HERO. Why, then your visor should be thatch'd. D. PEDRO. Speak low, if you speak love. [Takes her aside. BENE. Well, I would you did like me. 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. URS. I know you by the waggling of your head. ANT. To tell you true, I counterfeit him. 4 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 BEAT. I am sure, you know him well enough. 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. BOSWELL. 6- 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. for he both pleaseth men, and angers them, and then they laugh at him, and beat him: I am sure, he is in the fleet; I would he had boarded me. BENE. When I know the gentleman, I'll tell him what you say. BEAT. Do, do: he'll but break a comparison or two on me; which, peradventure, not marked, or not laughed at, strikes him into melancholy; and then there's a partridge' wing saved, for the fool will eat no supper that night. [Musick within.] We must follow the leaders. BENE. In every good thing. BEAT. Nay, if they lead to any ill, I will leave them at the next turning. [Dance. Then exeunt all but Don JOHN, BORACHIO, and CLAUDIO. D. JOHN. Sure, my brother is amorous on Hero, and hath withdrawn her father to break with him about it: The ladies follow her, and but one visor remains. BORA. And that is Claudio: I know him by his bearing". D. JOHN. Are not you signior Benedick? CLAUD. You know me well; I am ́he. D. JOHN. Signior, you are very near my brother in his love: he is enamoured on Hero; I pray you, dissuade him from her, she is no equal for his birth: you may do the part of an honest man in it. CLAUD. How know you he loves her? D. JOHN. I heard him swear his affection. BORA. So did I too; and he swore he marry her to-night. 8 his BEARING.] i. e. his carriage, his demeanor. So, in Measure for Measure: "How I may formally in person bear me." STEEVENS. D. JOHN. Come, let us to the banquet. [Exeunt Don JOHN and BORACHIO. CLAUD. Thus answer I in name of Benedick, But hear these ill news with the ears of Claudio.'Tis certain so ;-the prince woos for himself. Friendship is constant in all other things, Save in the office and affairs of love : And trust no agent: for beauty is a witch, Which I mistrusted not: Farewell therefore, Hero! Re-enter BENEDICK. BENE. Count Claudio? CLAUD. Yea, the same. BENE. Come, will you go with me? CLAUD. Whither? BENE. Even to the next willow, about your own business, count. What fashion will you wear the 9 Therefore, &c.] Let, which is found in the next line, is understood here. MALONE. - beauty is a witch, Against whose charms faith melteth into BLOOD.] i. e. as wax when opposed to the fire kindled by a witch, no longer preserves the figure of the person whom it was designed to represent, but flows into a shapeless lump; so fidelity, when confronted with beauty, dissolves into our ruling passion, and is lost there like a drop of water in the sea. That blood signifies (as Mr. Malone has also observed) amorous heat, will appear from the following passage in All's Well that Ends Well, Act III. Sc. VII. : "Now his important blood will nought deny "That she'll demand." Again, in Chapman's version of the third Iliad, Helen, speaking of Agamemnon, says: "And one that was my brother in law, when I contain'd my blood, "And was more worthy :-" STEEVENS. garland of? About your neck, like an usurer's chain? or under your arm, like a lieutenant's scarf? You must wear it one way, for the prince hath got your Hero. CLAUD. I wish him joy of her. BENE. Why, that's spoken like an honest drover; so they sell bullocks. But did you think, the prince would have served you thus ? CLAUD. I pray you, leave me. BENE. Ho! now you strike like the blind man ; 'twas the boy that stole your meat, and you'll beat the post. CLAUD. If it will not be, I'll leave you. [Exit. BENE. Alas, poor hurt fowl! Now will he creep into sedges. But, that my lady Beatrice should know me, and not know me! The prince's fool!Ha! it may be, I go under that title, because I am merry.-Yea; but so; I am apt to do myself wrong: I am not so reputed: it is the base, the bitter disposition of Beatrice, that puts the world into her person, and so gives me out. Well, I'll be revenged as I may. 2 usurer's CHAIN?] Chains of gold, of considerable value, were in our author's time, usually worn by wealthy citizens, and others, in the same manner as they now are, on publick occasions, by the Aldermen of London. See The Puritan, or the Widow of Watling-Street, Act III. Sc. III.; Albumazar, Act I. Sc. VII. and other pieces. REED. Usury seems about this time to have been a common topick of invective, I have three or four dialogues, pasquils, and discourses on the subject, printed before the year 1600. From every one of these it appears, that the merchants were the chief usurers of the age. STEEVENS. So, in The Choice of Change, containing the Triplicitie of Divinitie, Philosophie, and Poetrie, by S. R. Gent. 4to. 1598: "Three sortes of people, in respect of use in necessitie, may be accounted good:-Merchantes, for they may play the usurers, instead of the Jewes." Again, ibid.: "There is a scarcitie of Jewes, because Christians make an occupation of usurie." MALONE. |