BEAT. No; but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say, Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids: so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long. ANT. Well, niece, [To HERO,] I trust, you will be ruled by your father. BEAT. Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make courtesy, and say, Father, as it please you :—but yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another courtesy, and say, Father, as it please me. LEON. Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband. BEAT. Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be over-mastered with a piece of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred. LEON. Daughter, remember, what I told you: if the prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer. BEAT. The fault will be in the musick, cousin, if you be not woo'd in good time; if the prince be too important, tell him, there is measure in every thing, and so dance out the answer. For hear me, if the prince be too IMPORTANT,] Important here, and in many other places, is importunate. JOHNSON. So, in King Lear, Act IV. Sc. IV.: 66 6 great France "My mourning, and important tears hath pitied." STEEVENS. there is MEASURE in every thing,] A measure in old language, beside its ordinary meaning, signified also a dance. MALONE. Hero; Wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sinks into his grave. LEON. Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly. BEAT. I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by day-light. LEON. The revellers are entering, brother; make good room. Enter Don PEDRO, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK, BAlthaZAR'; Don JOHN, BORACHIO, MARGARET, URSULA, and others, masked. D. PEDRO. Lady, will you walk about with your friend 8 ? So, in King Richard II. : 66 My legs can keep no measure in delight, STEEVENS. 7 Balthazar ;] The quarto and folio add—or dumb John. STEEVENS. Here is another proof that when the first copies of our author's plays were prepared for the press, the transcript was made out by the ear. If the MS. had lain before the transcriber, it is very unlikely that he should have mistaken Don for dumb: but, by an inarticulate speaker, or inattentive hearer, they might easily be confounded. MALONE. Don John's taciturnity has been already noticed. It seems therefore not improbable that the author himself might have occasionally applied the epithet dumb to him. REED. 8- your FRIEND?] Friend, in our author's time, was the common term for a lover. So also in French and Italian. MALONE. Mr. Malone might have added, that this term was equally applicable to both sexes; for, in Measure for Measure, Lucio tells İsabella that her brother had got his friend with child." STEEVENS. HERO. So you walk softly, and look sweetly, and say nothing, I am yours for the walk; and, especially, when I walk away. D. PEDRO. With me in your company? D. PEDRO. And when please you to say so? HERO. When I like your favour; for God defend, the lute should be like the case1! D. PEDRO. My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove 2. 9 for God DEFEND,] i. e. forbid. So in the ancient MS. Romance of the Sowdon of Babyloyne, p. 38: "But saide, damsele, thou arte woode; "Both mete and drinke, and other goode See Othello, Act I. Sc. III. STEEVENS. -the LUTE should be like the CASE!] i. e. that your face should be as homely and coarse as your mask. THEOBALD. 2 My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is JOVE.] The first folio has-Love; the quarto, 1600-Iove; so that here Mr. Theobald might have found the very reading which, in the following note, he represents as a conjecture of his own. STEEVENS. 'Tis plain, the poet alludes to the story of Baucis and Philemon from Ovid; and this old couple, as the Roman poet describes it, lived in a thatch'd cottage: stipulis et cannâ tecta palustri. But why, "within this house is love?" Though this old pair lived in a cottage, this cottage received two straggling Gods, (Jupiter and Mercury,) under its roof. So Don Pedro is a prince; and though his visor is but ordinary, he would insinuate to Hero, that he has something godlike within: alluding either to his dignity, or the qualities of his mind and person. By these circumstances, I am sure, the thought is mended: as, I think verily, the text is too, by the addition of a single letter-' within the house is Jove.' Nor is this emendation a little confirmed by another passage in our author, in which he plainly alludes to the same story. As You Like It: 66 Jaques. O, knowledge ill inhabited, worse than Jove in a thatched house!" THEOBALD. The line of Ovid above quoted is thus translated by Golding, 1587: HERO. Why, then your visor should be thatch'd. MARG. So would not I, for your own sake; for I have many ill qualities. BENE. Which is one? MARG. I say my prayers aloud. BENE. I love you the better; the hearers may cry, Amen. MARG. God match me with a good dancer! MARG. And God keep him out of my sight, when the dance is done!-Answer, clerk. BALTH. No more words; the clerk is answered. URS. I know you well enough; you are signior Antonio. ANT. At a word, I am not. 3 URS. I know you by the waggling of your head. ANT. To tell you true, I counterfeit him. URS. You could never do him so ill-well 3, unless you were the very man: Here's his dry hand up and down; you are he, you are he. ANT. At a word, I am not. "The roofe thereof was thatched all with straw and fennish reede." MALONE. Perhaps the author meant here to introduce two of the long fourteen-syllable verses so common among our early dramatists, and the measure of Golding's translation: "D. Pedro. My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove. "Hero. Why, then your visor should be thatch'd. "D. Pedro. Speak low, if you speak love." BLAKEWAY. 3 You could never do him so ILL-WELL,] A similar phrase occurs in The Merchant of Venice: "He hath a better bad habit of frowning, than the Count Palatine." STEEVENS. 4 - his DRY hand -] A dry hand was anciently regarded as the sign of a cold constitution. To this, Maria, in Twelfth Night, alludes, Act I. Sc. III. STEEVENS. URS. Come, come; do you think I do not know you by your excellent wit? Can virtue hide itself? Go to, mum, you are he: graces will appear, and there's an end. BEAT. Will you not tell me who told you so? BEAT. Nor will you not tell me who you are? BEAT. That I was disdainful,-and that I had my good wit out of the Hundred merry Tales3 ;— Well, this was signior Benedick that said so. BENE. What's he? BEAT. I am sure, you know him well enough. BENE. Not I, believe me. BEAT. Did he never make you laugh? BENE. I pray you, what is he? BEAT. Why, he is the prince's jester: a very dull fool; only his gift is in devising impossible slanders: none but libertines delight in him; and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villainy7; 5 — Hundred merry Tales ;] This in Shakspeare's time was the term used to express a jest book, from a popular collection under that name. See the notes at the end of this play. 6 BOSWELL. his gift is in devising IMPOSSIBLE slanders:] We should read impassible, i. e. slanders so ill invented, that they will pass upon no body. WARBURTON. Impossible slanders are, I suppose, such slanders as, from their absurdity and impossibility, bring their own confutation with them. JOHNSON. Johnson's explanation appears to be right. Ford says, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, that he shall search for Falstaff in "impossible places." The word impossible is also used in a similar sense in Jonson's Sejanus, where Silius accuses Afer of— 7 "Malicious and manifold applying, "Foul wresting, and impossible construction." M. MASON. - his VILLAINY;] By which she means his malice and impiety. By his impious jests, she insinuates, he pleased libertines; and by his devising slanders of them, he angered them. WARBURTON. |