Heaven give thee moving graces. (1765, I,282,1)

I.iv.70 (27,1) [pith Of business] The inmost part, the main of my message.

I.iv.86 (28,4) [the mother] The abbess, or prioress.

II.i.8 (29,7) [Let but your honour know] To know is here to examine, to take cognisance. So in Midsummer-Night's Dream,

Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires; Know of your truth, examine well your blood.

II.i.23 (29,8)

['Tis very pregnant, The jewel that we find, we stoop and take it, Because we see it; but what we do not see, We tread upon, and never think of it]

'Tis plain that we must act with bad as with good; we punish the faults, as we take the advantages, that lie in our way, and what we do not see we cannot note.

II.i.28 (30,8) [For I have had such faults] That is, because, by reason that I have had faults.

II.i.57 (31,9) [This comes off well] This is nimbly spoken; this is volubly uttered.

II.i.63 (32,1) [a tapster, sir; parcel-bawd] This we should now express by saying, he is half-tapster, half-bawd. (1773)

II.i.66 (32,2) [she professes a hot-house] A hot-house is an English name for a bagnio.

Where lately harbour'd many a famous whore, A purging-bill now fix'd upon the door, Tells you it it a hot-house, so it may. And still be a whore-house. Ben. Jonson.

II.i.85 (32,3) [Ay, sir, by mistress Over-done's means] Here seems to have been some mention made of Froth, who was to be accused, and some words therefore may have been lost, unless the irregularity of the narrative may be better imputed to the ignorance of the constable.

II.i.180 (35,4) [Justice or Iniquity?] These were, I suppose, two personages well known to the audience by their frequent appearance in the old moralities. The words, therefore, at that time, produced a combination of ideas, which they have now lost.

II.i.183 (35,5) [Hannibal] Mistaken by the constable for Cannibal.

II.i.215 (36,6) [they will draw you] Draw has here a cluster of senses. As it refers to the tapster, it signifies to drain, to empty; as it is related to hang, it means to be conveyed to execution on a hurdle. In Froth's answer, it is the same as to bring along by some motive or power.

II.i.254 (37,7) [I'll rent the fairest house in it, after three pence a bay] A bay of building is, in many parts of England, a common term, of which the best conception that I could ever attain, is, that it is the space between the main beams of the roof; so that a barn crossed twice with beams is a barn of three bays.

II.ii.26 (40,8) [Stay yet a while] It is not clear why the provost is bidden to stay, nor when he goes out.

II.ii.32 (40,9) [For which I must not plead but that I am at war, 'twixt will, and will not] This is obscure; perhaps it may be mended by reading,

For which I must now plead; but yet I am At war, 'twixt will, and will not.

Yet and yt are almost indistinguishable in a manuscript. Yet no alteration is necessary, since the speech is not unintelligible as it now stands, (see 1765, 9I,294,5)

II.ii.78 (42,2) [And mercy then will breathe within your lips, Like man new made] I rather think the meaning is, You would then change the severity of your present character. In familiar speech, You would be quite another man. (see 1765, 1,296,7)

II.ii.99 (43,6)

[Isab. Yet shew some pity. Ang. I shew it most of all, when I shew justice; For then I pity those I do not know]

This was one of Bale's memorials. When I find myself swayed to mercy, let me remember, that there is a mercy likewise due to the country.

II.ii.126 (45,2) [We cannot weigh our brother with ourself] [W: yourself] The old reading is right. We mortals proud and foolish cannot prevail on our passions to weigh or compare our brother, a being of like nature and frailty, with ourself. We have different names and different judgments for the same faults committed by persons of different condition. (1773)

II.ii.141 (46,3) [She speaks, and 'tis Such sense, that my sense breeds with it] Thus all the folios. Some later editor has changed breeds to bleeds, and Dr. Warburton blames poor Mr. Theobald for recalling the old word, which yet is certainly right. My sense breeds with her sense, that is, new thoughts are stirring in my mind, new conceptions are hatched in my imagination.

So we say to brood over thought.

II.ii.149 (46,4) [tested gold] Rather cupelled, brought to the test, refined, (see 1765,I,299,6)

II.ii.157 (47,6) [For I am that way going to temptation, Where prayers cross] Which way Angelo is going to temptation, we begin to perceive; but how prayers cross that way, or cross each other, at that way, more than any other, I do not understand.

Isabella prays that his honour may be safe, meaning only to give him his title: his imagination is caught by the word honour; he feels that his honour is in danger, and therefore, I believe, answers thus:

I am that way going to temptation, Which your prayers cross.

That is, I am tempted to lose that honour of which thou implorest the preservation. The temptation under which I labour is that which thou hast unknowingly thwarted with thy prayer. He uses the same mode language a few lines lower. Isabella, parting, says, Save your honour! Angelo catches the word—Save it! From what? From thee; even from thy virtue!—(rev. 1778,II,52,3)

II.ii.165 (47,7)

[But it is I, That lying, by the violet, in the sun, Do, as the carrion does, not as the flower, Corrupt with virtuous season.]

I am not corrupted by her, but by my own heart, which excites foul desires under the same benign influences that exalt her purity, as the carrion grows putrid by those beams which encrease the fragrance of the violet.

II.ii.186 (48,8) [Ever, till now, When men were fond, I smil'd, and wonder'd how] As a day must now intervene between this conference of Isabella with Angelo, and the next, the act might more properly end here; and here, in my opinion, it was ended by the poet.

II.iii.11 (49,1) [Who falling in the flaws of her own youth, Hath blister'd her report] Who doth not see that the integrity of the metaphor requires we should read, —flames of her own youth? Warburton.]

Who does not see that, upon such principles, there is no end of correction?

II.iii.36 (50,3) [There rest] Keep yourself in this temper.

II.iii.40 (50,4) [Oh, injurious love] Her execution was respited on account of her pregnancy, the effects of her love: therefore she calls it injurious; not that it brought her to shame, but that it hindered her freeing herself from it. Is not this all very natural? yet the Oxford editor changes it to injurious law.

II.iv.9 (51,6) [Grown fear'd and tedious] [W: sear'd] I think fear'd

may stand. What we go to with reluctance may be said to be fear'd.

II.iv.13 (51,7) [case] For outside; garb; external shew.

II.iv.14 (51,8) [Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls To thy false seeming?] Here Shakespeare judiciously distinguishes the different operations of high place upon different minds. Fools are frighted, and wise men are allured. Those who cannot judge but by the eye, are easily awed by splendour; those who consider men as well as conditions, are easily persuaded to love the appearance of virtue dignified with power.

II.iv.16 (51,9) [Let's write good angel on the devil's horn; 'Tis not the devil's crest] [Hammer: Is't not the devil's crest] I am still inclined to the opinion of the Oxford editor. Angelo, reflecting on the difference between his seeming character, and his real disposition, observes, that he could change his gravity for a plume. He then digresses into an apostrophe, O dignity, how dost thou impose upon the world! then returning to himself, Blood, says he, thou art but blood, however concealed with appearances and decorations. Title and character do not alter nature, which is still corrupt, however dignified.

Let's write good angel on the devil's horn; Is't not?—or rather—'Tis yet the devil's crest.

It may however be understood, according to Dr. Warburton's explanation. O place, how dost thou impose upon the world by false appearances! so much, that if we write good angel on the devil's horn, 'tis not taken any longer to be the devil's crest. In this sense,

Blood, thou art but blood.!

is an interjected exclamation. (1773)

II.iv.27 (53,1) [The gen'ral subjects to a well-wish'd king] So the later editions: but the old copies read,

The general subject to a well-wish'd king.

The general subject seems a harsh expression, but general subjects has no sense at all; and general was, in our authour's time, a word for people, so that the general is the people, or multitude, subject to a king. So in Hamlet: The play pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general.

II.iv.47 (54,3) [Falsely to take away a life true made] Falsely is the same with dishonestly, illegally: so false, in the next lines, is illegal, illegitimate.

II.iv.48 (54,4) [As to put metal in restrained means] In forbidden moulds. I suspect means not to be the right word, but I cannot find another.

II.iv.50 (55,5) ['Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth] I would have it considered, whether the train of the discourse does not rather require Isabel to say,

'Tis so set down in earth, but not in heaven.

When she has said this, Then, says Angelo, I shall poze you quickly. Would you, who, for the present purpose, declare your brother's crime to be less in the sight of heaven, than the law has made it; would you commit that crime, light as it is, to save your brother's life? To this she answers, not very plainly in either reading, but more appositely to that which I propose:

I had rather give my body, than my soul. (1773)

II.iv.67 (56,6)

[Pleas'd you to do't at peril of your soul, Were equal poize of sin and charity]

The reasoning is thus: Angelo asks, whether there might not be a charity in sin to save this brother. Isabella answers, that if Angelo will save him, she will stake her soul that it were charity, not sin. Angelo replies, that if Isabella would save him at the hazard of her soul, it would be not indeed no sin, but a sin to which the charity would be equivalent.

II.iv.73 (56,7) [And nothing of your answer] I think it should be read,

And nothing of yours answer.

You, and whatever is yours, be exempt from penalty.

II.iv.86 (56,9) [Accountant to the law upon that pain] Pain is here for penalty, punishment.

II.iv.90 (57,2) [But in the loss of question,] The loss of question I do not well understand, and should rather read,

But in the toss of question.

In the agitation, in the discussion of the question. To toss an argument is a common phrase.

II.iv.106 (57,4) [a brother dy'd at once] Perhaps we should read,

Better it were, a brother died for once, Than that a sister, by redeeming him. Should die for ever.

II.iv.123 (58,6) [Owe, and succeed by weakness] To owe is, in this place, to own, to hold, to have possession.

II.iv.125 (59,7) [the glasses where they view themselves; Which are as easily broke, as they make forms] Would it not be better to read, ——take forms.

II.iv.128 (59,8) [In profiting by them] In imitating them, in taking them for examples.

II.iv.139 (59,1)

[I have no tongue but one. Gentle my lord, Let me intreat you, speak the former language]

Isabella answers to his circumlocutory courtship, that she has but one tongue, she does not understand this new phrase, and desires him to talk his former language, that is, to talk as he talked before.

II.iv.150 (60,3) [Seeming, seeming!] Hypocrisy, hypocrisy; counterfeit virtue.

II.iv.156 (60,4) [My Touch against you] [The calling his denial of her charge his vouch, has something fine. Vouch is the testimony one man bears for another. So that, by this, he insinuates his authority was so great, that his denial would have the same credit that a vouch or testimony has in ordinary cases. Warburton.] I believe this beauty is merely imaginary, and that vouch against means no more than denial.

II.iv.165 (60,5) [die the death] This seems to be a solemn phrase for death inflicted by law. So in Midsummer Night's Dream.

Prepare to die the death.

II.iv.178 (61,6) [prompture] Suggestion, temptation, instigation.

III.i.5 (62,8) [Be absolute for death] Be determined to die, without any hope of life. Horace,—

—The hour, which exceeds expectation will be welcome.

III.i.7 (62,9) [I do lose a thing, That none but fools would keep] [W: would reck] The meaning seems plainly this, that none but fools would wish to keep life; or, none but fools would keep it, if choice were allowed. A sense, which whether true or not, is certainly innocent.

III.i.14 (63,3) [For all the accommodations, that thou bear'st Are nurs'd by baseness] Dr. Warburton is undoubtedly mistaken in supposing that by baseness is meant self-love here assigned as the motive of all human actions. Shakespeare only meant to observe, that a minute analysis of life at once destroys that splendour which dazzles the imagination. Whatever grandeur can display, or luxury enjoy, is procured by baseness, by offices of which the mind shrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the shambles and the dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornaments dug from among the damps and darkness of the mine.

III.i.16 (64,4) [the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm] Worm is put for any creeping thing or serpent. Shakespeare supposes falsely, but according to the vulgar notion, that a serpent wounds with his tongue, and that his tongue is forked. He confounds reality and fiction, a serpent's tongue is soft but not forked nor hurtful. If it could hurt, it could not be soft. In Midsummer Night's Dream he has the same notion.

—With doubler tongue Than thine, O serpent, never adder stung.

III.i.17 (64,5)

[Thy best of rest is sleep, And that thou oft provok'st; yet grosly fear'st Thy death which is no more]

Here Dr. Warburton might have found a sentiment worthy of his

animadversion. I cannot without indignation find Shakespeare saying, that death is only sleep, lengthening out his exhortation by a sentence which in the friar is impious, in the reasoner is foolish, and in the poet trite and vulgar.

III.i.19 (64,6)

[Thou art not thyself, For thou exist'st on many thousand grains, That issue out of dust]

Thou art perpetually repaired and renovated by external assistance, thou subsistest upon foreign matter, and hast no power of producing or continuing thy own being.

III.i.24 (64,7) [strange effects] For effects read affects; that is, affections, passions of mind, or disorders of body variously affected. So in Othello, The young affects.

III.i.32 (65,9)

[Thou hast nor youth, nor age; But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, Dreaming on both]

This is exquisitely imagined. When we are young, we busy ourselves in forming schemes for succeeding time, and miss the gratifications that are before us; when we are old, we amuse the languor of age with the recollection of youthful pleasures or performances; so that our life, of which no part is filled with the business of the present time, resembles our dreams after dinner, when the events of the morning are mingled with the designs of the evening.

III.i.34 (65,1)

[for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied eld]

[W: for pall'd, thy blazed youth Becomes assuaged] Here again I think Dr. Warburton totally mistaken. Shakespeare declares that man has neither youth nor age; for in youth, which is the happiest time, or which might be the happiest, he commonly wants means to obtain what he could enjoy; he is dependent on palsied eld; must beg alms from the coffers of hoary avarice: and being very niggardly supplied, becomes as aged, looks, like an old man, on happiness which is beyond his reach. And when he is old and rich, when he has wealth enough for the purchase of all that formerly excited his desires, he has no longer the powers of enjoyment,

—has neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, To make his riches pleasant.—

I have explained this passage according to the present reading, which may stand without much inconvenience; yet I am willing to persuade my reader, because I have almost persuaded myself, that our authour wrote,

—for all thy blasted youth Becomes as aged—

III.i.37 (66,2) [Thou has neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty To make thy riches pleasant] [W: nor bounty] I am inclined to believe, that neither man nor woman will have much difficulty to tell how beauty makes riches pleasant. Surely this emendation, though it it elegant and ingenious, is not such as that an opportunity of inserting it should be purchased by declaring ignorance of what every one knows, by confessing insensibility to what every one feels.

III.i.40 (66,3) [more thousand deaths] For this sir T. Hammer reads, —— a thousand deaths:—— The meaning is not only a thousand deaths, but a thousand deaths besides what have been mentioned.

III.i.55 (67,5) [Why, as all comforts are; most good in Deed] If this reading be right, Isabella must mean that she brings something better than words of comfort, she brings an assurance of deeds. This is harsh and constrained, but I know not what better to offer. Sir Thomas Hammer reads,—in speed.

III.i.59 (68,6) [an everlasting leiger. Therefore your best appointment] Leiger is the same with resident. Appointment; preparation; act of fitting, or state of being fitted for any thing. So in old books, we have a knight well appointed; that is, well armed and mounted or fitted at all points.

III.i.68 (68,8)

[Tho' all the world's vastidity you had, To a determin'd scope]

A confinement of your mind to one painful idea; to ignominy, of which the remembrance can neither be suppressed nor escaped.

III.i.79 (69,9)

[And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great, As when a giant dies]

The reasoning is, _that death is no more than every being must suffer, though the dread of it is peculiar to man_; or perhaps, that_ we are inconsistent with ourselves, when we so much dread that which we carelessly inflict on other creatures, that feel the pain as acutely as we.

III.i.91 (69,1) [follies doth emmew] Forces follies to lie in cover without daring to show themselves.

III.1.93 (69,3) [His filth within being cast] To cast a pond is to empty it of mud.

Mr. Upton reads, His pond within being cast, he would appear A filth as deep as hell.

III.1.94 (70,4) [Claud. The princely Angelo? Isab. Oh, 'tis the cunning livery of hell, The damned'st body to invest and cover In princely guards!]

[W: priestly guards] The first folio has, in both places, prenzie,

from which the other folios made princely, and every editor may make what he can.

III.i.113 (71,7)

[If it were damnable, he being so wise, Why would he for the momentary trick Be perdurably fin'd?]

Shakespeare shows his knowledge of human nature in the conduct of Claudio. When Isabella first tells him of Angelo's proposal, he answers, with honest indignation, agreeably to his settled principles,

Thou shalt not do't.

But the love of life being permitted to operate, soon furnishes him with sophistical arguments, he believes it cannot be very dangerous to the soul, since Angelo, who is so wise, will venture it.

III.i.121 (71,8) [delighted spirit] This reading may perhaps stand, but many attempts have been made to correct it. The most plausible is that which substitutes,

—the benighted spirit,

alluding to the darkness always supposed in the place of future punishment.

Perhaps we may read,

—the delinquent spirit,

a word easily changed to delighted by a bad copier, or unskilful reader. Delinquent is proposed by Thirlby in his manuscript.(1773)

III.i.127 (72,9) [lawless and incertain thoughts] Conjecture sent out to wander without any certain direction, and ranging through all possibilities of pain.

III.i.139 (73,2) [Is't not a kind of incest, to take life From thine own sister's shame?] In Isabella's declamation there is something harsh, and something forced and far-fetched. But her indignation cannot be thought violent, when we consider her not only as a virgin, but as a nun.

III.i.149 (74,4) [but a trade] A custom; a practice, an established habit. So we say of a man much addicted to any thing, he makes a trade of it.

III.i.176 (75,6) [Hold you there] Continue in that resolution.

III.i.255 (77,l) [only refer yourself to this advantage] This is scarcely to be reconciled to any established mode of speech. We may read, only reserve yourself to, or only reserve to yourself this advantage.

III.i.266 (77,2) [the corrupt deputy scaled] To scale the deputy may be, to reach him, notwithstanding the elevation of his place; or it may be, to strip him and discover his nakedness, though armed and concealed by the investments of authority.

III.ii.6 (78,4) [since, of two usuries] Sir Thomas Hammer corrected this with less pomp [than Warburton], then since of two usurers the merriest was put down, and the worser allowed, by order of law, a furr'd gown, &c. His punctuation is right, but the alteration, small as it is, appears more than was wanted. Usury may be need by an easy licence for the professors of usury.

III.ii.14 (79,5) [father] This word should be expunged.

III.ii.40 (80,7) [That we were all, as some would seem to be, Free from all faults, as faults from seeming free!]

Sir T. Hammer reads,

Free from all faults, as from faults seeming free.

In the interpretation of Dr. Warburton, the sense is trifling, and the expression harsh. To wish that men were as free from faults, as faults are free from comeliness [instead of void of comeliness] is a very poor conceit. I once thought it should be read,

O that all were, as all would seem to be. Free from all faults, or from false seeming free.

So in this play,

O place, 0 power—how dost thou Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls To thy false seeming.

But now I believe that a less alteration will serve the turn.

_Free from all faults_, or _faults from seeming free;

that men were really good, or that their faults were known_, that men were free from faults, _or_ faults from _hypocrisy_. So Isabella calls Angelo's hypocrisy, _seeming, seeming_.

III.ii.42 (81,8) [His neck will come to your waist] That is, his neck will be tied, like your waist, with a rope. The friars of the Franciscan order, perhaps of all others, wear a hempen cord for a girdle. Thus Buchanan,

Fac gemant suis, Variata terga funibus.

III.ii.51 (81,1) [what say'st thou to this tune, matter and method? Is't not drown'd i' the last rain?] [W: It's not down i' the last reign] Dr. Warburton's emendation is ingenious, but I know not whether the sense may not be restored with less change. Let us consider it. Lucio, a prating fop, meets his old friend going to prison, and pours out upon him his impertinent interrogatories, to which, when the poor fellow makes no answer, he adds, What reply? ha? what say'st thou to this? tune, matter, and method,—is't not? drown'd i' th' last rain? ha? what say'st thou, trot? &c. It is a common phrase used in low raillery of a man crest-fallen and dejected, that he looks like a drown'd puppy, Lucio, therefore, asks him, whether he was drowned in the last rain, and therefore cannot speak.

III.ii.52 (82,2) [what say'st thou, trot?] Trot, or as it is now often pronounced, honest trout, is a familiar address to a man among the provincial vulgar. (1773)

III.ii.54 (82,3) [Which is the way?] What is the mode now?

III.ii.59 (82,4) [in the tub] The method of cure for veneral complaints is grosly celled the powdering tub.

III.ii.89 (83,6) [Go—to kennel, Pompey—go] It should be remembered, that Pompey is the common name of a dog, to which allusion is made in the mention of a kennel. (1773)

III.ii.135 (85,9) [clack-dish] The beggars, two or three centuries ago, used to proclaim their wont by a wooden dish with a moveable cover, which they clacked to shew that their vessel was empty. This appears in a passage quoted on another occasion by Dr. Gray, (see 1765, I,331,9 and the note in the 1765 Appendix)

III.ii.144 (86,1) [The greater file of the subject] The larger list, the greater number.

III.ii.193 (87,5) [He's now past it] Sir Thomas Hammer, He is not past it yet. This emendation was received in the former edition, but seems not necessary. It were to be wished, that we all explained more, and amended less. (see 1765, I,333,5)

III.ii.277 (90,9)

[Pattern in himself to know, Grace to stand, and virtue go]

These lines I cannot understand, but believe that they should be read thus:

Patterning himself to know, In grace to stand, in virtue go;

To pattern is to work after a pattern, and, perhaps, in Shakespeare's licentious diction, simply to work. The sense is, he that bears the sword of heaven should be holy as well as severe; one that after good examples labours to know himself, to live with innocence, and to act with virtue.

III.ii.294 (91,5)

[So disguise shall, by the disguis'd Pay with falshood false exacting]

So disguise shall by means of a person disguised, return an injurious demand with a counterfeit person.

IY.i.13 (93,4) [My mirth it much displeas'd, but pleas'd my woe] Though the musick soothed my sorrows, it had no tendency to produce light merriment.

IV.i.21 (93,5) [constantly] Certainly; without fluctuation of mind.

IV.i.28 (93,6) [circummur'd with brick] Circummured, walled round. He caused the doors to be mured and cased up.

Painter's Palace of Pleasure.

IV.i.40 (94,7) [In action all of precept] I rather think we should read,

In precept all of action,—

that is, in direction given not by words, but by mute signs.

IV.i.44 (94,8) [I have possess'd him] I have made him clearly and strongly comprehend.

IV.i.60 (95,9) [O place and greatness] [It plainly appears, that this fine speech belongs to that which concludes the preceding scene, between the Duke and Lucio.... But that some time might be given to the two women to confer together, the players, I suppose, took part of the speech, beginning at No might nor greatness, &c. and put it here, without troubling themselves about its pertinency. Warburton.] I cannot agree that these lines are placed here by the players. The sentiments are common, and such as a prince, given to reflection, must have often present. There was a necessity to fill up the time in which the ladies converse apart, and they must have quick tongues and ready apprehensions, if they understood each other while this speech was uttered.

IV.i.60 (95,1) [false eyes] That is, Eyes insidious and traiterous.

IV.i.62 (95,2) [contrarious quests] Different reports, running counter to each other.

IV.i.76 (96,4) [for yet our tithe's to sow] [W: tilth] The reader is here attacked with a pretty sophism. We should read tilth, i.e. our tillage is to make. But in the text it is to sow; and who has ever said that his tillage was to sow? I believe tythe is right, and that the expression is proverbial, in which tithe is taken, by an easy metonymy, for harvest.

IV.ii.69 (100,7) [ As fast lock'd up in sleep, as guiltless labour When it lies starkly in the traveller's bones ] Stiffly. These two lines afford a very pleasing image.

IV.ii.83 (101,1) [Even with the stroke] Stroke is here put for the stroke of a pen or a line.

IV.ii.86 (101,2) [To qualify] To temper, to moderate, as we say wine is qualified with water.

IV.ii.86 (101,3) [Were he meal'd] Were he sprinkled; were he defiled, A figure of the same kind our authour uses in Macbeth, The blood-bolter'd Banquo.

IV.ii.91 (101,4) [that spirit's possess'd with haste, That wounds the unresisting postern with these strokes] The line is irregular, and the unresisting postern so strange an expression, that want of measure, and want of sense, might justly raise suspicion of an errour, yet none of the later editors seem to have supposed the place faulty, except sir Tho. Hammer, who reads,

the unresting postern.

The three folio's have it,

unsisting postern,

out of which Mr. Rowe made unresisting, and the rest followed him. Sir Thomas Hammer seems to have supposed unresisting the word in the copies, from which he plausibly enough extracted unresting, but be grounded his emendation on the very syllable that wants authority. What can be made of unsisting I know not; the best that occurs to me is unfeeling.

IV.ii.103 (103,6) [Duke. This is his lordship's man. Prov. And here comes Claudio's pardon]

[Tyrwhitt suggested that the names of the speakers were misplaced] When, immediately after the Duke had hinted his expectation of a pardon, the Provost sees the Messenger, he supposes the Duke to to have known something, and changes his mind. Either reading may serve equally well. (1773)

IV.ii.153 (104,7) [desperately mortal] This expression is obscure. Sir Thomas Hammer reads, mortally desperate. Mortally is in low conversation used in this sense, but I know not whether it was ever written. I am inclined to believe, that desperately mortal means desperately mischievous. Or desperately mortal may mean a man likely to die in a desperate state, without reflection or repentance. (see 1765, I,348,7)

IV.ii.187 (106,8) [and tie the beard] A beard tied would give a very new air to that face, which had never been seen but with the beard loose, long, and squalid. (1773)

IV.iii.4 (107,2) [First, here's young master Rash] This enumeration of the inhabitants of the prison affords a very striking view of the practices predominant in Shakespeare's age. Besides those whose follies are common to all times, we have four fighting men and a traveller. It is not unlikely that the originals of the pictures were then known.

IV.iii.17 (108,4) [master Forthlight] Should not Forthlight be Forthright, alluding to the line in which the thrust is made? (1773)

IV.iii.21 (108,6) [in for the Lord's sake] [i.e. to beg for the rest of their lives. Warburton.] I rather think this expression intended to ridicule the puritans, whose turbulence and indecency often brought them to prison, and who considered themselves as suffering for religion.

It is not unlikely that men imprisoned for other crimes, might represent themselves to casual enquirers, as suffering for puritanism, and that this might be the common cant of the prisons. In Donne's time, every prisoner was brought to jail by suretiship.

IV.iii.68 (110,7) [After him, fellows] Here was a line given to the Duke, which belongs to the Provost. The Provost, while the Duke is lamenting the obduracy of the prisoner, cries out,

After him, fellows, &c.

and, when they are gone out, turns again to the Duke.

IV.iii.72 (110,8) [to transport him] To remove him from one world to another. The French trepas affords a kindred sense.

IV.iii.115 (112,1) [I will keep her ignorant of her good, To make her heavenly comforts of despair, When least it is expected.]

A better reason might have been given. It was necessary to keep Isabella in ignorance, that she might with more keenness accuse the deputy.

IV.iii.139 (113,2) [your bosom] Your wish; your heart's desire.

IV.iii.149 (113,3) [I am combined by a sacred vow] I once thought this should be confined, but Shakespeare uses combine for to bind by a pact or agreement, so he calls Angelo the combinate husband of Mariana.

IV.iii.163 (113,4) [if the old fantastical duke] Sir Thomas Hammer reads, the odd fantastical duke, but old is a common word of aggravation in ludicrous language, as, there was old revelling.

IV.iii.170 (114,5) [woodman] That is, huntsman, here taken for a hunter of girls.

IV.iv.19 (115,6) [sort and suit] Figure and rank.

IV.iv.27 (115,7) [Yet reason dares her No] Mr. Theobald reads,

—Yet reason dares her note.

Sir Thomas Hammer,

—Yet reason dares her: No.

Mr. Upton,

—Yet reason dares her—No,

which he explains thus: Yet, says Angelo, reason will give her courage—No, that is, it will not. I am afraid dare has no such signification. I have nothing to offer worth insertion.

IV.iv.28 (116,8)

[For my authority bears a credent bulk; That no particular scandal once can touch]

Credent is creditable, inforcing credit, not questionable. The old English writers often confound the active and passive adjectives. So Shakespeare, and Milton after him, use inexpressive from inexpressible.

Particular is private, a French sense. No scandal from any private mouth can reach a man in my authority.

IV.iv.36 (116,9) [Nothing goes right; we would, and we would not] Here undoubtedly the act should end, and was ended by the poet; for here is properly a cessation of action, and a night intervenes, and the place is changed, between the passages of this scene, and those of the next. The next act beginning with the following scene, proceeds without any interruption of time or change of place.

IV.v.1 (117,1) [Duke. These letters at fit time deliver me] Peter never delivers the letters, but tells his story without any credentials. The poet forgot the plot which he had formed.

IV.vi.4 (118,2) [He says, to vail full purpose] [T: t'availful] [Warburton had explained "full" as "beneficial."] To vail full purpose, may, with very little force on the words, mean, to hide the whole extent of our design, and therefore the reading may stand; yet I cannot but think Mr. Theobald's alteration either lucky or ingenious. To interpret words with such laxity, as to make full the sane with beneficial, is to put an end, at once, to all necessity of emendation, for any word may then stand in the place of another.

IV.vi.9 (118,3) [Enter Peter] This play has two Friars, either of whom might singly have served. I should therefore imagine, that Friar Thomas, in the first act, might be changed, without any harm, to Friar Peter; for why should the Duke unnecessarily trust two in an affair which required only one. The none of Friar Thomas is never mentioned in the dialogue, and therefore seems arbitrarily placed at the head of the scene.

IV.vi.14 (119,4) [Have bent the gates] Have taken possession of the gates, (rev. 1778, II,134,4)

V.i.20 (120,5) [vail your regard] That is, withdraw your thoughts from higher things, let your notice descend upon a wronged woman. To vail, is to lower.

V.i.45 (121,6) [truth is truth To the end of reckoning] That is, truth has no gradations; nothing which admits of encrease can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange, but if a proposition be true, there can be none more true.

V.i.54 (121,7) [as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute] As shy; as reserved, as abstracted: as just; as nice, as exact: as absolute; as complete in all the round of duty.

V.i.56 (121,8) [In all his dressings] In all his semblance of virtue, in all his habiliments of office.

V.i.64 (122,1) [do not banish reason For inequality] Let not the high quality of my adversary prejudice you against me.

V.i.104 (124,4) [Oh, that it were as like, as it is true!] [Warburton had explained "like" as "seemly."] Like I have never found for seemly.

V.i.107 (124,8) [In hateful practice] Practice was used by the old writers for any unlawful or insidious stratagem. So again,

This must needs be practice:

and again,

Let me have way to find this practice out.

V.i.145 (125,6) [nor a temporary medler] It is hard to know what is meant by a _temporary_ medler. In its usual sense, as opposed to _perpetual_, it cannot be used here. It may stand for _temporal_: the sense will then be, _I know him for a holy man, one that meddles not with_ secular _affairs_. It may mean _temporising_: I know him to be a holy man, one who would not_ temporise, _or take the opportunity of your absence to defame you_. Or we may read,

Not scurvy, nor a tamperer and medler:

not one who would bare tampered with this woman to make her a false evidence against your deputy.

V.i.160 (126,8) [So vulgarly and personally accus'd] Meaning either so grosly, with such indecency of invective, or by so mean and inadequate witnesses.

V.i.205 (128,2) [This is a strange abuse] Abuse stands in this place for deception, or puzzle. So in Macbeth,

This strange and self abuse,

means, this strange deception of himself.

V.i.219 (129,3) [her promised proportions Came short of composition] Her fortune, which was promised proportionate to mine, fell short of the composition, that is, contract or bargain.

V.i.236 (129,4) [These poor informal women] I once believed informal had no other or deeper signification than informing, accusing. The scope of justice, is the full extent; but think, upon farther enquiry, that informal signifies incompetent, not qualified to give testimony. Of this use there are precedents to be found, though I cannot now recover them.

V.i.245 (130,5) [That's seal'd in approbation?] Then any thing subject to counterfeits is tried by the proper officers and approved, a stamp or seal is put upon it, as among us on plate, weights, and measures. So the Duke says, that Angela's faith has been tried, approved, and seal'd in testimony of that approbation, and, like other things so sealed, is no more to be called in question.

V.i.255 (131,6) [to hear this matter forth] To hear it to the end; to search it to the bottom.

V.i.303 (132,4) [to retort your manifest appeal] To refer back to Angelo and the cause in which you appealed from Angelo to the Duke.

V.i.317 (133,5) [his subject I am not, Nor here provincial] Nor here accountable. The meaning seems to be, I am not one of his natural subjects, nor of any dependent province.

V.i.323 (133,6) [the forfeits in a barber's shop] [Warburton had explained that a list of forfeitures were posted in barber shops to warn patrons to keep their hands off the barber's surgical instruments.] This explanation may serve till a better is discovered. But whoever has seen the instruments of a chirurgeon, knows that they may be very easily kept out of improper hands in a very small box, or in his pocket.

V.i.336 (134,7) [And was the duke a fleshmonger, a fool, and a coward, as you then reported him to be?] So again afterwards,

You, sirrah, that know me for a fool, a coward, One of all luxury—

But Lucio had not, in the former conversation, mentioned cowardice among the faults of the duke.—Such failures of memory are incident to writers more diligent than this poet.

V.i.359 (135,8) [show your sheep-biting face, and be hang'd an hour' Will't not off?] This is intended to be the common language of vulgar indignation. Our phrase on such occasions is simply; show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged. The words an hour have no particular use here, nor are authorised by custom. I suppose it was written thus, show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged—an' how? wilt not off? In the midland counties, upon any unexpected obstruction or resistance, it is common to exclaim an' how?

V.i.388 (136,9) [Advertising, and holy] Attentive and faithful.

V.i.393 (136,l) [be you as free to us] Be as generous to us, pardon us as we have pardoned you.

V.i.401 (136,2) [That brain'd my purpose] We now use in conversation a like phrase. This it was that knocked my design on the head. Dr. Warburton reads,

—baned my purpose.

V.i.413 (137,3) [even from his proper tongue] Even from Angelo's own tongue. So above.

In the witness of his proper ear To call him villain.

V.i.438 (138,5) [Against all sense you do importune her] The meaning required is, against all reason and natural affection; Shakespeare, therefore, judiciously uses a single word that implies both; sense signifying both reason and affection.

V.i.452 (139,6) ['Till he did look on me] The duke has justly observed that Isabel is importuned against all sense to solicit for Angelo, yet here against all sense she solicits for him. Her argument is extraordinary.

A due sincerity govern'd his deeds, 'Till he did look on me; since it is so. Let him not die.

That Angelo had committed all the crimes charged against him, as far as he could commit them, is evident. The only intent which his act did not overtake, was the defilement of Isabel. Of this Angelo was only intentionally guilty.

Angela's crimes were such, as must sufficiently justify punishment, whether its end be to secure the innocent from wrong, or to deter guilt by example; and I believe every reader feels some indignation when he finds him spared. From what extenuation of his crime, can Isabel, who yet supposes her brother dead, form any plea in his favour. Since he was good 'till he looked on me, let him not die. I am afraid our varlet poet intended to inculcate, that women think ill of nothing that raises the credit of their beauty, and are ready, however virtuous, to pardon any act which they think incited by their own charms.

V.i.488 (140,7) [But, for those earthly faults, I quit them all] Thy faults, so far as they are punishable on earth, so far as they are cognisable by temporal power, I forgive.

V.i.499 (141,8) [By this, lord Angelo perceives he's safe] It is somewhat strange, that Isabel is not made to express either gratitude, wonder or joy at the sight of her brother.

V.i.501 (141,9) [your evil quits you well] Quits you, recompenses, requites you.

V.i.502 (141,1) [Look, that you love your wife; her worth, worth yours] Sir T. Hammer reads,

Her worth works yours.

This reading is adopted by Dr. Warburton, but for what reason? How does her worth work Angelo's worth? it has only contributed to work his pardon. The words are, as they are too frequently, an affected gingle, but the sense is plain. Her worth, worth yours; that is, her value is equal to your value, the match is not unworthy of you.

V.i.504 (141,2) [And yet here's one in place I cannot pardon] After the pardon of two murderers, Lucio might be treated by the good duke with less harshness; but perhaps the poet intended to show, what is too often seen, that men easily forgive wrongs which are not committed against themselves.

V.i.509 (142,3) [according to the trick] To my custom, my habitual practice.

V.i.526 (142,4) [thy other forfeits] Thy other punishments.

V.i.534 (142,5) [Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness] I have always thought that there is great confusion in this concluding speech. If my criticism would not be censured as too licentious, I should regulate it thus,

_Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness. Thanks. Provost, for thy care and secrecy; We shall employ thee in a worthier place. Forgive him, Angelo, that brought you home The head of Ragozine for Claudio's. _Ang_. _Th' offence pardons itself_. _Duke_, _There's more behind That is more gratulate. Dear Isabel, I have a motion_,&c,

V.i.545 (143,6) General Observation The novel of Cynthio Giraldi, from which Shakespeare is supposed to have borrowed this fable, may be read in Shakespeare illustrated, elegantly translated, with remarks which will assist the enquirer to discover how much absurdity Shakespeare has admitted or avoided. I cannot but suspect that some other had new-modelled the novel of Cynthio, or written a story which in some particulars resembled it, and that Cynthio was not the authour whom Shakespeare immediately followed. The emperour in Cynthio is named Maximine; the duke, in Shakespeare's enumeration of the persons of the drama, is called Vincentio. This appears a very slight remark; but since the duke has no name in the play, nor is ever mentioned but by his title, why should he be called Vincentio among the persons, but because the name was copied from the story, and placed superfluously at the head of the list by the mere habit of transcription? It is therefore likely that there was then a story of Vincentio duke of Vienna, different from that of Maximine emperour of the Romans.

Of this play the light or comick part is very natural and pleasing, but the grave scenes, if a few passages be excepted, have more labour than elegance. The plot is rather intricate than artful. The time of the action is indefinite; some time, we know not how much, must have elapsed between the recess of the duke and the imprisonment of Claudio; for he must have learned the story of Mariana in his disguise, or he delegated his power to a man already known to be corrupted. The unities of action and place are sufficiently preserved.



THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

I.ii.96 (155,3) [o'er-raught] That is, over-reached.

I.ii.98 (156,5)

[As, nimble jugglers, that deceive the eye, Dark-working sorcerers, that change the mind, Soul-killing witches, that deform the body]

[W: Drug-working] The learned commentator has endeavoured with much earnestness to recommend his alteration; but, if I may judge of other apprehensions by my own, without great success. This interpretation of soul-killing is forced and harsh. Sir T. Hammer reads soul-selling, agreeable enough to the common opinion, but without such improvement as may justify the change. Perhaps the epithets have only been misplaced, and the lines should be read thus,

Soul-killing sorcerers, that change the mind; Dark-working witches that deform the body.

This change seems to remove all difficulties.

By soul-killing I understand destroying the rational faculties by such means as make men fancy themselves beasts.

I.ii.102 (157,6) [liberties of sin] Sir T. Hammer reads, libertines, which, as the author has been enumerating not acts but persons, seems right.

II.i.30 (158,8) [How if your husband start some other where?] I cannot but think, that our authour wrote,

—start some other hare?

So in Much ado about Nothing, Cupid is said to be a good hare-finder. II.i.32 (159,9) [tho' she pause] To pause is to rest, to be in quiet.

II.i.41 (159,1) [fool-begg'd] She seems to mean, by fool-begg'd patience, that patience which is so near to idiotical simplicity, that your next relation would take advantage from it to represent you as a fool, and beg the guardianship of your fortune.

II.i.82 (161,3) [Am I so round with you, as you with me] He plays upon the word round, which signified spherical applied to himself, and unrestrained, or free in speech or action, spoken of his mistress. So the king, in Hamlet, bids the queen be round with her son.

II.i.100 (161,5) [too unruly deer] The ambiguity of deer and dear is borrowed, poor as it is, by Waller, in his poem on the Ladies Girdle.

"This was my heav'n's extremest sphere, "This pale that held my lovely deer."

II.i.101 (161,6) [poor I am but his stale] The word stale, in our authour, used as a substantive, means, not something offered to allure or attract, but something vitiated with use, something of which the best part has been enjoyed and consumed.

II.ii.86 (166,4) [Not a man of those, but he hath the wit to lose his hair] That is, Those who have more hair than wit, are easily entrapped by loose women, and suffer the consequences of lewdness, one of which, in the first appearance of the disease in Europe, was the loss of hair.

II.ii.173 (169,6) [Be it my wrong, you are from me exempt] Exempt, separated, parted. The sense is, If I am doomed to suffer the wrong of separation, yet injure not with contempt me who am already injured.

II.ii.210 (171,1) [And shrive you] That is, I will call you to confession, and make you tell your tricks.

III.i.4 (172,2) [carkanet] seems to have been a necklace or rather chain, perhaps hanging down double from the neck. So Lovelace in his poem,

The empress spreads her carcanets.

III.i.15 (173,3) [Marry, so it doth appear By the wrongs I suffer, and the blows I bear] [T: don't appear] I do not think this emendation necessary. He first says, that his wrongs and blows prove him an ass; but immediately, with a correction of his former sentiment, such as may be hourly observed in conversation, he observes that, if he had been an ass, he should, when he was kicked, have kicked again.

III.i.101 (177,7) [supposed by the common rout] For suppose I once thought it might be more commodious to substitute supported; but there is no need of change: supposed is founded on supposition, made by conjecture.

III.i.105 (178,8) [For slander lives upon succession] The line apparently wants two syllables: what they were, cannot now be known. The line may be filled up according to the reader's fancy, as thus:

For lasting slander lives upon succession.

III.ii.27 (180,3) ['Tis holy sport to be a little vain] is light of tongue, not veracious.

III.ii.64 (181,2) [My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim] When be calls the girl 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.

III.ii.125 (184,5)

[S. Ant. Where France? S. Dro. In her forehead; arm'd and reverted, making war against her hair]

[T, from the first Folio: heir] With this correction and explication Dr. Warburton concurs, and sir T. Hammer thinks an equivocation intended, though he retains hair in the text. Yet surely they have all lost the sense by looking beyond it. Our authour, in my opinion, only 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 offensive to be dilated. By a forehead armed, he means covered with incrusted eruptions: by reverted, he means having the hair turning backwards. An equivocal word must have senses applicable to both the subjects to which it is applied. Both forehead and France might in some sort make war against their hair, but how did the forehead make war against its heir? The sense which I have given immediately occurred to me, and will, I believe, arise to every reader who is contented with the meaning that lies before him, without sending out conjecture in search of refinements.

IV.ii.19 (192,9) [sere] that is, dry, withered.

IV.ii.22 (192,1) [Stigmatical in making] This is, marked or stigmatized by nature with deformity, as a token of his vicious disposition.

IV.ii.35 (193,3) [A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough] [T: A fiend, a fury] There were fairies like hobgoblins, pitiless and rough, and described as malevolent and mischievous, (see 1765, III,143,3)

IV.ii.39 (193,5) [A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry-foot well] To run counter is to run backward, by mistaking the course of the animal pursued; to draw dry-foot is, I believe, to pursue by the track or prick of the foot; to run counter and draw dry-foot well are, therefore, inconsistent. The jest consists in the ambiguity of the word counter, which means the wrong way in* the chase. and a prison in London. The officer that arrested him was a serjeant of the counter. For the congruity of this jest with the scene of action, let our authour answer.

IV.iii.13 (196,9) [what, have you got the picture of old Adam new apparel'd] [T: got rid of the picture] The explanation is very good, but the text does not require to be amended.

IV.iii.27 ('is rest to do more exploits with his mace than a morris pike] [W: a Maurice-pike] This conjecture is very ingenious, yet the commentator talks unnecessarily of the rest of a musket. by which he makes the hero of the speech set up the rest of a musket, to do exploits with a pike. The rest of a pike was a common term, and signified, I believe, the manner in which it was fixed to receive the rush of the enemy. A morris-pike was a pike used in a morris or a military dance, and with which great exploits were done, that is, great feats of dexterity were shewn. There is no need of change.

IV.iv.78 (202,3) [kitchen-vestal] Her charge being like that of the vestal virgins, to keep the fire burning.

V.1.137 (210,6) [important letters]Important seems to be for importunate. (1773)

V.i.298 (216,2) [time's deformed hand Have written strange defeatures in my face] Defeature is the privative of feature. The meaning is, time hath cancelled my features.

V.i.406 (220,7) [After so long grief such nativity!] We should surely read. After so long grief, such festivity.

Nativity lying so near, and the termination being the same of both words, the mistake was easy.



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

I.i.27 (226,3) [no faces truer] That is, none honester, none more sincere.

I.i.40 (227,7) [challenged Cupid at the flight] The disuse of the bow makes this passage obscure. Benedick is represented as challenging Cupid at archery. To challenge at the flight is, I believe, to wager who shall shoot the arrow furthest without any particular mark. To challenge at the bird-bolt, seems to mean the same as to challenge at children's archery, with snail arrows such as are discharged at birds. In Twelfth Night Lady Olivia opposes a bird-bolt to a cannon-bullet, the lightest to the heaviest of missive weapons.

I.i.66 (228,9) [four of his five wits] In our author's time wit was the general term for intellectual powers. So Davies on the Soul.

Wit, seeking truth from cause to cause ascends. And never rests till it the first attain; Will, seeking good, finds many middle ends, But never stays till it the last do gain.

And in another part,

But if a phrenzy do possess the brain, It so disturbs and blots the form of things, As fantasy proves altogether vain, And to the wit, no true relation brings. Then doth the wit, admitting all for true, Build fond conclusions on those idle grounds;—

The wits seem to have reckoned five, by analogy to the five senses, or the five inlets of ideas.

I.i.79 (229,4) [the gentleman is not in your books] This is a phrase used, I believe, by more than understand it. To be in one's books is to be in one's codicils or will, to be among friends set down for legacies.

I.i.82 (230,5) [young squarer] A squarer I take to be a cholerick, quarrelsome fellow, for in this sense Shakespeare uses the word to square. So in Midsummer Night's Dream it is said of Oberon and Titalia, that they never meet but they square. So the sense may be, Is there no hot-blooded youth that will keep him company through all his mad pranks?

I.i.103 (231,6) [You embrace your charge] That is your burthen, your incumbrunce.

I.i.185 (233,7) [to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder] I know not whether I conceive the jest here intended. Claudio hints his love of Hero. Benedick asks whether he is serious, or whether he only means to jest, and tell them that Cupid is a good hare-finder, and Vulcan a rare carpenter. A man praising a pretty lady in jest, may shew the quick sight of Cupid, but what has it to do with the carpentry of Vulcan? Perhaps the thought lies no deeper than this, Do you mean to tell us as new what we all know already?

I.i.200 (234,8) [wear his cap with suspicion?] That is, subject his head to the disquiet of jealousy.

I.i.217 (235,1) [Claud. If this were so, so were it uttered] This and the three next speeches I do not well understand; there seems something omitted relating to Hero's consent, or to Claudio's marriage, else I know not what Claudio can wish not to be otherwise. The copies all read alike. Perhaps it may be better thus,

Claud. If this were so, so were it. Bene. Uttered like the old tale, &c.

Claudio gives a sullen answer, if it is so, so it is. Still there seems something omitted which Claudio and Pedro concur in wishing.

I.i.243 (236,3) [but that I will have a recheate winded in my forehead] That is, I will wear a horn on my forehead which the huntsman may blow. A recheate is the sound by which dogs are called back. Shakespeare had no mercy upon the poor cuckold, his horn is an inexhaustible subject of merriment.

1.1.258 (236,4) [notable argument] An eminent subject for satire.

1.1.259 (237,5) [Adam] Adam Bell was a companion of Robin Hood, as may be seen in Robin Hood's Garland; in which, if I do not mistake, are these lines,

For he brought Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough, And William of Cloudeslea, To shoot with this forester for forty marks, And the forester beat them all three.

(see 1765, III,182,2)

I.i.290 (238,4) [ere you flout old ends any further, examine your conscience] Before you endeavour to distinguish yourself any more by antiquated allusions, examine whether you can fairly claim them for your own. This, I think is the meaning; or it may be understood in another sense, examine, if your sarcasms do not touch yourself.

I.iii.14 (241,6) [I cannot hide what I am] This is one of our authour's natural touches. An envious and unsocial mind, too proud to give pleasure, and too sullen to receive it, always endeavours to hide its malignity from the world and from itself, under the plainness of simple honesty, or the dignity of haughty independence.

I.iii.19 (241,7) [claw no man in his humour] To claw is to flatter. So the pope's claw-backs, in bishop Jewel, are the pope's flatterers. The sense is the same in the proverb, Mulus mulum scabit.

I.iii.28 (242,8) [I had rather be a canker in a hedge, than a rose in his grace] A canker is the canker rose, dog-rose, cynosbatus, or hip. The sense is, I would rather live in obscurity the wild life of nature, than owe dignity or estimation to my brother. He still continues his wish of gloomy independence. But what is the meaning of the expression, a rose in his grace? if he was a rose of himself, his brother's grace or favour could not degrade him. I once read thus, I had rather be a canker in a hedge, than a rose in his garden; that is, I had rather be what nature makes me, however mean, than owe any exaltation or improvement to my brother's kindness or cultivation. But a less change will be sufficient: I think it should be read, I had rather be a canker in a hedge, than a rose by his grace.

II.i.3 (244,1) [I never can see him, but I am heart-burn'd an hour after] The pain commonly called the heart-burn, proceeds from an acid humour in the stomach, and is therefore properly enough imputed to tart looks.

II.i.53 (245,3) [Well then, go you into hell] Of the two next speeches Mr. Warburton says, All this impious nonsense thrown to the bottom is the players, and foisted in without rhyme or reason. He therefore puts them in the margin. They do not deserve indeed so honourable a place, yet I am afraid they are too much in the manner of our authour, who is sometimes trying to purchase merriment at too dear a rate. (see 1765, III,190,9)

II.i.73 (246,4) [if the prince be too important] Important here, and in many other places, is importunate.

II.i.99 (247,6) [My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove] [T: house is love] This amendation, thus impressed with all the power of his eloquence and reason, Theobald found in the quarto edition of 1600, which he professes to have seen; and in the first folio, the l and the I are so much alike, that the printers, perhaps, used the same type for either letter. (1773)

II.i.143 (249,2) [his gift is in devising impossible slanders] [W: impassible] Impossible slanders are, I suppose, such slanders as, from their absurdity and impossibility, bring their own confutation with them.

II.i.195 (251,4) [usurer's chain] I know not whether the chain was, in our authour's time, the common ornament of wealthy citizens, or whether he satirically uses usurer and alderman as synonymous terms.

II.i.214 (252,5) [It is the base, the bitter disposition of Beatrice, that puts the world into her person] That is, It is the disposition of Beatrice, who takes upon her to personate the world, and therefore represents the world as saying what she only says herself.

Base, tho bitter. I do not understand how base and bitter are inconsistent, or why what is bitter should not be base. I believe, we may safely read, It is the base, the bitter disposition.

II.i.253 (253,8) [such impossible conveyance] [W: impassible] I know not what to propose. Impossible seems to have no meaning here, and for impassible I have not found any authority. Spenser uses the word importable in a sense very congruous to this passage, for insupportable, or not to be sustained.

Both him charge on either side, With hideous strokes and importable power, Which forced him his ground to traverse wide.

It may be easily imagined, that the transcribers would change a word so unusual, into that word most like it, which they could readily find. It must be however confessed, that importable appears harsh to our ears, and I wish a happier critick may find a better word.

Sir Tho. Hammer reads impetuous, which will serve the purpose well enough, but is not likely to have been changed to impossible.

_Importable_ was a word not peculiar to Spenser, but used by the last translators of the Apocrypha, and therefore such a word as Shakespeare may be supposed to have written. (1773) II.i.330 (256,2) [Thus goes every one to the world but I, and I am sun-burn'd] What is it, _to go the world_? perhaps, to enter by marriage into a settled state: but why is the unmarry'd lady _sun-burnt_? I believe we should read, _Thus goes every one to the wood_ but I, and I am sun-burnt_. Thus does every one but I find a shelter, and I am left exposed to wind and _sun. The nearest way to the_ wood, is a phrase for the readiest means to any end. It is said of a woman, who accepts a worse match than those which she had refused, that she has passed through the _wood_, and at last taken a crooked stick. But conjectural criticism has always something to abate its confidence. Shakespeare, in All's well that Ends well, uses the phrase, _to go to the world_, for _marriage_. So that my emendation depends only on the opposition of _wood_ to _sun-burnt_.

II.i.380 (258,4) [to bring signior Benedick, and the lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection, the one with another] A mountain of affection with one another is a strange expression, yet I know not well how to change it. Perhaps it was originally written, to bring Benedick into a mooting of affection; to bring them not to any more mootings of contention, but to a mooting or conversation of love. This reading is confirmed by the preposition with; a mountain with each other, or affection with each other, cannot be used, but a mooting with each other is proper and regular.

II.iii.104 (265,7) [but, that she loves him, with an enraged affection, it is past the infinite of thought] [W: the definite of] Here are difficulties raised only to shew how easily they can be removed. The plain sense is, I know not what to think otherwise, but that she loves him with an enraged affection: It (this affection) [is past the infinite of thought. Here are no abrupt stops, or imperfect sentences. Infinite may well enough stand; it is used by more careful writers for indefinite; and the speaker only means, that thought, though in itself unbounded, cannot reach or estimate the degree of her passion.

II.iii.146 (267,8) [O, she tore the letter into a thousand half-pence] [i.e. into a thousand pieces of the same bigness.] This is farther explained by a passage in As you Like it.

—_There were none principal; they were all like one

another as_ half-pence _are_. [Theobald.] How the quotation explains the passage, to which it is applied, I cannot discover.

II.iii.188 (268,9) [contemptible spirit] That is, a temper inclined to scorn and contempt. It has been before remarked, that our authour uses his verbal adjectives with great licence. There is therefore no need of changing the word with sir T. Hammer to contemptuous.

III.i.52 (273,3) [Misprising] Despising, contemning.

III.i.96 (275,8) [argument] This word seems here to signify discourse, or, the powers of reasoning. III.i.104 (275,7) [She's lim'd] She is ensnared and entangled as a sparrow with birdlime.

III.i.107 (275,9) [Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand] This image is taken from falconry. She had been charged with being as wild as haggards of the rock; she therefore says, that wild as her heart is, she will tame it to the hand.

III.ii.31 (277,2) [There is no appearance of fancy in him, unless it be a fancy that he hath to strange disguises] Here is a play upon the word fancy, which Shakespeare uses for love as well as for humour, caprice, or affectation.

III.ii.71 (278,3) [She shall be buried with her face upwards] [T: heels upwards] This emendation, which appears to me very specious, is rejected by Dr. Warburton. The meaning seems to be, that she who acted upon principles contrary to others, should be buried with the same contrariety.

III.iii.43 (282,5) [only have a care that your bills be not stolen] A bill is still carried by the watchmen at Litchfield. It was the old weapon of the English infantry, which, says Temple, gave the most ghastly and deplorable wounds. It may be called securis falcata.

III.iv.44 (289,3) [Light o' love] A tune so called, which has been already mentioned by our authour.

III.iv.49 (290,4) [you'll look he shall lack no burns] A quibble between barns, repositories of corn, and bairns, the old word for children.

III.iv.56 (290,5) [For the letter that begins them all, H] This is a poor jest, somewhat obscured, and not worth the trouble of elucidation.

Margaret asks Beatrice for what she cries, hey ho; Beatrice answers, for an H, that is, for an ache or pain.

III.iv.57 (290,6) [turn'd Turk] [i.e. taken captive by love, and turned a renegade to his religion. Warburton.] This interpretation is somewhat far-fetched, yet, perhaps, it is right.

III.iv.78 (291,7) [some morel] That is, some secret meaning, like the moral of a fable.

III.iv.89 (291,8) [he eats his meat without grudging] I do not see how this is a proof of Benedick's change of mind. It would afford more proof of amourosness to say, he eats not his meat without grudging; but it is impossible to fix the meaning of proverbial expressions: perhaps, to eat meat without grudging, was the same as, to do as others do, and the meaning is, he is content to live by eating like other mortals and will be content, notwithstanding his boasts, like other mortals, to have a wife.

III.v.15 (293,9) [I am as honest as any man living, that is an old man, and no honester than I] [There is much humour, and extreme good sense under the covering of this blundering expression. It is a sly insinuation that length of years, and the being much hacknied in the ways of men, as Shakespeare expresses it, take off the gloss of virtue, and bring much defilement on the manners. Warburton.] Much of this is true, but I believe Shakespeare did not intend to bestow all this reflection on the speaker.

III.v.40 (294,1) [an two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind] This is not out of place, or without meaning. Dogberry, in his vanity of superiour parts, apologizing for his neighbour, observes, that of two men on an horse, one must ride behind. The first place of rank or understanding can belong but to one, and that happy one ought not to despise his inferiour.

IV.i.22 (296,2) [Interjections? Why, then some be of laughing] This is a quotation from the Accidence.

IV.i.42 (296,3) [luxurious bed] That is, lascivious. Luxury is the confessor's term for unlawful pleasures of the sex.

IV.i.53 (297,5) [word too large] So he uses large jests in this play, for licentious, not restrained within due bounds.

IV.i.57 (297,6) [I will write against it] [W: rate against] As to subscribe to any thing is to allow it, so to write against is to disallow or deny.

IV.i.59 (297,7) [chaste as is the bud] Before the air has tasted its sweetness.

IV.i.75 (298,8) [kindly power] That is, natural power. Kind is nature.

IV.i.93 (298,9) [liberal villain] Liberal here, as in many places of these plays, means, frank beyond honesty or decency. Free of tongue. Dr. Warburton unnecessarily reads, illiberal.

IV.i. 101 (299,1) [O Hero! What a Hero hadst thou been] I am afraid here is intended a poor conceit upon the word Hero.

IV.i.123 (300,2) [The story that is printed in her blood?] That is, the story which her blushes discover to be true.

IV.i.128 (300,3) [Griev'd I, I had but one? Chid I for that at frugal nature's frame?] [W: nature's 'fraine] Though frame be not the word which appears to a reader of the present time most proper to exhibit the poet's sentiment, yet it may as well be used to shew that he had one child, and no more, as that he had a girl, not a boy, and as it may easily signify the system of things, or universal scheme, the whole order of beings is comprehended, there arises no difficulty from it which requires to be removed by so violent an effort as the introduction of a new word offensively mutilated.

IV.i.137 (301,4) [But mine, and mine I lov'd, and mine I prais'd, And mine that I was proud on] [W: "as mine" in three places] Even of this small alteration there is no need. The speaker utters his emotion abruptly, But mine, and mine that I loved, &c. by an ellipsis frequent, perhaps too frequent, both in verse and prose.

IV.i.187 (303,6) [bent of honour] Bent is used by our authour for the utmost degree of any passion, or mental quality. In this play before Benedick says of Beatrice, her affection has its full bent. The expression is derived from archery; the bow has its bent, when it is drawn as far as it can be.

IV.i.206 (304,8) [ostentation] Show; appearance.

IV.i.251 (305,1) [The smallest twine nay lead me] This is one of our author's observations upon life. Men overpowered with distress, eagerly listen to the first offers of relief, close with every scheme, and believe every promise. He that has no longer any confidence in himself, is glad to repose his trust in any other that will undertake to guide him.

IV.ii.70 (311,6) [Sexton. Let them be in hand] There is nothing in the old quarto different in this scene from the common copies, except that the names of two actors, Kempe and Cowley, are placed at the beginning of the speeches, instead of the proper words, (see 1765, III,249,7)

V.i.15 (313,7)

[If such a one will smile and stroke his beard; And, sorrow wag! cry; hem, when he should groan]

Sir Thomas Hammer, and after him Dr. Warburton, for wag read waive, which is, I suppose, the same as, put aside or shift off. None of these conjectures satisfy me, nor perhaps any other reader. I cannot but think the true meaning nearer than it is imagined. I point thus,

If such an one will smile, and stroke his beard, And, sorrow wag! cry; hem, when he should groan;

That is, If he will smile, and cry sorrow be gone, and hem instead of groaning. The order in which and and cry are placed is harsh, and this harshness made the sense mistaken. Range the words in the common order, and my reading will be free from all difficulty.

If such an one will smile, and stroke his beard, Cry, sorrow, wag! and hem when he should groan.

V.i.32 (314,8) [My griefs cry louder than advertisement] That is, than admonition, than moral instruction.

V.i.102 (318,4) [we will not wake your patience] [W: wrack] This emendation is very specious, and perhaps is right; yet the present reading may admit a congruous meaning with less difficulty than many other of Shakespeare's expressions.

The old men have been both very angry and outrageous; the prince tells them that he and Claudio will not wake their patience; will not any longer force them to endure the presence of those whom, though they look on them as enemies, they cannot resist.

V.i.138 (319,6) [to turn his girdle] We have a proverbial speech, If he be angry, let him turn the buckle of his girdle. But I do not know its original or meaning.

V.i.166 (320,7) [a wise gentleman] This jest depending on the colloquial use of words is now obscure; perhaps we should read, a wise gentle man, or a man wise enough to be a coward. Perhaps wise gentleman was in that age used ironically, and always stood for silly fellow.

V.i.231 (322,9) [one meaning well suited] That is, one meaning is put into many different dresses; the prince having asked the same question in four modes of speech.

V.ii.9 (326,3) [To have no man come over me? why, shall I always keep below stairs?] [T: above] I suppose every reader will find the meaning of the old copies.

V.ii.l7 (327,4) [I give thee the bucklers] I suppose that to give the bucklers is, to yield, or to lay by all thoughts of defence, so clipeum abjicere. The rest deserves no comment.

V.iii.13 (330,7) [Those that slew thy virgin knight] Knight, in its original signification, means follower or pupil, and in this sense may be feminine. Helena, in All's well that Ends well, uses knight in the same signification.



LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST

I.i.31 (342,2)

[To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die; With all these, living in philosophy]

The stile of the rhyming scenes in this play is often entangled and obscure. I know not certainly to what all these is to be referred; I suppose he means, that he finds love, pomp, and wealth in philosophy.

I.i.75 (344,4) [while truth the while Doth falsly blind] Falsly is here, and in many other places, the same as dishonestly or treacherously. The whole sense of this gingling declamation is only this, that a man by too close study may read himself blind, which might have been told with less obscurity in fewer words.

I.i.82 (344,5)

[Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed, And give him light, that it was blinded by]

This is another passage unnecessarily obscure: the meaning is, that when he dazzles, that is, has his eye made weak, by fixing his eye upon a fairer eye, that fairer eye shall be his heed, his direction or lode-star,(See Midsummer-Night's Dream) [and give him light that was blinded by it.

I.i.92 (345,6)

[Too much to know, is, to know nought but fame; And every godfather can give a name]

[W: "shame" or "feign"] That there are two ways of setting a passage right gives reason to suspect that there may be a third way better than either. The first of these emendations makes a fine sense, but will not unite with the next line; the other makes a sense less fine, and yet will not rhyme to the correspondent word. I cannot see why the passage may not stand without disturbance. The consequence, says Biron, of too much knowledge, is not any real solution of doubts, but mere empty reputation. That is, too much knowledge gives only fame, a name which every godfather can give likewise. (1773)

I.i.95 (345,7) [Proceeded well to stop all good proceeding] To proceed is an academical term, meaning, to take a degree, as he proceeded bachelor in physick. The sense is, he has taken his degrees on the art of hindering the degrees of others.

I.i.153 (348,1) [Not by might master'd, but by especial grace] Biron, amidst his extravagancies, speaks with great justness against the folly of vows. They are made without sufficient regard to the variations of life, and are therefore broken by some unforeseen necessity. They proceed commonly from a presumptuous confidence, and a false estimate of human power.

I.i.159 (349,2) [Suggestions] Temptations.

I.i.162 (349,3) [quick recreation] Lively sport, spritely diversion.

I.i.169 (349,4)

[A man of complements, whom right and wrong Have chose as umpire of their mutiny]

This passage, I believe, means no more than that Don Armado was a man nicely versed in ceremonial distinctions, one who could distinguish in the most delicate questions of honour the exact boundaries of right and wrong. Compliment, in Shakespeare's time, did not signify, at least did not only signify verbal civility, or phrases of courtesy, but according to its original meaning, the trapping, or ornamental appendages of a character, in the same manner, and on the same principles of speech with accomplishment. Compliment is, as Arwado well expresses it, the varnish of a complete man.

I.i.174 (350,6) [in the world's debate] The world seems to be used in a monastick sense by the king, now devoted for a time to a monastic life. In the world, in seculo, in the bustle of human affairs, from which we are now happily sequestred, in the world, to which the votaries of solitude have no relation.

I.i.252 (353,1) [base minow of thy mirth] A minnow is a little fish which cannot be intended here. We may read, the base minion of thy mirth.

I.ii.5 (355,2) [dear imp] Imp was anciently a term of dignity. Lord Cromwell in his last letter to Henry VIII. prays for the imp his son. It is now used only in contempt or abhorrence; perhaps in our authour's time it was ambiguous, in which state it suits well with this dialogue.

I.ii.36 (356,3) [crosses love not him] By crosses he means money. So in As you like it, the Clown says to Celia, if I should bear you, I should bear no cross.

I.ii.150 (360,7) [Jaq. Fair weather after you! Dull. Come, Jaquenetta, away]

[Theobald had reassigned two speeches] Mr. Theobald has endeavoured here to dignify his own industry by a very slight performance. The folios all read as he reads, except that instead of naming the persons they give their characters, enter Clown, Constable, and Wench.

I.ii.168 (361,8) [It is not for prisoners to be silent in their words] I suppose we should read, it is not for prisoners to be silent in their wards, that is, in custody, in the holds.

I.ii.183 (361,9) [The first and second cause will not serve my turn] See the last act of As you like it, with the notes.

II.i.15 (362,1)

[Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye, Not utter'd by base sale of chapmen's tongues]

Chapman here seems to signify the seller, not, as now commonly, the buyer. Cheap or cheping was anciently the market, chapman therefore is marketman. The meaning is, that that the estimation of beauty depends not on the uttering or proclamation of the seller, but on the eye of the buyer.

II.i.45 (363,2) [Well fitted] is well qualified.

II.i.49 (363,3) [match'd with] is combined or joined with.

II.i.105 (365,4) ['Tis deadly sin to keep that oath, my lord; And sin to break it] Sir T. Hammer reads,

Not sin to break it.

I believe erroneously. The Princess shews an inconvenience very frequently attending rash oaths, which, whether kept or broken, produce guilt.

II.i.203 (369,6) [God's blessing on your beard!] That is, mayst thou have sense and seriousness more proportionate to thy beard, the length of which suits ill with such idle catches of wit.

II.i.223 (370,7) [My lips are no common, though several they be] Several, is an inclosed field of a private proprietor, so Maria says, her lips are private property. Of a lord that was newly married one observed that he grew fat; Yes, said sir Walter Raleigh, any beast will grow fat, if you take him from the common and graze him in the several.

II.i.238 (370,8) [His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see] That is, his tongue being impatiently desirous to see as well as speak.

II. i. 241 (370,9) [To feel only looking] Perhaps we may better read, To feed only by looking.

II. i. 262 (371,1) [Boyet. You are too hard for me] [Theobald did not end Act II here] Mr. Theobald has reason enough to propose this alteration, but he should not have made it in his book without better authority or more need. I have therefore preserved his observation, but continued the former division.

III.i (372,2) [Enter Armado, and Moth.] In the folios the direction is, enter Braggart and Moth, and at the beginning of every speech of Armado stands Brag, both in this and the foregoing scene between him and his boy. The other personages of this play are likewise noted by their characters as often as by their names. All this confusion has been well regulated by the later editors.

III.i.3 (372,3) [Concolinel] Here is apparently a song lost.

III. i. 22 (373,5) [These are complements] Dr. Warburton has here changed complements to 'complishments, for accomplishments, but unnecessarily.

III. i. 32 (374,8) [but a colt] Colt is a hot, mad-brained, unbroken young fellow; or sometimes an old fellow with youthful desires.

III. i. 62 (375,9) [You are too swift, Sir, to say so] How is he too swift for saying that lead is slow? I fancy we should read, as well to supply the rhyme as the sense,

You are too swift, sir, to say so, so soon Is that lead slow, sir, which is fir'd from a gun?

III. i. 68 (375,1) [By thy favour, sweet welkin] Welkin is the sky, to which Armado, with the false dignity of a Spaniard, makes an apology for sighing in its face.

III. i. 73 (376,3) [no salve in the male, Sir] The old folio reads, no salve in thee male, sir, which, in another folio, is, no salve, in the male, sir. What it can mean is not easily discovered: if mail for a packet or bag was a word then in use, no salve in the mail may mean, no salve in the mountebank's budget. Or shall we read, no enigma, no riddle, no l'envoy—in the vale, sir—O, sir. plantain. The matter is not great, but one would wish for some meaning or other.

III. i.112 (377,5) [how was there a Costard broken in a shin?] Costard is the name of a species of apple.

III. i.136 (378,7) [my in-cony Jew] [W. jewel] I know not whether it be fit, however specious, to change Jew to jewel. Jew, in our author's time, was, for whatever reason, apparently a word of endearment. So in Midsummer-Night's Dream,

Most tender Juvenile, and eke most lovely Jew. (see 1765, II,144,9)

III.i.182 (381,2) [This signior Junto's giant-dwarf. Don Cupid] Mr. Upton has made a very ingenious conjecture on this passage. He reads,