manner, in which we now see the circumspect man watching every incident, and, as it were, playing the part of providence, has this effect upon us, that the events which are unfolded, find us prepared and calm; the painful and the severe in them becomes thus much mitigated; in the play itself we perceive the superior scene - shifter and observer, before whom the action seems to pass like a drama within a drama; in this way we are unconcerned for the evil issue of the evil actions. In the novel and in Whetstone's piece, no trace of this arrangement is to be found nor of the delicacy which dictated it.

Now begins the official career of the eager young statesman. He "picks out" from the dust the Draco-like statutes; the law is no more to remain a derided scare-crow; unexceptional mercy is no longer to prevail, but unexceptional justice. The inflexible lawyer is satisfied that the world should perish, so that law should hold its course; he imagines himself humane when in the administration of justice he aims at intimidating, because by unsparing severity, the law, like a prophet, stifles sin before its birth, or takes the germ of development from the evil already "hatched". In this behaviour his moral indignation concurs with the over-weening feeling of his own purity, and with the pride of his new dignity; it suits his inclination like a giant to use the "giant's strength" conferred upon him. Even now Claudio and Lucio see that double bias of his soul at work in the new part he plays, they see his pride of virtue, his desire to make himself a name, and his delight in the new splendour of his government. The young deputy orders now all disorderly houses in the suburbs to be "plucked down"; the prisons are filled with offensive criminals

of every kind; even a young noble we see publicly led to prison to the scandal of the town for the sake of a single offence; an example is to be made of him which will strike the eyes of all. Whether the object of intimidation with respect to the crime which it concerned, was to be attained by this severity, seems indeed to be rendered very doubtful by the immediate results. The judges among high and low who know the nature of this sin and the nature of men, such as the Lucios and the Pompeys, give us the little consolatory prospect, that this class of crime, grown indeed too great, would not be "extirped, till eating and drinking be put down"; that if heads should be cut off for this, there would soon be a want of heads. And yet this is not even pointed out as the first difficulty. With the pulling down of those abodes of crime, crime is in no wise extirpated, the trade only departs and changes its place. Habitual sinners do not allow themselves to be frightened by admonition and threatening. Besides the instruments of justice err: the stout Elbow, of the race of the Dogberrys, apprehends a poor knave, who, according to the intimations of the Clown is indeed not capable of sinning, while in Elbow's own house matters are worse, and his own wife is notoriously more guilty than the imprisoned Froth. This then, according to Shakespeare's method, is the burlesque parody of Angelo's administration of justice, who is at last more open to sin than any of his delinquents. Those, however, who pass unpunished in this system, are just the most. obdurate and the most crafty, whom the law ought to have touched first of all. A Lucio, the infamous slanderer and liar, whose familiar sin it is "with maids to seem the lapwing and to jest", who coldly brings his accomplice

into misfortune as his sacrifice, but hesitates not to free himself with false oaths, he, the incorrigible man, is just out of reach of the law, he mocks at its severity, he passes unpunished, while a lesser offence is to bring his friend Claudio to the block.

Claudio was betrothed to a near friend of his excellent sister Isabella; by a secret union she became his wife; the outward form of marriage was postponed, because Juliet's dower remained in the coffer of her friends, whose favour was first to be gained for the marriage of the two. Juliet is a being who appears honourable by the mere friendship of Isabella; we only catch a glimpse of her in her prison, composed and repentant in her innermost soul. Claudio himself is designated as a man true to his word, and so much the less was any bad intent in the mutual error. He erred, because with a lively and sanguine nature, very different to Angelo's, he surrenders himself to every momentary impression. The poet shows us the excitable, easily influenced nature of the man very distinctly in the scene, where he is at first quite filled with the Duke's representations of the evils of life and the consolations of death, but immediately afterwards he is overwhelmed by his own ideas of the horrors of death, compared to which even the weariest life seems to him a Paradise. Thus we subsequently learn to know him, when, in the first feeling of honour, he utterly rejects the price at which Isabella is to purchase his life, and immediately afterwards, when he pictures to himself the terror of death, he would see her pay the price. "He offended as in a dream”, the provost himself says compassionately of Claudio; "all sects, all ages smack of this vice", and he alone is to fall a sacrifice to a pitiless law, he is to die by

that Angelo, who has been guilty towards Mariana of a much worse moral crime from a perfectly similar motive. For which, indeed, was the more guilty, the anticipation of matrimonial right on the part of the faithful Claudio, or Angelo's breach of faith and his dissolving a firmly contracted alliance? Did not the similarity of the circumstance remind the severe judge of his own guilt? Abundantly is this remembrance brought home to him by Escalus, by Isabella, and by the Provost. But he thinks only of the letter of offence and law, and in his invulnerableness he feels himself secure against all the remonstrances and appeals to his own bosom. He forebodes not how soon even this his pride of virtue was to be confounded.

Claudio sends a request to his sister Isabella, since his appeal cannot reach the duke, that she would petition Angelo for his life. He knows that her youth and beauty will move him, he knows that she possesses happy mental endowments, that she is able to persuade, "when she will play with reason and discourse". He can also know of her that she sees through men judiciously; at least she proves it afterwards in his own case. She knows him well when she is to deliver Angelo's request to him; she sees through his weakness and love of life before she utters it; when he gives her his assurance, she believes him; and then at first in his firmness he meets the expectations of her belief, but far more in his despondency those of her just and former fear. This knowledge of human nature, this mind and beauty, these rich endowments for the world and its use, Isabella is on the point of carrying into the cloister. She possesses like the Duke in well-balanced proportions that two-sided nature, the capacity to enjoy the world according to

circumstances, or to dispense with it. She has already begun her noviciate; the rule of the cloister is known to her; its restraint to her is too slight rather than too strict. The low-minded Lucio, to whom an Angelo and his virtue, the Duke and his rank, the monk and his position, are not too sacred to be profaned by his aspersions, Isabella alone is capable of inspiring with respect by the impression of her nature; he sees her already as "a thing ensky'd", sainted by her renouncement, an immortal spirit, "to be talked with in sincerity, as with a saint". When she learns her brother's crime, she is rigorous enough to raise no objection to the law and its execution; nor is she so over-heroic in her virtue as not to feel the human emotion of gladly saving her brother's life; she sees in his case a punishable crime, but she sees no crime in pardoning him; she goes even so far as to estimate before the judge the fault of Claudio less than she thinks it. Strong as she is, she does not hesitate to take upon herself and her whole sex the show of weakness, a great contrast in this to Angelo, who falls with a show of strength and moral austerity. When her virtue is put to the test, she exhibits herself in truth as the hero she had formerly supposed Angelo to be; and sympathizingly as she had before felt for Claudio, as soon as he wishes to purchase his life with her shame, regarding not her twice-repeated reminder of their honourable deceased father, she indignantly rejects him, for she now regards his sin not as "accidental, but a trade". However much this severity and this heroism may seem in its asceticism and sobriety similar to Angelo's pride of virtue and show of honour, yet is she even in this the opposite to Angelo, so far from all false pretensions, that upon the