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&c. Written on the feast of All Saints, between mass and matins, calamo festinante." (Edit. by A. Ramsay, vol. i. p. 3.)

[Canker-Rosa Canina.]

SCENE III.-"I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace."

In an Illustration of The Two Gentlemen of

Verona' (Act I., Sc. 1) we have shown how frequently Shakspere uses the image of the canker in the rose bud. In the passage before us, a peculiar rose-the common dog-rose of the hedges-is meant. Mr. Richardson says, in his Dictionary, that in Devonshire the dogrose is called the canker-rose. The name had probably a more universal application; and as "the bud bit with an envious worm 39 was cankered, so the small uncultivated rose was compared to the rose of the garden whose beauty was impaired, by the name of canker.

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SCENE III.-"Smoking a musty room."

Burton in his 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' says, "The smoke of juniper is in great request with us at Oxford, to sweeten our chambers." Where the "perfumer" had been, the real cleanliness of the house or the person was doubtful: as in Ben Jonson's song:

"Still to be neat, still to be drest,
Still to be perfum'd as for a feast," &c.

ACT II.

10 SCENE I.-" That I had my good wit out of the Hundred Merry Tales."

THE "good wit" of Beatrice consisted in sharp sayings and quaint allusions, and Benedick might naturally enough have twitted her with what we now call a familiarity with 'Joe Miller.' 'The Hundred Merry Tales' were known only by their title; and a great controversy therefore sprang up whether they were a translation of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles' or of the 'Decameron." We need not enter upon this question; for a fragment of the identical Tales has been discovered, since the days of Reed and Steevens, by Mr. Coneybeare, which shows that the work was literally a jest-book-most probably a chapman's penny book. A copy would now be above all price, if it could be recovered entire. But its loss has occasioned more printing, in the way of speculation upon its contents; and thus the world keeps up its stock of typographical curiosities.

"SCENE L.-"Bring you the length of Prester John's foot."

The inaccessibility of Prester John has been described by Butler :

"While like the mighty Prester John,
Whose person none dares look upon,
But is preserv'd in close disguise

From being made cheap to vulgar eyes."

12 SCENE III.-" Carving the fashion of a new doublet."

This is the representation of an Englishman thus described by Coryat in his 'Crudities:'"We wear more fantastical fashions than any nation under the sun doth, the French only excepted; which hath given occasion to the Venetian and other Italians to brand the Englishman with a notable mark of levity, by painting him stark naked, with a pair of shears in his hand, making his fashion of attire according to the vain conception of his brain-sick head, not to comeliness and decorum."

The print from which we copy is in Borde's 13 SCENE III.-"Stalk on, stalk on: the fowl sits." 'Introduction of Knowledge;' and we subjoin the verses which are given under it :

The stalking-horse is thus described in an ancient tract, 'New Shreds of the Old Snare,' by John Gee :-"Methinks I behold the cunning fowler, such as I have known in the fencountries and elsewhere, that do shoot at woodcocks, snipes, and wild-fowl, by sneaking behind a painted cloth which they carry before them, having pictured on it the shape of a horse; which, while the silly fowl gazeth on, it is knocked down with hail-shot, and so put in the fowler's budget." There were stalking-bulls as well as stalking-horses; and the process of decoying partridges in this way into a net is described in Willughby's Ornithology.'

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"I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here, Musing in my mynde what rayment I shall were; For now I will were this, and now I will were that, Now I will were I cannot tell what."

ACT III.

14 SCENE I.-"Haggards of the rock." SIMON Latham, in his 'Book of Falconry,' thus describes the wild and unsocial nature of this species of hawk:-"She keeps in subjection the most part of all the fowl that fly, insomuch that the tassel gentle, her natural and chiefest companion, dares not come near that coast where she useth, nor sit by the place where she standeth. Such is the greatness of her spirit, she will not admit of any society until such a time as nature worketh."

15 SCENE L.-"What fire is in mine ears?" The popular opinion here alluded to is as old as Pliny:-"Moreover is not this an opinion generally received, that when our ears do glow and tingle, some there be that in our absence do talk of us?"-Holland's Translation, b. xxviii.

16 SCENE II.-"His jesting spirit; which is now crept into a lutestring:"-i. e. his jocular wit is now employed in the inditing of love-songs, which, in Shakspere's time, were usually accompanied on the lute. The "stops" are the frets of the lute, and those points on the fingerboard on which the string is pressed, or stopped, by the finger.

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20 SCENE IV.-"Carduus Benedictus."

We look back with wonder upon the importance attached by our ancestors to old women's remedies. That they confided in such powers as those of the Blessed Thistle, and of

"Spermaceti for an inward bruise," was a part of the system of belief which belonged to their age; and which was in itself of more Sovereign virtue than we are apt to imagine. Perhaps our faith in a fashionable physicianwhich, after all, is no abiding faith-would not stand a more severe examination. But at any rate no one now believes in calomel or quinine, as a writer of Shakspere's day believed in the Carduus Benedictus. "This herb may worthily

be called Benedictus, or Omnimorbia, that is, | providence of Almighty God."-Cogan's 'Haven a salve for every sore, not known to physicians of Health,' 1595.

of old time, but lately revealed by the special

ACT V.

2 SCENE I.-"If he be [angry], he knows how to turn his girdle."

THIS was a common form of expression, derived from the practice of wrestlers, and thus explained by Mr. Holt White:-"Large belts were worn with the buckle before; but for wrestling the buckle was turned behind, to give the adversary a fairer grasp at the girdle. To turn the buckle behind, therefore, was a challenge. Sir Ralph Winwood, in a letter to Cecil, says, "I said, what I spake was not to make him angry. He replied, If I were angry, I

might turn the buckle of my girdle behind me."

23 SCENE IV.—“There is no staff more reverend than one tipped, with liorn.”

that the staff here alluded to was the long Steevens; and Malone have long notes to prove baton appointed to be used in wager of battle. Surely the reverend staff is the old man's walking stick. The "staff tipped with horn" was carried by one of Chaucer's friars.

22 SCENE II.-" The god of Love:"

"The beginning of an old song by W. E. (William Elderton), a puritanical parody of which, by one W. Birch, under the title of "The Complaint of a Sinner,' is still extant." We have not been able to find the tune itself, or any other notice of it.

COSTUME.

IN affixing by the costume a particular period | being signed (August 3rd, 1529) by Margaret to any of Shakspere's plays which are not historical, care should be had to select one as near as possible to the time at which it was written. The comedy of 'Much Ado about Nothing' commences with the return of certain Italian and Spanish noblemen to Sicily after the wars. Now the last war in which the Italians under Spanish dominion were concerned previous to the production of this comedy was terminated by the peace of Cambray, called La Paix des Dames," in consequence of its

of Austria in the name of the Emperor Charles V., and the Duchess d'Angoulême in that of her son Francis I. This peace secured to Charles the crown of Naples and Sicily; and, after vanquishing the Saracens at Tunis, he made triumphal entries into Palermo and Messina in the autumn of 1535. Of the costume of this period we have given a detailed description and several pictorial illustrations in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona, to which we must refer the reader.

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