Measure for Measure
Act II, Scene 3
A room in a prison.
John Philip Kemble as the Duke
circa 1794
- Enter Duke disguised as a friar and Provost, meeting.
Duke
1- Hail to you, Provost! So I think you are.
Provost
2- I am the Provost. What’s your will, good friar?
Duke
3 - 8- Bound by my charity and my blest 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
- The nature of their crimes, that I may minister
- To them accordingly.
Provost
9 - 15- I would do more than that, if more were needful.
- Enter Juliet.
- Look, here comes one; a gentlewoman of mine,
- 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 offense
- Than die for this.
Duke
16- When must he die?
Provost
17 - 19- As I do think, tomorrow.
- To Juliet.
- I have provided for you. Stay a while,
- And you shall be conducted.
Duke
20- Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry?
Juliet
21- I do; and bear the shame most patiently.
Duke
22 - 24- I’ll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience,
- And try your penitence, if it be sound,
- Or hollowly put on.
Juliet
25- I’ll gladly learn.
Duke
26- Love you the man that wrong’d you?
Juliet
27- Yes, as I love the woman that wrong’d him.
Duke
28 - 29- So then it seems your most offenseful act
- Was mutually committed?
Juliet
30- Mutually.
Duke
31- Then was your sin of heavier kind than his.
Juliet
32- I do confess it, and repent it, father.
Duke
33 - 37- ’Tis meet so, daughter, but lest you do repent
- 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—
Juliet
38 - 39- I do repent me as it is an evil,
- And take the shame with joy.
Duke
40 - 43- There rest.
- Your partner, as I hear, must die tomorrow,
- And I am going with instruction to him.
- Grace go with you, Benedicite!
- Exit.
Juliet
44 - 46- Must die tomorrow? O injurious love,
- That respites me a life whose very comfort
- Is still a dying horror!
Provost
47- ’Tis pity of him.
- Exeunt.
Character study for unspecified character in Measure for Measure
Edwin Austin Abbey, unknown date