Isabella
What says my brother?
Claudio
Death is a fearful thing.
Isabella
And a shamèd life a hateful.
Compare the way that both Isabella and Claudio use language. Are they a good match in this scene?
Claudio
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 imprisoned in the viewless winds
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world, or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling; ’tis too horrible.
The weariest and most loathèd worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
Stillness, lack of movement.
Lump of compressed earth.
To swim in the fiery rivers of hell or live in a terrifying landscape of thick ice.
To be worse off than a tortured soul in hell, howling as they are punished for their sinful thoughts.
Claudio
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.
Who has the stronger argument?
Isabella
Oh, you beast!
Oh faithless coward, oh 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 played my father fair,
For such a warpèd slip of wilderness
Ne'er issued 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.
Look at the lengths of the sentences. What does it reveal about both characters' thoughts and emotions?
The crime of having sex with a member of your immediate family.
Heaven forbid, my mother must have cheated on my father because such a twisted savage could never be related to him.
(Text edited for rehearsals)