Part 32

"I am always running in the way of evil fortune, _like the fool in the play_," says Dr. Johnson. There is certainly no allusion to any _play_. See the note in p. 146.

SCENE 2. Page 456.

JUL. That _run-away's eyes_ may wink.

A great deal of ingenious criticism has been expended in endeavouring to ascertain the meaning of this expression. Dr. Warburton thought the _runaway_ in question was the _sun_; but Mr. Heath has most completely disproved this opinion. Mr. Steevens considers the passage as extremely elliptical, and regards the _night_ as the _runaway_; making Juliet wish that its eyes, the stars, might retire to prevent discovery. Mr. Justice Blackstone can perceive nothing _optative_ in the lines, but simply a _reason_ for Juliet's wish for a cloudy night; yet according to this construction of the passage, the grammar of it is not very easily to be discovered.

Whoever attentively reads over Juliet's speech will be inclined to think, or even be altogether satisfied, that the _whole tenor_ of it is _optative_. With respect to calling the night a runaway, one might surely ask how it can possibly be so termed in _an abstract point of view_? Is it a greater fugitive than the morning, the noon, or the evening? Mr. Steevens lays great stress on Shakspeare's having before called the night a runaway in _The Merchant of Venice_,

"For the close night doth play the _runaway_;"

but there it was already far advanced, and might therefore with great propriety be said to _play the runaway_; here it was not begun. The same remark will apply to the other passage cited by Mr. Steevens from _The fair maid of the Exchange_. Where then is this _runaway_ to be found? or can it be Juliet herself? She who had just been secretly married to the enemy of her parents might with some propriety be termed a _runaway from her duty_; but she had not abandoned her native pudency. She therefore invokes the night to veil those rites which she was about to perform, and to bring her Romeo to her arms in darkness and in silence. The lines that immediately follow may be thought to favour this interpretation; and the whole Scene may possibly bring to the reader's recollection an interesting part in the beautiful story of Cupid and Psyche.

SCENE 5. Page 483.

JUL. Hunting thee hence with _hunt's-up_ to the day.

Of the notes on this line, that by Mr. Malone is most to the point. He has shown from Cotgrave, that the _hunt's-up_ was "a morning song to a new married woman, &c.;" and it was, no doubt, an imitation of the tune to wake the hunters, noticed by Mr. Steevens, as was that in the celebrated Scotish _booke of godly and spirituall songs_, beginning,

"With hunts up, with huntis up, It is now perfite day: Jesus our king is gane in hunting, Quha likes to speed they may."

It is not improbable that the following was the identical song composed by the person of the name of Gray mentioned in Mr. Ritson's note. It occurs in a collection entitled _Hunting, hawking, &c._, already cited in the course of the remarks on _The merry wives of Windsor_. There was likewise a country dance with a similar title.

CHO. { The hunt is up, the hunt is up, { Sing merrily wee, the hunt is up; The birds they sing, The Deare they fling, Hey, nony nony-no: The hounds they crye, The hunters flye, Hey trolilo, trololilo. The hunt is up, _ut supra_.

The wood resounds To heere the hounds, Hey, nony nony-no: The rocks report This merry sport, Hey, trolilo, trololilo. CHO. { The hunt is up, the hunt is up, { Sing merrily wee, the hunt is up.

Then hye apace, Unto the chase, Hey nony, nony-no; Whilst every thing Doth sweetly sing, Hey trolilo, trololilo. CHO. { The hunt is up, the hunt is up, { Sing merrily wee, the hunt is up.

SCENE 5. Page 496.

NURSE. ... an eagle, madam, Hath not so _green_, so quick, so fair an eye.

Besides the authorities already produced in favour of _green_ eyes, and which show the impropriety of Hanmer's alteration to _keen_, a hundred others might, if necessary, be given. The early French poets are extremely fond of alluding to them under the title of _yeux vers_, which Mons. Le Grand has in vain attempted to convert into _yeux vairs_, or grey eyes.[22] It must be confessed that the scarcity, if not total absence of such eyes in modern times, might well have excited the doubts of the above intelligent and agreeable writer. For this let naturalists, if they can, account. It is certain that green eyes were found among the ancients. Plautus thus alludes to them in his _Curculio_:

"Qui hic est homo Cum collativo ventre, atque oculis _herbeis_?"

Lord Verulam says, "Great eyes with a _green circle_ between the white and the white of the eye, signify long life."--_Hist. of life and death_, p. 124. Villa Real, a Portuguese, has written a treatise in praise of them, and they are even said to exist now among his countrymen. See Pinkerton's _Geography_, vol. i. p. 556, and Steevens's Shakspeare, vol. v. 164, 203.

ACT IV.

SCENE 2. Page 508.

CAP. Where have you been _gadding_?

Mr. Steevens remarks that "the primitive sense of this word was to straggle from house to house and collect money under pretence of singing carols to the blessed Virgin;" and he quotes a note on Milton's Lycidas by Mr. Warton: but this derivation seems too refined. Mr. Warton's authority is an old register at Gadderston, in these words: "Receyvid at the _gadyng_ with Saynte Mary songe at Crismas." If the original were attentively examined, it would perhaps turn out that the word in question has some mark of contraction over it, which would convert it into _gaderyng_, i. e. gathering or collecting money, and not simply _going about from house to house_ according to Mr. Warton's explanation.

SCENE 5. Page 525.

FRI. ... and stick your _rosemary_ On this fair corse----

This plant was used in various ways at funerals. Being an evergreen, it was regarded as an emblem of the soul's immortality. Thus in Cartwright's _Ordinary_, Act V. Scene 1:

"... If there be Any so kind as to accompany My body to the earth, let them not want For entertainment; pr'ythee see they have A _sprig of rosemary_ dip'd in common water To smell to as they walk along the streets."

In an obituary kept by Mr. Smith, secondary of one of the Compters, and preserved among the Sloanian MSS. in the British Museum, No. 886, is the following entry: "Janʸ. 2. 1671. Mr. Cornelius Bee bookseller in Little Britain died; buried Jan. 4. at Great St. Bartholomew's without a sermon, without wine or wafers, only gloves and _rosmary_."

And Mr. Gay, when describing Blouzelinda's funeral, records that

"Sprigg'd rosemary the lads and lasses bore."

SCENE 5. Page 528.

PET. No money, on my faith; but the _gleek_: I will _give_ you the _minstrel_.

From what has been said in page 118, it becomes necessary to withdraw so much of a former note as relates to the _game_ of gleek. _To give the minstrel_, is no more than a punning phrase for _giving the gleek_. Minstrels and jesters were anciently called _gleekmen_ or _gligmen_.

SCENE 5. Page 529.

PET. When _griping grief_ the heart doth wound And _doleful dumps_ the mind oppress.

The following stanza from one of Whitney's _Emblems_, 1586, 4to, is not very dissimilar from that of Richard Edwards, communicated in the note by Sir John Hawkins, and may serve to confirm the propriety of Mr. Steevens's observation, that the epithet _griping_ was not calculated to excite laughter in the time of Shakspeare.

"If griping greifes have harbour in thie breste And pininge cares laie seige unto the same, Or straunge conceiptes doe reave thee of thie rest, And daie and nighte do bringe thee out of frame: Then choose a freinde, and doe his counsaile crave, Least secret sighes, doe bringe untimelie grave."

_Griping griefs_ and _doleful dumps_ are very thickly interspersed in Grange's _Golden Aphroditis_, 1577, 4to, and in many other places. They were great favourites; but griefs were not always _griping_. Thus in Turbervile's translation of _Ovid's epistle from Hero to Leander_;

"Which if I heard, of troth For _grunting_ griefe I die."

ACT V.

SCENE 1. Page 536.

ROM. An _alligator_ stuff'd----

Our dictionaries supply no materials towards the etymology of this word, which was probably introduced into the language by some of our early voyagers to the Spanish or Portuguese settlements in the newly discovered world. They would hear the Spaniards discoursing of the animal by the name of _el lagarto_, or the lizard; Lat. _lacerta_; and on their return home, they would inform their countrymen that this sort of crocodile was called an _alligator_. It would not be difficult to trace other corrupted words in a similar manner.

STORY OF THE PLAY.

It has hitherto remained unnoticed, that one of the material incidents in this drama is to be found in _The love adventures of Abrocomas and Anthia_, usually called the _Ephesiacs_ of Xenophon of Ephesus. The heroine of this romance, separated, by a series of misfortunes, from her husband, falls into the hands of robbers, from whom she is rescued by a young nobleman called Perilaus. He becomes enamoured of her; and she, fearing violence, affects to consent to marry him; but on the arrival of the appointed time, swallows a poisonous draught which she had procured from Eudoxus, an old physician and the friend of Perilaus, to whom she had communicated the secret of her history. Much lamentation is made for her death, and she is conveyed with great pomp to a sepulchre. As she had only taken a sleeping potion, she soon awakes in the tomb, which, on account of the riches it contained, is plundered by some thieves, who also carry her off. This work was certainly not published nor translated in the time of Luigi da Porto, the original narrator of the story of _Romeo and Juliet_; but there is no reason why he might not have seen a copy of the original in manuscript.

Two incidents in this Greek romance are likewise to be found in _Cymbeline_; one of which is the following: Anthia having become the slave of Manto and her husband, he is captivated with her beauty; and this coming to the knowledge of the jealous Manto, she orders a trusty servant to carry Anthia into a wood and put her to death. This man, like the servant in Boccaccio, and Pisanio in Shakspeare, commiserates the situation of Anthia, spares her life, and provides the means for her future safety. A similar occurrence is introduced into some of the tales of the middle ages. The other is the above-mentioned draught of poison swallowed by Imogen, as by Anthia, though not with precisely the same effect. As it is not to be found either in Boccaccio or in the old story-book of _Westward for smelts_, one might suspect that some novel, imitated from the _Ephesiacs_, was existing in the time of Shakspeare, though now unknown.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] Fabliaux ou contes, tom. iv. p. 215.

HAMLET.

ACT I.

SCENE 1. Page 9.

MAR. Thou art a _scholar_, speak to it, Horatio.

The reason why the common people believed that ghosts were only to be addressed by scholars seems to have been, that the exorcisms of troublesome spirits were usually performed in _Latin_.

SCENE 1. Page 21.

HOR. The _cock_ that is the _trumpet to the morn_, Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat _Awake the God of day_; and at his warning, Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, _The extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine_.

Besides the hymn of Prudentius referred to in Dr. Farmer's note, there is another said to have been composed by Saint Ambrose, and formerly used in the Salisbury service. It contains the following lines, which so much resemble Horatio's speech, that one might almost suppose Shakspeare had seen them:

"_Preco diei jam sonat_, Noctis profundæ pervigil; Nocturna lux viantibus, A nocte noctem segregans. _Hoc excitatus Lucifer, Solvit polum caligine; Hoc omnis errorum chorus Viam nocendi deserit. Gallo canente_ spes redit, &c."

See _Expositio hymnorum secundum usum Sarum_, pr. by R. Pynson, n. d. 4to, fo. vii. b. The epithets _extravagant_ and _erring_ are highly poetical and appropriate, and seem to prove that Shakspeare was not altogether ignorant of the Latin language.

SCENE 2. Page 35.

HAM. Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His _canon_ 'gainst self slaughter.

Mr. Steevens says, "there are yet those who suppose the old reading (cannon, in the sense of artillery) to be the true one." He himself was not of the number. It must be owned that _fixing a cannon_ is an odd mode of vengeance on the part of the Deity; yet it is still more difficult to conceive in what manner this instrument could operate in avenging _suicide_. The pedants of Hierocles, who were the Gothamites of their time, might, if now existing, be competent to explain all this; or, indeed, we might ourselves suppose that suicides could be blown into atoms as the seapoys sometimes are, by tying them to the cannon's mouth, a method equally humane with the practice of driving stakes through their bodies. Mr. Malone's happy quotation has for ever _fixed_ the proper meaning.

SCENE 2. Page 40.

HAM. ... the _funeral bak'd meats_ Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

The practice of making entertainments at funerals which prevailed in this and other countries, and which is not even at present quite disused in some of the northern counties of England, was certainly borrowed from the _cœna feralis_ of the Romans, alluded to in Juvenal's fifth satire, and in the laws of the twelve tables. It consisted of an offering of a small plate of milk, honey, wine, flowers, &c., to the ghost of the deceased. In the instances of heroes and other great characters, the same custom appears to have prevailed among the Greeks. With us the appetites of the living are consulted on this occasion. In the North this feast is called an _arval_ or _arvil-supper_; and the loaves that are sometimes distributed among the poor, _arval-bread_. Not many years since one of these arvals was celebrated in a village in Yorkshire at a public-house, the sign of which was the family arms of a nobleman whose motto is VIRTUS POST FUNERA VIVIT. The undertaker, who, though a clerk, was no scholar, requested a gentleman present to explain to him the meaning of these Latin words, which he readily and facetiously did in the following manner: _Virtus_, a parish clerk, _vivit_, lives well, _post funera_, at an _arval_. The latter word is apparently derived from some lost Teutonic term that indicated a funeral pile on which the body was burned in times of Paganism. Thus _ærill_ in Islandic signifies the inside of an oven. The common parent seems to have been _ar_, fire; whence _ara_, an altar of fire, _ardeo_, _aridus_, &c. &c. So the pile itself was called _ara_ by Virgil, Æn. vi. 177:

"Haud mora, festinant flentes; _aramque sepulchri_ Congerere arboribus, cœloque educere certant."

SCENE 2. Page 41.

HAM. He was a man, take him for all in all, _I_ shall not look upon his like again.

In further support of the proposed elegant emendation, "_Eye_ shall not look, &c.," this passage in 1 Corinth. ch ii. v. 9, may be adduced, "_Eye_ hath not seen, nor ear heard, the things which he hath prepared for them that love him." An objection of some weight may however be made to this change; which is, that in recitation some ambiguity might arise, or at least the force of it would not be perceived; whereas the other reading could not be mistaken.

SCENE 3. Page 51.

POL. But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade.

In Taverner's _Proverbes or Adagies, gathered out of the Chiliades of Erasmus_, 1569, 12mo, is the following adage: "_Ne cuivis porrigas dexteram._ Holde not forth thy hande to every man. He meaneth wee should not unadvisedlie admitte every body into our frendship and familiaritie." In the margin of the copy from which this extract is made, some person has _written_ the above lines from Hamlet, on which the whole serves as an excellent comment, supporting Dr. Johnson's explanation of them in a remarkable manner.

SCENE 4. Page 59.

HAM. The king doth wake to-night, and takes his _rouse_.

This word is used in the various significations of a riotous noise, a drunken debauch, and a large portion of liquor. We had it probably from our Saxon or Danish progenitors; and though the original word is lost it remains in the German _rausch_. Hence our _carouse_; _roister_ is of the same family, and perhaps the word _row_, which was very much used a few years since. The Greeks too had their καρωσις, _nimia ebrietas_.

SCENE 4. Page 60.

HAM. And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge.

Thus Cleaveland in his _Fuscara, or The bee errant_,

"Tuning his draughts with drowsie hums _As Danes carowse by kettle-drums_."

SCENE 4. Page 60.

HAM. Keeps _wassel_----

As the whole that appertains to this ancient, and, as connected with convivial manners, interesting word, lies scattered in various places, and has been detailed by writers whose opinions are extremely discordant, an attempt seemed necessary to digest within a reasonable compass the most valuable of the materials on the subject. There cannot be the smallest doubt that the term itself is to be sought for in the well-known story of Vortigern and Rowena, or Ronix, the daughter of Hengist; the earliest authority for which is that of Walter Calenius, who supplied the materials for Geoffrey of Monmouth's history. He relates that on Vortigern's first interview with the lady, she kneeled before him, and presenting a cup of wine, said to him, "Lord king, _wacht heil_," or in purer Saxon _wæs hæl_; literally, be health, or health be to you! As the king was unacquainted with the Saxon language, he inquired the meaning of these words; and being told that they wished him health, and that he should answer them by saying _drinc heil_, he did so, and commanded Rowena to drink. Then, taking the cup from her hand, he kissed the damsel and pledged her. The historian adds, that from that time to his own the custom remained in Britain that whoever drank to another at a feast said _wacht heil_, and he that immediately after received the cup answered _drinc heil_. Robert of Brunne, in translating this part of Geoffrey of Monmouth, has preserved a curious addition to it. He states that Vortigern, not comprehending the words of Rowena, demanded their meaning from one of his Britons, who immediately explained to him the Saxon custom as follows:

"This es ther custom and ther gest, Whan thei are at the ale or fest, Ilk man that lovis qware him think, Salle say _Wosseille_, and to him drink. He that bidis salle say, _Wassaile_; The tother salle say again, _Drink haille_. That sais _Wosseille_ drinkis of the cop, Kissand his felaw he gives it up; _Drinheille_, he sais, and drinks therof, Kissand him in bourd and skof. The king said as the knight gan ken _Drinkheille_, smiland on Rouewen, Rouwen drank as hire list, And gave the king, sine him kist. There was the first wassaille in dede And that first of fame yede Of that wassaille men told grete tale, And wassaille whan thei were at ale And drinkheille to tham that drank Thus was wassaille tane to thank."

An old metrical fragment preserved by Hearne in his glossary to Robert of Gloucester's chronicle, carries the practice of wassailing much higher, even to the time of Saint Alban in the third century:

"In that tyme weteth welle, Cam ferst wassayle and drynkehayl In to this londe, withowte wene, Thurghe a mayde, brygh and schene Sche was cleput mayde Ynge."

The chronicler proceeds to relate a story of this Ynge, who quitted Saxony with several others of her countrymen on account of hunger, and, arriving in Britain, obtained of the king as much land as she should be able to cover with a bull's hide. She afterwards invited the king and his nobles to a feast, and _giving him wassel_, treacherously slew him, her companions following the example by murdering the nobles. By these means she obtained possession of the whole kingdom, which was from her afterwards called _Yngland_. This statement is unworthy of notice in an historical point of view, being manifestly a corrupt account of the arrival of Hengist as related by Geoffrey of Monmouth. But the story of Vortigern is not improbable, and has at least furnished the origin of the words _wæs hæl_ and _drinc hæl_, as used at convivial meetings in this country; for whatever may have been said or imagined concerning any previous custom of health-drinking among the Saxons or other German nations, it is certain that no equivalent term with our _wassel_ is to be found in any of the Teutonic dialects.