does but wait for
its opportunity, for the almost accidental coherence of time with
place, and place with wishing, to annul its long and patient
discipline, and become in a moment the very opposite of that which
under ordinary conditions it seemed to be, even to itself. The mere
resolute self-assertion of the blood brings to others special
temptations, temptations which, as defects or over-growths, lie in the
very qualities which make them otherwise imposing or attractive; the
very advantage of men's gifts of intellect or sentiment being dependent
on a balance in their use so delicate that men hardly maintain it
always. Something also must be conceded to influences merely physical,
to the complexion of the heavens, the skyey influences, shifting as the
stars shift; as something also to the mere caprice of men exercised
over each other in the dispensations of social or political order, to
the chance which makes the life or death of Claudio dependent on
Angelo's will.

The many veins of thought which render the poetry of this play so
weighty and impressive unite in the image of Claudio, a flowerlike
young man, whom, prompted by a few hints from Shakespeare, the
imagination easily clothes with all the bravery of youth, as he crosses
the stage before us on his way to death, coming so [181] hastily to the
end of his pilgrimage. Set in the horrible blackness of the prison,
with its various forms of unsightly death, this flower seems the
braver. Fallen by "prompture of the blood," the victim of a suddenly
revived law against the common fault of youth like his, he finds his
life forfeited as if by the chance of a lottery. With that instinctive
clinging to life, which breaks through the subtlest casuistries of monk
or sage apologising for an early death, he welcomes for a moment the
chance of life through his sister's shame, though he revolts hardly
less from the notion of perpetual imprisonment so repulsive to the
buoyant energy of youth. Familiarised, by the words alike of friends
and the indifferent, to the thought of death, he becomes gentle and
subdued indeed, yet more perhaps through pride than real resignation,
and would go down to darkness at last hard and unblinded. Called upon
suddenly to encounter his fate, looking with keen and resolute profile
straight before him, he gives utterance to some of the central truths
of human feeling, the sincere, concentrated expression of the recoiling
flesh. Thoughts as profou