PRO. A little time, my lord, will kill that grief. DUKE. So I believe; but Thurio thinks not so.Proteus, the good conceit I hold of thee, (For thou hast shewn some sign of good desert,) Makes me the better to confer with thee. PRO. Longer than I prove loyal to your grace, Let me not live to look upon your grace. DUKE. Thou know'st, how willingly I would effect The match between sir Thurio and my daughter. PRO. I do, my lord. DUKE. And also, I think, thou art not ignorant How she opposes her against my will. PRO. She did, my lord, when Valentine was here. DUKE. Ay, and perversely she persévers so. What might we do to make the girl forget The love of Valentine, and love sir Thurio ? PRO. The best way is, to slander Valentine With falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent; Three things that women highly hold in hate. DUKE. Ay, but she'll think, that it is spoke in hate. PRO. Ay, if his enemy deliver it: Therefore it must, with circumstance, be spoken By one, whom she esteemeth as his friend. DUKE. Then you must undertake to slander him. PRO. And that, my lord, I shall be loth to do: "Tis an ill office for a gentleman; Especially, against his very friend". DUKE. Where your good word cannot advantage him, Your slander never can endamage him; Therefore the office is indifferent, we find "in that article." Both these corrections appear to have been made while the sheet was working off at the press. MALONE. - with circumstance,] With the addition of such incidental particulars as may induce belief. JOHNSON. - his VERY friend.] Very is immediate. So, in Macbeth: "And the very ports they blow." STEEVENS, Being entreated to it by your friend. PRO. You have prevail'd, my lord: if I can do it, By aught that I can speak in his dispraise, She shall not long continue love to him. But say, this weed her love from Valentine, It follows not that she will love sir Thurio. THU. Therefore as you unwind her love' from him, Lest it should ravel, and be good to none, You must provide to bottom it on me: DUKE. And, Proteus, we dare trust you in this kind; Because we know, on Valentine's report, You are already love's firm votary, And cannot soon revolt and change your mind. But you, sir Thurio, are not sharp enough; I as you UNWIND her love-] As you wind off her love from him, make me the bottom on which you wind it. The housewife's term for a ball of thread wound upon a central body, is a bottom of thread. JOHNSON. So, in Grange's Garden, 1557: "in answer to a letter written unto him by a Curtyzan :" 2 "A bottome for your silke it seems 66 My letters are become, "Which oft with winding off and on "Are wasted whole and some." STEEVENS. -you may TEMPER her,] Mould her, like wax, to whatever shape you please. So, in King Henry IV. Part II.: "I have him already tempering between my finger and my thumb; and shortly will I seal with him." MALONE. You must lay lime, to tangle her desires, Much is the force of heaven-bred poesy. PRO. Say, that upon the altar of her beauty You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart: Write, till your ink be dry; and with your tears Moist it again; and frame some feeling line, That may discover such integrity * : 4 For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews"; 3 4 - lime,] That is, birdlime. JOHNSON. such integrity:-] I suspect that a line following this has been lost; the import of which perhaps was "As her obdurate heart may penetrate." MALONE. Such integrity may mean such ardour and sincerity, as would be manifested by practising the directions given in the four preceding lines. STEEVENS. This note of Mr. Steevens, though carefully placed before the preceding remark in his edition, was written and published after it, and was intended to do away its force. The construction recommended is inadmissible: for the words-" that may discover such integrity," manifestly relate to the last clause of some feeling line, and not to the whole of the preceding speech. MALONE. 5 For Orpheus' LUTE was strung with POETS' SINEWS;] This shews Shakspeare's knowledge of antiquity. He here assigns Orpheus his true character of legislator. For under that of à poet only, or lover, the quality given to his lute is unintelligible. But, considered as a lawgiver, the thought is noble, and the imagery exquisitely beautiful. For by his lute, is to be understood his system of laws; and by the poet's sinews, the power of numbers, which Orpheus actually employed in those laws to make them received by a fierce and barbarous people. WARBURTON. Proteus is describing to Thurio the powers of poetry; and gives no quality to the lute of Orpheus, but those usually and vulgarly ascribed to it. It would be strange indeed if, in order to prevail upon the ignorant and stupid Thurio to write a sonnet to his mistress, he should enlarge upon the legislative powers of Orpheus, which were nothing to the purpose. Warburton's observations frequently tend to prove Shakspeare more profound and learned than the occasion required, and to make the Poet of Nature the most unnatural that ever wrote. M. MASON. Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones, Visit by night your lady's chamber-window 6 with some sweet CONCERT:] The old copy has consort, which I once thought might have meant in our author's time a hand or company of musicians. So, in Romeo and Juliet: "Tyb. Mercutio, thou consort'st with Romeo. "Mer. Consort! what, dost thou make us minstrels?" The subsequent words, "To their instruments, seem to favour this interpretation; but other instances, that I have since met with, in books of our author's age, have convinced me that consort was only the old spelling of concert, and I have accordingly printed the latter word in the text. The epithet sweet, annexed to it, seems better adapted to the musick itself than to the band. Consort, when accented on the first syllable (as here) had, I believe, the former meaning; when on the second, it signified a company. So, in the next scene: "What say'st thou? Wilt thou be of our consort?" In addition to these remarks, I may observe, that Coles in his Dictionary, 1679: renders consort by the Latin word concentus. With respect to the relative pronoun their, to which we have here no correspondent word, it must be remembered that Shakspeare frequently refers to words not expressed but implied in the former part of the sentence; thus in the present instance, the reference is to musicians, who are necessary to make a concert. So, in Othello: 66 - And bad me when my fate would have me wiv'd, "To give it her," i. e. his wife. MALONE. 7 Tune a deploring DUMP ;] A dump was the ancient term for a mournful elegy. A DOMPE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. |