Part 11

The _canary_ was another very favourite dance. In the translation of Leo's _Description of Africa_, by Pory, 1600, folio, there is an additional account of the _Canary islands_, in which the author, speaking of the inhabitants, says, "They were and are at this day delighted with a kind of dance which they use also in Spain, and in other places, and because it took originall from thence, it is called _the Canaries_." Thoinot Arbeau likewise mentions this opinion, but is himself, in common with some others, inclined to think that the dance originated from a ballet composed for a masquerade, in which the performers were habited as kings and queens of Morocco, or as savages with feathers of different colours. He then describes it as follows:--A lady is taken out by a gentleman, and after dancing together to the cadences of the proper air, he leads her to the end of the hall; this done he retreats back to the original spot, always looking at the lady. Then he makes up to her again, with certain steps, and retreats as before. His partner performs the same ceremony, which is several times repeated by both parties, with various strange fantastic steps, very much in the savage style. This dance was sometimes accompanied by the castagnets. The following _Canary_ tune is from Arbeau.

[Music]

SCENE 1. Page 236.

COST. Guerdon,--O sweet guerdon!

Mr. Steevens deduces this word from the middle age Latin _regardum_. It is presumed that few, if any, words are derived from the Latin of that period, which itself was rather corrupted by the introduction of terms from the living languages of Europe Latinized by the Monkish writers. _Guerdon_, as used by us, is immediately from the French: not equivalent, as some have imagined, with _don_ de _guerre_, but formed from the Teutonic _werd_ or _wurth_, i. e. _price_, _value_.

SCENE 1. Page 237.

BIRON. This _wimpled_, whining, purblind, wayward boy.

If, as Mr. Steevens observes, the advocates for Shakspeare's learning, on a presumption that he might have been acquainted with the Roman _flammeum_, or seen the celebrated gem of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, had applauded the choice of his epithet, it is certain they would have shown very little skill or critical judgment on the occasion. By _wimpled_, Shakspeare means no more than that Cupid was hood-winked, alluding to the usual representation in paintings where he is exhibited with a bandage over his eyes. It may be observed here that the blindness of the God of love is not warranted by the authority of any ancient classic author, but appears to have been the invention of some writer of the middle ages; not improbably Boccaccio, who in his _Genealogy of the Gods_ gives the following account: "Oculos autem illi fascia tegunt, ut advertamus amantes ignorare quo tendant; nulla eorum esse indicia, nullæ rerum distinctiones, sed sola passione duci."--Lib. ix. c. 4.

The oldest English writer who has noticed the blindness of love is Chaucer, in his translation of the _Roman de la rose_:

"The God of love, _blind as stone_."

But this line is not in the French original. Shakspeare himself has well accounted for Cupid's blindness:

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind."

_M. N. Dream_, Act I. Scene 1.

SCENE 1. Page 240.

BIRON. And I to be a corporal of the field.

Dr. Farmer's quotation of the line from Ben Jonson, "As corporal of the field, maestro del campo," has the appearance, without perhaps the intention, of suggesting that these officers were the same: this, however, was not the fact. In Styward's _Pathway to martiall discipline_, 1581, 4to, there is a chapter on the office of _maister of the campe_, and another on _the electing and office of the foure corporalls of the fields_; from which it appears that "two of the latter were appointed for placing and ordering of shot, and the other two for embattailing of the pikes and billes, who according to their worthinesse, if death hapneth, are to succeede the great sergeant or sergeant major."

SCENE 1. Page 241.

BIRON. ... like a _German clock_.

Such part of Mr. Steevens's note as relates to the invention of clocks may, in a future edition, be rendered more correct by consulting Beckman's _History of inventions_. It is certain that we had clocks in England before the reign of Elizabeth; but they were not in general use till that time, when most, if not all, of them were imported from Germany. These clocks resembled what are still made for the use of the lower classes of people by several ingenious Germans established in London.

SCENE 1. Page 242.

BIRON. Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.

Alluding to the homely proverb, "Joan's as good as my lady in the dark:" and in Markham's _Health to the gentlemanly profession of serving men_, sign. I. 3, we have, "What hath Joan to do with my lady?"

ACT IV.

SCENE 1. Page 243.

PRIN. ... my friend, where is the bush That we must stand and play the murderer in?

The practice of ladies shooting at deer in this passage alluded to, is of great antiquity, as may be collected from Strutt's _Sports and pastimes of the people of England_, p. 9. The old romances abound with such incidents; but one of the most diverting is recorded in _The history of prince Arthur_, part 3, chap. cxxiv. where a lady huntress wounds Sir Lancelot of the Lake, instead of a deer, in a manner most "comically tragical."

SCENE 1. Page 246.

COST. God-dig-you-den all.

"A corruption," says Mr. Malone very justly, "of God give you good even." Howel, at the end of his _Parley of the beasts_, has an advertisement relating to orthography, in which, after giving several examples that the French do not speak as they write, he observes that "the English come not short of him (the Frenchman); for whereas he writes, _God give you good evening_, he often saies, _Godi_, _godin_." But the whole of what Howel has said on this subject is unfairly pillaged from _Claude de Sainliens_, or, as he chose to call himself in this country, _Hollyband_; who after very successfully retorting a charge made by the English, that Frenchmen do not sound their words as they spell them, is nevertheless content to admit that his countrymen do _sometimes_ err, as when they say _avoo disné_, for _avez vous disné_? See his treatise _De pronuntiatione linguæ Gallicæ_, Lond. 1580, 12mo, p. 81. This person was a teacher of languages in London, and wrote several ingenious works, among which is the _first_ French and English dictionary, 1580, and 1593, 4to; afterwards much amplified by Randle Cotgrave, and by him rendered the best repertory of old French that is extant. It is in other respects an extremely valuable work.

SCENE 1. Page 49.

BOVET. A phantasm, a _Monarcho_.

Another trait of this person's character is preserved in Scot's _Discoverie of witchcraft_, edit. 1584, p. 54, where, speaking of the influence of melancholy on the imagination, he says, "the Italian, whom we call here in England _the Monarch_, was possessed of the like spirit or conceipt." This conceit was, that all the ships which came into port belonged to him.

SCENE 2. Page 526.

Enter HOLOFERNES.

A part of Mr. Steevens's note requires the following correction:--Florio's _First fruites_ were _printed_ in 1578, 4to, by Thomas Dawson. In 1598 he dedicated his Italian and English dictionary to Roger Earl of Rutland, Henry Earl of Southampton, and Lucy Countess of Bedford. As to the edition of 1595, mentioned by Mr. Steevens, does it really exist, or has not too much confidence been placed in the elegant but inaccurate historian of English poetry? See vol. iii. p. 465, note (h).

SCENE 2. Page 262.

HOL. _Dictynna_, goodman Dull; _Dictynna_, goodman Dull.

It is possible, as Mr. Steevens has remarked, that Shakspeare might have found Diana's title of _Dictynna_ in Golding's Ovid; but there is reason for supposing that he had seen an English translation of Boccaccio's _Genealogy of the Gods_, though we have it not at present. E. Kerke, in his notes on Spenser's _Shepherd's calendar_, quotes this work; yet he might have used the original. From the same source it was possible for Shakspeare to have acquired the present information, as well as what other mythology he stood in need of. The Latin dictionaries of Eliot and Cooper would likewise supply him with similar materials.

SCENE 3. Page 274.

BIRON. Thou mak'st the _triumviry_, the corner-cap of society, _The shape of love's Tyburn_ that hangs up simplicity.

An allusion to the gallows of the time, which was occasionally _triangular_. Such a one is seen in some of the cuts to the first edition of Holinshed's _Chronicle_, and in other ancient prints.

SCENE 3. Page 276.

BIRON. By earth she is _but corporal_; there you lie.

This is Theobald's alteration from the old reading, which was, "She is not, Corporal, there you lie," and has been adopted by the modern editors from its apparent ingenuity. A little attention may serve to show that no change was necessary, and that the original text should be restored. Theobald says that Dumain had _no post in the army_, and asks what wit there is in calling him corporal. The answer is, As much as there had already been in Biron's calling himself _a corporal of Cupid's field_; a title equally appropriate to Dumain on the present occasion. To render the matter still clearer, it may be observed that Biron does not give the lie to Dumain's assertion that his mistress was a _divinity_, as presumed by the amended reading, but to that of her being _the wonder of a mortal eye_. Dumain is answered sentence by sentence.

SCENE 3. Page 276.

DUM. Her amber hairs for foul have amber _coted_.

Mr. Steevens's explanation of _coted_, and of the whole line, is inadmissible. _Foulness_ or _cloudiness_ is no criterion of the _beauty_ of amber. Mr. Malone has partly explained _coted_, by _marked_, but has apparently missed the sense of it here when he adds _written down_. Mr. Mason has given the true construction of the line, but he mistakes the meaning of _coted_, which, after all, merely signifies to _mark_ or _note_. The word is from the French _coter_, which, in like manner as Mr. Malone has well observed of the English term, is the old orthography of _quoter_. The grammatical construction is, "her amber hairs have marked or shown that [real] amber is foul in comparison of themselves."

SCENE. 3. Page 291.

LONG. Some tricks, some _quillets_, how to cheat the Devil.

The objection to Warburton's derivation of _quillet_ from the _French_ is, that there is no such term in the language: nor is it exclusively applicable to law-chicane, though generally so used by Shakspeare. It strictly means a _subtilty_, and seems to have originated among the schoolmen of the middle ages, by whom it was called a _quidlibet_. They had likewise their _quodlibets_ and their _quiddities_. From the schoolmen these terms were properly enough transferred to the lawyers. Hamlet says, "Why may not that be the scull of a lawyer? where be his _quiddits_ now, his _quillets_, his cases, his tenures and his tricks?" The conjectures of Peck, and after him of Dr. Grey in a note to Hudibras, seem to merit but little attention.

SCENE 3. Page 294.

BIRON. Still climbing trees in the _Hesperides_.

An error is here laid to Shakspeare's charge, of which he is not perhaps guilty. The expression _trees in the Hesperides_ must be regarded as elliptical, and signifies _trees in the gardens of the Hesperides_. Shakspeare is seldom wrong in his mythology, and, if he had doubted on the present occasion, the dictionaries of Eliot or Cooper would have supplied him with the necessary information. The first quotation in the note from Greene, is equally elliptical; for this writer was too good a scholar to have committed the mistake ascribed to Shakspeare: so that the passage, instead of convicting the latter, does in reality support him. As to the other quotation from _Orpheus and Eurydice_, the learned critic himself lays but little stress on it; or indeed might, on reconsideration, be disposed to think the expression correct. It would not be difficult to trace instances in modern authors of the use of _Hesperides_ for _gardens of the Hesperides_. See Lempriere's excellent classical dictionary, edit. 1792, 8vo.

ACT V.

SCENE 1. Page 302.

HOL. His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his _tongue filed_.--

Mr Steevens has remarked that Chaucer, Skelton, and Spenser are frequent in their use of this phrase, but he has offered no explanation. It signifies _polished language_; thus Turbervile, in his translation of _Ovid's epistles_, makes Phyllis say to her lover--

"Thy many smooth and _filed_ wordes Did purchase credites place."

SCENE 1. Page 306.

ARM. ... a sweet touch, a quick _venew_ of wit.

The _cut and thrust_ notes on this occasion exhibit a complete _match_ between the two great Shakspearean _maisters of defence_. "A venew," says Mr. Steevens, "is the technical term for a _bout_ (or _set-to_, as he had before called it in vol. iii. p. 317,) at the fencing school." On the other hand, Mr. Malone maintains that "a venue is _not_ a _bout_ at fencing, but a _hit_;" and his opponent retorts on the ground of _positiveness_ of denial. As the present writer has himself been an amateur and practitioner of the noble science of defence, he undertakes on this occasion the office of umpire between the sturdy combatants.

The quotations adduced on either side are not calculated to ascertain the clear and genuine sense of the word _venew_, and it is therefore necessary to seek for more decisive evidence respecting its meaning. Howel in his _Lexicon tetraglotton_, 1660, mentions "a veny in fencing; venue, _touche_, toca;" and afterwards more fully in his vocabulary, sect. xxxii. "A foin, _veny_, or stoccado; la botta; la _touche_, le _coup_." In Sir John Harrington's _Life of Dr. Still_, is the following expression, "he would not sticke to warne them in the arguments to take heede to their answers, like a perfect fencer that will tell afore-hand in which button he will give the _venew_." _Nugæ antiquæ_, vol. ii. p. 158, edit. 1804, by Park. In Ben Jonson's _Every man in his humour_, Act I. Scene 5, Bobadil, in answer to Master Matthew's request for _one venue_, says, "Venue! fie: most gross denomination as ever I heard; O, the _stoccata_, while you live, sir, note that." On this passage, Mr. Reed, in a note on the play of _The widow's tears_, Dodsley's _Old plays_, vol. vi. 152, observes that "the word appears to have been out of fashion with the fantastic gallants of the time very early." Its occurrence however so late as the time in which Howel's dictionary was published seems to render this ingenious remark very questionable, and suggests another explanation of Bobadil's wish to change the word, namely, his coxcombly preference of the terms of the Spanish and Italian schools of fencing to those used in the English, which, it is presumed, were more immediately borrowed from our Gallic neighbours. That the terms _stoccado_ and _imbrocato_ denoted a _hit_ or thrust, may be collected from many passages in Vincent Saviolo's _Use of the rapier and dagger_, 1595, 4to; and in Florio's Italian dictionary, 1598, folio, _stoccata_ is rendered, _a foyne, a thrust given in fence_; and _tocco, a venie at fence, a hit_. All the above circumstances considered, one should feel inclined to adjudge the palm of victory to Mr. Malone.

It is however remarkable enough that Mr. Steevens is accidentally right in defining a _venew_ a _bout_, without being aware of the signification of the latter word. Florio renders _botta_, a _blowe_, a _stroake_. In the best of all the ancient French treatises on the art of fencing, entitled _Traicté sur l'espée seule, mere de toutes armes_, &c., by Henry De Sainct Didier, Paris, 1573, 4to, it is said, "_bottes_ en Napollitain, vaut autant à dire, que _coups_ en François." He then mentions five sorts of _bottes_, viz. _maindrette_, _renverse_, _fendante_, _estoccade_, and _imbroucade_. Nevertheless the word _bout_ had been used in the sense of a _set-to_ in Shakspeare's time. In _The first part of King Henry the Sixth_, Act I. Scene 5, Talbot says to the Pucelle, "I'll have a _bout_ with thee." It retained, however, its original meaning long afterwards. Howel, and Sherwood likewise in his English dictionary at the end of Cotgrave have "a boute, coup," and so it is defined by Skinner: but the following passage from the account given by Sir Thomas Urquhart in his singular book entitled _A discovery of a most exquisite jewel found in the kennel of Worcester streets_, &c. 1652, 12mo, of the combat between the admirable Crichton and the celebrated Mantuan duellist, will put the matter beyond all doubt. "Then was it that to vindicate the reputation of the duke's family and to expiate the blood of the three vanquished gentlemen, he alonged a _stoccade de pied ferme_; then recoyling, he advanced another thrust, and lodged it home; after which retiring again, his right foot did beat the cadence of the blow that pierced the belly of this Italian, whose heart and throat being hit with the two former stroaks, these _three franch bouts_ given in upon the back of other ... by them he was to be made a sacrifice of atonement for the slaughter of the three aforesaid gentlemen who were wounded in the very same parts of their bodies by other such _three venees_ as these." The same mode of expression is also used by the same writer in a subsequent account of a duel between Francis Sinclair, a natural son of the Earl of Caithness, and a German, at Vienna; where it was agreed that he who should give the other the first _three bouts_, should have a pair of golden spurs, in the event of which combat Sinclair "gave in two _venees_ more than he was obliged to."

On the whole therefore it appears that _venew_ and _bout_ equally denote a _hit_ in fencing; that both Mr. Steevens and Mr. Malone are right in this respect; but that the former gentleman is inaccurate in supposing a _venew_ to mean a _set-to_, and the latter equally so in asserting that "a _venew_ is _not_ a _bout_."

SCENE 1. Page 311.

DULL. I will play on the tabor to the worthies, and let them dance the _hay_.

This dance was borrowed by us from the French. It is classed among the _brawls_ in Thoinot Arbeau's _Orchesographie_, already mentioned in page 135.

SCENE 2. Page 312.

ROS. For he hath been five thousand years a boy.

KATH. Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too.

This description of Cupid is borrowed from some lines in Sidney's _Arcadia_, B. ii. See them already quoted on another occasion by Dr. Farmer in _Much ado about nothing_, Act III. Scene 2.

SCENE 2. Page 316.

ROS. That he should be my _fool_, and I his _fate_.

Dr. Warburton's conclusion that _fate_ here signifies _death_ is not satisfactory. Death would be an awkward character for Rosaline to assume, but that of _dame fortune_ infinitely more natural.

It must be owned that destiny and fortune are, strictly speaking, very different characters; yet they have sometimes been confounded. Even Pindar, as Pausanias observes, has made fortune one of the _Parcæ_. In _Julius Cæsar_, the expression, "he is but fortune's _knave_," seems to resemble the present, and to mean, "he is the servant of fortune and _bound to obey her_." Shakspeare is very fond of alluding to the _mockery_ of fortune. Thus we have

"O I am fortune's fool."

_Romeo and Juliet._

"Ye fools of fortune."

_Timon of Athens._

"I am the natural fool of fortune."

_King Lear._

In the last of which passages a pointed allusion is made to the _idiot fool_. Sir J. Suckling uses the same expression in his play of _The goblins_; and Hamlet speaks of "the fools of nature," precisely in the same sense.

SCENE 2. Page 327.

BOVET. Fleeter than arrows, _bullets_, wind, thought, swifter things.

The word _bullets_ is doubtless an interpolation in the manuscript by some ignorant person who thought it more appropriate than _arrows_, on account of the substitution of fire-arms for archery. It might very properly be omitted in the text, without any diminution of editorial accuracy.

SCENE 2. Page 330.

BOVET. Fair ladies mask'd are roses in their bud; Dismask'd their damask sweet commixture shown, Are _angels vailing clouds_, or roses blown.

Of the several explanations here offered of _vailing_, Dr. Johnson's is the best. The poet compares a lady unmasking to an angel dispelling the clouds in his descent from heaven to earth. The term is from the old French _avaler_ to _put_ or _let down_; the true etymology of which appears in the phrase _à mont et à val_, from top to bottom, from _mountain_ to _valley_, which very often occurs in old romances. In that of the _Saint Graal_, MS. we have "et avalerent aval le vessel." In Spenser's _Shepherd's calendar_, under January, "By that the welked Phœbus gan _availe_."

SCENE 2. Page 339.

BIRON. _Three pil'd_ hyperboles.

So in Fennor's _Compter's commonwealth_, 1617, 4to, p. 14, we have "_three pil'd_, huge Basilisco oaths, that would have torne a roring-boyes eares in a thousand shatters."

SCENE 2. Page 345.

COST. You cannot _beg us_, sir.

It has been already stated that it was not the next relation only who begged the wardship of _idiots_ in order to obtain possession of their property, but any person who could make interest with the sovereign to whom the legal guardianship belongs. Frequent allusions to this practice occur in the old comedies. In illustration of it, Mr. Ritson has given a curious story, which, as it is mutilated in the authority which he has used, is here subjoined from a more original source, a collection of tales, &c., compiled about the time of Charles the First, preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, No. 6395. "The Lord North begg'd old Bladwell for a foole (though he could never prove him so), and having him in his custodie as a lunaticke, he carried him to a gentleman's house, one day, that was his neighbour. The L. North and the gentleman retir'd awhile to private discourse, and left Bladwell in the dining roome, which was hung with a faire hanging; Bladwell walking up and downe, and viewing the imagerie, spyed a foole at last in the hanging, and without delay drawes his knife, flyes at the foole, cutts him cleane out, and layes him on the floore; my L. and the gentl. coming in againe, and finding the tapestrie thus defac'd, he ask'd Bladwell what he meant by such a rude uncivill act; he answered Sʳ. be content, I have rather done you a courtesie than a wrong, for if ever my L. N. had seene the foole there, he would have begg'd him, and so you might have lost your whole suite." The same story, but without the parties' names, is related in Fuller's _Holy state_, p. 182. Powel, in his _Attourney's academy_, 1630, 4to, says, "I shall neede to give you this monitorie instruction touching an _ideot_; that you be assured that yourselfe is somewhat the wiser man before you goe about to _beg him_, or else never meddle with him at all, lest you chance to play at handy-dandy, which is the guardian or which is the foole? and the case alter, _è converso_, _ad conversum_." In _A treatise of taxes_, 1667, 4to, p. 43, there is the following passage: "Now because the world abounds with this kind of fools, (Lottery fools,) it is not fit that every man that will may cheat every man that would be cheated; but it is rather ordained that the sovereign should have the guardianship of these fools, _or that some favourite should beg the sovereign's right of taking advantage of such men's folly, even as in the case of lunatics and ideots_." To this practice too, Butler alludes, in _Hudibras_, part iii. canto I, l. 590.

"Beg one another idiot To guardians, ere they are begot."