When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool, To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug! 30 Shake, quoth the dove-house: 'twas no need, I trow, And since that time it is eleven years; 35 For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood, She could have run and waddled all about; For even the day before, she broke her brow: 40 Fule] Juliet F, Rowe. Jule, Fulé Pope, &c. Juli' Capell. holy-dam] holydam Qq. holy dam Har. Camp. Knt. holidame Dyce (ed. 1), Cambr. halidom Dyce (ed. 2). [Knt. Haz. Sta. Dyce.] So in The Country Captain, by the Duke of Newcastle, 1649: "When these wordes of command are rotten, wee will sow some other military seedes; you beare a braine and memory." [Hal. STEEV. In Ram Alley or Merry Tricks, 1611: “Dash, we must bear some brain.” In Marston's Dutch Courtesan, 1604: "Nay an I bear not a brain." In Heywood's Golden Age, 1611: “As I can bear a pack, so I can bear a brain." [Hal. NARES. To exert attention, ingenuity, or memory. Thus in Marston's Dutch Courtesan: "My silly husband alas! knows nothing of it; 'tis I that beare, 'tis I that must beare a braine for all." [Sing. Huds. HALLIWELL. "Jones was no schoolman, yet he bore a brain Which ne'er forgot what ere it could contain."-Legend of Captain Jones, 1659. 31. felt] WHITE. The verbs expressive of the action of the senses were not carefully distinguished in their application when Sh. wrote; and "felt" was used with peculiar license. Sh. ridicules this license in several passages, and especially in Bottom's speech (Mid. Sum. N. D. IV, i, 197) when he wakes after his enchantment. 35. high-lone] DYCE [“Remarks," &c.] It may perhaps be worth while to notice that we find in Middleton's Blurt, Master Constable, "An old comb-pecked rascal, that was beaten out a' th' cock-pit, when I could not stand a' high lone without I held by a thing, to come crowing among us!" Act II, sc. ii; Works i, 262, ed. Dyce; and in W. Rowley's A Shoomaker a Gentleman, 1638: "The warres has lam'd many of my old customers; they cannot go a hie lone." Sig. B 4. [Sing. (ed. 2). WHITE. The idiom is still in use in "high time” for “full time.” To see now how a jest shall come about! 45 I warrant, an I should live a thousand years, I never should forget it: 'Wilt thou not, Jule?' quoth he; La. Cap. Enough of this; I pray thee, hold thy peace. 50 To think it should leave crying, and say 'Ay:' And yet, I warrant, it had upon its brow A bump as big as a young cockerel's stone; A perilous knock; and it cried bitterly: 55 Wilt thou not, Jule ?' it stinted, and said 'Ay.' Ful. And stint thou too, I pray thee, nurse, say I. 60 48. stinted] STEEV. It stopped, it forebore from weeping. So North, in his "Plutarch," speaking of the wound which Antony received, says: "for the blood stinted a little when he was laid." In "Cynthia's Revels," by Ben Jonson: "Stint thy babbling tongue." In "What You Will," by Marston, 1607: "Pish! for shame, stint thy idle chat." Spenser uses this word frequently in his Fairy Queen. [Sing. Coll. Verp. Huds. Sta. SING. Baret translates Lachrymas supprimere, to stinte weeping,' and 'to stinte talke,' by 'sermones restinguere.' KNT. Thus Gascoigne: "Then stinted she as if her song were done." To stint is used in an active signification for to stop. Thus in those fine lines in Titus Andronicus, which it is difficult to believe any other than Sh wrote: "The eagle suffers little birds to sing, And is not careful what they mean thereby, HALLIWELL. "I stynt, I cesse, je cesse; let him go to it, I praye God he never stynt." Palsgrave, 1530. 54. perilous] KNT. Parlous is a corruption of the word perilous. La. Cap. Marry, that 'marry' is the very theme Ful. It is an honour that I dream not of. Nurse. An honour! were not I thine only nurse, I would say thou hadst suck'd wisdom from thy teat. La. Cap. Well, think of marriage now; younger than you Here in Verona, ladies of esteem, Are made already mothers. By my count, I was your mother much upon these years That you are now a maid. Thus then in brief; Nurse. A man, young lady! lady, such a man 63. Marry, that marry'] And that same marriage Pope, &c. from (Q,). 65. disposition] dispositions Qq. 66. It is]'Tis FF, Rowe. 66, 67. honour] Pope, from (Q,). houre Q¶FF2 hour FF, Rowe, Capell. 67, 68. As verse first by Pope. 67. thine] om. Q4 25 65 70 75 68. I would say] I would say that FF. I'd say Pope, &c. Capell, Har. Camp. Sing. Knt. Corn. Haz. Sta. Dyce, (ed. 2), Ktly. wisdom] thy wisdome QQ5. 'wisdom Allen conj. MS. 71. mothers. By] mothers by Qq. 72. your] a Knt. 75, 76. Verse first, Pope. Prose, Ktly. 72. these years] STA. In the old poem Juliet's age is set down at sixteen; in Paynter's novel at eighteen. As Sh. makes his heroine only fourteen, if the words "your mother," which is the reading of the old editions, be correct, Lady Capulet would be eight and twenty; while her husband, having done masking some thirty years, must be at least threescore. Knight veils the disparity, and perhaps improves the passage, but we believe without authority. 76. a man of wax] STEEV. So, in Wily Beguiled: "Why, he's a man as one should picture him in wax." [Sing. Huds. Dyce, Hal. S. WESTON. Well made, as if he had been modeled in wax. [Haz. White.] As Steevens by a happy quotation has explained it. "When you, Lydia, praise the waxen arms of Telephus" (says Horace) (Waxen, well-shaped, fine-turned), &c. [Sing. Huds. Dyce, Clarke.] Bentley changes cerea into lactea, little understanding that the praise was given to the shape, not to the colour. [Hal. SING. [Quotes Hor. Od. I, xiii, 2, as above, and adds]: Which Dacier explains: 'Des bras faits au tour, comme nous disons d'un bras rond, qu'il est comme de cire.' WHITE. So in Euphues and his England: "You make either your lover... so exquisite that for shape he must be framed in wax,” 1597, Sig. X 3; and see in III, iii, 126, of this play. But the expression is not out of use in this country; and I have been so accustomed to hear my lad of wax' addressed as a phrase of jocular encouragement and approbation to a boy, that, had I not noticed the British editors' explanation of the phrase, I should not have thought that it needed one. La. Cap. Verona's summer hath not such a flower. DYCE. In some of the provinces, a man of wax means now-a-days "a smart, cleverish fellow;" vide Moor's Suffolk Words and The Dialect of Craven; but assuredly Sh. does not employ the expression in that sense. [In a note on a sea of wax [T. of A., I, i, 50], DYCE has the following]: Dr. Ingleby has put forth a brochure: The Still Lion, &c., Being part of the Shakespeare-jahrbuch, ii, wherein he gives, with astonishing confidence, entirely new glosses of "a sea of wax" and "a man of wax"-his attempt to show that Sh. employs a SUBSTANTIVE "war" in the sense of "expandedness or growth" vying in absurdity with any of the misinterpretations that ignorance and conceit have ever tried to force upon the great dramatist. [Dr. Ingleby says]: ““A man of wax" is a man of full growth. Of Falstaff [2 Hen. IV: I, ii, 149] it would mean a man of ample dimensions; of Romeo it means a man of puberty, "a proper man." It seems inconceivable that Dr. Ingleby should have so grossly misunderstood these words in Romeo and Juliet. 666 I add a passage which is decisive as to the true meaning of "a man of wax:" "A sweet face, an exceeding daintie hand; A body, were it framed of wax By all the cunning artists of the world, It could not better be proportioned.”—Faire Em., &c., sig. B, ed. 1631. 79. What say you] [This speech POPE pronounces "ridiculous," and STEEV. "stuff." SING. repeated Steevens's epithet in (ed. 1), but recalled it in (ed. 2)]. KNIGHT. This passage furnishes a very remarkable example of the correctness of the principle laid down in Whiter's very able tract: "An Attempt to explain and illustrate various Passages of Sh. on a new Principle of Criticism, derived from Locke's Doctrine of the Association of Ideas," wherein the leading doctrine, as applied to Sh., is, that the exceeding warmth of his imagination often supplied him, by the power of association, with words, and with ideas, suggested to the mind by a principle of union unperceived by himself, and independent of the subject to which they are applied. We readily agree with Whiter that "this propensity in the mind to associate subjects so remote in their meaning, and so heterogeneous in their nature, must, of necessity, sometimes deceive the ardour of the writer into whimsical or ridiculous combinations. As the reader, however, is not blinded by this fascinating principle, which, while it creates the association, conceals likewise its effects, he is instantly impressed with the quaintness, or the absurdity, of the imagery, and is inclined to charge the writer with the intention of a foolish quibble or an impertirent allusion." It is in this spirit of a cold and literal criticism, here so well de scribed, that Monck Mason pronounces upon the passage before us,—“this ridiculous speech is full of abstruse quibbles." But the principle of association, as explained by Whiter, at once reconciles us to the quibbles. The "volume" of young Paris's face suggests the "beauty's pen," which hath "writ" there. Then, the obscurities of the fair "volume" are written in the "margin of his eyes," as comments of ancient books are always printed in the margin. Lastly, this "book of love" lacks "a cover;" the "golden story" must be locked with "golden clasps." The ingenious management of the vein of imagery is, at least, as remarkable as its "abstruse quibbles." This night you shall behold him at our feast: 83. married] Q. severall The rest, Rowe, Theob. Warb. Johns. Capell, Camp. Knt. Del. White. 8c 85 85. obscured] obscure Allen Ms. conj. 86. margent] margin Var. Knt. Coll. Sing. Huds. Ulr. Del. Clarke, Hal. Ktly. 83. married lineament] STEEV. Examine how nicely one feature depends upon another, or accords with another, in order to produce that harmony of the whole face which seems to be implied in the word content. In Tro. and Cress, we have "the married calm of states," and in the 8th Sonnet the same allusion: "If the true concord of well-tuned sounds, By unions married, do offend thine ear."-[Sing. (ed. 1), Huds. ULR. In my opinion, the prosaic several would be decidedly preferable to the hyper-poetical and far-fetched “married” (especially as the thought that the features were in harmony is distinctly expressed in the next verse), if the whole speech of Lady Capulet were not so full of plays upon words and strained comparisons. That Sh. puts in the mouth of Juliet's mother such, so called, Euphuisms is certainly not without a deep design. She is distinguished by the style and matter of her speech as a highly cultivated, but in truth an artificial, woman of the world of that day, of considerable address, but without feeling, without heart or soul, who thinks more of fashionable elegance of manners, social advantage, &c., than of true inner worth, and is, therefore, more devoted to the world than to the care and education of her daughter. DEL. The epithet, "married," anticipates too forcibly the succeeding line. The blending together, emphasized in the succeeding verse, stands in more marked contrast by the use of "several" than by the use of “married.” 86. margent] STEEV. The comments on ancient books were always printed in the margin. So Horatio, in Hamlet, says: “I knew you must be edified by the margent," &c. [Sing. Haz. Huds. MAL. So in the Rape of Lucrece: "But she that never cop'd with stranger eyes Could pick no meaning from their parling looks, Nor read the subtle shining secrecies Writ in the glassy margent of such books."-[Sing. Huds. Sta. STA. Sh. was evidently fond of resembling the face to a book, and having once arrived at this similitude, the comparison, however odd, of the eyes to the margin wherein of old the commentary on the text was printed is not altogether unnatural. This passage, which presents both the primary and subordinate metaphor, is the best example he has given of this peculiar association of ideas. |