Re-enter Provost.

Prov. Here is the head; I'll carry it myself.
Duke. Convenient is it: Make a swift return;
of such things,
For I would commune with
That want no ear but yours.

Prov.

you

I'll make all speed.

[Exit.

Isab. [Within.] Peace, ho, be here!

Duke. The tongue of Isabel :-She's come to know, If yet her brother's pardon be come hither: But I will keep her ignorant of her good, To make her heavenly comforts of despair, When it is least expected.

Enter ISABElla.

Isab. Ho, by your

leave.

Duke. Good morning to you, fair and gracious daughter.

Isab. The better, given me by so holy a man. Hath yet the deputy sent my brother's pardon? Duke. He hath releas'd him, Isabel, from the world; His head is off, and sent to Angelo.

Isab. Nay, but it is not so.

Duke. It is no other: Show your wisdom, daughter, in your close patience. Isab. O, I will to him, and pluck out his eyes. Duke. You shall not be admitted to his sight. Isab. Unhappy Claudio! Wretched Isabel! Injurious world! Most damned Angelo!

Duke. This nor hurts him, nor profits you a jot: Forbear it therefore; give your cause to heaven. Mark what I which say, shall find

you

By every syllable a faithful verity:

The duke comes home to-morrow;-nay, dry your

eyes;

One of our convent, and his confessor,

Gives me this instance: Already he hath carried Notice to Escalus and Angelo;

Who do prepare to meet him at the gates,
There to give up their power. If you can pace your

wisdom

In that good path that I would wish it go;

heart,

And you shall have your bosom б on this wretch,
Grace of the duke, revenges to your
And general honour.
Isab.

I am directed by you.

yours,

Duke. This letter then to friar Peter give;
"Tis that he sent me of the duke's return:
Say, by this token, I desire his company
At Mariana's house to-night. Her cause,
and
I'll perfect him withal; and he shall bring you
Before the duke; and to the head of Angelo
Accuse him home, and home. For my poor self,
I am combined' by a sacred vow,

And shall be absent. Wend you with this letter;
Command these fretting waters from your eyes
With a light heart; trust not my holy order,
If I pervert your course.-Who's here?

Lucio. O, pretty Isabella, I am pale at mine heart, to see thine eyes so red: thou must be patient: I am fain to dine and sup with water and bran; I dare

6 Your bosom, is your heart's desire, your wish.

7 Shakspeare uses combine for to bind by a pact or agreement; so he calls Angelo the combinate husband of Mariana.

8 i. e. Go.

not for my head fill my belly; one fruitful meal would set me to❜t: But they say the duke will be here tomorrow. By my troth, Isabel, I lov'd thy brother: if the old fantastical duke of dark corners had been at home, he had lived. [Exit ISABELLA. Duke. Sir, the duke is marvellous little beholden to your reports; but the best is, he lives not in them 9. Lucio. Friar, thou knowest not the duke so well as I do he's a better woodman 10 than thou takest him for.

Duke. Well, you'll answer this one day. Fare ye well.

Lucio. Nay, tarry; I'll go along with thee; I can tell thee pretty tales of the duke.

Duke. You have told me too many of him already, sir, if they be true; if not true, none were enough. Lucio. I was once before him for getting a wench with child.

Duke. Did you such a thing?

Lucio. Yes, marry, did I; but was fain to forswear it; they would else have married me to the rotten medlar.

Duke. Sir, your company is fairer than honest: Rest you well.

Lucio. By my troth, I'll go with thee to the lane's end: If bawdy talk offend you, we'll have very little of it: Nay, friar, I am a kind of burr, I shall stick. [Exeunt.

9 i. e. he depends not on them.

10 A woodman was an attendant on the Forester; his great employment was hunting. It is here used in a wanton sense for a hunter of a different sort of game. So, Falstaff asks his mistresses in the Merry Wives of Windsor:

Am I a woodman? Ha!'

SCENE IV. A Room in Angelo's House.

Enter ANGELO and ESCALUS.

Escal. Every letter he hath writ hath disvouch'd1 other.

Ang. In most uneven and distracted manner. His actions show much like to madness: pray heaven, his wisdom be not tainted! And why meet him at the gates, and re-deliver our authorities there?

Ang. And why should we proclaim it in an hour before his entering, that, if any crave redress of injustice, they should exhibit their petitions in the street?

Escal. He shows his reason for that: to have a despatch of complaints; and to deliver us from devices hereafter, which shall then have no power to stand against us.

Ang. Well, I beseech you, let it be proclaim'd: Betimes i' the morn, I'll call you at your house: Give notice to such men of sort and suit2,

As are to meet him.

Escal.

Ang. Good night.—

I shall, sir: fare you well.

[Exit.

This deed unshapes me quite, makes me unpregnant3,
And dull to all proceeding. A deflower'd maid!
And by an eminent body, that enforc'd

The law against it!-But that her tender shame
Will not proclaim against her maiden loss,

1 Disvouched is contradicted.

2 Figure and rank.

3 Unready, unprepared; the contrary to pregnant in its sense of ready, apprehensive.

How might she tongue me? Yet reason dares *

her?-no:

For my authority bears a credent5 bulk,

That no particular scandal once can touch,
But it confounds the breather7. He should have liv'd,
Save that his riotous youth, with dangerous sense,
Might, in the times to come, have ta'en revenge,
By so receiving a dishonour'd life,

With ransom of such shame. 'Would yet he had liv'd!

Alack, when once our grace we have forgot, Nothing goes right; we would, and we would not.

[Exit.8

4 To dare has two significations; to terrify, as in The Maid's Tragedy:

And to challenge or call forth, as in K. Henry IV. p. 1.

'Unless a brother should a brother dare
To gentle exercise,' &c.

This passage will therefore bear two interpretations, between
which the reader must choose. In the old copy
it stands :-

which may be explained, 'Yet reason dares or overawes her from doing it, and cries no to her whenever she finds herself prompted to tongue Angelo.' Dare is often used in this sense by Shakspeare; and the word no is used in a similar way in the Chances :'I wear a sword to satisfy the world no.'

And in A Wife for a Month:

'I'm sure he did not, for I charged him no.'

The interpretation of the passage as pointed in the text is 'Yet does not reason challenge or incite her to accuse me?-no, (answers the speaker), for my authority bears off,' &c.

5 Credent, creditable, not questionable.

6 Particular is private: a French sense of the word.

7 i. e. utterer.

8 Dr. Johnson thought the fourth Act should end here, 'for here is properly a cessation of action, a night intervenes, and the place is changed between the passages of this scene and those of the The fifth Act, beginning with the following scene, would proceed without any interruption of time or place.'

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