you how JULIET. I do; and bear the shame most patiently. DUKE. I'll teach you shall arraign your conscience, And try your penitence, if it be found, 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 wrbng'd him. Duke. So then, it seems, your most offenceful act Was mutually committed ? JULIET. Mutually. DUKE. Then was your fin of heavier kind than his. JULIET. I do confess it, and repent it, father. DUKE. 'Tis meet so daughter: But left you do repent, As that the finthath brought you to this shame, Which sorrow is always toward ourselves, not heaven; Showing, we'd not spare heaven, 3 as we love it, But as we stand in fear, But left you do repent, ] Thus the old copy. The modern editors, led by Mr. Pope, read: But repent you not. But left you do repent is only a kind of negative imperative Ne te pæniteat, and means, repent not on this account. STEEVENS. I think that a line at least is wanting after the first of the Duke's speech. It would be presumptuous to attempt to replace the, words; but the sense, I am persuaded, is casily recoverablc out of Juliet's anfwer. I suppose his advice, in fubftance, to have been nearly this : « Take care, lest you tepent (not so much of your fault, as it is an evil, ] as that the fin hath brought you to this shame. ' Accordingly, Juliet's answer is explicit to this point: I do repent men as it is an evil, And take the share with joy. TYRWHITT. 3 Showing, we'd not spare heaven, ] The modern editors had changed this word into feek. STEEVENS. 4 JULIET. I do repent me, as it is an evil; There rest. love, [ Exit. 6 6 Showing, we'd not spare heaven,] i. c. spare to offend heaven. MALONE.' 4 There reft. ] Keep yourself in this temper. JOHNSON. { Grace go with you! Benedicite!) The former part of this ling evidently belongs to Juliet. Benedicite is the Duke's reply, RITSON. This regulation is undoubtedly proper: but I suppose Shakspeare to have written, Juliet. May grace go with you! Benedicite! STEEVENS. 0, injurious love, ] Her execution was respited on account of her pregnancy, the effets of her love; iherefore the calls it injurious; not that it brought her to shame, but that it hindered her freeing herself from it. Is not this all very natural? yet the Oxford editor changes it to injurious law. JOHNSO I know not what circumstance in this play can authorise a fupposition that Juliet was respited on account of her pregnancy; as her life was in no danger from the law, the severity of which was exerted only on the seducer. I suppose the means that a parent's love for the child she bears, is injurious, because it makes her careful of her life in her present shameful condition. Mr. Tollet explains the paffage thus: - 0, love, that is injurious in expediting Claudio's death, and that respites me a life, which is a burthen to me worse than death!" STEEVENS. Both Johnson's explanation of this passage, and Steevens's refu, tation of it, prove the necellity of Hanmer's amendment, which removes every difficulty, and can scarcely be considered as an alteration, the trace of the letters in the words law and love being so nearly alike, The law affe&ed the life of the man only, not that of the woman; and this is the injury that Juliet complains of, as she wished to dic with him. M. MASON. SON. 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. 7 Ang. When I woald pray and think, I think and pray To several subjects: heaven hath my empty words; Whilft my invention, invention, hearing not my tongue, 7 Enter Angelo.] Promos, in the play already quoted, has likewife a soliloquy previous to the second appearance of Cassandra. It begins thus: « Do what I can, no reason cooles desire : STEEVENS. Whilft my invention, ] Nothing can be either plainer or exader than this expression. [Dr. Warburton means - intention, a word substituted by himself. ] But the old blundering folio having it, invention, this was enough for Mr. Theobald to prefer authority to sense. WARBURTON. Intention (if it be the true reading) has, in this instance more than its common meaning, and fignifies eagerness of desire. So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor: o-course o'er my exteriors, with such greediness of inieniion." By invention, however, I believe the poet mcans imagination. STEEVENS. So, in our author's 103d fonnet: a face, " That overgoes my blunt invention quite." Again, in King Henry V : O for a muse of fire, that would ascend « The brightest heaven of invention!” MALONE. Steevens says that intention, in this place, means eagerness of defire; but I believe it means attention only, a sense in which the Anchors on Isabel: 9 Heaven in my mouth, word is frequently used by Shakspeare and the other writers of his My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: M. MASON. 9 Anchors on I fabel:] We have the same singular expresfion in Antony and Cleopatra : 1. There would he anchor his afpe&, and die " With looking on his life." MALONE. The same phrase occurs again in Cymbeline : Posthumus anchors upon Imogen. Steevens. 3 Grown fear'd and tedious ; ] We should read feared. i. e. old. So, Shakspeare uses in the fear, to signify old age. WARBURTON. I think fear'd may fand. What we go to with relu&ance may be said to be fear’d. Johnson. with boot, ] Boot is profit, advantage, gain. So, in M. Kyffin's translation of The Andria of. Terence, 1588 : 16 You obtained this at my hands, and I went about it while there was any boot." Again, in The Pinner of Wakefield, 1599: " Then list to me : Saint Andrew be my boot, change for an idle plume, for vain” being used for “ in vain. Besides ; has the air or wind lefs cffed on a feather than on twenty other things? or rather, is not the reverse of this the truth? An idle plume assuredly is not that « ever-fixed mark, of which our author fpeaks elsewhere, or that looks on tempests, and is never fhaken. The old copy has vaine, in which way vane or 'weather-cock was formerly spelt. (See Minshieu's Dict. 1617, in z'erb. So allo, in Love's 3 4 a How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit; vane. Labour's Lot, Aa IV. sc. i. edit. 1623 : " What vaine? what weathercock?"] . I would therefore read - I would exchange my gravity, says Angelo, for an idle feather, which being driven along by the wind, serves, to the fpe&ator, for a vane or weathercock.' So, in The Winter's Tale : . I am a feather for each wind that blows. And in The Merchant of Venice we meet with a kindred thought: - I should be still Plucking the grass, to know where fits the wind. " The omission of the article is certainly awkward, but not without example. Thus, in King Lear : « Hot questrists after him met him at gate." Again, in Coriolanus : " Go, see him out at gates.' Again, in Titus Andronicus : • Ascend, fair queen, Pantheon : Again, in The Winter's Tale: 'Pray heartily, he be at palaie! " Again, in Cymbeline : « Nor tent, to bottom, that. an idle plume, How often dost thou - &c. The pronoun thou, referring to only one antecedent, appears to me strongly to support such a regulation. MALONE. I adhere to the old reading. As fair is known to have been Tepeatedly used by Shakspeare, Marston, &c. for fairness, vain might have been employed on the present occasion, instead of vanity. Pure is also substituted for purity in England's Helicon. See likewise notes on The Midsummer Night's Dream, A& I. sc. i. and The Comedy of Errors, Aa II. sc. i. Again, in Love's Labour's Loft, foul is given, as a substantive, to express foulness. The air is represented by Angelo as chastising the plume for being vain. A feather is exhibited by many writers as the emblemi of vanity, Shakspeare himself, in K. Henry VIII. mentions fool and feather, as congenial obje&s. That the air beats the plume for its vainness, is a supposition fanciful enough; and yet it may be parallel'd by an image in K. Edward III. 1599, were flags are made the assailants, and - cuff the air, and beat the wind" that struggles to kiss them. The pronoun thou, referring to the double antecedents place and form, ought to be no obje&ion, for, a little further on, the Duke says: O forma |