ANG.

Believe me, on mine honour,

My words express my purpose.

ISAB. Ha! little honour to be much believ'd, And most pernicious purpose !-Seeming, seeming 5!

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,
My vouch against you, and my place i'the state,
Will so your accusation overweigh,

That you shall stifle in your own report,
And smell of calumny7. I have begun ;

4 Which seems a little fouler, &c.] So, in Promos and Cassandra:

Cas. Renowned lord, you use this speech (I hope) your
thrall to trye,

"If otherwise, my brother's life so deare I will not bye."
"Pro. Fair dame, my outward looks my inward thoughts
bewray;

"If y

5

f you mistrust, to search my harte, would God you had a kaye." STEEVens.

-Seeming, seeming!] Hypocrisy, hypocrisy; counterfeit virtue. JOHNSON.

My VOUCH against you,] The calling his denial of her charge his vouch, has something fine. Vouch is the testimony one man bears for another. So that, by this, he insinuates his authority was so great, that his denial would have the same credit that a vouch or testimony has in ordinary cases. WARBURTON, I believe this beauty is merely imaginary, and that vouch against means no more than denial. JOHNSON.

"Did, as he vouches, misreport your grace." MALone. 7 That you shall stifle in your own report,

And smell of calumny.] A metaphor from a lamp or candle extinguished in its own grease. STEEVENS.

And now I give my sensual race the rein3:
Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite;
Lay by all nicety, and prolixious blushes,

That banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother
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
To lingering sufferance: answer me to-morrow,
Or, by the affection that now guides me most,
I'll prove a tyrant to him: As for you,
Say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true.
[Exit.
ISAB. To whom shall I complain? Did I tell this,
Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,
That bear in them one and the self-same tongue,
Either of condemnation or approof!

* And now I give my sensual race the rein:] And now I give my senses the rein, in the race they are now actually running. HEATH.

and PROLIXIOUS blushes,] The word prolixious is not peculiar to Shakspeare. I find it in Moses his Birth and Miracles, by Drayton :

"Most part by water, more prolixious was," &c. Again, in the Dedication to Gabriel Harvey's Hunt Is Up, 1598: rarifier of prolixious rough barbarism," &c.

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Again, in Nash's Lenten Stuff, &c. 1599:

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well known unto them by his prolixious sea-wandering." Prolixious blushes mean what Milton has elegantly calledsweet reluctant delay." STEEVENS.

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1 -die the death,] This seems to be a solemn phrase for death inflicted by law. So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream: Prepare to die the death." JOHNSON.

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It is a phrase taken from Scripture, as is observed in a note on A Midsummer-Night's Dream. STEEVENS.

The phrase is a good phrase, as Shallow says, but I do not conceive it to be either of legal or scriptural origin. Chaucer uses it frequently. See Canterbury Tales, ver. 607:

They were adradde of him, as of the deth." ver. 1222. "The deth he feleth thurgh his herte smite." It seems to have been originally a mistaken translation of the French La Mort. TYRWHITT.

2

3

Bidding the law make court'sy to their will;
Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite,
To follow as it draws! I'll to my brother:
Though he hath fallen by prompture of the blood,
Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour
That had he twenty heads to tender down
On twenty bloody blocks, he'd yield them up,
Before his sister should her body stoop
To such abhorr'd pollution.

Then Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die ;
More than our brother is our chastity.

I'll tell him yet of Angelo's request,

And fit his mind to death, for his soul's rest. [Exit.

ACT III. SCENE I.

A Room in the Prison.

Enter DUKE, 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.

2

DUKE. Be absolute for death; either death, or

life,

prompture-] Suggestion, temptation, instigation. JOHNSON.

3 — such a mind of honour,] This, in Shakspeare's language, may mean, such an honourable mind, as he uses " mind of love," in The Merchant of Venice, for loving mind. Thus also, in Philaster:

Shall thereby be the sweeter.

Reason thus with

life,

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep 3: a breath thou art,

4 Be absolute for death ;] Be determined to die, without any hope of life. Horace,

"The hour which exceeds expectation will be welcome."

JOHNSON.

5 That none but fools would keep :] But this reading is not only contrary to all sense and reason, but to the drift of this moral discourse. The Duke, in his assumed character of a friar, is endeavouring to instil into the condemned prisoner a resignation of mind to his sentence; but the sense of the lines in this reading, is a direct persuasive to suicide: I make no doubt but the poet wrote

"That none but fools would reck :· i. e. care for, be anxious about, regret the loss of. So, in the tragedy of Tancred and Gismund, Act IV. Sc. III. :

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Not that she recks this life.--"

And Shakspeare, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona :

Recking as little what betideth me.

The meaning seems plainly this, that none but fools would wish to keep life; or, none but fools would keep it, if choice were allowed. A sense, which, whether true or not, is certainly innocent. JOHNSON.

Keep, in this place, I believe, may not signify preserve, but care for. No lenger for to liven I ne kepe, says Æneas, in Chaucer's Dido, Queen of Carthage; and elsewhere: "That I kepe not rehearsed be ; " i. e. which I care not to have rehearsed. Again, in The Knightes Tale, Tyrwhitt's edit. ver. 2240:

"I kepe nought of armes for to yelpe."

Again, in A Mery Jeste of a Man called Howleglass, bl. 1. no date: "Then the parson bad him remember that he had a soule for to kepe, and he preached and teached to him the use of confession," &c.

Again, in Ben Jonson's Volpone:

"Faith I could stifle him rarely with a pillow,

"As well as any woman that should keep him." i. e. have the care of him. STEEVENS.

Mr. Steevens's explanation is confirmed by a passage in The Dutchess of Malfy, by Webster, (1623,) an author who has frequently imitated Shakspeare, and who perhaps followed him in the present instance:

(Servile to all the skiey influences,)

That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet run'st toward him still': Thou art not
noble ;

"Of what is't fools make such vain keeping?
"Sin their conception, their birth weeping;
"Their life a general mist of error;

"Their death a hideous storm of terror."

See also, the Glossary to Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit. of The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, v. kepe. MAlone.

The

66 a

6 That DOST this habitation, where thou keep'st,] Sir T. Hanmer changed dost to do, without necessity or authority. construction is not, "the skiey influences that do," but, breath thou art, that dost," &c. If "Servile to all the skiey influences," be inclosed in a parenthesis, all the difficulty will vanish. PORSON.

7

merely, thou art DEATH'S FOOL; For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,

And yet run'st toward him still:] In those old farces called Moralities, the fool of the piece, in order to show the inevitable approaches of death, is made to employ all his stratagems to avoid him; which, as the matter is ordered, bring the fool, at every turn, into his very jaws. So that the representations of these scenes would afford a great deal of good mirth and morals mixed together. And from such circumstances, in the genius of our ancestors' publick diversions, I suppose it was, that the old proverb arose of being merry and wise. WARBUrton.

Such another expression as death's fool, occurs in The Honest Lawyer, a comedy, by S. S. 1616:

"Wilt thou be a fool of fate? who can

"Prevent the destiny decreed for man?" STEEvens.

It is observed by the editor of The Sad Shepherd, 8vo. 1783, p. 154, that the initial letter of Stow's Survey contains a representation of a struggle between Death and the Fool: the figures of which were most probably copied from those characters as formerly exhibited on the stage. REED.

any

There are no such characters as Death and the Fool, in old Morality now extant. They seem to have existed only in the dumb Shows. The two figures in the initial letter of Stow's Survey, 1603, which have been mistaken for these two personages, have no allusion whatever to the stage, being merely one of the set known by the name of Death's Dance, and actually copied from the margin of an old Missal. The scene in the