LECTURE VIII.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE-MERCHANT OF VENICE-WINTER'S TALE.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE is among the least attractive, yet most instructive, of Shakspeare's plays. Surpassingly rich both in poetry and wisdom, it has, however, as Hazlitt hath remarked, "an original sin in the nature of the subject, which prevents our taking a cordial interest in it." This inherent sinfulness forbids me to dwell much on the events of the play. For political philosophy Blackstone himself might, and for aught I know may have gone to school to it with advantage; while for height of moral argument and religious heroism, it occupies perhaps the summit of human conception; the tone of sentiment and character developed by the events of the drama being as pure and lofty as those events themselves are repulsive.

The Duke of Vienna, a wise and merciful, but somewhat artful and intriguing prince, under pretence of going to travel, nobody knows whither, deputes one Lord Angelo, a man of the highest professions and held in the greatest esteem, to administer the government during his absence. Instead, however, of going to travel, the duke disguises himsef as a monk, and remains in the city; an unknown

"Looker on here in Vienna,

Where he doth see corruption boil and bubble,

Till it o'errun the stew: laws for all faults;

But faults so countenanced, that the strong statutes
Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop,

As much in mock as mark."

His purpose in this action is so very subtle and complex, that I know not how to convey it save in his own words, wherein he unfolds his wishes and designs to the principal of the religious house where he puts up.

DUKE. We have strict statutes and most biting laws,

FRIAR.

DUKE.

(The needful bits and curbs of headstrong steeds,)
Which for these fourteen years we have let sleep;
Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave,

That goes not out to prey: Now, as fond fathers,
Having bound up the threat'ning twigs of birch,
Only to stick it in their children's sight,

For terror, not to use; in time the rod

Becomes more mocked than feared: so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;
And liberty plucks justice by the nose;

The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum.

It rested in your Grace

To unloose this tied-up justice when you pleased:
And it in you more dreadful would have seemed,
Than in Lord Angelo.

I do fear, too dreadful:
Sith 'twas my fault to give the people scope,
"Twould be my tyranny to strike, and gall them
For what I bid them do: For we bid this be done,
When evil deeds have their permissive pass,
And not the punishment. Therefore, indeed,

I have on Angelo imposed the office;

Who may, in the ambush of my name, strike home,

And yet my nature never in the sight,

To do it slander: And to behold his sway,

I will, as 'twere a brother of your order,
Visit both prince and people: therefore, pr'ythee,
Supply me with the habit, and instruct me

How I may formally in person bear me

Like a true friar. More reasons for this action,
At our more leisure shall I render you ;
Only this one: Lord Angelo is precise ;
Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses
That his blood flows, or that his appetite

Is more to bread than stone: Hence shall we see,
If power change purpose, what our seemers be."

Drest with the duke's love, and armed with power

"So to enforce or qualify the laws,

As to his soul seems good,"

the deputy, fond of practising godliness in the streets and at the looking-glass, and glad of an opportunity to act the reformer, because under that character he can best gratify his ambition while indulging his malignity and pride, forthwith awakens the sleeping statutes, and lets them loose against the life of one Claudio. Information of which is immediately sent to Isabella, Claudio's sister, "in whose youth there is a prone and speechless dialect, such as moves men," and who, besides,

"Hath prosperous art

When she will play with reason and discourse,
And well she can persuade;"

whereupon, leaving the convent where she is about enrolling herself among the holy sisterhood, she hastens to intercede with the deputy. Her intercession, however, though worthy of an angel's tongue, has no other effect upon his godly soul than to move in him the vilest lust;

and, under a solemn promise of pardon, which he does not mean to keep, he immediately attempts to commit, in its blackest form, the very crime for which he has passed upon her brother's life. Thus it turns out, as the duke had suspected, and as Isabella afterwards describes him, that

"This outward-sainted deputy,

Whose settled visage and deliberate word
Nips youth i' the head, and follies doth enmew,
As falcon doth the fowl,-is yet a devil;
His filth within being cast, he would appear
A pond as deep as hell."

His lordship, however, is suffered to go on until his guilt has fully matured itself, and he begins to exult in his success, when the duke, who has been secretly watching and thwarting all his movements, suddenly reveals himself and closes the deputation, with Lord Angelo effectually in his toils. To understand the play aright, it is proper to suppose, that his lordship, like other ambitious reformers, has long been cultivating popular arts, and, not content to let his light shine, has been trying hard to make it shine, affecting peculiar sanctity and severity of life, and perhaps murmuring against "the powers that be," with a view to ingratiate himself with the multitude; until the duke, better able to understand his motives than to persuade others of them, and knowing that one who so affects the honour of men by austerity of life, can hardly intend the honour of God thereby, wisely resolves to let him try his hand in the government. Of this, indeed, or something very like it, we have an intimation, where, when Lord Angelo pro

poses that he be publicly escorted out of the city, he declines the honour, saying,

"I'll privily away: I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes:
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause, and aves vehement;
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion,
That does affect it."

On the whole it is not easy to decide whether the duke be more wise in his reasons for suspecting the deputy, or more cunning in his plans for entrapping him.

ANGELO.

BISHOP BUTLER, in his sermon preached before the House of Lords on the anniversary of the murder of King Charles I., speaks of a class of hypocrites, who practice hypocrisy not only towards men, but towards God and their own consciencies; and who, unwilling to think or believe any thing ill of their own characters, "try appearances upon themselves as well as upon the world, and with at least as much success; and choose to manage so as to make their own minds easy with their faults, which can scarce be done without management, rather than to mend them." It is to this class of hypocrites, I take it, that Lord Angelo belongs. He is a puritan, in the true, original meaning and application of the term; that is, a man with whom purity is not so much a virtue as an art, a matter not of conscience but of conceit; one of those who fast their bodies only to feast