Clo. If you head and hang all that offend that Elb. Varlet, thou liest; thou liest, wicked varlet: way but for ten year together, you'll be glad to give the time is yet to come, that she was ever respect-out a commission for more heads. If this law hold ed with man, woman, or child.

Escal. Alas! it hath been great pains to you! They do you wrong to put you so oft upon't: Are there not men in your ward sufficient to serve it?

Elb. Faith, sir, few of any wit in such matters: as they are chosen, they are glad to choose me for them: I do it for some piece of money, and go through with all.

Escal. Look you, bring me in the names of some
Six or seven, the most sufficient of your parish.
Elb. To your worship's house, sir?

Escal. To my house: Fare you well. [Exit EL-I
Bow.] What's o'clock, think you?

He's sentenc'd; 'tis too late.
Lucio. You are too cold.
[TO ISABELLA.
Isab. Too late? why, no; I, that do speak a word,
May call it back again: Well, believe this,
No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,

Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace,
As mercy does. If he had been as you,
And you as he, you would have slipt like him;
But he, like you, would not have been so stern.
Ang. Pray you, begone.

Isab. I would to heaven I had your potency,
And you were Isabel! should it then be thus?
No; I would tell what 'twere to be a judge,

Go to; let that be mine: And what a prisoner.

Lucio. Ay, touch him: there's the vein. [Aside.
Ang. Your brother is a forfeit of the law,
And you but waste your words.

Isab.
Alas! alas!
Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took,
Found out the remedy: How would you be,
If he, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.4

He's not prepar'd for death! Even for our kitchens | Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself,
We kill the fowl of season: shall we serve heaven
With less respect than we do minister

To our gross selves? Good, good my lord, bethink
you:

Who is it that hath died for this offence?
There's many have committed it.
Lucio.
Ay, well said.
Ang. The law hath not been dead, though it hath
slept: 2

Those many had not dar'd to do that evil,
If the first man that did the edict infringe
Had answer'd for his deed: now, 'tis awake;
Takes note of what is done; and, like a prophet,
Looks in a glass, that shows what future evils,
(Either now, or by remissness new-conceiv'd,
And so in progress to be hatch'd and born,)
Are now to have no successive degrees,
But, where they live, to end.

Isab.

Yet show some pity.
Ang. I show it most of all, when I show justice;
For then I pity those I do not know,4
Which a dismiss'd offence would after gall;
And do him right, that, answering one foul wrong,
Lives not to act another. Be satisfied:
Your brother dies to-morrow: be content.

Isab. So you must be the first, that gives this

sentence:

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 assur'd,
His glassy essence,-like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastick tricks before high heaven.
As make the angels weep: who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

Lucio. O, to him, to him, wench: he will relent;
He's coming, I perceive't.
Prov.
Pray heaven, she win him!
Isab. We cannot weigh our brother with ourself:
Great men may jest with saints: 'tis wit in them!
But, in the less, foul profanation.

Lucio. Thou'rt in the right, girl; more o' that.
Isab. That in the captain's but a cholerick word,
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

Lucio. Art advis'd o' that? more on't.
Ang. Why do you put these sayings upon me?
Isab. Because authority, though it err like others,

1 i. e. when in season.

That skins the vice o' the top: Go to your bosom:
Knock there, and ask your heart, what it doth know
That's like my brother's fault: if it confess
A natural guiltiness, such as is his,
Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother's life.

Ang.
She speaks, and 'tis
Such sense, that my sense breeds with it.19.
Fare you well.

Isab. Gentle my lord, turn back.

Ang. I will bethink me:-Come again to-mor

row.

Isab. Hark, how I'll bribe you: Good my lord, turn back.

Ang. How! bribe me?

Isab. Ay, with such gifts, that heaven shall share with you.

Lucio. You had marr'd all else.

Isab. Not with fond shekels of the tested 12 gold,
Or stones, whose rates are either rich, or poor,
As fancy values them: but with true prayers,
That shall be up at heaven, and enter there,
Ere sun-rise; prayers from preserved11 souls,
From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.
Ang.
Well: come to me
To-morrow.

Lucio. Go to; it is well away. [Aside to ISABEL
Isab. Heaven keep your honour safe!
Ang.

For I am that way going to temptation,
Where prayers cross.15

Isab.

Amen. 14 [Aside.

At what hour to-morrow

Shall I attend your lordship?

Ang.

Isab. Save your honour!

At any time 'fore noon.

[Exeunt LUCIO, ISABELLA, and Provost.
Ang.
From thee; even from thy virtue.-
What's this? what's this? Is this her fault, or mine
The tempter, or the tempted, who sins most? Ha!
Not she; nor doth she tempt: but it is I,
That lying by the violet, in the sun,
Do, as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be,
That modesty may more betray our sensele
Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground
enough,

Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,
And pitch our evils there ? O, fy, fy, fy!
What dost thou ? or, what art thou, Angelo ?
Dost thou desire her foully, for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live:
Thieves for their robbery have authority,
When judges steal themselves. What? doI love her,
That I desire to hear her speak again,
And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on?
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous

10 i. e. Such sense as breeds or produces a const2 Dormiunt aliquando leges, moriuntur nun-quence in his mind. Malone thought that sense here quam,' is a maxim of our law. meant sensual desire.

3 This alludes to the deceptions of the fortune-tellers, who pretended to see future events in a beryl, or crystal glass.

4 One of Judge Hale's Memorials' is of the same tendency: When I find myself swayed to mercy, let me remember that there is a mercy likewise due to the

country."

5 Pelting for paltry. 6 Gnarled, knotted. 7 Mr. Douce has remarked the close affinity between this passage and one in the second satire of Persius. Yet we have no translation of that poet of Shakspeare's age.

Ignovisse putas, quia, cum tonat, ocyus ilex Sulfure discutitur sacro, quam tuque domusque?' 8 The notion of angels weeping for the sins of men is rabbinical. By spleens Shakspeare meant that peculiar turn of the human mind, that always inclines it to a spiteful and unseasonable mirth. Had the angels that, they would laugh themselves out of their immortality, by indulging a passion unworthy of that prerogative

9 Shakspeare has used this indelicate metaphor again in Hamlet: It will but skin and film the uleerous place'

11 Fond, in its old signification sometimes meant foolish. In its modern sense it evidently implied a doting or extravagant affection; here it signifies overvalued or prized by folly.

12 i. e. tried, refined.

13 Preserved from the corruption of the world.

14 Isabella prays that his honour may be safe, meaning only to give him his title his imagination is caught by the word honour, he feels that it is in danger, and therefore says amen to her benediction.

15 The petition of the Lord's Prayer, Lead us not into temptation,-is here considered as crossing or intercepting the way in which Angelo was going: he was exposing himself to temptation by the appointment for the morrow's meeting.

16 Sense for sensual appetite.

17 No language could more forcibly express the aggra vated profligacy of Angelo's passion, which the purity of Isabella but served the more to inflame. The dese cration of edifices devoted to religion, by converting them to the most abject purposes of nature, was an eastern method of expressing contempt. See 2 Kings,

X. 27.

Juliet. Must die to-morrow! O, injurious loves,
That respites me a life, whose very comfort
Is still a dying horror!

Prov.

"Tis pity of him. [Exeunt.

SCENE IV. A Room in Angelo's House. Enter
ANGELO.

Ang. When I would pray and think, I think and

pray

To several subjects: heaven hath my empty words;
Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,
Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,
As if I did but only chew his name;
And in my heart, the strong and swelling evil
Of my conception: The state, whereon I studied,
Is like a good thing, being often read,
Grown fear'd and tedious; yea, my gravity,
Wherein (let no man hear me) I take pride,
Could I, with boot," change for an idle plume,
Which the air beats for vain. O place! O form!
How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,
Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls
To thy false seeming ? Blood, thou still art blood!
Let's write good angel on the devil's horn,
"Tis not the devil's crest.10

8

One Isabel, a sister,

Teach her the way. [Exit Serv.

Why does my blood thus muster to my heart;
Making both it unable for itself,
And dispossessing all the other parts
Of necessary fitness?

So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons;
Come all to help him, and so stop the air
By which he should revive: and even so
The general,11 subject to a well-wish'd king,
Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness
Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love
Must needs
offence.
appear
Enter ISABELLA.

image

In stamps that are forbid: 'tis all as easy
Falsely to take away a life true made,
As to put mettle in restrained means,

1 Dr. Johnson thinks the second act should end here. To make a false one.14
2 The folio reads flawes.

31. e. not spare to offend heaven.

41. e. keep yourself in this frame of mind.

50 injurious love. Sir Thomas Hanmer proposed to read law instead of love.

6 Inrention for imagination. So, in Shakspeare's 103d Sonnet:

a face,

That overgoes my blunt invention quite.'
And in King Henry V.

O for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention.'
Si. e. outside.

7 Boot is profit.
9 Shakspeare judiciously distinguishes the different
perations of high place upon different minds. Fools
are frighted and wise men allured. Those who cannot
judge but by the eye are easily awed by splendour;
those who consider men as well as conditions, are easily
persuaded to love the appearance of virtue dignified

with power.

10 Though we should write good angel on the devil's horn, it will not change his nature, so as to give him a right to wear that crest. This explanation of Malone's is confirmed by a passage in Lylys Midas, Melancholy is melancholy a word for barber's mouth? Thou shouldst say heavy, dull, and doltish; melancholy is the crest of courtiers.'

11 i. e. the people or multitude subject to a king. So, in Hamlet: the play pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general. It is supposed that Shakspeare, in this passage, and in one before (Act i. Sc. 2.) intend ed to flatter the unkingly weakness of James I. which made him so impatient of the crowds which flocked to see him, at his first coming, that he restrained them by a proclamation.

12 i. e. that hath killed a man.

ishness.
13 Sweetness has here probably the sense of licker.

14 The thought is simply, that murder is as easy as

9 I adopt Mr. Nares' explanation of this difficult passage as the most satisfactory yet offered:- If he is the only feodary, i. e. subject who holds by the common tenure of human frailty. Owes, i. e. possesses and succeeds by, holds his right of succession by it. burton says that the allusion is so fine that it deserves to be explained.-The comparing mankind lying under the weight of original sin, to a feodary who owes suit and service to his lord, is not ill imagined.'

2 i. e. actions that we are compelled to, however numerous, are not imputed to us by heaven as crimes. 3 The masks worn by female spectators of the play are here probably meant; however improperly, a com- 10 The meaning appears to be, that men debase their pliment to them is put into the mouth of Angelo: un-natures by taking advantage of women's weakness.' less the demonstrative pronoun is put for the preposi- She therefore calls on Heaven to assist them. tive article? At the beginning of Romeo and Juliet, we have a passage of similar import:

12 i. e. your virtue assumes an air of licentiousness, which is not natural to you, on purpose to try me.' 13 Seeming is hypocrisy. 14 Vouch, assertion. 15 A metaphor from a lamp or candle extinguished in its own grease.

16 Prolixious blushes mean what Milton has elegantly called Sweet reluctant delay.