Imatges de pàgina
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Which I so lively acted with my tears,
That my poor mistress, moved therewithal,
Wept bitterly; and, would I might be dead,
If I in thought felt not her very sorrow!

SIL. She is beholding to thee, gentle youth !— Alas, poor lady! desolate and left!—

I weep myself, to think upon thy words.

Here, youth, there is my purse; I give thee this
For thy sweet mistress' sake, because thou lov'st her.
Farewell.
[Exit SILVIA.
JUL. And she shall thank you for't, if e'er you

know her.

A virtuous gentlewoman, mild, and beautiful.
I hope, my master's suit will be but cold,
Since she respects my mistress' love so much".
Alas, how love can trifle with itself!

Here is her picture: Let me see; I think,
If I had such a tire, this face of mine
Were full as lovely as is this of hers:
And yet the painter flatter'd her a little,
Unless I flatter with myself too much.
Her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow 1;
If that be all the difference in his love,
I'll get me such a colour'd periwig',

Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. iii. c. 12: "Some argument of matter passioned.'

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STEEVENS.

9 — MY MISTRESS' love so much.] She had in her preceding speech called Julia her mistress; but it is odd enough that she should thus describe herself, when she is alone. Sir T. Hanmer reads "his mistress; " but without necessity. Our author knew that his audience considered the disguised Julia in the present scene as a page to Proteus, and this, I believe, and the love of antithesis, produced the expression. MALONE.

Her hair is AUBURN, mine is perfect yellow:] i. e. her hair has a tinge of yellow; mine is perfectly of a yellow colour. Auburn hair is of the colour of amber. MALONE.

2 I'll get me such a colour'd PERIWIG.] It should be remembered, that false hair was worn by the ladies, long before wigs

Her eyes are grey as glass; and so are mine:
Ay, but her forehead's low, and mine's as high.
What should it be, that he respects in her,

were in fashion. These false coverings, however, were called periwigs. So, in Northward Hoe, 1607: "There is a new trade come up for cast gentlewomen of perriwig-making: let your wife set up in the Strand."-" Perwickes," however, are mentioned by Churchyard in one of his earliest poems. STEEVENS.

See Much Ado About Nothing, Act II. Sc. III.: “—and her hair shall be of what colour it please God." And The Merchant of Venice, Act. III. Sc. II. :

"So are those crisped snaky golden locks," &c.

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Again, in The Honestie of this Age, proving by good Circumstance that the World was never honest till now, by Barnabe Rich, quarto, 1615: "My lady holdeth on her way, perhaps to the tire-maker's shop, where she shaketh her crownes, to bestowe upon some new-fashioned attire;-upon such artificial deformed periwigs, that they were fitter to furnish a theatre, or for her that in a stage play should represent some hag of hell, than to be used by a Christian woman." Again, ibid.: These attiremakers within these forty years were not known by that name; and but now very lately they kept their lowzie commodity of periwigs, and their monstrous attires, closed in boxes,—and those women that used to weare them would not buy them but in secret. But now they are not ashamed to set them forth upon their stalls, such monstrous mop-powles of haire, so proportioned and deformed, that but within these twenty or thirty years would have drawne the passers-by to stand and gaze, and to wonder at them." MALONE.

3 Her eyes are GREY AS GLASS;] So Chaucer, in the character of his Prioress:

"Ful semely hire wimple y-pinched was ;

"Hire nose tretis; hire eyen grey as glas." THEOBALD. So, again in Romeo and Juliet:

"This be a grey eye or so."

By a grey eye was meant, what we now call a blue eye; grey, when applied to the eye, is rendered by Coles in his Dictionary, 1679, ceruleus, glaucus. MALONE.

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her forehead's low,] A high forehead was in our author's time accounted a feature eminently beautiful. So, in The History of Guy of Warwick, Felice his lady" is said to have "the same high forehead as Venus." JOHNSON.

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Again, in The Tempest:

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with foreheads villainous low." MALONE.

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But I can make respective in myself,

If this fond love were not a blinded god?

Come, shadow, come, and take this shadow up,
For 'tis thy rival. O thou senseless form,

Thou shalt be worshipp'd, kiss'd, lov'd, and ador'd ;

And, were there sense in his idolatry,
My substance should be statue in thy stead ".

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RESPECTIVE—] i. e. respectful, or respectable. STEEVENS. My substance should be STATUE in thy stead.] It would be easy to read, with no more roughness than is found in many lines of Shakspeare:

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The sense, as Mr. Edwards observes, is, "He should have my substance as a statue, instead of thee [the picture] who art a senseless form." This word, however, is used without the article a in Massinger's Great Duke of Florence:

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it was your beauty

"That turn'd me statue."

And again, in Lord Surrey's translation of the 4th Æneid:

"And Trojan statue throw into the flame."

Again, in Dryden's Don Sebastian :

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Steevens has clearly proved that this passage requires no amendment; but it appears from hence, and a passage in Massinger, that the word statue was formerly used to express a portrait. Julia is here addressing herself to a picture; and in the City Madam, the young ladies are supposed to take leave of the statues of their lovers, as they style them, though Sir John, at the beginning of the scene, calls them pictures, and describes them afterwards as nothing but superficies, colours, and no substance.

M. MASON.

Statue here, I think, should be written statua, and pronounced as it generally, if not always, was in our author's time, a word of three syllables. It being the first time this word occurs, I take the opportunity of observing that alterations have been often improperly made in the text of Shakspeare, by supposing statue to be intended by him for a dissyllable. Thus, in King Richard III. Act III. Sc. VII. :

"But like dumb statues or breathing stones." Mr. Rowe has unnecessarily changed breathing to unbreathing,

I'll use thee kindly for thy mistress' sake,
That us'd me so; or else, by Jove I vow,

for a supposed defect in the metre, to an actual violation of the

sense.

Again, in Julius Cæsar, Act II. Sc. II. :

"She dreamt to-night she saw my statue."

Here, to fill up the line, Mr. Capell adds the name of Decius, and the last editor, deserting his usual caution, has improperly changed the regulation of the whole passage.

Again, in the same play, Act III. `Sc. II. :

"Even at the base of Pompey's statue."

In this line, however, the true mode of pronouncing the word is suggested by the last editor, who quotes a very sufficient authority for his conjecture. From authors of the times it would not be difficult to fill whole pages with instances to prove that statue was at that period a trisyllable. Many authors spell it in that manner. On so clear a point the first proof which occurs is enough. Take the following from Bacon's Advancement of Learning, 4to. 1633: "It is not possible to have the true pictures or statuaes of Cyrus, Alexander, Cæsar, no nor of the kings or great personages of much later years," &c. p. 88. Again : without which the history of the world seemeth to be as the Statua of Polyphemus with his eye out," &c. REED.

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It may be observed, on this occasion, that some Latin words which were admitted into the English language, still retained their Roman pronunciation. Thus heroe and heroes are constantly used for trisyllables; as in the following instances, by Chapman :

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His speare fixt by him as he slept, the great end in the ground,

"The point that brisled the darke earth, cast a reflection round

Like pallid lightnings throwne from Jove. Thus this Heroe

ay,

"And under him a big oxe hide." 10th Iliad.

Again, in the same book:

"This said, he on his shoulders cast a yellow lion's hide,

"Big, and reacht earth; then took his speare; and Nestor's will applide,

"Rais'd the Heroes, brought them both. All met, the round they went." STEEVENS.

However proper it may be to read statua in certain passages of our author, there is certainly no occasion for any such reading here, the metre being perfect as the line stands in the old copy. MALOne.

I should have scratch'd out your unseeing eyes', To make my master out of love with thee. [Exit.

ACT V. SCENE I.

The Same. An Abbey.

Enter EGLAMOUR.

EGL. The sun begins to gild the western sky;

And now it is about the very hour

That Silvia, at friar Patrick's cell, should meet me .
She will not fail; for lovers break not hours,
Unless it be to come before their time;
So much they spur their expedition.

Enter SILVIA.

See, where she comes: Lady, a happy evening! SIL. Amen, amen! go on, good Eglamour,

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your UNSEEING EYES.] So, in Macbeth:

"Thou hast no speculation in these eyes." STEEvens.

8 That Sivia, at FRIAR Patrick's cell, should meet me.] The old copy redundantly reads-friar Patrick's cell. But the omission of this title is justified by a passage in the next scene, when the Duke says,

"At Patrick's cell this even; and there she was not."

STEEVENS. According to the doctrine here laid down, if the poet has ever added an epithet to a word, he must always use either the same or some other epithet; and has not the liberty of using the word again without any epithet at all.

I have adhered to the old copy, both because the reason for departing from it appears to me to have no weight, because compositors at the press never insert words not found in the manuscript, unless when the eye glances on a word above or below, and because the metre here is just as good as many other lines in these plays, as I have shown in the essay on that subject.

MALONE.

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