I'll change my black gown for a faithful friend. Rof. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Birón, With groaning wretches; and your task shall be, To enforce the pained impotent to fmile. Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be; it is impoffible: Mirth cannot move a foul in agony. Rof. Why that's the way to choke a gibing spirit, Which fhallow laughing hearers give to fools: Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans, And I shall find you empty of that fault, Right 5 Fierce is vehement, rapid.. STEEVINS. 6 Dear fhould here, as in many other places, be dere, fad, odious. JOHNSON I believe dear in this place, as in many others, means only immediate, confequential. So, already in this fcene: -full of dear guiltinefs. STEEVENS. Right joyful of your reformation. Biron A twelvemonth? well, befal what will befal, I'll jeft a twelvemonth in an hofpital." Prin. Ay, fweet my lord; and fo I take my leave. [To the KING. King. No, madam: we will bring you on your way. Biron. Our wooing doth not end like an old play ; Jack hath not Jill: thefe ladies' courtesy Might well have made our fport a comedy. King. Come, fir, it wants a twelvemonth and a day, And then 'twill end. Biron. That's too long for a play, Enter ARMADO. Arm. Sweet majefty, vouchfafe me,- Dum. The worthy knight of Troy. Arm. I will kifs thy royal finger, and take leave: I am a votary; I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her fweet love three years. But, moft efteemed greatnefs, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled, in praife of the owl and the cuckoo? it should have followed in the end of our show. King. Call them forth quickly, we will do fo. Enter HOLOFERNES, NATHANIEL, MOTH, COSTARD, and others. This fide is Hiems, winter; this Ver, the fpring; the one maintain'd by the owl, the other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin. SONG. 6 The characters of Biron and Rofaline fuffer much by comparison with thofe of Benedick and Beatrice. We know that Love's Labour's Loft was the elder performance; and as our author grew more experienced in dramatic writing, he might have seen how much he could improve on his own originals. To this circumftance, perhaps, we are indebted for the more perfect comedy of Much ado about Nothing. STEEVENS. SONG. Spring. When daifies pied, and violets blue, Cuckoo, cuckoo,-O word of fear, II. When Shepherds pipe on oaten ftraws, Mocks married men, for thus fings he, Cuckoo ; Cuckoo, cuckoo,-O word of fear, Winter. 7 The first lines of this fong that were tranfpofed, have been replaced by Mr. Theobald. JOHNSON. Gerard in his Herbal, 1597, fays, that the flos cuculi cardamine, &c. are called in English cuckoo-flowers, in Norfolk Canterbury-bells, and at Namptwich in Cheshire laidie fmocks." Shakspeare, however, might not have been fufficiently fkilled in botany to be aware of this particular. Mr. Tollet has obferved that Lyte in his Herbal, 1578 and 1579, remarks, that cowflips are in French, of fome called coquu, prime vere, and brayes de coquu. This he thinks will fufficiently account for our author's cuckoo-buds, by which he fuppofes cowflip buds to be meant; and further directs the reader to Cotgrave's Dictionary, under the articles-Cocu, and kerbe a coqu. STEEVENS. Cuckoo-buds must be wrong. I believe cowflip-buds, the true reading. FARMER. Mr. Whalley, the learned editor of Ben Jonfon's Works, many years ago propofed to read crocus buds. The cuckoo-flower, he obferved, could not be called yellow, it rather approaching to the colour of white, by which epithet, Cowley, who was himself no mean botanist, has diftinguifhed it: MALONE. Albaque cardamine, &c. STEEVENS, III. Winter. When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,2 Tu whit, to-who, 3 a merry note, When i. e. from the eaves of the thatch or other roofing, from which in the morning icicles are found depending in great abundance, after a night of froft. Our author (whose images are all taken from nature) has a'luded in The Tempeft, to the drops of water that after rain flow from fuch cover. ings, in their natural unfrozen state: "His tears run down his beard, like winter's drops MALONE. 2 And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,] So, in King Henry VI. P. III. "What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails, "Can neither call it perfect day or night." MALONE. 3 So, in Lyly's Mother Bombie: "To-whit, to-whoo the owle does cry." HOLT WHITE. + This word is yet ufed in Ireland, and fignifies to fcum the pt. GOLDSMITH." So, in Marston's What you Will, 1607: brain boils, keel it, keel it, or all the fat's in the fire." STEEVENS. To keel the pot is certainly to cool it, but in a particular manner: it is to ftir the pottage with the ladle to prevent the boiling over. FARMER. -keel the pot ] i. e. cool the pot. "The thing is, they mix their thicking of oatmeal and water, which they call blending the litting [or lithing], and put it in the pot, when they fet on, because when the meat, pudding and turnips are all in, they cannot fo well mix it, but 'tis apt to go into lumps; yet this method of theirs renders the pot liable to boil over at the first rifing, and every subsequent increase of the fire; to prevent which it becomes neceffary for one to attend to cool it occafionally, by lading it up frequently with a ladle, which they call keeling the pot, and is indeed a greafy office." Gent. Mag. 1760. This account feems to be accurate. RITSON. To keel fignifies to cool in general, without any reference to the kitchen. Mr. Lambe obferves in his notes on the ancient metrical Hiftory of The Battle of Floddon, that it is a common thing in the North "for a maid fervant to take out of a boiling pot a wheen, i, e. a finall quantity, viz. a porringer 1 - IV. When all aloud the wind doth blow, And Marian's nofe looks red and raw, Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note, Arm. The words of Mercury are harsh after the fongs of Apollo. You, that way; we, this way. [Exeunt, porringer or two of broth, and then to fill up the pot with cold water. The broth thus taken out, is called the keeling wheen. In this manner greafy Joan keeled the pot." STEEVENS. 5 Saw feems anciently to have meant, not as at prefent, a proverb, a fentence, but the whole tenor of any inftructive difcourfe. STEEVENS. Yet in As you like it, our author uses this word in the fenfe of a sentence, or maxim: Dead fhepherd, now I find thy faw of might," &c. It is, I believe, so used here. MALONE. STEEVENS. 6 i. e. the wild apples, fo called. The bowl must be supposed to be filled with ale; a toast and some spice and fugar being added, what is called Lamb's wool is produced. MALONE. 7 In this play, which all the editors have concurred to cenfure, and fome have rejected as unworthy of our poet, it must be confeffed that there are many paffages mean, childish, and vulgar; and fome which ought not to have been exhibited, as we are told they were, to a maiden queen. But there are fcattered through the whole many fparks of genius; nor is there any play that has more evident marks of the hand of Shakspeare. JOHNSON. ACT I. SCENE I. Page 417. This child of fancy, that Armado bight, &c.] This, as I have shown in the note in its place, relates to the ftories in the books of chivalry. A few words, therefore, concerning their origin and nature, may not be unacceptable to the reader. As I don't know of any writer, who has given any tolerable account of this matter: and especially as monfieur Huet, the bishop of Avranches, who wrote a formal treatife of the Origin of Romances, has faid little or nothing of these in that fuperficial work. For having brought down the account of Romances to the later Greeks, and entered upon those compofed by the barbarous weftern writers, which have now the name of Romances almost appropriated to them, he puts the change 6 |