Heaven let me bear it! you granting of my suit,
If that be sin, I'll make it my morn prayer
To have it added to the faults of mine,

And nothing of your answer.8

Ang.

Your sense pursues not mine:

Nay, but hear me.

either you're ignorant,

Or seem so, craftily; and that's not good.

Isab. Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,
But graciously to know I am no better.

Ang. Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright
When it doth tax itself; as these black masks
Proclaim an enshield beauty ten times louder
Than beauty could, display'd. But mark you me;
To be received plain, I'll speak more gross:
Your brother is to die.

Isab. So.

Ang. And his offence is so, as it appears, Accountant to the law upon that pain.

Isab. True.

Ang. Admit no other way to save his life,

As I subscribe not that, nor any other,

But (in the loss of question) that you, his sister, 10

8 Here, as often, of is equivalent to in respect of. Answer has the force of responsibility. "And be nothing in respect of which, or for which, you

will have to answer."

9 Enshield for enshielded; that is, covered or protected as with a shield. The Poet, as I have before noted, has many such shortened forms; as hoist for hoisted, quit for quitted, frustrate for frustrated, &c. And so in Bacon's Essay Of Vicissitude of Things: "Learning hath, lastly, its old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust." - In "these black masks," these is used indefinitely; that is, "the demonstrative pronoun for the prepositive article." This is an ancient and still current idiom of the language.

10 Here the order, according to the sense, is, " Admit no other way to save his life, but that you, his sister," &c. The meaning is somewhat perplexed and obscured by the intervening passages, which are all parenthetical." In the loss of question" means simply, as I take it, “in idle talk,"

Finding yourself desired of such a person,
Whose credit with the judge, or own great place,
Could fetch your brother from the manacles
Of the all-binding law; and that there were
No earthly mean to save him, but that either
You must lay down the treasures of your body
To this supposed, or else let him suffer;
What would you do?

Isab. As much for my poor brother as myself:
That is, were I under the terms of death,

Th' impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies,
And strip myself to death, as to a bed

That long I had been sick for, ere I'd yield
My body up to shame.

Ang. Were not you, then, as cruel as the sentence you have slander'd so?

That

Isab. Ignomy 11 in ransom, and free pardon,

Are of two houses: lawful mercy is

Nothing akin to foul redemption.

Ang. You seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant ; And rather proved the sliding of your brother

A merriment than a vice.

or, as Mr. White well puts it," in the waste of words." The Poet repeatedly uses question thus for talk or conversation. The obscurity of the text is somewhat enhanced or thickened to us by this obsolete use of the word. See vol. v., page 75, note 3.

11 Ignomy is but a shortened form of ignominy; used several times by

the Poet.

Isab. O, pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out,

To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean : I something do excuse the thing I hate,

For his advantage that I dearly love.

Ang. We are all frail.

Isab.

Else let my brother die,

If not a fedary, but only he,

Owe and succeed this weakness.12

Ang.

Nay, women are frail too.

Isab. Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves;
Which are as easy broke as they make forms.
Women! Help, Heaven! men their creation mar
In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail;
For we are soft as our complexions are,

And credulous to false prints. 13

Ang.

I think it well:

And from this testimony of your own sex,

Since, I suppose, we'er made to be no stronger

Than faults may shake our frames,14 — let me be bold:

I do arrest your words. Be that you are,

That is, a woman; if you be more, you're none;

If

you be one, as you are well express'd

By all external warrants,

show it now,

By putting on the destined livery.

12 Fedary is used by Shakespeare for associate, partner, or confederate.-Owe, as usual, is own, have, or possess. Succeed is follow or take after. So that the sense of the whole passage is, "If my brother alone, without a partner, owned and took after this weakness, then I would say, let him die." The odd use of fedary, owe, and succeed makes it obscure to modern ears.

13" Credulous to false prints means apt to trust false shows and pretences, or to take the painting or "counterfeit presentment" of a virtue for the thing itself. Women are not alone in that.

14 Old English, meaning, in modern phrase, "not made to be so strong but that faults may shake our frames." A somewhat similar expression occurs in All's Well. See vol. iv., page 39, note 15.

Isab. I have no tongue but one: gentle my lord,
Let me entreat you speak the former language.
Ang. Plainly conceive, I love you.

Isab. My brother did love Juliet; and you tell me
That he shall die for't.

Ang. He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love.

Isab. I know your virtue hath a license in't, Which seems a little fouler than it is,

To pluck on others.15

Ang.

Believe me, on mine honour,

My words express my purpose.

Isab. Ha little honour to be much believed,

And most pernicious purpose! Seeming, seeming!

I will proclaim thee, Angelo; look for't:

Sign me a present pardon for my brother,

Or with an outstretch'd throat I'll tell the world
What man thou art.

Ang.

Who will believe thee, Isabel?

My unsoil'd name, th' austereness of my life,
My vouch against you, and my place i' the State,

Will so your accusation overweigh,

That you shall stifle in your own report,

And smell of calumny. I have begun ;
And now I give my sensual race 16 the rein:
Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite;
Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes,17

15" To pluck on others" means, to pull or draw others into a disclosure of their hidden faults. Isabella cannot yet believe the man to be so bad as he talks, and thinks he is now assuming a vice in order to try what she is made of, or to draw her out.

16 Race, here, is native bent or inborn aptitude; like the Latin indoles. So again in The Tempest, i. 2: But thy vile race had that in't which good natures could not abide to be with."

17" Prolixious blushes" are blushes that put off or postpone the conclusion; what Milton calls "sweet, reluctant, amorous delay."

That banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother
By yielding up thy body to my will;

Or else he must not only die the death,

But thy unkindness shall his death draw out
To lingering sufferance. Answer me to-morrow,
Or, by th' affection that now guides me most,
I'll prove a tyrant to him.

Say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true.

As for you,

[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 self-same tongue,

Either of condemnation or approof; 18

Bidding the law make curtsy to their will;
Hooking both right and wrong, to th' appetite
To follow as it draws! I'll to my brother:
Though he hath fall'n by prompture of the blood,
Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour,19
That, had he twenty heads to tender down
On twenty bloody blocks, he'd yield them up,
Before his sister should her body stoop

To such abhorr'd pollution.

Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, died

More than our brother is our chastity.

I'll tell him yet of Angelo's request,

And fit his mind to death, for his soul's rest.

18 Approof is approval or approbation.

[Exit.

19" Mind of honour" for honourable mind, or mind full of noble thought. So the Poet has " mind of love" for loving mind, and other like phrases.