Part 2

We had already had this image in King Richard the third, where Clarence, describing his dream, says:

"... in those holes Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept (As 'twere in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems."

SCENE 2. Page 44.

MIRA ... What is't, a spirit? Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir, It carries a brave form.

The incident of Miranda's surprise at the first sight of Ferdinand, and of her falling in love with him, might have been suggested by some lost translation of the 13th tale in the _Cento novelle antiche_, and which is in fact the subject of _father Philip's geese_, so admirably told by Boccaccio and Lafontaine. It seems to have been originally taken from the life of Saint Barlaam in _The golden legend_.

ACT II.

SCENE 1. Page 54.

GON. How _lush_ and lusty the grass looks!

_Lush_, as Mr. Malone observes, has not yet been rightly interpreted. It is, after all, an old word synonymous with _loose_. In the _Promptuarium parvulorum_ 1516, 4to, we find "_lushe or slacke, laxus_." The quotation from Golding, who renders _turget_ by this word, confirms the foregoing definition, and demonstrates that as applied to grass, it means _loose or swollen_, thereby expressing the state of that vegetable when, the fibres being relaxed, it expands to its fullest growth.

SCENE 2. Page 76.

CAL. Sometime like _apes_, that moe and chatter at me And after bite me; then like _hedge-hogs_, which Lie _tumbling_ in my barefoot way----

Shakspeare, who seems to have been well acquainted with Bishop Harsnet's _Declaration of Popish impostures_, has here recollected that part of the work where the author, speaking of the supposed possession of young girls, says, "they make anticke faces, _girn, mow and mop like an ape, tumble like a hedge-hogge_, &c." Another reason for the introduction of urchins or hedge-hogs into this speech is, that on the first discovery of the Bermudas, which, as has been already stated, gave rise in part to this play, they were supposed to be "haunted as all men know with _hogs_ and hobgoblings." See Dekkar's _Strange horserace_, &c. sign. f. 3. b. and Mr. Steevens's note in p. 28.

SCENE 2. Page 77.

TRIN. A strange fish! Were I in England now (as once I was) and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.

This speech happily ridicules the mania that appears to have always existed among our countrymen for beholding strange sights, however trifling. A contemporary writer and professor of divinity has been no less severe. Speaking of the crocodile, he says, "Of late years there hath been brought into England, the cases or skinnes of such crocodiles to be seene, and much money given for the sight thereof; the policy of strangers laugh at our folly, either that we are too wealthy, or else that we know not how to bestow our money." Batman _uppon Bartholome_, fo. 359 b.

SCENE 2. Page 82.

STE. This _mooncalf_.

The best account of this fabulous substance may be found in Drayton's poem with that title.

SCENE 2. Page 83.

STE. I was the _man in the moon_.

This is a very old superstition founded, as Mr. Ritson has observed, on _Numbers_ xv. 32. See _Ancient songs_, p. 34. So far the tradition is still preserved among nurses and schoolboys; but how the culprit came to be imprisoned in the moon, has not yet been accounted for. It should seem that he had not merely gathered sticks on the sabbath, but that he had _stolen_ what he gathered, as appears from the following lines in Chaucer's _Testament of Creseid_, where the poet, describing the moon, informs us that she had

"On her brest a chorle painted ful even, Bearing a bush of thorns on his backe, Which for his _theft_ might clime no ner the heven."

We are to suppose that he was doomed to perpetual confinement in this planet, and precluded from every possibility of inhabiting the mansions of the just. With the Italians Cain appears to have been the offender, and he is alluded to in a very extraordinary manner by Dante in the twentieth canto of the _Inferno_, where the moon is described by the periphrasis _Caino e le spine_. One of the commentators on that poet says, that this alludes to the popular opinion of Cain loaded with the bundle of faggots, but how he procured them we are not informed. The Jews have some Talmudical story that Jacob is in the moon, and they believe that his face is visible. The natives of Ceylon, instead of a man, have placed a hare in the moon; and it is said to have got there in the following manner. Their great Deity Budha when a hermit on earth lost himself one day in a forest. After wandering about in great distress he met a hare, who thus addressed him: "It is in my power to extricate you from your difficulty; take the path on your right hand, and it will lead you out of the forest." "I am greatly obliged to you, Mr. Hare," said Budha, "but I am unfortunately very poor and very hungry, and have nothing to offer you in reward for your kindness." "If you are hungry," returned the hare, "I am again at your service; make a fire, kill me, roast me, and eat me." Budha made the fire, and the hare instantly jumped into it. Budha now exerted his miraculous powers, snatched the animal from the flames, and threw him into the moon, where he has ever since remained. This is from the information of a learned and intelligent French gentleman recently arrived from Ceylon, who adds that the Cingalese would often request of him to permit them to look for the hare through his telescope, and exclaim in raptures, that they saw it. It is remarkable that the Chinese represent the moon by a rabbit pounding rice in a mortar. Their mythological moon Jut-ho is figured by a beautiful young woman with a double sphere behind her head, and a rabbit at her feet. The period of this animal's gestation is thirty days; may it not therefore typify the moon's revolution round the earth?

SCENE 2. Page 86.

CAL. Nor _scrape-trenchering_, nor wash-dish.

_Scraping trenchers_ was likewise a scholastic employment at college, if we may believe the illiterate parson in the pleasant comedy of _Cornelianum dolium_, where speaking of his haughty treatment of the poor scholars whom he had distanced in getting possession of a fat living, he says, "Illi inquam, qui ut mihi narrârunt, quadras adipe illitas deglubere sunt coacti, quamdiu inter academicas ulnas manent, dapsili more à me nutriti sunt, saginati imò &c." It was the office too of apprentices. In _The life of a satirical puppy called Nim_, 1657, 12mo, a citizen describes how long "he bore the water tankard, _scrap't trenchers_, and made clean shoes."

ACT III.

SCENE 1. Page 91.

FER. This wooden slavery, than _I would_ suffer.

The old copy reads _than to suffer_, which, however ungrammatical, is justly maintained by Mr. Malone to be Shakspeare's language, and ought therefore to be restored. Mr. Steevens objects on the score of _defective_ metre: but this is not the case; the metre, however rugged, is certainly _perfect_.

SCENE 1. Page 92.

MIRA. I am your wife, if you will marry me; If not, I'll die your maid: to be your fellow You may deny me; but I'll be your servant Whether you will or no.

Mr. Malone has cited a very apposite passage from Catullus, but Shakspeare had probably on this occasion the pathetic old poem of _The nut-brown maid_ in his recollection.

SCENE 2. Page 94.

STE. Thy eyes are almost set in thy head.

TRIN. Where should they be set else? he were a brave monster indeed, if they were set in his tail.

The curious reader may nevertheless be gratified with a ludicrous instance of _eyes set in the tail_, if he can procure a sight of the first cut in Caxton's edition of _Æsop's fables_. In the mean time he is referred to the _genuine_ chap. xx. of Planudes's life of that fabulist, which is generally omitted in the modern editions.

SCENE 2. Page 97.

CAL. What a py'd ninny's this? thou scurvy patch!

Dr. Johnson would transfer this speech to Stephano, on the ground that Caliban could know nothing of the costume of fools. This objection is fairly removed by Mr. Malone; besides which it may be remarked that at the end of the play Caliban specifically calls Trinculo a _fool_. The modern managers will perhaps be inclined for the future to dress this character in the proper habit.

SCENE 2. Page 100.

CAL. Will you _troll_ the catch----

_Troll_ is from the French _trôler_, to _lead_, _draw_, or _drag_, and this sense particularly applies to a catch, in which one part is sung after the other, one of the singers leading off. The term is _sometimes_ used as Mr. Steevens has explained it. Littelton renders _to troll along his words_, by _volubiliter loqui sive rotundè_. _Trolling_ for fish, is drawing the bait along in the water, to imitate the swimming of a real fish.

SCENE 2. Page 104.

SEB. ... in _Arabia_ There is one tree, the Phœnix' throne, _one phœnix_ At this hour reigning there.

Bartholomæus _De propriet. rerum_, speaking of _Arabia_, says, "there breedeth a birde that is called _Phœnix_;" and from what has already been said of this book, it was probably one of Shakspeare's authorities on the occasion.

SCENE 2. Page 106.

GON. Who would believe that there were mountaineers, Dewlapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men, _Whose heads stood in their breasts?_

The "dewlapp'd mountaineers" are shown to have been borrowed from Maundeville's travels, and the same author doubtless supplied the other monsters. In the edition printed by Thomas Este, without date, is the following passage: "In another ile dwell men that have no heads, and their eyes are in their shoulders, _and their mouth is on their breast_." A cut however which occurs in this place is more to the purpose, and might have saved our poet the trouble of consulting the text, for it represents a complete head with eyes, nose, and mouth, placed on the breast and stomach.

ACT IV.

SCENE 1. Page 122.

CER. Hail many-coloured messenger, that ne'er Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter; Who with thy saffron wings upon my flowers Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers; And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown My bosky acres----

An elegant expansion of these lines in Phaer's _Virgil. Æn._ end of book 4.

"Dame rainbow down therefore with safron wings of dropping showres. Whose face a thousand sundry hewes against the sunne devoures, From heaven descending came----"

SCENE 1. Page 131.

ARI. ... so I charm'd their ears, That calf-like, they my lowing follow'd through Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns Which enter'd their frail skins.

Dr. Johnson has introduced a passage from Drayton's _Nymphidia_, as resembling the above description. It is still more like an incident in the well known story of the _friar and the boy_.

"Jacke toke his pype and began to blowe Then the frere, as I trowe, Began to daunce soone; The breres scratched hym in the face And in many another place That the blode brast out, He daunced among thornes thycke In many places they dyde hym prycke, &c."

SCENE 1. Page 136.

CAL. And all be turn'd to _barnacles_, or apes.

Mr. Collins's note, it is presumed, will not be thought worth retaining in any future edition. His account of the barnacle is extremely confused and imperfect. He makes Gerarde responsible for an opinion not his own; he substitutes the name of Holinshed for that of Harrison, whose statement is not so ridiculous as Mr. Collins would make it, and who might certainly have seen the feathers of the barnacles hanging out of the shells, as the _fish barnacle_ or _Lepas anatifera_ is undoubtedly furnished with a _feathered_ beard. The real absurdity was the credulity of Gerarde and Harrison in supposing that the barnacle goose was really produced from the shell of the fish. Dr. Bullein not only believed this himself, but bestows the epithets, _ignorant_ and _incredulous_ on those who did not; and in the same breath he maintains that crystal is nothing more than ice. See his _Bulwarke of defence_, &c. 1562, Folio, fo. 12. Caliban's barnacle is the _clakis_ or tree-goose. Every kind of information on the subject may be found in the _Physica curiosa_ of Gaspar Schot the Jesuit, who with great industry has collected from a multitude of authors whatever they had written concerning it. See lib. ix. c. 22. The works of Pennant and Bewick will supply every deficiency with respect to _rational_ knowledge.

ACT V.

SCENE 1. Page 140.

PRO. Ye _elves_ of hills----

The different species of the fairy tribe are called in the Northern languages _ælfen_, _elfen_, and _alpen_, words of remote and uncertain etymology. The Greek ολβιος, _felix_, is not so plausible an original as the Teutonic _helfen_, _juvare_; because many of these supernatural beings were supposed to be of a mischievous nature, but all of them might very properly be invoked to assist mankind. Some of the northern nations regarded them as the souls of men who in this world had given themselves up to corporeal pleasures, and trespasses against human laws. It was conceived therefore that they were doomed to wander for a certain time about the earth, and to be bound in a kind of servitude to mortals. One of their occupations was that of protecting horses in the stable. See Olaus Magnus _de gentibus septentrionalibus_, lib. iii. cap. xi. It is probable that our fairy system is originally derived from the Fates, Fauns, Nymphs, Dryads, Deæ matres, &c., of the ancients, in like manner as other Pagan superstitions were corruptedly retained after the promulgation of Christianity. The general stock might have been augmented and improved by means of the crusades and other causes of intercourse with the nations of the East.

SCENE 1. Page 141.

PRO. ... you demy-puppets, that By moonshine do the _green-sour_ ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites----

_Green sour_, if the genuine reading, should be given, as in the first folio, without a hyphen; for such a _compound_ epithet will not elsewhere be easily discovered. Though a real or supposed acidity in this kind of grass will certainly warrant the use of _sour_, it is not improbable that Shakspeare might have written _greensward_, i. e. the green surface of the ground, from the Saxon ꞅƿeaꞃꝺ, skin.

SCENE 1. Page 158.

PRO. His mother was a witch; and one so strong _That could control the moon_.

So in a former scene, Gonzalo had said, "You are gentlemen of brave mettle; you would _lift the moon out of her sphere_, &c." In Adlington's translation of _Apuleius_ 1596, 4to, a book well known to Shakspeare, a marginal note says, "Witches in old time were supposed to be of such power that they could pul downe _the moone by their inchauntment_." In Fleminge's _Virgil's Bucolics_ is this line, "Charms able are from heaven high to fetch the moone adowne;" and see Scot's _Discoverie of witchcraft_ 1584, 4to, pp. 174, 226, 227, 250.

But all the above authorities are from the ancients, the system of modern witchcraft not affording any similar instances of its power. The Jesuit Delrio is willing to put up with any notice of this superstition among heathen writers, but is extremely indignant to find it mentioned by a Christian; contending that it exclusively belongs to the ancients. _Disquis. magic._ lib. ii. quæst. xi. The following classical references may not be unacceptable. The earliest on the list will be that in Aristophanes's _Clouds_, where Strepsiades proposes the hiring of a Thessalian witch to bring down the moon and shut her in a box that he might thus evade paying his debts by the month.

"Quæ sidera excantata voce Thessalâ _Lunamque cœlo deripit_."

Horat. _epod._ v.

"_Deripere lunam_ vocibus possum meis."

Horat. _epod._ xvii.

"Et jam _luna negat toties descendere cœlo_."

Propert. II. _el._ 28.

"Cantus et _é curru lunam deducere_ tentat Et faceret, si non ære repuisa sonent."

Tibull. I. _el._ 8. and see _el._ 2.

... "_Phœbeque serena_ Non aliter diris verborum obsessa venenis Palluit, et nigris, terrenisque ignibus arsit, Et patitur tantos _cantu depressa_ labores Donec suppositas propior despumet in herbas."[2]

Lucan vi.

"Mater erat Mycale; quam _deduxisse canendo_ Sæpe reluctanti constabat _cornua lunæ_."

Ovid. _Metam._ I. xii.

"Illa reluctantem _curru deducere lunam_ Nititur"

Ovid. _epist._ vi.

"Sic _te_ regentem frena nocturni ætheris _Detrahere_ nunquam _Thessali cantus_ queant."

Senec. _Hippolyt._ Act. 2.

"Mulieres etiam lunam deducunt."

Petron. Hadrianid. 468.

In the same author the witch Enothea, describing her power, says, "_Lunæ descendit imago, carminibus deducta meis._" p. 489.

It is said that Menanda wrote a play called _the Thessalian_, in which were contained the several incantations used by witches to draw the moon from the heavens.

So when the moon was eclipsed, the Romans supposed it was from the influence of magical charms; to counteract which, as well as those already enumerated, they had recourse to the sound of brazen implements of all kinds. Juvenal alludes to this practice when he describes his talkative woman.

"... Jam nemo tubas, nemo æra fatiget, Una laboranti _poterit succurrere lunæ_."

_Sat._ vi. 441.

And see particularly Macrob. _Saturna._ l. v. c. 19. It is not improbable that the rattling of the sistrum by the priests of Isis, or the moon, may be in some way or other connected with this practice, or have even been its origin.

In proportion to the advance of science, it will, no doubt, be found that the Greeks and Romans borrowed more than is commonly imagined from the nations of the East, where the present practice seems to have been universal. Thus the Chinese believe that during eclipses of the sun and moon these celestial bodies are attacked by a great serpent, to drive away which they strike their gongs or brazen drums; the Turks and even some of the American Indians entertain the same opinion. This is perhaps a solution of the common subject on Chinese porcelain, of a dragon pursuing a ball of fire, the symbol of the sun. The Hindoos suppose that a serpent, born from the head of a giant slain by Vishnu, is permitted by that deity to attack the sun. Krishna the Hindoo sun is sometimes represented combating this monster, whence the Greek story of Apollo and the serpent Python may have been derived.

THE FOOL.

The character of Trinculo, who in the _dramatis personæ_ is called a _jester_, is not very well discriminated in the course of the play itself. As he is only associated with Caliban and the drunken butler, there was no opportunity of exhibiting him in the legitimate character of a professed fool; but at the conclusion of the play it appears that he was in the service of the king of Naples as well as Stephano. On this account therefore, and for the reasons already offered in page 20, he must be regarded as an allowed domestic buffoon, and should be habited on the stage in the usual manner.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Malone's _Shaksp._ vol. i. part i. p. 379.

[2] The last line is a good comment on the "lunam despumari" of Apuleius speaking of the effects of magical mutterings.

TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.

ACT I.

SCENE 1. Page 170.

PRO. For I will be thy _beadsman_, Valentine.

A beadsman is one who offers up prayers to heaven for the welfare of another. Many of the ancient petitions to great men were addressed to them by their "poor daily orators and beadsmen." _To count one's beads_, means, in the Romish church, to offer up as many prayers to God and the Virgin Mary as the priest or some voluntary penance or obligation shall have enjoined; and that no mistake may happen in the number, they are reckoned by means of certain balls strung in a kind of chaplet, and hence in the English language termed _beads_, from the Saxon beaꝺ, a prayer. There is much difference of opinion among ecclesiastical writers as to the origin of this practice. Some ascribe its invention to Peter the hermit in the eleventh century, others to Venerable Bede, misled probably by the affinity of the name. Monsieur Fleury more rationally conceives it to be not older than the eleventh century; but the probability is, that it was imported into Europe by the crusaders, who found it among the Mahometans. The latter use it wherever their religion has been planted, and there is even reason for supposing that it originated among the natives of Hindostan. These chaplets made of beads are called _rosaries_ when they are used in prayers to the Virgin. The term _bead_, as applied to the materials of which necklaces, &c. are made, seems therefore to have been borrowed from the chaplet of rosaries in question.

SCENE 1. Page 171.

PRO. Over the boots? Nay, _give me not the boots_.

An allusion, as it is supposed, to the diabolical torture of the boot. Not a great while before this play was written, it had been inflicted in the presence of King James on one Dr. Fian, a supposed wizard, who was charged with raising the storms that the King encountered in his return from Denmark. In the very curious pamphlet which contains the account of this transaction it is stated that "hee was with all convenient speed, by commandement, convaied againe to the _torment of the bootes_, wherein he continued a long time, and did abide so many blowes in them, that his legges were crushte and beaten togeather as small as might bee, and the bones and flesh so brused, that the bloud and marrowe spouted forth in great abundance, whereby they were made unserviceable for ever." The unfortunate man was afterwards burned. But the above instrument of torture was not, as suggested in one of the notes on this occasion, "used only in Scotland;" it was known in France, and in all probability imported from that country. The following representation of it is copied from Millæus's _Praxis criminis persequendi_, Paris, 1541, folio. This instrument of torture continued to be used in Scotland so late as the end of the 17th century. See _A hind let loose_, 1687, 8vo, pp. 186, 198, in the frontispiece to which work there is an indistinct representation of the boot. It is said to have been imported from Russia by a Scotchman. See Maclaurin's _Arguments in remarkable cases_, 4to, p. xxxvii.

SCENE 1. Page 171.

VAL. ... To be In love, where scorn is bought with groans: coy looks, With heart-sore sighs; one fading moment's mirth, With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights: If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain; If lost, why then a grievous labour won; However, but a folly bought with wit, Or else a wit by folly vanquished.

Thus explained by Dr. Johnson. "This love will end in a _foolish action_, to produce which you are long to spend your _wit_, or it will end in the loss of your wit, which will be overpowered by the folly of love;" an explanation that is in part very questionable. The poet simply means that love itself is sometimes a foolish object dearly attained in exchange for reason; at others the human judgment subdued by folly. He is speaking of love abstractedly, and not alluding to that of Proteus.

SCENE 1. Page 178.

SPEED. I thank you, you have _testern'd_ me.