Shake off the golden slumber of repose". Nature should be so conversant with pain, CER. I held it ever, Virtue and cunning' were endowments greater (Together with my practice,) made familiar That nature works, and of her cures; which give me The reasoning of warm and secure in defiance of the tempest. these gentlemen should rather have led them to say-such towers about you; i. e. a house or castle that could safely resist the assaults of weather. They left their mansion because they were no longer secure if they remained in it, and naturally wonder why he should have quitted his, who had no such apparent reason for deserting it and rising early. STEEVENS. 8 Shake off the GOLDEN slumber of REPOSE,] So, in Macbeth: "Shake off this downy sleep." STEEVENS. 9 Virtue and CUNNING -] Cunning means here knowledge. MALONE. So, in Jeremiah, ix. 17: "Send for cunning women that they may come." Again, in Romeo and Juliet : "Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks." STEEVENS. -the blest infusions That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones ;] So, in Romeo and Juliet: “O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies "In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities." STEEVENS. 2 Or tie my TREASURE up in silken bags,] The old copy reads: To please the fool and death 3. 2 GENT. Your honour has through Ephesus pour'd forth "Or tie my pleasure up," &c. Let the critick who can explain this reading of the quarto, displace my emendation. STEEVENS. 3 To please the FOOL and DEATH.] The Fool and Death were principal personages in the old Moralities. They are mentioned by our author in Measure for Measure: 66 merely thou art death's fool," &c. MALONE. Mr. Malone (as I had been) is on this occasion misled by a positive and hitherto uncontradicted assertion of Dr. Warburton. But I now think myself authorised to declare, on the strength of long and repeated enquiries, urged by numerous friends as well as myself, that no Morality in which Death and the Fool were agents, ever existed among the early French, English, or Italian stagerepresentations. I have seen, indeed, (though present means of reference to it are beyond my reach,) an old Flemish print in which Death is exhibited in the act of plundering a miser of his bags, and the Fool (discriminated by his bauble, &c.) is standing behind, and grinning at the process. The following intelligence on the same subject, though it applies more immediately to the allusion in Measure for Measure, and has occurred too late to stand in its proper place, may here, without any glaring impropriety, be introduced: 66 Merely thou art death's fool; "For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun, "And yet run'st towards him still." It was in a comment on these lines that Dr. Warburton's Gratis Dictum concerning the Fool and Death, made its first appear ance. The subsequent notitiæ are derived from two different gentlemen, whose report reflects a light upon each other. Mr. Douce, to whom our readers are indebted for several happy illustrations of Shakspeare, assures me, that some years ago, at a fair in a large market town, he observed a solitary figure sitting in a booth, and apparently exhausted with fatigue. This person was habited in a close black vest, painted over with bones in imitation of a skeleton. But my informant being then very young, and wholly uninitiated in theatrical antiquities, made no enquiry concerning so whimsical a phoenomenon. Indeed but for what follows, I might have been induced to suppose that the object he saw was nothing more or less than the hero of a well known pantomime, entitled Harlequin Skeleton. Your charity, and hundreds call themselves This circumstance, however, having accidentally reached the ears of a venerable clergyman who is now more than eighty years of age, he told me that he very well remembered to have met with such another figure, above fifty years ago, at Salisbury. Being there during the time of some publick meeting, he happened to call on a surgeon at the very instant when the representative of Death was brought in to be let blood on account of a tumble he had had on the stage, while in pursuit of his antagonist, a Merry Andrew, who very anxiously attended him (dressed also in character) to the phlebotomist's house. The same gentleman's curiosity a few days afterwards, prevailed on him to be spectator of the dance in which our emblem of mortality was a performer. This dance, he says, entirely consisted of Death's contrivances to surprize the Merry Andrew, and of the Merry Andrew's efforts. to elude the stratagems of Death, by whom at last he was overpowered; his finale being attended with such circumstances as mark the exit of the Dragon of Wantley. What Dr. Warburton therefore has asserted of the drama, is only known to be true of the dance; and the subject under consideration was certainly more adapted to the latter than the former, agility and grimace, rather than dialogue, being necessary to its exhibition. They who seek after the last lingering remains of ancient modes of amusement, will rather trace them with success in the country, than in the neighbourhood of London, from whence even Punch, the legitimate and undoubted successor of the old Vice, is almost banished. It should seem, that the general idea of this serio-comick pasde-deux had been borrowed from the ancient Dance of Machabre, commonly called The Dance of Death, a grotesque ornament of cloisters, both here and in foreign parts. The aforesaid combination of figures, though erroneously ascribed to Hans Holbein, was certainly of an origin more remote than the times in which that eminent painter is known to have flourished. STEEvens. Although the subject before us was certainly borrowed from the ancient Dance of Macaber, which I conceive to have been acted in churches, (but in a perfectly serious and moral way,) it receives a completer illustration from an old initial letter belonging to a set of them in my possession, on which is a dance of Death, infinitely more beautiful in point of design than even the celebrated one cut in wood and likewise ascribed to the graver of Holbein. In this letter, the Fool is engaged in a very stout combat with his adversary, and is actually buffeting him with a bladder filled with peas or small pebbles, an instrument yet in fashion among Merry Andrews. It is almost unnecessary to add And not your knowledge, personal pain, but even Your purse, still open, hath built lord Cerimon Such strong renown as time shall never Enter Two Servants with a Chest. SERV. So; lift there. CER. What is that? SERV. Sir, even now Set it down, let's look on it. Did the sea toss upon our shore this chest ; 'Tis of some wreck. CER. 2 GENT. "Tis like a coffin, sir. CER. Whate'er it be, "Tis wondrous heavy. Wrench it open straight; If the sea's stomach be o'ercharg'd with gold*, It is a good constraint of fortune, that It belches upon us. 2 GENT. 'Tis so, my lord. CER. How close 'tis caulk'd and bitum'd' !— Did the sea cast it up? that these initials are of foreign workmanship; and the inference is, that such farces were common upon the continent, and are here alluded to by the artist. I should not omit to mention, that the letter in question has been rudely copied in an edition of Stowe's Survey of London. DOUCE. 4 If the sea's stomach be O'ERCHARG'D with gold, &c.] This indelicate allusion has already occurred in the scene between Pericles and the Fishermen, and may also be found in King Richard III. : "Whom their o'ercloyed country vomits forth-." STEEVENS. 5 It is a good constraint of fortune, that It BELCHES upon us.] This singular expression is again applied by our author to the sea, in The Tempest: "You are three men of sin, whom destiny 66 (That hath to instrument this lower world, 6 How close 'tis caulk'd and BITUM'D!] Bottom'd, which is the reading of all the copies, is evidently a corruption. We had before: SERV. I never saw so huge a billow, sir, As toss'd it upon shore. CER. Come, wrench it open; Soft, soft!-it smells most sweetly in my sense. 2 GENT. A delicate odour. CER. As ever hit my nostril'; so, up with it, O you most potent god! what's here? a corse! 1 GENT. Most strange! CER. Shrouded in cloth of state; balm'd and entreasur'd With bags of spices full! A passport too! Apollo, perfect me i' the characters! 66 Here I give to understand, [Unfolds a Scroll. [Reads. (If e'er this coffin drive a-land",) I, king Pericles, have lost This queen, worth all our mundane cost. Who finds her, give her burying, Sir, we have a chest beneath the hatches, caulked and bitumed ready." MALONE. 7 As ever hit my nostril;] So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor: " -as ever offended nostril." STEEVENS. 8- Apollo, perfect me i' the characters!] Cerimon, having made physick his peculiar study, would naturally, in any emergency, invoke Apollo. On the present occasion, however, he addresses him as the patron of learning. MALONE. 9 (If e'er this coffin drive A-LAND,)] This uncommon phrase is repeatedly used in Twine's translation: "Then give thanks unto God, who in my flight hath brought me a-land into your costes." Again : certaine pyrats which were come a-land." STEEVENS. 66 Who finds her, give her burying, She was the daughter of a king :] The following, in Twine's translation, are the first words of Lucina on her recovery: 64 touch me not otherwise than thou oughtest to doe, for I am a king's daughter and the wife of a king." STEEVENS. So, in King Henry VIII. Queen Catharine says: |