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constitution; for though I am caparisoned like a man, I have not the manners, the disposition of one. B.

Ros. A lean cheek; which you have not: a blue eye, and sunken.

A blue eye, i, e. a blueness about the eyes. STEEV.

"A blue eye." But why a blue eye? I believe we should read, "a flu eye." Flu, fluish, in the northern counties, is watery, weak, tender. "A flu eye," will therefore mean an eye filled with tears. Fluer, French, to How or run. B.

Clo. Come apace, good Audrey; I will fetch up your goats, Audrey; and how, Audrey am I the man yet? doth my simple feature content you?

Doth my simple feature content you?] says the Clown to Audrey. "Your features," replies the wench. Lord warrant us, what features ?” I doubt not, this should be your feature! Lord warrant us, what's fea ure?

FARM.

Feat and feature, perhaps had anciently the same meaning. The Clown asks, if the features of his face content her, she takes the word in another sense, i. e. feats, deeds, and in her reply seems to mean, what feats, i. e. what have we done yet? The courtship of Audrey and her gallant had not proceeded further, as Sir William Witwood says, than a little inouth-glew; but she supposes him to be talking of something which as yet he had not performed. Or the jest may turn only on the Clown's pronunciation. In some parts, features might be pronounced, faitors, which signify rascals, low wretches. Pistol uses the word in the second part of K. Henry IV. and Spenser very frequently. STEEV.

"Simple feature content you." There is something of a conceit intended here in regard to feature. I think it will be as follows, Touchstone asks Audrey if his feature, that is, his face, his countenance, pleases her; but having a provincial accent, he makes of the word fauture, which is nearly the same in sound with fautor, i.e. one who cherishes or caresses. Audrey mistakes and confounds the words fauture and fautor, the latter of which she understands as being used by the Clown and expressive of caress or blandishment ; when, therefore, Touchstone says, "Doth my simple fauture content you?" the prudery of his mistress takes alarm. "Your [fautors] caresses! Lord warrant us! what caresses?" This reading will give aptness and pertinency to the dialogue. But what Mr. Steevens's "rascals" and 'low wretches," will do, I am wholly at a loss to conceive. B.

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Clo. No, truly; for the truest poetry is the most feigning; and lovers are given to poetry; and what they swear in poetry, may be said, as lovers, they do feign.

And what they swear in poetry, &c.] This sentence seems perplexed

and inconsequent, perhaps it were better read thus, What they swear as lovers they may be said to feign as poets. JOHN.

"And what they swear in poetry." I can discover no perplexity or inconsequence here. The passage may be paraphrastically explained as follows: "True poetry," says Touchstone, "is not true. Lovers are given to the study of poetry: nay, lovers swear in poetry, and poetry being made up of fiction, the necessary consequence among such description of persons is easily seen: it may well be imagined, that if they are true poets they must be false lovers. Swearing will in such case, I say, amount to nothing, since it is the very essence of poetry to feign." B.

Cel. O, that's a brave man! he writes brave verses, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely, quite traverse, athwart the heart of his lover; as a puny tilter, that spurs his horse but on one side, breaks his staff like a noble goose.

Quite traverse, athwart, &c.] An unexperienced lover is here compared to a puny tilier, to whom it was a disgrace to have his lance broken across, as it was a mark either of want of courage or address. This happened when the horse flew on one side, in the career: and hence, I suppose, arose the jocular proverbial pt rase of spurring the horse only on one site. Now as breaking the lance against his adversary's breast, in a direct line, was honorable, so the breaking it across, against his breast was, for the reason above, dishonorable : hence it is, tirat Sidney, in his Arcadiu, speaking of the mock combat of Climpias and Dainetas, says, The wind took such hod of his staff'that it crust quite over his breast, &c. The lover's meeting or appointment corresponds to the tilter's career; and as the one breaks staves, the other breaks oaths. The business is only meeting fairly, and doing both with address: and 'tis for the want of this, that Orlando is blamed. WARB.

A puny tiller, that breaks his stuff like a noble goose. Sir T. Hanmer altered this to a nose-quill'd goose, but no one seems to have regarded the alteration. Certainly nose-quilld is an epithet likely to be corrupted : it gives the image wanted, and may, in a great measure, be supported by a quotation from Turberville's Fa conrie. "Take with you a ducke, and slip one of her aing feathers, and having thrust it through her nur es, throw her out unto your hawke." FARM.

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"Quite traverse, athwart," &c. Warburton has properly explained the terms traverse and athwart, and he is perfectly right in regard to the honorable way in which the tilter's lance might be broken on the breast of his adversary: but as he has taken no kind breaks his staff of notice of the concluding part of the speech, noble goose," and which is certainly insufferable nonseuse, it is requisite to give to the passage a meaning. Hanmer's nosequill d goose is out of the question: it wholly respects the practice of the falconer, and as to Mr. Steevens's quotation from Northward Hoe, it brings us acquainted with nothing but what Warburton had told before. In illustrating Shakspeare it should be remembered, that and be it remembered and remarked once and for all, many of the errors in his plays have arisen from transcripts which were made

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in trusting to the ear. For "noble goose," then, I read, "noble joust," and which it is highly probable was pronounced jousse; and this, as is readily seen, might be mistaken by an ignorant transcriber for goose. "Noble" is splendid, honorable: "a noble joust," i. e. a splendid joust or tournament, in which the most honorable men were engaged. This too, we must take with us, that in "breaks his staff like a noble goose," there is an ellipsis, as is common with Shakspeare. The word which we are to understand as wanting is knight. But let us attend to the reasoning, "The puny filter and the accomplished knight," says Celia, "may each break a lance; but with this difference, that the one breaks it with honor to himself, and the other with dishonor." "Like" a," is as well as: and not in the same manner os. Such, I am persuaded, is the true meaning of the passage, and the conclusion that is drawn in it; which, though not set down in so many words, is yet evidently implied in the expressions puny and noble. B.

Sil. Will you sterner be

Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops?

will you sterner be

Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops ?]

This is spoken of the executioner. He lives indeed by bloody drops, if you will but how does he die by bloody drops? The poet must certainly have wrote that deals and lives, &c. i. e. that gets his bread by, and makes a trade of cutting off heads: but the Oxford editor makes it plainer. He reads:

"Than he that lives and thrives by bloody drops?" WARB.

Either Dr. Warburton's emendation, except that the word deals wants its proper construction, or that of Sir T. Hanmer, may serve the purpose; but I believe they have fixed corruption 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. JOHN.

"He that lives and dies." "Dies" is used in an active sense, like "falls" in the preceding line. "Dies," causeth death, kills. The meaning is, wilt thou he sterner than the man who kills, who murders; and who lives by that murder? B.

Sil. O dear Phebe,

If ever (as that ever may be near)

You meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy;
Then shall you know the wounds invisible

That love's keen arrows make.

Power of fancy.] Fancy is here used for love, as before in the Midsum. mer Night's Dream. See p. 105. also vol. ii. p. 323. JOHN.

I rather think that fancy, in this place, is thought, deep reflec

tion. B.

Ros. Who might be your mother,

That you insult, exult, and all at once,

Over the wretched? What though you have beauty,
(As, by my faith, I see no more in you
Than without candle may go dark to bed)
Must you be therefore proud and pitiless?

That you insult, exult, and all at once.] If the speaker intended to accuse the person spoken to only for insulting and 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:

That you insult, exult, and rail at once.

For these three things Phebe was guilty of. But the Oxford editor improves it, and, for rail at once, reads domineer. WARB.

I see no need of emendation. The speaker may mean thus: Whe might be your mother, that you insult, exult, and that too all in a breath. Such is perhaps the meaning of all at once. STEEV.

There is no necessity for introducing " rail," and which is beside included in the word insult. We have only to make a transposition of the words:

"That you at once insult, exult,—and all,

66 'Over the wretched."

i. e. and that too over the wretched.

B.

What though you have no beauty] 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 acknowledgment) that the negative ought to be left out.

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That the reading of the old copy is wrong, appears very clearly from the passage in Lodge's Rosalynde, which Shakspeare has here imitated: "Smetimes 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."

I do not, however, subscribe to Mr. Theobald's mode of correction. Omission is, I think, always dangerous. No, was, I believe, a misprint for mo. I would therefore read-What though you have mo beauty, &c. The word mo is often used by our author for more. So in a former scene in this play: "I pray you, mar no mo of my verses with reading them ill-favouredly."

Again, in Much ado about Nothing:

Sigh no more ladies, ladies sigh no mo." MAL.

"No beauty." Mr. Malone's mo will by no means do here, for how will the comparative be employed? more beauty than what? beside Rosalind, in the next line, says, "I see no more in you than &c." But all the editions read "no beauty"-the right word will certainly be noie, i. e. hurt, harm, as used by Chaucer.

"Altho' you have noie beauty;
"Though by my faith, &c."

"You have beauty that hurts, that wounds, this poor fellow: though, in truth, I can see little in you, &c." B.

Cel. It pleases him to call you só; but he hath a Rosalind of a better leer than you.

A Rosalind of a better leer than you.] i. e. of a better feature, complexion, or color, than you. So, in P. Holland's Pliny, B xxxI: c. ii. p. 40S: "In some places there is no other thing bred or growing, but brown and duskish, insomuch as not only the cattel is all of that love, but also the corn on the ground," &c. The word seems to be derived

from the Saxon Bleare, facies, frons, vultus. TOL.

In the notes on the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, vol. iv. p. 320. Lere is supposed to mean skin. So, in Isumbras MSS. Cott. Call. ii. fol. 129: "His lady is white as whales bone

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"Here lere bryghto to se upon

"So faire a blosme on tre." STEEV.

"A better leer than you." Lere and leer have totally different significations. Lere is leather, and in Isumbras is certainly used for skin; but leer, as it occurs in Spenser, is learning, skill. Leer," in the present instance, appears to be the French leure, which, literally taken, is a lure, a decoy, and figuratively is made to stand for cunning or wit. "He hath a Rosalind of a better [leer] wit than you." This is evidently the meaning, from the whole tenor of the discourse. B.

Ros. I will weep for nothing like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you are disposed to be merry; I will laugh like a hyen, and that when thou art inclined to sleep.

I will laugh like a hyen.] The bark of the hyena very much resembles a loud laugh.

So, in Webster's Duchess of Malfy, 1623:

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Methinks I see her laughing, "Excellent Hyena!"

Again, in The Cobler's Prophecy, 1594:

"You laugh hyena like, weep like a crocodile." STEEV.

"Laugh like a Hyen." That the bark of the Hyena resembles a loud laugh, is merely a vulgar notion. I read: "I will laugh like a Hymen." Hymen [Hymenæus] i. e. a wedding. The aptness and pleasantry of her allusion to marriage, and the joys which are attendant on it, are readily seen: nor must the archness of— " and that too when thou art inclined to sleep," be forgotten. It may be further observed, and in support of the reading I have proposed, that as she had just before spoken of Diana, a goddess, so it is much more likely that she should speak of Hymen, a god, than of the Hyena, a beast of

prey.

Congreve makes one of his characters say: "I have laughed like twenty christenings." B.

Ros. If you break one jot of your promise, or come one minute behind your hour, I will think you the most pathetical break-promise, and the most hollow

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