SCENE III. A Room in a Prison.

Enter Duke, habited like a Friar, and Provost.

Duke. Hail to you, provost! so, I think, you are. Prov. I am the provost: What's your will, good friar?

Duke. Bound by my charity, and my bless'd order, I come to visit the afflicted spirits

Here in the prison: do me the common right
To let me see them, and to make me know

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 blister'd her report: She is with child;
And he that got it, sentenc'd; a young man
More fit to do another such offence

Than die for this.

Duke.

When must he die ?

Prov. As I do think, to-morrow.

[To JULIET.] I have provided for you: stay a while, And you shall be conducted.

?

Duke. Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry Juliet. I do; and bear the shame most patiently. Duke. I'll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience,

And try your penitence, if it be sound,

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 seems, your most offenceful act Was mutually committed?

Juliet.

Mutually.

Duke. Then was your sin of heavier kind than

his.

Juliet. I do confess it, and repent it, father.

Duke. "Tis meet so, daughter: But lest you do repent,

As that the sin hath brought you to this shame, Which sorrow is always towards ourselves, not Heaven;

Showing, we would not serve Heaven as we love it, But as we stand in fear, —

Juliet. I do repent me, as it is an evil;

And take the shame with joy.

Duke.

There rest.

Your partner, as I hear, must die to-morrow,
And I am going with instruction to him.

Grace go with you! Benedicite.

[Exit.

Juliet. Must die to-morrow! O, injurious law,3

That respites me a life, whose very comfort

Is still a dying horror!

Prov.

"Tis pity of him. [Exeunt.

SCENE IV. A Room in ANGELO'S House.

Enter ANGELO.

Ang. When I would pray and think, I think and

pray

To several subjects: Heaven hath my empty words;

That is, not spare to offend Heaven.

2 That is, keep yourself in this frame of mind.

3 Sir Thomas Hanmer proposed to read law instead of love; a reading that coheres well with the Provost's reply. ·

H

Whilst my invention,' hearing not my tongue,
Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,
As if I did but only chew His name ;

And in my heart, the strong and swelling evil
Of my conception. The state, whereon I studied,

Is like a good thing, being often read,

2

Growr. sear'd and tedious; yea, my gravity.

Wherein (let no man hear me) I take pride,
Could I, with boot,3 change for an idle plume,
Which the air beats for vain. O place! O form'
How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,
Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls
To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood!
Let's write good angel on the devil's horn,
'Tis not the devil's crest."

1 Invention for imagination. So, in Henry V.:

"O for a muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention."

Respecting this word, which is usually given as fear'd, it is quite remarkable that of the first folio some copies read fear'd, and others sear'd, as if the correction were made while the edition was going through the press; though which way the change ran is not altogether certain. Such a use of either word is singular enough but on the whole we prefer sear'd, as it agrees very well with the Poet's use of that word in other places. Thus, in The Comedy of Errors, Act iv. sc. 2:

"He is deformed, crooked, old, and sere,

Ill-fac'd, worse-bodied, shapeless every where."
And again, in the well-known passage in Macbeth:
"I have liv'd long enough; my way of life
Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf."

So, also, in Spenser's Shepherd's Calender, January:
"All so my lustfull leafe is drie and sere,

My timely buds with wayling all are wasted."
Boot is profit.

H.

Shakespeare judiciously distinguishes the different operations of high place upon different minds. Fools are frighted and wise men allured. Those who cannot judge but by the eye are easily awed by splendour; those who consider men as well as condi. tions, are easily persuaded to love the appearance of virtue dig nified with power.

5 The crest was often emblematic of something in the wearer,

Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,
Making both it unable for itself,

And dispossessing all my other parts

Of necessary fitness ?

So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons; Come all to help him, and so stop the air

By which he should revive and even so

:

The general, subject to a well-wish'd king,
Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness
Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love
Must needs appear offence.

Enter ISABELLA.

How now, fair maid?

Isab.

I am come to know your pleasure.

Ang. That you might know it, would much better

please me,

Than to demand what 'tis.

live.

Your brother cannot

such, for example, as his ancestral name. "The devil's horn" is "the devil's crest;" but if we write "good angel" on it, the emblem is overlooked in the "false seeming; " we think it is not the devil's horn, because itself tells us otherwise.

H

So, in

6 That is, the people or multitude subject to a king. Hamlet: "The play pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general." It is supposed that Shakespeare, in this passage, and in one before, Act sc. 2, intended to flatter the unkingly weakness of James I., which made him so impatient of the crowds which flocked to see him, at his first coming, that he restrained them by a proclamation.

Isab. Even so ? — Heaven keep your honour !

[Retiring Ang. Yet may he live awhile; and it may be, As long as you, or I: Yet he must die.

Isab. Under your sentence?

Ang. Yea.

Isab. When, I beseech you? that in his reprieve, Longer, or shorter, he may be so fitted,

That his soul sicken not.

Ang. Ha! Fie, these filthy vices!

good

It were as

To pardon him, that hath from nature stolen
A man already made,' as to remit

Their saucy sweetness, that do coin Heaven's image
In stamps that are forbid: 'tis all as easy
Falsely to take away a life true made,
As to put mettle in restrained means,
To make a false one.

Isab.. "Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth
Ang. Say you so? then I shall pose you quickly
Which had you rather, that the most just law
Now took your brother's life; or, to redeem him,
Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness,
As she that he hath stain'd?

Isab.

Sir, believe this, I had rather give my body than my soul.9

Ang. I talk not of your soul: Our compell'd sins Stand more for number than accompt."

7 That is, that hath killed a man.

10

"The thought is simply, that murder is as easy as fornication and the inference which Angelo would draw is, that it is as im proper to pardon the latter as the former.

9 Isabel appears to use the words " give my body" in a different sense than Angelo. Her meaning appears to be, "I had rather die than forfeit my eternal happiness by the prostitution of my person."

10 That is, actions that we are compelled to, however numer ous, are not imputed to us by Heaven as crimes.