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, 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! Isab. O just, but severe law! I had a brother then.-Heaven keep your honour! [Retiring. Lucio. [To ISAB.] Give't not o'er so: to him again, en treat 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?? [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. STEEVENS. Ang. He's sentenc'd; 'tis too late. 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, Isab. I would to heaven I had your potency, Lucio. [Aside.] Ay, touch him: there's the vein. And you but waste your words. Isab. Alas! alas! # Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once; Ang. Be you content, fair maid; It is the law, not I, condemns your brother: It should be thus with him ;-he must die to-morrow. To our gross selves? Good, good my lord, bethink you : 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,* 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 súccessive 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. Lucio. 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, Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, 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, Lucio. O, to him, to him, wench: he will relent, 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 ether tricks of astrologers, the discovery of past or future events was supposed to be the consequence of looking into it. REED. [5] Guarre is the old English word for a knot in wood. STEEVENS. Isab. We cannot weigh our brother with ourself:" 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? That skins the vice o' th' top: Go to your bosom ; A natural guiltiness, such as is his, Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue Ang. She speaks, and 'tis Such sense, that my sense breeds with it.- -Fare you well. Ang. I will bethink me :-Come again to-morrow, Isab. Ay, with such gifts that heaven shall share with you. Isab. Not with fond shekels of the tested gold," Ang. Well come to me to-morrow. Isab. Heaven keep your honour safe! Ang. Amen! for Î Am that way going 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 our 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. STEEVENS. 3 VOL. II. B 2 Ang At any time 'fore noon. Isab. 'Save your honour! [Exe. LUCIO, ISAB. and Pro What's this? what's this? Is this her fault, or mine? Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough, And pitch our evils there ? O, fye, fye, fye! When judges steal themselves. What? do I love her, And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on? With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet, 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. 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 desires under the same benign influences that exalt her purity, as the carrion grows putrid by those beams which increase the fragrance of the violet. JOHNSON. [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 prò son." 1 Pet. iii. 19. WHALLEY. |