(45) "Ober. All fancy sick she is, and pale of cheer, M. N. Dr. III. 2. What though you have no beauty, As by my faith, I see no more— " Must you be therefore proud, &c.] The modern editors give more instead of no, the reading of the old copies. Malone says, that it appears clearly" from Lodge's Rosalynde, which Shakespeare imitated, viz. " because thou art beautiful, be not so coy," that it is a misprint in the folios; and it may also be said, that the argument plainly points that way. On the other hand it may be said, that Shakespeare does not follow the course of the argument in every speech that he imitates, but adapts it to his occasions; that in point of argument more does not so well consist with the next line; and further, that the course of argument is both in our author's manner, and in such a bantering dialogue sufficiently good. And Rosalind presently says, Though all the world could see, 66 "None could be so abus'd in sight as he :" viz. her suitor. In the same spirit of banter, and ironical character of argument, Touchstone tells the pages: "Truly, young gentlemen, though there was no great matter in the ditty, yet the note was very untuneable." V. 3. The sense of the passage is," what, must you add one species of deformity to another? and, because there is no beauty in your person, must you to this defect add deformities of mind ?" (46) your bugle eyeballs] i. e. black; eyes of that colour being considered so interesting, that various arts have been adopted to make them appear so. Stibium. Γυναικειον nonnullis dictum, quod tingendis nigrore ciliis mulierum expetatur. A kind of colouring stuffe, which women covet to make them blackebrowd." Fleming's Junius, 12mo. 1585, p. 406. Bugle is an ornament of bright black glass. (47) Entame my spirits to your worship] i. e. humble. Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand." Much ado &c. III. 1. Beatr. Though the above enumeration does not at all consist with the general depreciation of her personal qualities, made in the opening of this address, it is not under the circumstances the less natural. (48) Like foggy south, puffing with wind and rain] "The noisome gales "The humorous south breathes." G. Chapman's Hesiod's Opera et Dies, 4to. 1629, p. 31. (49) Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight] Such was the doctrine in old books. "But whan his mooste gentyll harte perceyved that my love was in a moche hygher degree than his toward that lady, and that it proceded neither of wantonness, neyther of long conversation, nor of any other corrupte desyre or fantasie, but in an instant, by the onely looke, and with such fervence that immediatly I was so cruciate, that I desired, and in all that I mought, provoked deth to take me." Sir Tho. Elyot's Governour, 12mo. 1534, fo. 145. "The spark, which but by slow degrees "Is habit, friendship, what you please : "To write, to sigh, and to converse, 'Ah, no! the love that kills indeed 66 Dispatches with a blow." Lord Holland's Life of Lope de Vega, 1806, p. 215. But Dr. Gregory, in his Legacy to his Daughters, gives a different lesson. "Love is very seldom produced at first sight; at least it must have in that case a very unjustifiable foundation. True love is founded on esteem, in a correspondence of tastes and sentiments, and steals on the heart imperceptibly." 12mo. 1776, p. 113. Steevens observes, that the line at the head of this note is from Marlowe's Hero and Leander, 1637, sign. B b. where it stands thus: "Where both deliberate the love is slight: "Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight ?" This line is likewise quoted in Belvidere, or the Garden of the Muses, 1610, p. 29, and in England's Parnassus, printed in 1600, p. 261. Malone says, this poem of Marlowe's was so popular, (as appears from many of the contemporary writers,) that a quotation from it must have been known at once, at least by the more enlightened part of the audience. Our author has again alluded to it in the Two Gentlemen of Verona.-The "dead shepherd," Marlowe, was killed in a brothel, in 1593. Two editions of Hero and Leander, I believe, had been published before the year 1600; it being entered in the Stationers' Books, Sept. 28, 1593, and again in 1597. (50) the constant red, and mingled damask] "Constant red" is uniform red: immoveably fixed." " the whiche is verye fayre and of a constant face and behaviour; and havynge her apparell and garmentes symple." Sir Francis Poyngs's Table of Cebes. Printer (Berthelet) to the Reader. Mingled damask" is the silk of that name, in which, by a various direction of the threads, many lighter shades of the same colour are exhibited. STEEVENS. "The devil a Puritan that he is, or any thing constantly, but,” &c. Tw. N. II. 3. Maria. ACT IV. (1) it is the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humourous sadness] i. e. it is the diversified consideration or view of my travels, in which process my frequent reflection, and continued interest that I take, wraps me in a most whimsical sadness. In his Apology for Smectymnuus, Milton says of his own ear for numbers, that it was "rather nice and humourous in what was tolerable, than patient to read every drawling versifier." Warton's Milton, 8vo. 1785, p. 207. Here it may be rendered exceptious:" and we have the humourous Duke, in I. 2. and II. 3. (2) swam in a gondola] i. e. been at Venice, the seat at that time of all licentiousness; where the young English gentlemen wasted their fortunes, debased their morals, and sometimes lost their religion. The fashion of travelling, which prevailed very much in our author's time, was considered by the wiser men as one of the principal causes of corrupt manners. It was, therefore, gravely censured by Ascham in his Schoolmaster, and by Bishop Hall, in his Quo Vadis; and is here, and in other passages, ridiculed by Shakespeare. JOHNSON. (3) better leer] i. e. cast of countenance.-Of a better fea ture, complexion, or colour, than you. So, in P. Holland's Pliny, B. XXXI. c. ii. p. 403 : "In some places there is no other thing bred or growing, but brown and duskish, insomuch as not only the cattel is all of that lere, but also the corn on the ground," &c. The word seems to be derived from the Saxon Hleare, facies, frons, vultus. So Tit. Andron. IV. 2. "Here's a young lad fram'd of another leer. TOLLET. In the notes on the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, Vol. IV. p. 320, lere is supposed to mean skin. So, in Isumbras MSS. Cott. Cal. II. fol. 129: (4) and when you were gravelled for lack of matter, you might take occasion to kiss] Thus also in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, edit. 1632, p. 511; - and when he hath pumped his wittes dry, and can say no more, kissing and colling are never out of season." STEEVENS. (5) more new-fangled than an ape] Neither fangle, which occurs in Cymb. "Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment nor this compound, are to be met with in our early dictionaries, though it is found in every writer of the age of Elizabeth and James. Johnson, following Skinner, derives the noun from fengan, Sax. to attempt; and interprets it," silly attempt, trifling scheme;" and this word "new-fashioned, dressed out in new decorations." Todd, in his note on Milton's Vacat. Exerc. v. 19, 20, quotes the description of a Fantastick in Barnabe Rych's Faults and nothing but Faults, 4to. 1606: “I beleeve he hath rob'd a jackanapes of his jesture: mark but his countenance, see how he mops and how he mows, and how he straines his lookes. All the apes, that have been in the parrish garden these twentie yeares, would not come nigh him for all maner of compliments." VII. 64. And in his Spenser, II. 127, he adds from the Cobler's Prophecie, 1594: "Niceness is Venus's maide, and new-fangle is her man." F. Q. I. IV. 25. See "May's new-fangled shows," L. L. L. I. 1. Bir. (6) — I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain] The allusion is to the cross in Cheapside; the religious images, with which it was ornamented, being defaced, (as we learn from Stowe,) in 1596: "There was then set up, a curious wrought tabernacle of gray marble, and in the same an alabaster image of Diana, and water conveyed from the Thames, prilling from her naked breast." Stowe, in Cheap Ward. Statues, and particularly that of Diana, with water conveyed through them to give them the appearance of weeping figures, were anciently a frequent ornament of fountains. "Like any image in a fountain, which "Runs lamentations." City Match, III. 3. And in Drayton's Rosamond's Epistle to Henry II.: D "Here in the garden, wrought by curious hands, See "weather-bitten conduit," Wint. T. V. 2. 3 Gent. (7) I will laugh like a hyen] The bark of the hyena was anciently supposed to resemble a loud laugh. So, in Webster's Duchess of Malfy, 1623: "Methinks I see her laughing, Again, in The Cobler's Prophecy, 1594 : "You laugh hyena-like, weep like a crocodile." STEEVENS. (8) Wit, whither wilt] In a sermon preached by Tho. Adams, at Paul's Cross, Mar. 7, 1611, we have: Vis consilii expers mole ruit sua, power without pollicy is like a peece without powder: many a pope sings that common ballad of hell: Ingenio perii qui miser ipse meo : "Wit, whither wilt thou? woe is me! 66 My wit hath wrought my miserie." 4to. 1514, Edit. 3, p. 39. This, the third edition of this notable discourse, is full of scrap quotation, alliteration, antithesis, and play upon words; and in this last particular, by a most extravagant instance fully exemplifies his own doctrine, and that of our text. He says of thieves. "Their church is the highway: there they pray (not to God, but) on men." Ib. p. 37. (9) You shall never take her without her answer] See Chaucer's Merchantes Tale, ver. 10,138-10,149: (10) "Now by my modre Ceres soule I swere, "And wepe and swere and chiden subtilly, TYRWHITT. time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let time try] (11) "And that old common arbitrator, Time, to her own nest] So, in Lodge's Rosalynde: " And I pray you (quoth Aliena) if your own robes were off, what metal are you made of, that you are so satyricall against women? Is it not a foule bird defiles her owne nest ?" STEEVENS. |