Bass. We should hold day with the If you would walk in absence of the su Por. Let me give light, but let me For a light wife doth make a heavy husl At any mark of his impatience to return, we be surprised the wonder would be, if h have waited till the morning. E. I We should hold day, &c.] If you would walk in the night, it would be day with us, a is on the other side of the globe. MALONE. 2 Let me give light, &c.] There is scard word with which Shakspeare so much del trifle as with light, in its various signification J Most of the old dramatic writers are guilty same quibble. So, Marston in his Insatiate 1613: "By this bright light that is deriv'd from t So, sir, you make me a very light crea Again, Middleton, in A Mad World my "-more lights-I call'd for light: here "two are light enough for a whole house." Again, in Springes for Woodcocks, a colle epigrams, 1606: "Lais of lighter metal is compos'd "Than hath her lightness till of late disc "For lighting where she light acceptance "Her fingers there prove lighter than her ST Bass. I thank you, madam: give welcome to my friend. This is the man, this is Anthonio, To whom I am so infinitely bound. Por. You should in all sense be much bound For, as I hear, he was much bound for you. house: It must appear in other ways than words, [Gratiano and Nerissa seem to talk apart. Gra By yonder moon, I swear, you do me wrong i In faith, I gave it to the judge's clerk: matter? Gra. About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring 3 --this breathing courtesy.] This verbal complimentary form, made up only of breath, i. e. words. So, in Timon of Athens, a senator replies. to Alcibiades, who had made a long speech:-1 "You breath in vain." MALONE. That she did give me; whose poesy was 4 You swore to me, when I did give it you, your vehement oaths, You 4 That she did give me; whose posy was, &c.] Poesy is the orthography of one quarto and of the folio copies, which seems to have been retained by modern editors with a view to make out the verse, but the verse is purposely incomplete, and of four feet only, me being redundant. CAPELL. If posy be the word, for the sake of metre, I suppose we should read That she did give to me;" &c. STEEVENS. Mr. Capell, possibly, imagined that the hobbling measure of the line was more expressive of the notion of contempt intended to be conveyed by this passage. E. 5 -like cutler's poetry;] Knives, as Sir John Hawkins observes, were formerly inscribed by means of aqua fortis, with short sentences in distich. In Decker's Satyromastix, Sir Edward Vaughan says, "You shall swear by Phoebus, who is your poet's good lord and master, that hereafter you will not "hire Horace to give you poesies for rings, or hand"kerchiefs, or knives, which you understand not." REED. You should have been respective, and have kept it. Gave it a judge's clerk !-but well I know, The clerk will ne'er wear hair on his face, that had it. Gra. He will, an if he live to be a man. 6 youth.7 A kind -have been respective.] Respective has the same meaning as respectful. See K. John Act 1. STEEVENS. I think it rather means regardful. J. M. MASON. Chapman, Marston, and other poets of that time, use this word in the same sense. [i. e. for respectful.] MALONE. Dr. Johnson in the Dictionary, as one class of the significations of this word, but obsolete, gives -Accurate; nice; prudent; cautious: I think the meaning here to be-" You ought to have had more "respect to the obligation you had laid yourself "under" which may accord with either of the above senses. 7 E. -a youth, A kind of boy; a little scrubbed boy, It is certain from the words of the context and the tenor of the story, that Gratiano does not here speak contemptuously of the judge's clerk, who was no other than Nerissa disguised in man's clothes. Hẹ only means to describe the person and appearance of this supposed youth, which he does by insinuating what seemed to be the precise time of his age: he represents A kind of boy; a little scrubbed boy, I could represents him as having the look of a young stripling, of a boy beginning to advance towards puberty. I am therefore of opinion, that the poet wrote: -a little stubbed boy. In many counties it is a common provincialism, to call young birds not yet fledged, stubbed young ones. But, what is more to our purpose, the author of The History and Antiquities of Glastonbury, printed by Hearne, an antiquarian, and a plain unaffected writer, says, that" Saunders must be a stubbed boy, "if not a man, at the dissolution of abbeys." edit. 1722, Pref. Signat. n. 2. It therefore seems to have been a common expression for stripling, the very idea which the speaker means to convey. If the emendation be just here, we should also correct Nerissa's speech which follows: "For that same stubbed boy, the doctor's clerk, "In lieu of this, did lie with me last night." WARTON. I believe scrubbed and stubbed have a like meaning, and signify stunted or shrub-like. So, in P. Holland's translation of Pliny's Nat. Hist. ". -but such "will never prove fair trees, but shrubs only." STEEVENS. Stubbed in the sense contended for by Mr. Warton was in use so late as the Restoration. In the Parlia mentary Register, July 30, 1660, is an advertisment enquiring after a person described as a thick, short, "stubbed fellow, round faced, ruddy complexion, "dark brown hair and eyebrows, with a sad gray "suit." REED. Scrubbed perhaps meant dirty, as well as short, Cole, in his Dictionary, 1672, renders it by the Latin word, squalidus. MALONE. |