have had an eye to the King in the passages cited by Malone in support of his conjecture. "I love the people, But do not like to stage me to their eyes: "And even so The general, subject to a well-wish'd king, The allusion here being granted, Malone's inference that the play was probably made soon after the King's accession, and before the effect of his unlooked-for austerity on this score had spent itself; was natural enough. Nor is the conjecture of Ulrici and others without weight, "that Shakespeare was led to the composition of the play by the rigoristic sentiments and arrogant virtue of the Puritans." And in this view several points of the main action might be aptly suggested at the time in question: for the King had scarcely set foot in England but he began to be worried by the importunities of that remarkable people, who had been feeding upon the hope, that by the sole exercise of his prerogative he would cast out surplice, Liturgy, and Episcopacy, and revolutionize the Church up to the Presbyterian model; it being a prime notion of theirs, that with the truth a minority, however small, was better than a majority, however large, without it. Whether this view be fully warranted or not, it has been much strengthened by a recent discovery. The play is now known to have been acted at court December 26, 1604. For this knowledge we are indebted to Edmund Tylney's Account of the Revels at Court, preserved in the Audit Office, Somerset House, and lately edited by Mr. Peter Cunningham. Tylney was Master of the Revels from 1579 to 1610; and in his account of expenses for the year beginning in October, 1604, occurs the following entry: "By His Majesty's players: On St. Stephen's night in the Hall a play called Measure for Measure." In a column headed "The Poets which made the Plays," our author is set down as "Mr. Shaxberd"; the writer not taking pains to know the right spelling of a name, the mentioning of which was to be the sole cause that his own should be remembered in after ages and on other continents. The date of the play being so far ascertained, all the main probabilities allegeable from the play itself readily fall into harmony therewith. And it is rather remarkable that Measure for Measure most resembles some other plays, known to have been written about the same time, in those very characteristics which led the German critics to fix upon a later date. Which shows how weak, in such cases, the internal evidence of style, temper, and spirit is by itself, and yet how strong in connection with the external evidence of facts. No question is made, that for some particulars in the plot and story of Measure for Measure the Poet was ultimately indebted to Giraldi Cinthio, an Italian novelist of the sixteenth century. The original story forms the eighty-fifth in his Hecatommithi, or Hundred Tales. A youth named Ludovico is there overtaken in the same fault as Claudio; Juriste, a magistrate highly reputed for wisdom and justice, passes sentence of death upon him; and Epitia, Ludovico's sister, a virgin of rare gifts and graces, goes to pleading for her brother's life. Casting herself at the governor's feet, her beauty and eloquence, made doubly potent by the tears of suffering affection, have the same effect upon him as Isabella's upon Angelo. His proposals are rejected with scorn and horror; but the lady, overcome by the pathetic entreaties of her brother, at last yields to them under a solemn promise of marriage. His object being gained, the wicked man commits a double vow-breach, neither marrying the lady nor sparing her brother. She carries her cause to the Emperor, by whom Juriste is convicted, forced to marry her, and then sentenced to death; but is at last pardoned at the suit of Epitia, who is now as earnest and eloquent for her husband as she had been for her brother. Her holy and heroic conduct touches him with remorse, and finally proves as effective in redeeming his character as it was in redeeming his life. As early as 1578, this tale of Cinthio's was dramatized after a sort by George Whetstone. The title of Whetstone's performance runs thus: The right excellent and famous History of Promos and Cassandra, divided into Comical Discourses. In the conduct of the story Whetstone varies somewhat from his model; as may be seen by the following abstract of his argument: In the city of Julio, then under the rule of Corvinus, King of Hungary, there was a law that for incontinency the man should lose his head, and the woman be marked out for infamy by her dress. Through the indulgence of magistrates this severe law came to be little regarded. At length the government falling into the hands of Lord Promos, he revived the terrible statute, and, a youth named Andrugio being convicted of the fault in question, resolved to visit the penalties in their utmost rigor upon both him and his partner in guilt. Andrugio had a sister of great virtue and accomplishment, named Cassandra, who undertook to sue for his life. Her good behavior, great beauty, and the sweet order of her talk wrought so far with the governor as to induce a short reprieve; but, his love soon turning into lust, he set down the spoil of her honor as the ransom; but she, abhorring both him and his suit, could by no persuasion be won to his wish. Unable, however, to stand out against the pathetic pleadings of her brother, she at last yielded to the wicked man's proposal, upon condition that he should pardon her brother and then marry her. This he solemnly vowed to do; but, his wish being gained, instead of keeping his vows, he ordered the jailer to present Cassandra with her brother's head. The jailer, knowing what the governor had done, and touched with the outcries of Andrugio, took the head of a felon just executed, and set the other at liberty. Cassandra, thinking the head to be her brother's, was at the point to kill herself for grief at this treachery, but spared that stroke to be avenged of the traitor. She devised to make her case known to the King, and he forthwith hastened to do justice upon Promos, ordering that to repair the lady's honor he should marry her, and then for his crime against the state lose his head. No sooner was Cassandra a wife, than all her rhetoric of eye, tongue, and action was tasked to procure the pardon of her husband; but the King, tendering the public good more than hers, denied her suit. At length Andrugio, overcome by his sister's grief, made himself known; for he had all the while been about the place in disguise; whereupon the King, to honor the virtues of Cassandra, pardoned both him and Promos. In 1582 Whetstone published his Heptameron of Civil Discourses, containing a prose version of the same tale. He was a writer of learning and talent, but not such that even the instructions of Shakespeare could have made him capable of dramatic excellence; and, as he had no such benefit, his performance, as might be expected, is insipid and worthless enough. It is observable that he deviates most from Cinthio in managing to bring Andrugio off alive; and from Shakespeare's concurring with him herein it may be fairly inferred that the borrowings were from him, not from the original author. The Poet, moreover, represents the illicit meeting of Claudio and Juliet as taking place under the shield of a solemn betrothment; which very much softens their fault, as marriage bonds were already upon them, and proportionably heightens the injustice of Angelo, as it brings upon him the guilt of making the law responsible for his own arbitrary rigor. Beyond this outline of the story, it does not appear that Shakespeare took any thing from Whetstone more than a few slight hints and casual expressions. And a comparison of the two performances were very far from abating the Poet's fame; it being more creditable to have lifted the story out of the mire into such a region of art and poetry than to have invented it. The main original feature in the plot of Measure for Measure is the part of Mariana, which puts a new life into the whole, and purifies it almost into another nature; as it prevents the soiling of Isabella's holy womanhood, suggests an apt reason for the Duke's mysterious conduct, and yields a pregnant motive for Angelo's pardon, in that his life is thereby bound up with that of a wronged and innocent woman, whom his crimes are made the occasion of restoring to her rights and happiness, so that her virtue may be justly allowed to reprieve him from death. In the comic scenes of Whetstone's play there is all the grossness of Measure for Measure, unredeemed by any thing that the utmost courtesy of language can call wit or humor: here, as Shakespeare took no help, so he can have no excuse, from his predecessor. But he probably saw that some such matter was required by the scheme of the work and the laws of artistic proportion; and as in these parts the truth and character are all his own, so he can scarce be blamed for not anticipating the delicacy of later times, there being none such in the most refined audiences of his day: and his choice of a subject so ugly in itself is amply justified by the many sweet lessons of virtue and wisdom which he has used it as an opportunity of delivering. To have trained and taught a barbarous tale of cruelty and lust into such a rich mellow fruitage of poetry and humanity, may be safely left to offset whatsoever of offense there may be in the play to modern taste. Perhaps the hardest thing to digest is the conduct of Angelo, as being too improbable for a work of art or fiction; though history has recorded several instances substantially the same, of which probably the most familiar to English and American ears is that of Colonel Kirke, a lewd and inhuman minion of James II, whose crimes, however, did not exclude him from the favor of William III. We have already referred to certain characteristics of style and temper which this play shares with several oth |