His filth within being cast 5, he would appear CLAUD. The princely Angelo? ISAB. O, 'tis the cunning livery of hell, The damned'st body to invest and cover In princely guards! Dost thou think, Claudio, not he that loves him best, "The proudest he that holds up Lancaster, "Dares stir a wing, if Warwick shakes his bells." To enmew is a term in falconry, also used by Beaumont and Fletcher, in the Knight of Malta: I have seen him scale, "As if a falcon had run up a train, "Clashing his warlike pinions, his steel'd cuirass, STEEVENS. 5 His filth within being CAST,] To cast a pond is to empty it of mud. Mr. Upton reads: 66 His pond within being cast, he would appear "A filth as deep as hell." JOHNSON. 6 The PRINCELY Angelo? PRINCELY guards!] The stupid editors, mistaking guards for satellites, (whereas it here signifies lace,) altered priestly, in both places, to princely. Whereas Shakspeare wrote it priestly, as appears from the words themselves : 66 'Tis the cunning livery of hell, "The damned'st body to invest and cover In the first place we see that guards here signifies lace, as referring to livery, and as having no sense in the signification of satellites. Now priestly guards means sanctity, which is the sense required. But princely guards means nothing but rich lace, which is a sense the passage will not bear. Angelo, indeed, as deputy, might be called the princely Angelo: but not in this place, where the immediately preceding words of This out-ward-sainted deputy," demand the reading I have restored. WARBURTON. The first folio has, in both places, prenzie, from which the other folios made princely, and every editor may make what he can. JOHNSON. Princely is the judicious correction of the second folio. Princely guards mean no more than the badges of royalty, (laced or bordered robes,) which Angelo is supposed to assume during the absence of the Duke. The stupidity of the first editors is some If I would yield him my virginity, CLAUD O, heavens! it cannot be. ISAB. Yes, he would give it thee, from this rank offence 7. So to offend him still; This night's the time Or else thou diest to-morrow. CLAUD. ISAB. O, were it but my life, Thou shalt not do't. I'd throw it down for your deliverance times not more injurious to Shakspeare, than the ingenuity of those who succeeded them. In the old play of Cambyses I meet with the same expression. Sisamnes is left by Cambyses to distribute justice while he is absent; and in a soliloquy says: 66 Now may I wear the brodered garde, Again, the queen of Cambyses says: "And all the facions new." STEEVENS. A guard, in old language, meant a welt or border of a garment; "because (says Minsheu) it gards and keeps the garment from tearing." These borders were sometimes of lace. So, in The Merchant of Venice: 66 Give him a livery "More guarded than his fellows." MALONE. Warburton reads-priestly, and, in my opinion, very properly. The meaning of the speech is, that it is the cunning policy of the devil, to invest the damnedest bodies in the most sanctified robes; that is to say, in priestly guards, which, when applied to deceitful purposes, she calls the livery of hell. By guards, Isabella metaphorically means-outward appearances. M. MASON. 7 FROM this rank offence,] I believe means, from the time of my committing this offence, you might persist in sinning with safety. The advantages you would derive from my having such a secret of his in my keeping, would ensure you from further harm on account of the same fault, however frequently repeated. STEEVENS. "I do not set my life at a pin's fee." STEEVENS. CLAUD. Thanks, dear Isabel. ISAB. Be ready, Claudio, for your death to-mor row. CLAUD. Yes.-Has he affections in him, That thus can make him bite the law by the nose, ISAB. Which is the least? CLAUD. If it were damnable 2, he, being so wise, Why, would he for the momentary trick ? Has he affections, &c.] pel him to transgress the law, forcing it against others?' Is he actuated by passions that imat the very moment that he is en[I find, he is.] Surely then, since this is so general a propensity, since the judge is as criminal as he whom he condemns, it is no sin, or at least a venial one. So, in the next Act: "And by an eminent body that enforc'd Force is again used for enforce in King Henry VIII. : "If you will now unite in your complaints, "And force them with a constancy." Again, in Coriolanus : "Why force you this?" MALONE. Or of the deadly SEVEN, &c.] It may be useful to know which they are; the reader is, therefore, presented with the following catalogue of them, viz. pride, envy, wrath, sloth, covetousness, gluttony, and lechery. To recapitulate the punishments hereafter for these sins, might have too powerful an effect upon the weak nerves of the present generation; but whoever is desirous of being particularly acquainted with them, may find information in some of the old monkish systems of divinity, and especially in a curious book entitled Le Kalendrier des Bergiers, 1500, folio, of which there is an English translation. DOUCE. If it were damnable, &c.] Shakspeare shows his knowledge of human nature in the conduct of Claudio. When Isabella first tells him of Angelo's proposal, he answers, with honest indignation agreeably to his settled principles "Thou shalt not do't." But the love of life being permitted to operate, soon furnishes him with sophistical arguments; he believes it cannot be very dangerous to the soul, since Angelo, who is so wise, will venture it. JOHNSON. Be perdurably fin'd?-O Isabel! Death is a fearful thing. ISAB. And shamed life a hateful. CLAUD. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where *; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit' 3 Be PERDURABLY fin'd?] Perdurably is lastingly. So, in Othello : 66 cables of perdurable toughness." STEEVENS. 4- and go WE KNOW NOT WHERE;] Dryden has imparted this sentiment to his Aureng-Zebe, Act IV. Sc. I.: "Death in itself is nothing; but we fear "To be we know not what, we know not where." STEEVENS. 5-delighted spirit-] i. e. the spirit accustomed here to ease and delights. This was properly urged as an aggravation to the sharpness of the torments spoken of. The Oxford editor, not apprehending this, alters it to dilated. As if, because the spirit in the body is said to be imprisoned, it was crouded together likewise; and so by death not only set free, but expanded too; which, if true, would make it the less sensible of pain. WARBURTON. This reading may perhaps stand, but many attempts have been made to correct it. The most plausible is that which substitutes— --the benighted spirit;" alluding to the darkness always supposed in the place of future punishment. Perhaps we may read: 66 the delinquent spirit ;' a word easily changed to delighted by a bad copier, or unskilful reader. Delinquent is proposed by Thirlby in his manuscript. JOHNSON. I think with Dr. Warburton, that by the delighted spirit is meant, the soul once accustomed to delight, which, of course, must render the sufferings afterwards described, less tolerable. Thus our author calls youth, blessed, in a former scene, before he proceeds to show its wants and its inconveniencies. Mr. Ritson has furnished me with a passage which I leave to those who can use it for the illustration of the foregoing epithet: "Sir Thomas Herbert, speaking of the death of Mirza, son to Shah Abbas, says, that he gave a period to his miseries in this world, by supping a delighted cup of extreame poyson." Travels, 1634, p. 101. STEEVENS. To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 8 In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice" To what we fear of death'. 6 thick-ribbed ice.] Jonson has a similar expression in his Catiline, Act I. Sc. IV. "We're spirits bound in ribs of ice." The Essenes, a Jewish sect, believed that the wicked went to a dark and cold place. Prideaux, ad ann. 107. Our author again returns to the various destinations of the disembodied spirit, in that pathetic speech of Othello in the fifth Act. Milton seems to have had Shakspeare before him when he wrote the second book of Paradise Lost, 595-603. BLAKEWAY. 7 VIEWLESS winds,] i. e. unseen, invisible. So, in Milton's Comus, v. 92: I must be viewless now." STEEVENS. 8-lawless and incertain thoughts-] Conjecture sent out to wander without any certain direction, and ranging through possibilities of pain. JOHNSON. 9-penury,] The old copy has-perjury. Corrected by the editor of the second folio. MALONE. To what we fear of death.] Most certainly the idea of the "spirit bathing in fiery floods," or of residing" in thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice," is not original to our poet; but I am not sure that they came from the Platonick hell of Virgil. The monks also had their hot and their cold hell: "the fyrste is fyre that ever brenneth, and never gyveth lighte," says an old homily:"The seconde is passyng cold, that yf a greate hylle of fyre were cast therin, it shold torne to yce." One of their legends, well remembered in the time of Shakspeare, gives us a dialogue between a bishop and a soul tormented in a piece of ice, which was brought to cure a brenning heate in his foote; take care, that you do not interpret this the gout, for I remember Menage quotes a canon upon us : Si quis dixerit episcopum podagra laborare, anathema sit." Another tells us of the soul of a monk fastened to a rock, which the winds were to blow about for a twelvemonth, and purge of its |