White Rose, Getty Museum (Gardens), Malibu, California, USA (photo (c) Ulrike Boehm; all rights reserved)
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Isabella is Virtue personified; the embodiment of all that the Catholic church fathers held up as laudable and right in a woman: chastity, modesty, and perpetual virginity – at the beginning of the play she even wants to become a nun. All the harder for her, thus, the blow of hearing that her brother Claudio has been sentenced to death for fornication (unlawful sex, a deadly sin), and for impregnating his girlfriend Juliet. And it doesn't even stop there, because after Isabella has vigorously but in vain pleaded with Angelo (the judge) for Claudio's life, she is made to share the fate of countless opera heroines: Angelo tells her flat-out that there is only one way she can save her brother – by giving herself up to the same act for which Claudio has been condemned to die. Isabella is shocked, horrified (even more so when she finds out that Claudio, despite an initial outburst of "Thou shalt not do it!", would actually have her do it after all), and vows that her brother's and even her own death are a thousand times preferable to a life in shame. With the help of a friar – unbeknownst to everybody, the Duke in disguise – and Angelo's former lover Marianna she eventually devises a plan to trip the judge, and since this is a comedy, we can be fairly sure that there will be a happy ending of sorts. But it doesn't come before some major emotional turmoil, which in "Romeo and Juliet" or in an Italian opera might well have turned the play into a tragedy at the slight of a hand. – Although doubtlessly intelligent, and although even she defends womankind against Angelo's charge that "women are frail, too" ("Ay," she counters, "as the glasses where they view themselves, which are as easy broke as they make forms. Women, help heaven! Men their creation mar in profiting by them") Isabella isn't Shakespeare's most sophisticated heroine; yet, her character is noteworthy because she so perfectly epitomises the near-saintly qualities Gertrude and Ophelia have to measure up to (and fall woefully short of in Hamlet's judgement).
How now, fair maid?
I am come to know your pleasure.
That you might know it would much better please me
Than to demand what 'tis. Your brother cannot live.
Even so! Heaven keep your honour!
Yet may he live awhile, and, it may be,
As long as you or I; yet he must die.
Under your sentence?
Yea.
When? I beseech you; that in his reprieve,
Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted
That his soul sicken not.
Ha! Fie, these filthy vices! It were as good
To pardon him that hath from nature stol'n
A man already made, as to remit
Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven's image
In stamps that are forbid; 'tis all as easy
Falsely to take away a life true made
As to put metal in restrained means
To make a false one.
'Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth.
Say you so? Then I shall pose you quickly.
Which had you rather– that the most just law
Now took your brother's life; or, to redeem him,
Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness
As she that he hath stain'd?
Sir, believe this:
I had rather give my body than my soul.
I talk not of your soul; our compell'd sins
Stand more for number than for accompt.
How say you?
Nay, I'll not warrant that; for I can speak
Against the thing I say. Answer to this:
I, now the voice of the recorded law,
Pronounce a sentence on your brother's life;
Might there not be a charity in sin
To save this brother's life?
Please you to do't,
I'll take it as a peril to my soul
It is no sin at all, but charity.
Pleas'd you to do't at peril of your soul,
Were equal poise of sin and charity.
That I do beg his life, if it be sin,
Heaven let me bear it! You granting of my suit,
If that be sin, I'll make it my morn prayer
To have it added to the faults of mine,
And nothing of your answer.
Nay, but hear me;
Your sense pursues not mine; either you are ignorant
Or seem so, craftily; and that's not good.
Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good
But graciously to know I am no better.
Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright
When it doth tax itself; as these black masks
Proclaim an enshielded beauty ten times louder
Than beauty could, display'd. But mark me:
To be received plain, I'll speak more gross–
Your brother is to die.
So.
And his offence is so, as it appears,
Accountant to the law upon that pain.
True.
Admit no other way to save his life,
As I subscribe not that, nor any other,
But, in the loss of question, that you, his sister,
Finding yourself desir'd of such a person
Whose credit with the judge, or own great place,
Could fetch your brother from the manacles
Of the all-binding law; and that there were
No earthly mean to save him but that either
You must lay down the treasures of your body
To this supposed, or else to let him suffer–
What would you do?
As much for my poor brother as myself;
That is, 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'd yield
My body up to shame.
Then must your brother die.
And 'twere the cheaper way:
Better it were a brother died at once
Than that a sister, by redeeming him,
Should die for ever.
Were not you, then, as cruel as the sentence
That you have slander'd so?
Ignominy in ransom and free pardon
Are of two houses: lawful mercy
Is nothing kin to foul redemption.
You seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant;
And rather prov'd the sliding of your brother
A merriment than a vice.
O, pardon me, my lord! It oft falls out,
To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean:
I something do excuse the thing I hate
For his advantage that I dearly love.
We are all frail.
Else let my brother die,
If not a fedary but only he
Owe and succeed thy weakness.
Nay, women are frail too.
Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves,
Which are as easy broke as they make forms.
Women, help heaven! Men their creation mar
In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail;
For we are soft as our complexions are,
And credulous to false prints.
I think it well;
And from this testimony of your own sex,
Since I suppose we are made to be no stronger
Than faults may shake our frames, let me be bold.
I do arrest your words. Be that you are,
That is, a woman; if you be more, you're none;
If you be one, as you are well express'd
By all external warrants, show it now
By putting on the destin'd livery.
I have no tongue but one; gentle, my lord,
Let me intreat you speak the former language.
Plainly conceive, I love you.
My brother did love Juliet,
And you tell me that he shall die for't.
He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love.
I know your virtue hath a license in't,
Which seems a little fouler than it is,
To pluck on others.
Believe me, on mine honour,
My words express my purpose.
Ha! little honour to be much believ'd,
And most pernicious purpose! Seeming, seeming!
I will proclaim thee, Angelo, look for't.
Sign me a present pardon for my brother
Or, with an outstretch'd throat, I'll tell the world aloud
What man thou art.
Who will believe thee, Isabel?
My unsoil'd name, th' austereness of my life,
My vouch against you, and my place i' th' state,
Will so your accusation overweigh
That you shall stifle in your own report,
And smell of calumny. I have begun,
And now I give my sensual race the rein:
Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite;
Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes
That banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother
By yielding up thy body to my will;
Or else he must not only die the death,
But thy unkindness shall his death draw out
To ling'ring sufferance. Answer me to-morrow,
Or, by the affection that now guides me most,
I'll prove a tyrant to him. As for you,
Say what you can: my false o'erweighs your true.
To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,
Who would believe me? O perilous mouths
That bear in them one and the self-same tongue
Either of condemnation or approof,
Bidding the law make curtsy to their will;
Hooking both right and wrong to th' appetite,
To follow as it draws! I'll to my brother.
Though he hath fall'n by prompture of the blood,
Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour
That, 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 abhorr'd pollution.
Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die:
More than our brother is our chastity.
I'll tell him yet of Angelo's request,
And fit his mind to death, for his soul's rest.
Now, sister, what's the comfort?
Why,
As all comforts are; most good, most good, indeed.
Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven,
Intends you for his swift ambassador,
Where you shall be an everlasting leiger.
Therefore, your best appointment make with speed;
To-morrow you set on.
Is there no remedy?
None, but such remedy as, to save a head,
To cleave a heart in twain.
But is there any?
Yes, brother, you may live:
There is a devilish mercy in the judge,
If you'll implore it, that will free your life,
But fetter you till death.
Perpetual durance?
Ay, just; perpetual durance, a restraint,
Though all the world's vastidity you had,
To a determin'd scope.
But in what nature?
In such a one as, you consenting to't,
Would bark your honour from that trunk you bear,
And leave you naked.
Let me know the point.
O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake,
Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain,
And six or seven winters more respect
Than a perpetual honour. Dar'st thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle that we tread upon
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.
Why give you me this shame?
Think you I can a resolution fetch
From flow'ry tenderness? If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride
And hug it in mine arms.
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' th' head, and follies doth enew
As falcon doth the fowl, is yet a devil;
His filth within being cast, he would appear
A pond as deep as hell.
The precise Angelo!
O, 'tis the cunning livery of hell
The damned'st body to invest and cover
In precise guards! Dost thou think, Claudio,
If I would yield him my virginity
Thou mightst be freed?
O heavens! it cannot be.
Yes, he would give't thee, from 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 diest to-morrow.
Thou shalt not do't.
O, were it but my life!
I'd throw it down for your deliverance
As frankly as a pin.
Thanks, dear Isabel.
Be ready, Claudio, for your death to-morrow.
Yes. Has he affections in him
That thus can make him bite the law by th' nose
When he would force it? Sure it is no sin;
Or of the deadly seven it is the least.
Which is the least?
If it were damnable, he being so wise,
Why would he for the momentary trick
Be perdurably fin'd? – O Isabel!
What says my brother?
Death is a fearful thing.
And shamed life a hateful.
Ay, 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 region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
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.
Alas, alas!
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.
O you beast!
O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!
Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?
Is't not a kind of incest to take life
From thine own sister's shame? What should I think?
Heaven shield my mother play'd my father fair!
For such a warped slip of wilderness
Ne'er issu'd from his blood. Take my defiance;
Die; perish. Might but my bending down
Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed.
I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,
No word to save thee.
Nay, hear me, Isabel.
O fie, fie, fie!
Thy sin's not accidental, but a trade.
Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd;
'Tis best that thou diest quickly.
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Copyright 2002 – 2009: Ulrike Böhm, all rights reserved.