Enter ROSALIND, CELIA, and CORIN, at a distance. PHE. I would not be thy executioner; I fly thee, for I would not injure thee. Either Dr. Warburton's emendation, except that the word deals, wants its proper construction, or that of Sir Tho. Hanmer, may serve the purpose; but I believe they have fixed cor ruption upon the wrong word, and should rather read: Than he that dies his lips by bloody drops? Will you speak with more sternness than the executioner, whose lips are used to be sprinkled with blood? The mention of drops implies some part that must be sprinkled rather than dipped. JOHNSON. I am afraid our bard is at his quibbles again. To die, means as well to dip a thing in a colour foreign to its own, as to expire. In this sense, contemptible as it is, the executioner may be said to die as well as live by bloody drops. Shakspeare is fond of opposing these terms to each other. In King John is a play on words not unlike this: 66 -all with purple hands "Dy'd in the dying slaughter of their foes." Camden has preserved an epitaph on a dyer, which has the same turn: "He that dyed so oft in sport, 66 Dyed at last, no colour for't." So, Heywood, in his Epigrams, 1562: "Is thy husband a dyer, woman? alack, Again, Puttenham, in his Art of Poetry, 1589: "We once sported upon a country fellow, who came to run for the best game, and was by his occupation a dyer, and had very big swelling legs, "He is but coarse to run a course, "Whose shanks are bigger than his thigh; "Yet is his luck a little worse "That often dyes before he die." Thou tell'st me, there is murder in mine eye: That eyes, that are the frail'st and softest things, Now counterfeit to swoon; why now fall down; "Where ye see the words course and die used in divers senses, one giving the rebound to the other." STEEVEns. J. Davies, of Hereford, in his Scourge of Folly, printed about 1611, has the same conceit, and uses almost our author's words OF A PROUD LYING DYER. "Turbine, the dyer, stalks before his dore, "Like Cæsar, that by dying oft did thrive ; "And though the beggar be as proud as poore, "Yet (like the mortifide) he dyes to live." Again, on the same: "Who lives well, dies well :-not by and by; MALONE. He that lives and dies, i. e. he who, to the very end of his life, continues a common executioner. So, in the second scene of the fifth Act of this play; "live and die a shepherd." TOLLET. To die and live by a thing is to be constant to it, to persevere in it to the end. Lives, therefore, does not signify is maintained, but the two verbs taken together mean, who is all his life conversant with bloody drops. MUSGRAVE. 'Tis pretty, sure, and very probable,] Sure for surely. DOUCE. Some scar of it; lean but upon a rush,' 2 Thy palm some moment keeps: but now mine eyes, Which I have darted at thee, hurt thee not; That can do hurt. If ever, (as that ever may be near,) You meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy,3 Then shall you know the wounds invisible That love's keen arrows make. PHE. But, till that time, Come not thou near me: and, when that time comes, Afflict me with thy mocks, pity me not; As, till that time, I shall not pity thee. Ros. And why, I pray you? [Advancing.] Who might be your mother,* That you insult, exult, and all at once, 1 5 lean but upon a rush,] But, which is not in the old copy, was added, for the sake of the metre, by the editor of the second folio. MALONE. * The cicatrice and capable impressure-] Cicatrice is here not very properly used; it is the scar of a wound. Capable impressure, hollow mark. JOHNSON. Capable, I believe, means here-perceptible. Our author often uses the word for intelligent; (See a note on Hamlet,"His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, "Would make them capable.") Hence, with his usual licence, for intelligible, and then for perceptible. MALone. 3 power of fancy,] Fancy is here used for love, as be fore, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream. JOHNSON. Who might be your mother,] It is common for the poets to express cruelty by saying, of those who commit it, that they were born of rocks, or suckled by tigresses. JOHNSON. • That you insult, exult, and all at once,] If the speaker intended to accuse the person spoken to only for insulting and VOL. VIII. K Over the wretched? What though you have more beauty," exulting; then, instead of-all at once, it ought to have been, both at once. But, by examining the crime of the person accused, we shall discover that the line is to be read thus: insult, exult, and rail at once. That you For these three things Phebe was guilty of. But the Oxford editor improves it, and, for rail at once, reads domineer. WARBURTON. I see no need of emendation. The speaker may mean thus: Who might be your mother, that you insult, exult, and that too all in a breath? Such is, perhaps, the meaning of all at once. 6 What though you have more beauty,] reads: STEEVENS. The old copy What though you have no beauty. STEEVENS. Though all the printed copies agree in this reading, it is very accurately observed to me, by an ingenious unknown correspondent, who signs himself L. H. (and to whom I can only here make my acknowledgement) that the negative ought to be left out. THEOBALD. That no is a misprint, appears clearly from the passage in Lodge's Rosalynde, which Shakspeare has here imitated: "Sometimes have I seen high disdaine turned to hot desires.Because thou art beautiful, be not so coy; as there is nothing more faire, so there is nothing more fading."-Mr. Theobald corrected the error, by expunging the word no; in which he was copied by the subsequent editors; but omission, (as I have often observed,) is, of all the modes of emendation, the most exceptionable. No was, I believe, a misprint for mo, a word often used by our author and his contemporaries for more. So, in a former scene of this play: "I pray you, mar no mo of my verses with reading them ill-favour'dly." Again, in Much Ado about Nothing: "Sing no more ditties, sing no mò.” Again, in The Tempest: "Mo widows of this business makingMany other instances might be added. The word is found in almost every book of that age. As no is here printed instead of mo, so in Romeo and Juliet, Act V. we find in the folio, 1623, Mo matter, for No matter. This correction being less violent than Mr. Theobald's, I have inserted it in the text. "What though I should allow you had more beauty than he, (says Rosalind,) though by my faith," &c. (for such is the force of As in the next line)" must you therefore treat him with disdain?" you (As, by my faith, I see no more in 8 In Antony and Cleopatra we meet with a passage constructed nearly in the same manner : 66 Say, this becomes him, "(As his composure must be rare indeed "Whom these things cannot blemish,) yet," &c. Again, in Love's Labour's Lost: "But say that he or we, (as neither have,) "Receiv'd that sum," &c. Again, more appositely, in Camden's Remaines, p. 190, edit. 1605: "I force not of such fooleries; but if I have any skill in sooth-saying, (as in sooth I have none,) it doth prognosticate that I shall change copie from a duke to a king." MALONE. As mo, (unless rhyme demands it,) is but an indolent abbreviation of more, I have adopted Mr. Malone's conjecture, without his manner of spelling the word in question. If mo were right, how happens it that more should occur twice afterwards in the same speech? STEEVEns. 7 Of nature's sale-work:] Those works that nature makes up carelessly and without exactness. The allusion is to the practice of mechanicks, whose work bespoke is more elaborate than that which is made up for chance-customers, or to sell in quantities to retailers, which is called sale-work. WARBURTON. That can entame my spirits to your worship.] So, in Much Ado about Nothing: Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand." STEEVENS. |