Enter DUKE senior, AMIENS, and two or three Lords, like foresters OW, MY CO-MATES AND brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this Than that of painted pomp? More free from peril than the Here feel we but the penalty of The seasons' difference; as the And churlish chiding of the winter's wind, say Which, when it bites and blows upon my body, 10 That feelingly persuade me what I am." Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head: Finds tongues in trees, books in the running Sermons in stones and good in every thing. I would not change it." AMI. "Happy is your Grace, That can translate the stubbornness of fortune Into so quiet and so sweet a style. DUKE S. Come, shall we go and kill us venison? And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools, Being native burghers of this desert city, Should in their own confines with forked heads Have their round haunches gored. 14 precious jewel in his head] Cf. Lyly's Euphues: "The foule Toade hath a faire stone in his head" (ed. Arber, p. 53). The ignorant popular belief, that a toad carried a precious stone in its head, which was universal in Shakespeare's day, is apparently derived from the fact that a stone or gem, chiefly found in Egypt, is of the brownish gray colour of toads, and is therefore called a batrachite or toadstone. Pliny in his Natural History (Book 32) ascribes to a bone in the toad's head curative and other properties, but does not suggest that a gem is ever found there. In his description elsewhere of the toadstones of Egypt he only notes their association with toads in the way of colour. 24 forked heads] arrow heads. Roger Ascham, in Toxophilus (ed. Arber, p. 135), mentions that arrow heads, "having two points streching forwards," are commonly called "fork heads." Cf. Lear, I, i, 143, where the arrow-head is called "the fork." 20. L FIRST LORD. Indeed, my lord, The melancholy Jaques grieves at that, Under an oak whose antique root peeps out Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook, DUKE S. But what said Jaques? Did he not moralize this spectacle? FIRST LORD. O, yes, into a thousand similes. First, for his weeping into the needless stream; "Poor deer," quoth he," thou makest a testament As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more To that which had too much": then, being there alone, 44 moralize] Cf. Cotgrave, Fr.-Eng. Dict.: "Moraliser: To morralize, to expound morrally, to give a morall sence vnto." See also infra, II, vii, 29: "moral on the time." 30 40 Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends; ""T is right," quoth he; thus misery doth part The flux of company: anon a careless herd, Full of the pasture, jumps along by him And never stays to greet him; "Ay," quoth Jaques, DUKE S. And did you leave him in this contemplation? SEC. LORD. We did, my lord, weeping and commenting Upon the sobbing deer. DUKE S. Show me the place: I love to cope him in these sullen fits, For then he 's full of matter. FIRST LORD. I'll bring you to him straight. [Exeunt. 62 kill . . . up] Intensitive of "kill,” i. e. exterminate. Cf. Adlington's Apuleius' Golden Asse, 1582, fo. 159: « Killed vp with colde." 67 cope] meet with, encounter. Cf. Venus and Adonis, 889: "They all strain courtesy who shall cope him first." SCENE II-A ROOM IN THE PALACE Enter DUKE FREDERICK, with Lords. DUKE F. Can it be possible that no man saw them? It cannot be some villains of my court Are of consent and sufferance in this. FIRST LORD. I cannot hear of any that did see her. They found the bed untreasured of their mistress. Your daughter and her cousin much commend That youth is surely in their company. DUKE F. Send to his brother; fetch that gallant hither; If he be absent, bring his brother to me; I'll make him find him: do this suddenly, 10 And let not search and inquisition quail [Exeunt. 8 roynish] scurvy. Cognate forms "roynous" and "roignous," both meaning "coarse," figure in the Romaunt of the Rose, 11. 987, 6193. The word seems adapted from the French. Cotgrave's Fr.-Eng. Dict. has “rougneux," which is interpreted "scabbie, mangie," and "scuruie." Cf. Macb., I, iii, 6: "rump-fed ronyon [mangy creature]." 20 quail] grow faint, slacken in effort. |