ACT THIRD

SCENE I

A room in the prison.

Enter Duke disguised as before, Claudio, and Pro

vost.

Duke. So, then, you hope of pardon from Lord

Angelo?

Claud. The miserable have no other medicine

But only hope:

I've hope to live, and am prepared to die.

Duke. Be absolute for death; either death or life Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,

Servile to all the skyey influences,

That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st, 10
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;

4

8. "keep" here means care for, a common acceptation of the word in Chaucer and later writers.-H. N. H.

11. Death and his fool were personages that once figured on the stage. Douce relates having seen a play at a fair, in which Death bore a part, attended by a fool or clown; the person that represented Death being habited in a close black vest so painted as to look like a skeleton. Douce also had an old wood-cut, one of a series representing the Dance of Death, in which the fool was engaged in combat with his adversary, and buffeting him with a bladder filled with peas or small pebbles. In all such perform

For him thou labor'st by thy flight to shun, And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art not noble;

For all the accommodations that thou bear'st

Are nursed by baseness. Thou 'rt by no means
valiant;

For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not

thyself;

For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains 20
That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to
get,

And what thou hast, forget'st. Thou art not
certain;

For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the moon. If thou art rich, thou 'rt

poor;

ances, the rule appears to have been, that the fool, after struggling long against the stratagems of Death, at last became his victim.— H. N. H.

14-15. Upon this passage Johnson observes: “A minute analysis of life at once destroys that splendor which dazzles the imagination. Whatever grandeur can display, or luxury enjoy, is procured by baseness, by offices of which the mind shrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the shambles and the dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornament from among the damps and darkness of the mine."-H. N. H.

17. "worm" is put for any creeping thing or serpent. Shakespeare adopts the vulgar error, that a serpent wounds with his tongue, and that his tongue is forked. In old tapestries and paintings the tongues of serpents and dragons always appear barbed like the point of an arrow.-H. N. H.

For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou

none;

For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

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Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,
For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor
youth nor age,

But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb nor
beauty,

To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in
this

That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid moe thousand deaths: yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even.

32-34. This is exquisitely imagined. When we are young, we busy ourselves in forming schemes for succeeding time, and miss the gratifications that are before us; when we are old, we amuse the languor of age with the recollection of youthful pleasures or performances; so that our life, of which no part is filled with the business of the present time, resembles our dreams after dinner, when the events of the morning are mingled with the designs of the evening.-H. N. H.

36. “palsied eld"; old age. In youth, which is or ought to be the happiest time, man commonly wants means to obtain what he could enjoy; he is dependent on palsied eld; must beg alms from the coffers of hoary avarice; and, being very niggardly supplied, becomes as aged, looks like an old man on happiness beyond his reach. And when he is old and rich, when he has wealth enough for the purchase of all that formerly excited his desires, he has no longer the powers of enjoyment.-H. N. H.

I humbly thank

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Claud.

you.

To sue to live, I find I seek to die; And, seeking death, find life: let it come on. Isab. [within] What, ho! Peace here; grace and good company!

Prov. Who's there? come in: the wish deserves a welcome.

Duke. Dear sir, ere long I'll visit you again.
Claud. Most holy sir, I thank you.

Enter Isabella.

Isab. My business is a word or two with Claudio. Prov. And very welcome. Look, signior, here's your sister.

Duke. Provost, a word with you.

Prov. As many as you please.

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Duke. Bring me to hear them speak, where I may be concealed. [Exeunt Duke and Provost.

Claud. Now, sister, what's the comfort?

Isab. Why,

As all comforts are; most good, most good indeed.

Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven,

Intends you for his swift ambassador,
Where you shall be an everlasting leiger:
Therefore your best appointment make with
speed;

To-morrow you set on.

Claud.

Is there no remedy?

Isab. None, but such remedy as, to save a head,

To cleave a heart in twain.

Claud.

But is there any?

60

Isab. Yes, brother, you may live:

There is a devilish mercy in the judge,

If you 'll implore it, that will free your life,
But fetter you till death.

Claud.

Perpetual durance?

Isab. Aye, just; perpetual durance, a restraint,
Though all the world's vastidity you had,
To a determined scope.

Claud.

But in what nature?

70

Isab. In such a one as, you consenting to 't,
Would bark your honor from that trunk you

bear,

And leave you naked.

Claud.
Let me know the point.
Isab. O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake,
Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain,
And six or seven winters more respect
Than a perpetual honor. Darest thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great 80
As when a giant dies.

Claud.

Why give you me this shame? Think you I can a resolution fetch

70. "determined scope"; a confinement of your mind to one idea; to ignominy, of which the remembrance can neither be suppressed nor escaped.-H. N. H.

72. A metaphor, from stripping trees of their bark.—H. N. H. 77-81. This beautiful passage is in all our minds and memories, but it most frequently stands in quotation detached from the antecedent line,-"The sense of death is most in apprehension"; without which it is liable to an opposite construction. The meaning is, that fear is the principal sensation in death, which has no pain; and the giant when he dies feels no greater pain than the beetle.-H. N. E