Let me intreat you, fpeak the former language.
Ang. Plainly conceive, I love you.

Ifab. My brother did love Juliet:

And you tell me, that he fhall die for it.

Ang. He fhall not, Ifabel, if you give me love. Ifab. I know, your virtue hath a licence in't, Which feems a little fouler than it is 1,

To pluck on others.

Ang. Believe me, on mine honour,
My words exprefs my purpose.

Ifab. Ha! little honour to be much believ'd,
And moft pernicious purpofe !-Seeming, feeming 2!.
I will proclaim thee, Angelo; look for't:

Sign me a prefent pardon for my brother,

Or, with an out-ftretch'd throat, I'll tell the world
Aloud, what man thou art.

Ang. Who will believe thee, Isabel?

My unfoil'd name, the auftereness of my life,
My vouch against 3 you, and my place i' the state,
Will fo your accufation over-weigh,

That you fhall ftifle in your own report,
And fmell of calumny 4. I have begun;
And now I give my fenfual race the rein:
Fit thy confent to my fharp appetite;

8fpeak the former language.] Ifabella anfwers to his circumlocutory courtship, that he has but one tongue, fhe does not understand this new phrafe, and defires him to talk his former language, that is, to talk as he talked before. JOHNSON.

9 I know your virtue bath a licence in't,] Alluding to the licences given by minifters to their fpies, to go into all fufpected companies, and join in the language of malecontents.

WARBURTON.

Which feems a little fouler &c.] So, in Promos and Caffandra: "Caf. Renowned lord, you ufe this fpeech (I hope) your thrall to trye; "If otherwife, my brother's life fo deare I will not bye.

Pro. Fair dame, my outward looks my inward thoughts bewray;
If you mistrust, to fearch my harte, would God you had a kaye."
STEEVENS.

2 Seeming, feeming !—] Hypocrify, hypocrify; counterfeit virtue. JOHNSON.

3 My vouch agairft] means no more than denial. JOHNSON. 4 That you fall fifle in your own report, And smell of calumny.] A metaphor from a lamp or candle extin

guished in its own greafe. STEEVENS.

Lay

Lay by all nicety, and prolixious blufhes 5,
That banish what they fue for; redeem thy brother
By yielding up thy body to my will;

Or elfe he must not only die the death",
But thy unkindness shall his death draw out
To lingering fufferance: anfwer me to-morrow,
Or, by the affection that now guides me most,
I'll prove a tyrant to him: As for you,

Say what you can, my falfe o'erweighs your true 7. [Exit.
Ifab. To whom fhould I complain? Did I tell this,
Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,

That bear in them one and the felf-fame tongue,
Either of condemnation or approof!

Bidding the law make court'fy to their will;
Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite,
To follow, as it draws! I'll to my brother:
Though he hath fallen by prompture of the blood,
Yet hath he in him fuch a mind of honour",
That had he twenty heads to tender down
On twenty bloody blocks, he'd yield them up,
Before his fifter fhould her body stoop

To fuch abhorr'd pollution.

5-and prolixious blushes,] That maiden modefty, which is flow in yielding to the wishes of a lover. MALONE.

The word prolixious is not peculiar to Shakspeare. It is used by Drayton, and by Nafhe. STEEVENS.

6

die the death,] This feems to be a folemn phrafe for death inAicted by law. JOHNSON.

It is a phrafe taken from fcripture, as is obferved in a note on the Midsummer Night's Dream. STEEVENS.

The phrafe is a good phrafe, as Shallow fays, but I do not conceive it to be either of legal or feriptural origin. Chaucer ufes it frequently. See Cant. Tales, ver. 607.

"They were adradde of him, as of the deth." ver. 1222.

"The derb he feleth thurgh his herte fmite." It feems to have been originally a mistaken tranflation of the French La Mort. TYRWHITT. 7 - my falle c'er webs your true.] Falfe and true are here used as fubftantives. My faijebood will outweigh your truth. So, in our author's 13th Sonnet:

MALONE.

"My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue." 8 - prompeure] Suggetion, temptation, inftigation. JOHNSON.' -fuch a mind of bonour,] This, in Shakspeare's language, may mean, fuch an bonourable mind, as he ufes elfewhere, mind of love, for loving mind.

9

STEEVENS.

Then,

Then, Ifabel, live chaffe, and, brother, die:
More than our brother is our chastity.
I'll tell him yet of Angelo's request,
And fit his mind to death, for his foul's reft.

ACT III.

[Exit.

SCENE I.

A Room in the Prifon.

Enter Duke, CLAUDIO, and Provost.

Duke. So, then you hope of pardon from lord Angelo? Claud. The miferable have no other medicine,

But only hope:

I have hope to live, and am prepar'd to die.

Duke. Be abfolute for death; either death, or life, Shall thereby be the fweeter. Reason thus with life, If I do lofe thee, I do lofe a thing,

:

That none but fools would keep a breath thou art, (Servile to all the fkiey influences,)

That doft this habitation, where thou keep'ft3,

life.

Hourly

Be abfolute for death;] Be determined to die, without any hope of
Horace,

"The hour which exceeds expectation will be welcome." JOHNSON. 2 That none but fools would keep :] The meaning is, that none but feels would with to keep life; or, noné but fools would keep it, if choice were allowed. JOHNSON.

Keep, in this place, I believe, may not fignify preferve, but care for. "No lenger for to liven I ne kepe," fays Æneas, in Chaucer's Dido queen of Carthage; and elfewhere," That I kepe not rehearsed be:" i. e. which I care not to have rehearsed.

Again, in the Knightes Tale, late edit. ver. 2240:

"I kepe nought of armes for to yelpe." STEEVENS.

Mr. Steevens's explanation is confirmed by a paflage in the Dutchess of Malfy, by Webfter, (1623) an author who has frequently imitated Shakspeare, and who perhaps followed him in the prefent inftance: Of what is't fools make fuch vain keeping? "Sin their conception, their birth weeping; "Their life a general mift of error;

"Their death a hideous storm of terror."

See the Gloffary to Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit. of the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer. v. kepe. MALONE.

3 That doft this habitation, where thou keep ft,] The editors have changed

5

Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou labour'ft by thy flight to fhun,
And yet run'ft toward him itill: Thou art not noble ;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'ft,

Are nurs'd by bafenefs: Thou art by no means valiant;
For thou doft fear the foft and tender fork

Of a poor worm: Thy best of rest is sleep 7,

And

changed doft to do without neceffity or authority. The conftruction is not, the fkiey influences that do," but, a breath thou art, that doft" &c. If "Servile to all the fkiey influences" be inclosed in a parenthefis, all the difficulty will vanish. PORSON.

4

-merely thou art death's fool:

In thofe old farces called

For bim ibou labour'ft by thy flight to foun, And yet runt toward him ftill:} Moralities, the fool of the piece, in order to fhew the inevitable approaches of death, is made to employ all his ftratagems to avoid him; which, as the matter is ordered, bring the fol at every turn into his very jaws. So that the reprefentations of thefe fcenes would afford a great deal of good mirth and morals mixed together. WARBURTON.

It is obferved by the editor of the Sad Shepherd, 8vo. 1783, p. 154, that the initial letter of Stowe's Survey contains a reprefentation of a ftruggle between Death and the Fool; the figures of which were most probably copied from those characters, as formerly exhibited on the ftage. REED.

5 Are nurs'd by bafenefs:] Dr. Warburton is undoubtedly mistaken in fuppofing that by bafenefs is meant felf-love, here affigned as the motive of all human actions. Shakspeare only meant to obferve, that a minute analyfis of life at once destroys that splendour which dazzles the imagination. Whatever grandeur can difplay, or luxury enjoy, is procured by bafenefs, by offices of which the mind fhrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the fhambles and the dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pump of ornament dug from among the damps and darkness of the mine. JOHNSON.

This is a thought which Shakipeare delights to exprefs. So, in Anteny and Cleopatra:

Again:

6

our dungy earth alike

"Feeds man as beat."

"Which fleeps, and never palates more the dung,
"The b ggar's nurje, and Cæfar's." STEEVENS.
tie.eft and tender fork

Of a poor worm:] Worm is put for any creeping thing or ferpent. Shakeare fuppofes taifely, but according to the vulgar notion,

that

And that thou oft provok'ft; yet grofsly fear'ft
Thy death, which is no more: Thou art not thyfelf';
For thou exift'ft on many a thousand grains
That iffue out of duft: Happy thou art not:
For what thou haft not, ftill thou ftriv'ft to get;
And what thou haft, forget'ft: Thou art not certain;
For thy complexion fhifts to ftrange effects',
After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'ft thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee: Friend haft thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee fire,
The mere effufion of thy proper loins,

Do curfe the gout, ferpigo2, and the rheum,

that a ferpent wounds with his tongue, and that his tongue is forked. He confounds reality and fiction; a ferpent's tongue is foft, but not forked nor hurtful. If it could hurt, it could not be foft. In the Midfummer Night's Dream he has the fame notion:

66

- With doubler tongue

"Thanthine, O ferfent, never adder ftung." JOHNSON.

Shakspeare might have caught this idea from old tapestries or paintings, in which the tongues of ferpents and dragons always appear barbed like the point of an arrow. STEEVENS.

7 Thy beft of reft is fleep, &c.] Evidently from the following paffage of Cicero: "Habes fomnum imaginem mortis, eamque quotidie induis, & dubitas quin fenfus in morte nullus fit cum in ejus fimulacro videas effe nullum fenfum. But the Epicurean infinuation is, with great judgment, omitted in the imitation. WAREURTON.

Here Dr. Warburton might have found a fentiment worthy of his animadverfion. I cannot without indignation find Shakspeare faying that death is only fleep, lengthening out his exhortation by a sentence which in the friar is impious, in the reafoner is foolish, and in the poet • trite and vulgar. JOHNSON.

This was an overfight in Shakspeare; for in the second scene of the fourth act, the Provoft fpeaks of the defperate Barnardine, as one who regards death only as a drunken fleep. STEEVENS.

thou oft provok'ft;] i. e. foliciteft, procureft. MALONE.

9 Thou art not thyself;] Thou art perpetually repaired and renovated by external affiftance; thou fubfifteft upon foreign matter, and haft no power of producing or continuing thy own being. JOHNSON.

1 ftrange effects] For effetes read affects; that is affections, passions of mind, or diforders of body variously affected. So, in Orbells: The young affects." JOHNSON.

fartigo,] The ferpige is a kind of tetter. STEEVENS.

For