Sir And. I was adored once too. Sir To. Let's to bed, knight.Thou hadst need send for more money. Sir And. If I cannot recover your niece, I am a foul way out. Sir To. Send for money, knight; if thou hast her not i' the end, call me Cut.' Sir And. If I do not, never trust me, take it how you will. Sir To. Come, come; I'll go burn some sack, 'tis too late to go to-bed now: Come, knight; come, knight. [Exeunt. SCENE IV. A Room in the Duke's Palace. Enter Duke, VIOLA, CURIO, and others. Duke. Give me some music :-) -Now, good-morrow, friends: Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song, Cur. He is not here, so please your lordship, that should sing it. Duke. Who was it? Cur. Feste, the jester, my lord; a fool, that the lady Olivia's father took much delight in : he is about the house. Duke. Seek him out, and play the tune the while. [Exit CURIO.-Music. -Come hither, boy; If ever thou shalt love, In the sweet pangs of it, remember me : For, such as I am, all true lovers are ; Unstaid and skittish in all motions else, Save, in the constant image of the creature That is belov'd.-How dost thou like this tune? Vio. It gives a very echo to the seat Where Love is thron'd. Duke. Thou dost speak masterly: [3] i. e. call me horse. So, Falstaff in King Henry IV. P I.: "-spit in my face, eall me horse." Curtal, which occurs in another of our author's plays, (i. e. a horse, whose tail has been docked,) and Cut, were probably synonymous. MALONE. My life upon't, young though thou art, thine eye Hath it not, boy? Vio. A little, by your favour. Duke. What kind of woman is't? Vio. Of your complexion. Duke. She is not worth thee then. What years, i'faith? Vio. About your years, my lord. Duke. Too old, by heaven; Let still the woman take An elder than herself; so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband's heart. Vio, I think it well, my lord. Duke. Then let thy love be younger than thyself, For women are as roses; whose fair flower, Duke. O fellow, come, the song we had last night: The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, And the free maids' that weave their thread with bones, Do use to chaunt it; it is silly sooth," And dallies with the innocence of love, Clo. Come away, come away, death, I am slain by a fair cruel maid. [4] Free is, perhaps, vacant, unengaged, easy in mind. [Music. JOHNSON. [6] The old age is the ages past, the times of simplicity. JOHNSON. "Lawn as white as driven snow, "Cyprus black as e'er was crow." [7] i. e. in a shroud of cypress or cyprus. Thus Autolyeus, in The Winter's Tale: There was both black and white cyprus, as there is still black and white crape; and ancient shrouds were always made of the latter. STEEVENS. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, My part of death no one so true Not a flower, not a flower sweet, On my black coffin let there be strown; Not a friend, not a friend greet My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown: Lay me, O, where Sad true lover ne'er find my grave, Duke. There's for thy pains. Clo. No pains, sir; I take pleasure in singing, sir. Clo. Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid, one time or another. Duke. Give me now leave to leave thee. Clo. Now, the melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffata, for thy mind is a very opal! I would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business might be every thing, and their intent every where; for that's it, that always makes a good voyage of nothing. Farewell. [Exit. Duke. Let all the rest give place. -Once more, Cesario, [Exe. CURIO and Attendants. Get thee to yon' same sovereign cruelty: Tell her, my love, more noble than the world, The parts that fortune hath bestow'd upon her, sir? That nature pranks her in, attracts my soul. Vio. 'Sooth, but you must. Say, that some lady, as, perhaps, there is, [6] So Milton, describing the walls of heaven: "With opal tow'rs, and battlements adorn'd. " The opal is a gem which varies its appearance as it is viewed in different lights. "In the opal (says P. Holland's translation of Pliny's Nat. History, B. XXXVII. e 6.) you shall see the burning fire of the carbuncle or rubie, the glorious purple of the amethyst, the green sea of the emeraud, and all glittering together mixed after an incredible manner." STEEVENS. Hath for your love as great a pang of heart As you have for Olivia: you cannot love her; Can 'bide the beating of so strong a passion And can digest as much; make no compare Vio. Ay, but I know,— Duke. What dost thou know? Vio. Too well what love women to men may owe: In faith, they are as true of heart as we. My father had a daughter lov'd a man, Duke. And what's her history? Vio. A blank, my lord: She never told her love, Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought; Smiling at grief." Was not this love, indeed? [9] Mr. Theobald supposes this might possibly be borrowed from Chaucer. Dame pacience ysitting there I fonde And adds: "If he was indebted, however, for the first rude draught, how amply has be repaid that debt, in heightening the picture! How much does the green and yellow melancholy transcend the old bard's pale face; the monument his hill of sand." I hope this critic does not imagine Shakespeare meant to give us a picture of the face of patience, by his green and yellow melancholy; because, he says it transcends the pale face of patience given us by Chaucer. To throw patience into fit of melancholy, would be indeed very extraordinary. The green and yellow then belonged not to patience, but to her who sat like patience. To give patience a pale face was proper; and had Shakespeare described her, he had done it as Chaucer did But Shakespeare is speaking of a marble statue of patience; Chaucer of patience herself. And the two representations of her are in quite different views. Our poet speaking of a despairing lover, judiciously compares her to patience exercised on the death of friends and relations: which affords him the beautiful picture of patience on a monument. The old bard speaking of patience herself, directly, and not by comparison, as judiciously draws her in that circumstance where she is most exercised, and has occasion for all her virtue; that is to say under the losses of shipwreck. And now we see why she is represented as sitting on a kill of sand, to design the scene to be the sea-shore. It is We men may say more, swear more: but, indeed, Duke. But died thy sister of her love, my boy? Duke. Ay, that's the theme. To her in haste; give her this jewel; say, SCENE V. [Exeunt. OLIVIA'S Garden. Enter Sir TOBY BELCH, Sir ANDREW AGUE-CHEEK, and FABIAN. Sir To. Come thy ways, signior Fabian. Fab. Nay, I'll come; if I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be boiled to death with melancholy. Sir To. Would'st thou not be glad to have the niggardly rascally sheep-biter come by some notable shame ? Fab. I would exult, man: you know, he brought me out of favour with my lady, about a bear-baiting here. Sir To. To anger him, we'll have the bear again; and we will fool him black and blue :-Shall we not, sir Andrew ? Sir And. An we do not, it is pity of our lives. finely imagined; and one of the noble simplicities of that admirable poet. But the critic thought, in good earnest, that Chaucer's inventica was so barren, and his imagination so beggarly, that he was not able to be at the charge of a monument for his goddess, but left her, like a stroller, sunning herself upon a heap of sand. WARBURTON. Dr. Percy thinks, that grief may here mean grievance, in which sense it is used in Dr. Powel's History of Wales, quarto, p. 356. MALONE. Ancient tombs, indeed, (if we must construe grief into grievance, and Shake speare has certainly used the former word for the latter,) frequently exhibit cumbent figures of the deceased, and over these an image of Patience, without impropriety, might express a smile of complacence: "Her meek hands folded on her modest breast, Even to the storm that wrecks her." I cannot help adding, that, to smile at grief, is as justifiable an expression as to rejoice at prosperity, or repine ut ill fortune. It is not necessary we should suppose the good or bad event, in either instance, is an object visible, except to the eye of imagination. STEEVENS. [1] This was the most artful answer that could be given. The question was of such a nature, that to have declined the appearance of a direct answer must have raised suspicion. This has the appearance of a direct answer, that the sister died of her love; she (who passed for a man) saying, she was all the daughters of her father's house. WARBURTON. [2] Denay, is denial. To denay is an antiquated verb sometimes used by Holinshed. STEEVENS. VOL. IV. F |