The statue is but newly fix'd, the colour's Cam. My lord, your sorrow was too sore laid on, Dear my brother, Indeed, my lord, mine,) I'd not have show'd it. Leon. Do not draw the curtain. Paul. No longer shall you gaze on’t, lest your fancy May think anon it moves. Leon. Let be, let be! Would I were dead, but thai, methinks, alreadyWhat was he that did make it?-See, my lord, Would you not deem it breath'd, and ihat those veins Did verily bear blood ? Pol. Masterly done : very life seems warm upon her lip. I'll draw the curtain. O, sweet Paulina! but I could afflict you further. Leon. Do, Paulina, lord, forbear. Leon. No, not these twenty years. So long could 1 Either forbear, Quit presently the chapel, or resolve you For more amazement. If you can behold it, I'll make the statue move indeed; descend, And take you by the hand; but then you'll think, (Which I protest against,) I am assisted By wicked powers. Leon. What you can make her do, I am content to look on: what to speak, I am content to hear; for 'tis as easy To make her speak, as move. Paul. It is requir'd, You do awake your faith. Then, all stand still. On; Those that think it is unlawful business I am about; let them depart. Leon. Proceed: No foot sball stir. Paul. Music awake her. Strike!- [Music. 'Tis time; descend; be stone no more: approach; [HERMIONE descends from the pedestal. Leon. O! she's warm. (Embracing her. If this be magic, let it be an art Lawful as eating. Pol. She embraces him. Cam. She hangs about his neck. If she pertain to life, let her speak too. Pol. Ay; and make it manifest where she has liv'd, Or how stol'n from the dead ? Paul. That she is living, Were it but told you, should be hooted at Like an old tale; but it appears she lives, Though yet she speak not. Mark a little while. Please you to interpose, fair madam: kneel, And pray your mother's blessing.–Turn, good lady, Our Perdita is found. [PERDITA kneels to HERMIONE. Her. You gods, look down, found There's time enough for that, I, an old turtle, Will wing me to some wither'd bough, and there My mate, that's never to be found again, Lament till I am lost. Leon. O peace, Paulina! Thou should'st a husband take by my consent, As I by thine, a wife: this is a match, And made between's by vows. Thou hast found mine; But how is to be question'd, for I saw her, As I thought, dead; and have in vain said many A prayer upon her grave: I'll not seek far (For him, I partly know his mind) to find thee An honourable husband.—Come, Camillo, And take her by the hand, whose worth, and honesty, Is richly noted, and here justified By us, a pair of kings.- Let's from this place.What!-Look upon my brother :—both your par dons, That e'er I put between your holy looks My ill suspicion.—This your son-in-law, And son unto the king, (whom heavens directing,) Is troth-plight to your daughter. Good Paulina, Lead us from hence, where we may leisurely Each one demand, and answer to his part Perform'd in this wide gap of time, since first We were disseverd. Hastily lead away. [Ereunt. Good my a ACT 1.-SCENE 1. " — shook hands, as over a vast”—Thus the first folio: the second has, "shook hands, as over a vast sea,' which Hanmer adopted. “Vast" is used substantively, and Shakespeare uses it for the sea in PericLES : Thou God of this great vast, rebuke these surges. In the Tempest, also, we have—the “vasl of night." " — one that, indeed, Physics the subject”—Here, as in MEASURE FOR MEASURE, act iii, scene 2, the word “ subject” is used for subjects. Physics the subject" means, gives the subjects of the king, or the state generally, health and joy month beyond the time prefixed for his departure. “Gest,” (from the French giste, a lodging,) was a term employed with reference to the royal progresses, and meant the place of abiding for a certain period. good deed”-i. e. " Indeed, in very deed, in troth. Good deed' is used in the same sense by the Earl of Surrey, Sir John Hayward, and Gascoigne.". STEVENS. " I love thee not A JAR O' THE CLOCK behind What lady SHOULD her lord.” "A jar o' the clock’ is a tick of the clock; “jar' being used for tick by writers of the time. The words what lady should her lord' have hitherto stood rather unintelligibly—'what lady she her lord.' The emendation is made on the authority of the old MS. corrector of the first folio, belonging to Lord Francis Egerton. 'Should' was perhaps written, in the MS., from which the printer composed the first folio, with an abbreviation, which he misread she."-COLLIER. “ — we should have answer'd heaven Boldly, ‘not guilty;' the imposition clear'd, Hereditary ours.' “That is, setting aside original sin, bating the imposition from the offence of our first parents, we might have boldly protested our innocence." Warburton, 45 SCENE II. - that may blow NO SNEAPING winds at home," etc. “Sneaping" is snipping, or nipping. Polixenes hopes that no sharp winds may blow at home, to induce him to say that he too truly prognosticated the consequences of his absence. Farmer shows that “that," for Oh that, was common in old writers, as Beaumont and Fletcher, and others. “ To let him there a month behind the GEST," etc.i. e. I will give him leave to detain himself there a 66 VENS. who labours to extract more theology from Shakespeare me to the heart; making things, ordinarily held to be than he dreamed of, is right here. incredible, to appear possible.' “Grace to boot” —An ejaculation, meaning, Grace, " -- Then, 'tis very credENT"-In MEASURE FOR or Heaven, help us! In Richard III. we have—“ Saint MEASURE we have “ credent," as here, for credible. George to boot." “ What cheer? how is't with you, best brother"“ – cram's with praise, and make's”-i. e. “ Cram Many editions follow Stevens in taking this passage from us with praise, and make us,' but, for the sake of the Leontes, and adding it to the preceding exclamation of metre, the old copies, by their mode of printing, inform Polixenes, " How, my lord !" The old copies are unius that cram us and make us were each to be read as form in the assignment of the dialogue as in our text, one syllable. Such doubtless was the mode in which which the later editors have restored. Leontes breaks the words were written in the MS. used by the old from a fit of abstraction with, “What cheer? how is't compositor, and we may presume that in this form they with you, best brother ?” What Hermione subsequently came from the pen of Shakespeare. This remark will says confirms this reading. apply to to’s' just preceding, and to other portions of " — METHOUGHts I did recoil this play.”—COLLIER. Twenty-three years," etc. “And clap thyself my love”—This was part of the In the old copies it stands,“ me thoughts I did recoil." troth-plight, and the custom is still retained in common and so it has been since usually printed. Collier prefers life, on bargains or bets. So, in HENRY V.: reading, “my thonghts I did recoil," on the authority And so, clap hands, and a bargain. of an old MS. correction of the folio. “ The mort o’the deer"—Was the peculiar prolonged “ This SQUASH"-In Old-English it did not mean the note of the huntsman's horn at the death of the deer. vegetable familiarly known on American tables, and in our gardens, by that name, but a pea-pod, when the " - I' FECKS”—Stevens supposes this to be a corrup young peas have not yet swelled and fornied themselves. tion of i' faith. Collier suggests it to be a corruption of in fact. “ Will you take eggs for money"— This phrase was proverbial for putting up with an affront, and so it was “ Why, that's my BAWCOCK"-"6 Perhaps from beau understood by Mamillius. and coq. It is still said, in vulgar language, that such a one is a jolly cock, a cock of the game. The word oc- “— why, happy man be his DOLE"-i. e. May happicurs in Twelfth Night, and is one of the titles by ness be his portion. The expression is of frequent ce which Pistol speaks of King Henry the Fifth."-STE- currence in old writers, and we have had it frequently in SHAKESPEARE. still virginalling "- Many a thousand on 's”—“Malone prints it of Upon his palm?” us;' but if he chose to alter on to of, he ought, for the That is, still playing with her fingers, as a girl playing sake of the verse, to have read of 's: ‘on 's' is an abbreon the virginals. Virginals were stringed instruments, viation for the sake of the verse, and the language of the time. Fidelity, metre, and custom require its preservaplayed with keys like a spinnet, which they resembled in all respects but in shape; spinnets being nearly tri tion."-COLLIER. angular, and virginals of an oblong-square shape, like a “ They're HERE ME already; echispering, small pianoforte. ROUNDING"-" They're here with me” means,“ They “ Thou want'st a rough PASH, and the shoots that I are aware of my condition.” “Rounding” is another have"—Holloway, in his “Dictionary of Provincialisms," word for “ whispering:" to round in the ear is common informs us that “ pash," in Cheshire, signifies the brains, in old writers. and that “mad pash” is the same as mad brains. “ – louer MESSES, “Pash" is to be taken in this place for the head, as Perchance, are to this business purblind,'' etc. Jamieson says it is used in Scotland. By the “rough The term "messes” here signifies degrees or condipash” is to be understood the hair on the forehead of a tions. The company at great tables were divided acbull, which the calf wants, as well as the “shoots," i. e. cording to their rank into higher and lower messes; the budding horns, which Leontes feels on his forehead. those of lower condition sitting below the great standing. “As o'ER-DYED blacks”-Hanmer and Johnson say salt in the centre of the table. Sometimes the messes that “o'er-dyed" here means too much dyed; but it is were served at different tables, and seem to have been to be understood as dyed over-i. e. coloured cloth that arranged into fours, as is still the use at the halls of the has been dyed over in order to make it black. Inns-of-Court. “Look on me with your WELKIN EYE"-"Welkin" is “ Which hoxes honesty behind”—To hox is to hou gk, blue, i. e. the colour of the welkin, or sky. H. Tooke or ham-string. explains, a rolling eye, from the Saxon wealcan, (vol (for cogitation vere;) but the sense in which Shakespeare always uses Resides not in that man that does not think) the word is against Tooke's opinion. My wife is slippery?" – my collop”-In King Henry VI., Part I., we Theobald quoted this passage in defence of the muchhave ridiculed line in his “ Double Falsehood:"-"None but God knows, thou art a collop of my flesh. himself can be his parallel.” “For who does not see at It is given as a proverbial phrase in Heywood's “Epi once, (says he,) that he who does not think has no grams," 1566: thought in him." In the same light the subsequent edi. For I have heard sa ie it is a deere collup tors view this passage, and read, with Pope, " that does That is cut out of th' ownc flesh. not think it." But the old reading is right, and the ab surdity only in the niisapprehension of it. Leontes “Affection! thy intention stabs the centre"-Rowe, means to say, Have you not thought that my wife is without authority, altered this to read slippery? (for cogitation resides not in the man that does Imagination! thou dost stab to the centre. not think my wife is slippery."). The four latter words, And thus it stands in many editions of the last century. though disjoined from the word think by the necessity Stevens, who restored the old reading, says, however, of a parenthesis, are evidently to be connected in conthat “atfection means imagination.". This is not so. struction with it. Malone, whose explanation this is, Affection is the state of being strongly affected by pas- | justly remarks that there are more involved and paren. sion: its intention seems used for the favourite modern thetical passages in this play than in any other of Shakeword, intensity. He says, “ This intense emotion stabs speare's, except, perhaps, King Henry VIII. WITH . 46 66 on the introduction of the kings and Hermione, in the second scene; and how admirably Polixenes's refusal to Leontes to stay There is no tongue that moves, none, none i' the world, So soon as yours, could win meprepares for the effect produced by his afterwards yielding to Hermione ;-which is, nevertheless, perfectly natural from mere courtesy to the sex, and the exhaustion of the will by former efforts of denial, and well calculated to set in nascent action the jealousy of Leontes. This, when once excited, is unconsciously increased by Hermione: - yet, good deed, Leontes, What lady should her lord:accompanied, as a good actress ought to represent it, by an expression and recoil of apprehension that she had gone too far. At my request, he would not The first working of the jealous fit: Too hot, too hotThe morbid tendency of Leontes to lay hold of the merest trifles, and his grossness immediately afterwards~ Paddling palms, and pinching fingersfollowed by his strange loss of self-control in his dialogue with the little boy." 66 — and all eyes blind With the PIN AND WEB, etc. “The pin and web” was the old name for a cataract in the eyes. Florio, in his “New World of Words," 1611, defines cataratta as “a dimness of sight, occasioned by humours hardened in the eyes, called a cataract, or a pin and a web.” (See Lear, act iii. scene 4.) Why he, that wears her like her medal-So the old copies; but Malone and other editors have altered it to his medal”—a useless change. The meaning is, that Polixenes wears Hermione round his neck, as it were, a medal, or resemblance of her—“ her medal.” ‘His cup-bearer”—Greene, in his novel of “Pandosto,” says that, “ Devising with himself a long time how he might best put away Egistus, without suspition of treacherous murder, he concluded at last to poyson him: which opinion pleasing his humour, he became resolute in his determination, and the better to bring the matter to passe he called unto him his cup-bearer," meaning the cup-bearer of Egistus. “ Nake that thy question, and go rot”—The commentators differ in their printing and interpretation of this passage, which in the folios is given as in our text. Malone would read, “Make't thy question," which seems to refer to the interrupted observation of Camillo, “I have lov'd thee," instead of to what the words “ Make that thy question," appear to relate to. The meaning of Leontes surely is, as Mr. Knight suggests, that Camillo may go rot, if he doubts or makes question of that which he has just been told. "Could man 80 BLENCH"-To "blench" is to start off"; as, in HAMLET, “if he but blench.” Leontes means, *could any man so start or tly off from propriety of behaviour." “Wasting his eyes to the contrary, and falling A lip of much contempt, speeds from me," etc. “ This is a stroke of nature worthy of Shakespeare. Leontes bad but a moment before told Camillo that he would seem friendly to Polixenes, according to his advice; but, on meeting him, his jealousy gets the better of his resolution, and he finds it impossible to restruin his hatred."-Masox. “ — Do you know, and dare not ? - Do you know, and dare not Be intelligent to me? “ TO vice you to 't"-i. e. To screw, or move you to it. A vice, in Shakespeare's time, meant any kind of winding-screw. The vice of a clock was a common expression. “Be yok'd with his that did betray the Best'-i. e. Be coupled with that of Judas Iscariot. “Best," as Henderson remarks, is printed with a capital in the folios. "— and comfort The gracious queen, part of his theme, but nothing Of his ill-ta'en suspicion!" A very obscure passage, of which, Johnson says, he “can make nothing;" and suspects, very probably, that a line connecting thein has been lost by the copyist or printer. Various emendations have been proposed, such as Jackson's—con sort, for “comfort;" throne for "theme." Malone, Collier, and others retain the old text, explaining it thus: Polixenes hopes that his speedy absence may comfort the queen, who was part of the theme on which the king dwelt, (Polixenes being the other part;) but who, being innocent, was really “nothing" of the “ill-ta'en suspicion” against her. Coleridge thns comments on the dramatic effect of this act: “ Observe the easy style of chit-chat between Camillo and Archidamus, as contrasted with the elevated diction ACT II.-SCENE I. " — There may be in the cup A spider steep'd," etc. " That spiders were esteemed venomous appears by the evidence of a person who was examined in Sir Thomas Overbury's affair: “The Countess wished me to get the strongest poison that I could, etc. Accordingly, I bought seven great spiders and cantharides.'' HENDERSON. “ Wilh violent herts' -i. e. Heavings. " He has discover'd my design, and I Remain a pinch'D THING, etc. “ The sense, I think, is, He hath now discovered my design, and I am treated as a mere child's baby, a thing pinched out of clouts, a puppet for them to move and actuate as they please.”—HEATH. This sense is supported by the following passage in the “ City Match," by Jasper Maine, 1639: - Pinch'd napkins, captain, and laid Like fishes, fowls, or faces. "A FEDERARY with her”-A “federary" means a confederate; but Collier doubts whether it is not a misprint for feodary, a word Shakespeare uses in MEASURE FOR MEASURE, and in CYMBELINE, act ii. scene 2, “Art thou a feodary for this act ?” Malone states that “there is no such word as federary;" but Stevens is probably right in considering it as "a word of our author's coinage.” “No; if I mistake”—Malone and Stevens, taking upon them to improve Shakespeare's versification, printed, “No, no; if I mistake," which many popnlar editions follow. I agree with the suggestion of Knight and Collier that the Poet meant to leave the line syllabically incomplete, for the sake of the emphasis to be placed upon the single "No," which, with a pause after it, would make up the time. “He, who shall speak for her, is Afar off guilty''i. e. He who shall speak for her is remotely guilty in merely speaking “ — I'll keep my stables where I lodge my wife," etc. Much has been said about this passage: Hanmer thought it should be stable-stand; Malone that it means station. But it may be explained thus:-" If she prove false, I'll make my stables, or kennel, of my wife's chamber; I'll go in couples with her like a dog, and man. 66 e never leave her for a moment; trust her no further than rary with Shakespeare. So, in Decker's “ Match me in I can feel and see her." London:" — The vulture tires “THAN when I feel, and see her, no further trust Upon the cagle's heart. her”—T han was formerly spelled then ; and we have to choose in this passage between than and then. Ma “ – give't to thy CRONE"-A “crone" is an old wolone prefers then; but the sentence is comparative: I Chaucer einploys the word. will trust her no further than I see her. " A CALLAT”—"Callat," sometimes spelled callet, is a " — would I knew the villain, very old term of abuse applied to women. It originally I would LAND-DAMN him." meant merely a low mean woman, and has been de. rived from calle, which Tyrwhitt tells us is French for “Land-damn" is probably one of those words which “a species of cap,” (“Gloss. to. Chaucer,') or from caprice brouglit into fashion, and wlich, after a short calote, which Grey says was a sort of head-dress worn time, reason and grammar drove irrecoverably away. by country girls. In the time of Shakespeare, and ear. It perhaps meant no more than—" I will rid the country lier, callet was generally used for a lewd woman, a of him ; condemn him to quit the land.”—Johnson. drab. Warner, a popular contemporary poet, has a similar phrase--"country loutes land-lurch their lords”—which “And, Lozel, thou art worthy to be hang'd"-"A supports Johnson's conjecture. Farmer proposes read. lozel," says Verstegan, in his “ Restitution," 1605, as ing, “ laudanum him”-i. e. poison him. quoted by Reed, “is one that hath lost, neglected, or “ The second, and the third, nine, and some five" cast off his own good and welfare, and who is become lewd, and careless of credit and honesty." Spenser i. e. The second nine, and the third some five. often uses the word. “ The instruments that feel”—Leontes, at these “So sure as the beard's grey”—The original readwords, must be supposed to take hold of Antigonus. ing is, “this beard is grey," but as Leontes, in a prior “The instruments that feel" are his fingers. scene, has told us that twenty-three years ago he was - nought for APPROBATION unbreeched, etc., he cannot mean his own beard; and But only seeing," etc. the annotators suppose that it is intended he should tako That required no other proof excepting sight, all hold of, or point at the beard of Antigonus. But we other circuinstances being complete. have no hesitation in adopting, with Collier, the old MS. correction of Lord Francis Egerton's copy of the folio, SCENE II. 1623, altering this into “ thy.' " These dangerous, unsafe lunes i' the king”—This ACT III.-SCENE I. word has not been found in any other English writer; but it is used in old French for frenzy, lunacy, folly. “Fertile The isle"-i. e. The “isle" of Delphos. A similar expression occurs in the Revenger's Tragedy," Warburton points out a geographical blunder here, inas1608: “I know it was but some peevish moon in lin." much as the Temple of Apollo at Delphi was not in an In As You Like It, we have the expression, "a moonish island, but in Phocis, on the continent. This is of youth." course true; but Shakespeare bad “isle" from Greene, in whom the error was less excusable, as he was Mas SCENE III. ter of Arts in both Universities. In “ Pandosto," Bella. “- Fie, fie! no thought of him”-i.e. “Of Polixenes, ria requests “that it would please his Majestie to send to whom the thoughts of Leontes naturally revert with sixe of his noble men, whom he best trusted, to the isle out naming him. Coleridge called this in his lectures, of Delphos, there to inquire of the Oracle of Apollo, in 1815, an admirable instance of propriety in soliloquy, whether she had committed adultery with Egistus, or wliere the mind leaps from one object to another, how- conspired to poyson him with Tranion.” (See * Shakeever distant, without any apparent interval; the opera speare's Library," part i. p. 20.) tion liere being perfectly intelligible without mentioning “Even to the guilt"—i. e. Equal, indifferent. Polixenes. The king is talking to himself, while his lords and attendants stand at a distance.''—Collier. "SILENCE"-"The word Silence is printed as a stage. direction in the first folio, without any indication of the “ The very thought of my revenges that way entrance of the queen, etc. This deficiency the second Recoil u pon me : in himself too mighty,” etc. folio supplied merely by the word Enter, which follows This passage is founded on a similar one in the novel Silence. The third and fourth folios adopt the reading of “ Dorastus and Fawnia:”—“Pandosto, although he || of the second. Malone and all the other modern edi. felt that revenge was a spur to war, and that envy al- tors take Silence as an exclamation of the officer: so it ways proftereth steel, yet he saw Egistus was not only | might be; but the printer of the folio, 1623. did not so of great puissance and prowess to withstand him, but understand it, and the editor of the folio, 1632, when also had many kings of his alliance to aid him, if need correcting an obvious omission, did not think fit to alter should serve; for he married the Emperor of Russia's the reading. The word Silence was probably meant daughter.” Shakespeare has made this lady the wife to mark the suspense, that ought to be displayed by all of the Leontes of the play-not of the Polixenes; but it upon the stage, on the entrance of Hermione to trial."will be seen that Greene, the acknowledged classical Collier, scholar, exhibits as much indifference to chronology as Though agreeing with Mr. Collier in adhering to the the supposed illiterate dramatist. original reading, I rather think that" Silence"(though the “Less appear so in COMFORTING your evils"-"Com. word is not meant as part of the officer's speech) is yet forting” is here used, as Monck Mason observes, in the to be understood as if here silence is proclaimed in legal legal sense of comforting and abetting a person in any form; as, in a parallel scene in Henry VIII., Wolsey criminal action. says, “Let silence be commanded." "A MANKIND witch”—In Junius's “Nomenclator," - the PRETENCE whereof"-. e. Design, or intenby Abraham Fleming, 1535, Virago is interpreted “A tion; a usual sense of the word in that age. manly woman, or a mankind woman." Johnson as " — For life, I prize it serts ihat the phrase is still used (in some English counties) for a woman violent, ferocious, and mischievous. As I weigh grief, which I would spare," etc. “Life is to me now only grief, and as such only is "— thou art woMAN-TIR'D”—To be “woman-tir'd" considered by me; I would iherefore willingly dismiss is to be pecked by a woman. The phrase is taken from it. To óspare' any thing is to let it go, to quit the posfalconry, and is often employed by writers contempo- | session of it.”—Johnsos. |
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