nd, as is always the case with laws so hated, the attempt to enforce
it drew on a commensurate reaction of licentiousness; the law thus
stimulating the evil it was meant to repress,--a mistaken plaster
inflaming the sore. Angelo had been secretly guilty of a far worse sin
than the one this law was aimed against, but had managed to fence
himself about with practical impunity; nay, his crafty, sanctimonious
selfishness had even turned that sin to an increase of honour, and so
made it a basis of pride. As the slumbering law does not touch his
case, he is earnest to have it revived and put to work: so the Duke,
being somewhat divided between the pleadings of justice and mercy,
concludes to let him try his hand. In the discharge of his new office,
which he conceives his great moral strictness to have gained for him,
Angelo thinks to build his reputation still higher by striking at a
conspicuous object. In the prosecution of his scheme, he soon goes to
attempting a vastly deeper breach of the very law he is enforcing than
that of the man whom he has found obnoxious to its penalties.
Claudio's offence was done when the law was sleeping. Angelo has just
awakened it, yet he proceeds against Claudio as if the latter had
transgressed while the law was vigilant. Angelo's transgression has no
such excuse, since he has himself already given new life and force to
the law. Nevertheless he persists in his design, and hardens himself
to the point of resolving to "give his sensual race the rein." The
hitherto unsuspected evil within he is now fully aware of, but looks
it squarely in the face, and rushes headlong into the double crime of
committing in its worst form the sin and at the same time punishing
the lighter form of it with death in another. Thus it turns out that

"This outward-sainted deputy--
Whose settled visage and deliberate word
Nips youth i' the head, and follies doth emmew
As falcon doth the fowl--is yet a devil;
His filth within being cast, he would appear
A pond as deep as Hell."

Yet Angelo is at first not so properly a hypocrite as a self-deceiver.
For it is very considerable that he wishes to be and sincerely thinks
he is, what he affects and appears to be; as is plain from his
consternation at the wickedness which opportunity awakens into
conscious action within him. He thus typifies that sort of men of whom
Bishop Butler says, "they try appearances upon themselves as well a