:

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

MAL.

P. 45. 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.

STE.

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.

VOL. II.

MERCHANT OF VENICE.

P. 13. And I am prest unto it :] Prest may not here signify impress'd, as into military service, but ready, Pret, Fr.

STE.

P. 14. the Neapolitan prince.] The Neapolitans in the time of Shakspeare, were eminently skilled in all that belongs to horsemanship; nor have they, even now, forfeited their title to the same praise. STE.

P. 37. -embraced heaviness] We say of a man now, that he hugs his sorrows,” and why might not Antonio embrace heaviness?

JOH.

P. 55. It is much, that the Moor should be more, &c.] Shakspeare, 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,

P. 71.

"Till More be there again."

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 Shakspeare 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 fiddlers 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 sculpture 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."

AS YOU LIKE IT.

STE.

P. 33. 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:

"Why, every fault's condemn'd, ere it be done." In twenty other instances, we find the same adverb introductorily used.

STE.

P. 74. 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. WARE. I read thus:

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

Or thus, with less alteration :

As those that fear, they hope, and now they fear. Јон. I would read:

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

I have little doubt but it should run thus:

MUSGRAVE.

As those who fearing hope, and hoping fear. 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.

HENLEY.

MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

P. 9. by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen.] Shaks peare had forgot that Theseus performed his exploits before the Trojan war, and consequently long before the death of Dido.

STE.

The

P. 19. And never, since the middle summer's spring.] middle summer's spring, is, I apprehend, the season when trees put forth their second, or, as they are frequently 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. 20. 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 be. guile a winter's evening, at the season of Christmas, which, it appears from the next line, was particularly in our author's contemplation.

MAL.

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. WARE.

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

P. 20. Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, &c.] The repeated adverb therefore, 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 Shakspeare; 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 Christmas, deoreased, was the subject of complaint to many of our ludicrous writers.

Ibid.

STE.

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.

STE.

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.

MAL.

P. 24. 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. STE.

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. I. 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." STE.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

P.35. No, not to be so odd] I should read, nor to be so odd,&c. M. MASON.

:

P.61. 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 believe, as little satisfaction; but I will, however, venture it. 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 Shakspeare, is this: "If such a one will patch grief with proverbs, case or cover the wounds of his grief with proverbial sayings ;—make misfortune drunk with candle-wasters,—stupify misfortune, or render himself insensible to the strokes of it, by the conversation or lucubrations 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. 30. And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop.] The conceit seems to be very forced and remote, however it be under, stood. 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.

Јон.

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

P. 51. 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. MAL.

P. 64. 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. MALT

VOL. III.

TAMING OF THE SHREW.

P. 5. 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. 10. Brach Merriman, the poor cur is emboss'd.] Perhaps we might read bathe Merriman, which is, I believe, the common practice of huntsmen; but the present reading may stand.

Јон.

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 !' RITSON.

P.15. Old John Naps of Greece] Read,old John Naps o'th'Green. BLACKSTONE.

P. 17. Or so devote to Aristotle's checks.] Tranio is here descanting on academical learning, and mentions by name six of the seven liberal sciences. I suspect this to be a mis-print, made by some copyist or compositor, for ethicks. The sense confirms it.

BLACKSTONE.

P. 59. To pass assurance-] means to make a conveyance or deed. Deeds are by law-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."

MAL.