my bosom as a bed “ Shall lodge thee.” STEEVENS. The second folio has bed. TYRWHITT. 182, rif she sink !] I know not to whom the pronoun she can be referred. I have made no scruple to remove a letter from it. The author of the Revisal has the same observation. STEEVENS. The author of REMARKS, however, thinks there can be little doubt but that tlie pronoun she must be referred to Love, that is Venus; and Mr. Reed, in confirmation of this interpretation, cites the following lines from the old ballad of The Spanish Lady : “ I will spend my days in prayer, “ Love and all her laws defy." 184. Not mad, but mated,] 1. e. confounded. So in Macbeth: My mind she has mated, and amaz'd STEEVENS. 187. Gaze where] The old copy reads, when. STEEVENS. 196. My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim.] When he calls the girls his only heaven on the earth, he utters the common cant of lovers. When he calls her his heaven's claim, I cannot understand him. Perhaps he means that which he asks of heaven. JOHNSON. 198. --for I mean thee :] Thus the modern editor's. The fulio reads, ---for I am thee. Perhaps we should read: -fir laim thee. He has just told her, that she was his sweet hope's aim. So my sight." S Ti Ele ple Esal XS. lere be in Fing So So in Orlando Furioso, 1594: -like Cassius, “ Sits sadly dumping, aiming Cæsar's death." Again, in Drayton's Legend of Robert Duke of Normandy: “ I make my changes aim one certain end." STEEVENS. 243. S. Ant. What's her name? S. Dro. Nell, sir ; but her name is three quarters; that is, an ell and three quarters, &c.] This passage has hitherto lain as perplexed and unintelligible, as it is now easy and truly humourous. If a conundrum be restored, in setting it right, who can help it? I owe the correction to the sagacity of the ingenious Dr. Thirlby, THEOBAID. This poor conundrum is borrowed by Massinger in The Old Law, 1653: “ Cook. That Nell was Hellen of Greece. “ Clown. As long as she tarried with her husband she was Ellen, but after she came to Troy she was Nell of Troy. “ Cook. Why did she grow shorter when she came to Troy? “ Clown. She grew longer, if you mark the story, when she grew to be an ell,” &c. MALONE. 257. S. Ant. Where France ? S. Dro. In her forehead arm’d and reverted, making war against her hair.] Our author here sports with an allusion, in which he takes too much delight, and means that his mistress had the French disease. The ideas are rather too offens ve to be dilated. By a fore. head head armed, he means covered with incrusted eruptions : by reverted, he means having the hair turning backward. Johnson. 271. to be ballasted] Thus the modern editors. The old copy reads only ballast, which may be right. Thus in Hamlet : to have the engineer Steevens. 275. assured to her;] i. e, affianced to her. Thus in K. John; “ For so I did when I was first assur'd," Steevens. 280. And, I think, if my breast had not been made of faith, &c.] Alluding to the superstition of the conmon people, that nothing could resist a witch's power of transforming men into animals, but a great share of faith : however the Oxford editor thinks a breast made of flint, better security, and has therefore put it in. WARBURTON. 305. at the Porpentine :] It is remarkable, that throughout the old editions of Shakspere's plays, the word Porpentine is used instead of Porcupine. Perhaps it was so pronounced at that time. I have since observed the same spelling in the plays of other ancient authors. Mr. Tollet finds it likewise in p. 66. of Ascham's Works, by Bennet, and in Stowe’s Chronicle, in the years 1117. 1135. STEEVENS ACT ACT IV. Line 4. LWANT gilders] A gilder is a c Jued from one shilling and six-pence, to two sh STEE 8. Is growing to me - ] 1. e. accruing to m STEE 95. -thou peevish sheep,] Peevish is sile in Cymbeline : “ Desire my man's abode where I did leave “ He's strange and peevish.”. STEE See catch-word Alphabet. 112.. Where Dowsabel] This name occurs of Drayton's Pastorals : “He had, as antique stories tell, STEE -meteors tilting in his face?] Allue these meteors in the sky, which have the appe of lines of armies meeting in the shock. WARBU The allusion is more clearly explained by the ing comparison in the second book of Paradise “ As when to warn proud cities, war appe с fore 121. URTO! mark “ Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms, « From either end of heaven the welkin burns." STEEVENS, 136. sere,] That is, dry, withered. JOHNSON. 139. Stigmatical in making, -] That is, marked or stigmatized by nature with deformity, as a token of his vicious disposition. JOHNSON So, in The Wonder of a Kingdom, 1636 : “ If you spy any man that hath a look, STEEVENS 144. Far from her nest the lapwing, &c.] This expression seems to be proverbial. I have met with it in many of the old comic writers. Greene, in his Second Part of Coney-Catching, 1592, says: 6* But again to our priggers, who, as before I said, cry witk the lapwing farthest from the nest, and from their place of residence where their most abode is." And several others. See this passage yet more amply explained in a note on Measure for Measure, act j. line 374. STEEVENS 151. an everlasting garment] Everlasting was in the time of Shakspere, as well as at present, the name of a kind of durable stuff. The quibble intended here, is likewise met with in Beaumont and Fletcher's Wi man Hater: I'll quit this transitory STREVENS. |