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

Or else he must not only die the death',
But thy unkindness fhall 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.
[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 3 fuch a mind of honour,
That had he twenty heads to tender down

Again, in Nafh's Lenten Stuff, &c. 1599:

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2

well known unto them by his prolixious fea-wandering." STEEVENS.

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

"Prepare to die the death." JOHNSON.

It is a phrafe taken from fcripture, as is obferved in a note on the Midfummer 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 ufes it frequently. See Cant. Tales, ver. 607.

"They were adradde of him, as of the deth." ver. 1222. "The deth he feleth thurgh his herte fmite." It seems to have been originally a mistaken tranflation of the French La Mort. TYRWHITT.

3

-prompture-] Suggeftion, temptation, inftigation.

JOHNSON.

fuch a mind of honour,] This, in Shakespeare's language may mean, fuch an honourable mind, as he ufes elsewhere mind of love, for loving mind. Thus in Philafer:

On twenty bloody blocks, he'd yield them up,
Before his fifter fhould her body stoop

To fuch abhorr'd pollution.

Then, Isabel, live chafte, 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. [Exit.

ACT III.

SCENE I.

The Prifon.

Enter Duke, Claudio, and Provoft.

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 sweeter.

life,

Reafon thus with

If I do lofe thee, I do lofe a thing,

That none but fools would keep 5: a breath thou art,

Be abfolute for death; any hope of life. Horace,

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Ser

-] Be determined to die, without

-The hour, which exceeds expectation will be welcome.”

JOHNSON.

5 That none but fools would keep : — ] But this reading is not only contrary to all fenfe and reafon; but to the drift of this moral discourse. 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 fense 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:

Servile to all the fkiey influences

That do this habitation, where thou keep'ft,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool 7;
For him thou labour'ft by thy flight to fhun,
And yet runneft toward him ftill: Thou art not
noble ;

For all the accommodations, that thou bear'st,

i. e. care for, be anxious about, regret the lofs of. So in the tragedy of Tancred and Gifmunda, act IV. fc, 3:

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Not that he recks this life

WARBURTON.

And Shakespeare, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona :
Recking as little what betideth me—”
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 fenfe, which whether true or not, is certainly innocent,

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 Chaycer's Dido queen of Carthage; and elsewhere. "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."

Again, in a Mery Jefte of a Man called Howleglas, 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.

That do this habitation,-] This reading is fubftituted by fir Thomas Hanmer, for

merely thou art death's fool;

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

And yet runneft toward him ftill:-}

In thofe old farces called 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 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 circumstances, in the genius of our ancestors publick diverfiens, I fuppofe it was, that the old proverb arofe, of being merry and wife. WARBURTON, Such another expreffion as death's fool, occurs in The Honeft Lawyer, a comedy, by S. S. 1616:

"Wilt thou be a fool of fate? who can

"Prevent the destiny decreed for man ?" STEEVENS.

Are

Are nurs'd by baseness; Thou art by no means va

liant;

For thou doft fear the soft and tender fork

Of a poor worm': Thy beft of reft is fleep',

And

Are nurs'd by bafeness:-] Dr. Warbutton is undoubtedly mifì taken in fuppofing that by bafenefs is meant felf-love here affigned as the motive of all human actions. Shakespeare only meant to observe, that a minute analysis of life at once destroys that splen dour 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 shambles and the dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornament dug from among the damps and darkness of the mine. JOHNSON..

This is a thought which Shakespeare delights to exprefs. So in Antony and Cleopatra:

Again:

9

66

Our dungy earth alike

"Feeds man as beast."

"Which fleeps, and never palates more the dung,
"The beggars nurse, and Cæfar's." STEEVENS.

the foft and tender fork

Of a poor worm:· -]

Worm is put for any creeping thing or ferpent. Shakespeare fuppofes falfely, but according to the vulgar notion, 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 MidSummer Night's Dream he has the fame notion:

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With doubler tongue

"Than thine, Oferpent, never adder ftung." JOHNSON. Shakespeare 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.

1

Thy best of reft is fleep,

And that thou oft provok'ft; yet grofly fear'ft
Thy death, which is no more.]

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. WARBURTON.

Here Dr. Warburton might have found a fentiment worthy of his animadverfion. I cannot without indignation find Shakespeare

fay

And that thou oft provok'ft; yet grofly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;
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 strange effects 3,
After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an afs, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'ft thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee: Friend haft thou none;
For thy own bowels, which do call thee fire,
The mere effufion of thy proper loins,

Do curfe the gout, ferpigo, and the rheum,
For ending thee no fooner: Thou haft nor youth,
nor ages;

But, as it were, an after-dinner's fleep,

faying, that death is only fleep, lengthening out his exhortation by a fentence which in the friar is impious, in the reafoner is foolish, and in the poet trite and vulgar. JOHNSON.

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

2-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.

Strange effects,] For effects read affects; that is, affections, paffions of mind, or diforders of body varioufly affected. So in Othello: "The young affects." JOHNSON.

4

-Serpigo,] The Serpigo is a kind of tetter. STEEVENS. S Thou haft nor youth, nor age;

But, as it avere, an after-dinner's fleep,
Dreaming on both :-]

This is exquifitely imagined. When we are young, we bufy ourselves in forming fchemes for fucceeding time, and mifs the gratifications that are before us; when we are old, we amuse the languor of age with the recollection of youthful pleafures or performances; to that our life, of which no part is filled with the bufinefs of the present time, resembles our dreams after dinner, when the events of the morning are mingled with the designs of the evening. JOHNSON.

Dream