Complete Works of Samuel Johnson, page 580
II.ii.26 (40,8) [Stay yet a while] It is not clear why the provost is bidden to stay, nor when he goes out.
II.ii.32 (40,9) [For which I must not plead but that I am at war, ‘twixt will, and will not] This is obscure; perhaps it may be mended by reading,
For which I must now plead; but yet I am At war, ‘twixt will, and will not.
Yet and yt are almost indistinguishable in a manuscript. Yet no alteration is necessary, since the speech is not unintelligible as it now stands, (see 1765, 9I,294,5)
II.ii.78 (42,2) [And mercy then will breathe within your lips, Like man new made] I rather think the meaning is, You would then change the severity of your present character. In familiar speech, You would be quite another man. (see 1765, 1,296,7)
II.ii.99 (43,6)
[Isab. Yet shew some pity. Ang. I shew it most of all, when I shew justice; For then I pity those I do not know]
This was one of Bale’s memorials. When I find myself swayed to mercy, let me remember, that there is a mercy likewise due to the country.
II.ii.126 (45,2) [We cannot weigh our brother with ourself] [W: yourself] The old reading is right. We mortals proud and foolish cannot prevail on our passions to weigh or compare our brother, a being of like nature and frailty, with ourself. We have different names and different judgments for the same faults committed by persons of different condition. (1773)
II.ii.141 (46,3) [She speaks, and ’tis Such sense, that my sense breeds with it] Thus all the folios. Some later editor has changed breeds to bleeds, and Dr. Warburton blames poor Mr. Theobald for recalling the old word, which yet is certainly right. My sense breeds with her sense, that is, new thoughts are stirring in my mind, new conceptions are hatched in my imagination.
So we say to brood over thought.
II.ii.149 (46,4) [tested gold] Rather cupelled, brought to the test, refined, (see 1765,I,299,6)
II.ii.157 (47,6) [For I am that way going to temptation, Where prayers cross] Which way Angelo is going to temptation, we begin to perceive; but how prayers cross that way, or cross each other, at that way, more than any other, I do not understand.
Isabella prays that his honour may be safe, meaning only to give him his title: his imagination is caught by the word honour; he feels that his honour is in danger, and therefore, I believe, answers thus:
I am that way going to temptation, Which your prayers cross.
That is, I am tempted to lose that honour of which thou implorest the preservation. The temptation under which I labour is that which thou hast unknowingly thwarted with thy prayer. He uses the same mode language a few lines lower. Isabella, parting, says, Save your honour! Angelo catches the word — Save it! From what? From thee; even from thy virtue! — (rev. 1778,II,52,3)
II.ii.165 (47,7)
[But it is I,
That lying, by the violet, in the sun,
Do, as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season.]
I am not corrupted by her, but by my own heart, which excites foul desires under the same benign influences that exalt her purity, as the carrion grows putrid by those beams which encrease the fragrance of the violet.
II.ii.186 (48,8) [Ever, till now, When men were fond, 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.
II.iii.11 (49,1) [Who falling in the flaws of her own youth, Hath blister’d her report] Who doth not see that the integrity of the metaphor requires we should read, — flames of her own youth? Warburton.]
Who does not see that, upon such principles, there is no end of correction?
II.iii.36 (50,3) [There rest] Keep yourself in this temper.
II.iii.40 (50,4) [Oh, 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.
II.iv.9 (51,6) [Grown fear’d and tedious] [W: sear’d] I think fear’d
may stand. What we go to with reluctance may be said to be fear’d.
II.iv.13 (51,7) [case] For outside; garb; external shew.
II.iv.14 (51,8) [Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls To thy false seeming?] Here Shakespeare judiciously distinguishes the different operations of high place upon different minds. Fools are frighted, and wise men are allured. Those who cannot judge but by the eye, are easily awed by splendour; those who consider men as well as conditions, are easily persuaded to love the appearance of virtue dignified with power.
II.iv.16 (51,9) [Let’s write good angel on the devil’s horn; ’Tis not the devil’s crest] [Hammer: Is’t not the devil’s crest] I am still inclined to the opinion of the Oxford editor. Angelo, reflecting on the difference between his seeming character, and his real disposition, observes, that he could change his gravity for a plume. He then digresses into an apostrophe, O dignity, how dost thou impose upon the world! then returning to himself, Blood, says he, thou art but blood, however concealed with appearances and decorations. Title and character do not alter nature, which is still corrupt, however dignified.
Let’s write good angel on the devil’s horn; Is’t not? — or rather— ’Tis yet the devil’s crest.
It may however be understood, according to Dr. Warburton’s explanation. O place, how dost thou impose upon the world by false appearances! so much, that if we write good angel on the devil’s horn, ’tis not taken any longer to be the devil’s crest. In this sense,
Blood, thou art but blood.!
is an interjected exclamation. (1773)
II.iv.27 (53,1) [The gen’ral subjects to a well-wish’d king] So the later editions: but the old copies read,
The general subject to a well-wish’d king.
The general subject seems a harsh expression, but general subjects has no sense at all; and general was, in our authour’s time, a word for people, so that the general is the people, or multitude, subject to a king. So in Hamlet: The play pleased not the million; ’twas caviare to the general.
II.iv.47 (54,3) [Falsely to take away a life true made] Falsely is the same with dishonestly, illegally: so false, in the next lines, is illegal, illegitimate.
II.iv.48 (54,4) [As to put metal in restrained means] In forbidden moulds. I suspect means not to be the right word, but I cannot find another.
II.iv.50 (55,5) [’Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth] I would have it considered, whether the train of the discourse does not rather require Isabel to say,
’Tis so set down in earth, but not in heaven.
When she has said this, Then, says Angelo, I shall poze you quickly. Would you, who, for the present purpose, declare your brother’s crime to be less in the sight of heaven, than the law has made it; would you commit that crime, light as it is, to save your brother’s life? To this she answers, not very plainly in either reading, but more appositely to that which I propose:
I had rather give my body, than my soul. (1773)
II.iv.67 (56,6)
[Pleas’d you to do’t at peril of your soul,
Were equal poize of sin and charity]
The reasoning is thus: Angelo asks, whether there might not be a charity in sin to save this brother. Isabella answers, that if Angelo will save him, she will stake her soul that it were charity, not sin. Angelo replies, that if Isabella would save him at the hazard of her soul, it would be not indeed no sin, but a sin to which the charity would be equivalent.
II.iv.73 (56,7) [And nothing of your answer] I think it should be read,
And nothing of yours answer.
You, and whatever is yours, be exempt from penalty.
II.iv.86 (56,9) [Accountant to the law upon that pain] Pain is here for penalty, punishment.
II.iv.90 (57,2) [But in the loss of question,] The loss of question I do not well understand, and should rather read,
But in the toss of question.
In the agitation, in the discussion of the question. To toss an argument is a common phrase.
II.iv.106 (57,4) [a brother dy’d at once] Perhaps we should read,
Better it were, a brother died for once, Than that a sister, by redeeming him. Should die for ever.
II.iv.123 (58,6) [Owe, and succeed by weakness] To owe is, in this place, to own, to hold, to have possession.
II.iv.125 (59,7) [the glasses where they view themselves; Which are as easily broke, as they make forms] Would it not be better to read, —— take forms.
II.iv.128 (59,8) [In profiting by them] In imitating them, in taking them for examples.
II.iv.139 (59,1)
[I have no tongue but one. Gentle my lord,
Let me intreat you, speak the former language]
Isabella answers to his circumlocutory courtship, that she has but one tongue, she does not understand this new phrase, and desires him to talk his former language, that is, to talk as he talked before.
II.iv.150 (60,3) [Seeming, seeming!] Hypocrisy, hypocrisy; counterfeit virtue.
II.iv.156 (60,4) [My Touch against you] [The calling his denial of her charge his vouch, has something fine. Vouch is the testimony one man bears for another. So that, by this, he insinuates his authority was so great, that his denial would have the same credit that a vouch or testimony has in ordinary cases. Warburton.] I believe this beauty is merely imaginary, and that vouch against means no more than denial.
II.iv.165 (60,5) [die the death] This seems to be a solemn phrase for death inflicted by law. So in Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Prepare to die the death.
II.iv.178 (61,6) [prompture] Suggestion, temptation, instigation.
III.i.5 (62,8) [Be absolute for death] Be determined to die, without any hope of life. Horace, —
— The hour, which exceeds expectation will be welcome.
III.i.7 (62,9) [I do lose a thing, That none but fools would keep] [W: would reck] The meaning seems plainly this, that none but fools would wish to keep life; or, none but fools would keep it, if choice were allowed. A sense, which whether true or not, is certainly innocent.
III.i.14 (63,3) [For all the accommodations, that thou bear’st Are nurs’d by baseness] Dr. Warburton is undoubtedly mistaken in supposing that by baseness is meant self-love here assigned as the motive of all human actions. Shakespeare only meant to observe, that a minute analysis of life at once destroys that splendour which dazzles the imagination. Whatever grandeur can display, or luxury enjoy, is procured by baseness, by offices of which the mind shrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the shambles and the dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornaments dug from among the damps and darkness of the mine.
III.i.16 (64,4) [the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm] Worm is put for any creeping thing or serpent. Shakespeare supposes falsely, but according to the vulgar notion, that a serpent wounds with his tongue, and that his tongue is forked. He confounds reality and fiction, a serpent’s tongue is soft but not forked nor hurtful. If it could hurt, it could not be soft. In Midsummer Night’s Dream he has the same notion.
— With doubler tongue Than thine, O serpent, never adder stung.
III.i.17 (64,5)
[Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok’st; yet grosly fear’st
Thy death which is no more]
Here Dr. Warburton might have found a sentiment worthy of his
animadversion. I cannot without indignation find Shakespeare saying, that death is only sleep, lengthening out his exhortation by a sentence which in the friar is impious, in the reasoner is foolish, and in the poet trite and vulgar.
III.i.19 (64,6)
[Thou art not thyself,
For thou exist’st on many thousand grains,
That issue out of dust]
Thou art perpetually repaired and renovated by external assistance, thou subsistest upon foreign matter, and hast no power of producing or continuing thy own being.
III.i.24 (64,7) [strange effects] For effects read affects; that is, affections, passions of mind, or disorders of body variously affected. So in Othello, The young affects.
III.i.32 (65,9)
[Thou hast nor youth, nor age;
But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep,
Dreaming on both]
This is exquisitely imagined. When we are young, we busy ourselves in forming schemes for succeeding time, and miss the gratifications that are before us; when we are old, we amuse the languor of age with the recollection of youthful pleasures or performances; so that our life, of which no part is filled with the business of the present time, resembles our dreams after dinner, when the events of the morning are mingled with the designs of the evening.
III.i.34 (65,1)
[for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied eld]
[W: for pall’d, thy blazed youth Becomes assuaged] Here again I think Dr. Warburton totally mistaken. Shakespeare declares that man has neither youth nor age; for in youth, which is the happiest time, or which might be the happiest, he commonly wants means to obtain what he could enjoy; he is dependent on palsied eld; must beg alms from the coffers of hoary avarice: and being very niggardly supplied, becomes as aged, looks, like an old man, on happiness which is beyond his reach. And when he is old and rich, when he has wealth enough for the purchase of all that formerly excited his desires, he has no longer the powers of enjoyment,
— has neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, To make his riches pleasant. —
I have explained this passage according to the present reading, which may stand without much inconvenience; yet I am willing to persuade my reader, because I have almost persuaded myself, that our authour wrote,
— for all thy blasted youth Becomes as aged —
III.i.37 (66,2) [Thou has neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty To make thy riches pleasant] [W: nor bounty] I am inclined to believe, that neither man nor woman will have much difficulty to tell how beauty makes riches pleasant. Surely this emendation, though it it elegant and ingenious, is not such as that an opportunity of inserting it should be purchased by declaring ignorance of what every one knows, by confessing insensibility to what every one feels.
III.i.40 (66,3) [more thousand deaths] For this sir T. Hammer reads, —— a thousand deaths: —— The meaning is not only a thousand deaths, but a thousand deaths besides what have been mentioned.
III.i.55 (67,5) [Why, as all comforts are; most good in Deed] If this reading be right, Isabella must mean that she brings something better than words of comfort, she brings an assurance of deeds. This is harsh and constrained, but I know not what better to offer. Sir Thomas Hammer reads, — in speed.
III.i.59 (68,6) [an everlasting leiger. Therefore your best appointment] Leiger is the same with resident. Appointment; preparation; act of fitting, or state of being fitted for any thing. So in old books, we have a knight well appointed; that is, well armed and mounted or fitted at all points.
III.i.68 (68,8)
[Tho’ all the world’s vastidity you had,
To a determin’d scope]
A confinement of your mind to one painful idea; to ignominy, of which the remembrance can neither be suppressed nor escaped.
III.i.79 (69,9)
[And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great,
As when a giant dies]
The reasoning is, that death is no more than every being must suffer, though the dread of it is peculiar to man; or perhaps, that we are inconsistent with ourselves, when we so much dread that which we carelessly inflict on other creatures, that feel the pain as acutely as we.
III.i.91 (69,1) [follies doth emmew] Forces follies to lie in cover without daring to show themselves.
III.1.93 (69,3) [His filth within being cast] To cast a pond is to empty it of mud.
Mr. Upton reads,
His pond within being cast, he would appear
A filth as deep as hell.
III.1.94 (70,4)
[Claud. The princely Angelo?
Isab. Oh, ’tis the cunning livery of hell,
The damned’st body to invest and cover
In princely guards!]
[W: priestly guards] The first folio has, in both places, prenzie,
from which the other folios made princely, and every editor may make what he can.
III.i.113 (71,7)
[If it were damnable, he being so wise,
Why would he for the momentary trick
Be perdurably fin’d?]
Shakespeare 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.
III.i.121 (71,8) [delighted spirit] 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,
— the delinquent spirit,
a word easily changed to delighted by a bad copier, or unskilful reader. Delinquent is proposed by Thirlby in his manuscript.(1773)
III.i.127 (72,9) [lawless and incertain thoughts] Conjecture sent out to wander without any certain direction, and ranging through all possibilities of pain.
III.i.139 (73,2) [Is’t not a kind of incest, to take life From thine own sister’s shame?] In Isabella’s declamation there is something harsh, and something forced and far-fetched. But her indignation cannot be thought violent, when we consider her not only as a virgin, but as a nun.
III.i.149 (74,4) [but a trade] A custom; a practice, an established habit. So we say of a man much addicted to any thing, he makes a trade of it.
