is appropriate to the personages of higher rank; and we must look to the England of Shakespeare's day to furnish dresses for Dogberry the Constable, Verges the Headborough, the Sexton, and the Watch. Vecelli is authority for the former, and a woodcut on the title page of Dekker's O per se 0, 1612, for the Watch among the latter.

We call this play Much Ado about Nothing; but it seems clear to me that Shakespeare and his contemporaries called it Much Ado about Noting; a pun being intended between 'nothing' and noting,' which were then pronounced alike, and upon which pun depends by far the more important significance of the title. This is not the place for minute orthoepical discussion; but that accented vowels had their pure and simple sound in a very much greater degree in Shakespeare's time than now, and that this was preserved in compound words, no sufficiently observant person, familiar with the literature of that time, can have failed to notice. Upon this fact depends, for instance, the Host's joke in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act III. Sc. 1, "he gives me the proverbs and the no-verbs; and I remark here that the pronunciation 'pro-verb' still lingers in New England. Shakespeare's contemporary John Florio tells us, in his Rules for the Italian Tongue appended to his Dictionary, that the "round or firm" Italian o "is ever pronounced as our o in these wordes : Bone, Dog, Flow, God, Rod, Stone, Tone; by which we see that three words of the seven have lost the pure sound of o. This is rather less than the proportion of those which have undergone a similar change throughout the language. But a joke of Touchstone's is quite decisive upon the point that the combination oth was sometimes, at least, pronounced ote. He says, (As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 3,) "I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths; " and if the pronunciation of Goths' was not 'gotes,' he might as well have said among the Vandals.' To this add another example, even more conclusive the spelling, in the original, of 'mote' in the following line, (Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV. Sc. 3,) and in every other instance in which the word is used in that volume, although it was pronounced mote, and had been so spelled in earlier days: —

"You found his Moth, the King your Moth did see."

In this very play, too, is another passage especially in point, that in which (Act II. Sc. 3) Balthazar uses the words 'note,'

'notes,' and 'noting,' and Don Pedro replies, "Note, notes, forBooth, and nothing." Here, if nothing' were pronounced nothing, the Prince might as well have said any thing;' but both quarto and folio give him his pun as well as his jeer. Theobald, failing to perceive this, changed 'nothing' to 'noting;' and so the passage remained until the present day. In the great Roman tragedy, too, of the Triumvir and the Egyptian Queen, the original has either Anthonie, Anthony, or even Anthonius, although the man was called then, as now, Mark Antony. So Antonio of The Tempest is Anthonio in the original, and Armado in Love's Labour's Lost is generally Armatho; and a common word which occurs in this play, lantern,' (so written originally and always so pronounced,) was in Shakespeare's day, and until recently, spelled lanthorn; and the last syllable of 'murder,' then written murther, seems to have been pronounced somewhat like the same syllable of the French meurtre.

But as to the significance of the title. The play is Much Ado about Nothing only in a very vague and general sense, but Much Ado about Noting in one especially apt and descriptive; for the much ado is produced entirely by noting. It begins with the noting of the Prince and Claudio, first by Antonio's man, and then by Borachio, who reveals their conference to John; it goes on with Benedick noting the Prince, Leonato, and Claudio in the garden, and again with Beatrice noting Margaret and Ursula in the same place; the incident upon which its action turns is the noting of Borachio's interview with Margaret by the Prince and Claudio; and finally, the incident which unravels the plot is the noting of Borachio and Conrade by the Watch. That this sense, to observe,' 'to watch,' was one in which 'note' was commonly used, it is quite needless to show by ref erence to the literature and the lexicographers of Shakespeare's day; it is hardly obsolete; and even of the many instances in Shakespeare's works, I will quote only one, from As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 2, which happens to be in all points corrrespondent. "Enter ORLANDO and JAQUES.] Celia. You bring me out:Soft! comes he not here? Ros. 'Tis he! Slink by and note him." Upon the other point let these lines of Shakespeare's speak:

Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing."

Sonnet XX.

*

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

ACT I.

SCENE I. Before LEONATO's House.

Enter LEONATO, HERO, BEATRICE, and others, with

I

a Messenger.

LEONATO.

LEARN in this letter, that Don Pedro of Arragon comes this night to Messina.

Messenger. He is very near by this: he was not three leagues off when I left him.

Leon. How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?

Mess. But few of any sort, and none of name. Leon. A victory is twice itself, when the achiever brings home full numbers. I find here, that Don Pedro hath bestowed much honour on a young Florentine, called Claudio.

Mess. Much deserv'd on his part, and equally remembered by Don Pedro: he hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing in the figure

of a lamb the feats of a lion he hath, indeed, bet

ter better'd expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how.

Leon. He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much glad of it.

Mess. I have already delivered him letters, and there appears much joy in him; even so much, that joy could not show itself modest enough without a badge of bitterness.

Leon. Did he break out into tears?

Mess. In great measure.

Leon. A kind overflow of kindness.

There are

no faces truer than those that are so wash'd: how much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping?

Beatrice. I pray you, is Signior Montanto return'd from the wars, or no?

Mess. I know none of that name, lady: there was none such in the army of any sort.

Leon. What is he that you ask for, niece?

Hero. My cousin means Signior Benedick of Padua. Mess. O! he's return'd, and as pleasant as ever he

was.

Beat. He set up his bills here in Messina, and challeng'd Cupid at the flight; and my uncle's Fool, reading the challenge, subscrib'd for Cupid, and challeng'd him at the bird-bolt. - I pray you, how many hath he kill'd and eaten in these wars? But how many hath he kill'd? for, indeed, I promis'd to eat all of his killing.

Leon. 'Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much; but he'll be meet with you, I doubt it

not.

Mess. He hath done good service, lady, in these

wars.

Beat. You had musty victual, and he hath holp