present reading, though intelligible, is very licentious, especially in prose. M. MALONE.

I'. 66, 1.9. in your allowance,] in your ap→ probation. MALONE.

P. 66, 1. 10 - 16

have seen play,

have so

there be players, that I and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of christians, nor the gait of christian, pagan, nor man, strutted, and bellow'd, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, &c.] I would read thus: "There be players, that I have seen play, and. heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak profanely) that neither having the accent nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor Mussulman, have so strutted and bellowed, that I thought some of nature's journeymen had made the men, and not made them well," &c. FARMER.

"that

I have no doubt that our author wrote, I thought some of nature's journeymen had made them, and not made them well," &c. Them and men are frequently confounded in the old copies. In the present instance the compositor probably caught the word men from the last syllable of journeymen. Shakspeare could not mean to assert as a general truth, that nature's journey men had made men, i. e. all mankind; for, if that were the case, these strutting players would have been on a footing with the rest of the species. Nature herself, the poet means to say, made all mankind except these strutting players, and they were made by Nature's journeymen.

This notion of Nature keeping a shop, and em→ ploying journeymen to form mankind, was com mon in Shakspeare's time. MALONE.

Profanely seems to relate, not to the praise which he has mentioned, but to the censure which he is about to utter. Any gross or indelicate language was called profane. JOHNSON.

P. 66, 1. 20. et fol. And let those, that play your clowns; speak no more than is set down for them: &c.] Stowe informs us, (p. 697, edit. 1615), that among the twelve players who were sworn the Queen's servants in 1583, "were two rare men, viz. Thomas Wilson, for a quick delicate refined extemporall witte; and Richard Tarleton, for a wondrous plentifull, pleasant extemporall witt, &c."

Again, in Tarleton's Newes from Purgatory: I absented myself from all plaies, as wauting that merrye Roscius of plaiers that famosed all comedies so with his pleasant and extemporall invention."

This cause for complaint, however, against low comedians, is still more ancient. STEEVENS.

The clown very often addressed the audience, in the middle of the play, and entered into a contest of raillery and sarcasm with such of the audience as chose to engage with him. It is to this absurd practice that Shakspeare alludes. See the Histo¬ rical Account of our old English Theatres, Vol. 11. MALONE.

P. 67, 1. 16. And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,} 1 be lieve the sense of pregnant in this place is, quick, ready, prompt. JOHNSON..

my dear soul] Perhaps my

P. 67, 1. 18. clear soul. JOHNSON.

Dear soul is an expression equivalent to the φίλα γούνατα, φίλον ήτορ, of Homer.

STEEVENS

P. 67, 1. 24. Whose blood and judgement are so well co-mingled,] According to the doctrine of the four humours, de sire and confidence were seated in the blood, and judgement in the phlegm, and the due mixture of the humours made a perfect character. JOHNSON. P. 68 1. 5. Vulcans stithy.] Stithy is a smith's anvil. JOHNSON.

P. 68, 1. 23. 24. these words are not mine. Ham. No, nor mine now] A man's words, says the proverb, are his own no longer than he keeps them unspoken. JOHNSON,

P. 68, 1. 25. you play'd once in the uni→ versity, It should seem from the following passage in Vice Chancellor Hatchet's letters to Lord Burghley on June 21, 1580, that the common players were likewise occasionally admitted to perform. there: "Whereas it hath pleased your Honour to recommend my lorde of Oxenford his players, that they might show their cunning in several plays already practised by 'em before the, Queen's Majesty" (denied on account of the pestilence and commencement:) "of late we denied the like to the Right Honourable the Lord of Leicester his servants." FARMER.

The practice of acting Latin plays in the uni versities of Oxford and Cambridge, is very an cient, and continued to near the middle of the last century. They were performed occasionally for the entertainment of Princes and other great personages; and regularly at Christmas, at which time a Lord of misrule was appointed at Oxford, to regulate the exhibitions, and a similar officer with the title of Imperator, at Cambridge. The most celebrated actors at Cambridge were the stu dents of St. John's and King's colleges: at Ox

ford, those of Christ-Church. In the hall of that college a Latin comedy called Marcus Geminus, and the Latin tragedy of Progne, were performed before Queen Elizabeth in the year 1566; and in 1564, the Latin tragedy of Dido was played before her Majesty, when she visited the university of Cambridge. The exhibition was in the body or uave of the chapel of King's college, which was lighted by the royal guards, each of whom bore a staff torch in his hand. See Peck's Desider. Cur. p. 36, n. x. The actors in this piece were all of that college. The author of the tragedy, who in the Latin account of this royal visit, in the Museum, [MSS. Baker, 7037, p. 203,) is said to have. been Regalis Collegii olim socius, was, I believe, John Rightwise, who was elected a fellow of King's college, in 1507, and according to Anthony Wood, "made the tragedy of Dido out of Virgil, and acted the same with the scholars of his school [St. Paul's, of which he was appointed master in 1522,] before Cardinal Wolsey with great applause." In 1583, the same play was performed at Oxford, in Christ-Church hall, before Albertus de Alasco, a Polish Prince Palatine, as was William Gager's Latin comedy, entitled Rivales. On Elizabeth's second visit to Oxford, iu 1502, a few years before the writing of the present play, she was entertained on the 24th and 26th of September, with the representation of the last-mentioned play, and another Latin comedy, called Bellum Grammaticale. MALONE.

P. 68, 1. 30. I did enact Julius Caesar:] A Latin play on the subject of Caesar's death was performed at Christ-Church in Oxford, in 1582; and several years before, a Latin play on the same subject, written by Jacques Grevin, was acted in

the

the college of Beauvais, at Paris. I suspect that there was likewise an English play on the story of Caesar before the time of Shakspeare. See Essay on the Order of Shakspeare's Plays. MALONE.

P. 68, 1. 30. 31. I was kill'd i'the Capitol;] This, it is well known, was not the case; for Caesar, we are expressly told by Plutarch, was killed in Pompey's Portico. But our poet followed the received opinion, and probably the representation of his own time, in a play on the subject of Caesar's death, previous to that which he wrote. The notion that Julius Caesar was kill ed in the Capitol is as old as the time of Chaucer. MALONE

P. 68, 1. 321 It was a brute part of him,] Sir John Harrington in his Metamorphosis of Ajax, 1596, has the same quibble: "O braveminded Brutus! but this I must truly say, they were two bruitish parts both of him and you? one to kill his sons for treason, the other to kill his father in treason." STEEVENS.

P. 68, last 1. they stay upon your patience.] May it not be read more intelligibly, they stay upon your pleasure. In Macbeth it is:

"Noble Macbeth, we stay upon your lei

• sure.

JOHNSON.

P. 69, 1. 6. [Lying down at OPHELIA's feet.] To lie at the feet of a mistress during any dra matick representation, seems to have been a common act of gallantry. STEEVENS.

P. 69, l. 10. 1 meant country matters?] Dr. Johnson, from a casual inadvertence, proposed to readcountry manners. The old reading is certainly right. What Shakspeare meant to allude to, VOL. VXII.