like a white flame, into this white spirit,
and, stripped in a moment of all convention, she stands before us
clear, detached, columnar, among the tender frailties of the piece.
Cassandra, the original of Isabella in Whetstone's tale, with the
purpose of the Roman Lucretia in her mind, yields gracefully enough to
the conditions of her brother's safety; and to the lighter reader of
Shakespeare there may seem something harshly conceived, or
psychologically impossible even, in the suddenness of the change
wrought in her, as Claudio welcomes for a moment the chance of life
through her compliance with Angelo's will, and he may have a sense here
of flagging skill, as in words less finely handled than in the
preceding scene. The play, though still not without traces of nobler
handiwork, sinks down, as we know, at last into almost homely comedy,
and it might be supposed that just here the grander manner [179]
deserted it. But the skill with which Isabella plays upon Claudio's
well-recognised sense of honour, and endeavours by means of that to
insure him beforehand from the acceptance of life on baser terms,
indicates no coming laxity of hand just in this place. It was rather
that there rose in Shakespeare's conception, as there may for the
reader, as there certainly would in any good acting of the part,
something of that terror, the seeking for which is one of the notes of
romanticism in Shakespeare and his circle. The stream of ardent
natural affection, poured as sudden hatred upon the youth condemned to
die, adds an additional note of expression to the horror of the prison
where so much of the scene takes place. It is not here only that
Shakespeare has conceived of such extreme anger and pity as putting a
sort of genius into simple women, so that their "lips drop eloquence,"
and their intuitions interpret that which is often too hard or fine for
manlier reason; and it is Isabella with her grand imaginative diction,
and that poetry laid upon the "prone and speechless dialect" there is
in mere youth itself, who gives utterance to the equity, the finer
judgments of the piece on men and things.

From behind this group with its subtle lights and shades, its poetry,
its impressive contrasts, Shakespeare, as I said, conveys to us a
strong sense of the tyranny of nature and [180] circumstance over human
action. The most powerful expressions of this side of experience might
be found here. The bloodless, impassible temperament