constancy put to sea, that their business might be every thing, and their intent every where;1 for that 's it, that always makes a good voyage of nothing.Farewel. [Exit Clown. Duke. Let all the rest give place. [Exeunt CURIO and Attendants. Get thee to yon' same sovereign cruelty: The parts that fortune hath bestow'd upon her, 9 a very opal!] A precious stone of almost all colours. So, Milton, describing the walls of heaven: "With opal tow'rs, and battlements adorn'd." Pope. The opal is a gem which varies its appearance as it is viewed in different lights. So, in The Muses' Elizium, by Drayton : "With opals more than any one "We'll deck thine altar fuller, "For that of every precious stone "It doth retain some colour." "In the opal, (says P. Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History, B. XXXVII, c. 6,) you shall see the burning fire of the carbuncle or rubbie, the glorious purple of the amethyst, the green sea of the emeraud, and all glittering together mixed after an incredible manner." Steevens. 1 that their business might be every thing, and their intent every where;] Both the preservation of the antithesis, and the recovery of the sense, require we should read,-and their intent no where. Because a man who suffers himself to run with every wind, and so makes his business every where, cannot be said to have any intent; for that word signifies a determination of the mind to something. Besides, the conclusion of making a good voyage of nothing, directs to this emendation. Warburton. An intent every where, is much the same as an intent no where, as it hath no one particular place more in view than another. Heath, The present reading is preferable to Warburton's amendment. We cannot accuse a man of inconstancy who has no intents at all, though we may the man whose intents are every where; that is, are continually varying. M. Mason. 2 But 'tis that miracle, and queen of gems, That nature pranks her in,] What is that miracle, and queen Vio. But, if she cannot love you, sir? Vio. 'Sooth, but you must. Can bide the beating of so strong a passion Besides, what is of gems? we are not told in this reading. meant by nature pranking her in a miracle?-We should read: But 'tis that miracle, and queen of gems, That nature pranks, her mind, i. e. what attracts my soul, is not her fortune, but her mind, that miracle and queen of gems that nature pranks, i, e. sets out, adorns. Warburton. The miracle and queen of gems is her beauty, which the commentator might have found without so emphatical an inquiry. As to her mind, he that should be captious would say, that though it may be formed by nature, it must be pranked by education Shakspeare does not say that nature pranks her in a miracle, but in the miracle of gems that is, in a gem, miraculously beautiful. Johnson. To prank is to deck out, to adorn. See Lye's Etymologicon. "Most goddess-like, prank'd up-." Steevens. Heath 3 I cannot be so answer'd.] The folio reads-It cannot be, &c. The correction by Sir Thomas Hanmer. Steevens. 4 Alas, their love may be call'd appetite, &c. That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt;] The duke has changed his opinion of women very suddenly. It was but a few minutes before that he said they had more constancy in love than men. M. Mason. Mr. Mason would read-suffers; but there is no need of change. Suffer is governed by women, implied under the words, "their love." The love of women, &c. who suffer. Malone. 5 - as hungry as the sea,] So, in Coriolanus: And can digest as much: make no compare Vio. Ay, but I know, Duke. What dost thou know? Vio. Too well what love women to men may owe: In faith, they are as true of heart as we. My father had a daughter lov'd a man, Duke. And what's her history? Viɔ. A blank, my lord: She never told her love, She sat like patience on a monument, Smiling at grief. 6 speare: Was not this love indeed? like a worm i' the bud,] So, in the 5th Sonnet of Shak "Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, Again, in our author's Rape of Lucrece: Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud? Again, in King Richard II: "But now will canker sorrow eat my bud, Steevens. "And chase the native beauty from his cheek." Malone. she pin'd in thought:] Thought formerly signified melanboly. So, in Hamlet: 7 "Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." Again, in The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, 1562: "The cause of this her death was inward care and thought." Malone. Mr. Malone says, thought means melancholy. But why wrest from this word its plain and usual acception, and make Shakspeare guilty of tautology? for in the very next line he uses melancholy." Douce. 8 She sat like patience on a monument, Smiling at grief] Mr. Theobald supposes this might possibly be borrowed from Chaucer: "And her besidis wonder discreetlie "Dame pacience ysitting there I fonde "With facé pale, upon a hill of sonde." And adds: " If he was indebted, however, for the first rude draught, how amply has he repaid that debt, in heightening the picture! We men may say more, swear more: but indeed, How much does the green and yellow melancholy transcend the old bard's pale face; the monument his hill of sand."-I hope this critic does not imagine Shakspeare meant to give us a picture of the face of patience, by his green and yellow melancholy; because, he says, it transcends the pale face of patience given us by Chaucer. To throw patience into a fit of melancholy, would be indeed very extraordinary. The green and yellow then belonged not to patience, but to her who sat like patience. To give patience a pale face was proper: and had Shakspeare described her, he had done it as Chaucer did. But Shakspeare is speaking of a marble statue of patience; Chaucer of patience herself. And the two representations of her, are in quite different views. Our poet, speaking of a despairing lover, judiciously compares her to patience exercised on the death of friends and relations; which affords him the beautiful picture of patience on a monument. The old bard, speaking of patience herself directly, and not by comparison, as judiciously draws her in that circumstance where she is most exercised, and has occasion for all her virtue;" that is to say, under the losses of shipwreck. And now we see why she is represented as sitting on a bill of sand, to design the scene to be the sea-shore. It is finely imagined; and one of the noble simplicities of that admirable poet. But the critic thought, in good earnest, that Chaucer's invention was so barren, and his imagination so beggarly, that he was not able to be at the charge of a monument for his goddess, but left her, like a stroller, sunning herself upon a heap of sand. Warburton. This celebrated image was not improbably first sketched out in the old play of Pericles. I think, Shakspeare's hand may be sometimes seen in the latter part of it, and there only: 66 thou [Marina] dost look "Like Patience, gazing on kings' graves, and smiling Extremity out of act." Farmer. 66 So, in our author's Rape of Lucrece: "So mild, that Patience seem'd to scorn his woes!' وو In the passage in the text, our author perhaps meant to personify GRIEF as well as PATIENCE; for we can scarcely understand" at grief" to mean "in grief," as no statuary could, I imagine, form a countenance in which smiles and grief should* be at once expressed. Shakspeare might have borrowed his imagery from some ancient monument on which these two figures were represented. The following lines in The Winter's Tale seem to countenance such an idea: "I doubt not then, but innocence shall make Again, in King Richard III: 66 ·like dumb statues, or unbreathing stones, "Star'd on each other, and look'd deadly pale." Our shows are more than will; for still we prove In King Lear, we again meet with two personages introduced in the text: "Patience and Sorrow strove, "Who should express her goodliest." Again, in Cymbeline, the same kind of imagery may be traced: nobly he yokes "A smiling with a sigs. "That Grief and Patience, rooted in him both, 66 I am aware that Homer's daxpuls, yeλacara, and a passage in Macbeth 86 My plenteous joys "Wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves may be urged against this interpretation; but it should be remembered, that in these instances it is joy which bursts into tears. There is no instance, I believe, either in poetry or real life, of sorrow smiling in anguish. In pain indeed the case is different: the suffering Indian having been known to smile in the midst of torture.-But, however this may be, the sculptor and the painter are confined to one point of time, and cannot exhibit successive movements in the countenance. Dr. Percy, however, thinks, that "grief may here mean grievance, in which sense it is used in Dr. Powel's History of Wales, quarto, p. 356: "Of the wrongs and griefs done to the noblemen at Stratolyn," &c. In the original, (printed at the end of Wynne's History of Wales, octavo,) it is gravamina, i. e. grievances. The word is often used by our author in the same sense, (So, in King Henry IV, P. I: 66 the king hath sent to know "The nature of your griefs;)" but never, I believe, in the singular number. In support of what has been suggested, the authority of Mr. Rowe may be adduced, for in his life of Shakspeare he has thus exhibited this passage: "She sat like Patience on a monument, In the observations now submitted to the reader, I had once some confidence, nor am I yet convinced that the objection founded on the particle at, and on the difficulty, if not impossibility, of a sculptor forming such a figure as these words are commonly supposed to describe, is without foundation. I have therefore retained my note; yet I must acknowledge, that the following lines in King Richard II, which have lately occurred to me, render my theory somewhat doubtful, though they do not overturn it: |