That I desire to hear her speak again,

And feast upon her eyes? What is’t I dream on?

O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,

With saints dost bait thy hook. Most dangerous

Is that temptation that doth goad us on

To sin in loving virtue. Never could the strumpet,

With all her double vigour, art and nature,

Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid

Subdues me quite. Ever till now,

When men were fond, I smiled and wondered how.

[II, iv, 1–17] His unlicensed feelings for Isabella, fears Angelo, make a mockery of his religious faith:

When I would pray and think, I think and pray

To several subjects: heaven hath my empty words,

Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,

Anchors on Isabel: God in my mouth,

As if I did but only chew His name,

And in my heart the strong and swelling evil

Of my conception. The state, whereon I studied,

Is like a good thing being often read,

Grown seared and tedious; yea, my gravity,

Wherein, let no man hear me, I take pride,

Could I with boot change for an idle plume

Which the air beats for vain. O place, O form,

How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,

Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls

To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood;

Let’s write ‘good Angel’ on the devil’s horn;

’Tis not the devil’s crest.

[III, ii, 249–70] Angelo’s superior, the Duke of Vienna, is scathing about his deputy’s corruption – but more about his hypocrisy. He will be repaid in kind for his dishonesty that night, decides the Duke, when his spurned love Mariana comes to his bed in place of Isabella, whom Angelo has ordered to sleep with him in return for her brother’s life:

He who the sword of heaven will bear

Should be as holy as severe;

Pattern in himself to know,

Grace to stand, and virtue go;

More nor less to others paying

Than by self-offences weighing.

Shame to him whose cruel striking

Kills for faults of his own liking.

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?

How may likeness made in crimes,

Make a practice on the times,

To-draw with idle spiders’ strings

Most ponderous and substantial things!

Craft against vice I must apply.

With Angelo tonight shall lie

His old betrothed but despised:

So disguise shall by th’ disguised

Pay with falsehood false exacting,

And perform an old contracting.

Othello

[III, iii, 255–74] Taken in as much by his own jealousy as by the lying insinuations of his malevolent ensign, lago, the moor Othello is tragically ready to see his beloved Desdemona as his betrayer – no true falcon but an unruly ‘haggard’ hawk:

This fellow’s of exceeding honesty,

And knows all qualities, with a learnèd spirit

Of human dealings. If I do prove her haggard,

Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings,