IMO. What is the matter, trow? Ілсн. The cloyed will, (That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub the present mistress of Posthumus, and proceeds to say, that appetite too would give the same suffrage. Desire, says he, when it approached sluttery, and considered it in comparison with such neat excellence, would not only be not so allured to feed, but, seized with a fit of loathing, would vomit emptiness, would feel the convulsions of disgust, though, being unfed, it had no object. JOHNSON. Dr. Warburton and Dr. Johnson have both taken the pains to give their different senses of this passage; but I am still unable to comprehend how desire, or any other thing, can be made to vomit emptiness. I rather believe the passage should be read thus: Sluttery to such neat excellence oppos'd, 66 "Should make desire vomit, emptiness "Not so allure to feed." That is, Should not so, [in such circumstances] allure [even] emptiness to feed. TYRWHITT. This is not ill conceived; but I think my own explanation right. "To vomit emptiness" is, in the language of poetry, to feel the convulsions of eructation without plenitude.' JOHNSON. No one who has been ever sick at sea, can be at a loss to understand what is meant by vomiting emptiness. Dr. Johnson's interpretation would perhaps be more exact, if after the word desire he had added, however hungry, or sharp set. A late editor, Mr. Capell, was so little acquainted with his author, as not to know that Shakspeare here, and in some other places, uses desire as a trisyllable; in consequence of which, he reads-" vomit to emptiness." MALONE. The indelicacy of this passage may be kept in countenance by the following lines and stage-directions in the tragedy of All for Money, by T. Lupton, 1578: "Now will I essay to vomit if I can ; "Let him hold your head, and I will hold your stomach," &c. "Here Money shall make as though he would vomit." Again: "Here Pleasure shall make as though he would vomit.” STEEVENS. 8 The cloyed will, &c.] The present irregularity of metre has almost persuaded me that this passage originally stood thus: 66 66 The cloyed will, (That's satiate, yet unsatisfied, that tub "Both fill'd and running,) ravening first the lamb, What, dear sir," &c. Both fill'd and running,) ravening first the lamb, Longs after for the garbage. IMO. Thus raps you? Are you well? What, dear sir, [TO PISANIO. IACH. Thanks, madam; well:-'Beseech, you, sir, desire My man's abode where I did leave him: he Is strange and peevish 9. The want, in the original MS. of the letter I have supplied, perhaps occasioned the interpolation of the word-desire. 9 he STEEVENS. IS STRANGE and peevish.] He is a foreigner, and easily fretted. JOHNSON. 66 Strange, I believe, signifies shy or backward. So, Holinshed, p. 735: brake to him his mind in this mischievous matter, in which he found him nothing strange." Peevish anciently meant weak, silly. So, in Lyly's Endymion, 1591: "Never was any so peevish to imagine the moon either capable of affection, or shape of a mistress." Again, in his Galatea, [1592,] when a man has given a conceited answer to a plain question, Diana says, "let him alone, he is but peevish." Again, in his Love's Metamorphosis, 1601: "In the heavens I saw an orderly course, in the earth nothing but disorderly love and peevishness." Again, in Gosson's School of Abuse, 1579: "We have infinite poets and pipers, and such peevish cattel among us in Englande." Again, in The Comedy of Errors: "How now! a madman! why thou peevish sheep, 66 No ship of Epidamnum stays for me." STEEVENS. Minsheu, in his Dictionary, 1617, explains peevish by foolish. So again, in our author's King Richard III. : "When Richmond was a little peevish boy." So also in Henry VI. Third Part, Act V. Sc. I.: "Why what a peevish fool was that of Crete." Strange is again used by our author in his Venus and Adonis, in the sense in which Mr. Steevens supposes it to be used here: "Measure my strangeness by my unripe years." Again, in Romeo and Juliet: "I'll prove more true "Than those that have more cunning to be strange." But I doubt whether the word was intended to bear that sense here. MALone. Johnson's explanation of strange [he is a foreigner] is certainly right. Iachimo uses it again in the latter end of this scene: VOL. XIII. E PIS. To give him welcome. seech you? I was going, sir, Exit PISANIO. IMO. Continues well my lord? His health, 'be IACH. Well, madam. IMO. Is he dispos'd to mirth? I hope, he is. IACH. Exceeding pleasant; none a stranger there So merry and so gamesome: he is call'd The Briton reveller 1. IMO. When he was here, He did incline to sadness; and oft-times IACH. I never saw him sad. There is a Frenchman his companion, one An eminent monsieur, that, it seems, much loves A Gallian girl at home: he furnaces The thick sighs from him2; whiles the jolly Briton (Your lord, I mean,) laughs from's free lungs, cries, O! Can my sides hold, to think, that man,-who knows "And I am something curious, being strange, "To have them in safe stowage." Here also strange evidently means, being a stranger. M. MASON. The BRITON REVELLER.] So, in Chaucer's Coke's Tale, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit. v. 4369: 2 "That he was cleped Perkin revelour." STEEVENs. he FURNACES 66 The thick sighs from him ;] So, in Chapman's preface to his translation of the Shield of Homer, 1598; -furnaceth the universall sighes and complaintes of this transposed world." STEEVENS. So, in As You Like It: 3 66 And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad." MALONE. Can my SIDES HOLD, &c.] Hence, perhaps, Milton's- 66 So, in Troilus and Cressida, vol. viii. p. 266: By history, report, or his own proof, What woman is, yea, what she cannot choose IMO. Will my lord say so? LACH. Ay, madam; with his eyes in flood with laughter. It is a recreation to be by, And hear him mock the Frenchman: But, heavens know, Some men are much to blame. IMO. Not he, I hope. LACH. Not he: But yet heaven's bounty towards him might 5 4 Be us'd more thankfully. In himself, 'tis much IMO. What do you pity, sir? LACH. Two creatures, heartily. IMO. Am I one, sir? You look on me; What wreck discern you in me, Deserves your pity? Іасн. Lamentable! What! To hide me from the radiant sun, and solace I' the dungeon by a snuff? IMO. I pray you, sir, Deliver with more openness your answers To my demands. Why do you pity me? IACH. That others do, O!-enough, Patroclus; "Or give me ribs of steel! I shall split all In himself, 'tis much;] If he merely regarded his own character, without any consideration of his wife, his conduct would be unpardonable. MALONE. I was about to say, enjoy your -But It is an office of the gods to venge it, Not mine to speak on't. IMO. You do seem to know Something of me, or what concerns me; 'Pray you, (Since doubting things go ill, often hurts more Than to be sure they do: For certainties Either are past remedies; or, timely knowing The remedy then born 7,) discover to me What both you spur and stop IACH. 6 Had I this cheek To bathe my lips upon; this hand, whose touch, Whose every touch, would force the feeler's soul To the oath of loyalty; this object, which 6- timely KNOWING,] Rather-timely known. JOHNSON. I believe Shakspeare wrote-known, and that the transcriber's ear deceived him here as in many other places. MALONE. 7 For certainties Either are past remedies; or, timely knowing, The remedy then born,] We should read, I think : "The remedy's then born-." MALONE. Perhaps the meaning is, as I have pointed the passage: For certainties 66 "Either are past remedy; or timely knowing "The remedy, then borne." They are either past all remedy; or, the remedy being timely suggested to us by the knowing them, they are the more easily borne. J. BOADEN. 8 What both you spur and stop.] What it is that at once incites you to speak, and restrains you from it. JOHNSON. This kind of ellipsis is common in spur and stop at, the poet means. these plays. What both you See a note on Act II. Sc. III. MALONE. The meaning is, 'what you seem anxious to utter, and yet withhold.' M. MASON. The allusion is to horsemanship. So, in Sidney's Arcadia, book i.: "She was like a horse desirous to runne, and miserably spurred, but so short-reined, as he cannot stirre forward." Again, in Ben Jonson's Epigram to the Earl of Newcastle : 9 "Provoke his mettle, and command his force." STEEVENS. - this hand, whose touch, To the oath of loyalty ?] There is, I think, here a reference |