GON. Upon mine honour, fir, I heard a humming, And that a strange one too, which did awake me: I fhak'd you, fir, and cry'd; as mine eyes open'd, I faw their weapons drawn :-there was a noise, That's verity: 'Beft ftand upon our guard ;2 Or that we quit this place : let's draw our weapons. ALON. Lead off this ground; and let's make further fearch ARI. Profpero my lord fhall know what I have done: So, king, go fafely on to feek thy fon. [Afide. [Exeunt. That's verity: 'Beft ftand upon our guard ;] The old copy reads "That's verily: 'Tis beft we ftand upon our guard." Mr. Pope very properly changed verily to verity: and as the verfe would be too long by a foot, if the words 'tis and we were retained, I have difcarded them in favour of an elliptical phrase which occurs in our ancient comedies, as well as in our author's Cymbeline, A& III, fc. iii: "Beft draw my fword;" i. e. it were beft to draw it. SCENE II. Another part of the Ifland. Enter CALIBAN, with a burden of wood. A noife of thunder heard. CAL. All the infections that the fun fucks up From bogs, fens, flats, on Profper fall, and make him By inch-meal a disease! His fpirits hear me, And yet Ì needs must curfe. But they'll nor pinch, Sometime like apes, that moe3 and chatter at me, 3 that moe &c.] i. e. make mouths. So, in the old verfion of the Pfalms: making moes at me." Again, in the Mystery of Candlemas-Day, 1512: "And make them to lye and mowe like an ape." Again, in Sidney's Arcadia, Book III: "Ape great thing gave, though he did mowing stand, "The inftrument of inftruments, the hand." STEEVENS. So, in Nashe's Apologie of Pierce Penniless, 1593: "-found nobody at home but an ape, that fate in the porch and made mops and mows at him." MALONE. ← Their pricks—] i. e. prickles. STEEVENS. S -wound with adders,] Enwrapped by adders wound or twisted about me. JOHNSON. Enter TRINCULO. Here comes a fpirit of his; and to torment me, TRIN. Here's neither bush nor fhrub, to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing; I hear it fingi' the wind: yond' fame black cloud, yond' huge one, looks like a foul bumbard that would fhed his liquor. If it fhould thunder, as it did before, I know not where to hide my head: yond' fame cloud cannot choosfe but fall by pailfuls. What have we here? a man or a fifh? Dead or alive? A fifh: he fmells like a fifh; a very ancient and fish-like smell; a kind of, not of the 6 looks like a foul bumbard-] This term again occurs in The First Part of Henry IV: "that fwoln parcel of dropfies, that huge bumbard of fack-" And again, in Henry VIII. "And here you lie baiting of bombards, when ye fhould do service." By these feveral paffages, 'tis plain, the word meant a large veffel for holding drink, as well as the piece of ordnance fo called. THEOBALD. Ben Jonfon, in his Mafque of Augurs, confirms the conjecture of Theobald: "The poor cattle yonder are paffing away the time with a cheat loaf, and a bumbard of broken beer."· So, again in The Martyr'd Soldier, by Shirley, 1638: "His boots as wide as the black-jacks, "Or bumbards, tofs'd by the king's guards." And it appears from a paffage in Ben Jonson's Mafque of Love Reftor'd, that a bombard-man was one who carried about provifions. "I am to deliver into the buttery fo many firkins of aurum potabile, as it delivers out lombards of bouge," &c. Again, in Decker's Match me in London, 1631: "You are ascended up to what you are, from the black-jack to the bumbard diftillation." STEEVENS. Mr. Upton would read—a full bumbard. See a note on"I thank the Gods, I am foul;" As you like it, A&t III. fc. iii. MALONE. neweft, Poor-John. A ftrange fifh! Were I in England now, (as once I was,) and had but this fifh painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of filver: there would this monfter make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to fee a dead Indian. Legg'd 7 this fish painted,] To exhibit fishes, either real or imaginary, was very common about the time of our author. So, in Jasper Maine's comedy of the City Match: "Enter Bright, &c. hanging out the picture of a strange fifh." This is the fifth fish now 66 "That he hath fhewn thus." It appears from the books at Stationers' Hall, that in 1604 was published, “A strange reporte of a monftrous fish, that appeared in the form of a woman from her waift upward, feene in the fea." So likewife, in Churchyard's Prayfe and Reporte of Maister Martyne Forboifher's Voyage to Meta Incognita, &c. bl. 1. 12mo. 1578: "And marchyng backe, they found a ftraunge Fish dead, that had been cafte from the sea on the fhore, who had a boane in his head like an Unicorne, which they brought awaye and presented to our Prince, when thei came home." STEEVENS. 8 make a man ;] That is, make a man's fortune. So, in A Midsummer Night's Dream: "we are all made men." JOHNSON. Again, in Ram-alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611: 9 She's a wench "Was born to make us all." STEEVENS. a dead Indian.] In a fubfequent fpeech of Stephano, we have: "-savages and men of Inde;" in Love's Labour's Loft, -a rude and favage man of Inde ;" and in K. Henry VIII. the porter asks the mob, if they think "fome strange Indian, &c. is come to court." Perhaps all these paffages allude to the Indians brought home by Sir Martin Frobisher. Queen Elizabeth's original inftructions to him (MS. now before me)" concerning his voyage to Cathaia," &c. contain the following article: "You fhall not bring aboue iii or iiii persons of that countrey, the which shall be of diuers ages, and fhall be taken in fuch fort as you may best avoyde offence of that people." In the year 1577, "A defcription of the portrayture and shape like a man and his fins like arms! Warm, o' my troth! I do now let loose my opinion,' hold it no longer; this is no fifh, but an iflander, that hath lately fuffered by a thunder-bolt. [Thunder.] Alas! the storm is come again: my best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other fhelter hereabout: Mifery acquaints a man with ftrange bedfellows.3 I will here fhroud, till the dregs of the storm be past. of those strange kinde of people which the wurthie Mr. Martin Fourbofier brought into England in A°. 1576," was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company. By Frobisher's First Voyage for the Discoverie of Cataya, bl. 1. 4to. 1578, the fate of the firft favage taken by him is afcertained." Whereupon when he founde himself in captiuitie, for very choler and difdain he bit his tong in twaine within his mouth notwithstanding, he died not thereof, but liued untill he came in Englande, and then he died of colde which he had taken at fea." STEEVENS. : ·let loose my opinion, &c.] So, in Love's Labour's Loft: Now you will be my purgation, and let me loofe." 2 his gaberdine ;] A gaberdine is frock or outward garment of a peafant. So, in Look about you, 1600: "I'll conjure his gaberdine." STEEVENS. properly the coarfe Spanish Gaberdina. The gaberdine is ftill worn by the peasants in Suffex. STEEVENS. It here however means, I believe, a loose felt cloak. Mintheu in his DICT. 1617, calls it "a rough Irish mantle, or horfeman's coat. Gaban, Span. and Fr.-Læna, i. e. veftis quæ fuper cætera veftimenta imponebatur." See alfo Cotgrave's DICT. in v. gaban, and galleverdine. MALONE. 3 - a very ancient and fifh like fmell-mifery acquaints a man with Strange bedfellows.] One would almost think that Shakspeare had not been unacquainted with a paffage in the fourth book of Homer's Odyffey, as tranflated by Chapman : The fea-calves favour was "So pafling fowre (they ftill being bred at feas,) "To lie by one of these same sea-bred whales?" STEEVENS. |