As that the sin hath brought you to this shame, Which sorrow is always toward ourselves, not heaven,

Showing we would not spare heaven as we love it,

But as we stand in fear,

Jul. I do repent me, as it is an evil,

And take the shame with joy.

Duke.

There rest.

Your partner, as I hear, must die to-morrow,
And I am going with instruction to him.

go with

you, Benedicite!

[Exit.

40

Grace
Jul. Must die to-morrow! O injurious love,
That respites me a life, whose very comfort
Is still a dying horror!

Prov.

'Tis pity of him. [Exeunt.

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,

36. "rest"; that is, keep yourself in this frame of mind.-H. N. H. 40. “O injurious love" (Folios “loue"); Hanmer's suggestion, "law" for "loue," has been generally accepted; the law respited her "a life whose very comfort" was "a dying horror."—I. G.

As if I did but only chew his name;

And in my heart the strong and swelling evil
The state, whereon I

Of my conception.

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, 10
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 case, thy habit,
Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls
To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood:
Let's write good angel on the devil's horn;
"Tis not the devil's crest.

Enter a Servant.

How now! who's there?

Serv. One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you.
Ang. Teach her the way. O heavens!

Why does my blood thus muster to my heart, 20
Making both it unable for itself,

And dispossessing all my other parts

9. "Feared"; probably an error of "feared," i. e. "seared," which, according to Collier, is the reading of Lord Ellesmere's copy of the 1st Folio.-I. G.

12. Shakespeare judiciously distinguishes the different operations of high place upon different minds. Fools are frighted and wise men allured. Those who cannot judge but by the eye are easily awed by splendor; those who consider men as well as conditions, are easily persuaded to love the appearance of virtue dignified with power.-H. N. H.

17. The crest was often emblematic of something in the wearer, such, for example, as his ancestral name. "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"; we think it is not the devil's horn, because itself tells us otherwise.-H. N. H.

Of necessary fitness?

So play the foolish throngs with one that

swoons;

Come all to help him, and so stop the air
By which he should revive: and even so
The general subject to a well-wish'd king
Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness
Crowd to his presence, where their untaught
love

Must needs appear offense.

Enter Isabella.

How now, fair maid? 30

Isab. I am come to know your pleasure.

Ang. That you might know it, would much better please me

Than to demand what 'tis. Your brother can

not live.

Isab. Even so.-Heaven keep your honor!
Ang. Yet may he live awhile; and, it may be,
As long as you or I: yet he must die.
Isab. Under your sentence?

Ang. Yea.

Isab. When, I beseech you? that in his reprieve,

27. That is, the people or multitude subject to a king. So, in Hamlet: "The play pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general." It is supposed that Shakespeare, in this passage, and in one before, Act i. sc. 2, intended to flatter the unkingly weakness of James I, which made him so impatient of the crowds which flocked to see him, at his first coming, that he restrained them by a proclamation.-H. N. H.

27-30. Like the similar passage in i. 1. 68-71, these lines have been thought to offer an apology for James's haughty demeanor on his entry into England.-C. H. H.

Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted

That his soul sicken not.

40

Ang. Ha! fie, these filthy vices! It were as good
To pardon him that hath from nature stolen
A man already made, as to remit

Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven's
image

In stamps that are forbid: 'tis all as easy
Falsely to take away a life true made,
As to put metal in restrained means
To make a false one.

Isab. 'Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth.
Ang. Say you so? then I shall pose you quickly. 51
Which had you rather, that the most just law
Now took your brother's life; or, to redeem him,
Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness
As she that he hath stain'd!

Isab.

Sir, believe this, I had rather give my body than my soul. Ang. I talk not of your soul: our compell'd sins Stand more for number than for accompt. Isab. How say you? Ang. Nay, I'll not warrant that; for I can speak Against the thing I say. Answer to this: 60

43, 44. That is, that hath killed a man.-H. N. H.

44. "remit"; pardon.-C. H. H.

46-49. The thought is simply, that murder is as easy as fornication; and the inference which Angelo would draw is, that it is as improper to pardon the latter as the former.-H. N. H.

56. Isabel appears to use the words "give my body" in a different sense than Angelo. Her meaning appears to be, "I had rather die than forfeit my eternal happiness by the prostitution of my person."-H. N. H.

58. That is, actions that we are compelled to, however numerous, are not imputed to us by Heaven as crimes.-H. N. H.

I, now the voice of the recorded law,
Pronounce a sentence on your brother's life:
Might there not be a charity in sin

To save this brother's life?

Isab.

Please you to do 't,

I'll take it as a peril to my soul,

It is no sin at all, but charity.

Ang. Pleased you to do 't at peril of your soul,
Were equal poise of sin and charity.
Isab. That I do beg his life, if it be sin,

Heaven let me bear it! you granting of my
suit,

If that be sin, I'll make it my morn prayer
To have it added to the faults of mine,

And nothing of your answer.

Ang.

70

Nay, but hear me. Your sense pursues not mine: either you are ignorant,

Or seem so, craftily; and that's not good. Isab. Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good, But graciously to know I am no better. Ang. Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright When it doth tax itself; as these black masks Proclaim an enshield beauty ten times louder 80 Than beauty could, display'd. But mark me;

73. "nothing of your answer"; not to be answered for by you.C. H. H.

79. The "masks" worn by female spectators of the play are here probably meant. At the beginning of Romeo and Juliet, we have a pasage of similar import:

"These happy masks that kiss fair ladies' brows,
Being black, put us in mind they hide the fair."

-H. N. H.