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Enter LUCIO.

LUCIO. Hail, virgin, if you be; as those cheek-roses
Proclaim you are no less! Can you so stead me,
As bring me to the sight of Isabella,

A novice of this place, and the fair sister
To her unhappy brother Claudio?

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:
Not to be weary with you, he's in prison.

ISAB. Woe me! For what?

LUCIO. For that, which if myself might be his judge,
He should receive his punishment in thanks:

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
With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest,

Tongue far from heart,-play with all virgins soa:

I hold you as a thing ensky'd, and sainted;
By your renouncement, an immortal spirit;
And to be talk'd with in sincerity,

As with a saint.

ISAB. You do blaspheme the good, in mocking me.
LUCIO. Do not believe it. Fewness and truth, 't is thus:
Your brother and his loverb have embrac'd:

As those that feed grow full; as blossoming time,

That from the seedness the bare fallow brings
To teeming foison; even so her plenteous womb
Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry.

ISAB. Some one with child by him?-My cousin Juliet?
LUCIO. Is she your cousin?

ISAB. Adoptedly; as schoolmaids change their names,

By vain though apt affection.

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In this passage we follow the original. Malone says that the reading should be thus:

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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.

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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;
Bore many gentlemen, myself being one,
In hand, and hope of action: but we do learn,
By those that know the very nerves of state,
His givings out were of an infinite distance
From his true-meant design. Upon his place,
And with full line of his authority,

Governs lord Angelo: a man whose blood
Is very snow-broth; one who never feels
The wanton stings and motions of the sense;
But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge
With profits of the mind, study and fast.
He (to give fear to use and liberty,
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 rigour 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 business
"Twixt you and your poor brother.

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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.

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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

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Let us be keen, and rather cut a little,

Than fall, and bruise to death: Alas! this gentleman,
Whom I would save, had a most noble father.

Let but your honour know,

(Whom I believe to be most straight in virtue,)
That, in the working of your own affections,
Had time coher'd with place, or place with wishing,
Or that the resolute acting of our blood b

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. "T is 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
Guiltier than him they try: What's open made
To justice, that justice seizes. What know the laws,
That thieves do pass ond thieves? 'Tis very pregnant,
The jewel that we find we stoop and take it,
Because we see it; but what we do not see

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
When I, that censure him, do so offend,

Let mine own judgment pattern out my death,
And nothing come in partial.

ESCAL. Be it as your wisdom will.
ANG.

PROV. Here, if it like your honour.
ANG.

Sir, he must die.

Where is the provost ?

See that Claudio

Be executed by nine to-morrow morning:
Bring him his confessor, let him be prepar'd;
For that 's the utmost of his pilgrimage.

ESCAL. Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all!
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall:

[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.

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