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When I, that censure him, do so offend,

Let mine own judgment pattern out my death,
And nothing come in partial. Sir, he must die.
Escal. Be it as your wisdom will.

Ang.

Where is the provost ?

Prov. Here, if it like your honour.
Ang.

See that Claudio

Be executed by nine to-morrow morning:
Bring him his confessor, let him be prepar'd;
For that's the utmost of his pilgrimage.

[Exit Provost. Escal. Well, Heaven forgive him; and forgive

us all!

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall:
Some run from brakes of vice,' and answer none;
And some condemned for a fault alone.

7 The original here reads, -"Some run from brakes of ice;" which Mr. Collier retains, silently changing brakes into breaks. It can hardly be denied that this reading yields very good sense; the image of course being that of men making good their escape, even when the ice breaking under them. But brakes and ice do not quite cohere; and it seems as proper to change ice into vice, as brakes into breaks; and, as the former accords better with the rest of the passage, we venture to accept it. It was first made by Rowe. But there is a further question, whether brake, allowing that to be the right word, here means an engine of war or torture, or a snare, or a bramble; the word being used in all these senses. For the first, thus in Holland's Pliny: "Among engines of artillery, the Cretes invented the scorpion or crossebow; the Syrians, the catapult; the Phenicians, the balist or brake, and the sling;" and in Palsgrave : "I brake on a brake or payne bauke, as men do mysdoers to confesse the trouthe." For the second, it occurs in Skelton's Ellinour Rummin: "It was a stale to takethe devil in a brake;" and in another old play: "Her I'll make a stale to catch this courtier in a brake." For the third, it is found in Henry VIII. Act i. sc. 2: ""Tis but the fate of place, and the rough brake that virtue must go through;" and Ben Jonson has, -"Look at the false and cunning man, crush'd in the snaky brukes that he had past." Which of these senses the word bears in the text, we must leave the reader to decide for himself. Mr. Dyce thinks that brakes is here used for instruments or engines of

Enter ELBOW, FROTH, Clown, Officers, &c.

Elb. Come, bring them away: If these be good people in a commonweal, that do nothing but use their abuses in common houses, I know no law: bring them away.

Ang. How now, sir! What's your name? and what's the matter?

Elb. If it please your honour, I am the poor Duke's constable, and my name is Elbow: I do lean upon justice, sir, and do bring in here before your good honour two notorious benefactors.

Ang. Benefactors! Well; what benefactors are they are they not malefactors?

Elb. If it please your honour, I know not well what they are but precise villains they are, that I am sure of; and void of all profanation in the world, that good Christians ought to have.

Escal. This comes off well: here's a wise officer. Ang. Go to: What quality are they of? Elbow is your name? Why dost thou not speak, Elbow ? Clo. He cannot, sir: he's out at elbow.

Ang. What are you, sir?

Elb. He, sir? a tapster, sir; parcel-bawd; one that serves a bad woman, whose house, sir, was, as they say, pluck'd down in the suburbs; and now she professes a hot-house, which, I think, is a very ill house too.

9

punishment, from which some men escape, and answer no questions. But the more common notion is, that in this place the word means brambles, thickets, or thorny entanglements of vice, which some rush into, and, when pursued, run away from uncaught, while others have to suffer for a single act of vice.

H.

8 That is, this is well told. The meaning of the phrase, when seriously applied to speech, is, "This is well delivered, this story is well told." But in the present instance it is used ironically.

That is, professes, or pretends, to keep a hot-house. Hot

Escal. How know you that?

Elb. My wife, sir, whom I detest 10 before heaven and your honour,

Escal. How! thy wife?

Elb. Ay, sir; whom, I thank Heaven, is an honest

woman,

Escal. Dost thou detest her therefore?

Elb. I say, sir, I will detest myself also, as well as she, that this house, if it be not a bawd's house, it is pity of her life, for it is a naughty house.

Escal. How dost thou know that, constable ?

Elb. Marry, sir, by my wife; who, if she had been a woman cardinally given, might have been accus'd in fornication, adultery, and all uncleanliness there. Escal. By the woman's means?

Elb. Ay, sir, by mistress Over-done's means: but as she spit in his face, so she defied him.

Clo. Sir, if it please your honour, this is not so. Elb. Prove it before these varlets here, thou honourable man; prove it.

Escal. [To ANG.] Do you hear how he misplaces? Clo. Sir, she came in great with child; and longing (saving your honour's reverence) for stew'd prunes sir, we had but two in the house, which at that very distant time stood, as it were, in a fruitdish, a dish of some three-pence : your honours have seen such dishes; they are not China dishes, but very good dishes.

11

houses were bagnios supplied with vapour-baths; but under this name other accommodations were often furnished. - Parcel-bawd, a few lines before, probably means partly bawd, alluding to his uniting the two offices of pimp and tapster. So, in 2 Henry IV. Act i. sc. 2, we have "parcel-gilt goblet," for partly gilt. H. 10 Detest is an Elbowism for protest.

H.

11 The Clown, catching the constable's trick of speech, here uses distant as an Elbowism for instant.

H.

Escal. Go to, go to: no matter for the dish, sir. Clo. No, indeed, sir, not of a pin; you are therein in the right but, to the point: As I say, this mistress Elbow, being, as I say, with child, and being great-bellied, and longing, as I said, for prunes; and having but two in the dish, as I said, master Froth here, this very man, having eaten the rest, as I said, and, as I say, paying for them very honestly; for, as you know, master Froth, I could not give you three-pence again.

Froth. No, indeed.

Clo. Very well: you being then, if you be remember'd, cracking the stones of the foresaid prunes. Froth. Ay, so I did, indeed.

Clo. Why, very well: I telling you then, if you be remember'd, that such a one, and such a one, were past cure of the thing you wot of, unless they kept very good diet, as I told you.

Froth. All this is true.

Clo. Why, very well then.

Escal. Come, you are a tedious fool: to the pur

pose:

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What was done to Elbow's wife, that he
Come me to what was

hath cause to complain of?
done to her.

Clo. Sir, your honour cannot come to that yet. Escal. No, sir, nor I mean it not.

Clo. Sir, but you shall come to it, by your honour's leave: And, I beseech you, look into master Froth here, sir; a man of fourscore pound a year; whose father died at Hallowmas : -Was't not at Hallowmas, master Froth?

Froth. All-hollownd eve.12

Clo. Why, very well: I hope here be truths:

12 All-Hollownd Eve, the Eve of All Saints' day.

13

He, sir, sitting, as I say, in a lower 13 chair, sir; 'twas in the Bunch of Grapes," where, indeed, you have a delight to sit, have you not?

Froth. I have so; because it is an open room, and good for winter.

Clo. Why, very well then :-I hope here be truths. Ang. This will last out a night in Russia, When nights are longest there: I'll take my leave, And leave you to the hearing of the cause; Hoping you'll find good cause to whip them all. Escal. I think no less: Good morrow to your

lordship.

[Exit ANGELO. Now, sir, come on: What was done to Elbow's wife, once more?

Clo. Once, sir? there was nothing done to her once. Elb. I beseech you, sir, ask him what this man did to my wife.

Cio. I beseech your honour, ask me.

Escal. Well, sir: What did this gentleman to her? Clo. I beseech you, sir, look in this gentleman's face: Good master Froth, look upon his honour; 'tis for a good purpose: Doth your honour mark his face?

Escal. Ay, sir, very well.

Clo. Nay, I beseech you, mark it well.

Escal. Well, I do so.

Clo. Doth your honour see any harm in his face? Escal. Why, no.

Clo. I'll be suppos'd upon a book, his face is the worst thing about him: Good then; if his face be

13 Every house had formerly what was called a low chair, designed for the ease of sick people, and occasionally occupied by lazy ones.

14 Such names were often given to rooms in the Poet's time. Thus in the Will of Henry Harte, we read of a "chamber called the Half-moon."

H.

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