robbery have authority when judges steal themselves''Never could the strumpet with all her double vigour, art and nature, once stir my temper: but this virtuous maid subdues me quite''Ever till now when men were fond, I smiled, and wondered how'Scene 3'Love you the man that wronged you? ... Yes, as I love the woman that wronged him'

Scene 4'In my heart the strong and swelling evil of my conception''Blood, thou art blood''Let's writ good angel on the devil's horn''I am come to know your pleasure''Yet may he live a while, and, it may be, as long as you or I; yet he must die''Which had you rather, that the most just law now took your brother's life, or, to redeem him, give up your body to sweet uncleanness as she that he hath stained?''Either you are ignorant, or seem so, crafty''You must lay down the treasures of your body to this supposed, or else to let him suffer''Were I under the terms of death, th'impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies, and strip myself to death as to a bed that longing have been sick for, ere I' yield my body up to shame''Twere the cheaper way. Better it were a brother died at once, than that a sister, by redeeming him, should die for ever''Were you not then as cruel as the sentence you have slandered so?'

Act 2: Scene 4 & Act 3: Scene 1

Scene 4'Women? ... Men their creation mar in profiting by them''Since I suppose we are made to be no stronger than faults may shake our frames''Plainly conceive, I love you ... My brother did love Juliet and you tell me that he shall die for't''Pernicious purpose''I'll tell the world aloud what man thou art ... Who will believe thee Isabel''Now I give my sensual race the rein: fit thy consent to my sharp appetite''To whom should I complain?''Had he twenty heads to tender down on twenty bloody blocks, he'd yield them up before his sister should her body stoop to such abhorred pollution''Isabel live chaste and brother, die: more than our brother is our chastity'

Scene 1 'Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven, intends you for his swift ambassador, where you shall be an everlasting leiger''None, but such remedy as, to save a head, to cleave a heart in twain''There is a devilish mercy in the judge, if you'll implore it, that will free your life, but fetter you till death''I will encounter darkness as a bride and hug it in mine arms''O were it but my life, I'd throw it down for your deliverance as frankly as a pin'''Sure, it is no sin; or of the deadly seven it is the least''Sweet sister, let me live. What sin you do to save a brother's life, nature dispense with the deed so far that it becomes a virtue''Is't not a kind of incest, to take life from thine own sister's shame?''Tis best thous diest quickly''The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good''I had rather my brother die by the law, than my son should be unlawfully born''Left her in tears, and dried not one of them with his comfort'

Act 3: Scenes 1 & 2

Scene 1'Swallowed his vows whole, pretending in her discoveries of dishonour''What a merit it were in death to take this poor maid from the world''His unjust unkindness, that in all reason should have quenched her love, hath, like an impediment in the current, made it more violent and unruly''Your brother saved, your honour untainted, the poor Mariana advantaged, and the corrupt deputy scaled''Give him promise of satisfaction'

Scene 2'He had some feeling of the sport; he knew the service; and that instructed him to mercy''Shame to him whose cruel striking kills for faults of his own liking'

Act 4: Scenes 1, 2 & 3

Scene 1'Seals of love, but sealed in vain''I am always bound to you''He did show me the way twice o'er''He is your husband on a pre-contract: to bring to together 'tis no sin'Scene 2'He will discredit our mystery''Let me have Claudio's head sent me''He hath evermore had the liberty of prison: give him leave to escape hence, he would not''Claudio, whom here you have warrant to execute, is no greater forfeit to the law than Angelo who hath sentenced him'

Scene 3'How now, Abhorson? What's the news with you?''I have been drinking all night; I am not fitted for't''I will not consent to die this day, that's certain''One Ragozine ... A man of Claudio's years; his beard and head just of his colour''O 'tis an accident that heavens provides''I am bound to enter publicly. Him I'll desire to meet me ... a league below the city''I will keep her ignorant of her good, to make her heavenly comforts despair when it is least expected''He hath released him, Isabel - from the world''Unhappy Claudio! Wretched Isabel! Injurious world! Most damned Angelo!''If the old fantastical Duke of dark corners had been at home, he had lived'

Act 4: Scenes 4, 5 & 6

Scene 4'If any crave of redress of injustice, they should exhibit their petitions in the street''This deed unshapes me quite; makes me unpregnant and dull to all proceedings''Her tender shame will not proclaim against her maiden loss''He should have lived''Nothing goes right; we would, and we would not'Scene 5'The provost knows our purpose and our plot''Keep your instruction, and hold you ever to our special drift'

Scene 6'I would say the truth, but to accuse him so that is your part; yet I am advised to do it, he says, to veil full purpose'