Angelo: The Puritan Who Discovers He Is Not One
First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
Angelo has a reputation for absolute moral strictness. The Duke trusts him with Vienna's laws precisely because he enforces them without favour. He has already abandoned one woman (Mariana, his former fiancée) on the grounds that she lost her dowry. He presents himself as a man without appetites. He is wrong about this.
Meeting Isabella, a novice nun who comes to plead for her brother's life, he finds himself attracted to her. His soliloquy at the end of Act 2 Scene 2 is one of Shakespeare's most honest pieces of self-examination: 'the tempter or the tempted, who sins most?' He knows what he is doing. He goes and does it anyway.
His proposition to Isabella (sleep with him or your brother dies) is the centre of the play's moral problem. He applies the letter of the law to Claudio for a lesser offence than his own. When the Duke unmasks him in Act 5, Angelo asks for death rather than mercy. The Duke refuses. Whether the forced marriage to Mariana that follows is justice or its own kind of cruelty is a question the play does not answer cleanly.
Key Scenes
Famous Quotes
“The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?”
Angelo — Act 2, Scene 2
“O, let her brother live! Thieves for their robbery have authority when judges steal themselves.”
Angelo — Act 2, Scene 2