DUKE. Well, you'll answer this one day. Fare ye well. LUCIO. Nay, tarry; I'll go along with thee; I can tell thee pretty tales of the duke. DUKE. You have told me too many of him already, sir, if they be true; if not true, none were enough. LUCIO. I was once before him for getting a wench with child. DUKE. Did you such a thing? LUCIO. Yes, marry, did I: but was fain to forswear it; they would else have married me to the rotten medlar. DUKE. Sir, your company is fairer than honest: Rest you well. LUCIO. By my troth, I'll go with thee to the lane's end: If bawdy talk offend you, we'll have very little of it: Nay, friar, I am a kind of burr, I shall stick. [Exeunt. SCENE IV. A Room in ANGELO'S House. Enter ANGELO and ESCALUS. ESCAL. Every letter he hath writ hath disvouch'd other. ANG. In most uneven and distracted manner. His actions show much like to madness: pray heaven, his wisdom be not tainted! and why meet him at the gates, and re-deliver our authorities there? ESCAL. I guess not. So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff asks his mistresses: 66 Am I a woodman? Ha!" STEEVENS. 9 ANG. And why should we proclaim it in an hour before his entering, that, if any crave redress of injustice, they should exhibit their petitions in the street? ESCAL. He shows his reason for that; to have a despatch of complaints; and to deliver us from devices hereafter, which shall then have no power to stand against us. ANG. Well, I beseech you, let it be proclaim'd: Betimes i' the morn, I'll call you at your house': Give notice to such men of sort and suit 2, 9 Ang. And why should we, &c.] It is the conscious guilt of Angelo that prompts this question. The reply of Escalus is such as arises from an undisturbed mind, that only considers the mysterious conduct of the Duke in a political point of view. -let it be proclaim'd: STEEVENS. Betimes i' the morn, &c.] Perhaps it should be pointed thus: 66 let it be proclaim'd "Betimes i' the morn: I'll call So above: you at your house.” "And why should we proclaim it in an hour before his en tering?" MALONE. 2-sort and suit,] Figure and rank. JOHNSON, Not so, as I imagine, in this passage. In the feudal times all vassals were bound to hold suit and service to their over-lord; that is, to be ready at all times to attend and serve him, either when summoned to his courts, or to his standard in war. "Such men of sort and suit as are to meet him," I presume, means the Duke's vassals or tenants in capite. Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1786. STEEVENS. 3 —makes me UNPREGNANT,] In the first scene the Duke says that Escalus is pregnant, i. e. ready in the forms of law. Unpreg nant, therefore, in the instance before us, is unready, unprepared. STEEVENS. And dull to all proceedings. A deflower'd maid! The law against it!-But that her tender shame How might she tongue me? Yet reason dares her? -no 4: 4 read: Yet reason dares her?-No:] The old folio impressions "Yet reason dares her No." And this is right. The meaning is, the circumstances of our case are such, that she will never venture to contradict me; dares her to reply No to me, whatever I say. WARBURTON. Which he explains thus: "Were it not for her maiden modesty, how might the lady proclaim my guilt? Yet (you'll say) she has reason on her side, and that will make her dare to do it. I think not; for my authority is of such weight, &c." I am afraid dare has no such signification. I have nothing to offer worth insertion. JOHNSON. To dare has two significations; to terrify, as in The Maid's Tragedy: Again, in Chapman's translation of the eleventh Iliad : the wound did dare him sore." In King Henry IV. Part 1. it means, to challenge, or call forth : "Unless a brother should a brother dare "To gentle exercise," &c. I would therefore read: Yet reason dares her not, "For my authority," &c. Or perhaps, with only a slight transposition: 66 Yet no reason dares her," &c. The meaning will then be-"Yet reason does not challenge, call forth, or incite her to appear against me, for my authority is above the reach of her accusation." STEEVENS. "Yet reason dares her? no." Yet does not reason challenge or incite her to accuse me?-no, (answers the speaker,) for my authority, &c. To dare, in this sense, is yet a school-phrase: For my authority bears off a credent bulk, liv'd, He should have Shakspeare probably learnt it there. He has again used the word in King Henry VI. Part II.: "What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?" MALONE. Yet reason dares her No." Dr. Warburton is evidently right with respect to this reading, though wrong in his application. The expression is a provincial one, and very intelligible: But that her tender shame 66 "Will not proclaim against her maiden loss, "How might she tongue me? Yet reason dares her No." That is, reason dares her to do it, as by this means she would not only publish her "maiden loss," but also as she would certainly suffer from the imposing credit of his station and power, which would repel with disgrace any attack on his reputation : "For my authority bears a credent bulk, "That no particular scandal once can touch, HENLEY. We think Mr. Henley rightly understands this passage, but has not sufficiently explained himself. Reason, or reflection, we conceive, personified by Shakspeare, and represented as daring or overawing Isabella, and crying No to her, whenever she finds herself prompted to "tongue" Angelo. Dare is often met with in this sense in Shakspeare. Beaumont and Fletcher have used the word No in a similar way in The Chances, Act III. Sc. IV. : "I wear a sword to satisfy the world no." Again, in A Wife For A Month, Act IV.: "I'm sure he did not, for I charg'd him no." MONTHLY REVIEW. my authority bears off a CREDENT bulk, That no PARTICULAR Scandal, &c.] Credent is creditable, inforcing credit, not questionable. The old English writers often confound the active and passive adjectives. So Shakspeare, and Milton after him, use inexpressive for inexpressible. 66 Particular is private, a French sense. No scandal from any private mouth can reach a man in my authority." JOHNSON. Angelo means, that his authority will ward off or set aside the weightiest and most probable charge that can be brought against him. MALONE. The old copy reads-" bears of a credent bulk." If of be any thing more than a blunder, it must mean-bears off, i. e. carries Save that his riotous youth, with dangerous sense, Might, in the times to come, have ta'en revenge, By so receiving a dishonour'd life, With ransome of such shame. 'Would yet he had liv'd! Alack, when once our grace we have forgot, Nothing goes right; we would, and we would not ". [Exit. SCENE V. Fields without the Town. Enter Duke in his own habit, and Friar PETER. DUKE. These letters at fit time deliver me. [Giving letters. The provost knows our purpose, and our plot. with it. As this monosyllable, however, does not improve our author's sense, and clogs his metre, I have omitted it. STEEVENS. 6 we would, and we would not.] Here undoubtedly the Act should end, and was ended by the poet; for here is properly a cessation of action, and a night intervenes, and the place is changed, between the passages of this scene, and those of the next. The next Act beginning with the following scene, proceeds without any interruption of time or change of place. JOHNSON. 7 These letters-] Peter never delivers the letters, but tells his story without any credentials. The poet forgot the plot which he had formed. JOHNSON. The first clause of this remark is undoubtedly just; but, respecting the second, I wish our readers to recollect that all the plays of Shakspeare, before they reached the press, had passed through a dangerous medium, and probably experienced the injudicious curtailments to which too many dramatic pieces are still exposed, from the ignorance, caprice, and presumption, of transcribers, players, and managers. STEEVENS. |