438. -who, with our spleens, Would all themselves laugh mortal.] Mr. Theobald says the meaning of this is, that if they were endowed with our spleens and perishable organs, they would laugh themselves out of immortality: which amounts to this, that if they were mortal, they would not be immortal. Shakspere meant no such nonsense. By spleens, he meant that peculiar turn of the human mind, that always inclines it to a spiteful, unseasonable mirth. Had the angels that, says Shakspere, they would laugh themselves out of their immortality, by indulging a passion which does not deserve that prerogative. The ancients thought that immoderate laughter was caused by the bigness of the spleen.. WARBURTON. 459. -that my sense breeds with it.] Thus all the folios. Some later editor has changed breeds to bleeds, and Dr. Warburton blames poor Mr. Theobald for recalling the old word, which yet is certainly right. My sense breeds with her sense, that is, new thoughts are stirring in my mind, new conceptions are hatched in my imagination. So we say to brood over thought. JOHNSON. Sir W. Davenant's alteration favours the sense of the old reading: -She speaks such sense As with my reason breeds such images As she has excellently form'd. 467. STEEVENS. -fond shekels- -] Fond, means very frequently in our author, foolish. It signifies in this place, place, valued or prized by folly. 467. STEEVENS. -tested gold,] i. e. attested, or marked with the standard stamp. WARBURTON. Rather cupelled, brought to the test, refined. JOHNSON. All gold that is tested is not marked with the standard stamp. The verb has a different sense, and means tried by the cuppel, which is called by the refiners a test. Vide Harris's Lex Tech. Voce CUPSir J. HAWKINS. preserved souls,] i. e. preserved from the corruption of the world. The metaphor is taken from fruits preserved in sugar. PELL. 471. So, in The Amorous War, 1648: WARBURTON. "You do not reckon us 'mongst marmalade, "Ladies preserved ?" 478. I am that way going to temptation, STEEVENS. Where prayers cross.] Which way Angelo is going to temptation, we begin to perceive; but how prayers cross that way, or cross each other, at that way, more than any other, I do not understand. 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 his honour is in danger, and therefore, I believe, answers thus ; I am that way going to temptation, Which your prayers cross. That is, I am tempted to lose that honour of which thou implorest the preservation. The temptation under which I labour, is, that which thou hast unknowingly thwarted with thy prayer. He uses the same mode of language a few lines lower. Isabella, parting, says: Angelo catches the word-Save it! From what? From thee; even from thy virtue !— JOHNSON. The best method of illustrating this passage will be to quote a similar one from the Merchant of Venice, act iii. sc. 1. "Sal. I would it might prove the end of his losses! "Sola. Let me say Amen betimes, lest the devil cross thy prayer." For the same reason Angelo seems to say Amen to Isabella's prayer; but, to make the expression clear, we should read perhaps-Where prayers are crossed. TYRWHITT. The petition of the Lord's prayer—“ lead us not into temptation"-is here considered as crossing or intercepting the onward way in which Angelo was going; this appointment of his for the morrow's meeting being a premeditated exposure of himself to temptation, which it was the general object of prayer to thwart. HENLEY. 487. -it is 1, That lying, by the violet, in the sun, &c.] I am not corrupted by her, but by my own heart, which excites foul desires under the same benign influences that exalt her purity, as the carrion grows putrid by those beams which increase the fragrance of the violet. JOHNSON. 494. And pitch our evils there?] So, in K. Henry VIII, "Nor build their evils on the graves of great men." Neither of these passages appear to contain a very ele gant allusion. STEEVENS. Evils, in the present instance, undoubtedly stands for forica. Dr. Farmer assures me he has seen the word evil used in this sense by our ancient writers; and it appears from Harrington's Metamorphosis of Ajax, &c. that privies were originally so ill contrived, even in royal palaces, as to deserve the title of evils or nuisances. Shall we desire to raise a sanctuary, And pitch our evils there? Oh fie, fie, fie!] No language could more forcibly express the aggravated profligacy of Angelo's passion, which the purity of Isabella served but the more to inflame.-The desecration 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, HENLEY. X. 27. 509. -I smil'd and wonder'd how.] As a day must now intervene between this conference of Isabella with Angelo, and the next, the act might more properly end here; and here, in my opinion, it was ended by the poet. JOHNSON. 513. I come to visit the afflicted spirits Here in the prison :- -] This is a scriptural expression, expression, very suitable to the grave character which the Duke assumes, "By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison.” 1 Pet. iii. 19. WHALLEY. 520. Who falling in the flaws of her own youth, Hath blister'd her report :- -] Who doth not see that the integrity of the metaphor requires we should read: -flames of her own youth? WARBURTON. Who does not see that, upon such principles, there is no end of correction? JOHNSON. Dr. Johnson did not know, nor perhaps Dr. Warburton either, that Sir W. Davenant reads flames instead of flaws in his Law against Lovers, a play almost literally taken from Measure for Measure and Much Ado about Nothing. FARMER. Shakspere has flaming youth in Hamlet; and Greene, in his Never too Late, 1616, says" he measured the flames of youth by his own dead cinders." Blister'd her report, is disfigur'd her fame. Blister seems to have reference to the flames mentioned in the preceding line. A similar use of this word occurs in Hamlet: -takes the rose "From the fair forehead of an innocent love, In support of Dr. Warburton's emendation, it should be remembered, that flawes (for so it was anciently spelled) and flames differ only by a letter that is very frequently mistaken at the press. The same mistake is found in the Comedy of Errors, act v. sc. 1. edit. 1623 :-" She never reprehended him but wildly;" |