ANG. Plainly conceive, I love you.

ISAB. 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. ISAB. I know, your virtue hath a licence in't,' Which feems a little fouler than it is,

To pluck on others.

ANG.

Believe me, on mine honour,

My words express my purpose.

ISAB. Ha! little honour to be much believ'd, And moft pernicious purpofe!-Seeming, feeming!

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, Ifabel? My unfoil'd name, the austereness of my life,

understand this new phrafe, and defires him to talk his former language, that is, to talk as he talked before. JOHNSON.

3 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 malcontents. WARBURTON.

I fufpect Warburton's interpretation to be more ingenious than juft. The obvious meaning is-I know your virtue affumes an air of licentioufnefs which is not natural to you, on purpose to try me.Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1786. STEEVENS.

4 Which feems a little fouler, &c.] So, in Promos and Caffandra: Caf. Renowned lord, you ufe this fpeech (I hope) your

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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.

5-Seeming, feeming!] Hypocrify, hypocrify; counterfeit virtue. JOHNSON.

My vouch against you," and my place i'the state,
Will fo your accufation over-weigh,

That you shall ftifle in your own report,
And fmell of calumny.' I have begun;
And now I give my fenfual race the rein: *
Fit thy consent to my fharp appetite;
Lay by all nicety, and prolixious blushes,"
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,"

6 My vouch against you,] The calling his denial of her charge his vouch, has fomething fine. Vouch is the teftimony one man bears for another. So that, by this, he infinuates his authority was fo great, that his denial would have the fame credit that a vouch or teftimony has in ordinary cafes. WARBURTON.

I believe this beauty is merely imaginary, and that vouch against means no more than denial. JOHNSON.

7 That you shall fifle in your own report,

And Imell of calumny.] A metaphor from a lamp or candle extinguished in its own greafe. STEEVENS.

8 And now I give my fenfual race the rein:] And now I give my fenses the rein, in the race they are now actually running. HEATH. 9 and prolixious blushes,] The word prolixious is not peculiar to Shakspeare. I find it in Mofes his Birth and Miracles, by Drayton :

Moft part by water, more prolixious was," &c. Again, in the Dedication to Gabriel Harvey's Hunt is Up, 1598: - rarifier of prolixious rough barbarism," &c. Again, in Nah's Lenten Stuff, &c. 1599:

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well known unto them by his prolixious fea-wandering." Prolixious blufbes mean what Milton has elegantly called

2

- sweet reluctant delay." STEEVENS.

die the death,] This seems to be a folemn phrase for death inflicted by law. So, in A Midsummer Night's Dream:

Prepare to die the death." JOHNSON.

It is a phrafe taken from fcripture, as is obferved in a note on The Midjummer 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 fcriptural origin. Chaucer uses it frequently. See Cant. Tales, ver. 607.

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

But thy unkindness fhall his death draw out
To lingering fufferance: answer 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 false o'erweighs your true.
[Exit.
ISAB. To whom should 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.

Then Ifabel, live chaste, 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 rest.

[Exit.

"The deth he feleth thurgh his herte fmite." It seems to have been originally a mistaken translation of the French La Mort.

3

4

TYRWHITT.

prompture-] Suggestion, temptation, inftigation.

JOHNSON.

such a mind of honour,] This, in Shakspeare's language, may mean, fuch an honourable mind, as he uses "mind of love," in The Merchant of Venice, for loving mind. Thus alfo, in Philafter: I had thought, thy mind "Had been of bonour." STEEVENS.

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ACT III. SCENE I.

A Room in the Prifon.

Enter DUKE, CLAUDIO, and Provost.

DUKE. So, then you hope of pardon from lord Angelo?

CLAUD. The miserable 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. Reafon thus with life,— If I do lose thee, I do lofe a thing

That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,

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

"The hour which exceeds expectation will be welcome." JOHNSON.

6 That none but fools would keep :] But this reading is not only contrary to all fenfe and reason, but to the drift of this moral difcourfe. The Duke, in his affumed character of a friar, is endeavouring to inftil into the condemned prifoner a refignation of mind to his fentence; but the sense of the lines in this reading, is a direct perfuafive to fuicide: I make no doubt, but the poet wrote,

That none but fools would reck :

i. e. care for, be anxious about, regret the lofs of. So, in the tragedy of Tancred and Gifmund, A&t IV. fc. iii:

Not that the recks this life."

And Shakspeare, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona:
Recking as little what betideth me.".

WARBURTON.

The meaning feems plainly this, that none but fools would wish to keep life; or, none but fools would keep it, if choice were allowed. A fense which, whether true or not, is certainly innocent.

JOHNSON.

(Servile to all the fkiey influences,)

That doft this habitation, where thou keep'ft,"
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou labour'ft by thy flight to fhun,
And yet run'ft toward him ftill: Thou art not
noble ;

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

Again, in The Knightes Tale, Tyrwhitt's edit. ver. 2240: "I kepe nought of armes for to yelpe."

Again, in A Mery Jefte of a Man called Howleglafs, bl. 1. no date. Then the parfon bad him remember that he had a foule for to kepe, and he preached and teached to him the ufe of confeffion," &c. STEEVENS.

Mr. Steevens's explanation is confirmed by a paffage in The Dutchefs of Malfy, by Webfter, (1623) an author who has frequently imitated Shakspeare, and who perhaps followed him in the prefent

instance:

"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 ftorm of terror."

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

7 That doft this habitation, where thou keep'ft,] Sir T. Hanmer changed doft to do without neceffity or authority. The construction is not, the fkiey influences that do," but, a breath thou art, that doft," &c. If" Servile to all the skiey influences" be inclosed in a parenthefis, all the difficulty will vanish. PORSON.

8

merely, thou art death's fool;

For him thou labour'ft by thy flight to fhun,

And yet run'ft toward him ftill:] In thofe old farces called Moralities, the fool of the piece, in order to fhow the inevitable approaches of death, is made to employ all his ftratagems to avoid him; which, as the matter is ordered, bring the fool 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. And from fuch circumftances, in the genius of our ancestors' publick diverfions, I fuppofe it was, that the old proverb arofe, of being merry and wife. WARBURTON.