Which have for long run by the hideous law,
As mice by lions-hath pick'd out an act,
Under whose heavy sense your brother's life
Falls into forfeit: he arrests him on it;
And follows close the rigor of the statute,
To make him an example. All hope is gone,
Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer
To soften Angelo: and that's my pith of busi-

ness

"Twixt you and your poor brother. Isab. Doth he so seek his life?

Lucio.

Has censured him

Already; and, as I hear, the provost hath

A warrant for his execution.

Isab. Alas! what poor ability's in me

To do him good?

Lucio.

Assay the power you have.

Isab. My power? Alas, I doubt,-
Lucio.

70

Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt. Go to Lord Angelo, And let him learn to know, when maidens sue, Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel,

All their petitions are as freely theirs

As they themselves would owe them.

Isab. I'll see what I can do.

Lucio.

Isab. I will about it straight;

But speedily.

No longer staying but to give the Mother

81

83. As if they themselves owned the petitions, i. e. had the granting of them in their own hands.-C. H. H.

Notice of my affair. I humbly thank you: Commend me to my brother: soon at night I'll send him certain word of my success. Lucio. I take my leave of you.

Isab.

Good sir, adieu.

90

[Exeunt.

89. "my success"; the issue of my suit.-C. H. H.

ACT SECOND

SCENE I

A hall in Angelo's house.

Enter Angelo, Escalus, and a Justice, Provost, Officers, and other Attendants, behind.

Ang. We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,

And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch, and not their terror.

Escal.

Aye, but yet
Let us be keen, and rather cut a little,
Than fall, and bruise to death. Alas, this gen-
tleman,

Whom I would save, had a most noble father!
Let but your honor know,

Whom I believe to be most straight in virtue,
That, in the working of your own affections, 10
Had time cohered with place or place with wish-
ing,

Or that the resolute acting of your blood

6. "fall"; that is, throw down; to fall a tree is still used for to fell it.-H. N. H.

To complete the sense of this line for seems to be required,— "which now you censure him for." But Shakespeare frequently uses elliptical expressions.-H. N. H.

Could have attain'd the effect of your own

purpose,

Whether you had not sometime in your life
Err'd in this point which now you censure him,
And pull'd the law upon you.

Ang. 'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
Another thing to fall. I not deny,

The jury, passing on the prisoner's life,
May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two 20
Guiltier than him they try. What's open
made to justice,

That justice seizes: what know the laws

That thieves do pass on thieves? 'Tis very pregnant,

29

The jewel that we find, we stoop and take 't, Because we see it; but what we do not see We tread upon, and never think of it. You may not so extenuate his offense For I have had such faults; but rather tell me, When I, that censure him, do so offend, Let mine own judgment pattern out my death, And nothing come in partial. Sir, he must die. Escal. Be it as your wisdom will. Ang. Prov. Here, if it like your honor. Ang.

Where is the provost?

See that Claudio Be executed by nine to-morrow morning: Bring him his confessor, let him be prepared;

28. "for"; that is, because.-H. N. H.

30. Let my death-sentence on him be applied to my own case.— C. H. H.

29

For that's the utmost of his pilgrimage.

[Exit Provost.

Escal. [Aside] Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all!

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall:

Some run from breaks of ice, and answer none;
And some condemned for a fault alone. 40

Enter Elbow, and Officers with Froth and Pompey.
Elb. Come, bring them away: if these be good

people in a commonweal that do nothing but
use their abuses in common houses, I know
no law: bring them away.

Ang. How now, sir! What's your name? and
what's the matter?

39. "Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none"; the line as it stands in the Folios is obviously corrupt, and has occasioned much discussion. Shakespeare probably wrote “brakes of vice"} brakes thickets, hence "entanglements"; "brakes of vice" is antithetical to "a fault alone," cp. Henry VIII, I. ii. 75—

"the rough brake

That virtue must go through."

The line therefore means "some escape from whole thickets of sin, and pay no penalty." Judging by the passage in Henry VIII, through for from would perhaps be an improvement.-I. G.

The original here reads, "Some run from brakes of ice"; which Mr. Collier retains, silently changing brakes into breaks. It can hardly be denied that this reading yields very good sense; the image of course being that of men making good their escape, even when the ice is breaking under them. But brakes and ice do not quite cohere; and it seems as proper to change ice into vice, as brakes into breaks; and, as the former accords better with the rest of the passage, we venture to accept it. It was first made by Rowe. But there is a further question, whether brake, allowing that to be the right word, here means an engine of war or torture, or a snare, or a bramble; the word being used in all these senses. Which of these senses the word bears in the text, we must leave the reader to decide for himself.-H. N. H.

43. "common houses"; houses of ill-fame.-C. H. H.