I will, as 'twere a brother of your order,

Vifit both prince and people. Therefore, pr'ythee, Supply me with the habit, and instruct me

How I may formally in perfon bear,'

Like a true friar. More reafons for this action
At our more leifure fhall I render you;
Only, this one :-Lord Angelo is precife;
Stands at a guard with envy; fcarce confeffes
That his blood flows, or that his appetite

Is more to bread than ftone: Hence fhall we fee,
If power change purpose, what our feemers be.

SCENE V.

A NUNNERY.

Enter Ifabella and Francifca.

Ifab. And have you nuns no further privileges?
Nun. Are not these large enough?

Ifab. Yes, truly: I fpeak not as defiring more;
But rather wishing a more strict restraint
Upon the fifter-hood, the votarifts of faint Clare.
Lucio. [Within.] Ho! Peace be in this place!
Ifab. Who's that, which calls?

Yet perhaps lefs alteration might have produced the true reading, And yet my nature never, in the fight,

So doing flandered.

And yet my nature never fuffer flander by doing any open acts of feverity. JOHNSON.

-in perfon bear,] Mr. Pope reads,

-my perfon bear.

Perhaps a word was dropped at the end of the line, which originally stood thus,

How I may formally in perfon bear me,

Like a true friar.

Stands at a guard

Nun. It is a man's voice. Gentle Ifabella,

Turn you the key, and know his bufinefs of him;
You may; I may not; you are yet unfworn:
When you have vow'd, you muft not speak with men,
But in the prefence of the prioress:

Then, if you fpeak, you must not fhew your face;
Or, if you fhew your face, you must not speak.
He calls again I pray you, answer him. [Exit Frans.
Ifab. Peace and profperity! who is't that calls?
Enter Lucio.

Lucio. Hail, virgin, if you be; as those cheek-rofes
Proclaim you are no lefs! can you fo ftead me,
As bring me to the fight of Ifabella,

A novice of this place, and the fair fifter
To her unhappy brother Claudio?

Ifab. Why her unhappy brother? let me afk;
The rather, for I now must make you know

I am that Ifabella, and his fifter.

Lucio. Gentle and fair, your brother kindly greets

you:

Not to be weary with you, he's in prison.
Ifab. Woe me! For what?

Lucio. For that, which, if myself might be his judge,
He fhould receive his punishment in thanks :
He hath got his friend with child.

Ifab. Sir, make me not your ftory.3

Lucio. 'Tis true :-I would not (tho' 'tis my fami

- liar fin

With maids to feem the lapwing, and to jeft,

Tongue

3make me not your fiery.] Do not, by deceiving me, make

me a fubicct for a tale. JOHNSON.

Perhaps only, Do not divert yourself with me, as you would with a flory. STEEVENS.

The Oxford editor's note on this paffage is in these words. The

Lap

Tongue far from heart) play with all virgins fo.
I hold you as a thing eníky'd, and fainted;
By your renouncement, an immortal spirit;
And to be talk'd with in fincerity,

As with a faint.

Ifab. You do blafpheme the good, in mocking me. Lucio. Do not believe it. Fewnefs and truth, 'tis thus:

Your brother and his lover having embrac'd,

lapwings fly, with feeming fright and anxiety, far from their nets, to deceive those who seek their young. And do not all other birds de the fame ? But what has this to do with the infidelity of a general lover, to whom this bird is compared? It is another quality of the lapwing, that is here alluded to, viz. its perpetually flying fo low and fo near the paffenger, that he thinks he has it, and then is fuddenly gone again. This made it a proverbial expreffion to fignify a lover's falfhood: and it feems to be a very old one; for Chaucer, in his Plowman's Tale, fays,

-And lapwings that swell conith lie. WARBURTON.

The modern editors have not taken in the whole fimilitude here they have taken notice of the lightnefs of a spark's behaviour to his miftrefs, and compared it to the lap wing's hovering and fluttering as it flies. But the chief, of which no notice is taken, is,

-and to jeft.

(See Ray's Proverbs)" The laping cries, tongue far from heart." i. e. most furthest from the nest, i. e. She is, as Shakespeare has it here,

Tongue far from beart.

"The farther fhe is from her neft, where her heart is with her young ones, fhe is the louder, or perhaps all tongue." SMITH. Shakespeare has an expreffion of the like kind, Com. of Errors, act. iv. fc. 3.

"Adr. Far from her neft the lapwing cries away, "My heart prays for him, tho' my tongue do curfe." We meet with the fame thought in John Lilly's comedy, intitled Campafpe (first published in 1591) act ii. fc. 2. from whence Shakespeare might borrow it.

"Alex. Not with Timoleon you mean, wherein you resemble "the lapwing, who crieth most where her neft is not, and fo, "to lead me from efpying your love for Campafpe, you cry "Timoclea." Dr. GRAY,

As

As those that feed grow full; as bloffoming time
That from the feedness the bare fallow brings
To teeming foyfon, fo her plenteous womb
Expreffeth his full tilth and husbandry.

Ifab. Some one with child by him?-My cousin
Juliet?

Lucio. Is fhe your coufin?

Ifab. Adoptedly; as fchool-maids change their

names,

By vain, tho' apt, affection.

Lucio. She it is.

Ifab. O, let him marry her!
Lucio. This is the point.

The duke is very strangely gone from hence
Bore many gentlemen, myself being one,
In hand, and hope of action: but we do learn
By those that know the very nerves of state,
His givings-out were of an infinite distance
From his true-meant defign. Upon his place,
And with full line of his authority,

To teeming foyfon; fo

-1

As the fentence now ftands, it is apparently ungrammatical. I read,

At blooming time, &c.

That is, As they that feed grow full, so her womb now at blossoming time, at that time through which the feed time proceeds to the barveft, her womb fhows what has been doing. Lucio ludicrously calls pregnancy blossoming time, the time when fruit is promised, though not yet ripe. JOHNSON.

Inflead of that, we may read-doth; and, instead of brings, bring. STEEVENS.

• Bore many gentlemen

In hand and hope of allion;·

-]

To bear in hand is a common phrafe for to keep in expectation and dependance, but we should read,

with hope of action.

JOHNSON.

7 with full line-] With full extent, with the whole length.

JOHNSON.
Go-

Governs lord Angelo; A man whose blood
Is very fnow-broth; one who never feels
The wanton ftings and motions of the sense;
But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge
With profits of the mind, study and fast.
He (to give fear to use and liberty,
Which have, for long, run by the hideous law,
As mice by lions) hath pick'd out an act,
Under whofe heavy fenfe your brother's life
Falls into forfeit: he arrefts him on it;
And follows clofe the rigour of the statute,
To make him an example. All hope is gone,
Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer
To foften Angelo: and that's my ' pith

Of bufinefs betwixt you and your poor brother.
Ifab. Doth he fo

Seek for his life?

Lucio. Has cenfur'd him already;

And, as I hear, the provoft hath a warrant
For his execution.

Ifab. Alas! what poor ability's in me

To do him good?

Lucio. Affay the power you have.

Ifab. My power! Alas! I doubt—

Lucio. Our doubts are traitors;

And made us lofe the good, we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt. Go to lord Angelo,

8-give fear to ufe-] To intimidate ufe, that is, practices. long countenanced by cuftom. JOHNSON.

9

Unless you have the grace

] That is, the acceptableness, the power of gaining favour. So when he makes her fuit, the

2-cenfur'd him,-] i. e. fentenced him. STEEVENS.

6

And