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Ifab. I am a woeful fuitor to your honour, Please but your honour hear me.

Ang.

Well; what's your fuit?
Ifab. There is a vice, that most I do abhor,
And most defire fhould meet the blow of juftice;
For which I would not plead, but that I muft;
For which I must not plead, but that I am
At war, 'twixt will, and will not.8

Ang.
Well; the matter?
Ifab. I have a brother is condemn'd to die :
I do befeech you, let it be his fault,

And not my brother.

Prov.

Heaven give thee moving graces!

Ang. Condemn the fault, but not the actor of it!
Why, every fault's condemn'd, ere it be done :
Mine were the very cypher of a function,

To find the faults, whose fine stands in record,
And let go by the actor.

O juft, but fevere law!

Ifab.
I had a brother then.-Heaven keep your honour!

[Retiring. Lucio. [To ISA B.] Give't not o'er fo: to him again, in

treat him;

Kneel down before him, hang upon his gown;

You are too cold: if you should need a pin,

You could not with more tame a tongue defire it :

To him, I fay.

Ifab. Muft he needs die?

Ang.
Maiden, no remedy.
Ifab. Yes; I do think that you might pardon him,
And neither heaven, nor man, grieve at the mercy.
Ang. I will not do't.

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But can you, if you would?

This is obfcure; perhaps it may be mended by reading:

For which I must now plead; but yet I am

At war, 'twixt will, and will not.

Ang.

Yet and ye are almost undistinguishable in an ancient manufcript. Yet no alteration is neceffary, fince the fpeech is not unintelligible as it now ftands. JOHNSON.

9 i. e. let his fault be condemned, or extirpated, but let not my brother himself fuffer. MALONE.

Ang. Look, what I will not, that I cannot do. Ifab. But might you do't, and do the world no wrong, If fo your heart were touch'd with that remorfe2

As mine is to him?

Ang.

He's fentenc'd; 'tis too late.

Lucio. You are too cold.

[To ISABELLA. fab. Too late? why, no; I, that do speak a word, May call it back again: Well believe this, No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,

Not the king's crown, nor the deputed fword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half fo good a grace,
As mercy does. If he had been as you,
And you as he, you would have flipt like him;
But he, like you, would not have been so stern.
Ang. Pray you, begone.

Ifab. I would to heaven I had your potency,
And you were Ifabel! should it then be thus ?
No; I would tell what 'twere to be a judge,
And what a prifoner.

Lucio. Ay, touch him: there's the vein.
Ang. Your brother is the forfeit of the law,
And you but waste your words.
Lab.
Alas! alas!
Why, all the fouls that were,3 were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took,
Found out the remedy: How would you be,
If he, which is the top of judgement, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,

Like man new made.4

[Afide.

Ang.

2 Remorse, in this place, as in many others, fignifies pity. See Othello, A& III. STEEVENS.

WARBURTON.

3 This is falfe divinity. We fhould read-are. I fear, the player, in this inftance, is a better divine than the prelate. The fouls that wERE, evidently refer to Adam and Eve, whofe tranfgref. fion rendered them obnoxious to the penalty of annihilation, but for the remedy which the author of their being mott graciously provided. The learned Bishop, however, is more fuccessful in his next explanation.

HENLEY. A This is a fine thought, and finely expreffed. The meaning is, that mercy

Ang.

Be you content, fair maid; It is the law, not I, condemns your brother: Were he my kinfman, brother, or my fon,

It should be thus with him;-he muft die to-morrow.
Ifab. To-morrow? O, that's fudden! Spare him, spare
him;

He's not prepar'd for death! Even for our kitchens
We kill the fowl of feafon; 5 fhall we serve heaven
With lefs refpect than we do minister

To our grofs felves? Good, good my lord, bethink you :
Who is it that hath died for this offence?

There's many have committed it.

Lucio.

Ay, well faid.

Ang. The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept :" Those many had not dar'd to do that evil,

If the first man that did the edict infringe,"

Had anfwer'd for his deed: now, 'tis awake;
Takes note of what is done; and, like a prophet,

8

Looks in a glafs, that shows what future evils, (Either now, or by remiffness new-conceiv'd,

And

mercy will add fuch a grace to your perfon, that you will appear as amiable as a man come fresh out of the bands of his Creator. WARBURTON.

I rather think the meaning is, You will then change the feverity of your pr fent character. In familiar speech, You would be quite another man. JOHNSON.

You will then appear as tender-hearted and merciful as the first man was in his days of innocence, immediately after his creation. MALONE. I incline to a different interpretation :-And you, Angelo, will breathe new life into Claudio, as the Creator animated Adam, by "breathing into his noftrils the breath of life." HOLT WHITE.

5 i. e. when it is in feafon. So, in The Merry Wives of Windfor: 66- buck; and of the feafon too it fhall appear. STEEVENS.

6 Dormiunt aliquando leges, moriuntur nunquam, is a maxim in our law.

HOLT WHITE. 7 The word man has been fupplied by the modern editors. I would rather read

If be, the firft, &c. TYRWHITT.

Man was introduced by Mr. Pope. MALONE.

8 This alludes to the fopperies of the beril, much used at that time by cheats and fortune-tellers to predict by WARBURTON.

it

The beril, which is a kind of crystal,

hath a weak tincture of red in

Among other tricks of Aftrologers, the difcovery of paft or future events was fuppofed to be the confequence of looking into it. See Aubrey's M.fcellanies, p. 165. edit. 1721. REED.

And fo in progrefs to be hatch'd and born,)
Are now to have no fucceffive degrees,
But, when they live, to end.

Ifab.

Yet fhow fome pity, Ang. I fhow it moft of all, when I fhow justice; For then I pity those I do not know,9

Which a difmifs'd offence would after gall;

And do him right, that, anfwering one foul wrong,
Lives not to act another. Be fatisfied;

Your brother dies to-morrow; be content.

Ifab. So you must be the firft, that gives this fentence;

And he, that fuffers: O, it is excellent

To have a giant's ftrength; but it is tyrannous,
To use it like a giant.

Lucio.

That's well faid.

Ifab. Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,

For every pelting,3 petty officer,

Would ufe his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder.

Merciful heaven!

Thou rather, with thy fharp and fulphurous bolt,
Split'ft the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,4

Than the foft myrtle;-O, but man, proud man!
Dreft in a little brief authority;

Moft ignorant of what he's most affur'd,

His glaffy effence,-like an angry ape,

Plays fuch fantaftick tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal. "

Lucio.

This was one of Hale's memorials. When I find myself fwayed to mercy, let me remember, that there is a mercy likewife due to the country.

JOHNSON.

2 Ifabella alludes to the favage conduct of giants in ancient romances. STERVENS

3 -pelting,] i. e. paltry. STEEVENS.

4 Gnarre is the old English word for a knot in rvcod. STEEVENS. 5 The notion of angels weeping for the fins of men is rabbinical.Ob peccatum flentes angelos inducunt Hebræorum magiftri.—Grotius ad S. Lucam. THEOBALD.

6 Mr. Theobald fays the meaning of this is, that if they were endowed with our pleens and perishable organs, they would laugh themselves out of immortality:

Lucio. O, to him, to him, wench: he will relent; He's coming; I perceive't.

Prov.

Pray heaven the win him!
Ifab. We cannot weigh our brother with ourself: 7
Great men may jeft with faints: 'tis wit in them;
But, in the lefs, foul profanation.

Lucio. Thou'rt in the right, girl; more o' that.
Ifab. That in the captain's but a cholerick word,
Which in the foldier is flat blafphemy.

Lucio. Art advis'd o' that? more on't.
Ang. Why do you put these sayings upon me?
Ifab. Becaufe authority, though it err like others,
Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself,

That ĺkins the vice o' the top: Go to your bofom;
Knock there; and ask your heart, what it doth know
That's like my brother's fault: if it confefs

A natural guiltiness, such as is his,

Let it not found a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother's life.

Ang.

She speaks, and 'tis

Such fenfe, that my sense breeds with it.8-Fare you well.

Ifab.

immortality; or, as we fay in common life, laugh themselves dead; which amounts to this, that if they were mortal, they would not be immortal. Shakspeare meant no fuch nonfenfe. By spleens, he meant that peculiar turn of the human mind, that always inclines it to a spiteful, unfeasonable mirth. Had the angels that, fays Shakspeare, they would laugh themfelves out of their immortality, by indulging a paffion which does not deferve that prerogative. The ancients thought, that immoderate laughter was caufed by the bigness of the spleen. WARBURTON.

7 We mortals, proud and foolish, cannot prevail on our paffions to weigh or compare our brother, a being of like nature and like frailty, with ourself. We have different names and different judgements for the fame faults committed by perfons of different condition. JOHNSON.

8 Thus all the folios. Some later editor has changed breeds to bleeds, and Dr Warburton blames poor Theobald for recalling the old word, which yet is certainly right. My fenfe breeds with her fenfe, that is, new thoughts are ftirring in my mind, new conceptions are batched in my imagination. So we fay, to brood over thought. JOHNSON.

The fentence fignifies, Ifabella does not utter barren words, but speaks fuch fenfe as breeds or produces a confequence in Angelo's mind. Thus truths which generate no conclufion are often termed barren facts.

HOLT WHITE. 1 under

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