P. 111 Not mad but mated] I suspect there is a play upon words intended here. Mated signifies not only confounded, but matched with a wife: and Antipholis, who had been challenged as a husband by Adriana, which he cannot account for, uses the word mated in both these senses. M. MASON.

P. 124. your customers?] A customer is used in Othello for a common woman. Here it seems to signify one who visits such women. MALONE.

P. 131. --His man with scissars nicks him like a fool:] The force of this allusion I am unable to explain with certainty. Perhaps it was once the custom to cut the hair of idiots close to their heads. STEEVENS.

There is a penalty of ten shillings in one of King Alfred's ecclesiastical laws, if one opprobriously shave a common man like a fool. TOLLET. The hair of idiots is still cut close to their heads, to prevent the consequences of uncleanliness. RITSON.

MERCHANT OF VENICE.

P. 149. --- And I am prest unto it:] Prest may not here signify impress'd, as into military service, but ready, Pret. Fr. STEEVENS.

P 150. the Neapolitan prince.] The Neapolitans in the time of Shakespeare, were eminently skilled in all that belongs to horsemanship; nor have they, even now, forfeited their title to the same praise. STEEVENS.

P. 173. embraced heaviness.] We say of a man now, that he "hugs his sorrows," and why might not Antonio embrace heaviness? JOHNSON.

P. 191.

It is much, that the Moor should be more, &c.] Shakespeare, no doubt, had read or heard of the old epigram on Sir Thomas More:

"When More some years had chancellor been,
"No more suits did remain;

"The like shall never more be seen,
"Till More be there again."

P. 207. ---The man that hath no music in himself,

RITSON.

Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,] Let not this capricious sentiment of Shakespeare descend to posterity, unattended by the opinion of the late Lord Chesterfield on the same subject. In his 148th letter to his son, who was then at Venice, his lordship, after having enumerated music among the illiberal pleasures, adds---" if you love music, hear it; go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddiers to play to you; but I must insist on your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous and contemptible light; brings him into a great deal of bad company, and takes up a great deal of time, which might be much better employed. Few things would mortify me more, than to see you bearing a part in a concert, with a fiddle under your chin, or a pipe in your mouth." Again, Letter 153: "A taste of scuipture and painting is, in my mind, as becoming as a taste of fiddling and piping is unbecoming a man of fashion. The former is connected with history and poetry, the latter with nothing but bad company." STEEVENS.

AS YOU LIKE IT.

P. 251. Wherein we play in.] I believe, with Mr. Pope, that we should only read--Wherein we play.

and add a word at the beginning of the next speech, to complete the measure; viz. "Why, all the world's a stage."

Thus, in Hamlet:

"Hor. So Rosencrantz and Guildenstern go to't.

"Ham. Why, man, they did make love to their employment."

Again, in Measure for Measure:

"Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once."

Again, ibid:

66 Why, every fault's condemn'd, ere it be done."

In twenty other instances, we find the same adverb introductorily used.

STEEVENS.

P. 291. As those that fear they hope, and know they fear.] This should be read thus:

As those that fear their hap, and know their fear.

I read thus:

As those that fear with hope, and hope with fear.

WARBURTON.

Or thus, with less alteration :

As those that fear, they hope, and now they fear.

I would read:

As those that fear, then hope; and know, then fear.

I have little doubt but it should run thus:

As those who fearing hope, and hoping fear.

JOHNSON.

MUSGRAVE.

M. MASON.

I believe this line requires no other alteration than the addition of a semi-colon: As those that fear; they hope, and know they fear.

VOL. III.

MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

HENLEY.

P. 13.by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen.] Shakespeare had forgot that Theseus performed his exploits before the Trojan war, and consequently long before the death of Dido. STEEVENS.

P. 23. And never, since the middle summer's spring.] The middle summer's spring, is, I apprehend, the season when trees put forth their second, or, as they are fre quently called, their midsummer shoots. Thus, Evelyn in his Silva: "Cut off all the side boughs, and especially at midsummer, if you spy them breaking out." And again, "Where the rows and brush lie longer than midsummer, unbound, or made up, you endanger the loss of the second spring." HENLEY.

P. 24. their winter here ;] Here, in this country.---I once inclined to receive the emendation proposed by Mr. Theobald, and adopted by Sir T. Hanmer,---their winter cheer; but perhaps alteration is unnecessary. "Their winter" may mean those sports with which country people are wont to beguile a winter's evening, at the season of Christmas, which, it appears from the next line, was particularly in our author's contemplation. MALONE.

Ibid. No night is now with hymn or carol blest :] Since the coming of Christianity, this season, (winter,) in commemoration of the birth of Christ, has been particularly devoted to festivity. And to this custom, notwithstanding the impropriety, hymn or carol blest certainly alludes. WARBURTON.

Hymns and carols, in the time of Shakespeare, during the season of Christmas, were sung every night about the streets, as a pretext for collecting money from house to house. STEEVENS.

Ibid. Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, &c.] The repeated adverb there fore, throughout this speech, I suppose to have constant reference to the first time when it is used. All these irregularities of season happened in consequence of the disagreement between the king and queen of the fairies, and not in consequence of each other. Ideas crowded fast on Shakespeare; and as he committed them to paper, he did not attend to the distance of the leading object from which they took their rise. Mr. Malone concurs with me on this occasion.

That the festivity and hospitality attending Christinas, decreased, was the subject of complaint to many of our ludicrous writers. STEEVENS.

Ibid. ---Hyems' chin,] Dr. Grey, not inelegantly, conjectures, that the poet wrote: -on old Hyems' chill and icy crown.

It is not indeed easy to discover how a chaplet can be placed on the chin.

STEEVENS.

Thinne is nearer to chinne (the spelling of the old copies) than chill, and therefore, I think, more likely to have been the author's word. MALONE.

P. 28. And maidens call it, love-in-idleness.] It is called, in other counties the "Three-coloured violet," the "Herb of Trinity," "Three faces in a hood,” “ Cuddle me to you," &c. STEEVENS.

Ibid. You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant;

But yet you draw not iron,] I learn from Edward Fenton's Certaine Secret Wonders of Nature, bl. 1. 1569, that---" there is now a dayes a kind of adamant which draweth unto it fleshe, and the same so strongly, that it hath power to knit and tie together, two mouthes of contrary persons, and drawe the heart of a man out of his bodie without offendyng any parte of him." STEEVENS.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

P. 113. No, not to be so odd] I should read, nor to be so odd, &c. M. MASON.
P. 139. With candle-wasters;] This is a very difficult passage, and hath not, I

think, been satisfactorily cleared up. The explanation I shall offer, will give, I be lieve, as little satisfaction; but I will, however, venture. Candle-wasters is a term of contempt for scholars: thus Jonson, in Cynthia's Revels, Act III. sc. ii: "--spoiled by a whoreson book-worm, a candle-waster." The sense then, which I would assign to Shakespeare, is this: "If such a one will patch grief with proverbs,--case or cover the wounds of his grief with proverbial sayi gs-make misfortune drunk with candle-wasters,---stupify misfortune, or render himself insensible to the strokes of it, by the conversation or lucrubrations of scholars; the production of the lamp, but not fitted to human nature." Patch, in the sense of mending a defect or breach, occurs in Hamlet:

"O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
"Should patch a wall, to expel the winter's flaw."

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.

WHALLEY.

P. 184. And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop.] The conceit seems to be very forced and remote, however it be understood. The notion is not that the hoop wears colours, but that the colours are worn as a tumbler carries his hoop, hanging on one shoulder and falling under the opposite arm. JOHNSON.

It was once a mark of gallantry to wear a lady's colours. So, in Cynthia's Revels, by Ben Jonson: "dispatches his lacquey to her chamber early, to know what her colours are for the day, with purpose to apply his wear that day accordingly," &c. I am informed by a lady who remembers morris-dancing, that the character who tumbled, always carried his hoop dressed out with ribbands, and in the position described by Dr. Johnson. STEEVENS.

P. 205. Still climbing trees in the Hesperides.] Our author had heard or read of "the gardens of the Hesperides," and seems to have thought that the latter word was the name of the garden in which the golden apples were kept; as we say, the gardens of the Tuilleries, &c. MALONE.

P. 218. Veal, quoth the Dutchman.] I suppose, by veal, she means well, sounded as foreigners usually pronounce that word; and introduced merely for the sake of the subsequent question. MALONE.

TAMING OF THE SHREW.

P. 249. I must go fetch the thirdborough.] The office of Thirdborough is the same with that of Constable, except in places where there are both, in which case the former is little more than the constable's assistant. The etymology of the word is uncertain. RITSON.

P. 250. Brach Merriman, the poor cur is emboss'd.] Perhaps we might read baths Merriman, which is, I believe, the common practice of hunismen; but the present reading may stand. JOHNSON.

Can any thing be more evident than that imboss'd means swelled in the knees, and that we ought to read bathe? What has the imbossing of a deer to do with that of a hound? Imbossed sores' occur in As you like it; and in King Henry IV. the prince calls Falstaff imboss'd rascal!

P. 255. Old John Naps of Greece] Read, old John Naps o' th' Green.

P. 257. Or so devote to Aristotle's checks.] learning, and mentions by name six of the be a mis-print, made by some copyist or firms it.

RITSON.

BLACKSTONE.

Tranio is here descanting on academical seven liberal sciences. I suspect this to compositor, for ethicks. The sense conBLACKSTONE.

P. 299. To pass assurance---] means to make a conveyance or deed. Deeds are by lay-writers called, The common assurances of the realm," because thereby each man's property is assured to him. So in a subsequent scene of this act: "they are busied about a counterfeit assurance." MALONE

VOL. IV.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

P. 29. and great seas have dried.] So holy writ, &c. alludes to Daniel's judging, when, a young youth,' the two elders in the story of Susannah. Great floods, &c. when Moses smote the rock in Horeb, Exod. xvii. Great seas have dried, &c. refers to the children of Israel passing the Red sea, when miracles had been denied, or not hearkened to, by Pharaoh. H. WHITE.

P.36.

-good alone

Is good, without a name; vileness is so.] Shakespeare may mean that external circumstances have no power over the real nature of things. Good alone (by itself) without a name (without the addition of tities) is good. Vileness is so (is itself.) Either of them is what its name implies.

"Let's write good angel on the devil's horn,
"Tis not the devil's crest." Mea. for Mea.

STEEVENS.

Good is good, independent on any worldly distinction or title: so vileness is vile, in whatever state it may appear. MALONE.

P. 103.

TWELFTH NIGHT.

madonna,] Ital. mistress, dame. So, La maddona, by way of pre-emlnence, the Blessed Virgin.

STEEVENS.

P. 104. a most weak pia mater] The pia mater is the membrane that immediate. ly covers the substance of the brain. STEEVENS.

P. 125. Day-light and champain discovers not more :] i. e. broad day and an open country cannot make things plainer. WARBURTON.

P 130. Then westward hoe :] This is the name of a comedy by T. Decker, 1607. He was assisted in it by Webster, and it was acted with great success by the children of Paul's, on whom Shakespeare has bestowed such notice in Hamiet, that we may be sure they were rivals to the company patronized by himself. STEEVENS.

P. 132. Look, where the youngest wren of nine comes,] The women's parts were then acted by boys, sometimes so low in stature, that there was occasion to obviate the impropriety by such kind of oblique apologies. WARBURTON.

The wren generally lays nine or ten eggs at a time, and the last hatched of all birds are usually the smallest and weakest of the whole brood. STEEVENS.

P. 137. Play at cherry-pit-] Cherry-pi! is pitching cherry-stones into a little hole. Nash, speaking of the paint on ladies' faces, says: "You may play at cherrypit in their cheeks." STEEVENS.

P. 138. More matter for a May morning. It was usual on the first of May to exhibit metrical interludes of the comic kind, as well as the morris-dance.

STEEVENS.

P. 154. Like to the Egyptian thief, at point of death, Kill what I love ;] In this simile, a particular story is presupposed, which ought to be known to show the justness and propriety of the comparison. It was taken from Heliodorus's Ethiopics, to which our author was indebted for the allusion. This Egyptian thief" was Thyamis, who was a native of Memphis, and at the head of a band of robbers. Theagenes and Chariclea falling into their hands, Thyamis fell desperately in love with the lady, and would have married her. Soon after, a stronger body of robbers coming down upon Thyamis's party, he was in such fears for his mistress, that he had her shut into a cave with his treasure. It was customary with those barbarians, when they despaired of their own safety, first to make away with those whom they held dear, and desired for companions in the next life. Thyamis, therefore, benetted round with his enemies, raging with love, jealousy, and anger, went to his cave; and calling aloud in the Egyptian tongue, so soon as he heard himself answered towards the cave's mouth by a Gre cian, making to the person by the direction of her voice, he caught her by the hair with his left hand, and (supposing her to be Chariclea) with his right hand plunged his sword into her breast. THEOBALD.

P. 159. ---you must allow vox.] The Clown, we may presume, had begun to read the letter in a very loud tone, and probably with extravagant gesticulation. Being reprimanded by his mistress, he justifies himself by saying, "If you would have it read in character, as such a mad epistle ought to be read, you must permit me to assume a frantic tone." MALONE.

WINTER'S TALE.

P. 174. You were pretty lordlings then.] Read lordings.

P. 176. We must be neat ;] Leontes, seeing his son's nose smutch'd, cries, we must be neat; then recollecting that neat is the ancient term for horned cattle, he says, not neat, but cleanly. JOHNSON.

P. 177. Affection! thy intention stabs the centre] Affection, I believe, signifies imegination. Thus, in the Merchant of Venice:

-affection,

"Mistress of passion, sways it," &c.

66

i. e. imagination governs our passions. Intention is, as Mr. Locke expresses it, “ when the mind with great earnestness, and of choice, fixes its view on any idea, considers it on every side, and will not be called off by the ordinary solicitations of other ideas." This vehemence of the mind seems to be what affects Leontes so deeply, or in Shakespeare's language,---stabs him to the centre. STEEVENS.

P. 188. A sad tale's best for winter :] Hence, I suppose, the title of the play. TYRWHITT.

P. 217. My traffic is sheets ;] Autolycus means, that his practice was to steal sheets and large pieces of linen, leaving the smaller pieces for the kites to build with.

M. MASON. When the good women, in solitary cottages near the woods where kites build, miss any of their lesser linen, as it hangs to dry on the hedge in spring, they con clude that the kite has been marauding for a lining to her nest; and there adventurous boys often find it employed for that purpose. HOLT WHITE.

P. 223. Then make your garden rich in gilly flowers,] There is some further conceit relative to gilly flowers than has yet been discovered. The old copy, (in both instances where this word occurs,) reads---Gilly'vors, a term still used by low people in Sussex, to denote a harlot. I suppose gill-flirt to be derived, or rather corrupted, from gy-flower or carnation, which, though beautiful in its appearance, is apt, in the gardener's phrase, to run from its colours, and change as often as a licentious female. STEEVENS.

P. 226. the sleeve-hand, and the work about the square on't.] The word sleevehands occurs in Leland's Collectanea, 1770: “A surcoat [of crimson velvet] furred with mynever pure, the collar, skirts, and sleeve-hands garnished with ribbons of gold." So, in Cotgrave's Dict. "Poignet de la chemise" is Englished "the wristband, or gathering at the sleeve-hand of a shirt." I conceive, that the "work about the square on't," signifies the work or embroidery about the bosom part of a shift, which might then have been of a square form, or might have a square tucker, as Anne Bolen and Jane Seymour have in Houbraken's engravings of the heads of illustrious persons. TOLLET.

P. 233. Where no priest shovels-in dust.] This part of the priest's office might be remembered in Shakespeare's time: it was not left off till the reign of Edward VI. That is---in pronouncing the words "earth to earth," &c.

MACBETH.

FARMER.
HENLEY.

P. 279. The Prince of Cumberland.] The crown of Scotland was originally not hereditary. When a successor was declared in the life-time of a king, (as was often the case,) the title of Prince of Cumberland was immediately bestowed on him as the mark of his designation. Cumberland was at that time held by Scotland of the crown of England, as a fief. STEEVENS.

P. 282.--the blanket of the dark,] Blanket was perhaps suggested to our poet by the coarse woollen curtain of his own theatre, through which probably, while the house was yet but half-lighted, he had himself often peeped.--In King Henry VI. P. III. we have-night's coverture." MALONE.

P. 285. And falls on the other.] The general image, though confusedly expressed, relates to a horse, who, overleaping himself, falls, and his rider under him. Macbeth, as I apprehend, is meant for the rider, his intent for his horse, and his ambition for his spur; but, unluckily, as the words are arranged, the spur is said to over-leap itself. Such hazardous things are long-drawn metaphors in the hands of careless writers.

STEEVENS.

P. 295. New hatch'd to the woeful time.] Prophecying is what is new-hatch'd, and in the metaphor holds the place of the egg. The events are the fruit of such hatching.

P. 298.

-the near in blood,

STEEVENS.

The nearer bloody.] Meaning, that he suspected Macbeth to be the murderer; for he was the nearest in blood to the two princes, being the cousin-german of DunSTEEVENS.

can.

P. 300.-Colmes-kill;] Or Colm-kill, is the famous lona, one of the western isles, which Dr. Johnson visited, and describes in his Tour. STEEVENS.