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Dead though she be, she feels her young one kick;
So there's my riddle, One, that's dead, is quick:
And now behold the meaning.

Re-enter Widow, with HELENA.

King. Is there no exorcist'

Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes?
Is't real, that I see?

Hel. No, my good lord;

"Tis but the shadow of a wife you see, The name, and not the thing.

Ber. Both, both; O, pardon!

Hel. O, my good lord, when I was like this maid,
I found you wondrous kind. There is your ring,
And, look you, here's your letter; This it says,
When from my finger you can get this ring,
And are by me with child, &c. This is done :
Will you be mine, now you are doubly won?

Ber. If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly,

I'll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly.

Hel. If it appear not plain, and prove untrue, Deadly divorce step between me and you!—

O, my dear mother, do I see you living?

Laf. Mine eyes smell onions, I shall weep anon :Good Tom Drum, [To PAR.] lend me a handkerchief: So, I thank thee; wait on me home, I'll make sport with thee: Let thy courtesies alone, they are scurvy ones. King. Let us from point to point this story know,

To make the even truth in pleasure flow :

If thou be'st yet a fresh uncropped flower,

[To DIANA.

[1] This word is used, not very properly, for enchanter. JOHNSON. Shakespeare invariably uses the word exorcist, to imply a person who can raise spirits. not in the usual sense of one that can lay them. So, Ligarius, in Julius Casar, says

"Thou, like an exorcist, hast conjur'd up

"My mortified spirit." M. MASON.

Such was the common acceptation of the word in our author's time. So, Minsheu, in his Dict. 1617: "The Conjurer seemeth by praiers and invocations of God's powerfull names, to compel the Devil to say or doe what he commandeth him. The Witch dealeth rather by a friendly and voluntarie conference or agreement between him or her and the Divell or Familiar, to have his or her turne served, in lieu or stead of blood or other gift offered unto him, especially of his or her soute :And both these differ from Inchanters or Sorcerers, because the former two have personal conference with the Divell, and the other meddles but with medicines and ceremonial formes of words called charmes, without apparition."

MALONE

88

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

Choose thou thy husband, and i'll pay thy dower;
For I can guess, that, by the honest aid,
Thou kepist a wife herself, thyself a maid.-
Of that, and all the progress, more and less,
Resolvedly more leisure shall express :
All yet seems well; and, if it end so meet,
The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.

Advancing.

The king's a beggar, now the play is done:
All is well ended, if this suit be won,
That you express content; which we will pay,
With strife to please you, day exceeding day:
Ours be your patience then, and yours our parts;
Your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts.

ACT V.

[Flourish.

[Exeunt.

[2] The meaning is: Grant us then your patience; bear us without interruption. And take our parts; that is, support and defend us. JOHNSON.

TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT

YOU WILL.

OBSERVATIONS.

TWELFTH-NIGHT: OR, WHAT YOU WILL.] There is great reason to believe, that the serious part of this Comedy is founded on some old translation of the seventh history in the 4th vol. of Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques. Belleforest took the story as usual, from Bandello. The comic scenes appear to have been entirely the production of Shakespeare. It is not impossible, however, that the circumstances of the Duke sending his Page to plead his cause with the Lady, and of the Lady's falling in love with the Page, &c. might be borrowed from the Fifth Eglog of Barnaby Googe, published with his other original Poems in 1563. STEEVENS.

This play is in the graver part elegant and easy, and in some of the lighter scenes exquisitely humorous. Aguecheek is drawn with great propriety, but his character is, in a great measure, that of natural fatuity, and is the refore not the proper prey of a satirist. The soliloquy of Malvolio is truly comic; he is betrayed to ridicule merely by his pride. The marriage of Olivia, and the succeeding perplexity, though well enough contrived to divert on the stage, wants credibility, and fails to produce the proper instruction required in the drama, as it exhibits no just picture of life. JOHNSON.

The first edition of this play is in the folio of 1623.

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