perfectly or from one point of view, shows itself also in
his conduct respecting the morality or immorality of the
people of Vienna, which by degrees had attained to such
a height that the prince could no longer remain inactive.
He is himself not of a sensual nature, but he does not, like
Angelo, judge those who are so with unreasonable severity
and strictness. In this mild spirit he has allowed those se-
vere laws to slumber, but by this he has given free course
to crime; these fruits of his kindness rouse him into seeking
a remedy. But even while he now has recourse to severity,
he allows himself to be governed by the same two-sided
consideration which is throughout peculiar to him; he re-
flects that it would be tyrannical in him if he, who by his
lenity had first given a free passage to sin, should all of a
sudden turn to rigor. He therefore withdraws himself,
and imposes on a deputy this office of making the change
from the hitherto lax administration of justice to a new in-
culcation of the old, neglected, and severe laws.-- GERVINUS
, Shakespeare Commentaries.

With deliberate distinctness, which hasty reading must
not be allowed to blur, Shakspere has set forth the circum-
stances which bring this young man, who in Whetstone's
version was an ordinary libertine, within the scope of the
terrible statute. He had been contracted to Juliet, and
had lived with her as his wife, though the outward form
of marriage had been postponed, because Juliet's dowry
remained in the coffer of her friends, whose favor had yet
to be gained for the union. A contracted couple, from the
Elizabethan point of view, were looked upon as joined in
wedlock, and thus Claudio's sin was merely one in name.
Moreover--and it is one of the dramatist's most subtle and
original uses of parallelism--Claudio's relation to Juliet
had been almost of a piece with that of Angelo to Mariana.
But where the one had for wordly reasons left his already
affianced bride in the lurch, the other with generous im-

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