nd and poetical as Hamlet's arise in him; and
but for the accidental arrest of sentence he would descend into the
dust, a mere gilded, idle flower of youth indeed, but with what are
perhaps the most eloquent of all Shakespeare's words upon his lips.

As Shakespeare in Measure for Measure has [182] refashioned, after a
nobler pattern, materials already at hand, so that the relics of other
men's poetry are incorporated into his perfect work, so traces of the
old "morality," that early form of dramatic composition which had for
its function the inculcating of some moral theme, survive in it also,
and give it a peculiar ethical interest. This ethical interest, though
it can escape no attentive reader, yet, in accordance with that
artistic law which demands the predominance of form everywhere over the
mere matter or subject handled, is not to be wholly separated from the
special circumstances, necessities, embarrassments, of these particular
dramatic persons. The old "moralities" exemplified most often some
rough-and-ready lesson. Here the very intricacy and subtlety of the
moral world itself, the difficulty of seizing the true relations of so
complex a material, the difficulty of just judgment, of judgment that
shall not be unjust, are the lessons conveyed. Even in Whetstone's old
story this peculiar vein of moralising comes to the surface: even
there, we notice the tendency to dwell on mixed motives, the contending
issues of action, the presence of virtues and vices alike in unexpected
places, on "the hard choice of two evils," on the "imprisoning" of
men's "real intents." Measure for Measure is full of expressions drawn
from a profound experience of these casuistries, and that ethical
interest becomes predominant in it: it is no longer Promos and [183]
Cassandra, but Measure for Measure, its new name expressly suggesting
the subject of poetical justice. The action of the play, like the
action of life itself for the keener observer, develops in us the
conception of this poetical justice, and the yearning to realise it,
the true justice of which Angelo knows nothing, because it lies for the
most part beyond the limits of any acknowledged law. The idea of
justice involves the idea of rights. But at bottom rights are
equivalent to that which really is, to facts; and the recognition of
his rights therefore, the justice he requires of our hands, or our
thoughts, is the recognition of that which the person, in his inmost
n