FRI.

More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends
Of burning youth.

May your grace speak of it?
DUKE. My holy sir, none better knows than you

How I have ever lov'd the life remov'd;

And held in idle price to haunt assemblies,
Where youth, and cost, and witless bravery keeps b.
I have deliver'd to lord Angelo

(A man of stricture and firm abstinence)

My absolute power and place here in Vienna,
And he supposes me travell'd to Poland;

For so I have strew'd it in the common ear,

And so it is receiv'd: Now, pious sir,

You will demand of me why I do this?

FRI. Gladly, my lord.

DUKE. We have strict statutes, and most biting laws,
(The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds d,)
Which for this fourteen years we have let slip*;
Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave,
That goes not out to prey2: Now, as fond fathers
Having bound up the threat'ning twigs of birch,
Only to stick it in their children's sight,

FRI.

For terror, not to use, in time the rod

[Becomes] more mock'd than fear'd: so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;
And liberty plucks justice by the nose;
The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum.

It rested in your grace
To unloose this tied-up justice when you pleas'd:
And it in you more dreadful would have seem'd
Than in lord Angelo.

DUKE.

I do fear, too dreadful: Sith 't was my fault to give the people scope,

"T would be my tyranny to strike and gall them

For what I bid them do: For we bid this be done,

■ And is not found in the original, but is supplied in the second folio.

Keeps-dwells.

· Stricture-strictness.

Steeds. In the original, weeds.

· Slip. The reading of the original has been changed to sleep. Theobald, who, as Mr. Dyce informs us, followed Davenant in this alteration,-(Davenant's 'The Law against Lovers' being founded on 'Measure for Measure,' and 'Much Ado about Nothing,') made this correction. He thought that it suited the comparison; and that the laws were sleeping like an old lion. The Duke compares himself with the animal "who goes not out to prey." He has let the laws slip. Mr. Collier and Mr. Dyce consider sleep to be the true reading.

1 Becomes was added by Pope to the original.

པ་ནན

When evil deeds have their permissive pass,

And not the punishment. Therefore, indeed, my father,

I have on Angelo impos'd the office;

Who may, in the ambush of my name, strike home,

And yet my nature never in the fight,

To do, in slander: And to behold his sway,

I will, as 't were a brother of your order,

Visit both prince and people: therefore, I prithee,
Supply me with the habit, and instruct me
How I may formally in person bear

Like a true friar. More reasons for this action,

At our more leisure shall I render you;
Only this one:-Lord Angelo is precise;
Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses
That his blood flows, or that his appetite

Is more to bread than stone: Hence shall we see,
If power change purpose, what our seemers be.

[Exeunt.

SCENE V.-A Nunnery.

Enter ISABELLA and FRANCISCA.

ISAB. And have you nuns no further privileges?
FRAN. Are not these large enough?
ISAB. Yes, truly: I speak not as desiring more;
But rather wishing a more strict restraint
Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of saint Clare.
LUCIO. Ho! Peace be in this place!

ISAB.
Who 's that which calls?
FRAN. It is a man's voice: Gentle Isabella,
Turn you the key, and know his business of him;
You may, I may not; you are yet unsworn:

When
you have vow'd, you must not speak with men,
But in the presence of the prioress:

Then, if you speak, you must not show your face;
Or, if you show your face, you must not speak.
He calls again; I pray you answer him.
ISAB. Peace and prosperity! Who is 't that calls?

■ We print this as in the original. The passage is ordinarily printed

The image of a fight was

"And yet, my nature never in the sight

To do it slander."

[Within.

[Exit FRANCISCA.

certainly in the poet's mind, from the use of ambush and strike home. We understand by to do, in slander, to be prominent in action, and thus exposed to slander.

Enter LUCIO.

LUCIO. Hail, virgin, if you be; as those cheek-roses
Proclaim you are no less! Can you so stead me,
As bring me to the sight of Isabella,

A novice of this place, and the fair sister
To her unhappy brother Claudio?

ISAB. Why her unhappy brother? let me ask;

The rather, for I now must make you know

I am that Isabella, and his sister..

LUCIO. Gentle and fair, your brother kindly greets you:
Not to be weary with you, he's in prison.

ISAB. Woe me! For what?

LUCIO. For that, which if myself might be his judge,
He should receive his punishment in thanks:

He hath got his friend with child.

ISAB. Sir, make me not your story.

LUCIO. T is true. I would not-though 't is my familiar sin
With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest,

Tongue far from heart,-play with all virgins soa:

I hold you as a thing ensky'd, and sainted;
By your renouncement, an immortal spirit;
And to be talk'd with in sincerity,

As with a saint.

ISAB. You do blaspheme the good, in mocking me.

LUCIO. Do not believe it. Fewness and truth, 't is thus:

Your brother and his loverb have embrac'd:

As those that feed grow full; as blossoming time,

That from the seedness the bare fallow brings

To teeming foison; even so her plenteous womb
Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry.

ISAB. Some one with child by him?-My cousin Juliet?
LUCIO. Is she your cousin?

ISAB. Adoptedly; as schoolmaids change their names,

By vain though apt affection.

■ In this passage we follow the original. Malone says that the reading should be thus:"6 Sir, mock me not-your story."

But the original meaning is clear enough: make me not your story is, invent me not your story,a very common phraseology of our author. When Lucio replies 't is true, he means his story is true; he has not invented it; and he adds that he would not jest with her, though jesting be his familiar sin, &c.

Lover-mistress. Shakspere's poem of The Lover's Complaint' is the lament of a deserted

maiden.

The duke is very strangely gone from hence;
Bore many gentlemen, myself being one,
In hand, and hope of action: but we do learn,
By those that know the very nerves of state,
His givings out were of an infinite distance
From his true-meant design. Upon his place,
And with full line of his authority,

Governs lord Angelo: a man whose blood
Is very snow-broth; one who never feels
The wanton stings and motions of the sense;
But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge
With profits of the mind, study and fast.
He (to give fear to use and liberty,

Which have, for long, run by the hideous law,
As mice by lions) hath pick'd out an act,
Under whose heavy sense your brother's life
Falls into forfeit: he arrests him on it;
And follows close the rigour of the statute,
To make him an example; all hope is gone,
Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer
To soften Angelo: And that's my pith of business
"Twixt you and your poor brother.

And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt: Go to lord Angelo,
And let him learn to know, when maidens sue

Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel,

All their petitions are as freely theirs

As they themselves would owe them.

ISAB. I'll see what I can do.