Chapter 7

II.i.82 (161,3) [Am I so round with you, as you with me] He plays upon the word _round_, which signified _spherical_ applied to himself, and _unrestrained_, or _free in speech_ or _action_, spoken of his mistress. So the king, in _Hamlet_, bids the queen be _round_ with her son.

II.i.100 (161,5) [too unruly deer] The ambiguity of _deer_ and _dear_ is borrowed, poor as it is, by Waller, in his poem on the _Ladies Girdle_.

"This was my heav'n's extremest sphere, "This pale that held my lovely deer."

II.i.101 (161,6) [poor I am but his stale] The word _stale_, in our authour, used as a substantive, means, not something offered to _allure_ or _attract_, but something _vitiated_ with _use_, something of which the best part has been enjoyed and consumed.

II.ii.86 (166,4) [Not a man of those, but he hath the wit to lose his hair] That is, _Those who have more hair than wit_, are easily entrapped by loose women, and suffer the consequences of lewdness, one of which, in the first appearance of the disease in Europe, was the loss of hair.

II.ii.173 (169,6) [Be it my wrong, you are from me exempt] Exempt, separated, parted. The sense is, _If I am doomed to suffer the wrong of separation, yet injure not with contempt me who am already injured_.

II.ii.210 (171,1) [And shrive you] That is, I will _call you to confession_, and make you tell your tricks.

III.i.4 (172,2) [carkanet] seems to have been a necklace or rather chain, perhaps hanging down double from the neck. So Lovelace in his poem,

_The empress spreads her_ carcanets.

III.i.15 (173,3) [Marry, so it doth appear By the wrongs I suffer, and the blows I bear] [T: don't appear] I do not think this emendation necessary. He first says, that his _wrongs_ and _blows_ prove him an _ass_; but immediately, with a correction of his former sentiment, such as may be hourly observed in conversation, he observes that, if he had been an ass, he should, when he was _kicked_, have _kicked_ again.

III.i.101 (177,7) [supposed by the common rout] For _suppose_ I once thought it might be more commodious to substitute _supported_; but there is no need of change: _supposed_ is _founded on supposition_, made by conjecture.

III.i.105 (178,8) [For slander lives upon succession] The line apparently wants two syllables: what they were, cannot now be known. The line may be filled up according to the reader's fancy, as thus:

_For_ lasting _slander lives upon succession_.

III.ii.27 (180,3) ['Tis holy sport to be a little vain] is _light of tongue, not veracious_.

III.ii.64 (181,2) [My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim] When be calls the girl his _only heaven on the earth_, he utters the common cant of lovers. When he calls her _his heaven's claim_, I cannot understand him. Perhaps he means that which he asks of heaven.

III.ii.125 (184,5)

[_S. Ant._ Where France? _S. Dro._ In her forehead; arm'd and reverted, making war against her hair]

[T, from the first Folio: heir] With this correction and explication Dr. Warburton concurs, and sir T. Hammer thinks an equivocation intended, though he retains _hair_ in the text. Yet surely they have all lost the sense by looking beyond it. Our authour, in my opinion, only sports with an allusion, in which he takes too much delight, and means that his mistress had the French disease. The ideas are rather too offensive to be dilated. By a forehead _armed_, he means covered with incrusted eruptions: by reverted, he means having the hair turning backwards. An equivocal word must have senses applicable to both the subjects to which it is applied. Both _forehead_ and _France_ might in some sort make war against their _hair_, but how did the _forehead_ make war against its _heir_? The sense which I have given immediately occurred to me, and will, I believe, arise to every reader who is contented with the meaning that lies before him, without sending out conjecture in search of refinements.

IV.ii.19 (192,9) [sere] that is, _dry_, withered.

IV.ii.22 (192,1) [Stigmatical in making] This is, _marked_ or _stigmatized_ by nature with deformity, as a token of his vicious disposition.

IV.ii.35 (193,3) [A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough] [T: A fiend, a fury] There were fairies like _hobgoblins_, pitiless and rough, and described as malevolent and mischievous, (see 1765, III,143,3)

IV.ii.39 (193,5) [A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry-foot well] To _run counter_ is to _run backward_, by mistaking the course of the animal pursued; to _draw dry-foot_ is, I believe, to pursue by the _track_ or _prick of the foot_; to _run counter_ and _draw dry-foot well are_, therefore, inconsistent. The jest consists in the ambiguity of the word _counter_, which means the _wrong way in_* _the chase._ and a _prison_ in London. The officer that arrested him was a serjeant of the counter. For the congruity of this jest with the scene of action, let our authour answer.

IV.iii.13 (196,9) [what, have you got the picture of old Adam new apparel'd] [T: got rid of the picture] The explanation is very good, but the text does not require to be amended.

IV.iii.27 (`is rest to do more exploits with his mace than a morris pike] [W: a Maurice-pike] This conjecture is very ingenious, yet the commentator talks unnecessarily of the _rest of a musket._ by which he makes the hero of the speech set up the _rest_ of a _musket,_ to do exploits with a _pike._ The rest of a _pike_ was a common term, and signified, I believe, the manner in which it was fixed to receive the rush of the enemy. A _morris-pike_ was a pike used in a morris or a military dance, and with which great _exploits_ were _done,_ that is, great feats of dexterity were shewn. There is no need of change.

IV.iv.78 (202,3) [kitchen-vestal] Her charge being like that of the vestal virgins, to keep the fire burning.

V.1.137 (210,6) [important letters]_Important_ seems to be for _importunate._ (1773)

V.i.298 (216,2) [time's deformed hand Have written strange defeatures in my face] _Defeature_ is the privative of _feature._ The meaning is, time hath cancelled my features.

V.i.406 (220,7) [After so long grief such nativity!] We should surely read. _After so long grief, such_ festivity.

_Nativity_ lying so near, and the termination being the same of both words, the mistake was easy.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

I.i.27 (226,3) [no faces truer] That is, none _honester,_ none _more sincere._

I.i.40 (227,7) [challenged Cupid at the flight] The disuse of the bow makes this passage obscure. Benedick is represented as challenging Cupid at archery. To challenge _at the flight is,_ I believe, to wager who shall shoot the arrow furthest without any particular mark. To _challenge at the bird-bolt,_ seems to mean the same as to challenge at children's archery, with snail arrows such as are discharged at birds. In Twelfth Night Lady Olivia opposes a _bird-bolt_ to a _cannon-bullet,_ the lightest to the heaviest of missive weapons.

I.i.66 (228,9) [four of his five wits] In our author's time _wit_ was the general term for intellectual powers. So Davies on the Soul.

Wit, _seeking truth from cause to cause ascends._ _And never rests till it the first attain;_ Will, _seeking good, finds many middle ends, But never stays till it the last do gain._

And in another part,

_But if a phrenzy do possess the brain, It so disturbs and blots the form of things, As fantasy proves altogether vain, And to the_ wit, _no true relation brings. Then doth the_ wit, _admitting all for true, Build fond conclusions on those idle grounds;_--

The _wits_ seem to have reckoned five, by analogy to the five senses, or the five inlets of ideas.

I.i.79 (229,4) [the gentleman is not in your books] This is a phrase used, I believe, by more than understand it. _To be in one's books is to be in one's_ codicils _or_ will, _to be among friends set down for legacies_.

I.i.82 (230,5) [young squarer] A _squarer_ I take to be a cholerick, quarrelsome fellow, for in this sense Shakespeare uses the word to _square_. So in Midsummer Night's Dream it is said of Oberon and Titalia, that _they never meet but they_ square. So the sense may be, _Is there no_ hot-blooded _youth that will keep him company through all his mad pranks_?

I.i.103 (231,6) [You embrace your charge] That is your _burthen_, your _incumbrunce_.

I.i.185 (233,7) [to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder] I know not whether I conceive the jest here intended. Claudio hints his love of Hero. Benedick asks whether he is serious, or whether he only means to jest, and tell them that _Cupid is a good hare-finder, and Vulcan a rare carpenter_. A man praising a pretty lady in jest, may shew the quick sight of Cupid, but what has it to do with the _carpentry_ of Vulcan? Perhaps the thought lies no deeper than this, _Do you mean to tell us as new what we all know already?_

I.i.200 (234,8) [wear his cap with suspicion?] That is, subject his head to the disquiet of jealousy.

I.i.217 (235,1) [_Claud_. If this were so, so were it uttered] This and the three next speeches I do not well understand; there seems something omitted relating to Hero's consent, or to Claudio's marriage, else I know not what Claudio can wish _not to be otherwise_. The copies all read alike. Perhaps it may be better thus,

Claud. _If this were so, so were it_. Bene. _Uttered like the old tale_, &c.

Claudio gives a sullen answer, _if it is so, so it is_. Still there seems something omitted which Claudio and Pedro concur in wishing.

I.i.243 (236,3) [but that I will have a recheate winded in my forehead] That is, _I will wear a horn on my forehead which the huntsman may blow_. A _recheate_ is the sound by which dogs are called back. Shakespeare had no mercy upon the poor cuckold, his _horn_ is an inexhaustible subject of merriment.

1.1.258 (236,4) [notable argument] An eminent subject for satire.

1.1.259 (237,5) [Adam] Adam Bell was a companion of Robin Hood, as may be seen in Robin Hood's Garland; in which, if I do not mistake, are these lines,

_For he brought Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough, And William of Cloudeslea, To shoot with this forester for forty marks, And the forester beat them all three._

(see 1765, III,182,2)

I.i.290 (238,4) [ere you flout old ends any further, examine your conscience] _Before you endeavour to distinguish yourself any more by antiquated allusions, examine whether you can fairly claim them for your own_. This, I think is the meaning; or it may be understood in another sense, _examine, if your sarcasms do not touch yourself._

I.iii.14 (241,6) [I cannot hide what I am] This is one of our authour's natural touches. An envious and unsocial mind, too proud to give pleasure, and too sullen to receive it, always endeavours to hide its malignity from the world and from itself, under the plainness of simple honesty, or the dignity of haughty independence.

I.iii.19 (241,7) [claw no man in his humour] To _claw_ is to flatter. So _the pope's claw-backs_, in bishop Jewel, are the pope's _flatterers_. The sense is the same in the proverb, _Mulus mulum scabit_.

I.iii.28 (242,8) [I had rather be a canker in a hedge, than a rose in his grace] A _canker_ is the _canker_ rose, _dog-rose, cynosbatus,_ or _hip_. The sense is, I would rather live in obscurity the wild life of nature, than owe dignity or estimation to my brother. He still continues his wish of gloomy independence. But what is the meaning of the expression, _a rose in his grace_? if he was a _rose_ of himself, his brother's _grace_ or _favour_ could not degrade him. I once read thus, _I had rather be a canker in a hedge, than a rose in his_ garden; that is, I had rather be what nature makes me, however mean, than owe any exaltation or improvement to my brother's kindness or cultivation. But a less change will be sufficient: I think it should be read, _I had rather be a canker in a hedge, than a rose by his grace_.

II.i.3 (244,1) [I never can see him, but I am heart-burn'd an hour after] The pain commonly called the _heart-burn_, proceeds from an _acid_ humour in the stomach, and is therefore properly enough imputed to _tart_ looks.

II.i.53 (245,3) [Well then, go you into hell] Of the two next speeches Mr. Warburton says, _All this impious nonsense thrown to the bottom is the players, and foisted in without rhyme or reason_. He therefore puts them in the margin. They do not deserve indeed so honourable a place, yet I am afraid they are too much in the manner of our authour, who is sometimes trying to purchase merriment at too dear a rate. (see 1765, III,190,9)

II.i.73 (246,4) [if the prince be too important] _Important_ here, and in many other places, is _importunate_.

II.i.99 (247,6) [My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove] [T: house is love] This amendation, thus impressed with all the power of his eloquence and reason, Theobald found in the quarto edition of 1600, which he professes to have seen; and in the first folio, the _l_ and the _I_ are so much alike, that the printers, perhaps, used the same type for either letter. (1773)

II.i.143 (249,2) [his gift is in devising impossible slanders] [W: impassible] _Impossible_ slanders are, I suppose, such slanders as, from their absurdity and impossibility, bring their own confutation with them.

II.i.195 (251,4) [usurer's chain] I know not whether the _chain_ was, in our authour's time, the common ornament of wealthy citizens, or whether he satirically uses _usurer_ and _alderman_ as synonymous terms.

II.i.214 (252,5) [It is the base, the bitter disposition of Beatrice, that puts the world into her person] That is, _It is the disposition of Beatrice, who takes upon her to personate the world, and therefore represents the world as saying what she only says herself_.

_Base, tho bitter_. I do not understand how _base_ and _bitter_ are inconsistent, or why what is _bitter_ should not be _base_. I believe, we may safely read, _It is the base_, the _bitter_ disposition.

II.i.253 (253,8) [such impossible conveyance] [W: impassible] I know not what to propose. _Impossible_ seems to have no meaning here, and for _impassible_ I have not found any authority. Spenser uses the word _importable_ in a sense very congruous to this passage, for _insupportable_, or _not to be sustained_.

_Both him charge on either side, With hideous strokes and_ importable _power, Which forced him his ground to traverse wide_.

It may be easily imagined, that the transcribers would change a word so unusual, into that word most like it, which they could readily find. It must be however confessed, that _importable_ appears harsh to our ears, and I wish a happier critick may find a better word.

Sir Tho. Hammer reads _impetuous_, which will serve the purpose well enough, but is not likely to have been changed to _impossible_.

_Importable_ was a word not peculiar to Spenser, but used by the last translators of the Apocrypha, and therefore such a word as Shakespeare may be supposed to have written. (1773) II.i.330 (256,2) [Thus goes every one to the world but I, and I am sun-burn'd] What is it, _to go the world_? perhaps, to enter by marriage into a settled state: but why is the unmarry'd lady _sun-burnt_? I believe we should read, _Thus goes every one to the wood_ but I, and I am sun-burnt_. Thus does every one but I find a shelter, and I am left exposed to wind and _sun. The nearest way to the_ wood, is a phrase for the readiest means to any end. It is said of a woman, who accepts a worse match than those which she had refused, that she has passed through the _wood_, and at last taken a crooked stick. But conjectural criticism has always something to abate its confidence. Shakespeare, in All's well that Ends well, uses the phrase, _to go to the world_, for _marriage_. So that my emendation depends only on the opposition of _wood_ to _sun-burnt_.

II.i.380 (258,4) [to bring signior Benedick, and the lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection, the one with another] _A mountain of affection with one another_ is a strange expression, yet I know not well how to change it. Perhaps it was originally written, _to bring Benedick into a mooting of affection_; to bring them not to any more _mootings_ of contention, but to a _mooting_ or conversation of love. This reading is confirmed by the preposition _with; a mountain with each other,_ or _affection with each other,_ cannot be used, but _a mooting with each other_ is proper and regular.

II.iii.104 (265,7) [but, that she loves him, with an enraged affection, it is past the infinite of thought] [W: the definite of] Here are difficulties raised only to shew how easily they can be removed. The plain sense is, _I know not what to think_ otherwise, _but that she loves him with_ an enraged _affection: It_ (this affection) [is past the infinite of thought. Here are no abrupt stops, or imperfect sentences. _Infinite_ may well enough stand; it is used by more careful writers for _indefinite_; and the speaker only means, that _thought_, though in itself _unbounded_, cannot reach or estimate the degree of her passion.

II.iii.146 (267,8) [O, she tore the letter into a thousand half-pence] [i.e. into a thousand pieces of the same bigness.] This is farther explained by a passage in As you Like it.

--_There were none principal; they were all like one

another as_ half-pence _are_. [Theobald.] How the quotation explains the passage, to which it is applied, I cannot discover.

II.iii.188 (268,9) [contemptible spirit] That is, a temper inclined to scorn and contempt. It has been before remarked, that our authour uses his verbal adjectives with great licence. There is therefore no need of changing the word with sir T. Hammer to _contemptuous_.

III.i.52 (273,3) [Misprising] Despising, contemning.

III.i.96 (275,8) [argument] This word seems here to signify _discourse_, or, the _powers_ of reasoning. III.i.104 (275,7) [She's lim'd] She is ensnared and entangled as a sparrow with _birdlime_.

III.i.107 (275,9) [Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand] This image is taken from falconry. She had been charged with being as wild as _haggards of the rock_; she therefore says, that _wild_ as her _heart_ is, she will tame it _to the hand_.

III.ii.31 (277,2) [There is no appearance of fancy in him, unless it be a fancy that he hath to strange disguises] Here is a play upon the word _fancy_, which Shakespeare uses for _love_ as well as for _humour, caprice_, or _affectation_.

III.ii.71 (278,3) [She shall be buried with her face upwards] [T: heels upwards] This emendation, which appears to me very specious, is rejected by Dr. Warburton. The meaning seems to be, that she who acted upon principles contrary to others, should be buried with the same contrariety.

III.iii.43 (282,5) [only have a care that your bills be not stolen] A _bill_ is still carried by the watchmen at Litchfield. It was the old weapon of the English infantry, which, says Temple, _gave the most ghastly and deplorable wounds_. It may be called _securis falcata_.

III.iv.44 (289,3) [Light o' love] A tune so called, which has been already mentioned by our authour.

III.iv.49 (290,4) [you'll look he shall lack no burns] A quibble between _barns_, repositories of corn, and _bairns_, the old word for children.

III.iv.56 (290,5) [For the letter that begins them all, H] This is a poor jest, somewhat obscured, and not worth the trouble of elucidation.

Margaret asks Beatrice for what she cries, _hey ho_; Beatrice answers, for an _H_, that is, for an _ache_ or _pain_.

III.iv.57 (290,6) [turn'd Turk] [i.e. taken captive by love, and turned a renegade to his religion. Warburton.] This interpretation is somewhat far-fetched, yet, perhaps, it is right.

III.iv.78 (291,7) [some morel] That is, some secret meaning, like the _moral_ of a fable.

III.iv.89 (291,8) [he eats his meat without grudging] I do not see how this is a proof of Benedick's change of mind. It would afford more proof of amourosness to say, _he eats_ not _his meat without grudging_; but it is impossible to fix the meaning of proverbial expressions: perhaps, _to eat meat without grudging_, was the same as, _to do as others do_, and the meaning is, _he is content to live by eating like other mortals and will be content, notwithstanding his boasts, like other mortals, to have a wife_.

III.v.15 (293,9) [I am as honest as any man living, that is an old man, and no honester than I] [There is much humour, and extreme good sense under the covering of this blundering expression. It is a sly insinuation that length of years, and the being much _hacknied in the ways of men_, as Shakespeare expresses it, take off the gloss of virtue, and bring much defilement on the manners. Warburton.] Much of this is true, but I believe Shakespeare did not intend to bestow all this reflection on the speaker.

III.v.40 (294,1) [an two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind] This is not out of place, or without meaning. Dogberry, in his vanity of superiour parts, apologizing for his neighbour, observes, that _of two men on an horse, one must ride behind_. The _first_ place of rank or understanding can belong but to _one_, and that happy _one_ ought not to despise his inferiour.

IV.i.22 (296,2) [Interjections? Why, then some be of laughing] This is a quotation from the Accidence.

IV.i.42 (296,3) [luxurious bed] That is, _lascivious_. _Luxury_ is the confessor's term for unlawful pleasures of the sex.

IV.i.53 (297,5) [word too large] So he uses _large jests_ in this play, for _licentious, not restrained within due bounds_.

IV.i.57 (297,6) [I will write against it] [W: rate against] As to _subscribe to_ any thing is to _allow_ it, so to _write against_ is to _disallow_ or _deny_.

IV.i.59 (297,7) [chaste as is the bud] Before the air has tasted its sweetness.

IV.i.75 (298,8) [kindly power] That is, _natural power_. _Kind_ is _nature_.

IV.i.93 (298,9) [liberal villain] _Liberal_ here, as in many places of these plays, means, _frank beyond honesty_ or _decency_. _Free of tongue_. Dr. Warburton unnecessarily reads, _illiberal_.

IV.i. 101 (299,1) [O Hero! What a Hero hadst thou been] I am afraid here is intended a poor conceit upon the word _Hero_.

IV.i.123 (300,2) [The story that is printed in her blood?] That is, _the story which her blushes discover to be true_.

IV.i.128 (300,3) [Griev'd I, I had but one? Chid I for that at frugal nature's frame?] [W: nature's 'fraine] Though _frame_ be not the word which appears to a reader of the present time most proper to exhibit the poet's sentiment, yet it may as well be used to shew that he had _one child_, and _no more_, as that he had a _girl_, not a _boy_, and as it may easily signify _the system of things_, or _universal scheme_, the whole order of beings is comprehended, there arises no difficulty from it which requires to be removed by so violent an effort as the introduction of a new word offensively mutilated.

IV.i.137 (301,4) [But mine, and mine I lov'd, and mine I prais'd, And mine that I was proud on] [W: "as mine" in three places] Even of this small alteration there is no need. The speaker utters his emotion abruptly, But _mine_, _and mine_ that _I loved_, &c. by an ellipsis frequent, perhaps too frequent, both in verse and prose.

IV.i.187 (303,6) [bent of honour] _Bent_ is used by our authour for the utmost degree of any passion, or mental quality. In this play before Benedick says of Beatrice, _her affection has its full bent_. The expression is derived from archery; the bow has its _bent_, when it is drawn as far as it can be.

IV.i.206 (304,8) [ostentation] Show; appearance.