ORL. Who stays it still withal? Ros. With lawyers in the vacation: for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how time moves. ORL. Where dwell you, pretty youth? Ros. With this shepherdess, my sister: here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat. ORL. Are you native of this place ? Ros. As the coney, that you see dwell where she is kindled. ORL. Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so removed 2 a dwelling. Ros. I have been told so of many: but, indeed, an old religious uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an in-land man3; one that knew courtship too well, for there he fell in love. I have heard him read many lectures against it; and I thank God, I am not a woman, to be touch'd with so many giddy offences as he hath generally tax'd their whole sex withal. ORL. Can you remember any of the principal evils, that he laid to the charge of women? 2 Ros. There were none principal; they were all removed] i. e. remote, sequestered. REED. So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, folio, 1623: 3 "From Athens is her house remov'd seven leagues." STEEVENS. -IN-LAND man;] Is used in this play for one civilised, in opposition to the rustick of the priest. So, Orlando, before: "Yet am I inland bred, and know some nurture." JOHNSON See Marlowe's Hero and Leander, 1598 : "His presence made the rudest peasant melt, Again, in Futtenham's Arte of Poesie, 4to. 1589, fol. 120: or finally in any uplandish village or corner of a realm, where is no resort but of poor rusticall or uncivill people." MALONE. Again, in Chapman's version of the 24th Iliad: 66 but lion-like, uplandish, and meere wilde.” STEEVENS. like one another, as half-pence are: every one fault seeming monstrous, till his fellow fault came to match it. ORL. I pr'ythee, recount some of them. Ros. No; I will not cast away my physick, but on those that are sick. There is a man haunts the forest, that abuses our young plants with carving Rosalind on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns, and elegies on brambles; all, forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind: if I could meet that fancy-monger, I would give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love upon him. ORL. I am he that is so love-shaked; I pray you, tell me your remedy. Ros. There is none of my uncle's marks upon you he taught me how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes, I am sure, you are not prisoner. ORL. What were his marks? Ros. A lean cheek; which you have not: a blue eye1, and sunken; which you have not: an unquestionable spirit ; which you have not: a beard 4 5 3; а BLUE eye,] i. e. a blueness about the eyes. STEEVENS. an UNQUESTIONABLE spirit;] That is, a spirit not inquisitive, a mind indifferent to common objects, and negligent of common occurrences. Here Shakspeare has used a passive for an active mode of speech: so, in a former scene, "The Duke is too disputable for me," that is, too disputatious. JOHNSON. May it not mean, unwilling to be conversed with? CHAMIER. Mr. Chamier is right in supposing that it means a spirit averse to conversation. So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Demetrius says to Helena 66 I will not stay your question." And, in The Merchant of Venice, Antonio says “I pray you, think you question with the Jew." In the very next scene, Rosalind says-" I met the Duke yesterday, and had much question with him." And in the last scene, Jaques de Bois says-"The Duke was converted after some ques 6 neglected; which you have not:-but I pardon you for that; for, simply, your having in beard is a younger brother's revenue:-Then your hose should be ungarter'd', your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such man; you are rather point-device in your accoutrements; as loving yourself, than seeming the lover of any other. S ORL. Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love. Ros. Me believe it? you may as soon make her that you love believe it; which, I warrant, she is apter to do, than to confess she does: that is one of the points in the which women still give the lie to their consciences. But, in good sooth, are you tion with a religious man." discourse or conversation. your HAVING ] 6 In all which places, question means M. MASON. Having is possession, estate. So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor: "The gentleman is of no having.” So, in Macbeth : 7 STEEVENS. "Of noble having and of royal hope." BOSWELL. Then your hose should be UNGARTER'D, &c.] These seem to have been the established and characteristical marks by which the votaries of love were denoted in the time of Shakspeare. So, in The Fair Maid of the Exchange, by Heywood, 1637: “ Shall I, that have jested at love's sighs, now raise whirlwinds! Shall I, that have flouted ah me's once a quarter, now practise ah me's every minute? Shall I defy hat-bands, and tread garters and shoe-strings under my feet? Shall I fall to falling bands, and be a ruffian no longer? I must; I am now liegeman to Cupid, and have read all these informations in the book of his statutes.” Again, in A Pleasant Comedy how to chuse a Good Wife from a Bad, 1602: I was once like thee 8 66 "A sigher, melancholy humorist, "Crosser of arms, a goer without garters, "A hat-band hater, and a busk-point wearer." MALONE. point-device-] i. e. exact, drest with finical nicety. So, in Love's Labour's Lost: “I hate such insociable and pointdevice companions." STEEVENS. he that hangs the verses on the trees, wherein Rosalind is so admired? ORL. I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I am that he, that unfortunate he. Ros. But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak? ORL. Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much. Ros. Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house, and a whip, as madmen do: and the reason why they are not so punished and cured, is, that the lunacy is so ordinary, that the whippers are in love too: Yet I profess curing it by counsel. ORL. Did you ever cure any so? Ros. Yes, one; and in this manner. He was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me: At which time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing, and liking; proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles; for every passion something, and for no passion truly any thing, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this colour: would now like him, now loath him; then entertain him, then forswear him ; now weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love, to a living humour of madness1; which was, to forswear the 9 a MOONISH youth,] i. e. variable. So, in Romeo and Juliet: "O swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon." I STEEVENS. to a LIVING humour of madness;] If this be the true reading, we must by living understand lasting, or permanent; but I cannot forbear to think that some antithesis was intended which is now lost; perhaps the passage stood thus-I drove my suitor from a dying humour of love to a living humour of madness. Or full stream of the world, and to live in a nook merely monastick: And thus I cured him; and this way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart 2, that there shall not be one spot of love in't. ORL. I would not be cured, youth. Ros. I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind, and come every day to my cote, and woo me. ORL. Now, by the faith of my love, I will; tell me where it is. Ros. Go with me to it, and I'll show it you: and, by the way, you shall tell me where in the forest you live: Will you go? ORL. With all my heart, good youth. Ros. Nay, you must call me Rosalind :-Come, sister, will you go? [Exeunt. rather thus-From a mad humour of love to a loving humour of madness, that is,—From a madness that was love, to a love that was madness. This seems somewhat harsh and strained, but such modes of speech are not unusual in our poet; and this harshness was probably the cause of the corruption. JOHNSON. Perhaps we should read—to a humour of loving madness. FARMER. Both the emendations appear to me inconsistent with the tenour of Rosalind's argument. Rosalind by her fantastick tricks did not drive her suitor either into a loving humour of madness, or a humour of loving madness; (in which he was originally without her aid ;) but she drove him from love into a sequester'd and melancholy retirement. A living humour of madness is, I conceive, in our author's licentious language, a humour of living madness, a mad humour that operates on the mode of living; or, in other words, and more accurately, a mad humour of life; "-to forswear the world, and to live in a nook merely monastick." MALONE, 2 as clean as a sound sheep's heart,] This is no very delicate comparison, though produced by Rosalind in her assumed character of a shepherd. A sheep's heart, before it is drest, is always split and washed, that the blood within it may be dislodged. STEEVENS. |