Part 15

SCENE 7. Page 66.

JAQ. And one man in his time plays many parts, _His acts being seven ages_.

A print of the seven ages of men like those referred to by Messrs. Henley and Steevens may be seen in Comenius's _Orbis pictus_, tit. xxxvii., in which are found _the infant_, _the boy_, and _the decrepid old man_: the rest of Shakspeare's characters seem to be of his own invention. There is a division of the seven ages of man in Arnolde's _Chronicle_, fo. lix. verso, agreeing, except in the arrangement of years, with that given by Mr. Malone from _The treasury of ancient and modern times_.

SCENE 7. Page 69.

JAQ. _Sans_ teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.

This word, introduced into our language as early as the time of Chaucer, has sometimes received on the stage a French pronunciation, which in the time of Shakspeare it certainly had not. The old orthography will serve to verify this position:

"I none dislike, I fancie some, But yet of all the rest, _Sance_ envie, let my verdite passe, Lord Buckhurst is the best."

Turbervile's verses before his _Tragical tales_, 1587, 4to.

ACT III.

SCENE 2. Page 82.

ROS. I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar: then it will be the _earliest_ fruit in the country, for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medlar.

On this Mr. Steevens observes that Shakspeare had little knowledge of gardening, the medlar being one of the latest fruits, and uneatable till the end of November. But is not the charge, at least in this instance, unfounded; and has not the learned commentator misunderstood the poet's meaning? It is well known that the medlar is only edible when _apparently_ rotten. This is what Shakspeare calls its _right virtue_. If a fruit be fit to be eaten when rotten and _before it be ripe_, it may in one sense be termed _the earliest_. The inaccuracy seems to be in making the medlar rotten before it is ripe, the rottenness being, as it is conceived, the ripeness.

SCENE 2. Page 93.

ORL. I pray you, mar no more of my verses with reading them ill-favouredly.

This very much resembles the _sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuum_, in one of Martial's epigrams, lib. i. ep. 39, of which the following translation was made by Timothy Kendall, in his _Flowers of epigrammes_, 1577, 12mo:

"The booke which thou doest read, it is Frende Fidentinus myne; _But when thou ill doest read it, then Beginns it to bee thyne_."

SCENE 4. Page 111.

CEL. He hath bought a pair of _cast_ lips of Diana: a nun of winter's sisterhood kisses not more religiously; the very ice of chastity is in them.

Theobald explains _cast_ lips "a pair _left off_ by Diana." It is not easy to conceive how the goddess could _leave off_ her lips; or how, being left off, Orlando could purchase them. Celia seems rather to allude to a statue _cast in plaister or metal_, the lips of which might well be said to possess _the ice_ of chastity.

As to the "nun of winter's sisterhood," Warburton might have contented himself with censuring the dullness of Theobald. His own _sisterhoods of the seasons_ are by much too refined and pedantic, and in every respect objectionable. Shakspeare poetically feigns a new order of nuns, most appropriate to his subject, and wholly devoid of obscurity.

SCENE 5. Page 115.

SIL. ... The common executioner _Falls not the axe_ upon the humbled neck.

There is no doubt that the expression _to fall the axe_ may with propriety refer to the usual mode of decapitation; but if it could be shown that in the reign of Elizabeth this punishment was inflicted in England by an instrument resembling the French guillotine, which though merciful in the discharge of its office, has justly excited abhorrence from the number of innocent victims that have suffered by it, the expression would perhaps seem rather more appropriate. Among the cuts to the first edition of Holinshed's chronicle such a machine is twice introduced; and as it does not appear that in either instance there was any cause for the particular use of it, we may reasonably infer that it was at least sometimes adopted. Every one has heard of the _Halifax gibbet_, which was just such another instrument, and certainly introduced into that town, for reasons that do not appear, long before the time in which Holinshed was printed. It is said that the Earl of Morton, the Scotish regent, saw it at Halifax, and that he introduced it into Scotland, where it was used for a considerable time afterwards.[14] In that country it was called _the maiden_, and Morton himself actually suffered by it, when condemned as an accomplice in the murder of Lord Darnley. In the best edition of Holinshed, Thynne's continuation of Hector Boethius's history is printed, in which there is an account of the conference between the Earl and the Ministers of Edinburgh, under the title of _The examination and answers of the Earl of Morton before his death, but after his condemnation_. Thynne seems to say that the above account was delivered over to him, but he has omitted to state the particulars. In a manuscript of this conference, written at the time, and in the possession of the author of these observations, it is called _The some of all the conferrence that was betweene the Earle Morton and John Dury and Mr. Walker the same daye that he suffered which was the 2 June 1581_, and differs in several places from the other. In both, at the end, there is an account of the Earl's last moments, in which it is stated (the MS. being here quoted) that he "layde his head _under the axe_, his handes being unbounde, Mr. Walker cried in his eare, Lord Jesus receive thy spirite, he saide Jesus receive my sowle, which wordes he was speaking while _the axe fell on his necke_." This extract would alone be sufficient to decide on the mode in which Morton was beheaded; but in the MS. there is a neat drawing of the machine itself, resembling the cut in the earliest edition of Holinshed, except that in the latter the axe is suspended to the top of the frame by a string which the executioner cuts with a knife, whilst in the other, a peg, to which the string is attached, is drawn out of one of the sides.

It may be worth adding that in _King Henry VI. part 2_, Eleanor says to her husband the duke of Gloucester,

"But be thou mild, and blush not at my shame, Nor stir at nothing, till the axe of death _Hang over thee_----"

SCENE 5. Page 118.

ROS. ... What though you have _more_ beauty (As by my faith, I see no more in you Than without candle may go dark to bed)

The old copy reads _no beauty_. Mr. Malone substitutes _mo_, i. e. _more_, and supports his alteration by making Rosalind allow that Phœbe had _more_ beauty than her lover; but she soon afterwards asserts the contrary in the most positive terms. The omission of the disputed monosyllable, which in the old copy might have caught the compositor's eye in the ensuing line and occasioned the mistake, will certainly correct the present redundancy in the line, and perhaps restore the author's original language. _As_ in the next line appears to have the power of _though_; a word that could not be used on account of its introduction in the preceding line.

ACT IV.

SCENE 1. Page 130.

ROS. I will laugh like a _hyen_, and that when thou art inclined to _sleep_.

"He commeth to houses _by night_, and feineth _mannes voyce_ as he maye," &c.--Bartholomæus _De propriet. rer._ lib. xviii. c. 61. _De Hiena_.

SCENE 3. Page 142.

OLI ... for 'tis The royal disposition of that beast, To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.

This property of the lion, whether true or false, was acknowledged by our forefathers. Thus in "_The choise of change containing the divinitie, philosophie, and poetrie_," &c., 1585, 4to, a work evidently constructed on the model of the Welsh triads, we find the following passage: "three things shew that there is a great clemencie in lions; _they will not hurt them that lie groveling_," &c. Bartholomæus says, "their mercie is known by many and oft ensamples: _for they spare them that lye on the ground_." Shakspeare again alludes to the lion's generosity in _Troilus and Cressida_, Act V. Scene 3:

"Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you Which better fits a lion than a man."

ACT V.

SCENE 2. Page 152.

ROS. By my life, I do; which I tender dearly, though I say I am a magician.

Of the two constructions of this speech, that by Mr. Steevens seems deserving of the preference; but the grounds on which it stands require examination. A statute against witchcraft was made in the first year of king James. Now if, as Dr. Warburton conceives, it is to this that Rosalind alludes, the play must have been written after 1603. Mr. Malone, whose opinion is supported by very solid reasons, thinks it was written in 1600; and therefore to reconcile the explanation given by Mr. Steevens, we must suppose that the foregoing allusion is to some prior statutes of Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth, which punished those who practised witchcraft with death.

SCENE 2. Page 154.

ROS. I will satisfy you if ever I _satisfy'd_ man.

The context seems to require that we should read _satisfy_; and it was the genius of Shakspeare's age to write so.

THE CLOWN.

Touchstone is the domestic fool of Frederick the duke's brother, and belongs to the class of witty or allowed fools. He is threatened with the whip, a mode of chastisement which was often inflicted on this motley personage. His dress should be a party-coloured garment. He should occasionally carry a bauble in his hand, and wear asses' ears to his hood, which is probably the head dress intended by Shakspeare, there being no allusion whatever to a cock's head or comb. The three-cornered hat which Touchstone is made to wear on the modern stage is an innovation, and totally unconnected with the genuine costume of the domestic fool.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] See Hume's hist. of the houses of Douglas and Angus, 1644, folio, p. 356. There are good reasons for supposing that the instrument in question was invented in Germany.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

In the _dramatis personæ_ of this play the "gentle astringer" is omitted, who, though he says but little, has a better claim to be inserted than Violenta, who says nothing. Mr. Steevens remarks that her name was borrowed from an old _metrical history_ entitled _Didaco and Violenta_; but Shakspeare more probably saw it in the running title of Painter's _Palace of pleasure_, whence he got his plot of this play, and where the above history occurs in _prose_. The title is borrowed from a proverbial saying much older than the time of Shakspeare. Knyghton has preserved some of the speeches of Jack Straw and his brother insurgents; and in that of Jack Carter we have this expression: _for if the ende be wele than is alle wele_. The orations of these heroes were made up of proverbial saws, a proof of the great influence they must have had with the common people. See the _Decem scriptores_ by Twysden, col. 2637.

ACT I.

SCENE 1. Page 187.

LAF. A fistula, my Lord.

What Mr. Steevens calls the _inelegance_ of the king's disorder is not to be placed to Shakspeare's account; for it is specifically mentioned both in Painter's story of _Giletta_, and in Boccaccio himself. It is singular that the learned critic should not have remembered this.

SCENE 1. Page 188.

COUNT. Where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity; they are virtues and traitors too.

The explanations of this speech appear to be too refined; and Dr. Warburton's, as usual, particularly so. The meaning is simply this:--_where strong and useful talents are combined with an evil disposition, we feel regret even in commending them; because, in such a mind, however good in themselves, their use and application are always to be suspected_.

SCENE 3. Page 217.

CLO. A _prophet_ I madam.

A reconsideration of these words have suggested the necessity of cancelling _both_ the notes, for the clown is not a _natural_, but an _artificial_ fool.

SCENE 3. Page 224.

HEL. Indeed, my mother! or were you _both our mothers_.

This strange and faulty language deserved notice. It should have been, _or were you so to both_.

ACT II.

SCENE 1. Page 234.

BER. I shall stay here the _forehorse to a smock_ Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry Till honour be brought up, and _no sword worn, But one to dance with_.

He means that he shall remain at home to _lead out ladies_ in the dance, till honour, &c. In _Titus Andronicus_, Act II. Scene 1, Demetrius speaks of _a dancing rapier_. The custom of wearing swords in the dancing schools is exemplified in a curious story related in _Newes from the North_, 1579, 4to, where "Pierce Plowman sheweth how his neighbour and hee went to the tavern and to _the dauncing schoole_ and what hapned there," in these words: "Now was there one man of our company that was as deaf as a doore naile. When we were come into the schoole; the musitions were playing and one dauncing of a galiard, and even at our entring hee was beginning a trick as I remember of sixteens or seventeens, I doo not very wel remember, but wunderfully hee leaped, flung and took on, which the deaf man beholding, and not hearing any noyse of the musick, thought verily that hee had been stark mad and out of his wit, and of pure pittie and compassion ran to him and caught him in his armes and held him hard and fast. The dauncer not knowing his good meaning, and taking it to the wurst, and having _a dagger_ drew it out, and smot the man a great blowe upon the hed, and brake his hed very sore." Another illustration of the subject is too interesting from the picture of ancient manners which it exhibits to stand in need of any apology for its insertion. It is from Stafforde's _Briefe conceipt of English pollicy_, 1581, 4to. "I thinke wee were as much dread or more of our enemies, when our gentlemen went simply and our serving men plainely, without cuts or gards, bearing their heavy swordes and buckelers on their thighes insted of cuts and gardes and _light daunsing swordes_; and when they rode carrying good speares in theyr hands in stede of white rods, which they cary now more like ladies or gentlewomen then men; all which delicacyes maketh our men cleane effeminate and without strength."

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_?"

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_.

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_.

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.

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.

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_.

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.

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: