Provost's Epilogue

PROVOST    Three weeks has it been since I saw the face of Claudio

Sitting in despondence within that cell.

Vienna has seen the most turbulent of times

With the duke returned and requested the hand

Of the maid whose chastity was saved.

I had judged the girl proud enough to immediately refuse,

Yet in hesitation she called for a friar to come and advise her.

Not a second after the words urging her to marry the Duke

Had dropped from his lips did she devote herself completely to the man.

Though Lucio and Angelo cried out the misery of matrimony,

The pain of being joined in a bond of unreciprocated love,

Forced to bear the undesired affection of another;

She would not listen. Her heart was locked

As soon as the friar had uttered the deed favorable in the eyes of God.

A kindness for a kindness, he said, is a fitting end.

Woe be to the girl, who took the words of a friar

As though they were the writ of God; those words came from a man

governed by God,  not the governor Himself.

Indeed, until the day these men and women cease to trust

The judgment of other instead of the judgment of their own,

They will be ruled by tragedy, seemers, and hearts of stone.