LACH. The crickets sing, and man's o'er-labour'd sense Repairs itself by rest: Our Tarquin' thus How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily 9! 8 "Restrain in me the cursed thoughts, that nature "Gives way to in repose!” STEEVENS. OUR Tarquin-] The speaker is an Italian. JOHNSON. Did SOFTLY press the RUSHES,] This shows that Shakspeare's idea was, that the ravishing strides of Tarquin were softly ones, and may serve as a comment on that passage in Macbeth. See vol. xi. p. 98, n. 9. 66 BLACKSTONE. the rushes." It was the custom in the time of our author to strew chambers with rushes, as we now cover them with carpets the practice is mentioned in Caius de Ephemera Britannica. JOHNSON. : So, in Thomas Newton's Herball to the Bible, 8vo. 1587: Sedge and rushes,-with the which many in this country do use in sommer time to strawe their parlors and churches, as well for coolenes as for pleasant smell.” Again, in Arden of Feversham, 1592: 66 66 his blood remains. Why strew rushes." Again, in Bussy d'Ambois, 1607: "Were not the king here, he should strew the chamber like a rush." Shakspeare has the same circumstance in his Rape of Lucrece : by the light he spies 66 "Lucretia's glove wherein her needle sticks ; "He takes it from the rushes where it lies," &c. The ancient English stage also, as appears from more than one passage in Decker's Gul's Hornbook, 1609, was strewn with rushes; "Salute all your gentle acquaintance that are spred either on the rushes or on stooles about you, and drawe what troope you can from the stage after you." STEEVENS. 9 Cytherea, How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily! And WHITER THAN THE SHEETS!] So, in our author's Venus and Adonis : 66 66 'Who sees his true love in her naked bed, Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white." And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch! But kiss; one kiss !-Rubies unparagon'd, How dearly they do't!-'Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus: The flame o' the taper Bows toward her; and would under-peep her lids, To see the enclosed lights, now canopied 2 Under these windows: White and azure, lac'd With blue of heaven's own tinct.-But my de sign. Again, in The Rape of Lucrece : "Who o'er the white sheets peers her whiter chin.” "White as her bosom." STEEVENS. 'Tis her breathing that MALONE. Perfumes the chamber thus:] The same hyperbole is found in The Metamorphosis of Pygmalion's Image, by J. Marston, 1598: 2 "In his conceit; through which he thinks doth flie MALONE. now CANOPIED] Shakspeare has the same expression in Tarquin and Lucrece : "Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheath'd their light, "Till they might open to adorn the day." MALONE. 3 Under these WINDOWS:] i. e. her eyelids. and Juliet: 66 Thy eyes' windows fall, So, in Romeo "Like death, when he shuts up the day of life." Again, in his Venus and Adonis : 4 "The night of sorrow now is turn'd to day; White AND azure, lac'd MALONE. WITH blue of heaven's own tinct.] We should read: 66 White with azure lac'd, "The blue of heaven's own tinct." i. e. the white skin laced with blue veins. WARBURTON. So, in Macbeth: "His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood." To note the chamber, I will write all down :- The adornment of her bed ;-The arras, figures, Why, such, and such 5 :-And the contents o' the story, The passage before us, without Dr. Warburton's emendation, is, to me at least, unintelligible. STEevens. So, in Romeo and Juliet: "What envious streaks do lace the severing clouds." These words, I apprehend, refer not to Imogen's eye-lids, (of which the poet would scarcely have given so particular a description,) but to the inclosed lights, i. e. her eyes: which though now shut, Iachimo had seen before, and which are here said in poetical language to be blue, and that blue celestial. Dr. Warburton is of opinion that the eye-lid was meant, and according to his notion, the poet intended to praise its white skin, and blue veins. Drayton, who has often imitated Shakspeare, seems to have viewed this passage in the same light: "And these sweet veins by nature rightly plac'd, "Wherewith she seems the white skin to have lac'd, "She soon doth alter." The Mooncalf, 1627. MALONE. We learn from a quotation in n. 3, that by blue windows were meant blue eye-lids; and indeed our author has dwelt on corresponding imagery in The Winter's Tale : 66 violets, dim, "But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes." A particular description, therefore, of the same objects, might, in the present instance, have been designed. Thus, in Chapman's translation of the twenty-third book of Homer's Odyssey, Minerva is the person described: 5 66 the Dame "That bears the blue sky intermix'd with flame "In her fair eyes," &c. STEEvens. -The arras, figures, Why, such, and such:] We should print, says Mr. M. Mason, thus: " the arras-figures;" that is, the figures of the arras. But, I think, he is mistaken. It appears from what Iachimo says afterwards, that he had noted, not only the figures of the arras, but the stuff of which the arras was composed : "With tapestry of silk and silver; the story Ah, but some natural notes about her body, O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her! Thus in a chapel lying!-Come off, come off;- Again, in Act V.: 6 averring notes "Of chamber-hanging, pictures," &c. MALONE. but as a monument, Thus in a chapel lying!] Shakspeare was here thinking of the recumbent whole-length figures, which in his time were usually placed on the tombs of considerable persons. The head was always reposed upon a pillow. He has again the same allusion in his Rape of Lucrece : “Where like a virtuous monument she lies, See also vol. viii. p. 430. n. 6. MALONE. A mole cinque-spotted,] Our author certainly took this circumstance from some translation of Boccacio's novel; for it does not occur in the imitation printed in Westward for Smelts, which the reader will find at the end of this play. In the Decamerone, Ambrogioulo, (the Iachimo of our author,) who is concealed in a chest in the chamber of Madonna Gineura, (whereas in Westward for Smelts the contemner of female chastity hides himself under the lady's bed,) wishing to discover some particular mark about her person, which might help him to deceive her husband, "at last espied a large mole under her left breast, with several hairs round it, of the colour of gold." Though this mole is said in the present passage to be on Imogen's breast, in the account that Iachimo afterwards gives to Posthumus, our author has adhered closely to his original : 66 66 under her breast (Worthy the pressing) lies a mole, right proud "Of that most delicate lodging." MALONE. I' the bottom of a cowslip: Here's a voucher, Stronger than ever law could make this secret Will force him think I have pick'd the lock, and ta'en The treasure of her honour. No more.-To what end? Why should I write this down, that's rivetted, Screw'd to my memory? She hath been reading late The tale of Tereus; here the leaf's turn'd down, To the trunk again, and shut the spring of it. dawning May bare the raven's eye2: I lodge in fear; 8 like the crimson drops I' the bottom of a cowslip:] This simile contains the smallest out of a thousand proofs that Shakspeare was an observer of nature, though, in this instance, no very accurate describer of it, for the drops alluded to are of a deep yellow. STEEVENS. 9 She hath been reading late THE TALE OF TEREUS:] Tereus and Progne is the second tale in A Petite Palace of Pettie his Pleasure, printed in quarto, in 1576. The same tale is related in Gower's poem De Confessione Amantis, b. v. fol. 113, b. and in Ovid's Metamorphoses, 1. vi. - MALONE. you DRAGONS of the night!] The task of drawing the chariot of night was assigned to dragons, on account of their supposed watchfulness. Milton mentions "the dragon yoke of night" in II Penseroso; and in his Masque at Ludlow Castle : 66 -the dragon womb "Of Stygian darkness." Again, In Obitum Præsulis Eliensis : It their 2 sub pedibus deam Vidi triformem, dum coërcebat suos may be remarked, that the whole tribe of serpents sleep with that dawning STEEVENS. May BARE the raven's eye :] The old copy has-beare. The correction was proposed by Mr. Theobald: and I think properly adopted by Sir T. Hanmer and Dr. Johnson. MALONE. |