Imatges de pàgina
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For 'twas your heaven, she should be advanc'd:
And weep ye now, seeing she is advanc'd,
Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?
O, in this love, you love your child so ill,
That you run mad, seeing that she is well :
She's not well married, that lives married long;
But she's best married, that dies married young.
Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary
On this fair corse; and, as the custom is,
In all her best array bear her to church:
For though fond nature bids us all lament,
Yet nature's tears are reason's merriment.

CAP. All things', that we ordained festival,

9 For though FOND nature] This line is not in the first quarto. The quarto 1599, and the folio, read-though some nature. The editor of the second folio substituted fond for some. I do not believe this was the poet's word, though I have nothing better to propose. I have already shown that all the alterations made by the editor of the second folio were capricious, and generally extremely injudicious.

In the preceding line the word all is drawn from the quarto 1597, where we find

"In all her best and sumptuous ornaments," &c.

The quarto 1599, and folio, read

"And in her best array bear her to church." MALONE. I am fully satisfied with the reading of the second folio, the propriety of which is confirmed by the following passage in Coriolanus:

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'Tis fond to wail inevitable strokes." STEEVENS.

All things, &c.] Instead of this and the following speeches, the eldest quarto has only a couplet :

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Cap. Let it be so come woeful sorrow-mates,

"Let us together taste this bitter fate." STEEVENS. "All things, that we ordained festival," &c. So, in the poem already quoted:

"Now is the parent's mirth quite changed into mone,

"And now to sorrow is return'd the joy of every one;

"And now the wedding weeds for mourning weeds they change,

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And Hymen to a dirge :-alas! it seemeth strange.

Instead of marriage gloves now funeral gowns they have, And, whom they should see married, they follow to the grave;

Turn from their office to black funeral:
Our instruments, to melancholy bells;
Our wedding cheer, to a sad burial feast 2;
Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change;
Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,
And all things change them to the contrary.
FRI. Sir, go you in,-and, madam, go with
him ;-

And go, sir Paris ;-every one prepare

To follow this fair corse unto her grave:
The heavens do low'r upon you, for some ill;
Move them no more, by crossing their high will.
[Exeunt CAPULET, Lady CAPULEt, Paris, and
Friar.

1 Mus. 'Faith, we may put up our pipes, and be gone.

NURSE. Honest good fellows, ah, put up, put up; For, well you know, this is a pitiful case3.

[Exit Nurse. 1 Mus. Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended.

Enter PETER1.

PET. Musicians, O, musicians, Heart's ease, heart's ease: O, an you will have me live, playheart's ease.

2

1 Mus. Why heart's ease?

PET. O, musicians, because my heart itself plays

"The feast that should have been of pleasure and of joy, "Hath every dish and cup fill'd full of sorrow and annoy."

MALONE.

burial feast;] See Hamlet, Act I. Sc. II. STEEVENS. 3-a PITIFUL case.] If this speech was designed to be metrical, we should read-piteous. STEEVENS.

• Enter Peter.] From the quarto of 1599, it appears, that the part of Peter was originally performed by William Kempe.

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MALONE.

-My heart is full of woe: O, play me some merry dump, to comfort me".

2 Mus. Not a dump we; 'tis no time to play

now.

PET. You will not then?

My heart is full of woe:] This is the burthen of the first stanza of A Pleasant new Ballad of Two Lovers:

"Hey hoe! my heart is full of woe." STEEVENS.

6- O, play me some merry DUMP, to comfort me.] A dump anciently signified some kind of dance, as well as sorrow. So, in Humour Out of Breath, a comedy, by John Day, 1607: "He loves nothing but an Italian dump,

"Or a French brawl."

But on this occasion it means a mournful song. So, in The Arraignment of Paris, 1584, after the shepherds have sung an elegiac hymn over the hearse of Colin, Venus says to ParisHow cheers my lovely boy after this dump of woe? "Paris. Such dumps, sweet lady, as bin these, are deadly dumps to prove.” STEEVENS.

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Dumps were heavy mournful tunes; possibly indeed any sort of movements were once so called, as we sometimes meet with a merry dump. Hence doleful dumps, deep sorrow, or grievous affliction, as in the next page but one, and in the less ancient ballad of Chevy Chase. It is still said of a person uncommonly sad, that he is in the dumps.

In a MS. of Henry the Eighth's time, now among the King's Collection in the Museum, is a tune for the cittern, or guitar, entitled, "My lady Careys dompe;" there is also "The duke of Somersettes dompe; as we now say, Lady Coventry's minuet," &c. "If thou wert not some blockish and senseless dolt, thou wouldest never laugh when I sung a heavy mixt-Lydian tune, or a note to a dumpe or dolefull dittie." Plutarch's Morals, by Holland, 1602, p. 61. RITSON.

At the end of The Secretaries Studie, by Thomas Gainsford, Esq. 4to. 1616, is a long poem of forty-seven stanzas, and called A Dumpe or Passion. It begins in this manner:

"I cannot sing; for neither have I voyce,
"Nor is my minde nor matter musicall;

"My barren pen hath neither form nor choyce:
"Nor is my tale or talesman comicall,
"Fashions and I were never friends at all:

"I write and credit that I see and knowe,

"And mean plain troth; would every one did so."

Reed.

Mus. No.

PET. I will then give it you soundly. 1 Mus. What will you give us?

PET. No money, on my faith; but the gleek': I will give you the minstrel ".

1 Mus. Then will I give you the serving-creature. PET. Then will I lay the serving-creature's dagger on your pate. I will carry no crotchets: I'll re you, I'll fa you; Do you note me?

1 Mus. An you re us, and fa us, you note us. 2 Mus. Pray you, put up your dagger, and put out your wit.

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the GLEEK:] So, in A Midsummer Night's Dream:
Nay, I can gleek, upon occasion."

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To gleek is to scoff. The term is taken from an ancient game at cards called gleek.

So, in Turberville's translation of Ovid's Epistle from Dido to Eneas:

"By manly mart to purchase prayse,
"And give his foes the gleeke."

Again, in the argument to the same translator's version of Hermione to Orestes:

"Orestes gave Achylles' sonne the gleeke." STEEVENS. The use of this cant term is nowhere explained; and in all probability cannot, at this distance of time, be recovered. To gleek however signified to put a joke or trick upon a person, perhaps to jest according to the coarse humour of that age. See A Midsummer Night's Dream, above quoted. RITSON.

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* No money, on my faith; but the GLEEK: I will give you the MINSTREL.] Shakspeare's pun has here remained unnoticed. A Gleekman or Gligman, as Dr. Percy has shown, signified a minstrel. See his Essay on the Antient English Minstrels, p. 55. The word gleek here signifies scorn, as Mr. Steevens has already observed; and is, as he says, borrowed from the old game so called, the method of playing which may be seen in Skinner's Etymologicon, in voce, and also in The Compleat Gamester, 2d edit. 1676, p. 90. DOUCE.

"the minstrel." From the following entry on the books of the Stationers' Company, in the year 1560, it appears, that the hire of a parson was cheaper than that of a minstrel or a cook.

"Item, payd to the preacher
"Item, payd to the minstrell
"Item, payd to the coke

vi s. ii d. xii s.

XV S." STEEVENS.

PET. Then have at you with my wit; I will drybeat you with an iron wit, and put up my iron dagger :-Answer me like men:

When griping grief the heart doth wound,

9 When GRIPING grief, &c.] The epithet griping was by no means likely to excite laughter at the time it was written. Lord Surrey, in his translation of the second book of Virgil's Æneid, makes the hero say:

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New gripes of dred then pearse our trembling brestes." Dr. Percy thinks that the questions of Peter are designed as a ridicule on the forced and unnatural explanations too often given by us painful editors of ancient authors. STEEVENS.

66 IN COMMENDATION OF MUSICKE.

"Where griping grief ye hart would woūd, (& dolful domps ye mind oppresse)

"There musick with her silver sound, is wont with spede to geue redresse;

"Of troubled minds for every sore, swete musick hath a salue

in store:

"In ioy it maks our mirth abound, in grief it chers our heauy sprights,

"The carefull head releef hath found, by musicks pleasant swete delights:

"Our senses, what should I saie more, are subject unto mu

sicks lore.

"The gods by musick hath their pray, the soul therein doth

ioye,

"For as the Romaine poets saie, in seas whom pirats would

destroye,

" A Dolphin sau'd from death most sharpe, Arion playing on his

harp.

"Oh heauenly gift that turnes the minde, (like as the sterne doth rule the ship,)

"Of musick, whom ye gods assignde to comfort man, whom cares would nip,

"Sith thou both man, and beast doest moue, what wisemā thē will thee reprove?

From the Paradise of Daintie

Deuises, fol. 31. b.

"Richard Edwards."

Of Richard Edwards and William Hunnis, the authors of sundry poems in this collection, see an account in Wood's Athenæ Oxon. and also in Tanner's Bibliotheca. SIR JOHN HAWKINS. Another copy of this song is published by Dr. Percy, in the first volume of his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. STEEVENS.

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