the sake of "delicacy ;" and that both the dramatist and his poet editor found an apologist in Malone, on the score that "the word employed in the text undoubtedly did not appear indelicate in Shakespeare's time, though perhaps it would not be endured at this day." It may be that now we have the genuine moral purity of 1600, with none of the hypocritical squeamishness of 1750; but if Measure for Measure be voted intrinsically repulsive on account of its plot, it is to be feared that we have more of the latter and less of the former than we would like to own. The passion upon which the action of the play hinges is one which nature has made common to mankind, which influences largely the destiny of every one of us, and which tinges more or less deeply the pages of every tale that has lived in the memory of the world. As Shakespeare has represented it in this drama, it is unrestrained, indeed, but it is also unperverted: it tempts to hideous crime, but in itself it is not monstrous. There lurks more moral poison in the damnable metaphysics of one adulterous French romance, or one incestuous German melodrama, than in whole libraries of such plays as this. In the character of the act upon which it turns, and in the decorum of its language, Hamlet has no advantage over it. The crime of Hamlet's mother and uncle, and the terms in which the son rebukes his parent for her past guilt and warns her against futureerror, to say nothing of the songs of poor, half-crazed Ophelia, are much more exceptionable upon the score of delicacy, than any word uttered or deed hinted by the principal characters in Measure for Measure. But in neither play is there contamination; and in the latter, the principal personage, she for whom the play was written, and around whom the others group themselves, is an embodiment of the * Act III. Sc. 4. iciest, the most repelling continence. Nothing repulsive is brought before the reader's eye. The relations of Claudio and Juliet, while they awaken our pity for their sufferings, warn us against their error. diated Mariana, counting through five years the lonely days and nights in that moated grange! do not her wrongs and her true-hearted devotion plead "trumpet-tongued" against the guilt of her betrothed husband? As to his dramatic relations with Isabella, what influence do they exert, save upon the side of virtue? Which comes most bravely out from those interviews, the designing villain, or the intended victim? What he says to her, is said by scores of scoundrels such as he in scores of other plays, including some of Shakespeare's; but what she says to him, and to her brother, about his base designs, finds no such utterance from other lips. I do not envy those who find this plot disgusting. They seem to me to be "more nice than wise." And poor deserted and repu The principal characters, instead of being "unindividualized men and women," are distinctly drawn embodiments of types, clearly if not strongly marked. There are rulers, upright in intention, and not wanting in wisdom, but who lack administrative force, and who, half conscious. of their failing, seek on some pretence to effect that by the hands of others which their own weak wills have failed to consummate. They are thoughtful when they should be active; and are employed in analyzing the causes or tracing the consequences of crime, when their energies should be bent on its prevention or its punishment. Such a ruler is the Duke. His inertness has allowed "strict statutes and most biting laws," which he confesses are "needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds," to sleep for fourteen years; and his assumption of the monk's cowl is not his first masquerade; for Lucio, who knows nothing of his present disguise, calls him (Act IV. Sc. 3), "the old fantastical duke of dark corners." Shakespeare seems to have had an ever present consciousness of the essential opposition between the faculties which lead men to reflect and those which impel them to act. This consciousness often appears in his writings; but is never so clearly uttered as in these lines in the soliloquy of Hamlet, in the fourth Scene of the fourth Act of the tragedy. "Now, whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on th' event,— A thought, which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom Why yet I live to say, 'This thing's to do.'" And yet this soliloquy and the scene in which it occurs are cut out of the play as it is acted; because, forsooth, it retards the action. When will people learn that Hamlet is not a drama of action! In Angelo, Shakespeare has drawn a faithful portrait of the man whose pride is in his eminent respectability—the man who finds it easy to lead a reputable life, and whose whole life is in his good repute. He is a selfish precisian. He is content to be pure when he has no great temptation to be otherwise; but he would seem pure at every hazard. There are men of no remarkable abilities or acquirements who attain position and influence and the deference due to wisdom, solely by the discreetness of their lives, the grave courtliness of their bearing, their composed and collected manner, and the polished preciseness of their speech, which approaches pomposity, but still stops short of it. Such a man Shakespeare has shown us in Angelo, and in him alone. Polonius-Shakespeare's acute and high-bred courtier, not the jack-a-dandy of the stage,-is an approximation to this type; but he has too much affectation of subtle thought in his conversation. The man whom Angelo represents is always spoken of as 'eminent for his clear common sense and practical views of life,' and would never talk as Polonius does about Hamlet and Ophelia to the King and Queen in the second Scene of the second Act of the tragedy. That Angelo is punctilious, his first speech in the play, as he enters in obedience to the request of the Duke, plainly shows. He says, "Always obedient to your grace's will, I come to know your pleasure." It needs the manner of a Chesterfield to give those lines their proper utterance,-to make them deferential without servility, and formal without affectation. The Duke's reply shows how eminently respectable his deputy was considered by all Vienna; how he was looked to by the public, as a man whose character and conduct fitted him for dignified position, and how reputable were all his antecedents. "Angelo, There is a kind of character in thy life, Claudio says of him, in the third Scene of this Act, that he "for a name Now puts the drowsy and neglected act The Duke tells Friar Thomas that his deputy "stands at a guard with envy;" and he himself, in the solitude of his own chamber, confesses to himself that he takes pride in his own gravity; yet even in that secret place he shrinks from the confession, and says, "let no man hear me." But Angelo is not all hypocrite at first. His gravity, his preciseness, and his respectability, are not mere shams. He is naturally sober, formal, and austere; and having never encountered exactly the sort of temptation which alone could betray him into impropriety, he has been exceedingly proper all his life. His selfish and hard-hearted repudiation of poor Mariana, which afterwards appears, would not impeach his respectability then more than it would now. Generosity is one thing; respectability quite another. They are not twins, nor is the latter born of the former. Observe that Angelo is naturally too grave to find any amusement in the conversation between the Clown, Froth, and Elbow, in the first Scene of the second Act. Elbow brings in, as he says, two notorious benefactors." The humor of the blunder does not exist for Angelo, who, not to be turned from his literal preciseness, solemnly asks, "Benefactors! Well, what benefactors are they? Are they not male factors?" He puts but a curt question or two, and, leaving the affair in the hands of Escalus, soon goes out, hoping that his colleague "will find cause to whip them all." There is no affectation about this: he really finds no pleasure in studying the characteristics of such scum; and thinks whipping the best use to which they can be put. Here it may be pertinent to say, that I cannot agree with those who find in Elbow only a feeble imitation of Dogberry. He has nothing in common with the guardian of Messina, except his ignorance. The pompous self-sufficiency, the ineffable conceit, the affectation of manner which imposes upon Dogberry's subordinates, and actually gives him a moral power over them, are entirely wanting in Elbow. Although, like Dogberry, he was "the poor Duke's officer," he would never have the calm self-confidence to |