the beggarly thanks. Come sing; and you that will not, hold your tongues. Ami. Well, I'll end the song.-Sirs, cover the while; the duke will drink under this tree:-he hath been all this day to look you. Jay. And I have been all this day to avoid him. He is too dispútable for my company: I think of as many matters as he; but I give heaven thanks, and make no boast of them. Come, warble, come. SONG. Who doth ambition shun, [All together here] And loves to live i' the sun, 9 Seeking the food he eats, And pleas'd with what he gets, Come hither, come hither, come hither; Here shall he see No enemy, But winter and rough weather. Jaq. I'll give you a verse to this note, that I made yesterday in despite of my invention. Ami. And I'll sing it. Jaq. Thus it goes: 8 If it do come to pass, That any man turn ass, Leaving his wealth and ease, Gross fools as he, An if he will come to Ami. dispútable-] For disputatious. Malone. 9 — to live i' the sun,] Modern editions, to lie. Johnson. To live i' the sun, is to labour and "sweat in the eye of Phabus," or, vitam agere sub dio; for by lying in the sun, how could they get the food they eat? Tollet. 1- - ducdame;] For ducdàme, Sir Thomas Hanmer, very acutely and judiciously, reads duc ad me, that is, bring him to me. Johnson. If duc ad me were right, Amiens would not have asked its meaning, and been put off with "a Greek invocation." It is evidently a word coined for the nonce. We have here, as Butler says, “One for sense, and one for rhyme." Indeed we must have Ami. What 's that ducdàme? Jaq. 'Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle. I'll go sleep if I can; if I cannot, I'll rail against all the first-born of Egypt.2 Ami. And I'll go seek the duke; his banquet is prepar'd. [Exeunt severally. a double rhyme; or this stanza cannot well be sung to the same tune with the former. I read thus: "Ducdame, Ducdàme, Ducdàme, "Gross fools as he, "An' if he will come to Ami." That is, to Amiens. Jaques did not mean to ridicule himself. Farmer. Duc ad me has hitherto been received as an illusion to the burthen of Amiens's song Come hither, come hither, come hither. That Amiens, who is a courtier, should not understand Latin, or be persuaded it was Greek, is no great matter for wonder. An anonymous correspondent proposes to read-Huc ad me. In confirmation of the old reading, however, Dr. Farmer observes to me, that, being at a house not far from Cambridge, when news was brought that the hen-roost was robbed, a facetious old squire who was present, immediately sung the following stanza, which has an odd coincidence with the ditty of Jaques : "Dame, what makes your ducks to die? "duck, duck, duck. "Dame, what makes your chicks to cry? I have placed Dr. Farmer's emendation in the text. Ducdame is a trisyllable. Steevens. Gross fools as, &c.] See Hor. Serm. L. II, sat. iii : 2 "Aut alio mentis morbo calet: Huc proprius me, the first-born of Egypt.] A proverbial expression for highborn persons. Johnson. The phrase is scriptural, as well as proverbial. So, in Exodus, xii, 29: "And the Lord smote all the first-born in Egypt." Steevens. SCENE VI. The same. Enter ORLANDO and ADAM. Adam. Dear master, I can go no further: O, I die for food! Here lie I down, and measure out my grave. Farewel, kind master. Orl. Why, how now, Adam! no greater heart in thee? Live a little; comfort a little; cheer thyself a little: If this uncouth forest yield any thing savage, I will either be food for it, or bring it for food to thee. Thy conceit is nearer death than thy powers. For my sake, be comfortable; hold death awhile at the arm's end: I will here be with thee presently; and if I bring thee not something to eat, I'll give thee leave to die: but if thou diest before I come, thou art a mocker of my labour. Well said! thou look'st cheerly: and I'll be with thee quickly. Yet thou liest in the bleak air: Come, I will bear thee to some shelter; and thou shalt not die for lack of a dinner, if there live any thing in this desert. Cheerly, good Adam! [Exeunt. A table set out. SCENE VII. The same. Enter Duke senior, AMIENS, Lords, and Others. Duke S. I think he be transform'd into a beast; For I can no where find him like a man. 1 Lord. My lord, he is but even now gone hence; Here was he merry, hearing of a song. 4 Duke S. If he, compact of jars, grow musical, 3 Here lie I down, and measure out my grave.] So, in Romeo and Juliet: 4 66 fall upon the ground, as I do now, "Taking the measure of an unmade grave." Steevens. compact of jars,] i e. made up of discords. In The Comedy of Errors, we have "compact of credit," for made up of credulity. Again, in Woman is a Weathercock, 1612: 66 like gilded tombs Compacted of jet pillars.” The same expression occurs also in Tamburlane, 1590: "Compact of rapine, piracy, and spoil." Steevens. We shall have shortly discord in the spheres:- 1 Lord. He saves my labour by his own approach. Duke S. Why, how now, monsieur! what a life is this, That your poor friends must woo your company? What! you look merrily. Jaq. A fool, a fool! -I met a fool i' the forest, A motley fool;-a miserable world!5. As I do live by food, I met a fool; Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun, And looking on it with lack-lustre eye, Thus may we see, quoth he, how the world wags: 5 A motley fool; ';—a miserable world!] What! because he met a motle fool, was it therefore a miserable world? This is sadly blundered; we should read: a miserable varlet. His head is altogether running on this fool, both before and after these words, and here he calls him a miserable varlet, notwithstanding he railed on lady Fortune in good terms, &c. Nor is the change we may make, so great as appears at first sight. Warburton. I see no need of changing world to varlet, nor, if a change were necessary, can I guess how it should certainly be known that varlet is the true word. A miserable world is a parenthetical exclamation, frequent among melancholy men, and natural to Jaques at the sight of a fool, or at the hearing of reflections on the fragility of life. Johnson. 6 Call me not fool, till heaven hath sent me fortune: Fortuna favat fatuis, is, as Mr. Upton observes, the saying here alluded to; or, as in Publius Syrus: "Fortuna, nimium quem fovet, stultum facit.” So, in the Prologue to The Alchemist: "Fortune, that favours fooles, these two short houres "We wish away." Again, in Every Man out of his Humour, Act I, sc. iii: "Sog. Why, who am I, sir? "Mac. One of those that fortune favours. "Car. The periphrasis of a foole." Reed. 'Tis but an hour ago, since it was nine; Jaq. O worthy fool!-One that hath been a courtier; And says, if ladies be but young, and fair, They have the gift to know it: and in his brain,— Which is as dry as the remainder bisket After a voyage, he hath strange places cramm'd In mangled forms:-O, that I were a fool! Duke S. Thou shalt have one. Jaq. It is my only suit; Provided, that you weed your better judgments Of all opinion that grows rank in them, That I am wise. I must have liberty Withal, as large a charter as the wind, 9 7 Motley's the only wear.] It would have been unnecessary to repeat that a motley, or parti-coloured coat, was anciently the dress of a fool, had not the editor of Ben Jonson's works been mistaken in his comment on the 53d Epigram: where (out of motie)) 's he "Could save that line to dedicate to thee?" Motley, , says Mr. Whalley, is the man who out of any odd mixture, or old scraps, could save, &c. whereas it means only, Who but a fool, i. e. one in a suit of motley, &c. The observation-Motley's the only wear, might have been sug gested to Shakspeare by the following line in the 4th Satire of Donne: "Your only wearing is your grogaram." Steevens. 8 only suit;] Suit means petition, I believe, not dress. Johnson. The poet meant a quibble. So, Act V: "Not out of your apparel, but out of your suit." Steevens. |