Imatges de pàgina
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that eye shall be his heed, And give him light that it was blinded by. 'Me' (1. 80) is the 'ethical dative'; 'Who' (1. 82) refers to the eye mentioned in 1. 80 or to its owner; and ‘it' (1. 83) is the object of 'by.' The passage may be paraphrased: Rather study how really to please your eye by fixing it upon that of a sweetheart, whereupon your own eye will be dimmed; but the 'fairer eye' will be your sole attention and give light to you whom it has blinded.

I. i. 88-93. These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights, That give a name to every fixed star, Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that walk and wot not what they are. Too much to know is to know nought but fame; And every godfather can give a name. The learned astronomers who give names to the stars have no more real control of them than have the ignorant. Encyclopedic knowledge is but parrot-like, no more essential than the bestowal of a name at the baptism of an infant.

I. i. 95. Proceeded. Almost certainly used in the technical sense of taking an academic degree. Berowne employs his own intellectual subtlety to discourage others from similarly training themselves.

I. i. 99. In reason nothing. Ber. Something, then, in rime. Shakespeare is very fond of playing on the alliterative phrase, rime and reason. Compare I.

ii. 113.

I. i. 106. May's new-fangled shows. Since the rest of the passage is in alternate rime, it is assumed that the poet intended this line to end with a word riming with 'birth' (1. 104). Many editors have therefore substituted 'earth' (Theobald) or 'mirth' (Walker) for 'shows'; but neither seems natural, and it is quite likely that Shakespeare himself made the slip through inadvertence.

I. i. 109. Climb o'er the house to unlock the little gate. Take an absurdly impractical course. The line

is printed as in the Quarto. The Folio has the inferior version: 'That were to clymbe ore the house to vnlocke the gate.

I. i. 114.

Yet confident I'll keep what I have The second Folio reads 'swore,' which most modern editors introduce for the sake of rime.

sworn.

I. ii. 58. the dancing horse. A famous performing horse named Morocco, first definitely mentioned in 1591 but apparently known as early as 1589. He was particularly accomplished in arithmetic.

I. ii. 83. Of what complexion? The four ‘complexions' of the body were variously ascribed to the four elements (earth, air, water, fire) and to the four 'humours' (phlegm, choler, blood, melancholy).

I. ii. 95. she had a green wit. Perhaps Moth implies a pun on the green withes with which Samson was bound (Judges 16. 7): 'And Samson said unto her, If they bind me with seven green withs that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and be as another man.'

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I. ii. 115, 116. a ballet of the King and the Beggar. The ballad of King Cophetua and the Beggar-maid is a favorite subject of allusion in Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Compare Armado's later mention of it in his letter (IV. i. 65 ff.). The extant version, printed in Percy's Reliques, appears to be post-Elizabethan.

I. ii. 167. the merry days of desolation. Perhaps Costard means 'dissipation.'

II. i. 41. Lord Perigort. Of course, an invented name. Périgord, near Bordeaux, was an important district during the Hundred Years' War between France and England. Shakespeare would have found it mentioned repeatedly in Holinshed in connection with the French campaigns of Henry VI's reign. Falconbridge, in the next line, appears to have been a name the poet liked. It is not French, but is applied

to important characters both in King John and in 3 Henry VI. See note on the latter play, I. i. 239, in this edition.

II. i. 62, 63. And much too little of that good I saw Is my report to his great worthiness. My testimony to his worthiness is summed up in saying that I had much too little opportunity to observe it.

II. i. 74. That aged ears play truant at his tales. The aged are tempted away from business to listen to his tales.

II. i. 130. Being but the one half of an entire sum. That is, the sum which Navarre's father had lent to France amounted to two hundred thousand crowns. See Appendix A, p. 130.

II. i. 184. let it blood. Alluding to the nearly inevitable practice of blood-letting in sickness.

II. i. 188. No point. A pun on the English word, 'point' (i.e. my eye is not sharp enough), and the French negative, ne . . . point. Maria makes the same poor joke in V. ii. 278.

II. i. 193. The heir of Alençon, Katharine her name. Both the Quarto and Folio texts here print 'Rosalin' instead of Katharine, and in line 208 'Katherin (e)' instead of Rosaline. This is one of the chief points used by Mr. Dover Wilson in an ingenious elaboration of a theory proposed by Mr. Charlton in 1917 (The Library, vol. viii, pp. 355370); namely, that Shakespeare, in the first version of the play, intended the ladies to be masked and Boyet to mix their names when the lovers inquire of him, and that in the revised version he intended to omit this motive of confused identity because of its employment later in V. ii. Mr. Wilson thinks that an unintentional blending of the two versions can be seen in the text of the present scene. There are very strong reasons against these assumptions. The only basis for the idea that the three ladies (unlike the

Princess) wear masks in this scene is Berowne's exclamation, 'Now fair befall your mask!' (1. 123), and the reply of Rosaline ('Katharine' in the Quarto). This is far from conclusive. On the other hand, the evident purpose of the scene is to allow each of the lords an opportunity of falling in love with a lady with whom, by hypothesis, he has previously had only the slightest acquaintance, but with whose peculiarities of face and coloring they are all shown to be perfectly familiar when they next appear (see Berowne's soliloquy, III. i. 205 ff., and the whole of IV. iii). It is impossible to believe that any author, skilled or unskilled, could have had the idea of frustrating so essential a piece of dramatic business by having the ladies unrecognizably masked and making them converse at cross purposes with the wrong gallants.

II. i. 201. God's blessing on your beard. Longaville means to imply that Boyet's flippant answers are inconsistent with his venerable beard. In pronunciation 'beard' and 'heard' rimed better than at present, the latter word still retaining the long vowel of its infinitive.

II. i. 212. Farewell to me, sir, and welcome to you. Say 'farewell' to me, and I will say you are welcome (to depart).

The

II. i. 217. Kath. Two hot sheeps, marry. Quarto assigns this speech to 'Lady Ka.' and the Folio to 'La. Ma.' Nearly all editors follow the latter, which, however, is probably a compositor's error occasioned by the fact that Maria is the speaker just above (1. 213). The three following lady's speeches (11. 219, 220, 222), assigned in both the early editions simply to 'La.' or 'Lad.,' evidently belong to the same lady who speaks in 1. 217. The Quarto's introduction of Katharine into the conversation is a dramatic gain.

II. i. 221. My lips are no common, though several they be. A quasi-legal pun. Several land, as op

posed to common, was that in separate or private ownership. Katharine also calls her lips several as being more than one, or as being parted.

II. i. 244. margent. Alluding to the habit of printing explanatory notes on the margin (rather than the foot) of the page.

III. i. 3. Concolinel. Not satisfactorily explained. It has been interpreted as a corruption of the Irish words 'Can cailin gheal' (pronounced con colleen yal), i.e. 'sing, maiden fair.' Marshall suggests that it is French, 'Quand Colinelle,' which is at least as likely. III. i. 9. brawl. French branle. Defined as the oldest of figure dances.

III. i. 13. canary. The canary was a very lively dance, allowing the improvisation of new steps.

III. i. 32. The hobby-horse is forgot. The 'hobbyhorse,' a dancer made up to look like a horse, was a favorite figure in morris dances, and a special subject of Puritan invective. The line, 'O, the hobby-horse is forgot,' which Shakespeare uses again in Hamlet, III. ii. 145, has been supposed to come from a ballad.

III. i. 75. no salve in the mail, sir. That is, no quacksalver's remedy. Costard apprehends that Armado is calling for exotic (and hence suspect) remedies for the broken shin.

III. i. 86. is not l'envoy a salve? A pun on the Latin salve, used in salutations. The envoi, or concluding section, of a mediæval ballade ordinarily contained an address to the person to whom the poem was written.

III. i. 107. The boy hath sold him a bargain. This is usually explained as 'has got the better of him, made a fool of him,'- -a sense which the idiom, to sell one a bargain, undoubtedly had. But I think the context shows that Costard, in the innocence of his rustic heart, really conjectures that l'envoy means goose, and that the goose mentioned in the incomprehensible

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