Page 1143 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

ISABELLA

And shamed life a hateful.

CLAUDIO
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; [120]
This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bath in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison’d in the viewless winds [125]

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 [130]
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, [135]
Nature dispenses with the deed so far
That it becomes a virtue.

ISABELLA

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 [140]
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 issued from his blood. Take my defiance,