1603 - Measure for Measure - “Good counsellors lack no clients…”

1603 - Measure for Measure - “Good counsellors lack no clients…”

The New Year of 1603 would not have been a happy and ceremonious occasion for Shakespeare and others who lived in London. After a relatively subdued party for her 69^th birthday on September 7^th in 1602, Queen Elizabeth started to be seen even less in public and everyone played the waiting game. She knew people wanted her to name a successor but she also knew that she had successfully played the political game of not naming an heir for a while now and this had worked for stability in her case. She knew that her cousin Arabella was popular but Arabella had annoyed Elizabeth on a number of occasions due to flippant statements and besides, Elizabeth knew that the Privy Council favoured a male heir. So although not publicly announced, her preferences swayed towards James VI of Scotland who was already a monarch and a fortuitously for Elizabeth and England, a Protestant. The weather deteriorated further in January 1603 and Queen Elizabeth’s health and will to live took a further blow when the last of her close friends and confidante’s Catherine Howard (Countess of Nottingham) died in February. Elizabeth fell into "settled and unremovable melancholy" and was moved to Richmond Palace early in March 1603 and so the waiting game began.

The events surrounding the ‘melancholy’ of Queen Elizabeth I, the questions of succession and the cold and wet weather meant that William Shakespeare probably was stuck in London for most of January, February and early March of 1603. He spent much of his time reading and buying manuscripts which he found in the market place but uncertainty about Queen Elizabeth and whether the theatre would open in May, meant that this was a lean time for Shakespeare. Sometime in early March of 1603, he may have re-read through Cinthio’s ‘Hecatommithi’.

‘Hecatommithi' is a set of tales framed within the story of Roman fugitives escaping by sea who sit down every couple of nights at different ports and tell stories. These stories within the main story each have a theme (normally one for each night of the storytelling) and there is a sense that by telling the stories that the fugitives achieve some redemption. The story of Epitia which involves a corrupt magistrate who, when the wife of man who is to be executed gives up her body to the him, sleeps with the woman and then kills her husband anyway, must have been seen to have some dramatic legs for Shakespeare. He probably saw the potential in this story even though in its original form it lacks a sense of character and purpose. 

As the waiting game continued as Elizabeth I’s health deteriorated further, Shakespeare probably turned to older plays by English playwrights. It was probably out of frustration that he burnt the candle late one night reading Whetstone’s ‘Promos and Cassandra’ for another time. Shakespeare had probably seen Whetstone’s play when he was young or maybe even acted in it as a young actor some 13 years earlier. The comic sub-plot of the play and the character of Mistress Overdone who runs a brothel would have been seen to have dramatic potential for Shakespeare. What probably troubled him about the main plot of the play was that Cassandra marries Promos, the murderer of her brother. Shakespeare saw that he needed a very clever and subtle handling of the main tragic plot but he probably was also fascinated with putting a tragic plot with high and bawdy comedy (a idea that had worked with the character of Falstaff). With Falstaff it had worked because the story of Henry V was so well known and the comedy helped to move along the narrative of history plays but Shakespeare probably mused over whether it could work with a tragedy or even dominate the tragic events. But his musings and initial writings came to a halt when on March 24th 1603, the bells rang out over London.

Through much of March 1603, Queen Elizabeth I had refused to see doctors and even members of her Privy Council. She even refused to take to her bed and would stand for hours looking out the window of Richmond Palace. It is said that her servants even made a day bed for her on the floor of one of the rooms. Then on March 23rd she was finally taken to her bed and early in the morning of March 24th depending on your sources she either spoke to Lord Robert Cecil in whispered tones on her death bed and "...mildly like a lamb" and "easily like a ripe apple from the tree..." and said “I will that a king succeed me and who but my kinsman the king of Scots.” Or if you follow the other common scenario, Elizabeth, being unable to verbally reply to the question should James VI of Scotland succeed her, she simply nodded and gestured a circle crown on a head. Even as her body was still warm, a rider was dispatched to Scotland and to London (since relay riders would have been set in place days if not weeks before). Later on the day of her death, Cecil and the Privy Council announced James VI of Scotland as her successor. A torch and candle lit barge was arranged and Elizabeth's coffin was carried downriver at night to Whitehall. On 28 April, her coffin was taken to Westminster Abbey and she was interred with her half-sister, Mary with the inscription "Regno consortes & urna, hic obdormimus Elizabetha et Maria sorores, in spe resurrectionis" ("Consorts in realm and tomb, here we sleep, Elizabeth and Mary, sisters, in hope of resurrection") written on the tomb.

By early May, Shakespeare was being pressured to have at least two new plays ready for late May to open the Globe Theatre’s 1603 season. He had probably started lodging at the Mountjoy's residence on the corner of Silver and Muggle Streets in East London around this time. It is possible that he paid the £25 a year rent in advance. This was a step up from other accommodation he had rented prior but Shakespeare probably was making around £250 a year by this point with his tenanted farmland, his investments in moiety, his shares in the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the Globe and the money paid to him for writing plays. With parades in the streets on May 7^th when James arrived in London in preparation for his July coronation, Shakespeare knew he needed something new for a new age for his play and the main topic of conversation on the street seemed to be questions of what sort of ruler James VI of Scotland (soon to be crowned James I of England) would be. Time was running out when Shakespeare probably started to pull together the tragic and comic elements of Cinthio’s ‘Hecatommithi’ and Whetstone’s ‘Promos and Cassandra’ into the tragic-comedy or comi-tragedy which he called ‘Measure for Measure’. He probably had started rehearsals on 'Measure for Measure' while still trying to nut out the more difficult 'Othello'. Little did he know that late in 1603, the plague would close the theatres again and kill off almost 10% of London's population.

'Measure for Measure' opens when Lord Angelo is summoned by the Duke and appointed in charge of Vienna while the Duke will go on a long trip. Angelo who comes across as earnest and almost austere initially refuses but the Duke is insistent. We then move slightly forward in time to the talk in the street where gentlemen (who are also ex-military men) show disapproval of the peace accord which the Duke has recently struck. The conversation deteriorates to talk venereal disease when Mistress Overdone (the owner of a local brothel) enters and tells them of how one of Angelo’s first acts as leader has been to tighten up on law and moral enforcement as shown by his imprisonment of a young man called Claudio who has been locked up and sentenced to death for getting his young female love Juliet pregnant. Lucio and the Gentlemen exit to discovery more about the whole matter.

Pompey the clown enters and confirms that Claudio has been imprisoned for lechery but he tells Mistress Overdone of the more shocking news that Angelo has made a proclamation which will shut down all of the brothels in part of the city. Mistress Overdone seems distressed about what this means for her business but Pompey claims that their will always be customers for her profession.

Claudio enters and he asks the provost why he has been arrested and the provost replies that he is only following Lord Angelo’s orders. Lucio asks Claudio what offense he committed that deserves the death penalty and when he hears that it is not murder but lechery Lucio is surprised at the penalty and asks, "Is lechery so looked after?"

Claudio explains that he admits to sleeping with Juliet and that it was consensual and that they intended to get married soon but were waiting for a good time to announce their engagement. It seems that their activities are part of Lord Angelo’s larger clamp down on illegal premarital sexual activity. Claudio expresses the view that he thinks that Lord Angelo is only trying to show strength at the beginning of his rule to seem strong. Lucio insists that Claudio appeal directly to the Duke but Claudio reveals that no-one seems to know where the Duke is. He asks Lucio to go to the nunnery to find Isabella, his sister (who has just joined the nunnery as a novice), to appeal directly to Angelo for clemency and his life.

We cross to the local monastery where the Duke asks Friar Thomas to hide him since his lie about a trip is only the premise for him seeing how Angelo will govern since as the Duke explains, for the past fourteen years everyone in Vienna seems to ignore the rules and undermine his authority. The Duke claims since he gave the people some freedoms, he doesn’t feel he can be strict. The Duke asks Friar Thomas to hide and disguise him as a monk so he can observe what happens when Angelo enacts the letter of the law.

The scene switches to Claudio’s sister Isabella as she is having the laws of the nunnery explained to her. Lucio arrives at the door and Isabella is allowed to speak to him since she has not taken her vows yet. Lucio explains how her brother has got a girl called Juliet pregnant and he further reveals that since the Duke has left Angelo is in charge and Angelo is intent on following the law to the letter, Angelo means to make an example of Claudio by executing him. Isabella is distressed and asks how she can help, and Lucio suggests that she visits Angelo and pleads on her brother’s behalf using her womanly charms.  

“Go to Lord Angelo,

And let him learn to know, when maidens sue,

Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel,

All their petitions are as freely theirs

As they themselves would owe them.”

Measure for Measure - Act Two - Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.”

Shakespeare is a magician with dramatic intention and tension. Just when the plot starts to get intricate, he adds extra layers, characters and even comic relief to divert our attention away while he starts to work his magic. Escalus is meeting with Angelo and he advises him that they must not be a firm but a little subtle in their enforcement of the law and like a gardener pruning a tree “…cut a little…” . The case of Claudio is raised by Escalus and he aks for pity since he infers that all men sometimes stray from the righteous path. But Angelo claims that temptation and yielding are two different things, "Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, another thing to fall…"  Angelo claims that the law should remain strong amongst the wavering of lawmakers and criminals, and then summons the provost and reinforces that Claudio is going to be executed early the next day before nine o'clock.

Comic relief elbows its way into the room with the entrance of Elbow, Pompey and Froth. Elbow is the Duke constable and he claims to have brought two "notorious benefactors" to Angelo whereby Angelo corrects him by asking whether they are not "malefactors" and Elbow bends to even greater word play and confusion. It finally transpires that Elbow had found Pompey and Froth at a brothel and then Froth confesses that he works for Mistress Overdone who runs the brothel. The two are warned by Escalus that prostitution is illegal and punishable occupation, and are told not to go near the brothel again. Escalus then asks Elbow to gather the names of worthy people and ends the scene seeing Claudio’s death as inevitable.

Angelo is visited by the Provost who tries to convince him to show clemency to Claudio especially since Juliet is about to have her baby soon. Just then, a servant enters to announce that Isabella (Claudio’s sister) is at the door. Isabella is shown in and starts by telling that although she judges Claudio's fornication as sinful, that she has come to ask for clemency for Claudio by asking for Angelo to condemn his fault instead of Claudio himself. Angelo is steadfast. Lucio urges Isabella to continue her pleas and to kneel before Angelo and touch him. She does but Angelo continues to state that Claudio must die. Isabella pleads for mercy and encouraged by  Lucio, touches Angelo once more and asks him whether he would treat his own relatives in this way. Angelo  eventually says that he will think more about that matter and asks Isabella to return the next day. Isabella is pleased and says she will pray for him.

When Isabella leaves we hear a soliloquy from Angelo where he shows that he sexually desires Isabella and questions what he feels and what he should do next: "Dost thou desire her foully for those things that make her good? Oh, let her brother live. . ."

It is like unexpected magic when we find the Duke, who has disguised himself as a friar, visiting prisoners in the prison. The Duke (as a priest) absolves Juliet of her sin and aks her if she loves the man who impregnated her, and the Duke then asks Juliet whether the sex was consensual to which she agrees and the Duke says that he will visit Claudio, but tells Juliet that Claudio is scheduled to die tomorrow. The Duke is the only character who appears in almost every location in the play; his hand is active everywhere, and he is pulling most of the strings.

We return to Angelo who is torn between his desire to enforce the laws around fornication and his sexual desire for Isabella. When Isabella arrives, he tells her that Claudio will still die but puts the question to Isabella whether she would give up her virginity to save her brother: "Which had you rather: 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 stained?" Isabella ironically answers that: "I had rather give my body than my soul…” Angelo then answers with the question, "Might there not be a charity in sin to save this brother's life?" to which Isabella innocently replies that pardoning her brother would be worth a sin. Angelo then makes it clear that he is offering to pardon her brother if she has sex with him and Isabella firmly replies that says that she would rather seek death than commit such a sin. Isabel then claims that she will blackmail him if he does not pardon Claudio and reveal to everyone what he Angelo has asked to which Angelo replies that no-one would believe her. Angelo says he will give her one day to consider his proposal and he exits. Alone, Isabella contemplates her situation and decides to visit her brother who she knows will agree that she should remain chaste and give her some conciliation before he dies. 

Measure for Measure - Act Three - “The miserable have no other medicine, but only hope.”
‘Measure for Measure’ has the strangest mix of tragedy and comedy and no more is this evident than in Act Three of the play. Disguised as a priest, the Duke visits Claudio and asks him whether he thinks Angelo will pardon him. Claudio says that he hopes that he will live but he says that he is ready to die. The Duke describes how life can sometimes be worse to death and Claudio resigns himself to his fate.

When Claudio’s sister, Isabella, enters, the Duke hides so that he can hear the conversation between Claudio and his sister. Claudio enquires of his sister as to whether her visit to Claudio can provide any hope for his life and Isabella tells Claudio that Angelo has provided one way out and it involves the loss of honour. Then Isabella finally reveals that Angelo will spare Claudio’s life if Isabella offers up her virginity to Angelo. Claudio  is shocked curses Angelo, tells Isabella not to do it. Isabella asks her brother to prepare for his death the next day. Claudio then becomes overcome by despair about dying and then requests that his sister give up her birginity for his own life. Isabella is shocked and chastises her brother comparing his demand of her having intercourse with Angelo to save his life to a type of incest to require her to have sexual intercourse in order to save his life.

Then the Duke (still disguised as a priest) asks to talk to Claudio first alone and then to Isabella. He tells Claudio that he overheard the conversation and that he thinks that Angelo is only trying to test Isabella’s virtue. Claudio aks the Duke to ask his sister for his forgiveness for what he asked. When the Duke is alone with Isabella, he tells her that he thinks Angelo was only trying to test her. He then reveals how Angelo once broke off an engagement to a girl called Mariana when her dowry went down with a shipwreck. Just like the Friar in ‘Romeo and Juliet’, the Duke has a plan that involves Isabella pretending to yield to Angelo’s request but having Mariana arrive at the bedchamber instead of Isabella and when Angelo has sex with Marianna, he will be forced to marry Mariana and free Claudio due to his own hypocrisy.

On his way out of the prison, the Duke meets Elbow who has arrested Pompey and when the Duke inquires about Pompey's crime. Elbow points out that Pompey is a pickpocket but Pompey claims that he has been wrongly treated. Lucio enters and enquires what's is going on and Pompey then asks Lucio to post bail for him but Lucio refuses. Pompey then asks the Friar (who is the Duke in disguise) if he knows where the Duke is since he thinks the Duke would help him. When Lucio criticises the strictness of Angelo enforcing the law, the Friar (Duke in disguise) shows support for Angelo. Lucio questions whether so harsh a punishments should be given out for lechery such as Claudio's since even the absent (or not so absent) Duke himself enjoyed some sexual promiscuity in his time. The Friar (the Duke) argues with him and Lucio makes inferences about the Duke's sexuality. The conversation then moves onto Claudio and when Lucio exits, Escalus then comes on with the Provost and Mistress Overdone who has been arrested for running a brothel. Mistress Overdone's defence seems to be that even Lucio is a hypocrite who has committed lechery. Escalus informs everyone that Claudio will soon be put to death because Angelo has not changed his mind. Escalus then turns his attention to the Friar (the Duke) and asks him where he is from. The Friar (the Duke) replies that he is a stranger to this land, and asks Escalus what this Angelo who is now in charge is like. Escalus replies that Angelo is always virtuous and shows great temperance in all matters. When the Duke is left alone, he breaks into a soliloquy about how Angelo will soon be shown to be a hypocrite and suffer his own penalty.

“He who the sword of heaven will bear

Should be as holy as severe…

Twice treble shame on Angelo,

To weed my vice and let his grow!

O, what may man within him hide,

Though angel on the outward side…

Craft against vice I must apply:

With Angelo to-night shall lie

His old betrothed but despised;

So disguise shall, by the disguised,

Pay with falsehood false exacting,

And perform an old contracting.”

Measure for Measure Act Four – “O! death's a great disguiser.”

Around Act Four of ‘Measure for Measure’ Shakespeare finely juggles the elements of comedy and tragedy in as the plot the Duke’s plan starts to take shape with some unexpected twists. When the Duke visits Mariana with Isabella to set up Angelo, Isabella tells of how Angelo has instructed Isabella to meet him in his garden. Isabella has already told Angelo that she will be bringing a female servant with her. The Duke introduces Mariana to Isabella and invites them to walk and talk about what they are going to do to Angelo. Mariana is reassured by the Duke that what she will do is not a sin since Angelo and her already had a marriage agreement. 

Back at the prison, Pompey is given a way out of serving a criminal sentence through agreeing to help Abhorson, the executioner, with an execution. Pompey agrees. Then the Duke (who seems to be able to move from one place to another very quickly) enters and tells the Provost that Claudio may be pardoned before morning but when the messenger from Angelo arrives, his message is the devastating command to execute Claudio by four o'clock and Barnadine in the afternoon, and to send Claudio's head to Angelo by five.The Duke (still dressed as a friar) enquires about Barnadine and when he finds that he is unrepentant, asks the Provost to put off executing Claudio and to send the shaven head of Barnadine to Angelo. 

When Abhorson is brought to the Friar (Duke) for him to offer prayers Barnadine tells them that because he was drinking all of the previous night, he is not ready to die today. Then the Provost informs the Friar (Duke) of a famous young pirate who died in the jail the previous night and they decide that they will deliver the pirate's head to Angelo instead of Barnadine's or Claudio's. 

Then Isabella enters, expecting Claudio's pardon to have been delivered but is shocked to hear that no pardon arrived and Angelo's execution order was carried out on Claudio. Why the Duke doesn't reveal all his plan to Isabella at this point and save her the grief, I don't know. It comes across as a bit strange or cruel. Isabella of course wants to confront Angelo but the Friar (Duke) says that Angelo won't let her in and that she should wait until the Duke returns and punishes Angelo and then he gives Isabella a letter to take to another friar. before she goes, Lucio enters and commiserates with Isabella over the death of Claudio and claims that the Duke would never have allowed this to happen. When Isabella leaves, Lucio raves on about the Duke's exploits with women to the Friar (the Duke in disguise) and even reveals that he was once before the Duke for getting a woman pregnant but that he denied it because he didn't want to marry the woman. 

Soon after, Angelo and Escalus have received a letter from discuss the Duke ordering them to meet him at the gates and to proclaim that anyone with any complaint should present a petition in the street. When Escalus exits, Angelo gets anxious about what complaint isabella might bring but decides that Isabella is too modest to reveal how she was dealt with by him. Angelo also reveals that the only reason he eventually put Claudio to death is that he was afraid that Claudio would seek revenge on him. 

“This deed unshapes me quite, makes me unpregnant

And dull to all proceedings. A deflower'd maid!

And by an eminent body that enforced

The law against it! But that her tender shame

Will not proclaim against her maiden loss,

How might she tongue me! Yet reason dares her no;

For my authority bears of a credent bulk,

That no particular scandal once can touch

But it confounds the breather. He should have lived,

Save that riotous youth, with dangerous sense,

Might in the times to come have ta'en revenge,

By so receiving a dishonour'd life

With ransom of such shame. Would yet he had lived!

A lack, when once our grace we have forgot,

Nothing goes right: we would, and we would not.”

We end the act with everything in place for the great revelations and the play's style moves on from the heavy events and wrestling of consciences and starts to feel more like it will reveal resolutions more conducive to a Shakespearean comedy. Friar Peter and the Duke (now dressed as himself) arrives at the gates of the town. The Duke gets Friar Peter to deliver some letters and then Varrius enters, and the Duke and him take a walk. Meanwhile Isabella and Mariana wait by the gates of the city. While Isabella afraid of openly accusing Angelo, Mariana reinforces that they should stick to the Friar's (Duke's) plan. Friar Peter comes to take the women to a place close to the Duke to prepare for the revelations and accusations.

Measure for Measure Act Five – “Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;
Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.”

Shakespeare’s original audience for ‘Measure for Measure’ would have known it was going to be a comedy because they would have seen the white flag flying above the theatre and knowing that comedies traditionally end with amazing and sometimes unbelievable revelations and marriages (the more the merrier), as the play enters its last act, the audience would have expected revelations, unions and marriages. Act Five of ‘Measure for Measure’ starts with The Duke finally meeting Angelo and Escalus at the gates of the city where he thanks them for running the city in his absence. Isabella comes forward to bring her complaint against Angelo for him being a hypocrite, an "adulterous thief… virgin-violator" and a murderer. Angelo denies all this and calls Isabella insane and The Duke labels Isabella mad and tries to dismiss her.

Isabella pleads further with the Duke and he maintains that Isabella seems too logical and detailed to be mad and he allows her to tell her whole story. Isabella starts with Claudio (her brother) being sentenced to death for fornication, and she relates how she went to plead for his life with Angelo but that Angelo desired her and demanded her to give herself to him in exchange for letting her brother live. She says that she eventually relented but that Angelo executed her brother anyway. Standing up for Angelo, The Duke rejects the truth of Isabella’s story and claims that Isabella has been set up by someone and that she must name who helped her in all this. Isabella maintains that she speaks the truth and names Friar Lodowick (The Duke’s name when he was disguised as a friar). Lucio (who has consistently slandered the Duke to the friar) claims he knows the friar as a dishonest man who has slandered The Duke many times. The Duke demands to see the Friar Lodowick, and Friar Peter stands up for Friar Lodowick and claims he is sick and has sent him instead. Isabella is labeled a liar and is arrested and taken away.

Then with her face veiled, Mariana enters, to act as a witness to Isabella’s story. The Duke demands that Mariana to show her face but she says she will not do so until her husband lifts her veil. A cryptic interchange then follows where it is established that Mariana wants her husband to lift her veil, even though she is not married, not a maid (a virgin), not a widow, not a punk (a prostitute) but that even though he didn’t know it, her husband has ‘known’ her (in the sexual sense). The Duke is about to dismiss Mariana from testifying when she names Angelo.

Angelo denies all and Mariana lifts her veil and Angelo reveals that he did know Mariana and was engaged to her five years ago. Mariana reveals that they consummated their contract and had sex on Tuesday night but  Angelo denies this. The Duke demands to see Friar Lodowick so that he can clarify the issue and Friar Peter goes off. The Duke then makes a feeble excuse to leave, leaves Escalus in charge and leaves (obviously to make a quick change back into Friar Lodowick.

Escalus calls Isabella back, and claiming that someone has already denied the truth of her story, he tries to cross-examine her. Suddenly Friar Lodowick (The Duke in disguise) enters and Escalus accuses him of having groomed and sent Isabella and Mariana to slander Angelo. The Friar (The Duke) maintains he is telling the truth and asks to see The Duke (impossible of course for him to see himself) but Escalus says that has full authority and he threatens to torture the Friar (the Duke) in the Duke’s name. Angelo then asks Lucio accuse against the FriarDuke for the way he had slandered The Duke. The Friar/Duke says that in fact Lucio had slandered the Duke. The Friar/Duke is about to be taken off to prison, when Lucio pulls the Friar’s hood off, and Friar Lodowick is revealed to be The Duke.

Turning to Angelo, The Duke asks if he has anything to say and Angelo confesses all and asks to be put to death. The Duke sentences him to marriage to  Mariana and then The Duke requests for Isabella to be brought back and he apologizes to her for not revealing himself and claims he did this to save Claudio’s life but that he did not succeed. The Duke then orders Angelo to be executed to pay for Claudio's death (all this would not work as comedy if the audience did not know that Claudio is in fact alive)

Mariana is distressed that she will now be a widow instead of a wife and she asks for a pardon on Angelo’s behalf but the Duke refuses and tries to placte her by telling her that she will find a better husband. Mariana then asks for Isabella's help and Isabella kneels and asks for Angelo to be pardoned. The Duke ignores this and the Provost is chastised for executing Claudio at such an early hour and then the Provost says he went against part of his orders and did not execute Barnadine. At this point, Barnadine (really Claudio bound up and muffled) is brought on and The Duke pardons Barnadine. The head cover and gag are removed and Claudio is revealed (having already been pardoned as Barnadine). The Duke then asks Isabella not to join the nunnery but to marry him instead. Lucio is sentenced to marry the woman he made pregnant (who is a well-known punk) and The Duke concludes by saying that everyone should confess, marry and live happily ever after and marriage is the ultimate punishment or reward for all:

“She, Claudio, that you wrong'd, look you restore.

Joy to you, Mariana! Love her, Angelo:

I have confess'd her and I know her virtue.

Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness:

There's more behind that is more gratulate.

Thanks, provost, for thy care and secrecy:

We shill employ thee in a worthier place.

Forgive him, Angelo, that brought you home

The head of Ragozine for Claudio's:

The offence pardons itself. Dear Isabel,

I have a motion much imports your good;

Whereto if you'll a willing ear incline,

What's mine is yours and what is yours is mine.

So, bring us to our palace; where we'll show

What's yet behind, that's meet you all should know.”