Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

548. O sweet-suggesting love,] To suggest is to tempt, in our author's language. So again :

"Knowing that tender youth is soon suggested." The sense is, O tempting love, if thou hast influenced me to sin, teach me to excuse it. Dr. Warbur ton reads, if I have sinn'd; but, I think, not only without necessity, but with less elegance. JOHNSON. 576. Myself] Who am his competitor or rival, being admitted to his counsel.

Competitor is confederate, assistant, partner. So, in Antony and Cleopatra:

JOHNSON.

"It is not Cæsar's natural vice, to hate
"One great competitor.”

And he is speaking of Lepidus, one of the triumvirate.

STEEVENS. 578. —pretended flight;] Pretended flight is proposed or intended flight. So, in Macbeth:

-What good could they pretend?"

STEEVENS.

Mr. Reed cites also from De Borde's Introduction of Knowledge, 1542, sign. H 3, “I pretend to return and come round about thorow other regyons on Europ." EDITOR.

584. I suspect that the author concluded the act with this couplet, and that the next scene should begin in the third act; but the change, as it will add nothing to the probability of the action, is of no great importance. JOHNSON.

[ocr errors]

637. with a cod-piece, &c.] Whoever wishes to be acquainted with this particular, relative to dress,

[blocks in formation]

may consult Bulwer's Artificial Changeling, in which such matters are very amply discussed. Ocular in struction may be had from the armour shewn as John of Gaunt's, in the Tower of London. The same fashion appears to have been no less offensive in France. See Montaigne, Chap. XXII. The custom of sticking pins in this ostentatious piece of indecency, was continued by the illiberal warders of the Tower, till-forbidden by authority. STEEVENS.

638. Out, out, Lucetta! &c.] Dr. Percy observes, that this interjection is still used in the North. It seems to have the same meaning as apage, Lat.

[ocr errors][merged small]

So, in Every Man out of his Humour, act ii. sc. 6. "Out, out, unworthy to speak where he breath

eth."

REED.

669. my longing journey.] Dr. Grey observes, that longing is a participle active, with a passive signification; for longed, wished or desired. STEEVENS.

ACT III.

Line 28. JEALOUS aim-] Aim is guess, in this

instance, as in the following. So, in Romeo and Juliet:

I aim'd so near, when I suppos'd you lov'd."

STEEVENS.

45.

-be not aim'd at;] Be not guessed.

JOHNSON.

47. of this pretence.] Of this claim made to

your daughter.

Pretence is design. So, in King Lear:

JOHNSON.

-to feel

my affection to your honour, and no other pretence of danger." Again, in the same play: pose of unkindness."

[ocr errors]

-pretence and purSTEEVENS.

81. sir, in Milan, here,] It ought to be thus, instead of-in Verona, here-for the scene apparently is in Milan, as is clear from several passages in the first act, and in the beginning of the first scene of the fourth act. A like mistake had crept into the fifth scene of act ii. where Speed bids his fellow-servant Launce welcome to Padua.

POPE.

86, -the fashion of the time-] The modes of courtship, the acts by which men recommended themselves to ladies. JOHNSON.

89. Win her with gifts, &c-] An earlier writer than Shakspere, speaking of women, has the same unfavourable (and, I hope, unfounded) sentiment: ""Tis wisdom to give much; a gift prevails, "When deep persuasive oratory fails."

Marlowe's Hero and Leander.

113. What lets,

MALONE.

i. e. what hinders.

So, in Hamlet, act i. sc. 4.

By heaven I'll make a ghost of him that lets

me."

Ciij

STEEVENS.

149.

for they are sent by me,] For is the same

149.

as for that, since.

150.

would - Should, first folio.

JOHNSON.

MALONE.

153. ·Merops' son),] Thou art Phaeton in thy rashness, but without his pretensions; thou art not the son of a divinity, but a terræ filius, a low-born wretch; Merops is thy true father, with whom Phaëton was falsely reproached. JOHNSON. This scrap of mythology Shakspere might have found in the spurious play of King John, 1591, 1611, and 1622:

586 -as sometime Phaeton
"Mistrusting silly Merops for his sire.”

STEEVENS.

177. And feed upon the shadow of perfection.] Animum pictura pascit inani." Virg.

HENLEY. 85. Ifly not death, to fly his deadly doom:] To fly His doom, used for by flying, or in flying, is a Gallicrsm. The sensé is, By avoiding the execution of his sentence, I shall not escape death. If I stay here, I suffer myself to be destroyed; if I go away, I destroy myself. JOHNSON. 250. Even in the milk-white bosom of thy love.] Só; -m Hamlet:

"These to her excellent white bosom," &c. t Trifling as the remark may appear, "before the meaning of this address of letters to the bosom of a mis"tress can be understood, it should be known that

women

[ocr errors]

women anciently had a pocket in the fore-part of their stays, in which they not only cafried love-letters and love-tokens, but even their money, and materials for needle-work. In many parts of England the rustick damsels still observe the same practice; and a very old lady informs me, that she remembers when it was the fashion to wear very prominent stays, it was no less the custom for stratagem or gallantry to drop its literary favours within the front of them.

STEEVENS

261. Laun. I am but a foot, look you; and yet I have the wit to think my master is a kind of knave : but that's all one, if he be but one knave.] I know not whether, in Shakspere's language, one knave may not signify a knave on only one occasion, a single knave. We still use a double villain for a villain beyond the common rate of guilt. JOHNSON.

In the old play of Damon and Pythias, Aristippus declares of Carisophus, "you lose money by him if you sell him for one knave, for he serves for twayne."

This phraseology is often met with: Arragon says in the Merchant of Venice:

With one fool's head I came to woo,

"But I go away with two."

Donne begins one of his sonnets:

"I am two fools, I know,

"For loving and for saying so," i&c,

And when Panurge cheats St. Nicholas of the chapel which he vowed to him in a storm, Rabelais calls

him

« ZurückWeiter »