Your brother is a forfeit of the law,

And you but waste your words.

Alas, alas!

Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once,

And He that might the vantage best have took

Found out the remedy. How would you be

If He, which is the top of judgment, should

But judge you as you are? O, think on that,

And mercy then will breathe within your lips,

Like man new made.

Be you content, fair maid,

It is the law, not I, condemn your brother.

Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son,

It should be thus with him: he must die tomorrow.

Tomorrow? O, that’s sudden! Spare him, spare him!

He’s not prepar’d for death. Even for our kitchens

We kill the fowl of season. Shall we serve heaven

With less respect than we do minister

To our gross selves? Good, good my lord, bethink you:

Who is it that hath died for this offense?

There’s many have committed it.

Aside to Isabella: Ay, well said.

The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.

Those many had not dar’d to do that evil

If the first that did th’ edict infringe

Had answer’d for his deed. Now ’tis awake,

Takes note of what is done, and like a prophet

Looks in a glass that shows what future evils,

Either now, or by remissness new conceiv’d

And so in progress to be hatch’d and born,

Are now to have no successive degrees,

But here they live, to end.

Yet show some pity.

I show it most of all when I show justice;

For then I pity those I do not know,

Which a dismiss’d offense would after gall,

And do him right that, answering one foul wrong,

Lives not to act another. Be satisfied;

Your brother dies tomorrow; be content.

So you must be the first that gives this sentence,

And he, that suffers. O, it is excellent

To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous

To use it like a giant.

Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would never be quiet,

For every pelting, petty officer

Would use his heaven for thunder,

Nothing but thunder! Merciful heaven,

Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt

Splits the unwedgeable and gnarled oak

Than the soft myrtle; but man, proud man,

Dress’d in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d

(His glassy essence), like an angry ape

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,

Would all themselves laugh mortal.