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ACT IV.

(12)

35 sc. II. n. 13. sc. I. n. 15.

I'll go find a shadow, and sigh till he come] "Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there

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Weep our sad bosoms empty." Macb. STEEVENS.

"What news,

(13) His leather skin and horns to wear] Forrester? Hast thou wounded some deere, and lost him in the fall? Care not, man, for so small a losse; thy fees was but the skinne, the shoulders, and the horns." Lodge's Rosalinde, 1592. STEEVENS.

(14) Take thou no scorn, to wear the horn] In King John in two parts, 1591, we find

"But let the foolish Frenchman take no scorn

"If Philip front him with an English horn." MALONE. And in the old comedy of Grim the Collier of Croydon: "Unless your great infernal majesty "Do solemnly proclaim, no devil shall scorn "Hereafter still to wear the goodly horn."

To take scorn occurs in I. H. VI. IV. 4.

"And take foul scorn, to fawn on him by sending."

STEEVENS.

We find "Thinke discourtesie," Prol. to Sir John Harrington's Metam. of Ajax, 1596. So" thinks scorn." Cymb. IV. 4. Bel.

(15) Patience herself would startle at this letter,

And play the swaggerer ;]

"This would make mercy swear, and play the tyrant.”

(16) a tame snake] i. e. spiritless.

M. for M. STEEVENS.

"If those silie poore soules had taken up armour against his majesties power, they might justly be called rebels; but, alas! they were silie poore snakes, utterly unarmed."

tured, 4to. 1616, p. 156.

"And still the poorest, miserable snakes."

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Tobacco tor

Meliusque miserrimus horum." Juv. XI. 12.
Fasciculus florum. 12mo. 1636, p. 161.

(17) purlieus of this forest] Purlieu, says Manwood's Treatise on the Forest Laws, c. xx. 66 Is a certaine territorie of ground adjoyning unto the forest, meared and bounded with unmoveable marks, meeres, and boundaries: which territories of ground was also forest, and afterwards disaforested againe by the perambulations made for the severing of the new forest from the old."

REED.

Purlieus are the outskirts or borders. The derivation of the word, which our other dictionaries had not before given, appears in Todd. "Pur, Fr. clear, exempt, and lieu, a place."

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H. III.'s time the charta de Foresta was established; so that there was much land disafforested, which hath been called pourlieus ever since." Howell's Letters, IV. 16.

(18) The rank of osiers] i. e. row.

"Short be the rank of pearles, circling her tongue."

Wit's Interpreter, 8vo. 1571, p. 226.

"If all committers stood in a rank,

466 They'd make a lane &c."

See "rank'd," Tim. I. 1. Poet.

Decker's Honest Whore, Part I.

(19) bestows himself, like, &c.] i. e. carries, shows. Steevens instances II. H. IV. "How might we see Falstaff bestow himself to-night in his true colours, and not ourselves be seen."

(20) this bloody napkin] "A napkin or handkerchiefe, wherewith wee wipe away the sweate. Sudarium." Baret's Alv. 1580.

Steevens cites Ray, that a pocket handkerchief is so called about Sheffield, in Yorkshire: and Greene's Never too Late, 1616: "I can wet one of my new lockram napkins with weeping."

Napery, indeed, signifies linen in general in Decker's Honest Whore, 1635 :

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pr'ythee put me into wholesome napery.” And in Chapman's May-Day, 1611: "Besides your munition of manchet napery plates." Naperia, Ital. STEEVens.

(21) Under an oak, &c.] The passage stands thus in Lodge's novel: " Saladyne, wearie with wandring up and downe, and hungry with long fasting, finding a little cave by the side of a thicket, eating such fruite as the forrest did affoord, and contenting himself with such drinke as nature had provided, and thirst made delicate, after his repast he fell into a dead sleepe. As thus he lay, a hungry lyon came hunting downe the edge of the grove for pray, and espying Saladyne, began to ceaze upon him; but seeing he lay still without any motion, he left to touch him, for that lyons hate to pray on dead carkasses: and yet desirous to have some foode, the lyon lay downe and watcht to see if he would stirre. While thus Saladyne slept secure, fortune that was careful of her champion, began to smile, and brought it so to passe, that Rosader (having stricken a deere that but lightly hurt fled through the thicket) came pacing downe by the grove with a boare-speare in his hande in great haste, he spyed where a man lay asleepe, and a lyon fast by him amazed at this sight, as he stood gazing, his nose on the sodaine bledde, which made him conjecture it was some friend of his. Whereupon drawing more nigh, he might easily discerne his visage, and perceived by his phisnomie that it was his

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brother Saladyne, which drave Rosader into a deepe passion, as a man perplexed, &c.—But the present time craved no such doubting ambages; for he must eyther resolve to hazard his life for his reliefe, or else steale away and leave him to the crueltie of the lyon. In which doubt hee thus briefly debated," &c. STEEVENS.

(22) To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead]

"There is

a great clemencie in lions; they will not hurt them that lie groveling." Choise of Change, &c. 4to. 1585. "Their mercie is known by oft examples; for they spare them that lye on the ground." Bartholomæus.

(23)

"Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you,
"Which better fits a lion than a man."

Tr. and Cress. V. 3. Douce's Illustr. 1. 307.

Cousin-Ganymede] Celia, in her first fright, for

gets Rosalind's character and disguise, and calls out cousin, then recollects herself, and says, Ganymede. JOHNSON,

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(1) meaning thereby, that grapes were made to eat, and lips to open. You do love this maid] Part of this dialogue seems to have grown out of the novel on which the play is formed: "Phebe is no latice for your lips, and her grapes hang so hie, that gaze at them you may, but touch them you cannot."

MALONE.

So much of nothing, set out in so much form, is, indeed, simply taken, enough in character; but was probably meant to ridicule something now out of reach.

(2) clubs cannot part them] i. e. " the interposition of the civic guard, armed with clubs, when that outcry is made for assistance, on the breaking out of an affray. Malone observes, that the preceding words "they are in the very wrath of love," give the introduction of this word a marked propriety here; and he cites Tit. Andron.

Clubs, clubs; these lovers will not keep the peace."
II. 1. Aaron.

See H. VIII. V. 3. Porter's Man.

(3) which I tender dearly, though I say I am a magician] And therefore might be supposed able to elude death. MALONE.

Certainly, as M. Mason observes at the end of Mids. N. Dr., the fairies of Shakespeare, and of common tradition, were endowed with immortality. Such too is his spirit Ariel, and Milton's Comus. But the witch Sycorax was no more than inortal; neither was Prospero, who had power to control her. The sanguinary laws enacted by James against those who exercised witchcraft could not, as supposed by Warburton and Steevens, affect this question, if, as Malone, Chalmers, and Douce concur, this play was not written later than 1600.

(4) 'tis like the howling of Irish wolves against the moon] i. e. "the same monotonous chime wearisomely and sickeningly repeated." Malone observes, that this expression is borrowed from Lodge's Rosalynde, 1592: "I tell thee, Montanus, in courting Phoebe, thou barkest with the wolves of Syria, against the moone." In that place, however, it imports an aim at impossibilities, a sense which, whatever may be Rosalind's meaning, cannot very well be attached to it here.

(5) desire to be a woman of the world] i. e. to be married. "If I may have your ladyship's good will to go to the world, Isbell the woman and I will do as we may." All's well &c. I. 3. Clown. See M. ado &c. II. 1. Beatr., and Ant. and Cl. I. 2. CL.

(6) a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino] It is observable, that amongst other scraps and burdens of songs, Ophelia, under her visitation of madness, Haml. IV. 5. sings this, as well as others of a similar character: and see Lear III. 3. Edgar.

Douce quotes Melismata, musical phansies, &c. 4to. 1611, and Playford's musical Companion, p. 55.

"He that will an alehouse keepe
"Must have three things in store;
"A chamber and a feather bed,
"A chimney, and a hey no-ny no-ny,
"Hey no-ny no-ny, hey no-ny no,

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Hey no-ny no, hey no-ny no."

Illustrat. II. 162.

See Florio's Ital. Dict. 1611, sub voce Fossa.

(7) The spring time, the only pretty rang time] Whatever the meaning of this word, the reading of Dr. Johnson, rank, though it offers a sense no way foreign to the ideas afloat in this ballad, wants the ease and flow that belongs to the playful character of such rhymes.

Rang and tang, and such chiming monosyllables, as rang a rang, tang a tang, are in frequent use by nurses with children, when any shrill or jocund sound is heard, or made by themselves.

Rang time may then be the season of joyous sounds.

"When birds do sing, hey ding a ding."

The season of the "canere undique sylvas" of Lucretius, 1. 257, and Virgil's Georg. I. 422,

avium concentus in agros,

"Et lætæ pecudes, & ovantes gutture corvi."

In addition we shall throw out for the reader's amusement an extract from R. Brathwayt's Wildman's Measures, 8vo. 1621. p. 211.

"Measures store, to please thy mind;

66

Roundelayes, Irish-hayes,

Cogs and rongs, and Peggie Ramsie."

That Peggy Ramsie did not class amongst songs of the most correct character may be collected from the note on Peg a Ramsey. Tw. N. II. 3. Sir Toby.

(8) make these doubts all even] i. e. remove doubts, which may be said to be in the nature of knobs or inequalities, obstructing our course. Steevens refers to

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(9) I desire you of the like] i. e. the like of you. Steevens cites Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, 1621 :

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"She dear besought the prince of remedy."

And Heywood's Play of the Wether:

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Besechynge your grace of wynde continual."

See M. N. Dr. III. 1. Bottom.

(10) as marriage binds, and blood breaks] i. e.

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marriage-rite imposes the obligation, and heat of blood prompts to its breach." So M. ado &c. II. 1. Claud.

"Beauty is a witch,

Against whose charms faith melteth into blood."

See "blood thy direction."

Tr. and Cr. II. 3. Friar.

(11) the fool's bolt, sir, and such dulcet diseases] i. e. such pleasant fooleries or sayings, as I have been scattering about; and which are epidemical among us as diseases.

Malone has produced a very apt instance of the same species of writing and humour in Launcelot Gobbo :-" the young gentleman (according to the fates and destinies, and such odd sayings, the sisters three, and such branches of learning,) is indeed deceased." M. of Ven. II. 2.

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