You gods, look down, Her. Thy father's court? for thou shalt hear that I Gave hope thou wast in being-have preserved Paul. There's time enough for that; Lest they desire, upon this push, to trouble Your joys with like relation.— Go together, You precious winners all your exultation Partake to every one. I, an old turtle, Will wing me to some withered bough; My mate, that's never to be found again, And made between's by vows. Thou hast found mine; But how is to be questioned: for I saw her, As I thought, dead; and have in vain said many A prayer upon her grave: I'll not seek far (For him, I partly know his mind) to find thee. An honorable husband: - come, Camillo, And take her by the hand: whose worth and honesty Is richly noted, and here justified By us, a pair of kings.- Let's from this place. What?-look upon my brother: :- - both your par dons That e'er I put between your holy looks and My ill suspicion. This your son-in-law, And son unto the king (whom heavens directing), We were dissevered.-Hastily lead away. [Exeunt. That is, still playing with her fingers, as a girl playing on the vir. ginals. Virginals were stringed instruments played with keys like a spinnet, which they resembled in all respects but in shape; spinnets being nearly triangular, and virginals of an oblong square shape, like a small pianoforte. "Thou want'st a rough pash, and the shoots that I have, "Pash" in Scotland signifies a head. Many words that are now used only in that country, were, perhaps, ouce common to the whole island of Great Britain, or at least to the northern part of England. "Affection! thy intention stabs the center."-Act I., Scene 2. "Affection" here means imagination. Intention is earnest consideration, eager attention. It is this vehemence of mind which affects Leontes by making him conjure up unreal causes of disquiet; and thus, in the poet's language, "stabs him to the center." "Mine honest friend, Will you take eggs for money?"-Act I., Scene 2. This seems to have been a common proverbial expression, used when a man sees himself wronged, and makes no resistance. Its origin is uncertain. Lower messes, Perchance are to this business purblind." — Act I., Scene 2. The term "messes" here significs degrees or conditions. The com. pany at great tables were divided according to their rank into higher "There may be in the cup A spider steeped."- Act II., Scene 1. That spiders were esteemed venomous, appears by the evidence of a person who was examined in Sir Thomas Overbury's affair:-"The Countess wished me to get the strongest poison that I could, &c. Accordingly, I bought seven great spiders and cantharides." "Would I knew the villain, I would land-dam him."— Act II., Scene 1. "Land-dam" is probably one of those words which caprice brought into fashion, and which, after a short time, reason and grammar drove irrecoverably away. It, perhaps, meant no more than "I will rid the country of him; condemn him to quit the land."-JOHNSON. "The very thought of my revenges that way And in his parties, his alliance." Act II., Scene 3. This passage is founded on a similar one in the novel of " DORASTUS AND FAWNIA :" "Pandosto, although he felt that revenge was a spur to war, and that envy always proffereth steel, yet he saw Egistus was not only of great puissance and prowess to withstand him, but also had many kings of his alliance to aid him, if need should serve; for he married the Emperor of Russia's daughter." Shakspeare has made this lady the wife of the Leontes of the play, not of the Pol ixenes: but it will be seen that Greene, the acknowledged classical scholar, exhibits as much indifference to chronology as the supposed illiterate dramatist. "A mankind witch! Hence with her."— Act II., Scene 3. "A"mankind-woman" is said to be a term used in some counties to designate a female, violent, ferocious and mischievous. Mr Tollet suggests that "mankind" may signify one of a wicked and pernicious nature; from the Saxon man, mischief or wickedness and kind. "Thou dotard, thou art woman-tired." — Act II., Scene 3. To be "woman-tired" is to be pecked by a woman. The phrase is taken from falconry, and is often employed by writers contemporary with Shakspeare. So in Decker's "MATCH ME IN LONDON:" "The climate's delicate; the air most sweet; The Temple of Apollo at Delphi was not in an island, but in Phocis, on the continent. In this instance, also, as in many others, Shakspeare followed the language of his original. In the novel, the queen desires the king to send "six of his noblemen whom he best trusted, to the Isle of Delphos." The writer was probably thinking of Delos, an island of the Cyclades. The geographical blunder, in considering Bohemia a maritime country, is copied from Greene's narrative. This trespass in respect of dramatic unity, will appear venial to those who have read the once famous Lily's “ENDYMION" (or, as he himself calls it in the prologue, his " MAN IN THE MOOON"). Two acts of this piece comprise the space of forty years; Endymion lying down to sleep at the end of the second, and waking in the first scene of the fifth, after a nap of that unconscionable length. Lily has, likewise, been guilty of much greater absurdity than Shakspeare committed; for he supposes that Endymion's hair, features, and per. son, were changed by age during his sleep, while all the other personages of the drama remained without alteration.-STEEVENS. Malone states, that, in the comedy of " PATIENT GRISSEL" (by Decker, Chettle, and Haughton), Grissel is in the first act married, and soon afterwards brought to bed of twins, a son and a daughter; and the daughter, in the fifth act, is produced on the scene as a woman old enough to be married. Some remarks by Dr. Johnson, on the subject of time, in dramatic representations, may be here appropriately introduced: — "By supposition, as place is introduced, time way be extended. The time required by the fable elapses, for the most part, between the acts; for, of so much of the action as is represented, the real and poetical duration is the same. If, in the first act, preparations for war against Mithridates are represented to be made in Rome, the event of the war, may, without absurdity, be represented in the catastrophe as happening in Pontus. We know that there is neither war nor preparation for war: we know that we are neither in Rome nor Pontus; that neither Mithridates nor Lucullus is before us.— The drama exhibits successive imitations of successive actions; and why may not the second imitation represent an action that happened years after the first, if it be so connected with it that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene? Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation, we easily contract the time of real actions, and, therefore, willingly permit it to be contracted when we only see their imitation." "I have missingly noted he is of late much retired from court.” Act IV., Scene 1. Meaning, probably, I have observed him at intervals; not constantly or regularly, but occasionally. "The red blood reigns in the winter's pale.” — Act IV., Scene 2. That is, the red, the spring blood, now reigns o'er the parts lately under the dominion of winter. The "English pale," and the "Irish pale," were frequent expressions in Shakspeare's time; and the words red and pale were used for the sake of the antithesis. "Every 'leven wether-tods; every tod yields-pound and odd shilling," &c. Act IV., Scene 2. To tod is used as a verb by dealers in wool. Thus, they say, "Twenty sheep ought to tod fifty pounds of wool," &c. The meaning, therefore, of the Clown's words is, "Every eleven (wethers) tods; i. e. will produce a tod, or twenty-eight pounds of wool; every tod yields a pound and odd shilling; what then will the wool of fifteen hundred yield?" "Three-man song men all.” — Act IV., Scene 2. That is, singers of catches in three parts. "A fellow, sir, that I have known to go about with trolmy-dames.” Act IV., Scene 2. This is probably a corruption of the French term, trou madame ; the game much resembles that called bagatelle. The old English title of this sport was "pigeon-holes," as the arches in the machine, through which the balls are rolled, resemble the cavities made for pigeons in a dove-house. "Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, And merrily hent the stile-a.”—Act IV,, Scene 2. The lines in the text form part of a song first printed in "An Antidote against Melancholy, made up in Pills, compounded of witty Ballads, jovial Songs, and merry Catches" (1661). To "hent the stile," is to take the stile; from the Saxon hentan. "But that our feasts In every mess have folly, and the feeders To see you so attired; sworn, I think, To shew myself a glass."— Act IV., Scene 2. Perdita probably means, that the prince, by the rustic habit he wears, seems as if he had sworn to shew her, as in a glass, how she ought to be dressed, instead of being "so goddess-like pranked up:" and were it not for the license and folly which custom had made familiar at such feasts as that of sheep-shearing, when mimetic sports were allowable, she should blush to see him so attired. "For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep Ophelia distributes the same plants, and accompanies them with similar expressions: "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. There's rue for you; we may call it herb of grace." The qualities of retaining "seeming and savor" appear to form the reason why these plants were considered emblematical of grace and remembrance. "The fairest flowers o' the season, Are our carnations and streaked gillyflowers, Which some call nature's bastards."— Act IV., Scene 3. The variegated gillyflowers, or carnations, being considered as a produce of art, were properly called nature's bastards; and being streaked white and red, Perdita considers them a proper emblem of a painted or immodest woman. -"Pale primroses, That die unmarried; ere they can behold Bright Phabus in his strength.”—Act IV., Scene 3. The reason why the primrose is said to "die unmarried" is, according to Warton, "because it grows in the shade, uncherished or unseen by the sun, who was supposed to be in love with some sort of flowers." "He so chants to the sleeve-hand, and the work about the square on 't." Act IV., Scene 3. The "sleeve-hand" was the cuff or wristband; the "square" signified the work about the bosom. "Pins and poking-sticks of steel."- Act IV., Scene 3. These "poking-sticks" were used to set the large ruffs so much in fashion. Stowe states, that "about the sixteenth year of Queen Elizabeth, began the making of steel-poking-sticks; and until that time, all laundresses used setting-sticks made of wood or bone.” "They call him Doricles; and he boasts himself To have a worthy feeding."— Act IV., Scene 3. A "worthy-feeding," probably signifies a tract of pasturage not inconsiderable," which the old shepherd considers not unworthy of his supposed daughter's fortune." "Here's another ballad, Of a fish that appeared upon the coast," &c. Act IV., Scene 3. In 1604, was entered on the books of the Stationer's Company, “A strange reporte of a monstrous fish, that appeared in the form of a woman, from her waist upward, seene in the sea." To this it is highly probable that Shakspeare alludes. In Sir Henry Herbert's office-book, which contains a register of all the shows of London, from 1623 to 1642, is entered, “A license to Francis Sherret, to show a strange fish for one year, from the 10th of March, 1635." "That have made themselves all men of hair." Act IV., Scene 3. "Men of hair" are hairy men or satyrs. A dance of satyrs was no unusual entertainment in the middle ages. At a great festival celebrated in France in 1392, the king and some of the nobles personated satyrs dressed in close habits, tufted or shagged all over, to imitate hair. They began a wild dance, and in the tumult of their merriment, one of them went too near a candle, and set fire to his satyr's garb; the flame ran instantly over the loose tufts, and spread itself to the dress of those that were next him; a great number of the dancers were cruelly scorched, being neither able to throw off their coats nor extinguish them. The king had set himself in the lap of the Duchess of Berry, who threw her robe over him and saved him. The dress of the rustic dancers mentioned in the text was, perhaps, made of goat's skin. Cervantes mentions, in the preface to his plays, that in the time of an early Spanish writer, Lope du Rueda, "all the furniture and utensils of the actor consisted of four shopherds' jerkins with the wool on, and adorned with gilt leather trimming; four beards and periwigs, and four pastoral crooks: little more or less." Probably a similar shepherd's jerkin was used in Shakspeare's theatre. "I was not much afeard," &c.— Act IV., Scene 3. The character of Perdita is here finely sustained. To have made her quite astonished at the king's discovery of himself, had not be come her birth; and to have given her presence of mind to have made this reply to the king, had not become her education.- WAR BURTON. "Some hangman must put on my shroud, and lay me Before the reform of the burial-service in the time of Edward VI., it was the custom for the priest to throw earth on the body in the form of a cross, and then sprinkle it with holy water. "The which shall point you forth, at every sitting, "Every sitting" means, at every audience you shall have of the king aud council: the council days being formerly called, in common speech, the sitting. Howell, in one of his letters, says:-"My lord president hopes to be at the next sitting in York." "I think affliction may subdue the cheek, But not take in the mind."— Act IV., Scene 3. To "take in" anciently meant to conquer, to get the better of. As in "ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA : "He could so quickly cut the Ionian seas, "Not a ribbon, glass, pomander," &c.— Act IV., Scene 3. A "pomander" was a little ball of perfumed paste, worn in the pocket, or in various parts of the person as an antidote to infection. Various recipes for making them may be found in old books of housewifery. As if my trinkets had been hallowed."— Act IV., Scene 3. This alludes to the custom of selling beads, &c., as made particuularly efficacious by the touch of some relic. "A great man, I'll warrant: I know by the picking on's teeth." Act IV., Scene 3. It seems that to pick the teeth was, at this time, a mark of some pretension to greatness or elegance. Falconbridge, speaking of the traveler, says, "He and his toothpick at my worship's mess." In Sir Thomas Overbury's "Characters" we find,-"If you find not a courtier here, you shall in Paul's, with a toothpick in his hat, a cape-cloak, and a long stocking." "The hottest day prognostication proclaims.” — Act IV., Scene 3. That is, the hottest day foretold in the almanac. Almanacs were, in Shakspeare's time, published under this title:-"An Almanac and Prognostication made for the year of our Lord God, 1595." "Being something gently considered, I'll bring you where he is aboard.” Act IV., Scene 3. Autolycus means, "I, having a gentlemanlike consideration given me, (i. e. a bribe), will bring you," &c. "What were more holy, Than to rejoice the former queen is well?" Act V., Scene 1. By "well," is here meant dead. In "ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA," the phrase is said to be peculiarly applicable to the dead: "MESS. First, madam he is well. CLEO. Why, there's more gold; but sırrah, mark: And in "ROMEO and JULIET," Balthazar speaking of Juliet, whom he imagined to be dead, says,— "Then she is well, and nothing can be ill." "The old shepherd which stands by, like a weather-bitten conduit.” Act V., Scene 2 Conduits representing the human figure were formerly not uncommon. The same image is found in "ROMEO and JULIET:" "How now? a conduit, girl? what, still in tears! "Weather-bitten" was in the third folio changed to "weatherbeaten;" but there does not seem to be any necessity for the change. Hamlet says, "The air bites shrewdly;" and the Duke, in "As YOU LIKE IT," speaking of the wind, says, "When it bites and blows upon my body." Weather-bitten, therefore, means corroded by the weather. "A piece many years in doing, and now newly performed by that rare Italian master, Julio Romano.” — Act V., Scene 2. Painted statues appear to have been not uncommon in Shakspeare's day. In Ben Jonson's "MAGNETIC LADY," Doctor Rut says,"All city statues must be painted, Else they be worth nought in their subtle judgments." "Would beguile nature of her custom."-Act V., Scene 2. That is, of her trade; would draw nature's customers from her. "Let boors and franklins say it, I'll swear it."- Act V., Scene 2. A "franklin" was a freeholder, or yeoman; a man above a villain, but not a gentleman. "I'll swear to the prince, thou art a tall fellow of thy hands." Act V., Scene 2. The phrase," tall fellow" was used to signify a bold, courageous fellow. "Of his hands," probably meant, skillful in the use of his hands. "Come, follow us; we'll be thy good masters.” — Act V., Scene 2. The Clown conceits himself already a man of consequence at court. It was the fashion for an inferior or suitor to beg of the great man, after his humble commendations, that he would be "good master" to him. Many ancient letters run in this fashion. Thus Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, when in prison, in a letter to Lord Cromwell (in the time of Henry VIII.), says: -"Furthermore, I beseech you to be good master unto one in my necessities; for I have neither shirt nor suit, nor yet other clothes that are necessary for me to wear." "The fixure of her eye has motion in 't.” — Act V., Scene 3. The meaning is, though her eye be fixed, yet it seems to have motion in it that tremulous motion which is perceptible in the eye of a living person, how much soever one endeavors to fix it. In the novel of "DORASTUS and FAWNIA," the King of Sicilia, whom Shakspeare named Leontes, is called Egistus; Polixenes, King of Bo hemia, Pandosto; Mamillius, Prince of Sicilia,-Garinter; Florizel, Prince of Bohemia, — Dorastus; Camillo, - Franion; Old Shepherd,Porrus; Hermione,- Bellaria; Perdita,- Fawnia. The parts of Antigonus, Paulina, and Autolycus, are of the poet's own invention; but many circumstances of the novel are omitted in the play.STEEVENS. The "WINTER'S TALE" is as appropriately named as the " MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM." It is one of those tales which are peculiarly calculated to beguile the dreary leisure of a long winter evening; which are even attractive and intelligible to childhood; and which, animated by fervent truth in the delineation of character and passion, invested with the decoration of a poetry lowering itself, as it were, to the simplicity of the subject, transport even manhood back to the golden age of imagination. The calculation of probabilities has nothing to do with such wonderful and fleeting adventures, ending at last in general joy: and accordingly, Shakspeare has here taken the greatest liberties with anachronisms and geographical errors,- SCHLEGEL. |