111 SCENE V. villainous SAFFRON"-The phrase "unbaked and doughy" shows that here is an allusion to the proverbial use of saffron to colour pastry, according to the fancy of the age. ("Saffron to colour the warden-pies."-WINTER'S TALE.) But, as applied to and descriptive of Parolles, it also alludes to another fantastical usage of the day, and the dress of the coxcomb, in which, of course, yellow would predominate. The dramatists of the age of Elizabeth, and her successors, are full of allusions to "yellow starch," "yellow garters," "yellow bands," etc. The red and yellow of the "humble-bee" continues the sneer on the coxcomb's finery. "my BAUBLE"-"The fool usually carried in his hand an official sceptre or 'bauble,' which was a short stick, ornamented at the end with the figure of a fool's head, or sometimes with that of a doll, or puppet. To this instrument there was frequently annexed an inflated skin or bladder, with which the fool belaboured those who offended him, or with whom he was inclined to make sport. This was often used by itself, in lieu, as it should seem, of a bauble."-DOUCE. FOOL'S BAUBLE. "SUGGEST thee from thy master"-i. e. Tempt thee from thy master. "A shrewd knave, and an UNHAPPY"-i. e. Mischievous. In the romance of "Howleglas," unhappiness is used for mischievousness:-"In such manner colde he cloke and hyde his unhappinesse and falsnesse." The word "unhappy" is often used in the sense of mischievous, by the old dramatists. It sometimes means only unlucky. "-he has no PACE"-"A pace is a certain or prescribed walk; so we say of a man meanly obsequious, that he has learned his paces, and of a horse who moves irregularly, that he has no paces."-JOHNSON. Ulrici adopts this idea of the resemblance of Parolles, and calls him "the little appendix to the great Falstaff." The two characters seem to me to resemble each other only in their vices, but to have no point in common intellectually. "-a cheek of two PILE and a half"-Referring to the "pile" of the velvet patch. "it is your CARBONADOED face"-" Carbonadoed" means "slashed over the face in a manner that fetcheth the flesh with it." The term is derived from carbonado-a collop of meat. In KING LEAR, Kent says to the steward, "I'll carbonado your shanks for you." ACT V.-SCENE I. "Enter a gentle ASTRINGER"-This term signifies a gentleman falconer. The word is derived from asturcus, or austurcus, (a goshawk.) Cowell, in his "Law Dictionary," says-"We usually call a falconer, who keeps that kind of hawk, an astringer." "Our means will make us means"-"Shakespeare delights much in this kind of reduplication, sometimes so as to obscure his meaning. Helena says, they will fol low with such speed as the means which they have will give them ability to exert."-JOHNSON. SCENE II. "muddied in fortune's MOOD"-Mud was, in Shakespeare's day, pronounced nearly like "mood," and hence the intended jingle, which Warburton not adverting to, changed "mood" to moat. "Fortune's mood" is several times used by Shakespeare for the caprices of fortune. "You beg more than ONE WORD, then"-Parolles, or paroles, being French for words, a quibble was intended. "—you shall eat"-" Parolles has many of the lineaments of Falstaff, and seems to be the character which Shakespeare delighted to draw-a fellow that had more wit than virtue. Though justice required that he should be detected and exposed, yet his vices sit so fit in him that he is not at last suffered to starve."-JOHNSON. SCENE III. "Her estimation HOME"-i. e. Completely, in its full extent. So in MACBETH-" That thrusted home," etc. "-done in the BLADE of youth"-i. e. As Johnson says, "the spring of early life, when the man is yet green." The next line passes to a new metaphor, or rather "blade" is used not as a formal figure, but in a secondary sense. Most of the editors have thought that the imagery was incongruous, and have adopted Theobald's conjecture of "blaze of youth." But the old copies all read "blade." "RICHEST eyes"-" Shakespeare means that her beauty had astonished those who, having seen the greatest number of fair women, might be said to be the richest in ideas of beauty. So in As You LIKE IT-TO have seen much and to have nothing, is to have rich eyes and poor hands.'"-STEVENS. shine and hail mark a day out of season. "a day of SEASON"-i e. A seasonable day. SunThe expres sion is still in use in various parts of the United States, though obsolete in England. "Contempt his scornful PERSPECTIVE did lend me"— Apparently used for a glass, or mirror, effecting some optical delusion, like the anamorphosis. Thus says an old writer-"A picture of a Chancellor presented a multitude of little faces; but if one did look at it through a perspective, there appeared only the single pour traiture."-Humane Industrie. "Our own love, waking"-I suspect, with Johnson, that the author having corrected his first thought, both the original and the correction have been preserved, and mixed up so as to make a very confused sense. Bat this obscure line may mean that, "Our love, awaking to the worth of the lost object, too late laments; our shameful hate or dislike having slept out the period when our fault was remediable." That knows the TINCT and MULTIPLYING medicine," etc. "Plutus, the grand alchemist, who knows the tincture which confers the properties of gold upon base metals, and the matter by which gold is multiplied, by which a small quantity of gold is made to communicate its qualities to a large mass of base metal. In the reign of Henry IV. a law was made to forbid all men thenceforth to multiply gold, or use any craft of multiplication. Of this law, Mr. Boyle, when he was warm with the hope of transmutation, procured a repeal."-JOHNSON. - if you know 66 That you are well acquainted with yourself," etc. "The true meaning of this expression is, If you know that your faculties are so sound as that you have the proper consciousness of your own actions, and are able to recollect and relate what you have done, tell me," etc.-JOHNSON. neys. "-for four or five REMOVES"-i. e. Stages, or jourThe petitioner had lost the opportunity of presenting the paper herself, either at Marseilles, or on the road from thence to Rousillon, in consequence of having been four or five "removes" behind the court. "I will buy me a son-in-law in a fair, and toll for THIS"-There has been much contest between this, which is the reading of the first folio, and that of the second; either of which may have been the true one, and both are intelligible. I have, with Knight and Singer, preferred the former. The second folio reads, "I will buy me a son-in-law in a fair, and toll for him: for this, I'll none of him." "The allusion is to the custom of paying toll for the liberty of selling in a fair, and means, I will buy me a son-in-law in a fair, and sell this one: pay toll for the liberty of selling him.' So in 'Hudibras:' a roan gelding, Where, when, by whom, and what were ye sold for, There were two statutes to regulate the tolling of horses in fairs."-SINGER. Collier retains and thus defends the other reading:— "The meaning is plain, although much comment has been wasted upon the passage. Lafeu says, 'I will buy me a son-in-law in a fair, and pay toll for him on the purchase as for this son-in-law, I'll have nothing to do with him.'" "FOR wives are monsters to you"-The first folio repeats sir instead of "for," which Collier, following an old MS. correction, reads "for." Sir, with a long, would be easily misprinted "for." Other editors read since; but "for" is used in the sense of because. second folio gives the line thus:— The I wonder, sir, wives are such monsters to youwhich Stevens adopts. The choice is of little moment. and rich VALIDITY"-Here, as elsewhere, Shakespeare uses "validity" for value; but it is found in no other writer, and seems peculiar to him. "He blushes, and 'tis HIS"-The old folios have hit, instead of his." Malone reads, "He blushes, and 'tis it," which may be right, but not, as Malone supposed, because it was a misprint; but because hit is the an cient orthography of it, being universal in the old chronicles, etc., and not quite out of use in Elizabeth's reign. H. Tooke ("Diversions of Purley") is very contemptuous on Malone for not knowing this. But here the context indicates that "his" was meant. The countess of course means that the ring is Bertram's. QUOTED for a most perfidious knave"has the same sense as noted, or observed. LET: 11 '-"Quoted" So in HAM I am sorry that with better heed and judgment thou art too FINE"-i. e. Too full of finesse, and art; being the French trop fin. "If it appear not plain, and prove untrue"-In Painter, and in his original, Boccaccio, Helen comes before Count Bertram at Rousillon, with twins in her arms: "Io ti richieggio per Dio, che le conditioni postemi per li due cavalieri, che io ti mandai, tu le mi osservi: ed ecco nelle mie braccia non un solo figliuolo di te ma due; ed ecco qui il tuo anello;" which Painter thus renders:-"Therefore I now beseche thee, for the honour of God, that thou wilt observe the conditions which the twoo Knightes that I sent unto thee did commannde me to doe; for beholde here, in my armes, not onely one sonne begotten by thee, but twayne, and likewyse thy ryng."-(Palace of Pleasure.) In the original story the King is not present at the reconcilement of Bertram and Helena. "This play has many delightful scenes, though not sufficiently probable, and some happy characters, though not new, nor produced by any deep knowledge of huParolles is a boaster and a coward, such as has always been the sport of the stage, but perhaps never raised more laughter or contempt than in the hands of Shakespeare. man nature. "I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram: a man noble without generosity, and young without truth; who marries Helena as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate when she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home to a second marriage, is accused by a woman whom he has wronged, defends himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to happiness. "The story of Bertram and Diana had been told before of Mariana and Angelo, and, to confess the truth, scarcely merited to be heard a second time."-JOHNSON. "The story of ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, and of several others of Shakespeare's plays, is taken from Boccaccio. The Poet has dramatized the original novel with great skill and comic spirit, and has preserved all the beauty of character and sentiment, without improving upon it, which was impossible. There are, indeed, in Boccaccio's serious pieces, a truth, a pathos, and an exquisite refinement of sentiment, which are hardly to be met with in any other prose-writer whatever. Justice has not been done him by the world. He has in general passed for a mere narrator of lascivious tales or idle jests. This character probably originated in his obnoxious attacks on the monks, and has been kept up by the grossness of mankind, who revenged their own want of refinement on Boccaccio, and only saw in his writings what suited the coarseness of their own tastes. But the truth is, that he has carried sentiment of every kind to its very highest purity and perfection. By sentiment, we would here understand the habitual workings of some one powerful feeling, where the heart reposes almost entirely upon itself, without the violent excitement of opposing duties or untoward circumstances. "The invention implied in his different tales is immense; but we are not to infer that it is all his own. He probably availed himself of all the common traditions which were floating in his time, and which he was the first to appropriate. Homer appears the most original of all authors, probably for no other reason than that we can trace the plagiarism no further."-Hazlitt. "The comic parts of the plot of ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, and the characters of the Countess, Lafeu, etc., are of the Poet's own creation; and, in the conduct of the fable, he has found it expedient to depart from his original more than it is his usual custom to do. "Johnson has expressed his dislike of the character of Bertram, and most fair readers have manifested their abhorrence of him, and have thought with Johnson that he ought not to have gone unpunished, for the sake not only of poetical, but of moral justice. Schlegel has remarked, that Shakespeare never attempts to mitigate the impression of his unfeeling pride and giddy dissipation. He intended merely to give us a military portrait; and paints the true way of the world, according to which the injustice of men towards women is not considered in a very serious light, if they only maintain what is called the honour of the family.' The fact is, that the construction of his plot prevented him. Helena was to be rewarded for her heroic and persevering affection; and any more serious punishment than the temporary shame and remorse that awaits Bertram, would have been inconsistent with comedy. It should also be remembered that he was constrained to marry Helena against his will. Shakespeare was a good-natured moralist; and, like his own creation, old Lafeu, though he was delighted to strip off the mask of pretension, he thought that punishment might be carried too far."SINGER. "Helena is the union of strength of passion with strength of character. To be tremblingly alive to gentle impressions, and yet able to preserve, when the prosecution of a design requires it, an immovable heart, amidst even the most imperious causes of subduing emotion, is, perhaps, not an impossible constitution of mind; but it is the utmost and rarest endowment of humanity.' (FOSTER'S Essays.) Such a character, almost as difficult to delineate in fiction as to find in real life, has Shakespeare given us in Helena, touched with the most soul-subduing pathos, and developed with the most consummate skill. "Although Helena tells herself that she loves in vain, a conviction stronger than reason tells her that she does Her love is like a religion, pure, holy, and deep: the blessedness to which she has lifted her thoughts is not. ever before her to despair would be a crime, and would be to cast herself away, and die. The faith of her affection, combining with the natural energy of her character, believing all things possible, makes them so. It could say to the mountain of pride which stands be tween her and her hopes, 'Be thou removed! and it is removed. This is the solution of her behaviour in the marriage-scene, where Bertram, with obvious reluctance and disdain, accepts her hand, which the King, his feudal lord and guardian, forces on him. "Her maidenly shame is at first shocked, and she shrinks back: That you are well restored, my lord, I'm glad : But shall she weakly relinquish the golden opportunity. and dash the cup from her lips at the moment it is presented? Shall she cast away the treasure for which she has ventured life, honour, all-when it is just within her grasp Shall she, after compromising her feminine delicacy by the public disclosure of her preference, be thrust back into shame, 'to blush out the poor remainder of her life,' and die a poor, lost, scorned thing! This would be very pretty, and interesting, and charac teristic, in Viola or Ophelia; but not at all consistent with that high determined spirit, that moral energy. with which Helena is portrayed. Pride is the only obstacle opposed to her. She is not despised and rejected as a woman, but as a poor physician's daughter; and this, to an understanding so clear, so strong, so just as Helena's, is not felt as an unpardonable insult. The mere pride of rank and birth is a prejudice of which she cannot comprehend the force, because her mind towers so immeasurably above it; and, compared with the infinite love that swells in her own bosom, it sinks into nothing. She cannot conceive that he to whom she has devoted her heart and truth, her soul, her life, her service, must not one day love her in return; and, once her own beyond the reach of fate, that her cares, her caresses, her unwearied, patient tenderness, will not, at last, win her lord to look upon her.' "It is this fond faith which, hoping all things, enables her to endure all things-which hallows and dignifies the surrender of her woman's pride, making it a sacrifice on which virtue and love throw a mingled essence." -MRS. JAMESON. SOURCE OF THE PLOT. The plot, as before stated, is taken, with the alteration of names and some importa Robert Greene's tale, entitled "Pandosto, or the Triumph of Time," better known un Historie of Dorastus and Fawnia;" the first named, Pandosto, being the jealous Leontes and Fawnia are his Florizel and Perdita. It was first printed in 1588; reprinted, wit again in 1609; and afterwards went through many editions. Such was its popularity fourteen editions, if not more, still to be found in the libraries of collectors. As Colli that Shakespeare's attention was directed to it (as affording a fit subject for dramatic edition, which he appears to have used, and which came out in 1609, the year befo concurring circumstances conspire to point out as that of the preparation of the WIN lately been reprinted by Mr. Collier, in his "Shakespeare's Library," with an excel which the nature and degree of the Poet's obligations to the novelist are thus accuratel "Robert Greene was a man who possessed all the advantages of education: he v versities; he was skilled in ancient learning and in modern languages; he had, besid lively and elegant fancy, and a grace of expression rarely exceeded; yet, let any perso WINTER'S TALE read the novel of 'Pandosto,' upon which it was founded, and he will vast pre-eminence of Shakespeare, and with the admirable manner in which he has c by another to his own use. The bare outline of the story (with the exception of Sha clusion) is nearly the same in both; but this is all they have in common, and Shake scarcely adopted a single hint for his descriptions, or a line for his dialogue;* while, timent, Greene is cold, formal, and artificial-the very opposite of every thing in Shake And again, Mr. Collier adds "The variation in the conclusion has already been mentioned: nothing can well be and even offensive, than the winding up of Greene's novel, where he makes Pandosto with his own daughter, and then, without any adequate motive, commit suicide. Here triumphed over all competition: he saw at once how the preceding incidents might be matic and moral purpose, the most pathetic and the most beautiful. In other places, t our great dramatist are scarcely less conspicuous: as, for instance, in the very outset of sents Polixenes (the Egistus of the novel) as previously prepared to take his departu only, therefore, to weigh anchor; while, in Greene's novel, the determination of the v of his royal friend is sudden, and all his vessels have to be got ready on the instant. of the disclosure of the oracle may also be noticed as a proof of the knowledge Shakesp effect." It is worthy of remark that in Greene's novel, as well as in Shakespeare's play, maritime country, a matter which, as to Shakespeare, has given as much trouble critics as a similar question (in regard to the possibility of Bohemia having been made a given to Corporal Trim and Captain Shandy. This blunder, if such it were in the no be supposed) one that the Poet did not care to correct, lest he should disturb the familiar with the conventional geography of the popular tale, and not at all fastidious himself was content, with the more cultivated parts of his audience, to consider the Mr. Knight's happy language) as "purposely taken out of the domain of the real" and be sphere, where Bohemia is but a name for a wild country upon the sea, and the oracular are heard amid the merriment of Whitsun Pastorals' and the solemnities of 'Christian b of Russia' represents some dim conception of a mighty monarch of far-off lands; and Julio Romano,' stands as the abstract personification of excellence in art." To endeavour to adjust the geography of such a romantic tale as this to that of a mo would be to apply the same rule to Spenser's “Faery Queen,” or the “Orlando Furios "Some verbal resemblances and trifling obligations have been incidentally pointed out by the com WINTER'S TALE. One of the principal instances occurs in act iv. scene 3, where Florizel says: "This (says Malone) is taken almost literally from the novel,' when, in fact, the resemblance merely co speare of part of the mythological knowledge supplied by Greene. The Gods above disdaine not to liked Daphne; Jupiter Io; and why not I then Fawnia?' The resemblance is any thing but litera Library." |