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by Nirav Soni

Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Act III, Scene 1

(edited to ensure readability)

  Cla. The miserable have no other medicine

But only hope: I have hope to live, and am prepar’d to

die.

  Duke. Be absolute for death: either death or life

Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:

If I do loose thee, I do loose a thing

That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,

Servile to all the skyie-influences

That dost this habitation where thou keepst

Hourly afflict: Merely, thou art deaths fool,

For him thou labourst by thy flight to shun,

And yet runst toward him still. Thou art not noble,

For all th’ accommodations that thou bearst,

Are nurst by baseness: Thou’rt by no means valiant,

For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork

Of a poor worm: thy best of rest is sleep,

And that thou oft provokest, yet grossely fearst

Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thy self,

For thou exists on many a thousand graines

That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not,

For what thou hast not, still thou striv’st to get,

And what thou hast forgetst. Thou art not certain,

For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,

After the Moon: If thou art rich, thou’rt poor,

For like an Ass, whose back with Ingots bowes;

Thou bearst thy heavie riches but a iournie,

And death unloads thee; Friend hast thou none.

For thine own bowels which do call thee, fire

The meere effusion of thy proper loins

Do curse the Gout, Sapego, and the Rheume

For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth, nor age

But as it were an after-dinners sleep

Dreaming on both, for all thy blessed youth

Becomes as aged, and doth beg the almes

Of palsied-Eld: and when thou art old, and rich

Thou hast neither heate, affection, limb, nor beauty

To make thy riches pleasant: what’s yet in this

That beares the name of life? Yet in this life

Lie hid more thousand deaths; yet death we fear

That makes these oddes, all even.