Pom. He is coming, sir, he is coming; I hear his straw rustle.

Abhor. Is the axe upon the block, sirrah?
Pom. Very ready, sir.

Enter BARNARDINE.

Barnar. How now, Abhorson! what's the news with you?

Abhor. Truly, sir, I would desire you to clap into your prayers; for, look you, the warrant's come. Barnar. You rogue, I have been drinking all night; I am not fitted for't.

Pom. O, the better, sir; for he that drinks all night, and is hang'd betimes in the morning, may sleep the sounder all the next day.

Abhor. Look you, sir; here comes your ghostly father: do we jest now, think you?

Enter DUKE, disguised as before. Duke. Sir, induced by my charity, and hearing how hastily you are to depart, I am come to advise you, comfort you, and pray with you.

Barnar. Friar, not I: I have been drinking hard all night, and I will have more time to prepare me, or they shall beat out my brains with billets. I will not consent to die this day, that's certain.

Duke. O, sir, you must; and therefore, I beseech you, look forward on the journey you shall go. Barnar. I swear I will not die to-day for any man's persuasion.

Duke. But hear you

Barnar. Not a word; if you have anything to say to me, come to my ward, for thence will not I to-day. [Exit.

Duke. Unfit to live, or die; O, gravel heart!After him, fellows; bring him to the block. Yet the Duke respites him, as so unmeet for death, and the head of a prisoner who had died of fever is palmed off as Claudio's on Angelo. Isabella, too, is told that her brother is dead.

The Fifth Act winds up all with the Duke's return. Isabella pleads her cause with him, alleging that she yielded to Angelo, and was recompensed by her brother's death. the friar-who was, of course, the DukeBeing disbelieved, she calls as evidence in her behalf. Lucio cannot resist the opportunity of ape-like mischief:

For certain words he spake against your grace
"Had he been lay, my lord,
In your retirement, I had swing'd him soundly."
Mariana, veiled, now complicates the mat-

ter by her story. The Duke departs, and returning as the Friar, has a dispute with Lucio, who pulls off his hood. Tableau! Angelo begs for "immediate sentence then, and sequent death," which, as in Lucio's case later, is commuted for marriage. But death is to follow for Angelo, till Mariana begs for his life in her own interest:

"I hope you will not mock me with a husband."

She wins Isabella to aid her suit:

"I partly think

A due sincerity govern'd his deeds,
Till he did look on me; since it is so,
Let him not die."

Then, of course, we have Claudio brought on "muffled," and the piece "ends happily," if people could be happy who had gone through such shame and terror.

Measure for Measure is a fantastical play of dark corners, like the Duke himself. It wants relief, which it does not obtain either from a gorgeous pageantry of court life in Vienna or from real comedy and humor. We no longer find Pompey and Abhorson comic, Lucio loses our liking, and perhaps I have overstated the unsympathetic elements in the character of Isabella. Perhaps poor Juliet, with whom Claudio sinned-Juliet, who only crosses the stage on her meeting with the Duke-is the most winning person of the play. In Juliet penitence is indeed a grace. Duke. Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry? Juliet. I do, and bear the shame most patiently.

Certainly we can esteem Juliet more than the dishonorably pertinacious love of Mariana. Nor can we be quite out of sympathy with Pompey, and his

"Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live,"

-an excuse for many callings.

With all its gloom, Measure for Measure is at least rich, and perhaps too rich, in dramatic situations. The changes and turns of character under the stress of different emotions are almost too frequent. Of all Shakespeare's plays, Mr. Pater says, in his interesting study, it contains most of his ethical judgments on sin, on mercy, on death. No man nor woman in the piece has the right to cast the first stone at the others, and, except in the luckless case of Lucio, no stone is cast in the end. But the very pitifulness of Shakespeare is in this play allied to contempt. It is a child of his darker moods. Most things are pardonable in men, because in such a creature most things become insignificant. We are such stuff as nightmares are made of. Purity is hard and stern, Honor is a broken reed, even Love may be degraded by too persistent pardoning. Life is a comedy or tragedy of errors, and the veil of Death may hide a face more horrible than Life's. Truly Coleridge was right in deeming Measure for Measure a painful play. It is a comedy where Death holds the place of Love; there is no beautiful shape of Love in the whole of it, and the very mirth is miserable.