neglected; which you have not:-but I pardon you for that; for, simply, your having in beard is a younger brother's revenue:-Then your hose should be ungarter'd', your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such man; you are rather point-device in your accoutrements; as loving yourself, than seeming the lover of any other. ORL. Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love. Ros. Me believe it? you may as soon make her that you love believe it; which, I warrant, she is apter to do, than to confess she does: that is one of the points in the which women still give the lie to their consciences. But, in good sooth, are you tion with a religious man." In all which places, question means discourse or conversation. M. MASON. 6 your HAVING] Having is possession, estate. So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor: "The gentleman is of no having." STEEVENS. So, in Macbeth: 7 "Of noble having and of royal hope." BOSWELL. Then your hose should be UNGARTER'd, &c.] These seem to have been the established and characteristical marks by which the votaries of love were denoted in the time of Shakspeare. So, in The Fair Maid of the Exchange, by Heywood, 1637: "Shall I, that have jested at love's sighs, now raise whirlwinds! Shall I, that have flouted ah me's once a quarter, now practise ah me's every minute? Shall I defy hat-bands, and tread garters and shoe-strings under my feet? Shall I fall to falling bands, and be a ruffian no longer? I must; I am now liegeman to Cupid, and have read all these informations in the book of his statutes." Again, in A Pleasant Comedy how to chuse a Good Wife from a Bad, 1602: I was once like thee 8 66 "A sigher, melancholy humorist, "Crosser of arms, a goer without garters, "A hat-band hater, and a busk-point wearer." MALONE. point-device] i. e. exact, drest with finical nicety. So, in Love's Labour's Lost: "I hate such insociable and pointdevice companions." STEEVENS, he that hangs the verses on the trees, wherein Rosalind is so admired? ORL. I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I am that he, that unfortunate he. Ros. But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak? ORL. Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much. Ros. Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house, and a whip, as madmen do: and the reason why they are not so punished and cured, is, that the lunacy is so ordinary, that the whippers are in love too: Yet I profess curing it by counsel. ORL. Did you ever cure any so? Ros. Yes, one; and in this manner. He was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me: At which time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing, and liking; proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles; for every passion something, and for no passion truly any thing, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this colour: would now like him, now loath him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love, to a living humour of madness1; which was, to forswear the 9 a мOONISH youth,] i. e. variable. So, in Romeo and Juliet: "O swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon." STEEVENS. I to a LIVING humour of madness;] If this be the true reading, we must by living understand lasting, or permanent; but I cannot forbear to think that some antithesis was intended which is now lost; perhaps the passage stood thus-I drove my suitor from a dying humour of love to a living humour of madness. Or full stream of the world, and to live in a nook merely monastick: And thus I cured him; and this way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart 2, that there shall not be one spot of love in't. ORL. I would not be cured, youth. Ros. I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind, and come every day to my cote, and woo me. ORL. Now, by the faith of my love, I will; tell me where it is. Ros. Go with me to it, and I'll show it you: and, by the way, you shall tell me where in the forest you live: Will you go? ORL. With all my heart, good youth. Ros. Nay, you must call me Rosalind :-Come, sister, will you go? [Exeunt. rather thus-From a mad humour of love to a loving humour of madness, that is,—From a madness that was love, to a love that was madness. This seems somewhat harsh and strained, but such modes of speech are not unusual in our poet; and this harshness was probably the cause of the corruption. JOHNSON. Perhaps we should read-to a humour of loving madness. FARMER. Both the emendations appear to me inconsistent with the tenour of Rosalind's argument. Rosalind by her fantastick tricks did not drive her suitor either into a loving humour of madness, or a humour of loving madness; (in which he was originally without her aid ;) but she drove him from love into a sequester'd and melancholy retirement. A living humour of madness is, I conceive, in our author's licentious language, a humour of living madness, a mad humour that operates on the mode of living; or, in other words, and more accurately, a mad humour of life; to forswear the world, and to live in a nook merely monastick." MALONE. 66 2 as clean as a sound sheep's heart,] This is no very delicate comparison, though produced by Rosalind in her assumed character of a shepherd. A sheep's heart, before it is drest, is always split and washed, that the blood within it may be dislodged. STEEVENS. SCENE III. 3 Enter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY3; JAQUES at a distance, observing them. TOUCH. Come apace, good Audrey; I will fetch up your goats, Audrey: And how, Audrey? am I the man yet? Doth my simple feature content you * ? 4 AUD. Your features! Lord warrant us! what features? TOUCH. I am here with thee and thy goats, as 3-Audrey;] Is a corruption of Etheldreda. The saint of that name is so styled in ancient calendars. STEEVENS. 4 Doth my simple FEATURE content you?] Says the Clown to Audrey. "Your features! (replies the wench,) Lord warrant us! what features?" I doubt not, this should be-your feature! Lord warrant us! what's feature? FARMER. Feat and feature, perhaps, had anciently the same meaning. The Clown asks, if the features of his face content her, she takes the word in another sense, i. e. feats, deeds, and in her reply seems to mean, what feats, i. e. what have we done yet? The courtship of Audrey and her gallant had not proceeded further, as Sir Wilful Witwood says, than a little mouth-glue; but she supposes him to be talking of something which as yet he had not performed. Or the jest may turn only on the Clown's pronunciation. In some parts, features might be pronounced, faitors, which signify rascals, low wretches. Pistol uses the word in The Second Part of King Henry IV. and Spenser very frequently. STEEVENS. In Daniel's Cleopatra, 1594, is the following couplet : "I see then, artless feature can content, Again, in The Spanish Tragedy: "It is my fault, not she, that merits blame; 66 66 My feature is not to content her sight; My words are rude, and work her no delight." Feature appears to have formerly signified the whole countenance. So, in King Henry VI. P. I. : "Her peerless feature, joined with her birth, Approves her fit for none but for a king." MALONE. the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths 5. JAQ. O knowledge ill-inhabited"! worse than Jove in a thatch'd house! [Aside TOUCH. When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room':Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical. 5- as the most CAPRICIOUS poet, honest Ovid, was among the GOTHS.] Capricious is not here humoursome, fantastical, &c. but lascivious. Hor. Epod. 10. Libidinosus immolabitur caper. The Goths are the Geta. Ovid. Trist. v. 7. The thatch'd house is that of Baucis and Philemon. Ovid. Met. viii. 630. Stipulis et canna tecta palustri. UPTON. Mr. Upton is, perhaps, too refined in his interpretation of capricious. Our author remembered that caper was the Latin for a goat, and thence chose this epithet. This, I believe, is the whole. There is a poor quibble between goats and Goths. MALONE. 6 word. ill-inhabited!] i. e. ill-lodged. An unusual sense of the A similar phrase occurs in Reynolds's God's Revenge against Murder, book v. hist. 21: "Pieria's heart is not so ill-lodged, nor her extraction and quality so contemptible, but that she is very sensible of her disgrace." Again, in The Golden Legend, Wynkyn de Worde's edit. fol. 196: "I am ryghtwysnes that am enhabited here, and this hous is myne, and thou art not ryghtwyse." STEEVENS. 7 it strikes a man more dead than a great RECKONING in a little room] Nothing was ever wrote in higher humour than this simile. "A great reckoning, in a little room," implies that the entertainment was mean, and the bill extravagant. The poet here alluded to the French proverbial phrase of" the quarter of an hour of Rabelais : " who said, "there was only one quarter of an hour in human life passed ill, and that was between the calling for the reckoning and paying it." Yet the delicacy of our Oxford editor would correct this into, "It strikes a man more dead than a great reeking in a little room." This is amending with a vengeance. When men are joking together in a merry humour, all are disposed to laugh. One of the company says a good thing: the jest is not taken; all are silent; and he who said it, quite confounded. This is compared to a tavern jollity interrupted by the |
