Chapter 8

IV.i.251 (305,1) [The smallest twine nay lead me] This is one of our author's observations upon life. Men overpowered with distress, eagerly listen to the first offers of relief, close with every scheme, and believe every promise. He that has no longer any confidence in himself, is glad to repose his trust in any other that will undertake to guide him.

IV.ii.70 (311,6) [_Sexton_. Let them be in hand] There is nothing in the old quarto different in this scene from the common copies, except that the names of two actors, Kempe and Cowley, are placed at the beginning of the speeches, instead of the proper words, (see 1765, III,249,7)

V.i.15 (313,7)

[If such a one will smile and stroke his beard; And, sorrow wag! cry; hem, when he should groan]

Sir Thomas Hammer, and after him Dr. Warburton, for _wag_ read _waive_, which is, I suppose, the same as, _put aside_ or _shift off_. None of these conjectures satisfy me, nor perhaps any other reader. I cannot but think the true meaning nearer than it is imagined. I point thus,

_If such an one will smile, and stroke his beard, And, sorrow wag! cry; hem, when he should groan;_

That is, _If he will smile, and cry_ sorrow be gone, _and hem instead_ of groaning. The order in which _and_ and _cry_ are placed is harsh, and this harshness made the sense mistaken. Range the words in the common order, and my reading will be free from all difficulty.

_If such an one will smile, and stroke his beard, Cry, sorrow, wag! and hem when he should groan._

V.i.32 (314,8) [My griefs cry louder than advertisement] That is, than _admonition_, than _moral instruction_.

V.i.102 (318,4) [we will not wake your patience] [W: wrack] This emendation is very specious, and perhaps is right; yet the present reading may admit a congruous meaning with less difficulty than many other of Shakespeare's expressions.

The old men have been both very angry and outrageous; the prince tells them that he and Claudio _will not_ wake _their patience_; will not any longer force them to _endure_ the presence of those whom, though they look on them as enemies, they cannot resist.

V.i.138 (319,6) [to turn his girdle] We have a proverbial speech, _If he be angry, let him turn the buckle of his girdle_. But I do not know its original or meaning.

V.i.166 (320,7) [a wise gentleman] This jest depending on the colloquial use of words is now obscure; perhaps we should read, _a wise gentle man_, or _a man wise enough to be a coward_. Perhaps _wise gentleman_ was in that age used ironically, and always stood for _silly fellow_.

V.i.231 (322,9) [one meaning well suited] That is, _one meaning is put into many different dresses_; the prince having asked the same question in four modes of speech.

V.ii.9 (326,3) [To have no man come over me? why, shall I always keep below stairs?] [T: above] I suppose every reader will find the meaning of the old copies.

V.ii.l7 (327,4) [I give thee the bucklers] I suppose that _to give the bucklers_ is, _to yield_, or _to lay by all thoughts of defence_, so _clipeum abjicere_. The rest deserves no comment.

V.iii.13 (330,7) [_Those that slew thy virgin knight_] _Knight_, in its original signification, means _follower_ or _pupil_, and in this sense may be feminine. Helena, in All's well that Ends well, uses _knight_ in the same signification.

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST

I.i.31 (342,2)

[To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die; With all these, living in philosophy]

The stile of the rhyming scenes in this play is often entangled and obscure. I know not certainly to what _all these_ is to be referred; I suppose he means, that he finds _love_, _pomp_, and _wealth_ in _philosophy_.

I.i.75 (344,4) [while truth the while Doth falsly blind] _Falsly_ is here, and in many other places, the same as _dishonestly_ or _treacherously_. The whole sense of this gingling declamation is only this, that _a man by too close study may read himself blind_, which might have been told with less obscurity in fewer words.

I.i.82 (344,5)

[Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed, And give him light, that it was blinded by]

This is another passage unnecessarily obscure: the meaning is, that when he _dazzles_, that is, has his eye made weak, _by fixing his eye upon a fairer eye, that_ fairer _eye shall be his heed_, his _direction_ or _lode-star_,(See Midsummer-Night's Dream) [_and give him light that was blinded by it_.

I.i.92 (345,6)

[Too much to know, is, to know nought but fame; And every godfather can give a name]

[W: "shame" or "feign"] That there are _two ways of setting_ a passage _right_ gives reason to suspect that there may be a third way better than either. The first of these emendations _makes a fine sense_, but will not unite with the next line; the other makes a sense less fine, and yet will not rhyme to the correspondent word. I cannot see why the passage may not stand without disturbance. _The consequence_, says Biron, _of too much knowledge_, is not any real solution of doubts, but mere empty _reputation_. That is, _too much knowledge gives only fame, a name which every godfather can give likewise_. (1773)

I.i.95 (345,7) [Proceeded well to stop all good proceeding] To _proceed_ is an academical term, meaning, _to take a degree_, as _he_ proceeded _bachelor in physick_. The sense is, _he has taken his degrees on the art of hindering the degrees of others_.

I.i.153 (348,1) [Not by might master'd, but by especial grace] Biron, amidst his extravagancies, speaks with great justness against the folly of vows. They are made without sufficient regard to the variations of life, and are therefore broken by some unforeseen necessity. They proceed commonly from a presumptuous confidence, and a false estimate of human power.

I.i.159 (349,2) [Suggestions] Temptations.

I.i.162 (349,3) [quick recreation] Lively sport, spritely diversion.

I.i.169 (349,4)

[A man of complements, whom right and wrong Have chose as umpire of their mutiny]

This passage, I believe, means no more than that Don Armado was a man nicely versed in ceremonial distinctions, one who could distinguish in the most delicate questions of honour the exact boundaries of right and wrong. _Compliment_, in Shakespeare's time, did not signify, at least did not only signify verbal civility, or phrases of courtesy, but according to its original meaning, the trapping, or ornamental appendages of a character, in the same manner, and on the same principles of speech with _accomplishment. Compliment_ is, as Arwado well expresses it, _the varnish of a complete man_.

I.i.174 (350,6) [in the world's debate] The _world_ seems to be used in a monastick sense by the king, now devoted for a time to a monastic life. _In the world, in seculo_, in the bustle of human affairs, from which we are now happily sequestred, _in the world_, to which the votaries of solitude have no relation.

I.i.252 (353,1) [_base minow of thy mirth_] A _minnow_ is a little fish which cannot be intended here. We may read, _the base_ minion _of thy mirth_.

I.ii.5 (355,2) [dear imp] _Imp_ was anciently a term of dignity. Lord Cromwell in his last letter to Henry VIII. prays for _the_ imp _his son_. It is now used only in contempt or abhorrence; perhaps in our authour's time it was ambiguous, in which state it suits well with this dialogue.

I.ii.36 (356,3) [crosses love not him] By _crosses_ he means money. So in As you like it, the Clown says to Celia, _if I should bear you, I should bear no cross_.

I.ii.150 (360,7) [_Jaq_. Fair weather after you! _Dull_. Come, Jaquenetta, away]

[Theobald had reassigned two speeches] Mr. Theobald has endeavoured here to dignify his own industry by a very slight performance. The folios all read as he reads, except that instead of naming the persons they give their characters, enter _Clown, Constable, and Wench_.

I.ii.168 (361,8) [It is not for prisoners to be silent in their words] I suppose we should read, it is not for prisoners to be silent in their _wards_, that is, in _custody_, in the _holds_.

I.ii.183 (361,9) [The first and second cause will not serve my turn] See the last act of As you like it, with the notes.

II.i.15 (362,1)

[Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye, Not utter'd by base sale of chapmen's tongues]

Chapman here seems to signify the _seller_, not, as now commonly, the _buyer_. _Cheap_ or _cheping_ was anciently the _market_, _chapman_ therefore is _marketman_. The meaning is, that _that the estimation of beauty depends not on the_ uttering or _proclamation of the seller, but on the eye of the buyer_.

II.i.45 (363,2) [Well fitted] is _well qualified_.

II.i.49 (363,3) [match'd with] is _combined_ or _joined_ with.

II.i.105 (365,4) ['Tis deadly sin to keep that oath, my lord; And sin to break it] Sir T. Hammer reads,

Not _sin to break it_.

I believe erroneously. The Princess shews an inconvenience very frequently attending rash oaths, which, whether kept or broken, produce guilt.

II.i.203 (369,6) [God's blessing on your beard!] That is, mayst thou have sense and seriousness more proportionate to thy beard, the length of which suits ill with such idle catches of wit.

II.i.223 (370,7) [My lips are no common, though several they be] _Several_, is an inclosed field of a private proprietor, so Maria says, _her lips_ are _private property_. Of a lord that was newly married one observed that he grew fat; Yes, said sir Walter Raleigh, any beast will grow fat, if you take him from the _common_ and graze him in the _several_.

II.i.238 (370,8) [His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see] That is, _his tongue being impatiently desirous to see as well as_ _speak_.

II. i. 241 (370,9) [To feel only looking] Perhaps we may better read, _To_ feed _only_ by _looking_.

II. i. 262 (371,1) [_Boyet_. You are too hard for me] [Theobald did not end Act II here] Mr. Theobald has reason enough to propose this alteration, but he should not have made it in his book without better authority or more need. I have therefore preserved his observation, but continued the former division.

III.i (372,2) [_Enter Armado, and Moth._] In the folios the direction is, _enter Braggart and Moth_, and at the beginning of every speech of Armado stands _Brag_, both in this and the foregoing scene between him and his boy. The other personages of this play are likewise noted by their characters as often as by their names. All this confusion has been well regulated by the later editors.

III.i.3 (372,3) [Concolinel] Here is apparently a song lost.

III. i. 22 (373,5) [These are complements] Dr. Warburton has here changed _complements_ to _'complishments_, for accomplishments, but unnecessarily.

III. i. 32 (374,8) [but a colt] _Colt_ is a hot, mad-brained, unbroken young fellow; or sometimes an old fellow with youthful desires.

III. i. 62 (375,9) [You are too swift, Sir, to say so] How is he too swift for saying that lead is slow? I fancy we should read, as well to supply the rhyme as the sense,

_You are too swift, sir, to say so, so soon Is that lead slow, sir, which is fir'd from a gun?_

III. i. 68 (375,1) [By thy favour, sweet welkin] Welkin is the sky, to which Armado, with the false dignity of a Spaniard, makes an apology for sighing in its face.

III. i. 73 (376,3) [no salve in the male, Sir] The old folio reads, _no salve in_ thee _male, sir_, which, in another folio, is, _no salve, in the male, sir_. What it can mean is not easily discovered: if _mail_ for a _packet_ or _bag_ was a word then in use, _no salve in the mail_ may mean, no salve in the mountebank's budget. Or shall we read, _no enigma, no riddle, no l'envoy--in the_ vale, _sir--O, sir. plantain_. The matter is not great, but one would wish for some meaning or other.

III. i.112 (377,5) [how was there a Costard broken in a shin?] _Costard_ is the name of a species of apple.

III. i.136 (378,7) [my in-cony Jew] [W. jewel] I know not whether it be fit, however specious, to change _Jew_ to _jewel_. _Jew_, in our author's time, was, for whatever reason, apparently a word of endearment. So in Midsummer-Night's Dream,

_Most tender Juvenile, and eke most lovely_ Jew. (see 1765, II,144,9)

III.i.182 (381,2) [This signior Junto's giant-dwarf. Don Cupid] Mr. Upton has made a very ingenious conjecture on this passage. He reads,

_This signior_ Julio's _giant-dwarf_--

Shakespeare, says he, intended to compliment Julio Romano, who drew Cupid in the character of a giant-dwarf. Dr. Warburton thinks, that by Junio is meant youth in general.

III.i.188 (382,3) [Of trotting paritors] An _apparitor_, or _paritor_. is an officer of the bishop's court who carries out citations; as citations are most frequently issued for fornication, the _paritor_ is put under Cupid's government.

III.i.189 (382,4)

[And I to be a corporal of his field, And wear his colours! like a tumbler's hoop!]

The conceit seems to be very forced and remote, however it be understood. The notion is not that the _hoop wears colours_, but that the colours are worn as a _tumbler_ carries his _hoop_, hanging on one shoulder and falling under the opposite arm.

III.i.207 (383,5) [Some men must love my lady, and some Joan] To this line Mr. Theobald extends his second act, not injudiciously, but, as was before observed, without sufficient authority.

IV.i.19 (384,6) [Here,--good my glass] To understand how the princess has her glass so ready at hand in a casual conversation, it must be remembered that in those days it was the fashion among the French ladies to wear a looking-glass,' as Mr. Bayle coarsely represents it, _on their bellies_; that is, to have a small mirrour set in gold hanging at the girdle, by which they occasionally viewed their faces or adjusted their hair.

IV.i.35 (385,8) [that my heart means no ill] [W: tho'] _That my heart means no ill_, is the same with _to whom my heart means no ill_; the common phrase suppresses the particle, as _I mean him_ [not _to_ him] _no harm_.

IV.i.41 (386,9) [a member of the commonwealth] Here, I believe, is a kind of jest intended; a member of the _common_-wealth is put for one of the _common_ people, one of the meanest.

IV.i.49 (386,1)

[An' your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit, One o' these maids girdles for your waist should be fit]

[W: my waste ... your wit ... my waste] This conjecture is ingenious enough, but not well considered. It is plain that the ladies girdles would not fit the princess. For when she has referred the clown to _the thickest and the tallest_, he turns immediately to her with the blunt apology, _truth is truth_; and again tells her, _you are the thickest here_. If any alteration is to be made, I should propose,

_An' your waist, mistress, were as slender as_ your _wit_.

This would point the reply; but perhaps he mentions the slenderness of his own wit to excuse his bluntness.

IV.i.59 (387,3) [Break the neck of the wax] Still alluding to the capon.

IV.i.65 (388,5) [_king_ Cophetua] This story is again alluded to in Henry IV.

_Let king Cophetua know the truth thereof._

But of this king and beggar, the story, then doubtless well known, is, I am afraid, lost. Zenelophon has not appearance of a female name, but since I know not the true none, it is idle to guess.

IV.i.99 (389,7) [ere while] Just now; a little while ago. So Raleigh,

_Here lies Hobbinol our shepherd_, while e'er.

IV.i.108 (390,9) [Come, lords, away] Perhaps the Princess said rather,

--_Come_, ladies, _away_.

The rest of the scene deserves no care.

IV.ii (392,2) [_Enter Dull, Holofernes, and Sir Nathaniel_] I am not of the learned commentator's [Wurburton] opinion, that the satire of Shakespeare is so seldom personal. It is of the nature of personal invectives to be soon unintelligible; and the authour that gratifies private malice, _aniuam in vulnere ponit_, destroys the future efficacy of his own writings, and sacrifices the esteem of succeeding times to the laughter of a day. It is no wonder, therefore, that the sarcasms, which, perhaps, in the authour's time, _set the_ playhouse _in a roar_, are now lost among general reflections. Yet whether the character of Holofernes was pointed at any particular man, I am, notwithstanding the plausibility of Dr. Warburton's conjecture, inclined to doubt. Every man adheres as long as he can to his own pre-conceptions. Before I read this note I considered the character of Holofernes as borrowed from the Rhombus of sir Philip Sidney, who, in a kind of pastoral entertainment, exhibited to queen Elizabeth, has introduced a school-master so called, speaking _a leash of languages at once_, and puzzling himself and his auditors with a jargon like that of Holofernes in the present play. Sidney himself might bring the character from Italy; for, as Peacham observes, the school-master has long been one of the ridiculous personages in the farces of that country.

IV.ii.29 (395,4)

[And such barren plants are set before us, that we thankful should be, Which we taste and feeling are for those parts that do fructify in us, more than he]

Sir T. Hammer reads thus,

_And such barren plants are set before us, that we thankful should be, For those parts which we taste and feel do fructify in us more than he._

And Mr. Edwards, in his animadversions on Dr. Warburton's notes, applauds the emendation. I think both the editors mistaken, except that sir T. Hammer found the metre, though he missed the sense. I read, with a slight change,

_And such barren plants are set before us, that we thankful should be_, When _we taste and feeling are for those parts that do fructify in us more than he_.

That is, _such barren plants_ are exhibited in the creation, to make us _thankful when we have more taste and feeling than he, of those parts_ or qualities _which_ produce fruit _in us_, and preserve as from being likewise _barren plants_. Such is the sense, just in itself and pious, but a little clouded by the diction of sir Nathaniel. The length of these lines was no novelty on the English stage. The moralities afford scenes of the like measure. (1773)

IV.ii.32 (396,5)

[For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool; So were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school]

The meaning is, to be in a school would as ill become a _patch_, or low fellow, as folly would become me.

IV.ii.99 (399,2) [_Vinegia. Vinegia, Chi non te vedi, ei non te pregia_] [This reading is an emendation by Theobald] The proverb, as I am informed, is this; _He that sees Venice little, values it much; he that sees it much, values it little_. But I suppose Mr. Theobald is right, for the true proverb would hot serve the speaker's purpose.

IV.ii.156 (403,6) [colourable colours] That is specious, or fair seeming appearances.

IV.iii.3 (403,7) [I am toiling in a pitch] Alluding to lady Rosaline's complexion, who is through the whole play represented as a black beauty.

IV.iii.29 (404,8) [The night of dew, that on my cheeks down flows] I cannot think the _night of dew_ the true reading, but know not what to offer.

IV.iii.47 (405,9) [he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers] The punishment of perjury is to wear on the breast a paper expressing the crime.

IV.iii.74 (406,2) [the liver-vein] The liver was anciently supposed to be the seat of love.

IV.iii.110 (408,5) [_Air, would I might triumph so_!] Perhaps we may better read,

Ah! _would I might triumph so!_

IV.iii.117 (409,7) [ay true love's fasting pain] [W: festring] There is no need of any alteration. _Fasting_ is _longing, hungry, wanting_.

IV.iii.148 (410,8) [How will he triumph, leap, and laugh at it?] [W: geap] To _leap_ is to _exult_, to skip for joy. It must stand.

IV.iii.166 (410,9) [To see a king transformed to a knot!] _Knot_ has no sense that can suit this place. We may read _sot_. The rhimes in this play are such, as that _sat_ and _sot_ may be well enough admitted.

IV.iii.180 (412,2) [With men like men] [W: vane-like] This is well imagined, but perhaps the poet may mean, with _men like_ common _men_.

IV.iii.231 (414,3) [She (an attending star)] Something like this is a stanza of sir Henry Wotton, of which the poetical reader will forgive the insertion.

_--Ye stars, the train of night, That poorly satisfy our eyes More by your number than your light: Ye common people of the skies, What are ye when the sun shall rise_.

IV.iii.256 (415,6) [And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well] [W: crete] This emendation cannot be received till its authour can prove that _crete_ is an English word. Besides, _crest_ is here properly opposed to _badge_. _Black_, says the King, is the _badge of hell_, but that which graces the heaven is _the crest of_ beauty. _Black_ darkens hell, and is therefore hateful; _white_ adorns heaven, and is therefore lovely.

IV.iii.290 (417,8) [affection's men at arms] _A man at arms_, is a soldier armed at all points both offensively and defensively. It is no more than, _Ye soldiers of affection_.

IV.iii.313 (418,2) [Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye] i.e. a lady's eyes gives a fuller notion of beauty than any authour.

IV.iii.321 (418.3) [In leaden contemplation have found out Such fiery numbers] _Numbers_ are, in this passage, nothing more than _poetical measures_. _Could you_, says Biron, _by solitary contemplation, have attained such poetical_ fire, _such spritely numbers, as have been prompted by the eyes of beauty_? The astronomer, by looking too much aloft, falls into a ditch.

IV.iii.358 (422,9)

[Or for love's sake, a word, that loves all men; Or for men's sake, the author of these women; Or women's sake, by whom we men are men]

Perhaps we might read thus, transposing the lines,

_Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men; For women's sake, by whom we men are men; Or for men's sake, the authours of these women_.

The antithesis of _a word that all men love_, and _a word which loves all men_, though in itself worth little, has much of the spirit of this play.

IV.iii.386 (423,2) [If so, our copper buys no better treasure] Here Mr. Theobald ends the third act.

V.i.3 (423,3) [your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious] I know not well what degree of respect Shakespeare intends to obtain for this vicar, but he has here put into his mouth a finished representation of colloquial excellence. It is very difficult to add any thing to this character of the school-master's table-talk, and perhaps all the precepts of Castiglione will scarcely be found to comprehend a rule for conversation so justly delineated, so widely dilated, and so nicely limited.

It may be proper just to note, that _reason_ here, and in many other places, signifies _discourse_; and that _audacious_ is used in a good sense for _spirited, animated, confident_. _Opinion_ is the same with _obstinacy_ or _opinionated_.

V.i.14 (424,4) [He is too picked] To have the beard _piqued_ or shorn so as to end in a point, was, in our authour's time, a mark of a traveller affecting foreign fashions: so says the Bastard in K. John, --_I catechise _My_ piqued _man of countries_.

V.i.29 (425,6) [(_Ne intelligis, Domine._) to make frantick, lunatick?] There seems yet something wanting to the integrity of this passage, which Mr. Theobald has in the most corrupt and difficult places very happily restored. For _ne intelligis domine, to make frantick, lunatick_, I read, (nonne _intelligis, domine?_) to _be_ mad, frantick, lunatick.

V.i.44 (427,6) [_honorificabilitudinitatibus_] This word, whencesoever it comes, is often mentioned as the longest word known. (1773)

V.i.110 (429,6) [dally with my excrement] The authour has before called the beard _valour's excrement_ in the Merchant of Venice.

V.ii.43 (432,5) ['Ware pencils!] The former editions read,

Were _pencils_----

Sir T. Hammer here rightly restored,

'Ware _pencils_-----

Rosaline, a black beauty, reproaches the fair Catherine for painting.