tioned in such an irreverent manner on the stage." The poetry of the Drama at
all times, must confess to this guilt : its object being to give a supposed spirit to
the sentiment and expression.
13
tares of her consort, and Art and Nature (Truth being another
name for Nature), being united, form the excellence of the
dramatic invention, which mere opinions cannot injure.
" I heard
The sweetest and most ravishing contention
That Art and Nature ever were at strife in."
Vide Ford's Lover's Melancholy, i, so. 1,
V. 48. Thenot's speech—" This is the cabin," &c. and
editor's note, p. 49, p. I conceive that the whole of this
speech is addressed to the moon, whom he personifies as the
sister of Apollo, though calling her a " blessed star ;" nor,
indeed, could the language in which she is represented as
infusing into the breasts of mortals a soul more valuable
than the gift of reason itself (that separates man from the
lower creatures), be applicable to a mere woman — the shep-
herdess Clorin.
p. 77. â– This spring of thine,
Let it of nothing taste but earth
And salt conceived in its birth.
The editor says, "I have restored these lines, though I must
confess I do not understand them." — Marini, addressing
the river god, prays that nothing injurious or unwholesome
may infect the purity of his waters — no poisonous animals,
as the newt (eft) and toad ; no veins of nitre or brim-
stone spoyle their taste ; but that they may have only the
natural flavour of the earth from which they rise, and what
he calls the salts that are native to them ; by which the
nuu'iates and sulphates, which are found in some propor-
tions in all waters, are intended, and which go under the
general name of salts, forming by their relative quantities,
hard or soft water. These make component parts of all
waters ; but not so brimstone or nitre, and mineral sub-
stances, which ^x^ foreign to them, and destroy their purity
and salubrity.*
P. 106. Like thunder 'gainst the bay.
The editor's note — " Bay is here used for laurel." No !
the bay-tree is emphatically the laurel, and it is in the hay
(/. e. the true laurel) that the quality here mentioned by
* The soil must be renew'd, which often wash'd,
Loses its treasure of saUibrious salts. — Cowpeb's TasTc^ book iii.
14
the poets is supposed to exist — Laurus nobilis, the laurel
of the ancients. The plant that we now in England call the
laurel, is a prunus or cerasus — the Lauro cerastis, or cherry-
laurel ; it was unknown to the ancients, and was only
introduced into Europe in 1576, and indeed it is 7iot men-
tioned in Gerard's Herbal so late as 1597, so that it has
not been known much above 250 years. The hai/^ and
laurel seem used for the same tree in Ford's The Suns
Darling, act ii, sc. 1, p. 353, ed. Weber.
P. 117. To cherish him whose many pains and sweat
Hath given increase, and added to the downs,
Sort all your shepherds from the lazy clowns
That feed their heifers on the budded broom, &c.
A distinction is here made between the shepherd-farmer,
who has stubbed up the thorns, furze, shrubby wood, &c,
on the wild lands, recovered them from the waste, and con-
verted them into good pasture for the flocks ; and the "lazy
clown," who is contented to lie down in idleness, merely
accompanying his heifers and cattle to feed and wander at
will among the broom and heath, in their natural, uncul-
tivated, and much less productive state. This is a picture
that preserves its truth to the present day.
P. 120. " Rack." A sea fog, which in cold evenings
in spring, succeeding hot days, and accompanied with an
east wind, rolls over to the land, reaching some miles inland,
is provincially called " a roke." — Suff. Gloss. MS,
KNIGHT OF THE BUKNING PESTLE.
P. 191. And in a tub that 's heated smoking hot.
Editor's Note — " The process of sweating patients afflicted
with the venereal disease, is often mentioned in our old
plays, &c. with a variety of jocular allusions." A view of
such a patient in his tub, looking very wretched and peni-
tent, warning off some bona robas, who have come to visit
* The Lauro cerasus, or common laurel, is too tender to bear the climate of
Germany, and does not thrive well even at Paris. The Laurus nobilis, or bay-
tree, is stUl more tender, and wUl not succeed if planted much north of London.
The late severe vrinter (1855) has probably destroyed half of those that were in
England— except in the southern counties. In my garden all, even of thirty years'
growth, were killed,
15
liiiii in his affliction, is to be seen as a frontispiece to Ran-
dolpli's Coruelianum Dolium, 1638, 12nio. In my copy, in
an antique hand, is written —
Young man, take warning by my fate,
To lead a chaste and virtuous life ;
All wanton peats' allurements hate,
And cleave unto thy wedded wife ;
To Cicely, Susan, or to Kate.
So may you 'scape the bitter ills
Of Esculapius' searching pills,"
KING AND NO KING.
P. 314. I say you palter : the must three times together.
I wear as sharp steel as another man,
And my fox bites as deep : musted, my dear brother,
Put to the case again.
The editor says — " Musted may perhaps be right, but I
have felt strongly inclined to alter it to 7mst, as the early
possessor of the first 4to. has done." I consider it to be a
corruption of "must de," the d reversed would form d.
See the preceding dialogue — "This nwst he granted."
" Still the must — give me the must^' &c. This change of
the letter is very common, and is just now before me —
"Use elephants and hwhed horses" for barc?ed. Vide
Ford's Perkin Warbeck, act iv, sc. 4.
CUPID'S REVENGE.
P. 362. Wore their own faces (though they wore gay clothes),
Without surveying.
I think that the text may be right. "Wore their own
faces," without looking at them in the glass, though they
still wore gay clothes ; an allowable gratification, which
painting the face with false colour was not.
P. 366. "Who kneel."
I can see no necessity for believing, with the modern
editors, that a line has dropt out, seeing the sense is perfect.
P. 379. Leuc. Pare thee well,
Mine own good Bacha, I will make all haste.
BacJia. Just as you are a dozen, I esteem you —
No more.
Mason would read " donor," whose " tameness is shocking"
to Mr. Weber. I would read " doter" (dotard), as used by
16
Shakespeare {v. Index), and explained by the dictionaries —
a man fondly and weakly in love, as Leucippus was,
" 1 may be cozened, but sure, if I can,
I'll have no doting, but a doing man."
F. Hayman's Quodlibets, p. 29.
P. 407. Oh ! good gods !
What qualities thus pass by us, without reverence.
The word " qualities" is a guess of Sympson's, as " virtues"
is of Seward, and " faculties" of the editor : the original
word being " frailties." Though not believing that " quali-
ties" is the poet's own word, I think the editor has chosen
for the best. " Faculties" does not seem to agree so well
with the phrase "pass by us." If "frailties" is to be
retained, it can only be, by supposing the speech unfinished,
and abruptly stopped by Leon,
P. 407. Bacha. Done with ! Oh, good gods ! &c.
The editor says — "Altered by the editors of 1778 and Weber
to 'Done with himf but previously the 4to. ed. 1635, had
given ' Done with him P " which indeed is the true reading.
P. 393, Your whore you shall never
I would make this a broken speech. In the next line read —
A little left to keep me warm and honest,
omitting the first "me" after "left," which is quite unne-
cessary: "me" occurs five times in five lines, and in this
place belongs not to the poet, but to the printer.
THE TRIUMPH OF HONOUR.
P. 490. 'Tis to murder
The fame of living men, which great ones do
Their studies strangle, SfC.
See the long note and the various interpretations of the
commentators. I would read, " Their studies strang/z;?y,"
by which their reputation and fame are injured or destroyed.
P. 493. " Eaglet [ ]." The editor judiciously fills
up this extraordinary blank with the word " talons," but is
in doubt as to the cause of the omission, which certainly is
not clear, as the sense could not demand a word either im-
proper or obscure. I think it might be by a blunder of the
compositor, who, having wrongly joined the t to " eagle," to
make "eaglet," had only a mutilated word, "alons," which
17
he declined inserting. " Eagle talons " is the reading I
should adopt.
" When I was about thy years, Hall, I was an
Eagle s talon in the waist." — Vide Henry IF, act ii, sc. 4.
The contrast which Nicodemus makes between his own
power and the insignificance of Cornelius, is diminished
unnecessarily by the diminutive, ear/let (a young eagle).
But perhaps the poet's word was " unces " (claws), which
the printer, not understanding, omitted, thinking it could not
be right. It is a word however authorised by Hey wood.
What if the word was written talents, as not unusually it
was, and the printer did not understand it? See Mr. Dyce's
Marlowe's Tamhmiaine, act ii, sc. 7, p. 51, " with greedy
talents;" and his reference to Love's Labour Lost, act iv,
sc. 2, " If a talent be a claw."
VOL. IV.
WIT WITHOUT MONEY.
P. 119. March off amain, within an inch o^furcug.
Turn ine o' the toe, like a weathercock.
Other editions, as second 4to and folio, read "tircug;"
Theobald, " firelock ;" Weber, " firecock ;" " but the right
reading," says the editor, "remains yet to be ascertained ;"
— which may be, in my opinion," fire-pluff" In the pre-
ceding line, should not " then " be " there," i. e. in your
understandings ?
P. 139. Let Mims * be angry at their St. Bel-sicagye7- .
The conjectures and authorities cited in the note leave this
singular expression still unexplained. " Belswagger " I
believe to be the same as " Belly-swagger," and that to be
identical with " swag-bellied," as in Othello, act. ii, sc. 3 —
"Your swag-beUied Hollander;" or in Brown's Vulvar Errors
(given by Dr. Richardson), "his swaggy and prominent
belly." The addition of Saint in this passage, and the
mention of church-buckets and engines in the one quoted
from Dryden, would lead us to suppose, that it w^as an
allusion to a braggart or bully connected with the church,
whether as parson or beadle, or in some other place of
* John Heywoocl the clraniatist was born and liyed at North Mints, which
thereby has become a spot of classical interest.
O
18
authority ; and both passages seem to mfer that it was a
woman s riot. " The suds and dish-water " of this passage,
and "the wife," calhng out in Dryden's Sjjanish Friar, act v.:
" You are a charitable Behwagger. My wife cried out, 'Fire ! fire !' and
you brought out your church-hnckets" &c.
P. 177. — Eun you into questions,
Who huilt the Thames ?
If the reading of this passage be right, I should conceive
that it alluded to the banks of the Thames being (unlike
some other rivers flowing through cities, as the Seine at Paris,
and the Tiber, which have open quays) closely covered with
buildings to the water's edge, as it appears to have been
from very early times.
" Here to the Thames-ward, all along the strand
The stately houses of the nobles stand." — Buhartas, iii, 2.
THE WIDOW.
P. 318. A scornful ^o;«.
The editor, I think correctly, says, " This cannot be the right
reading." — I believe it to be a mere printer's corruption of
" a scornful ?d;ow^-an."* See in a speech, a little previous,
p. 317, ''Fran. You play a scornful woman T again, "Learn
you to play a ivoman not so scornfidly ;" again, " Thou
art too good to be a v:omcm long — Do not find fault with
this, for fear I prove too scornful.'' On the unusual word
gom, as signifying a man, see the editor's note.f
VOL. r.
p. 140. Had it been
To any of a higher strain than you, sir.
The well-known, well-approved, and lov'd Miranda, &c.
I had not thought on't.
I do not feel sure that "higher strain" is not the true
reading, taken in the sense authorised by the dictionaries,
of an arrogant, haughty temperament ; but when Sympson
speaks of the " even temper and disposition of Miranda,"
he forgets his language to Mountferrat,
Tlion liest, thou liest, Mountferrat, thou best basely, &c.
* Of all our early dramatic poets, none have suffered such mangling by the
printer as Beaiunont and Fletcher." — Hallaji's History of Literature, vol. iii,
p. 586 ; but quare Marlowe and Shirley ?
t "Raro occurrentibus verbis abstinendum est; quod ssepe accidit, ut taha
melioribud lihris inspectis, a itiosa reperiautur" — a rule strictly to be regarded.
19
and Mountferrat's speech to him,
I have forgiven and forgot your rashness, &c.
''High " is given by lexicographers in the sense of "proud,
violent, and arrogant" — one of " high heart."
P. 186. A dog stav'd.
A strange and awkward expression. I should be inclined
to read —
Thou art a dog — I will make thee swear — a starvd, mangy, cur dog,
omitting the repetition of " dog " a second time.
Thus I had written ; — but the remembrance of a passage
in 1 Samuel xvii, 43, has made me retain the original text —
"Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves?"
P. 248. "Like two sailing cedars."
This expression occurs again in Lovers Progress, act i, sc. 1,
but I do not know in what other place or author ; and I
am in doubt whether it means (1); — that the overspreading
boughs and expanded umbrage of the cedar resemble the
sails of ships ; (2) — or whether it is used in the sense in
which the ancient poets used i\\Q''piniis'\^ being the material
of which ships were built in the countries of the East, and in
Judaea in old times, as among the Romans, they were con-
structed of fir and pine :" thus, " cava pinus" and '' pontica
pinusy were used for the ship. "Like to the cedar in the
loftie sea," is a line in the old play, Johi a Kent and John
a Cumber, p. 16 ; but it throws little light on the passage,
and perhaps should be read, " Like to the loftie cedar in
the sea."
VALENTINIAN.
P. 270. Max. I danger!
I willing to do anything ! I die !
The old editions have "dig ;" "die" was introduced in 1778,
in which reading I quite agree, with the slight change —
I 'm willing to do any thing ; ay, die !
To " dig" does not at all suit the disordered and tem-
pestuous state of Maximus, nor the furious and deep
revenge he meditated. See his previous speech, p. 269,
"Truly spoken!" &c.
20
QUEEN OF COEINTH.
P. 400. Perhaps (for the editor thinks the defective
metre should be suppUed,) we should read
I am o^rjoyd, my lord ; indeed I know not
What to reply,
which would not disturb the established text by introducing
so — *' I am so overjoyed," nor require oerjoijd to be altered
to oi'crjoyd.
P. 404. Last line, read —
If I speak
Too much, though I confess it, I speak well.
The metre is thus improved, and "confess" is more gene-
rally used actively. The old reading — " though I confess
I speak well."
P. 415. These stick like comets, blaze eternally,
read " strike like comets." " These blazing starres dread-
full to be scene. "^ — " There no planets strike." — Hamlet,
act i, sc. 1 .
P. 431, What! Monsieur Onos ! the very /;w«/^ of travelling ! —
See Woman Pleased, vol. vii, p. 70 : —
" This is the bravest Capitano Pompo ;
But I shall ^;?««^ you anon, sir."
A learned friend has conjectured " pumpion," from vol. ix,
Rule a Wife —
" Oh ! here 's another purapion, let him loose,"
he means Cacofogo.
P. 449. Your honour 's no whit less, your chastity
No whit impaired, for fair Merione
Is more a virgin yet than all her sex.
Here Agenor's speech should end; and the succeeding
very pathetic exclamation belongs to Merione — "Alas ! 'tis
done ! " The word, too, in which it is expressed, is the
one appropriate to the deed alluded to, as —
" I would have told you in what case I was.
But you must needs be doing."
Ford's 'Tis Pity, ^r. i, 18, ed. Weber.
21
VOL. VI.
THE MAD LOVER.
P. 134. Beaten about the ears with bawling sheepskins,
Cut to the soul /or summer; here an arm lost, &e.
Weber's note is a piece of sheer absurdity. Tlieobald *
reads " Cut to the soul for honor!' My reading is
Cut to the soul for summer-s/wr^.
See a few lines further —
dead there.
And all this sport for cheese and chines of dog's flesh.
P. 166. Get thee to school again and talk oj turnips.
Seward, always ready at a random conjecture, proposes
"turn-spits" most unadvisedly. Schoolboys talk of turnips,
as used at games of play. Anne Page says : —
"I had rather be set quick in the earth and bowled to death with turnips."
Vide Merry TVives of Windsor, act iii, s. 4.
A passage from a writer of the present day will illustrate
and confirm the text : —
"After a nephew has children of his own, lives at a distance, and finds
occasion to talk much of oxen and turnips, he ceases to be an object of any
very profound interest." — De (^vii^cy's Autobloff. Sketches, vol. ii, p. 314.
But it may be asked why turmps are mentioned rather
than any other vegetable ? because they were rare at that
time, and lately introduced, in the same manner ^^ potatoes
are alluded to in Shakespeare. A well-informed writer, in
a late work called Table Traits, tells us that " Turnips are
so comparatively new to some parts of England, that theii'
introduction into the northern counties is hardly a century
old." Amherst, of Merchant Tailors', the well-knoMai
satirical writer, declared he was expelled the university,
" because he loved foreign turnips and Presbyterian
bishops." Lord Townshend is well known as having been
* Speaking of Theobald as a critic, Dr. Johnson (in Othello) says, "Theobald
trifles, as is usual." Maloue's accusation against him, that " Mr. Theobald seems
to think that any word may be substituted for another, if thereby sense may be
obtained;" this is hardly just towards one who has done much service to the
dramatic pages : he had better left him to the playful malice of Pope. See the note
on Henry V, p. 41.1, ed. var. We have known when Mr. Malonc has substituted
one word for another, tvifhovt obtaining the sense.
22
influential in introducing them, to the great improvement
of cultivation in Norfolk : hence Pope's line —
" All Townsheiid's turnips."
Lindsay, Bishop of Kildare, used to say, ''If\ know
anything, it is the management of turnips!'
I may add that the long note on jjofatoes, in the 15th
volume of the Variorum Shakspeare, signed Collins («'. e.
G. Steevens), needs some slight correction. . . . Whenever
this plant is mentioned by Shakespeare, the Convolvulus
hatafes, or sweet potato, is to be understood, not the Solanum
tuberosum, or the one now in common use. The former was
a favourite dish, and in high repute in France, some years
previous to the introduction of the other. Tradescant *
mentioned its becoming rotten in his garden at Lambeth as
soon as winter approached, which identifies the more tender
plant. Perhaps the best account of it is in Loudon's
JEnci/clo]). of Plants, p. 624. The sweet potato is now occa-
sionally imported to England as a curiosity, and may be seen
in the shops of the superior fruiterers and salesmen.
rOL. vii.
THE CHANCES.
P. 248. Whose liard heart never
Slew those rewarders — (second folio).
Seward conjectured,
Whose hard heart never slew
Those ill rewarded.
But there is nothing in this conjecture to compensate its
deviation from the printed text. I am inclined to read — â–
Whose hard heart never slew
Those his ngarders.
Not only are the letters y and w often changed in the
printing, but " regarders " is a word used in subjects
connected with love, as the present -. —
"For it sit every man to have
BegarJe to love, and to his might." — GoWER, C. A.
* I am grateful to certain inhabitants of Lambeth, for having lately renewed
with much taste and care the decayed monument of this early and illustrious
botanist, " acer et oxitimus investigator v iturce" in their churchyard. It is a
mommient that I, as a Ki]TroTvpai'vog, piously visit during my annual sojourns in
London
" And as she shall me prove,
So bid her nic rp.garde.
And render love for love,
Which is a just rewarded — Wyatt.
" He should advaunced bee to high rec/arde,
Said they, and have our ladle's love for his reioarde." — Spenser.
Retoard and regard are so often and so closely joined in
these and other passages, that they may easily be confused
by such printers as were used in these dramatic pieces,
and where there was probably no reader or corrector of the
press.*
MONSIEUE THOMAS.
P. 377. Extreme strange — should thus boldly
Bud \\\ your sight unto your son.
See a long and not satisfactory note of the commentators
on the word " bud." The editor more judiciously prints
his conjecture and, not doubting the other word to be a
corruption, in which I agree, believing the b produced by
the preceding word " holdli/ " to have been in the printer's
heedless and hasty eye, which caught up its initial letter.
THE ISLAND PRINCESS.
P. 444. Capt. Up, soldiers, up ! and deal like men.
Citiz. More water,
More water, all is consumed else.
Capt. All is gone
Unless you undertake it straight ; you7' wealth too,
That must preserve and pay your labour bravely.
Up, up, away !
The editor writes : — " Mason says no amendment is ne-
cessary. . . . Weber gave another arrangement. I have
tried a third, but none is satisfactory. The passage seems
to be corrupted." This corruption, in my judgment,
extends only to a single letter. The captain is urging the
lower kind of citizens to exert themselves to extinguish the
fire. " All," he says, " will be consumed and gone, unless
* Wliat mistates even careful printers will make we may learn from the
authority of an editor who paid great attention to typography. " In tliree late
proof sheets," says Mr. G. Steevens in a note on Othello, " a couple of the most
aecurate compositors in general had substituted palace and less and catch, instead
of tragedy, more, and ensnare." — Vol. xix, p. 402.
24
you give immediate assistance, and with all other, our
wealth (not ''your'"), which is to preserve you and pay
your labour liberally, will be destroyed." — See the Go-
vernor's speech, a little before, where he uses the same
incitement to them to work.
Good worthy citizens,
Follow me all, and all your powers give to me !
/ will reward you all.
Freedom and wealth to Mm that helps. Follow, oh follow !
Fling wine or any thing. Vll see it reconpeused, &c.
They are now urged in the strongest manner, by being
told that this wealth, which is held out as furnishing their
reward, is also in equal danger of being destroyed.
So read : —
Capt. All is gone. —
"Unless you undertake it straight. Our wealth too,
That must preserve and pay your labour bravely ; —
Up, up, away !"
P. 501. Read—
She 'f? have laid hands on her own life.
I do not see that anything is lost, as the editors of 1778
assert. Both the folios read " have ;" the editor adopts
Mason's correction, " had."
VOL. VIII.
THE WILD-GOOSE CHASE.
P. 123. Altho' it be a tveiyhty ceremony.
Although, as is said in the note (for the old editions read
•^^ witty"), that wit and wisdom were, in the language of those
days, synonymous terms, so that any number of examples
might be quoted (Reed, in his note, saying too cautiously,
" other examples might be produced "), yet it cannot with
any propriety be introduced into this place ; and the editor
accordingly has printed as I conceive the poet wrote : the
two words, from their similarity in somid and in spelling,
being easily confounded. In Marlowe's Tamhurlaine, act ii,
sc. 4, '' Tcmh. Are you the loitty King of Persia?" for
wise.
25
THE PROPHETESS.
P, 257. Slth tliat thou art dishonest, false of faith.
The first folio, " sigh," and so the modern editions; l>ut with
great disregard to the poetical sense, which is deeply
injured, and overlooking the cause of the typographical
ciTor.— " Sith," for since, " sithe " for sigh, and then
" sigh." Though I do not see " sithe" for sigh in Richard-
son's Dictionari/, it is a legitimate word, and invariably used
in the Eastern Counties dialect, where " sigh " is seldom
heard. See J. Hawes's Temple of Glas, iiii : —
"Then young folkes cryed and often sythed.'"
See the Knave in Grain, p. 22 : —
" Like another rousing sigJdh,
Would w^ell split me, gay and blithe."
the old ed. 1640 wrongly has siffh.
" Sigh " (says Dr. Nares in his Elements of Orthoepy,