Page 1430 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

I thank you, Princes, for my daughter’s death;
Record it with your high and worthy deeds. [255]
’Twas bravely done, if you bethink you of it.

CLAUDIO
I know not how to pray your patience,
Yet I must speak. Choose your revenge yourself;

Impose me to what penance your invention
Can lay upon my sin; yet sinned I not [260]
But in mistaking.

DON PEDRO
By my soul, nor I;

And yet, to satisfy this good old man,
I would bend under any heavy weight
That he’ll enjoin me to.

LEONATO
I cannot bid you bid my daughter live, [265]
That were impossible; but, I pray you both,

Possess the people in Messina here
How innocent she died; and if your love
Can labour aught in sad invention,

Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb [270]
And sing it to her bones, sing it tonight.
Tomorrow morning come you to my house;
And since you could not be my son-in-law,
Be yet my nephew. My brother hath a daughter,

Almost the copy of my child that’s dead, [275]
And she alone is heir to both of us.
Give her the right you should have given her cousin,

And so dies my revenge.

CLAUDIO

O noble sir!
Your over-kindness doth wring tears from me.
I do embrace your offer, and dispose [280]
For henceforth of poor Claudio.