Duke. Bring me to hear them speak, where I may be conceal'd. [Exeunt DUKE and Provost. Claud. Now, sister, what's the comfort? Why, as all Isab. Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven, Intends you for his swift ambassador, Where 9 you shall be an everlasting lieger: ' Therefore your best appointment 10 make with speed; To-morrow you set on. Claud. Is there no remedy ? Isab. None, but such remedy, as to save a head To cleave a heart in twain. Claud. But is there any? Isab. Yes, brother, you may live : There is a devilish mercy in the judge, If you'll implore it, that will free your life, Claud. Perpetual durance ? Isab. Ay, just; perpetual durance: a restraint, Though all the world's vastidity" you had, To a determin'd scope.12 Claud. But in what nature? Isab. In such a one as, you consenting to't, Would bark your honour from that trunk you bear, And leave you naked." Claud. 13 Let me know the point. Isab. O! I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake, Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain, And six or seven winters more respect 9 A lieger is a resident. 11 That is, vastness of extent. 10 That is, preparation. 12 A confinement of your mind to one idea; to ignominy, of which the remembrance can neither be suppressed nor escaped. 13 A metaphor, from stripping trees of their bark. Than a perpetual honour. Dar'st thou die? Claud. Why give you me this shame? Think you I can a resolution fetch From flowery tenderness? If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride, And hug it in mine arms. Isab. There spake my brother: there my father's grave Did utter forth a voice! Yes, thou must die: In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy – Nips youth i'the head, and follies doth emmew, 15 His filth within being cast, he would appear Claud. The precise Angelo ? Isab. O! 'tis the cunning livery of hell, The damned'st body to invest and cover 16 In precise guards! Dost thou think, Claudio, 14 This beautiful passage is in all our minds and memories, but it most frequently stands in quotation detached from the antecedent line,- The sense of death is most in apprehension;" without which it is liable to an opposite construction. The meaning is, that fear is the principal sensation in death, which has no pain; and the giant when he dies feels no greater pain than the beetle. 15 In whose presence the follies of youth are afraid to show themselves, as the fowl is afraid to flutter while the falcon hovers over it. To emmew is a term in falconry, signifying to restrain, to keep in a mew or cage either by force or terror. 16 The original here reads prenzie guards, and, three lines above, prenzie Angelo; both of them evident corruptions, there being no such word. The common reading in both places is princely. Warburton would have it priestly, and Tieck suggests If I would yield him my virginity, Claud. O, heavens! it cannot be. Isab. Yes, he would give't thee, from this rank offence, So to offend him still." This night's the time Or else thou diest to-morrow. Claud. Isab. O! were it but my life, Thou shalt not do't. I'd throw it down for your deliverance Claud. Thanks, dear Isabel. Isab. Be ready, Claudio, for your death to-mor row. Claud. Yes. Has he affections in him, That thus can make him bite the law by the nose, When he would force it? Sure it is no sin; 19 Or of the deadly seven it is the least. Isab. Which is the least! precise, which is adopted by Knight and Verplanck. Precise certainly suits well with the character of the Deputy, and the Duke has already said, - -"Lord Angelo is precise." And the use, so familiar in the Poet's time, of precisian for puritan, would render the term as intelligible to an audience as it is appropriate to the person. Guards were trimmings, facings, ornaments; and as Angelo was a precisian in morals and manners, he would naturally be so likewise in his dress: the "pride" he takes in his "gravity" would lead him to affect plainness of decoration. Halliwell objects to precise, that it makes the metre irregular; but such irregularities appear to have been oftener sought than shunned by the Poet. H. 17 That is," from the time of my committing this offence, you might persist in sinning with safety." 18 Frankly, freely. 19" Has he passions that impel him to transgress the law at the very moment that he is enforcing it against others? Surely then it cannot be a sin so very heinous, since Angelo, who is so wise, will venture it." Shakespeare shows his knowledge of human nature in the conduct of Claudio. Claud. If it were damnable, he, being so wise, Why, would he for the momentary trick, Be perdurably fin'd? - O Isabel! Isab. What says my brother? Claud. Death is a fearful thing. Isab. And shamed life a hateful. Claud. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; 21 20 20 This passage is a standing puzzle to commentators; “fiery floods" and "region of thick-ribbed ice" being, as one would think, among the last places to be delighted in. The most common explanation is, that delighted spirit means the spirit that has been delighted, or is accustomed to delight. Another, and perhaps a better explanation, is, that the passive form is here used in an active sense, delighted for delighting or delightful, - an usage quite frequent in Shakespeare; as in Othello, Act i. sc. 3: "If virtue no delighted beauty lack;" and in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iv. sc. 6: "Give our hearts united ceremony." But the best suggestion we have seen is, that the word is here used in the sense of removed from or deprived of the light, as if it were written de-lighted; which is a strictly classical use of the prepositive de, and certainly has the merit of harmony with the context. The use of the Latin prepositive de, di, dis, in combination with native words, is so common in Shakespeare and other writers of that time, that it is scarce worth the while to cite examples. Thus, Shakespeare has dislimns and dismask'd; Drayton, diswitted; Daniel, disweaponing; Feltham, disman'd; Drant, dehusk'd; Speed, deking'd; and Giles Fletcher, in his fine poem, Christ's Victory and Triumph, thus describes the passing away of an eclipse of the sun : "But soon as he again deshadow'd is, Restoring the blind world his blemish'd sight, And wonder at the shortness of the night." H. 21 So, in Ben Jonson's Catiline, Act i. sc. 1: "We are spiritbound in ribs of ice, our whole bloods are one stone, and honour cannot thaw us ;" and in Paradise Lost, Book ii. : To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, The weariest and most loathed worldly life, To what we fear of death. Isab. Alas! alas! Claud. Sweet sister, let me live: What sin you do to save a brother's life, Isab. O, you beast! O, faithless coward! O, dishonest wretch ! Is't not a kind of incest, to take life From thine own sister's shame ? What should I think? 22 Heaven shield, my mother play'd my father fair! Claud. Nay, hear me, Isabel. O, fie, fie, fie! Thy sin's not accidental, but a trade: "From beds of raging fire to starve in ice Periods of time." VOL. II. 22 Wilderness for wildness. 7 H. 23 |