Isabella.  There spake my brother! there my father’s grave
     Did utter forth a voice!  Yes, thou must die: 
     Thou art too noble to conserve a life
     In base appliances.  This outward-sainted deputy—­
     Whose settled visage and deliberate word
     Nips youth i’ the head, and follies doth emmew
     As faulcon doth the fowl—­is yet a devil.

   Claudio.  The princely Angelo?

   Isabella.  Oh,’tis the cunning livery of hell,
     The damned’st body to invest and cover
     In princely guards!  Dost thou think, Claudio,
     If I would yield him my virginity,
     Thou might’st be freed?

   Claudio.  Oh, heavens! it cannot be.

   Isabella.  Yes, he would give it thee, for this rank offence,
     So to offend him still:  this night’s the time
     That I should do what I abhor to name,
     Or else thou dy’st to-morrow.

   Claudio.  Thou shalt not do’t.

   Isabella.  Oh, were it but my life,
     I’d throw it down for your deliverance
     As frankly as a pin.

   Claudio.  Thanks, dear Isabel.

   Isabella.  Be ready, Claudio, for your death to-morrow.

   Claudio.  Yes.—­Has he affections in him,
     That thus can make him bite the law by the nose? 
     When he would force it, sure it is no sin;
     Or of the deadly seven it is the least.

   Isabella.  Which is the least?

   Claudio.  If it were damnable, he, being so wise,
     Why would he for the momentary trick
     Be perdurably fin’d?  Oh, Isabel!

   Isabella.  What says my brother?

   Claudio.  Death is a fearful thing.

   Isabella.  And shamed life a hateful.

   Claudio.  Aye, but to die, and go we know not where;
     To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
     This sensible warm motion to become
     A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
     To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
     In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice: 
     To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,
     And blown with restless violence round about
     The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
     Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
     Imagine howling!—­’tis too horrible! 
     The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
     That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
     Can lay on nature, is a paradise
     To what we fear of death.

   Isabella.  Alas! alas!

   Claudio.  Sweet sister, let me live: 
     What sin you do to save a brother’s life,
     Nature dispenses with the deed so far,
     That it becomes a virtue.

What adds to the dramatic beauty of this scene and the effect of Claudio’s passionate attachment to life is, that it immediately follows the Duke’s lecture to him, on the character of the Friar, recommending an absolute indifference to it.