Act II, Scene 2 — Page 249
CLO. As Tib's rush for Tom's forefinger.
The covert allusion mentioned by Mr. Ritson is, in all probability, the right solution of this passage; but the practice of marrying with a rush ring may admit of some additional remarks. Sir John Hawkins had already, in a very curious and interesting note, illustrated the subject; and it must appear very extraordinary that one of the subsequent notes should question the practice of marrying with a rush ring, on the grounds that no authority had been produced in support of it. This must therefore be explained. The fact is, that the author of the doubts had never seen Sir John Hawkins's entire note, which had originally appeared in the edition of 1778, but was injudiciously suppressed in that of 1785. In the edition of 1790 there is only a brief and general statement of Sir John's opinion, and this led to the doubts expressed. In 1793 Mr. Steevens restores a note which he had already cancelled, and with all its authorities before him, permits them to be questioned; but there are many who will comprehend his motive.
The information from Du Breul (not Breval, as misprinted) Theâtre des antiquitez de Paris. 1612. 4to, is worth stating more at large. The author tells us that in the official court of the church of Saint Marinus, those who have lived unchastely are conducted to the church by two officers, in case they refuse to go of their own accord, and there married by the curate with a rush ring. They are likewise enjoined to live in peace and friendship, thereby to preserve the honour of their friends and relations, and their own souls from the danger they had incurred. This is only practised where no other method of saving the honour of the parties and their connexions can be devised. A modern French writer remarks on this ceremony; "pour faire observer, sans doute, au mari, combien etoit fragile la vertu de celle qu'il choisissait."
With respect to the constitutions of the bishop of Salisbury in 1217, which forbid the putting of rush rings on women's fingers, there seems to be an error in the reason for this prohibition as stated by Sir John Hawkins, but for which he is not perhaps responsible. He says it is insinuated by the bishop, "that there were some people weak enough to believe, that what was thus done in jest, was a real marriage." The original words, as in Spelman's councils, are these: "ne dum jocari se putat, honoribus matrimonialibus se abstringat." Now unless we read "adstringat" there is a difficulty in making sense of the passage, which seems to mean, least, whilst he thinks he is only practising a joke, he may be tying himself in the matrimonial noose. It is to be observed that this consequence was not limited to the deception of putting a rush ring only on the woman's finger, but any ring whatever, whether of vile or of precious materials.
In Greene's Menaphon is this passage: "Well, 'twas a good worlde when such simplicitie was used, sayes the old women of our time, when a ring of a rush would tie as much love together as a gimmon of golde." But rush rings were sometimes innocently used. Thus in Spenser's Shepherds calendar, eclog. xi. mention is made of "the knotted rush rings, and gilt rosemaree" of the deceased shepherdess. Again in Fletcher's Two noble kinsmen, Act iv.;
"... Rings she made Of rushes that grew by, and to 'em spoke The prettiest posies: _thus our true love's ty'd; This you may loose, not me_; and many a one."
Tib and Tom were names for any low or vulgar persons, and they are usually mentioned together in the same manner as Jack and Gill, &c. In the morality of Like will to like quoth the devil to the collier, Nicholas Newfangle says,
"By the mas for thee he is so fit a mate As Tom and Tib for Kit and Kate."
In the old song of The shepheard's holyday, we have,
"Jetting Gill, Jumping Will, O'r the floore will have their measure; Kit and Kate There will waite, Tib and Tom will take their pleasure."
Thomas Drant in his translation of Horace's Arte of poetrye, 1567, 4to, has Englished fricti ciceris et nucis emptor, by Tom and Tib, &c.; and in A satyr against Satyrs, or St. Peter's vision transubstantiated, 1680, 4to, are these lines:
"O' th same bead-string with fryar hang'd a nun, What, would not you have Tib to follow Tom?"
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 257
HEL. To each of you one fair and virtuous mistress Fall, when love please! marry to each, but one!
Mr. Tyrwhitt regards the latter exclamation as ludicrous, in consequence of Helena's limitation of one mistress to each lord, and would therefore give it to Parolles. Mr. Mason, on the contrary, is of opinion that the words but one, mean except one; that the person excepted is Bertram, whose mistress Helena hoped she herself should be; and that she makes the exception out of modesty, as otherwise it would extend to herself. Of these two opinions the first is the most probable, deriving considerable support from the one in the preceding line; for if Shakspeare had meant except one, he would have written "a fair and virtuous mistress." Helena's exception as stated by Mr. Mason might indeed have been made on the score of modesty so far as regarded her beauty; but she could not with propriety admit that she had no virtue.
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 257
LAF. I'd give bay Curtal.
Mr. Steevens should have added that this was a proper name for a horse, as well as an appellation for a dock'd one. "Their knavery is on this manner; they have always good geldings and trusty, which they can make curtailes when they list, and againe set too large tailes, hanging to the fetlockes at their pleasure."--Martin Marhall's apologie to the belman of London, 1610, sign. G. Curtail is not from cur and tail, as stated in some dictionaries, but from the French tailler court.
Act III, Scene 6 — Page 298
2. LORD. If you give him not John Drum's entertainment.
The meaning of this phrase has been very well ascertained, but its origin remains to be traced. Is it a metaphor borrowed from the beating of a drum, or does it allude to the drumming a person out of a regiment? There can be no reference to a real person, because in many old writers we find both Jack and Tom Drum.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 323
1. LORD. Hoodman comes!
An allusion to the game of blindman's buff, formerly called hoodman blind.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 326
PAR. He was whipp'd for getting the sheriff's fool with child.
Mr. Ritson will not admit this to be a fool kept by the sheriff for diversion, but supposes her one of those idiots whose care, as he says, devolved on the sheriff when they had not been begged of the king on account of the value of their lands. Now if this was the law, the sheriff must have usually had more than one idiot in his custody; and had Shakspeare alluded to one of these persons, he would not have chosen so definite an expression as that in question; he would rather have said, "a sheriff's fool." Female idiots were retained in families for diversion as well as male, though not so commonly; and there would be as much reason to expect one of the former in the sheriffs household as in that of any other person. It is not impossible that our author might have in view some real event that had just happened.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 327
BER. I know his brains are forfeit to the next tile that falls.
In Whitney's Emblems, a book certainly known to Shakspeare, there is a story of three women who threw dice to ascertain which of them should first die. She who lost affected to laugh at the decrees of fate, when a tile suddenly falling, put an end to her existence.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 329
PAR. ... a dangerous and lascivious boy, who is a whale to virginity.
This is an allusion to the story of Andromeda in old prints, where the monster is very frequently represented as a whale.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 333
PAR. For a quart d'ecu he will sell the fee simple of his salvation.
The quart d'ecu, or as it was sometimes written cardecue, was a French piece of money first coined in the reign of Henry III. It was the fourth part of the gold crown, and worth fifteen sols. It is a fact not generally known, that many foreign coins were current at this time in England; some English coins were likewise circulated on the continent. The French crown and its parts passed by weight only.
Act IV, Scene 4 — Page 339
HEL. All's well that ends well: still the fine's a crown.
In King Henry VI. part 2. Act V. we have "la fin couronne les œuvres." Both phrases are from the Latin finis coronat opus. In this sense we still use the expression to crown, for to finish or make perfect. Coronidem imponere is a metaphor well known to the ancients, and supposed to have originated from the practice of finishing buildings by placing a crown at their top as an ornament; and for this reason the words crown, top and head are become synonymous in most languages.
There is reason for believing that the ancients placed a crescent at the beginning, and a crown, or some ornament that resembled it, at the end of their books. In support of the first usage we have a poem by Ausonius entitled CORONIS which begins in this manner:
"Quos legis à prima deductos menide libri."
And of the other, these lines in Martial, lib. x. ep. 1:
"Si nimius videor, seraque coronide longus Esse liber: legito pauca, libellus ero."
The mark which was used in later times for the coronis has been preserved in the etymologies of Isidore, lib. i. c. 20. It is this, [Illustration]; and in some manuscripts of that writer [Illustration] and [Illustration]. In other places it has these forms, [Illustration].
Act IV, Scene 5 — Page 343
CLO. But sure, he is the prince of the world.
The Devil is often called so by Saint John.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 349
PAR. Good Monsieur Lavatch.
"This," says Mr Steevens, "is an undoubted and perhaps irremediable corruption of some French word." Yet the name is obviously La vache, which, whether really belonging to the clown or not, seems well adapted to such a character.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 351
CLO. Here is a pur of fortune's sir, or of fortune's cat.
The text is perfectly intelligible, and requires no conjectural amendment. The clown calls Parolles's letter a pur; because, like the purring of the sycophant cat, it was calculated to procure favour and protection.
THE CLOWN.
He is a domestic fool of the same kind as Touchstone.
TAMING OF THE SHREW.
Induction, Scene 1 — Page 386
SLY. Therefore, paucas pallabris.
Perhaps these words are part of an old Spanish proverb, corresponding with the Portuguese, "A o hom entendedor poucas palavras," i. e. to an intelligent man, few words. Most of the modern European languages have a proverb like our "word to the wise." In Ben Jonson's Masque of Augures, Vangoose is made to exclaim "hochos-pochos, paucos palabros."
Induction, Scene 1 — Page 394
LORD. And when he says he is ----, say that he dreams.
Of the various modes of filling up this blank suggested in the notes, that of Dr. Johnson, who would insert sly, is the most probable. Mr. Steevens asks, "how should the Lord know the beggar's name to be Sly?" This is very true; yet Shakspeare might as well forget himself in this place as he certainly did a few pages afterwards, where he makes the Lord's servant talk of Cicely Hacket, &c.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 414
KATH. I pray you, sir, is it your will To make a stale of me amongst these mates.
She means to say, "do you intend to make a strumpet of me among these companions?" but the expression seems to have been suggested by the chess-term of stale mate, which is used when the game is ended by the king being alone and unchecked, and then forced into a situation from which he is unable to move without going into check. This is a dishonourable termination to the adversary, who thereby loses the game. Thus in Lord Verulam's twelfth essay, "They stand still like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir."
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 427
PET. Be she as foul as was Florentius' love.
Dr. Farmer's note might have been omitted, as it refers to a story which has no manner of connection with that to which Petruchio alludes.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 436
PET. Tush, tush, fear boys with bugs.
To fear is to frighten. In Mathews's Bible, psalm xci. v. 5, is thus rendered: "Thou shalt not nede to be afraied for any bugs by night." In the Hebrew it is "terror of the night;" a curious passage, evidently alluding to that horrible sensation the night-mare, which in all ages has been regarded as the operation of evil spirits. Thus much seemed necessary in explanation or defence of the above most excellent old translation, which we have retained with very little change in the language; for the expression, from its influence on a modern ear, might have been liable to a very ludicrous construction. The word bug is originally Celtic, bŵg, a ghost or goblin, and hence bug-bear, boggerd, bogle, boggy-bo, and perhaps pug, an old name for the Devil. Boggy-bo seems to signify the spirit Bo, and has been thought, with some probability, to refer to a warrior of that name, the son of Odin, and of great celebrity among the ancient Danes and Norwegians. His name is said to have struck his enemies with terror, and might have been used by the nurses of those times to frighten children, as that of Marlborough was in France on the same occasion. It is remarkable that the Italian women use bau bau, for this purpose, and the French ba-bo. It should seem as if bug had been metaphorically applied to the cimex, that insect being in all respects a terror of the night. Nor was the word used in this sense till late in the seventeenth century, the old names for the house bug being, wall-louse, wig-louse, chinch, punie, and puneez; the two last from the French.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 442
KATH. And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell.
It is perhaps an ill-natured, though a very common, presumption, that the single state of old maids originates either in prudery or in real aversion to the male sex, and that consequently they deserve some kind of punishment in the next world. It is therefore not a matter of wonder that some of our waggish forefathers, impressed with this idea, should have maintained that these obdurate damsels would be condemned to lead apes in the inferior regions, instead, as Mr. Steevens has ingeniously suggested, of children; or perhaps with a view to compel them to bestow such attention on these deformed animals as they had formerly denied to men. So in Rabelais' hell, Alexander the great is condemned, for his ambition, to mend old stockings, and Cleopatra, for her pride, to cry onions.
It is said that homicides and adulterers were in ancient times compelled by way of punishment to lead an ape by the neck, with their mouths affixed in a very unseemly manner to the animal's tail. The fact is mentioned in the early Latin dictionary entitled Vocabularius breviloquus, and in the Catholicon of Johannes Januensis, both printed at the end of the fifteenth century, under the article anulus. It is added, that the above punishment being found too opprobrious was commuted for wearing a ring on the finger, which the higher classes caused to be made of gold or silver; and this is further stated to have been the reason why the general practice of wearing rings declined. After all it may be a mere fabrication for the purpose of introducing an etymology of the word annulus, that cannot here be repeated.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 450
HOR. And, twangling Jack.
It is the author's desire to withdraw a former note on this passage, which, as well as a few others of a confidential nature, was not intended for publication. To twangle means to make any sharp shrill noise on a stringed instrument, as a bad player would do. A Jack denotes a low or mean person, and is occasionally used as a term of reproach. Thus Horatio is afterwards called "swearing Jack." Twangling Jack may sometimes allude to that little machine in harpsichords and spinnets in which the quill is placed that strikes the wires. The jangling Jack mentioned in Mr. Steevens's note is not connected with the other. He is a mere prating fellow. Thus in Drant's translation of Horace's ninth satire, 1567, 4to:
"A prater shal becom his death, Therefore, let him alwayes, If he be wise, shun jangling jackes, After his youthful dayes."
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 461
GRE. My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry.
Whether the purple of Tyre be here alluded to is doubtful. There is a Turkish city of some celebrity in Natolia called Tiria, where, according to the account of Paul Lucas, carpets are manufactured; and in the Comedy of errors, Act IV. Scene 1, mention is made of Turkish tapestry.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 470
LUC. ... for, but I be deceiv'd.
Mr. Malone has well explained this word as meaning unless, in which sense it is often used by Shakspeare. It is the Saxon buꞇon, nisi. Sometimes it was used with if, as "I wol breake thy heed but if thou get the hense;" from Terence's "Diminuam ego tibi caput, nisi abis," Udall's Floures from Latine, 1533, 12mo.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 487
PET. Go to the feast, revel and domineer.
So in Tarlton's Jests, "T. having been domineering very late at night with two of his friends." In these instances to domineer is to bluster.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 487
PET. She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, My houshold stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing.
In the anonymous play of A knacke to knowe a knave, 1594, one of the old men says, "My house? why, 'tis my goods, my wyfe, my land, my horse, my ass, or any thing that is his." If Mr. Malone's conjecture respecting the date of The taming of the shrew be well founded, it is difficult to say whether Shakspeare is the borrower, in this instance, or not.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 494
CRU. ... their blue coats brushed----
Thus in Nashe's Have with you to Saffron Walden, or Gabriell Harvey's hunt is up, when this foul-mouth'd writer has accused his adversary Harvey of defrauding Wolfe his printer of thirty-six pounds, he adds, that he borrowed of him a blue coat for his man; "and yet Wolfe did not so much as brush it, when he lent it him, or presse out the print where the badge had been." In another place, alluding to the same transaction, he states that Wolfe "lent him one of his prentises for a serving creature to grace him, clapping an old blue coate on his backe, which was one of my Lord of Harford's liveries (he pulling the badge off)."
The practice of giving liveries to menial servants has not originated in modern times. It is mentioned in some of the statutes made in the reign of Richard the Second. In that of Edward the Fourth the terms livery and badge appear to have been synonymous, the former having no doubt been borrowed from the French language, and signifying a thing delivered. The badge consisted of the master's device, crest, or arms, on a separate piece of cloth, or sometimes silver, in the form of a shield, fastened to the left sleeve. Greene, in his Quip for an upstart courtier, speaking of some serving men, says, "their cognizance, as I remember, was a peacocke without a tayle." In queen Elizabeth's time the nobility gave silver badges, as appears from Hentzner's Travels, p. 156, edit. Norimb. 1612, 4to. "Angli magnifici domi forisque magna assectantium famulorum agmini secum trahunt, quibus in sinistro brachio scuta ex argento facta appendunt." But this foolish extravagance was not limited to persons of high rank. Fynes Moryson, speaking of the English apparel, informs us that "the servants of gentlemen were wont to weare blew coates, with their masters badge of silver on the left sleeve, but now they most commonly weare clokes garded with lace, all the servants of one family wearing the same liverie for colour and ornament:" we are therefore to suppose that the sleeve badge was left off in the reign of James I. Yet the badge was at one time so general an accompaniment to a blue coat, that when any thing wanted its usual appendage, it was proverbially said to be like a blue coat without a badge.
The custom of clothing persons in liveries and badges was not confined to menial servants. Another class of men called retainers, who appear to have been of no small importance among our ancestors, were habited in a similar manner. They were a sort of servants, not residing in the master's house like other menial domestics, but attending occasionally for the purpose of ostentation, and retained by the annual donation of a livery consisting of a hat or hood, a badge, and a suit of clothes. As they were frequently kept for the purpose of maintaining quarrels and committing other excesses, it became necessary to impose heavy penalties on the offenders, both masters and retainers. In process of time they were licensed. Strype complains of the too great indulgence of queen Mary in this respect. "She granted," says he, "more by half in her short five years than her sister and successor in thirteen. For in all that time there were but fifteen licenses of retainer granted, whereas queen Mary had granted nine and thirty. She was more liberal also in yielding the number of retainers to each person, which sometimes amounted to two hundred. Whereas Q. Elizabeth never yielded above an hundred to any person of the greatest quality, and that rarely too. But Bishop Gardiner began that ill example, who retained two hundred men: whereas under Q. Elizabeth the Duke of Norfolk retained but an hundred; and Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, but forty." He has added a list of the persons to whom Mary granted licenses, and the number of persons retained. Eccl. memorials, iii. 479.
Nor did these retainers always consist of men of low condition. The entertaining author of a book entitled A health to the gentlemanly profession of serving men, or the serving man's comfort, 1598, 4to, (to whom these notes have occasionally been indebted, and who with good reason is supposed to have been Jervis Markham,) has certainly alluded to them in the following curious passage, wherein he is consoling the objects of his labour: "Amongst what sort of people should then this serving man be sought for? Even the duke's sonne preferred page to the prince, the earles seconde sonne attendant upon the duke, the knights seconde sonne the earles servant, the esquires sonne to weare the knightes lyverie, and the gentlemans sonne the esquiers serving man: Yea I know at this day, gentlemen younger brothers, that weares their elder brothers blew coate and badge, attending him with as reverend regard and duetifull obedience, as if he were their prince or soveraigne." Let us congratulate ourselves that we no longer endure such insolent aggressions, the result of family pride and ignorance, and which had been too often permitted to degrade the natural liberties and independence of mankind. The excellent old ballad of Times alteration, has the following illustrative stanza of the coats and badges in question:
"The nobles of our land Were much delighted then, To have at their command A crew of lusty men; Which by their coats were known Of tawny, red or blue, With crests on their sleeves shown, When this old cap was new."
Before we dismiss the present subject, it will be necessary to observe that the badge occurs in all the old representations of posts or messengers. On the latter of these characters it may be seen in the 52nd plate of Mr. Strutt's first volume of The dress and habits of the people of England, where, as in the most ancient instances, the badge is affixed to the girdle; but it is often seen on the shoulder, and even on the hat or cap. These figures extend as far back as the thirteenth century, and many old German engravings exhibit both the characters with a badge that has sometimes the device or arms of the town to which the post belongs. He has generally a spear in his hand, not only for personal security, but for repelling any nuisance that might interrupt his progress. Among ourselves the remains of the ancient badge are still preserved in the dresses of porters, firemen, and watermen, and perhaps in the shoulder-knots of footmen. The blue coat and badge still remain with the parish and hospital boys. The following figure of a person of a higher class with a badge, is copied from the view of Windsor in Braunii civitates orbis terrarum, 1573.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 496
PET. Where be these knaves? what no man at door.
Although door might in the middle of a line be pronounced as a dissyllable, it is submitted that it cannot, with any propriety, at the end. It were better to suppose an omission at the press, and read "at the door."
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 506
TRA. That teacheth tricks eleven and twenty long.
We have here a very uncommon and perhaps unique expression; but it seems to mean no more than that the tricks were of an extraordinary kind. Eleven and twenty is the same as eleven score, which signified a great length or number as applied to the exertions of a few or even of a single person. Thus in the old ballad of The low country soldier,
"Myself and seven more We fought eleven score."
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 513
KATH. Why then the beef, and let the mustard rest, &c.
This part of the dialogue was in all probability suggested by the following whimsical story in Wits, fittes and fancies, 1595, 4to:--"A clowne having surfeited of beefe, and being therewith extreame sicke, vow'd never whiles he liv'd to eat beefe more, if it pleas'd God he might escape for that once: Shortlie after having his perfect health again, he would needs have eaten beefe, and his sister putting him in mind of his vow, hee answered: True (sister) not without mustard (good L.) not without mustard." This is not the only use that Shakespeare has made of this curious book, which was, in part, translated from a Spanish work, entitled La floresta Spagnola, by Anthony Copley, who was the author of a poem printed at the end, called Love's owle: In dialogue-wise betweene love and an olde man. Of this poem Copley thus speaks in his dedication: "As for my Loves owle, I am content that Momus turne it to a tennis-ball if he can, and bandy it quite away: namelie, I desire M. Daniel, M. Spencer, and other the Prime Poets of our time, to pardon it with as easie a frowne as they please, for that I give them to understand, that an Universitie Muse never pend it, though humbly devoted thereunto."
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 514
PET. And all my pains is sorted to no proof.
This is explained by Dr. Johnson, "and all my labour has proved nothing." It rather means, "all my labour is adapted to no approof," or "I have taken all this pains without approbation." Approof is used by Shakspeare in this sense, and should be here printed with an apostrophe, 'proof.
Act IV, Scene 4 — Page 529
BION. Take your assurance of her cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum.
This is not the only instance in which our poet has borrowed his broad metaphors from the typographical art.
In The winter's tale, Act V. Scene 1, we have, "Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince; for she did print your royal father off, conceiving you."
* * * * *
To the stories already mentioned in the notes to this play as resembling that of the induction, the following are to be added:--1. The sleeper awakened, in the Arabian nights. This is probably the original of all the rest. 2. A similar incident in the story of Xailoun in the Continuation of the Arabian nights. 3. In The apophthegms of King James, King Charles, the marquess of Worcester, &c., 1658, 12mo, there is the story of an old bachelor named Thomas Deputy, who at the marriage of Edward Lord Herbert taking a fancy to one of the bride's waiting-maids, was persuaded by the old Marquess of Worcester to marry her at the same time. Thomas, being overpowered on this occasion with the joy he felt from the liberal donations of the noble assistants at the wedding, and also with the good wine that was freely circulated, became altogether incapable of consummating his marriage; and the Marquess, after relating to the company "the story of the begger who was made to believe he did but dream of the happiness that was really acted," determined to make the experiment in the person of old Thomas, and accordingly ordered that he "should be disrobed of his new wedding garment, the rest of his fine cloaths taken from him, and himself carried unto his old lodging in the porter's lodge, and his wife to respite the solemnization of the marriage bed untill his comportment should deserve so fair an admission: which was done accordingly. The next morning made the experiment to answer the height of all their expectations; for news was brought unto the Marquesse, all the rest of the lords and ladies standing by, that Thom. took all yesterdayes work but for a dream, or at least seemed to do so, to humour the fancy." 4. Winstanley, in his Historical rarities, 1684, 8vo, has a story of Aladine the Persian, called the old man of the mountain, who built a magnificent palace near a city called Mulebet, and filled it with every sort of luxury and delight. "Hither he brought all the lusty youths he could light on, casting them into prison, where they endured much sorrow and woe. And when he thought good, he caused a certain drink to be given them, which cast them into a dead sleep: then he caused them to be carried into divers chambers of the said palaces, where they saw the things aforesaid as soon as they awaked; each of them having those damsels to minister meats and excellent drinks, and all varieties of pleasures to them, insomuch, that the fools thought themselves to be in paradise indeed. Having enjoyed this happiness a whole day, they were in a like sleep conveyed to their irons again; after which, he caused them to be brought into his presence, and questioned where they had been; which answered, by your grace, in paradise, and recounted all the particulars before mentioned." Winstanley has also given the story of Philip duke of Burgundy. 5. A similar incident in the penny history of The frolicksome courtier and the jovial tinker.
The author of the story in the Tatler might have used a novel in the Piacevoli notti of Straparola, nott. 8, fab. 2. and the outline of the Taming of the shrew may be found in a Spanish work entitled El conde Lucanor, 1643, 4to, composed by Don Juan Manuel, nephew to Ferdinand the fourth king of Castile.
The character of Petruchio bears some resemblance to that of Pisardo in Straparola's Novels, night 8, fab. 7.
WINTER'S TALE.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 27
LEON. And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour.
This is not the only gross and offensive metaphor of the kind that our poet has used. In Measure for measure, we have "groping for trouts in a peculiar river."
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 30
LEON. ... I have trusted thee Camillo, With all the nearest things to my heart---- ... wherein, priest-like thou Hast cleans'd my bosom.
So in Macbeth we have,
"Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff, Which weighs upon the heart."
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 39
CAM. ... If I could find example Of thousands that had struck anointed kings And flourish'd after, I'd not do't.
If, as Mr. Blackstone supposes, this be an allusion to the death of the queen of Scots, it exhibits Shakspeare in the character of a cringing flatterer accommodating himself to existing circumstances, and is moreover an extremely severe one. But the perpetrator of that atrocious murder did flourish many years afterwards. May it not rather be designed as a compliment to King James on his escape from the Gowrie conspiracy, an event often brought to the people's recollection during his reign, from the day on which it happened being made a day of thanksgiving? See Osborne's traditional memoyres, and the almanacks of the time under the 5th of August.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 41
POL. In whose success we are gentle.
So in Act V. Scene 2, the old shepherd says, "we must be gentle now we are gentlemen." What our ancestors conceived to be the true definition of a gentleman may be seen at large in The booke of honor and armes, 1594, 4to, book iii. In Morgan's Sphere of gentry, the silly author has gravely stated that Jesus Christ was a gentleman and bore arms. Of the latter assertion he has given no proof, though he might have adduced a sort of armorial bearing made up from the implements of the passion, and often exhibited as such in some of the horæ and other service books of the church, before the reformation. Such a coat of arms was likewise used as a stamp on the covers of old books, with the motto REDEMPTORIS MUNDI ARMA. Gentle gentlemen is an alliteration that is very frequent in writers of the age of Shakspeare. In the preface to Gerard Leigh's Accedence of armorie, 1597, 4to, three sorts of ungentiles are described, "the first whereof are gentle ungentle. Such be they as wil rather sweare armes then beare armes. Who of negligence stop mustard pots with their fathers pedegrees, or otherwise abuse them. The second sort are ungentle gentlemen, who being enhaunced to honor by their fathers, on whom (though it were to their owne worship) yet can they not keepe so much money from the dice, as to make worshipful obsequies for their sad fathers with any point of armory. The third sort, and worst of all, are neither gentle ungentle, or ungentle gentile, but verie stubble curs, and be neither doers, sufferers, or wel speakers of honors tokens."
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 42
CAM. I am appointed him to murder you.
"i. e." says Mr. Steevens, "I am the person appointed to murder you." This is certainly the meaning, but the grammatical construction is, "I am appointed the person to murder you." The lines quoted from King Henry VI. are ungrammatical, and not, as is conceived, an exemplification of the foregoing passage.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 42
POL. ... and my name Be yok'd with his that did betray the best.
Mr. Henderson's conjecture that Judas is here meant is certainly well founded. A clause in the sentence against excommunicated persons was, "let them have part with Judas that betrayed Christ. Amen;" and this is here imitated.
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 73
LEON. And lozel, thou art worthy to be hang'd.
The derivation of lozel cited from Verstegan is arbitrary, and deduced from a mere resemblance of sound. The word has been apparently corrupted from the Saxon lorel, used by Chaucer for a worthless fellow. See Mr. Tyrwhitt's glossary. The corruption may have originated in the similitude of the letters r and z in ancient manuscripts.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 82
HER. ... since he came, With what encounter so uncurrent I Have strain'd to appear thus.
Dr. Johnson, not understanding these lines, "with the licence of all editors," pronounces them unintelligible. However strange the language may appear in the mouth of a lady, there is hardly a doubt that it is a metaphor taken from tilting. Hermione means to say, I appeal to your own conscience whether since Polixenes came, I have made any violent or irregular encounter unlike that of a fair courser; or, in plainer terms, whether I have deviated from the paths of honour and forcibly obtruded myself on this tribunal. Those who made an encounter at justs were called runners; and were said, occasionally, to run foul. This may serve to explain what is meant by uncurrent.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 107
AUT. When daffodils begin to peer, &c.
Mr. Steevens, to give himself an opportunity of introducing a neat retort on an attack which his favourite author had sustained, has quoted a remark by Dr. Burney that Autolycus "is the true ancient minstrel, as described in the old fabliaux." With great deference to this learned and elegant writer, the observation is inaccurate. Autolycus has nothing in common with the character of a minstrel but the singing of a song or two. He is a mere rogue, assuming various shapes, and is specifically called so in the dramatis personæ; but it will not surely be contended that all rogues were minstrels, because a cruel and illiberal statute has made all minstrels rogues. It is true that Autolycus declares he had been an ape-bearer; but this was no part of the minstrel profession in Shakspeare's time, though it had been so formerly. As this circumstance however has not been noticed, or at least very slightly, by any of the writers on the subject of the ancient minstrels, it may be worth while to exhibit the following curious story from the second book of The dialogues of Saint Gregory, who lived in the sixth century. At the celebration of the feast of Saint Proculus the martyr, a nobleman named Fortunatus having prevailed on Bishop Boniface to eat with him after celebrating the service of the day, it happened that before the holy prelate had pronounced the usual benediction at table, a minstrel leading an ape and playing on a cymbal arrived. This very much discomposed the good bishop, who exclaimed, Alas! alas! the wretched man is dead; behold, I have not yet opened my lips to praise God, and he is here with his ape and playing on his instrument. He then desired the servants to carry some victuals to the unhappy man, which when he had eaten, a stone fell from the house top and killed him.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 109
AUT. The lark that tirra-lirra chants.
The tire-lire was not, it seems, peculiar to the lark. In Skelton's Colin Cloute we have,
"... howe Cupide shaked His darte and bente hys bowe, For to shote a crowe, At her tyrly tyrlowe."
And in one of the Coventry pageants there is the following old song sung by the shepherds at the birth of Christ, which is further remarkable for its use of the very uncommon word endenes, from the Saxon enꝺenehꞅꞇ, the last.
"As I out rode this endenes night, Of three joli shepherds I sawe a syght, And all aboute there fold a stare shone bright: They sang terli terlow, So mereli the sheppards there pipes can blow."
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 111
AUT. My father named me Autolycus, &c.
It is necessary on this occasion to lay before the reader Dr. Warburton's own words. "Mr. Theobald says, the allusion is unquestionably to Ovid. He is mistaken. Not only the allusion, but the whole speech is taken from Lucian, who appears to have been one of our poet's favourite authors, as may be collected from several places of his works. It is from his discourse on judicial astrology, where Autolycus talks much in the same manner, &c."
Now if any one will take the trouble of comparing what Ovid and Lucian have respectively said concerning Autolycus, he will, it is presumed, be altogether disposed to give the preference to Theobald's opinion. Dr. Warburton must have been exclusively fortunate in discovering that the whole speech is taken from Lucian; that he was one of our poet's favourite authors; and that, in the dialogue alluded to, Autolycus talks much in the same manner. He must have used some edition of Lucian's works vastly preferable to those which now remain. The reader will be pleased to consult the eleventh book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, in the translation (if he have it) by Golding.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 113
CLOWN. ... three-man songmen all.
"They have also Cornish three-mens songs, cunningly contrived for the ditty, and pleasantly for the note." Carew's Survey of Cornwall, fo. 72.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 113
CLOWN. ... but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.
An allusion to a practice, common at this time among the Puritans, of burlesquing the plein chant of the Papists, by adapting vulgar and ludicrous music to psalms and pious compositions.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 123
PER. For you there's rosemary, and rue; Grace and remembrance be to you both.
The following lines are from a song entitled, A nosegaie alwaies sweet for lovers to send for tokens of love at newyere's tide, or for fairings, as they in their minds shall be disposed to write, printed in Robinson's Handefull of pleasant delites, 1584, 16mo:--
"Rosemarie is for remembrance, Betweene us daie and night, Wishing that I might alwaies have You present in my sight."
This plant, as being thought to strengthen the memory, was therefore given to friends, as in the present instance. See Parkinson's Flower garden, p. 426. Thus Ophelia says to her brother, "There's rosemary; that's for remembrance, pray you, love, remember." The reason for calling rue herb of grace is best explained in the notes on a subsequent speech of Ophelia. See vol. xv. p. 276.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 124
PER. ... and streak'd gilliflowers, Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind Our rustick garden's barren; and I care not To get slips of them.
POL. Wherefore, gentle maiden, Do you neglect them?
PER. For I have heard it said, There is an art which in their piedness, shares With great creating nature.
The solution of the riddle in these lines that has embarrassed Mr. Steevens is probably this: the gilly-flower or carnation is streaked, as every one knows, with white and red. In this respect it is a proper emblem of a painted or immodest woman, and therefore Perdita declines to meddle with it. She connects the gardener's art of varying the colours of the above flowers with the art of painting the face, a fashion very prevalent in Shakspeare's time. This conclusion is justified by what she says in her next speech but one.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 126
PER. The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun And with him rises weeping.
"So upon occasions past, David found it true that he should not have bene heretofore at any time, and therefore professeth, that, for the time to come, he would be no marigold-servant of God, to open with the sun, and shut with the dewe."--Prime's Consolations of David applied to Queene Elizabeth: in a sermon preached in Oxford the 17 of November, 1588, 12mo. Lord Howard, in his Defensative against the poyson of supposed prophecies, 1583, 4to, says that "the marie-golde dooth close and open with the sunne, &c."
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 131
PER. ... I'll swear for 'em.
Dr. Johnson would transfer this speech to the king, and Mr. Ritson would read "swear for one," or at least have some alteration; but in reality no change is necessary. Florizel had just said, "so turtles pair that never mean to part," on which Perdita very naturally observes, "I'll swear for 'em." This is no more than a common phrase of acquiescence, as we likewise say, "I'll warrant you."
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 137
AUT. ... poking-sticks of steel.
To Mr. Steevens's curious note on these implements for stiffening the ruffs formerly worn by persons of both sexes, it may be worth adding that this fashion being carried to a great extremity, became the subject of many satirical prints. One of the oldest was engraved in 1580, by Matthias Quad, and represents the Devil's ruff-shop, he being called the kragen-setzer or ruff-setter. A young gallant has brought his mistress to have her ruff set. The Devil is engaged in this operation whilst an assistant is heating fresh poking-sticks in a brasier. Another print of this sort by Galle, is copied from a design by Martin de Vos, and entitled Diaboli partus superbia. It has this inscription relating to the poking-sticks: "Avec ces fers chauds qu'on vous icy appreste, En enfer puny seras, O layde beste." Other prints represent several monkeys habited in ruffs, and busily employed in poking and starching them, &c.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 138
CLOWN. Clamour your tongues, and not a word more.
The word is difficult, and, it is feared, likely to afford nothing but conjecture.
Dr. Warburton asserts that the phrase is from ringing; that to clamour bells is to repeat the stroke quicker than before, previously to ceasing them. On the contrary, Dr. Grey maintains that to clamour bells is a continued ringing, and Mr. Malone, with great probability, suspects that what Warburton has said is gratis dictum. Dr. Johnson says that "to clam a bell is to cover the clapper with felt, which drowns the blow, and hinders the sound;" and Mr. Nicholls, that a good clam is a peal of all the bells at once. According to the treatise on ringing in The school of recreation, 1684, 12mo, "clamming is when each concord strikes together, which being done true, the 8 will strike but as four bells, and make a melodious harmony." The accounts of bell-clamming are therefore so discordant that it seems but fair to give up entirely this sense of the word.
The clown evidently wishes to keep the damsels' tongues from wagging. Now to clam, clem, or cleam are provincial words, signifying to glue together or fasten with glue, and, metonymically, to starve by contraction. Thus,
"... my entrails Are clam'd with keeping a continual fast."
Massinger's Roman actor.
And we still use clammy, for sticking together. All the Northern languages have an equivalent term. The Germans have klemmen, to tie, and in the old Icelandic we find klæmman in the same sense. Ihre, Lexicon Suio-Goth. In Saxon clam, ligamen, clæmɩnᵹ, a stiffening. Somner Gloss. Littelton has to clamm, or hunger-starve, and Rider to clamme, to stop. The latter is indeed more to the present purpose than any or all of the others: because by supposing, what is extremely probable, an error of the press, all will be set right. On the other hand, clamour is the reverse of what is required. Thus in Macbeth, Act II. Scene 3, we have, "The obscure bird clamour'd the live-long night," and we are not to suppose that Shakspeare could have used the same word in senses so extremely opposite.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 148
Re-enter servant, with twelve rusticks habited like satyrs. They dance, and then exeunt.
In the old collection of songs set by Thomas Ravenscroft and others, already quoted in p. 11, there is one called The satyres daunce. It is for four voices, and as follows:--
"Round a round, a rounda, keepe your ring To the glorious sunne we sing; Hoe, hoe!
He that weares the flaming rayes, And the imperiall crowne of bayes, Him, with him, with shoutes and songs we praise. Hoe, hoe!
That in his bountee would vouchsafe to grace The humble sylvanes and their shaggy race."
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 154
SHEP. Some hangman must put on my shroud, and lay me Where no priest shovels in dust.
i. e. I must be buried as a common malefactor, out of the pale of consecrated ground, and without the usual rites of the dead; a whimsical anachronism, when it is considered that the old shepherd was a Pagan, a worshipper of Jupiter and Apollo. But Shakspeare seldom cares about blending the manners of distant ages.
Dr. Farmer has remarked that the priest's office above mentioned might be remembered in Shakspeare's time, which is very probable: the mention of it here is one of the numerous instances of his intimate acquaintance with the ceremonies of the Romish church. Before the introduction of the new form of burial service by Edward the Sixth, it was the custom for the priest to throw earth on the body in the form of a cross, and then to sprinkle it with holy water; but this was not done in pronouncing the words earth to earth, according to a learned commentator: that part of the ceremony was postponed till after a psalm had been sung, the body being previously covered up. An antiphone next followed; and then the priest said these words: "I commend thy soul to God the father omnipotent: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," &c.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 182
FLO. ... Good my lord, She came from Libya.
Perdita is here transformed into a Moor; and although this play among others affords the most unequivocal proofs of Shakspeare's want of skill in the science of geography, it is at least possible that an error of the press has substituted Libya for Lydia or Lycia.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 194
CLOWN. Give me the lie, do; and try whether I am not now a gentleman born.
This is a satire on certain ridiculous punctilios very much in use at this time. Thus in The booke of honor and armes, 1590, 4to, "In saying a gentleman borne, we meane he must be descended from three degrees of gentry, both on the mother's and father's side." The same work has many particulars relating to the circumstances in which the giving the lie is to be resented. See likewise Vincent Saviolo On honor and honorable quarrels, book ii.
THE CLOWN.
He is a mere country booby.
* * * * *
The observation by Dr. Warburton, that The winter's tale with all its absurdities is very entertaining, though stated by Dr. Johnson to be just, must be allowed at the same time to be extremely frigid. In point of fine writing it may be ranked among Shakspeare's best efforts. The absurdities pointed at by Warburton, together with the whimsical anachronisms of Whitson pastorals, Christian burial, an emperor of Russia, and an Italian painter of the fifteenth century, are no real drawbacks on the superlative merits of this charming drama. The character of Perdita will remain for ages unrivalled; for where shall such language be found as she is made to utter?
COMEDY OF ERRORS.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 228
DRO. E. Will you come home? quoth I; my gold, quoth he.
The word home, which the metre requires, is said to have been suggested by Capell, but it had been already adopted by Sir Thomas Hanmer.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 234
ANT. S. If you will jest with me, know my aspéct.
Mr. Steevens explains this, study my countenance. It seems rather to be an astrological phrase, and to mean, ascertain whether my aspect be malignant or benign. He had just before mentioned the sun. Thus in 1 Henry IV. Act I. Scene 1, "Malevolent to you in all aspécts."
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 241
ADR. Thou art an elm my husband, I a vine; If aught possess thee from me, it is dross, Usurping Ivy, briar or idle moss.
So in A midsummer night's dream, Act IV. Scene 1, "The female ivy so enrings the barky fingers of the elm." There is something extremely beautiful in making the vine the lawful spouse of the elm, and the parasite plants here named its concubines.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 248
DRO. S. Mome, malthorse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch!
Sir J. Hawkins would derive mome from the French momon, the challenge at dice made by a mummer or silent person disguised in masquerade. It more probably came to us from one of those similar words that are found in many languages signifying something foolish. Momar is used by Plautus for a fool, whence the French mommeur. The Greeks too had μομος and μορμος in the same sense.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 257
ANT. S. Less in your knowledge and your grace, you show not, Than our earth's wonder, more than earth divine.
This play abounds so much in anachronisms, that there will be no impropriety in supposing the above simile to have been designed as a compliment to the reigning sovereign. Pronounced with emphasis, it would not fail to make a due impression on the audience.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 280
DRO. S. What, have you got the picture of old Adam new apparell'd?
Here seems to be an allusion to some well-known contemporary painting, perhaps of a sign. "Adam whom God dyd fyrst create, made the fyrst lether coates for himself and his wyfe Eve our old mother, leavyng thereby a patron to al his posterite of that crafte." Polydore Vergil de rer. invent. translated by Langley, fo. lxix. Similar instances had before occurred in the picture of we three, and Mistress Mall.
MACBETH.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 327
ALL. Paddock calls.
Mr. Steevens has remarked that "in Shakspeare a paddock certainly means a toad." Indeed it properly does everywhere; and when applied to the frog, seems either to have been mistakenly used, or to have signified the rubeta or rana bufo, a frog of a venomous kind. The word comes to us from the Saxon Paꝺa, and a toad is still called by a similar term in most of the Teutonic languages. It may be likewise observed that witches have nothing to do with frogs, an animal always regarded as perfectly harmless, though perhaps not more so in reality than the unjustly persecuted toad.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 331
SOLD. And fortune on his damned quarrel smiling.
The old copy has quarry, which Dr. Johnson has changed to quarrel, a reading that had already been adopted by Hanmer. Chance may hereafter determine that quarry was an occasional mode of orthography, euphoniæ gratiâ, as we find perrie for perril. See Howard's Defensative against the poyson of supposed prophesies, 1583, 4to, sig. A iij. The word too which expresses a square-headed arrow and a pane of glass is written both quarry and quarrel.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 335
DUN. Dismay'd not this Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?
SOLD. Yes.
Mr. Steevens, adverting to the apparent defect of metre in the last line, concludes that some word has been omitted in the old copy; and Hanmer reads, brave Macbeth, &c. No other change is necessary than in orthography; for Shakspeare had, no doubt, written capitaynes, a common mode of spelling the word in his time; and the fault lay either in the printer or transcriber for the press.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 339
ROSSE. Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapt in proof.
Shakspeare is here accused of ignorantly making Bellona wife to the God of war; but, strictly speaking, this is not the case. He has not called Macbeth, to whom he alludes, the God of war; and there seems no great impropriety in poetically supposing that a warlike hero might be newly married to the Goddess of war. Mr. Steevens's objection appears to have been founded on a conclusion that Shakspeare meant to compare Macbeth to Mars, and that of the other learned and ingenious critic, on the impropriety of considering Bellona as a married goddess.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 341
1. WITCH. Aroint thee witch!
The reference to Hearne's print from an old calendar, in his edition of Fordun, is very appositely introduced by Dr. Johnson in illustration of aroint; but his explanation of the print is in many respects erroneous. He is particularly mistaken in supposing it to represent Saint Patrick visiting hell; for it is manifestly the very trite subject of Christ delivering souls from purgatory, often painted by Albert Durer and other ancient artists. The Doctor neglected to examine not only the inscription on the print, but Hearne's own account of it; and his eye having accidentally caught the name of Saint Patrick, of whom Hearne had been speaking, his imagination suggested the common story of the visit to purgatory (not hell). There is no doubt that aroint signifies away! run! and that it is of Saxon origin. The original Saxon verb has not been preserved in any other way, but the glossaries supply ryne for running; and in the old Islandic, runka signifies to agitate, to move. Mr. Grose is certainly wrong in his explanation of the proverb, "Rynt you witch! quoth Besse Locket to her mother," when he says it means "by your leave, stand handsomely." See his Provincial glossary.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 353
BAN. Or have we eaten of the insane root, That takes the reason prisoner?
Mr. Steevens conceives that hemlock is the root in question; whilst Mr. Malone, after noticing the trouble which the commentators have given themselves, introduces a quotation from Plutarch's life of Antony, ("which," says he, "our author must have diligently read,") that leads him to conclude the name to have been unknown even to Shakspeare himself. There is however another book which has in the course of these notes been shown to have been also read and even studied by the poet, and wherein, it is presumed, he actually found the name of the above root. This will appear from the following passage: "Henbane ... is called Insana, mad, for the use thereof is perillous; for if it be eate or dronke, it breedeth madnesse, or slow lykenesse of sleepe. Therefore this hearb is called commonly Mirilidium, for it taketh away wit and reason." Batman Uppon Bartholome de propriet. rerum, lib. xvii. ch. 87.
Act I, Scene 5 — Page 373
ATTEN. One of my fellows had the speed of him; Who almost dead for breath, had scarcely more Than would make up his message.
LADY M. Give him tending, He brings great news. _The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan._
The last lines may appear less difficult, if the reader will suppose that at the moment in which the attendant finishes his speech, the raven's voice is heard on the battlements of the castle; when Lady Macbeth, adverting to the situation in which the messenger had just been described, most naturally exclaims, "the raven himself is hoarse," &c. Entrance must be here pronounced as a trisyllable, which is better than to read Dŭncān.
Act I, Scene 5 — Page 374
LADY M. Under my battlements. Come come you spirits.
The second come has been added by Mr. Steevens. On this it may be permitted to remark, that although Shakspeare's versification is unquestionably more smooth and melodious than that of most of his contemporaries, he has on many occasions exhibited more carelessness in this respect than can well be accounted for, unless by supposing the errors to belong to the printers or editors. If the above line was defective, many others of similar construction are still equally so; as for example, this in p. 378,
"This ignorant present, and I feel now,"
which Mr. Steevens strangely maintains to be complete, though undoubtedly as discordant to the ear as the other. Both, strictly speaking, have the full number of syllables; a mode of construction which it is to be feared our elder poets regarded as sufficient in general to give perfection to a line.
Act I, Scene 6 — Page 384
DUN. We cours'd him at the heels, and had a purpose To be his purveyor.
The duty of the purveyor, an officer belonging to the court, was to make a general provision for the royal household. It was the office also of this person to travel before the king whenever he made his progresses to different parts of the realm, and to see that every thing was duly provided. The right of purveyance and pre-emption having become extremely oppressive to the subject, was included, among other objects of regulation, under the stat. of 12 Car. II.
Act I, Scene 7 — Page 395
LADY M. But screw your courage to the sticking-place.
Mr. Steevens has suggested two metaphors, neither of which seems to advance the explanation. If it could be shown that the stop of a pile-driver, or the bed of a violin peg were ever called sticking-places, one might indeed suspect a miserable pun: but it is submitted that all the metaphor lies in the screwing. Another learned commentator states that Davenant misunderstood the sense when he supposed that stabbing is alluded to; and yet there are grounds for thinking his opinion correct. Lady Macbeth, after remarking that the enterprise would not fail if her husband would but exert his courage to the commission of the murder, proceeds to suggest the particular manner in which it was to be accomplished. In short, if there be a metaphor, abstractedly considered, it signifies nothing; for what would be the use of Macbeth's courage, if, according to Mr. Steevens, it were to remain fast in that sticking-place from which it was not to move? The Scots have a proverb, "Sticking goes not by strength, but by guiding of the gooly," i. e. the knife.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 401
BAN. This diamond he greets your wife withal, By the name of most kind hostess; _and shut up In measureless content_.
As the last sentence stands, it is at once ungrammatical and obscure; and neither Mr. Steevens's construction of shut up in the sense of to conclude, as referring to the speaker, nor Hanmer's reading and is shut up, as connected with Duncan, will render it intelligible. It should seem as if Banquo meant to say that the king was immured in happiness; but then it is obvious that some preceding words have been lost.
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 428
Enter MACDUFF.
Duff in the Erse language signifies a captain; Macduff, the son of a captain.
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 433
MACD. Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit.
This simile has been elsewhere used by Shakspeare. Thus in Cymbeline, he calls sleep the ape of death. In A midsummer night's dream, he has death counterfeiting sleep. It might indeed from its extreme obviousness have occurred to writers of weaker imagination than our poet; yet as he is known to have borrowed so much, it is not impossible that he might in this instance have been indebted to Marlow's translation of a line in Ovid's Elegies, book ii. el. 9:
"Foole what is sleepe, but image of cold death?"
or to another version of the same line in Cardanus's Comfort:
"Is not our sleepe (O foole) of death an image playne?"
Whoever will take the trouble of reading over the whole of Cardanus's second book as translated by Bedingfield, and printed by T. Marshe, 1576, 4to, will soon be convinced that it had been perused by Shakspeare.
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 438
MACB. ... _their daggers Unmannerly breech'd_ with gore.
Mr. Steevens's explanation must be objected to. Finding that the lower end of a cannon is called its breech, he concludes that the hilt or handle of a dagger must be here intended by the like appellation. But is not this literally to mistake the top for the bottom? It is conceived that the present expression, though in itself something unmannerly, simply means covered as with breeches. The idea, uncouth and perhaps inaccurate as it is, might have been suggested from the resemblance of daggers to the legs and thighs of a man. The sentiments of Dr. Farmer on this, as on all occasions, are ingenious, and deserving of the highest respect; but it is hardly possible that Shakspeare could have been deceived in the way he states. To give colour to his opinion, he is obliged in his quotation from Erondell's French garden to print the word master's as a genitive case singular, in order to apply the pronoun their to daggers; but without the aid of the French text, the word their is in the original equally applicable to masters. Indeed the subsequent mention of stockings, hose and garters, would have satisfied a person of much less penetration than Shakspeare, that breeches were there intended as an article of dress.
The above conjecture that the term breech'd might signify cover'd, suggests the mention of a circumstance from which it may on the whole be thought to derive support.
It is well known that some ridicule has been cast on one of our translations of the Bible from the Genevan French edition, on account of the following words, "And they sewed fig-tree leaves together and made themselves breeches," Gen. iii. 7; whence it has been called the Breeches Bible, and sometimes sold for a high price. It is generally conceived that this peculiarity belongs exclusively to the above Bible, but it is a mistake. The Saxon version by Ælfric has ⁊ ꞅɩƿoꝺon ꝼɩcleaꝼ ⁊ ƿoꞃhꞇon hɩm ƿæꝺbꞃec, and sewed fig-leaves and worked them WEED-BREECH_, or cloaths for the breech_. Wicliffe also translates "and maden hem breechis;" and it is singular that Littelton in his excellent dictionary explains perizomata, the word used in the Vulgate, by breeches. In the manuscript French translation of Petrus Comestor's commentary on the Bible, made by Guiars des Moulins in the thirteenth century, we have "couvertures tout autressint comme unnes petites braies."
Act III, Scene 4 — Page 476
MACB. ... Get thee gone; to-morrow We'll hear, ourselves again.
i. e. when I have recovered from my fit, and am once more myself. It is an ablative absolute. Ourselves is much more properly used than ourself, the modern language of royalty.
Act III, Scene 4 — Page 482
MACB. If trembling I inhibit thee, protest me The baby of girl.
Every partaker of the rational Diversions of Purley will here call to mind what has been advanced on the subject of this difficult and much contested passage; but with all the respect and admiration that are due to their profound and ingenious writer, will he feel himself altogether satisfied? It were to be wished that not only the above grammarian but another gentleman not less eminently qualified to illustrate any subject he undertakes, had favoured us with some example of the neutral use of inhabit in the sense of to house or remain at home. Until this be done, or even then, it may be boldly said, and without much difficulty maintained, that inhibit, in point of meaning, was Shakspeare's word. Nor is it a paradox to affirm that inhabit, the original reading, is also right; because this may be only one of the numerous instances during the former unsettled state of orthography, where the same word has been spelled in different ways. Mr. Malone has already supplied instances of inhabit for inhibit in a passage from All's well that ends well, in all the folios except the first, and another from Stowe's Survey of London. In the edition of the Shepherd's calendar, printed without date by Wynkyn de Worde in 4to, there is this sentence in chap. xxi.: "Correccyon is for to inhabyte & defende by the bridle of reason all errowres," &c. Later editions have inhibit. Are we then to suppose that all these examples are typographical mistakes, rather than a varied orthography?
The difficulty remains to extract a sense from inhibit adapted to the occasion. Mr. Steevens has justly said, "to inhibit is to forbid;" but this cannot be the present signification. A man cannot well be said to forbid another who has challenged him. He might indeed keep back or hesitate in such a case, which is the neutral sense now offered, but it must be confessed with nearly the same diffidence in its accuracy which has been expressed as to that of the others.
With respect to the punctuation, it is conceived, that considering the mode in which these plays were published, the authority of Shakspeare is almost out of the question; and therefore a judicious modern editor is entitled to use a great deal of discretion in corrections of this kind. In the present instance there is no great objection to the old pointing, though the comma should seem better after "inhibit," and may render the line more emphatic. "If trembling, I keep back, then protest me," &c. After all, this is one of the many instances in which the real meaning of the author cannot be satisfactorily obtained.
Act III, Scene 5 — Page 490
Enter HECATE.
Mr. Tollett has already vindicated Shakspeare from the supposed impropriety of introducing Hecate among modern witches. The fact seems to be, that acquainted, as he has elsewhere shown himself to have been, with the classical connection which this deity had with witchcraft, but knowing also, as Mr. Tollett's quotation from Scot indicates, that Diana was the name by which she was invoked in modern times, he has preferred the former rather than the latter name of the goddess, for reasons that were best known to himself.
That there existed during the middle ages numerous superstitions relating to a connection that witches were imagined to have had with Diana, it will be no difficult task to prove. From an ecclesiastical statute, promulgated during the reign of Louis II., king of France, it appears that certain mischievous women professed their belief in that goddess, obeying her as their mistress; and that accompanied by her and a great multitude of other females, they travelled over immense spaces of the earth at midnight, mounted upon various animals. Many other ecclesiastical regulations, and some of the councils, notice these superstitions, and denounce very severe vengeance against those persons who were thought to practise them. In one we find the following declaration: "Nulla mulier se nocturnis equitare cum Diana dea Paganorum, vel cum Herodiade seu Benzoria et innumera mulierum multitudine profiteatur; hæc enim dæmoniaca est illusio."--Ducange, Gloss. v. Diana. These witches sometimes assembled at the river Jordan, the favourite spot of Diana or Herodias. The Jesuit Delrio very gravely denies the possibility of the above pranks, remarking that there is in reality no Diana, and that Herodias the dancer, whom he here confounds with her daughter, is at present in hell. Disquisit. magic. lib. ii. quæst. 16. Eccard, in his preface to Leibnitz's Collectanea etymologica, relates that in a journey through Misnia in Saxony, he discovered traces of the German Hecate among the peasants in their frauholde or frau faute, i. e. lady fate. John Herold or Herolt, a German friar of the fifteenth century, in one of his Sermons exclaims against those "qui deam, quam quidam Dianam nominant, in vulgari die fraurve unhold dicunt cum suo exercitu ambulare."--Sermones discipuli, serm. xi. He states this practice to have taken place at Christmas time. See likewise Carpentier Suppl. ad Ducangii glossar. v. holda. His majesty King James the First, author of that most sapient work entitled Dæmonologie, informs his readers that the spirits whom the gentiles called Diana and her wandering court, were known among his countrymen by the name of pharie. Other appellations of this personage are likewise to be met with, as Hera, Nicneven, and Dame Habunde; all as the chief or queen of the witches, whom she generally accompanied in their nocturnal dances and excursions through the air.
For the name of Herodias it is not easy to account. It may not be deemed a very extravagant conjecture, that the common people had converted Herod's wife into a witch from their abhorrence of her cruelty towards Saint John the Baptist; for the old mysteries have preserved to us the indignant manner in which they treated Pontius Pilate. The circumstance too of her daughter's dancing, compared with the predilection of witches for that amusement, might contribute to the idea. The learned Schiller thinks that Herodias was the same as Juno. He founds this opinion on the testimony of Gobelinus Persona, a Monk of Paderborn in the fifteenth century, who in his general history of the world had asserted that the Saxons worshipped Juno under the Greek name of Hera, and that the common people still believed in the flight of the lady Hera through the air about the time of Christmas; a superstition which seems to have been derived from an older notion, that Juno presided over that element. Ducange imagined he had found the name in Hera Diana; but he has not brought forward any instance of the use of such an expression. With respect to Benzoria or Bensozia, very little is known. Carpentier, in his Supplement to Ducange's glossary, conjectures that she was designed for the daughter of Herodias, and to assist in the magic dances. It is not improbable that this character is in some way or other connected with the Irish Banshee or Benshi, a kind of fairy. In these subjects we can perceive many corruptions which it is impossible to account for.
Dr. Leyden, in p. 318 of the glossary to his edition of The complaynt of Scotland, mentions the "gyre carling, the queen of fairies, the great hag Hecate, or mother witch of peasants," and cites Polwart's Flyting of Montgomery for "Nicneven and her nymphs." In the fragment of an old Scotish poem in Lord Hyndford's manuscript, in strict conformity with what has been just advanced concerning Juno, she is termed "quene of Jowis." See Ancient Scot. poems, 1768, p. 231.
As Dame Habunde or Abunde has been classed among the names given to the president of the witches, it becomes necessary to take some further notice of her, though a character of an opposite description to those already mentioned. She appears to have been the genuine queen of fairies, and of a most innocuous and benevolent disposition, bestowing happiness and abundance on all her votaries. In the passage before mentioned in Gobelinus Persona, Hera is spoken of as conferring temporal abundance; and although she is represented as flying through the air, it is not by night, nor accompanied by others. Ducange has therefore improperly assimilated her to Diana and her tribe of mischief, and of course his etymology of Herodias is rendered very improbable. In an ancient fabliau by Haisiau, never entirely printed, Dame Abunde is thus introduced:
"Ceste richesce nus abonde Nos lavon de par Dame Avonde."
She is also mentioned in the works of William Auvergne, bishop of Paris, in the fourteenth century, as a spirit enriching the houses that she visited. Delrio adds, that on her coming with the rest of the good ladies, the superstitious old women used to provide plenty of victuals for them, leaving all the dishes and wine-vessels uncovered to prevent any obstruction to their getting at the food, and expecting on the occasion nothing but plenty and prosperity. See Disquisit. magic. 1. ii. quæst. 27. sect. 2. In the life of Saint Germain, bishop of Auxerre, we find these dames paying their respects to the holy man; and as the story is misrepresented in its most material part by Caxton's translation of the Golden legend, it shall be given from a valuable manuscript of the same work much older than his time. "Narratio. In a tyme he was herboured in a place wher men made redy the borde for to go to dyner aftir he had soupid, and he was gretli merveiled, and asked for whom the borde was sette aᵹen; and thei seide for the good women that walke by nyᵹte; and than Seinte Germayne ordeyned that nyᵹte to be waked. And than at a certeyn hour gret multitude of feendis come to the borde in liknesse of men and of women. And than Germayn comaundid him that thei shold not passe thens, and than he awoke al the meyne, and asked yf thei knewe eny of thoo persones, and they seide that thei wer her neyᵹebores, and than he sente to her housis, and thei wer alle founde in bedde, and than thei alle had gret merveile and thouᵹte wel that thei were feendis that had so longe scorned hem."
The Samogitæ, a people formerly inhabiting the shores of the Baltic, and who remained idolaters so late as the fifteenth century, believed in the existence of a sort of demi-fairies about a palm high, with beards, whom they called Kaukie. To these little beings they made an offering of all kinds of food to avert their displeasure. They likewise invoked a deity called Putscet to send them the Barstuccæ to live with them and make them fortunate. To effect this, they placed every night in the barn a table covered with bread, butter, cheese, and ale; and if these were taken away before morning, they looked for good fortune, but if left, for nothing but ill luck. See Lasicius De diis Samagitarum, 1615, 4to, pp. 51, 55. A similar superstition prevailed in England, and is thus recorded in Browne's Britannia's pastorals, book i. song 2.
"Within one of these rounds was to be seene A hillocke rise, where oft the Fairie queene At twy-light sate, and did command her elves To pinch those maids that had not swept their shelves: And further, if by maidens oversight, Within doores water were not brought at night; Or if they spread no table, set no bread, They should have nips from toe unto the head: And for the maid that had perform'd each thing, She in the water-paile bad leave a ring."
Mr. Bell, in his Description of the condition and manners of the Irish peasantry, relates that the fairies or good people were supposed to enter habitations after the family retired to rest, to indulge in sportive gambols, and particularly to wash themselves in clean water; but if there were no water in the house, to play some mischievous tricks in revenge.
Fairies were also, from their supposed place of residence, denominated waternymphs, in the Teutonic languages, wasserfrauwen, wassernixen, nocka, necker, and nicker, terms, excepting the first, manifestly connected with the Scotish nicneven, and most probably with our old nick. Very great confusion seems to have arisen in the change of sex and appellation among these supernatural beings. This may have been occasioned by the numerous Pagan superstitions to which the common people were still attached long after the promulgation of Christianity, as well as from their excessive ignorance and credulity, which led them to convert the deities of the heathens into phantoms of their own creation. Thus Diana and Minerva were degraded into witches, and Mercury became the prince of fairies. Neptune was metamorphosed into a water-fairy, of whom a most curious account is preserved in the Otia imperii of Gervase of Tilbury, published in Leibnitz's Scriptores rerum Brunsvic. p. 980, and partly copied into Mr. Tyrwhitt's edition of Chaucer's Canterbury tales, vol. iv. 268. It seems probable that the name of Neptune is merely disguised in the Scotish Nicneven. Some of the Teutonic glossaries render the word necker by dæmon aquaticus, Neptunus. A further account of him may be found in Wormii Monumenta Danica, p. 17, and in Keysler Antiquitat. select. septentr. p. 261, where the etymology of necker, viz. from the Latin necare, strengthens the preceding conjecture as to that of Nicneven, and resolves it into the destroying or dæmoniacal Neptune. The reader may likewise consult Wachter's German glossary under the word necker, where it would have been of some use to the learned author to have known that this mischievous fairy was remarkable for drowning people, and was called Nocka, the Danish term, as he states on another occasion, for suffocating. Nor would the contrast of character between this being and the beneficent queen of fairy amount to any solid objection against the proposed etymology. Whoever may attempt an investigation of the fairy system will be sure of finding the greatest disorder and confusion; nor is it possible at this time to offer any reason that will be quite satisfactory why different qualities were ascribed to beings of similar names by different people. We must rest contented with possession of the fact. Thus Dame Abunde has been made to preside over the white nymphs, white ladies, or witte wyven, who all appear to have been of a mischievous disposition, committing nocturnal depredations on men and cattle, but more particularly on pregnant women and infants, whom they shut up in their subterraneous abodes, from which groans and lamentations, and occasionally melodious sounds were often heard to issue. See Kempius De orig. Frisiæ, p. 341. Ben Jonson in his Sad shepherd makes the white faies to reside in stocks of trees.
But let us now return from this digression to the subject of Hecate or Diana. Under the reign of Hadrian, Saint Taurinus is said to have converted the inhabitants of Evreux in Normandy to the Christian faith, but this was not accomplished until the Devil had been fairly expelled from Diana's temple in the above city. For this purpose, he was with great solemnity enjoined to appear in the presence of all the people, who, as heathens, were extremely terrified, especially as the evil spirit came forth under the form of an Ethiopian, dark as soot, with a long beard, and fire issuing from his mouth. An angel then tied his hands behind him and led him away. This dæmon is believed still to remain at Evreux, frequently appearing to the inhabitants, but is said to be perfectly harmless. He is called Goblin by the common people, who believe that he is restrained from mischief by the merits of Saint Taurinus. The reason why he was not at once consigned to the infernal regions, is, that at the command of the holy bishop he assisted in destroying the idols of the city; but he is supposed to have received sufficient punishment in beholding those persons in a state of salvation, whom during his power he had insultingly regarded as his victims. See Ordericus Vitalis, p. 555. In England it appears that the common people not only feared Diana as a witch, but that they had on many occasions paid her reverential honours as a goddess. This is confirmed by the remains of such animals as were used in her sacrifices, and also by her own images found on rebuilding Saint Paul's cathedral. These have been particularly described in Dr. Woodward's letter to Sir Christopher Wren in the eighth volume of Leland's Itinerary; from which circumstance the doctor very plausibly inferred that a Roman temple of Diana had been formerly erected on this spot. There is preserved a most curious sermon by Saint Maximus bishop of Turin in the fifth century, replete with the superstitions that existed in his time relating to the worship of Diana; nor can it be controverted that she was equally reverenced in this country long after the introduction of Christianity, when we find from the testimony of Richard Sporling, a Monk of Westminster in 1450, and a diligent collector of ancient materials, that during the persecution of Diocletian the inhabitants of London sacrificed to Diana, whilst those of Thorney, now Westminster, were offering incense to Apollo. Sir William Dugdale records that a commutation grant was made in the reign of Edward I., by Sir William Le Baud, to the dean and canons of Saint Paul, of a doe in winter on the day of the saint's conversion, and of a fat buck in summer on that of his commemoration, to be offered at the high altar, and distributed among the canons. To this ceremony Erasmus has alluded in his book De ratione concionandi, when he describes the custom which the Londoners had of going in procession to St. Paul's cathedral with a deer's head fixed upon a spear, accompanied with men blowing hunting-horns. Mr. Strype likewise, in his Ecclesiastical memorials, vol. iii. p. 378, has preserved a notice of the custom as practised in Queen Mary's time, with this addition, that the priest of every parish in the city arrayed in his cope, and the bishop of London in his mitre, assisted on the occasion. Camden had likewise seen it when a boy, and had heard that the canons of the cathedral attended in their sacred vestments, wearing garlands of flowers on their heads. As to Mr. Selden's witty conceit on the subject, which bishop Gibson inclines to adopt, it is enough to allude to it, being most certainly unworthy of a serious confutation.
Some of the above remarks have been offered as hints only for a more ample investigation of the fairy superstitions of the middle ages, so far as they are connected with the religion of the ancient Romans; a subject of intrinsic curiosity, and well deserving the attention of those who may feel interest in the history of the human mind.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 497
1. WITCH. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.
Dr. Warburton has adduced classical authority for the connexion between Hecate and this animal, with a view to trace the reason why it was the agent and favourite of modern witches. It may be added, that among the Egyptians the cat was sacred to Isis or the Moon, their Hecate or Diana, and accordingly worshipped with great honour. Many cat idols are still preserved in the cabinets of the curious, and the sistrum or rattle used by the priests of Isis is generally ornamented with the figure of a cat with a crescent on its head. We know also that the Egyptians typified the Moon by this animal, as the Chinese and some of the people of India do now by the rabbit; but the cause is as likely to remain a mystery as their hieroglyphic mode of writing. Some of the ancients have amused themselves with guessing at the reason. They have supposed that the cat became fat or lean with the increase or wane of the Moon; that it usually brought forth as many young as there are days in a lunar period; and that the pupils of its eyes dilated or contracted according to the changes of the planet.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 503
3. WITCH. ... slips of yew.
The reason for introducing this tree is, that it was reckoned poisonous. See Batman Uppon Bartholome, 1. xvii. c. 161.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 505
MACB. Though you untie the winds, and let them fight Against the churches.
The influence of witches over the winds had been already discussed by Mr. Steevens in a former note on Act I. Scene 3, and it might be well supposed that their formidable power would be occasionally directed by these mischievous beings against religious edifices. It is therefore by no means improbable that in order to counteract this imaginary danger, the superstitious caution of our ancestors might have planted the yew-tree in their church-yards, preferring this tree not only on account of its vigour as an evergreen, but as independently connected, in some now forgotten manner, with the influence of evil powers. Accordingly in a statute made in the latter part of the reign of Edward I., to prevent rectors from cutting down trees in church-yards, we find the following passage: "verum arbores ipsæ, propter ventorum impetus ne ecclesiis noceant, sæpe plantantur." This is at least sufficient for the purpose of disproving what has been so often asserted respecting the plantation of yews in church-yards for the purpose of making bows; for although these weapons were sometimes made of English yew, the more common materials employed were elm and hazel, either on account of the comparative scarcity of English yew, or more probably from its inadequacy, in point of toughness, for constructing such bows as our robust and skilful archers were famed for using. Indeed modern experience has proved the truth of the latter supposition; and therefore, whenever yew was used for making the best sort of bows, it was of foreign growth: many of our ancient statutes very carefully provide for the importation of that commodity, which appears to have been chiefly Italian, with other merchandise.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 506
1. WITCH. ... grease that's sweaten From the murderer's gibbet.
Apuleius in describing the process used by the witch, Milo's wife, for transforming herself into a bird, says that "she cut the lumps of flesh of such as were hanged." See Adlington's translation, p. 49, edit. 1596, 4to, a book certainly used by Shakspeare on other occasions.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 540
ROSSE. ... to relate the manner, Were, on the quarry of these murder'd deer, To add the death of you.
"Quarry," says Mr. Steevens, "is a term used both in hunting and falconry. In both sports it means the game after it is killed." So far this is just, and serves partly to explain the passage before us, as well as this in Coriolanus, Act I. Scene 1:
"And let me use my sword, I'd make a quarry With thousands of these quarter'd slaves, as high As I could pitch my lance."
What follows respecting the etymology of the word may not appear quite so correct. Mr. Steevens cites the MS. Mayster of game, in which the old English term querre is used for the square spot wherein the dead game was deposited. It is simply the French carré, but not, as Mr. Steevens conceived, the origin of quarry. It is necessary to state that quarry not only signified the game that was killed, but, in falconry, the bird that was pursued or sought after. The same term is used to express the flight of the hawk after its prey. In these senses it is probable that the word has been formed from the French querir, to seek after, and that the game sought after would be called in that language querie, whence our English quarrie, the old and correct orthography. The more modern French term in falconry for pursuing the game is charrier. See René François, Essay des merveilles de nature, 1626, 4to, p. 48.
It is conceived therefore that in both the passages in Shakspeare quarry signifies the spot or square in which the heaps of dead game were placed. Not so in the quotation from Massinger's Guardian; for there quarry is evidently the bird pursued to death.
Act V, Scene 5 — Page 570
MACB. The way to dusty death.
Perhaps no quotation can be better calculated to show the propriety of this epithet than the following grand lines in The vision of Pierce Plowman, a work which Shakspeare might have seen:
"Death came drivynge after, and all to dust pashed Kynges and kaysers, knightes and popes."
Scriptural language and a passage in the burial service might have likewise suggested the epithet.
KING JOHN.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 19
BAST. Good den, sir Richard.
SEE former note, p. 139.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 26
BAST. ... Basilisco like.
This braggadocio character must have been very popular, as his oaths became proverbial. Thus in Fennor's Compter's commonwealth, 1617, 4to, we have, "three-pil'd, huge Basilisco oaths that would have torn a roring-boyes eares in a thousand shatters."
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 39
ELL. His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps.
CONST. Now shame upon you, whether she does, or no!
Mr. Ritson proposes to read, whether he does or no! i. e. whether he weeps or not; and he adds that Constance, so far from admitting, expressly denies that she shames him. It may be answered, that this reading is equally objectionable; for Constance admits also that her son wept. In either case there is ambiguity; but the words as they stand are infinitely more natural, and even defensible, according to common usage.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 44
K. JOHN. Have brought a countercheck before your gates.
Mr. Steevens thinks this one of the old terms used at chess, but none such occurs in any of the treatises on that game. It is presumed to be simply a military word. Thus the Bastard afterwards asks, "shall a silken wanton brave our fields and find no check?" and we still say, "the enemy has received a check."
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 47
K. PHI. Command the rest to stand.--God, and our right!
An English motto is here improperly put into the mouth of a Frenchman. Richard the First is said to have originally used DIEU ET MON DROIT.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 64
K. PHI. ... Young princes close your hands
AUST. And your lips too; for, I am well assur'd, That I did so, when I was first assur'd.
The kiss was a part of the ceremony of affiancing. Thus in Twelfth night:
"A contract of eternal bond of love, Attested by the holy close of lips."
See the note in page 67.
Act III, Scene 4 — Page 107
CONST. And buss thee as thy wife.
In former times there was no vulgarity in this word, as the two first quotations by Mr Steevens demonstrate; but he is peculiarly unfortunate in his last example, which may without detriment be omitted in future editions. The singular vulgarity of Stanihurst's language cannot with propriety be used to exemplify the undegraded use of any word whatever.
No further proof of the justice of this remark is necessary than the mention of his "dandiprat cockney Cupido," or the "blubbering Andromache," whom he describes as "stuttering and stammering to fumble out an answer to her sweeting delicat Hector;" and numerous expressions of a similar nature occur in his eccentric translation of the pure and elegant Virgil. To buss is either from the French baiser, or from some radical word common to both languages, and was formerly written bass. Thus Stanihurst, whom it may be allowable to quote on this occasion;
"That when Queen Dido shall col thee and smacklye bebasse thee:"
And the duke of Orleans, in one of his love poems written in the time of King Henry the Fifth;
"Lend me your praty mouth madame I wis dere hart to basse it swete."
Act III, Scene 4 — Page 115
PAND. No natural exhalation in the sky, No scape of nature, no distempered day, No common wind, no customed event, But they will pluck away his natural cause, And call them meteors, prodigies and signs, Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven.
The old copy reads scope of nature. The alteration was made by Pope, and plausibly commented on by Warburton, who seems to have influenced Mr. Malone to adopt it. The speaker's design is to show that all the common effects of nature which he mentions would be perverted by the people; but an escape of nature would be very properly deemed an abortive. The original reading is therefore correct; nor could an apter word have been selected. Thus in King Henry the Fourth, Part I.:
"And curbs himself even of his natural scope."
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 128
PEMB. If what in rest you have, in right you hold.
Mr. Steevens would read wrest, which he explains to be violence. But surely "the murmuring lips of discontent" would not insinuate that John was an usurper; because the subsequent words, "in right you hold," would then be contradictory. One could not say, "if, being an usurper, you reign by right." The construction may therefore be more simple: "If the power you now possess in quiet be held by right, why should your fears," &c. The explanation given by Mr. Malone might have sufficed.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 137
K. JOHN. It is the curse of kings to be attended By slaves that take their humours for a warrant To break within the bloody house of life.
Mr. Malone ingeniously conceives this to be a covert apology for Elizabeth's conduct to the queen of Scots; yet it may be doubted whether any such apology would be thought necessary during the life of Elizabeth. May it not rather allude to the death of the earl of Essex? If this conjecture be well founded, it will serve to ascertain the date of the composition of the play, and to show that Meres had mistaken the older piece for Shakspeare's.
Act IV, Scene 2 — Page 139
K. JOHN. Or turn'd an eye of doubt upon my face, As bid me tell my tale in express words.
And, and or, have been proposed instead of as, but without necessity. The words are elliptical in Shakspeare's manner, and only mean, "or turn'd such an eye of doubt as bid me," &c.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 142
SAL. Two long days journey lords, or e'er we meet.
Dr. Percy has judiciously remarked that ever or e'er in this phrase is a useless augmentative, or being of itself equivalent to before. The corruption is not much older than Shakspeare's time. In some of the editions of Cranmer's Bible, Ecclesiastes xii. 6 is rendered, "Or ever the silver lace be taken away, and or ever the golden well be broken." In others the second ever is omitted. Wicliffe's translation, an invaluable monument of our language, has it, "er be to broke the silveren corde," &c. This is pure Saxon æꞃ or eꞃ; and so is our modern ere, often erroneously spelled e'er, as a supposed contraction of ever. Yet in Chaucer's time it had become or;
"For, par amour, I loved hir first or thou."
Knight's tale, v. 1155.
though some copies, both manuscript and printed, read er in this place as well as in others. Mr. Steevens seems properly to object to the orthography of ore.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 155
BAST. Away then, with good courage; yet I know, Our party may well meet a prouder foe.
Mr. Steevens has noticed Dr. Johnson's misconception of this passage; yet it may be doubted whether he has sufficiently simplified the meaning, which is, "yet I know that our party is fully competent to engage a more valiant foe." Prouder has in this place the signification of the old French word preux.
KING RICHARD II.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 272
K. RICH. That when the searching eye of heaven is hid Behind the globe, and lights the lower world.
The slight but necessary emendation of and for that ascribed to Johnson, had already been made by Hanmer. Lower world simply means lower hemisphere.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 279
K. RICH. Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's, And nothing can we call our own, but death.
This resembles Wolsey's speech;
"To the last penny 'tis the king's; my robe And my integrity to heav'n, is all I dare now call my own."
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 279
K. RICH. And that small model of the barren earth.
Model or module, for they were the same in Shakspeare's time, seems to mean in this place, a measure, portion, or quantity.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 280
K. RICH. ... For within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps death his court; and there the antick sits, Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp.
Some part of this fine description might have been suggested from the seventh print in the Imagines mortis, a celebrated series of wooden cuts which have been improperly attributed to Holbein. It is probable that Shakspeare might have seen some spurious edition of this work; for the great scarcity of the original in this country in former times is apparent, when Hollar could not procure the use of it for his copy of the dance of death. This note, which more properly belongs to the present place, had been inadvertently inserted in the first part of Henry the Sixth. See Act IV. Scene 7, in Mr. Steevens's edition.
Act III, Scene 3 — Page 283
NORTH. Your grace mistakes me; only to be brief Left I his title out.
YORK. The time hath been, Would you have been so brief with him, he would Have been so brief with you, to shorten you, For taking so the head, your whole head's length.
"To take the head," says Dr. Johnson, "is to act without restraint; to take undue liberties." It is presumed it rather means to take away or omit the sovereign's chief and usual title; a construction which considerably augments the play on words that is here intended.
KING HENRY IV.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 357
K. HEN. To be commenced in stronds afar remote.
This antiquated word, signifying shores, seems to have been entitled to some notice by the editors, as it cannot be familiar to every reader. We have now, perhaps accidentally, restored the original Saxon ꞅꞇꞃanꝺ.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 357
K. HEN. No more the thirsty Erinnys of this soil Shall daub her lips with her own childrens blood.
The original reads entrance, which is supported by Mr. Malone and also by Mr. Ritson, to whose authorities might be added the line in Spenser's Shepherds calendar;
"Quenching the gasping furrowes thirst with rayne."
The present reading was ingeniously suggested by Mr. Mason, and has been adopted by Mr. Steevens, who, vigorously maintaining its propriety, throws the gauntlet of defiance to all adversaries: but let us not be appalled!
To the assertion that a just and striking personification is all that is wanted on this emergency, the answer is, that we have it already. Soil is personified; they are her lips, and her children that are alluded to. With respect to Erinnys, notwithstanding the examples of typographical errors that are adduced, it is highly improbable that it should have been mistaken for entrance, a word which has three letters that are wanting in the other. Again, are the instances common, or rather do they exist at all, where the capital letter of a proper name has been lost in a corruption? And, lastly, to turn in part Mr. Steevens's own words against himself, it is not probable that Shakspeare would have "opened his play with a speech, the fifth line of which is obscure enough to demand a series of comments thrice as long as the dialogue to which it is appended;" or, it may be added, which contained a name of such unfrequent occurrence, and certainly unintelligible to the greatest part of the audience.
It is often expected, though perhaps rather unreasonably, that where an opinion is controverted, a better should be substituted; yet it does seem just that something at least, in value equal or nearly so, should be produced, and on this ground the following new reading is very diffidently offered:
"No more the thirsty entrails of this soil."
In Titus Andronicus we have the expression, "the ragged entrails of this pit." And in the Third part of King Henry VI.,
"What, hath thy fiery heart so parch'd thine entrails?"
Nothing that has been here advanced is calculated to maintain that the name of Erinnys must have been obscure to Shakspeare. One or two quotations have been already given from authorities that might have supplied him, to which the following shall now be added:
"Erinnis rage is growen so fel and fearce."
Last part of the mirour for magistrates, 1578, fo. 153.
"On me, ye swarth Erinnyes, fling the flames."
Turbervile's Ovid's epistles, sign. K. ij.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 367
FAL. ... not by Phœbus,--he, that wandering knight so fair.
Falstaff, with great propriety, according to vulgar astronomy, calls the sun a wandering knight, and by this expression evidently alludes to some hero of romance. Now though the knight of the sun mentioned by Mr. Steevens, was doubtless a great wanderer, he was not more so than others of his profession; and therefore it is possible that Falstaff may refer to another person particularly known by the name of the wandering knight, and the hero of a spiritual romance translated in Shakspeare's time from the French by William Goodyeare, under the last-named title. It may be worth mentioning that in all probability John Bunyan used this work in the composition of his Pilgrim's progress.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 376
FAL. 'S blood, I am as melancholy as a gib cat.
Captain Grose in his Dictionary of the vulgar tongue informs us that a gib cat is so called from Gilbert, the northern name for a he cat; and this is corroborated by the manner in which Chaucer has used the word in question;
"I mean but gyle, and follow that, For right no more than Gibbe our cat That awaiteth mice and rattes to killen."
Rom. of the rose.
The original French has "dam Thibert le chas," which proves that Gib was a proper name in Chaucer's time, whatever change it may have since undergone in its feline application. We see too the reason why a gib is a male cat. The melancholy of this animal has been sufficiently explained. Another quality belonging to him is thus ironically mentioned in the anonymous play of The politick whore, 1680; "as modest as a gib-cat at midnight."
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 381
POINS. What says sir John Sack-and-sugar?
In aid of Mr. Malone's conjecture that sack was so called as being a dry wine, vin sec, it may be remarked that the old orthography was secke and not sack. Dr. Boorde in his Regimente of health, 1562, 12mo, calls it so. In Hollyband's French schoolemaister, 1619, 12mo, we have "secke, du vin sec." Again, "Some of you chaplaines, get my lorde a cup of secke, to comfort his spirites." Ponet's Treatise of politike power, 1556, 12mo; and Cotgrave in his Dictionary, makes sack to be vin sec. This plausible etymology might have been wholly relied on, if an ingenious female traveller in speaking of the Tatar koumis, a preparation of mare's milk, had not informed us that she could not choose to partake of it out of the goatskin sacks in which it is carried "as the Spaniards," says she, "do their wine; which, by the by, is a practice so common in Spain, as to give the name of sack to a species of sweet wine once highly prized in Great Britain."--Guthrie's Tour through the Crimea, 1802, 4to, page 229. More stress is to be laid on this matter from a remarkable coincidence mentioned by Isidore of Seville, in his Etymologies, book iii. ch. 4, where he states saccatum to be a liquor made from water and the dregs of wine passed through a sack. See also Ducange Gloss. v. Saccatum, and Carpentier's supplement, v. Saquatum.
Whatever has been said in the course of the scattered notes concerning Falstaff's sack is so confused and contradictory, that it will be the duty of a future editor, either to concentrate them for the purpose of enabling the reader to deduce his own inference; or, rejecting them altogether in their present form, to extract from the materials they supply, the best opinion he may be able to form. There are two principal questions on the subject: 1. Whether sack was known in this country in the time of Henry the Fourth? 2. Whether it was a dry or a sweet wine when this play was written? The first is very easily solved; for there appears to be no mention of it till the 23rd year of Henry the Eighth, when a regulation was made that no malmseys, romineis, sackes nor other sweet wines, should be sold for more than three-pence a quart. The other question is full of difficulties, and the evidence relating to it very contradictory. We see it was a sweet wine before Shakspeare's time, a circumstance that may be noticed as adverse to the etymology of sec. But if it was sweet, whence the use of sugar, which we do not find to have been added to other sweet wines? The testimony of Dr. Venner proves that sack was drunk either with or without sugar, according to the palate. The quality of this wine, originally sweet and luscious, might have undergone a change, or else some other Spanish wine less saccharine in its nature might have obtained the name of sack.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 385
POINS. ... and sirrah, I have cases of buckram, &c.
Mr. Malone has in this and some other places maintained that sirrah was not used as a term of disrespect in Shakspeare's time; but the learned commentator would probably have revised his opinion had he recollected the quarrel between Vernon and Basset in the first part of Henry the Sixth, where, in the most opprobrious manner, sirrah is answered by villain. It seems to have been used much in the same way as at present, sometimes expressing anger and contempt, yet more frequently in a milder way when addressed to children and servants. It was even applied to women.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 399
HOT. And if the Devil come and roar for them.
This line would be highly relished by an audience accustomed in Shakspeare's time to "Satan's chaunt," on some of the minor stages. On the theatrical roaring of the Devil, see the notes of Messrs. Steevens and Malone in King Henry V. Act IV.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 403
WOR. As to o'er-walk a current, roaring loud, On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.
He seems to allude to the practice of making a bridge by means of a sword or a spear sometimes adopted by the heroes of ancient chivalry. See Lancelot of the lake, and other similar romances. Such an incident is represented on an ivory chest engraved in the first volume of Mr. Carter's Specimens of ancient sculpture and painting.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 407
HOT. And that same sword-and-buckler prince of Wales.
To convey to the reader a complete idea of a sword-and-buckler man of Shakspeare's time, the following print of a young Englishman is exhibited. It is taken from the collection of dresses designed by Titian, and said to have been engraved on wood by his brother Cesar Vecelli, the editor of which remarks that the English youths then made great use of the sword and buckler. A similar figure occurs in the frontispiece to Cranmer's Bible, designed by Holbein, which has been most unfaithfully copied in Lewis's History of the translations of the bible. Mr. Strutt has given more correct copies of the man with the buckler in his Manners and customs of the inhabitants of England, vol. iii. pl. xii. and in his Dress and habits of the people of England, pl. cxxxviii.
The subject receives much illustration from a passage in Stowe's chronicle, p. 869, edit. 1634: "Untill about the twelfe or thirteenth yeere of Queene Elizabeth the auncient English fight of sword and buckler was onely had in use: the bucklers then being but a foote broad, with a pike of foure or five inches long. Then they began to make them full halfe ell broad with sharpe pikes ten or twelve inches long wherewith they meant either to breake the swords of their enemies, if it hit upon the pike, or els suddenly to run within them and stabbe, and thrust their buckler with the pike, into the face, arme or body of their adversary; but this continued not long. Every haberdasher then sold bucklers." The above historian had, no doubt, good authority for what he says respecting the length of the pike; but it is certain that in the eighth year of Elizabeth a proclamation was issued by which no person was permitted to wear any sword or rapier that should exceed the length of one yard and half a quarter in the blade, nor any dagger above the length of twelve inches in the blade, nor any buckler with a point or pike exceeding the length of two inches. The mode of wearing the buckler at the back may be seen in the cut p. 209.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 407
HOT. I'd have him poison'd with a pot of ale.
Mr. Steevens suggests that this speech has reference to the prince of Wales's pot companions, and Dr. Grey to the manner of King John's death. It will indeed suit either of those circumstances. But this remark has been principally made for the purpose of correcting an error of long standing with respect to what has been generally called Caxton's chronicle. Dr. Grey, relying perhaps on Bale or Nicolson, has inaccurately cited Caxton's Fructus temporum for the account of King John's death; yet this work was never printed by Caxton under that title. It was professedly compiled by a schoolmaster of Saint Alban's, and originally printed in that city in 1483. In this form it is properly called The Saint Alban's chronicle, and is in fact a republication of one attributed to Caxton, with some additions at the beginning and end. The original often occurs in manuscript both in French and English; and, from the evidence of an ancient note in one copy preserved among the Harleian manuscripts, appears to have been composed by a monk of Glastonbury, named Douglas, who in the early part of it has copied Geoffrey of Monmouth. This work has been commonly ascribed to Caxton, and is often cited, even by old writers, under the name of his chronicle, though he only made a trifling addition by a continuation to his own time. It is likewise supposed to have been originally printed by him, but this is in all probability a mistake; for there is an edition undoubtedly printed by William Machlinia without date, which had escaped the observation of the correct and industrious Herbert. The type is the same as that used in the Speculum Christiani. This is presumed to be the prior edition which is spoken of in the prologue to that which Caxton printed in 1480, and there is no proof whatever that he printed any edition before that year.
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 436
LADY PER. Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin.
In the note we are only told that "a basilisk is a cannon of a particular kind." It is well known that there was a serpent so called, perhaps an imaginary one; and this animal with others of a like nature being sculptured on the ancient pieces of artillery, supplied them with the various appellations of serpentines, culverines, (from the French couleuvre,) flying dragons, &c. Of these the basilisk was the largest. It was sometimes called a double culverine, and was much used about the middle of the sixteenth century, especially by the Turks. It must have been of a prodigious size, as it carried a ball of near two hundred pounds weight. Coryat mentions that he saw in the citadel of Milan "an exceeding huge basiliske which was so great that it would easily contayne the body of a very corpulent man."--Crudities, p. 104, quarto edition. Father Maffei, in his History of the Indies, relates that Badur, king of Cambay, had at the siege of Chitor four basilisks of so large a size that each was drawn by a hundred yoke of oxen, so that the ground trembled beneath them.
Act II, Scene 3 — Page 438
LADY PER. In faith I'll break thy little finger, Harry.
This "token of amorous dalliance" is more particularly exemplified in an ancient song, entitled Beware my lyttyl fynger, reprinted by Mr. Ritson from Sir John Hawkins's History of music.
As the learned historian has not stated whence he procured this piece, it may be worth adding that it occurs in a small oblong quarto volume of songs with music, printed, according to appearance, by Wynkyn de Worde, in 1530; but as it varies in some instances from the reading in Sir John's work it is possible that he might have used some other authority.
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 442
P. HEN. I am no proud Jack, like Falstaff; but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle.
The celebrity of Lais, the Corinthian courtezan, is said to have occasioned the proverb cited in Mr. Steevens's note, because from the extravagance of the lady's demands every one could not afford to go to Corinth, which, says Taverner, in his Proverbs or adagies of Erasmus, 1569, 12mo, is of like sense with our English proverb, Every man may not be a lord. We are told by Strabo that the temple of Venus at Corinth was furnished with a thousand young girls who performed the rites of the goddess. In short, that city appears to have been so notorious for its luxury, that ancient writers are full of allusions on this subject. See particularly Aristophanes's Plutus, Act I. Scene 2, and Saint Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, ch. v. verse 1. This may serve to explain why wenchers were called Corinthians.
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 444
FRAN. Anon, anon, sir.
This was the coming, sir, of the waiters in Shakspeare's time. In Summer's last will and testament, Harvest says, "Why, friend, I am no tapster to say, anon, anon, sir."
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 461
P. HEN. Thou knotty-pated fool.
Although it certainly stands thus in the old copy, the word should be changed without scruple to nott-pated, i. e. polled or cropped. The prince had a little before bestowed the same epithet on the drawer. In this place it may refer to the practice of nicking or cropping naturals.
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 461
FAL. What upon compulsion? No; were I at the strappado, or all the racks in the world, I would not tell you on compulsion.
As the strappado has been elsewhere improperly defined "a chastisement by blows," under an idea that a strap was used on the occasion, it may be necessary to take further notice of it on this occasion. It was a military punishment, by which the unfortunate sufferer was most inhumanly tortured in the following manner:--a rope being fastened under his arms, he was drawn up by a pulley to the top of a high beam, and then suddenly let down with a jerk. The consequence usually was a dislocation of the shoulder blade. Representations of this nefarious process may be seen in Breughel's print of The punishments of the law; in one of Gerini's fine Views of Florence, and in Callot's Miseries of war. The term is evidently taken from the Italian strappare, to pull or draw with violence. At Paris there was a spot called l'estrapade in the fauxbourg St. Jaques, where soldiers received this punishment. The machine, whence the place took its name, remained fixed like a perpetual gallows.
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 468
FAL. ... he of Wales, that gave Amaimon the bastinado.
Amaimon, king of the East, was one of the principal devils who might be bound or restrained from doing hurt from the third hour till noon, and from the ninth hour till evening. See Scot's Discovery of witchcraft, B. xv. ch. 3.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 487
GLEN. The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes Of burning cressets.
A cresset light was the same as a beacon light, but occasionally portable. It consisted of a wreathed rope smeared with pitch and placed in a cage of iron like a trivet, which was suspended on pivots in a kind of fork. The light sometimes issued from a hollow pan filled with combustibles. The term is not, as Hanmer and others have stated, from the French croissette, a little cross, but rather from croiset, a cruet or earthen pot; yet as the French language furnishes no similar word for the cresset itself, we might prefer a different etymology. Our Saxon glossaries afford no equivalent term, but it may perhaps exhibit a Teutonic origin in the German kerze, a light or candle, or even in the French cierge, from cereus, because the original materials were of wax. Stowe the historian has left us some account of the marching watches that formerly paraded many of the streets of London, in which he says that "the whole way ordered for this watch extended to two thousand three hundred taylors yards of assize, for the furniture wherof with lights there were appointed seven hundred cressets, five hundred of them being found by the companies, the other two hundred by the chamber of London. Besides the which lights every constable in London, in number more than two hundred and forty, had his cresset, the charge of every cresset was in light two shillings fourepence, and every cresset had two men, one to beare or hold it, another to beare a bagge with light, and to serve it: so that the poore men pertaining to the cressets, taking wages, besides that every one had a strawne hat, with a badge painted, and his breakfast in the morning, amounted in number to almost two thousand."--Survay of London, 1618, 4to, p. 160. The following representations of ancient cressets have been collected from various prints and drawings.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 492
HOT. And cuts me from the best of all my land, A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle.
The word in its strict sense, signifies a small piece of any thing, but here a portion or parcel. The French have chanteau and chantel, from the Latin quantulum.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 494
GLEN. ... I framed to the harp Many an English ditty, lovely well, And gave the tongue a helpful ornament, A virtue that was never seen in you.
"Glendower means," says Mr. Ritson, "that he graced his own tongue with the art of singing." This is surely wrong. The meaning is, that, by setting the English ditties to Welsh music, he had embellished the language in a manner that Hotspur had never done, the roughness of his speech affording neither poetry nor music. Tongue was rightly explained by Dr. Johnson, the English language.
Act III, Scene 1 — Page 499
MORT. ... that pretty Welsh Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens I am too perfect in; and but for shame, In such a parley would I answer thee.
According to Mr. Steevens, swelling heavens are prominent lips. Are they not eyes swollen with tears? Glendower had just said that his daughter wept; and Mortimer tells his wife that he would answer the melting language of her eyes, if it were not for shame.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 508
P. HEN. By smiling pick-thanks.
A pick-thank is one who gathers or collects favour, thanks, or applause, by means of flattery. "Cave ne falsam gratiam studes inire." Terence; which is thus Englished by Udall in his Floures for Latine spekynge, 1533, 12mo, fo. 137:--"Beware that thou desire not to pyke or to have a thanke of me undeserved."
Act III, Scene 3 — Page 522
FAL. I never see thy face, but I think upon hell-fire.
Falstaff's wit at the expense of poor Bardolph's ruby face is inexhaustible. The same subject is treated with considerable humour in the following passage in Melton's Astrologaster, 1620, 4to: "But that which most grieves me, is, most of the varlets belonging to the citie colledges (I meane both the prodigious compters) have fierie red faces, that they cannot put a cup of Nippitato to their snowts, but with the extreme heat that doth glow from them, they make it cry hisse again, as if there were a gadd of burning steele flung into the pot," &c.
Act III, Scene 3 — Page 528
FAL. There's no more truth in thee, than in a drawn fox.
The quotation from Olaus Magnus does not support Mr. Steevens's assertion that the fox when drawn out of his hole was supposed to counterfeit death; for it is stated by that writer, and indeed by others, that he uses this device when hungry, to attract the birds, who mistake him for carrion. The following passage from Turbervile's Noble arte of venery or hunting is offered, but with no great confidence, as a possible illustration of the phrase in question: "Foxes which have been beaten have this subtletie, to drawe unto the largest part of the burrow where three or foure angles meete together, and there to stand at baye with the terriers, to the ende they may afterwardes shift and goe to which chamber they list."
Act III, Scene 3 — Page 535
P. HEN. Go bear this letter to lord John of Lancaster, &c.
The first seven lines of this speech are undoubtedly prose, and should be so printed, like the preceding speeches of the Prince. No correct ear will ever receive them as blank verse, notwithstanding the efforts that have been or shall be made to convert them into metre.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 543
VER. All plum'd like estridges, that wing the wind Bated like eagles having lately bath'd:
The evident corruption or mutilation in these lines, has rendered any attempt to explain them a task of great difficulty. It will be necessary in the first place to ascertain the exact sense of the word estridge; and although it is admitted that the ostrich was occasionally so denominated by our old writers, it is by no means certain that this bird is meant in the present instance. It may seem a very obvious comparison between the feathers of a crested helmet and those of the ostrich; and had the expression plum'd like estridges stood singly, no doubt whatever could have arisen. It is what follows that occasions the difficulty.
The old copies read, with the wind: now if the ostrich had been here alluded to, the conjectural substitution of wing would have been absolutely requisite; but the line which follows cannot by any possible construction be made to apply to that bird. It relates altogether to falconry, a sport to which Shakspeare is perpetually referring. Throughout the many observations on these difficult lines, it has been quite overlooked that estridge signifies a goshawk. In this sense the word is used in Antony and Cleopatra, Act III. Scene 2:
"And in that mood [of fury] the dove will peck the estridge."
There is likewise a similar passage in the third part of King Henry VI., which may serve as a commentary on the above line:
"So cowards fight, when they can fly no further; So doves do peck the faulcon's piercing talons."
It would be absurd to talk of a dove pecking an ostrich; the allusion is to the practice of flying falcons at pigeons. Thus Golding in his translation of Ovid's metamorphoses, fo. 9:
"With flittering feather sielie doves so from the gosshawk flie."
The manor of Radeclyve in Nottinghamshire was held by the service of "mewing a goshawk;" in the original charter, "mutandi unum estricium" In the romance of Guy earl of Warwick we have,
"Estrich falcons, of great mounde."
Falconers are often called ostregers and ostringers in the old books of falconry, and elsewhere. Estridge for ostrich or ostridge is a corrupt spelling that crept into the language at the commencement of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and it appears that after that period the two words were very often confounded together, and used one for the other.
The explanation of to bate, as cited from Minsheu in one of the notes, cannot apply to ostriches, though it does, very properly, to a bird of prey like the falcon.
After all, there is certainly a line lost, as Mr. Malone has very justly and ingeniously conjectured; but the place should rather seem to have been after the word bath'd, than before. The sense of the old copies, as to what remains, will then be tolerably perspicuous:
"All plum'd like estridges, that with the wind Bated, like eagles having lately bath'd * * * * * * *"
i. e. plumed like falcons, which, their feathers being ruffled with the wind, like eagles that have recently bathed, make a violent fluttering noise; the words in Italics being here conjecturally offered as something like the sense of the omitted line.
Act IV, Scene 1 — Page 546
VER. I saw young Harry with his beaver on.
There are two other passages in Shakspeare's plays that relate to the beaver, which it will be best to insert here for the purpose of avoiding confusion, and to afford likewise the means of assembling together the various and discordant opinions of the commentators. These are, 1. in King Henry IV. Part II. Act IV. Scene 1, "their beavers down;" and 2. in Hamlet, Act I. Scene 2, "he wore his beaver up."
In the first of these passages Dr. Warburton would read with his beaver up; and he remarks that "the beaver is only the visiere of the helmet, which, let down, covers the face. When the soldier was not upon action, he wore it up, so that his face might be seen, but when upon [in] action, it was let down to cover and secure the face." All this is correct, except that the beaver is certainly not the visor.
Dr. Johnson says, "there is no need of all this note; for beaver may be a helmet." This too is very just; the beaver, a part only of the helmet strictly speaking, is frequently used to express a helmet generally. Thus, in the first scene of the third part of King Henry VI., "I cleft his beaver with a downright blow." The latter part of the doctor's note was unnecessary, and its inference apparently wrong.
Mr. Malone remarks that "Dr. Warburton seems not to have observed, that Vernon only says, he saw young Harry, not that he saw his face." But surely, Dr Warburton having contended for the reading beaver up, could not have misconceived Vernon's meaning as above.
Dr. Lort contents himself with distinguishing and explaining the beaver and visor. He is however wrong in stating that the beaver was let down to enable the wearer to drink.
Mr. Malone's second note relating to Hamlet, will be considered in the third passage.
In the second passage, Mr. Malone remarks that the beaver "is confounded both here and in Hamlet with visor, or used for helmet in general," but that "Shakspeare is not answerable for any confusion on this subject, as he used beaver in the same sense in which it was used by all his contemporaries." The latter part of this note applies very justly to the first passage, beaver on, where it is used generally for a helmet, but not to the present; beavers down being perfectly accurate. It is submitted that the former part of the note, which relates to a supposed confusion both here and in Hamlet between beaver and visor, is not quite accurate, as may hereafter appear.
In the third passage Mr. Malone says, "though beaver properly signified that part of the helmet which was let down, to enable the wearer to drink, Shakspeare always uses the word as denoting that part of the helmet which, when raised up, exposed the face of the wearer; and such was the popular signification of the word in his time. In Bullokar's English expositor, 8vo, 1616, beaver is defined thus:--'In armour it signifies that part of the helmet which may be lifted up to take the breath more freely.'" On this passage Mr. Malone had also before remarked that Shakspeare confounded the beaver and visor; for in Hamlet Horatio says that he saw the old king's face, because he wore his beaver up; and yet the learned commentator inadvertently quotes Bullokar's definition, which is adverse to his own opinion. Another observation that suggests itself on Mr. Malone's note on Hamlet is, that Shakspeare does not always use beaver to denote that part of the helmet which, when raised up, exposed the face of the wearer; because we have just seen that he sometimes, as other writers do, applies it to the whole of the helmet.
And lastly, as to preceding notes; the present writer had, in defending Shakspeare's accuracy, expressed himself in most faulty and inaccurate terms, when he said that "the beaver was as often made to lift up as to let down." A great deal of confusion has arisen from the want of due attention to these words.
There is a chance that the reader, unless he have paid more attention to what has already been stated than it perhaps deserves, may have got into a labyrinth; from which it shall be the endeavour of the rest of this note to extricate him.
In the first place, no want of accuracy whatever is imputable to Shakspeare.
The beaver of a helmet is frequently used by writers, improperly enough, to express the helmet itself. It is in reality the lower part of it, adapted to the purpose of giving the wearer an opportunity of taking breath when oppressed with heat, or, without putting off the helmet, of taking his repast. As it was raised up for this purpose, it could of course be let down again; but it could not be let down on either of the before-mentioned occasions. The visiere or visor was another moveable part in the front of a helmet, and placed above the beaver in order to protect the upper part of the face; and being perforated with many holes, afforded the wearer an opportunity of discerning objects: and thence its name. It was made also to lift up when the party either wanted more air, or was desirous of seeing more distinctly. It was perhaps never down but in actual combat; whilst the beaver would be thrown up or kept down at the wearer's discretion, without much difference, except that in battle it would be closed, and at meals, or for additional coolness, thrown up. In short, the visor or beaver could only be let down after they had been already lifted up; and when a writer speaks of their being down, it is generally meant that the helmet is closed.
To exemplify the above remarks, correct representations of a real helmet and its parts are here given. See likewise Grose's Treatise on ancient armour, plates 10, 26, 30.
Fig. 1. The helmet closed.
Fig. 2. The visor thrown up, the beaver down.
Fig. 3. The visor and beaver thrown up.
Fig. 4. The visor detached.
Fig. 5. The beaver detached.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 567
P. HEN. Of fickle changelings, and poor discontents, Which gape and rub the elbow, at the news Of hurly burly innovation.
The itching of the elbow, according to popular belief, denoted an approaching change of some kind or other.
Act V, Scene 4 — Page 587
HOT. ... and life time's fool.
Mr. Steevens could not very easily have supported his opinion, that the allusion here is to the fool in the ancient farces, or in the representations called the Dance of death; a character which has been altogether misconceived in the course of the annotations on Shakspeare. Dr. Johnson's interpretation is much more natural and intelligible, and the allusion is certainly to the common or domestic fool, who was retained for the express purpose of affording sport to his still more foolish employers. In this sense our author uses death's fool, fortune's fool, and fate's fool.
Act V, Scene 5 — Page 589
P. HEN. Embowel'd will I see thee by and by.
An ingenious commentator on Mr. Mason's supplement to Dr. Johnson's dictionary, (see the Monthly magazine, vol. xii. p. 299,) has disputed the usual sense of embowel'd in this speech, on the ground that the prince would not be guilty of such brutality as to see Falstaff eviscerated; and he therefore contends that the meaning is, put into the bowels of the earth. But surely the prince designs no more than that Falstaff's body shall be embalmed in the usual manner. When the knight rises, he exclaims, "if thou embowel me to day, I'll give you leave to powder me, and eat me to-morrow," evidently alluding to the practice of evisceration and subsequent treatment of a dead body by strewing aromatics over it for preservation. If the body were to be put into the bowels of the earth, as the commentator contends, Falstaff's "eat me to-morrow" would manifestly be an absurd expression. That the present writer may not be suspected of plagiarism on this occasion, he feels himself obliged to lay claim to the above opinion in answer to the commentator, as it appeared in the before-mentioned periodical publication.
But the following curious extract from the arraignment of Hugh Le Despenser, the favourite of Edward II., will set the question at rest for ever: "Hugh contraytour este trove, par quoy vous agardent touz lez bonez gentz de realme, meyndrez et greyndres, ryches et povrez par comun assent, que vous come larone estes trove, par quey vous serrez pendue. Et contreytour estez trove, par quey vous serrez treynez[15] et quarterecez, et envoye parmy le realme. Et pur ceo que vous fuistez utlage par nostre seignour le roy et par commune assent, et estez revenue en courte sanz garrant, vous serrez decollez. Et pur ceo que vous abbestatez et procurastez discorde entre nostre seignour le roy et la royne et lez altrez del realme, si serret enbouelleez, et puis ils serront ars. Retrayez vous traytour, tyrant reneyee, si alez vostre juyse prendre. Traytour malveys et attaynte." In English. "Hugh Le Despencer, you have been found an arch-traitor, for which cause all good people of the realm, great and small, rich and poor, by common consent, award you a convicted felon; therefore you shall be hanged. And forasmuch as you have been found a traitor, you shall be drawn and quartered, and [your limbs] dispersed throughout the kingdom. And having been outlawed by our lord the king, and by common assent, you have unwarrantably returned into court; and therefore you shall be beheaded. And because you have procured and abetted discord between our lord the king, and the queen, and others of the realm, you shall be embowelled, and [your bowels] afterwards burnt. Begone traitorous renegade tyrant, and await the execution of your sentence. Wicked and attainted traitor!"--Knighton, inter Historiæ Anglicanæ decem scriptores, col. 2549.
The author of Aulicus coquinariæ, 1650, speaking of the opening of King James the First's body, has these words: "The next day was solemnly appointed for imbowelling the corps, in the presence of some of the counsell, all the physicians, chirurgions, apothecaries, and the Palsgrave's physician."
We got this word from the old French eboeler, the orthography of which at once declares its meaning. With us it might perhaps be more properly written ebowel, if the ear were not likely to be offended by the change.
* * * * *
Foote has borrowed some hints from Falstaff's speeches, in his admirably drawn character of Mother Cole. Among others take the following:--"Now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it over." He immediately changes his praying into pursetaking. See particularly the beginning of the third scene in the third act. Our English Aristophanes seems to have been likewise indebted to a story related in Lord Bacon's Apophthegms, of an old bawd who on her death-bed was interrogated by a customer whether a wench whom she had provided for him was in all respects as she had promised; to which she answered, that she was; and further left it to him to judge with what comfort and confidence she could expect to meet her Saviour, if she should leave the world with a lie in her mouth.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] This word may serve to correct a mistake in a note in King Richard III., Act V. Scene 2, by Dr. Johnson, who had supposed that drawn was the same as exenterated.
KING HENRY IV.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 11
TRA. Up to the rowel head.
Dr. Johnson had either forgotten the precise meaning of the word rowel, or has made choice of inaccurate language in applying it to the single spiked spur which he had seen in old prints. The former signifies the moveable spiked wheel at the end of a spur, such as was actually used in the time of Henry the Fourth, and long before the other was laid aside. Shakspeare certainly meant the spur of his own time.
Act I, Scene 1 — Page 13
NORTH. Even such a man so faint so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, &c.
Dr. Bentley's proposed substitution of Ucalegon for woe-begone, is a most striking example of the uselessness of learning when unaccompanied with judgment to direct it. Where too had the doctor found that Ucalegon drew Priam's curtain? and, it may be added, where did Shakspeare find that any one did so? It is not very uncommon for our poet to forget his reading, and make events change places. Thus a little further on, he has confounded Althea's firebrand with Hecuba's; and it is not improbable that in the present instance he might have misapplied the vision of Hector to Æneas so finely described in the second book of the Æneid.
Act I, Scene 3 — Page 46
HAST. The duke of Lancaster and Westmorland.
Mr. Malone's note on this anachronism would be more perfect if this slight addition were made to it, "and then not duke of Lancaster but of Bedford." Mr. Ritson seems to have traced the source of Shakspeare's error in calling prince John of Lancaster duke of Lancaster, in Stowe's Annales; but he has omitted to remark that even then Shakspeare had forgotten that prince John was not the second son of Henry the Fourth. The blunder of the industrious historian is unaccountable. See the seal of Henry the Fifth as prince of Wales and duke of Lancaster in Sandford's Genealogical history.
Act II, Scene 1 — Page 49
HOST. A hundred mark is a long loan for a poor lone woman to bear.
The old copy reads long one, and the above alteration has, on the suggestion of Theobald, been very improperly and unnecessarily made. The hostess means to say that a hundred mark is a long mark, that is score, reckoning, for her to bear. The use of mark in the singular number in familiar language admits very well of this equivoque.
Act II, Scene 2 — Page 64
PAGE. Marry, my Lord, Althea dream'd she was delivered of a firebrand.
Dr. Johnson has properly noticed the error concerning Althea's firebrand. This mythological fable is accurately alluded to in 2 Henry VI. Act I. Scene 1; a circumstance that may perhaps furnish an additional argument, though a slight one, that that play was not written by Shakspeare.
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 91
PIST. Have we not Hiren here.
The notes on this expression have left it a matter of doubt whether Pistol is speaking of his sword or of a woman; but the fact is, after all, that the word Hiren was purposely designed by the author to be ambiguous, though used by Pistol with reference only to his sword. When the hostess replies, "There's none such here, do you think I would deny her?" she evidently conceives that he is calling for some wench. Pistol, not regarding her blunder, continues to handle his sword, and in his next speech reads the motto on it--SI FORTUNA ME TORMENTA, SPERATO ME CONTENTA. It is to be observed that most of the ancient swords had inscriptions on them, and there is no doubt that if diligent search were made, the one before us, in a less corrupted state, would be found. In the mean time the reader is presented with the figure of an old French rapier, in the author's possession, on which these lines are engraved: SI FORTUNE ME TOURMENTE L'ESPERANCE ME CONTENTE.
In further illustration, the following story from Wits, fits and fancies, 1614, 4to, is added:--"Haniball Gonsaga being in the low countries overthrowne from his horse by an English captaine, and commanded to yeeld himselfe prisoner: kist his sword and gave it the Englishman saying: Si fortuna me tormenta, il speranza me contenta." Part of this story had already been quoted by Dr. Farmer, but not for a similar purpose.
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 94
FAL. Quoit him down, Bardolph, like a shove-groat shilling.
Mr. Steevens supposes the shove-groat shilling to have been used in the game of shovel-board, by which he seems to infer that the games of shove-groat and shovel-board were the same; but this is apparently a mistake. The former was invented during the reign of Henry the Eighth; for in the statutes of his 33rd year, chap. ix., it is called a new game. It was also known by the several appellations of slide-groat, slide-board, slide-thrift, and slip-thrift, the first of which was probably adopted from the game being originally played with the silver groats of the time, then nearly as large as modern shillings. When the broad shillings of Edward the Sixth were coined, they were substituted for the groats in this game, and used also at that of shovel-board, which seems to have been only a variation of the other on a larger scale. Nothing has occurred to carry it beyond the time of Henry the Eighth; and from the want of such a term as a shovel-groat, it is probably not older than the reign of Edward the Sixth, who first coined the shilling piece. Shovel-board is already too well known to require any description of it in this place; but of the other little seems recorded, or not sufficient to discover the manner in which it was played. Holinshed, or rather Stanihurst, in his history of Ireland, speaking of a mandate for the execution of the Earl of Kildare in the reign of Henry the Eighth, says, that "one night when the lieutenant and he for their disport were playing at slidegrote or shofleboorde, sodainly commeth from the Cardinall (Wolsey) a mandatum to execute Kyldare on the morrow. The earle marking the lieutenant's deepe sigh, By S. Bryde, Lieutenant, quoth he, there is some made game in that scrole; but fall how it will, this throwe is for a huddle." Here the writer has either confounded the two games, or might only mean to state that the Earl was playing at one or the other of them. Rice the puritan, in his Invective against vices, black letter, no date, 12mo, speaks of "paysed [weighed] groates to plaie at slip-thrifte;" and in another place he asks whether God sent Adam into Paradise to play at it. There is a modern game called Justice Jervis, which is supposed by Mr. Strutt, who has described it at large, to bear some resemblance to shove-groat. See his Sports and pastimes, p. 225.
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 94
PIST. Why then let grievous, ghastly, gaping _wounds Untwine the sisters three_. Come Atropos, I say!
This is manifestly in ridicule of Sackvile's Complaynt of Henry Duke of Buckingham, in The mirour for magistrates:
"Where eke my graundsire, Duke of Buckingham Was wounded sore, and hardly scapt untane. But what may boote to stay the sisters three? When Atropos perforce will cut the thred."
Stanzas 5 and 6.
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 96
PAGE. The musick is come, sir.
FAL. Let them play;--play, sirs.
This music was, in all probability, that belonging to one of those dances called passameasures; and it appears to have afterwards travelled by some means or other to Barbadoes: for Ligon, in his entertaining account of that island, where he was in 1647, tells us that he heard it played there by an old fellow. Ligon, no doubt, remembered it on the stage, and it is very likely to have been the original music of Shakspeare's time; but the above writer has very ignorantly supposed it to have been "a tune in great esteem in Harry the Fourth's dayes."
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 98
FAL. Drinks off candles ends for flap-dragons; and rides the wild mare with the boys.
A flap-dragon is a sport among choice spirits, by putting nuts or raisins into a bowl of brandy, which being set on fire, the nuts are snatched out hastily and swallowed, the party usually burning his mouth and fingers. In this way men formerly drank healths to their mistresses. It is likewise a Christmas gambol among young people, at which, instead of brandy, spirits of wine are used. It is sometimes called slap-dragon and snap-dragon. In The laws of drinking, 1617, 12mo, p. 147, a person is said to be "as familiar as slap-dragons with the Flemming."
Riding the wild mare, is another name for the childish sport of see-saw, or what the French call bascule and balançoire.
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 100
FAL. ... and breeds no bate with telling of discreet stories.
Dr. Warburton would most unnecessarily read indiscreet. Mr. Steevens supposes that "by discreet stories is meant what suspicious masters and mistresses of families would call prudential information; i. e. what ought to be known, and yet is disgraceful to the teller." But Poins, of whom Falstaff is speaking, had no masters or mistresses; and if it be recollected with what sort of companions he was likely to associate, Falstaff's meaning will appear to be, that he excites no censure for telling them modest stories; or in plain English, that he tells them nothing but immodest ones.
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 102
FAL. What stuff wilt have a kirtle of?
Notwithstanding this word has excited as much conjecture as almost any other in the language, it will still admit of discussion. Kirtel is pure Saxon, and signifies, generally, a covering, i. e. over all the other garments; in which sense it will always be found to have been [properly] used. In Littelton's Dictionary it is Latinized supparum. See likewise Ducange's Glossary, and a multitude of other authorities. Hence probably covercle. From the circumstance of its occurring as often in the sense of a long as of a short garment, it is more probable that the root of the word should denote that which covers, simply, than something that is short, curtus. In one of the notes, Cotgrave is cited as making kirtle and petticoat synonymous; but this definition is at variance with the line in the comedy of Ignoramus,
"Gownos, silkcotos, kirtellos et peticotos."
It is admitted, however, that this word has been used with great latitude of meaning. Randle Holme makes it the same with the apron.
Act II, Scene 4 — Page 104
FAL. Ha! a bastard son of the king's?--And art not thou Poins his brother?
Mr. Ritson explains this the brother of Poins. But where is the use of asking the prince such a question? It must be remembered that the prince and Poins have just made their appearance, and Falstaff has a question for each. The sense therefore is, "Art not thou Poins, the brother of this bastard?"
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 135
BULL. ... here is four Harry ten shillings in French crowns for you.
This is an anachronism; there were no coins of ten shillings value in the reign of Henry the Fourth. Shakspeare's Harry ten shillings were those of Henry the Seventh or Eighth, but he thought these might do for any other Harry.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 140
SHAL. I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur's show.
The question whether Shallow represented Sir Dagonet at Mile-end green, or Clement's inn, although it has been maintained on either side with great plausibility, must ever remain undecided; but Mr. Malone's acute and ingenious conjecture that Arthur's show was an exhibition of archery, and not an interlude, will no longer admit of any doubt. The truth of both these positions will appear from the following circumstances: In 1682 there was published "A remembrance of the worthy show and shooting by the Duke of Shoreditch and his associates the worshipful citizens of London upon Tuesday the 17th of September 1583, set forth according to the truth thereof to the everlasting honour of the game of shooting in the long bow. By W. M." in p. 40 of which book is this passage: "The prince of famous memory King Henry the Eighth, having red in the chronicles of England, and seen in his own time how armies mixed with good archers have evermore so galled the enemy, that it hath been great cause of the victory, he being one day at Mile-end when prince Arthur and his knights were there shooting did greatly commend the game, and allowed thereof, lauding them to their encouragement." One should be very much inclined to suppose this decisive of the first question, and that these shows were usually held at Mile-end; but this is by no means the case. The work proceeds to state that King Henry the Eighth, keeping at one time a princely court at Windsor, caused sundry matches to be made concerning shooting with the long bow; at which one Barlo, who belonged to his majesty's guard, remaining to shoot, the king said to him, "Win thou all, and thou shalt be duke over all archers." Barlo drew his bow and won the match; whereat the king being pleased, commended him for his good archery; and the man dwelling in Shoreditch, the king named him Duke of Shoreditch. One of the successors to this duke appointed a show on the 17th of September 1583, to be held in Smithfield and other parts of the city, which is here very circumstantially described; and among many other curious particulars it is mentioned that the citizens and inhabitants of Fleetbridge, &c. followed with a show worth beholding of seemly archers; "then the odd devise of Saint Clements parish, which but ten days before had made the same show in their own parish, in setting up the queen's majesties stake in Holborn fields, which stakemaster Knevit, one of the gentlemen of her majesties chamber, gave unto them at his cost and charges; and a gunn worth three pound, made of gold, to be given unto him that best deserved it by shooting in a peece at the mark which was set up on purpose at Saint Jame's wall." This however was not solely a shooting with fire-arms, but also with bows: for in the account of the show itself, which immediately follows, men bearing "shields and shafts" are mentioned, and "a worthy show of archers following." In the continuation of the description of the Smithfield show, mention is made of "the baron Stirrop, whose costly stake will be in memorys after he is dead, now standing at Mile-end;" and again, "And this one thing is worthy of memory: that upon the day of Prince Arthur's shooting, which was five weeks before this show, the duke, willing to beautifie the same in some seemly sort, sent a buck of that season by the marquess Barlo, (the name of this person was kept up long after his decease,) accompanied with many goldsmiths, who coming in satten dublets and chains of gold about their bodies, with horns at their backs, did all the way wind their horns, and presented the same to prince Arthur, who was at his tent, which was at Mile-end-green."
We see therefore that Shakspeare having both these shows in his recollection, has made Shallow, a talkative simpleton, refer to them indistinctly, and that probably by design, and with a due attention to the nature of his character. What Shallow afterwards says about the management of the little quiver fellow's piece, or caliver, will not weigh in either scale; because in all these shows there were musketeers. In that at Smithfield the feryers marched, consisting of "one hundred handsome fellowes with calivers on their necks, all trimly decked with white feathers in their hats." Maister Thomas Smith, who in Mr. Malone's note is said to have personated Prince Arthur, was "chiefe customer to her majesty in the port of London;" and to him Richard Robinson, a translator of several books in the reign of Elizabeth, dedicated his Auncient order, societie and unitie laudable of Prince Arthure and his knightly armory of the round table, with a threefold assertion frendly in favour and furtherance of English archery at this day, 1583, 4to. Such part of this work as regards Prince Arthur is chiefly a translation from the French, being a description of the arms of the knights of the round table; the rest is a panegyric in verse by Robinson himself in praise of archery. It appears from the dedication that King Henry VIII. confirmed by charter to the citizens of London, the "famous order of knightes of prince Arthur's round table or society: like as in his life time when he sawe a good archer in deede, he chose him and ordained such a one for a knight of the same order." Hearne says this book was so scarce in his time that he could never get a copy of it. See preface to Leland's Collectanea, p. liii.
Whatever part Sir Dagonet took in this show would doubtless be borrowed from Mallory's romance of the Mort Arture, which had been compiled in the reign of Henry VII. What there occurs relating to Sir Dagonet was extracted from the excellent and ancient story of Tristan de Leonnois, in which Dagonet is represented as the fool of king Arthur. He is sometimes dressed up in armour and set on to attack the knights of Cornwall, who are uniformly described as cowards. It once happened that a certain knight, who for a particular reason had been called Sir Cotte mal taillée by Sir Kay, king Arthur's seneschal, was, at the instance of Sir Kay, attacked by poor Dagonet; but the latter was very soon made to repent of his rashness and thrown over his horse's crupper. On another occasion Tristan himself, in the disguise of a fool, handles Sir Dagonet very roughly; but he, regardless of these tricks of fortune, is afterwards persuaded to attack Mark the king of Cornwall, who is in reality a coward of the first magnitude. Mark, supposing him to be Lancelot of the lake, runs away, and is pursued by the other; but the persons who had set on Sir Dagonet, becoming apprehensive for the consequences, followed them, as "they would not," says the romance, "for no good, that Sir Dagonet were hurt; for king Arthur loved him passing well, and made him knight with his owne hands." King Mark at length meets with another knight, who, perceiving his cowardice, attacks Dagonet and tumbles him from his horse.
In the romance of Sir Perceval li Gallois, Kay, the seneschal of Arthur, being offended with Dagonet for insinuating that he was not the most valorous of knights, kicks him into the fire. So much for the hero personated by Master Justice Shallow.
Act III, Scene 2 — Page 146
FAL. ... this Vice's dagger----
To each of the proposed etymologies of Vice in the note there seem to be solid objections.
Hanmer's derivation from the French visdase, is unsupported by any thing like authority. This word occurs in no ancient French writer as a theatrical character, and has only been used by modern ones in the sense of ass or fool, and then probably by corruption; there being good reason to suppose that it was originally a very obscene expression. It is seldom, if ever, that an English term is made up from a French one, unless the thing itself so expressed be likewise borrowed; and it is certain that in the old French moralities and comedies there is no character similar to the Vice.
Mr. Warton says it is an abbreviation of device, because in the old dramatical shows this character was nothing more than a puppet moved by machinery, and then originally called a device. But where is the proof of these assertions, and why should one puppet in particular be termed a device? As to what he states concerning the name of the smith's machine, the answer is, that it is immediately derived from the French vis, a screw, and neither probably from device; for the machine in question is not more a device than many other mechanical contrivances. Mr. Warton has likewise informed us that the vice had appeared as a puppet before he was introduced into the early comedies; but it would be no easy task to maintain such an opinion. Nor is it by any means clear that Hamlet, in calling his uncle a vice, means to compare him to a puppet or factitious image of majesty; but rather simply to a buffoon, or, as he afterwards expresses it, a king of shreds and patches. The puppet shows had, probably, kings as well as vices in their dramas; and Hamlet might as well have called his uncle at once, a puppet king.
What Mr. Steevens has said on this subject in a note to Twelfth night, vol. iv. 146, deserves a little more consideration. He states, but without having favoured us with proof, that the vice was always acted in a mask; herein probably recollecting that of the modern Harlequin, the illegitimate successor to the old vice. But the mask of the former could have nothing to do with that of the latter, if he really wore any. Admitting however that he might, it is improbable that he should take his name from such a circumstance; and even then, it would be unnecessary to resort, with Mr. Steevens, to the French word vis, which, by the bye, never signified a mask, when our own visard, i. e. a covering for the visage, would have suited much better.
A successful investigation of the origin and peculiarities of this singular theatrical personage would be a subject of extreme curiosity. The etymology of the word itself is all that we have here to attend to; and when the vicious qualities annexed to the names of the above character in our old dramas, together with the mischievous nature of his general conduct and deportment, be considered, there will scarcely remain a doubt that the word in question must be taken in its literal and common acceptation. It may be worth while just to state some of these curious appellations, such as shift, ambidexter, sin, fraud, vanity, covetousness, iniquity, prodigality, infidelity, inclination; and many others that are either entirely lost, or still lurk amidst the impenetrable stores of our ancient dramatic compositions.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 174
COLE. I am a knight, sir; and my name is Colevile of the dale.
"At the king's coming to Durham, the Lord Hastings, Sir John Colevile of the dale, &c., being convicted of the conspiracy, were there beheaded."--Holinshed, p. 530.
The above quotation has not been appositely made by Mr. Steevens. It appears very soon afterwards in this scene that Colevile and his confederates were sent by prince John to York to be beheaded.
It is to be observed that there are two accounts of the termination of the archbishop of York's conspiracy, both of which are given by Holinshed, who likewise states that on the archbishop and the earl marshal's submission to the king and to his son prince John, there present, "their troupes skaled and fledde their wayes, but being pursued, many were taken, many slain, &c., the archbishop and earl marshal were brought to Pomfret to the king, who from thence went to Yorke whyther the prisoners were also brought and there beheaded." It is this account that Shakspeare has followed, but with some variation; for the names of Hastings and Colevile are not mentioned among those who were so beheaded at York.
Mr. Ritson, in an additional note, says it is not clear that Hastings and Colevile were taken prisoners in this battle; meaning, it is presumed, the skirmishes with "the scattered stray" whom prince John had ordered to be pursued, including Hastings and Colevile. It is however quite clear from the testimony of the parliament rolls, that they were taken prisoners in their flight from Topcliffe, on the borders of Galtree forest, where they had made head against the king's army, and were dispersed by prince John and the earl of Westmoreland.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 176
FAL. ... if you do not all shew like gilt two-pences to me----
He means to say, "you will seem no more in comparison to me than a gilt twopence does to a coin of real gold." It was the practice to gild the smaller pieces of silver coin in the reign of Elizabeth.
Act IV, Scene 3 — Page 178
FAL. ... 'twere better than your dukedom.
Mr. Ritson justly observes that prince John had no dukedom, and in a former note pointed out a passage in Stowe's annals which had misled Shakspeare. The annalist repeated his error, strange as it is, in the account of the conspiracy. Holinshed always names prince John properly.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 207
SHAL. By cock and pye, sir, you shall not away to night.
This oath has been supposed to refer to the sacred name, and to that service book of the Romish church which in England, before the reformation, was denominated a pie; but it is improbable that a volume with which the common people would scarcely be acquainted, and exclusively intended for the use of the clergy, could have suggested a popular adjuration.
It will, no doubt, be recollected, that in the days of ancient chivalry it was the practice to make solemn vows or engagements for the performance of some considerable enterprise. This ceremony was usually performed during some grand feast or entertainment, at which a roasted peacock or pheasant, being served up by ladies in a dish of gold or silver, was thus presented to each knight, who then made the particular vow which he had chosen, with great solemnity. When this custom had fallen into disuse, the peacock nevertheless continued to be a favourite dish, and was introduced on the table in a pie, the head, with gilded beak, being proudly elevated above the crust, and the splendid tail expanded. Other birds of smaller value were introduced in the same manner, and the recollection of the old peacock vows might occasion the less serious, or even burlesque, imitation of swearing not only by the bird itself but also by the pie; and hence probably the oath by cock and pie, for the use of which no very old authority can be found. The vow to the peacock had even got into the mouths of such as had no pretensions to knighthood. Thus in The merchant's second tale, or the history of Beryn, the host is made to say,
"I make a vowe to the pecock there shal wake a foul mist."
There is an alehouse sign of the cock and magpie, which seems a corruption of the peacock pie. Although the latter still preserved its genuine appellation of the cock and pie, the magic art of modern painters would not fail to produce a metamorphosis like that which we have witnessed on many other occasions.
Act V, Scene 1 — Page 211
FAL. ... if to his men, I would curry with Master Shallow----
To curry is the same as to curry favour, to flatter, to please. To curry, in its genuine acceptation, is, as every one knows, to rub or dress leather, in French courroyer, from cuir; and in this sense it was applied to rubbing down a horse's hide, a process that conveys a sensation of pleasure to the animal. The rest of the phrase is corrupt, as will appear from the ancient orthography, which is, to curry favel. Thus in the old story How a merchande dyd hys wyfe betray, we have,
"There sche currayed favell well;"
and in the prologue to The merchant's tale of Beryn, in Urry's Chaucer, p. 597,
"As though he had lerned cury favel of some old frere."
Now the name of Favel was anciently given to yellow-coloured horses, in like manner as Bayard, Blanchard, and Lyard were to brown, white, or gray. One of Richard the First's horses was so called, as we learn from Robert of Brunne's Chronicle, p. 175:
"Sithen at Japhet [Jaffa] was slayn fauvelle his stede, The romance tellis grete pas ther of his douhty dede:"
and see Warton's Hist. of Engl. poetry, vol. i. p. 161. It must be obvious, therefore, that the phrase to curry favel was a metaphorical expression adopted from the stable.
Puttenham informs us that moderation of words tending to flattery, or soothing, or excusing, is expressed by the figure paradiastole, "which therefore," says he, "nothing improperly we call curry favell, as when we make the best of a thing," &c.--Arte of English poesie, p. 154. There is likewise a proverb, "He that will in court dwell, must needes currie fabel;" the meaning of which was not well understood, even in the time of Elizabeth; for Taverner speaking of it says, "Ye shal understand that fabel is an olde Englishe worde, and signified as much as favour doth now a dayes."--Proverbes or adagies gathered out of the Chiliades of Erasmus, 1569, 18mo, fo. 44. Much about this time began the corruption from favel to favour, of which an example may be seen in Forrest's translation of Isocrates, 1580, 4to, fo. 23.
It is necessary to add that favel is also an old word that expresses deceit, from the French favele, fabula; and is so used by Skelton: but this will not invalidate the foregoing etymology. As to Skinner's derivation of curry favour from the French querir faveur,--if an equivalent phrase had existed in the French language, it might at least have been plausible: but there is no instance of cury, or rather curray, the proper word, being used alone in the sense of to seek; nor does it appear from ancient authority that favel ever denoted favour.
Act V, Scene 2 — Page 217
CH. JUST. And struck me in my very seat of justice.
In a note on this passage, the anachronism of continuing Gascoine chief justice in the reign of Henry the Fifth has been adverted to. The fault is properly to be ascribed to the author of the old play of Henry the Fifth, from which Shakspeare inadvertently adopted it.
Act V, Scene 3 — Page 229
SIL. And dub me knight.
The following addition to the ceremony of dubbing topers knights on their knees in Shakspeare's time, from a contemporary pamphlet, may not be unacceptable: "The divell will suffer no dissensions amongst them untill they have executed his wil in the deepest degree of drinking, and made their sacrifice unto him, and most commonly that is done upon their knees being bare. The prophaneness whereof is most lamentable and detestable, being duely considered by a Christian, to think that that member of the body which is appointed for the service of God is too often abused with the adoration of a harlot, or a base drunkard, as I myself have been (and to my griefe of conscience) may now say have in presence, yea and amongst others, been an actor in the business, when upon our knees, after healthes to many private punkes, a health have been drunke to all the whoores in the world."--Young's England's bane, or the description of drunkennesse, 1617, quarto.
Act V, Scene 4 — Page 238
DOL. You blue-bottle rogue.
This allusion to the dress of the beadle is further confirmed by the two beadles in blew gownes who are introduced in the fourth act of the old play of Promos and Cassandra, which at the same time furnishes additional illustration of Mr. Steevens's remark on the strumpet's dress, as Polina is there exhibited doing penance in a blue habit.
Act V, Scene 5 — Page 241
1. GROOM. More rushes, more rushes.
Dr. Bullein, who speaks much in general commendation of the rush for its utility, informs us, that "rushes that grow upon dry groundes be good to strew in halles, chambers and galleries, to walke upon, defending apparell, as traynes of gownes and kertles from dust. Rushes be olde courtiers, and when they be nothing worth, then they be cast out of the doores; so be many that do treade upon them."--Bulwarke of defence, 1579, fol. 21. The length of the kirtle is here ascertained, and Mr. Malone's account of it in this respect fully confirmed. See his note in Act II. Scene 4, of this play.
Act V, Scene 5 — Page 248
CH. JUST. Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet.
Every body will agree with Dr. Johnson in the impropriety of Falstaff's cruel and unnecessary commitment to prison. The king had already given him a fit admonition as to his future conduct, and banished him to a proper distance from the court. We must suppose therefore that the chief justice had far exceeded his royal master's commands on this occasion, or that the king had repented of his lenity. The latter circumstance would indeed augur but unfavourably of the sovereign's future regard to justice; for had he not himself been a partaker, and consequently an encourager, of Falstaff's excesses? On the stage this scene may very well be spared. The audience will be better pleased at the poor knight's retiring with his companions under the impression that the king's behaviour to him has been necessarily disguised. No one will wish to see him punished.
KING HENRY V.
Page 263.
CHORUS. O for a muse of fire, &c.
"This," says Dr. Warburton, "goes upon the notion of the Peripatetic system, which imagines several heavens, one above another; the last and highest of which was one of fire." We have here one of the very best specimens of the doctor's flights of fancy. Shakspeare, in all probability, knew nothing of the Peripatetic philosophy; he simply wishes for poetic fire, and a due portion of inventive genius. The other explanation by Dr. Johnson seems likewise too refined.
Page 264.
CHORUS. ... Can this cock-pit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O, the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt?
Dr. Johnson has elsewhere remarked that Shakspeare was fully sensible of the absurdity of showing battles on the theatre, which, says he, is never done but tragedy becomes a farce. The whole of this chorus receives considerable illustration from a passage in Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of poesie, where, speaking of the inartificial management of time and place in the theatres of his time, he thus proceeds: "where you shall have Asia of the one side and Affricke of the other, and so many other under-kingdoms, that the player when he comes in, must ever begin with telling where hee is, or else the tale will not be conceived. Now shall you have three ladies walke to gather flowers, and then we must beleeve the stage to bee a garden. By and by we heare newes of shipwracke in the same place, then we are too blame if we accept it not for a rocke. Upon the backe of that comes out a hidious monster with fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave: while in the meane time two armies flie in, represented with foure swordes and bucklers, and then what hard hart will not receive it for a pitched field? Now of time they are much more liberal. For ordinarie it is that two young princes fall in love, and after many traverses she is got with child, delivered of a faire boy; he is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and is ready to get another child; and all this in two houres space: which how absurd it is in sence, even sence may imagine: and art hath taught, and all ancient examples justified, and at this day the ordinary players in Italie will not erre in." These remarks might with great propriety be applied to the play before us, to the Winter's tale, to Pericles, and some others of Shakspeare's dramas. In France, the contemporary playwrights were commonly more observant of the unities, though many charges to the contrary might be brought against them.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 277
K. HEN. Therefore take heed how you impawn our person, How you awake the sleeping sword of war.
Dr. Johnson would read your person, and then explain it, "take heed how you pledge your honour, &c. in support of bad advice." The archbishop might indeed pledge his opinion in this case; but person must in all events belong to the king. It was he who had the prerogative of making war; and as the impawning of a thing is generally attended with a risk of its future loss, so the king may here allude to the danger of his own person, which, from the practice at that time of sovereigns to engage in battle, might not be inconsiderable.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 281
CANT. ... Also king Lewis the tenth.
Shakspeare having here adopted Holinshed's error in substituting Lewis the Tenth for Lewis the Ninth, Mr. Malone has faithfully discharged his editorial duty in permitting it to remain. It was sufficient to point out the mistake in a note; and therefore Mr. Ritson's genealogy, designed to vindicate the text, but manifestly erroneous, should be omitted.
Act I, Scene 2 — Page 291
CANT. They have a king, and officers of sorts.
Sorts, if the true reading, rather means portions or companies, than of different kinds, according to Mr. Steevens; and such is the sense of the word in Mr. Reed's quotation, "drummes and sortes of musicke," though adduced in support of Mr. Steevens. In that much disputed verse 13 of the 68th psalm, the Greek word cleros, very strangely introduced into the Vulgate translation, is rendered by Wicliffe sortis; and in another old translation, lottes.