in his disguise to what honourable purposes the Friars applied themselves

"Bound by my charity and my blest order

I come to visit the afflicted spirits

Here in the prison" (ii. 3).

And he catechises Mariana on the subject of penance like a Catholic divine, while she answers him as a Catholic penitent would—

"I do repent me as it is an evil

And bear the shame with joy" (ii. 3).

The distinction of repenting for the sin and rejoicing at the temporal evil incurred by it is a feature that would hardly have suggested itself to a Protestant, unless, like Jeremy Taylor, he was compiling from Catholic sources.

A pungent satire on the union of licentiousness and Puritan cant is found in the list of prisoners under Pompey's care, who are "all great doers in our trade (scortatores), and are now in for the Lord's sake" (iv. 3).

Familiarity with Catholic forms of speech seems also to manifest itself in the Duke's reply to Elbow's "Bless you, good father friar," "And you, good brother father" (iii. 2); and in Mrs. Overdone's declaration that Lucio's child is a year old come Philip and Jacob (iii. 2). It would be difficult to find a trace of anti-Romish feeling in the Duke's description of himself

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"I am a brother

Of gracious order, late come from the See

On special business from his Holiness" (iii. 2);

or in the sketch of the times which he gives in that character: "There is so great a fever of goodness, that the dissolution of it must cure it; novelty is only in request and it is as dangerous to be aged in any kind of course, as it is virtuous to be constant in any undertaking. There is scarce truth enough alive to make societies secure; but security enough to make fellowships accursed: much upon this riddle runs the wisdom of the world."

Isabella's doubt as to following the advice of the disguised Duke, and swearing that Angelo had achieved his purpose, is remarkable.

"To speak so indirectly I am loth.

I would say the truth. . .

...

yet I am advised to do it" (iv. 6),

because it must have reminded Shakespeare's audience of an incident that had been much talked of in 1595. In that year Blessed Robert Southwell, the Jesuit martyr, a poet of whom Ben Jonson spoke to Drummond with admiration, and to whose pieces Shakespeare paid the compliment of imitation, was tried for saying Mass at Mr. Bellamy's at Harrowon-the-Hill. A servant girl of the family swore that he had not said Mass there. But her evidence broke down, and she then confessed that in swearing as she did she had acted on the advice of the Jesuit.

Hereupon grave scandal arose; the popular

belief was encouraged that Catholics cared nothing for oaths or for the truth. What, then, were

Shakespeare's views on the point?

If his argument in "Measure for Measure" is that human law has nothing to do with sin, but only with crime, or injustice, he must necessarily have considered truth in its double aspect; as a debt owed to God by man, and as a debt owed by man to his neighbour. Prescinding for the moment from the first aspect of truth, under the second it is possible to inquire, whether truthfulness is a debt of justice to men who seek it to treat you unjustly? If you are condemned for being what you are-Catholic or Puritan-you are not bound to criminate yourself by confessing what you are; and if your silence under interrogatories would condemn you, you have a right, so far as your oppressors are concerned, to give an ambiguous answer. Between man and man, unjust oppression is the natural parent of equivocation, and justifies it. Under all ordinary aspects of life I am bound to tell you the truth; but if you wish to compel me to tell the truth, in order to found on my confession your right to punish me unjustly, I have a right to let you be deceived. Such was Southwell's defence of what he had done.

ask you, Mr. Attorney," said he, "if the French King were to invade the realm, and capture the city, and search for the Queen hidden in some corner of the palace, which you knew, and if you were taken, and examined upon oath where she was, what would

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363

you do? To boggle is to tell; to refuse to swear is to betray. What would you say? You would go and show the place! and would not everybody call you a traitor? You would then, if you were wise, swear you knew not, or that you knew she was not there. This is our state: the Catholics are in jeopardy of goods, liberty, and life, if they harbour a priest. Who will prevent their seeking safety in a doubtful answer? For in matters of this kind there are three things to be regarded. First, that injustice will be done if you do not swear. Next, that you are not bound to answer every question; and lastly, that any oath is lawful, if you can take it with truth, judgment, and justice." The controversy reached its head in 1606, after Father Garnet's trial, when he had said that 'equivocation" was not lying, but a peculiarity in the use of certain propositions. "For a man may be asked of one who hath no authority to interrogate, or examined concerning something that belongeth not to his cognisance who asketh. No man may equivocate when he ought to tell the truth: otherwise he may."

The Catholic doctrine, then, was that words are a coin, which must in justice be sterling when we pay our just debts with it, but which may be counterfeit when we put it off on a thief. An oath only adds an additional sanction to an existing duty, but does not change its nature. What I may declare I may,

More, Hist. Prov. Anglic. Soc. Jes., Lib. v. No. 29.

is a

if need be, swear. Before an unjust judge, or in presence of a tyrannical law, equivocation with oath is exactly as lawful as equivocation without oath; and under such circumstances it may be your duty to say what is only in one respect true, for perhaps you can only be true to those to whom you owe fidelity by thus veiling truth to others. This is the doctrine of Shakespeare in "Measure for Measure"; the very title of the play, moralised as it is in Act v. 1, implies it, and the words of the Duke (ii. 2), "pay with falsehood [equivocation], false exacting," formulate it with philosophical precision. To be true even by means of "falsehood problem which he often makes his characters work out practically, and of which he makes Pandulph give, as we have seen, the theoretical demonstration ("King John," iii. 1, and Salisbury in " 2 Henry VI.,' v. 1). "Cymbeline," according to Gervinus," is a parable on the doctrine of fidelity. Pisanio, the faithful follower, there speaks, "True to thee [Cloten] were to prove false, which I never will be, to him that is most true" (iii. 5); and again, Wherein I am false I am honest: not true, to be true" (iv. 3). All this is distinctly on Southwell's side. Helena in "All's Well" is made to act much as Isabella in "Measure for Measure," and Desdemona, who dies declaring that she killed herself, elicits from Othello and Emilia the contradictory conclusions, "She's like a liar, gone to burning hell," and "O, the more angel she."