2

Vica

I think it well, my lord.
Duke. Then let thy love be younger than thyself,
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent :
For women are as rofes; whose fair flower,
Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour.

Vio. And so they are : alas, that they are so;
To die, even when they to perfection grow!

Re-enter CURIO, and CLOWN.
Duke. O fellow, come, the song we had last night :-
Mark it, Cesario; it is old, and plain :
The spinsters and the knitters in the fun,
And the free 9 maids, that weave their thread with bones,
Do use to chaunt it; it is filly footh,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the old age.

Clo. Are you ready, fir?
Duke. Ay; prythee, fing.

[Musicka
SONG
CLO. Come away, come away, death,

And in fad cypress let me be laid ;'

Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am Jain by a fair cruel maid.

My 9 Perhaps, vacant, unengaged, ealy in mind. JOHNSON.

I rather think, that free means here--not having yet surrendered their liberty to man ;=unmarried. 'MALONE.

Is not free, unreferred, uncontrolled by the restraints of female delicacy, forward, and such as sing plain fongs? HENLEY.

The precise meaning of this epithet cannot very easily be pointed out. As Mr. Warton observes, on another occafion,' fair and free" are words often paired together in metrical romances. Chaucer, Drayton, Ben Jonson, and many other poets employ the epithet free, with little cer. tainty of meaning. Free, in the instance before us, may commodiously tignify, artlifs, free from art, uninfuenced by artificial manners, undirected by faise refinement in tbeir choice of ditries, STEEVENS. Ž It is plain, simple truth. JOHNSON. . 3. To daliy is to play, to trifle. STEEVENS. 4 The old age is the ages past, the times of fimplicity. JOHNSON.

Si. e. in a Shroud of cypress or cyprus. There was both black and white cyprus, as there is still black and white crape; and ancient throuds were always made of the latter.

STEEVENS,

Lay me,

My fbroud of white, fuck all with you,

, prepare it;
My part of death no one to true

Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be ferown;

Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand fighs to favegi 151.1::

O where
Sad true lover ne'er find my grave,

To weep there.
Duke. There's for thy pains.
Clo. No pains, fir ; I take pleasure in singing, îir.
Duke. I'll pay thy pleafure then.

Clo. Truly, fir, and pleasure will be paid, one time or another.

Duke. Give me now leave to leave thee.

Clo. Now, the melancholy god protect thee ; and the tai. lor make thy doublet of changeable taffata, for thy mind is a very of :!7- I would have men of such

h constancy put to fea, that their business might be every thing, and their intent every where :' for that's it, that always makes a good voyage of nothing.-Farewel.

[Exit Clown. es

Dike. 6 Though death is a part in which every one a&ts his sšare, yet of all these actors no one is so true as 1. JOHNSON,

7 A precious stone of almoft all colours. Pope. The opal is a gem which varies its appearance as it is viewed in different lights. STLEVENS.

8 Both the preservation of the antithefis, and the recovery of the fente, require we should read, and their intent, no wbers. Because a man who fuffers himself to run with every wind, and so makes his business every where, cannot be faid to have any intent ; for that word benifies a determination of the mind to fomething. Besides, the conclusion of making a good voyage of nothing, directs to this emendation.. WAR BURTON.

An intent every where, is much the same as an intent no roberc, as it hath no one particular place more in view than another. HEATR.

The present reading is preferable to Warburton's amendment. We cannot accuse a man of inconstancy, who has no intents at all, though we may the man whose intents are every where that is, are continually varying. M. MASON.

Duke. Let all the rest give place.

Exeunt Curto and Attendants.

Once more, Cesario, Get thee to yon' fame fovereign cruelty : Tell her, my love, more noble than the world, Prizes not quantity of dirty lands; The parts

that fortune hath bestow'd upon her, Tell her, I hold as giddily as fortune ; But 'tis that miracle, and queen

of

gerns, That nature pranks her in, attracts my soul,

Vin. But, if she cannot love you, sir?
Duke. I cannot be so answer'd.
Vio

'Sooth, but

you

muft,
Say, that some lady, as, perhaps, there is,
Hath for your love as great a pang of heart
As you have for Olivia : you cannot love her ;
You tell her so; Muft she not then be answer'd ?

Duke. There is no woman's fides,
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
As love doth give my heart : no woman's heart
So big, to hold so much; they lack retention.
Alas, their love may be call'd appetite.-
No motion of the liver, but the palate, -
That suffer furfeit, cloyment, and revolt;3

But

9 What is tbat miracle, and queen of gems ? we are not told in this read. ing. Befides, what is meant by nature pranking ber in a miracle 3-We thould read :

But ’ris tbat miracle, and queen of gems,

That nature pranks, her mind, j. e. what attracts my foul, is not her fortune, but ber mind, ibat miracle ond queen of gems but nature pronks, i. e. sets out, adorns.

WARBURTON. The miracle and queen of gems is her beauty, which the commentator might have found without so emphatical an enquiry. As to her mind, he that should be captious would fay, that though it may be formed by nature, it must be pranked by education.

Shakspeare does not say that nature pranks ber in a miracle, but in tbe miracle of genes, that is, in a gem miraculously beautiful. Jurnson.

To prank is to deck out, to adorn. See Lye's Etymologicon. HLATH. z 'The Duke has changed his opinion of women very suddenly. It w33

a few minutes fore, that he said they had more conftancy in love than sen, M, MASON,

But mine is all as hungry as the sea,
And can digest as much: make no compare
Between that love a woman can bear me,
And that I owe Olivia
Vio

Ay, but I know,
Duke. What doit thou know?

Vio. Too well what love women to men mayowe :
In faith, they are as true of heart as we.
My father had a daughter lov'd a man,
As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,
I should your lordship.
Duke.

And what's her history?
Vio. A blank, my lord : She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i'the bud,
Feed on her damak cheek: The pin’d in thought;::
And, with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief+ Was not this love, indeed ?
We men may say more, fwear more: but, indeed,

Ous 3 Tbought formerly signified melancholy. MALONE.

Mr. Malone says, tbought mans melani koly.. But why wrest from this word its plain and usual acceptation, and make Shakspeare guilty of tau. tology? for in the very next line he uses.“ Melancholy.” Douce. + Mr. Theobald supposes this might pollibly be borrowed from Chaucer :

“ snd ker besidis wonder discreetlie
“ Dame pacience ysitting ibere I fonde

“ Witb facé palc, upon a bill of sonde.". And adds: “ If be was indebted, bowever, for the forff rude draugbi, bow amply bas be repaid that debt, in beightening the picture! How much does ibe green and yellow melancholy transcend the old bard's pale face; the monument bis hill of land."--I hope this critic does not imagine Shakspeare meant to give us a picture of the face of patience, by bis green and yellow melancholy; because, he says, it transcends the pale face of patience, given as by Chaucer. To throw patience into a fit of melancholy, would be indeed very extraordinary. The green and yellow then belonged not to patience, but to ber who sat like patience. To give patience a pale face was proper: and had Shakipeare described ber, he had done it as Chaucer did.. But Shakspeare is speaking of a marble ftatue of patience; Chaucer of patience herself. And the two representations of her, are in quite differerit views. Our poet, speaking of a despairing lover, judiciously compares her to patience exercised on the death of friends and relations; which affo ds him the beautiful picture of patience on a monument. The old bard, Speak. ing of patience herself, directly, and not by mparison, as judiciously draws her in that circumstance where the is. sncft excocifed, and has RO

occalion

וי

Our Mows are more than will; for ftill we prove
Much in our vows,

but little in our love..
Duke. But dy'd thy, fifter of her loves my boy?

Vis. I am all the daughters of my father's house, And all the brothers too ;5--and yet I know not : Sir, shall I to this lady?

Dule. occafion for all her virtue;. that is to say, under the losses of shipwreck. And now we see why she is represented as string on a hill of land, to design the scene to be the sea- thore. It is finely imagined; and one of the noble fimplicities of that'admirable poet. But the critic thought, in good earneft, that Chaucer's invention was fo barren, and his imagination so beggarly, that he was not able to be at the charge of a monument for his goddess, but left her, like a stroller, funning herself upon a heap of fand.

WARBURTON This celebrated image was not improbably first sketched out in the old play of Pericles. I think, Shakspeare's hand may be sometimes seen in the latter part of it, and there only.

-thou (Marina) doft look
" Like Patience, gazing on kings' graves, and smiling

“ Extremity out of act.” FARMER. So, in our author's Rape of Lucrece :

“ So mild, that Pajience seem’d to scorn bis wees." In the passage in the text, our author perhaps meant to personify GRIEF as well as PATIENCE; for we can scarcely understand " ut grief” to mean " in grief," as no statuary could, I imagine, form a countenance in which smiles and grief should be at once expreifed. Shakspeare might have borrowed his imagery from fome ancient monument on which these two figures were represented. MALONE.

I am unwilling to suppose a monumental image of Patience was ever confronted by an emblematical figure of Grief, on purpose that one might fit and smile at the other; because such a representation might be confidered as a satire on human in fenfibility. When Patierce (miles, it is to express a christian triumph over the common cause of forrow, a cause, of which the farcophagus, near her station, ought very sufficiently to remind her. True Patience, when it is ber cue to smile over calamity, knows her office witbout a prompter; knows that stubborn lamentation displays a will most incorreft to beaven; and therefore appears content with one of its severelt dispensations, the loss of a relation'or a frier.d. Ancient tombs, indeed (if we must construe grief into grievance, and Shakspeare has certainly used the former word for the latter, j frequently exhibit cum. bent figures of the deceased, and over these an image of Patience, without impropriety, might exprefs a smile of complacence:

" Her meek hands folded on her modest breaft,
“With calm fubmiffion-lift the adoring eye

* Even to the storm that wrecks her.” ŠTEEVENS. pils This was the most artful answer that could be given. The question **-5 of such a nature, that to have declined the appearance of a direct

answer