117.-ISABELLA AND ANGELO.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was born at Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire, England, April 23, 1564. His only opportunities for study were those afforded by a free grammar-school in his native town. As a man, De

he is described as full of kindly wit, gentle, and good-natured. Quincey says of his writings, "O mighty poet! thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art, but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert, but that the further we press in our discoveries the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye has seen nothing but accident." He died April 23, 1616. The first edition of his collected works appeared in the year 1623.

Angelo. You are welcome. What's your will?
Isabella. I am a woeful suitor to your Honor,

Please but your Honor hear me.

Angelo. Well, what's your suit?

Isabella. I have a brother is condemned to die;

I do beseech you let it be his fault,

And not my brother.

Angelo. Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it! Why, every fault's condemned ere it be done.

Mine were the very cipher of a function,

To fine the faults whose fine stands in record,
And let go by the actor.

Isabella. Oh, just but severe law!

I had a brother, then. Heaven keep your Honor!

Lucio (to Isabella). Give it not o'er so.

intreat him;

(Retiring.)

To him again;

Kneel down before him; hang upon his gown.
You are too cold; if you should need a pin,
You could not with more tame a tongue desire it.

Isabella. Must he needs die?

Angelo. Maiden, no remedy.

Isabella. Yes, I do think that you might pardon him, And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy.

Angelo. I will not do it.

Isabella. But can you, if you would?

Angelo. Look, what I will not, that I cannot do.

Isabella. But might you do't, and do the world no

wrong,

If so your heart were touched with that remorse

As mine is to him?

Angelo. He's sentenced; 'tis too late.
Isabella. Too late?

Why, no; I, that do speak a word,

May call it back again. Well believe this,
No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one-half so good a grace
As mercy does. If he had been as you,
And you as he, you would have slipt like him;
But he, like you, would not have been as stern.
Angelo. Pray you, begone.

Isabella. I would to heaven I had your potency,
And you were Isabel! Should it then be thus?
No; I would tell what 'twere to be a judge,
And what a prisoner.

Angelo. Your brother is a forfeit of the law,
And you but waste your words.

Isabella. Alas! alas!

Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy. How would you be,
If He which is the top of judgment should

But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.

Angelo. Be you content, fair maid;

It is the law, not I, condemns your brother.
Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son,

It should be thus with him he must die to-morrow.
Isabella. Yet show some pity.

Angelo. I show it most of all when I show justice;
For then I pity those I do not know,

Which a dismissed offence would after gall,

And do him right, that answering one foul wrong,

Lives not to act another.

Be satisfied:

Your brother dies to-morrow; be content.

Isabella. So you must be the first that gives this sen

tence,

And he that suffers! O, it is excellent

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous

To use it like a giant.

Lucio. That's well said.

Isabella. Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,

For every pelting, petty officer

Would use his heaven for thunder, nothing but thunder.

Merciful heaven!

Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt

Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarléd oak

Than the soft myrtle; but man, proud man!

Drest in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he's most assured,

His glassy essence,-like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep.