Imatges de pàgina
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You know no Centaur? You receiv'd no gold ?
Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner?
My house was at the Phoenix? Wast thou mad,
That thus so madly thou didst answer me?
DRO. S. What answer, sir? when spake I such a
word?

ANT. S. Even now, even here, not half an hour since.

DRO. S. I did not see you since you sent me hence,

Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me. ANT. S. Villain, thou didst deny the gold's receipt;

And told'st me of a mistress, and a dinner;
For which, I hope, thou felt'st I was displeas'd.

DRO. S. I am glad to see you in this merry vein : What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me. ANT. S. Yea, dost thou jeer, and flout me in the

teeth?

Think'st thou, I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that. [Beating him.

DRO. S. Hold, sir, for God's sake: now your jest is earnest:

Upon what bargain do you give it me?

ANT. S. Because that I familiarly sometimes Do use you for my fool, and chat with you, Your sauciness will jest upon my love,

And make a common of my serious hours1.

When the sun shines, let foolish gnats make sport, But creep in crannies, when he hides his beams. you will jest with me, know my aspéct 2,

If

And fashion your demeanour to my looks,

1 And make a cOMMON of my serious hours.] i. e. intrude on them when you please. The allusion is to those tracts of ground destined to common use, which are thence called commons.

2

STEEVENS.

- know my aspéct,] Study my countenance. STEEVENS.

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Or I will beat this method in your sconce.

DRO. S. Sconce, call you it? so you would leave battering, I had rather have it a head: an you use these blows long, I must get a sconce for my head, and insconce it too; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders. But, I pray, sir, why am I beaten ? ANT. S. Dost thou not know?

DRO. S. Nothing, sir; but that I am beaten.
ANT. S. Shall I tell you why?

DRO. S. Ay, sir, and wherefore; for, they say, every why hath a wherefore.

ANT. S. Why, first,-for flouting me; and then, wherefore, for urging it the second time to me. DRO. S. Was there ever any man thus beaten out

of season?

When, in the why, and the wherefore, is neither rhime nor reason?

Well, sir, I thank you.

ANT. S. Thank me, sir? for what?

DRO. S. Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing.

ANT. S. I'll make you amends next, to give you nothing for something. But say, sir, is it dinnertime?

DRO. S. No, sir; I think, the meat wants that I have.

ANT. S. In good time, sir, what's that?

DRO. S. Basting.

ANT. S. Well, sir, then 'twill be dry.

DRO. S. If it be, sir, I pray you eat none of it.

3 and INSCONCE it too;] A sconce was a petty fortification. So, in Orlando Furioso, 1509:

"Let us to our sconce, and you my lord of Mexico."

Again:

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Ay, sirs, ensconce you how you can.”

"And here ensconce myself, despite of thee." STEEVENS.

✦ — next,] Our author probably wrote-next time. MALONE.

ANT. S. Your reason?

DRO. S. Lest it make you cholerick, and purchase me another dry-basting.

ANT. S. Well, sir, learn to jest in good time: There's a time for all things.

DRO. S. I durst have deny'd that, before you were so cholerick.

ANT. S. By what rule, sir?

DRO. S. Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of father Time himself.

ANT. S. Let's hear it.

DRO. S. There's no time for a man to recover his hair, that grows bald by nature.

ANT. S. May he not do it by fine and recovery"? DRO. S. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair of another man.

ANT. S. Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement"?

5 Lest it make you cholerick, &c.] So, in the Taming of the Shrew :

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"I tell thee Kate, 'twas burnt and dry'd away,

"And I expressly am forbid to touch it,

"For it engenders choler, planteth anger, &c." STEEVENS. - by fine and recovery?] This attempt at pleasantry must have originated from our author's clerkship to an attorney. has other jokes of the same school. STEEVENS.

He

7 Ant. S. Why is TIME, &c.] In former editions: "Ant. S. Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement?

"Dro. S. Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts, and what he hath scanted them in hair, he hath given them in wit." Surely, this is mock-reasoning, and a contradiction in sense. Can hair be supposed a blessing, 'which Time bestows on beasts peculiarly; and yet that he hath scanted them of it too? Men and them, I observe, are very frequently mistaken, vice versa, for each other, in the old impressions of our author.

THEOBALD.

The same error is found in the Induction to King Henry IV. Part II. edit. 1623:

"Stuffing the ears of them with false reports." And vice versa, we have in Hamlet, I think, men printed for

DRO. S. Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts: and what he hath scanted men in hair, he hath given them in wit.

ANT. S. Why, but there's many a man hath more hair than witR.

DRO. S. Not a man of those, but he hath the wit to lose his hair 9.

ANT. S. Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain dealers without wit.

DRO. S. The plainer dealer, the sooner lost: Yet he loseth it in a kind of jollity.

ANT. S. For what reason?

DRO. S. For two; and sound ones too.
ANT. S. Nay, not sound, I pray you.

DRO. S. Sure ones then.

ANT. S. Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing1.

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them in the following passage:
that I thought some of Na-
ture's journeymen had made men, and not made them well," &c.
where it is manifest that we ought to read "-some of Nature's jour-
neymen had made them, and not made them well," &c. MALONE.
there's many a man hath more hair than wit.]
hair than wit," is a proverbial sentence; of which the following
lines "upon [Suckling's] Aglaura, printed in folio," may serve
to illustrate :

"This great voluminous pamphlet may be said,
"To be like one who hath more haire than head;
"More excrement than body :-trees, which sprout
"With broadest leaves, have still the smallest fruit."

More

Parnassus Biceps, 8vo. 1656. MALONE. 9 Not a man of those, but he hath the wit to lose his hair.] That is, Those who have more hair than wit, are easily entrapped by loose women, and suffer the consequences of lewdness, one of which, in the first appearance of the disease in Europe, was the loss of hair. JOHNSON.

So, in the Roaring Girl, 1611:

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my

-Your women are so hot, I must lose hair in their company, I see."-" His hair sheds off, and yet he speaks not so much in the nose as he did before." STEEVENS.

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-falsing.] This word is now obsolete. Spenser and Chaucer often use the verb to false. Mr. Heath would read falling.

STEEVENS.

DRO. S. Certain ones then.

ANT. S. Name them.

DRO. S. The one, to save the money that he spends in tiring2; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his porridge.

ANT. S. You would all this time have proved, there is no time for all things.

3

DRO. S. Marry, and did, sir; namely, e'en no time to recover hair lost by nature.

4

ANT. S. But your reason was not substantial, why there is no time to recover.

DRO. S. Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and therefore, to the world's end, will have bald followers.

ANT. S. I knew, 'twould be a bald conclusion: But soft! who wafts us3 yonder?

Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA.

ADR. Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange, and frown; Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects, I am not Adriana, nor thy wife.

The time was once, when thou unurg'd would'st vow That never words were musick to thine ear,

2

3

that he spends in TIRING;] The old copy reads-in trying. This very happy correction was made by Mr. Pope. MALONE. THERE is no time-] In some copies of the original and authentick edition of this copy, the letter (t) in there had dropped out: in one of my copies it is almost visible; accordingly it was restored in the second folio. MALONE.

4

namely, E'EN no time-] The authentick copy, 1623, reads-" namely, in no time, &c." The same error is found in All's Well that Ends Well, Act I. Sc. I. where we have "in my great friends," instead of "e'en my great friends."

The reviser of the second folio corrected the errour by omitting in. MALONE.

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WAFTS US] i. e. beckons us.

So, in Hamlet:

Imitated by

It wafts me still-go on, I'll follow thee." STEEVENS. 6 That never words were musick to thine ear,] Pope in his Epistle from Sappho to Phaon:

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