Puslapio vaizdai
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Shakespeare was acquainted with, and meant to laugh at it. Mr. HAWKINS. P. 281. In this note, for into his land, read band. Conjecture is unneceffary; for Mr. Percy has published the original fong in his collection of old ballads. P. 308. For who could bear

the whips and fcorns of time. Qu. Quips? Which fignifies gybes, jeers, flouts, or taunts. See Minfher's Guide into the Tongues, col. 597.

So ufed by Ben. Johnson, Cynthia's Revels, act iì, fc. iv.

Phil. "Faith how like you "my quippe to Hedon about the 25 garter; was't not wittie ?"

Dr. GRAY. P. 320. Whether lago fingly was a Florentine, or both he and Caffio were fo, does not appear to me of much confequence. That the latter was actually married, is not fufficiently implied in a fellow almost damn'd in a fair wife, fince it may mean, according to Iago's licentious manner of expreffing himself, no more than a man very near being married. Had Shakespeare, confiftently with lago's character, meant to make him fay, Caffio was damn'd in being married to a handSome woman, he would have made him fay it outright, and not have interpofed the palliative almoft. The fucceeding parts of his converfation fufficiently evince that the Poet thought no mode of conception or expreffion too fhocking for lago.

Mr. STEEVENS. P. 324. Iago. Your daughter and the Moor are making the beast with two backs.] In a "Dictio

"naire des Proverbes François, "Par G. D. B. Bruffelles, 1710, " 12mo," under the word dos I find the following article:

Faire la bete a deux dos," pour dire faire l'amour.

P. 345:

Mr. PERCY.

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Let me fpeak like yourself. i. e. let me speak as yourself would fpeak, were you not too much heated with paffion. Mr. REYNOLDS. P. 346. That the bruifed heart was pierced through the ear.] Shakespeare was continually changing his first expreffion for another, either ftronger or more uncommon, fo that very often the reader, who has not the fame continuity or fucceffion of ideas, is at a lofs for its meaning. Many of Shakespeare's uncouth ftrained epithets may be explained, by going back to the obvious and fimple expreffion which is moft likely to occur to the mind in that ftate. I can imagine the first mode of expreffion that occurred to Shakespeare was this:

The troubled heart was never

cured by words: To give it poetical force, he altered the phrase;

The wounded heart was never

reached through the ear: Wounded heart he changed to broken, and that to bruifed, as a more uncommon expreffion. Reach, he altered to touched, and the tranfition is then eafy to pierced, i. e. thoroughly touched. When the fentiment is brought to this ftate, the commentator, without this unraveling clue, expounds piercing the heart, in its common acceptation, wounding the heart, which making in this place nonL14

fenfe,

fenfe, is corrected to pieced the beart, which is very stiff, and as Polonius fays, is a vile phrafe.

Mr. REYNOLDS. P. 355. A Veronefe, Michael Caffio.] The Revisal suppofes, I believe rightly, that Michael Cuffie is a Veronefe..

It should just be obferved, that the Italian pronunciation of the word must be retained, other wife the measure will be defective. Mr. STEEVENS. P. 362. To fuckle fools, and chronicle fmall beer.] I fee no more humour in this line than is obvious to the moft careless reader. After enumerating the perfections of a woman, he adds, that if ever there was one fuch

as he had been defcribing, the was, at the beft, of no other ufe than to fuckle children and keep the accounts of a household. The expreffions of to Jackie fools and chronicle fmall beer, are only two inftances of the want of natural affection, and the predominance of a critical cenforioufnefs in Iago, which he allows himself to have, where he fays, oh, I am nothing if not critical! Shakespeare never thought of any thing like the "Onate mecum confule Man"lio." Mr. STEEVENS.

This is certainly right. P. 366. Or tainting his dif cipline-] If the fenfe in this place was not fufficiently clear, I fhould have thought taunting his difcipline might have been the word, fince it was more likely for Rodrigo, from his general foolish character, to be able to throw out fomething in contempt of what he did not understand, than to fay any thing which

might really fully it, which tainting feems to imply. Mr. STEEVENS. P. 368. If this poor brach of Venice, whom I trace For bis quick bunting, ftand the

putting on.] The old reading was trap, which Dr. Warburton judiciously turned into brach. But it seems to me, that trash belongs to another part of the line, and that we ought to read trash for trace. To trash a bound, is a term of hunting fill used in the North, and perhaps elsewhere; i. e. to correct, to rate. The fenfe is, "If this "hound Roderige, whom I rate " for quick hunting, for over

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running the fcent, will but "fland the putting on, will but "have patience to be properly "and fairly put upon the fcent, "&." The context and fenfe is nothing if we read trace. This very hunting-term, to trak, is metaphorically used by ShakeSpeare in the Tempest, act i. sc. ii.

"Pro. Being once perfected

"how to grant fuits, "How to deny them; whom

t' advance, and whom "To trash for overtopping."To trash for overtopping; i. e. "what fuitors to check for their "too great forwardness." To overtop, is when a hound gives his tongue, above the reft, too loudly or too readily; for which he ought to be trajb'd or rated. Topper, in the good fenfe of the word, is a common name for a hound, in many parts of England. Shakespeare is fond of allufiens to hunting, and appears to be well acquainted with its language. Mr. WARTON.

P.

374. Iago. He'll watch the horologue a double fet, If drink rock not his cradle.-] Chaucer ufes the word borologe in more places than one. "Well fkirer was his crowing " in his loge, (lodge) "Than is a clocke, or abbey "borologe." P. 397. To feal ber father's eyes up clofe as oak.] The oak is (I believe) the moft clofegrained wood of the growth of England. Clofe as oak, means clofe as the grain of the oak.

Mr. STEEVENS.

I am ftill of my former opi

nion.

P. 404. The fpirit-firring drum, th' ear piercing fife.] In mentioning the fife joined with the drum, Shakespeare, as ufual, paints from the life: thofe inftruments accompanying each other, being used, in his age, by the English foldiery. The fife, however, as a martial inftrument, was afterwards entirely difcontinued among our troops for many years, but at length revived in the war before the laft. It is commonly fuppofed, that our foldiers borrowed it from the Highlanders in the last rebellion but I do not know that the fife is peculiar to the Scotch, or even used at all by them. It was first used, within the memory of man, among our troops, by the British guards, by order of the duke of Cumberland, when they were encamped at Maefricht, in the year 1747, and thence foon adopted into other English regiments of infantry. They took it from the allies with whom they ferved. This intrument, accompanying

the drum, is of confiderable an tiquity in the European armies, particularly the German. In a curious picture in the Afhmolean Mufeum at Oxford, painted 1525, reprefenting the fiege of Pavia by the French king, where the emperor was taken prisoner, we fee fifes and drums. In an old English treatise written by William Garrard before 1587, and published by one captain Hichcock in 1591, entitled the Arte of Warre, there are feveral woodcutts of military evolutions,' in which thefe inftruments are both introduced. In Rymer's Fadera, in a diary of king Henry's fiege of Bulloigne, 1544, mention is made of the "drommes and viff"leurs," marching at the head of the king's army. Tom. xv. p. 53.

The drum and fife were also much used at antient feftivals, fhows, and proceffions. Gerard Leigh, in his Accidence of Armory, printed in 1576, describing a christmas magnificently celebrated at the inner temple, fays,

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we entered the prince his hall, "where anon we heard the noyle "of drum and fife," p. 119. At a ftately mafque on Shrove-Junday 1509, in which Henry VIII. was an actor, Hollinfhed mentions the entry of "a drum and fife

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apprelled in white damaske "and grene bonnettes." Chron. iii. 805. col. 2. There are many more inftances in Hollinfhed, and Stowe's Survey of London.

From the old French word viffleur, above cited, came the Eng lifh word avbiffler, which anciently was used in its proper literal fenfe. Strype, speaking of

a grand

a grand filting before the court, in queen Mary's reign, 1554, fays, from an old journal, that king Philip and the challengers, entered the lifts, preceded by their whifflers, their footmen, and their armourers." Ecclef. Memor. iii. p. 211. This explains the ufe of the word in Shakespeare, where it is alfo literally applied. Henry V. act iv. fc. ult.

Behold, the Englife beach "Pales in the flood with men, with wives and boys, "Whofe fhouts and claps out"voice the deep-mouth'd

fea, "Which, like a mighty whif"fler 'fore the king, "Seems to prepare his "way."

By degrees, the word whiffler bence acquired the metaphorical meaning which it at prefent obtains in common fpeech, and became an appellation of contempt. Whiffler, a light trivial character, a fellow bired to pipe at foorus and proceffions.

Mr. WARTON. P. 424: Nature could not inveft herself in fuch Shadowing paffions without fome infiruction.] However ingenious Dr. Warburton's note may be, it is certainly too forced and farfetch'd. Othello alludes only to Caffio's dream, which had been invented and told him by lago, when many confufed and very interefting ideas pour in upon the mind all at once, and with fuch rapidity, that it has not time to fhape or digeft them, if the mind does not relieve itfelf by tears, which we know it often does, whether

for joy or grief, it produces ftapefaction and fainting.

Othello, in broken fentences and fingle words, all of which have a reference to the cause of his jealoufy, fhews, that all the proofs are prefent at once to his mind, which fo overpowers it, that he falls in a trance, the natural confequence. Mr. REYNOLDS. P. 461. Line 2. Gone to burning bell.-] Against the authority of all the editions, I think, we might venture to read, burn in hell.- REVISAL. P. 469. Like the bafe Judean threw a pearl away, Richer than all his tribe.] I cannot join with the learned criticks in fuppofing this paffage to refer either to the ignorance of the natives of India, in respect of pearls or the well known ftory of Herod and Mariamne.

Othello, in deteftation of what he had done, feems to compare himself to another who had thrown away a thing of value, with fome circumftances of the meanest villainy, which the epithet bafe feems to imply in its general fenfe, though it is fometimes uted only for low or mean. The Indian could not properly be termed bafe in the former and molt common fenfe, whofe fault was ignorance, which brings its own excufe with it, and the crime of Herod furely deferves a more aggravated diftinction. For though in every crime, great as well as mall, there is a degree of bafeness, yet the furiis agitatus amor, fuch as contributed to that of Herod, feems to ask a ftronger word to characterize it, as there

was

was Spirit at leaft in what he did, though the fpirit of a fiend, and the epithet bafe would better fuit with petty larceny than royal guilt. Befides, the fimile appears to me too appofite almoft to be used on the occafion, and is little more than bringing the fact into comparifon with itself. Each through jealoufy had deftroyed an innocent wife, circumstances fo parallel, as hardly to admit of that variety which we generally find in one allufion, which is meant to illuftrate another, and at the fame time to appear as no fuperfluous ornament. Neither do I believe the poet intended to make it coincide with all the circumftances of Othello's fituation, but merely with the fingle act of having bafely (as he himself terms it) destroyed that, on which he ought to have fet a greater value. As the pearl may bear a literal as well as a metaphorical fenfe, I would rather chufe to take it in the literal one, and receive Mr. Pope's rejected explanation, preSuppofing fome ftory of a Jew alluded to, which might be well understood at that time, though now totally forgotten.

Shakespeare's feeming averfion to the Jews in general, and his conftant defire to expofe their avarice and bafenefs as often as he had an opportunity, may ferve to ftrengthen this fuppolition; and as that nation in his time, and fince, has not been famous for crimes daring and confpicuous, but has rather content ed itself to thrive by the meaner and more fuccefsful arts of baje nefs, there feems to be a particular propriety in the epithet.

When Falfaff is juftifying himfelf in Henry IV. he adds, If what I have faid be not true, I am a few, an Ebrew Jews (info one of the moft fufpected characters of the time) and the vigilance for gain which is de fcribed in Shylock, may afford us reason to suppose the poet was alluding to a story of fome Jew, who rather than not have his own price for a pearl of value, bafely threw that away which was fo excellent in its kind, that its fellow could hardly ever be expected to be found again.

Richer than all his tribe, seems to point out the Jew again in a mercantile light, and may mean that the pearl was richer than all the gems to be found among a fet of men generally trading in them. Neither do I recollect that Othello mentions many things, but what he might fairly have been allowed to have had knowledge of in the courfe of his peregrinations. Of this kind, are the fimilies to to the Euxine fea flowing into the Propontick, and the Arabian trees dropping their gums. The reft of his fpeeches are more free from mythological and hiftorical allufions, than almost any to be found in Shakespeare, for he is never quite clear from them, though in the design of this character, he feems to have meant it for one who had spent a greater part of his life in the field, than in the cultivation of any other knowledge than what would be of ufe to him in his military capacity. It should be obferved that most of the flourifhes merely ornamental were added after the first edition, and

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