Shakspere's intention to depict merciful judgment, he would not be very nice in shewing a disregard to morals in those. particulars, towards which, in the whole tenor of his writings, he showed no great severity. It is his sympathy with irreligion that offended these critics. It could not be expected of a player, of whom Pope says he was obliged to please the lowest of the people, and to keep the worst of company,' that he would be very severe against the offences of his companions. No doubt Shakspere read future history with a prophetic eye. He might see from what the Puritans said of the sinful lusts of the flesh, what they might do if they were in power. We forget whether they went to the extent of inflicting capital punishments for transgressions of this sort. They intended it, and we believe there were laws passed to that effect. Cromwell himself partially acted as an Angelo to the city of London. Unfortunates were sent to prison, and transported for life. We think, throughout this play, the Puritans, in morals, doctrines, and politics are attacked. In it is held up to applause an indifference to death, and a disbelief in a future state and punishments. The author makes the good Duke take the habit of a priest, that he may strip the profession of its faith, and clothe it in the garments of materialism and philosophy. Shakspere declares himself under this mask, unequivocally against a future state, and puts in the mouth of a believer a direct attack upon the orthodox belief in punishments after death, delivered by the Saviour. There are passages of infidelity in this play that staggered Warburton, made Johnson indignant, and confounded Coleridge and Knight. In part and whole they gave it up in silent despair, or expressed, sometimes a qualified, and sometimes unmixed, disapprobation; but the wonder has been that they would set out with the prejudice, more or less, that Shakspere was to be made out religious. The play, to our mind, is a very comprehensible whole, though universally condemned as a very unchristian performance. Eschylus and Euripides would be very unintelligible, if taken in some other sense than their natural one. Their plays employ the critical labours of our bishops, and are the reading of our youths, yet they abound in philosophy contrary to Christian truths; but no one sets out to per

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vert their meaning. In the same spirit and sense of harmlessness should Shakspere be studied. True, the pulpit is not to be directed by the stage, the globe by the Globe Theatre of Shakspere, but we may read Shakspere with the same indifference as to his principles as we do the ancients; only, if we would preserve the integrity of sense in an author, we should avoid this religious 'purifying of the text.' It was the literary duty of a bishop, as Warburton, of a moralist, as Johnson, to allow or restore the real sense of Shakspere, to praise and condemn according to their own opinions, not travesty their author, and give him a coat cut to the fashion of the day-a practice now so common to make editions popular and pictorial.

The Duke's speech, in which he commissions Angelo to assume the reigns of government, is ironically spoken, as the sequel shows, of the untried virtue of the man. The sequel exhibits how the private person, who condemns the morals of his superiors, would act were he surrounded by the circumstances of power, and had the will to fulfil his pleasures. Steevens says Shakspere must, I believe, be answerable for the unnecessary solemnity of this introduction.' Steevens styles it the same thought as the one noticed in Henry IV., viz.— that from the past you may prophesy of the future actions of The Duke knew that Angelo had acted unjustly and dishonestly already in one public transaction of his life. The Duke usurps the words of the Saviour :

men.

Heaven doth with us, as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues

Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike

As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd,
But to fine issues; nor Nature never lends

The smallest scruple of her excellence,

But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use.

This is taken from the parable of the talents, and is an exact parallel and abstract of the circumstances, only it ascribes to nature what was assumed by religion. These illustrations of the theme would point also the adaptation of the story to the form of a parable so frequently used by the

Saviour that of a lord or king leaving his servants to act for themselves. They act some well, some wrongfully, some indifferently, some as if they thought their master would never come back. He returns unexpectedly, which figures the day of judgment, when he distributes rewards and punishments to those who have done well or ill in his absence. There is little doubt, therefore, that in manner, as well as matter, Shakspere followed the sacred precedent. This withdrawal of the Duke is not in the Italian novel whence Shakspere took his story, and why he should go into retirement is a mystery to the commentators, who wanted this explanation: we may hazard the conjecture, that Escalus was only introduced as the image of the servant who did neither well nor ill, for that personage seems otherwise quite unnecessary; he has no part in the plot, and the necessary and natural consequence seems to be that he is the only person comparatively forgotten in the end. Lucio and other gentlemen, talking of war and peace, one says:

Heaven grant us its peace, but not the king of Hungary's. 2nd Gent. Amen.

Lucio. Thou concludest like the sanctimonious pirate, that went to sea with the ten commandments, but scraped one out of the table.

2nd Gent. Thou shalt not steal.

Luc. Ay, that he razed.

1st Gent. Why, 'twas a commandment to command the captain and all the rest from their functions; they put forth to steal: there's not a soldier of us all, that, in the thanksgiving before meat, doth relish the petition well, that prays for peace.

2nd Gent. I never heard any soldier dislike it.

Lucio. I believe thee, for I think thou never wast where grace was said.

2nd Gent. No? a dozen times at least.

1st Gent. What? in metre?

Luc. In any proportion, or in any language.

1st Gent. I think, or in any religion.

Luc. Ay, why not? Grace is grace despite of all controversy, as for example; thou thyself art a wicked villain, despite of all grace.

This jocularity is quite in our author's vein. The rest of

the discourse of these gentlemen is mixed up with the indecency which the Quarterly Reviewer says goes hand-inhand with scepticism. But at the end there is a play upon the word sound, which our readers will recollect was used as a term of recrimination between the divines and laymen assembled at the council board to accuse Cranmer.

1st Gent. I am sound.

Luc. Nay, not as one would say, healthy; but so sound, as things that are hollow: thy bones are hollow; impiety has made a feast of thee.

Claudio, carried to prison and to death, the first seized under an obsolete law, by which others had hitherto passed unscathed, says:

Thus can the demi-god, Authority,

Make us pay down, for our offence, by weight.-
The words of Heaven; on whom it will, it will;
On whom it will not, so; yet still 'tis just.

It is often the defence, set up by criminals, that an offence is punished in them which in others passes unnoticed. This arises from the imperfections in human justice, and is not to be compared without impiety with the divine administration. The religious philosophy which Claudio has acquired by being sent to prison Lucio laughs at:—

If I could speak so wisely under an arrest, I would send for certain of my creditors: And yet, to say the truth, I had as lief have the foppery of freedom, as the morality of imprisonment.

We have noticed before that Shakspere spoke very slightingly of marriage, and here is given the first instance in this play of looseness of morality in this respect, which is continued in another example. Claudio, speaking of Julietta being with child, for which he is sent to prison, says to Lucio :

You know the lady, she is fast my wife,
Save that we do the denunciation lack
Of outward order.

But stranger to say, the
recommends Mariana to

Duke, in character of a friar, have intercourse with Angelo

before she is married to him, and says he absolves her from the consequences of sin. In opposing the priest to religion in this instance, Shakspere seems to act from the same motive; no reverential one as when he makes him deny a future state. We even think when Claudio says:— This day my sister should the cloister enter, And there receive her approbation—

and when Isabella herself says to the mother of the nuns, that instead of wanting more privileges, she wished for more strict restraint; and when the mother tells her that when she is veiled she may not speak to men—and finally, when this zealous sister quietly consents, at the end of the play, to marry the Duke, when they had only known each other as friar and nun-we are presented with so many lustrations of how easily and quickly religious persons may forego their most pious resolutions when they are opposed to the force of nature.

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The Duke himself adds to the catalogue of those who yield to love in the end quite apart from original design. He tells his confidant not to imagine his withdrawal from the state arises from love-or to carry on an intrigue-he has a complete bosom ;' but he no sooner sees Isabella than he is frenzied with the dribbling dart of love, and likes society better with a wife rescued from a nunnery. Shakspere leaves it in doubt, when Isabella is introduced to the Duke by the Provost, whether she was not 'already' a nun. Even Johnson (Hallam is of the same opinion) thought that Isabella's execration of her brother, when he solicited her to yield her person to Angelo to save his life, an exhibition of prudery and ferocity of virtue; but this was probably to mark her final acquiescence in a state which was at variance with her intentions, and to show how we are all governed by a passion against our wills, whether lawfully or unlawfully entertained, howevre much we may be incensed at vice, and intend to make of ourselves sacrifices to virtue.

The aim of the Duke, in delegating his power to a deputy, is more to see its effects on the supposed puritanism of Angelo than to have the laws executed with vigour. For he had said to Angelo he might qualify the laws as much as he had done, and now he says of him to the friar :