to trash" accords with the grammatical usage of Shakespeare's day.

92. O'er-prized all popular rate:-The meaning seems to be, “Which would have exceeded all popular estimate, but that it withdrew me from my public duties"; as if he were sensible of his error in getting so rapt in secret studies" as to leave the state a prey to violence and usurpation.

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97. sans bound:-Without limit. "A general combination,” says Nares, seems to have subsisted, among all our poets, to introduce this French word, certainly very convenient for their verse, into the English language; but in vain; the country never received it, and it has always appeared as an exotic, even though the elder poets Anglicized its form into saunce, or gave it the English pronunciation." In As You Like It (II. vii. 166) sans occurs four times in a single line.

155. deck'd:-Some good editors think this should be degg'd, a provincial word, as explained in Carr's Glossary, and in several others, for sprinkle. Dyce regards deck'd as a form, perhaps a corruption, of degg'd-a word still used in the north of England for to sprinkle. This sense is so much better than either of the others, that we cannot help thinking it the right one.

190-192. To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly, etc. :-Fletcher's imitation of this passage in The Faithful Shepherdess, is thus quoted by Henley:

"Tell me, sweetest,

What new service now is meetest

For the satyre; shall I stray

In the middle ayre, and stay

The sailing rack, or nimbly take

Hold by the moone, and gently make
Suit to the pale queene of night,
For a beame to give thee light?
Shall I dive into the sea,

And bring thee coral, making way
Through the rising waves," etc.

194. to point:-To the minutest detail; exactly; like the French à point.

200. distinctly:-That is separately, in different places at once. To quote from the account of Robert Tomson's voyage, 1555: "This light continued aboard our ship about three hours, flying from mast to mast, and from top to top; and sometimes it would

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be in two or three places at once." This is a description of the electrical phenomenon known as Saint Elmo's fire"- a certain little light, much like unto the light of a little candle, which the Spaniards call the corpos sancto. Shakespeare may have been thinking of this.

209. fever of the mad:-Such a fever as madmen feel when the frantic fit is on them.

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229. "The epithet here applied to the Bermudas," says Henley, I will be best understood by those who have seen the chafing of the sea over the rugged rocks by which they are surrounded, and which render access to them so dangerous." It was then the current opinion that the Bermudas were inhabited by monsters and devils.

326. urchins:-Fairies of a particular class. Hedgehogs were also called urchins; and it is probable that the sprites were so named, because they were of a mischievous kind, the urchin being anciently deemed a very noxious animal.

327. that vast of night:-So in Hamlet, I. ii. 198: "In the dead vast and middle of the night"; meaning the silent void or vacancy of night, when spirits were anciently supposed to walk abroad on errands of love, or sport, or mischief.

370. As ache used to be pronounced like the letter h, the plural aches, was a dissyllable, as it is here required to be by the measure. Of this there are many examples in the old writers. A clamour was raised among the critics against John Kemble for pronouncing the word thus on the stage. See, in Antony and Cleopatra, IV. vii. 7, 8: “I had a wound here that was like a T, but now 'tis made an H."

373. Setebos:-The name of an American god, or rather devil, worshiped by the Patagonians. In Eden's History of Travaile, 1577, is an account of Magellan's voyage to the South Pole, containing a description of this god and his worshipers, wherein the author says: "When they felt the shackles fast about their legs, they began to doubt; but the captain did put them in comfort and bade them stand still. In fine, when they saw how they were deceived, they roared like bulls, and cryed upon their great devil Setebos, to help them.” White mentions this allusion another evidence that Shakespeare had been reading books of American discovery before he wrote this play."

as

378, 379. kiss'd The wild waves whist:-That is, kissed or soothed the raging waves into silence or stillness. delicate touch of poetry that is quite lost, as the

This is a passage is

usually printed; the line, The wild waves whist, being made parenthetical, and that too without any authority from the original. 427. maid:-Ferdinand has already spoken of Miranda as a goddess; he now asks if she be a mortal; not a celestial being, but a maiden. Of course her answer is to be taken in the same sense as his question.

443. done yourself some wrong:-Done wrong to your character, in claiming to be King of Naples.

་

ACT SECOND.

Scene I.

55. an eye of green :-A tinge or shade of green. So in Sandy's Travels: "Cloth of silver, tissued with an eye of green"; and Bayle says, "Red with an eye of blue."

87. the miraculous harp:-An allusion to the myth of Amphion, King of Thebes, a great musician, to whom the god Mercury gave a lyre, wherewith the King charmed the stones and thus made them take their places in the walls of the city. To the building of the walls by the power of music, Wordsworth has this reference:

"The gift to King Amphion,

That wall'd a city with its melody."

126, 127. your eye, Who:-The meaning of this will probably appear if who be understood as referring to eye. Who and which were often used indiscriminately of persons and things.

143. Had I plantation of this isle:-That is, had I the colonization, not the planting, of this isle. See Bacon's Essay Of Plantations. Some editors, even of a recent day, have so misunderstood this expression as to give, "Had I a plantation," etc.; and in the French translation the word is rendered defricher, a purely agricultural term, meaning, to clear, to bring under cultivation. Tieck and Schlegel correctly give pflanzung, which corresponds exactly to the word of the original in both its significations.

"for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate."

This passage is plainly taken from Montaigne's Essays, in which (Book I. Chap. xxx., Of the Caniballes), according to Florio's translation, published in 1603, this passage occurs:

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'It is a nation, would I answere Plato, that hath no kinde of traffike, no knowledge of Letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politike, superioritie; no use of service, of riches, or of povertie; no contracts, no successions, no dividences; no occupation, but idle; no respect of kinred, but common; no apparell, but naturall; no manuring of lands; no use of wine, corn, or mettle. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envie, detraction, and pardon were never heard amongst them."

Capell first pointed out the likeness of the two passages. Shakespeare might have read the Essay in the original, but the identity of phrase in the play and the translation indicate the latter as the source of Gonzalo's policy.

266. A chough:-A bird of the jackdaw kind.

Scene II.

9. To mow is to make mouths :-So in Nash's Pierce Penniless: 'Nobody at home but an ape, that sat in the porch, and made mops and mows at him.”

12. Pricks is the ancient word for prickles.

31. make a man :—Make a man's fortune; set a man up. Thus in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, IV. ii. 17, 18: "If our sport had gone forward, we had all been made men." Also in Othello, I. ii. 51: "If it prove lawful prize, he's made forever."

all made men"; and in the old comedy of Ram Alley: wench was born to make us all.”

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We are

She's a

40. A gaberdine was a coarse outer garment. "A shepherd's pelt, frock, or gaberdine, such a coarse long jacket as our porters wear over the rest of their garments," says Cotgrave. "A kind of rough cassock or frock like an Irish mantle," says Philips.

80. I will not take too much for him:-A piece of vulgar irony, meaning, "I'll take as much as I can get."

86. will give language to you, cat:-Shakespeare gives his characters appropriate language: “They belch forth proverbs in their drink"; Good liquor will make a cat speak"; and "He who eats with the devil had need of a long spoon."

115. moon-calf:—An imaginary monster, supposed to be pro

duced by lunar influence. In Holland's Pliny it is described as

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a lump of flesh without shape, without life."

ACT THIRD.

Scene I.

2. The delight those painful sports give us offsets the labour they call for. So in Macbeth, II. iii. 54: "The labour we delight in physics pain."

72. what else:-Whatsoever else.

91. A thousand thousand farewells.

Scene II,

69. pied ninny:-Alluding to Trinculo's motley dress; he was a professional fool or jester. See use of patch in Merchant of Venice, II. v. 46, to the same effect.

133, 134. the picture of Nobody:-A common sign, which consisted of a head upon two legs, with arms. There was also a woodcut prefixed to an old play of Nobody and Somebody, which represented this personage.

158. this taborer:-" You shall heare in the ayre the sound of tabers and other instruments, to put the travellers in feare, by evill spirites that makes these soundes, and also do call diverse of the travellers by their names." Travels of Marcus Paulus, 1579. To some of these Milton also alludes in Comus:

"Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire;
And aery tongues that syllable men's names
On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses."

Scene III.

1. By'r lakin is a contraction of by our ladykin, the diminutive of our Lady.

21. Shows, called Drolleries, were in Shakespeare's time performed by puppets only. A living drollery is therefore a drollery not by wooden but by living personages.

23. one tree, the phœnix' throne, etc.:-Shakespeare and others