Against your yet ungalled estimation, Ant. E. You have prevail'd; I will depart in quiet, [Ereunt. SCENE II. The same. Enter LUCIANA, and ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse. Luc. And may it be that you have quite forgot A husband's office? shall, Antipholus, Even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot? Shall love, in building, grow so ruinous ? 12 By this time. And may it be that you have quite forgot Shall love in buildings grow so ruinate?' The present emendation was proposed by Steevens, though he admitted Theobald's into his own text. Love-springs are the buds of love, or rather the young shoots. "The spring, or young sboots that grow out of the stems or roots of trees.' BABET. "This canker that cats up love's tender spring.' And in The Rape of Lucrece : If you did wed my sister for her wealth, kindness: your false love with some show of blindness: Let not my sister read it in your eye; Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator; Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty; Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger: Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted; Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint: Be secret-false; What need she be acquainted ? What simple thief brags of his own attaint? "Tis double wrong, to truant with your bed, And let her read it in thy looks at board: Shame hath a bastard fame, well managed; Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word. Alas, poor woman! make us but2 believe Being compact of credit3, that you love us; Though others have the arm, show us the sleeve We in your motion turn, and you may move us. Then gentle brother, get you in again; Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife: "Tis holy sport, to be a little vaino, When the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife. Ant. S. Sweet mistress (what your name is else, I know not, Again: 'To branch out, to shoot out young springes.' Shakspeare uses it again in his Venus and Adonis : "To dry the old oak's sap and cherish spring8. That love is gradually built up, and that the lover's bosom is the mansion where this sovereign deity resides, was a favourite notion with the poet. Thus in The Two Gentlemen of Verona : "O) thou that dost inhabit in my breast, Lest, growning ruinous, the building fall. He has similar allusions in Antony and Cleopatra and in Troilus and Cressida. 2 Old copy, not. 3 i. e. being made altogether of credulity. 4 Vain is light of tougue. Vol. IV. Nor by what wonder you do hit on mine), Less, in your knowledge, and your grace, you show not, Than our earth's wonder; more than earth divine. Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak; Lay open to my earthy gross conceit, Smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak, The folded meaning of your words' deceit. Against my soul's pure truth why labour you, To make it wander in an unknown field? Are you a god? would you create me new ? Transform me then, and to your power I'll yield. But if that I am I, then well I know, Your weeping sister is no wife of mine, Nor to her bed no homage do I owe; Far more, far more, to you do I decline5. 0, train me not, sweet mermaids, with thy note, To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears; Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote: Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs, And as a bed8 I'll take thee, and there lie; And, in that glorious supposition, think He gains by death, that hath such means to die: Let love, being light, be drowned if she sink! Luc. What, are you mad, that you do reason so ? Ant. S. Not mad, but mated10; how, I do not 5 "To decline; to turne, or hang toward some place or thing: BARET. 6 Mermaid for siren. So in Macbeth: 'His silver skin laced with his golden blood.' 8 The first folio reads : 'And as a bud I'll take thee, and there lie;' Which Malone thus explains :-I, like an insect, will take thy bosom for a rose, or other flower,' and there “Involved in fragrance, burn and die.”' It appears to me that the context requires that we should read bed, with the second folio. Edwards proposed to read :And as a bed I'll take them (i. e. the waves), and there lie,' &c. 9 Malone says that by love here is meant the queen of love. In Venus and Adonis, Venus, speaking of herself, says: "Love is a spirit, all compact of fire, know. Luc. It is a fault that springeth from your eye. Ant. S. For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by. Luc. Gaze where you should, and that will clear your sight. Ant. S. As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night. Luc. Why call you me love ? call my sister so. Ant. S. Thy sister's sister. Luc. That's my sister. Ant. S. No; It is thyself, mine own self's better part; Mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart; My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope's aimll, My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim. Luc. All this my sister is, or else should be. Ant. S. Call thyself sister, sweet, for I aim 12 thee: Thee will I love, and with thee lead my life; Thou hast no husband yet, nor I no wife: Give me thy hand. Luc. 0, soft, sir, hold you still ; I'll fetch my sister, to get her good will. [Exit Luc. Enter, from the House of ANTIPHOLUS of Ephesus, DROMIO of Syracuse. Ant. S. Why, how now, Dromio ? where runn'st thou so fast ? Dro. S. Do you know me, sir ? am I Dromio? am I your man? am I myself? Ant. s. Thou art Dromio, thou art my man, thou art thyself. 10 Mated means matched with a wife, and confounded. A quibble is intended. 11 i. e. all the happiness I wish for on earth, and all that I claim from heaven hereafter. 12 The old copy reads I am thee. The present reading is Steevens's. Others have proposed I mean thee: but aim for aim at was sometimes used; as in Drayton's Legend of Robert Duke of Normandy: I make my changes aim one certain end Dro. S. I am an ass, I am a woman's man, and besides myself. Ant. S. What woman's man? and how besides thyself? Dro. S. Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a woman: one that claims me, one that haunts me, one that will have me. Ant. S. What claim lays she to thee? Dro. S. Marry, sir, such claim as you would lay to your horse; and she would have me as a beast : not that, I being a beast, she would have me; bnt that she, being a very beastly creature, lays claim to me. Ant. S. What is she? Dro. S. A very reverend body; ay, such a one as a man may not speak of, without he reverence13: I have but lean luck in the match, and yet is she a wondrous fat marriage ? Ant. S. How dost thou mean, a fat marriage ? Dro. S. Marry, sir, she's the kitchen-wench, and all grease; and I know not what use to put her to, but to make a lamp of her, and run from her by her own light. I warrant, her rags, and the tallow in them, will burn a Poland winter: if she lives till doomsday, she'll burn a week longer than the whole world. Ant. S. What complexion is she of? Dro. S. Swart14, like my shoe, but her face no say, sir 13 This is a very old corruption of save reverence, salva reverentia. See Blount's Gl088ography, 1682. "To speake words of reverence before, as when we say, saving your worship, saving your reverence, and such like." Baret.--Shakspeare has very properly put this corruption into the mouth of Dromio. It Swart, or swarth, i. c. dark, dusky, infuscus. Steevens says, 'black, or rather of a dark brown:' but hear Shakspeare, King Henry VI. Part 1: And whereas I was black and swart before.' Malone says, Mr. Steevens's first definition is right. Swart is a Dutch word; and the Dutch call a blackamoor a swart." is certainly a Dutch word; but it is an English word also, and unquestionably not derived from the Dutch. It runs through all the northern dialects; we have it from the Saxon sweart, or the Gothic swarts. |