"-a CoSTARD broken in a shin"-" Costard" signifies a head; hence Moth's joke.

"thy L'ENVOY;—begin”—“ L'envoy" is the old French word for the conclusion of a story, or poem. Armado means, "Come to thy conclusion by beginning." "L'envoy" was adopted early in English.

“—no salve in THE MALE"-" This is printed in the quarto, (1598,) and in the folio, no salve in thee male, sir.' Malone, Stevens, and Johnson take "male" in the sense of bag-there is no salve in the bag, or wallet; but Tyrwhitt proposes to read, no salve in them all, sir'-which is so plausible, that I am almost tempted to place it in the text, even in opposition to all the authorities."-COLLIER.

"The boy hath sold him a bargain"—" This comedy is running over with allusions to country-sports-one of the many proofs that, in its original shape, it may be assigned to the author's greenest years. The sport which so delights Costard, about the fox, the ape, and the humble-bee, has been explained by Capell, whose lumbering and obscure comments upon Shakespeare have been pillaged and sneered at by the other commentators. In this instance, they take no notice of him. It seems, according to Capell, that selling a bargain' consisted in drawing a person in, by some stratagem, to proclaim himself fool, by his own lips; and thus, when Moth makes his master repeat the l'envoy, ending in the goose, he proclaims himself a goose, according to the rustic wit, which Costard calls selling a bargain well. Fast and loose,' to which he alludes, was another holiday sport; and the goose, that ended the market, alludes to the proverb, three women and a goose make a market.'"-KNIGHT.

4

"my INCONY Jew"-Mr. Dyce, in his edition of Middleton's works, explains "incony" as fine, delicate, pretty. This was also Warburton's interpretation of the word, asserting it to be of northern origin, which Ritson, without sufficient evidence, denied. It is of frequent occurrence, and we meet with it again in this play, act iv. scene 1. "Jew" seems used by Costard as a term of endearment, and for the sake of the rhyme.

- Guerdon-remuneration"-In a tract published in 1598, ("A Health to the Gentlemanly Profession of Serving Men,") there is a story of a servant who got a "remuneration" of three farthings from one of his master's guests, and a "guerdon" of a shilling from another guest. Perhaps the story had passed into the gossip of the people, and Costard's jocularity was understood by thegentlemanly profession," who stood on the ground of the Blackfriars Theatre, or the Globe.

"This SENIOR-JUNIOR"-In reference to the contrariety of love, Shakespeare calls Cupid "senior-junior," and "giant-dwarf." The quarto and the folios have it, "signior Junios giant dwarf." The change was made by Johnson.

"-trotting PARITORS"-"An apparitor, or 'paritor,' (says Johnson,) 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."

"-a corporal of his field,

And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!" "It appears, from Lord Stafford's 'Letters,' that a corporal of the field was employed, as an aide-de-camp is now, 'in taking and carrying to and fro the directions of the general, or other higher officers of the field.' From other sources, however, it seems that the functions of this officer were of a diversified nature. 'tumbler's hoop' was usually dressed out with coloured ribands. To wear love's colours means, to wear his badge or cognomen, or to be his servant or retainer."Illust. Shak.

A

ACT IV. SCENE I.

"Whoe'er A' was"-We have, with Collier, preferred the retaining, as in the original editions, this mode of putting a' for he, in familiar conversation; as showing it not to have been confined, in that age, to vulgar or ludicrous dialogue.

- play the murderer in"-" Royal and noble ladies, in the days of Elizabeth, delighted in the somewhat unrefined sport of shooting deer with a cross-bow. In the 'alleys green' of Windsor or of Greenwich parks, the queen would take her stand, on an elevated platform, and, as the pricket or the buck was driven past her, would aim the death-shaft, amid the acclamations of her admiring courtiers. The ladies, it appears, were skilful enough at this sylvan butchering. Sir Francis Leake writes to the Earl of Shrewsbury-Your lordship has sent me a very great and fat stag, the welcomer being stricken by your right honourable lady's hand.' The practice was as old as the romances of the middle ages. But, in those days, the ladies were sometimes not so expert as the Countess of Shrewsbury; for, in the history of Prince Arthur, a fair huntress wounds Sir Launcelot of the Lake, instead of the stag at which she aims."-KNIGHT.

"good my GLASS" -"Here Dr. Johnson and Dr. Farmer have each a note, too long and too absurd to quote, to show it was the fashion for ladies to wear mirrors at their girdles. Stevens says, justly, that Dr. Johnson is mistaken, and that the forester is the mirror."-PYE.

"— a member of the commonwealth"-"The Princess calls Costard a 'member of the commonwealth,' because he is one of the attendants on the King and his associates, in their new-modelled society."-SINGER.

"God DIG-YOU-DEN all"-i. e. God give you good even all. "Good den" is good even. "Break up this capon"-i. e. Open this letter. "To break up (says Percy) was a peculiar phrase in carving."

- PENELOPHON"-The ballad which Shakespeare alludes to, in RICHARD II. and elsewhere, may be found in Percy's delightful collection of "Reliques of Ancient Poetry."

"a MONARCHO"-The allusion is to a fantastical character of the time. 86 Popular applause (says Meares, in 'Wit's Treasurie,' p. 178) doth nourish some, neither do they gape after any other thing but vaine praise and glorie, as in our age Peter Shakerlye of Paules, and Monarcho that lived about the court." He is called an Italian by Nashe, and Churchyard has written some lines which he calls his "Epitaphe." By another writer it appears that he was a Bergamasco."

who is the SUITOR"-The joke, here and afterwards, depends upon the pronunciation of "suitor"shooter. In this play, in the last line but one of act iii., to sue is printed to shue, both in the quarto and in the folio; and here "suitor" is printed shooter. This indicates the pronunciation of the Elizabethan age, in this respect, to have been the same with that still preserved in Ireland, which was for a time, on Sheridan's authority, fashionable on the stage, and among public speakers.

"An I cannot, another can"-This, like many of the "snatches of songs" in SHAKESPEARE, is a fragment of a popular song. It is referred to in the light poetry of the time.

A roe

complete buck. Likewise, your hart is the first year, a calf; the second year, a brocket; the third year, a spade; the fourth year, a stag; the sixth year, a hart. buck is the first year, a kid; the second year, a gird; the third year, a hemuse. And these are your special beasts for chace." Sir Nathaniel and Dull differ as to the age of the animal.

"'twas a PRICKET"-A "buck of the first head" is a stag of five years old; a "pricket" is a stag of the second year-as Malone has shown from the "Return from Parnassus," (1606.)

66

RAUGHT not”—i. e. Reached not, or attained not. "If a TALENT be a claw"-In our author's time the talon of a bird was frequently written "talent." Hence the quibble. In Beaumont and Fletcher's "Woman Hater," talons is spelt talents, in the old copies.

"master PERSON"-The derivation of parson was, perhaps, commonly understood in Shakespeare's time, and parson and "person" were used indifferently. Blackstone (Commentaries) has explained the word:"A parson, persona ecclesiæ, is one that hath full pos session of all the rights of a parochial church. He is called parson, persona, because by his person the church, which is an invisible body, is represented."

- good old Mantuan”—The " good old Mantuan" was Joh. Baptista Mantuanus, a Carmelite, whose "Eclogues" were translated into English by George Turbervile, in 1567. His first "Eclogue" commences withFauste, precor gelida; and Farnaby, in his preface to "Martial," says, that pedants thought more highly of the Fauste, precor gelida, than of the Arma virumque cano. Here, again, the unlearned Shakespeare hits the mark when he meddles with learned matters.

"NON TE PREGIA"-A proverbial expression applied to Venice, which we find thus in Howell's "Letters:"Venetia, Venetia, chi non te vede, non te pregia, Ma chi t' ha troppo veduto te dispregia.

SCENE III.

"Gets up into a tree"-The old stage-direction is, "He stands aside," which was all that the humble scenic arrangement of the old stage could afford; but it is evident, from what Biron says, on the entrance of Dumaine, that the author meant that he should be above the others:

Like a demi-god here sit I in the sky, etc.

- like a PERJURER, wearing papers"-From a passage in Hollingshed, it appears that perjurers wore papers, stating their offence, when they were punished. "the TRIUMVIRY, the corner-cap of society, The SHAPE OF LOVE'S TYBURN," etc. "Triumviry," and the "shape of love's Tyburn," allude to the gallows of the time, which was occasionally triangular

"GUARDS on wanton Cupid's hose"-" Guards" signify the edges, or hems, of garments.

"This is the LIVER VEIN"-In reference to the supposition, which came down from classic antiquity, and is often alluded to by Shakespeare, that the liver was the seat of love.

"she is NOT :-corporal"-The received reading is, "she is but corporal." Ours is the ancient reading: and Douce repudiates the modern change. Biron calls Dumaine "corporal," as he had formerly named himself (act iii.) "corporal of his field"-of Cupid's field.

"Her amber hairs for foul have amber QUOTED", "Quoted" signifies marked, or noted. The word is from the coter, (to quote.) The construction of this passage will, therefore, be-Her amber hairs have marked, or shown, that real amber is foul in comparison with themselves.

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-nor I Biron"-Here, as throughout the play, the In name of Biron is accented on the second syllable. the first quarto he is called Beroune. From the line before us, it appears that, in our author's time, the name was pronounced Biroon. Mr. Boswell has remarked that this was the mode in which words of this termination were pronounced, in English. Mr. Fox always said Touloon, when speaking of Toulon, in the House of Commons.

"some QUILLETS"-" Quillet" means an ingenious turn of argument, and is applied to the refinements of the law. Its derivation has perplexed the etymologists; that given by Bailey and Nares, in their "Dictionaries," is the most probable—“ Quibblet; a diminutive of quibble."

- climbing trees in the Hesperides"-"The 'Hesperides' were the daughters of Hesperus, and the fabled possessors of the golden apples carried away by Hercules. In the text, the term is used as though it were the name of the garden itself. Several of the Poet's classical contemporaries have fallen into the same error."-KNIGHT.

"Makes heaven drowsy"-Few passages have been more discussed than this. Yet the only difficulty seems to be from insisting on a literal and prosaic sense. The obvious interpretation of it is-"Whenever love speaks, all the gods join their voices in harmonious concert." The power of harmonious sounds to make the hearers drowsy has been alluded to, by poets, in all ages. The old copies read make. Shakespeare often falls into a similar carelessness.

- get the sun of them"-In the days of archery, it was of consequence to have the sun at the back of the bowmen, and in the face of the enemy. This circumstance was of great advantage to Henry V. at the battle of Agincourt.

ACT V.-SCENE I.

- 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 schoolmaster'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."JOHNSON.

Reason, in the text, and in many other places, signifies discourse; audacious is used in a good sense, for spirited, animated, confident; opinion is equivalent to obstinacy, or the French opiniatraté; and affection, as often in Shakespeare and his contemporaries, for affectation.

"—thrasonical"-From Thraso, the boasting soldier of Terence. Fuller, in his "Worthies," speaks of one as a "thrasonical puff, and emblem of mock valour." Farmer asserts that the word was introduced in our language before Shakespeare's time.

"POINT-DEVISE companions"-i. e. Nice to excess. The origin of the phrase is very obscure. Gifford thinks it must have been a mathematical phrase. Other examples of its use are found in Shakespeare, and in Hollingshed, Drayton, and Ben Jonson.

"This is ABHOMINABLE"-This was a frequent mode of spelling the word, before the time of Shakespeare. It seems to have been going out of use when this play was written, and "abhominable" soon was generally spelled abominable.

"HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS"-"Taylor, the old water-poet, has given us a syllable more of this delight of school-boys-honorificicabilitudinitatibus. But he has not equalled Rabelais, who has thus furnished the

title of a book that might puzzle Paternoster RowAntipericatametaparhengedamphicribrationes."

KNIGHT.

“— @ FLAP-DRAGON”—A “flap-dragon" is a small inflammable substance, which topers used to swallow, floating on the wine.

“— or the fifth, if I”—“The pedant asks who is the silly sheep-quis, quis? The third of the five vowels, if you repeat them,' says Moth; and the pedant does repeat them-a, e, I. The other two clinches it,' says Moth-'o, u,' (O you.) This may appear a poor conundrum, and a low conceit, as Theobald has it; but the satire is in opposing the pedantry of the boy to that of the man, and making the pedant have the worst of it, in what he calls a quick venew of wit.' "

KNIGHT.

"-VENEW of wit"—A "venew," or venie, was the technical term for a hit, at the fencing-school. In the various forms of venew, venie, venny, and vennie, it is of common occurrence in old writers.

"at the CHARGE-HOUSE"-Stevens supposed that by "charge-house" was meant a free-school. Collier suggests that it is a misprint for large house.

"-remember thy courtesy"-By "remember thy courtesy," Armado probably means-Remember that all this time thou art standing with thy hat off." The putting off the hat at table is a kind of courtesie, or ceremonie, rather to be avoided than otherwise."-FLORIO'S "Second Frutes," (1591.)

SCENE II.

-to make his god-head wax"-i. e. Grow. The pun is obvious.

"-mouse”—A term of endearment; as, in HAMLET"call you his mouse."

"A POx of that jest"-Theobald is scandalized at this language from a princess. "But (Dr. Farmer observes) there need be no alarm-the small-pox only is alluded to, with which it seems Katharine was pitted; or, as it is quaintly expressed, her face was full of O's." Dr. Donne and others are quoted to show this use of the word. Such a plague was the small-pox formerly, that its name might well be used as an imprecation.

"—by the week"-i. e. For a certainty, and a fixed period. The expression was common.

"Like Muscovites, or Russians"-It appears that a masque of Muscovites was not an unusual court recreation. Hall (the Chronicler) states that, in the first year of Henry VIII., at a banquet made for the foreign ambassadors, in the parliament-chamber, at Westminster, "came the Lord Henry Earle of Wiltshire, and the Lord Fitzwater, in two long gowns of yellow satin, traversed with white satin, and in every bend of white was a bend of crimson satin, after the fashion of Russia, or Russland, with furred hats of grey on their heads; either of them having a hatchet in their hands, and boots with pikes turned up."

"-in Russian habits"-Boyet has previously told us that the King and his lords were to enter " like Muscovites, or Russians." The old stage-direction is, "Enter Black-moors with music, the boy with a speech, and the rest of the lords disguised." Hence it appears that Black-moors, with music, preceded the lords, in order to introduce the maskers.

"Beauties no richer than rich taffata"-This speech, which, in the older editions, is assigned to Biron, as here, was given, by Theobald and his successors, to Boyet, as more appropriate to him. It may be so, but is not out of place in the mouth of the jesting Biron. The allusion is to the "taffata" masks.

"-tread a MEASURE"-The "measure" was a grave courtly dance, of which the steps were slow and measured, like those of a modern minuet.

- Since you can coG"-To "cog" is, technically, to load dice, and, metaphorically, to deceive and cheat. "is not VEAL a calf"-By "veal" is probably meant well, sounded as foreigners usually pronounce that word, and introduced merely for the sake of the subsequent question. In the play of "Dr. Doddypoll," the same joke occurs:

Doctor. Hans, my very special friend, fait and trot me be right glad for see you reale.

Hans. What, do you make a calf of me, master doctor?

"better wits have worn plain STATUTE-CAPS"-In the Thirteenth of Elizabeth, (1571,) an act was passed "For the continuance of making and wearing woollen caps, in behalf of the trade of cappers," providing that all above the age of six years, (except the nobility, and some others,) should, on sabbath-days and holidays, wear caps of wool, knit, thicked, and dressed in England, upon penalty of ten groats. These were the "statute-caps" alluded to; and the meaning of the passage in the text is-" Better wits may be found among the plain citizens." In Marston's "Dutch Courtesan," Mrs. Mulligrub says-"Though my husband be a citizen, and his cap's made of wool, yet I have wit." Walter Scott has made the term more familiar to the modern reader, by using it in the "Fortunes of Nigel." "angels VAILING clouds"-i. e. Angels lowering the clouds that concealed them.

"A MEAN"-The "mean," in vocal music, is an intermediate part-a part (whether tenour, or second soprano, or contra-tenour) between the two extremes of highest and lowest.

"-teeth as white as WHALES bone"-i. e. As white as the "bone," or tooth, of the walrus, of old called the "whale." The expression was common, at a very early date, in our language. The reader will perceive that "whales" is to be read as a dissyllable, in Shakespeare, as well as in Lord Surrey's "Songs and Sonnets," in Spenser's "Faerie Queene," and various older authorities for the same simile.

spruce AFFECTION"-So the old copies; and Sir Nathaniel has already used the expression, “witty without affection." In both cases, we should now write affectation; but Shakespeare's word, as appears by all the old copies, was "affection;" and that ought to be retained, though Malone and other editors reject it.

"Write 'Lord have mercy on us'"-The inscription upon the doors of houses infected with the plague. The word "tokens," occurring a few lines lower, in reference to the favours worn by the ladies, was then also applied to symptoms of the plague.

— you FORCE not to forswear"-i. e. You do not hesitate, or care not, to forswear. This idiomatic use of the word is very old in our language:—

O Lorde! some good body, for God's sake, gvye me meate, I force not what it were, so that I had to eate. "Jacob and Esau," (1568,) act ii. scene 2.

"smiles his cheek in YEARS"-The old copies are uniform in this reading, which is very intelligible. Biron is speaking generally of some courtier, who "smiles his cheek in (or into) years," or an appearance of age, by constant grinning. Malone altered "years" into jeers. "by the SQUIRE"-From esquierre, (French)-a rule, or square.

"this brave MANAGE"-A term from the tilt-yard, The quarto (1598) has nuage; the folio (1623) manager. The correct reading was given by Theobald.

"You cannot BEG us"-In the old common-law was a writ de idiota inquirendo, under which, if a man was legally proved an idiot, the profits of his lands, and the

custody of his person, might be granted by the king to any subject. Such a person, when this grant was asked, was said to be begged for a fool.-(See "Blackstone," b. i. c. 8.) One of the legal tests appears to have been to try whether the party could answer a simple arithmetical question.

"ABATE throw at NOVUM"-" Novum,' or novem, was a game at dice, and 'abate throw at novum' seems equivalent to saying, 'barring throw at dice,' or barring the chance of throwing, these persons cannot be matched. Malone inserted the indefinite article before 'throw; but it is not necessary. The 'Nine Worthies' brought novem into Biron's mind."-COLLIER.

The old reading has been retained in the text, which, read as you may, must require a note. My impression is, that the reading of the second folio, adopted in several editions, is right-"a bare throw"-a mere freak of odd chance to bring five such persons together.

"Pageant of the Nine Worthies"-"The genuine worthies of the old pageant were Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bulloigne. Sometimes Guy of Warwick was substituted for Godfrey of Bulloigne. These redoubted personages, according to a manuscript in the British Museum, (Harl. 2057,) were clad in complete armour, with crowns of gold on their heads; every one having his esquire, to bear before him his shield and pennon-at-arms. According to this manuscript, these lords' were dressed as three Hebrews, three Infidels, and three Christians. Shakespeare overthrew the just proportion of age and country; for he gives us four infidels, (Hector, Pompey, Alexander, and Hercules,) out of the five of the schoolmaster's pageant."-KNIGHT.

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LIBBARD's head on knee"-Pompey wore a "libbard's" (or panther's) head upon his knee.

"-it stands TOO RIGHT"-"It should be remembered, (Stevens remarks,) to relish this joke, that the head of Alexander was obliquely placed on his shoulders."

"Your nose smells"-"His (Alexander's) body had so sweet a smell of itselfe that all the apparell he wore next unto his body, tooke thereof a passing delightful savour, as if it had been perfumed."-NORTH'S "Plutarch."

"-lion, that holds his poll-axe sitting on a closestool"- This alludes to the arms given in the old history of the Nine Worthies,' (says Tollet,) to Alexander, the which did beare geules, a lion or, seiante in a chayer, holding a battle-axe argent.'"-(Leigh's "Accidence of Armoury," 1597, p. 23.) The second part of the joke arises out of the similarity of sound between Ajax and a jakes.

"Judas was hang'd on an elder"-The common tradition was that Judas hanged himself on an elder-tree. Thus, in Ben Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humour""He shall be your Judas, and you shall be his elder-tree to hang on."

"A CITTERN head"-It appears, from several passages in the old dramas, that the head of a "cittern," gittern, or guitar, was terminated with a face.

"The carv'd-bone face on a FLASK"-A soldier's powder-horn, which was often elaborately "carv'd."

"I go wooLWARD"-i. e. Wanting the shirt, so as to leave the woollen cloth of the outer coat next the skin. In an old collection of satires we have

And when his shirt's a washing, then he must
Go woolward for the time.

"-at his very LOOSE"-"At his very loose' may mean, (say the editors following Stevens,) at the moment of his parting." But "loose" is an old term of archery"the act of discharging an arrow." Drayton has this

same phrase, used in its literal sense-"in the very loose" of the shaft. The King then means-" at the very beginning of the time of any affair, is often decided," etc.

"it would CONVINCE"-i. e. Overcome, or obtain by overcoming.

"STRAYING shapes"-All the old copies read"Full of straying shapes." Coleridge recommends the substitution of stray. Malone and others have strange; which (Dyce says) is often thus misprinted in old books. "As BOMBAST, and as LINING to the time"-i. e. To fill up the time, as bombast" (in its original sense cotton, or such wadding) was formerly used to fill up and stuff out dress.

"and LAST love"-i. e. If it continue still to be love.

"-seek the weary beds of people sick.]"-Thirlby, printed in the text in brackets ought to be omitted, as Warburton, and Coleridge suggested, that the lines only an abridgment of what Rosaline says afterwards, in answer to Biron. They have been here retained, because they are in all the older editions, and most modern ones. The probability seems to be that here, as it occurs in ROMEO AND JULIET, the author's first draft, afterwards altered and enlarged, was accidentally left in the dialogue, along with the expanded lines.

"KEEL the pot"-To "keel," or kele, is to cool(from celan, Anglo-Saxon.) H. Tooke asserts that it has no other sense; but, latterly, it seems to have been applied particularly to the tending of boiling liquor. To "keel the pot" is to cool it, by stirring the pottage with a ladle, to prevent the boiling over. Thus, in a much older author

And lered men a ladel bygge, with a long stele

That cast for to kele a crokke, and save the fatte above. "-roasted CRABS"-Not our shell-fish, but the wild English apple, which, roasted and put into ale, was a favourite Old-English luxury. This was probably the origin of the apple-toddy of Virginia.

"If we were to part with any of the author's come dies, it should be this. Yet we should be loth to part with Don Adriano de Armado, that mighty potentate of nonsense; or his page, that handful of wit; with Nathaniel the curate, or Holofernes the schoolmaster, and their dispute after dinner, on the golden cadences of poetry;' with Costard the clown, or Dull the constable. Biron is too accomplished a character to be lost to the world, and yet he could not appear without his fellowcourtiers and the King; and if we were to leave out the

ladies, the gentlemen would have no mistresses. So that we believe we must let the whole play stand as it is, and we shall hardly venture to set a mark of reprobation on it.' Still we have some objections to the style, which we think savours more of the pedantic spirit of Shakespeare's time than of his own geniusmore of controversial divinity, and the logic of Peter Lombard, than of the inspiration of the muse. It transports us quite as much to the manners of the court, and the quirks of courts of law, as to the scenes of nature, or the fairy-land of his own imagination.

"Shakespeare has set himself to imitate the tone of polite conversation then prevailing among the fair, the witty, and the learned; and he has imitated it but too faithfully. It is as if the hand of Titian had been employed to give grace to the curls of a full-bottomed periwig, or Raphael had attempted to give expression to the tapestry figures in the House of Lords. Shakespeare has put an excellent description of this fashionable jargon into the mouth of the critical Holofernes, 'as too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, too peregrinate, as I may call it:' and nothing can be more marked than the difference when he breaks loose from the trammels he had imposed on himself, as light as bird from brake,' and speaks in his own person."-HAZLITT.

"In this play, which all the editors have concurred to censure, and some have rejected as unworthy of our Poet, it must be confessed that there are many passages mean, childish, and vulgar; and some which ought not to have been exhibited, as we are told they were, to a maiden queen. But there are scattered through the whole many sparks of genius; nor is there any play that has more evident marks of the hand of Shakespeare."JOHNSON.

"This is one of Shakespeare's early plays, and the author's youth is certainly perceivable, not only in the style and manner of the versification, but in the lavish superfluity displayed in the execution; the uninterrupted succession of quibbles, equivoques, and sallies of every description. The sparks of wit fly about in such profusion that they form complete fireworks, and the dialogue for the most part resembles the bustling collision and banter of passing masks at a carnival.'-(Schlegel.) The scene in which the King and his companions detect each other's breach of their mutual vow, is capitally contrived. The discovery of Biron's love-letter while rallying his friends, and the manner in which he extricates himself, by ridiculing the folly of the vow, are admirable."-SINGER.

"The characters in this play are either impersonated out of Shakespeare's own multiformity by imaginative self position, or out of such as a country-town and a schoolboy's observation might supply-the curate, the schoolmaster, the Armado, (who even in my time was not extinct in the cheaper inns of North Wales,) and so on. The satire is chiefly on follies of words. Biron and Ro

saline are evidently the pre-existent state of Benedick and Beatrice, and so, perhaps, is Boyet of Lafeu, and Costard of the Tapster in MEASURE FOR MEASURE; and the frequency of the rhymes, the sweetness as well as the smoothness of the metre, and the number of acute and fancifully illustrated aphorisms, are all as they ought to be in a poet's youth. True genius begins by generalizing and condensing; it ends in realizing and expanding. It first collects the seeds.

"Yet if this juvenile drama had been the only one extant of our Shakespeare, and we possessed the tradition only of his riper works, or accounts of them in writers who had not even mentioned this play, how many of Shakespeare's characteristic features might we not still have discovered in LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST, though as in a portrait taken of him in his boyhood.

"I can never sufficiently admire the wonderful activity of thought throughout the whole of the first scene of the play, rendered natural, as it is, by the choice of the

characters, and the whimsical determination on which the drama is founded. A whimsical determination certainly;-yet not altogether so very improbable to those who are conversant in the history of the middle ages, with their courts of love, and all that lighter drapery of chivalry, which engaged even mighty kings with a sort of serio-comic interest, and may well be supposed to have occupied more completely the smaller princes, at a time when the noble's or prince's court contained the only theatre of the domain or principality. This sort of story, too, was admirably suited to Shakespeare's times, when the English court was still the foster-mother of the state and the muses; and when, in consequence, the courtiers, and men of rank and fashion, affected a display of wit, point, and sententious observation, that would be deemed intolerable at present; but in which a hundred years of controversy, involving every great political and every dear domestic interest, had trained all but the lowest classes to participate. Add to this the very style of the sermons of the time, and the eagerness of the Protestants to distinguish themselves by long and frequent preaching, and it will be found that, from the reign of Henry VIII. to the abdication of James II. no country ever received such a national education as England.

"Hence the comic matter chosen in the first instance is a ridiculous imitation or apery of this constant striving after logical precision, and subtle opposition of thoughts, together with a making the most of every conception or image, by expressing it under the least expected property belonging to it, and this, again, rendered specially absurd by being applied to the most current subjects and occurrences. The phrases and modes of combination and argument were caught by the most ignorant from the custom of the age, and their ridiculous misapplication of them is most amusingly exhibited in Costard; while examples suited only to the gravest propositions and impersonations, or apostrophes to abstract thoughts impersonated, (which are in fact the natural language only of the most vehement agitations of the mind,) are adopted by the coxcombry of Armado as mere artifices of ornament.

"The same kind of intellectual action is exhibited in a more serious and elevated strain, in many other parts of this play. Biron's speech at the end of the fourth act is an excellent specimen of it. It logic clothed in rhetoric-but observe how Shakespeare, in his two-fold being of poet and philosopher, avails himself of it to convey profound truths in the most lively images-the whole remaining faithful to the character supposed to utter the lines, and the expressions themselves constituting a further development of that character.