Again, in Stanyhurst's Virgil, 1582: "wherefore thus vainely in land Lybye mitche you ?" The quarto reads-munching mallico. STEEVENS. Miching, secret, covered, lying hid. In this sense Chapman, our author's contemporary, uses the word in The Widow's Tears, Dods. Old Pl. Vol. IV. p. 291, Lysander, to try his wife's fidelity, elopes from her : his friends report that he is dead, and make a mock funeral for him: his wife, to shew excessive sorrow for the loss of her husband, shuts herself up in his monument; to which he comes in disguise, and obtains her love, notwithstanding he had assured her in the mean time, that he was the man who murdered her husband. On which he exclaims, -Out upon the monster! "Go tell the governour, let me be brought And again, p. 301: "My truant "Was micht, sir, into a blind corner of the tomb." In this very sense it occurs in the Philaster of Beaumont and Fletcher, Vol. I. p. 142. "A rascal miching in a meadow." That is, as the ingenious editors (who have happily substituted miching for milking) remark, "A lean deer creeping, solitary, and withdrawn from the herd." WARTON. The word mitching is daily used in the west of England for playing truant, or skulking about in private for some sinister purpose; and malicho, inaccurately written for malheco, signifies mischief; so that mitching malicho is mischief on the watch for opportunity.- When Ophelia asks Hamlet-" What means this?" she applies to him for an explanation of what she had just seen in the show; and not, as Dr. Warburton would have it, the purpose for which the show was contrived.— Besides, malhechor no more signifies a poisoner, than the perpetrator of any other crime. HENLEY. 348. Be not you asham'd to shew, &c.] The conversation of Hamlet with Ophelia, which cannot fail to disgust every modern reader, is probably such as was peculiar to the young and fashionable of the age of Shakspere, which was, by no means, an age of delicacy. The poet is, however, blamable; for extravagance of thought, not indecency of expression, is the characteristick of madness, at least of such madness as should be represented on the scene. STEEVENS. 359. cart- -] A chariot was anciently so called. Thus Chaucer in The Knight's Tale, late edit. ver. 2024: "The carter over-ridden with his cart." 361. sheen] Splendour, lustre. STEEVENS. JOHNSON. 371. -even as they love.] Here seems to be a line lost, which should have rhymed to love. JOHNSON. This line is omitted in the folio. Perhaps a triplet was was designed, and then instead of love we should read lust. The folio gives the next line thus: "For women's fear and love holds quantity." STEEVENS. There is, I believe, no instance of a triplet being used in our author's time. Some trace of the lost line is found in the quartos, which read, Either none in neither aught, &c. Perhaps the word omitted might have been of this import : Either none they feel, or an excess approve ; In neither aught, or in extremity. MALONE. 375. And as my love is siz'd, my fear is so.] Cleopatra expresses herself much in the same manner, with regard to her grief for the loss of Antony: Proportion'd to our cause, must be as great "As that which makes it." 376. THEOBALD. -Where love, &c.] These two lines are omitted in the folio. 379. STEEVENS. operant powers- -] Operant is active. Shakspere gives it in Timon as an epithet to poison. Heywood has likewise used it in his Royal King and Loyal Subject, 1637: "may my operant parts "Each one forget their office!" The word is now obsolete. 388. The instances,-] The motives. STEEVENS. JOHNSON. 399. —what to ourselves is debt :] The performance of a resolution, in which only the resolver is interested, is a debt only to himself, which he may therefore remit at pleasure. 402. The violence of either grief or joy, JOHNSON. Their own enactures with themselves destroy :] What grief or joy enact or determine in their violence, is revoked in their abatement. Enactures is the word in the quarto; all the modern editions have enactors. JOHNSON. 412. And hitherto doth love on fortune tend : For who not needs, shall never lack a friend; author's Passionate Pilgrim: ́ "Every man will be thy friend, "Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend ; "No man will supply thy want." These coincidences may serve to refute an idea that some have entertained, that the lines spoken by the player were not written by Shakspere, but the production of a contemporary poet. MALONE. 424. To desperation, &c.] This and the following line are omitted in the folio. STEEVENS. 425. An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope!] May my whole liberty and enjoyment be to live on hermit's fare in a prison. Anchor is for anchoret. JOHNSON. This abbreviation of the word anchoret is very ancient. I find it in the Romance of Robert the Devil, printed by Wonkyn de Worde: "We have robbed and killed nonnes, holy aunkers, preestes, clerkęs," &c. Again, the foxe will be an aunker, for he begynneth to preche." Again, in The Vision of Pierce Plowman: "As ankers and hermits that hold them in her selles." This and the foregoing line are not in the folio. I believe we should read-anchor's chair. So in the second Satire of Hall's fourth book, edit 1602, p. 18. "Sit seven yeres pining in an anchore's cheyre, STEEVENS. -] He calls it the mouse 444. The mouse-trap. the thing trap, because it is In which he'll catch the conscience of the king. STEEVENS. 446. Baptista is, I think, in Italian, the name always of a man. You are as good as a chorus.-] The use to 452. which Shakspere converted the chorus, may be seen in his History of Henry V. HENLEY. 453. Ham. I could interpret, &c.] This refers to the interpreter, who formerly sat on the stage at all motions or puppet-shews, and interpreted to the audience. So, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona : "Oh excellent motion! oh exceeding puppet! Again, in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, 1621 : |