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Ang.

Nay, women are frail too. Isab. Ay, as the glasses where they view them

selves;

Which are as easy broke as they make forms. Women!-Help heaven! men their creation mar In profiting by them 19. Nay, call us ten times frail; For we are soft as our complexions are,

And credulous to false prints 20.

Ang.

I think it well: And from this testimony of your own sex, (Since, I suppose, we are made to be no stronger Than faults may shake our frames) let me be bold;— I do arrest your words; Be that you are, That is, a woman; if you be more, you're none; If you be one (as you are well express'd By all external warrants), show it now, By putting on the destin❜d livery.

Isab. I have no tongue but one: gentle my lord, Let me entreat you speak the former language. Ang. Plainly conceive, I love you.

Isab. My brother did love Juliet; and you tell me, That he shall die for it.

Ang. He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love. Isab. I know, your virtue hath a licence in't, Which seems a little fouler than it is,

To pluck on others 21.

Ang.

Believe me, on mine honour,

My words express my purpose.

Warburton says that the allusion is so fine that it deserves to be explained. The comparing mankind lying under the weight of original sin, to a feodary who owes suit and service to his lord, is not ill imagined.'

19 The meaning appears to be, that men debase their natures by taking advantage of women's weakness.' She therefore calls

on Heaven to assist them.

20 i. e. impressions.

21 i. e.

your virtue assumes an air of licentiousness, which is

not natural to you, on purpose to try me.'

Isab. Ha! little honour to be much believ'd, And most pernicious purpose!-Seeming, seeming 22!

I will proclaim thee, Angelo; look for't:
Sign me a present pardon for my brother,

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

Ang.

Who will believe thee, Isabel?

My unsoil'd name, the austereness of my life,

23

My vouch 25 against you, and my place i'the state,
Will so your accusation overweigh,

That you shall stifle in your own report,
And smell of calumny 24. I have begun;
And now I give my sensual race the rein:
Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite;
Lay by all nicety, and prolixious blushes 25,
That banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother
By yielding up thy body to my will;

Or else he must not only die the death 26,
But thy unkindness shall his death draw out
To lingering sufferance: answer me to-morrow,
Or, by the affection that now guides me most,
I'll prove a tyrant to him: As for you,
Say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true.
[Exit.
Isab. To whom shall I complain? Did I tell this,
Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,
That bear in them one and the selfsame tongue,
Either of condemnation or approof!

22 Seeming is hypocrisy.

23 Vouch, assertion.

24 A metaphor from a lamp or candle extinguished in its own

grease.

25 Prolixious blushes mean what Milton has elegantly called'Sweet reluctant delay.'

26 The death. This phrase seems originally to have been a mistaken translation of the French La mort. Chaucer uses it frequently, and it is common to all writers of Shakspeare's age.

Bidding the law make court'sy 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 7 of the blood,
Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour,
That had he twenty heads to tender down
On twenty bloody blocks, he'd yield them up,
Before his sister should her body stoop
To such abhorr'd pollution.

Then Isabel, 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 soul's rest.

[Exit.

ACT III.

SCENE I. A Room in the Prison.

Enter Duke, CLAUDIO, and Provost.

Duke. So, then you hope of pardon from lord Angelo?

Claud. The miserable have no other medicine, But only hope:

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

Duke. Be absolute 1 for death; either death or life, Shall thereby be the sweeter.

life,

Reason thus with

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep2: a breath thou art, (Servile to all the skiey influences),

27 i. e. temptation, instigation.

1 i. e. determined.

2 Keep here means care for, a common acceptation of the word in Chaucer and later writers.

That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st3,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet runn'st toward him still: Thou art not noble;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st,

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

For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork

Of a poor worm 5: Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more.
Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust: Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get;
And what thou hast, forget'st: Thou art not certain;
For thy complexion shifts to strange affects",
After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee: Friend, hast thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

3 i. e. dwellest. So, in Henry IV. Part i:

'Twas where the madcap duke his uncle kept.'

4 Shakspeare here meant to observe, that a minute analysis of life at once destroys that splendour which dazzles the imagination. Whatever grandeur can display, or luxury enjoy, is procured by baseness, by offices of which the mind shrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the shambles and the dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornament from among the damps and darkness of the mine.

5 Worm is put for any creeping thing or serpent. Shakspeare adopts the vulgar error, that a serpent wounds with his tongue, and that his tongue is forked. In old tapestriea and paintings the tongues of serpents and dragons always appear barbed like the point of an arrow.

6 The old copy reads effects. fections, passions of the mind. VOL. II.

We should read affects, i. e. afSee Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 4.

F

Do curse the gout, serpigo7, and the rheum,

For ending thee no sooner: Thou hast nor youth,

nor age;

But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,

Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied eld 9; and when thou art old, and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life

Lie hid more thousand deaths; yet death we fear, That makes these odds all even.

Claud.

I humbly thank you. To sue to live, I find, I seek to die:

And seeking death, find life: Let it come on.

Enter ISABElla.

Isab. What, ho! Peace here; grace and good company!

Prov. Who's there? come in; the wish deserves a welcome.

Duke. Dear sir, ere long I'll visit you again.

7 Serpigo, is a leprous eruption.

8 This is exquisitely imagined. When we are young, we busy ourselves in forming schemes for succeeding time, and miss the gratifications that are before us; when we are old, we amuse the languor of age with the recollection of youthful pleasures or performances; so that our life, of which no part is filled with the business of the present time, resembles our dreams after dinner, when the events of the morning are mingled with the designs of the evening.

9 Old age. In youth, which is or ought to be the happiest time, man commonly wants means to obtain what he could enjoy, he is dependent on palsied eld; must beg alms from the coffers of hoary avarice; and being very niggardly supplied, becomes as aged, looks like an old man on happiness beyond his reach. And when

he is old and rich, when he has wealth enough for the purchase of all that formerly excited his desires, he has no longer the powers of enjoyment.

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