Your queen: and I are devils: Yet, go on; The offences we have made you do, we'll answer ; If you first sinn'd with us, and that with us You did continue fault, and that you slipp'd not With any but with us. LEON. Is he won yet? HER. What? have I twice said well? when was't before? I pr'ythee, tell me : Cram us with praise, and make us As fat as tame things: One good deed, dying tongueless, Slaughters a thousand, waiting upon that. Grace or Heaven help me!-Do not argue in that manner; do not draw any conclusion or inference from your, and your friend's having, since those days of childhood and innocence, become acquainted with your Queen and me; for, as you have said that in the period between childhood and the present time temptations have been born to you, and as in that interval you have become acquainted with us, the inference or insinuation would be strong against us, as your corrupters, and, "by that kind of chase," your Queen and I would be devils. MALONE. 7 With spur we heat an acre. But to the goal;] Thus this passage has been always printed; whence it appears, that the editors did not take the poet's conceit. They imagined that, "But to the goal," meant," but to come to the purpose; " but the sense is different, and plain enough when the line is pointed "With spur we heat an acre, but to the goal." i. e. good usage will win us to any thing; but, with ill, we stop short, even there where both our interest and our inclination would otherwise have carried us. WARBURTON. My last good was, to entreat his stay: What was my first? it has an elder sister, Or I mistake you: O, would her name were Grace! But once before I spoke to the purpose: When? Nay, let me have't; I long. LEON. Why, that was when Three crabbed months had sour'd themselves to death, Ere I could make thee open thy white hand, utter, I am yours for ever. HER. It is Grace, indeed 9. I have followed the old copy, the pointing of which appears to afford as apt a meaning as that produced by the change recommended by Dr. Warburton. STEEVENS. 8 And CLAP thyself my love ;] She opened her hand, to clap the palm of it into his, as people do when they confirm a bargain. Hence the phrase" to clap up a bargain,” i. e. make one with no other ceremony than the junction of hands. So, in Ram-Alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611 : Speak, widow, is't a match? "Shall we clap it up? Again, in A Trick to catch the Old One, 1618: 66 Come, clap hands, a match." Again, in King Henry V.: 66 and so clap hands, and a bargain." STEEVENS, This was a regular part of the ceremony of troth-plighting, to which Shakspeare often alludes. So, in Measure for Measure: "This is the hand, which with a vow'd contráct Young princes, close your hands. "Aust. And your lips too, for I am well assur'd, "That I did so, when I was first assur'd." So, also, in No Wit Like a Woman's, a comedy, by Middleton, 1657: "There these young lovers shall clap hands together." I should not have given so many instances of this custom, but that I know Mr. Pope's reading-" And clepe thyself my love," has many favourers. The old copy has-A clap, &c. The correction was made by the editor of the second folio. MALONE. Why, lo you now, I have spoke to the purpose twice : The one for ever earn'd a royal husband; The other, for some while a friend. LEON. [Giving her hand to POLIXENES. To mingle friendship far, is mingling bloods. MAM. LEON. Ay, my good lord. I' fecks? 9 It is GRACE, indeed!] Referring to what she had just said"O, would her name were Grace! MALONE. from BOUNTY, fertile bosom,] I suppose that a letter dropped out at the press, and would read-from bounty's fertile bosom. MALONE. By fertile bosom, I suppose, is meant a bosom like that of the earth, which yields a spontaneous produce. In the same strain is the address of Timon of Athens: "Thou common mother, thou, "Teems and feeds all!" STEEVENS. 2 The MORT O' the deer;] A lesson upon the horn at the death of the deer. THEOBALD. So, in Greene's Card of Fancy, 1608: "He that bloweth the mort before the death of the buck, may very well miss of his fees." Again, in the oldest copy of Chevy Chace: "The blewe a mort uppone the bent." STEEVENS. 3 I'fecks? A supposed corruption of-in faith. Our present vulgar pronounce it-fegs. STEEVENS. Why, that's my bawcock. What, hast smutch'd thy nose ? They say, it's a copy out of mine. Come, captain, [Observing POLIXENES and HERmione. Upon his palm ?-How now, you wanton calf? Art thou my calf? MAM. Yes, if you will, my lord. LEON. Thou want'st a rough pash, and the shoots that I have 4 Why, that's my BAWCOCK.] Perhaps from beau and coq. It is still said in vulgar language that such a one is a jolly cock, a cock of the game. The word has already occurred in TwelfthNight, and is one of the titles by which Pistol speaks of King Henry the Fifth. STEEVENS. 5 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. So, in Drayton's Polyolbion, Song 3: "His large provision there of flesh, of fowl, of neat.” STEEVENS. 6 - Still virginalling-] Still playing with her fingers, as a girl playing on the virginals. JOHNSON. A virginal, as I am informed, is a very small kind of spinnet. Queen Elizabeth's virginal-book is yet in being, and many of the lessons in it have proved so difficult, as to baffle our most expert players on the harpsichord. So, in Decker's Satiromastix, or the Untrussing of the humorous Poet, 1602: "When we have husbands, we play upon them like virginal jacks, they must rise and fall to our humours, else they'll never get any good strains of musick out of one of us." Again, in Ram-Alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611: "Where be these rascals that skip up and down A virginal was strung like a spinnet, and shaped like a piano forte. MALONE. 7 Thou want'st a rough PASH, and the SHOOTS that I have,] Pash, (says Sir T. Hanmer,) is kiss. Paz. Spanish, i. e. "thou 8 To be full like me :-yet, they say, we are That will say any thing: But were they false want'st a mouth made rough by a beard, to kiss with." Shoots are branches, i. e. horns. Leontes is alluding to the ensigns of cuckoldom. A mad-brained boy, is, however, called a mad pash in Cheshire. STEEVENS. Thou want'st a rough pash, and the shoots that I have, in connection with the context, signifies-" to make thee a calf thou must have the tuft on thy forehead and the young horns that shoot up in it, as I have." Leontes asks the Prince: How now, you wanton calf! "Art thou my calf? 66 "Mam. Yes, if you will, my lord. "Leon. Thou want'st a rough pash, and the shoots that I have, "To be full like me.' To pash signifies to push or dash against, and frequently occurs in old writers. Thus, Drayton : "They either poles their heads together pasht." Again, in How to choose a Good Wife from a Bad, 1602, 4to.: learn pash and knock, and beat and mall, "Cleave pates and caputs." When in Cheshire a pash is used for a mad-brained boy, it is designed to characterize him from the wantonness of a calf that blunders on, and runs his head against any thing. HENLEY. In Troilus and Cressida, the verb pash also occurs: - waving his beam Upon the pashed corses of the kings And again, (as Mr. Henley on another occasion observes,) in The Virgin Martyr: when the battering ram "Were fetching his career backward, to pash "Me with his horns to pieces." STEEVENS. I have lately learned that pash in Scotland signifies a head. The old reading therefore may stand. Many words, that are now used only in that country, were perhaps once common to the whole island of Great Britain, or at least to the northern part of England. The meaning, therefore, of the present passage, I suppose, is this: "You tell me, (says Leontes to his son,) that you are like me; that you are my calf. I am the horned bull: thou wantest the rough head and the horns of that animal, completely to resemble your father." MALONE. 8 To be FULL like me :] Full is here, as in other places, used by our author, adverbially:-to be entirely like me. MALONE. |