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Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,

And pitch our evils there? O, fy, fy, fy!
What dost thou ? or what art thou, Angelo ?
Dost thou desire her foully, for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live:
Thieves for their robbery have authority,

When judges steal themselves. What? do I love her,

That I desire to hear her speak again,

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"Hir bewtie lures, her lookes cut off fond suits with chast disdain.

"O God, I feele a sodaine change, that doth my freedome

chayne.

"What didst thou say? fie, Promos fie," &c. STEEVENS. Sense has in this passage the same signification as in that above, that my sense breeds with it." MALONE.

8 And pitch our EVILS there?] So, in King Henry VIII. : "Nor build their evils on the graves of great men.' Neither of these passages appears to contain a very elegant allusion.

Evils, in the present instance, [as Dr. Grey has remarked] undoubtedly stands for forica. Dr. Farmer assures me he has seen the word evil used in this sense by our ancient writers; and it appears from Harrington's Metamorphosis of Ajax, &c. that privies were originally so ill-contrived, even in royal palaces, as to deserve the title of evils or nuisances. STEEVENS.

One of Sir John Berkenhead's queries confirms the foregoing observation :

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'Whether, ever since the House of Commons has been locked up, the speaker's chair has not been a close-stool? '

"Whether it is not seasonable to stop the nose of my evil?" Two Centuries of Paul's Church-Yard, 8vo. no date. MALONE. No language could more forcibly express the aggravated profligacy of Angelo's passion, which the purity of Isabella but served the more to inflame.-The desecration of edifices devoted to religion, by converting them to the most abject purposes of nature, was an eastern method of expressing contempt. See 2 Kings, x. 27. HENLEY.

A Brahman is forbid to drop his fæces even on "the ruins of a temple." See Sir W. Jones's translation of Institutes of the Hindu Law, or the Ordinances of Menu, London edit. p. 95.

STEEVENS.

And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on?
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints doth bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation, that doth goad us on

To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,
With all her double vigour, art, and nature,
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite ;-Ever, till now,

When men were fond, I smil'd, and wonder'd how'.

[Exit.

SCENE III.

A Room in a Prison.

Enter Duke, habited like a Friar, and Provost. DUKE. Hail to you, provost ! so, I think you are. PROV. I am the provost : What's your will, good friar ?

DUKE. Bound by my charity, and my bless'd order,

I come to visit the afflicted spirits

Here in the prison: do me the common right To let me see them; and to make me know The nature of their crimes, that I may minister To them accordingly.

PROV. I would do more than that, if more were needful.

Enter JULIET.

Look, here comes one; a gentlewoman of mine, Who falling in the flames of her own youth,

9- I smil'd, and wonder'd how.] As a day must now intervene between this conference of Isabella with Angelo, and the next, the Act might more properly end here; and here, in my opinion, it was ended by the poet. JOHNSON.

Hath blister'd her report 2: She is with child;
And he that got it, sentenc'd: a young man
More fit to do another such offence,

Than die for this.

DUKE. When must he die ?

PROV.

As I do think, to-morrow.

I have provided for you; stay a while, [To JULiet.
And you shall be conducted.

2 Who falling in the FLAMES of her own youth,
Hath BLISTER'D her report!] The old copy reads-flaws.

STEEVENS. Who doth not see that the integrity of the metaphor requires we should read:

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-flames of her own youth?" WARBURTON. Who does not see that, upon such principles, there is no end of correction? JOHNSON.

Dr. Johnson did not know, nor perhaps Dr. Warburton either, that Sir William D'Avenant reads flames instead of flaws, in his Law against Lovers, a play almost literally taken from Measure for Measure, and Much Ado About Nothing. FARMER.

In support of Warburton's emendation, it should be remembered, that flawes (for so it was anciently spelled) and flames differ only by a letter that is very frequently mistaken at the press. The same mistake is found in Macbeth, Act II. Sc. I. edit. 1623 :

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my steps, which may they walk,-"

instead of which way. Again, in this play of Measure for Measure, Act V. Sc. I. edit. 1623 :-" give we your hand;" instead of me.—In a former scene of the play before us we meet with "burning youth." Again, in All's Well That Ends Well:

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Yet, in his idle fire,

"To buy his will, it would not seem too dear."

To fall in (not into) was the language of the time. So, in ymbeline :

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almost spent with hunger,

66 I am fallen in offence." MALONE.

Shakspeare has flaming youth in Hamlet; and Greene, in his Never too Late, 1616, says- -"he measured the flames of youth by his own dead cinders.' Blister'd her report, is disfigur'd her fame. Blister seems to have reference to the flames mentioned in the preceding line. A similar use of this word occurs in Hamlet:

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"From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
"And sets a blister there." STEEVENS.

1

DUKE, Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry?

JULIET. I do; and bear the shame most patiently. DUKE. I'll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience,

And try your penitence, if it be sound,

Or hollowly put on.

JULIET.

I'll gladly learn.

DUKE. Love you the man that wrong'd you? JULIET. Yes, as I love the woman that wrong'd him.

DUKE. So then, it seems, your most offenceful act Was mutually committed?

JULIET.

Mutually.

DUKE. Then was your sin of heavier kind than

his.

JULIET. I do confess it, and repent it, father. DUKE. 'Tis meet so, daughter: But lest you do repent 3,

3

As that the sin hath brought you to this shame,— Which sorrow is always toward ourselves, not heaven;

Showing, we'd not spare heaven, as we love it, But as we stand in fear,

3 -

But lest you do repent,] Thus the old copy. The modern editors, led by Mr. Pope, read:

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But repent you not,"

But lest you do repent is only a kind of negative imperativeNe te poeniteat,-and means, repent not on this account. STEEVENS.

I think that a line at least is wanting after the first of the Duke's speech. It would be presumptuous to attempt to replace the words; but the sense, I am persuaded, is easily recoverable out of Juliet's answer. I suppose his advice, in substance, to have been nearly this: "Take care, lest you repent (not so much of your fault, as it is an evil,) as that the sin hath brought you to this shame." Accordingly, Juliet's answer is explicit to this point:

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'I do repent me, as it is an evil,

"And take the shame with joy." TYRWHITT,

JULIET. I do repent me, as it is an evil; And take the shame with joy.

DUKE.

There rest.

Your partner, as I hear, must die to-morrow,
And I am going with instruction to him.-
Grace go with you! Benedicite!

[Exit.

JULIET. Must die to-morrow! O, injurious love', That respites me a life, whose very comfort

Is still a dying horror!

PROV.

"Tis pity of him. [Exeunt.

* Showing, we'd not SPARE heaven,] The modern editors had changed this word into seek. STEEVENS. "Showing we'd not spare heaven," i. e. spare to offend heaven. MALONE.

5 There rest.] Keep yourself in this temper. JOHNSON. Grace go with you! BENEDICITE !] The former part of this line evidently belongs to Juliet. Benedicite is the Duke's reply. RITSON. This regulation is undoubtedly proper: but I suppose Shakspeare to have written

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Juliet. May grace go with you! "Duke.

Benedicite!" STEEVENS.

7-O, injurious love,] Her execution was respited on account of her pregnancy, the effects of her love; therefore she calls it injurious; not that it brought her to shame, but that it hindered her freeing herself from it. Is not this all very natural? yet the Oxford editor changes it to injurious law. JOHNSON.

I know not what circumstance in this play can authorise a supposition that Juliet was respited on account of her pregnancy; as her life was in no danger from the law, the severity of which was exerted only on the seducer. I suppose she means that a parent's love for the child she bears is injurious, because it makes her careful of her life in her present shameful condition.

Mr. Tollet explains the passage thus: "O, love, that is injurious in expediting Claudio's death, and that respites me a life, which is a burthen to me worse than death!" STEEVENS.

Both Johnson's explanation of this passage, and Steevens's refutation of it, prove the necessity of Hanmer's amendment, which removes every difficulty, and can scarcely be considered as an alteration, the trace of the letters in the words law and love being so nearly alike.-The law affected the life of the man only, not that of the woman; and this is the injury that Juliet complains of, as she wished to die with him. M. MASON.

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