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.

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,

Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,

Than the soft myrtle: But man, proud mana!

Dress'd 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,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

LUCIO. O, to him, to him, wench: he will relent;
He's coming, I perceive 't.

Pray heaven, she win him!

PROV.
ISAB. We cannot weigh our brother with ourself:

Great men may jest with saints: 't is 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 avis'd o' that? more on 't.

ANG. Why do you put these sayings upon me?
ISAB. Because authority, though it err like others,
Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself,

That skins the vice o' the top: Go to your bosom;
Knock there; and ask your heart, what it doth know
That's like my brother's fault: if it confess

A natural guiltiness, such as is his,

a The editor of the second folio reads, O! but man, proud man. How much more emphatic is the passage without the 0, making the pause after myrtle!

We understand this passage,-as they are angels, they weep at folly; if they had our spleens, they would laugh, as mortals.

Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother's life.

ANG.

She speaks, and 't is

Such sense, that my sense breeds with it.-Fare you well. ISAB. Gentle my lord, turn back.

ANG. I will bethink me:-Come again to-morrow.

ISAB. Hark, how I'll bribe you: Good my lord, turn back.
ANG. How! bribe me?

ISAB. Ay, with such gifts that heaven shall share with you.
LUCIO. You had marr'd all else.

ISAB. Not with fond shekels of the tested gold,

ANG.

Or stones, whose rates are either rich or poor
As fancy values them; but with true prayers,
That shall be up at heaven, and enter there,
Ere sunrise: prayers from preserved souls,
From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.

Well: come to me to-morrow.
LUCIO. Go to: 't is well; away.
ISAB. Heaven keep your honour safe!
ANG.
For I am that way going to temptation,
Where prayers crossa.

ISAB.

Amen :

[Aside to ISABEL.

[Aside.

At what hour to-morrow

Shall I attend your lordship?

At any time 'fore noon.

ISAB. Save your honour!

[Exeunt LUCIO, ISABELLA, and Provost.

ANG.

ANG.

From thee; even from thy virtue !—

What's this? what's this? Is this her fault, or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most? Ha!
Not she; nor doth she tempt: but it is I,

That lying by the violet, in the sun,

Do, as the carrion does, not as the flower,

Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be,

That modesty may more betray our sense

Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough,
Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,

And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!

a We believe Tyrwhitt's explanation of this passage is the true one. He quotes the following lines from The Merchant of Venice,' Act III., Scene 1:

"SAL. I would it might prove the end of his losses."

SOLA. Let me say Amen betimes, lest the Devil cross thy prayer.”

And he adds, "For the same reason Angelo seems to say Amen to Isabella's prayer."

Evils has here a peculiar signification. The desecration which is thus expressed may be understood from a passage in 2 Kings, chapter x., verse 27: “And they brake down the image of Baal, and brake down the house of Baal, and made it a draught house unto this day."

What dost thou? or what art thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her foully, for those things

That make her good? O, let her brother live:
Thieves for their robbery have authority,

When judges steal themselves. What? do I love her,
That I desire to hear her speak again,

And feast upon her eyes? What is 't I dream on?

O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,

With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation, that doth goad us on

To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,
With all her double vigour, art, and nature,
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite :-Ever till now,

When men were fond, I smil'd and wonder'd how.

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.
PROV. I am the provost: What's your will, good friar?
DUKE. Bound by my charity, and my bless'd order,
I come to visit the afflicted spirits

Here in the prison: do me the common right

To let me see them; and to make me know

The nature of their crimes, that I may minister

To them accordingly.

PROV. I would do more than that if more were needful.

Enter JULIET.

[Exit.

■ Flaws. So the original. The ordinary reading, that of Warburton, is flames, which he adopts to preserve "the integrity of the metaphor." Shakspere, in the superabundance of his thought, makes one metaphor run into another; and thus Juliet may yield to the flaws-storms-of her own youth, and so blister her reputation. Steevens says, "Blister seems to have reference to the flames mentioned in the preceding line. A similar use of this word occurs in Hamlet:'takes the rose

666

From the fair forehead of an innocent love,

And sets a blister there.'"

The passage which he quotes to defend the reading of flames makes against it. The blister succeeds the rose, without any previous burning.

DUKE. Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry?

JULIET. I do; and bear the shame most patiently.

DUKE. I'll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience,

And try your penitence, if it be sound,

DUKE. Then was your sin of heavier kind than his.
JULIET. I do confess it, and repent it, father.
DUKE. T is meet so, daughter: but lest you do repent,
As that the sin hath brought you to this shame,—
Which sorrow is always towards ourselves, not heaven;
Showing, we would not spare heaven, as we love it,
But as we stand in fear,-

JULIET. I do repent me, as it is an evil;

And take the shame with joy.

[To JULIET.

[Exit

PROV.

"T is pity of him.

[Exeunt.

a Lest. The original has least. Mr. Collier, who adopts and explains the reading of least, overlooks the circumstance that in the next Act, in the line,

"Lest thou a feverous life should entertain,"

the original has also least; for which Mr. Collier substitutes lest without explanation.

SCENE IV.-A Room in Angelo's House.

Enter ANGELO.

ANG. When I would pray and think, I think and pray
To several subjects: heaven hath my empty words:
Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,
Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,
As if I did but only chew his name;

And in my heart, the strong and swelling evil
Of my conception: The state whereon I studied
Is like a good thing, being often read,
Grown fear'd and tedious; yea, my gravity,
Wherein (let no man hear me) I take pride,
Could I, with boot, change for an idle plume,
Which the air beats for vain. O place! O form!
How often dost thou with thy cased, thy habit,
Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls
To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art bloode:
Let's write good angel on the devil's horn,
'Tis not the devil's crest.

a Invention-imagination.

b Fear'd. So all the original copies, except one, in which the ƒ looks like (the long 8). This action of the press in wearing the ƒ into ƒ rendered the modern change to the short s very useful.

Boot-advantage.

d Case-outside.

So the original. The ordinary reading is, Blood, thou still art blood.

A crest was emblematical of some quality in the wearer, such as his ancestral name. Whatever legend we put on it, the crest is typical of the person. The "devil's horn" is the "devil's crest;" but if we write "good angel" on it, the emblem is overlooked in the "false seeming." • The general-the people.