Most truly limn'd, and living in your face,-- [Exeunt. ACT III. SCENE 1.-A Room in the Palace. Enter Duke FREDERICK, OLIVER, Lords, and Attendants. Duke F. Nor see him since? Sir, sir, that cannot be : Of my revenge, thou present: But look to it; Thy lands, and all things that thou dost call thine, Oli. O, that your highness knew my heart in this! Duke F. More villain thou.-Well, push him out of doors; And let my officers of such a nature Make an extent upon his house and lands: [Exeunt. [7] An argument is the contents of a book, thence Shakespeare considered it as meaning the subject, and then used it for subject in yet another sense. JOHNSON. Alluding, probably, to St. Luke's Gospel, ch. xv. 8. STEEVENS. "To make an extent of lands," is a legal phrase, from the words of a writ (extendi facias) whereby the sheriff is directed to cause certain lands to be appraised to their full extended value, before he delivers them to the person entitled under a recognizance, &c. in order that it may be certainly known how soon the debt will be paid. MALONE. [1] i. e. Expeditiously. JOHNS- -Expedient, throughout our author's plays, signifies expeditious. STEEVENS 2 SCENE II.-The Forest. Enter ORLANDO, with a paper. sway. Ŏ Rosalind! these trees shall be my books, [Exit. Enter CORIN and TOUCHSTOne. Cor. And how like you this shepherd's life, master Touchstone? Touch. Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes much against my stomach. Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd? Cor. No more, but that I know, the more one sickens, the worse at ease he is; and that he that wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends :-That the property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn: That good pasture makes fat sheep; and that a great cause of the night, is lack of the sun: That he, that hath learned no wit by nature nor art, may complain of good breeding, or comes of a very dull kindred. 3 Touch. Such a one is a natural philosopher. Wast ever in court, shepherd? [2] Alluding to the triple character of Proserpine, Cynthia, and Diana, given by some mythologists to the same goddess, and comprised in these memorial lines: Terret, lustrat, agit, Proserpina, Luna, Diana, Ima, superna, feras, sceptro, fulgore, sagittis. JOHNSON. [3] The shepherd had said all the philosophy he knew was the property of things, that rain wetted, fire burnt, &c. And the Clown's reply, in a satire on physics or natural philosophy, though introduced with a quibble, is extremely just. For the natural philosopher is indeed as ignorant (notwithstanding all his parade of knowledge) of the efficient cause of things, as the rustic. It appears, from a thousand instances, that our poet was well acquainted with the physics of his time; and his great penetration enabled him to see this remediless defect of it. WARBURTON. Cor. No, truly. Touch. Then thou art damn'd. Cor. Nay, I hope,— Touch. Truly, thou art damn'd; like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side." Cor. For not being at court? Your reason. Touch. Why, if thou never wast at court, thou never saw'st good manners; if thou never saw'st good manners, then thy manners must be wicked: and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation: Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd. Cor. Not a whit, Touchstone: those, that are good manners at the court, are as ridiculous in the country, as the behaviour of the country is most mockable at the court. You told me, you salute not at the court, but you kiss your hands; that courtesy would be uncleanly, if courtiers were shepherds. Touch. Instance, briefly; come, instance. Cor. Why, we are still handling our ewes; and their fells you know, are greasy. Touch. Why, do not your courtiers' hands sweat? and is not the grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man? Shallow, shallow: A better instance, I say; come. Cor. Besides, our hands are hard. Touch. Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow, again: A more sounder instance, come. The Cor. And they are often tarr'd over with the surgery of our sheep; And would you have us kiss tar? courtier's hands are perfumed with civet. Touch. Most shallow man! Thou worms-meat, in re Shakespeare is responsible for the quibble only, let the commentator answer for the refinement. STEEVENS. The Clown calls Corin a natural philosopher, because he reasons from his obserM. MASON. vations on nature. [4] There is a proverb, that a fool is the best roaster of an egg, because he is al ways turning it. This will explain how an egg may be damn'd all on one side; but will not sufficiently show how Touchstone applies his simile with propriety. STEEVENS. I believe there was nothing intended in the corresponding part of the simile, to answer to the words, " all on one side." Shakespeare's similes (as has been already observed) hardly ever run on four feet. Touchstone, I apprehend, only meant to say, that Corin is completely damned; as irretrievably destroyed as an egg that is utterly spoiled in the roasting, by being done all on one side only. So, in a subsequent scene," and both in a tune like two gypsies on a horse." Here the poet certainly meant that the speaker and his companion should sing in unison, and thus resemble each other as perfectly as two gypsies on a horse; not that two gypsies on a horse sing both in a tune. MALONE. spect of a good piece of flesh: Indeed!-Learn of the wise and perpend: Civet is of a baser birth than tar; the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance, shepherd. Cor. You have too courtly a wit for me; I'll rest. Touch. Wilt thou rest damn'd?, God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee! thou art raw. Cor. Sir, I am a true labourer; I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness; glad of other men's good, content with my harm: and the greatest of my pride is, to see my ewes graze, and my lambs suck. Touch. That is another simple sin in you; to bring the ewes and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle: to be bawd to a bell-wether;" and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth, to a crookedpated, old, cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. If thou be'st not damn'd for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how thou should'st 'scape. Cor. Here comes young master Ganymede, my new mistress's brother. Enter ROSALIND, reading a paper. Ros. From the east to western Ind, Her worth, being mounted on the wind, Are but black to Rosalind. Let no face be kept in mind, But the face of Rosalind. Touch. I'll rhyme you so, eight years together; dinners, and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted: it is the right butter-woman's rank to market." Ros. Out, fool! Touch. For a taste: If a heart do lack a hind, [5] Raw, i. e. ignorant, unexperienced. MALONE. 6 Wether and ram had anciently the same meaning. i. e. most fairly delineated. STEEVENS. JOHNSON. "The right butter-woman's rank to market" means the jog-trot trade (as it is vulgarly called) with which butter-women uniformly travel one after another in their road to market: in its application to Orlando's poetry, it means a set or string of verses in the same coarse cadence and vulgar uniformity of rhyme. WHITER 17 VOL. II 258 AS YOU LIKE IT. If the cat will after kind, They that reap, must sheaf and bind; Sweetest nut hath sourest rind, Such a nut is Rosalind. He that sweetest rose will find, Must find love's prick, and Rosalind. This is the very false gallop of verses; Why do you infect yourself with them? Ros. Peace, you dull fool; I found them on a tree. Ros. I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar: then it will be the earliest fruit in the country: for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medlar. Touch. You have said; but whether wisely or no, the forest judge. Ros. Peace! Enter CELIA, reading a paper. Here comes my sister, reading; stand aside. Cel. Why should this desert silent be? 'Twixt the souls of friend and friend: Or at every sentence' end, Will I Rosalinda write; Teaching all that read, to know let The current phrase in our author's |