Sign me a prefent pardon for my brother,

Or, with an out-ftretch'd throat, I'll tell the world
Aloud, what man thou art.

Ang.

Who will believe thee, Ifabel?

My unfoil'd name, the austereness of my life,
My vouch against you, and my place i'the state,
Will fo your accufation over-weigh,

That you fhall ftifle in your own report,

And fmell of calumny.

I have begun;

And now I give my fenfual race the rein :7

Fit thy confent to my fharp appetite;

Lay by all nicety, and prolixious blushes,

That banish what they fue for; redeem thy brother

By yielding up thy body to my will;

Or elfe he muft not only die the death,

8

But thy unkindness shall his death draw out
To lingering fufferance: anfwer me to-morrow,,
Or, by the affection that now guides me most,
I'll prove a tyrant to him: As for

you,

[Exit.

Say what you can, my falfe o'erweighs your true.
Ifab. To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,
Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,

That

5 The calling his denial of her charge his vouch, has fomething fine.. Vouch is the testimony one man bears for another. So that, by this, he. infinuates his authority was fo great, that his denial would have the fame credit that a vouch or teftimony has in ordinary cafes. WARBURTON.

I believe this beauty is merely imaginary, and that vouch against means no more than denial. JOHNSON.

6 A metaphor from a lamp or candle extinguished in its own greafe.

STEEVENS. 7 And now I give my fenfes the rein, in the race they are now actually running. HEATH.

8 This feems to be a folemn phrafe for death inflicted by law. So, in A Midsummer Night's Dream:

"Prepare to die the death." JOHNSON.

It is a phrafe taken from fcripture, as is obferved in a note on The MidJummer Night's Dream. STEEVENS.

The phrafe is a good phrafe, as Shallow fays, but I do not conceive it to be either of legal or fcriptural origin. Chaucer ufes it frequently. See Cant. Tales, ver. 607.

They were adradde of him, as of the deth." ver. 1222. "The detb he feleth thurgh his herte fmite." It feems to have been originally a mistaken translation of the French La Mort. TYRWHITT

That bear in them one and the self-same tongue,
Either of condemnation or approof!

Bidding the law make court'fy to their will;
Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite,
To follow, as it draws! I'll to my brother:
Though he hath fallen by prompture 9 of the blood,,
Yet hath he in him fuch a mind of honour,z
That had he twenty heads to tender down
On twenty bloody blocks, he'd yield them up,,
Before his fifter fhould her body stoop

To fuch abhorr'd pollution.

Then Ifabel, 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 foul's reft.

ACT III.

[Exit.

SCENE I.

A Room in the prifon.

Enter DUKE, CLAUDIO, and Provoft.

Duke. So, then you hope of pardon from lord Angelo?: Glaud. The miferable have no other medicine,

But only hope:

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

Duke. Be abfolute for death ;3 either death, or life, Shall thereby be the fweeter. Reason thus with life,If I do lofe thee, I do lofe a thing

That none but fools would keep : 4 a breath thou art,

Servile

9 Suggestion, temptation, inftigation. JOHNSON 2 This, in Shakspeare's la guage, may mean, fuch an bonourable mind, as he ufes "mind of love," in The Merchant of Venice, for loving mind.STEEVENS.

3. Be determined to die, without any hope of life. Horace,

"The hour which exceeds expectation will be welcome."

JOHNSON.

4 This reading is not only contrary to all ferfs and reafon, but to the drift of this moral difcourfe. The Duke, in his affumed character of a friar, is endeavouring to inft into the condemned prifoner a refignation of mind to his fenterice; but the fenfe of the lines in this reading, is a direct perfuafive to fuicide: I make no doubt, but the poet wrote,

That

(Servile to all the skiey influences,)

That doft 5 this habitation, where thou keep'ft,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou labour'ft by thy flight to fhun,

And yet run'ft toward him ftill: Thou art not noble ;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st,

Are nurs❜d by baseness: 7 Thou art by no means valiant;

That none but fools would reck:

For

i. e. care for, be anxious about, regret the lofs of So, in the tragedy of Tancred and Gifmund, A& IV. sc. iii:

And Shakspeare, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona :

"Recking as little what betideth me."

WARBURTON.

The meaning feems plainly this, that none but fools would wish to keep life; or, none but fools would keep it, if choice were allowed. A fenfe which, whether true or not, is certainly innocent. JOHNSON.

Keep, in this place, I believe, may not fignify preserve, but care for.

STEEVENS,

5 Sir T. Hanmer changed doft to do without neceffity or authority. The conftruction is not, "the fkiey influences that do," but," a breath thou art, that doft," &c. If " Servile to all the fkiey influences" be inclosed in a parenthefis, all the difficulty will vanish. PORSON.

6 In thofe old farces called Moralities, the fool of the piece, in order to fhow the inevitable approaches of death, is made to employ all his ftratagems to avoid him; which, as the matter is ordered, bring the fool, at every turn, into his very jaws. So that the representations of these scenes would afford a great deal of good mirth and morals mixed together. And: from fuch circumftances, in the genius of our ancestors' publick diverfions,. I fuppofe it was, that the old proverb arofe, of being merry and wife. WARBURTON..

It is obferved by the Editor of The Sad Shepherd, 8vo. 1783, p. 154.." that the initial letter of Stowe's Survey, contains a reprefentation of a ftruggle between Death and the Fool; the figures of which were most probably copied from thofe characters as formerly exhibited on the ftage..

REED

There are no fuch characters as Death and the Fool, in any old Morality now extant. They feem to have existed only in the dumb Shows. The two figures in the initial letter of Stowe's Survey, 1603, which have been mistaken for thefe two perfonages, have no allufion whatever to the stage, being merely one of the fet known by the name of Death's Dance, and actually copied from the margin of an old Miffal. The fcene in the modern pantomime of Harlequin Skeleton, feems to have been fuggefted by fome playhoufe tradition of Death and the Fool. RITSON.

7 Dr. Warburton is undoubtedly mistaken in fuppofing that by bafeness is meant felf-love, here affigned as the motive of all human actions. Shakspeare only meant to obferve, that a minute analysis of life at once

destroys

For thou doft fear the soft and tender fork

Of a poor worm: 8 Thy beft of reft is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'ft; yet grofsly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more.9 Thou art not thyself;2
For thou exift'ft on many a thousand grains
That iffue out of duft: Happy thou art not:
For what thou haft not, ftill thou striv'st to get ;
And what thou haft, forget'ft: Thou art not certain ;

For

destroys that splendour which dazzles the imagination. Whatever gran deur can difplay, or luxury enjoy, is procured by bafenefs, by offices of which the mind fhrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the fhambles and the dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornament dug from among the dumps and darkness of the mine. JOHNSON.

Worm is put for any creeping thing or ferpent. Shakspeare fuppofes falfely, but according to the vulgar notion, that a ferpent wounds with his tongue, and that his tongue is for ked. He confounds reality and fiction; a ferpent's tongue is foft, but not forked nor hurtful. If it could hurt, it could not be foft. In A Midsummer Night's Dream he has the fane notion :

With doubler tongue

Than thine, O ferpent, never adder fung." JOHNSON. Shakspeare mentions the "adder's fork" in Macbeth; and might have caught this idea from old tapestries or paintings, in which the tongues of ferpents and dragons always appear barbed like the point of an arrow. STEEVENS.

9 Evidently from the following paffage of Cicero: "Habes fomnum imaginem mortis, eamque quotidie induis, & dubitas quin fenfus in morte nullus fit, cum in ejus fimulacro videas effe nullum fenfum.' But the Epicurean infinu. ation is, with great judgement, omitted in the imitation. WARBURTON. Here Dr. Warburton might have found a fentiment worthy of his animadverfion. I cannot without indignation find Shakspeare faying, that death is only fleep, lengthening out his exhortation by a fentence which in the friar is impious, in the reafoner is foolish, and in the poet trite and vulgar. JOHNSON.

This was an overfight in Shakspeare; for in the fecond fcene of the fourth act, the Provoft fpeaks of the defperate Barnardine, as one who regards death only as a drunken fleep. STEEVENS.

I apprehend Shakspeare means to fay no more, than that the paffage from this life to another is as eafy as fleep; a position in which there is furely neither folly nor impiety. MALONE..

2 Thou art perpetually repaired and renovated by external affistance, thou fubfifteft upon foreign matter, and haft no power of producing or continuing thy own being. JOHNSON.

For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,3
After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an afs, whofe back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'ft thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee: Friend haft thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee fire,
The mere effufion of thy proper loins,

Do curfe the gout, ferpigo,4 and the rheum,

For ending thee no fooner: Thou haft nor youth, nor age; But, as it were, an after-dinner's fleep,

Dreaming on both: 5 for all thy blessed youth

Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palfied eld; 6 and when thou art old, and rich,
Thou haft neither heat," affection, limb, nor beauty, 8

To

3 For effects read affects; that is, affections, paffions of mind, or disorders of body variously affected. JOHNSON.

4 The fertigo is a kind of tetter.

STEEVENS.

5 This is exquifitely imagined. When we are young, we bufy ourfelves in forming fchemes for fucceeding time, and mifs the gratifications that are before us; when we are old, we amuse the languor of age with the recollection of youthful pleafures or performances; fo that our life, of which no part is filled with the bufinefs of the prefent time, refembles our dreams after dinner, when the events of the morning are mingled with the defigns of the evening, JOHNSON.

6 Eld is generally used for old age, decrepitude. It is here put for old people, perfons worn with years. STEEVENS.

The drift of this period is to prove, that neither youth nor age can be faid to be really enjoyed, which, in poetical language, is,-We bave neither youth nor age. But how is this made out? That age is not enjoyed, he proves by recapitulating the infirmities of it, which deprive that period of life of all fenfe of pleasure. To prove that youth is not enjoyed, he uses thefe words:

for all thy bleffed youth

Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palfied eld;

Out of which, he that can deduce the conclufion, has a better knack at logic than I have. I fuppofe the poet wrote,

For pall'd, thy blazed youth

Becomes affuaged; and doth beg the alms
Of palfied eld;

i. e. when thy youthful appetite becomes palled, as it will be in the very enjoyment, the blaze of youth is at once affuaged, and thou immediately contracteft the infirmities of old age; as particularly the palfy and other nervous disorders, confequent on the inordinate ufe of fenfual pleasures.

This