LORD JUSTICE: The Court needs not thy voice, Lord Moranzone.
Madam, it were a precedent most evil
To wrest the law from its appointed course,
For, though the cause be just, yet anarchy
Might on this licence touch these golden scales
And unjust causes unjust victories gain.

COUNT BARDI: I do not think your Grace can stay the law.

DUCHESS: Ay, it is well to preach and prate of law:
Methinks, my haughty lords of Padua,
If ye are hurt in pocket or estate,
So much as makes your monstrous revenues
Less by the value of one ferry toll,
Ye do not wait the tedious law’s delay
With such sweet patience as ye counsel me.

COUNT BARDI: Madam, I think you wrong our nobles here.

DUCHESS: I think I wrong them not. Which of ye all
Finding a thief within his house at night,
With some poor chattel thrust into his rags,
Will stop and parley with him? Do ye not
Give him unto the officer and his hook
To be dragged gaolwards straightway? And so now,
Had ye been men, finding this fellow here,
With my Lord’s life still hot upon his hands,
Ye would have haled him out into the court,
And struck his head off with an axe.

GUIDO: O God!

DUCHESS: Speak, my Lord Justice.

LORD JUSTICE: Your Grace, it cannot be:
The laws of Padua are most certain here:
And by those laws the common murderer even
May with his own lips plead, and make defence.

DUCHESS: Tarry a little with thy righteousness.
This is no common murderer, Lord Justice,
But a great outlaw, and a most vile traitor,
Taken in open arms against the state.
For he who slays the man who rules a state
Slays the state also, widows every wife,
And makes each child an orphan, and no less
Is to be held a public enemy,
Than if he came with mighty ordonnance,
And all the spears of Venice at his back,
To beat and batter at our city gates –
Nay, is more dangerous to our commonwealth
Than gleaming spears and thundering ordonnance,
For walls and gates, bastions and forts, and things
Whose common elements are wood and stone
May be raised up, but who can raise again
The ruined body of my murdered lord,
And bid it live and laugh?

MAFFIO: Now by Saint Paul
I do not think that they will let him speak.

JEPPO VITELLOZZO: There is much in this, listen.

DUCHESS: Wherefore now,
Throw ashes on the head of Padua,
With sable banners hang each silent street,
Let every man be clad in solemn black,
But ere we turn to these sad rites of mourning
Let us bethink us of the desperate hand
Which wrought and brought this ruin on our state,
And straightway pack him to that narrow house,
Where no voice is, but with a little dust
Death fills up the lying mouths of men.