Duke. Stay, sir; stay awhile.

Ang. What! resists he? Help him, Lucio. Lucio. Come, sir; come, sir; come, sir; foh, sir: Why, you baldpated, lying rascal! you must be hooded, must you? Show your knave's visage, with a pox to you! show your sheepbiting face, and be hanged an hour! Will 't not off? [Pulls off the Friar's hood, and discovers the DUKE. Duke. Thou art the first knave that e'er made a duke.

:

First, provost, let me bail these gentle three :-
Sneak not away, sir; [to Lucio] for the friar and you
Must have a word anon:-lay hold on him.

Lucio. This may prove worse than hanging. Duke. What you have spoke, I pardon; sit you down.[To ESCALUS. We'll borrow place of him-Sir, by your leave:

Hast thou or word, or wit, or impudence,
That yet can do thee office? If thou hast,
Rely upon it till my tale be heard,

And hold no longer out.

[To ANG.

When I perceive your grace, like power divine,
Hath look'd upon my passes." Then, good prince,
No longer session hold upon my shame,
But let my trial be mine own confession:
Immediate sentence then, and sequent death,
Is all the grace I beg.

Duke.
Come hither, Mariana :—
Say, wast thou e'er contracted to this woman?
Ang. I was, my lord.

Duke. Go take her hence, and marry her, instantly.-
Do you the office, friar; which consummate,
Return him here again :-Go with him, provost.

[Exeunt ANG., MARI., PETER, and Prov. Escal. My lord, I am more amaz'd at his dishonour, Than at the strangeness of it.

Duke.
Come hither, Isabel :
Your friar is now your prince: As I was then
Advertising, and holy to your business,

Not changing heart with habit, I am still
Attorney'd at your service.

Isab.

O give me pardon,

That I, your vassal, have employ'd and pain'd Your unknown sovereignty.

Duke.

You are pardon'd, Isabel : And now, dear maid, be you as free to us. Your brother's death, I know, sits at your heart; And you may marvel, why I obscur'd myself, Labouring to save his life; and would not rather Make rash remonstrance of my hidden power, Than let him so be lost: O most kind maid, It was the swift celerity of his death, Which I did think with slower foot came on, That brain'd my purpose: But peace be with him! That life is better life, past fearing death, Than that which lives to fear: make it your comfort, So happy is your brother.

Re-enter ANGELO, MARIANA, PETER, and Provost Isab.

I do, my lord.

Most audible, even from his proper tongue,
An Angelo for Claudio, death for death.
Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;
Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.
Then, Angelo, thy fault 's thus manifested :
Which, though thou wouldst deny, denies thee vantage:
We do condemn thee to the very block
Where Claudio stoop'd to death, and with like haste;
Away with him.
O, my most gracious lord,

Mari.

I hope you will not mock me with a husband!
Duke. It is your husband mock'd you with a hus-
band:

Consenting to the safeguard of your honour,
I thought your marriage fit; else imputation,
For that he knew you, might reproach your life,
And choke your good to come: for his possessions,
Although by confiscation they are ours,
We do instate and widow you withal,
To buy you a better husband.
Mari.

O, my dear lord,
I crave no other, nor no better man.
Duke. Never crave him; we are definitive.
Mari. Gentle my liege,-
Duke.

[Kneeling.

You do but lose your labour:
Away with him to death.-Now, sir, [to Lucio] to you.
Mari. O, my good lord !-Sweet Isabel, take my part;
Lend me your knees, and all my life to come
I'll lend you all my life to do you service.

Duke. Against all sense you do importune her:
Should she kneel down, in mercy of this fact,
Her brother's ghost his paved bed would break,
And take her hence in horror.

Mari.
Isabel,
Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me;
Hold up your hands, say nothing, I'll speak all.
They say, best men are moulded out of faults;
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad: so may my husband.
O, Isabel! will you not lend a knee?
Duke. He dies for Claudio's death.
Isab.
Most bounteous sir, [Kneeling.
Look, if it please you, on this man condemn'd,
As if my brother liv'd: I partly think,

A due sincerity govern'd his deeds,
Till he did look on me; since it is so,

Let him not die: My brother had but justice
In that he did the thing for which he died:
For Angelo,

His act did not o'ertake his bad intent;
And must be buried but as an intent

That perish'd by the way: thoughts are no subjects;
Intents but merely thoughts.

Mari.

Merely, my lord. Duke. Your suit 's unprofitable; stand up, I say. — I have bethought me of another fault :Provost, how came it Claudio was beheaded At an unusual hour?

Whose salt imagination yet hath wrong'd

Your well-defended honour, you must pardon

For Mariana's sake: but as he adjudg'd your brother, (Being criminal, in double violation

Of sacred chastity, and of promise-breach
Thereon dependent, for your brother's life,)

The very mercy of the law cries out

a Passes is used, we believe, in the same sense as the somewhat obsolete word passages.

We have no edition of the Winter's Tale' prior to that of the folio of 1623; nor was it entered upon the registers of the Stationers' Company previous to the entry by the proprietors of the folio. The original text, which is divided into acts and scenes, is remarkably correct.

The novel of Robert Greene, called Pandosto,' and "The History of Dorastus and Fawnia,' which Shakspere undoubtedly followed, with very few important deviations, in the construction of the plot of his Winter's Tale,' was a work of extraordinary popularity, there weing fourteen editions known to exist.

"In the country of Bohemia," says the novel, "there reigned a king called Pandosto." The Leontes of Shakspere is the Pandosto of Greene. The Polixenes of the play is Egistus in the novel :-" It so happened that Egistus, King of Sicilia, who in his youth had been brought up with Pandosto, desirous to show that neither tract of time nor distance of place could diminish their former friendship, provided a navy of ships and sailed into Bohemia to visit his old friend and companion." Here, then, we have the scene of the action reversed. The jealous king is of Bohemia,his injured friend of Sicilia. But the visiter sails into Bohemia. The most accomplished scholars of Shakspere's period purposely committed such apparent violations of propriety, when dealing with the legendary and romantic. The wife of Pandosto is Bellaria; and they have a young son called Garinter. Pandosto becomes jealous, slowly, and by degrees; and there is at least some want of caution in the queen to justify it. The great author of Othello' would not deal with jealousy after this fashion. He had already produced that immortal portrait

"Of one, not easily jealous, but, being wrought,
Perplex'd in the extreme."

He had now to exhibit the distractions of a mind to which jealousy was native; to depict the terrible access of passion, uprooting in a moment all deliberation, all reason, all gentleness. The instant the idea enters the mind of Leontes the passion is at its height.

car

cent; and the king shall live without an heir, if that which is lost be not found." On their return, upon an appointed day, the queen was "brought in before the judgment-seat." Shakspere has followed a part of the tragical ending of this scene; but he preserves his injured Hermione, to be re-united to her daughter after years of solitude and suffering.

The story of the preservation of the deserted infant is prettily told in the novel. The infant is taken to the shepherd's home, and is brought up by his wife and himself under the name of Fawnia. In a narrative the lapse of sixteen years may occur without any violation of propriety. The changes are gradual. But in a drama, whose action depends upon a manifest lapse of time, there must be a sudden transition. Shakspere is perfectly aware of the difficulty; and he diminishes it by the introduction of Time as a Chorus:

To me, or my swift passage, that I slide
O'er sixteen years, and leave the growth untried
Of that wide gap; since it is in my power
To o'erthrow law, and in one self-bora hour
To plant and o'erwhelm custom."

Shakspere has exhibited his consummate art in opening the fourth act with Polixenes and Camillo, of whom we have lost sight since the end of the first. Had it been otherwise,-had he brought Autolycus, and Florizel, and Perdita, at once upon the scene,—the continuity of action would have been destroyed; and the commencement of the fourth act would have appeared as the commencement of a new play. Shakspere made the difficulties of his plot bend to his art; instead of wanting art, as Ben Jonson says. Autolycus and the Clown prepare us for Perdita; and when the third scene opens, what a beautiful vision lights upon this earth! There perhaps never was such a union of perfect simplicity and perfect grace as in the character of Perdita. What an exquisite idea of her mere personal appearance is presented in Florizel's rapturous exclamation,—

"When you do dance, I wish you

A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that!"

In the novel we have no trace of the interruption by the father of the princely lover in the disguise of a guest at the shepherd's cottage. Dorastus and Fawnia flee from the country without the knowledge of the king. The ship in which they embark is thrown by a storm upon the coast of Bohemia. Messengers are despatched in search of the lovers; and they arrive in Bohemia with the request of Egistus that the companions in the flight of Dorastus shall be put to death. The secret of Fawnia's birth is discovered by the shepherd; and her father recoguises her. But the previous circumstances exhibit as much grossness of conception on the part of the novelist, as the different management of the catastrophe shows the matchless skill and taste of the dramatist. We forgive Leontes for his early folly and wickedness; for during sixteen years has his remorse been bitter and