He contrives to check Angelo's treachery, that would have caused Claudio's death in spite of the submission.
Lastly he reveals himself, exposes Angelo's sin, compels him to marry Mariana, pardons Claudio, and makes Isabella his Duchess.
This play is now seldom performed. It is one of the greatest works of the greatest English mind. It deals justly with the case of the man who sets up a lifeless sentimentality as a defence against a living natural impulse. The spirit of Angelo has avenged itself on Shakespeare by becoming the guardian spirit of the British theatre.
In this play Shakespeare seems to have brooded on the fact that the common prudential virtues are sometimes due, not to virtue, but to some starvation of the nature. Chastity may proceed from a meanness in the mind, from coldness of the emotions, or from cowardice, at least as often as from manly and cleanly thinking. Two kinds of chastity are set at clash here. The one springs from a fire in the personality that causes Isabella to think death better than contamination, and gives her that whiteness of generosity which fills nunneries with living sacrifice; the other comes from the niggardliness that makes Angelo jilt Mariana rather than take her without a dower. Both are obsessions; both exalt a part of life above life itself. Like other obsessions, they come to grief in the presence of something real.
These two characters make the action. The play is concerned with the difficulty of doing justice in a world of animals swayed by rumour. The subject is one that occupied Shakespeare's mind throughout his creative life. Wisdom begins in justice. But how can man be just, without the understanding of God? Who is so faultless that he can sit in judgment on another? Who so wise that he can see into the heart, weigh the act with the temptation and strike the balance?
Sexual sin is the least of the sins in Dante. It is allied to love. It is an image of regeneration. No sin is so common, none is more glibly blamed. It is so easy to cry "treacherous," "base," and "immoral." But who, while the heart beats, can call himself safe from the temptation to this sin? It is mixed up with every generosity. It is a flood in the heart and a blinding wave over the eyes. It is the thorn in the side under the cloak of the beauty of youth. In Shakespeare's vision it is a natural force, incident to youth, as April is incident to the year. The young men live as though life were oil, and youth a bonfire to be burnt. Life is always wasteful. Youth is life's test for manhood. The clown finds in the prison a great company of the tested and rejected, calling through the bars for alms. In spite of all this choice, another victim is picked by tragical chance. Lucio, a butterfly of the brothel, a dirtier soul than Claudio, is spared. Claudio is taken and condemned. The beautiful, vain, high-blooded youth, so quick with life and glad of the sun, is to lie in earth, at the bidding of one less full of April.
Angelo, the man whose want of sympathy condemns Claudio, is in the state of security that precedes so much Shakespearean tragedy. He has received the name of being more than human because (unlike his admirers) he has not shown himself to be considerably less. He has come through youth unsinged. He has not been betrayed by his "gross body's treason." Both he and those about him think that he is proof against temptation to sexual sin. Suddenly his security is swept away. He is betrayed by the subtler temptation that would mean nothing to a grosser man. He is moved by the sight of the beauty of a distressed woman's mind. The sight means nothing to Claudio, and less than nothing to Lucio. The happy animal nature of youthful man has a way of avoiding distressed women. The cleverer man, who has shut himself up in the half life of sentiment, cannot so escape. He is attacked suddenly by the unknown imprisoned side of him as well as by temptation. He falls, and, like all who fall, he falls not to one sin, but to a degradation of the entire man. The sins come linked. "Treason and murder ever kept together." When he is once involved with lust, treachery and murder follow. He is swiftly so stained that when the wise Duke shows him as he is, he shrinks from the picture, with a cry that he may be put out of the way by some swift merciful death so that the horror of the knowledge of himself may end, too.
The play is a marvellous piece of unflinching thought. Like all the greatest of the plays, it is so full of illustration of the main idea that it gives an illusion of an infinity like that of life. It is constructed closely and subtly for the stage. It is more full of the ingenuities of play-writing than any of the plays. The verse and the prose have that smoothness of happy ease which makes one think of Shakespeare not as a poet writing, but as a sun shining.
" ... It deserves with characters of brass
A forted residence 'gainst the tooth of time."
The thought of the play is penetrating rather than impassioned. The poetry follows the thought. There are cold lines like Death laying a hand on the blood. The faultless lyric, "Take, O take those lips away" occurs. Some say Fletcher wrote it, some Bacon. "Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love." The music of the great manner rings—