But feek the weary beds of people fick.

Dum. But what to me, my love? but what to me? Cath. A wife!-a beard, fair health, and honesty; With three-fold love I wish you all these three.

Dum. O, fhall I fay, I thank you, gentle wife? Cath. Not fo, my lord;-atwelve-month and a day -I'll mark no words that smooth-fac'd wooers fay. Come, when the king doth to my lady come; Then, if I have much love, I'll give you fome. Dum. I'll ferve thee true and faithfully till then. Cath. Yet fwear not, left you be forfworn again. Long. What fays Maria?

Mar. At the twelve-month's end,

I'll change my black gown for a faithful friend.
Long. I'll stay with patience; but the time is long.
Mar. The liker you; few tailer are fo young.
Biron. Studies my lady? miftrefs, look on me,
Behold the window of my heart, mine eye,
What humble fuit attends thy answer there;
Impose fome fervice on me for thy love.

Rof. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron,
Before I faw you; and the world's large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks;
Full of comparisons and wounding flouts;
Which you on all eftates will execute,
That lie within the mercy of your wit:

To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain;
And therewithal, to win me, if you please,
(Without the which I am not to be won)
You fhall this twelve-month-term from day to day
Vifit the fpeechlefs fick, and ftill converfe
With groaning wretches; and your task fhall be,
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,
To enforce the pained impotent to fmile.

Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be, it is impoffible:

2

Mirth

Mirth cannot move a foul in agony.

Rof. Why, that's the way to choak a gibing fpirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace,
Which fhallow-laughing hearers give to fools.
A jeft's profperity lies in the ear

Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it: then, if fickly ears,
Deaft with the clamours of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle fcorns, continue then,
And I will have you, and that fault withal:
But if they will not, throw away that spirit;
And I fhall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your reformation.

Biron. A twelve month? well; befal what will befal, I'll jeft a twelve-month in an hofpital.

Prin. Ay, fweet my lord, and fo I take my leave. [To the King. King. No, madam; we will bring you on your way. Biron. Our wooing doth not end like an old play; Jack hath not Jill; thefe ladies' courtesy Might well have made our fport a comedy.

King. Come, fir, it wants a twelve-month and a day, And then 'twill end.

Biron. That's too long for a play.

Enter Armado.

Arm. Sweet majefty, vouchfafe me
Prin. Was not that Hector?

Dum. That worthy knight of Troy.

Arm. I will kifs thy royal finger, and take leave. I am a votary; I have vow'd to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her fweet love three years. But, most

2

dear groans,] Dear fhould here, as in many be dere, fad, odious. JOHNSON.

other places,

esteemed greatnefs, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled, in praise of the owl and the cuckow? it should have follow'd in the end of our show.

King. Call them forth quickly, we will do fo.
Arm. Holla! approach.-

Enter all, for the fong.

This fide is Hiems, winter.

This Ver, the spring: the one maintained by the owl,

Do paint the meadows with delight;
The cuckow then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus fings he,
Cuckow !

Cuckow! cuckow !-O word of fear,
Unpleafing to a married car.

3 When, &c.] The first lines of this fong that were tranfpofed, have been replaced by Mr. Theobald. JOHNSON.

4

+ -cuckor-buds-] Miller fays, that lady-fmocks and cuckooflowers are only different names of the fame plant. STEEVENS.

5 Do paint the meadows with delight;] This is a pretty rural fong, in which the images are drawn with great force from nature. But this fenfelefs expletive of painting with delight, I would read thus,

Do paint the meadows much-bedight,

i. e much bedecked or adorned as they are in fpring-time. The epithet is proper, and the compound not inelegant. WARBURTON. Much less elegant than the prefent reading. JOHNSON.

When

When Shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

And merry larks are plowmens' clocks:
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,

And maidens bleach their summer fmocks;
The cuckow then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus fings be,
Cuckow !

Cuckow! cuckow ! O word of fear,
Unpleafing to a married ear!

WINTER.

When ificles bang by the wall,

And Dick the fhepherd blows his nail;
And Tom bears logs into the ball,

And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
Then nightly fings the staring owl,
Tu-whit! to-whoo!·

-A merry note,

While greafy Joan ‘doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parfon's faw;

And birds fit trocding in the fnow,

Aud Marian's nofe looks red and raw ;

When roafted crabs hifs in the bowl,
Then nightly fings the staring owl,
Tu-whit! to-whoo!

doth keel the pot.] This word is yet ufed in Ireland, and fignifies to fcum the pot. Dr. GOLDSMITH.

So in Marfton's Dumb Knight, 1607.-"Faith, Doricus, thy "brain boils, keel it, keel it, or all the fat's in the fire." STEEVENS.

472

Arm. The words of Mercury are harsh after the fongs of Apollo: You that way; we this way. [Exeunt omnes."

7 In this play, which all the editors have concurred to cenfure, and fome have rejected as unworthy of our poet, it must be confeffed, that there are many paffages mean, childish, and vulgar; and fome which ought not to have been exhibited, as we are told they were, to a maiden queen. But there are fcattered through the whole many fparks of genius; nor is there any play that has more evident marks of the hand of Shakespeare. JOHNSON.

ACT I. SCENE I. Page 350.

THIS child of fancy, that Armado hight, &c.] This, as I have fhewn in the note in its place, relates to the ftories in the books of chivalry. A few words, therefore, concerning their origin and nature, may not be unacceptable to the reader. As I don't know of any writer, who has given any tolerable account of this matter and especially as monfieur Huet, the bishop of Avranches, who wrote a formal treatife of the Origin of Romances, has faid little or nothing of thefe in that fuperficial work. For having brought down the account of romances to the later Greeks, and entered upon thofe compofed by the barbarous western writers, which have now the name of Romances almost appropriated to them, he puts the change upon his reader, and inftead of giving us an account of thefe books of chivalry, one of the most curious and interefting parts of the subject he promised to treat of, he contents himself with a long account of the poems of the provincial writers, called likewife romances: and fo, under the equivoque of a common term, drops his proper fubject, and entertains us with another, that had no relation to it more than in the name.

The Spaniards were of all others the fondeft of these fables, as fuiting beft their extravagant turn to gallantry and bravery ; which in time grew fo excellive, as to need all the efficacy of Cervantes's incomparable fatire to bring them back to their fenfes. The French fuffered an eafier cure from their doctor Rabelais, who enough difcredited the books of chivalry, by only ufing the extravagant ftories of us giants, &c. as a cover for another kind of fatire against the refined politicks of his countrymen; of which they were as much poffeffed as the Spaniards of their romantic bravery. A bravery our Shakespeare makes their chara&eristic, in this defeription of a Spanish gentleman;

A