# Result number

Work The work is either a play, poem, or sonnet. The sonnets are treated as single work with 154 parts.

Character Indicates who said the line. If it's a play or sonnet, the character name is "Poet."

Line Shows where the line falls within the work.

The numbering is not keyed to any copyrighted numbering system found in a volume of collected works (Arden, Oxford, etc.) The numbering starts at the beginning of the work, and does not restart for each scene.

Text The line's full text, with keywords highlighted within it, unless highlighting has been disabled by the user.

1

Measure for Measure
[II, 1]

Escalus

457

Ay, but yet
Let us be keen, and rather cut a little,
Than fall, and bruise to death. Alas, this gentleman
Whom I would save, had a most noble father!
Let but your honour know,
Whom I believe to be most strait in virtue,
That, in the working of your own affections,
Had time cohered with place or place with wishing,
Or that the resolute acting of your blood
Could have attain'd the effect of your own purpose,
Whether you had not sometime in your life
Err'd in this point which now you censure him,
And pull'd the law upon you.

2

Measure for Measure
[II, 2]

Angelo

773

Stay a little while.
[To ISABELLA]
You're welcome: what's your will?

3

Measure for Measure
[II, 2]

Isabella

875

Could great men thunder
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,
For every pelting, petty officer
Would use his heaven for thunder;
Nothing but thunder! Merciful Heaven,
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

4

Measure for Measure
[II, 4]

Isabella

1174

I know your virtue hath a licence in't,
Which seems a little fouler than it is,
To pluck on others.

5

Measure for Measure
[II, 4]

Isabella

1179

Ha! little honour to be much believed,
And most pernicious purpose! Seeming, seeming!
I will proclaim thee, Angelo; look for't:
Sign me a present pardon for my brother,
Or with an outstretch'd throat I'll tell the world aloud
What man thou art.

6

Measure for Measure
[III, 2]

Lucio

1608

A little more lenity to lechery would do no harm in
him: something too crabbed that way, friar.

7

Measure for Measure
[III, 2]

Vincentio

1672

O, you hope the duke will return no more; or you
imagine me too unhurtful an opposite. But indeed I
can do you little harm; you'll forswear this again.

8

Measure for Measure
[IV, 1]

Vincentio

1818

I do constantly believe you. The time is come even
now. I shall crave your forbearance a little: may
be I will call upon you anon, for some advantage to yourself.

9

Measure for Measure
[IV, 1]

Isabella

1825

He hath a garden circummured with brick,
Whose western side is with a vineyard back'd;
And to that vineyard is a planched gate,
That makes his opening with this bigger key:
This other doth command a little door
Which from the vineyard to the garden leads;
There have I made my promise
Upon the heavy middle of the night
To call upon him.

10

Measure for Measure
[IV, 1]

Isabella

1874

Little have you to say
When you depart from him, but, soft and low,
'Remember now my brother.'

11

Measure for Measure
[IV, 2]

Abhorson

1926

Every true man's apparel fits your thief: if it be
too little for your thief, your true man thinks it
big enough; if it be too big for your thief, your
thief thinks it little enough: so every true man's
apparel fits your thief.

12

Measure for Measure
[IV, 3]

Vincentio

2289

Sir, the duke is marvellous little beholding to your
reports; but the best is, he lives not in them.

13

Measure for Measure
[IV, 3]

Lucio

2303

By my troth, I'll go with thee to the lane's end:
if bawdy talk offend you, we'll have very little of
it. Nay, friar, I am a kind of burr; I shall stick.

14

Measure for Measure
[V, 1]

Mariana

2869

Isabel,
Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me;
Hold up your hands, say nothing; I'll speak all.
They say, best men are moulded out of faults;
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad: so may my husband.
O Isabel, will you not lend a knee?