ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

་

P. 25. 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.

P. 32.

good alone

H. WHITE,

Is good, without a name; vileness is so.] Shakspeare 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 titles) is good. Vileness is so (is itself.) Either of them is what its name implies.

STE.

"Let's write good angel on the devil's horn, ""Tis not the devil's crest" Mea. for Mea. Good is good, independent on any worldly distinction or title so vileness is vile, in whatever state it may appear.

TWELFTH NIGHT.

MAL.

P. 15. madonna,] Ital. mistress, dame. So, La maddona, by way of pre-eminence, the Blessed Virgin.

STE.

P. 16. a most weak pia mater] The pia mater is the membrane that immediately covers the substance of the brain. STE.

i. e.

P. 37. Day-light and champian discovers not more :3 broad day and an open country cannot make things plainer. WARB.

P. 42. Then westward hoc :] 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 Shakspeare has bestowed such notice in Hamlet, that we may be sure they were rivals to the company patronized by himself. STE.

P. 44. 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. WARB.

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.

STE.

P. 49. Play at cherry-pit-] Cherry-pit is pitching cherrystones into a little hole. Nash, speaking of the paint on ladies' faces, says: "You may play at cherry-pit in their cheeks."

STE.

P. 50. 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.

P. 66. Like to the Egyptian thief, at point of death,

STE.

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 Æthiopics, 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 de sperately 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 Grecian, 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. THEO.

P. 71. 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.”

WINTER'S TALE.

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

MAL.

P. 10. 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.

Јон.

P. 11. Affection! thy intention stabs the center] Affection, I believe, signifies imagination. Thus, in the Merchant of Venice: -affection,

66

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

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 Shakspeare's language,—stabs him to the center.

STE.

P. 22. A sad tale's best for winter ] Hence, I suppose, the title of the play.

TYRWHITT.

P. 51. 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 conclude that the kite has. been marauding for a lining to her nest; and there adventuturous boys often find it employed for that purpose.

HOLT WHITE.

P. 57. Then make your garden rich in gillyflowers,] There is some further conceit relative to gillyflowers 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 gilly-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.

STE..

P. 60. -the sleeve-hand, and the work about the square on't.] The word sleeve-hands 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. 67. Where no priest shovels-in dust.] This part of the priest's office might be remembered in Shakspeare's time it was not left off till the reign of Edward VI. FARMER.

That is-in pronouncing the words "earth to earth," &c. HENLEY.

MACBETH.

P. 17. 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.

STE.

P. 20. -the blanket of the dark,] Blanket was perhaps sug gested 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."

MAL.

P. 23. 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.

STE.

P. 33. 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. 36. -the near in blood,

STE.

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 Duncan.

STE.

P. 38. Colmes-kill;] Or Colm-kill, is the famous Iona, one of the western isles, which Dr. Johnson visited, and describes in his Tour.

STE.

It is now called Icolmkill. Kill, in the Erse language, signifies a burying-place.

MAL.

P. 47. Than pity for mischance !] "I have more cause to accuse him of unkindness for his absence, than to pity him for any accident or mischance that may have occasioned it."

DOUCE

P. 60. when we hold rumour] Hold means, in this place, to believe, as we say, I hold such a thing to be true, i. e. I take it, I believe it to be so.

When we are led by our fears to believe every rumour of danger we hear, yet are not conscious to ourselves of any crime for which we should be disturbed with those fears.

STE.

VOL. IV.

KING JOHN.

P. 12. Knight, knight, good mother-Basilisco-like :] Faulconbridge's words here carry a concealed piece of satire on a stupid drama of that age, printed in 1509, and called Soliman and Perseda. In this piece there is a character of a bragging cowardly knight, called Basilisco. His pretension to valour is so blown, and seen through, that Piston, a buffoon-servant in the play, jumps upon his back, and will not disengage him, till he makes Basilisco swear upon his dudgeon dagger to the contents, and in the terms he dictates to him; as, for instance : "Bas. O, I swear, I swear.

"Pist. By the contents of this blade,"Bas. By the contents of this blade,— "Pist. I, the aforesaid Basilisco,

"Bas. I, the aforesaid Basilisco,-knight, good fellow, knight. "Pist. Knave, good fellow, knave, knave.'

Philip, when his mother calls him knave, throws off that reproach by humorously laying claim to his new dignity of knighthood. THEOBALD

P. 24. Do like the mutines of Jerusalem,] The mutines are the mutineers, the seditious.

Our author had probably read the following passages in A compendious and most marvellous History of the latter Times of the Jewes Common-Weale, &c. Written in Hebrew, by Joseph Ben Gorion,-translated into English, by Peter Morwyn : "The same yeere the civil warres grew and increased in Jerusalem; for the citizens slew one another without any truce, rest, or quietnesse.-The people were divided into three parties; whereof the first and best followed Anani, the high-priest; another part followed seditious Jehochanan; the third most cruel Schimeon.-Anani, being a perfect godly man, and seeing the common-weale of Jerusalem governed by the seditious, gave over his third part, that stacke to him, to Eliasar, his sonne. Eliasar with his companie took the Temple, and the courts about it; appointing of his men, some to be spyes, some to keepe watche and warde.-But Jehochanan tooke the market-place and streetes, the lower part of the citie. Then Schimeon, the Jerosolimite, tooke the highest part of the towne, wherefore his men annoyed Jehochanan's parte sore with slings and crossebowes. Between these three there was also most cruel battailes in Jerusalem for the space of four daies.

"Titus' campe was about sixe furlongs from the towne. The next morrow they of the towne seeing Titus to be encamped upon the mount Olivet, the captaines of the seditious