CAIUS. I pray you, bear vitness that me have stay fix or seven, two, tree hours for him, and he is no come. SHAL. He is the wiser man, master doctor: he is a curer of fouls, and you a curer of bodies; if you should fight, you go against the hair' of your profeffions: is it not true, mafter Page? PAGE. Mafter Shallow, you have yourself been a great fighter, though now a man of peace. SHAL. Bodykins, master Page, though I now be old, and of the peace, if I fee a sword out, my finger itches to make one: though we are justices, and doctors, and churchmen, master Page, we have fome falt of our youth in us; we are the fons of women, master Page. PAGE. 'Tis true, master Shallow. SHAL. It will be found so, master Page. Master doctor Caius, I am come to fetch you home. I am fworn of the peace: you have showed yourself a wife phyfician, and fir Hugh hath fhown himself a wife and patient churchman: you must go with me, mafter doctor. "My lordes, what means these gallants to performe? "Do all thefe mountains move, to breed a moufe?" There may, however, be alfo an allufion to his profeffion, as a water-cafter. I know not whether we should not rather point-Thou art a Caftilian, king-urinal! &c. In K. Henry VIII. Wolfey is called count-cardinal. MALONE. 5against the hair, &c.] This phrafe is proverbial, and is taken from stroking the hair of animals a contrary way to that in which it grows. So, in T. Churchyard's Difcourfe of Rebellion, &c. 1570: "You fhoote amis when boe is drawen to eare, "And brush the cloth full fore against the heare.” We now fay against the grain. STEEVENS. Hosr. Pardon, guest justice :-A word, monfieur Muck-water." CAIUS. Muck-vater! vat is dat? HOST. Muck-water, in our English tongue, is valour, bully. 6-Muck-water.] The old copy reads-mock-water. STEEVENS, The hoft means, I believe, to reflect on the infpection of urine, which made a confiderable part of practical phyfick in that time; yet I do not well fee the meaning of mock-water. JOHNSON. Dr. Farmer judiciously proposes to read-muck-water, i. e. the drain of a dunghill. Henry Cornelius Agrippa, of the Vanitie and Uncertainty of Artes and Sciences, Englished by James Sanford, Gent. bl. 1. 4to. 1569. might have furnished Shakspeare with a fufficient hint for the compound term muck-water, as applied to Dr. Caius. Dr. Farmer's emendation is completely countenanced by the fame work, p. 145. Furthermore, Phifitians oftentimes be contagious by reafon of urine," &c. but the reft of the paffage (in which the names of Efculapius, Hippocrates, &c. are ludicrously introduced) is too indelicate to be laid before the reader. STEEVENS. 66 Muck-water, as explained by Dr. Farmer, is mentioned in Evelyn's Philofophical Difcourfe on Earth, 1676, p. 160. REED. A word, Monfieur Muck-water.] The fecond of thefe words was recovered from the early quarto by Mr. Theobald. Some years ago I fufpected that mock-water, which appears to me to afford no meaning, was corrupt, and that the author wrote-Make-water. I have fince obferved that the words mock and make are often confounded in the old copies, and have therefore now more confidence in my conjecture. It is obfervable that the hoft, availing himself of the Doctor's ignorance of English, annexes to the terms that he ufes a fenfe directly oppofite to their real import. Thus, the poor Frenchman is made to believe, that he will clapper-claw thee tightly," fignifies, "he will make thee amends." Again, when he propofes to be his friend, he tells him, " for this I will be thy adverfary toward Anne Page." So alfo, instead of " heart of oak," he calls him " heart of elder." In the fame way, he informs him that Make-water means "valour."—In the old play called The Life and Death of Lord Cromwell, 1602, a female of this name is mentioned. MALONE. I have inferted Dr. Farmer's emendation in my text. Where is the humour or propriety of calling a Phyfician—Make-water? It is furely a term of general application. STEEVENS. CAIUS. By gar, then I have as much muck-vater -Scurvy jack-dog-priest! by as de Englishman : gar, me vil cut his ears. HOST. He will clapper-claw thee tightly, bully. CAIUS. Clapper-de-claw! vat is dat? Hosr. That is, he will make thee amends. CAIUS. By gar, me do look, he fhall clapper-declaw me; for, by gar, me vill have it. HOST. And I will provoke him to't, or let him wag. CAIUS. Me tank you for dat. Host. And moreover, bully,-But first, master gueft, and mafter Page, and eke cavalero Slender, go you through the town to Frogmore. [Afide to them. PAGE. Sir Hugh is there, is he? HOST. He is there: fee what humour he is in; and I will bring the doctor about by the fields: will it do well? SHAL. We will do it. PAGE. SHAL. and SLEN.Adieu, good master doctor. [Exeunt PAGE, SHALLOW and SLENDER. CAIUS. By gar, me vill kill de priest; for he fpeak for a jack-an-ape to Anne Page. Host. Let him die: but, firft, fheath thy impatience; throw cold water on thy choler: " go about the fields with me through Frogmore; I will bring thee where mistress Anne Page is, at a farm-house a feafting; and thou fhall woo her: Cry'd game, faid I well? throw cold water on thy choler:] So, in Hamlet: 8 cry'd game, faid I well?] Mr. Theobald alters this nonfenfe to try'd game; that is, to nonfenfe of a worse com I CAIUS. By gar, me tank you for dat: by gar, I love you; and I fhall procure-a you de good gueft, plexion. Shakspeare wrote and pointed thus, CRY AIM, said ! well? i. e. confent to it, approve of it. Have not I made a good propofal? for to cry aim fignifies to confent to, or approve of any thing. So, again in this play: And to thefe violent proceedings all my neighbours fhall CRY AIM, i. e. approve them. And again, in King John, A&t II. fc. ii: "It ill becomes this prefence to cry aim "To thefe ill-tuned repetitions." i. e. to approve of, or encourage them. The phrafe was taken, originally, from archery. When any one had challenged another to fhoot at the butts (the perpetual diverfion, as well as exercise, of that time,) the ftanders-by used to say one to the other, Cry aim, i. e. accept the challenge. Thus Beaumont and Fletcher, in The Fair Maid of the Inn, A&t V. make the Duke fay : 66 muft I cry AIME "To this unheard of infolence?". i. e. encourage it, and agree to the request of the duel, which one of his fubjects had infolently demanded against the other. But here it is remarkable, that the fenfelefs editors, not knowing what to make of the phrafe, Cry aim, read it thus: -muft I cry AI-ME;" as if it was a note of interjection. So again, Maffinger, in his Guardian: "I will CRY AIM, and in another room And again, in his Renegado: to play the pander "To the viceroy's loofe embraces, and cry aim, But the Oxford editor transforms it to Cock o' the Game; and his improvements of Shakspeare's language abound with these modern elegances of fpeech, fuch as mynbeers, bull-baitings, &c. WARBURTON. Dr. Warburton is right in his explanation of cry aim, and in fuppofing that the phrafe was taken from archery; but is certainly wrong in the particular practice which he affigns for the original of it. It feems to have been the office of the aim-crier, to give notice to the archer when he was within a proper diftance of his mark, or in a direct line with it, and to point out why he failed to ftrike it. So, in All's left by Luft, 1633: "He gives me aim, I am three bows too short; de earl, de knight, de lords, de gentlemen, my pa tients. Again, in Vittoria Corombona, 1612: "I'll give aim to you, "And tell how near you shoot." Again, in The Spanish Gipfie, by Rowley and Middleton, 1653: "Though I am no great mark in refpect of a huge butt, yet I can tell you, great bobbers have shot at me, and fhot golden arrows; but I myself gave aim, thus :-wide, four bows; fhort, three and a half;" &c. Again, in Green's Tu Quoque (no date) " We'll ftand by, and give aim, and holoo if you hit the clout." Again, in Jarvis Markham's English Arcadia, 1607: "Thou fmiling aim-crier at princes' fall." Again, ibid. " - while her own creatures, like aim criers, beheld her mifchance with nothing but lip-pity." In Ames's Typographical Antiquities, p. 402, a book is mentioned, called "Ayme for Finfburie Archers, or an Alphabetical Table of the name of every Mark in the fame Fields, with their true Distances, both by the Map and the Dimenfuration of the Line, &c. 1594.' Shakspeare ufes the phrafe again, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, fcene the laft, where it undoubtedly means to encourage: "Behold her that gave aim to all thy vows.' So, in The Palgrave, by W. Smith, 1615: "Shame to us all, if we give aim to that." Again, in The Revenger's Tragedy, 1607: "A mother to give aim to her own daughter!" Again, in Fenton's Tragical Difcourfes, bl. 1. 1567. "-Standyng rather in his window to-crye ayme, than helpyng any waye to part the fraye," p. 165. b. The original and literal meaning of this expreffion may be afcertained from fome of the foregoing examples, and its figurative one from the reft; for, as Dr. Warburton obferves, it can mean nothing in these latter inftances, but to confent to, approve, or encourage. It is not, however, the reading of Shakspeare in the paffage before us, and therefore, we must strive to produce some sense from the words which we find there-cry'd game. We yet fay, in colloquial language, that fuch a one is-gameor game to the back. There is furely no need of blaming Theobald's emendation with fuch feverity. Cry'd game might mean, in those days,-a profess'd buck, one who was as well known by the report of his gallantry, as he could have been by proclamation. Thus, in Troilus and Creffida: "On whose bright creft, fame, with her loud'ft O-yes, |