SCENE III. A Room in a Prison.

Enter, severally, the DUKE disguised as a Friar, and the Provost.

Duke. Hail to you, Provost !-so I think you are.

Prov. I am the Provost. What's your will, good friar? Duke. Bound by my charity and my bless'd order,

I come to visit the afflicted spirits

Here in the prison. Do me the common right

To let me see them, and to make me know

The nature of their crimes, that I may minister

To them accordingly.

Prov. I would do more than that, if more were needful.

Look, here comes one, a gentlewoman of mine,

Who, falling in the flames of her own youth,

Hath blister'd her report: she is with child;

And he that got it, sentenced,

a young man

[To JULIET.] I have provided for you: stay awhile,

Duke. Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry?

Jul. I do; and bear the shame most patiently.

Duke. I'll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience,

1 To let is the gerundial infinitive, as it is called, and so is equivalent to

by letting. A very frequent usage. See vol. v., page 78, note 10.

2 In for into; the two being often used indiscriminately. See vol. iv., page 90, note 6.

Duke. Love you the man that wrong'd you?
Jul. Yes, as I love the woman that wrong'd him.
Duke. So, then it seems your most offenceful act
Was mutually committed?

Duke. Then was your sin of heavier kind than his.
Jul. I do confess it, and repent it, father.

Duke. 'Tis meet so, daughter: but lest you do repent,
As that the sin hath brought you to this shame,
Which sorrow is always toward ourselves, not Heaven,
Showing we would not spare Heaven 3 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.

Your partner, as I hear, must die to-morrow,

And I am going with instruction to him.

Jul. God's grace go with you!

Duke.

Benedicite!

Jul. Must die to-morrow! O injurious law, That respites me a life, whose very comfort

Is still a dying horror!

[Exit.

Prov.

'Tis pity of him.

[Exeunt.

3 Here, if the text be right, we have a rather bold ellipsis; the required sense being "forbear to offend Heaven," or spare Heaven the offence of our sin. A like expression, however, occurs in Coriolanus, i. 1, where Brutus the Tribune says of the hero, " Being moved, he will not spare to gird the gods"; that is, "will not spare the gods in his girding." See Critical Notes.

4 There remain, there stand firm, or "keep yourself in that frame of mind."

SCENE IV.A Room in ANGELO's House.

Enter ANGELO.

Ang. When I would pray and think, I think and pray
To several subjects.1 Heaven hath my empty words;

Whilst my intention, hearing not my tongue,
Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,

As if I did but only chew His name;

And in my heart the strong and swelling evil

Of my conception. The State, whereon I studied,
Is, like a good thing being often read,

Grown sere 2 and tedious; yea, my gravity,
Wherein - let no man hear me - I take pride,
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!3 Blood, thou still art blood:
Let's write good angel on the Devil's horn,

'Tis not the Devil's crest.4

Enter a Servant.

How now! who's there?

1 Several in its old sense of separate or different. Repeatedly so.

2 Sere is dry, withered. So in Macbeth, v. 3: "My way of life is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf." And in Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, January:

All so my lustful leafe is drie and sere,

My timely buds with wailing all are wasted.

3 Fools, those who judge only by the eye, are easily awed by spendour; and those who regard men as well as conditions are easily induced to love the appearance of virtue dignified by power and place.

4 The meaning appears to be, though we write good angel on the Devil's horn, still it will not change his nature, nor be his proper crest; will not be emblematic of his real character.

Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,

Making both it unable for itself,

And dispossessing all my other parts

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 offence.

How now, fair maid!

Isab.

Enter ISABELLA.

I'm come to know your pleasure. Ang. That you might know it, would much better please

me

Than to demand what 'tis. Your brother cannot live.
Isab. Even so. Heaven keep your Honour! [Retiring.
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, Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted

That his soul sicken not.

Ang. Ha! fie, these filthy vices! 'Twere as good

5 "The general" for what we sometimes call the generality, that is, the multitude. Shakespeare often thus uses an adjective with the sense of the plural substantive. So in Hamlet, i. 2: "The levies, the lists, and full proportions, are all made out of his subject."

To pardon him that hath from Nature stol'n

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 restrainèd means
To make a false one.6

Isab. 'Tis set down so in Heaven, but not in Earth.
Ang. Ay, say you so? then I shall pose you quickly.

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 cómpell'd sins Stand more for number than accompt.

Isab.

How say you?

Ang. Nay, I'll not warrant that; for I can speak Against the thing I say. Answer to this:

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,7

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,

6 Meaning, probably, that murder is as easy as fornication; from which Angelo would infer that it is as wrong to pardon the latter as the former. "I'll take it on the peril of my soul"; meaning, "I'll stake my soul upon it."

7 We should say,