Portia. Thou mayst, I warrant. We shall have old2 swearing That they did give away the rings to men; But we'll outface them, and outswear them too. Away! make haste: thou know'st where I will tarry. Neris. Come, good sir; will you show me to this house? [Exeunt. ACT V. SCENE I. ·Belmont. Avenue to PORTIA'S House. Enter LORENZO and JESSICA. Loren. The Moon shines bright. In such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise, in such a night Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls, 2 Old was a frequent intensive in colloquial speech; very much as huge is used now. So in Much Ado about Nothing, v. 2: 'Yonder's old coil at home." And in The Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 4: "Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English." 1 Toward, like many other words, is, with the poets, one or two syllables according to the occasions of their metre. Here it is two, with the accent on the second. At the end of iv. 1, it has the accent on the first: And in the morning early will we both Fly toward Belmont: come, Antonio. 2 The story of Troilus and Cressida is dramatized in Shakespeare's play of that name. Troilus was a Trojan prince, one of King Priam's fifty sons. He fell deeply and most honourably in love with Cressida, who, after being mighty sweet upon him, forseok him for his enemy, Diomedes the Greek; which he took to heart prodigiously. Jess. In such a night Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew, And ran dismay'd away. Loren. In such a night Stood Dido with a willow4 in her hand Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love To come again to Carthage. Jess. In such a night Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs That did renew old son.5 8 That is, ere she saw the lion himself. The story of "Pyramus and his love Thisbe" is burlesqued in the interlude of Bottom and company in A Midsummer-Night's Dream. 4 Spenser in like sort makes the willow a symbol of forsaken love. So in The Farie Queene, i. 1, 9: “The willow, worne of forlorne paramours." Dido was Queen of Carthage. After the destruction of Troy, Æneas, a great Trojan prince, in the course of his wanderings landed at Carthage, where he was received and treated with all possible kindness and honour by the Queen. He was a splendid fellow, and she got desperately smitten with him. After thus winning her heart entirely, he jilted her, and ran away, alleging that the gods peremptorily commanded him to go and found a new nation accordingly he became the founder of Rome. 5 Twice before in this play we have had allusions to the story of Jason and his voyage to Colchos in quest of the golden fleece. Medea, daughter to the King of Colchos, fell in love with him, helped him to win the fleece, then stole her father's treasure, and ran away with Jason to Greece. Now Jason's father was very old and decayed; and Medea was a potent enchantress, the most so of all the ancient girls: so, with "the hidden power of herbs and might of magic spell," she made a most plenipotent broth, wherewith she renewed the old man's youth. Ovid has it, that she did this by drawing the blood out of his veins, and filling them with the broth. Burke, in the following passage, seems to infer that she put him into the kettle, and boiled him into a young man: "We are taught to look with horror on the children of their country, who are rashly prompt to hack that aged parent in pieces, and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds and wild incantations they may regenerate the paternal constitution, and renovate their father's life." - Reflections, &c. Loren. In such a night Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, And with an únthrift love did run from Venice Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well, And ne'er a true one. Loren. And in such a night Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew, Slander her love, and he forgave it her. Jess. I would out-night you, did nobody come : But, hark! I hear the footing of a man. Enter STEPHANO. Loren. Who comes so fast in silence of the night? Steph. A friend. Loren. A friend! what friend? your name, I pray you, friend? Steph. Stephano is my name;6 and I bring word Loren. Who comes with her? Steph. None but a holy hermit and her maid. 6 In this play the name Stephano has the accent on the second syllable. In The Tempest, written some years later, the same name has it, rightly, on the first. 7 In old times crosses were set up at the intersection of roads, and in other places specially associated with saintly or heroic names, to invite the passers-by to devotion. And in those days Christians were much in the habit of remembering in their prayers whatever lay nearest their hearts. I pray you, is my master yet return'd? Loren. He is not, nor we have not heard from him.— But go we in, I pray thee, Jessica, And ceremoniously let us prepare Some welcome for the mistress of the house. Enter LAUNCELOT. Laun. Sola, sola! wo, ha, ho! sola, sóla! Loren. Who calls? Laun. Sola ! did you see Master Lorenzo and Mistress Lorenzo? - - sola, sola! Loren. Leave hollaing, man: here. Laun. Sola ! - Where? where? Loren. Here. Laun. Tell him there's a post come from my master, with his horn full of good news: my master will be here ere morning. [Exit. Loren. Sweet soul, let's in, and there expect their coming. And yet no matter why should we go in?— My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you, Within the house, your mistress is at hand; And bring your music forth into the air. [Exit STEPHANO. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music 8 Here we have a clear instance of the first person plural, in the imperative. The Poet has many such. So in Hamlet, i. 1: “Well, sit we down, and let us hear Bernardo speak of this." And again: "Break we our watch up." 9 The postman used to carry a horn, and blow it to give notice of his coming, on approaching a place where he had something to deliver. Launcelot has just been imitating the notes of the horn in his exclamations, Sola, &c. - Expect, in the next line, is wait for or await. The Poet has it repeatedly in that sense. And so in Hebrews, x. 13: "From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool." Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins: s; But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Come, ho, and wake Diana with a hymn! Jess. I'm never merry when I hear sweet music. [Music. 10 A small plate, used in the administration of the Eucharist: it was commonly of gold, or silver-gilt. 11 Continually sounding an accompaniment. Of course everybody has heard of "the music of the spheres," - an ancient mystery which taught that the heavenly bodies in their revolutions sing together in a concert so loud, various, and sweet, as to exceed all proportion to the human ear. And the greatest souls, from Plato to Wordsworth, have been lifted above themselves, with the idea that the universe was knit together by a principle of which musical harmony is the aptest and clearest expression. Milton touches it with surpassing sweetness in the morning hymn of Adam and Eve, Paradise Lost, v. 177: "And ye five other wandering fires, that move in mystic dance not without song, resound His praise," &c. See, also, Milton's Arcades, and Coleridge's Remorse, Act iii. scene 1, and Wordsworth's great poem On the Power of Sound, stanza xii. 12 So in Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, v. 38: "Touching musical harmony, such is the force thereof, and so pleasing effects it hath in that very part of man which is most divine, that some have thereby been induced to think that the soul itself by nature is or hath in it harmony |