Enter Lucio and Second Gentleman.

At this point, the scene has run along two rails: First, there was the coarse jesting of Lucio and his friends and the Bawd’s concern about her livelihood. Second, there was the grim scene of a man being paraded mercilessly through public to prison.  Here, those two streams will converge and the primary action of the play will commence.

These two streams of actions are two basic forces which have converged in the figure of Claudio and then his sister.  They themselves will image different elements of this conflict, we can think of them as excesses of liberty and restraint.

Claudio begins as who has balanced the restraint and desire too much to the side of liberty. He is engaged, but has not formalized his marriage before he consummated. His sister balances the two on the side of excess of restraint in her intention to become a nun.  Lucio goes further than Claudio in impregnating a prostitute. Angelo goes further than Isabella. Angelo refused a woman to whom he was engaged.  By saying excess, I think I am taking the part of Shakespeare here: Claudio, his sister, Angelo, and Lucio all resolve their situation by marriage.   The space for sexual desire and restraint is the confine and freedom of marriage.

Lucio comes to Claudio. Again note that Lucio speaks prose and Claudio poetry.

Lucio

 [120]  Why, how now, Claudio? Whence comes this

 [121]  restraint?

Claudio

 [122]  From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty.

 [123]  As surfeit is the father of much fast,

 [124]  So every scope by the immoderate use

 [125]  Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue,

 [126]  Like rats that raven down their proper bane,

 [127]  A thirsty evil, and when we drink, we die.

What caused this restraint? An excess of liberty. The alliteration of Lucio and liberty draws these two words together:

[122]   From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty.

Next, Claudio explains his situation in particularly dense and philosophical poetry:

It breaks down into two parallel explanations

[123]   As surfeit is the father of much fast,

[124]   So every scope by the immoderate use

[125]   Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue,

[126]   Like rats that raven down their proper bane,

[127]   A thirsty evil, and when we drink, we die.

First, an abstract and philosophical explanation:

[123]   As SurFeit is the Father of much Fast,

[124]   So every Scope by the immoderate use

[125]   Turns to restraint.

The first line is held together by an alliterative F, and S ties the first and second line. The idea here is the excess of Thanksgiving dinner. We eat too much, we are stuffed and refuse more food. When we do too much of a thing, we are too full and so we stop. Excess ends in restraint. One of the forces which motivates the action in the play.

The lines then pick up on the R in restraint and repeats and revises the concept: Excess does not end in restraint, it ends in death. We are like rats which gorge (raven down) poison (proper bane), and our thirst is evil: both because it is immoral and because it will kill us. By gulping our desire we kill ourselves:

                                                Our natures do pursue,

[126]   Like rats that raven down their proper bane,

[127]   A thirsty evil, and when we drink, we die.

He lodges this trouble in “our natures”. It is the fault of human being. The irrationality which Christianity would term “original sin”. It is bare guilt for a thing, it is an irrational self-destruction. In this respect, Shakespeare is echoing the language of Romans 1 where sexual sin is explained in terms of God giving human beings over to our desire.

This point makes Shakespeare’s play in some manner incomprehensible to our day. We see desires as innate therefor neither good nor bad, just present. If restraining those desires will result in distress, the desire must be given liberty. Restraint is simply archaic foolishness.

Claudio, who is expressing the moral perspective of the play, says unbridled desire is destructive. By we can also see Angelo’s restraint as excessive. In the lines above, Claudio has condemned Angelo’s abuse in lines allusive of Aeschylus. But we could also see Angelo’s desire for power as itself an excessive desire.

Lucio

 [128]  If I could speak so wisely under an arrest, I

 [129]  would send for certain of my creditors. And yet, to

 [130]  say the truth, I had as lief have the foppery of

 [131]  freedom as the mortality of imprisonment. What’s

 [132]  thy offense, Claudio?

This is quite funny, because Lucio is calling attention to the fact that Claudio is speaking just elegant poetry. I would send for my creditors, because I could talk myself out of any trouble. And yet, I would prefer the foolishness of freedom “lief have the foppery of freedom” – I’d rather be a free fool—than “morality of imprisonment.”  Lucio has a cribbed and wrong understanding of morality. Not having a sense of the moderation of marriage, he looks upon morality as imprisonment. Perversely, so does Angelo. We could even say the Duke himself was out of balance, because he too was not yet married and had let the morality of the law wither