We have " fierce extremes," K. John, last sc. and " fierce vanities," H. VIII. Buck. I. 1. In Jonson's Sejanus, Arruntius says, "O most tame slavery, and fierce flattery!" A. V. (21) omen coming on] Portentous event at hand. That this noun was used in the sense of fate, Dr. Farmer has shewn from the life of Merlin by Heywood. "Merlin, well vers'd in many a hidden spell, And Mr. Steevens has in the Vowbreaker shewn the use of the adjective for fatal. "And much I fear the weakness of her braine (22) The passages included in brackets are throughout this work taken from Mr. Steevens's edition of the quarto. In that edition the title page of this play in 1611 (there had been two preceding, one in 1604, and another in 1605) states, that it had been enlarged to almost double its original size. It also appears, that in their folio of 1623, the player editors made many retrenchments. Splendid passages, not contributing to the action of the drama, and not admitted latterly in representation, they may have not adequately appreciated; and the coherence of the dialogue and fable may in consequence be sometimes found to have suffered. Johnson says, their omissions sometimes leave it better, and sometimes worse, and seem only made for the purpose of abbreviation. (23) Or if thou hast uphoarded, &c.] "If any of them had bound the spirit of gold by any charmes in caves, or in iron fetters under the ground, they should for their own soules quiet (which questionlesse else would whine up and down) if not for the good of their children, release it."-Decker's Knight's Conjuring, &c. STEEVENS. It is also observed by Johnson, that the whole of this address is very elegant and noble, and congruous to the common traditions of the causes of apparitions. (24) it is, as the air, invulnerable] "As easy may'st thou the intrenchant air "With thy keen sword impress." Macb. last sc. K. John, II. 2. MALONE. (25) The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn] Mr. Steevens says, that the cock, the trumpet to the morn, the reading of the 4to. 1604, is so called in lines ascribed to Drayton. "And now the cocke, the morning's trumpeter, And he certainly, in the same marked phrase as our author, tells us, that he calls up the sun. "The cocke, the country horologe that rings Moses his Bush. Part II. 4to. 1630, p. 157. (26) Whether in sea, &c.] According to the pneumatology of that time, every element was inhabited by its peculiar order of spirits, who had dispositions different, according to their various places of abode. A Chorus in Andreini's drama, called Adamo, written in 1613, consists of spirits of fire, air, water, and hell, or subterraneous, being the exiled angels. "Choro di Spiriti ignei, aerei, acquatici, ed infernali," &c. These are the demons to which Shakespeare alludes. These spirits were supposed to controul the elements in which they respectively resided; and when formally invoked or commanded by a magician, to produce tempests, conflagrations, floods, and earthquakes. For thus says The Spanish Mandeville of Miracles, &c. 1600: "Those which are in the middle region of the ayre, and those that are under them nearer the earth, are those, which sometimes out of the ordinary operation of nature doe moove the windes with greater fury than they are accustomed; and do, out of season, congeele the cloudes, causing it to thunder, lighten, hayle, and to destroy the grasse, corne, &c. &c.-Witches and necromancers worke many such like things by the help of those spirits," &c. Of this school therefore was Shakespeare's Prospero in The Tempest. T. WARTON. Bourne of Newcastle, in his Antiquities of the common People, informs us," It is a received tradition among the vulgar, that at the time of cock-crowing, the midnight spirits forsake these lower regions, and go to their proper places.-Hence it is, (says he) that in country places, where the way of life requires more early labour, they always go chearfully to work at that time; whereas if they are called abroad sooner, they imagine every thing they see a wandering ghost." And he quotes on this occasion, as all his predecessors had done, the well-known lines from the first hymn of Prudentius. I know not whose translation he gives us, but there is an old one by Heywood. The pious chansons, the hymns and carrols, which Shakespeare mentions presently, were usually copied from the elder Christian poets. FARMer, (27) The extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine] From St. Ambrose's hymn in the Salis bury service. "Præco diei jam sonat: "Hoc excitatus Lucifer "Hôc omnis Errorum chorus "Viam nocendi deserit, "Gallo canente." Mr. Douce not only supposes that Shakespeare had seen these lines, but is disposed to infer from some parts of them, that he was a Latin scholar: and it must be allowed, that extravagant, erring, and confine, are terms not vernacular: derivatives from a learned language, they have here, though used in close succession, a dignified propriety and nothing tumid or pedantic, but are, on the contrary, delivered with all the ease and perspicuity, with which an accomplished scholar might be supposed to adapt and transfuse the spirit of one language, that he had a mastery in, to the occasion and into the character in which he chose to use it in another. But it is also to be considered, that these short Latin hymns (such as Flaminius's, "Jam noctis umbras Lucifer "Almæ diei nuntius," &c. printed in Preces privatæ regia authoritate, 12mo. 1598,) were so popular, that their language even might have been familiar, as well as the images open, to our author through translation. There are so many channels through which the wording of religious formularies, and the records of popular superstitions, in whatever language they are found, become accessible, that the adoption of either their words, or images, or both, will afford a very slender argument in favour of Mr. Douce's conclusion. Mr. Steevens points out two instances in Chapman's Odyssey, in which this word is used in the sense of wandering or erratic. Telemachus calls Ulysses "My erring father." Odys. IV. p. 55. "Erring Grecians we from Troy were turning homewards." Τροιηθεν αποπλαγθεντες. Odys. ΙΧ. ν. 259. We find the verb also in the sense of rove or range, in his Batrachom. p. 4. "The cat and night-hawke, who much scathe confer "On all the outraies (foramen, rpwyλŋ) where for food I erre." Mr. Steevens has produced an instance of the word extravagant in the sense in which vagrant is used in our criminal law: "They took me up for a 'stravagant." Nobody and Somebody. 1598. And in Othello we have the same ideas coupled in nearly the same expressions: "In an extravagant and wheeling stranger." I. 1. Roder. 66 (28) It faded on the crowing of the cock] Its shadowy appearance lost all of its distinctness: it melted into thin air: passed away, vanished, flitted. Vado is to flow or go, as a river doth," says Littleton in his Dictionary, "Hinc Angl. to vade or fade." "Thy form's divine, no fading, vading flower."-Brathwaite's Strappado for the Divell, 12mo. 1515. p. 53. "O darknesse, fade thy way from hence."-Barnabe Googe's Palengenius's Zodiake of Life, 12mo. Mr. Steevens refers to Vit. Apoll. IV. 16. Philostratus giving an account of the apparition of Achilles' shade to Apollonius Tyaneus, says that it vanished with a little glimmer as soon as the cock crowed. (29) No fairy takes] Takes, the reading of the quartos, is catches, possesses, blasts. See M. W. of W. IV. 4. Mrs. Page. (30) gracious] Partaking of the nature of the epithet with which it is associated, with "blessedness:" participating of a heavenly quality, of grace in its scriptural sense-quasi quodam divino afflatus spiritu: in the sense in which it is used in K. John, III. 4. Const. "There was not such a gracious creature born." And frequently in our author's works: where it does not mean, as has been interpreted, graceful, elegant, winning, pleasing simply, but of the character and nature above stated; touched with something holy, instinct with goodness. O scelestum hominem! "Oh what an ungratious felowe!" Nic. Udall's Floures from Terence, 12mo. 1550. fo. 83. & 98, b. See Two G. of V. Launce. III. 1. (31) But, look, the morn, &c.] Doubtless the almost momentary appearance of the Ghost, and the short conversations preceding and subsequent to it, could not have filled up the long interval of a winter's night in Denmark, from twelve till morning. But, indifferent as was Shakespeare to all dramatic rules and laws, there was no other license so large as that which he took with Time. In whatever direction and wherever he sped, "Still panting Time toil'd after him in vain." With the interesting topic he has contrived to introduce at the close, and dazzled also as an audience would be by the splendor of his poetry, this irregularity would not in representation be generally detected at any time; and at this time it would neither be thought of or regarded: and when the age and the audience so little attended to it, as Mr. Steevens represents to be the case, the playwright was not likely to be very anxious about it. He tells us, in his notes upon Hamlet's advice to the players, that" dumb shews sometimes supplied deficiences, and at others filled up the space of time which was necessary to pass, while business was supposed to be transacted in foreign parts. With this method of preserving one of the unities, our ancestors appear to have been satisfied." (32) with a defeated joy, With one auspicious, and one dropping eye] With joy baffled, and with one well-omen'd and smiling, and one clouded and weeping eye. A similar idea is pointed out by Mr. Steevens in Wint. T.: "She had one eye declined for the loss of her husband; another elevated that the oracle was fulfilled." (33) bands of law] Under every species of bond or solemn obligation. "A sealed compact, well ratified by law and heraldry." Sc. 1. Hor. "Limit this presumed liberty within the bands of discretion and government."-Heywood's Apol. for Actors, 1612. (34) gait] Progress. From the A. S. verb gae. A gate for a path, passage, or street, is still, says Dr. Percy, current in the North. See M. N. Dr. V. 1. Thes. (35) Out of his subject] Out of those subject to him. "So nightly toils the subject of the land." Sc. 1. Marcell. "The general subject to a well-wish'd king "Quit their own part." (36) M. for M. II. 4. Ang. & III. 2. Lucio. The Scope Of these dilated articles allow] The tenor of these articles, set out at large, authorizes. The use of the plural verb with a nominative singular, so far from being offensive even to modern ears, seems under the present circumstances, viz. those of a plural genitive intervening, to improve the harmony of the versification, and to constitute an exception to the general rule. At any rate our author would be fully justified by the loose practise of his age, which, even in prose, and where no member of a sentence was interposed between the nominative case and the verb, allowed plural verbs and nouns singular, and vice versa, to be united. A similar example occurs in III. 2, Player King, where, indeed, it may be said, that this license was used for the convenience of the rhyme: but nothing is more fully understood, than that it was the practise of the learned of these times, of our translators both in prose and verse, and of our highest personages, as well as our greatest scholars and most polished writers, to join noun and verb without any regard to the singular or plural of either. In her translation of a classic it was done by the sovereign of that day: "The cleare daies followes the darck clowdes: the roughest seas insues the greatest calmes:" Queen Elizabeth's Seneca, given to Sir J. Harrington, 1597. Nuga Antiq. 12mo. 1779, II. 308: and, when laying down rules for composition, we find in the works of her learned successor, "And birds with all their heavenlie voces cleare King James's reylis and cautelis of Scottis Poesie, 1584. And, whether it was understood or not, that, from the rude state of our language, the ear was then untuned and inattentive to niceties and the modulation of its periods, certainly this was not "The violence of either grief or joy "Their own enactures will themselves destroy." |