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A thousand irreligious cursed hours,

Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.
FORD. Stand not amaz'd: here is no remedy:

In love, the heavens themselves do guide the state;
Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.

FAL. I am glad, though you have ta'en a special stand to strike at me, that your arrow hath glanced.

PAGE. Well, what remedy?

Fenton, heaven give thee joy!

What cannot be eschew'd must be embrac'd.

FAL. When night-dogs run all sorts of deer are chas'da.
MRS. PAGE. Well, I will muse no further: master Fenton,
Heaven give you many, many merry days!
Good husband, let us every one go home,
And laugh this sport o'er by a country fire;
Sir John and all.

FORD. Let it be so:-Sir John,

To master Brook you yet shall hold your word;
For he, to-night, shall lie with mistress Ford.

[Exeunt.

We have also another line restored-rescued, as the editors say-good in itself, but out of place:"EVA. I will dance and eat plums at your wedding."

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1

ACT I.

SCENE I.-"Sir Hugh, persuade me not." WE find several instances in Shakspere of a priest being called Sir; as, Sir Hugh in this comedy; Sir Oliver in 'As You Like It;' Sir Topas in Twelfth Night;' and Sir Nathaniel in 'Love's Labour's Lost.'-In a curious treatise quoted by Todd, entitled 'A Decacordon of Ten Quodlibeticall Questions concerning Religion and State, &c., newly imprinted, 1602,' we have the following magniloquent explanation of the

matter:

"By the laws armorial, civil, and of arms, a Priest in his place in civil conversation is always before any Esquire, as being a Knight's fellow by his holy orders: and the third of the three Sirs, which only were in request of old (no baron, viscount, earl, nor marquis being then in use) to wit Sir King, Sir Knight, and Sir Priest; this word Dominus, in Latin, being a noun substantive common to them all, as

Dominus meus Rex, Dominus meus Joab, Dominus Sacerdos: and afterwards, when honours began to take their subordination one under another, and titles of princely dignity to be hereditary to succeeding posterity (which happened upon the fall of the Roman empire), then Dominus was in Latin applied to all noble and generous hearts, even from the king to the meanest Priest, or temporal person of gentle blood, coat-armour perfect, and ancestry. But Sir in English was restrained to these four; Sir Knight, Sir Priest, Sir Graduate, and in common speech Sir Esquire: so as always since distinction of titles were, Sir Priest was ever the second."

Fuller, in his 'Church History,' gives us a more homely version of the title. After saying that anciently there were in England more Sirs than Knights, he adds, "Such priests as have the addition of Sir before their Christian name were men not graduated in the university,

being in orders, but not in degrees, whilst | rank according to their academical degrees others entituled masters had commenced in the arts." In a note in Smith's Antiquities of Westminster,' Mr. John Sidney Hawkins gives us the following explanation of the passage in Fuller:

"It was, probably, only a translation of the Latin dominus, which in strictness means, when applied to persons under the degree of knighthood, nothing more than master, or, as it is now written, Mr. In the university persons would

only, and there was, consequently, no danger of confusion between baronets and knights and those of the clergy, but to preserve the distinction which Fuller points out, it seems to have been thought necessary to translate dominus, in this case, by the appellative Sir; for had magister been used instead of dominus, or had dominus been rendered master, non-graduates, to whom it had been applied, would have been mistaken for magistri artium, masters of arts."

Thomas Bucy

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2 SCENE I.-" The luce is the fresh fish; the salt fish is an old coat."

This speech is an heraldic puzzle. It is pretty clear that "the dozen white luces" apply to the arms of the Lucy family. In Ferne's 'Blazon of Gentry,' 1586, we have, "signs of the coat should something agree with the name. It is the coat of Geffray Lord Lucy. He did bear gules, three lucies hariant argent." The luce is a pike,-" the fresh fish;" not the "familiar beast to man." So far is clear; but why "the salt fish is an old coat" is not so intelligible. Farmer thus explains it. "Slender has observed, that the family might give a dozen white luces in their coat; to which the Justice adds, 'It is an old one.' This produces the Parson's blunder, and Shallow's correction. 'The luce is not the louse but the pike, the fresh fish of that name. Indeed our coat is old, as I said, and the fish cannot be fresh and therefore we bear the white, i. e., the pickled or salt fish.'" This explanation is very forced and unsatisfactory. We have received an explanation from a correspondent-'A Lover of Heraldry-which at any rate is extremely ingenious:

"The arms of the Lucys (now quartered by the Duke of Northumberland) are gules, three luces hauriant, argent. The fish is called hauriant in heraldry when it is drawn erect, or

in the act of springing up to draw in the air. Now Shallow is not a very exact herald, and does not apply the special term hauriant to the luce, but the term saltant or saliant, which expresses the same thing, but is only used of beasts, like lions, &c. The first part of the sentence is merely in answer to what Sir Hugh has just said, explaining what the luce is. The luce is the fresh fish,' i. e., the large fresh-water fish, the pike. Then he goes on in conclusion, -but without any opposition of the latter part of his sentence to the first,- The salt fish (i. e., the fish or luce saltant) is an old coat.' Without taking it as a strict and formed adjective, I think in Shallow's mouth the salt luces may well mean the saltant lucies."

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5 SCENE 1.-" Two Edward shovel-board 8, that cost me two shilling and two pence a-piece."

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In an illustration of the second Act of Henry IV., Part II.' we have exhibited the broad shilling of Edward VI.-the Edward shovel-board. We there expressed an opinion that Slender's costly shillings were probably lucky ones. Douce, however, thus explains the matter:-"We must suppose that the shillings purchased of the miller had been hoarded by him, and were in high preservation, and heavier

than those which had been worn in circulation. These would consequently be of greater importance to a nice player at the game of shovelboard, and induce him, especially if an opulent man, to procure them at a price far beyond their original value."

The Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire, like many other places, were anciently famous for rural sports. In the Second Part of 'Henry IV.,' Shallow mentions "Will Squele, a Cotswold man," as one of his four swinge bucklers. But Cotswold subsequently became famous for "the yearly celebration of Mr. Robert Dover's Olympie Games." Mr. Robert Dover was an attorney at Barton on the Heath, in Warwickshire; and early in the reign of James I. established these "Olympick Games," of wrestling, leaping, pitching the bar, and coursing. His merits had the good fortune to be celebrated in verse by Drayton, Randolph, and Jonson, in a book called 'Annalia Dubrensia.' The passage "he was out-run at Cotsall" does not occur in the quarto of 1602; and therefore, whether the reference is to Dover's games, or to the unpatronised games of the Cotswold men themselves, is not material, as affecting the date of the original comedy. It is clear from the passage in 'Henry IV., "Will Squele a Cotswold man," that Cotswold had some celebrity before Dover made it famous.

SCENE I.-"Seven groats in mill sixpences." How Slender could be robbed of two shillings and fourpence in sixpences would require his

SCENE I. "I had rather than forty shillings, I had my book of Songs and Sonnets here."

The exquisite bit of nature of poor Slender wanting his book of Songs and Sonnets, and his book of Riddles, to help him out in his talk with Anne Page, is not found in the original Sketch. Malone thinks that the 'Songs and Sonnets' of Lord Surrey and others, printed in 1567, are here alluded to; but surely there were many other poetical collections of Shakspere's own day which were as familiar to the young gentlemen and ladies as the Riddles. It is scarcely necessary for Reed to tell us that the latter was "a popular book."

7 SCENE I.-" Master of fence."

Steevens informs us that "master of defence, on this occasion, does not simply mean a professor of the art of fencing, but a person who

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had taken his master's degree in it;" and he adds, that in this art there were three degrees, a master, a provost, and a scholar. We doubt whether Slender, "on this occasion," meant very precisely to indicate the quality of the professor with whom he played at sword and dagger. Mr. Buss's design, in which a novice is represented taking his first lesson, will give a better idea of a school where "the noble science of defence" was taught in the time of Elizabeth, than any lengthened description.

SCENE I.-"I have seen Sackerson loose twenty times."

"Publius, a student of the common law,

To Paris-garden doth himself withdraw;Leaving old Ployden, Dyer, and Broke alone, To see old Harry Hunkes and Sacarson." loose" has been composed by Mr. Buss, upon The following representation of "Sackerson the authority of a description in Strutt's 'Sports and Pastimes.' If Slender had "taken him by the chain," Sackerson and Slender must have been equals in simplicity. Slender's triumph of manhood over the women, who "so cried and shrieked at it," is exquisite. The passage is wonderfully improved from the corresponding one in the original sketch :

"Slen. What, have you bears in your town, mistress

Anne. I cannot tell, master Slender, I think there be. Slen. Ha, how say you? I warrant you're afraid of a bear let loose, are you not?

Anne. Yes, trust me.

Slen. Now that's meat and drink to me. I'll run to a But indeed I cannot blame you, for they are marvellous bear, and take her by the muzzle, you never saw the like. rough things.

The inquiry of Slender "be there bears i' the town?" furnishes a proof of the universality of Anne, your dogs bark so? the practice of bear-baiting. In the time of Henry VIII. the bear-gardens on Bank-side were open on Sundays; and the price of admission was a halfpenny. That it was a barbarous custom we can have no doubt. Master Laneham, in his letters from Kenilworth, tells us that when a bear was loose from the dogs, it was a matter of goodly relief to him to shake his ears twice or thrice. Sackerson was a celebrated bear exhibited in Paris Garden in Southwark. In a collection of Epigrams by Sir John Davies we have the following lines :-—

Anne. Will you go in to dinner, master Slender? The meat stays for you.

Slen. No faith, not I, I thank you. I cannot abide the smell of hot meat, ne'er since I broke my shin. I'll tell you how it came, by my troth. A fencer and I played ward defending my head, he hit my shin; yes faith." three venies for a dish of stewed prunes, and I with my

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