By all external warrants,) show it now, Isab. I have no tongue but one: gentle my lord, Let me entreat you speak the former language. Ang. Plainly, conceive I love you. Isab. My brother did love Juliet ; and you tell That he shall die for it. Ang. He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love. Isab. I know your virtue hath a license in't, Which seems a little fouler than it is, To pluck on others.18 Ang. Believe me, on mine honour, My words express my purpose. Isab. Ha! little honour to be much believ'd, And most pernicious purpose! ing! me Seeming, seem I will proclaim thee, Angelo; look for't! Sign me a present pardon for my brother, Or, with an outstretch'd throat, I'll tell the world aloud What man thou art. Ang. Who will believe thee, Isabel? My unsoil'd name, the austereness of my life, That you shall stifle in your own report, 18 That is, your virtue assumes an air of licentiousness, which is not natural to you, on purpose to try me. 19 Prolixious blushes means what Milton has elegantly called "sweet reluctant amorous delay." By yielding up thy body to my will; Or else he must not only die the death, But thy unkindness shall his death draw out this, Who would believe me? O perilous mouths ! Bidding the law make courtesy to their will; Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die : I'll tell him yet of Angelo's request, And fit his mind to death, for his soul's rest. [Exit. ACT III. SCENE 1. A Room in the Prison. Enter DUKE, as a Friar, CLAUDIO, and Provost. Duke. So, then, you hope of pardon from lord Angelo ? Claud. The miserable have no other medicine, But only hope: I have hope to live, and am prepar'd to die. Duke. Be absolute for death; either death or life Shall thereby be the sweeter. life: Reason thus with If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep:1 a breath thou art, Servile to all the skyey influences, That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,2 ble; 1 Keep here means care for, a common acceptation of the word in Chaucer and later writers. 2 That is, dwellest. See Act i. sc. 4, note 2, of this play. 3 Death and his fool were personages that once figured on the stage. Douce relates having seen a play at a fair, in which Death bore a part, attended by a fool or clown; the person that represented Death being habited in a close black vest so painted as to look like a skeleton. Douce also had an old wood-cut, one of a series representing the Dance of Death, in which the fool was engaged in combat with his adversary, and buffetting him with a bladder filled with peas or small pebbles. In all such performances, the rule appears to have been, that the fool, after struggling long against the stratagems of Death, at last became his victim. H. For all the accommodations that thou bear'st Are nurs'd by baseness: Thou art by no means valiant ; For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm: Thy best of rest is sleep, Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, 4 Upon this passage Johnson observes: "A minute analysis of life at once destroys that splendour which dazzles the imagination. Whatever grandeur can display, or luxury enjoy, is procured by baseness, by offices of which the mind shrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the shambles and the dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornament from among the damps and darkness of the mine." 5 Worm is put for any creeping thing or serpent. Shakespeare adopts the vulgar error, that a serpent wounds with his tongue, and that his tongue is forked. In old tapestries and paintings the tongues of serpents and dragons always appear barbed like the point of an arrow. Serpigo is a leprous eruption. 7 This is exquisitely imagined. When we are young, we busy ourselves in forming schemes for succeeding time, and miss the Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms 8 Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich, That bears the name of life? What's yet in this yet death we fear, I humbly thank you. To sue to live, I find I seek to die; And, seeking death, find life: Let it come on. Isab. [Without.] What, ho! Peace here; grace and good company! Prov. Who's there? come in: the wish deserves a welcome. Enter ISABELLA. Duke. Dear sir, ere long I'll visit you again. Isab. My business is a word or two with Claudio. your sister. Duke. Provost, a word with you. Prov. As many as you please. gratifications that are before us; when we are old, we amuse the languor of age with the recollection of youthful pleasures or performances; so that our life, of which no part is filled with the business of the present time, resembles our dreams after dinner, when the events of the morning are mingled with the designs of the evening. 8 Old age. In youth, which is or ought to be the happiest time, man commonly wants means to obtain what he could enjoy; he is dependent on palsied eld; must beg alms from the coffers of hoary avarice; and, being very niggardly supplied, becomes as aged, looks like an old man on happiness beyond his reach. And when he is old and rich, when he has wealth enough for the purchase of all that formerly excited his desires, he has no longer the powers of enjoyment. |