It’s a long time since we had a bit of Shakespeare, so here is Claudio’s speech from Act 3, Scene 1 of ‘Measure for Measure’. For those unfamiliar with the play, the Duke of Vienna decides he needs a break from the day job and appoints a certain Angelo to govern in his place while he ostensibly goes off on a diplomatic mission abroad (but actually hangs around disguised as a friar, just to see what happens).

Angelo takes up his post full of reforming zeal and, possibly after toying with the idea of stopping the winter fuel allowance for old age pensioners, decides instead to come down hard on fornication (a quaint old term for sex outside marriage). Unfortunately our hero Claudio has recently got a woman pregnant without quite getting round to observing the matrimonial rites, and as a result is sentenced to death.

His sister Isabella, who is a novice nun, goes to see Angelo to plead for her brother’s life. Angelo is at first unmoved but then, smitten by a fancy for Isabella, has the bright idea of sparing Claudio’s life if she will yield up her virginity to him. ‘No way!’ says Isabella and she hurries off to tell Claudio the bad news: you’re on your own in this one, bro. At first he is nobly understanding, but then, having thought about it a bit, he engages in this eloquent reflection, that feels rather like a speech from ‘Hamlet’ dropped into a lesser play, and begs Isabella to save his life even at the expense of her honour. ‘Sweet sister, let me live’. Sadly Isabella is unimpressed and just tells him to man up and stop being a wuss.

But since this is a comedy of sorts, all ends well. The Duke throws off his disguise and after some nonsense featuring a cameo appearance by a severed head pardons Claudio, deals with the despicable Angelo and in a final speech rather surprisingly proposes marriage to Isabella – there appears to be a part of being a nun that he doesn’t understand.

It is a rather odd play, and I’m not sure what moral we are meant to draw from it, unless it is that you can only rely on sisters up to a point. But I think most of us already knew that.

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-ribbèd ice,
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent 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.

William Shakespeare