"What member 'tis of whom they talk, "When they cry rope, and walk, knave, walk!" So in Decker's Satiromastix : "But come, respice funem." 356. Certes,] i. e. certainly. WARBURTON. STEEVENS. STEEVENS. Kitchen-vestal,] Her charge being like that of the vestal virgins, to keep the fire burning. JOHNSON. 396. -thou peevish officer?] This is the second time that in the course of this play, peevish has been used for foolish. STEEVENS. 406. unhappy strumpet!] Unhappy is here used in one of the senses of unlucky; i, e. mischievous. STEEVENS. ACT V. Line 64. THE copy] i. e. the theme. We still talk of setting copies for boys. STEEVENS. 81. But moody and dull melancholy, &c.] So in King Henry VI. Part I. "But rather moody mad." MALONE. 82. Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair ;] Shakspere could never make melancholy a male in this line, and a female in the next. This was the foolish insertion of the first editors. I have therefore put it into hooks, as spurious. WARBURTON. The The defective metre of the second line, is a plain proof that some dissyllable hath been dropped there. I think it therefore probable our poet may have written: Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue, REVISAL. Kinsman means no more than near relation. Many words are used by Shakspere with much greater latitude. REMARKS. 83. And, at her heels, a huge infectious troop.] I have no doubt that the emendation proposed by Mr. Heath ["their heels"] is right. In the English manuscripts of our author's time the pronouns were generally expressed by abbreviations. In this very play we have already met their for her, which has been rightly amended: "Among my wife and their confederates,” Act iv. scene 1. MALONE. STEEVENS. 107. -a formal man again :] See catch-word Alphabet. 123. The place of death, and sorry execution,] The first and second folio read-" the place of depth." Mr. Rowe made the change.. MALONE. -sorry execution,] So in Macbeth: "Of sorriest fancies your companions making." Sorry, had anciently a stronger meaning than at present. STEEVENS. Thus, Thus, Macbeth looking on his bloody hands after the murder of Duncan : "This is a sorry sight!" 139. Whom I made lord of me, and all I had, At your important letters, seems to be for importunate. HENLEY. -] Important JOHNSON. So in one of Shakspere's Historical plays : 66 -great France "My mourning and important tears hath pitied. Again, in George Whetstone's Castle of Delight, 1576: "yet won by importance accepted his courtesie." Shakspere, who gives to all nations the customs of his own, seems, from this passage, to allude to a court of wards in Ephesus. The court of wards was always considered as a grievous oppression. It is glanced at as early as in the old morality of Hycke Scorner : 66 -these ryche men ben unkinde: "Wydowes do curse lordes and gentyllmen. For they contrayne them to marry with theyr men, "Ye, wheder they wyll or no.” STEEVENS. 148. —to take order] i.e. to take measure. Othello, act v. So, in "Honest Iago hath taken order for it." STEEVENS.. 152. And, with his mad attendant AND himself,] We should read: -MAD himself. We might read, WARBURTON. And And here his mad attendant and himself. STEEVENS. 172. Beaten the maids a-row] i. e. Successively, one after another. So in Chaucer's Wife of Bath, Tale v. 6836, late edit. "A thousand times a-row he can hire kisse." STEEVENS. 173. Whose beard they have sing'd off with brands of fire;] Such a ludicrous circumstance is not unworthy of the farce in which we find it introduced; but is rather out of place in an epick poem, amidst all the horrors and carnage of a battle: "Obvius ambustum torrem Corynæus ab ara Virg. Æneid. lib. xii. 298. STEEVENS. Shakspere was a great reader of Plutarch, where he might have seen this method of shaving in the life of Dion. p. 167, 4to. See North's translation, in which vpaμ may be translated brands. S. W. 177. His man with scissors nicks him like a fool :] The force of this allusion I am unable to explain. Perhaps it was once the custom to cut the hair of ideots' or jesters close to their heads. There is a proverbial simile-"Like crop the conjurer;" which might have been applied to either of these characters. STEEVENS. There is a penalty of ten shillings in one of king Alfred's ecclesiastical laws, if one opprobriously shave a common man like a fool. TOLLET. 207. with harlots -] Antipholis did not suspect his wife of having entertained courtezans, but of having been confederate with cheats, to impose on him and abuse him, therefore he says to her, act i. sc. 4: -are these your customers, &c. By this description he points out Pinch and his followers. Harlot was a term of reproach applied to cheats among men, as well as to wantons among women. Thus, in the Fox, Corbacchio says to Volpone : Again, in The Winter's Tale: -for the harlot king "Is quite beyond mine arm-——” The learned editor of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 4 vol. 8vo. 1775, observes, that in The Romaunt of the Rose, v 6068, King of Harlots is Chaucer's Translation of Roy des ribaulx. Chaucer uses the word more than once: "A sturdy harlot went hem ay behind, " &c. Sompnoures Tale, v. 7336. Again, in the Dyers' Play, among the Chester Collection in the Museum, Antichrist says to the male characters on the stage: "Out on ye harlots, whence come ye ?" |