Enter LUCIO and ISABELLA. PROV. Save your honour!" [Offering to retire. 2 ANG. Stay a little while. [To ISAB.] You are -- welcome: What's your will? ISAB. I am a woeful fuitor to your honour, Please but your honour hear me. ANG. Well; what's your fuit? ISAB. There is a vice, that most I do abhor, And moft 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. 3 9 Save your honour!] Your honour, which is fo often repeated in this fcene, was in our author's time the ufual mode of addrefs to a lord. It had become antiquated after the Refloration; for Sir William D'Avenant in his alteration of this play has fubftituted your excellence in the room of it, MALONE. 2 Stay a little while.] It is not clear why the Provost is bidden to ftay, nor when he goes out. JOHNSON. The entrance of Lucio and Ifabelia should not, perhaps, be made till after Angelo's fpeech to the Provoft, who had only announced a lady, and feems to be detained as a witness to the purity of the deputy's converfation with her. His exit may be fixed with that of Lucio and Ifabella. He cannot remain longer, and there is no reafon to think he departs before. RITSON. Stay a little while, is faid by Angelo, in anfwer to the words, « Save your honour;" which denoted the Provoft's intention to depart. Ifabella ufes the fame words to Angelo, when the goes out, near the conclufion of this fcene. So alfo, when fhe offers to retire, on finding her fuit ineffectual: «Heaven keep your honour!" 3 For which I must not plead, but that I am MALONE. At war, twixt will, and will not.] This is obfcure; perhaps it may be mended by reading: For which I must now plead; but yet I am At war, twist will, and will not. Yt and yt are almoft undiftinguishable in an ancient manufcript. ANG. Well; the matter? ISAB. I have a brother is condemn'd to die: I do beseech you, let it be his fault, And not my brother. * PROV. Heaven give thee moving graces! ANG. Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it! Why, every fault's condemn'd, ere it be done: Mine were the very sypher of a function, To find the faults, whofe fine ftands in record, And let go by the actor. ISAB. O juft, but fevere law! I had a brother then. - Heaven keep your honour! [Retiring. LUCIO. [TO ISAB.] Give't not o'er fo: to him again, intreat him; Kneel down before him, hang upon his gown; Yet no alteration is neceffary, fince the fpeech is not unintelligible as it now ftands. JOHNSON. For which I must not plead, but that I am At war', 'twixt will, and will not.] i. e. for which I muft not plead, but that there is a conflict in my breast betwixt my affection for my brother, which induces me to plead for him, and my regard to virtue, which forbids me to intercede for one guilty of fuch a crime; and I find the former more powerful than the latter. MALONE. let it be his fault, And not my brother.] i. e. let his fault be condemned, or extir. pated, but let not my brother himself fuffer. To find the faults,] The old copy reads MALONE. To fine, &c. STEEVENS. To fine means, I think, to pronounce the fine or sentence of the law, appointed for certain crimes. Mr. Theobald, without neceffity, reads find. The repetition is much in our author's manner. MALONE. Theobald's emendation may be justified by a passage in King Lear: All's not offence that indiscretion finds, And dotage terms fo." STEEVENS. ISAB. Muft he needs die? ANG. Maiden, no remedy. ISAB. Yes; I'do think that you might pardon him, And neither heaven, nor man, grieve at the mercy. ANG. I will not do't. ISAB. wrong, If fo your heart were touch'd with that remorfe 6 As mine is to him? ANG. He's fentenc'd; 'tis too late. LUCIO. You are too cold. 8 [To ISABELLA. ISAB. 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 so 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 ftern. 6 touch'd with that remorse-] Remorse, in this place, as in many others, fignifies pity. So, in the 5th A& of this play: My fifterly remorfe confutes my honour, "And I did yield to him." Again, in Heywood's Iron Age, 1632: "The perfed image of a wretched creature, See Othello, A& III. STEEVENS. 7 May call it back again:] The word back was inferted by the editor of the fecond folio, for the fake of the metre. MALONE. Surely, it is added for the fake of fenfe as well as metre. STEEVENS. Well believe this,] Be thoroughly affured of this. & THEOBALD. ANG. Pray you, begone. ISAB. I would to heaven I had your potency, And you were Ifabel! fhould it then be thus? No; I would tell what 'twere to be a judge, And what a prisoner. LUCIO. Ay, touch him: there's the vein. [Afide. ANG. Your brother is a forfeit of the law, And you but wafte your words. ISAB. Alas! alas! Why, all the fouls that were, 9 were forfeit once; 9 all the fouls that were,] This is falfe divinity. We fhould read are. WARBURTON. 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 tranfgreffion rendered them obnoxious to the penalty of annihilation, but for the remedy which the author of their being moft graciously provided. The learned Bifhop, however, is more fuccefsful in his next explanation. HENLEY. 2 And mercy then will breathe within your lips, Like man new made.] This is a fine thought, and finely expreffed. The meaning is, that mercy will add fuch a grace to your perfon, that you will appear as amiable as a man come fresh out of the hands of his Creator. WARBURTON. I rather think the meaning is, You will then change the feverity of your prefent character. In familiar fpeech, You would be quite another man. JOHNSON. And mercy then will breathe within your lips, Like man new made.] You will then appear as tender-hearted and merciful as the firft 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. 33 ANG. Be you content, fair maid; It is the law, not I, condemns your brother: Were he my kinfman, brother, or my son, It fhould be thus with him;-he muft die to-morrow. ISAB. To-morrow? O, that's fudden! Spare him, fpare him; He's not prepar'd for death! Even for our kitchens We kill the fowl of feafon; fhall we ferve heaven With lefs refpect than we do minifter 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 flept: 3 Thofe many had not dar'd to do that evil, 2 of feafon;] i. e. when it is in feafon. So, in The Merry Wives of Windfor: buck; and of the feafon too it fhall appear. STEEVENS. 3 The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept :] quando leges, moriuntur nunquam, is a maxim in our law. Dormiunt aliHOLT WHITE. 4 If the first man, &c.] The word man has been supplied by the modern editors. I would rather read like a prophet, Looks in a glass, ] This alludes to the fopperies of the beril, much used at that time by cheats and fortune-tellers to predi& by. See Macbeth, A& IV. fc. i. So again, in Vittoria Corombona, 1612: WARBURTON. "How long have I beheld the devil in chryftal?" STEEVENS. The beril, which is a kind of cryftal, hath a weak tincture of |