Polixenes for Leontes: O thou thing, Herm. No, by my life, Privy to none of this. How will this grieve you, Leon. No, no; if I mistake In those foundations which I build upon, The centre 10 is not big enough to bear A schoolboy's top. -Away with her to prison ! 7 Fedary for confederate, partner, or accomplice. Repeatedly so. See vol. vi. page 176, note 12. 8 One that knows what she would be ashamed to know herself, even if the knowledge of it were shared but with her paramour. 9 Throughly and thoroughly are but different forms of the same word. To be thorough in a thing, or to do a thing thoroughly, is to go through it. To say is here an instance of the infinitive used gerundively, and so is equivalent to by saying. 10 Centre here is the Earth, which the old astronomy regarded as literally the centre of the solar system. The Copernican astronomy was not received in England till many years later. See page 148, note 21. But that he speaks.11 Herm. There's some ill planet reigns: I must be patient till the Heavens look With an aspéct more favourable. Good my lords, I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Perchance shall 12 dry your pities; but I have Shall best instruct you, measure me; The King's will be perform'd ! Leon. [To the Guards.] - and so Shall I be heard? Herm. Who is't that goes with me? — Beseech your High ness, My women may be with me; for, you see, My plight requires it. Do not weep, good fools; 13. There is no cause: when you shall know your mistress As I come out: this action I now go on I trust I shall. My women, come; you have leave. Leon. Go, do our bidding; hence ! [Exeunt Queen and Ladies, with Guards. I Lord. Beseech your Highness, call the Queen again. Ant. Be certain what you do, sir, lest your justice 11 The mere act of speaking in her behalf makes the speaker remotely guilty of her crime. 12 Shall where we should use will; the two being often used indiscriminately in the Poet's time. Repeatedly so in this play. 13 Fool was much used as a term of loving, or playful, familiarity. So, in King Lear, v. 3, the old King says of his Cordelia, when he brings her in dead, "And my poor fool is hang'd." Prove violence; in the which three great ones suffer, I Lord. For her, my lord, I dare my life lay down, and will do't, sir, Please you t' accept it, that the Queen is spotless I' the eyes of Heaven and to you; Ant. I mean, If it prove She's otherwise, I'll keep my stable where I lodge my wife; 14 I'll go in couples with her ; Ay, every dram of woman's flesh, is false, 14 The meaning of this passage has been much disputed. The Poet often uses to keep for to guard, to watch; and such is no doubt the meaning here. Dr. Ingleby, in his Shakespeare Hermeneutics, says, and, I think, shows, that keeping one's stable was a familiar phrase in the Poet's time, meaning to keep personal watch over the fidelity of one's wife or one's mistress. He aptly quotes from Much Ado, iii. 4: "Then, if your husband have stables enough, you'll look he shall lack no barns"; whereupon he remarks as follows: "Of course there is a pun on barns; and there is a like pun on stables, which like barns had two meanings. When we know that stables was the condition precedent to barns, we have already pretty nearly determined its cant meaning. But a man's stable may be kept by his wife, by himself, or by a third party: by the wife, if she be chaste; by the husband, if he be suspicious; by a third party, if she be unchaste and her husband be absent." Then, as an instance of the first, he quotes from Chapman's All Fools, iv. 2: "But, for your wife that keeps the stable of your honour, let her be lockt in a brazen towre, let Argus himselfe keepe her, yet can you never bee secure of your honour." Of course Dr. Ingleby regards the passage in the text as an instance of the second. It is hardly needful to remark how well this explanation accords with the context. For so the meaning comes thus: "I will trust my wife no further than I can see her; will myself, in my own person, keep watch and ward over her virtue, and not confide her to any other guardianship." See Critical Notes. 15 Peaces where we should say peace. This use of the plural, when speaking to or of more than one person, was common in Shakespeare's I Lord. Good my lord, Ant. It is for you we speak, not for ourselves : You are abused, and by some putter-on,' 16 That will be damn'd for it; would I knew the villain, I would lant-dam him.17 Be she honour-flaw'd, I have three daughters; the eldest is eleven ; To bring false generations: they're co-heirs ; Should not produce fair issue. Leon. Cease; no more. You smell this business with a sense as cold As is a dead man's nose: but I do see't and feel't, As you feel doing this, and see withal [Grasping his arm. The instruments that you feel.18 Ant. If it be so, We need no grave to bury honesty : There's not a grain of it the face to sweeten Of the whole dungy Earth. Leon. What! lack I credit? 1 Lord. I had rather you did lack than I, my lord, Upon this ground; and more it would content me To have her honour true than your suspicion, Be blamed for't how you might. time. So near the opening of this play: "We will be justified in our loves." And a little before in this scene: "Perchance shall dry your pities. 16 A putter-on, as the word is here used, is an instigator. So the Poet repeatedly has to put on for to incite, to instigate, or to set on. — Here, as often, abused is cheated, deceived, or practised upon. 17 Punishment by lant-damming would involve a peculiar sort of mutilation, and cause a slow and dreadful death. See Critical Notes. 18 "I see and feel my disgrace, as you now feel my doing this to you, and as you now see the instruments that you feel;" that is, my fingers. SCENE I. THE WINTER'S TALE. Leon. LIBRARY Why, what need we UNIVERSITY OF ALIFORNIA. Commune with you of this, but 19 rather follow Or seeming so in skill 21 cannot or will not Relish as truth, like us, inform yourselves We need no more of your advice: the matter, Ant. And I do wish, my liege, You had only in your silent judgment tried it, Leon. How could that be? Either thou art most ignorant by age, Or thou wert born a fool. Camillo's flight, Which was as gross as ever touch'd conjecture,23 19 Shakespeare has divers instances of but so used as to be hardly reducible under any general rules: often in the adversative sense, often in the exceptive; and often with various shades of meaning lying between these two, and partaking, more or less, of them both. Here it seems to have the force of and not. Perhaps the instance nearest to this is in Richard III., ii. 1: “Whenever Buckingham doth turn his hate upon your Grace, but with all duteous love doth cherish you and yours, God punish me with hate in those where I expect most love." Here the meaning seems to be " and doth not cherish." Sometimes, however, but seems to have the force of instead of. So, in the passage just quoted, the sense may well be instead of cherishing, &c. And so in the text, "instead of following rather," &c. A like use of the word occurs in Cymbeline, iii. 6: “Were you a woman, I should woo hard but be your groom;" that is, "rather than not be your groom," or " rather than be any thing except your groom." 20 Instigation is here to be taken in a good sense: "the strong prompting of our own judgment or understanding." 21 Skill in the sense of art, craft, or cunning. 22 Overture is disclosure, or publishment. So in King Lear, iii. 7: “It was he that made the overture of thy treasons to us." 23 To touch sometimes means to stir, to move, to rouse. So in King |