Enter LUCIO and ISABELLA.

Prov. 'Save your honour !

[Offering to retire.

Ang. Stay a little while.-[To ISAB.] You are welcome: What's your will?

Isab. I am a woeful suitor to your honour, Please but your honour hear me.

Ang. Well; what's your suit?

Isab. There is a vice, that most I do abhor,
And most desire should meet the blow of justice;
For which I would not plead, but that I must ;
For which I must not plead, but that I am
At war, 'twixt will, and will not.

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 cypher of a function,

To find the faults, whose fine stands in record,
And let go by the actor.

Isab. O just, but severe law !

I had a brother then.-Heaven keep your honour!

[Retiring. Lucio. [To ISA B.] Give't not o'er so: to him again,

intreat him;

Kneel down before him, hang upon his gown ;

You are too cold: If you should need a pin,

You could not with more tame a tongue desire it :

To him, I say.

Isab. Must 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. But can you, if you would?

Ang. Look, what I will not, that I cannot do.

Isab. But might you do't, and do the world no wrong, If so your heart were touch'd with that remorse

As mine is to him?2

Ang. He's sentenc'd ; 'tis too late.

[1] i. e. let his fault be condemned, or extirpated, but let not my brother himself suffer. MALONE.

[2] Remorse, in this place, as in many others, signifies pity.

STEEV.

Lucio. You are too cold.

[To ISAB.

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 sword,
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 slipt like him ;
But he, like you, would not have been so stern.
Ang. Pray you, be gone.

Isab. I would to heaven I had your potency,
And you were Isabel! should it be then thus ?
No; I would tell what 'twere to be a judge,
And what a prisoner.

Lucio. [Aside.] Ay, touch him: there's the vein.
Ang. Your brother is a forfeit of the law,
And you but waste your words.

Isab. Alas! alas!

Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took,
Found out the remedy: How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips
Like man new made.3

Ang. Be you content, fair maid;

It is the law, not I, condemns your brother :
Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son,

It should be thus with him ;-he must die to-morrow. Isab. To-morrow? O, that's sudden! Spare him, spare him:

He's not prepar'd for death! Even for our kitchens
We kill the fowl of season: shall we serve heaven
With less respect than we do minister

To our gross selves? Good, good my lord, bethink you:
Who is it that hath died for this offence?
There's many have committed it.

Lucio. Ay, well said.

[3] This is a fine thought, and finely expressed. The meaning is, that Mercy will add such a grace to your person, that you will appear as amiable as a man come fresh out of the hands of his Creator. WARBURTON. I incline to a different interpretation: And you, Angelo, will breathe new life into Claudio, as the Creator animated Adam, by breathing into his nostrils the breath of life." HOLT WHITE.

Ang. The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept: Those many had not dar'd to do that evil,

If the first man, that did the edict infringe,
Had answer'd for his deed now, 'tis awake;
Takes note of what is done; and, like a prophet,4
Looks in a glass, that shows what future evils,
(Either now, or by remissness new-conceiv'd,
And so in progress to be hatch'd and born,)
Are now to have no successive degrees,
But, where they live, to end.

Isab. Yet show some pity.

Ang. I show it most of all when I show justice; For then I pity those I do not know,

Which a dismiss'd offence would after gall;

And do him right, that, answering one foul wrong,
Lives not to act another. Be satisfied;

Your brother dies to-morrow; be content.

Isab. So you must be the first, that gives this sentence; And he, that suffers? O, it is excellent

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

Luc. That's well said.

Isab. Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,

For every pelting, petty officer,

Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder.

-Merciful heaven!

Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,

Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, 5

Than the soft myrtle ;-O, but man, proud man!
Drest in a little brief authority;

Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,

His glassy essence,-like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,

As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

Lucio. O, to him, to him, wench: he will relent,
He's coming, I perceiv't.

Prov. Pray heaven, she win him!

[4] This alludes to the fopperies of the beril, much used at that time by cheats and fortune-tellers to predict by. WARBURTON.

The beril, which is a kind of crystal, hath a weak tincture of red in it. Among other tricks of astrologers, the discovery of past or future events was supposed to be the consequence of looking into it.

REED.

[5] Gnarre is the old English word for a knot in wood. STEEVENS.

Isab. We cannot weigh our brother with ourself:6 Great men may jest with saints: 'tis wit in them; But, in the less, foul profanation.

Lucio. Thou'rt in the right, girl; more o' that. Isab. That in the captain's but a choleric word, Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

Lucio. Art advis'd o' that? more on't.

Ang. Why do you put these sayings upon me? Isab. Because authority, though it err like others,

Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself,

That skins the vice o' the top: Go to your bosom ; Knock there; and ask your heart, what it doth know That's like my brother's fault: if it confess

A natural guiltiness, such as is his,

Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother's life.

Ang. She speaks, and 'tis

Such sense, that my sense breeds with it.—Fare you well. Isab. Gentle my lord, turn back.

Ang. I will bethink me :-Come again to-morrow. Isab. Hark,how I'll bribe you: Good my lord,turn back. Ang. How! bribe me?

Isa. Ay, with such gifts that heaven shall share with you
Lucio. You had marr'd all else.

Isab. Not with fond shekels of the tested gold,?
Or stones, whose rates are either rich or poor,
As fancy values them but with true prayers,
That shall be up at heaven, and enter there,
Ere sun-rise; prayers from preserved souls,
From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.

Ang. Well: come to me to-morrow.
Lucio. Go to; it is well; away.

Isab. Heaven keep your honour safe!

Ang. Amen! For I

Am going that way to temptation,

Where prayers cross.

Isab. At what hour to-morrow

Shall I attend your lordship?

[Aside to ISAB,

[Aside.

[6] We mortals, proud and foolish, cannot prevail on our passions to weigh or compare cur brother, a being of like nature and like frailty, with ourself. We have different names and different judgments for the same, faults committed by persons of different condition. JOHNSON.

[7] Fond means very frequently in our author, foolish. It signifies in this place valued or prized by folly.

29*

VOL. I.

STEEVENS,

Ang. At any time 'fore noon.

Isab. 'Save your honour! [Exe.LUCIO. ISA B. and Pro.
Ang. From thee; even from thy virtue !—

What's this? what's this? Is this her fault, or mine?
The tempter, or the tempted, who sins most? Ha!
Not she; Nor doth she tempt: but it is I,
That lying by the violet, in the sun,

8

Do, as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be,
That modesty may more betray our sense

Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough,
Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,
And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie !
What dost thou ? or what art thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her foully, for those things

That make her good? O, let her brother live :
Thieves for their robbery have authority,

When judges steal themselves. What? I do love her,
That I desire to hear her speak again,

And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on?
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,

With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation, that doth goad us on

To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,
With all her double vigour, art, and nature,
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite ;-Ever, till now,

When men were fond, I smil❜d, and wonder'd how. [Exit.

SCENE III.

A Room in a Prison. Enter Duke, habited like a friar, and Provost.

Duke. Hail to you, provost! so I think you are.
Prov. I am the provost : What's your will, good friar?
Duke. Bound by my charity, and my bless'd order,

I come to visit the afflicted spirits

Here in the prison :9 do me the common right

To let me see them; and to make me know

[8] I am not corrupted by her, but by my own heart, which excites foul de. sires under the same benign influences that exalt her purity, as the carrion grows putrid by those beams which increase the fragrance of the violet JOH. [9] This is a scriptural expression, very suitable to the grave character which the Duke assumes. By which also he went and preached unto the

spirits in prison." Pet. iii. 19. WHALLEY,