And credulous to false prints.79

Ang.
I think it well:
And from this testimony of your own sex,-
Since, I suppose, we are made to be no stronger
Than faults may shake our frames,-let me be
bold;-

I do arrest your words. Be that you are,
That is, a woman; if you be more, you're none;
If y
you be onc,-as you are well express'd
By all external warrants,—show it now,
By putting on the destin❜d livery.

80

Isab. I have no tongue but one: gentle my lord,

Let me entreat you speak the former language.
Ang. Plainly conceive, I love you.

Isab. My brother did love Juliet; and you tell me That he shall die for't.

Ang. He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love. Isab. I know your virtue hath a license in't," Which seems a little fouler than it is,

To pluck on others. Ang.

Will so your accusation overweigh,
That you shall stifle in your own report,
And smell of calumny. I have begun;
And now I give my sensual race the rein:
Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite;
Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes,
That banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother;
Or else he must not only die the death,
But thy unkindness shall his death draw out
To lingering sufferance. Answer me to-morrow,
Or, by the affection that now guides me most,
I'll prove a tyrant to him. As for you,
Say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true.
[Exit.

Isab. To whom should I complain? Did I tell

this,

My words express my purpose.

Isab. Ha! little honour to be much believ'd, And most pernicious purpose!--Seeming, seeming!

I will proclaim thee, Angelo, look for't:
Sign me a present pardon for my brother,

Or with an outstretch'd throat I'll tell the world
Aloud what man thou art.

Ang. Who will believe thee, Isabel? My unsoil'd name, the austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i' the state,

Though he hath fall'n by prompture 85 of the blood,
Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour,
That, had he twenty heads to tender down
On twenty bloody blocks, he'd yield them up,
Before his sister should her body stoop
To such abhorr'd pollution.

Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die :
More than our brother is our chastity.
I'll tell him yet of Angelo's request,
And fit his mind to death, for his soul's rest.

[Exit.

SCENE I-A room in the Prison. Enter DUKE disguised as before, CLAUDIO, and PROVOST.

Duke. So, then, you hope of pardon from Lord Angelo ?

Claud. The miserable have

No other medicine, but only hope:

I have hope to live, and am prepar'd to die.

79. Prints. Impressions.

80. I have no tongue but one. 'I have spoken consistently throughout.'

81. Let me entreat you speak the former language. Isabella begs Angelo to resume the tone of conversation he used before he said, "I'll speak more gross;" that is, openly, plainly. She would rather he would continue to talk in such a way that she can affect to misunderstand the terms on which he will spare her brother; and from which she has shrunk from comprehending as long as possible. The poet's conduct of this difficult scene is a

Duke. Be absolute for death; either death or life Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life :

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,

Servile to all the skyey influences,-

That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,'

marvel of skill, and proves his insight into womanly nature to be little short of miraculous.

82. Your virtue hath a license in't, which seems, &c. 'Your virtue allows itself to seem more fallible than it is, in order to draw me on to confess the like.'

83. Seeming. Here used for hypocrisy, simulated virtue. 84. Prolixious. Protractive; calculated to induce forbearance. 85. Prompture. Incitement, instigation.

1. Keep'st. Used for dwell'st, keep'st station.

Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;2
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art not
noble ;

For all th' accommodations that thou bear'st
Are nurs'd by baseness. Thou art by no means
valiant;

For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get,
And what thou hast, forget'st. Thou art not
certain ;

For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the moon. If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,

For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth

nor age;

But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth Becomes as agèd, and doth beg the alms

10

Of palsied eld ;1o and when thou art old and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths :" yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even.

Claud.
I humbly thank you.
To sue to live, I find I seek to die;
And, seeking death, find life: let it come on.
Isab. [Within.] What, ho! Peace here; grace
and good company!

9. Serpigo. A cutaneous disorder, a kind of leprosy. 10. Eld. Old people; elderly folk. The sentence, which is very condensedly expressed, requires that we should understand 'if it were' between "as" and "aged:" the meaning being-thy youth becomes as if it were aged, carkingly coveting those things that belong to old people,'-such as riches, experience, &c.

11 More thousand deaths. Meaning, 'A thousand more deaths than I have enumerated, or than the one that is life's ending.'

12. Leiger. A permanently resident embassador; in contradistinction to an envoy, one temporarily sent on a mission to a foreign court.

13. Appointment. Preparation. Here used in the sense of outfit, or equipment for a voyage, and in that of spiritual supplyment; with which Isabella bids her brother provide himself. 14. A restraint, to a determin'd scope. A moral restriction to one sole idea,-that of voluntarily incurred infamy.'

15. Bark your honour from, &c. A metaphorical allusion to stripping trees of their bark,

father's grave

Did utter forth a voice! Yes, thou must die:
Thou art too noble to conserve a life

In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy-
Whose settled visage and deliberate word

Nips youth i' the head, and follies doth enmew, 19
As falcon doth the fowl-is yet a devil;
His filth within being cast, he would appear
A pond as deep as hell.
Claud.

The priestly Angelo 20
Isab. Oh, 'tis the cunning livery of hell,
The foulest body to invest and cover

In priestly guards! 21 Dost thou think, Claudio,—
If I would yield him my virginity,
Thou mightst be freed?

16. Entertain. Used for 'hold too dear,' 'estimate too highly,' overprize.'

17. The sense of death, &c. We take the interpretation of this passage to be :- The feeling of death lies most in fearing it; its mere bodily pain is no more than is experienced by the beetle in common with the giant.'

18. Think you I can a resolution fetch from flowery tenderness? It has been thought that there should be a full stop instead of a point of interrogation after this sentence; in which case, "Think you," would be used in the imperative mood, and "flowery tenderness" would refer to the image of "darkness as a bride." However, not only does the Folio print the sentence as a question, but Shakespeare always uses "Think you" as a form of demand; therefore, we come to the conclusion that here Claudio asks his sister whether she thinks he can derive courage from a figurative illustration,-that of the " poor beetle "

19. Follies doth enmew. "Enmew" is a technical term in falconry for encage, or retain in the mew used to keep hawks in. But here the word is rather employed for enclosing with intent to destroy, as the falcon soars and circles round the fowl it makes

its prey.

20. The priestly Angelo? The Folio misprints 'prenzie' for "priestly" here and three lines farther on. Several substitutions have been proposed: such as 'princely' (2nd Folio), 'precise' (Tieck), 'primzie' (Singer), 'rev'rend' (Staunton); but Warburton's suggestion, "priestly," appears to us to be the most pro

Be perdurably fin'd 23-O Isabel! Isab. What says my brother? Claud.

Death is a fearful thing.

Isab. And shamèd life a hateful.
Claud. Ay, but to die, and go we know not

where ;

To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit 24
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbèd ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling!-'tis too horrible!

The weariest and most loathèd worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

Isab.

Alas! alas!

bable correction, as coming nearest to the misprinted word, while best supplying the sense required in both the places where it occurs.

21. Guards. A kind of lace or trimming, with which liveries were ornamented. A passage in point occurs, "Merchant of Venice," ii. 2:-"Give him a livery more guarded than his fellows." These ornamental facings were called "guards," because they protected the edges from soon wearing out.

22. Has he affections in him, that thus, &c. Has he inclinations that induce him to act in defiance of the very law he would enforce against me?'

23. Perdurably fin'd. Everlastingly punished. Per is often used in Latin to enhance the effect of a verb; thus, durare is to last, perdurare is to last extremely.

24. The delighted spirit. This epithet, "delighted," has puzzled the commentators; those who adopt it explaining it to mean 'heretofore accustomed to delights,' 'delighting,' and 'de-lighted,' or 'deprived of light.' Others have proposed various substitutions; such as 'benighted,' 'dilated,' 'delinquent,' &c. Though we have not ventured to alter the text, our belief is that "delighted" is a misprint of the Folio for delated; a word that, in Shakespeare's way of using epithets derived from the Latin for his own purpose, and in his way of blending various significations in a single term, would imply both conveyed and accused. Delatus is explained in Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary to mean both carried' and 'accused;' and

Bacon speaks of the time wherein sound is delated. The more we consider the passage, the more we feel persuaded that 'delated' is the Poet's word here; and that it means a spirit accused of sin, and whirled through space, "to bathe in fiery floods," &c. The expression in "Hamlet,"i. 1, "The extravagant and erring spirit;" the one in "Othello," v. 2, " Blow me about in winds! roast me in sulphur! Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!" and the words, "Blown with restless violence round about the pendent world," in the very speech under consideration, all show the idea of a spirit under impeachment of guilt hurried through vastnesses of varied horror.

25. Oh, you beast! Shakespeare uses the word "beast," in numerous instances, to express 'inconsistent with human nature,' 'wanting in manhood.' Here, Claudio pleading nature's leniency to sin, suggests to his sister the retort that he is unnatural and unmanly in his plea. The very vehemence of Isabella's indignation in this speech might surely redeem her from the charge of 'coldness;' and can we need stronger proof of her warm affection for her brother than those glowing words of passionate earnestness?" Oh, were it but my life, I'd throw it down for your deliverance as frankly as a pin!"

Duke. The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good: the goodness that is cheap in beauty, makes beauty brief in goodness; but grace, being the soul of your complexion, shall keep the body of it ever fair. The assault that Angelo hath made to you, fortune hath conveyed to my understanding: and, but that frailty hath examples for his falling, I should wonder at Angelo. How will you do to content this substitute, and to save your brother?

Isab. I am now going to resolve him, I had rather my brother die by the law, than my son should be unlawfully born. But, oh! how much is the good duke deceived in Angelo! If ever he return, and I can speak to him, I will open my lips in vain, or discover his government.

Duke. That shall not be much amiss: yet, as the matter now stands, he will avoid your accusation ; 32 he made trial of you only. Therefore fasten your ear on my advisings: to the love I have in doing

26. Wilderness. Not unfrequently used by writers of Shakespeare's time for wildness,' in the sense of irregular growths, as applied to plants allowed to run wild.

27. Thy sin's not accidental, but a trade. Thy sin is not casual error, but habitual course.'

28. Satisfy. Used here in the sense in which we now use 'feed,' or 'sustain ;' the meaning of the passage is, 'Do not feed your resolution (or sustain your courage) with hopes that are groundless.'

29. Hold you there. The friar-duke has the same meaning in these words, as in "There rest." See Note 54, Act ii.

30. In good time. Used as the French say 'à la bonne heure ;' 'very well,' 'exactly so.'

31. The goodness that is cheap in beauty, makes, &c. The virtue of a beautiful woman that is parted with on easy terms, makes her beauty of short duration; but virtue, being the essence of your loveliness, shall preserve its substance ever fair.'

32. He will avoid your accusation; he made, &c. The phrase is elliptical; and we must understand by pretending that' before "he made trial of you only."