COUNT. What hope is there of his majesty's amendment? LAF. He hath abandoned his physicians, madam; under whose practices he hath persecuted time with hope; and finds no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time. COUNT. This young gentlewoman had a father, (O, that had! how sad a passage 'tis 2!) whose skill was almost as great as his honesty; had it stretched 2 O, that HAD! how sad a PASSAGE 'tis !] Imitated from the Heautontimorumenos of Terence, (then translated,) where Menedemus says: Filium unicum adolescentulum Habeo. Ah, quid dixi? habere me? imo Nunc habeam necne incertum est. BLACKSTONE. So, in Spenser's Shepheard's Calender: "Shee, while she was, (that was a woeful word to saine,) "For beauties praise and pleasaunce had no peere." Again, in Wily Beguil'd, 1606: 66 She is not mine, I have no daughter now; "That I should say I had, thence comes my grief." MALONE. Passage is any thing that passes. So we now say, a passage author; and we said about a century ago, the passages of a reign. When the Countess mentions Helena's loss of a father, she recollects her own loss of a husband, and stops to observe how heavily the word had passes through her mind. JOHNSON. Thus Shakspeare himself. See The Comedy of Errors, Act III. Sc. I. : "Now in the stirring passage of the day." So, in The Gamester, by Shirley, 1637: "I'll not be witness of your passages myself: " i. e. of what passses between you. Again, in A Woman's a Weathercock, 1612: 66 66 never lov'd these prying listening men "That ask of others' states and passages." Again: I knew the passages 'twixt her and Scudamore." Again, in The Dumb Knight, 1633: "Your vile and most lascivious passages." Again in The English Intelligencer, a tragi-comedy, 1641: two philosophers that jeer and weep at the passages of the world." STEEVENS. so far, would have made nature immortal, and death should have play for lack of work. 'Would, for the king's sake, he were living! I think, it would be the death of the king's disease. LAF. How called you the man you speak of, madam? COUNT. He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbon. LAF. He was excellent, indeed, madam; the king very lately spoke of him, admiringly, and mourningly he was skilful enough to have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality. BER. What is it, my good lord, the king languishes of? LAF. A fistula, my lord 3. BER. I heard not of it before. LAF. I would, it were not notorious.-Was this gentlewoman the daughter of Gerard de Narbon? COUNT. His sole child, my lord; and bequeathed to my overlooking. I have those hopes of her good, that her education promises: her dispositions she inherits, which make fair gifts fairer; for where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities', there com 66 3 A FISTULA, my lord.] The King of France's disorder is specified as follows in Painter's translation from Boccacio's Novel, on which this play was founded : She heard by report that the French King had a swelling upon his breast, which by reason of ill cure, was growen into a fistula," &c. In Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, 1589, p. 251, we have also mention of this inelegant disorder. Speaking of the necessity which princes occasionally find to counterfeit maladies, our author has the following remark: "And in dissembling of diseases, which I pray you? for I have obserued it in the Court of Fraunce, not a burning feuer, or a pleurisie, or a palsie, or the hydropick and swelling gowte, But it must be either a dry dropsie, or a megrim or letarge, or a fistule in ano, or some such other secret disease as the common conuersant can hardly discouer, and the physitian either not speedily heale, or not honestly bewray." STEEVENS. &c. virtuous qualities,] By virtuous qualities are meant qua mendations go with pity, they are virtues and traitors too; in her they are the better for their simpleness; she derives her honesty, and achieves her goodness. lities of good breeding and erudition; in the same sense that the Italians say, qualità virtuosa; and not moral ones. On this account it is, she says, that, in an ill mind, these virtuous qualities are virtues and traitors too: i. e. the advantages of education enable an ill mind to go further in wickedness than it could have done without them. WARBURTON. Virtue, and virtuous, as I am told, still keep this signification in the north, and mean ingenuity and ingenious. Of this sense, perhaps, an instance occurs in the eighth book of Chapman's version of the Iliad : "Then will I to Olympus' top our virtuous engine bind, 66 And by it every thing shall hang," &c. Again, in Marlowe's Tamburlaine, p. 1, 1590: 66 If these had made one poem's period, "And all combin'd in beauties worthynesse, "Yet should there hover in their restlesse heads 'One thought, one grace, one wonder at the least, they are virtues and traitors too; in her they are the better for their simpleness ;] "Her virtues are the better for their simpleness," that is, her excellencies are the better because they are artless and open, without fraud, without design. The learned commentator has well explained virtues, but has not, I think, reached the force of the word traitors, and therefore has not shown the full extent of Shakspeare's masterly observation. "Virtues in an unclean mind are virtues and traitors too." Estimable and useful qualities, joined with an evil disposition, give that evil disposition power over others, who, by admiring the virtue, are betrayed to the malevolence. The Tatler, mentioning the sharpers of his time, observes, that some of them are men of such elegance and knowledge, that a "young man who falls into their way, is betrayed as much by his judgment as his passions." JOHNSON. In As You Like It, virtues are called traitors on a very ground: "Their graces serve them but as enemies; "No more do yours; your virtues, gentle master, " 66 what a world is this, when what is comely · Envenoms him that bears it!" MALONE. different LAF. Your commendations, madam, get from her tears. COUNT. 'Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in. The remembrance of her father never approaches her heart, but the tyranny of her sorrows takes all livelihood' from her cheek. No more of this, Helena, go to, no more; lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow, than to have ". HEL. I do affect a sorrow, indeed, but I have it too 9. 6 can SEASON her praise in.] To season has here a culinary sense; to preserve by salting. A passage in Twelfth-Night will best explain its meaning: 66 - all this to season "A brother's dead love, which she would keep fresh, And lasting in her remembrance." MALONE. So, in Chapman's version of the third Iliad: 7 "Season'd with tears her joys, to see," &c. STEEVENS. all livelihood-] i. e. all appearance of life. STEEVENS. 8 - lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow, than To HAVE.] Our author sometimes is guilty of such slight inaccuracies; and concludes a sentence as if the former part of it had been constructed differently. Thus, in the present instance, he seems to have meant-lest you be rather thought to affect a sorrow, than to have.' So, in his 58th Sonnet: "That God forbid, that made me first your slave, "I should in thought control your times of pleasure, "Or at your hand the account of hours to crave." But this inaccuracy was not peculiar to Shakspeare, as will be shown in the Essay on his Phraseology. MALONE. 9 I do affect a sorrow, indeed, but I have it too.] Helena has, I believe, a meaning here, that she does not wish should be understood by the countess. Her affected sorrow was for the death of her father; her real grief for the lowness of her situation, which she feared would for ever be a bar to her union with her beloved Bertram. Her own words afterwards fully support this interpretation: The sorrow that Helen affected, was for her father; that which 5 LAF. Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living. COUNT. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal1. BER. Madam, I desire your holy wishes. LAF. How understand we that? COUNT. Be thou blest, Bertram! and succeed thy father In manners, as in shape! thy blood, and virtue, Contend for empire in thee; and thy goodness Share with thy birth-right! Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power, than use; and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence, But never tax'd for speech. What heaven more will, That thee may furnish, and my prayers pluck down, she really felt, was for Bertram's departure. The line should be particularly attended to, as it tends to explain some subsequent passages which have hitherto been misunderstood. M. MASON. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.] Lafeu says, "excessive grief is the enemy of the living" the Countess replies, "If the living be an enemy to grief, the excess soon makes it mortal: that is, If the living do not indulge grief, grief destroys itself by its own excess.' By the word mortal I understand that which dies; and Dr. Warburton [who reads-be not enemy-] that which destroys. I think that my interpretation gives a sentence more acute and more refined. Let the reader judge. JOHNSON. A passage in The Winter's Tale, in which our author again speaks of grief destroying itself by its own excess, adds support to Dr. Johnson's interpretation: scarce any joy "Did ever live so long; no sorrow In Romeo and Juliet we meet with a kindred thought: "And in their triumph die." MALONE. 2 That thee may furnish,] That may help thee with more and better qualifications. JOHNSON. |