Opening
ILLUSTRATIONS
OF
SHAKSPEARE.
ILLUSTRATIONS
OF
SHAKSPEARE,
AND OF
ANCIENT MANNERS:
WITH
DISSERTATIONS
ON THE CLOWNS AND FOOLS OF SHAKSPEARE;
ON THE COLLECTION OF POPULAR TALES ENTITLED GESTA ROMANORUM;
AND ON THE ENGLISH MORRIS DANCE.
By FRANCIS DOUCE.
THE ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD BY JACKSON.
A NEW EDITION.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR THOMAS TEGG, CHEAPSIDE;
R. GRIFFIN AND CO., GLASGOW; TEGG AND CO., DUBLIN; ALSO J. & S. A. TEGG, SYDNEY AND HOBART TOWN.
1839.
PRINTED BY RICHARD KINDER, GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY.
Preface
The practice, and also the necessity of explaining the writings of Shakspeare, have already been so ably defended by former commentators, that no other apology on the part of those who may elect to persevere in this kind of labour seems to be necessary than with regard to the qualifications of the writer: but as no one in this case perhaps ever thought, or at least should think, himself incompetent to the task assumed of instructing or amusing others, it may be as well, on the present occasion, to waive altogether such a common-place intrusion on the reader's time. It is enough to state that accident had given birth to a considerable portion of the following pages, and that design supplied the rest. The late Mr. Steevens had already in a manner too careless for his own reputation, and abundantly too favourable to his friend, presented to public view such of the author's remarks as were solely put together for the private use and consideration of that able critic. The former wish of their compiler has, with the present opportunity, been accomplished; that is, some of them withdrawn, and others, it is hoped, rendered less exceptionable.
The readers of Shakspeare may be properly divided into three classes. The first, as they travel through the text, appeal to each explanation of a word or passage as it occurs. The second read a large portion of the text, or perhaps the whole, uninterruptedly, and then consult the notes; and the third reject the illustrations altogether. Of these the second appear to be the most rational. The last, with all their affectation, are probably the least learned, but will undoubtedly remain so; and it may be justly remarked on this occasion, in the language of the writer who has best illustrated the principles of taste, that "the pride of science is always meek and humble compared with the pride of ignorance." He, who at this day can entirely comprehend the writings of Shakspeare without the aid of a comment, and frequently of laborious illustration, may be said to possess a degree of inspiration almost commensurate with that of the great bard himself. Mr. Steevens has indeed summed up every necessary argument in his assertion that "if Shakspeare is worth reading, he is worth explaining; and the researches used for so valuable and elegant a purpose, merit the thanks of genius and candour, not the satire of prejudice and ignorance."
The indefatigable exertions of Messrs. Steevens, Malone, Tyrwhitt, and Mason, will ever be duly appreciated by the true and zealous admirers of Shakspeare's pages. If the name of a celebrated critic and moralist be not included on this occasion, it is because he was certainly unskilled in the knowledge of obsolete customs and expressions. His explanatory notes therefore are, generally speaking, the most controvertible of any; but no future editor will discharge his duty to the public who shall omit a single sentence of this writer's masterly preface, or of his sound and tasteful characters of the plays of Shakspeare. Of all the commentators Dr. Warburton was surely the worst. His sentiments indeed have been seldom exhibited in modern editions but for the purpose of confuting them.
The wide dispersion of those materials which are essential to the illustration of inquiries like the present, will necessarily frustrate every endeavour at perfection; a circumstance that alone should teach every one discussing these difficult and obscure subjects, to speak of them with becoming diffidence. The present writer cannot flatter himself that he has uniformly paid a strict attention to this rule; the ardour of conjecture may have sometimes led him, in common with others, to forget the precepts he had himself laid down.
It may be thought by some, and even with great justice, that several of the corrections are trifling and unimportant; but even these may perhaps be endured wherever it shall be manifest that their object, and it is hoped their effect, has been to remove error and establish truth; a matter undoubtedly of some consequence in the school of criticism. One design of this volume has been to augment the knowledge of our popular customs and antiquities, in which respect alone the writings of Shakspeare have suggested better hints, and furnished ampler materials than those of any one besides. Other digressions too have been introduced, as it was conceived that they might operate in diminishing that tedium which usually results from an attention to matters purely critical; and that whilst there was almost a certainty of supplying some amusement, there might even be a chance of conveying instruction. Sometimes there has been a necessity for stepping in between two contending critics; and for showing, as in the case of many other disputes, that both parties are in the wrong.
Some excuse may seem necessary for obtruding on the reader so many passages from what Mr. Steevens has somewhere called "books too mean to be formally quoted." And yet the wisest among us may be often benefited by the meanest productions of human intellect, if, like medicinal poisons, they be administered with skill. It had escaped the recollection of the learned and accomplished commentator that he had himself condescended to examine a multitude of volumes of the above class, and even to use them with advantage to his readers in the course of his notes.
With respect to what is often absurdly denominated black letter learning, the taste which prevails in the present times for this sort of reading, wherever true scholarship and a laudable curiosity are found united, will afford the best reply to the hyper-criticisms and impotent sarcasms of those who, having from indolence or ignorance neglected to cultivate so rich a field of knowledge, exert the whole of their endeavours to depreciate its value. Are the earlier labours of our countrymen, and especially the copious stores of information that enriched the long and flourishing reign of Elizabeth, to be rejected because they are recorded in a particular typography?
Others again have complained of the redundancy of the commentators, and of an affected display of learning to explain terms and illustrate matters of obvious and easy comprehension. This may sometimes have been the case; but it were easier to show that too little, and not too much, has been attempted on many of these occasions. An eminent critic has declared that "if every line of Shakspeare's plays were accompanied with a comment, every intelligent reader would be indebted to the industry of him who produced it." Shakspeare indeed is not more obscure than contemporary writers; but he is certainly much better worth illustrating. The above objectors, affectedly zealous to detect the errors of other men, but more frequently betraying their own self-sufficiency and over-weening importance, seem to forget that comments and illustrations are designed for the more ignorant class of readers, who are always the most numerous; and that very few possess the happiness and advantage of being wise or learned.
It might be thought that in the following pages exemplifications of the senses of words have been sometimes unnecessarily introduced where others had already been given; but this has only been done where the new ones were deemed of greater force or utility than the others, or where they were supposed to be really and intrinsically curious. Some of the notes will require that the whole of others which they advert to, should be examined in Mr. Steevens's edition; but these were not reprinted, as they would have occupied a space much too unreasonable.
At the end of every play in which a fool or clown is introduced there will be found particular and discriminative notice of a character which some may regard as by no means unworthy of such attention.
The Dissertations which accompany this work will, it is hoped, not be found misplaced nor altogether uninteresting. The subject of the first of them, though often introduced into former notes on the plays of Shakspeare and other dramatic writers, had been but partially and imperfectly illustrated. The Gesta Romanorum, to which The Merchant of Venice has been so much indebted for the construction of its story, had, it is true, been already disserted on by Mr. Warton with his accustomed elegance; but it will be found that he had by no means exhausted the subject. The morris dance, so frequently alluded to in our old plays, seemed to require and deserve additional researches.
This preface shall not be concluded without embracing the opportunity of submitting a very few hints to the consideration of all future editors of Shakspeare.
It were much to be wished that the text of an author, and more especially that of our greatest dramatic writer, could be altered as seldom as possible by conjectural emendation, or only where it is manifestly erroneous from typographical causes. The readers of Dr. Bentley's notes on Milton will soon be convinced of the inexpediency of the former of these practices, and of what little importance are the conjectures of the mere scholar, when unaccompanied by skill and judgement to direct them.
As the information on a particular subject has been hitherto frequently dispersed in separate notes, and consequently remains imperfect in each of them, would it not be more desirable to concentrate this scattered intelligence, or even to reduce it to a new form, to be referred to whenever necessary?
Although the strict restitution of the old orthography is not meant to be insisted on, nor would indeed accommodate the generality of readers, there are many instances in which it should be stated in the notes; and such will occur to every skilful editor.
Every word or passage that may be substituted in the text in the room of others to be found in any of the old editions should be printed in Italics, and assigned to its proper owner, with a reason for its preference to the originals. The mention of variations in the old copies must of course be left to an editor's discretion. No disparagement is meant to the memory or talents of one of the greatest of men, when a protest is here entered against "the text of Dr. Johnson." It is to be regretted that all editions of Shakspeare, as well as of other dramatic writers, have not marginal references to the acts and scenes of each play. Those of Bell and Stockdale are, in this respect, preeminently useful. The time and trouble that would be saved in consulting them would be very considerable.
The Edition of Shakspeare used in the compilation of this volume, and to which the pages cited refer, is the last published by Mr. Steevens himself, in fifteen volumes 8vo, 1793; but in order to facilitate a reference to most other editions, the acts and scenes of the plays are specified.
ILLUSTRATIONS
OF
SHAKSPEARE.
THE TEMPEST.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 9
ANT. We are merely cheated of our lives----
Mr. Steevens has remarked that merely in this place signifies absolutely. His interpretation is confirmed by the word merus in Littelton's dictionary, where it is rendered downright.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 10
MIRA. ... a brave vessel, Who had, no doubt, some noble creatures in her.
There is a peculiar propriety in this expression that has escaped the notice it deserved. Miranda had as yet seen no other man than her father. She had perceived, but indistinctly, some living creatures perish in the shipwreck; and she supposes they might be of her father's species. Thus she afterwards, when speaking of Ferdinand, calls him noble.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 11
MIRA. ... or e'er It should the good ship, &c.
This word should always be written ere, and not ever, nor contractedly e'er, with which it has no connection. It is pure Saxon, æꞃ. The corruption in Ecclesiastes cited in the note, is as old as the time of Henry the Eighth; but in Wicliffe we have properly "er be to broke the silveren corde," and so it is given by Chaucer.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 20
PRO. Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepar'd A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast----
The present note is more particularly offered to the admirers of ancient romances, and to which class Shakspeare himself, no doubt, belonged. It is well known that the earliest English specimen of these singular and fascinating compositions is the Geste of king Horn, which has been faithfully published by the late Mr. Ritson, who has given some account of a French copy in the British Museum. He did not live to know that another manuscript of this interesting romance, in the same language, is still remaining in private hands, very different in substance and construction from the other. One might almost conclude that some English translation of it existed in Shakspeare's time, and that he had in the above passage imitated the following description of the boat in which Horn and his companions were put by king Rodmund at the suggestion of Browans,
"Sire, fet il purnez un de vos vielz chalanz Metez icels valez ki jo vei ici estanz Kil naient avirum dunt aseient aidanz Sigle ne guvernad dunt il seint vaianz."
l. 58.
That is,
"Sir, said he, take one of your old boats, put into it these varlets whom I see here; let them have no oars to help them, sail nor rudder to put them in motion."
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 26
ARI. ... sometimes I'd divide And burn in many places; on the top-mast, The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly, Then meet and join----
This is a very elegant description of a meteor well known to sailors. It has been called by the several names of the fire of Saint Helen, Saint Elm, Saint Herm, Saint Clare, Saint Peter, and Saint Nicholas. Whenever it appeared as a single flame it was supposed by the ancients to be Helena, the sister of Castor and Pollux, and in this state to bring ill luck, from the calamities which this lady is known to have caused in the Trojan war. When it came double it was called Castor and Pollux, and accounted a good omen. It has been described as a little blaze of fire, sometimes appearing by night on the tops of soldiers' lances, or at sea on masts and sail-yards whirling and leaping in a moment from one place to another. Some have said, but erroneously, that it never appears but after a tempest. It is also supposed to lead people to suicide by drowning.
Further information on the subject may be collected from Plin. Hist. nat. 1. ii. c. 37. Seneca Quæst. nat. c. 1. Erasm. Colloq. in naufragio. Schotti. Physica curiosa, p. 1209. Menage Dict. etym. v. Saint Telme. Cotgrave Dict. v. feu, furole. Trevoux Dict. v. furole. Lettres de Bergerac, p. 45. Eden's Hist. of travayle, fo. 432 b. 433 b. Camerarii Horæ subsecivæ iii. 53. Cambray Voy. dans la Finisterre ii. 296. Swan's Speculum mundi p. 89. Shakspeare seems to have consulted Stephen Batman's Golden books of the leaden goddes, who, speaking of Castor and Pollux, says "they were figured like two lampes or cresset lightes, one on the toppe of a maste, the other on the stemme or foreshippe." He adds that if the light first appears in the stem or foreship and ascends upwards, it is good luck; if either lights begin at the top-mast, bowsprit or foreship, and descend towards the sea, it is a sign of tempest. In taking therefore the latter position, Ariel had fulfilled the commands of Prospero to raise a storm.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 28
ARI. From the still-vext Bermoothes----
The voyage of Sir George Sommers to the Bermudas in the year 1609 has been already noticed with a view of ascertaining the time in which The tempest was written; but the important particulars of his shipwreck, from which it is exceedingly probable that the outline of a considerable part of this play was borrowed, has been unaccountably overlooked. Several contemporary narratives of the above event were published, which Shakspeare might have consulted; and the conversation of the time might have furnished, or at least suggested, some particulars that are not to be found in any of the printed accounts. In 1610 Silvester Jourdan, an eyewitness, published A discovery of the Barmudas, otherwise called the ISLE OF DIVELS: By Sir Thomas Gates, Sir Geo. Sommers, and Captayne Newport, with divers others. Next followed Strachey's Proceedings of the English colonie in Virginia 1612, 4to, and some other pamphlets of less moment. From these accounts it appears that the Bermudas had never been inhabited, but regarded as under the influence of inchantment; though an addition to a subsequent edition of Jourdan's work gravely states that they are not inchanted; that Sommers's ship had been split between two rocks; that during his stay on the island several conspiracies had taken place; and that a sea-monster in shape like a man had been seen, who had been so called after the monstrous tempests that often happened at Bermuda. In Stowe's Annals we have also an account of Sommers's shipwreck, in which this important passage occurs, "Sir George Sommers sitting at the stearne, seeing the ship desperate of reliefe, looking every minute when the ship would sinke, hee espied land, which according to his and Captaine Newport's opinion, they judged it should be that dreadfull coast of the Bermodes, which iland were of all nations said and supposed to bee inchanted and inhabited with witches and devills, which grew by reason of accustomed monstrous thunder, storm, and tempest, neere unto those ilands, also for that the whole coast is so wonderous dangerous of rockes, that few can approach them, but with unspeakable hazard of ship-wrack." Now if some of these circumstances in the shipwreck of Sir George Sommers be considered, it may possibly turn out that they are "the particular and recent event which determined Shakspeare to call his play The tempest,"[1] instead of "the great tempest of 1612," which has already been supposed to have suggested its name, and which might have happened after its composition. If this be the fact the play was written between 1609 and 1614 when it was so illiberally and invidiously alluded to in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew-fair.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 30
PRO. What is't thou can'st demand?
ARI. ... My liberty.
PRO. Before the time be out? no more.
The spirits or familiars attending on magicians were always impatient of confinement. Thus we are told that the spirit Balkin is wearied if the action wherein he is employed continue longer than an hour; and therefore the magician must be careful to dismiss him. The form of such a dismission may be seen in Scot's Discovery of witchcraft, edit. 1665, folio, p. 228.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 35
PRO. ... My quaint Ariel.
Quaint here means brisk, spruce, dexterous. From the French cointe.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 35
CAL. As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd With raven's feather from unwholsome fen, Drop on you both! a south-west blow on you, And blister you all o'er!
The following passage in Batman uppon Bartholome his booke De proprietatibus rerum, 1582, folio, will not only throw considerable light on these lines, but furnish at the same time grounds for a conjecture that Shakspeare was indebted to it, with a slight alteration, for the name of Caliban's mother Sycorax the witch. "The raven is called corvus of CORAX ... it is said that ravens birdes be fed with deaw of heaven all the time that they have no black feathers by benefite of age." Lib. xii. c. 10. The same author will also account for the choice which is made, in the monster's speech, of the South-west wind. "This Southern wind is hot and moyst.... Southern winds corrupt and destroy; they heat and maketh men fall into sicknesse." Lib. xi. c. 3. It will be seen in the course of these notes that Shakspeare was extremely well acquainted with this work; and as it is likely hereafter to form an article in a Shakspearean library, it may be worth adding that in a private diary written at the time, the original price of the volume appears to have been eight shillings.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 36
PRO. ... urchins Shall, for that vast of night that they may work, All exercise on thee.
Although urchins sometimes means hedge-hogs, it is more probable that in this place they denote fairies or spirits, and that Mr. Malone is right in the explanation which he has given. The present writer's former note must therefore be cancelled, as should, according to his conception, such part of Mr. Steevens's as relates to the hedge-hog. The same term both in the next act, and in the Merry Wives of Windsor, is used in a similar sense.
Mr. Steevens in a note on this word in the last mentioned play has observed that the primitive sense of urchin is a hedge-hog, whence it came, says he, to signify any thing dwarfish. There is however good reason for supposing it of Celtic origin. Erch in Welsh, is terrible, and urzen, a superior intelligence. In the Bas Breton language urcha signifies to howl. "Urthinwad Elgin," says Scot in his Discovery of witchcraft, p. 224, edit. 1665, "was a spirit in the days of King Solomon, came over with Julius Cæsar, and remained many hundred years in Wales, where he got the above name."
The urchin or irchin, in the sense of a hedge-hog, is certainly derived from the Latin ericeus; and whoever is desirous of more information concerning the radical of ericeus may be gratified by consulting Vossius's Etymologicon v. erinaceus. With respect to the application of urchin to any thing dwarfish, for we still say a little urchin, this sense of the word seems to have originated rather from the circumstance of its having once signified a fairy, who is always supposed to be a diminutive being, than from the cause assigned by Mr. Steevens.
It is true that in the ensuing act Caliban speaks of Prospero's spirits as attacking him in the shape of hedge-hogs, for which another reason will be offered presently; and yet the word in question is only one out of many used by Shakspeare, which may be best disposed of by concluding that he designed they should be taken in both or either of their senses.
In a very rare old collection of songs set to music by John Bennett, Edward Piers or Peirce, and Thomas Ravenscroft, composers in the time of Shakspeare, and entitled Hunting, hawking, dauncing, drinking, enamoring, 4to, no date, there are, the fairies dance, the elves dance, and the urchins dance. This is the latter:
"By the moone we sport and play, With the night begins our day; As we friske the dew doth fall, Trip it little urchins all, Lightly as the little bee, Two by two, and three by three, And about goe wee, goe wee."
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 40
CAL. It would control my dam's God Setebos.
In Dr. Farmer's note it should have been added that the passage from Eden's History of travayle was part of Magellan's Voyage; or in Mr. Tollet's, that Magellan was included in Eden's collection.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 42
ARI. Those are pearls, that were his eyes.
We had already had this image in King Richard the third, where Clarence, describing his dream, says:
"... in those holes Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept (As 'twere in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems."
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 44
MIRA ... What is't, a spirit? Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir, It carries a brave form.
The incident of Miranda's surprise at the first sight of Ferdinand, and of her falling in love with him, might have been suggested by some lost translation of the 13th tale in the Cento novelle antiche, and which is in fact the subject of father Philip's geese, so admirably told by Boccaccio and Lafontaine. It seems to have been originally taken from the life of Saint Barlaam in The golden legend.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 54
GON. How lush and lusty the grass looks!
Lush, as Mr. Malone observes, has not yet been rightly interpreted. It is, after all, an old word synonymous with loose. In the Promptuarium parvulorum 1516, 4to, we find "lushe or slacke, laxus." The quotation from Golding, who renders turget by this word, confirms the foregoing definition, and demonstrates that as applied to grass, it means loose or swollen, thereby expressing the state of that vegetable when, the fibres being relaxed, it expands to its fullest growth.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 76
CAL. Sometime like apes, that moe and chatter at me And after bite me; then like hedge-hogs, which Lie tumbling in my barefoot way----
Shakspeare, who seems to have been well acquainted with Bishop Harsnet's Declaration of Popish impostures, has here recollected that part of the work where the author, speaking of the supposed possession of young girls, says, "they make anticke faces, girn, mow and mop like an ape, tumble like a hedge-hogge, &c." Another reason for the introduction of urchins or hedge-hogs into this speech is, that on the first discovery of the Bermudas, which, as has been already stated, gave rise in part to this play, they were supposed to be "haunted as all men know with hogs and hobgoblings." See Dekkar's Strange horserace, &c. sign. f. 3. b. and Mr. Steevens's note in p. 28.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 77
TRIN. A strange fish! Were I in England now (as once I was) and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.
This speech happily ridicules the mania that appears to have always existed among our countrymen for beholding strange sights, however trifling. A contemporary writer and professor of divinity has been no less severe. Speaking of the crocodile, he says, "Of late years there hath been brought into England, the cases or skinnes of such crocodiles to be seene, and much money given for the sight thereof; the policy of strangers laugh at our folly, either that we are too wealthy, or else that we know not how to bestow our money." Batman uppon Bartholome, fo. 359 b.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 82
STE. This mooncalf.
The best account of this fabulous substance may be found in Drayton's poem with that title.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 83
STE. I was the man in the moon.
This is a very old superstition founded, as Mr. Ritson has observed, on Numbers xv. 32. See Ancient songs, p. 34. So far the tradition is still preserved among nurses and schoolboys; but how the culprit came to be imprisoned in the moon, has not yet been accounted for. It should seem that he had not merely gathered sticks on the sabbath, but that he had stolen what he gathered, as appears from the following lines in Chaucer's Testament of Creseid, where the poet, describing the moon, informs us that she had
"On her brest a chorle painted ful even, Bearing a bush of thorns on his backe, Which for his theft might clime no ner the heven."
We are to suppose that he was doomed to perpetual confinement in this planet, and precluded from every possibility of inhabiting the mansions of the just. With the Italians Cain appears to have been the offender, and he is alluded to in a very extraordinary manner by Dante in the twentieth canto of the Inferno, where the moon is described by the periphrasis Caino e le spine. One of the commentators on that poet says, that this alludes to the popular opinion of Cain loaded with the bundle of faggots, but how he procured them we are not informed. The Jews have some Talmudical story that Jacob is in the moon, and they believe that his face is visible. The natives of Ceylon, instead of a man, have placed a hare in the moon; and it is said to have got there in the following manner. Their great Deity Budha when a hermit on earth lost himself one day in a forest. After wandering about in great distress he met a hare, who thus addressed him: "It is in my power to extricate you from your difficulty; take the path on your right hand, and it will lead you out of the forest." "I am greatly obliged to you, Mr. Hare," said Budha, "but I am unfortunately very poor and very hungry, and have nothing to offer you in reward for your kindness." "If you are hungry," returned the hare, "I am again at your service; make a fire, kill me, roast me, and eat me." Budha made the fire, and the hare instantly jumped into it. Budha now exerted his miraculous powers, snatched the animal from the flames, and threw him into the moon, where he has ever since remained. This is from the information of a learned and intelligent French gentleman recently arrived from Ceylon, who adds that the Cingalese would often request of him to permit them to look for the hare through his telescope, and exclaim in raptures, that they saw it. It is remarkable that the Chinese represent the moon by a rabbit pounding rice in a mortar. Their mythological moon Jut-ho is figured by a beautiful young woman with a double sphere behind her head, and a rabbit at her feet. The period of this animal's gestation is thirty days; may it not therefore typify the moon's revolution round the earth?
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 86
CAL. Nor scrape-trenchering, nor wash-dish.
Scraping trenchers was likewise a scholastic employment at college, if we may believe the illiterate parson in the pleasant comedy of Cornelianum dolium, where speaking of his haughty treatment of the poor scholars whom he had distanced in getting possession of a fat living, he says, "Illi inquam, qui ut mihi narrârunt, quadras adipe illitas deglubere sunt coacti, quamdiu inter academicas ulnas manent, dapsili more à me nutriti sunt, saginati imò &c." It was the office too of apprentices. In The life of a satirical puppy called Nim, 1657, 12mo, a citizen describes how long "he bore the water tankard, scrap't trenchers, and made clean shoes."
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 91
FER. This wooden slavery, than I would suffer.
The old copy reads than to suffer, which, however ungrammatical, is justly maintained by Mr. Malone to be Shakspeare's language, and ought therefore to be restored. Mr. Steevens objects on the score of defective metre: but this is not the case; the metre, however rugged, is certainly perfect.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 92
MIRA. I am your wife, if you will marry me; If not, I'll die your maid: to be your fellow You may deny me; but I'll be your servant Whether you will or no.
Mr. Malone has cited a very apposite passage from Catullus, but Shakspeare had probably on this occasion the pathetic old poem of The nut-brown maid in his recollection.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 94
STE. Thy eyes are almost set in thy head.
TRIN. Where should they be set else? he were a brave monster indeed, if they were set in his tail.
The curious reader may nevertheless be gratified with a ludicrous instance of eyes set in the tail, if he can procure a sight of the first cut in Caxton's edition of Æsop's fables. In the mean time he is referred to the genuine chap. xx. of Planudes's life of that fabulist, which is generally omitted in the modern editions.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 97
CAL. What a py'd ninny's this? thou scurvy patch!
Dr. Johnson would transfer this speech to Stephano, on the ground that Caliban could know nothing of the costume of fools. This objection is fairly removed by Mr. Malone; besides which it may be remarked that at the end of the play Caliban specifically calls Trinculo a fool. The modern managers will perhaps be inclined for the future to dress this character in the proper habit.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 100
CAL. Will you troll the catch----
Troll is from the French trôler, to lead, draw, or drag, and this sense particularly applies to a catch, in which one part is sung after the other, one of the singers leading off. The term is sometimes used as Mr. Steevens has explained it. Littelton renders to troll along his words, by volubiliter loqui sive rotundè. Trolling for fish, is drawing the bait along in the water, to imitate the swimming of a real fish.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 104
SEB. ... in Arabia There is one tree, the Phœnix' throne, one phœnix At this hour reigning there.
Bartholomæus De propriet. rerum, speaking of Arabia, says, "there breedeth a birde that is called Phœnix;" and from what has already been said of this book, it was probably one of Shakspeare's authorities on the occasion.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 106
GON. Who would believe that there were mountaineers, Dewlapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men, Whose heads stood in their breasts?
The "dewlapp'd mountaineers" are shown to have been borrowed from Maundeville's travels, and the same author doubtless supplied the other monsters. In the edition printed by Thomas Este, without date, is the following passage: "In another ile dwell men that have no heads, and their eyes are in their shoulders, and their mouth is on their breast." A cut however which occurs in this place is more to the purpose, and might have saved our poet the trouble of consulting the text, for it represents a complete head with eyes, nose, and mouth, placed on the breast and stomach.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 122
CER. Hail many-coloured messenger, that ne'er Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter; Who with thy saffron wings upon my flowers Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers; And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown My bosky acres----
An elegant expansion of these lines in Phaer's Virgil. Æn. end of book 4.
"Dame rainbow down therefore with safron wings of dropping showres. Whose face a thousand sundry hewes against the sunne devoures, From heaven descending came----"
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 131
ARI. ... so I charm'd their ears, That calf-like, they my lowing follow'd through Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns Which enter'd their frail skins.
Dr. Johnson has introduced a passage from Drayton's Nymphidia, as resembling the above description. It is still more like an incident in the well known story of the friar and the boy.
"Jacke toke his pype and began to blowe Then the frere, as I trowe, Began to daunce soone; The breres scratched hym in the face And in many another place That the blode brast out, He daunced among thornes thycke In many places they dyde hym prycke, &c."
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 136
CAL. And all be turn'd to barnacles, or apes.
Mr. Collins's note, it is presumed, will not be thought worth retaining in any future edition. His account of the barnacle is extremely confused and imperfect. He makes Gerarde responsible for an opinion not his own; he substitutes the name of Holinshed for that of Harrison, whose statement is not so ridiculous as Mr. Collins would make it, and who might certainly have seen the feathers of the barnacles hanging out of the shells, as the fish barnacle or Lepas anatifera is undoubtedly furnished with a feathered beard. The real absurdity was the credulity of Gerarde and Harrison in supposing that the barnacle goose was really produced from the shell of the fish. Dr. Bullein not only believed this himself, but bestows the epithets, ignorant and incredulous on those who did not; and in the same breath he maintains that crystal is nothing more than ice. See his Bulwarke of defence, &c. 1562, Folio, fo. 12. Caliban's barnacle is the clakis or tree-goose. Every kind of information on the subject may be found in the Physica curiosa of Gaspar Schot the Jesuit, who with great industry has collected from a multitude of authors whatever they had written concerning it. See lib. ix. c. 22. The works of Pennant and Bewick will supply every deficiency with respect to rational knowledge.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 140
PRO. Ye elves of hills----
The different species of the fairy tribe are called in the Northern languages ælfen, elfen, and alpen, words of remote and uncertain etymology. The Greek ολβιος, felix, is not so plausible an original as the Teutonic helfen, juvare; because many of these supernatural beings were supposed to be of a mischievous nature, but all of them might very properly be invoked to assist mankind. Some of the northern nations regarded them as the souls of men who in this world had given themselves up to corporeal pleasures, and trespasses against human laws. It was conceived therefore that they were doomed to wander for a certain time about the earth, and to be bound in a kind of servitude to mortals. One of their occupations was that of protecting horses in the stable. See Olaus Magnus de gentibus septentrionalibus, lib. iii. cap. xi. It is probable that our fairy system is originally derived from the Fates, Fauns, Nymphs, Dryads, Deæ matres, &c., of the ancients, in like manner as other Pagan superstitions were corruptedly retained after the promulgation of Christianity. The general stock might have been augmented and improved by means of the crusades and other causes of intercourse with the nations of the East.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 141
PRO. ... you demy-puppets, that By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites----
Green sour, if the genuine reading, should be given, as in the first folio, without a hyphen; for such a compound epithet will not elsewhere be easily discovered. Though a real or supposed acidity in this kind of grass will certainly warrant the use of sour, it is not improbable that Shakspeare might have written greensward, i. e. the green surface of the ground, from the Saxon ꞅƿeaꞃꝺ, skin.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 158
PRO. His mother was a witch; and one so strong That could control the moon.
So in a former scene, Gonzalo had said, "You are gentlemen of brave mettle; you would lift the moon out of her sphere, &c." In Adlington's translation of Apuleius 1596, 4to, a book well known to Shakspeare, a marginal note says, "Witches in old time were supposed to be of such power that they could pul downe the moone by their inchauntment." In Fleminge's Virgil's Bucolics is this line, "Charms able are from heaven high to fetch the moone adowne;" and see Scot's Discoverie of witchcraft 1584, 4to, pp. 174, 226, 227, 250.
But all the above authorities are from the ancients, the system of modern witchcraft not affording any similar instances of its power. The Jesuit Delrio is willing to put up with any notice of this superstition among heathen writers, but is extremely indignant to find it mentioned by a Christian; contending that it exclusively belongs to the ancients. Disquis. magic. lib. ii. quæst. xi. The following classical references may not be unacceptable. The earliest on the list will be that in Aristophanes's Clouds, where Strepsiades proposes the hiring of a Thessalian witch to bring down the moon and shut her in a box that he might thus evade paying his debts by the month.
"Quæ sidera excantata voce Thessalâ Lunamque cœlo deripit."
Horat. epod. v.
"Deripere lunam vocibus possum meis."
Horat. epod. xvii.
"Et jam luna negat toties descendere cœlo."
Propert. II. el. 28.
"Cantus et é curru lunam deducere tentat Et faceret, si non ære repuisa sonent."
Tibull. I. el. 8. and see el. 2.
... "Phœbeque serena Non aliter diris verborum obsessa venenis Palluit, et nigris, terrenisque ignibus arsit, Et patitur tantos cantu depressa labores Donec suppositas propior despumet in herbas."[2]
Lucan vi.
"Mater erat Mycale; quam deduxisse canendo Sæpe reluctanti constabat cornua lunæ."
Ovid. Metam. I. xii.
"Illa reluctantem curru deducere lunam Nititur"
Ovid. epist. vi.
"Sic te regentem frena nocturni ætheris Detrahere nunquam Thessali cantus queant."
Senec. Hippolyt. Act. 2.
"Mulieres etiam lunam deducunt."
Petron. Hadrianid. 468.
In the same author the witch Enothea, describing her power, says, "Lunæ descendit imago, carminibus deducta meis." p. 489.
It is said that Menanda wrote a play called the Thessalian, in which were contained the several incantations used by witches to draw the moon from the heavens.
So when the moon was eclipsed, the Romans supposed it was from the influence of magical charms; to counteract which, as well as those already enumerated, they had recourse to the sound of brazen implements of all kinds. Juvenal alludes to this practice when he describes his talkative woman.
"... Jam nemo tubas, nemo æra fatiget, Una laboranti poterit succurrere lunæ."
Sat. vi. 441.
And see particularly Macrob. Saturna. l. v. c. 19. It is not improbable that the rattling of the sistrum by the priests of Isis, or the moon, may be in some way or other connected with this practice, or have even been its origin.
In proportion to the advance of science, it will, no doubt, be found that the Greeks and Romans borrowed more than is commonly imagined from the nations of the East, where the present practice seems to have been universal. Thus the Chinese believe that during eclipses of the sun and moon these celestial bodies are attacked by a great serpent, to drive away which they strike their gongs or brazen drums; the Turks and even some of the American Indians entertain the same opinion. This is perhaps a solution of the common subject on Chinese porcelain, of a dragon pursuing a ball of fire, the symbol of the sun. The Hindoos suppose that a serpent, born from the head of a giant slain by Vishnu, is permitted by that deity to attack the sun. Krishna the Hindoo sun is sometimes represented combating this monster, whence the Greek story of Apollo and the serpent Python may have been derived.
THE FOOL.
The character of Trinculo, who in the dramatis personæ is called a jester, is not very well discriminated in the course of the play itself. As he is only associated with Caliban and the drunken butler, there was no opportunity of exhibiting him in the legitimate character of a professed fool; but at the conclusion of the play it appears that he was in the service of the king of Naples as well as Stephano. On this account therefore, and for the reasons already offered in page 20, he must be regarded as an allowed domestic buffoon, and should be habited on the stage in the usual manner.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Malone's Shaksp. vol. i. part i. p. 379.
[2] The last line is a good comment on the "lunam despumari" of Apuleius speaking of the effects of magical mutterings.
TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 170
PRO. For I will be thy beadsman, Valentine.
A beadsman is one who offers up prayers to heaven for the welfare of another. Many of the ancient petitions to great men were addressed to them by their "poor daily orators and beadsmen." To count one's beads, means, in the Romish church, to offer up as many prayers to God and the Virgin Mary as the priest or some voluntary penance or obligation shall have enjoined; and that no mistake may happen in the number, they are reckoned by means of certain balls strung in a kind of chaplet, and hence in the English language termed beads, from the Saxon beaꝺ, a prayer. There is much difference of opinion among ecclesiastical writers as to the origin of this practice. Some ascribe its invention to Peter the hermit in the eleventh century, others to Venerable Bede, misled probably by the affinity of the name. Monsieur Fleury more rationally conceives it to be not older than the eleventh century; but the probability is, that it was imported into Europe by the crusaders, who found it among the Mahometans. The latter use it wherever their religion has been planted, and there is even reason for supposing that it originated among the natives of Hindostan. These chaplets made of beads are called rosaries when they are used in prayers to the Virgin. The term bead, as applied to the materials of which necklaces, &c. are made, seems therefore to have been borrowed from the chaplet of rosaries in question.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 171
PRO. Over the boots? Nay, give me not the boots.
An allusion, as it is supposed, to the diabolical torture of the boot. Not a great while before this play was written, it had been inflicted in the presence of King James on one Dr. Fian, a supposed wizard, who was charged with raising the storms that the King encountered in his return from Denmark. In the very curious pamphlet which contains the account of this transaction it is stated that "hee was with all convenient speed, by commandement, convaied againe to the torment of the bootes, wherein he continued a long time, and did abide so many blowes in them, that his legges were crushte and beaten togeather as small as might bee, and the bones and flesh so brused, that the bloud and marrowe spouted forth in great abundance, whereby they were made unserviceable for ever." The unfortunate man was afterwards burned. But the above instrument of torture was not, as suggested in one of the notes on this occasion, "used only in Scotland;" it was known in France, and in all probability imported from that country. The following representation of it is copied from Millæus's Praxis criminis persequendi, Paris, 1541, folio. This instrument of torture continued to be used in Scotland so late as the end of the 17th century. See A hind let loose, 1687, 8vo, pp. 186, 198, in the frontispiece to which work there is an indistinct representation of the boot. It is said to have been imported from Russia by a Scotchman. See Maclaurin's Arguments in remarkable cases, 4to, p. xxxvii.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 171
VAL. ... To be In love, where scorn is bought with groans: coy looks, With heart-sore sighs; one fading moment's mirth, With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights: If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain; If lost, why then a grievous labour won; However, but a folly bought with wit, Or else a wit by folly vanquished.
Thus explained by Dr. Johnson. "This love will end in a foolish action, to produce which you are long to spend your wit, or it will end in the loss of your wit, which will be overpowered by the folly of love;" an explanation that is in part very questionable. The poet simply means that love itself is sometimes a foolish object dearly attained in exchange for reason; at others the human judgment subdued by folly. He is speaking of love abstractedly, and not alluding to that of Proteus.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 178
SPEED. I thank you, you have testern'd me.
Mr. Holt White's information from a passage in Latimer's sermons, that the tester was then worth more than six-pence, is so far correct; but as an inference might be drawn from the quotation that it was actually worth ten-pence, it becomes necessary to state that at that time, viz. in 1550, the tester was worth twelve-pence. It is presumed that no accurate account of this piece of coin has been hitherto given; and therefore the following attempt, which has been attended with no small labour, may not be unacceptable.
The term, variously written, teston, tester, testern, and, in Twelfth night, testril, is from the French teston, and so called from the king's head, which first appeared on this coin in the reign of Louis XII. A. D. 1513, though the Italians seem previously to have had a coin of the same denomination. In our own country the name was first applied to the English shilling (originally coined by Henry the Seventh) at the beginning of the reign of Henry the Eighth, probably because it resembled in value the French coin above described; so that shilling and teston were at that time synonymous terms. Although the teston underwent several reductions in value, it appears to have been worth twelve-pence at the beginning of Edward the Sixth's reign, from three several proclamations in his second and third years for calling in, and at length annihilating, this coin, on account of the forgeries that had been committed; Sir William Sharington having falsified it to the amount of 12,000_l._, for which by an express act of parliament he was attainted of treason. In the above proclamations the testons are specifically described as "pieces of xiid commonly called testons;" and in the last of them, the possessors are allowed twelve-pence apiece on bringing them to the mint. Sir Henry Spelman, who has asserted in his glossary that the teston was reduced to nine-pence in the first year of King Edward, must be mistaken. Stowe more correctly informs us that on the 9th of July 1551 (the fifth year of the King's reign), the base shillings of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. were called down to nine-pence, and on the 17th of August following to six-pence. He afterwards, under the year 1559, cites a proclamation for reducing it still lower, viz. to fourpence halfpenny. We must conclude that it again rose in value as the coin became improved; for it appears from Twelfth night, Act II. Scene 3, that it was in Shakspeare's time the same as the six-pence, and it has probably continued ever since as another name for that coin.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 185
JUL. I see you have a month's mind to them.
There is a great deal of quotation given in the notes, but nothing after all that amounts to an explanation of the term. It alludes to the mind or remembrance days of our Popish ancestors. Persons in their wills often directed that in a month, or any other specific time, from the day of their decease, some solemn office for the repose of their souls, as a mass or dirge, should be performed in the parish church, with a suitable charity or benevolence on the occasion. Polydore Vergil has shown that the custom is of Roman origin; and he seems to speak of the month's mind as a ceremony peculiar to the English. De rer. invent. lib. vi. c. 10.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 201
JUL. Keep this remembrance for thy Julia's sake.
[giving a ring.
PRO. Why then we'll make exchange; here, take you this.
JUL. And seal the bargain with a holy kiss.
This was the mode of plighting troth between lovers in private. It was sometimes done in the church with great solemnity, and the service on this occasion is preserved in some of the old rituals. To the latter ceremony the priest alludes in Twelfth night, Act V. Scene 1.
"A contract of eternal bond of love Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands, Attested by the holy close of lips, Strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings, &c."
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 210
SIL. That you are welcome?
PRO. ... No; that you are worthless.
Dr. Johnson has here inserted the particle no, "to fill up the measure;" but the measure is not defective though the harmony is. Mr. Steevens, disputing the suggestion of a brother critic, that worthless might have been designed as a trisyllable, asks whether worthless in the preceding speech of Sylvia is a trisyllable? Certainly not; but he should have remembered the want of uniformity of metre in many words among the poets of this period. Thus in p. 223, lines 8 and 9, the word fire is alternately used as a monosyllable and dissyllable; and where the quantity is complete, as in the present instance, the harmony is often left to shift for itself.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 232
DUKE. Why Phaeton, (for thou art Merop's son)
It is far more likely that Shakspeare found this at the end of the first book of Golding's Ovid's metamorphosis, than in the authorities referred to in Mr. Steevens's note.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 239
LAUN. There; and Saint Nicholas be thy speed.
The true reason why this Saint was chosen to be the patron of Scholars may be gathered from the following story in his life, composed in French verse by Maitre Wace, chaplain to Henry the Second, remaining in manuscript but never printed. It appears from a passage in Ordericus Vitalis, p. 598, that the metrical legends of Saints were sung by the Norman minstrels to the common people.
"Treis clers aloent a escole, Nen frai mie longe parole; Lor ostes par nuit les oscieit, Les cors musca, la ...[3]prenoit Saint Nicolas par Deu le sout, Sempris fut la si cum Deu plut, Les clers al oste demanda, Nes peut muscier einz lui mustra. Seint Nicolas par sa priere Les ames mist el cors ariere. Por ceo qe as clers fist tiel honor Font li clerc feste a icel jor."
That is, "Three scholars were on their way to school, (I shall not make a long story of it,) their host murdered them in the night, and hid their bodies; their ... he reserved. Saint Nicholas was informed of it by God Almighty, and according to his pleasure went to the place. He demanded the scholars of the host, who was not able to conceal them, and therefore showed them to him. Saint Nicholas, by his prayers, restored the souls to their bodies. Because he conferred such honour on scholars, they at this day celebrate a festival."
It is remarkable, that although the above story explains the common representation of the Saint, with three children in a tub, it is not to be found in that grand repertory of Monkish lies, The Golden Legend. It occurs, however, in an Italian life of Saint Nicholas, printed in 1645, whence it is extracted into the Gentleman's Magazine for 1777, p. 158. There is a note by Mr. Whalley on Saint Nicholas's clerks, as applied to highwaymen, in King Henry the Fourth, part the first, vol. viii. p. 418, which, though erroneously conceived, would have been more properly introduced on the present occasion. Standing where it does, the worthy author is made responsible for having converted the parish clerks of London into a nest of thieves, which he certainly never intended. Those respectable persons, finding that scholars, more usually termed clerks, had placed themselves under the patronage of Saint Nicholas, conceived that clerks of any kind might have the same right, and accordingly took this saint as their patron; much in the same way as the wool-combers did Saint Blaise, who was martyred with an instrument resembling a curry-comb, the nail-makers Saint Clou, and the booksellers Saint John Port-Latin.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 246
PRO. Especially against his very friend.
Mr. Steevens explains very to be immediate. Is it not rather true, verus? Thus Massinger calls one of his plays A very woman. See likewise the beginning of the Nicene creed.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 257
HOST. ... the musick likes you not.
i. e. pleases, in which sense it is used by Chaucer. This is the genuine Saxon meaning of the word, however it might have been corrupted in early times from its Latin original licet. In the next speech Julietta plays upon the word.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 258
SIL. What is your will?
PRO. That I may compass yours.
SIL. You have your wish; my will is even this;--
On which Dr. Johnson observes, "The word will is here ambiguous. He wishes to gain her will; she tells him, if he wants her will he has it." The learned critic seems to have mistaken the sense of the word compass, when he says it means to gain. If it did, his remark would be just. But to compass in this place signifies, to perform, accomplish, take measures for doing a thing. Thus in Twelfth night, Act I. Scene 2, "that were hard to compass;" and in 1 Hen. VI. Act V. Scene 5, "You judge it impossible to compass wonders." Accordingly Sylvia proceeds to instruct Proteus how he may perform her will. Wish and will are here used, as in many other places, though inaccurately, as synonymous. If however Shakspeare really designed to make Proteus say that he was desirous of gaining Sylvia's good will, she must be supposed, in her reply, purposely to mistake his meaning.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 260
SIL. But since your falshood shall become you well To worship shadows, and adore false shapes.
Dr. Johnson objects to the sense of this passage, and the other commentators offer conjectural interpretations; yet surely nothing is more clear than the sense, and even the grammar may be defended. It is simply, "since your falsehood shall adapt or render you fit to worship shadows." Become here answers to the Latin convenire, and is used according to its genuine Saxon meaning.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 260
HOST. By my HALLIDOM, I was fast asleep.
This Mr. Ritson explains, by my holy doom, or sentence at the resurrection, from the Saxon halɩᵹꝺom; but the word does not appear to have had such a meaning. It rather signifies holiness or honesty. It likewise denoted a sacrament, a sanctuary, relics of saints, or anything holy. It seems in later times to have been corrupted into holidame, as if it expressed the holy virgin. Thus we have so help me God and hollidame. See Bullein's Book of the use of sicke men, 1579, in folio, fo. 2 b.
Act IV, Scene 4 — Page 270
JUL. But since she did neglect her looking-glass, And threw her sun-expelling mask away.
It was the fashion at this time for the ladies to wear masks, which are thus described by the puritanical Stubs in his Anatomie of abuses, 1595, 4to, p. 59. "When they use to ride abroad they have masks and visors made of velvet wherewith they cover all their faces, having holes made in them against their eyes, whereout they looke. So that if a man that knew not their guise before, should chaunce to meet one of them, he would think he met a monster or a Devil, for face he can shew (see) none, but two broad holes against their eyes, with glasses in them." More will be said on the subject of this mode of disguising the female face in a remark on The merry wives of Windsor, Act IV. Scene 2.
Act IV, Scene 4 — Page 271
JUL. ... 'twas Ariadne, passioning For Theseus' perjury and unjust flight.
A note is here inserted, "not" says its learned and classical author, "on the business of Shakspeare," but to introduce a conjecture relating to one of Guido's paintings commonly supposed to represent Ariadne as deserted by Theseus and courted by Bacchus, but which he conceives to have been intended for Bacchus's desertion of this lady for an Indian captive. An attentive examination of the print from Guido's picture will, it is presumed, incline any one to hesitate much before he shall decide on having discerned any traces of an Indian princess; and this supposed character may rather turn out to be Venus introducing the amorous Deity, attended by his followers, to Ariadne, forlorn and abandoned by Theseus in the isle of Chios, according to Ovid, or Naxos according to Lactantius. Nor is the female who accompanies Bacchus "hanging on his arm," as stated by the critic. It is impossible likewise to perceive in this figure the modest looks or demeanour of a female captive, or in the supposed Bacchus the character of a lover, insulting, according to Ovid's description, his former mistress by displaying the beauties of another. Boccaccio has very comically accounted for Ariadne's desertion by Theseus, and her subsequent transfer to Bacchus. He supposes the lady to have been too fond of the juice of the grape, and that on her continuing to indulge this propensity, she was therefore called the wife of Bacchus. See Geneal. deor. lib. xi. c. 29.
Act IV, Scene 4 — Page 274
JUL. Her eyes are grey as glass.
This was in old times the favourite colour of the eyes in both sexes:
"His eyen are gray as any glasse."
Romance of Sir Isenbras.
"Her eyen gray as glas."
Romance of Libeaus desconus.
"Les iex vairs et rians com un faucon."
Roman de Guerin de Montglaive. MS.
And to come nearer to Shakspeare's time:--In the interlude of Marie Magdalene, a song in praise of her says, "your eyes as gray as glasse and right amiable." The French term ver or vair has induced some of their antiquaries to suppose that it meant green; but it has been very satisfactorily shown to signify in general the colour still called by heralds vair. It is certain however that the French romances and other authorities allude occasionally to green eyes.
Act IV, Scene 4 — Page 274
JUL. My substance should be statue in thy stead.
In confirmation of Mr. M. Mason's note, it may be observed that in the comedy of Cornelianum dolium, Act I. Scene 5, statua is twice used for a picture. They were synonymous terms, and sometimes a statue was called a picture. Thus Stowe, speaking of Elizabeth's funeral, says that when the people beheld "her statue or picture lying upon the coffin" there was a general sighing, &c. Annals, p. 815, edit. 1631. In the glossary to Speght's Chaucer, 1598, statue is explained picture; and in one of the inventories of King Henry the Eighth's furniture at Greenwich, several pictures of earth are mentioned. These were busts in terra cotta like those still remaining in Wolsey's palace at Hampton Court.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 276
EGL. That Silvia at Patrick's cell should meet me.
The old copy reads "at friar Patrick's cell," which Mr. Steevens calls a redundance, justifying his alteration by a passage in the next scene, where "At Patrick's cell" occurs. But the old reading is right, and should not have been disturbed, there being no redundance when it is judiciously read. Silvia is often used as a dissyllable, and must here be read elliptically. Besides, we had "friar Patrick's cell" before in p. 263.
Act V, Scene 4 — Page 280
VAL. And to the nightingale's complaining notes Tune my distresses, and record my woes.
It has been already observed that this term refers to the singing of birds. It should have been added that it was formed from the recorder, a sort of flute by which they were taught to sing.
Act V, Scene 4 — Page 286
JUL. How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root?
The speech had been begun with a metaphor from archery, and is here continued in the same strain. To cleave the pin, was to break the nail which attached the mark to the butt.
Act V, Scene 4 — Page 290
Mr. Ritson's reply to Mr. Tyrwhitt.
However ingenious and even just the system in this reply may be, it is evident that Shakspeare was not governed by it; but, on the contrary, that he has taken the liberties pointed out by Mr. Tyrwhitt. The proof is, 1. From the circumstance that none of Shakspeare's contemporaries have used similar words in such a protracted form. 2. Because he has used other words in the same manner which are not reducible to Mr. Ritson's system; such as country, assembly, &c. He never troubled himself about establishing a canon of which he was, in all likelihood, altogether ignorant; but occasionally took such liberties as his verses required. This is clearly manifested by his various use, in many instances, of the selfsame words.
THE CLOWNS.
The character of Speed is that of a shrewd witty servant. Launce is something different, exhibiting a mixture of archness and rustic simplicity. There is no allusion to dress, nor any other circumstance, that marks either of them as the domestic fool or jester.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] A word defaced in the manuscript.
MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 309
SLEN. She has brown hair, and speaks small like a woman.
It may be doubted whether the real humour of this speech has been pointed out. Does it not consist in Slender's characterizing Ann Page by a property belonging to himself, and which renders him ridiculous? The audience would naturally smile at hearing him deliver the speech in an effeminate tone of voice.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 314
FAL. But not kiss'd your keeper's daughter.
This has the appearance of a fragment of some old ballad.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 317
PIST. He hears with ears.
EVA. The tevil and his tarn! what phrase is this, he hears with ear? Why it is affectations.
If, according to Mr. Henderson, Sir Hugh be justified in his censure of this phrase as a pleonasm, we must also censure the parson in his turn for having forgot that the common prayer would have furnished an example of Pistol's language. See also Jerem. xxvi. 11.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 317
SLEN. Seven groats in mill-sixpences, and two Edward shovel-boards that cost me two shillings and twopence apiece.
These sixpences were coined in 1561, and are the first milled money used in this kingdom. The invention is due to the French, and was introduced here by a native of France, who misapplied his talents by private coining, and suffered the penalty of the law. That seven groats could be lost in sixpences must be placed to the account of Master Slender's simplicity of wit.
With respect to the Edward shovel-boards:--Mr. Malone's inference from the reading in the old quarto that "Slender means the broad shilling of one of our kings," is sufficiently maintained by the other notes; but that it was the shilling of Edward the Sixth there is no doubt, no other Edward having coined such a piece of money. It still remains to explain how these shillings could have cost Master Slender two and twopence apiece; because, if Dr. Farmer's quotation from Folkes had gone far enough, it would have appeared that the thick shillings mentioned by that writer were pattern-pieces, even originally of great rarity, and never in circulation. Folkes could have seen very few of such pieces, and it would be extremely difficult at present to find a single one; whereas the common shillings of Edward the Sixth remain in great numbers. We must suppose then that the shillings purchased of the miller had been hoarded by him, and were in high preservation, and heavier than those which had been worn in circulation. These would consequently be of greater importance to a nice player at the game of shovel-board, and induce him, especially if an opulent man, to procure them at a price far beyond their original value.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 321
BARD. ... And so conclusions pass'd the careires.
We are told that this is a technical term in the manege; but no explanation is given. It was the same as running a career, or galloping a horse violently backwards and forwards, stopping him suddenly at the end of the career; "which career the more seldom it be used and with the lesse fury, the better mouth shall your horse have," says Master Blundeville in his Arte of ryding, b. l. 4to, where there is a whole chapter on the subject, as well as in "The art of riding," translated by Thomas Bedingfield from the Italian of Claudio Corte, 1584, 4to.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 325
SLEN. I hope upon familiarity will grow more contempt.
This is no more than a perversion of the common proverb, Familiarity breeds contempt. Slender's school learning had furnished him on the occasion. The phrase is still used in copy-books for children.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 327
SLEN. I bruis'd my shin the other day with playing at sword and dagger with a master of fence.
"Master of defence, on the present occasion, does not simply mean a professor of the art of fencing, but a person who had taken his master's degree in it," says Mr. Steevens, whose readers are under great obligations to him for pointing out one of the greatest curiosities extant on the ancient science of defence, in support of his position. Yet it may be doubted whether the expression master of defence does not very often, and even on the present occasion, signify merely a professor of the art. Numerous authorities might be adduced on this side of the question, but perhaps a single one that is apposite may suffice. In Eden's History of travayle, 1577, 4to, speaking of Calecut in the East Indies, he says, "they have in the citie certayne maisters of fence that teach them how to use the swoord, &c." The original Latin from which Eden translates has lanista. Now it is not to be presumed that the last-mentioned maisters of fence had taken any degree. It must be owned that the evidence of the manuscript cited by Mr. Steevens goes very far to show that none were allowed to practise as professors who had not taken a degree in some fencing school; an honour once conferred by king Edward the Sixth, and generally granted, though not till after many years' experience, by one who was himself a master. Yet a person who had only a provost's degree might be allowed to teach, and he would be termed a master of defence.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 330
HOST. What says my bully-rook?
Messrs. Steevens and Whalley maintain that the above term (a cant one) derives its origin from the rook in the game of chess; but it is very improbable that that noble game, never the amusement of gamblers, should have been ransacked on this occasion. It means a hectoring, cheating sharper, as appears from A new dictionary of the terms of the canting crew, no date, 12mo, and from the lines prefixed to The compleat gamester, 1680, 12mo, in both which places it is spelt bully-rock. Nor is Mr. Whalley correct in stating that rock and not rook is the true name of the chess piece, if he mean that it is equivalent to the Latin rupes.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 333
PIST. O base Gongarian wight!
It is already shown that this is the same as Hungarian. It simply means a gipsy. The parts of Europe in which it is supposed that the gipsies originally appeared were Hungary and Bohemia. In Act IV. Scene 5, of this play, the host in the like cant language calls Simple a Bohemian Tartar; and Munster in his Cosmography informs us that the Germans denominated the gipsies Tartars.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 333
FAL. I am glad I am so acquit of this tinder box.
There is a great deal of humour in this appellation. Falstaff alludes to Pistol's rubicund nose, which, like the above utensil, carried fire in it.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 333
PIST. Young ravens must have food.
Either Shakspeare or the adage, if it be one, has borrowed from scripture. See Psalm cxlvii. 9. or Job xxxviii. 41.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 337. Note 4
To the instances adduced by Mr. Steevens in this note, of particular phrases in old theatrical characters, may be added that of Murley in Sir John Oldcastle, who is continually prefacing his speeches with "fye paltry, paltry, in and out, to and fro upon occasion." This practice has been revived in our modern comedies.
Act I, Scene 4 — Page 347
CAIUS. You are John Rugby, and you are Jack Rugby: come take-a your rapier, and come after my heel to de court.
It was the custom, in Shakspeare's time, for physicians to be attended by their servants when visiting their patients. This appears from the second part of Stubs's Anatomie of abuses, sign. H. 4 b., where, speaking of physicians, he says, "For now they ruffle it out in silckes and velvets, with their men attending upon them, whereas many a poor man (God wot) smarteth for it." Servants also carried their masters' rapiers: "Yf a man can place a dysh, fyll a boule and carrie his maister's rapier, what more is or can be required at his handes?"--Markham's Health to the gentlemanly profession of a serving-man, sign. F. 3.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 357
MRS. FORD. ... to the tune of Green sleeves.
Another ballad with this title, and which has an equally good claim to be the one alluded to as those already quoted, may be seen in Mr. Ellis's elegant Specimens of the early English poets, vol. iii. p. 327, edit. 1801.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 358
MRS. PAGE. ... for sure, unless he knew some strain in me that I know not myself----
The note seem to have wrested from this word its plain and obvious meaning of turn, humour, tendency, in which it is often used by Shakspeare.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 359
PIST. Hope is a curtail dog in some affairs.
A curtail or curtal dog is placed by Howel in the vocabulary at the end of his Dictionary of four languages among hunting-dogs, and is defined to be a dog without a tail good for any service. Yet we are not to suppose that the word uniformly signifies an animal with its tail cut off. It is in fact derived from tailler court, and applied to any animals that are defective, man not excepted. Thus in Greene's Quip for an upstart courtier, a collier is made to say, "I am made a curtall: for the pillory hath eaten off both my eares," sign. E. 2. Nashe, in his Prayse of the red herring, speaks of the "curtaild skinclipping pagans." fo. 20. Dr. Stukeley, in a manuscript note in his copy of Robin Hood's garland, states that "the curtal fryer of Fountain's abby is Cordelier, from the cord or rope which they wore round their wast, to whip themselves with. They were of the Franciscan order." But this is a mistake; and the opinion of Staveley much more probable, who, in chap. xxv. of his Romish horseleech, says, that in some countries where the Franciscan friars, conformably to the injunction of their founder, wore short habits, the order was presently contemned and derided, and men called them curtailed friars.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 360
FORD. Love my wife?
PIST. With liver burning hot.
It is here observed by Mr. Steevens, and elsewhere by Dr. Johnson, that the liver was anciently supposed to be the inspirer of amorous passions, and the seat of love. In conformity with this opinion, we are told in the English translation of Bartholomæus De proprietatibus rerum, lib. v. cap. 39, that "the lyver is the place of voluptuousnesse and lyking of the flesh;" and again, "the liver is a member, hot, &c." There is some reason for thinking that the idea was borrowed from the Arabian physicians, or at least adopted by them; for in the Turkish tales, an amorous tailor is made to address his wife by the titles of "thou corner of my liver, and soul of my life!" and in another place the king of Syria, who had sustained a temporary privation of his mistress, is said to have had "his liver, which had been burnt up by the loss of her, cooled and refreshed at the sight of her." In Twelfth night, Fabian, speaking of Olivia's supposed letter to Malvolio, says, "This wins him, liver and all."
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 367, 368
PAGE. I have heard the Frenchman hath good skill in his rapier.
SHAL. In these times you stand on distance, your passes stoccadoes and I know not what. I have seen the time with my long sword I would have made you four tall fellows skip like rats.
The notes on these speeches are at variance on a supposed anachronism committed by Shakspeare in introducing the rapier in the time of Henry the Fourth. The same weapon is likewise found in Richard II. Act IV. Scene 1, where the controversy is renewed; and therefore it will be proper in considering this question to state the evidence and arguments in both places. It is maintained on one side that the rapier was not used in England before the reign of Elizabeth; and in support of this opinion a passage from Carleton's Thankful remembrance of God's mercy is offered; which, being only a second-hand and inaccurate statement from Darcie's Annals of Elizabeth, is not deserving of further notice. Darcie himself informs us that one Rowland York (who appears to have betrayed Deventer to the Spaniards in 1587) was the first that brought into England "that wicked and pernicious fashion to fight in the fields in duels with a rapier called a tucke onely for the thrust, &c." On this passage it may be remarked, that the rapier is not generally spoken of, but only a particular sort, the tucke for the thrust. On the same side Stowe is next cited, who mentions that the mode of fighting with the sword and buckler was frequent with all men till that of the rapier and dagger took place, when suddenly the general quarrel of fighting abated, which began about the 20th of Elizabeth (1578). Now here the date seems rather applicable to the cessation of the very popular combats with sword and buckler, and the substitution only, and, as it will presently appear, the revival of the rapier and dagger, as a more limited manner of fighting, from its superior danger. There is another passage in Stowe, p. 869, which not being already cited, and throwing some light on the nature of the rapier, may deserve notice. The historian relates that "Shortly after (referring to the 12th or 13th year of Elizabeth) began long tucks and long rapiers, and he was held the greatest gallant that had the deepest ruffe and longest rapier: the offence to the eye of the one, and the hurt unto the life of the subject that came by the other, caused her majesty to make proclamation against them both, and to place selected grave citizens at every gate to cut the ruffes, and breake the rapiers points of all passengers that exceeded a yeard in length of their rapiers, and a nayle of a yeard in depth of their ruffes." But this is likewise no evidence in favour of the general introduction of the rapier in the reign of Elizabeth, as Stowe merely refers to the long foining or thrusting rapier. The last quotation on this side of the question is from Bulleine's Dialogue between soarnesse and chirurgi, 1579, where the long foining rapier is also mentioned as "a new kind of instrument to let blood withall."
On the opposite side, Mr. Ritson produces a quotation from Nashe's Life of Jacke Wilton, who lived in the reign of Henry the Eighth, to show that rapiers were used at that period. This sort of evidence might appear, on a first view, inadmissible, on the ground that Nashe had committed an error, very common with Shakspeare, in ascribing a custom of his own time to a preceding one, if it were not supported by the manuscript cited by Mr. Steevens in vol. iii. p. 327, in which, but not in the quotation from it, it appears that the rapier actually was in use in the time of Henry the Eighth; and therefore it is impossible to decide that this weapon, which, with its name, we received from the French, might not have been known as early as the reign of Henry the Fourth, or even of Richard the Second. Shallow's ridicule of passes and stoccadoes seems more objectionable, and may possibly deserve the appellation of anachronism. It is not a little remarkable that the rapier was an article of exportation from this country in Cromwell's time. See Oliverian acts, A.D. 1657.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 369
FORD. Though Page be a secure fool, and stands so firmly on his wife's frailty, yet I cannot put off my opinion so easily: she was in his company, &c.
This speech is surely not so obscure as the notes seem to consider it. Ford says that Page makes a firm stand with respect to, or on the question of, his wife's frailty. What follows better deserves explanation, because the grammatical construction of the last sentence is, that Page's wife was in Falstaff's company; whereas Ford means to say, "I cannot put off my opinion, i. e. of my own wife, so easily; as she was in Falstaff's company," &c. The emphasis should be laid on the words his and my, and then the whole will be far more intelligible.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 375
FAL. Your cat-a-mountain looks.
A term borrowed from the Spaniards, who call the wild cat gato-montes.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 375
FAL. Your red lattice phrases.
Mr. Steevens, speaking of this external mark of an alehouse, says, "Hence the present chequers." But in reality the lattice is the younger of the two, as the reference in the note to the Pompeii plate in Archæologia demonstrates. Although the Romans were not acquainted with the game of chess, they certainly were with such a one as required a board with squares; and in all probability this sign of a house of entertainment where table games were played, has been handed down to us from the ancients. The resemblance of lattice work, or laths crossing each other, to a chess or backgammon board, might induce some ignorant painters to exhibit the former; but the chequers have once more reassumed their station. Nor was red always the colour; for, in the cant language of jolly fellows, a red or blue lattice was termed a free school for all comers. See Heywood's Philocothonista, 1635, 4to.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 376
QUICK. There is one mistress Ford, sir:--I pray come a little nearer this ways:--I myself dwell with master Doctor Caius.
FAL. Well, on: mistress Ford, you say----
Is it not more natural that Falstaff should, in this first instance, repeat the dame's own words, and say, "Well, one mistress Ford, you say."
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 389
FORD. ... an Irishman with my aqua vitæ bottle----
Irish aqua vitæ was certainly usquebaugh, and not brandy, as Mr. Malone has observed; but Ford is here speaking of English aqua vitæ, which was very different from the other so called from the Irish words uisge, aqua, and beatha, vita. That the curious reader may judge for himself, and at the same time be furnished with the means of indulging any wish that he may have for tasting the respective sorts in their genuine form, the following receipts for making them are subjoined:--The first is from a manuscript monkish common-place book, written about the reign of Henry the Sixth. "For to make water of lyff, that ys clepyd aqua vitæ. Take and fylle thy violle fulle of lyes of stronge vine, and put therto these powdrys. First powder of canel, powder of clowes, powdyr of gyngevir, powdyr of notemugys, powder of galyngale and powdyr of quibibis, poudyr of greyn de parys, poudyr of longe pepyr, powdyr of blacke pepir, carewey, cirmowitteyn, comyn, fenyl, smallache, persile, sawge, myntys, rewe, calamente, origaun, one ounce or more or lesse as ye lykyth; stampe hem a lytill for it will be bettyr, and put hem to these powdrys, than set thy glas on the fyre set on the hovel and kepe it wel that the eyre come not owte and set ther undyr a viole and kepe the watyr." The next is from Cogan's Haven of health, 1612, 4to, chap. 222. "To make aqua vitæ. Take of strong ale, or strong wine, or the lees of strong wine and ale together, a gallon or two as you please, and take half a pound or more of good liquorice, and as much annise seedes; scrape off the bark from the liquorice, and cut it into thin slices, and punne the annise grosse, and steepe altogether close covered twelve houres, then distill it with a limbecke or serpentine. And of every gallon of the liquor you may draw a quart of reasonable good aqua vitæ, that is of two galons two quarts. But see that your fire be temperate, and that the heade of your limbecke bee kept colde continually with fresh water, and that the bottome of your limbecke bee fast luted with rye dough, that no ayre issue out. The best ale to make aqua vitæ of, is to be made of wheate malte, and the next of cleane barley malte, and the best wine for that purpose is sacke." The last is a receipt for making "Usquebath, or Irish aqua vitæ. To every gallon of good aqua composita, put two ounces of chosen liquorice bruised and cut into small peeces, but first cleansed from all his filth, and two ounces of annis seedes that are cleane and bruised; let them macerate five or six days in a wodden vessell, stopping the same close, and then draw off as much as will runne cleere, dissolving in that cleere aqua vitæ five or sixe spoonefulls of the best malassoes you can get: Spanish cute if you can get it, is thought better than malassoes: then put this into another vessell, and after three or foure dayes (the more the better) when the liquor hath fined itselfe, you maie use the same: some adde dates and raisins of the sun to this receipt; those grounds which remaine you maie redistill and make more aqua composita of them, and of that aqua composita you maie make more usquebath."--Plat's Delightes for ladies, 1611, 24to. It is to be observed, that aqua composita is wine of any kind distilled with spices and sweet herbs. Brandy, or burnt wine, seems first to occur in Skinner's Etymologicon, 1671, under the name of Brandewin, from the Dutch or German, and soon after in its present form; yet aqua vitæ was continued a long while afterwards.
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 395
HOST. Cry'd game, said I well?
The evidence, and indeed the sense, in favour of the phrase to cry aim, preponderates so greatly, that one cannot hesitate in discarding the nonsensical expression of cry'd game, which derives not the least support from any of Mr. Steevens's quotations. The probability is very great that there was an error of the press, and that the words should have been printed according to the orthography of the time, "Cry'd I ayme, said I well?" A g might easily have crept in instead of a y.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 398
SIM. Marry, sir, the city-ward----
"The old editions read pittie-ward, the modern editors pitty-wary," says Mr. Steevens, who in this edition has abandoned the best part of a former note where he had proposed to read petty-ward, which is the right word, and of the same import as the old one. That such a word formerly existed is demonstrable from its still remaining as a proper name, and near Wimbledon is a wood so called, probably from the owner. Mr. Steevens mistakes in supposing ward to mean towards in this instance, where it is put for the division of a city; nor does his quotation from William of Worcester assist him. The via de Petty and the Pyttey gate might be named after the hundred of Pyttey in Somersetshire. In Lyne's Map of Cambridge, 1574, we find the petticurie.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 399
EVANS. I will knog his urinals about his knave's costard----
This utensil was the usual concomitant of physicians in former times, as appears from most of the frontispieces to old medical books and other ancient prints.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 410
HOST. ... he smells April and May.
The same as if he had said he smells of youth and courtship, symbolized by these months, the former of which in old calendars is described in these lines:
"The next vi yere maketh foure and twenty, And fygured is to joly Apryll; That tyme of pleasures man hath moost plenty Fresshe and lovyng his lustes to fulfyll----"
and the latter in the following:
"As in the month of Maye all thyng is in myght, So at xxx yeres man is in chyef lykyng; Pleasaunt and lusty, to every mannes syght, In beaute and strength to women pleasyng."
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 412
HOST. I will to my honest knight Falstaff, and drink canary with him.
FORD. I think I shall drink-in pipe-wine first with him; I'll make him dance.
It may be doubted whether the exact meaning of this cluster of puns has already been given. Mr. Tyrwhitt says he cannot understand the phrase to drink in pipe-wine, and suggests that Shakspeare might have written horn-pipe wine. Now Ford terms canary pipe-wine, both because the canary dance is performed to a tabor and pipe, and because the canary bird is said to pipe his tunes. Ford is speaking of Falstaff, not of Page, as Mr. Tyrwhitt's note implies when it refers to horns. He says he will make him pipe and dance too.
Act III, Scene 3 — Page 414
MRS. FORD. How now, my eyas-musket?
There was no reason for disturbing the etymology of this word given by Dr. Warburton, by substituting that of Dame Juliana Bernes, which for ingenuity and veracity may be well classed with many of those in Isidore of Seville, or The golden legend. Take an example from the latter. "Felix is sayd of fero fers, that is to saye, to bere, and of this word lis, litis, whiche is as moche to say as stryfe, for he bare stryfe for the fayth of our lorde." Turberville tells us that "the first name and terme that they bestowe on a falcon is an eyesse, and this name doth laste as long as she is in the eyrie and for that she is taken from the eyrie." This is almost as bad as the lady abbess's account. Eyrie is simply the nest or eggery, and has no connexion with the name of the bird. Eyas or nias, is a term borrowed from the French niais, which means any young bird in the nest, avis in nido. It is the first of five several names by which a falcon is called during its first year. The best account of this bird is in La fauconnerie de Charles d'Arcussa de Capre, seigneur d'Esparron, 1643, 4to. A musket is a sparrow-hawk, and is derived from the French mouchet, and the latter probably from musca, on account of its diminutive form. The humour therefore lies in comparing the page to a young male sparrow-hawk, an emblem of his tender years and activity.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 448
MRS. FORD. ... and her muffler too.
It would oppress the reader by citing authorities to prove that the muffler was a contrivance of various kinds to conceal a part of the face, and that even a mask was occasionally so denominated. From an examination of several ancient prints and paintings, it appears that when the muffler was made of linen, it only covered the lower part of the face; such it was in the present instance, for the old woman of Brentford would not want to conceal her eyes. It is otherwise in King Henry V. Act III. Scene 1, where Fortune's blindness is described, and there a linen bandage would be meant, but perhaps not very correctly called a muffler. The term is connected with the old French musser or muçer, to hide, or with amuseler, to cover the museau or mufle, a word which has been indiscriminately used for the mouth, nose, and even the whole of the face; hence our muzzle. It was enacted by a Scotish statute in 1457, that "na woman cum to kirk, nor mercat, with her face mussaled or covered that scho may not be kend." Notwithstanding this interposition of the legislature, says Mr. Warton, the ladies of Scotland continued muzzled during three reigns; and he cites Sir David Lyndsay's poem In contemptioun of syde taillis, in which the author advises the king to issue a proclamation that the women should show their faces as they did in France. Hist. of Eng. poetry, ii. 324.
The annexed cuts exhibit different sorts of mufflers. The first and third figures are copied from Jost Amman's Theatrum mulierum, Francof. 1586, 4to; the second, from Speed's Map of England, is the costume of an English countrywoman in the reign of James I.; the fourth is from an old German print; and the others from Weigel's Habitus præcipuorum populorum, Nuremb. 1577, folio; a work which, for the beauty of the wood-cuts, has never been surpassed.
In the reign of Charles I. the ladies wore masks which covered the eye-brows and nose, holes being left for the eyes. Sometimes, but not always, the mouth was covered, and the chin guarded with a sort of muffler then called a chin-cloth; these were chiefly used to keep off the sun. See Hollar's print of Winter. The velvet masks probably came from France, as they are mentioned in the Book of values of merchandize imported, under the administration of Oliver Cromwell. There was another sort called visard masks, that covered all the face, having holes only for the eyes, a case for the nose, and a slit for the mouth. They were easily disengaged, being held in the teeth by means of a round bead fastened in the inside. These masks were usually made of leather, covered with black velvet. Randle Holme, from whose Academy of armory, book iii. c. 5, their description is extracted, adds, that the devil invented them, and that none about court except w----s, bawds, and the devil's imps, used them, being ashamed to show their faces.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 450
PAGE. Why this passes!----
The word had been already explained by Warburton in p. 329. Page, astonished at Ford's conduct, says it exceeds every thing. Such is the sense in the New Testament, "the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge," Ephes. iii. 19. The French often use passer in the same manner; and in Hamlet we have this expression, "I have that within which passeth show."
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 452
FORD. ... his wife's leman.
Mr. Steevens derives it from the Dutch, a language whence we have borrowed few, if any words. The term is of Saxon origin, and leveman can be traced to an Anglo-Norman period. This was afterwards contracted into leman. The etymology is perhaps from leoꝼe, amabilis, and man, homo. The latter in Saxon denoted both man and woman; so that leman was formerly applied to both sexes as a person beloved.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 455
MRS. PAGE. ... in the way of waste----
This expression is from the same law manufactory referred to by Mr. Ritson in the preceding note. The incident in the present scene, of Falstaff's threshing in the habit of a woman, might have been suggested by the story of the beaten and contented cuckold in Boccaccio's Decameron, day 7. ver. 7.
Act IV, Scene 5 — Page 466
SIMP. Pray you, sir, was't not the wise woman of Brentford?
Mr. Steevens cites Judges v. 29, on this occasion: but the wise ladies there were of a very different character from the old woman of Brentford, even according to the Hebrew text: see the Vulgate and Septuagint versions, where the expression is still more remote. The subject of these wise women will be resumed in a note on Twelfth night, Act III. Scene 4.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 475
FAL. Hold up your head, and mince.
The word is properly explained by Mr. Steevens. Thus in Isaiah iii. 16, "walking and mincing as they go." Wicliffe has "with their feet in curious goyng;" and Tindale, "tryppyng so nicely with their feet." To mince is likewise to walk in a stately, or, as Littelton expresses it, Junonian step.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 477
SLEN. I come to her in white, and cry mum, she cries, budget.
The word mumbudget, here divided, is used by Nashe in his Have with you to Saffron Walden, where, speaking of Gabriel Harvey, he says, "no villaine, no atheist, no murderer, but hee hath likened me too, for no other reason in the earth, but because I would not let him go beyond me, or be won to put my finger in my mouth and crie mumbudget when he had baffuld mee in print throughout England." To play mumbudget, is rendered demeurer court, ne sonner mot, in Sherwood's English and French dictionary, 1632, folio. Mumchance is silence; and a mummery was a silent masquerade. Mumbudget may be silence in a budget, a something closed or stopped up, Fr. bouché.
Act V, Scene 4 — Page 479
MRS. PAGE.... hard by Herne's oak----
The tree in Windsor forest referred to in Mr. Steevens's note, was said, on newspaper authority in 1795, to have been cut down by his majesty's order, on account of its being totally decayed.
Act V, Scene 5 — Page 490
PIST. Vile worm!
Old copy vild, which Mr. Malone shows to have been the old pronunciation. It may be added that it is likewise the modern in some of the provinces.
Act V, Scene 5 — Page 492
[Stage direction.] "During this song, the fairies pinch Falstaff."
In the old collection of songs already cited in p. 7, there is one entitled "The fayries daunce," which bearing some resemblance to that by Shakspeare, may be entitled to the reader's notice:
"Dare you haunt our hallowed greene? None but fayries here are seene. Downe and sleepe, Wake and weepe, Pinch him black, and pinch him blew, That seekes to steale a lover true. When you come to heare us sing, Or to tread our fayrie ring, Pinch him black, and pinch him blew, O thus our nayles shall handle you."
Act V, Scene 5 — Page 500
PAGE. What cannot be eschew'd must be embrac'd.
This is either a proverbial saying now lost, or borrowed from one of the following, "What cannot be altered must be borne not blamed;" "What cannot be cured must be endured."
TWELFTH NIGHT.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 8
DUKE. How will she love, when the rich golden shaft Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else That live in her.
This golden shaft was supplied either from a description of Cupid in Sidney's Arcadia, book ii., or from Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Golding, 4to, fo. 8, where, speaking of Cupid's arrows, he says,
"That causeth love is all of golde with point full sharp and bright. That chaseth love, is blunt, whose steele with leaden head is dight."
Milton seems to have forgotten that Love had only one shaft of gold. See Parad. Lost, iv. 1. 763.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 11
CAP. ... she hath abjur'd the company And sight of men.
This necessary and justifiable change in the ordo verborum from the reading in the old copy, and to which Mr. Steevens lays claim, had been already made by Sir Thomas Hanmer.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 21
SIR TO. ... Wherefore have these gifts a curtain before them? are they like to take dust, like mistress Mall's picture?
Mr. Malone's conjecture that curtains were at this time frequently hung before pictures of value, is further supported in Scene 5 of this Act, where Olivia, in unveiling her face, mentions the practice. In Deloney's Pleasant history of Jack of Newbery, printed before 1597, it is recorded that "in a faire large parlour, which was wainscotted round about, Jacke of Newbery had fifteene faire pictures hanging, which were covered with curtaines of greene silke, frienged with gold, which he would often shew to his friends and servants."
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 23
SIR AND. Taurus? that's sides and heart.
SIR TO. No, sir, it is legs and thighs.
Both the knights are wrong in their astrology, according to the almanacs of the time, which make Taurus govern the neck and throat. Their ignorance is perhaps intentional.
Act I, Scene 5 — Page 31
SIR TO. ... How now, sot?
There is great humour in this ambiguous word, which applies equally to the fool and the knight himself, in his drunken condition.
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 51
CLOWN. How now, my hearts? Did you never see the picture of we three?
The original picture, or sign as it sometimes was, seems to have been two fools. Thus in Shirley's Bird in cage, Morello, who counterfeits a fool, says, "We be three of old, without exception to your lordship, only with this difference, I am the wisest fool." In Day's comedy of Law tricks, 1608, Jul. says, "appoint the place prest." To which Em. answers, "At the three fools." Sometimes, as Mr. Henley has stated, it was two asses. Thus in Beaumont and Fletcher's Queen of Corinth, Act III. Scene 1,
"NEAN. He is another ass, he says, I believe him.
UNCLE. We be three, heroical prince.
NEAN. Nay then we must have the picture of 'em, and the word nos sumus."
Act II, Scene 3 — Page. 53
CLO. I did impeticos thy gratility.
This is undoubtedly the true reading, for the reason assigned by Mr. Malone. From the discordant notes on the passage, a question has arisen whether the fool means to say that he had put the six-pence into his own petticoats, or given it to his petticoat companion, his leman. Mr. Steevens has observed that "petticoats were not always a part of the dress of fools, though they were of idiots;" and on this assertion, coupled with another by Dr. Johnson, that "fools were kept in long coats to which the allusion is made," Mr. Ritson maintains that "it is a very gross mistake to imagine that this character (i. e. our clown's) was habited like an idiot." Now it is very certain, that although the idiot fools were generally dressed in petticoats, the allowed fool was occasionally habited in like manner, as is shown more at large in another part of this volume; which circumstance, though it may strengthen the opinion that the clown has alluded to his own dress, by no means decides the above question, which remains very equally balanced.
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 63
SIR TO. Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall beno more cakes and ale?
The holiday cakes referred to in Mr. Letherland's note were the yule or Christmas cakes; those on the lying-in of the Virgin; cross-buns, and twelfth cakes. Mr. Lysons, in his account of Twickenham, mentions an ancient custom of dividing two great cakes in the church on Easter-day among the young people. This was regarded as a superstitious relic; and it was ordered by the parliament in 1645, that the parishioners should forbear that custom, and instead thereof buy loaves of bread for the poor of the parish.
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 70
DUKE. And the free maids that weave their threads with bones.
The private memoirs of Peter the wild boy, if they could be disclosed, would afford the best comment on the above disputed epithet, as applied to the websters in question.
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 71
CLO. And in sad cypress let me be laid.
Mr. Steevens has in this edition cancelled a brother commentator's note, which ought on every account to have been retained, and has himself attempted to show that a shroud and not a coffin of cypress or cyprus is intended. It is no easy matter, from the ambiguity of the word, to decide the question. The cypress tree was used by the ancients for funeral purposes, and dedicated to Pluto. As it was not liable to perish from rottenness, it appears to have been used for coffins. See Mr. Gough's Introduction to Sepulchral monuments, p. lxvi. In Quarles's Argalus and Parthenia, book iii., a knight is introduced, whose
"... horse was black as jet, His furniture was round about beset With branches, slipt from the sad cypresse tree."
In further behalf of the wood, it may be worth remarking that the expression laid seems more applicable to a coffin than to a shroud, in which a party may with greater propriety be said to be wrapped; and also that the shroud is afterwards expressly mentioned by itself. It is nevertheless very certain that the fine linen called Cyprus, perhaps from being originally manufactured in the island of that name, was used for shrouds. In the churchwardens' accounts of St. Mary's, Cambridge, mention is made of a sypyrs kyrcher belonging to the cross. In this instance there being the figure of a dead body on the cross, the cyprus was designed as a shroud.
Act II, Scene 5 — Page 88
MAL. By my life, this is my lady's hand: these be her very C's, her U's, and her T's, and thus makes she her great P's.
Mr. Ritson having with great probability supplied the whole direction of the letter, there seems to be no foundation left for Blackstone's conjecture. Malvolio had no motive for any coarse allusion. With respect to the instance of the letter in All's well that ends well not being recited literally by Helen, it must be recollected that there was no reason for making her do so, as she talks in blank verse; and it would therefore have been improper that she should have given more than the substance of the letter.
Act II, Scene 5 — Page 93
MAL. ... and wish'd to see thee cross-gartered.
Of this fashion but few vestiges remain; a circumstance the more remarkable, as it must have been at one time extremely common among the beaux in Elizabeth's reign. In the English edition of Junius's Nomenclator, 1585, 12mo, mention is made of "hose garters, going acrosse, or over-thwart, both above and below the knee." In the old comedy of The two angrie women of Abingdon, 1599, 4to, a serving-man is thus described:
"... hee's a fine neate fellow, A spruce slave, I warrant ye, he'ele have His cruell garters crosse about the knee."
Act II, Scene 5 — Page 94
MAL. I will be point-de-vice [device].
As the instances of this expression are of rare occurrence, those which follow are offered as likely to be useful to the author of any future work that may resemble the well-planned, but unfinished glossary of obsolete and provincial words by the late Dr. Boucher. In the interlude of The nature of the four elements, Sensuality, one of the dramatis personæ, promises a banquet
"Of metys that be most delycate, Which shall be in a chamber feyre Replete with sote and fragrāt eyre Prepared poynt-deryse."
In Newes from the North, 1579, 4to, mention is made of "costly banqueting houses, galleries, bowling-allees, straunge toies of point-devise and woorkmanship," sign. G. In an old and very rare satirical poem against married ladies, entitled, The proude wyves paternoster that wold go gaye, and undyd her husbande and went her waye, 1560, 4to, one of the gossips recommends her companion to wear
"Rybandes of sylke that be full longe and large, With tryangles trymly made poyntdevyse."
Some further account of this piece may not be unacceptable. It is described in Laneham's Letter from Killingworth as forming part of Captain Cox the mason's curious library. In the appendix to Baker's Biographia dramatica, p. 433, a play under the same title is mentioned as entered on the Stationers' books in 1559; but from the correspondence in the date, it was, most likely, the present work, which cannot be regarded as a dramatic one. It describes the hypocritical behaviour of women at church, who, instead of attending to their devotions, are more anxious to show their gay apparel. One of these, observing a neighbour much better clothed than herself, begins her paternoster, wherein she complains of her husband's restrictions, and prays that she may be enabled to dress as gaily as the rest of her acquaintance. She afterwards enters into conversation with a female gossip, by whose mischievous instigation she is seduced to rebel against her husband's authority. In consequence of this, the poor man is first entreated, next threatened, and finally ruined. The author of this poem is not the first who has irreligiously made use of the present vehicle of his satire. One of the old Norman minstrels had preceded him in The usurer's paternoster, which Mons. Le Grand has inserted among his entertaining fabliaux, and at the same time described some other similar compositions.
But to return to point-device:--There was no occasion for separating the two last syllables of this term, as in the quotation from Mr. Steevens's text, nor is it done when it occurs elsewhere in his edition. It has been properly stated that point-device signifies exact, nicely finical; but nothing has been offered concerning the etymology, except that we got the expression from the French. It has in fact been supplied from the labours of the needle. Poinet in the French language denotes a stitch; devisé any thing invented, disposed, or arranged. Point-devisé was therefore a particular sort of patterned lace worked with the needle; and the term point-lace is still familiar to every female. They had likewise their point-coupé, point-compté, dentelle au point devant l'aiguille, &c., &c. The various kinds of needle-work practised by our indefatigable grandmothers, if enumerated, would astonish even the most industrious of our modern ladies. Many curious books of patterns for lace and all sorts of needle-work were formerly published, some of which are worth pointing out to the curious collector. The earliest on the list is an Italian book under the title of Esemplario di lavori: dove le tenere fanciulle & altre donne nobile potranno facilmente imparare il modo & ordine di lavorare, cusire, raccamare, & finalmente far tutte quelle gentillezze & lodevili opere, le quali pò fare una donna virtuosa con laco in mano, con li suoi compasse & misure. Vinegia, per Nicolo D'Aristotile detto Zoppino, MDXXIX. 8vo. The next that occurs was likewise set forth by an Italian, and entitled, Les singuliers et nouveaux pourtraicts du seigneur Federic de Vinciolo Venitien, pour toutes sortes d'ouvrages de lingerie. Paris, 1588, 4to. It is dedicated to the queen of France, and had been already twice published. In 1599 a second part came out, which is much more difficult to be met with than the former, and sometimes contains a neat portrait, by Gaultier, of Catherine de Bourbon, the sister of Henry the Fourth. The next is Nouveaux pourtraicts de point coupé et dantelles en petite moyenne et grande forme, nouvellement inventez et mis en lumiere. Imprimé à Montbeliard, 1598, 4to. It has an address to the ladies, and a poem exhorting young damsels to be industrious; but the author's name does not appear. Vincentio's work was published in England, and printed by John Wolf, under the title of New and singular patternes and workes of linnen, serving for paternes to make all sortes of lace, edginges and cut-workes. Newly invented for the profite and contentment of ladies, gentilwomen, and others that are desireous of this art. 1591, 4to. He seems also to have printed it with a French title. We have then another English book of which this is the title: Here foloweth certaine Patternes of Cut-workes: newly invented and never published before. Also sundry sortes of spots, as flowers, birdes and fishes, &c. and will fitly serve to be wrought, some with gould, some with silke, and some with crewell in coullers: or otherwise at your pleasure. And never but once published before. Printed by Rich. Shorleyker. No date, in oblong 4to. And, lastly, another oblong quarto entitled The needles excellency, a new booke wherin are divers admirable workes wrought with the needle. Newly invented and cut in copper for the pleasure and profit of the industrious. Printed for James Boler, &c. 1640. Beneath this title is a neat engraving of three ladies in a flower garden, under the names of Wisdom, Industrie, and Follie. Prefixed to the patterns are sundry poems in commendation of the needle, and describing the characters of ladies who have been eminent for their skill in needle-work, among whom are Queen Elizabeth and the Countess of Pembroke. These poems were composed by John Taylor the water poet. It appears that the work had gone through twelve impressions, and yet a copy is now scarcely to be met with. This may be accounted for by supposing that such books were generally cut to pieces, and used by women to work upon or transfer to their samplers. From the dress of a lady and gentleman on one of the patterns in the last mentioned book, it appears to have been originally published in the reign of James the First. All the others are embellished with a multitude of patterns elegantly cut in wood, several of which are eminently conspicuous for their taste and beauty.
It is therefore apparent that the expression point-devise became applicable, in a secondary sense, to whatever was uncommonly exact, or constructed with the nicety and precision of stitches made or devised by the needle.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 97
VIO. Dost thou live by thy tabor?
This instrument is found in the hands of fools long before the time of Shakspeare. With respect to the sign of the tabor mentioned in the notes, it might, as stated, have been the designation of a musick shop; but that it was the sign of an eating-house kept by Tarleton is a mistake into which a learned commentator has been inadvertently betrayed. It appears from Tarleton's Jests, 1611, 4to, that he kept a tavern in Gracious [Gracechurch] street, at the sign of the Saba. This is the person who in our modern bibles is called the queen of Sheba, and the sign has been corrupted into that of the bell-savage, as may be gathered from the inedited metrical romance of Alexander, supposed to have been written at the beginning of the fourteenth century by Adam Davie, who, in describing the countries visited by his hero, mentions that of Macropy (the Macropii of Pliny), and adds,
"In heore[4] lond is a cité On of the noblest in Christianté[5]; Hit hotith[6] Sabba in langage. Thennes cam Sibely savage, Of al theo world theo fairest quene, To Jerusalem, Salamon to seone[7] For hire fairhed[8], and for hire love, Salamon forsok his God above."
Sibely savage, as a proper name, is another perversion of si belle sauvage; and though the lady was supposed to have come from the remotest parts of Africa, and might have been as black as a Negro, we are not now to dispute the superlative beauty of the mistress of Salomon, here converted into a Savage. It must be admitted that the queen of Sheba was as well adapted to a sign as the wise men of the East, afterwards metamorphosed into the three kings of Cologne.
Mr. Pegge, in his Anecdotes of the English language, p. 291, informs us that a friend had seen a lease of the Bell Savage inn to Isabella Savage; "which," says he, "overthrows the conjectures about a bell and a savage, la belle sauvage, &c." It is probable that the learned writer's friend was in some way or other deceived. The date of the instrument is not mentioned; and if the above name really appeared in the lease, it might have been an accidental circumstance at a period not very distant. Mr. Pegge was likewise not aware that the same sign, corrupted in like manner, was used on the continent.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 109
SIR TO. Go write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief.
Of the latter sentence Dr. Johnson has not given the exact explanation. It alludes to the proverb, "A curst cur must be tied short."
Act III, Scene 4 — Page 120
SIR TO. What, man! defy the Devil: consider, he's an enemy to mankind.
It was very much the practice with old writers, both French and English, to call the Devil, the enemy, by way of pre-eminence, founded perhaps on the words of Christ in Luke x. 19. Thus at the beginning of the Roman de Merlin, MS. "Mult fu iriez li anemis quant nre sires ot este en anfer;" and see other examples in Barbasan's glossary to the Ordene de chevalerie, 1759, 12mo, in v. Anemi. The cause of the Devil's wrath in the above instance, was the liberation of Adam, Noah, and many other saints and patriarchs from the purgatorial torments which they had endured. In a most curious description of hell in Examples howe mortall synne maketh the synners inobedyentes to have many paynes and doloures within the fyre of hell, b. l. no date, 12mo, the Devil is thus referred to: "Come than after me, and I shal shewe unto the the ryght cursed enemye of humayne lygnage." And again, "About the enemy there were so many devyls and of cursed and myserable soules that no man myght beleve that of all the worlde from the begynnynge myght be yssued and brought forth so many soules." Sometimes he was called the enemy of hell, as in Larke's Boke of wisdome, b. l. no date, 12mo, where it is said that "the enemye of hell ought to be doubted of every wise man." This note may serve also in further explanation of the line in Macbeth, Act III. Scene 1,
"Given to the common enemy of man."
It is remarkable that the Devil should be likewise called the enemy of mankind in the East. See Gladwin's Persian moon-shee, part ii. p. 23.
Act III, Scene 4 — Page 120
FAB. Carry his water to the wise woman.
Here may be a direct allusion to one of the two ladies of this description mentioned in the following passage from Heywood's play of The wise woman of Hogsdon; "You have heard of Mother Notingham, who for her time was prettily well skill'd in casting of waters: and after her, Mother Bombye." The latter is sometimes alluded to by Gerarde the Herbalist, who, speaking of the properties of vervain, says, "you must observe mother Bumbies rules to take just so many knots or sprigs, and no more, least it fall out so that it do you no good, if you catch no harme by it." Historie of plants, p. 581.
Lilly's comedy of Mother Bombie is well known. The several occupations of these impostors are thus described in the above play by Heywood: "Let me see how many trades have I to live by: First, I am a wise-woman, and a fortuneteller, and under that I deale in physicke and forespeaking, in palmistry, and recovering of things lost. Next, I undertake to cure madd folkes. Then I keepe gentlewomen lodgers, to furnish such chambers as I let out by the night: Then I am provided for bringing young wenches to bed; and, for a need, you see I can play the match-maker. Shee that is but one, and professeth so many, may well be tearmed a wise-woman, if there bee any." Such another character was Julian of Brentford, mentioned in the Merry wives of Windsor. These persons were sometimes called cunning and looming women.
Act III, Scene 4 — Page 121
SIR TO. Come, we'll have him in a dark room, and bound. My niece is already in the belief that he is mad.
The reason for putting Malvolio into a dark room was to make him believe that he was mad; for a madhouse seems formerly to have been called a dark-house. In the next act Malvolio says, "Good Sir Topas, do not think I am mad, they have laid me here in hideous darkness." And again, "I say this house is dark." In Act V. he asks, "Why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd, kept in a dark-house?" In As you like it, Act III. Scene 1, Rosalind says that "love is a madness, and deserves as well a dark-house and a whip, as madmen do." Edward Blount, in the second dedication to his Hospitall of incurable fooles, 1600, 4to, a translation from the Italian, requests of the person whom he addresses to take on him the office of patron or treasurer to the hospital; and that if any desperate censurer shall stab him for assigning his office or place, he presently take him into the dark ward: and in the same work, certain idle fools are consigned to the darksome guesthouse of their madness.
Act III, Scene 4 — Page 124
OLI. I have said too much unto a heart of stone, and laid mine honour too unchary on't.
This is the reading of the old copy, which has been unnecessarily disturbed at Theobald's suggestion by substituting out. It might be urged that laying honour out is but an awkward phrase. The old text simply means, I have placed my honour too incautiously upon a heart of stone. The preceding note had shown that adjectives are often used adverbially by Shakspeare.
Act III, Scene 4 — Page 127
SIR TO. He is a knight, dubb'd with unhack'd rapier, and on carpet consideration.
The original word is unhatch'd, and if any alteration be admitted it should be an hatch'd, for the first reason assigned in Mr. Malone's ingenious note. Sir Toby says that his brother knight was no hero dubbed in the field of battle, but a carpet knight made at home in time of peace with a sword of ceremony richly gilt or engraved. In Don Quixote, the damsel whom Sancho finds wandering in the streets of Barataria disguised as a man, is furnished with "a very faire hatched dagger," chap. 49 of Shelton's translation. In The tragical history of Jetzer, 1683, 18mo, mention is made of "a sword richly hatcht with silver." Thus much in support of the above slight alteration of the old reading. The second conjecture of Mr. Malone, that unhatcht might have been used in the sense of unhack'd, deserves much attention; but there was no necessity for introducing the latter word into the text. To hatch a sword has been thought to signify to engrave it; but it appears from Holme's Academy of armory, B. iii. p. 91, that "hatching, is to silver or gild the hilt and pomell of a sword or hanger."
With respect to carpet knights, they were sometimes called knights of the green cloth. For this information we are also indebted to Holme, who, in his above cited work, B. iii. p. 57, informs us that "all such as have studied law, physic, or any other arts and sciences whereby they have become famous and serviceable to the court, city, or state, and thereby have merited honour, worship, or dignity, from the sovereign and fountain of honour; if it be the King's pleasure to knight any such persons, seeing they are not knighted as soldiers, they are not therefore to use the horseman's title or spurs; they are only termed simply miles et milites, knights of the carpet or knights of the green cloth, to distinguish them from knights that are dubbed as soldiers in the field; though in these our days they are created or dubbed with the like ceremony as the others are, by the stroak of a naked sword upon their shoulder, with the words, Rise up Sir T. A. knight."
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 136
CLO. I am afraid this great lubber the world will prove a cockney.
A typographical corruption seems to have crept into this place from similitude of sound; but a very slight alteration will restore the sense. The clown is speaking of vent as an affected word; and we should therefore read "this great lubberly word will prove a cockney," i. e. will turn out to be cockney language.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 140
CLO. For as the old hermit of Prague----
Not the celebrated heresiarch Jerome of Prague, but another of that name born likewise at Prague, and called the hermit of Camaldoli in Tuscany.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 141
CLO. Say'st thou that house is dark?
This Mr. Malone conceives to be a pompous appellation for the small room in which Malvolio was confined; but it seems to be merely the designation of a madhouse. See the preceding note on Act III. Scene 4, p. 121.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 157
PRIEST. A contract of eternal bond of love Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands, Attested by the holy close of lips, Strengthened by interchangement of your rings; And all the ceremony of this compact Seal'd in my function, by my testimony.
It will be necessary, for the better illustration of these lines, to connect them with what Olivia had said to Sebastian at the end of the preceding act:
"Now go with me, and with this holy man, Into the chantry by: there before him And underneath that consecrated roof Plight me the full assurance of your faith; That my most jealous and too doubtful soul May live at peace. He shall conceal it Whiles you are willing it shall come to note; What time we will our celebration keep According to my birth."
Now the whole has been hitherto regarded as relating to an actual marriage that had been solemnized between the parties; whereas it is manifest that nothing more is meant than a betrothing, affiancing or promise of future marriage, anciently distinguished by the name of espousals, a term which was for a long time confounded with matrimony, and at length came exclusively to denote it. The form of betrothing at church in this country, has not been handed down to us in any of its ancient ecclesiastical service books; but it is to be remembered that Shakspeare is here making use of foreign materials, and the ceremony is preserved in a few of the French and Italian rituals.
The custom of betrothing appears to have been known in ancient times to almost all the civilized nations among whom marriage was considered as a sacred engagement. Our northern ancestors were well acquainted with it. With them the process was as follows: 1. Procatio, or wooing. 2. Impetratio, or demanding of the parents or guardian. 3. The conditions of the contract. All these were sealed by joining the right hands, by a certain form of words, and a confirmation before witnesses. The length of the time between espousals and marriage was uncertain, and governed by the convenience of the parties; it generally extended to a few months. Sometimes in cases of necessity, such as the parties living in different countries, and where the interference of proxies had been necessary, the time was protracted to three years. The contract of the affiancing party was called handsaul; (whence our hansel) of the agreeing party, handfastening. See Thorlacius De borealium veterum matrimonio, 1785, 4to, pp. 33, 42. Vincent de Beauvais, a writer of the 13th century, in his Speculum historiale, lib. ix. c. 70, has defined espousals to be a contract of future marriage, made either by a simple promise, by earnest or security given, by a ring, or by an oath. During the same period, and the following centuries, we may trace several other modes of betrothing, some of which it may be worth while to describe more at large.
I. The interchangement of rings.--Thus in Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide, book 3.
"Sone after this they spake of sondry things As fill to purpose of this aventure, And playing enterchaungeden her rings Of which I can not tellen no scripture. But well I wot, a broche of gold and assure In which a rubie set was like an herte Creseide him yave, and stacke it on his sherte."
When espousals took place at church, rings were also interchanged. According to the ritual of the Greek church, the priest first placed the rings on the fingers of the parties, who afterwards exchanged them. Sometimes the man only gave a ring. In the life of Saint Leobard, who is said to have flourished about the year 580, written by Gregory of Tours he gives a ring, a kiss, and a pair of shoes to his affianced. The ring and shoes were a symbol of securing the lady's hands and feet in the trammels of conjugal obedience; but the ring of itself was sufficient to confirm the contract. In The miracles of the Virgin Mary, compiled in the twelfth century by a French monk, there is a story of a young man who, falling in love with an image of the Virgin, inadvertently placed on one of its fingers a ring which he had received from his mistress, accompanying the gift with the most tender language of respect and affection. A miracle instantly took place, and the ring remained immoveable. The young man, greatly alarmed for the consequences of his rashness, consulted his friends, who advised him by all means to devote himself entirely to the service of the Madonna. His love for his former mistress prevailing over their remonstrances: he married her; but on the wedding night the newly-betrothed lady appeared to him, and urged her claim with so many dreadful menaces that the poor man felt himself compelled to abandon his bride, and that very night to retire privately to a hermitage, where he became a monk for the rest of his life. This story has been translated by Mons. Le Grand in his entertaining collection of fabliaux, where the ring is called a marriage ring: but this is probably a mistake in the translator, as appears from several copies of the above Miracles that have been consulted. The giving of rings was likewise a pledge of love in cases where no marriage could possibly happen. In The lay of Equitan, a married woman and her gallant exchange rings,
"Par lur anels sentresaísirent Lur fiaunce sentreplevirent."
In a romance written by Raimond Vidal, a Provençal poet of the thirteenth century, a knight devotes himself to the service of a lady, who promises him a kiss in a year's time when she shall be married. They ratify the contract by an exchange of rings. Mr. Steevens has on the present occasion introduced a note, wherein a ludicrous superstition is mentioned, in order to prove that "in our ancient marriage ceremony, the man received as well as gave a ring." But the passage which he cites from Lupton is wrongly translated from Mizaldus, who only speaks of the marriage ring: and so it is in Scott's Discovery of witchcraft, fo. 82. edit. 1584, 4to, where a similar receipt is given. Mr. Steevens was indeed convinced of this by the author of these observations, and in a note on All's well that ends well has retracted his opinion. No instance has occurred where rings were interchanged at a marriage.
II. The kiss that was mutually given. When this ceremony took place at church, the lady of course withdrew the veil which was usually worn on the occasion; when in private, the drinking of healths generally followed.
III. The joining of hands. This is often alluded to by Shakspeare himself. See a note in the Winter's tale, p. 17, Steevens's edition, 1793.
IV. The testimony of witnesses. That of the priest alone was generally sufficient, though we often find many other persons attending the ceremony. The words "there before him," and "he shall conceal it," in Olivia's speech, sufficiently demonstrate that betrothing and not marriage is intended; for in the latter the presence of the priest alone would not have sufficed. In later times, espousals in the church were often prohibited in France, because instances frequently occurred where the parties, relying on the testimony of the priest, scrupled not to live together as man and wife; which gave rise to much scandal and disorder. Excesses were likewise often committed by the celebration of espousals in taverns and alehouses, and some of the synodal decrees expressly enjoin that the parties shall not get drunk on these occasions.
The ceremony, generally speaking, was performed by the priest demanding of the parties if they had entered into a contract with any other person, or made a vow of chastity or religion; whether they had acted for each other, or for any child they might have had, in the capacity of godfather or godmother, or whether they had committed incontinence with any near relation of the other party; but the latter questions might be dispensed with at the discretion of the priest. Then this oath was administered--"You swear by God and his holy saints herein and by all the saints of Paradise, that you will take this woman whose name is N. to wife within forty days, if holy church will permit." The priest then joined their hands, and said,--"And thus you affiance yourselves;" to which the parties answered,--"Yes, sir." They then received a suitable exhortation on the nature and design of marriage, and an injunction to live piously and chastely until that event should take place. They were not permitted, at least by the church, to reside in the same house, but were nevertheless regarded as man and wife independently of the usual privileges: and this will account for Olivia's calling Cesario "husband;" and when she speaks of "keeping celebration according to her birth," it alludes to future marriage. This took place in a reasonable time after betrothing, but was seldom protracted in modern times beyond forty days. So in Measure for measure, Claudio calls Julietta his wife, and says he got possession of her bed upon a true contract. The duke likewise, in addressing Mariana who had been affianced to Angelo, says, "he is your husband on a pre-contract."
Before we quit the subject, it may be necessary to observe that betrothing was not an essential preliminary to marriage, but might be dispensed with. The practice in this respect varied in different times and places. The desuetude of espousals in England seems to have given rise to the action at law for damages on breach of promise of marriage. And thus much may suffice for a general idea of this ancient custom; the legal niceties must be sought for in the works of the civilians.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 159
SIR TO. Then he's a rogue. After a passy-measure, or a pavin, I hate a drunken rogue.
Florio, in his Italian dictionary, 1598, has "passamezzo, a passameasure in dancing, a cinque pace;" and although the English word is corrupt, the other contributes to show a part, at least, of the figure of this dance, which is said to have consisted in making several steps round the ball-room and then crossing it in the middle. Brantôme calls it "le pazzameno d'Italie," and it appears to have been more particularly used by the Venetians. It was much in vogue with us during Shakspeare's time, as well as the Pavan; and both were imported either from France, Spain, or Italy. In a book of instructions for the lute, translated from the French by J. Alford, 1568, 4to, there are two passameze tunes printed in letters according to the lute notation.
As to the Pavan, there is some doubt whether it originally belongs to Spain or Italy. Spanish pavans are certainly mentioned by Ben Jonson in the Alchymist, and by Brantôme in his Dames illustres, who adds that he had seen it danced by Francis I. and his sister, the celebrated Margaret of Navarre, and also by Mary Queen of Scots. There is good reason, however, for thinking the term is Italian, and derived from the city of Padua, where the dance is said to have been invented. Massa Gallesi, a civilian of the sixteenth century, calls it saltatio Paduana. In a catalogue of books that were exposed to sale at Frankfort fair, from 1564 to 1592, the following are mentioned: "Chorearum molliorum collectanea omnis fere generis tripudia complectens, utpote Padoanas, passemezos, allemandas, galliardas, branles, et id genus alia, tam vivæ voci quam instrumentis musicis accommodata. Antverpiæ, 1583, 4to." "Cantiones Italicæ quas Paduana Itali vocant, quatuor vocum. Venetiis, 1565, 4to." "Sixti Kargen, renovata cythara, hoc est, novi et commodissimi exercendæ cytharæ modi, constantes cantionibus musicis, passomezo, podoanis, gaillardis, Alemanicis et aliis ejusmodi pulchris exemplis, ad tabulaturam communem redactis. Argentorati, 1575, et Moguntiæ, 1569, folio." In Alford's Instructions for the lute, above mentioned, there is a Paduane and a Pavane. Randle Holme, in his Academy of armory, 1688, folio, book iii. c. 3, speaking of the Pavan as a tune, describes it as "the height of composition made only to delight the ear: be it of 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 parts [it] doth commonly consist of three straines, each straine to be played twice over." In an old MS. collection of lessons for the virginals, there is one called "Dr. Bull's melancholy pavin." Mr. Tyrwhitt, therefore, is right in supposing that a jovial blade like Sir Toby would be naturally averse to these grave dances, and the dullness of the tunes belonging to them.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 162
DUKE. One face, one voice, one habit and two persons; A natural perspective, that is, and is not.
The several kinds of perspective glasses that were used in Shakspeare's time, may be found collected together in Scot's Discoverie of witchcraft, 1584, 4to, book xiii. ch. 19. They cannot be exceeded in number by any modern optician's shop in England. Among these, that alluded to by the Duke is thus described: "There be glasses also wherein one man may see another man's image, and not his own." It is to be observed that a perspective formerly meant a glass that assisted the sight in any way.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 169
MAL. And made the most notorious geck, and gull.
Dr. Johnson rightly explains geck, a fool. It is so in all the Northern languages. In Saxon, ᵹæc is a cuckow, whence gouk, gawk, and gawky. Mr. Steevens's quotations seem to exhibit the word in another sense, viz. a mock or mockery.
THE CLOWN.
The clown in this play is a domestic or hired fool, in the service of Olivia. He is specifically termed "an allowed fool," and "Feste the jester, a fool that the lady Olivia's father took much delight in." Malvolio likewise speaks of him as "a set fool." Of his dress it is impossible to speak correctly. If the fool's expression, "I will impeticoat thy gratility," be the original language, he must have been habited accordingly. Mr. Ritson has asserted that he has neither coxcomb nor bauble, deducing his argument from the want of any allusion to them. Yet such an omission may be a very fallacious guide in judging of the habit of this character on the stage. It must, however, be admitted, that where this happens there can be no clue as to the precise manner in which the fool was dressed.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] their.
[5] The mention of the region of Christianity is a whimsical anachronism as connected with the story of Alexander; but we must do our author the justice to admit that in his time the Ethiopians were Christians.
[6] is called.
[7] to see.
[8] fairness, beauty.
MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 180
DUKE. ... Then no more remains, But that to your sufficiency, as your worth is able, And let them work.
Sufficiency is, no doubt, ability, and not authority, as Warburton conceives; and this shows that there is an omission in the speech of what the duke would have added concerning the authority which he meant to delegate. The most rational addition is that suggested by Mr. Tyrwhitt. It is remarkable that Dr. Johnson should contend for the introduction of a line of thirteen syllables!
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 186
DUKE. Mortality and mercy in Vienna Live in thy tongue and heart.
That is, "I delegate to thy tongue the power of pronouncing sentence of death, and to thy heart the privilege of exercising mercy." These are words of great import, and ought to be made clear, as on them depends the chief incident of the play.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 191
LUCIO. Behold, behold, &c.
This speech should have been given to the first gentleman, in order to correspond with the note, which is probably right.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 191
LUCIO. A French crown more.
The quotations already given sufficiently exemplify the meaning; yet that which follows being remarkably illustrative, is offered in addition. "More seeming friendship [is] to be had in an house of transgression for a French crown, though it be a bald one, than at Belinsgate for a boxe o' th'eare." Vox graculi, or Jack Dawe's prognostication, 1623, 4to, p. 60.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 192
I. GENT. How now, which of your hips has the most profound sciatica?
A most appropriate question to the bawd. The author of the facetious Latin comedy of Cornelianum dolium has named one of Cornelius's strumpets Sciatica. She thus speaks of herself; "In lectulo meo ægrè me vertere potui; podagram, chiragram, et hip-agram (si ita dicere liceat) nocte quotidie sensi."
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 195
BAWD. What's to do here, Thomas Tapster?
Why does she call the clown by this name, when it appears from his own showing that his name was Pompey? Perhaps she is only quoting some old saying or ballad.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 201
CLAUD. ... for in her youth There is a prone and speechless dialect.
One of the old significations of this word appears to have been easily moving, which is evidently the sense required in this place. See Cotgrave's Dictionary, in prone.
Act I, Scene 4 — Page 203
DUKE. Where youth and cost and witless bravery keeps.
Mr. Reed's explanation of this word as used for dwells, is confirmed by another passage in this play, Act IV. Scene 1.
"... a breath thou art That dost this habitation where thou keep'st Hourly afflict."
Act I, Scene 5 — Page 208
LUCIO. For that, which if myself might be his judge, He should receive his punishment in thanks.
It has been conceived that there is here a transposition at the press for "that for which." The emendation is more grammatical than harmonious; but the expression is quite in Shakspeare's manner. A few pages further on we have this similar phraseology:
"Whether you had not sometime in your life Err'd in this point which now you censure him."
Act I, Scene 5 — Page 211
LUCIO. Your brother and his lover.
This term was applied to the female sex not only in Shakspeare's time, but even to a very late period. Lady Wortley Montagu in a letter to her husband, speaking of a young girl who forbade the bans of marriage at Huntingdon, calls her lover. See her works, vol. i. p. 238.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 216
ESCAL. Let us be keen, and rather cut a little Than fall and bruise to death.
On the very plausible authority of a passage in As you like it, where the executioner is said to "fall his axe," the present metaphor has been supposed to refer also to the punishment of decapitation. If it be so, there is a manifest impropriety in the expression "cut a little," as we are not to imagine that Escalus would intend to chop off a criminal's hand, or to deprive him of his ears; both modes of punishment, which though frequently practised in the reign of Elizabeth, seem exclusively adapted to a community of barbarians. May not the metaphor be rather borrowed from the cutting down of timber, and Escalus mean to say, "Is it not better to lop off a few branches, than to fall the whole tree?"
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 217
ANG. The jury, passing on the prisoner's life May, in the sworn twelve, have a thief or two, &c.
We have here one of Shakspeare's trips; an English jury in a German court of justice.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 223
CLO. Your honours have seen such dishes; they are not China dishes, but very good dishes.
We must not conclude with Mr Steevens that a China dish was such an uncommon thing in the age of Shakspeare. In the first act of Massinger's Renegado, this article is mentioned, together with crystal glasses and pictures, as composing the furniture of a broker's shop; and it appears from other authorities that China dishes were used at banquets. During the reign of Elizabeth several Spanish carracks were taken, a part of whose cargoes was China ware of porcelaine. The recent seizure by Philip II. of Portugal and its colonies led to this sort of commerce in the East Indies. In Minsheu's Spanish dialogues, 1623, folio, p. 12, China mettall is explained to be "the fine dishes of earth painted, such as are brought from Venice." It is very probable that we had this commodity by means of our traffic with Italy, which also supplied the term porcelaine. China ware was so called from its resemblance to the polished exterior of the concha Veneris or some other similar shell, which, for reasons that cannot here be given, was called porcellana. The curious reader may find a clue by consulting Florio's Italian dictionary, 1598, under the word porcile. In the time of Cromwell a duty of twenty shillings was paid on every dozen China dishes under a quart, and of sixty on those of a quart and upwards. See Oliverian acts, A. D. 1657.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 238
ISAB. ... spare him, spare him; He's not prepar'd for death! Even for our kitchens We kill the fowl of season.
She means "not before it is in season; not prematurely, as you would kill my brother."
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 240
ISAB. Could great men thunder As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet, For ev'ry pelting petty officer Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder.
This fine sentiment, which nevertheless contains a very obvious fault in the mode of expressing it, appears to have been suggested by the following lines in Ovid's Tristia, lib. ii., that Shakspeare might have read in Churchyard's translation:
"Si quoties peccant homines sua fulmina mittat Jupiter, exiguo tempore inermis erit."
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 240
ISAB.. Merciful heaven! Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, Than the soft myrtle.
There is much affinity between the above lines and these in Persius, sat. ii.:
"Ignovisse putas, quia, cum tonat, ocyus ilex Sulfure discutitur sacro, quam tuque domusque?"
But although there were two or three editions of that author published in England in the reign of Elizabeth, he does not appear to have been then translated.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 243
ISAB. ... prayers from preserved souls, From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate To nothing temporal.
Here is no metaphor from preserved fruits, as Warburton fancifully conceives. Preserved is used in its common and obvious acceptation. Isabella alludes to the prayers of her fellow nuns in addition to her own.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 246
ANG. O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint, With saints dost bait thy hook!
Enemy is here used for the Devil. See before in p. 62, 63.
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 260
ISAB. ... Sir, believe this, I had rather give my body than my soul.
It is Isabella's purpose to give an evasive or ambiguous answer to Angelo's strange question, and she accordingly does so. Or, if it have any meaning, it may be "I would even consent to your terms if I could save my soul, or if my soul did not thereby incur perdition."
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 272
DUKE. ... merely thou art Death's fool; For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun, And yet run'st toward him still.
And in Pericles, Act III. Scene 2, "to please the fool and death." One note may serve for both these passages.
Dr. Warburton had conceived an allusion in the first speech to certain characters of death and the fool in the old moralities, in which, most unquestionably, they are not to be found, at least, in any which now remain. It is in this place that the latter part of Mr. Steevens's note on the passage in Pericles should have been introduced, with the following additional circumstances that had probably escaped the learned commentator's recollection; that his informant concerning the skeleton character at the fair remembered also to have seen another personage in the habit of a fool: and that arriving when the performances at the booth were finished for the evening, he could not succeed in procuring a repetition of the piece, losing thereby the means of all further information on the subject. It is therefore probable that the remainder of Dr. Warburton's note is correct, although he may have erred in his designation of this mummery. What connection the subject in question has with the old initial letter of death and the fool, and the dance of death, is shown in a note to Love's labour lost, vol. v. p. 316, and in another on the passage in Pericles, both of which should have been incorporated with the present.
Mr. Ritson, in correcting a remark made by the ingenious continuator of Ben Jonson's Sad shepherd, has inaccurately stated that the figures in the initial letter were "actually copied from the margin of an old missal." The letter that occurs in Stowe's Survey of London, edit. 1618, 4to, is only an enlarged but imperfect copy from another belonging to a regular dance of death used as initials by some of the Basil printers in the sixteenth century, and which, from the extraordinary skill that accompanies their execution, will ever rank amongst the finest efforts in the art of engraving on blocks of wood or metal. Most of the subjects in this dance of death have undoubtedly been supplied by that curious pageant of mortality which, during the middle ages, was so great a favourite as to be perpetually exhibited to the people either in the sculpture and painting of ecclesiastical buildings, or in the books adapted to the service of the church: yet some of them but ill accord with those serious ideas which the nature of the subject is calculated to inspire. In these the artist has indulged a vein of broad and satirical humour which was not wholly reserved for the caricaturists of modern times; and in one or two instances he has even overleaped the bounds of decency. The letter in Stowe's Survey is the only one that appears to have been imitated from the above alphabet; and as it throws some light on that part of the Duke's speech which occasioned the present note, it is here very accurately copied. It is to be remembered that in most of the old dances of death the subject of the fool is introduced: and it is, on the whole, extremely probable that some such representation might have suggested the image before us.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 285
CLAUD. ... and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendant world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling!----
It is difficult to decide whether Shakspeare is here alluding to the pains of hell or purgatory. May not the whole be a mere poetical rhapsody originating in the recollection of what he had read in books of Catholic divinity? for it is very certain that some of these were extremely familiar to him. Among them he might have seen a compilation on the pains of hell, entitled Examples howe mortall synne maketh the synners inobedyentes to have many paynes and dolours within the fyre of hell; black letter, no date, 12mo, and chiefly extracted from that once popular work, the Sermones discipuli, which contains at the end a promptuary of examples for the use of preachers. From this little volume it may be worth while to select the following passage, as according in some degree with the matter of Claudio's speech:--"he tolde that he sawe in hell a torment of an yzye ponde where the soules the whiche therin were tormented cryed so horryble that they were herde unto heven," sign. B. iij. "And the sayde beest was upon a ponde full of strong yse, the which beest devoured the soules within his wombe in suche maner that they became as unto nothynge by the tormentes that they suffred. Afterwarde he put them out of his wombe within the yse of the sayde ponde," sign. G. iij. "The caytyve was in syke wyse, for she myght not helpe herself, the whiche herde terryble cryes and howlynges of soules," sign. H. And again, "And the devyll was bounde by every joynture of all his membres with great chaynes of yron and of copre brennyng. And of great torment and vehement woodnes whereof he was full he turned hym from the one syde unto the other, and stretched out his handes in the multytude of the sayde soules, and toke them, and strayned them in lykewyse as men may do a clustre of grapes in theyr handes for to make the wyne come forth. And in such maner he strayned them that he eyther brake theyr heedes, or theyr fete, or handes, or some other membres. Afterward he syghed and blewe and dysperpeled the sayde soules into many of the tormentes of the fyre of hell," sign. H. iiij.
The following lines from the sixth book of Phaer's Virgil might have furnished some materials on the occasion:
"... some hie in ayer doth hang in pinnes Some fleeting ben in floods, and deepe in gulfes themselves they tier Till sinnes away be washt, or clensed cleer with purgin fire."
In the old legend of Saint Patrick's purgatory mention is made of a lake of ice and snow, into which persons were plunged up to their necks; and in the Shepherd's calendar, chap, xviii. there is a description of hell as "the rewarde of them that kepen the X comaundements of the Devyll," in in which these lines occur:
"... a great froste in a water rounes And after a bytter wynde comes Whiche gothe through the soules with yre; Fendes with pokes pulle theyr flesshe ysondre, They fyght and curse, and eche on other wonder."
Chaucer, in his Assemblie of foules, has given an abridgement of Cicero's dream of Scipio; and speaking of souls in hell, he says:
"And breakers of the lawe, sothe to saine And likerous folke, after that they been dede Shull whirle about the world alway in paine Till many a world be passed."
It was not until the seventh century that the doctrine of purgatory was confirmed, when "they held that departed souls expiated their sins by baths, ice, hanging in the air, &c.," says a curious writer on this subject. See Douglas's Vitis degeneris, 1668, 12mo, p. 77.
With respect to the much contested and obscure expression of bathing the delighted spirit in fiery floods, Milton appears to have felt less difficulty in its construction than we do at present; for he certainly remembered it when he made Comus say,
"... one sip of this Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight Beyond the bliss of dreams."
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 295
ELB. Bless you good father friar.
DUKE. And you good brother father.
Mr. Tyrwhitt remarks that father friar is a blunder, and so indeed the Duke from his answer seems to consider it. Yet friars have often been addressed in this way; and a few pages further Escalus calls the Duke father, who had just been introduced to him as a friar. The Duke, indeed, soon after uses the term brother when speaking of himself. Whilst the passage quoted by Mr. Steevens gives support to Mr. Tyrwhitt's observation that friar is a corruption of the French frere, it seems to disprove his assertion that Elbow's phrase is erroneous.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 298
LUCIO. What, is there none of Pygmalion's images, newly made woman, to be had now, for putting the hand in the pocket, and extracting it clutch'd?
None of the explanations of this speech are satisfactory, but least of all such part of a note by the author of these remarks, as refers to the picklock, which has been better accounted for by Mr. Ritson. It is probable, after all, that Lucio simply means to ask the clown if he has no newly-coined money wherewith to bribe the officers of justice, alluding to the portrait of the queen.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 308
ESCAL. This would make mercy swear and play the tyrant.
The old belief certainly was that tyrants in general swore lustily; but here seems to be a particular allusion to the character of Herod, in the mystery of The slaughter of the innocents, formerly acted by the city companies in their pageants, and of which those for Chester and Coventry are still preserved in the British Museum. In this curious specimen of our early drama, Herod is made to swear by Mahound, by cockes blood, &c. He is uniformly in a passion throughout the piece; and this, according to the stage direction, "Here Erode ragis," is exemplified by some extraordinary gesticulation. See the notes of Messrs. Steevens and Malone on a passage in Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 310
DUKE. ... and now is he resolved to die.
Mr. Reed has certainly adduced an instance which proves that resolved occasionally means satisfied, and we still talk of resolving difficulties, or a question in arithmetic; but in the passage before us it seems rather to signify resolute, firm, determined. Thus the allegorical romance of Le chevalier deliberé was translated into English in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, under the title of The resolved gentleman; and into Spanish by that of Il cavalero determinado.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 318
ISAB. And that I have possess'd him.
In the same sense Shylock says
"I have possess'd your grace of what I purpose."
It were better that Shakspeare should be thus made his own commentator where it can be done, than that he should be explained by quotations from other authors.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 319
DUKE. ... volumes of report Run with these false and most contrarious quests Upon thy doings.
It is presumed that the sense of messengers annexed to this word by Mr. Ritson cannot be maintained, but that the very line he refers to establishes it to be searches, inquiries. Mr. Malone's note is, of the others, the most satisfactory. The Duke alludes to the false and various conclusions that result from investigating the actions of men high in office. There is an old pamphlet with the whimsical title of Jacke of Dover, his quest of inquiry, or his privy search for the veriest foole in England, 1604, 4to.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 321
DUKE. Sith that the justice of your title to him Doth flourish the deceit.
That is, decorate an action that would otherwise seem ugly. Two metaphors have already been suggested; a third remains to be stated. Flourish may, perhaps, allude to the ornaments that embellish the ancient as well as modern books of penmanship. There are no finer specimens of beautiful writing extant than some of the reign of Elizabeth, who herself wrote a very elegant Italian hand in the early part of her life.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 322
PROV. ... and your deliverance with an unpitied whipping; for you have been a notorious bawd.
Mr. Steevens makes unpitied, unmerciful; it is rather a whipping that none shall pity, for the reason that immediately follows.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 334
PROV. Pardon me, good father, it is against my oath.
This is a very different provost from one of whom Fabian in his Chronicle, p. 187, relates the following story: "In the thyrde yere of the reigne of this Philip, the provost of Paris, having in his prison a Picard, a man of greate riches, whiche for felony or like crime, was judged to be hanged. The sayde provost for great benefit to him done and payment of great summes by the sayd Pycard, tooke an other poore innocent man, and put him to death, in steede of the sayd Pycarde. Of the whiche offence whan due proofe of it was made before the kynges counsayle, the sayde provoste for the same dede was put unto like judgement."
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 335
CLO. First, here's young master Rash, he's in for a commodity of brown paper and old ginger.
The nefarious practice of lending young men money in the shape of goods which are afterwards sold at a great loss, appears to have been more prevalent in the reign of Elizabeth than even at present. It is very strongly marked in Lodge's Looking glasse for London and Englande, 1598, where a usurer being very urgent for the repayment of his debt is thus answered, "I pray you, sir, consider that my losse was great by the commoditie I tooke up; you know, sir, I borrowed of you forty pounds, whereof I had ten pounds in money, and thirtie pounds in lute strings, which when I came to sell againe, I could get but five pounds for them, so had I, sir, but fifteene pounds for my fortie: In consideration of this ill bargaine, I pray you, sir, give me a month longer." But this sort of usury is much older than Shakspeare's time, and is thus curiously described in one of the sermons of Father Maillard, a celebrated preacher at Paris at the end of the fifteenth century, and whose style very much resembles that of John Whitfield. "Quidam indigens pecunia venit ad thesaurarium supra quem fuerunt assignata mille scuta; dicit thesaurarius, Ego dabo tibi, sed pro nunc non habeo argentum; sed expectes usque ad quindecim dies. Pauper dicit, Non possum expectare; respondet thesaurarius, Dabo tibi unam partem in argento et alia in mercantiis: et illud quod valebit centum scuta, faciet valere ducenta. Hic est usura palliata." Sermo in feriam, iiii. de passione.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 337
CLO. ... ginger was not much in request, for the old women were all dead.
This spice was formerly held in very great repute, and especially among elderly persons. Sir Thomas Elyot in his Castle of health, 1580, 12mo, says, it comforts the head and stomach, and being green and well confectioned, quickens remembrance, if it be taken in a morning fasting. Henry Buttes, who wrote a whimsical book entitled Dyet's dry dinner, 1599, 12mo, speaks much in its praise, and says that being condite with honey it "warmes olde mens bellyes." In Ben Jonson's masque of The metamorphosed gipsies, a country wench laments the being robbed of "a dainty race of ginger;" and in the old play of The famous victories of Henry the fifth, a clown charges a thief with having "taken the great race of ginger, that bouncing Besse with the jolly buttocks should have had." In Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the burning pestle, the citizen's wife gives a man who had been soundly beaten some green ginger to comfort him. Ginger was used likewise to spice ale. In Lodge's Looking glasse for London and England, the clown says, "Ile tell you, sir, if you did taste of the ale, all Ninivie hath not such a cup of ale, it floures in the cup, sir, by my troth I spent eleven pence, besides three rases of ginger." The numerous virtues of this root are likewise detailed in Vennor's Via recta ad vitam longam.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 342
PROV. One Ragozine, a most notorious pirate.
Some attempt to elucidate this name has been made in the first note to the Merchant of Venice, into which it is rather improperly introduced. Mr. Heath had supposed that Ragozine was put for Ragusan, i. e. a native of the city of Ragusa on the gulf of Venice, famous for its trading vessels; but it was incumbent on that gentleman to have shown that the inhabitants of the above city were pirates. This however would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible; for, on the contrary, Rycaut, in his State of the Ottoman empire, has expressly declared that the Ragusans never offered injury; but that, on receiving any, they very patiently supported it. Wherever Shakspeare met with the name of Ragozine, it should seem to be a metathesis of the French Argousin, or the Italian Argosino, i. e. an officer or lieutenant on board a galley; and, as Menage conjectures, a corruption of the Spanish Alguasil. See Carpentier, Suppl. ad gloss. Dufresne, under the word Argoisillo.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 358
ISAB. ... but let your reason serve To make the truth appear, where it seems hid; And hide the false, seems true.
The apparent difficulty in the last line proceeds from its elliptical construction; yet the meaning is sufficiently obvious. Isabella requests of the Duke to exert his reason to discover truth where it seems hid, and to suppress falsehood where it has the semblance of truth. Hide is, doubtless, a licentious word, but was used for the reason suggested by Mr. Malone.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 375
LUCIO. Show your sheep-biting face, and be hang'd an hour.
There would have been little reason for dissenting from Mr. Henley's ingenious note, in which he supposes that this expression refers to the pillory, but for the subsequent remark by Lucio, "this may prove worse than hanging." It seems therefore more probable that "hang'd an hour" alludes to the time usually allotted for torturing the miserable object of the barbarous punishment by suspension, which is justly execrated by Randle Holme as "a dog's death," and always excites in the spectator a strange mixture of ludicrous and shocking sensations. It dishonours the living more than it degrades the criminal. The Turkish bowstring were much less offensive to the feelings of humanity: but the more solemn and decorous infliction of death, (if inflicted it must be,) would, as in military cases, be the stroke of the bullet, provided such a measure could be adopted without offending the soldier's honour. The pre-eminent mercy of the English law disdains to augment the horrors of premature dissolution by personal pain and torture; its object is to prevent or diminish the commission of the crime. On this principle, one could wish that, on the close of the usual necessary and consolatory preparation for death, some mode of stupefying the offender were adopted; that no sensation of torture on his part might be felt, nor any other on that of the spectator, than a satisfaction that the sentence of the law had been fulfilled. For this digression no apology can be necessary. As to Mr. Daines Barrington's supposition, that "the criminal was suspended in the air by the collistrigium or stretch-neck," a very little reflection will suffice to show that it is founded in error. Such a process would in half an hour's time most effectually prevent a repetition of the ceremony. The collistrigium was so called from the stretching out or projection of the neck through a hole made in the pillory for that purpose, or through an iron collar or carcan that was sometimes attached to the pillar itself. No punishment has been inflicted in so many different ways as that of the pillory; and therefore the following varieties of it have been thought worth exhibiting.
The first is from a manuscript of the Chronicle of Saint Denis, in the British Museum, Bibl. Reg. 16. G. vi. It was written in the thirteenth century. The second occurs in a manuscript of Froissart, preserved in the same collection. The third is copied from a print in Comenius's Orbis pictus, and furnishes a specimen of the carcan, the woman being confined to the pillar by an iron ring or collar. The fourth is from a table of the standard of ancient weights and measures in the exchequer, and shows the mode of punishing a forestaller or regrator in the time of Henry the Seventh. The fifth exhibits Robert Ockam in the pillory for perjury. The fact happened in the reign of Henry the Eighth, but the cut is copied from Fox's Martyrs, published long afterwards. The sixth and last figure represents an ancient pillory that formerly stood in the market-place of the village of Paulmy in Touraine. It is copied from a view of the castle of Paulmy in Belleforest's Cosmographie universelle, 1575, folio. Not long since there was remaining in the Section des halles at Paris an old hexangular building of stone, with open Gothic windows, through which appeared an iron circle or carcan, with holes for placing the hands and necks of several persons at the same time, in like manner as in the first and last figures. There is an engraving of it in Millin's Antiquités nationales, tom. iii. no. 34.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 378
DUKE. Being criminal in double violation Of sacred chastity, and of promise-breach.
Mr. Malone thinks double refers to Angelo's conduct to Mariana and Isabel; but surely, however inaccurate the expression, it alludes to Angelo's double misconduct to Isabella, in having attempted her chastity, and violated his promise with respect to her brother. Thus in Promos and Cassandra:
"Thou wycked man, might it not thee suffice By worse than force to spoyle her chastitie, But heaping sinne on sinne against thy othe, Hast cruelly her brother done to death."
In Cinthio Giraldi's novel, it is "Vous avez commis deux crimes fort grans, l'un d'avoir diffamé cette jeune femme, par telle tromperie que l'on peut dire que vous l'avez forcée: l'autre d'avoir fait mourir son frere contre la foy à elle donnée." Transl. by Chappuys, 1584.