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of standing (lasting). It should be printed statu, the better to mark the etymon of the word, and at the same time to distinguish it from image. The meaning will thus be clear, the primitive, Job-like and lasting memorial of cuckolds.'

lord, go off:

Ulyss. Now, good my lord,

1

B.

You flow to great distraction: come, iny lord.

You flew to great distraction:] So the moderns. The folio has: You flow to great distraction.

The quarto:

I read :

You flow to great destruction.--

You show too great distraction.-

Jour.

I would adhere to the old reading. You flow to great destruction, or distraction, means, the tide of your imagination will hurry you either to noble death from the hand of Diomed, or to the height of madness from the predominance of your own passions. STEEV.

'You flew to great distraction.' Flow' is the proper word; 'Being that I flow in grief.' K. John.

Flow in the play of K. John is abound. 'Abound in grief, or I am overwhelmed with grief.' Flow, in the present instance, is run, proceed to. B.

Ther. Now the pledge; now, now, now!

Cre. Here, Diomed, keep this sleeve.

-keep this sleeve.] The custom of wearing a lady's sleeve for a favor, is mentioned in Hall's Chronicle, tol. 12:Ŏne ware on his bead-piece his lady's sleeve, and another bare on his helme the glove of his deareling.' STEEV.

In an old play (in six acts) called Histriomastix, 1610, this incident seems to be burlesqued. Troylus and Cressida are introduced by way of interlude: and Cressida breaks out:

'O Knight, with valour in thy face,

Here take my skreene, wear it for grace,

Within thy helmet put the same,

Therewith to make thine enemies lame.' FAR.

'Keep this sleeve.' Sleeve' in all these places means a scarf. A scarf is a silken ornament worn on the arm. Hence it has improperly been called a sleeve: but scarf (the mitra of the Romans) is also veil. We therefore find in Hall one ware on his head-piece a lady's sleeve and in Hollingshed Had on his head a lady's sleeve.' In Histriomastix it is called skrene,' i. e. veil. B.

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Troi. If there be rule in unity itself,
This is not she.

If there be rule in unity itself,] I do not well understand what is meant by rule in unity. By rule our author, in this place as in others, intends virtuous restraint, regularity of manners, command of passions and appetites. In Macbeth:

He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause
Within the belt of rule.-

But I know not how to apply the word in this sense to unity. I read : If there be rule in purity itself,

Or,

If there be rule in verity itself.

Such alterations would not offend the reader, who saw the state of the old editions, in which, for instance, a few lines lower, the almighty sun is called the almighty fenne.--Yet the words may at last mean, If there be certainty in unity, if it be a rule that one is one. JOHN.

'If there be rule in unity itself.' This appears to be said in allusion to the god-head-' If there be rule in unity' if the deity be one and the same, Cressid must be one and the same;'-' my eyes and ears have been deceived: she cannot be false.' B.

Troi. And yet the spacious breadth of this division
Admits no orifice for a point, as subtle

As Arachne's broken woof, to enter.

As is Arachne's broken woof to enter.] The syllable wanting in this verse the modern editors have hitherto supplied. I hope the mistake was not originally the poet's own; yet one of the quartos reads with the folio, Ariachna's broken woof, and the other Ariathna's. It is not impossible that Shakspeare might have written Ariadne's broken woof, having confounded the two names or the stories, in his imagination; or alluding to the clue of thread, by the assistance of which Theseus escaped from the Cretan labyrinth. STEEV.

As Arachne's broken woof.' The sense directs us to read unbroken, and to make at the same time a slight transposition. And yet the spacious breadth of this division, (Subtile as Arachne's unbroken woof)

Admits no orifice for a point to enter.'

The reasoning is,-That, notwithstanding all he has seen, his faith is so strongly and firmly knit, that like the web of Arachne (before it was broken by Minerva) it will scarcely admit a point, (i. e. a doubt) to enter. B.

Troi. The bonds of heaven are slipp'd, dissolv'd, and loos'd;

And with another knot, five-finger-tied,

The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,

The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy reliques
Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.

--o'er-eaten faith,——] Vows which she has already swallowed once over. We still say of a faithless man, that he has eaten his words. JOHN.

-O'er-eaten faith.' The expression is wretched and unmeaning. I suspect that part of this speech is an interpolation of the players. I therefore strike out a line and half immediately preceding o'ereaten,' (which should, no doubt, be o'er-ethen,) and read;

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That is, The fractions, the remains of her love, of her too-easy ('o'er-ethen') love, are given to. Diomed.' B.

Cas. It is the purpose, that makes strong the vow;
But vows, to every purpose, must not hold :

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It is the purpose-] The mad prophetess speaks nere with all the coolness and judgment of a skiltul casuist. The essence of a lawful vow is a lawful purpose, and the vow of which the end is wrong must not be regarded as cogent.' JOHN.

Dr. Johnson is right. But was he to be told that reason is frequently found in madness? He might, indeed, have learnt it from our author.

O matter and impertinency mixt!
Reason in madness!'

See King Lear. B.

fate :

Hect. Mine honor keeps the weather of my
Life every man holds dear; but the dear man
Holds honor far more precious-dear than life.
-dear man] Valuable man. The modern editions read,

-brave man.

The repetition of the word is in our author's manner. JOHN.

But the dear man,' &c.

'Brave man' is wholly arbitrary. I think it should be dere man, i. e. injured man. Hector is injured, his honor is assailed, and he holds that honor more precious-dear than life' he would, therefore, endeavour to vindicate it by fight. This is surely the meaning. The play on dear and dere is, at the same time, more in the manner of Shakspeare than the repetition of dear, while it gives a better, that is, a fuller sense.

It is not the honor of the soldier (as such) which Shakspeare would here contend for, but that of the man. Hector must at no time swerve from his word. Pope has wished of his friend Southerne that he should

Pass to the grave without reproach,

And scorn a rascal and a coach.'

The expression is widely different in these eminent poets, but the moral feeling is the same with both,—an utter detestation of deceit. Or as the latter again, and more elegantly has it

'A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod :

An honest man's the noblest work of God.' B.

Ther. O' the other side, the policy of those crafty swearing rascals.

O' the other side, the policy of those crafty swearing rascals, &c.] But in what sense are Nestor and Ulysses accused of being swearing rascals? What, or to whom, did they swear? I am positive that sneering is the true reading. They had collogued with Ajax, and trimmed him up with insincere praises, only in order to have stirred Achilles's emulation.

In this, they were the true sneerers; betraying the first, to gain their ends on the latter by that artifice. THEOB.

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Those crafty swearing rascals.' Perhaps swerving' i. e. pliable, time-serving, will be the proper word. The context seems to warrant this reading. B.

Ther. And now is the cur Ajax prouder than the cur Achilles, and will not arm to-day; whereupon the Grecians begin to proclaim barbarism, and policy grows into an ill opinion.

to proclaim barbarism,-] To set up the authority of ignorance, to declare that they will be governed by policy no longer. JoHN.

To proclaim, means in this place, I think, to shew, and not to declare. The Greeks, by their actions, seem degenerating into barbarism: they shew an inclination to barbarism. This, I believe, is the meaning, and not, as Dr. Johnson supposes, that they openly declare they will not any longer be governed by policy. B.

Hect.

I like thy armour well; I'll frush it, and unlock the rivets all,

But I'll be master of it:

I'll frush it,--] The word frush I never found elsewhere, nor understand it. Hanmer explains it, to break or bruise. JOHN.

To frush a chicken, is a term in carving which I cannot explain. I am indebted for this little knowledge of it to E. Smith's Complete Huswife, published in 1741. The term is as ancient as Wynkyn de Worde's Book of Kervinge, 1508. Holinshed, describing the soldiers of Richmond making themselves ready, says, "they bent their bows, and frushed their feathers." STEEV.

I'll frush it.' Frush,' from the citations here made, appears to have several meanings. Its primitive signification, however, is certainly that which Hanmer has set down, and which is perfectly suitable here (to frush, i. e. to break). It is evidently derived from the Latin. Thus in the language of the Lawyer of old, frussura domorum, house-breaking: frussura terræ, newly broken land. To 'frush a chicken' is to break up, i. e. cut up, a chicken. Break up will be found in the books on carving of Shakspeare's time. B.

Achil. And when I have the bloody Hector found,
Empale him with your weapons round about;
In fellest manner execute your arms.

-execute your arms.] Thus all the copies; but surely we should read-aims. STEEV.

Execute your arms,'—' employ your arms well, and to the purpose: mind that your weapons take effect. B.

Cymbeline.

ACT I. SCENE I.

1 Gent. You do not meet a man, but frowns; our bloods No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers',

Still seem, as does the king's.

You do not meet a man, but frowns: our BLOODS

No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers

Still seem, as does the king's]

The thought is this: we are not now (as we were wont) influenced by the weather, but by the king's looks. We no more obey the heavens (the sky) than our courtiers obey the heavens (God). By which it appears that the reading, our bloods, is wrong. For though the blood may be affected with the weather, yet that affection is discovered, not by change of color, but by change of countenance. And it is the outward not the inward change that is here talked of, as appears from the word seem. We should read, therefore:

-Our BROWS

No more obey the heavens, &c.

Which is evident from the precedent words,
You do not meet a man but frowns.

And from the following,

-But not a courtier,

Altho' they wear their faces to the bent

Of the king's look, but hath a heart that is

Glad at the thing they scowl at.

The Oxford Editor improves upon this emendation, and reads,

-Our looks

No more obey the heart ev'n than our courtiers.

But by venturing too far, at a second emendatiou, he has stript it of, all thought and sentiment.

WARB.

This passage is so difficult, that commentators may differ concerning it without animosity or shame. Of the two emendations proposed, Han

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