It is religion to be thus forsworn: And who can sever love from charity? King. Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field! Biron. Advance your standards, and upon them, lords; Pell-mell, down with them! but be first advis'd, In conflict that you get the sun of them.1 Long. Now to plain-dealing; lay these glozes by: Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France? King. And win them too: therefore let us devise Some entertainment for them in their tents. Biron. First, from the park let us conduct them thither; We will with some strange pastime solace them, Biron. Allons! Allons!—Sow'd cockle reap'd no corn; Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;] So, in King Richard III: “Advance your standards, set upon our foes-;" Steevens. 1—but be first advis'd, In conflict that you get the sun of them.] In the days of archery, it was of consequence to have the sun at the back of the bowmen, and in the face of the enemy. This circumstance was of great advantage to our Henry the Fifth at the battle of Agincourt.-Our poet, however, I believe, had also an equivoque in his thoughts. Malone. 2 Fore-run, fair Love,] i.e. Venus. So, in Antony and Cleopatra: "Now for the love of Love, and her soft hours-." Malone. 3 — sow'd cockle reap'd no corn;] This proverbial expression intimates, that beginning with perjury, they can expect to reap nothing but falshood. The following lines lead us to this sense. Warburton. Dr. Warburton's first interpretation of this passage, which is preserved in Mr. Theobald's edition,-" if we don't take the proper measures for winning these ladies, we shall never achieve them,"-is undoubtedly the true one. Heath. ACT V.... SCENE I. Another part of the same. Enter HOLOFERNES, Sir NATHANIEL, and DULL. Hol. Satis quod sufficit.5 Nath. I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the king's, who is intituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado. Hol. Novi hominem tanquam te: His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, 1 1 Mr. Edwards, however, approves of Dr. Warburton's second thoughts. Malone. 4 If so, our copper buys no better treasure.] Here Mr. Theobald ends the third Act. Johnson. 6 5 Satis quod sufficit.] i. e. Enough's as good as a feast. Steevens. your reasons at dinner have been &c.] I know not well what degree of respect Shakspeare intends to obtain for this vicar, but he has here put into his mouth a finished representation of colloquial excellence. It is very difficult to add any thing to his character of the schoolmaster's table-talk, and perhaps all the precepts of Castiglione will scarcely be found to comprehend a rule for conversation so justly delineated, so widely dilated, and so nicely limited. It may be proper just to note, that reason here, and in many other places, signifies discourse; and that audacious is used in a good sense for spirited, animated, confident. Opinion is the same with obstinacy or opiniatreté. Johnson. 7 without affection,] i. e. without affectation. So, in Hamlet: "- -No matter that might indite the author of affection." Again, in Twelfth Night, Malvolio is called "an affection'd ass." Steevens. 8 his tongue filed,] Chaucer, Skelton, and Spenser, are frequent in their use of this phrase. Ben Jonson has it likewise. Steevens. 9 thrasonical.] The use of the word thrasonical is no argument that the author had read Terence. It was introduced to our language long before Shakspeare's time. Farmer. It is found in Bullokar's Expositor, 8vo. 1616. Malone. too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too perigrinate, as I may call it. Nath. A most singular and choice epithet. [Takes out his table-book. Hol. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasms, such insociable and point-devise3 companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak, dout, fine, when he should say, doubt; det, when he should pronounce, debt; d, e, b, t; not, d, e, t, he clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour, vocatur, nebour; neigh, abbreviated, ne: This is abhominable,+ (which he would 1 He is too picked,] To have the beard piqued or shorn so as to end in a point, was, in our author's time, a mark of a traveller affecting foreign fashions: so says the Bastard in King John: 66 -I catechise "My piqued man of countries." Johnson. See a note on King John, Act I, and another on King Lear, where the reader will find the epithet piqued differently spelt and interpreted. Piqued may allude to the length of the shoes then worn. Bulwer, in his Artificial Changeling, says: "We weare our forked shoes almost as long again as our feete, not a little to the hindrance of the action of the foote; and not only so, but they prove an impediment to reverentiall devotion, for our bootes and shoes are so long snouted, that we can hardly kneele in God's house." Steevens. I believe picked (for so it should be written) signifies nicely drest in general, without reference to any particular fashion of dress. It is a metaphor taken from birds, who dress themselves by picking out or pruning their broken or superfluous feathers. So Chaucer uses the word, in his description of Damian dressing himself, Canterbury Tales, v. 9885: "He kembeth him, he proineth him and piketh." And Shakspeare, in this very play, uses the corresponding word pruning for dressing, Act IV, sc. iii: 66 —or spend a minute's time "In pruning me—.” The substantive pickedness is used by Ben Jonson for nicety in dress. Discoveries, Vol. VII, Whalley's edit. p. 116: "-too much pickedness is not manly." Tyrwhitt. 2 3. - phantasms,] See Act IV, sc. i: “A phantasm, a Monarcho-." Steevens. -point-devise-] A French expression for the utmost or finical exactness. So, in Twelfth Night, Malvolio says: "I will be point-device, the very man." Steevens. ▲ This is abhominable, &c.] He has here well imitated the lan call abominable) it insinuateth me of insanie; Ne intelligis domine? to make frantick, lunatick. Nath. Laus deo, bone intelligo. Hol. Bone?-bone, for benè: Priscian a little scratch'd; 'twill serve. guage of the most redoubtable pedants of that time. On such sort of occasions, Joseph Scaliger used to break out: "Abominor, execror. Asinitas mera est, impietas," &c. and calls his adversary, "Lutum stercore maceratum, dæmoniacum recrementum inscitie, sterquilinium, stercus diaboli, scarabæum, larvam, pecus postremum bestiarum, infame propudium, zabaqua." Warburton. Shakspeare knew nothing of this language; and the resemblance which Dr. Warburton finds, if it deserves that title, is quite accidental. It is far more probable, that he means to ridicule the foppish manner of speaking, and affected pronunciation, introduced at court by Lyly and his imitators. abhominable,] Thus the word is constantly spelt in the old moralities and other antiquated books. So, in Lusty Juventus, 1561: 5 "And then I will bryng in it insinuateth me of insanie; &c.] In former editions, it insinuateth me of infamie: Ne intelligis, domine? to make frantick, lunatick. Nath. Laus Deo, bone intelligo. Hol. Bome, boon for boon Priscian; a little scratch, 'twill serve.] Why should infamy be explained by making frantick lunatick? It is plain and obvious that the poet intended the pedant should coin an uncouth affected word here, insanie, from insania of the Latins. Then, what a piece of unintelligible jargon have these learned criticks given us for Latin? I think, I may venture to affirm, I have restored the passage to its true purity. Nath. Laus Deo, bone, intelligo. The curate addressing with complaisance his brother pedant, says, bone, to him, as we frequently in Terence find bone vir; but the pedant, thinking he had mistaken the adverb, thus descants on it: Bone?-bone for bene. Priscian a little scratched: 'twill serve. Alluding to the common phrase, Diminuis Prisciani caput, applied to such as speak false Latin. Theobald. There seems yet something wanting to the integrity of this passage, which Mr. Theobald has in the most corrupt and difficult places very happily restored. For ne intelligis domine? to make frantick, lunatick, I read (nonne intelligis, domine?) to be mal, frantick, lunatick. Johnson. Insanie appears to have been a word anciently used. In a book entitled, The Fall and evil Successe of Rebellion from Time to Time, &c. written in verse by Wilfride Holme, imprinted at London by Henry Bynneman; without date, (though from the conclud Enter ARMADO, MOTH, and COSTARD. Nath. Videsne quis venit? Hol. Video, & gaudeo. Arm. Chirra! Hol. Quare Chirra, not sirrah? Arm. Men of peace, well encounter'd. [TO MOTH. Moth. They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps. [To Cosr. aside. Cost. O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words! I marvel, thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a flapdragon.9 ing stanza, it appears to have been produced in the 8th year of the reign of Henry VIII,) I find the word used: "In the days of sixth Henry, Jack Cade made a brag, "With a multitude of people; but in the consequence, "After a little insanie they fled tag and rag, "For Alexander Iden he did his diligence." Steevens. I should rather read-" it insinuateth men of insanie." Farmer. 6 They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.] So, in Christ's Tears over Jerusalem, by Thomas Nashe, 1594: "The phrase of sermons, as it ought to agree with the scripture, so heed must be taken, that their whole sermon seem not a banquet of the broken fragments of scripture." Malone 71 -the alms-basket of words!] i. e. the refuse of words. The refuse meat of great families was formerly sent to the prisons. So, in The Inner Temple Masque, 1619, by T. Middleton: "his perpetual lodging in the King's Bench, and his ordinary out of the basket." Again, in If this be not a good Play the Devil is in it, 1612: "He must feed on beggary's basket." Steevens. The refuse meat of families was put into a basket in our author's time, and given to the poor. So, in Florio's Second Frutes, 1591: "Take away the table, fould up the cloth, and put all those pieces of broken meat into a basket for the poor." Malone. 8-honorificabilitudinitatibus:] This word, whencesoever it comes, is often mentioned as the longest word known. Johnson. It occurs likewise in Marston's Dutch Courtezan, 1604: "His discourse is like the long word honorificabilitudinitatibus; a great deal of sound and no sense." I meet with it likewise in Nash's Lenten Stuff, &c. 1599. Steevens. See a note —a flap-dragon.] A flap-dragon is a small inflammable substance, which topers swallow in a glass of wine. on King Henry IV, P. II, Act II, sc. ult. Steevens. |