Enter LUCIO. LUCIO. Hail, virgin, if you be; as those cheek-roses A novice of this place, and the fair sister ISAB. Why her unhappy brother? let me ask; The rather, for I now must make you know I am that Isabella, and his sister. LUCIO. Gentle and fair, your brother kindly greets you: ISAB. Woe me! For what? LUCIO. For that, which if myself might be his judge, He hath got his friend with child. ISAB. Sir, make me not your story. LUCIO. "T is true. I would not-though 't is my familiar sin Tongue far from heart,-play with all virgins soa: I hold you as a thing ensky'd, and sainted; As with a saint. ISAB. You do blaspheme the good, in mocking me. As those that feed grow full; as blossoming time, That from the seedness the bare fallow brings ISAB. Some one with child by him?-My cousin Juliet? ISAB. Adoptedly; as schoolmaids change their names, By vain though apt affection. In this passage we follow the original. Malone says that the reading should be thus: But the original meaning is clear enough: make me not your story is, invent me not your story,a very common phraseology of our author. When Lucio replies 't is true, he means his story is true; he has not invented it; and he adds that he would not jest with her, though jesting be his familiar sin, &c. Lover-mistress. Shakspere's poem of The Lover's Complaint' is the lament of a deserted maiden. The duke is very strangely gone from hence; Governs lord Angelo: a man whose blood And make us lose the good we oft might win, As they themselves would owe them. ISAB. I'll see what I can do. SCENE I-A Hall in Angelo's House. Enter ANGELO, ESCALUS, a Justice, Provost, Officers, and other Attendants. ANG. We must not make a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fearb the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape, till custom make it Let us be keen, and rather cut a little, Than fall, and bruise to death: Alas! this gentleman, Let but your honour know, (Whom I believe to be most straight in virtue,) Could have attain'd the effect of your own purpose, ANG. "T is one thing to be tempted, Escalus, The jury, passing on the prisoner's life, We tread upon, and never think of it. You may not so extenuate his offence, For I have had such faults; but rather tell me Let mine own judgment pattern out my death, ESCAL. Be it as your wisdom will. PROV. Here, if it like your honour. Sir, he must die. Where is the provost ? See that Claudio Be executed by nine to-morrow morning: ESCAL. Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all! [Exit Provost. Fall. The verb is here used actively. We still say to fall a tree; and probably Shakspere had this image in his mind. Our blood. The original has our; the common reading is your. Our blood may mean, our nature-the nature of man. • In the elliptical construction of this sentence we must understand for after censure him. a Pass on-condemn-adjudicate. We have the same expression in a contemporary play: “A jury of brokers, impanelled and deeply sworn to pass on all villains." For-because. |