Imo. Great men,

Hark, boys.

I pray, draw near. [Exeunt.

SCENE VII.-Rome.

Enter Two Senators and Tribunes.

1 Sen. This is the tenor of the emperor's writ: That since the common men are now in action 'Gainst the Pannonians and Dalmatians, And that the legions now in Gallia are Full weak to undertake our wars against The fallen-off Britons, that we do incite The gentry to this business. He creates Lucius pro-consul: and to you the tribunes, For this immediate levy, he commands His absolute commission. Long live Cæsar! Tri. Is Lucius general of the forces? 2. Sen.

Tri. Remaining now in Gallia ?

1 Sen.

Ay.

With those legions Which I have spoke of, whereunto your levy

Must be supplyant: The words of your com

1SCENE L-"The fam'd Cassibelan, who was once at point

(0, giglot fortune 1) to master Casar's sword, Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright." MALONE has the following observation upon this passage: "Shakspere has here transferred to Cassibelan an adventure which happened to his brother Nennius. The same historie (ɛays Holinshed) also maketh mention of Nennius, brother to Cassibelane, who in fight happened to get Caesar's sword fastened in his shield, by a blow which Cæsar struck at him.'" Malone has here fallen into an error, from a too literal acceptance of Shakspere's words. To be once at point to master Caesar's sword, is to be once nearly vanquishing Cæsar. We can put our finger upon the passage in Holinshed's Chronicle which Shakspere had in view: "Our histories far differ from this (Cæsar's account), affirming that Cæsar, coming the second time, was by the Britains with valiancy and martial prowess beaten and repelled, as he was at the first, and specially by means that Cassibelane had pight in the Thames great piles of trees, piked with iron, through which his ships, being entered the river, were perished and lost. And after his coming a land he was vanquished in battle, and constrained to flee into Gallia with those ships that remained. For joy of this second victory (saith Galfrid) Cassibelane made a great feast at London, and there did sacrifice to the gods." The victory and the rejoicing are exactly in the same juxta-position as in Shakspere.

The Lud's town of the old chroniclers is London. They considered that London was the town of Lud; and, in a similar manner, that Lud-gate was the gate of Lud. The tradition that Lud rebuilt the ancient Troinovant is given in Spenser : [Fairy Queen, canto x. book ii.]

"He had two sons, whose eldest, called Lud,

Left of his life most famous memory,

And endless monuments of his great good.

The ruin'd walls he did re-edify

Of Troinovant, 'gainst force of enemy,
And built that gate, which of his name is hight."

But Verstegan, in his very amusing' Restitution of Decayed Intelligence concerning Britain,' objects to the connexion both of Lud's town and Lud-gate with King Lud:

"As touching the name of our most ancient, chief, and famous city, it could never of Lud'stown take the name of London, because it had never anciently the name of Lud's-town, neither could it, for that town is not a British, but a Saxon word; but if it took any appellation after King Lud, it must then have been called Caer-Lud, and not Lud's-town; but, considering of how little credit the relations of Geffery of Monmouth are, who from Lud doth derive it, it may rather be thought that he hath imagined this name to have come from King Lud, because of some nearness of sound, for our Saxon ancestors, having divers ages before Geffery was born called it by the name of London, he, not knowing from whence it came, might straight imagine it to have come from Lud, and therefore ought to be Caer-Lud, or Lud's town, as after him others called it; and some also of the name of London, in British sound made it L'hundain, both appellations, as I am persuaded, being of the Britains first taken up and used after. the Saxons had given it the name of London.

"But here I cannot a little marvel how Tacitus (or any such ancient writers) should call it by the name of Londinum (that having been, as it should seem, the Latin name thereof since it hath been called London), which appellation he could never have from the ancient Britains, seeing they never so called it. Julius Cæsar seemed not to know of the name of Londinum, but nameth the city of the Trinobants; and a marvel it is, that, between the time of Cæsar and Tacitus, it should come to get the new name of Londinum, no man can tell how. To deliver my conjecture how this may chance to have happened, I am loth, for that it may peradventure be of some disallowed, and so, omitting it, I will leave the reader to note that the reign of King Lud, from whom some will needs derive the name of London, was before Julius Cæsar came into Britain, and not after, for Cæsar

first entered Britain in the time of Cassibelan, who was brother unto Lud, and succeeded next after him; and in all likelihood, if Lud had given it after himself the new name of Caer-Lud, or, as some more fondly have supposed, of Lud's-town, Julius Cæsar, who came thither so soon after his death, could not have been so utterly ignorant of the new naming of that city, but have known it as well as such writers as came after him.

"Evident it is, that our Saxon ancestors called it Lunden, (in pronunciation sounded London) sometimes adding thereunto the ordinary termination which they gave to all well-fenced cities, or rather such as had forts or castles annexed unto them, by calling it Lundenbirig, and Lundenceaster, that is, after our latter pronunciation, Londonbury or London-chester. This name of Lunden, since varied into London, they gave it in regard and memory of the ancient famous metropolitan city of Lunden, in Sconeland or Sconia, sometime of greatest traffic of all the east parts of Germany.

"And I find in Crautzius that Eric, the fourth of that name, King of Denmark, went in person to Rome to solicit Pope Paschal the Second that Denmark might be no longer under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the bishop of Hambrough, but that the Archbishop of Lunden should be the chief Prelate of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, the which in fine was granted. As for the name of Ludgate, which some will needs have so to have been called of King Lud, and accordingly infer the name of the city, I answer, that it could never of Lud be called Ludgate, because gate is no British word, and, had it taken name of Lud, it must have been Ludporth, and not Ludgate. But how cometh it that all the gates of London, yea, and all the streets and lanes of the city, having English names, Ludgate only must remain British, or the one half of it, to wit, Lud,-gate, as before hath been said, being English? This surely can have proceeded of no other cause than of the lack of heed that men have taken unto our ancient language; and Geffery of Monmouth, or some other as unsure in his reports as he, by hearing ouly of the name of Ludgate, might easily fall into a dream or imagination that it must needs have had that name of King Lud. There is no doubt but that our Saxon ancestors (as I have said), changing all the names of the other gates about London, did also change this, and called it Ludgate, otherwise also written Leodgeat; Lud and Leod is all one, and, in our ancient language, folk or people, and so is Ludgate as much to say as Porta populi, the gate or passage of the people. And if a man do observe it, he shall find that, of all the gates of the city, the greatest passage of the people is through this gate; and yet must it needs have been much more in time past before Newgate was builded, which, as Mr. John Stow saith, was

first builded about the reign of King Henry the Second. And therefore the name of Leod-gate, was aptly given in respect of the great concourse of people through it."

2 SCENE I.-".

—“ Mulmutius made our laws," &c. According to Holinshed, Mulmutius, the first King of Britain who was crowned with a golden crown, "made many good laws, which were long after used, called Mulmutius' laws, turned out of the British speech into Latin, by Gildas Priscus, and long time after translated out of Latin into English, by Alfred, King of England, and mingled in his statutes."

3 SCENE I." Thy Cæsar knighted me." Shakspere still follows Holinshed literally:"This man was brought up at Rome, and there was made knight by Augustus Cæsar." Douce objects to the word knight as a downright anachronism; as well as to another similar passage, where Cymbeline addresses Belarius and his

sons:

"Bow your knees:

Arise my knights o' the battle." Both Holinshed and Shakspere, in applying a term of the feudal ages to convey the notion of a Roman dignity, did precisely what they were called upon to do. They used a word which conveyed a distinct image much more clearly than any phrase of stricter propriety. They translated ideas as well as words.

it

← SCENE II.—“ A franklin's housewife." The franklin, in the days of Shakspere, had become a less important personage than he was in those of Chaucer:

"A Frankelein was in this compagnie;
White was his berd as is the dayesie.
Of his complexion he was sanguin.
Wel loved he by the morwe a sop in win.
To liven in delit was ever his wone,
For he was Epicures owen sone,
That held opinion, that plein delit
Was veraily felicite parfite.
An housholder, and that a grete was he;
Seint Julian he was in his contree.
His brede, his ale, was alway after on;
A better envyued man was no wher non.
Withouten bake mete never was his hous,
of fish and flesh, and that so plenteous,
It snewed in his hous of mete and drinke,
Of alle deintees that men coud of thinke.
After the sondry sesons of the yere,
So changed he his mete and his soupere.
Ful many a fat partrich hadde he in mewe,
And many a breme, and many a luce in stewe.
Wo was his coke, but if his sauce were
Poinant and sharpe, and redy all his gere.
His table dormant in his halle alway
Stode redy covered all the longe day.

At sessions ther was he lord and sire.
Ful often time he was knight of the shire.
An anelace and a gipciere all of silk,
Heng at his girdel, white as morwe milk.
A shereve hadde he ben, and a countour.
Was no wher swiche a worthy vavasour."

Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 333.

But, a century and a half later than Chaucer, he Was still a dignified member of the landed aristocracy. "England is so thick spread and filled with rich and landed men, that there is scarce a small village in which you may not find a knight, an e-quire, or some substantial householder, commonly called a frankleyne; all men of considerable estates." This is the description of Sir John Fortescue, in the reign of Henry VI. The franklin in the time of Shakspere had, for the most part, gone upward into the squire, or downward into the yeutaan; and the name had probably become synonymous with the small freeholder and cultivator. "A franklin's housewife" would wear no costlier suit than Imogen desired for concealment. Latimer has described the farmer of the early part of the sixteenth century:-"My father was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm of three or four pound by year, at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He had walk for an hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine."

66

beetle, the beetle whose scaly wing-cases are not formed for a flight far above the earth,-is contrasted with the full-wing'd eagle. The shards support the insect when he rises from the ground; but they do not enable him to cleave the air with a bird-like wing. The shard-borne beetle of Macbeth is therefore, the beetle supported on its shards.

6 SCENE IV.-" And, for I am richer than to be hang'd by the walls,

I must be ripp'd."

Steevens has an interesting note upon this passage:

"To hang by the walls' does not mean, to be converted into hangings for a room, but to be hung up, as useless, among the neglected contents of a wardrobe. So, in Measure for Measure:

That have, like unscour'd armour, hung by the wall! "When a boy, at an ancient mansion-house in Suffolk I saw one of these repositories, which (thanks to a succession of old maids!) had been preserved with superstitious reverence for almost a century and a half.

"Clothes were not formerly, as at present, made of slight materials; were not kept in drawers, or given away as soon as lapse of time or change of fashion had impaired their value. On the contrary, they were hung upon wooden pegs in a room appropriated to the sole purpose of receiving them; and, though such cast-off things as were composed of rich substances were occasionally ripped for domestic uses (viz. mantles for infants, vests for children, and counterpanes for beds), articles of inferior quality were suffered to hang by the walls till age and moths had destroyed what pride would not permit to be worn by servants or poor relations'

SCENE I.-The Forest, near the Cave.

Enter CLOTEN.

Clo. I am near to the place where they should meet, if Pisanio have mapped it truly. How fit his garments serve me! Why should his mistress, who was made by him that made the tailor, not be fit too? the rather (saving reverence of the word) for 't is said, a woman's fitness comes by fits. Therein I must play the workman. I dare speak it to myself, (for it is not vain-glory for a man and his glass to confer in his own chamber,) I mean, the lines of my body are as well drawn as his; no less young, more strong, not beneath him in fortunes, beyond him in the advantage of the time, above him in birth, alike conversant in general services, and more remarkable in single oppositions: yet this imperseverant thing loves him in my despite. What mortality is! Posthumus, thy head, which now is growing upon thy shoulders, shall within this hour be off;

a

a Imperseverant. Mr. Dyce changes this to imperceiverant, without the power of perceiving. The im is a prefix to perseverant; in the same way as impassioned.

thy mistress enforced; thy garments cut to pieces before thy face: and all this done, spurn her home to her father: who may, haply, be a little angry for my so rough usage: but my mother, having power of his testiness, shall turn all into my commendations. My horse is tied up safe: Out, sword, and to a sore purpose! Fortune, put them into my hand! This is the very description of their meeting-place; and the fellow dares not deceive me.

[Brit.