Imatges de pàgina
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223. is it not like, that I,] This speech is confused, and inconsequential, according to the disorder of Juliet's mind. JOHNSON.

226. run mad-] So, in Webster's Dutchess of Malfy, 1623:

"I have this night digg'd up a mandrake,
"And am grown mad with't."

So, in The Atheist's Tragedy, 1611:

"The cries of mandrakes never touch'd the ear
"With more sad horror, than that voice does
mine."

Again, in A Christian turn'd Turk, 1612:

"I'll rather give an ear to the black shrieks
“Of mandrakes," &c.

Again, in Aristippus, or the Jovial Philosopher:

"This is the mandrake's voice that undoes me." The mandrake (says Thomas Newton in his Herball to the Bible, 8vo. 1587), has been supposed to be a creature having life, and engendered under the earth of the seed of some dead person that hath been convicted and put to death for some felonie or murther; and that they had the same in such dampish and funerall places where the said convicted persons were buried, &c.

STEEVENS.

227. be distraught,] Distraught is distracted. So, in Drayton's Polyolbion, Song 10.

"Is, for that river's sake, near of his wits distraught."

Again, in Spenser's Faery Queen, B. I. c. 9.

"What

"What frantick fit, quoth he, hath thus dis

traught," &c.

STEEVENS.

238. They call for dates, &c. in the pastry.] On the books of the Stationers-Company, in the year 1560, are the following entries :

"Item payd for iiii. pound of datts iiiis.

"Item payd for xxiiii. pounde of prunys iiis.

viiid."

STEEVENS. 240. The curfew-bell-] I know not that the morning bell is called the curfew in any other place.

JOHNSON. The curfew bell was rung at nine in the evening as appears from a passage in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1626:

"—well 'tis nine o'clock, 'tis time to ring curSTEEVENS.

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few." 248. a mouse-hunt-] It appears from a passage in Hamlet, that mouse was once a term of endear. ment applied to a woman:

"Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his

mouse.

STEEVENS.

The animal called a mouse-hunt, is the martin. Ja

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271. -set up his rest,] This expression, which is frequently employed by the old dramatick writers, is taken from the manner of firing the harquebuss. This was so heavy a gun, that the soldiers were obliged to carry a supporter called a rest, which they fixed in the ground before they levelled to take aim. Decker uses it in his comedy of Old Fortunatus, 1600:

"-set your heart at rest, for I have set up my rest, that unless you can run swifter than a hart, home you go not." STEEVENS.

Mr. Reed says, that though the above expression may probably be sometimes used in the sense already explained, yet it is oftener employed with a reference to the game at primero, in which it was one of the terms then in use. See his edition of Dodsley's Collection of Old Plays, Vol. X. p. 364.

EDITOR.

275. Ay, let the county take you in your bed;} So, in The Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet:

"First softly did she call, then louder she did

cry,

"Lady, you sleep too long, the earl will raise
by and by."

300.

yon MALONE.

Death, that hath ta'en her hence to make me wail, Ties up my tongue, and will not let me speak.] Our author has here followed the poem closely, without recollecting that he had made Capulet, in this scene, clamorous in his grief. In The Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet, Juliet's mother makes a long speech, but the old man utters not a word :

"But more than all the rest the father's heart

was so

"Smit with the heavy news, and so shut up with sudden woe,

"That he ne had the pow'r his daughter to be

weep,

"Ne yet to speak, but long is forc'd his tears and

plaints to keep."

MALONE.

304. O son, the night before thy wedding day

Hath death lain with thy bride :-] Euripides hath sported with this thought in the same manner. Iphig. in Aul. ver. 460:

64 Τήνδ' συ τάλαιναν παρθένον (τί παρθενον ;
σε "Αδης νιν, ὡς ἔοικε, νυμφεύσει τάχα.)”
Sir W. RAWLINSON.

305. Hath death lain with thy bride :—— -] Perhaps this line is coarsely ridiculed in Decker's Satiromastix: "Dead: she's death's bride; he hath her maid

enhead."

STEEVENS.

Decker seems rather to have intended to ridicule a former line in this play:

—I'll to my wedding bed,

"And Death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead.” MALONE.

306. Flower as she was, deflowered now by him.] This jingle was common to other writers; and among the rest, to Greene, in his Greene in Conceipt, 1568: “a garden-house having round about it many flowers, and within it much deflowering." COLLINS.

310. morning's face,] The quarto, 1597, continues the speech of Paris thus :

And doth it now present such prodigies
Accurst, unhappy, miserable man,
Forlorn, forsaken, destitute I am;
Born to the world to be a slave in it :..
Distrest, remediless, unfortunate.

Q heavens t

O heavens! O nature! wherefore did you make

me,

To live so vile, so wretched as I shall ?

STEEVENS.

318. O woe! oh woeful, &c.] This speech of exclamations is not in the edition above-cited. Several other parts unnecessary or tautology, are not to be found in the said edition; which occasions the variation in this from the common books. POPE. 334. Peace, ho, for shame! confusion's care lives not

In these confusions.-] This speech, though it contains good Christian doctrine, though it is perfectly in character for the Friar, Mr. Pope has curtailed to little or nothing, because it has not the sanction of the first old copy. But there was another reason: certain corruptions started, which should have required the indulging his private sense to make them intelligible, and this was an unreasonable labour. As I have reformed the passage above-quoted, I dare warrant I have restored our poet's text; and a fine sensible reproof it contains against immoderate grief. THEOBALD.

353. All things, &c.] Instead of this and the following speeches the eldest quarto has only a couplet : Cap. Let it be so, come weeful sorrow-mates,

Let us together taste this bitter fate.

STEEVENS.

All things that we ordained festival, &c.] So, in the poem already quoted :

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