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the personages of the scene: and to mark them, when it could be effected, for his own. It is therefore much more probable that the word is derived from viser, to aim at: to have in view. B.

Seb.

Where's Antonio then?

I could not find him at the Elephant :

Yet there he was: and there I found this credit,
That he did range the town to seek me out.

Yet there he was; and there I found this credit,

That he did range, &c.]

i. e. I found it justified, credibly vouched. Whether the word credit will easily carry this meaning, at doubtful. The expression seems' obscure; and though I have not disturbed the text, I very much suspect that the poet wrote:

"and there I found this credent.

He uses the same term again in the very same sense in the Winter's Tale:

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--Then 'tis very credent,

"Thou may'st cojoin with something, and thou dost," &c. THEOB. "I found this credit." Credit is employed participially as is frequent with Shakspeare. Or he may have written in credit (en credit) according to the French idiom. B.

Oli. If it be ought to the old tune, my lord,

It is as fat and fulsome to mine ear,

As howling after musick.

As fat and fulsome.] We should read: as flat. WARB.

Fat means dull; so we say a fatheaded fellow; fat likewise means gross, and is sometimes used for obscene; and fut is more congruent to fulsome than flat. Jonn.

"As fat and fulsome."

"Fat," the English word, is too inelegant for the mouth of Olivia. It is certainly the French fat which Shakspeare has here employed adjectively. The meaning is: "It is as impertinent and offensive to mine ear," &c. B.

Sir To. Then he's a rogue. After a passy-measure or a pavin,

I hate a drunken rogue.

Then he's a rogue, and a passy-measure pavin;

A passy-measure pavin may perhaps mean a pavin danced out of time. Sir Toby might call the surgeon by this title, because he was drunk at å time when he should have been sober, and in a condition to attend on the wounded knight. Panyn however is the reading of the old copy, though the u in it being reversed, the modern editors have been contented to read:

"And a past-measure painim."

This dance called the pavyn is mentioned by Beaumont and Fletcher in the Mad Lover:

"I'll pipe him such a pavan."

And in Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse, containing a pleasant invective against Poets, Pipers, &c. 1579, it is enumerated, as follows, among other dances.

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"Dumps, pavins, galliards, measures, fancyes, or newe streynes." I do not, at last, see how the sense will completely quadrate on the present occasion. Sir W. Davenant in one of his interludes, mentions doleful pavin." In the Cardinal, by Shirley, 1652: "Who then shall dance the pavin with Osorio?" Again, in 'Tis pity she's a Whore, by Ford, 1633: "I have seen an ass and a mule trot the Spanish pavin with a better grace." Lastly, in Shadwell's Virtuoso, 1676: "A grave pavin or almain, at which the black Tarantula only moved: it danced to it with a kind of grave motion much like the benchers at the revels." STEEV.

Bailey's Dictionary says, pavan is the lowest sort of instrumental music; and when this play was written, the pavin and the passamezzo might be in vogue only with the vulgar, as with Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet and hence Sir Toby may mean-he is a rogue and a mean low fellow. TOLLET.

Then he's a rogue, and a passy measure pavin,

I hate a drunken rogue.]

B. Jonson also mentions the pavin, and calls it a Spanish dance, Alchemist, p. 97. but it seems to come originally from Padua, and should rather be written pavane, as a corruption of paduana. A dance of that name (saltatio paduana) occurs in an old writer, quoted by the annotator on Rabelais, b. v. c. 30.

Passy measures is undoubtedly a corruption, but I know not how it should be rectified. TYRW.

Then he's a rogue. After a passy-measure or a pavin, I hate a drunken rogue, i. e. next to a passy measure or a pavin, &c. It is in character, that Sir Toby should express a strong dislike of serious dances, such as the passamezzo and the pavan are described to be. TYRW.

I have followed Mr. Tyrwhitt's regulation, which indeed I ought to have adopted in the edition preceding this. STEEV.

"A rouge and passy-measure pavin." The Commentators have totally mistaken the sense. They have been led into error by the faulty printing of the quarto edition (paynyn for paynym) and by the word pavin or pavan, and which, as it signifies a dance,they supposed passy measure to mean the same, and that it is corrupted of passainezzo. The fact, however, is, that passamezzo is not to be found in either the Spanish or the Italian language, any more than passymeasure is in the English. For pavin we must read painim, i. e. heathen. As to pazzomezzo it is of Shakspeare's coinage: a compound of pazzo [mad] and mezzo [half] i. e. half mad, or as we should now say, crackbrained, besotted. It is evident from the conjunction "and" that Sir Toby would represent the surgeon not only as a rogue, but something more. Now by the present reading what would he prove him to be? "Then he's a rogue and two dances," &c. The incongruence, not to say ridiculousness, of the images, is easily seen. I read: "Then he's a rogue and a pazzomezzo painim," i. e. Then he's a rogue and a besotted Pagan, &c. Here the whole is apposite and just. It may be urged that the expression is extravagant and bombastic; but it should be remembered that this accords with the character of Sir Toby, and indeed

with that of some others which are found in the play. But this I have observed in a former note.

B.

Duke. Your master quits you: and, for

done him,

your

So much against the metal of your sex,
So far beneath your soft and tender breeding,
And since you call'd me master for so long,
Here is my hand.

service

[To Viola.

So much against the metal of your sex.] The old copy reads, I think rightly:

So much against the mettle of your sex.

i. e. so much against the natural disposition of your sex. MAL.

"Against the metal of your sex." I am persuaded that mittle will be the right word here. In old language it signifies mightiness, and is used by our poet for excellence, dignity, [natural, not acquired] a sense which it will very well bear.

"So much against the dignity of your sex."

It is easily seen how much this change gives foree to the expression. B.

Winter's Tale.

ACT I. SCENE I.

Cam. Their encounters, though not personal, have been royally attorney'd, with interchange of gifts, letters, loving embassies.

-royally attorney'd-Nobly supplied by substitution of embassies, &c. JOHN.

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Royally attorney'd.' It would seem that attorney'd' should be atourned (atourner fr. to furnish out, to decorate) "royally atourned," a splendid retinue, a magnificent suite. immediately after, of " their loving embassies."

Her.

I'll give you my commission,

To let him there a month, behind the
Prefix'd for his parting.

-behind the gest,]

gest,

He speaks

Mr. Theobald says: he can neither trace, nor understand the phrase, and therefore thinks it should be just; But the word gest is right, and signifies a stage or journey. In the time of royal progresses the king's stages, as we may see by the journals of them in the herald's office, were called his gests; from the old French word giste, diversorium. WARB.

In Strype's Memorials of Archbishop Cranmer, p. 283.--The Archbishop intreats Cecil," to let him have the new resolved-upon gests, from that time to the end, that he might from time to time know where the king was."

Again, in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 1599:

"Castile, and lovely Elinor with him,

"Have in their gests resolved for Oxford town."

Again, in Vittoria Corombona, 1612:

"Do like the gests in the progress,

"You know where you shall find me." STEEV.

Gest!' It is true that the word gest is frequently used for stage, or journey. But gest will hardly accord with the words immediately following Prefixed for his parting. Time, or season, would give the proper sense. May we not therefore read behind the les,' i. e. beyond the season or time which had been settled for his departure. Leson is found in Chaucer, and used for season. The contraction is such as Shakspeare has frequently ventured on in other words. He uses less for bounds or limits. B.

Leo. Why, that was when

Three crabbed months had sour'd themselves to death,
Ere I could make thee open thy white hand,
And clap thyself my love.

And clepe thyself my love;

The old edition reads-clap thyself. This reading may be explained: She open'd her hand, to clap the palm of it into his, as people do when they confirm a bargain. Hence the phrase-to clap up a bargain, i. c. make one with no other ceremony than the junction of hands. STEEV.

Clepe thyself, i. e. name thyself, is surely the reading that should be preferred, A king should not be made to talk of clapping up a bargain. B.

Leo. I'fecks?

Why, that's my bawcock.

Why, that's my bawcock-] Perhaps from beau and coq. It is still said in vulgar language that.such a one is a jolly cock, a cock of the game. The word has already occurred in Twelfth Night, and is one of the titles by which Pistol speaks of King Henry the Fifth. STEEV.

Mr. Steevens is right, I believe, in saying that "bawcock" comes from beau and coq; but it can hardly be supposed that Leontes, a king, should call his son a jolly cock, or a cock of the game.

"That's my bawcock," i. e. that's my fine fellow.

The Scots say," Bra Cock." Bra is contracted of brave. B.

Leo. Thou want'st a rough pash, and the shoots that I have,

To be full like me.

Thou want'st a rough pash, and the shoots that I have, Pash is kiss. Paz, Spanish, i. e. thou want'st a mouth made rough by s beard to kiss with. Shoots are branches, i e. horns. Leontes is alluding to the ensigns of cuckoldom. STEEV.

A rough pash seems to mean a rough hide or skin. Perhaps it comes from the plural of the French word peau, or from a corruption of the Teutonic, peltz, a pelt. TOLLET.

Thou want'st a rough pash.' Leontes is talking of the rough pash,' of a calf. Mr. Steevens accordingly tells us that to pash is te kiss. But calves, I believe, are not remarkable for kissing. Per

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