P. 44, 1. 10. Pregnant for ready; as in Mea sure for Measure, Act I. sc. i. STEEVENS. Vouchsafed for vouchsafing. MALONE.

P. 44, 1. 12. copy has

all three ready. ] The old all three already.

Mr. Malone reads ,,all three all ready." STEEVENS. The editor, of the third folio reformed the pas sage by reading only ready. But omissions ought always to be avoided if possible. The repetition of the word all is not improper in the month of Sir Andrew. MALONE.

Praeferatur lectio brevior, is a well known rule of criticism; and in the present instance I must willingly follow it, omitting the useless repetition all. STEEVENS.

P. 45, 1. 4. After the last enchantment you did here,] The old copy reads

Nonsense.

heare.

STEEVENS.

Read and point it thus:

After the last enchantment you did here,

i, e after the enchantment your presence worked in my affections. WARBURTON.

The present, reading is no more nonsense than the emendation. JOHNSON.

Warburton's amendment, the reading, you did here," though it may not perhaps be absolutely necessary to make sense of the passage, is evi dently right. Olivia could not speak of her sending him a ring, as a matter he did not know except by hearsay; for the ring was absolutely des livered to him. It would, besides, be impossible to know what Olivia meant by the last enchantment, if she had not explained it herself, by say ing the last enchantment you did here." There is not, perhaps, à passage in Shakspeare,

where so great an improvement of the sense is gained by changing a single letter. M. MASON.

The two words are very frequently confounded in the old editions of our author's plays, and the other books of that age. See the last line of K. Richard III. quarto, 1613:

That she may long live heare, God say amen." I could add twenty other instances, were they necessary. Throughout the first edition of our author's Rape of Lucrece, 1594, which was pro-. bably printed under his own inspection, the word we now spell here is constantly written heare. Let me add, that Viola had not simply heard that a ring had been sent (if even such an expression ,,After the last enchantment, you did heare," were admissible;) she had seen and talked with the bearer of it. MALONE.

as

She consi

P. 45, 1. 13. To one of your receiving to one of your ready apprehension. ders him as an arch page. WARBURTON. P. 45, 1. 15. — a cyprus,

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1

transparent stuff.

JOHNSON.

P. 45, 1. 19.a grise; is a step, someti mes written 'greese from degres, French. JOHNSON. P. 45, L. 19. for 'tis a vulgar proof, that is, it is a common proof. The experience of every day shews that, etc. MALONE.

P. 45, 32 westward-hoe:] This is the name of a comedy by T. Decker, 1607. He was assisted in it by Webster, and it was acted with great success by the children of Paul's, on whom Shakspeare has bestowed such notice in Hamlet, that we may be sure they were rivals to the company patronized by himself.

P. 46, 1. 19. Maugre

STEEVENS.

i. e. in spite of. STEEVENS.

P. 46, 1. 28. 29. I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth,

And that no woman has; —] And that heart and bosom I have never yielded to any woman. JOHNSON.

P. 46, 1. 30. save I alone.] These three words Sir Thomas Hanmer gives to Olivia probably enough. JOHNSON,

P. 48, 1. 3. The Brownists were so called from Mr. Robert Browne, a noted separatist in Queen Elizabeth's reign. Strype, in his life of Whitgift, P. 323, informs us, that Browne, in the year 1589, went off from the separation, and came into the communion of the church." AV 4

This Browne was descended from an ancient and honourable family in Rutlandshire; his grand father, Francis, had a charter granted him by K. Henry VIII. and confirmed by act of parliament; giving him leave,,to put on his hat in the presence of the King, or his heirs, or any loril spiritual or temporal in the land; and not to put it off, but for his own ease and pleasure: Neal's History of New England, Vol. I. p. 58.

GREY. - The Brownists seem, in the time of our author, to have been the constant object of popular satire. P. 48, 1. 15. 16. Martial hand, seems to be a careless scrawl, such as shewed the writer to neg lect ceremony. Curst, is petulant, crabbed. A curst cur, is a dog that with little provocation snarls and bites. JOHNSON,

2

P. 48, 1. 1524. There is no doubt, I think, but this passage is one of those in which our author intended so shew his respect for Sir Walter Raleigh, and a detestation of the virulence of his prosecutors. - The words quoted, seem to me

directly

directly levelled at the Attorney - general Coke, who, in the trial of Sir Walter, attacked him with all the following indecent expressions: ,,All that he did was by thy instigation, thou viper; for I thou thee, thou traytor!" (Here, by the way', are the poet's three thou's),,You are an odious man." ,,Is he base? I return it into thy throat, on his behalf." ,,0 damnable Fatheist."- ,,Thou art a monster; thou hast an English face, but a Spanish heart." Thou hast a Spanish heart, and thyself art a spider of hell." ,,Go to, I will lay thee on thy back for the confi dent'st traytor that ever came at a bar,“ etc. Is not here all the licence of tongue, which the poet satirically prescribes to Sir Andrew's ink? And how mean an opinion Shakspeare had of these petulant invectives, is pretty evident from his close of this speech: Let there be gall enough in thy ink: though thou write it with a goose-pen, 120 "matter. A keener lash at the attorney for a fool, than all the contumelies the attorney threw at the prisoner, as a supposed traytor!

THEOBALD.

The resentment of our author, as Dr. Farmer observes to me, might likewise have been excited by the contemptuous manner in which Lord Coke has spoken of players, and the severity he was always willing to exert against them. Thus, in his Speech and Charge at Norwich, with a discoverie of the abuses and corruption of officers. Nath. Butter, 4to. 1607: ,,Because I must hast anto an end, I will request that you will care fully put in execution the statute against vagrants; since the making whereof I have found fewer theeves, and the gaole lesse pestered than before. The abuse of stage- players wherewith I find the VOL. II.

16

country, much troubled, may easily be reformed; they having no commission to play in any place without leave: and therefore, if by your willingnesse they be not entertained, you may soone be rid of them." STEEVENS.

Though I think it probable Lord Coke might have been in Shakspeare's mind when he wrote the above passage, yet it is by no means certain. It ought to be observed, that the conduct of that. great lawyer, bad as it was on this occasion, received too much contenance from the practice of his predecessors, both at the bar and on the bench. The State Trials will shew, to the disgrace of the profession, that many other criminals. were THOU'D by their prosecutors and judges, besides Sir Walter Raleigh. In Knox's History of the Reformation, are eighteen articles exhibited against Master George Wischarde, 1546,' ‚every one of which begins THOU false heretick, and sometimes with the adition of thief, traitor, runagate, etc. REED.

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P. 48, L 26. - at the cubiculo:] I believe we should read at thy cubiculo. MALONE. P. 49, 1. 3. Opposite in our author's time was used as a substantive, and synonymous to adversary. MALONE.

P. 49, 1. 6. Look, where the youngest wren of nine comes.] The women's parts were then acted by boys, sometimes so low in stature, that there was occasion to obviate the impropriety by such kind of oblique apologies. WARBURTON.

The wren generally lays nine or ten eggs at a time, and the last hatch'd of all birds are usually the smallest and weakest of the whole brood. STEEVENS. P. 49, 1. 25. my lady will strike him;] We may suppose, that in an age when ladies struck