Chapter XXVI: Act V: SCENE 1. Page 358

ISAB. ... but let your reason serve
To make the truth appear, where it seems hid;
_And hide the false, seems true_.

The apparent difficulty in the last line proceeds from its elliptical construction; yet the meaning is sufficiently obvious. Isabella requests of the Duke to exert his reason _to discover_ truth where it seems hid, and _to suppress_ falsehood _where it_ has the semblance of truth. _Hide_ is, doubtless, a licentious word, but was used for the reason suggested by Mr. Malone.

SCENE 1. Page 375.

LUCIO. Show your sheep-biting face, and be _hang'd an hour_.

There would have been little reason for dissenting from Mr. Henley's ingenious note, in which he supposes that this expression refers to the _pillory_, but for the subsequent remark by Lucio, "this may prove worse than _hanging_." It seems therefore more probable that "hang'd an hour" alludes to the _time_ usually allotted for torturing the miserable object of the barbarous punishment by suspension, which is justly execrated by Randle Holme as "a dog's death," and always excites in the spectator a strange mixture of ludicrous and shocking sensations. It dishonours the living more than it degrades the criminal. The Turkish bowstring were much less offensive to the feelings of humanity: but the more solemn and decorous infliction of death, (if inflicted it must be,) would, as in military cases, be the stroke of the bullet, provided such a measure could be adopted without offending the soldier's honour. The pre-eminent mercy of the English law disdains to augment the horrors of premature dissolution by personal pain and torture; its object is to prevent or diminish the commission of the crime. On this principle, one could wish that, on the close of the usual necessary and consolatory preparation for death, some mode of stupefying the offender were adopted; that no sensation of torture on his part might be felt, nor any other on that of the spectator, than a satisfaction that the sentence of the law had been fulfilled. For this digression no apology can be necessary. As to Mr. Daines Barrington's supposition, that "the criminal was _suspended in the air by the collistrigium or stretch-neck_," a very little reflection will suffice to show that it is founded in error. Such a process would in _half an hour's_ time most effectually prevent a repetition of the ceremony. The _collistrigium_ was so called from the _stretching out or projection of the neck_ through a hole made in the pillory for that purpose, or through an iron collar or _carcan_ that was sometimes attached to the _pillar_ itself. No punishment has been inflicted in so many different ways as that of the pillory; and therefore the following varieties of it have been thought worth exhibiting.

The first is from a manuscript of the Chronicle of Saint Denis, in the British Museum, Bibl. Reg. 16. G. vi. It was written in the thirteenth century. The second occurs in a manuscript of Froissart, preserved in the same collection. The third is copied from a print in Comenius's _Orbis pictus_, and furnishes a specimen of the _carcan_, the woman being confined to the pillar by an iron ring or collar. The fourth is from a table of the standard of ancient weights and measures in the exchequer, and shows the mode of punishing a forestaller or regrator in the time of Henry the Seventh. The fifth exhibits Robert Ockam in the pillory for perjury. The fact happened in the reign of Henry the Eighth, but the cut is copied from Fox's _Martyrs_, published long afterwards. The sixth and last figure represents an ancient pillory that formerly stood in the market-place of the village of Paulmy in Touraine. It is copied from a view of the castle of Paulmy in Belleforest's _Cosmographie universelle_, 1575, folio. Not long since there was remaining in the Section des halles at Paris an old hexangular building of stone, with open Gothic windows, through which appeared an iron circle or _carcan_, with holes for placing the hands and necks of several persons at the same time, in like manner as in the first and last figures. There is an engraving of it in Millin's _Antiquités nationales_, tom. iii. no. 34.

SCENE 1. Page 378.

DUKE. Being criminal in _double_ violation
Of sacred chastity, and of promise-breach.

Mr. Malone thinks _double_ refers to Angelo's conduct to _Mariana_ and Isabel; but surely, however inaccurate the expression, it alludes to Angelo's _double_ misconduct to _Isabella_, in having attempted _her_ chastity, and violated his promise with respect to her brother. Thus in _Promos and Cassandra_:

"Thou wycked man, might it not thee suffice
By worse than force to spoyle her chastitie,
But heaping sinne on sinne against thy othe,
Hast cruelly her brother done to death."

In Cinthio Giraldi's novel, it is "Vous avez commis _deux crimes_ fort grans, l'un d'avoir diffamé cette jeune femme, par telle tromperie que l'on peut dire que vous l'avez forcée: l'autre d'avoir fait mourir son frere contre la foy à elle donnée." Transl. by Chappuys, 1584.

SCENE 1. Page 385.

DUKE. Thy slanders I forgive; and therewithal
Remit thy other _forfeits_: Take him to prison.

Mr. Steevens has refined too much in supposing this word to mean _carnal offences_. It is simply _penalties_. The Duke remits all Lucio's offences except the injury done to the woman, and he is ordered to remain in prison until he marry her. _Forfeit_ was also used in the French sense of the word, _crime_, _transgression_.

THE CLOWN.

The clown in this play officiates as the tapster of a brothel; whence it has been concluded that he is not a domestic fool, nor ought to appear in the dress of that character. A little consideration will serve to show that the opinion is erroneous, that _this_ clown is _altogether_ a domestic fool, and that he should be habited accordingly. In Act II. Scene 1, Escalus calls him a _tedious fool_, and _Iniquity_, a name for one of the old stage buffoons. He tells him that he will have him _whipt_, a punishment that was very often inflicted on fools. In _Timon of Athens_ we have a _strumpet's fool_, and a similar character is mentioned in the first speech in _Antony and Cleopatra_. But if any one should still entertain a doubt on the subject, he may receive the most complete satisfaction by an attentive examination of ancient prints, many of which will furnish instances of the common use of the domestic fool in brothels. In _Twelfth Night_,