Perhaps it is—
As many devils enter (or enter'd) swine; and to her, boy, say I:—
a somewhat profane, but not un-Shakspearian, allusion to the 'legion' in St. Luke's 'gospel.'
MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
This play, which is Shakspeare's throughout, is to me the most painful—say rather, the only painful—part of his genuine works. The comic and tragic parts equally border on the {Greek (transliterated): misaeteon},—the one being disgusting, the other horrible; and the pardon and marriage of Angelo not merely baffles the strong indignant claim of justice—(for cruelty, with lust and damnable baseness, cannot be forgiven, because we cannot conceive them as being morally repented of;) but it is likewise degrading to the character of woman. Beaumont and Fletcher, who can follow Shakspeare in his errors only, have presented a still worse, because more loathsome and contradictory, instance of the same kind in the Night-Walker, in the marriage of Alathe to Algripe. Of the counterbalancing beauties of Measure for Measure, I need say nothing; for I have already remarked that the play is Shakspeare's throughout.
Act iii. sc. 1.
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where, &c.
This natural fear of Claudio, from the antipathy we have to death, seems very little varied from that infamous wish of Mæcenas, recorded in the 101st epistle of Seneca: