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Ifab. Gentle, my lord, turn back.

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

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

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Ang. How! bribe me?

Ifab. Ay, with fuch gifts, that heaven fhall fhare with

you.

Lucio. You had marr'd all elfe.

Ifab. Not with fond fhekels 9 of the tested gold,*
Or ftones, whofe rates are either rich, or poor,
As fancy values them: but with true prayers,
That fhall be up at heaven, and enter there,
Ere fun-rife; prayers from preferved fouls,3
From fafting maids, whofe minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.

Ang.

To-morrow.

Well: come to me

Lucio. Go to; it is well; away.
Ifab. Heaven keep your honour fafe!
Ang.

Am that way going to temptation,
Where prayers cross.4

[Afide to ISABEL.

Amen for I

:

[Afide.

Ijab.

I understand the paffage thus: Her arguments are enforced with fo much good fenfe, as to increase that stock of fense which I already poffels. DOUCE.

9 Fond means very frequently in our author, foolish. It fignifies in this place valued or prized by folly. STEEVENS.

2 i, e. attefted, or marked with the standard stamp. WARBURTON. Rather cupelled, brought to the teft, refined. JOHNSON.

The

All gold that is tefted is not marked with the ftandard ftamp. verb has a different fenfe, and means tried by the cuppel, which is called by the refiners a teft. Vide Harris's Lex. Tech.

Voce CUPPELL.

SIR J. HAWKINS.
The metaphor is

3 i. e. preferved from the corruption of the world. taken from fruits preserved in fugar. WARBURTON. 4 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.

Ifabella prays that his bonour may be fafe, meaning only to give him his title his imagination is caught by the word bonour: he feels that his bonour is in danger, and therefore, I believe, answers thus:

I am that way going to temptation,

Which your prayers cross.

That

fab.

At what hour to-morrow

At any time 'forenoon.

Shall I attend your lordship?

Ang.

Ifab. Save your honour!

Ang.

[Exeunt Lucio, ISABELLA, and Provost.
From thee; even from thy virtue!-

What's this? what's this? Is this her fault, or mine?
The tempter, or the tempted, who fins moft? Ha!
Not fhe; nor doth fhe tempt: but it is I,
That lying by the violet, in the fun,5
Do, as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous feafon. Can it be,
That modefty may more betray our sense

Than woman's lightnefs? Having wafte ground enough,
Shall we defire to raze the fanctuary,

6

And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!

What

That is, I am tempted to lose that honour of which thou imploreft the prefervation. The temptation under which I labour is that which thou haft unknowingly thwarted with thy prayer. He uses the fame mode of language a few lines lower. Ifabella, parting, says:

Save you honour!

Angelo catches the word-Save it! From what?

JOHNSON.

From thee; even from thy virtue !The best method of illuftrating this paffage will be to quote a fimilar one from The Merchant of Venice, A&t III. fc. i:

"Sal. I would it might prove the end of his loffes!

"Sola. Let me fay Amen betimes, left the devil cross thy prayer." For the fame reafon Angelo feems to fay Amen to Ifabella's prayer; but, to make the expreflion clear, we fhould read perhaps-Where prayers are croffed. TYRWHITT.

The petition of the Lord's Prayer- lead us not into temptation". is here confidered as crofling or intercepting the onward way in which Angelo was going; this appointment of his for the morrow's meeting, being a premeditated expofure of himself to temptation, which it was the general object of prayer to thwart. HENLEY.

5 I am not corrupted by her, but my own heart, which excites foul defires under the fame benign influences that exalt her purity, as the carrion grows putrid by thofe beams which increase the fragrance of the violet. JOHNSON.

6 And pitch our evils there?] So, in King Henry VIII:

"Nor build their evils on the graves of great men."

Neither of thefe paflages appears to contain a very elegant allufion.
Evils, in the prefent inftance, undoubtedly stand for forice. Dr. Far-
mer affures me he has feen the word evil used in this sense by our ancient
VOL. I.

X

writers

What doft thou? or what art thou, Angelo?
Doft thou defire her foully, for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live :
Thieves for their robbery have authority,

When judges fteal themfelves. What do I love her,
That I defire to hear her speak again,

And feaft upon her eyes? What is't I dream on?
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a faint.
With faints doft bait thy hook! Moft dangerous
Is that temptation, that doth goad us on

To fin in loving virtue: never could the ftrumpet,
With all her double vigour, art, and nature,
Once ftir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite;-Ever, till now,

When men were fond, I fmil'd, and wonder'd how." [Exit,

SCENE III.

A Room in a Prison.

Enter DUKE, habited like a Friar, and Provost.

Duke. Hail to you, provoft! fo, I think you are.
Prov. I am the provoft: What's your will, good friar ?
Duke. Bound by my charity, and my blefs'd order,

I come to vifit the afflicted fpirits

Here in the prison: 8 do me the common right
To let me fee them; and to make me know

The

writers; and it appears from Harrington's Metamorphofis of Ajax, &c. that Privies were originally fo ill-contrived, even in royal palaces, as to deferve the title of evils or nuifances. STEEVENS.

No language could more forcibly exprefs the aggravated profligacy of Angelo's paffion, which the purity of Ifabella but ferved the more to inflame.-The defecration of edifices devoted to religion, by converting them to the most abject purposes of nature, was an eastern method of expreffing contempt. See 2 Kings, x. 27. HENLEY.

7 As a day muft 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.

8 This is a fcriptural expreffion, very fuitable to the grave character which the Duke affumes. "By which alfo he went and preached unto the e-spirits in prison.”. Pet. iii, 19. WHALLEY.

The nature of their crimes, that I may minister

To them accordingly.

Prov. I would do more than that, if more were needful.

Enter JULIET.

Look, here comes one; a gentlewoman of mine,
Who falling in the flames of her own youth,
Hath blifter'd her report: " She is with child;
And he that got it, fentenc'd: a young man
More fit to do another fuch offence,

Than die for this.

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Prov. As I do think, to-morrow.
I have provided for you; ftay a while,

And you fhall be conducted.

[To JULIET.

Duke. Repent you, fair one, of the fin you carry?
Juliet. I do; and bear the fhame most patiently.

Duke. I'll teach you how you fhall arraign your confcience, And try your penitence, if it be found,

Or hollowly put on.

Juliet.

I'll gladly learn.

Duke. Love you the man that wrong'd you?

Juliet. Yes, as I love the woman that wrong'd him. Duke. So then, it feems, your most offenceful act Was mutually committed?

Juliet.

Mutually.

Duke. Then was your fin of heavier kind than his.
Juliet. I do confefs it, and repent it, father.

X 2

9 Who falling in the flames of her own youth,

Hath blifter'd ber report:] The old copy reads-flaws.

Duke.

STEEVENS. Who doth not fee that the integrity of the metaphor requires, we should read:

flames of her own youth? WARBURTON.

Who does not fee that, upon fuch principles, there is no end of cɔrrection? JOHNSON.

Dr. Johnfon d'd not know, nor perhaps Dr. Warburton either, that Sir William D'Avenant reads flames inftead of flaws in his Law against Lovers, a play almost literally taken from Measure for Measure, and M ado about Nothing. FARMER.

Duke. 'Tis meet fo daughter: But left you do repent,2
As that the fin has brought you to this fhame,-
Which forrow is always toward ourselves, not heaven;
'Showing, we'd not fpare heaven, as we love it,
But as we ftand in fear,-

Juliet. I do repent me, as it is an evil;
And take the shame with joy.

Duke.

There reft.3 Your partner, as I hear, muft die to-morrow, And I am going with inftruction to him.Grace go with you! Benedicite ! 4

Juliet. Mult die to-morrow! O, injurious love,

[Exit. That

2 I think that a line at leaft is wanting after the firft of the Duke's peech. It would be prefumptuous to attempt to replace the words; but the fenfe, I am perfuaded, is eafily recoverable out of Juliet's answer. I' fuppofe his advice, in fubftance, to have been nearly this: "Take care, left you repent [not:fo much of your fault, as it is an evil,] as that the fin bath brought you to this fhame." Accordingly, Juliet's anfwer is explicit to this point:

I do refent me, as it is an evil,

ind take the flame with joy. TYRWHITT.

3 Keep yourfelf in this temper. JOHNSON.

4 The former part of this line evidently belongs to Juliet. Benedicite is the Duke's reply. RITSON.

This regulation is undoubtedly proper: but I fuppofe Shakspeare to have written,

Juliet. May grace go with you!
Duke.

Benedicite! STEEVENS.

5 Her execution was refpited on account of her pregnancy, the effects of her love; therefore the calls it injurious; not that it brought her to hame, but that it hindered her freeing herfelf from it. Is not this all very natural? yet the Oxford editor changes it to injurious law.

JOHNSON. I know not what circumftance in this play can authorise a fuppofition that Juliet was refpited on account of her pregnancy; as her life was in no danger from the law, the severity of which was exerted only on the feduI fuppofe fhe means that a parent's love for the child the bears, is injurious, because it makes her careful of her life in her prefent fhameful condition.

.cer.

Mr. Tollet explains the paffage thus: "O, love, that is injurious in expediting Claudio's death, and that refpites me a life, which is a burthen to me worfe than death !" STEEVENS.

Both Johnson's explanation of this paffage, and Steevens's refutation of it, prove the neceflity of Hanmer's amendment, which removes every

difficulty,

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