ILLUSTRATIONS. ACT I. We puff direct, and the puff collateral, and the and my uncle's fool, reading the challenge, subscribed. for Cupid, and challenged him at the bird-bolt." 'SCENE I.-" He set up his bills." THE history of advertising, if well worked out, would form one of the most curious chapters of any account of the progress of English civilisa tion. We are here in the rude stages of that history, and see the beginnings of the craving for publicity which was to produce that marvel of society, a Times newspaper of 1851. In Shakspere's day the bearwards, fencing- 2 SCENE I.—“ Challenged Cupid at the flight: masters, mountebanks, and players, "set up their bills upon posts;" masterless men "set up their bills in Paul's for services;" schoolmasters "pasted up their papers on every post for arithmetic and writing;" and it is recorded as a somewhat clever proceeding, that a man having lost his purse "set up bills in divers places, that if any man of the city had found the purse and would bring it again to him, he should have well for his labour." These were very simple and straghtforward operations. The mysteries of advertising were not then studied. Men had to make their plain announcements, and to be attended to. "The In Ben Jonson's 'Cynthia's Revels' Mercury says to Cupid, "I fear thou hast not arrows for the purpose;" to which Cupid replies, "O yes, here be of all sorts, flights, rovers, and buttshafts." Gifford explains that "flights were long and light-feathered arrows which went level to the mark." These were the weapons for Cupid and Benedick therefore is said to have "challenged Cupid at the flight," with arrows such as these: But "my uncle's fool" thought Benedick was better qualified to match with him in the skilful use of that blunt and heavy weapon whose employment by those of his vocation has passed into a proverb-"a fool's bolt is soon shot." Douce has preserved the forms of some of these bird-bolts: (and which we shall have more particularly to notice in Act II.,) the hat underwent every possible transition of form. We had intended to have illustrated this by exhibiting the principal varieties which we find in pictures of that day; but if our blocks had been as numerous as these blocks, we should have filled pages with the graceful or grotesque caprices of the exquisites from whom Brummell inherited his belief in the powers of the hat: "Why, Mr. Brummell, does an Englishman always look better dressed than a Frenchman?" The oracular reply was, ""T is the hat." We present, however, the portrait of one ancient Brummell, with a few hats at his feet to choose from. SCENE I.-" Cupid is a good hare-finder, and Vulcan a rare carpenter." The English commentators can give no explanation of this passage; except Steevens, who makes it the vehicle for one of his Collins notes. Tieck says that Ayrer of Nürnberg,who has treated after his own manner the novel of Bandello upon which this comedy is founded,-introduces Venus complaining that Cupid has shot many arrows in vain at the Count Claudio of his story, and that Vulcan will make no more arrows; and Tieck adds his opinion that Ayrer was acquainted with some English comedy older than that of Shakspere, from which Cupid and Vulcan have been derived. The resemblance which Tieck produces is not very striking. Benedick's allusion, whatever it be, must pass to the limbo of meaningless jokes-that is, jokes of which time has worn out the application. 3 SCENE I.-" He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block." In the perpetual change of fashions which was imputed to the English of Elizabeth's day, 5 SCENE I.-"Like the old tale, my lord: 'it is not so, nor 't was not so; but, indeed, God forbid it should be so.'" Mr. Blakeway, who has contributed a few valuable notes to Shakspere which will be found in Boswell's edition of Malone, has given us an illustration of this passage, in his own recollections of an old tale to which he thinks our poet evidently alludes, "and which has often froze my young blood, when I was a child, as, I dare say, it had done his before me." "Once upon a time there was a young lady (called Lady Mary in the story) who had two brothers. One summer they all three went to a country-seat of theirs, which they had not before visited. Among the other gentry of the nighbourhood who came to see them was a Mr. Fox, a bachelor, with whom they, particularly the young lady, were much pleased. He used often to dine with them, and frequently invited Lady Mary to come and see his house. One day that her brothers were absent elsewhere, and she had nothing better to do, she determined to go thither, and accordingly set out unattended. When she arrived at the house, and knocked at the door, no one answered. At length she opened it and went in. Over the portal of the hall was written, 'Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.' She advanced: over the staircase, the same inscription. She went up: over the entrance of a gallery, the same. ceeded over the door of a chamber,-' Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest that your heart's blood should run cold. She opened it-it was full of skeletons, tubs full of blood, &c. She retreated in haste. Coming down stairs she saw, out of a window, Mr. Fox advancing towards the house, with a drawn sword in one hand, while with the other he dragged along a She pro young lady by her hair. Lady Mary had just time to slip down and hide herself under the stairs before Mr. Fox and his victim arrived at the foot of them. As he pulled the young lady up stairs she caught hold of one of the banisters with her hand, on which was a rich bracelet. Mr. Fox cut it off with his sword: the hand and bracelet fell into Lady Mary's lap, who then contrived to escape unobserved, and got home safe to her brothers' house. "After a few days Mr. Fox came to dine with them as usual (whether by invitation or of his own accord, this deponent saith not). After dinner, when the guests began to amuse each other with extraordinary anecdotes, Lady Mary at length said she would relate to them a remarkable dream she had lately had. 'I dreamt,' said she, 'that as you, Mr. Fox, had often invited me to your house, I would go there one morning. When I came to the house, I knocked, &c., but no one answered. When I opened the door, over the hall was written, Be bold, be bold, but not too bold. But,' said she, turning to Mr. Fox, and smiling, 'It is not so, nor it was not so;' then she pursues the rest of the story, concluding at every turn with 'It is not so, nor it was not so,' till she comes to the room full of bodies, when Mr. Fox took up the burden of the tale, and said, 'It is not so, nor it was not so, and God forbid it should be so:' which he continues to repeat at every subsequent turn of the dreadful story, till she came to the circumstance of his cutting off the young lady's hand, when, upon his saying as usual, It is not so, nor it was not so, and God forbid it should be so,' Lady Mary retorts, 'But it is so, and it was so, and here the hand I have to show,' at the same time producing the hand and bracelet from her lap: whereupon the guests drew their swords, and instantly cut Mr. Fox into a thousand pieces." Verona' (Act I., Sc. 1) we have shown how frequently Shakspere uses the image of the canker in the rose-bud. In the passage before us, a peculiar rose-the common dog-rose of the hedges-is meant. Mr. Richardson says, in his Dictionary, that in Devonshire the dogrose is called the canker-rose. The name had probably a more universal application; and as "the bud bit with an envious worm" was cankered, so the small uncultivated rose was compared to the rose of the garden whose beauty was impaired, by the name of canker. 9 SCENE III.-" Smoking a musty room." Burton in his 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' says, "The smoke of juniper is in great request with us at Oxford, to sweeten our chambers." Where the "perfumer" had been, the real cleanliness of the house or the person was doubtful: as in Ben Jonson's song: "Still to be neat, still to be drest, ACT II. 10 SCENE I.-" That I had my good wit out of the Hundred Merry Tales." THE "good wit" of Beatrice consisted in sharp sayings and quaint allusions, and Benedick might naturally enough have twitted her with what we now call a familiarity with 'Joe Miller.' "The Hundred Merry Tales' were known only by their title; and a great controversy therefore sprang up whether they were a translation of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles' or of the 'Decameron.' We need not enter upon this question; for a fragment of the identical Tales has been discovered, since the days of Reed and Steevens, by Mr. Coneybeare, which shows that the work was literally a jest-book-most probably a chapman's penny book. A copy would now be above all price, if it could be recovered entire. But its loss has occasioned more printing, in the way of speculation upon its contents; and thus the world keeps up its stock of typographical curiosities. "SCENE I.-" Bring you the length of Prester John's foot." The inaccessibility of Prester John has been described by Butler : "While like the mighty Prester John, 12 SCENE III." Carving the fashion of a new doublet." This is the representation of an Englishman thus described by Coryat in his 'Crudities:"We wear more fantastical fashions than any nation under the sun doth, the French only excepted; which hath given occasion to the Venetian and other Italians to brand the Englishman with a notable mark of levity, by painting him stark naked, with a pair of shears in his hand, making his fashion of attire according to the vain conception of his brain-sick head, not to comeliness and decorum." The print from which we copy is in Borde's 'Introduction of Knowledge;' and we subjoin the verses which are given under it : 13 SCENE III.-"Stalk on, stalk on: the foul sits." The stalking-horse is thus described in an ancient tract, New Shreds of the Old Snare,' by John Gee :-"Methinks I behold the cunning fowler, such as I have known in the fencountries and elsewhere, that do shoot at woodcocks, snipes, and wild-fowl, by sneaking behind a painted cloth which they carry before them, having pictured on it the shape of a horse; which, while the silly fowl gazeth on, it is knocked down with hail-shot, and so put in the fowler's budget." There were stalking-bulls as well as stalking-horses; and the process of decoying partridges in this way into a net is described in Willughby's 'Ornithology.' ACT III. 14 SCENE I.-"Haggards of the rock." SIMON Latham, in his Book of Falconry,' thus describes the wild and unsocial nature of this species of hawk:-"She keeps in subjection the most part of all the fowl that fly, insomuch that the tassel gentle, her natural and chiefest companion, dares not come near that coast where she useth, nor sit by the place where she standeth. Such is the greatness of her spirit, she will not admit of any society until such a time as nature worketh." 15 SCENE I." What fire is in mine ears?" The popular opinion here alluded to is as old as Pliny:-" Moreover is not this an opinion generally received, that when our ears do glow and tingle, some there be that in our absence do talk of us?"-Holland's Translation, b. xxviii. 16 SCENE II." His jesting spirit; which is now crept into a lutestring:"-i. e. his jocular wit is now employed in the inditing of love-songs, which, in Shakspere's time, were usually accompanied on the lute. The "stops" are the frets of the lute, and those points on the fingerboard on which the string is pressed, or stopped, by the finger. |