392. Reason becomes the marshal to my will,] That is, My will now follows reason. So, in Macbeth: JOHNSON. “Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going." STEEVENS. 404. -true gentleness.] Gentleness is equivalent to what, in modern language, we should call the spirit of a gentleman. 412. PERCY. -those they did deceive;] The folio MALONE. reads-that did deceive. 422. And you-] Instead of you, the elder folio reads yet. Mr. Pope first gave the right word from the quarto 1600. STEEVENS. 426. Speak, of all loves ;-] Of all loves, is an adjuration more than once used by our author. So, Merry Wives, &c. act ii. 66 loves." to send her your little page, of all STEEVENS. 428. Or death, or you, &c.] The folio 1623, and the quarto 1600, instead of the first or, read either. STEEVENS. ACT ACT III. • Line 1. ENTER Quince, &c.] The two quartos 1600, and the folio, read only, Enter the Clowns. STEEVENS. 13. By'rlakin, a parlous fear.] By our ladykin, or little lady, as ifakins is a corruption of by my faith. The former is used in Preston's Cambyses: "The clock hath stricken vive ich think by laken." Again, in Magnificence, an ancient folio interlude, written by Skelton, and printed by Rastell : "By our lakin, syr, not by my will." Parlous, a word corrupted from perilous, i. e. dangerous. So, Phaer and Twyne translate Virg. Æn. lib. vii. 302. "Quid Syrtes, aut Scylla mihi, quid vasta Charybdis Profuit?" "What good did Scylla me? What could pre vail Charybdis wood? "Or Sirtes parlous sands?" STEEVENS. 75. that brake;] Brake a thicket or bush. Brake, in the west of England, is used to express a large extent of ground over-grown with furze, and appears both here and in the next scene to convey the same idea: "The "The shallowest thick skin of the barren sort HENLEY. 85. So doth thy breath,-] The old copies concur in reading: So hath thy breath, Mr. Pope, I believe, first made the alteration. 86. editions: STEEVENS. -stay thou but ere a whit,] In the old -stay thou but here a while; The verses should be alternately in rhime; but sweet in the close of the first line, and while in the third, will not do for this purpose. The author, doubtless, gave it: -stay thou but here a whit; i. e. a little while: for so it signifies, as also any thing of no price or consideration; a trifle: in which sense it is very frequent with our author. 88. THEOBALD. -than e'er play'd here!] I suppose he means in that theatre where the piece was acting. 95. STEEVENS. juvenal, i. e. young man. So, Fal staff, "the juvenal thy master." 100. STEEVENS. cues and all] A cue, in stage cant, is the last words of the preceding speech, and serves as a hint to him who is to speak next. So Othello: "Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it "Without a prompter." F So, So, in the Return from Parnassus : "Indeed, master Kempe, you are very famous: but that is as well for works in print, as your part in cue." Kempe was one of Shakspere's fellow comedians. STEEVENS. 103. If I were fair, Thisby, I were only thine:] I think, this ought to be pointed differently:-If I were, [i. e. as true, &c.] fair Thisbe, I were only thine. MALONE. 107. Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier;] Here are two syllables wanting. Perhaps, it was written : Through bog, through mire,JOHNSON. 113. ―to make me afeard.] Afeard is from to fear, by the old form of the language, as an hungered, from to hunger. So adry, for thirsty. JOHNSON. 114. O Bottom, thou art chang'd! what do I see on thee?] It is plain by Bottom's answer, that Snout mentioned an ass's head. Therefore we should read: Snout. O Bottom, thou art changed! what do I see on thee? An ass's head? 125. JOHNSON. The ousel-cock,] The ousel-cock is generally understood to be the cock blackbird. Ben Jonson uses the word in The Devil is an Ass : "stay till cold weather come, "I'll help thee to an ouzel and a field-fare." P. Holland, however, in his translation of Pliny's Natural History, B. X. c. 24. represents the ouzle and the the blackbird, as different birds. See also Sir Ashton Lever's Museum. 127. The throstle with his note so true,] So, in the old metrical romance of The Squhr of Low Degree, bl. let. no date: "The pee and the popinjaye, "The thrustele, sayinge both nyght and daye." Again, in the first book of Gower De Confessione Amantis, 1554: "The throstle with the nightingale." It appears from the following passage in Thomas Newton's Herball to the Bible, 8vo. 1587, that the throstle is a distinct bird from the thrush. "There is also another sorte of myrte or myrtle which is wild, whose berries the mavises, throssels, owsells, and thrushes, delite much to eate." STEEVENS. 131. plain-song cuckow, &c.] That is, the cuckoo, who, having no variety of strains, sings in plain song, or in plano cantu, by which expression the uniform modulation or simplicity of the chaunt was anciently distinguished, in opposition to prick-song, or varie gated musick sung by note. Skelton introduces the birds singing the different parts of the service of the funeral of his favourite sparrow: among the rest is the cuckoo. P. 277. edit. Lond. 1736; "But with a large and a long "To keep just playne songe "Our chanter shall be your cuckoue." |