Act V, Scene 1 — Page 385
DUKE. Thy slanders I forgive; and therewithal Remit thy other forfeits: Take him to prison.
Mr. Steevens has refined too much in supposing this word to mean carnal offences. It is simply penalties. The Duke remits all Lucio's offences except the injury done to the woman, and he is ordered to remain in prison until he marry her. Forfeit was also used in the French sense of the word, crime, transgression.
THE CLOWN.
The clown in this play officiates as the tapster of a brothel; whence it has been concluded that he is not a domestic fool, nor ought to appear in the dress of that character. A little consideration will serve to show that the opinion is erroneous, that this clown is altogether a domestic fool, and that he should be habited accordingly. In Act II. Scene 1, Escalus calls him a tedious fool, and Iniquity, a name for one of the old stage buffoons. He tells him that he will have him whipt, a punishment that was very often inflicted on fools. In Timon of Athens we have a strumpet's fool, and a similar character is mentioned in the first speech in Antony and Cleopatra. But if any one should still entertain a doubt on the subject, he may receive the most complete satisfaction by an attentive examination of ancient prints, many of which will furnish instances of the common use of the domestic fool in brothels. In Twelfth Night, Act IV. Scene 1, Sebastian mistakes the clown for such a character as that before us, and calls him a foolish Greek, a term that is very happily explained by Dr. Warburton, whose note both communicates and receives support on the present occasion.
ON THE STORY AND CONSTRUCTION OF MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
Three sources whence the plot of this play might have been extracted, have already been mentioned, viz. Whetstone's Heptameron, 1582, 4to; his Promos and Cassandra, 1578, 4to; and novel 5, decad. 8, in Cinthio Giraldi. It is probable that the general outline of the story is founded on fact, as it is related, with some variety of circumstance, by several writers, and appears to have been very popular. It has therefore been thought worth while to point out the following works in which it occurs.
In Lipsii Monita et exempla politica, Antverp. 1613, 4to, cap. viii. Charles the bold duke of Burgundy causes one of his noblemen to be put to death for offending in the manner that Angelo would have done; but he is first compelled to marry the lady. This story has been copied from Lipsius into Wanley's Wonders of the little world, book iii. ch. 29, edit. 1678, folio; and from Wanley into that favourite little chap book, Burton's Unparalleled varieties, p. 42. See likewise The spectator, No. 491. This event was made the subject of a French play by Antoine Maréchal, called Le jugement équitable de Charles le hardy, 1646, 4to. Here the offender is called Rodolph governor of Maestrick, and by theatrical licence turns out to be the duke's own son. Another similar story of Charles's upright judgment may be found in the third volume of Goulart's Thrésor d'histoires admirables, 1628, 8vo, p. 373.
Much about the time when the above events are supposed to have happened, Olivier le Dain, for his wickedness surnamed the Devil, originally the barber, and afterwards the favourite of Louis XI., is said to have committed a similar offence, for which he was deservedly hanged. See Godefroy's edition of the Memoirs of Philip de Comines, Brussels, 1723, 8vo, tom. v. p. 55.
At the end of Belleforest's translation of Bandello's novels, there are three additional of his own invention. The first of these relates to a captain, who, having seduced the wife of one of his soldiers under a promise to save the life of her husband, exhibited him soon afterwards through the window of his apartment suspended on a gibbet. His commander, the marshal de Brissac, after compelling him to marry the widow, adjudges him to death. The striking similitude of a part of this story to what Mr. Hume has related of colonel Kirke, will present itself to every reader, and perhaps induce some to think with Mr. Ritson, (however they will differ in his mode of expressing the sentiment,) that Mr. Hume's narration is "an impudent and barefaced lie." See The quip modest, p. 30. A defence also of Kirke may be seen in the Monthly magazine, vol. ii. p. 544. Yet though we may be inclined to adopt this side of the question, it will only serve to diminish, in a single instance, the atrocities of that sanguinary monster.
In Lupton's Siuqila. Too good to be true, 1580, 4to, there is a long story of a woman, who, her husband having slain his adversary in a duel, goes to the judge for the purpose of prevailing on him to remit the sentence of the law. He obtains of her, in the first place, a large sum of money, and afterwards the reluctant prostitution of her person, under a solemn promise to save her husband. The rest, as in Belleforest's novel.
In vol. i. of Goulart's Thrésor d'histoires admirables, above cited, there are two stories on this subject. The first, in p. 300, is of a citizen of Como in Italy, who in 1547 was detained prisoner by a Spanish captain on a charge of murder. The wife pleads for him as before, and obtains a promise of favour on the same terms. The husband recommends her compliance, after which the Spaniard beheads him. Complaint is made to the Duke of Ferrara, who compels the captain to marry the widow, and then orders him to be hanged. The other, in p. 304, is of a provost named La Vouste, whose conduct resembles that of the other villain's, with this addition; he says to the woman, "I promised to restore your husband; I have not kept him, here he is." No punishment is inflicted on this fellow.
The last example to be mentioned on this occasion occurs in Cooke's Vindication of the professors and profession of the law, 1646, 4to, p. 61. During the wars between Charles the Fifth and Francis the First, one Raynucio had been imprisoned at Milan for betraying a fort to the French. His wife petitions the governor Don Garcias in his favour, who refuses to listen but on dishonourable terms, which are indignantly rejected. The husband, like Claudio in Measure for measure, at first commends the magnanimity of his wife, and submits to his sentence; but when the time for his execution approaches, his courage fails him, and he prevails on his wife to acquiesce in the governor's demands. A sum of ten thousand crowns is likewise extorted from the unhappy woman, and she receives in return the dead body of her husband. The Duke of Ferrara, Hercules of Este, who was general for the Emperor, is informed of the circumstance. He first persuades the governor to marry the lady, and then orders him to be beheaded.
Towards the conclusion of this play Dr. Johnson has observed, that "every reader feels some indignation when he finds Angelo spared." This remark is rigorously just, and calculated to satisfy those moralists who would have preferred the catastrophe in some of the preceding stories. But in the construction of a play theatrical effect was to be attended to; on which ground alone the poet may be defended. The other charge against him in Dr. Johnson's note is doubtless unfounded, and even laboriously strained. Shakspeare has been likewise hastily censured by a female writer of great ingenuity, for almost every supposed deviation from the plot of Cinthio's novel, and even for adhering to it in sparing Angelo.[9] It might however be contended, that, if our author really used this novel,[10] he has, with some exceptions, exerted a considerable degree of skill and contrivance in his alterations; and that he has consequently furnished a rich and diversified repast for his readers, instead of serving up the simple story in the shape of such a tragedy as might have suited a Greek audience, but certainly would not have pleased an English one in his time. In the novel, the sister, when she solicits mercy for her brother's murderer and her own seducer, (in the play Angelo is neither but in intention,) justly urges that excess of justice becomes cruelty. He therefore who would refuse mercy to Angelo for an intentional offence, has no right to censure him for severity to Claudio who had committed a real one. In the novel, the sister is actually seduced, and her brother murdered; and yet she pleads for the offender. In the play, though Isabella believes her brother to be dead, she reconciles herself to the sad event, inasmuch as she knows that he suffered by course of law, as well as by the cruelty of Angelo, from whose iniquity she herself has happily escaped. She is stimulated to solicit this man's life, from the suggestion and situation of her friend the innocent Mariana, who would have felt more distress from the death of Angelo, than the other parties discontent from his acquittal. The female critic has likewise observed that "Measure for measure ought not to be the title, since justice is not the virtue it inculcates." But surely, if Angelo had died, it would have been outmeasuring measure; as it is, the administration of justice is duly balanced, and both he and Claudio are equally punished in imagination. The Duke too, who knew all the circumstances, deserves credit for some ingenuity in his arrangements to protect the innocent, and, if not rigidly to punish the guilty, at least to save a sinner. Nor will any one contend that Angelo has escaped punishment: the agonizing state of uncertainty in which he long remained after the mock sentence, the bitter reproof of his colleague, and the still severer language of the Duke, will, it is to be hoped, conduce to satisfy every feeling and humane spectator of this fine play, that the poet has done enough to content even the rigorous moralist, and to exemplify, in his own divine words, that "earthly power doth then seem likest heaven's, when mercy seasons justice."
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Dr. Johnson in his dedication to the above lady's work, speaking of Shakspeare, says, "he lived in an age when the minds of his auditors were not accustomed to balance probabilities, or to examine nicely the proportion between causes and effects. It was sufficient to recommend a story that it was far removed from common life, that its changes were frequent, and its close pathetic." How much at variance is all this with the sentiments that follow on our play, and how it serves to mark the folly and absurdity of hireling dedications!
[10] It may well be doubted whether Shakspeare ever saw the story as related by Cinthio. There was not, as far as we know at present, any English translation of it in his time. He might indeed have seen the French version by Gabriel Chappuys, printed at Paris, 1583, 8vo; but it is certain that his chief model for the plot was the old play of Promos and Cassandra, a circumstance unknown to Mrs. Lenox. All must admit that the mode of saving the deputy's life is much better managed by Shakspeare than by Whetstone.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 395
Enter LEONATO....
This is the name of the injured lady's father in the novel of Belleforest which Mr. Steevens supposes to have furnished the plot of the play; a circumstance that tends very much to prove the justness of that gentleman's opinion.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 396
MESS. Without a badge of bitterness.
See a future note on The taming of the shrew, Act IV. Scene 1.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 397
BEAT. He set up his bills here in Messina.
This mode of expression will admit of a little more illustration than it has already received. The practice to which it refers was calculated to advertise the public of any matters which concerned itself or the party whose bills were set up; and it is the more necessary to state this, because the passages which have been used in explanation might induce the reader to suppose that challenges and prize-fightings were the exclusive objects of these bills. This however was not the case. In Northbrooke's Treatise against dicing, dauncing, vaine plaies, &c., 1579, 4to, a work much resembling that extremely curious volume Stubbes's Anatomie of abuses, we are told that they used "to set up their billes upon postes certain dayes before, to admonish the people to make resort unto their theatres, that they may thereby be the better furnished, and the people prepared to fill their purses with their treasures." In the play of Histriomastix, a man is introduced setting up text billes for playes; and William Rankins, another puritanical writer against plays, which he calls the instruments of Satan, in his Mirrour of monsters, 1587, 4to, p. 6, says, that "players by sticking of their bils in London, defile the streetes with their infectious filthines." Mountebanks likewise set up their bills. "Upon this scaffold also might bee mounted a number of quacksalving emperickes, who arriving in some country towne, clap up their terrible billes in the market place, and filling the paper with such horrible names of diseases, as if every disease were a divell, and that they could conjure them out of any towne at their pleasure." Dekkar's Villanies discovered by lanthorne and candle-light, &c., 1616, 4to, sign. H. Again, in Tales and quick answeres, printed by Berthelette, b. l. n. d. 4to, a man having lost his purse in London "sette up bylles in divers places that if any man of the cyte had founde the purse and woulde brynge it agayn to him he shulde have welle for his laboure. A gentyllman of the Temple wrote under one of the byls howe the man shulde come to his chambers and told where." It appears from a very rare little piece entitled Questions of profitable and pleasant concernings talked of by two olde seniors, &c., 1594, 4to, that Saint Paul's was a place in which these bills or advertisements were posted up. Thomas Nashe in his Pierce Pennilesse his supplication to the divell, 1595, 4to, sign. E. speaks of the "maisterlessemen that set up theyr bills in Paules for services, and such as paste up their papers on every post, for arithmetique and writing schooles:" we may therefore suppose that several of the walks about Saint Paul's cathedral then resembled the present Royal Exchange with respect to the business that was there transacted; and it appears indeed, from many allusions in our old plays, to have been as well the resort of the idle, as the busy. The phrase of setting up bills continued long after the time of Shakspeare and is used in a translation of Suetonius published in 1677, 8vo, p. 227.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 399
BEAT. ... challenged him at the bird-bolt.
In further exemplification of this sort of arrow, the following representations have been collected. A very sagacious modern editor of King James's Christ's kirk on the green has stated that the line "the bolt flew o'er the bire" is a metaphor of a thunderbolt flying over the cowhouse!
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 412
BENE. Prove that ever I lose more blood with love, &c.
There is a covert allusion in this speech that will not admit of a particular explanation. Debauchees imagine that wine recruits the loss of animal spirits. Love is used here in its very worst sense, and the whole is extremely gross and indelicate.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 429
BEAT. ... that I had my good wit out of the hundred merry tales.
From the unfortunate loss of these Merry tales, a doubt has arisen from whence they were translated, it being pretty clear that they were not originally written in English. Two authorities have been produced on this occasion, the Cent nouvelles nouvelles, and the Decameron of Boccaccio.
Mr. Steevens is an advocate for the first of these, and refers to an edition of them mentioned by Ames. This, it is to be presumed, is the Hundred merry tales noticed under the article for James Roberts. To this opinion an objection has been taken by Mr. Ritson, on the ground that many of the tales in the Cent nouvelles nouvelles are "very tragical, and none of them calculated to furnish a lady with good wit." Now it appears that out of these hundred stories only five are tragical, viz. novels 32, 47, 55, 56, and 98. In the old editions they are entitled Comptes plaisans et recreatiz pour deviser en toutes compaignies, and Moult plaisans á raconter par maniere de joyeuseté.
Mr. Reed has "but little doubt that Boccace's Decameron was the book here alluded to." If this gentleman's quotation from Guazzo's Civile conversation, 1586, be meant to establish the existence of the above work in an English dress it certainly falls short of the purpose; because it is no more than a translation of an author, who is speaking of the original Decameron. But there is a more forcible objection to Mr. Reed's opinion, which is, that the first complete English translation of Boccaccio's novels was not published till 1620, and after Shakspeare's death. The dedication states indeed, that many of the tales had long since been published; but this may allude to those which had appeared in Painter's Palace of pleasure, or in some other similar work not now remaining. There are likewise two or three of Boccaccio's novels in Tarlton's Newes out of purgatory, which might be alluded to in the above dedication, if the work which now remains under the date of 1630 was really printed in 1589, as may be suspected from a license granted to Thomas Gubbin. There seems to have been some prior attempt to publish the Decameron in English, but it was "recalled by my Lord of Canterbury's commands." See a note by Mr. Steevens prefixed to The two gentlemen of Verona. There is a remarkable fact however that deserves to be mentioned in this place, which is, that in the proem to Sacchetti's Novelle, written about the year 1360, it appears that Boccaccio's novels had been then translated into English, not a single vestige of which translation is elsewhere to be traced.
A third work that may appear to possess some right to assert its claim on the present occasion is the Cento novelle antiche, which might have been translated before or in Shakspeare's time, as it has been already shown in a note on the story of Twelfth night that he had probably seen the 13th novel in that collection. It may likewise be worth mentioning that Nashe in his Pappe with an hatchet, speaks of a book then coming out under the title of A hundred merrie tales, in which Martin Marprelate, i. e. John Penry, and his friends were to be satirized.
On the whole, the evidence seems to preponderate in favour of the Cent nouvelles nouvelles. As the greatest portion of this work consists of merry stories, there is no impropriety in calling it The hundred merry tales; the term hundred being part of the original title, and the epithet merry in all probability an addition for the purpose of designating the general quality of the stories. The Decameron of Boccaccio, which contains more tragical subjects than the other, is called in the English translation A hundred PLEASANT novels.
Whatever the hundred merry tales really were, we find them in existence so late as 1659, and the entire loss of them to the present age might have been occasioned by the devastation in the great fire of London.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 432
BENE. Come, will you go with me?
CLAUD. Whither?
BENE. Even to the next willow, about your own business, Count. What fashion will you wear the garland of?
It was the custom for those who were forsaken in love to wear willow garlands. This tree might have been chosen as the symbol of sadness from the verse in psalm 137, "We hanged our harps upon the willows, in the midst thereof;" or else from a coincidence between the weeping willow and falling tears. Another reason has been assigned. The Agnus castus or vitex, was supposed by the ancients to promote chastity, "and the willow being of a much like nature," says an old writer, "it is yet a custom that he which is deprived of his love must wear a willow garland." Swan's Speculum mundi, chap. 6. sect. 4. edit. 1635. Bona, the sister of the king of France, on receiving news of Edward the Fourth's marriage with Elizabeth Grey, exclaims, "In hope he'll prove a widower shortly, I'll wear a willow garland for his sake." See Henry the Sixth, part iii. and Desdemona's willow song in Othello, Act IV. Two more ballads of a similar nature may be found in Playford's Select ayres, 1659, folio, pp. 19, 21.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 438
BEAT. Civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion.
This reading of the older copy has been judiciously preferred to a jealous complexion. Yellow is an epithet often applied to jealousy by the old writers. In The merry wives of Windsor, Nym says he will possess Ford with yellowness. Shakspeare more usually terms it green-eyed.
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 447
BENE. ... now will he lie ten nights awake, carving the fashion of a new doublet.
The print in Borde of the Englishman with a pair of shears, seems to have been borrowed from some Italian or other foreign picture in ridicule of our countrymen's folly. Coryat, in his Crudities, p. 260, has this remark; "we weare more phantasticall fashions than any nation under the sunne doth, the French onely excepted; which hath given occasion both to the Venetian and other Italians to brand the Englishman with a notable marke of levity, by painting him starke naked with a paire of shears in his hand, making his fashion of attire according to the vaine invention of his braine-sicke head, not to comelinesse and decorum." Purchas, in his Pilgrim, 1619, 8vo, speaks of "a naked man with sheeres in one hand and cloth in the other," as a general emblem of fashion. Many other allusions to such a figure might be cited, but it was not peculiar to the English. In La geographie Françoise, by P. Du Val d'Abbeville, 1663, 12mo, the author, speaking of the Frenchman's versatility in dress, adds, "dans la peinture des nations on met pres de luy le cizeau."
The inconstancy of our own countrymen in the article of dress is described in the following verses from John Halle's Courte of vertue, 1565, 12mo.
"As fast as God's word one synne doth blame They devyse other as yll as the same, And this varietie of Englyshe folke, Dothe cause all wyse people us for to mocke.
For all discrete nations under the sonne, Do use at thys day as they fyrst begonne: And never doo change, but styll do frequent, Theyr old guyse, what ever fond folkes do invent.
But we here in England lyke fooles and apes, Do by our vayne fangles deserve mocks and japes, For all kynde of countreys dooe us deryde, In no constant custome sythe we abyde For we never knowe howe in our aray, We may in fyrme fashion stedfastly stay."
Randle Holme complained that in his time (1680) Englishmen were as changeable as the moon in their dress, "in which respect," says he, "we are termed the Frenchmen's apes, imitating them in all their fantastick devised fashions of garbs." Acad. of armory, book iii. ch. 5.
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 452
CLAUD. Stalk on, stalk on, the fowl sits.
It has been already shown that the stalking bull was equally common with the stalking horse. It was sometimes used for decoying partridges into a tunnelling net, or cage of net work, in the form of a tun, with doors. The process is described at large, with a print, in Willughby's Ornithology, 1678, folio, p. 34, where an account is also given of the stalking-horse, ox, stag, &c.
Howel in his Vocabulary, sect. xxxv. seems to have mistaken the tun or net into which the birds were driven, for the stalking bull itself. Sometimes, as in hunting the wolf, an artificial bush and a wooden screen were used to stalk with. See Clamorgan, Chasse du loup, 1595, 4to, p. 29.
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 455
LEON. She tore the letter into a thousand halfpence.
Mr. Theobald explains this "into a thousand pieces of the same bigness," as if Beatrice had torn the letter by rule and compass. Mr. Steevens more properly supposes halfpence to mean small pieces; but his note would have been less imperfect if he had added that the halfpence of Elizabeth were of silver, and about the size of a modern silver penny.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 469
D. PEDRO. ... the little hangman dare not shoot at him.
Dr. Farmer has illustrated this term by citing a passage from Sidney's Arcadia; but he has omitted a previous description in which Cupid is metamorphosed into a strange old monster, sitting on a gallows with a crown of laurel in one hand, and a purse of money in the other, as if he would persuade folks by these allurements to hang themselves. It is certainly possible that this might have been Shakspeare's prototype; we should otherwise have supposed that he had called Cupid a hangman metaphorically, from the remedy sometimes adopted by desparing lovers.
Act III, Scene 4 — Page 488
MARG. Clap us into light o'love.
When Margaret adds that this tune "goes without a burden," she does not mean that it never had words to it, but only that it wanted a very common appendage to the ballads of that time. The name itself may be illustrated by the following extract from The glasse of man's follie, 1615, 4to. "There be wealthy houswives, and good house-keepers that use no starch, but faire water: their linnen is white, and they looke more Christian-like in small ruffes, then Light of love lookes in her great starched ruffs, looke she never so hie, with eye-lids awrye." This anonymous work is written much in the manner of Stubbes's Anatomie of abuses, and for the same purpose.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 510
BENE. Tarry, sweet Beatrice.
BEAT. I am gone, though I am here. There is no love in you--Nay, I pray you let me go.
Though three explanations have been already offered, there is room for further conjecture. From the latter words of Beatrice it is clear that Benedick had stopped her from going. She may therefore intend to say that notwithstanding she is detained by force, she is in reality absent; her heart is no longer Benedick's.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 524
LEON. His May of youth, and bloom of lustyhood.
An allusion to these lines in the old calendars that describe the state of man:
"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."
In the Notbrowne mayde we have the expression lusty May. Capel's edit. p. 6. Roger Ascham, speaking of young men, says; "It availeth not to see them well taught in yong yeares, and after when they come to lust and youthfull dayes, to give them licence to live as they lust themselves." Scholemaster, 1571, fo. 13. See a former note in p. 45.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 529
CLAUD. If he be, [angry] he knows how to turn his girdle.
Mr. Holt White's ingenious note may be supported by the following passage in Carew's Survey of Cornwall, 1602, 4to. p. 76: the author is speaking of wrestling. "This hath also his lawes, of taking hold onely above girdle, wearing a girdle to take hold by, playing three pulles, for tryall of the mastery, &c."
Act V, Scene 4 — Page 554
BENE. Prince, thou art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife; there is no staff more reverend than one tipp'd with horn.
In this comparison the prince is the staff, and the question is what sort of a one is here alluded to. Messrs. Steevens, Reed, and Malone, conceive it to be the staff used in the ancient trial by wager of battle; but this seems to have but small claim to be entitled reverend. On the contrary, as the combatants were of the meaner class of people, who were not allowed to make use of edged weapons, the higher ranks usually deciding the business by hired champions, it cannot well be maintained that much, if any, reverence belongs to such a staff. It is possible, therefore, that Shakspeare, whose allusions to archery are almost as frequent as they are to cuckoldom, might refer to the bowstaff, which was usually tipped with a piece of horn at each end, to make such a notch for the string as would not wear, and at the same time to strengthen the bow, and prevent the extremities from breaking. It is equally possible that the walking-sticks or staves used by elderly people might be intended, which were often headed or tipped with a cross piece of horn, or sometimes amber. They seem to have been imitated from the crutched sticks, or potences, as they were called, used by the friars, and by them borrowed from the celebrated tau of St. Anthony. Thus in The Canterbury tales, the Sompnour describes one of his friars as having "a scrippe and tipped staf," and he adds that
"His felaw had a staf tipped with horn."
In these instances the epithet reverend is much more appropriate than in the others.
* * * * *
Mrs. Lenox, assuming, with the same inaccuracy as had been manifested in her critique on Measure for measure, that Shakspeare borrowed his plot from Ariosto, proceeds to censure him for "poverty of invention, want of judgment, and wild conceits," deducing all her reasoning from false premises. This is certainly but a bad method of illustrating Shakspeare.
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 6
EGE. Happy be Theseus, our renowned duke.
This is in reality no "misapplication of a modern title," as Mr. Steevens conceived, but a legitimate use of the word in its primitive Latin sense of leader; and so it is often used in the Bible. Not so the instance adduced of sheriffs of the provinces, which might have been avoided in our printed bibles. Wicliffe had most properly used prefectis. Shakspeare might have found Duke Theseus in the book of Troy, or in Turbervile's Ovid's Epistles. See the argument to that of Phædra to Hippolytus.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 9
THE. You can endure the livery of a nun, For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd.
The threatening to make a nun of poor Hermia is as whimsical an anachronism as any in Shakspeare.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 13
LYS. Making it momentany as a sound.
Momentany and momentary were indiscriminately used in Shakspeare's time. The former corresponds with the French momentaine.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 30
FAI. And I serve the fairy queen, To dew her orbs upon the green.
Mr. Steevens in the happy and elegant remark at the end of his note on the last line, has made a slight mistake in substituting Puck for the fairy. When the damsels of old gathered the May dew on the grass, and which they made use of to improve their complexions, they left undisturbed such of it as they perceived on the fairy-rings; apprehensive that the fairies should in revenge destroy their beauty. Nor was it reckoned safe to put the foot within the rings, lest they should be liable to the fairies' power.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 32
Puck. But they do square.
Dr. Johnson has very justly observed that to square here is to quarrel. In investigating the reason, we must previously take it for granted that our verb to quarrel is from the French quereller, or perhaps both from the common source, the Latin querela. Blackstone has remarked that the glaziers use the words square and quarrel as synonymous terms for a pane of glass, and he might have added for the instrument with which they cut it. This, he says, is somewhat whimsical; but had he been acquainted with the reason, he might have been disposed to waive his opinion, at least on the present occasion. The glazier's instrument is a diamond, usually cut into such a square form as the supposed diamonds on the French and English cards, in the former of which it is still properly called carreau, from its original. This was the square iron head of the arrow used for the cross-bow. In English it was called a quarrel, and hence the glazier's diamond and the pane of glass have received their names of square and quarrel. Now we may suppose without straining the point very violently, that these words being evidently synonymous in one sense, have corruptedly become so in another; and that the verb to square, which correctly and metaphorically, even at this time, signifies to agree or accord, has been carelessly and ignorantly wrested from its true sense, and from frequent use become a legitimate word. The French have avoided this error, and to express a meaning very similar to that of to quarrel or dispute, make use of the word contrecarrer.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 37
PUCK. The wisest aunt telling the saddest tale, Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me; Then slip I from her bum, down-topples she.
The celebrated duchess of Newcastle, in a poem of some fancy, entitled The queen of fairies, makes Puck or hobgoblin the queen of fairies' fool, and alludes to the above prank in the following lines:
"The goodwife sad squats down upon a stool, Not at all thinking it was Hob the fool, And frowning sits, then Hob gives her a slip, And down she falls, whereby she hurts her hip."
The above dame is a farmer's wife who has been scolding because she was unable to procure any butter or cheese, and at Puck's holding up the hens' rumps to prevent their laying eggs too fast.
With respect to the word aunt, it has been usually derived from the French tante; but the original Norman term is ante. See examples in Carpentier Suppl. ad Ducang. v. avuncula. So the author of the old and excellent farce of Maistre Patelin,
"Vostre belle ante, mourut-elle?"
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 39
Enter OBERON and TITANIA.
Mr. Tyrwhitt's remark that the Pluto and Proserpine of Chaucer were the true progenitors of Oberon and Titania, may be perfectly true; but the name of Oberon as king of the fairies, must have been exceedingly well known from the romance of Huon of Bourdeaux, in which this Oberon makes a very conspicuous figure.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 41
TITA. Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead, By paved fountain.
Milton, doubtless, had these lines in recollection when he wrote,
"To hill or valley, fountain or fresh shade."
Par. lost, b. v. l. 203.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 41
TITA. To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind.
An allusion to what the country people call fairy rings, which they suppose to be the tracks of the dances of those diminutive beings.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 43
TITA. The nine mens morris is fill'd up with mud.
This game was sometimes called the nine mens merrils, from merelles or mereaux, an ancient French word for the jettons or counters, with which it was played. The other term morris is probably a corruption suggested by the sort of dance which in the progress of the game the counters performed. In the French merelles each party had three counters only, which were to be placed in a line in order to win the game. It appears to have been the Tremerel mentioned in an old fabliau. See Le Grand Fabliaux et contes, tom. ii. p. 208.
Dr. Hyde thinks the morris or merrils was known during the time that the Normans continued in possession of England, and that the name was afterwards corrupted into three mens morals, or nine mens morals. If this be true, the conversion of morals into morris, a term so very familiar to the country people, was extremely natural. The doctor adds, that it was likewise called nine-penny, or nine-pin miracle, three-penny morris, five-penny morris, nine-penny morris, or three-pin, five-pin, and nine-pin morris, all corruptions of three-pin, &c. merels. Hyde Hist. Nerdiludii, p. 202.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 44
TITA. The human mortals want their winter here.
In the controversy respecting the immortality of fairies, Mr. Ritson's ingenious and decisive reply in his Quip modest ought on every account to have been introduced. A few pages further Titania evidently alludes to the immortality of fairies, when, speaking of the changeling's mother, she says, "but she, being mortal, of that boy did die." Spenser's fairy system and his pedigree were allegorical, invented by himself, and not coinciding with the popular superstitions on the subject. Human mortals is merely a pleonasm, and neither put in opposition to fairy mortals, according to Mr. Steevens, nor to human immortals, according to Ritson; it is simply the language of a fairy speaking of men.
A posthumous note by Mr. Steevens has not contributed to strengthen his former arguments, as the authors therein mentioned do not, strictly speaking, allude to the sort of fairies in question, but to spirits, devils, and angels. Shakspeare, however, would certainly be more influenced by popular opinion than by the dreams of the casuists. There is a curious instance of the nature of fairies, according to the belief of more ancient times, in the romance of Lancelot of the lake. "En celui temps," (the author is speaking of the days of king Arthur,) "estoient appellees faees toutes selles qui sentremettoient denchantemens et de charmes, et moult en estoit pour lors principalement en la Grande Bretaigne, et savoient la force et la vertu des paroles, des pierres, et des herbes, parquoy elles estoient tenues en jeunesse et en beaulte, et en grandes richesses comme elles devisoient." This perpetual youth and beauty cannot well be separated from a state of immortality. Nor would it be difficult to controvert the sentiments of those who have maintained the mortality of devils, by means of authorities as valid as their own. The above interesting romance will furnish one at least that may not be unacceptable. Speaking of the birth of the prophet and enchanter Merlin, it informs us that his mother would not consent to the embraces of any man who should be visible; and therefore it was by some means ordained that a devil should be her lover. When he approached her, to use the words of the romance, "la damoiselle le tasta et sentit quil avoit le corps moult bien fait; non pourtant les dyables n'ont ne corps ne membres que l'en puisse veoir ne toucher, car spirituelle chose ne peut estre touchée, et tous diables sont choses spirituelles." The fruit of this amour was Merlin; but he, being born of woman, was but a semi-devil, and subject to mortality. A damsel with whom he had fallen in love, prevailed on him to disclose some of his magical arts to her, by means of which she deceived him, and preserved her chastity by casting him into a deep sleep whenever he importuned her. The romance adds, "si le decevoit ainsi pource qu'il estoit mortel; mais s'il eust este du tout dyable, elle ne l'eust peu decepvoir; car ung dyable ne peut dormir."
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 45
TITA. Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, Pale in her anger, washes all the air, That rheumatic diseases do abound.
Thus in Newton's Direction for the health of magistrates and studentes, 1574, 12mo, we are told that "the moone is ladie of moysture;" and in Hamlet, Act I. Scene 1, she is called "the moist star." In Bartholomæus De propriet. rerum, by Batman, lib. 8. c. 29, the moon is described to be "mother of all humours, minister and lady of the sea." But in Lydgate's prologue to his Storie of Thebes, there are two lines which Shakspeare seems closely to have imitated;
"Of Lucina the moone, moist and pale, That many showre fro heaven made availe."
The same mode of expression occurs in Parkes's Curtaine drawer of the world, 1612, 4to, p. 48: "the centinels of the season ordained to marke the queen of floods how she lends her borrowed light." This book deserves to be noticed for the good sense which it contains, and the merit of some occasional pieces of poetry.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 50
OBE. I do but beg a little changeling boy To be my henchman.
Of all the opinions concerning the origin of this word, that of Sir William Spelman alone can be maintained. If instead of deriving it from the German, he had stated that it came to us through the Saxon Henᵹeꞅꞇ, a horse, his information had been more correct. Although in more modern times the pages or henchmen might have walked on foot, it is very certain that they were originally horsemen, according to the term. Thus in Chaucer's Floure and the leafe:
"And every knight had after him riding Three henshmen, on him awaiting."
If the old orthography henxmen had not been unfortunately disturbed, we should have heard nothing of the conjectures about haunch and haunch-men.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 58
Enter DEMETRIUS, Helena following him.
However forward and indecorous the conduct of Helena in pursuing Demetrius may appear to modern readers, such examples are very frequent in old romances of chivalry, wherein Shakspeare was undoubtedly well read. The beautiful ballad of the Nut-brown maid might have been more immediately in his recollection, many parts of this scene having a very strong resemblance to it.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 61
HEL. I'll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell.
Imitated by Milton:
"The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heaven."
Par. lost, b. i. l. 254.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 62
OBE. Quite overcanopied with lush woodbine.
See what has been already said on this word in p. 8; the meaning is the same as there. Theobald's amendment from luscious was probably in conformity with that passage; and the printers of the old editions not comprehending the meaning of lush, which even in their time was an antiquated word, ignorantly, as well as unharmoniously, substituted luscious.
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 68
HER. ... in human modesty Such separation, as, may well be said, Becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid.
That is, "let there be such separation," &c. A comma should be placed after modesty.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 77
QUIN. When you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake.
It is submitted that brake cannot in this instance signify a large extent of ground, overgrown with furze, but merely the hawthorn bush or tyring-house as Quince had already called it.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 83
BOT. Nay I can gleek upon occasion.
Again, in Romeo and Juliet, Act IV. Scene 5:
"1. MUS. What will you give us?
Pet. No money, on my faith; but the gleek."
On which consult Mr. Steevens's posthumous note in Mr. Reed's last edition.
Mr. Pope had justly remarked that to gleek is to scoff. In some of the notes on this word it has been supposed to be connected with the card game of gleek; but it was not recollected that the Saxon language supplied the term Glɩᵹ, ludibrium, and doubtless a corresponding verb. Thus glee signifies mirth and jocularity; and gleeman or gligman, a minstrel or joculator. Gleek was therefore used to express a stronger sort of joke, a scoffing. It does not appear that the phrase to give the gleek was ever introduced in the above game, which was borrowed by us from the French, and derived from an original of very different import from the word in question.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 84
TITA. And light them at the fiery glow-worms eyes.
Dr. Johnson's objection to the word eyes, has been very skilfully removed by Mr. Monck Mason; but this gentleman appears to have misconceived the meaning of Shakspeare's most appropriate epithet of ineffectual, in the passage from Hamlet. The glow-worm's fire was ineffectual only at the approach of morn, in like manner as the light of a candle would be at mid-day.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 88
OBE. What night-rule now about this haunted grove?
Mr. Steevens has properly explained night-rule. Rule in this word has the same meaning as in the Christmas lord of mis-rule, and is a corruption of revel, formerly written reuel.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 89
PUCK. An ass's nowl I fixed on his head.
The receipt for making a man resemble an ass, already given in a former note, must give place to the following in Scot's Discoverie of witchcraft, b. 13. c. xix. "Cutt off the head of a horsse or an asse (before they be dead), otherwise the vertue or strength thereof will be the lesse effectuall, and make an earthern vessell of fit capacitie to conteine the same, and let it be filled with the oile and fat thereof; cover it close, and dawbe it over with lome: let it boile over a soft fier three daies continuallie, that the flesh boiled may run into oile, so as the bare bones may be seene: beate the haire into powder, and mingle the same with the oile; and annoint the heads of the standers by, and they shall seem to have horsses or asses heads."
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 95
OBE. All fancy-sick she is, and pale of cheer.
Mr. Steevens deduces this word from the Italian cara; but it is from the old French chere, face. Lydgate finishes the prologue to his Storie of Thebes with these lines:
"And as I coud, with a pale cheare, My tale I gan anone, as ye shall heare."
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 103
HEL. So with two seeming bodies, but one heart; Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.
It may be doubted whether this passage has been rightly explained, and whether the commentators have not given Shakspeare credit for more skill in heraldry than he really possessed, or at least than he intended to exhibit on the present occasion. Helen says, "we had two seeming bodies, but only one heart." She then exemplifies her position by a simile--"we had two of the first, i. e. bodies, like the double coats in heraldry that belong to man and wife as one person, but which, like our single heart, have but one crest."
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 112
PUCK. And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger, At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there, Troop home to church-yards.
Aurora's harbinger is Lucifer, the morning star.
"Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the East----"[11]
It was the popular belief that ghosts retired at the approach of day. Thus the spirit of Hamlet's father exclaims,
"But soft, methinks I scent the morning air."
In further illustration see a subsequent note on Hamlet, Act I. Scene 1.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 117
HEL. And, sleep, that sometime shuts up sorrow's eye.
Again, in Macbeth:
"Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care." #/
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 145
PHILOST. ... I have heard it over, And it is nothing, nothing in the world; Unless you can find sport in their intents, Extremely stretch'd, and conn'd with cruel pain, To do you service.
Dr. Johnson suspects a line to be lost, as he "knows not what it is to stretch and con an intent;" but it is surely not intents that are stretch'd and conn'd but the play, of which Philostrate is speaking. If the line
"Unless you can find sport, &c."
were printed in a parenthesis, all would be right. Mr. Steevens, not perceiving this, has endeavoured to wrest from the word intents, its plain and usual meaning, and would unnecessarily convert it to attention, which might undoubtedly be stretch'd, but could not well be conn'd.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 148
PHILOST. The prologue is addrest.
We have borrowed this sense of the word (ready) from the French adressé.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 157
MOON. This lantern doth the horned moon present.
But why horned? He evidently refers to the materials of which the lantern was made.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 168
PUCK. By the triple Hecat's team.
By this team is meant the chariot of the moon, said to be drawn by two horses, the one black, the other white. It is probable that Shakspeare might have consulted some translation of Boccaccio's Genealogy of the gods, which, as has been already remarked, appears to have occasionally supplied him with his mythological information. As this is the first time we meet with the name of Hecate in our author, it may be proper to notice the error he has committed in making it a word of two syllables, which he has done in several other places, though in one (viz. I. Henry Sixth, if he wrote that play) it is rightly made a trisyllable:
"I speak not to that railing Hĕcătē."
Act III, Scene 2
His contemporaries have usually given it properly. Thus Spenser in the Fairy queen,
"As Hĕcătē, in whose almighty hand."
B. vii. Canto 6.
Ben Jonson has, of course, always been correct. Mr. Malone observes, in a note on Macbeth, Act III. Scene 5, that Marlowe, though a scholar, has used the word Hecate as a dissyllable. It may be added that Middelton and Golding have done the same; the latter in his translation of Ovid, book vii. has used it in both ways.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 168
PUCK. I am sent with broom before, To sweep the dust behind the door.
In confirmation of Dr. Johnson's remark that fairies delight in cleanliness, two other poems shall be quoted. The first is the Fairy queen, printed in Percy's Ancient Ballads, iii. 207, edit. 1775.
"But if the house be swept, And from uncleanness kept, We praise the household maid," &c.
The other is the Fairies farewell, by Bishop Corbet, printed also in Percy's collection, iii. 210, from his Poetica stromata, 1648, 18mo. It is also in a preceding edition of the bishop's poems, 1647, 18mo.
"Farewell rewards and fairies! Good housewives now may say; For now foule sluts in dairies Doe fare as well as they: And though they sweepe their hearths no less Than mayds were wont to doe, Yet who of late for cleanliness Finds sixepence in her shoe?"
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 170
OBE. To the best bride bed will we, Which by us shall blessed be.
Mr. Steevens remarks that the ceremony of blessing the bed was observed at the marriage of a princess. It was used at all marriages. This was the form, copied from the Manual for the use of Salisbury. "Nocte vero sequente cum sponsus et sponsa ad lectum pervenerint, accedat sacerdos et benedicat thalamum, dicens: Benedic, Domine, thalamum istum et omnes habitantes in eo; ut in tua pace consistant, et in tua voluntate permaneant: et in amore tuo vivant et senescant et multiplicentur in longitudine dierum. Per Dominum.--Item benedictio super lectum. Benedic, Domine, hoc cubiculum, respice, quinon dormis neque dormitas. Qui custodis Israel, custodi famulos tuos in hoc lecto quiescentes ab omnibus fantasmaticis demonum illusionibus: custodi eos vigilantes ut in preceptis tuis meditentur dormientes, et te per soporem sentiant: ut hic et ubique defensionis tuæ muniantur auxilio. Per Dominum.--Deinde fiat benedictio super eos in lecto tantum cum Oremus. Benedicat Deus corpora vestra et animas vestras; et det super vos benedictionem sicut benedixit Abraham, Isaac, et Jacob, Amen.--His peractis aspergat eos aqua benedicta, et sic discedat et dimittat eos in pace." We may observe on this strange ceremony, that the purity of modern times stands not in need of these holy aspersions to lull the senses and dissipate the illusions of the Devil. The married couple would, no doubt, rejoice when the benediction was ended. In the French romance of Melusine, the bishop who marries her to Raymondin blesses the nuptial bed. The ceremony is there represented in a very ancient cut, of which a copy is subjoined. The good prelate is sprinkling the parties with holy water. Sometimes during the benediction the married couple only sat upon the bed; but they generally received a portion of consecrated bread and wine. It is recorded in France, that on frequent occasions the priest was improperly detained till the hour of midnight, whilst the wedding guests rioted in the luxuries of the table, and made use of language that was extremely offensive to the clergy, and injurious to the salvation of the parties. It was therefore, in the year 1577, ordained by Pierre de Gondi, archbishop of Paris, that the ceremony of blessing the nuptial bed should for the future be performed in the day time, or at least before supper, and in the presence only of the bride and bridegroom, and of their nearest relations.
There is a singularity in this cut which may well excuse a short digression. This is the horned head-dress of the bride, a fashion that prevailed in England during the reign of Henry the Sixth, and for a short time afterwards. Lydgate has left us an unpublished ditty, in which he complains of it. As it is, like most of his other poetry, very dull and very tedious, a couple of stanzas may suffice; each concludes with a line to recommend the casting away of these horns.
"Clerkys recorde by gret auctorite, Hornys were yove to beestys for diffence; A thyng contrary to femynyte To be made sturdy of resistence. But arche wyves egre in ther violence, Fers as tygre for to make affray, They have despyt and ageyn conscience Lyst nat of pryde ther hornys cast away.
Noble pryncessys, this litel shoort ditee Rewdly compiled lat it be noon offence To your womanly merciful pitie, Thouh it be rad in your audience; Peysed ech thyng in your just advertence, So it be no displesaunce to your pay, Undir support of your patience Yevyth example hornys to cast away."
Harl. MS. No. 2255.
In France, this part of female dress was a frequent subject of clerical reprehension. Nicholas de Claminges, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and contemporary with Lydgate, compares it to the horns of oxen. "Tenduntur hinc et inde mira et inaudita deformitate gemina cornua bipedali prope intervallo à se distantia, majorique latitudine caput fœmineum diffundunt quam bubalinum longitudine distenditur. Auro ac gemmis omnia rutilant. Stibio et cerusa pinguntur facies; patent colla; nudantur pectora." Nicolai de Clemangiis opera, Lugd. Batavor. 1613, 4to, p. 144. And again, in his letters, "quid de cornibus et caudis loquar, quas illic jam vulgo matronæ gestant, qua in re naturam videntur humanam reliquisse, bestialemque sibi ultro adscivisse. Adde quod in effigie cornutæ fœminæ Diabolus plerumque pingitur." We cannot but admire the pious writer's ingenuity in the latter declaration, and how well it was calculated to terrify the ladies out of this preposterous fashion.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 171
OBE. With this field-dew consecrate Every fairy take his gait; And each several chamber bless, Through this palace with sweet peace.
Thus in the Merry wives of Windsor, Act V. Scene 5:
"Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out: Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room."
In the first line of Oberon's speech there seems to be a covert satire against holy water. Whilst the popular confidence in the power of fairies existed, they had obtained the credit of occasionally performing much good service to mankind; and the great influence which they possessed gave so much offence to the holy monks and friars, that they determined to exert all their power to expel the above imaginary beings from the minds of the people, by taking the office of the fairies' benedictions entirely into their own hands. Of this we have a curious proof in the beginning of Chaucer's admirable tale of the Wife of Bath:
"I speke of many hundred yeres ago; But now can no man see non elves mo, For now the grete charitee and prayeres Of limitoures and other holy freres That serchen every land and every streme. As thikke as motes in the sonne beme, _Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures, Citees and burghes, castles highe and toures, Thropes and bernes, shepenes and dairies, This maketh that ther ben no faeries: For ther as wont to walken was an elf, Ther walketh now the limitour himself_."
The other quotation from Chaucer, which Mr. Steevens has given, is not to the present purpose. The fairies' blessing was to bring peace upon the house of Theseus; the night-spell in the Miller's tale, is pronounced against the influence of elves, and those demons, or evil spirits, that were supposed to occasion the night-mare, and other nocturnal illusions. As this is a subject that has never been professedly handled, it may be worth while to bring together a few facts that relate to it; to do it ample justice would require an express dissertation.
A belief in the influence of evil spirits has been common to all nations, and in the remotest periods of the human history. The gross superstitions of the middle ages, which even exceeded those in Pagan times, had given birth to a variety of imaginary beings, who were supposed to be perpetually occupied in doing mischief to mankind. The chief of these were the Incubus, or night-mare, and certain fairies of a malignant nature. It therefore became necessary to check and counteract their operations by spells, charms, and invocations to saints. Some of these have been preserved. The lines given to Mad Tom in Lear, beginning
"Saint Withold footed thrice the wold,"
is one of them; and in the notes belonging to it, as well as in those by Mr. Tyrwhitt on the Canterbury tales, vol. iv. 242, others have been collected. To these may be added the following in Cartwright's play of The Ordinary, Act III. Scene 1:
"Saint Francis, and Saint Benedight, Blesse this house from wicked wight, From the night-mare and the goblin, That is hight good fellow Robin. Keep it from all evil spirits, Fayries, weezels, rats and ferrets, From curfew time To the next prime."
This indeed may be rather considered as satirical, but it is a parody on those which were genuine. Sinclair, in his Satan's invisible world discovered, informs us that "At night, in the time of popery, when folks went to bed, they believed the repetition of this following prayer was effectual to preserve them from danger, and the house too."
"Who sains the house the night, They that sains it ilka night. Saint Bryde and her brate, Saint Colme and his hat, Saint Michael and his spear, Keep this house from the weir; From running thief, And burning thief; And from an ill Rea, That be the gate can gae; And from an ill weight, That be the gate can light Nine reeds about the house; Keep it all the night, What is that, what I see So red, so bright, beyond the sea? 'Tis he was pierc'd through the hands, Through the feet, through the throat, Through the tongue; Through the liver and the lung. Well is them that well may Fast on Good-friday."
As darkness was supposed to be more immediately adapted to the machinations of these malicious spirits, it was natural that, on retiring to rest, certain prayers should be chosen to deprecate their influence, which was often regarded as of a particular kind. To this Imogen alludes when she exclaims,
"To your protection I commend me, Gods! From fairies, and the tempters of the night Guard me, beseech ye!"
Cymbeline, Act II. Scene 2.
So Banquo in Macbeth:
"Restrain in me the _cursed thoughts that nature Gives way to in repose_."
An ancient hymn by Saint Ambrose goes to the same point:
"Procul recedant somnia Et noctium phantasmata: Hostemque nostrum comprime Ne polluantur corpora."
The demon who was supposed to have particular influence in these nocturnal illusions, was Asmodeus, the lame devil of whom Mons. Le Sage has made such admirable use. In expelling him, the sign of the cross was most efficacious; a very old practice on similar occasions, as we learn from the following lines in Prudentius:--
"Fac, cum _vocante somno Castum petis cubile_ Frontem, locumque cordis Crucis figura signes. Crux pellit omne crimen, Fugunt crucem tenebræ: Tali dicata signo Mens fluctuare nescit. Procul, ô procul _vagantum Portenta somniorum_, Procul esto pervicaci Præstigiator astu."
Relics of saints, images of the holy Virgin, sanctified girdles, and a variety of other amulets were resorted to on the same occasion, exhibiting a lamentable proof of the imbecility of human nature.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 172
PUCK. Give me your hands, if we be friends.
Thus in the epilogue to Stubbes's excellent play of Senile odium,
"... jam vestræ quid valeant manus Nimis velim experiri: ab illis enim vapulare, munus erit."
FOOTNOTES:
[11] It has not been recollected to what poet these lines belong.
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 181
KING. Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live register'd upon our brazen tombs.
It was the fashion in Shakspeare's time, and had been so from the thirteenth century, to ornament the tombs of eminent persons with figures and inscriptions on plates of brass: to these the allusion seems rather to be made, than to monuments that were entirely of brass, such being of very rare occurrence.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 182
Long. Fat paunches have lean pates.
From the Latin pinguis venter non gignit sensum tenuem. See Ray's Proverbs. The rest of Longaville's speech, "and dainty bits," &c. merely repeats the same sentiment for the sake of a rhime.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 183
BIRON. If study's gain be thus, and this be so.
Mr. Ritson would read, If study's gain be this. There is no occasion for any change. Thus means after this manner; but the poet would not write this, in order to avoid a cacophony.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 191
KING. This child of fancy, that Armado hight, For interim to our studies shall relate, In high-horn words, the worth of many a knight From tawny Spain, lost in the world's debate.
The context seems to indicate that child of fancy is here used precisely in the sense in which Milton applied it to Shakspeare, from whom he probably borrowed it. The meaning of this controverted speech may be as follows: "this child of invention shall relate to us, in his bombastic language, the worthy deeds of many a Spanish knight which are now forgotten amidst those topics that engage the attention of mankind." The expression tawny Spain may refer to the Moors in that country; for although they had been expelled from thence almost a century before the time of Shakspeare, it was allowable on the present occasion to refer to the period when they flourished in Spain; or he might only copy what he found in the original story of the play.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 198
ARM. Why, sadness is one and the self same thing, dear imp.
This word, which is well explained by Mr. Ritson, was often, as in the present instance, used to pages. Thus Urquhart in his Discovery of a jewel, &c. p. 133, calls a person of this description "a hopeful youth and tender imp of great expectation."
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 200
MOTH ... the dancing horse will tell you.
The best account of Banks and his famous horse Morocco is to be found in the notes to a French translation of Apuleius's Golden ass by Jean de Montlyard, Sieur de Melleray, counsellor to the Prince of Condé. This work was first printed in 1602, 8vo, and several times afterwards. The author himself had seen the horse, whose master he calls a Scotishman, at Paris, where he was exhibited in 1601, at the Golden Lion, Rue Saint Jaques. He is described as a middle-sized bay English gelding, about 14 years old. A few quotations from the work itself may not be unacceptable. "Son maistre l'appelle Moraco.... Nous avons vu son maistre l'interroger combien de francs vaut l'escu: et luy, donner trois fois du pied en terre. Mais chose plus estrange, parce que l'escu d'or sol et de poids vaut encor maintenant au mois de Mars 1601, plus que trois francs: l'Escossois luy demanda combien de sols valoit cest escu outre les trois francs; et Moraco frappa quatre coups, pour denoter les quatre sols que vaut lescu de surcroist." In which remark the counsellor shows himself less sagacious than the horse he is describing. He proceeds: "Après un infinité de tours de passe-passe, il luy fait danser les Canaries avec beaucoup d'art et de dexterité." The rest of the numerous tricks performed by this animal are much the same as those practised by the horses educated under the ingenious Mr. Astley. We also learn from this French work, that the magistrates, conceiving that all this could not be done without the aid of magic, had some time before imprisoned the master, and put the horse under sequestration; but having since discovered that every thing was effected by mere art and the making of signs, they had liberated the parties and permitted an exhibition. The Scotchman had undertaken to teach any horse the same tricks in a twelvemonth. It is said that both the horse and his master were afterwards burned at Rome as magicians; nor is this the only instance of the kind. In a little book entitled Le diable bossu, Nancy, 1708, 18mo, there is an obscure allusion to an English horse, whose master had taught him to know the cards, and which was burned alive at Lisbon in 1707; and Mr. Granger, in his Biographical history of England, vol. iii. p. 164, edit. 1779, has informed us that within his remembrance a horse which had been taught to perform several tricks was, with his owner, put into the Inquisition. The author of the life of Mal Cutpurse, 1662, 12mo, mentions her "fellow humourist Banks the vintner in Cheapside, who taught his horse to dance and shooed him with silver." In the eighth book of Markham's Cavalarice or the English horseman, 1607, 4to, there is a chapter "how a horse may be taught to doe and tricke done by Bankes his curtall." It is extremely curious, and towards the end throws light upon the second line of Bastard's epigram quoted by Mr. Steevens.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 203
ARM. Green, indeed, is the colour of lovers.
Green eyes, jealousy, and the willow, have been mentioned as the subjects of this allusion; but it is, perhaps, to melancholy, the frequent concomitant of love. Thus in Twelfth night, "And with a green and yellow melancholy;" certainly in that instance, the effect of love.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 206
DULL. She is allowed for the day-woman.
See more on the word dey in Mr. Tyrwhitt's edition of The Canterbury tales, iii. 287, who supposes that a dey originally meant a day labourer, however it came afterwards to be applied to the dairy: yet this conjecture must give way to Dr. Johnson's statement that day is an old word for milk. The doctor has not indeed produced any authority, and the original Saxon word seems lost; but in the Swedish language, which bears the greatest affinity to our own of any other, as far as regards the Teutonic part of it, dia signifies to milk, and deie, in Polish, the same. Die, in Danish, is the breast. The nearest Saxon word that remains is diende, sucklings; and there can be no doubt that we have the term in question from some of our northern ancestors. The dey or dairy maid is mentioned in the old statutes that relate to working people; and in that of 12 Ric. II. the annual wages of this person are settled at six shillings.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 221
PRIN. Good wits will be jangling: but gentles agree.
These alliterative and anapæstic lines are in the manner of Tusser, who has many such; for example,
"At Christmas of Christ many carols we sing."
It will be admitted that the construction of this sort of verse is rather less adapted to a court than a cottage; but it is presumed that none will be inclined to find Shakspeare guilty of such poetry, which a good deal resembles the halfpenny book style of
"Here's N. with a nag that is prancing with pride, And O. with an owl hooping close by his side."
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 222
BOVET. His heart like an agate with your print impressed.
An allusion either to the figures of the human face often found in agates and other stones, or to an engraved gem.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 225
MOTH. Master, will you win your love with a French brawl.
The word brawl in its signification of a dance is from the French branle, indicating a shaking or swinging motion. The following accounts of this dance may be found more intelligible than that cited from Marston. It was performed by several persons uniting hands in a circle, and giving each other continual shakes, the steps changing with the tune. It usually consisted of three pas and a pied-joint, to the time of four strokes of the bow; which being repeated was termed a double brawl. With this dance balls were usually opened. Le branle du bouquet is thus described in Deux dialogues du nouveau langage François, Italianizé, &c. Anvers, 1579, 24mo:--"Un des gentilhommes et une des dames, estans les premiers en la danse, laissent les autres (qui cependant continuent la danse) et se mettans dedans la dicte compagnie, vont baisans par ordre toutes les personnes qui y sont: à sçavoir le gentil-homme les dames, et la dame les gentils-hommes. Puis ayans achevé leurs baisemens, au lieu qu'ils estoyent les premiers en la danse, se mettent les derniers. Et ceste façon de faire se continue par le gentilhomme et la dame qui sont les plus prochains, jusques à ce qu'on vienne aux derniers."--P. 385. It is probably to this dance that the puritan Stubbes alludes in the following words: "for what clipping, what culling, what kissing and bussing, what smouching and slabbering one of another: what filthy groping and unclean handling is not practised every where in these dauncings? Yea the very deed and action itselfe which I will not name for offending chaste eares, shall bee purtrayed and shadowed foorth in their bawdy gestures of one to another."--Anatomie of abuses, p. 114, edit. 1595, 4to. And John Northbrooke, another writer ejusdem farinæ, in his invective called A treatise wherein dicing, dauncing, vaine plaies or enterludes, &c. 1579, 4to, exclaims that "the Pagans were better and more sad than wee be, they never knewe this newe fashion of dauncing of ours, and uncleanely handling and groping, and kissings, and a very kindling of lechery: whereto serveth all that bassing, as were pigeons the birdes of Venus?" And again; "they daunce with disordinate gestures, and with monstrous thumping of the feete, to pleasant soundes, to wanton songues, to dishonest verses, maidens and matrons are groped and handled with unchaste hands, and kissed and dishonestly embraced," fo. 64, 66. Amidst a great variety of brawls mentioned in the very curious treatise on dancing by Thoinot Arbeau, entitled Orchesographie, Lengres, 1588, 4to, there is a Scotish brawl, with the music, which is here given as a specimen of an old Scotish tune.
[Music]
The facetious macaronic poet Antony Sablon, or de Arena, whose work Camden says he "kept as a jewel," has left the following description of a brawl:--
Modus dansandi branlos.
"Ipse modis branlos debes dansare duobus, Simplos et duplos usus habere solet. Sed branlos duplos, passus tibi quinque laborent. Tres fac avantum, sed reculando duos, Quattuor in mensura ictus marchabis eundo, Atque retornando quattuor ipse dabis."
This dance continued in fashion in our own country so late as the year 1693, when Playford published a book of tunes in which a brawl composed by Mons. Paisable occurs; and see many of the little French pieces in the Theatre de la foire, 1721.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 225
MOTH. Canary it with your feet.
The canary was another very favourite dance. In the translation of Leo's Description of Africa, by Pory, 1600, folio, there is an additional account of the Canary islands, in which the author, speaking of the inhabitants, says, "They were and are at this day delighted with a kind of dance which they use also in Spain, and in other places, and because it took originall from thence, it is called the Canaries." Thoinot Arbeau likewise mentions this opinion, but is himself, in common with some others, inclined to think that the dance originated from a ballet composed for a masquerade, in which the performers were habited as kings and queens of Morocco, or as savages with feathers of different colours. He then describes it as follows:--A lady is taken out by a gentleman, and after dancing together to the cadences of the proper air, he leads her to the end of the hall; this done he retreats back to the original spot, always looking at the lady. Then he makes up to her again, with certain steps, and retreats as before. His partner performs the same ceremony, which is several times repeated by both parties, with various strange fantastic steps, very much in the savage style. This dance was sometimes accompanied by the castagnets. The following Canary tune is from Arbeau.
[Music]
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 236
COST. Guerdon,--O sweet guerdon!
Mr. Steevens deduces this word from the middle age Latin regardum. It is presumed that few, if any, words are derived from the Latin of that period, which itself was rather corrupted by the introduction of terms from the living languages of Europe Latinized by the Monkish writers. Guerdon, as used by us, is immediately from the French: not equivalent, as some have imagined, with don de guerre, but formed from the Teutonic werd or wurth, i. e. price, value.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 237
BIRON. This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy.
If, as Mr. Steevens observes, the advocates for Shakspeare's learning, on a presumption that he might have been acquainted with the Roman flammeum, or seen the celebrated gem of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, had applauded the choice of his epithet, it is certain they would have shown very little skill or critical judgment on the occasion. By wimpled, Shakspeare means no more than that Cupid was hood-winked, alluding to the usual representation in paintings where he is exhibited with a bandage over his eyes. It may be observed here that the blindness of the God of love is not warranted by the authority of any ancient classic author, but appears to have been the invention of some writer of the middle ages; not improbably Boccaccio, who in his Genealogy of the Gods gives the following account: "Oculos autem illi fascia tegunt, ut advertamus amantes ignorare quo tendant; nulla eorum esse indicia, nullæ rerum distinctiones, sed sola passione duci."--Lib. ix. c. 4.
The oldest English writer who has noticed the blindness of love is Chaucer, in his translation of the Roman de la rose:
"The God of love, blind as stone."
But this line is not in the French original. Shakspeare himself has well accounted for Cupid's blindness:
"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind."
M. N. Dream, Act I. Scene 1.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 240
BIRON. And I to be a corporal of the field.
Dr. Farmer's quotation of the line from Ben Jonson, "As corporal of the field, maestro del campo," has the appearance, without perhaps the intention, of suggesting that these officers were the same: this, however, was not the fact. In Styward's Pathway to martiall discipline, 1581, 4to, there is a chapter on the office of maister of the campe, and another on the electing and office of the foure corporalls of the fields; from which it appears that "two of the latter were appointed for placing and ordering of shot, and the other two for embattailing of the pikes and billes, who according to their worthinesse, if death hapneth, are to succeede the great sergeant or sergeant major."
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 241
BIRON. ... like a German clock.
Such part of Mr. Steevens's note as relates to the invention of clocks may, in a future edition, be rendered more correct by consulting Beckman's History of inventions. It is certain that we had clocks in England before the reign of Elizabeth; but they were not in general use till that time, when most, if not all, of them were imported from Germany. These clocks resembled what are still made for the use of the lower classes of people by several ingenious Germans established in London.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 242
BIRON. Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.
Alluding to the homely proverb, "Joan's as good as my lady in the dark:" and in Markham's Health to the gentlemanly profession of serving men, sign. I. 3, we have, "What hath Joan to do with my lady?"
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 243
PRIN. ... my friend, where is the bush That we must stand and play the murderer in?
The practice of ladies shooting at deer in this passage alluded to, is of great antiquity, as may be collected from Strutt's Sports and pastimes of the people of England, p. 9. The old romances abound with such incidents; but one of the most diverting is recorded in The history of prince Arthur, part 3, chap. cxxiv. where a lady huntress wounds Sir Lancelot of the Lake, instead of a deer, in a manner most "comically tragical."
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 246
COST. God-dig-you-den all.
"A corruption," says Mr. Malone very justly, "of God give you good even." Howel, at the end of his Parley of the beasts, has an advertisement relating to orthography, in which, after giving several examples that the French do not speak as they write, he observes that "the English come not short of him (the Frenchman); for whereas he writes, God give you good evening, he often saies, Godi, godin." But the whole of what Howel has said on this subject is unfairly pillaged from Claude de Sainliens, or, as he chose to call himself in this country, Hollyband; who after very successfully retorting a charge made by the English, that Frenchmen do not sound their words as they spell them, is nevertheless content to admit that his countrymen do sometimes err, as when they say avoo disné, for avez vous disné? See his treatise De pronuntiatione linguæ Gallicæ, Lond. 1580, 12mo, p. 81. This person was a teacher of languages in London, and wrote several ingenious works, among which is the first French and English dictionary, 1580, and 1593, 4to; afterwards much amplified by Randle Cotgrave, and by him rendered the best repertory of old French that is extant. It is in other respects an extremely valuable work.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 49
BOVET. A phantasm, a Monarcho.
Another trait of this person's character is preserved in Scot's Discoverie of witchcraft, edit. 1584, p. 54, where, speaking of the influence of melancholy on the imagination, he says, "the Italian, whom we call here in England the Monarch, was possessed of the like spirit or conceipt." This conceit was, that all the ships which came into port belonged to him.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 526
Enter HOLOFERNES.
A part of Mr. Steevens's note requires the following correction:--Florio's First fruites were printed in 1578, 4to, by Thomas Dawson. In 1598 he dedicated his Italian and English dictionary to Roger Earl of Rutland, Henry Earl of Southampton, and Lucy Countess of Bedford. As to the edition of 1595, mentioned by Mr. Steevens, does it really exist, or has not too much confidence been placed in the elegant but inaccurate historian of English poetry? See vol. iii. p. 465, note (h).
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 262
HOL. Dictynna, goodman Dull; Dictynna, goodman Dull.
It is possible, as Mr. Steevens has remarked, that Shakspeare might have found Diana's title of Dictynna in Golding's Ovid; but there is reason for supposing that he had seen an English translation of Boccaccio's Genealogy of the Gods, though we have it not at present. E. Kerke, in his notes on Spenser's Shepherd's calendar, quotes this work; yet he might have used the original. From the same source it was possible for Shakspeare to have acquired the present information, as well as what other mythology he stood in need of. The Latin dictionaries of Eliot and Cooper would likewise supply him with similar materials.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 274
BIRON. Thou mak'st the triumviry, the corner-cap of society, The shape of love's Tyburn that hangs up simplicity.
An allusion to the gallows of the time, which was occasionally triangular. Such a one is seen in some of the cuts to the first edition of Holinshed's Chronicle, and in other ancient prints.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 276
BIRON. By earth she is but corporal; there you lie.
This is Theobald's alteration from the old reading, which was, "She is not, Corporal, there you lie," and has been adopted by the modern editors from its apparent ingenuity. A little attention may serve to show that no change was necessary, and that the original text should be restored. Theobald says that Dumain had no post in the army, and asks what wit there is in calling him corporal. The answer is, As much as there had already been in Biron's calling himself a corporal of Cupid's field; a title equally appropriate to Dumain on the present occasion. To render the matter still clearer, it may be observed that Biron does not give the lie to Dumain's assertion that his mistress was a divinity, as presumed by the amended reading, but to that of her being the wonder of a mortal eye. Dumain is answered sentence by sentence.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 276
DUM. Her amber hairs for foul have amber coted.
Mr. Steevens's explanation of coted, and of the whole line, is inadmissible. Foulness or cloudiness is no criterion of the beauty of amber. Mr. Malone has partly explained coted, by marked, but has apparently missed the sense of it here when he adds written down. Mr. Mason has given the true construction of the line, but he mistakes the meaning of coted, which, after all, merely signifies to mark or note. The word is from the French coter, which, in like manner as Mr. Malone has well observed of the English term, is the old orthography of quoter. The grammatical construction is, "her amber hairs have marked or shown that [real] amber is foul in comparison of themselves."
SCENE. 3. Page 291.
LONG. Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the Devil.
The objection to Warburton's derivation of quillet from the French is, that there is no such term in the language: nor is it exclusively applicable to law-chicane, though generally so used by Shakspeare. It strictly means a subtilty, and seems to have originated among the schoolmen of the middle ages, by whom it was called a quidlibet. They had likewise their quodlibets and their quiddities. From the schoolmen these terms were properly enough transferred to the lawyers. Hamlet says, "Why may not that be the scull of a lawyer? where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures and his tricks?" The conjectures of Peck, and after him of Dr. Grey in a note to Hudibras, seem to merit but little attention.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 294
BIRON. Still climbing trees in the Hesperides.
An error is here laid to Shakspeare's charge, of which he is not perhaps guilty. The expression trees in the Hesperides must be regarded as elliptical, and signifies trees in the gardens of the Hesperides. Shakspeare is seldom wrong in his mythology, and, if he had doubted on the present occasion, the dictionaries of Eliot or Cooper would have supplied him with the necessary information. The first quotation in the note from Greene, is equally elliptical; for this writer was too good a scholar to have committed the mistake ascribed to Shakspeare: so that the passage, instead of convicting the latter, does in reality support him. As to the other quotation from Orpheus and Eurydice, the learned critic himself lays but little stress on it; or indeed might, on reconsideration, be disposed to think the expression correct. It would not be difficult to trace instances in modern authors of the use of Hesperides for gardens of the Hesperides. See Lempriere's excellent classical dictionary, edit. 1792, 8vo.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 302
HOL. His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed.--
Mr Steevens has remarked that Chaucer, Skelton, and Spenser are frequent in their use of this phrase, but he has offered no explanation. It signifies polished language; thus Turbervile, in his translation of Ovid's epistles, makes Phyllis say to her lover--
"Thy many smooth and filed wordes Did purchase credites place."
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 306
ARM. ... a sweet touch, a quick venew of wit.
The cut and thrust notes on this occasion exhibit a complete match between the two great Shakspearean maisters of defence. "A venew," says Mr. Steevens, "is the technical term for a bout (or set-to, as he had before called it in vol. iii. p. 317,) at the fencing school." On the other hand, Mr. Malone maintains that "a venue is not a bout at fencing, but a hit;" and his opponent retorts on the ground of positiveness of denial. As the present writer has himself been an amateur and practitioner of the noble science of defence, he undertakes on this occasion the office of umpire between the sturdy combatants.
The quotations adduced on either side are not calculated to ascertain the clear and genuine sense of the word venew, and it is therefore necessary to seek for more decisive evidence respecting its meaning. Howel in his Lexicon tetraglotton, 1660, mentions "a veny in fencing; venue, touche, toca;" and afterwards more fully in his vocabulary, sect. xxxii. "A foin, veny, or stoccado; la botta; la touche, le coup." In Sir John Harrington's Life of Dr. Still, is the following expression, "he would not sticke to warne them in the arguments to take heede to their answers, like a perfect fencer that will tell afore-hand in which button he will give the venew." Nugæ antiquæ, vol. ii. p. 158, edit. 1804, by Park. In Ben Jonson's Every man in his humour, Act I. Scene 5, Bobadil, in answer to Master Matthew's request for one venue, says, "Venue! fie: most gross denomination as ever I heard; O, the stoccata, while you live, sir, note that." On this passage, Mr. Reed, in a note on the play of The widow's tears, Dodsley's Old plays, vol. vi. 152, observes that "the word appears to have been out of fashion with the fantastic gallants of the time very early." Its occurrence however so late as the time in which Howel's dictionary was published seems to render this ingenious remark very questionable, and suggests another explanation of Bobadil's wish to change the word, namely, his coxcombly preference of the terms of the Spanish and Italian schools of fencing to those used in the English, which, it is presumed, were more immediately borrowed from our Gallic neighbours. That the terms stoccado and imbrocato denoted a hit or thrust, may be collected from many passages in Vincent Saviolo's Use of the rapier and dagger, 1595, 4to; and in Florio's Italian dictionary, 1598, folio, stoccata is rendered, a foyne, a thrust given in fence; and tocco, a venie at fence, a hit. All the above circumstances considered, one should feel inclined to adjudge the palm of victory to Mr. Malone.
It is however remarkable enough that Mr. Steevens is accidentally right in defining a venew a bout, without being aware of the signification of the latter word. Florio renders botta, a blowe, a stroake. In the best of all the ancient French treatises on the art of fencing, entitled Traicté sur l'espée seule, mere de toutes armes, &c., by Henry De Sainct Didier, Paris, 1573, 4to, it is said, "bottes en Napollitain, vaut autant à dire, que coups en François." He then mentions five sorts of bottes, viz. maindrette, renverse, fendante, estoccade, and imbroucade. Nevertheless the word bout had been used in the sense of a set-to in Shakspeare's time. In The first part of King Henry the Sixth, Act I. Scene 5, Talbot says to the Pucelle, "I'll have a bout with thee." It retained, however, its original meaning long afterwards. Howel, and Sherwood likewise in his English dictionary at the end of Cotgrave have "a boute, coup," and so it is defined by Skinner: but the following passage from the account given by Sir Thomas Urquhart in his singular book entitled A discovery of a most exquisite jewel found in the kennel of Worcester streets, &c. 1652, 12mo, of the combat between the admirable Crichton and the celebrated Mantuan duellist, will put the matter beyond all doubt. "Then was it that to vindicate the reputation of the duke's family and to expiate the blood of the three vanquished gentlemen, he alonged a stoccade de pied ferme; then recoyling, he advanced another thrust, and lodged it home; after which retiring again, his right foot did beat the cadence of the blow that pierced the belly of this Italian, whose heart and throat being hit with the two former stroaks, these three franch bouts given in upon the back of other ... by them he was to be made a sacrifice of atonement for the slaughter of the three aforesaid gentlemen who were wounded in the very same parts of their bodies by other such three venees as these." The same mode of expression is also used by the same writer in a subsequent account of a duel between Francis Sinclair, a natural son of the Earl of Caithness, and a German, at Vienna; where it was agreed that he who should give the other the first three bouts, should have a pair of golden spurs, in the event of which combat Sinclair "gave in two venees more than he was obliged to."
On the whole therefore it appears that venew and bout equally denote a hit in fencing; that both Mr. Steevens and Mr. Malone are right in this respect; but that the former gentleman is inaccurate in supposing a venew to mean a set-to, and the latter equally so in asserting that "a venew is not a bout."
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 311
DULL. I will play on the tabor to the worthies, and let them dance the hay.
This dance was borrowed by us from the French. It is classed among the brawls in Thoinot Arbeau's Orchesographie, already mentioned in page 135.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 312
ROS. For he hath been five thousand years a boy.
KATH. Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too.
This description of Cupid is borrowed from some lines in Sidney's Arcadia, B. ii. See them already quoted on another occasion by Dr. Farmer in Much ado about nothing, Act III. Scene 2.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 316
ROS. That he should be my fool, and I his fate.
Dr. Warburton's conclusion that fate here signifies death is not satisfactory. Death would be an awkward character for Rosaline to assume, but that of dame fortune infinitely more natural.
It must be owned that destiny and fortune are, strictly speaking, very different characters; yet they have sometimes been confounded. Even Pindar, as Pausanias observes, has made fortune one of the Parcæ. In Julius Cæsar, the expression, "he is but fortune's knave," seems to resemble the present, and to mean, "he is the servant of fortune and bound to obey her." Shakspeare is very fond of alluding to the mockery of fortune. Thus we have
"O I am fortune's fool."
Romeo and Juliet.
"Ye fools of fortune."
Timon of Athens.
"I am the natural fool of fortune."
King Lear.
In the last of which passages a pointed allusion is made to the idiot fool. Sir J. Suckling uses the same expression in his play of The goblins; and Hamlet speaks of "the fools of nature," precisely in the same sense.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 327
BOVET. Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things.
The word bullets is doubtless an interpolation in the manuscript by some ignorant person who thought it more appropriate than arrows, on account of the substitution of fire-arms for archery. It might very properly be omitted in the text, without any diminution of editorial accuracy.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 330
BOVET. Fair ladies mask'd are roses in their bud; Dismask'd their damask sweet commixture shown, Are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown.
Of the several explanations here offered of vailing, Dr. Johnson's is the best. The poet compares a lady unmasking to an angel dispelling the clouds in his descent from heaven to earth. The term is from the old French avaler to put or let down; the true etymology of which appears in the phrase à mont et à val, from top to bottom, from mountain to valley, which very often occurs in old romances. In that of the Saint Graal, MS. we have "et avalerent aval le vessel." In Spenser's Shepherd's calendar, under January, "By that the welked Phœbus gan availe."
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 339
BIRON. Three pil'd hyperboles.
So in Fennor's Compter's commonwealth, 1617, 4to, p. 14, we have "three pil'd, huge Basilisco oaths, that would have torne a roring-boyes eares in a thousand shatters."
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 345
COST. You cannot beg us, sir.
It has been already stated that it was not the next relation only who begged the wardship of idiots in order to obtain possession of their property, but any person who could make interest with the sovereign to whom the legal guardianship belongs. Frequent allusions to this practice occur in the old comedies. In illustration of it, Mr. Ritson has given a curious story, which, as it is mutilated in the authority which he has used, is here subjoined from a more original source, a collection of tales, &c., compiled about the time of Charles the First, preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, No. 6395. "The Lord North begg'd old Bladwell for a foole (though he could never prove him so), and having him in his custodie as a lunaticke, he carried him to a gentleman's house, one day, that was his neighbour. The L. North and the gentleman retir'd awhile to private discourse, and left Bladwell in the dining roome, which was hung with a faire hanging; Bladwell walking up and downe, and viewing the imagerie, spyed a foole at last in the hanging, and without delay drawes his knife, flyes at the foole, cutts him cleane out, and layes him on the floore; my L. and the gentl. coming in againe, and finding the tapestrie thus defac'd, he ask'd Bladwell what he meant by such a rude uncivill act; he answered Sʳ. be content, I have rather done you a courtesie than a wrong, for if ever my L. N. had seene the foole there, he would have begg'd him, and so you might have lost your whole suite." The same story, but without the parties' names, is related in Fuller's Holy state, p. 182. Powel, in his Attourney's academy, 1630, 4to, says, "I shall neede to give you this monitorie instruction touching an ideot; that you be assured that yourselfe is somewhat the wiser man before you goe about to beg him, or else never meddle with him at all, lest you chance to play at handy-dandy, which is the guardian or which is the foole? and the case alter, è converso, ad conversum." In A treatise of taxes, 1667, 4to, p. 43, there is the following passage: "Now because the world abounds with this kind of fools, (Lottery fools,) it is not fit that every man that will may cheat every man that would be cheated; but it is rather ordained that the sovereign should have the guardianship of these fools, or that some favourite should beg the sovereign's right of taking advantage of such men's folly, even as in the case of lunatics and ideots." To this practice too, Butler alludes, in Hudibras, part iii. canto I, l. 590.
"Beg one another idiot To guardians, ere they are begot."
Mr. Justice Blackstone, in treating of idiots, has spoken of it; and adds in a note, that the king's power of delegating the custody of them to some subject who has interest enough on the occasion, has of late been very rarely exerted.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 350
BIRON. The Pedant, the Braggart, the Hedge-priest, the Fool And the boy:-- Abate a throw at novum; and the whole world again, Cannot prick out five such, take each one in his vein.
The game of novum or novem, here alluded to, requires further illustration to render the whole of the above passage intelligible. It is therefore necessary to state that it was properly called novum quinque, from the two principal throws of the dice, nine and five; and then Biron's meaning becomes perfectly clear, according to the reading of the old editions. The above game was called in French quinquenove, and is said to have been invented in Flanders.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 351
Pageant of the nine worthies.
The genuine worthies were Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bulloigne, or sometimes in his room Guy of Warwick. Why Shakspeare, in the five of them only whom he has introduced by name, has included Hercules and Pompey, remains to be accounted for. It was a great pity to omit, on this occasion, the very curious specimen of an ancient pageant given by Mr. Ritson, who, in stating that nothing of the kind had ever appeared in print, seems to have forgotten the pageants of Dekker, Middleton, and others, a list of which may be found in Baker's Biographia dramatica, vol. ii. 270.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 353
BIRON. Your nose smells no, in this, most tender smelling knight.
He is addressing, or rather ridiculing Alexander. Plutarch in his life of that hero relates, on the authority of Aristoxenus, that his skin "had a marvellous good savour, and that his breath was very sweet, in so much that his body had so sweet a smell of itselfe that all the apparell he wore next unto his body, tooke thereof a passing delightfull savour, as if it had been perfumed." This Shakspeare had read in Sir Thomas North's translation.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 353
COST. Your lion, that holds his poll-ax sitting, &c.
The clown's Cloacinian allusion to the arms of Alexander is a wilful blunder, for the purpose of introducing his subsequent joke about Ajax. These are the arms themselves copied from the Roman des neuf preux, Abbeville, 1487, folio, showing that the chair is not a chaise-perçée.
The modern patent Bramahs were in Shakspeare's time called Ajaxes. Thus in The hospitall of incurable fooles, 1600, 4to, fo. 7: "Whoever saw so many odd mechanicks as are at this day, who not with a geometricall spirite like Archimedes, but even with arte surpassing the profoundest Cabalistes, who instead of a pigeon loft, place in the garrets of houses, portable and commodious Ajaxes." The marginal explanation comes closer to the point. Again, "the Romans might well be numbered amongst those three-elbowed fooles in adoring Stercutio for a God, shamefully constituting him a patron and protector of Ajax and his commodities," fo. 6.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 360
COST. I will not fight with a pole, like a northern man.
On this passage Dr. Farmer says, "Vir borealis, a clown, See glossary to Urry's Chaucer." The Doctor's notes are generally clear and instructive, but in this instance he is obscure. It is presumed that he intends to refer the reader to the word borel in Urry's glossary, where it is properly explained a clown. Whether borel be derived from borealis may be questioned; but Shakspeare in all probability was unacquainted with this word and its etymology. Does he not refer to the particular use of the quarter staff in the Northern counties?
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 367
PRIN. As bombast, and as lining to the time.
Bombast is from the Italian bombagia, which signifies all sorts of cotton wool. Hence the stuff called bombasine. The cotton put into ink was called bombase. "Need you any inke and bombase?" Hollyband's Italian schole-maister, 1579, 12mo, sign. E. 3.
THE CLOWN.
The clown in this play is a mere country fellow. The term fool applied to him in Act V. Scene 2, means nothing more than a silly fellow. He has not sufficient simplicity for a natural fool, nor wit enough for an artificial one.
It will probably be discovered at some future time that this play was borrowed from a French novel. The dramatis personæ in a great measure demonstrate this, as well as a palpable Gallicism in Act IV. Scene 1, viz. the terming a letter a capon.
MERCHANT OF VENICE.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 397
SALAR. There, where your argosies, with portly sail Like signiors and rich burghers of the flood, Or as it were the Pageants of the sea, Do overpeer the petty traffickers.
Argosies are properly defined to be "ships of great burthen," and so they are described almost wherever they are mentioned. Mr. Steevens has quoted Rycaut's Maxims of Turkish polity, to show that the term originated in a corruption of Ragosies, i. e. ships of Ragusa. However specious this may appear, it is to be observed that Rycaut, a writer at the end of the seventeenth century, only states it as a matter of report, not as a fact; and he seems to have followed the slight authority of Roberts's Marchant's map of commerce. If any instance shall be produced of the use of such a word as ragosie, the objection must be given up. In the mean time it may be permitted to hazard another opinion, which is, that the word in question derives its origin from the famous ship Argo: and indeed Shakspeare himself appears to have hinted as much; for the story of Jason is twice adverted to in the course of this play. On one of these occasions Gratiano certainly alludes to Antonio's argosie when he says,
"We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece."
Act III, Scene 2
Gregory of Tours has more than once made use of Argis to express a ship generally. With respect to Ragozine, it has been contended in a former note, page 89, that this name ought not to have been introduced in the discussion of the present subject.
Mr. Steevens remarks that both ancient and modern editors have hitherto been content to read "burghers on the flood;" and, on the authority of a line in which we have "burghers of a city," he has substituted "burghers of the flood." He might have been less inclined to this new reading, had he recollected that the "signiors and rich burghers on the flood" are the Venetians, who may well be said to live on the sea. It would be difficult to discover who are the signiors and burghers of the flood, unless they be whales and porpoises.
In calling argosies the pageants of the sea, Shakspeare alludes to those enormous machines, in the shapes of castles, dragons, ships, giants, &c., that were drawn about the streets in the ancient shows or pageants, and which often constituted the most important part of them.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 399
SALAN. Now, by two-headed Janus.
Dr. Warburton's note may well be spared in all future editions. If Shakspeare have shown a knowledge of the antique, which he might have obtained from his dictionary at school, the Doctor has, unluckily, on this occasion proved himself less profound in it than Shakspeare, or he would not have ventured to assert that the heads of Janus were those of Pan and Bacchus, Saturn and Apollo, &c. It is presumed that these heads will continue to perplex the learned for many generations.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 410
POR. If a throstle sing.
Notwithstanding the apparent difference in opinion between Messrs. Steevens and Malone respecting this bird, they are both right. The throstle is only a variety of the thrush, as will be seen by consulting Mr. Pennant's Account of English birds. In The new general history of birds, 1745, 12mo, there is an account of "the song-thrush, or throstle;" and see Randle Holme's Academy of armory, book ii. ch. 12, no. lxxiii.
Act III, Scene 3 — Page 413
Enter SHYLOCK.
His stage dress should be a scarlet hat lined with black taffeta. This is the manner in which the Jews of Venice were formerly distinguished. See Saint Didier Histoire de Venise. In the year 1581 they wore red caps for distinction's sake, as appears from Hakluyt's Voyages, p. 179, edit. 1589. Lord Verulam, in his Essay on usury, speaking of the witty invectives that men have made against usury, states one of them to be "that usurers should have orange-tawny bonnets, because they do Judaize."
Act III, Scene 3 — Page 414
SHY. He lends out money gratis, and brings down The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
"It is almost incredyble what gaine the Venetians receive by the usury of the Jewes, both pryvately and in common. For in everye citee the Jewes kepe open shops of usurie, taking gaiges of ordinarie for xv in the hundred by the yere; and if at the yeres ende the gaige be not redemed, it is forfeite, or at the least dooen away to a great disadvantage: by reason whereof the Jewes are out of measure wealthie in those parties."--Thomas's Historye of Italye, 1561, 4to, fo. 77.
Act III, Scene 3 — Page 416
SHY. He stuck them up before the fulsome ewes.
Fulsome has, doubtless, the same signification as the preceding epithet rank, the physical reason for its application being very generally known. "Ικτιδος pellis. Proverbium apud Germanos in vilissimum quodque et maxime fœtidum scortum. Nam Ictis, id est sylvestris mustela cum graviter exarserit, male olet." Erasmi Adagia. Spenser makes one of his shepherds speak thus of a kid:
"The blossoms of lust to bud did beginne And spring forth ranckly under his chinne."
Fulsome is from the Gothic fuls, i. e. foul, fœtid. That it sometimes had another root, viz. full, is manifest from the line in Golding's Ovid, whose expression "fulsome dugs" is in the original "pleno ubere," but is of no service on the present occasion, though quoted by Mr. Steevens.
Act III, Scene 3 — Page 418
SHY. About my money and my usances.
Mr. Steevens asserts that use and usance anciently signified usury, but both his quotations show the contrary. Mr. Ritson very properly asks whether Mr. Steevens is not mistaken; and Mr. Reed, maintaining that he is right, adduces a passage which proves him to be wrong. A gentleman, says Wylson, borrowed 1000 pounds, running still upon usury and double usury. "The merchants termyng it usance and double usance, by a more clenly name," i. e. interest, till he owed the usurer five thousand pounds, &c. The sense was obscured by the omission of an important comma after the word name. Mr. Malone's note was quite adequate to the purpose of explanation.
Act III, Scene 3 — Page 421
SHY. ... seal me there Your single bond; and in a merry sport, If you repay me not, &c.
Thus in the ballad of Gernutus:
"But we will have a merry jeast For to be talked long; You shall make me a bond, quoth he. That shall be large and strong."
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 423
MOR. But let us make incision for your love, To prove whose blood is reddest, his, or mine.
Dr. Johnson's observation that "red blood is a traditionary sign of courage" derives support from our English Pliny, Bartholomew Glantville, who says, after Isidorus, "Reed clothes ben layed upon deed men in remembrance of theyr hardynes and boldnes, whyle they were in theyr bloudde." On which his commentator Batman remarks: "It appereth in the time of the Saxons that the manner over their dead was a red cloath, as we now use black. The red of valiauncie, and that was over kings, lords, knights and valyaunt souldiours."
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 426
LAUN. Do not run; scorn running with thy heels.
Mr. Steevens calls this absurdity, and introduces a brother critic, Sir Hugh Evans, who had maintained that "he hears with ears" was affectations: both the parties had forgotten their Bible. As to the proposed alteration "withe thy heels," it might be asked, who ever heard of a person binding his own heels to prevent running? Mr. Malone has well defended the consistency of Launcelot's speech. It may be added that in King Richard II. Act V. Scene 3, we have "kneel upon my knees."
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 427
LAUN. Well, my conscience says--Launcelot, budge not; budge, says the fiend; budge not, says my conscience.
It is not improbable that this curious struggle between Launcelot's conscience and the fiend might have been suggested by some well-known story in Shakspeare's time, grafted on the following Monkish fable. It occurs in a collection of apologues that remain only in manuscript, and have been severally ascribed to Hugo of Saint Victor, and Odo de Sheriton or Shirton, an English Cistercian Monk of the 12th century. "Multi sunt sicut mulier delicata et pigra. Talis vero mulier dum jacet mane in lecto et audit pulsari ad missam, cogitat secum quod vadat ad missam. Et cum caro, quæ pigra est, timet frigus, respondet et dicit, Quare ires ita mane, nonne scis quod clerici pulsant campanas propter oblationes? dormi adhuc; et sic transit pars diei. Postea iterum conscientia pungit eam quod vadat ad missam. Sed caro respondet, et dicit, Quare ires tu tam cito ad ecclesiam? certè tu destrueres corpus tuum si ita manè surrexeris, et hoc Deus non vult ut homo destruat seipsum; ergo quiesce et dormi. Et transit alia pars diei. Iterum conscientia pungit eam quod vadat ad ecclesiam; sed caro dicit, Ut quid ires tam cito? Ego bene scio quod talis vicina tua nondum vadit ad ecclesiam; dormi parum adhuc. Et sic transit alia pars diei. Postea pungit eam conscientia; sed caro dicit, Non oportet quod adhuc vadas, quia sacerdos est curialis et bene expectabit te; attende et dormi. Et sic dormiendo transit tempus. Et tamen ad ultimum verecundia tacita atque coacta, surgit et vadit ad ecclesiam, et invenit portas clausas." Then follows the moral of the fable, in which the church is repentance, the bells the preachers. The lazy flesh prevails over conscience, till, on the approach of death, fear dictates the sending for the priest. An imperfect confession of sins takes place; the party dies, and the miserable soul finds the gates of heaven shut.
Act II, Scene 5 — Page 443
SHY. The patch is kind enough.
It has been supposed that this term originated from the name of a fool belonging to Cardinal Wolsey, and that his parti-coloured dress was given to him in allusion to his name. The objection to this is, that the motley habit worn by fools is much older than the time of Wolsey. Again, it appears that Patch was an appellation given not to one fool only that belonged to Wolsey. There is an epigram by Heywood, entitled A saying of Patch my Lord Cardinal's foole; but in the epigram itself he is twice called Sexten, which was his real name. In a manuscript life of Wolsey, by his gentleman usher Cavendish, there is a story of another fool belonging to the Cardinal, and presented by him to the King. A marginal note states that "this foole was callid Master Williames, owtherwise called Patch."[12] In Heylin's History of the reformation, mention is made of another fool called Patch, belonging to Elizabeth. But the name is even older than Wolsey's time; for in some household accounts of Henry the Seventh, there are payments to a fool who is named Pechie, and Packye. It seems therefore more probable on the whole that fools were nick-named Patch from their dress; unless there happen to be a nearer affinity to the Italian pazzo, a word that has all the appearance of a descent from fatuus. This was the opinion of Mr. Tyrwhitt in a note on A midsummer night's dream, Act III. Scene 2. But although in the above instance, as well as in a multitude of others, a patch denotes a fool or simpleton, and, by corruption, a clown, it seems to have been occasionally used in the sense of any low or mean person. Thus in the passage in A midsummer night's dream just referred to, Puck calls Bottom and his companions a crew of patches, rude mechanicals, certainly not meaning to compare them to pampered and sleek buffoons. Whether in this sense the term have a simple reference to that class of people whose clothes might be pieced or patched with rags; or whether it is derived from the Saxon verb pæcan, to deceive by false appearances, as suggested by the acute and ingenious author of The diversions of Purley, must be left to the reader's own discernment.
Act II, Scene 7 — Page 450
MOR. ... They have in England A coin that bears the figure of an Angel Stamped in gold; but that's insculp'd upon; But here an angel in a golden bed Lies all within.
To insculp, as Mr. Steevens has observed, means to engrave, but is here put in opposition to it, and simply denotes to carve in relief. The angel on the coin was raised; on the casket indented. The word insculp was however formerly used with great latitude of meaning. Shakspeare might have caught it from the casket story in the Gesta Romanorum, where it is rightly used: "the third vessell was made of lead, and thereupon was insculpt this posey, &c."
Act II, Scene 7 — Page 450
MOR. Gilded tombs do worms infold.
The old editions read gilded timber; and however specious the alteration in the text, on the ground of redundancy of measure or defect in grammar, it might have been dispensed with. To infold is to inwrap or contain any thing; and therefore, unless we conclude that do is an error of the press for doth, we must adopt the other sense, however ungrammatically expressed, and suppose the sentiment to be, that timber though fenced or protected with gilding in still liable to the worm's invasion. The lines cited by Mr. Steevens from the Arcadia supports the original reading, as do the following from Silvester's Works, edit. 1633, p. 649:
"Wealth on a cottage can a palace build, New paint old walls, and rotten timber guild."
Act II, Scene 8 — Page 453
SALAR. And for the Jew's bond, which he hath of me, Let it not enter in your mind of love.
Dr. Johnson suspects a corruption. Mr. Langton would place a comma after mind. The expression seems equivalent to a loving or affectionate mind, a mind made up of love.
Act II, Scene 9 — Page 458
AR. What's here? the portrait of a blinking ideot, Presenting me a schedule.
This idea suggests the story of a Jew apothecary, who, to ridicule the Mayersbachs of his time, placed in the front of his shop the figure of a grinning fool holding out an urinal. See Pancirollus De rebus deperditis, lib. ii. tit. 1.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 465
SHY. It was my turquoise.
If the reason last assigned in Mr. Steevens's note for the value which Shylock professes for the turquoise be entitled to any preference, the information whereon it rests must be referred to the right owner, who is Anselm de Boot, Nicols being only the translator of his work.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 469
POR. ... he makes a swan-like end. Fading in musick.
That the swan uttered musical sounds at the approach of death was credited by Plato, Chrysippus, Aristotle, Euripides, Philostratus, Cicero, Seneca, and Martial. Pliny, Ælian, and Athenæus, among the ancients, and Sir Thomas More, among the moderns, treat this opinion as a vulgar error. Luther believed in it. See his Colloquia, par. 2, p. 125, edit. 1571, 8vo. Our countryman Bartholomew Glantville thus mentions the singing of the swan: "And whan she shal dye and that a fether is pyght in the brayn, then she syngethe, as Ambrose sayth," De propr. rer. 1. xii. c. 11. Monsieur Morin has written a dissertation on this subject in vol. v. of the Mem. de l'acad. des inscript. There are likewise some curious remarks on it in Weston's Specimens of the conformity of the European languages with the Oriental, p. 135; in Seelen Miscellanea, tom. i. 298; and in Pinkerton's Recollections of Paris, ii. 336.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 472
BASS. Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge 'Tween man and man.
The greatest part of the current coin being of silver, this metal is here emphatically called the common drudge in the more frequent transactions among men.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 472
BASS. Thy plainness moves me more than eloquence.
However elegant this emendation by Dr. Warburton, it must yield to the decisive reasoning of Dr. Farmer and Mr. Malone, in favour of paleness, which ought to have been adopted in the text.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 474
BASS. Fair Portia's counterfeit?
A further illustration occurs in the beginning of Lilie's dedication to his Euphues, "Parasius drawing the counterfeit of Hellen, made the attire of her head loose." In Littelton's English and Latin dictionary, we have "A counterfeit of a picture, ectypum."
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 480
GRA. We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece.
The meaning is "Antonio with his argosie is not the successful Jason; we are the persons who have won the fleece." See the note in p. 153.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 480
POR. ... else nothing in the world Could turn so much the constitution Of any constant man.
This word occasionally signified grave, as in the present instance. In Withall's Shorte dictionarie, 1599, 4to, fo. 105, we have "sadde, grave, constant,--gravis." So in Twelfth night, when Malvolio is under confinement, he says, "I am no more mad than you are; make the trial of it in any constant question."
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 501
SHY. Why he a swollen bagpipe.
We have here one of the too frequent instances of conjectural readings; but it is to be hoped that all future editors will restore the original woollen, after weighing not only what has been already urged in its support, but the additional and accurate testimony of Dr. Leyden, who in his edition of The complaynt of Scotland, p. 149, informs us that the Lowland bagpipe commonly had the bag or sack covered with woollen cloth of a green colour, a practice which, he adds, prevailed in the northern counties of England.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 506
BASS. Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?
This incident occurs in the ballad of Gernutus, whence there is reason to suppose it was borrowed. In 1597 was acted at Cambridge a Latin play called Machiavellus, in which there is a Jew, but very unlike Shylock. He is a shrewd intriguing fellow of considerable humour, who, to obtain possession of a girl, puts a number of tricks on the Machiavel of the piece, and generally outwits him. In one scene he overhears his rival despairing of success with the father of his mistress, and expressing a wish that he had some instrument wherewith to put an end to his misery. On this he lays a knife in his way, but first takes care to whet it. To The merchant of Venice or to Gernutus the Latin play was indebted. If to the former, then Shakspeare's play must have been acted before 1597; if to the latter, it strengthens the above conjecture that he borrowed from the ballad. Should Gosson's Jew shown at the Bull ever make its appearance, all would be set right.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 507
GRA. And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam.
Is not this a very common misprint for lay'dst, where the preterite is intended?
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 509
POR. But mercy is above this scepter'd sway, It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself, And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.
This beautiful sentiment accords very much with the following speech made by Sir James Melvil to the queen of Scots, and printed in his Memoirs, p. 149, edit. 1752, 8vo. These, however, were not published till a considerable time after his death. "For as princes are called divine persons, so no prince can pretend to this title, but he who draws near the nature of God by godliness and good government, being slow to vengeance, and ready to forgive."
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 518
GRA. Had I been judge thou should'st have had ten more To bring thee to the gallows.
We had already had an English trial by jury at Vienna. See p. 78. Here we have one at Venice.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 523
LOR. Stood Dido with a willow in her hand.
On this passage Mr. Steevens founds an argument that Shakspeare was no reader of the classics. It is true that no classical authority for the above circumstance relating to Dido can be found, and that other instances of our poet's errors in classical matters might be adduced; but this will not prove his ignorance of Greek and Roman writers. On the contrary, do not the numerous quotations from them in the notes of his commentators afford sufficient testimony that he had read many ancient authors through the medium of English translations? If this had not been the case, to what end has the useful and interesting list of such translations been drawn up and published by the above learned critic? Wherever Shakspeare met with the image in question, it has reference to the popular superstitions relating to the willow, which will be more fully illustrated in some remarks on a passage in Othello.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 529
LOR. You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze.
This is spoken of young colts, but the speech is only a poetical amplification of a phrase that seems more properly to belong to deer. In the Noble arte of venerie or hunting, ascribed to Turbervile, the author or translator, speaking of the hart, says, "when he stayeth to looke at any thing, then he standeth at gaze;" and again, "he loveth to hear instruments and assureth himselfe when he heareth a flute or any other sweete noyse. He marvelleth at all things, and taketh pleasure to gaze at them." See likewise Holland's translation of Pliny, tom. i. p. 213.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 530
LOR. The man that hath no musick in himself, Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit, &c.
Had the sentiments in the note on this passage been expressed by Dr. Johnson, disorganized as he was for the enjoyment of music, it would not have been matter to wonder at: but that such a man as Mr. Steevens, whose ordinary speech was melody, and whose correct and elegant ear for poetical concord is so frequently manifested in the course of his Shakspearean labours, should have shown himself a very Timon in music, can only be accounted for by supposing that he regarded the speech in question as a libel on his great colleague's organization. He has here assumed a task, which Dr. Johnson would for obvious reasons have declined; and with the feeble aid of an illiberal passage from Lord Chesterfield's Letters, has most disingenuously endeavoured to cast an odium on a science which from its intimate and natural connexion with poetry and painting, deserves the highest attention and respect. He that is happily qualified to appreciate the better parts of music, will never seek them in the society so emphatically reprobated by the noble lord, nor altogether in the way he recommends. He will not lend an ear to the vulgarity and tumultuous roar of the tavern catch, or the delusive sounds of martial clangour; but he will enjoy this heavenly gift, this exquisite and soul-delighting sensation, in the temples of his God, or in the peaceful circles of domestic happiness: he will pursue the blessings and advantages of it with ardour, and turn aside from its abuses.
The quotation which Mr. Steevens has given from Peacham, is in reality an encomium on music as practised in the time of Shakspeare. It indicates that gentlemen then associated with their equals only in the pursuit of this innocent recreation; and the same writer would have furnished many other observations that tend to place the science of music in an amiable, or at least in a harmless point of view. Mr. Steevens might have also recollected that Cicero has called it "Stabilem thesaurum, qui mores instituit, componitque, ac mollit irarum ardores." It will be readily conceded that Shakspeare has overcharged the speech before us, and that it by no means follows that a man who is unmusical must be a traitor, a Machiavel, a robber; or that he is deserving of no confidence. This, however, is all that should have occupied the commentator's notice; and herein his castigation would have been really meritorious. The Italians too have a proverb that is equally reprehensible: "Whom God loves not, that man loves not music." Let such extravagancies be consigned to the censure they deserve!
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 542
GRA. ... The first intergatory That my Nerissa shall besworn on----
This word being nothing more than a contraction of interrogatory, should be elliptically printed, inter'gatory.
THE CLOWN.
There is not a single circumstance through the whole of this play which constitutes Lancelot an allowed fool or jester; and yet there is some reason for supposing that Shakspeare intended him as such, from his being called a patch, a fool of Hagar's offspring, and in one place the fool. It is not reasonable, however, to conclude that a person like Shylock would entertain a domestic of this description; and it is possible that the foregoing terms may be merely designed as synonymous with the appellation of clown, as in Love's labour's lost. On the whole, we have here a proof that Shakspeare has not observed that nice discrimination of character in his clowns for which some have given him credit.
ON THE SOURCES FROM WHICH THE STORY OF THIS PLAY HAS BEEN DERIVED.
The present subject, notwithstanding it has been already discussed with considerable labour and ingenuity, may still be said to rest in much obscurity. This has partly arisen from some confusion in the mode of stating the information conveyed in the several notes wherein it has been discussed. To render this position the more intelligible, it will be necessary to say a few words on each commentator's opinion: and first on that of Dr. Farmer. He states that the story was taken from an old translation of the Gesta Romanorum, first printed by Wynkyn de Worde; and that Shakspeare has closely copied some of the language. The Doctor's use of the word story is not consistent with his usual accuracy, because, in what follows, he speaks only of the incident of the caskets, which forms in reality but a part of the story. It is much to be wished, for reasons which will hereafter appear, that Dr. Farmer had been more particular in his account of the edition of the Gesta Romanorum which he says was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, none such having, after much inquiry, been discovered; and it is to be feared that he had trusted to a previous statement of his friend the accomplished and elegant historian of English poetry, whose accuracy is unhappily known to have been by no means commensurate with his taste. The Doctor's assertion, that Shakspeare "closely copied some of the language," cannot be maintained until it be first ascertained if any use had been made of the Gesta Romanorum by the author of the old play of the Jew, mentioned by Gosson, and also in what particulars Shakspeare followed him. It is proper to take notice in this place of the mistake that has been committed by those who speak of Shakspeare's imitations of the sources of this play, and who forget that one on the same subject had already appeared, and which might have furnished him with the whole of the plot. It is however probable that he improved it by means of other novels, as will be seen hereafter.
The next critic to be noticed is the truly learned and judicious Mr. Tyrwhitt. He informs us that the two principal incidents of this play occur in the Gesta Romanorum, and produces some extracts from a Latin manuscript of that work in the British museum. Admitting that the incident of the caskets might have been taken from the English Gesta Romanorum, as mentioned by Dr. Farmer, he cautiously gives it as his opinion that both the stories in the Gesta Romanorum quoted by himself are the remote originals of Shakspeare's play; for he had also forgotten the elder drama mentioned by Gosson. He thinks, however, that the bond story might have come to Shakspeare from the Pecorone, but suspects on the whole that he followed some hitherto unknown novelist, who had saved him the trouble of working up the two stories into one. Aware also that Shakspeare's small acquaintance with the Latin language would scarcely enable him to consult the manuscript Gesta Romanorum, he has very properly used the expression remote originals; and the rather, because he had probably examined the printed English editions without finding the story of the bond, which would hardly have escaped the diligent researches of Dr. Farmer, had it really been there. The fact however is, that the bond story did exist in English long before Shakspeare's time, and it is extremely probable that the original author of the Jew used some English Gesta Romanorum for the whole of his plot. There is more stress to be laid on this opinion so far as it regards the original dramatist, because it seems most probable that Shakspeare, on account of the closer resemblance of the story in the Pecorone to his incident of the bond, had, with great advantage, made use of some translation of it now irrecoverably lost. For this reason, with all due respect for Mr. Tyrwhitt's opinion, it is improbable that Shakspeare followed some unknown novelist who had saved him the trouble of working up the two stories into one; unless it be conceded that such person was the author of the elder play.
The last opinion to be noticed is that of Dr. Johnson; and he remarks that the modern translator of the Pecorone thought the incident of the caskets was borrowed from Boccaccio. This shall be examined presently. The Doctor thinks, however, that Shakspeare had some other novel in view, a conjecture which Mr. Malone very properly supports by a reference to Dr. Farmer's note.
In offering some additional observations on the stories that are connected with the Merchant of Venice, it will be necessary, for the purpose of avoiding confusion, to speak separately of the two main incidents on which that play is constructed.
STORY OF THE CASKETS.
The novel of Boccaccio that has been cited on this occasion, together with some other tales that resemble it, have, it is conceived, no manner of connexion with the play. The curious reader will find one of these stories, and perhaps the most ancient of them, in the lives of Barlaam and Josaphat, as related in the Golden legend, though compiled at a period much anterior to that amusing work. Another is in Gower's Confessio amantis, fo. 96, edit. 1532; and a third in the same work, fo. 96, verso. The latter has been related in a more ample and ingenious manner in the Cento novelle antiche, nov. 65.
In chap. 109 of the Latin printed copy of the Gesta Romanorum, a very different work from that referred to by Dr. Farmer and Mr. Tyrwhitt, there is the following story: A smith had lost a chest of money, which being carried by the sea to the shores of a distant country, was taken up by an inn-keeper, who, not suspecting that it contained any thing, threw it carelessly aside. Having occasion one day for some fuel to warm his guests, he broke up the chest, and finding the money, laid it by safely, till some one should arrive to claim it. The smith soon afterwards appeared; and having publicly declared his loss, the inn-keeper resolved to ascertain if it were the will of Providence that he should make restitution. He therefore caused three pasties to be made; the first he filled with earth, the second with dead men's bones, and the third with money. He then invited the smith to dinner, and gave him the choice of the pasties. The smith fixed on those with the earth and bones, and relinquished the other. The host now concluded that it was not the will of Heaven that he should restore the money; he therefore called in the blind and the lame, opened the other pasty in their presence, and divided the treasure between them.
But the work to which the play stands immediately indebted, is a Gesta Romanorum in English, never printed in Latin, and of which the earliest edition that could be procured on the present occasion was printed by Thomas Est, in 1595, 12mo, and several times afterwards. The latter part only of the 32nd history has been used. This has already been given in English by Dr. Farmer, and in Latin by Mr. Tyrwhitt. It has undoubtedly furnished the author of the play with the incident of the caskets; but he has transposed the mottoes of the gold and silver ones, and substituted another for that of lead.
THE BOND STORY.
The character of Leti as an historian warrants an opinion that his story is a mere fabrication, grafted on one of those that he had met with on the same subject. The tale itself is most probably of Eastern origin. Besides that given by Mr. Malone from Ensign Munro's manuscript, a similar one is related in Gladwin's Persian Moonshee, story 13; and another likewise from an oriental source, in the British magazine for 1800, page 159.
In Tyron, Recueil de plusieures plaisantes nouvelles, &c., Anvers, 1590, 18mo, a Christian borrows 500 ducats of a Jew at Constantinople, on condition of paying two ounces of flesh for usury. At the expiration of the term the Christian refuses to pay more than the principal. The matter is brought before the Emperor Solyman, who orders a razor to be brought, and admonishes the Jew not to cut off more or less than the two ounces on pain of death. The Jew gives up the point. The same story occurs in Roger Bontemps en belle humeur; in the Tresor des recreations, Douay, 1625, 18mo, p. 27; in Doctæ nugæ Gaudensij Jocosi, 1713, 12mo, p. 23; in the Courier facetieux, Lyon, 1650, 8vo, p. 109; in the Chasse ennuy, Paris, 1645, 18mo, p. 49; in Corrozet Divers propos memorables, &c., 1557, 12mo, p. 77, of which work there is an English translation under the title of Memorable conceits of divers noble and famous personages of Christendome, &c., 1602, 24mo; in Apophthegmes, ou La recreation de la jeunesse, p. 155. It agrees also with the story related by Gracian in his Hero. See Steevens's Shakspeare, V. 515.
It has been imitated by Antony Munday in his Astræpho, being the third part of Zelauto, or The fountaine of fame, 1580, 4to. This writer had found it in Silvayn's Orator, which, as we have already seen, he translated. Instead of the cutting off a pound of flesh, it is agreed that one of the party's eyes shall be pulled out. Besides the ballad of Gernutus the Jew of Venice, printed in Dr. Percy's Reliques, there is another less ancient, under the title of The cruel Jew's garland, in which the story is varied, and with some ingenuity.
A part of the novel in the Pecorone is most likely of Oriental origin, and might have been transmitted to Ser Giovanni from the same source that supplied Boccaccio and many of the French minstrels with their stories, viz. the crusades.
As the Bond Story in the Gesta Romanorum is not known to exist at present in any printed edition, though it might in Shakspeare's time, and as the Latin original mentioned by Mr. Tyrwhitt has never been printed, it is therefore offered to the reader's notice, and will afford besides an interesting specimen of ancient English. It occurs in a manuscript preserved in the Harleian collection, No. 7333, written in the reign of Henry the Sixth. The language is of the same period.
"Selestinus reignid a wyse emperoure in Rome, and he had a faire dowter; and in his tyme ther was a knyᵹte that lovid this dowter, but he thowte in himselfe that he dud al in veyne, for he thouᵹt as forsothe that the emperoure wolde not late him to have hir, for he was unworthi therto; nevertheles he thought yf he myght be any wey have love of the damiselle it were inowe to me. He yede ofte tyme to the damisell and aspied hir wille; and she said to him ayene that he travaylid al in veyne, for trowist thow, quod she, with thi deseyvable of faire wordes to begile me? Nay sir, be my soule, hit shal not be so. Thenne saide the kniᵹte, What shal I yeve to the and late me lye by the a nyght? Not thowh thou woldest yeve me an C marke of florens, quod she, thou shalt not lye by me a nyght. Then hit shal be as thou wilte, quod he. What dude he but purveyde him of so muche mony, s. an C. marke of floreyns, and yaf hir. Whenne nyght come the kniᵹte enterid into the bed of the mayde, and anoon he was aslepe, and she dude of hir harnes, and come and laye downe by him. So the kniᵹte laye slepynge al the nyght. On the morow she ros, and did on hir clothis, and wishe hir hondes. And the kniᵹte awoke of his slepe, and thenne he said, Come hedir to me that I may do my wille with the. Nay, by the helth of my fadir, that wolle I not, quod she; for frende, I do the no wronge. Thow accordiste with me that I shulde lye with the al nyght, and so it is idon; for I lay by the al nyght, and thou sleptest and preferdest me no solace, and therrfore blame thi selfe, and not me. And the kniᵹte was hevy, and seide, What shal I yeve to the and lete me lygge by the another nyght? As much, quod she, as thou did afor, and no lesse. I assente, seide he. And the kniᵹte yede and solde alle his movable goodes, and made redy an C. marke of floreynse. But se now a marvelouse case; for right as hit was the furste nyght, so hit was in the secounde. Thenne the kniᵹte mervaylid mor thanne man may suppose, and hevy he was, and saide, Allas, for now have I spend al my godes withoute spede; and therfore thow I shulle dye therefor I woll make another ende, how moch shall I yeve the, and late us be togeder the thirde nyght, quod the kniᵹte to the damisell. Sothely, she saide, yf thou have me, as thou paide afore, fiat voluntas tua. I assent, quod he, thou shalte have thin askynge and thi wille. The kniᵹte yede into fer contree, til he come to a grete citee, in the whiche wer many marchaunts and many philesophers, amonge the wiche was master Virgile the philesopher. Then the kniᵹte yede to a grete marchaunt, and saide, I have [nede] of monye, and yf thou wolt lende me an C marke unto a certeyne day, I wolle ley to the al my londes undir this conducion that if I holde not my day thow shalt have my londes for evere. Thenne seyde the marchaunt, Der frend, I sette not so muche be thi londes, but yf thow wolt make this covenaunt, that I shal sey to the, I wolle fulfill thi wille. This saide he I am redy to do thi wille, yf thou wolt do my petucion. Thenne, seide he, when this covenaunt is made that I shalle seye unto the, thenne I shalle fulfille thyne askynge; and the covenaunt shalle be this, that thou make to me a charter of thine owne blood, in conducion that yf thowe kepe not thi day of payment, hit shalle be lefulle to me for to draw awey alle the flesh of thi body froo the bone with a sharp swerde, and yf thow wolt assent herto, I shalle fulfille thi wille. The kniᵹte lovid the damisell so moch that he grauntid al this, and made a charter of his owne bloode, and selid it, and after the selyng this marchaunt toke him the money that he askid. When he had the moneye, he thoute to him selfe, yf I gete my wylle by this moneye, I am but dede; nay, nay, it may not be so. When he harde tell of the grete name of maister Virgile, he yede to him, and seide, Gode sir, I have previ counseill to speke a twene us too, and I beseche yow of your wise counseill in this cas. Sey on, quod Virgile, and I shalle telle the aftir my discrecion. Sir, I love the dowter of the emperoure more than ye wolle trowe, and I accordid with her for a certen sum of money. I have be disceyvid two nyghts in swiche maner; and tolde alle the cas as welle as he coude, and sir nowe I have borowed of a marchaunt so much moneye for the same cas to be fulfillid, and undir this conducion, that yf I holde not my day of payment, hit shalle thenne be lefulle to him to helde of alle the skynne of my body with his swerde, and then I am but dede, and therfor sir, I am com to you to have counsaill and wyt how I may bothe have helpe ayenste swiche a parill, and also to have the love of that lovely lady. Thou hast made a lewde covenaunt, seide Virgile, for as a man bindithe him with his owne wille, right so he shall be servid be lawe of the emperoure; and therefore thou shalt do wysely for to kepe the day of thi payment alle things lefte. And towchinge the damesell I shall yeve the a tale of truthe. Bitwene her shete and her coverlyte of hir bed is a letter of swiche vertu, that whoso ever gothe with hir to bed, he shall anon falle into a dede slepe; and he shalle not wake til time that hit be put awey: and therfor when thou comest to hir bed, seche a twene the shete and the coverlyte, and thow shalt fynde the letter; and when thow hast founde hit caste hit fer from the bedde, and then entre into the bed, for thou shalte not slepe til tyme that thow haste doon thi wille with the damiselle, and that shalle torne to the gret honour and joye. The kniᵹte toke his leve at Virgile, and thonkid him moche of his hie counseill and yede to the damysell, and yafe hir the monye. When nyᵹt come the kniᵹt enterid the chaumber, and preveli putte his honde bitwene the coverlite and the shete, and there he fonde the letter; and whenne he hadde hit he caste hit fer fro the bedde, and lay downe and feynid as he hadde islepte, and thenne the damiselle knowing that he had yslepte as he dude afor, she caste of hir clothis, and went to bedde. Anon the kniᵹte sette hande to hir as is the maner of bed, and she perceyved that, and prayd him of grace, and to save hir maydinhede, and I shall dobble al the monye that thow hast yevin to me and yeve it to the.... And aftur he lovid hir so muche that he drow so moche to hir compane that he forᵹate the marchaunt and the day of payment was passid by the space of xiiii dayes. And as he lay in a certen nyght in his bed, hit come to his mynde the day that he made to the marchaunt, and alle his bowells wer storid therewithe, and thenne said to her, Alas woman that ever I saw the, for I am but dede. I borowed for thi love swiche a some of mony for to pay at a certeyne day bi this conducion, that yf I pay not at my day he shall have full power for to hilde of the fleshe of my body without contradiccion; and now my day is passid fourtenyte ago, so hih I sette myn hert in the. Then seide she, Sorowithe not so moche, gothe to him, and debbelithe the mony to him, and yf he wolle not, aske howe moche he wolle have, and I shalle paye it. Tho was the kniᵹte comfortid. He yede to the citee, and there he mette with the marchaunt in the stret, and lowly he saluid him. Tho saide the marchaunt, So sey I not to the. Thenne seyde the kniᵹte, Sir, for the trespas that I have made ayenste youre convencion I wolle dowble the payment. Naye seide the marchaunt, that spake we not of, I wolle have right as thou dudest bynde the to me. Aske of me, quod the knight, as much mony as thou wolte, and thowe shalt be paide for my trespas. It is veyne that thow spekist, quod the marchaunt, for thowhe thou geve to me al the gode of thi citee, I wolle have the covenaunt I holde, and non othere wolle I have of the than as the charter asselid makith mencioun of; and anon he made the kniᵹt to be itake and lad to the castell, and sette him in a safe ward, abyding the justice. When the juge was come and satte in the dome, the kniᵹt come to barr among other prisoners, and the marchaunt shewid his lettire afor the juge. Anoon as the juge sawe there his owne dede, he said to alle that stode aboute, Sirs, ye know welle it is the law of the emperour that yf enye man bynde him by his owne freewille he shal resseyve as he servithe, and therefore this marchaunt shalle have covenaunt as lawe wolle. Now in al this tyme the damysell his love had sent kniᵹts for to aspie and enquer how the law was pursued ayenst him, and whenne she harde telle that the lawe passid ayenst him, she kytte of al the longe her of hir hede, and cladde hir in precious clothing like to a man, and yede to the palys there as hir lemon was to be demyd, and saluyd the justice, and all they trowid that she had be a kniᵹte; and the juge enquerid of what contree she was, and what she had to do ther. She said, I am a kniᵹte, and come of fer contree, and her tithings that there is a kniᵹte amonge yowe that shuld be demid to dethe for an obligacion that he made to a marchaunt, and therefor I am come to deliver him. Thenne the juge said, It is lawe of the emperoure that who so ever byndethe him with his owne propre wille and consent withoute enye constraynynge he shulde be servid so ayene. When the damisell harde this she turnid to the marchaunt and saide, Der frende, what profite is it to the that this kniᵹte that stondithe her redy to the dome be slayne? it wer [better] to the to have monye than to have him slayne. Thou spekest al in veyne, quod the marchaunt, for withoute doute I wolle have the lawe sithe he bonde him so frely, and therefor he shalle have noon other grace than lawe wolle, for he come to me, and I not to him. I desirid him not thereto ayenste his wille. Thenne saide she, I praye the howe moche shall I yeve to have my petucion? I shalle yeve the thi monye double, and yf that be not plesynge to the, aske of me what thou wolte, and Thou shalt have. Then saide he, thow harde me never seye but that I wolde have my covenaunte kept. Sothely, seyde she, and thou shalt trowe me afor your [you] sir juge, and afor yowe alle, I sey now sir juge ywithe a right wisdome of that that I shal seye to yowe; ye have ihard howe moche I have proferid this marchaunt for the lyf of this kniᵹte, and he forsakithe all, and askithe the lawe, and that likith me moche; and therfore lordinges that beye her, herithe me what I shalle seye. Ye knowithe welle that the kniᵹt bonde him never by letter but that the marchaunt shulde have power to kutte his fleshe fro the boons, but there was no covenaunt made of sheding of blode, thereof was nothing ispoke, and therefor late him set hond on him anoon, and yf he shede ony bloode with his shavinge of the fleshe forsothe then shalle the kynge have goode lawe upon him. And when the marchaunt harde this he said, Yef me my monye, and I foryeve my accion. Fforsothe, quod she, thou shalt not have oo penye, for afor al this companye I proferid to the al that I myght, and thou forsoke hit, and saydist with a lowde wyse, I shalle have my covenaunte; and therfor do thi beste with him, but loke that thow shede no blode I charge the; for it is not thin, ne no covenaunt was thereof. Thenne the marchaunt seynge this yede away confus. And so was the Kniᵹt's lyf savid, and no penye ipayde. And she yede home ayene, and dude of that clothinge, and clothid hit as she was afor like to a woman. And the kniᵹte yede home ayene, and the damisell turnid and met him, and askid howe he had ispedde, as thowhe she had not knowen therof. A, lady, quod he, this day was I in poynt to be dede for thy love, but as I was in point to be dampned, there come in sodeynlye a knite, a fair and well ishape, the whiche I saw never afor, and he delivirid me by his exellent wisdom bothe from dethe and eke from payment of moneye. Thenne were thowhe, quod she, unkynde that woldest nat bidde that kniᵹte to mete, that so faire had savid the. He aunswerde therto, and saide that he come sodeinly and sodenly yede. Thenne seide she, Knowiste thow him if thou seye him? Yee, quod he, right wele. She yede up and cladde hir as she dide afore, and then she yede forthe. And the kniᵹte knew her thenne wele, and for joye fel doune upon hire, and said, Blessid be thow, and the houre in the whiche I fyrste knew the. And he wepte, and aftir he weddid hir and livid and deyde in the service of God, and yelde to God goode sowlis."
On the whole, then, it is conceived that the outline of the bond story is of Oriental origin;[13] that the author of the old play of The Jew, and Shakspeare in his Merchant of Venice, have not confined themselves to one source only in the construction of their plot; but that the Pecorone, the Gesta Romanorum, and perhaps the old Ballad of Gernutus, have been respectively resorted to. It is however most probable that the original play was indebted chiefly, if not altogether, to the Gesta Romanorum, which contained both the main incidents; and that Shakspeare expanded and improved them, partly from his own genius, and partly, as to the bond, from the Pecorone, where the coincidences are too manifest to leave any doubt. Thus, the scene being laid at Venice; the residence of the lady at Belmont; the introduction of a person bound for the principal; the double infraction of the bond, viz., the taking more or less than a pound of flesh and the shedding of blood, together with the after-incident of the ring, are common to the novel and the play. The whetting of the knife might perhaps have been taken from the Ballad of Gernutus. Shakspeare was likewise indebted to an authority that could not have occurred to the original author of the play in an English form; this was, Silvayn's Orator, as translated by Munday. From that work Shylock's reasoning before the senate is evidently borrowed; but at the same time it has been most skilfully improved.
The frequent allusions to the different Gesta Romanorum may have excited a wish to be more familiarly acquainted with that singular and interesting work; but as the discussion of the subject in this place would have augmented the tediousness of the note, it has been thought better to make the attempt in a separate dissertation, where it is hoped that any obscurity in the preceding remarks will be removed.
It is much to be lamented that this exquisitely beautiful drama can neither be read nor performed, without exciting in every humane and liberal mind an abhorrence of its professed design to vilify an ancient and respectable, but persecuted, nation. It should be remembered that contempt and intolerance must naturally excite hatred; that to provoke revenge is, in fact, to become responsible for the crimes it may occasion; that to those who would degrade and oppress us, it is but justice to oppose craft; and that nature has supplied even the brute creation with the means of resisting persecution. It will be readily conceded that there happily exist in the present moment but few remains of the illiberal prejudices complained of, the asperity of which has been greatly mitigated by the laudable and successful exertions of a modern dramatic writer, to whom the Jewish people are under the highest obligations.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] It may be worth remarking that the historian Stowe has made great use of this curious and valuable Life of Wolsey, without naming the author. It has been several times printed, but the manuscript copies have greatly the advantage in fullness and accuracy.
[13] If the horrible incident of the cutting off the flesh had not occurred in the several Oriental stories that have been mentioned, one should have supposed that it had been suggested by that atrocious decemviral law of the Twelve Tables, which empowered a creditor to mangle the living body of his debtor without fear of punishment for cutting more or less than the magistrate allowed. For the honour of the Roman law, it is not recorded that the above inhuman decree was ever enforced.
AS YOU LIKE IT.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 16
CEL. This is not fortune's work neither, but nature's, who perceiving our natural wits too dull to reason of such Goddesses, hath sent this natural for our whetstone.
It must be observed that Touchstone is here called a natural merely for the sake of alliteration and a punning jingle of words; for he is undoubtedly an artificial fool.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 29
LE BEAU. More suits you to conceive, than me to speak of.
The old copy had, than I. These grammatical errors in the use of the personal pronoun should either be uniformly corrected or left entirely to themselves. Mr. Steevens in p. 9, note 7, seems to regard them as the anomalies of the play-house editors; but Mr. Malone, probably with more reason, is inclined to place them to the author's own account. If the present correction by Mr. Rowe be retained in future editions, we ought not to find such expressions as "hates nothing more than he," p. 14; "no child but I," p. 15, and who for whom perpetually.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 37
DUKE S. Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
What that stone which many people suppose to come from the head of a toad really was, would be no easy task at present to determine. Various conjectures have made it the bsatrachites, chelonites, brontia, ceraunia, glossopetra, &c. Neither is it certain that the text alludes to a stone; for Gesner informs us that in his time, and in England more particularly, the common people made superstitious uses of a real jewel that always could be found in a toad's head, viz., its forehead bone. To obtain this they severed the animal in two parts, and exposed it to be devoured by ants; by which means it presently became a skeleton. The above author carefully distinguishes this bone from the toadstone, and from Pliny's bone mentioned in Mr. Steevens's note. He has likewise with great industry, as on all occasions, collected much that relates to the subject of the toadstone. See his work De quadrup. ovipar. p. 65. It must be owned that better naturalists than Shakspeare believed in the common accounts of the toadstone. Batman in his edition to the article relating to the botrax or rubeta in Bartholomæus De propr. rerum, informs us that "some toads that breed in Italy and about Naples, have in their heads a stone called a crapo, of bignes like a big peach, but flat, of colour gray, with a browne spot in the midst said to be of vertue. In times past they were much worne, and used in ringes, as the forewarning against venime." Another learned divine who is often very witty, but on this occasion perfectly grave, has told us that "some report that the toad before her death sucks up (if not prevented with sudden surprisal) the precious stone (as yet but a jelly) in her head, grudging mankind the good thereof."--Fuller's Church history, p. 151. In a medical work too we are informed that "in the head of a greate tode there is a stone, which stone being stampt and geven to the pacyent to drinke in warme wine, maketh him to pise the stone out incontinent," &c.--Lloyd's Treasure of helth, pr. by Copland, n. d. 12mo. The notion of jewels in the heads of animals is very widely spread. Mr. Wilkins has informed us that it is a vulgar notion in India that some species of serpents have precious stones in their heads. Hectopades, p. 302. The best account of the different sorts of toadstones, so far as regards the illustration of the above superstitious notions, is in Topsell's History of serpents, 1608, folio, p. 188.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 39
1. LORD. To the which place a poor sequester'd stag Did come to languish ... ... and the big round tears Cours'd one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase.
The stag is said to possess a very large secretion of tears. "When the hart is arered, he fleethe to a ryver or ponde, and roreth cryeth and wepeth when he is take."--Bartholomæus De propriet. rerum, 1. xviii. c. 30. Batman, in his commentary on that work, adds, from Gesner, that "when the hart is sick and hath eaten many serpents for his recoverie, he is brought unto so great a heate, that he hasteth to the water, and their covereth his body unto the very eares and eyes, at which time distilleth many teares from which the [Bezoar] stone is gendered," &c. The translator of The noble arte of Venerie makes the hart thus address the hunter:
"O cruell, be content, to take in worth my teares, Which growe to gumme, and fall from me; content thee with my heares, Content thee with my hornes, which every yeare I mew, Since all these three make medicines, some sicknesse to eschew. My teares congeal'd to gumme, by peeces from me fall, And thee preserve from pestilence, in pomander or ball. Such wholesome teares shedde I, when thou pursewest me so."
Compare also Virgil's description of the wounded stag in the seventh book of the Æneid.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 43
DUKE. And let not search and inquisition quail To bring again these foolish runaways.
"To quail," says Mr. Steevens, "is to faint, to sink into dejection;" and so it certainly is, but not in this instance; for neither search nor inquisition could very well faint or become dejected. They might indeed slacken, relax, or diminish, and such is really the present meaning of the word. Thus "Hunger cureth love, for love quaileth when good cheare faileth."--The choise of change, 1585, 4to, sign. L. i. To quail is also used in the several senses of to sink, abate, deaden, enfeeble, press down, and oppress; all of which might be exemplified from the writings of authors contemporary with Shakspeare, and some of them from his own. It seems to be a modification of to quell, i. e. to destroy altogether, to kill, from the Saxon cƿellan.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 54
JAQ. But that they call compliment, is like the encounter of two dog-apes.
Bartholomæus, speaking of apes, says, "some be called cenophe; and be lyke to an hounde in the face, and in the body lyke to an ape."--Lib. xviii. c. 96.
Act II, Scene 5 — Page 55
JAQ. Ducdáme, ducdáme, ducdáme.
The stanza which the facetious old squire sang before Dr. Farmer has occurred in the following shape; but where is the Œdipus who shall unfold the connexion of either with Jaques's song?
"O damy what makes my ducks to die? What can ail them, Oh! They eat their victuals and down they lie, What can ail them, Oh!"
Act II, Scene 7 — Page 66
JAQ. ... All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players.
Mr. Steevens refers to the totus mundus exerceat histrioniam of Petronius, with whom probably the sentiment originated; but this author had not been translated in Shakspeare's time. The play of Damon and Pythias, which Mr. Malone has cited, might have furnished the observation. There are likewise two other probable sources that are worthy of notice on this occasion. The first is Withal's Short dictionarie in Latine and English, several times printed in the reign of Elizabeth, where in fo. 69 of the edit. 1599, is the following passage: "This life is a certain enterlude or plaie. The world is a stage full of chang everie way, everie man is a plaier." The other is Pettie's translation of Guazzo's Civile conversation, 1586, 4to, where one of the parties introduces the saying of some philosopher "that this world was a stage, we the players which present the comedie." Shakspeare had himself used nearly the same language in the first act of The merchant of Venice:
"I hold the world, but as the world, Gratiano, A stage, where every man must play a part."
A portion of Jaques's speech has been imitated in some lines by Thomas Heywood among the commendatory verses prefixed to his Actors vindication, 1658, 4to:
"The world 's a theater, the earth a stage, Which God and nature doth with actors fill; All men have parts, and each man acts his own," &c.
Act II, Scene 7 — Page 66
JAQ. And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.
A print of the seven ages of men like those referred to by Messrs. Henley and Steevens may be seen in Comenius's Orbis pictus, tit. xxxvii., in which are found the infant, the boy, and the decrepid old man: the rest of Shakspeare's characters seem to be of his own invention. There is a division of the seven ages of man in Arnolde's Chronicle, fo. lix. verso, agreeing, except in the arrangement of years, with that given by Mr. Malone from The treasury of ancient and modern times.
Act II, Scene 7 — Page 69
JAQ. Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.
This word, introduced into our language as early as the time of Chaucer, has sometimes received on the stage a French pronunciation, which in the time of Shakspeare it certainly had not. The old orthography will serve to verify this position:
"I none dislike, I fancie some, But yet of all the rest, Sance envie, let my verdite passe, Lord Buckhurst is the best."
Turbervile's verses before his Tragical tales, 1587, 4to.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 82
ROS. I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar: then it will be the earliest fruit in the country, for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medlar.
On this Mr. Steevens observes that Shakspeare had little knowledge of gardening, the medlar being one of the latest fruits, and uneatable till the end of November. But is not the charge, at least in this instance, unfounded; and has not the learned commentator misunderstood the poet's meaning? It is well known that the medlar is only edible when apparently rotten. This is what Shakspeare calls its right virtue. If a fruit be fit to be eaten when rotten and before it be ripe, it may in one sense be termed the earliest. The inaccuracy seems to be in making the medlar rotten before it is ripe, the rottenness being, as it is conceived, the ripeness.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 93
ORL. I pray you, mar no more of my verses with reading them ill-favouredly.
This very much resembles the sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuum, in one of Martial's epigrams, lib. i. ep. 39, of which the following translation was made by Timothy Kendall, in his Flowers of epigrammes, 1577, 12mo:
"The booke which thou doest read, it is Frende Fidentinus myne; _But when thou ill doest read it, then Beginns it to bee thyne_."
Act III, Scene 4 — Page 111
CEL. He hath bought a pair of cast lips of Diana: a nun of winter's sisterhood kisses not more religiously; the very ice of chastity is in them.
Theobald explains cast lips "a pair left off by Diana." It is not easy to conceive how the goddess could leave off her lips; or how, being left off, Orlando could purchase them. Celia seems rather to allude to a statue cast in plaister or metal, the lips of which might well be said to possess the ice of chastity.
As to the "nun of winter's sisterhood," Warburton might have contented himself with censuring the dullness of Theobald. His own sisterhoods of the seasons are by much too refined and pedantic, and in every respect objectionable. Shakspeare poetically feigns a new order of nuns, most appropriate to his subject, and wholly devoid of obscurity.
Act III, Scene 5 — Page 115
SIL. ... The common executioner Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck.
There is no doubt that the expression to fall the axe may with propriety refer to the usual mode of decapitation; but if it could be shown that in the reign of Elizabeth this punishment was inflicted in England by an instrument resembling the French guillotine, which though merciful in the discharge of its office, has justly excited abhorrence from the number of innocent victims that have suffered by it, the expression would perhaps seem rather more appropriate. Among the cuts to the first edition of Holinshed's chronicle such a machine is twice introduced; and as it does not appear that in either instance there was any cause for the particular use of it, we may reasonably infer that it was at least sometimes adopted. Every one has heard of the Halifax gibbet, which was just such another instrument, and certainly introduced into that town, for reasons that do not appear, long before the time in which Holinshed was printed. It is said that the Earl of Morton, the Scotish regent, saw it at Halifax, and that he introduced it into Scotland, where it was used for a considerable time afterwards.[14] In that country it was called the maiden, and Morton himself actually suffered by it, when condemned as an accomplice in the murder of Lord Darnley. In the best edition of Holinshed, Thynne's continuation of Hector Boethius's history is printed, in which there is an account of the conference between the Earl and the Ministers of Edinburgh, under the title of The examination and answers of the Earl of Morton before his death, but after his condemnation. Thynne seems to say that the above account was delivered over to him, but he has omitted to state the particulars. In a manuscript of this conference, written at the time, and in the possession of the author of these observations, it is called The some of all the conferrence that was betweene the Earle Morton and John Dury and Mr. Walker the same daye that he suffered which was the 2 June 1581, and differs in several places from the other. In both, at the end, there is an account of the Earl's last moments, in which it is stated (the MS. being here quoted) that he "layde his head under the axe, his handes being unbounde, Mr. Walker cried in his eare, Lord Jesus receive thy spirite, he saide Jesus receive my sowle, which wordes he was speaking while the axe fell on his necke." This extract would alone be sufficient to decide on the mode in which Morton was beheaded; but in the MS. there is a neat drawing of the machine itself, resembling the cut in the earliest edition of Holinshed, except that in the latter the axe is suspended to the top of the frame by a string which the executioner cuts with a knife, whilst in the other, a peg, to which the string is attached, is drawn out of one of the sides.
It may be worth adding that in King Henry VI. part 2, Eleanor says to her husband the duke of Gloucester,
"But be thou mild, and blush not at my shame, Nor stir at nothing, till the axe of death Hang over thee----"
Act III, Scene 5 — Page 118
ROS. ... What though you have more beauty (As by my faith, I see no more in you Than without candle may go dark to bed)
The old copy reads no beauty. Mr. Malone substitutes mo, i. e. more, and supports his alteration by making Rosalind allow that Phœbe had more beauty than her lover; but she soon afterwards asserts the contrary in the most positive terms. The omission of the disputed monosyllable, which in the old copy might have caught the compositor's eye in the ensuing line and occasioned the mistake, will certainly correct the present redundancy in the line, and perhaps restore the author's original language. As in the next line appears to have the power of though; a word that could not be used on account of its introduction in the preceding line.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 130
ROS. I will laugh like a hyen, and that when thou art inclined to sleep.
"He commeth to houses by night, and feineth mannes voyce as he maye," &c.--Bartholomæus De propriet. rer. lib. xviii. c. 61. De Hiena.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 142
OLI ... for 'tis The royal disposition of that beast, To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.
This property of the lion, whether true or false, was acknowledged by our forefathers. Thus in "The choise of change containing the divinitie, philosophie, and poetrie," &c., 1585, 4to, a work evidently constructed on the model of the Welsh triads, we find the following passage: "three things shew that there is a great clemencie in lions; they will not hurt them that lie groveling," &c. Bartholomæus says, "their mercie is known by many and oft ensamples: for they spare them that lye on the ground." Shakspeare again alludes to the lion's generosity in Troilus and Cressida, Act V. Scene 3:
"Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you Which better fits a lion than a man."
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 152
ROS. By my life, I do; which I tender dearly, though I say I am a magician.
Of the two constructions of this speech, that by Mr. Steevens seems deserving of the preference; but the grounds on which it stands require examination. A statute against witchcraft was made in the first year of king James. Now if, as Dr. Warburton conceives, it is to this that Rosalind alludes, the play must have been written after 1603. Mr. Malone, whose opinion is supported by very solid reasons, thinks it was written in 1600; and therefore to reconcile the explanation given by Mr. Steevens, we must suppose that the foregoing allusion is to some prior statutes of Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth, which punished those who practised witchcraft with death.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 154
ROS. I will satisfy you if ever I satisfy'd man.
The context seems to require that we should read satisfy; and it was the genius of Shakspeare's age to write so.
THE CLOWN.
Touchstone is the domestic fool of Frederick the duke's brother, and belongs to the class of witty or allowed fools. He is threatened with the whip, a mode of chastisement which was often inflicted on this motley personage. His dress should be a party-coloured garment. He should occasionally carry a bauble in his hand, and wear asses' ears to his hood, which is probably the head dress intended by Shakspeare, there being no allusion whatever to a cock's head or comb. The three-cornered hat which Touchstone is made to wear on the modern stage is an innovation, and totally unconnected with the genuine costume of the domestic fool.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] See Hume's hist. of the houses of Douglas and Angus, 1644, folio, p. 356. There are good reasons for supposing that the instrument in question was invented in Germany.
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
In the dramatis personæ of this play the "gentle astringer" is omitted, who, though he says but little, has a better claim to be inserted than Violenta, who says nothing. Mr. Steevens remarks that her name was borrowed from an old metrical history entitled Didaco and Violenta; but Shakspeare more probably saw it in the running title of Painter's Palace of pleasure, whence he got his plot of this play, and where the above history occurs in prose. The title is borrowed from a proverbial saying much older than the time of Shakspeare. Knyghton has preserved some of the speeches of Jack Straw and his brother insurgents; and in that of Jack Carter we have this expression: for if the ende be wele than is alle wele. The orations of these heroes were made up of proverbial saws, a proof of the great influence they must have had with the common people. See the Decem scriptores by Twysden, col. 2637.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 187
LAF. A fistula, my Lord.
What Mr. Steevens calls the inelegance of the king's disorder is not to be placed to Shakspeare's account; for it is specifically mentioned both in Painter's story of Giletta, and in Boccaccio himself. It is singular that the learned critic should not have remembered this.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 188
COUNT. Where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity; they are virtues and traitors too.
The explanations of this speech appear to be too refined; and Dr. Warburton's, as usual, particularly so. The meaning is simply this:--where strong and useful talents are combined with an evil disposition, we feel regret even in commending them; because, in such a mind, however good in themselves, their use and application are always to be suspected.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 217
CLO. A prophet I madam.
A reconsideration of these words have suggested the necessity of cancelling both the notes, for the clown is not a natural, but an artificial fool.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 224
HEL. Indeed, my mother! or were you both our mothers.
This strange and faulty language deserved notice. It should have been, or were you so to both.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 234
BER. I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry Till honour be brought up, and _no sword worn, But one to dance with_.
He means that he shall remain at home to lead out ladies in the dance, till honour, &c. In Titus Andronicus, Act II. Scene 1, Demetrius speaks of a dancing rapier. The custom of wearing swords in the dancing schools is exemplified in a curious story related in Newes from the North, 1579, 4to, where "Pierce Plowman sheweth how his neighbour and hee went to the tavern and to the dauncing schoole and what hapned there," in these words: "Now was there one man of our company that was as deaf as a doore naile. When we were come into the schoole; the musitions were playing and one dauncing of a galiard, and even at our entring hee was beginning a trick as I remember of sixteens or seventeens, I doo not very wel remember, but wunderfully hee leaped, flung and took on, which the deaf man beholding, and not hearing any noyse of the musick, thought verily that hee had been stark mad and out of his wit, and of pure pittie and compassion ran to him and caught him in his armes and held him hard and fast. The dauncer not knowing his good meaning, and taking it to the wurst, and having a dagger drew it out, and smot the man a great blowe upon the hed, and brake his hed very sore." Another illustration of the subject is too interesting from the picture of ancient manners which it exhibits to stand in need of any apology for its insertion. It is from Stafforde's Briefe conceipt of English pollicy, 1581, 4to. "I thinke wee were as much dread or more of our enemies, when our gentlemen went simply and our serving men plainely, without cuts or gards, bearing their heavy swordes and buckelers on their thighes insted of cuts and gardes and light daunsing swordes; and when they rode carrying good speares in theyr hands in stede of white rods, which they cary now more like ladies or gentlewomen then men; all which delicacyes maketh our men cleane effeminate and without strength."