Paul. So much the more our carver's excellence; Which lets go by some sixteen years, and makes her As she lived now.

Leon. As now she might have done, So much to my good comfort, as it is Now piercing to my soul. O, thus she stood, Even with such life of majesty (warm life, As now it coldly stands), when first I wooed her! I am ashamed-does not the stone rebuke me, For being more stone than it?—O, royal piece, There's magic in thy majesty, which has My evils conjured to remembrance, and From thy admiring daughter took the spirits, Standing like stone with thee!

'Tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach;
Strike all that look upon with marvel. Come;
I'll fill your grave up: stir; nay, come away;
Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him
Dear life redeems you. You perceive, she stirs :
[HERMIONE comes down from the pedestal.
Start not her actions shall be holy as
You hear my spell is lawful: do not shun her
Until you see her die again; for then

You kill her double. Nay, present your hand:
When she was young, you wooed her; now in age
Is she become the suitor.

Like an old tale; but it appears she lives, Though yet she speak not. Mark a little while.Please you to interpose, fair madam; kneel, And pray your mother's blessing.-Turn, good lady;

Our Perdita is found.

[Presenting PERDITA, who kneels to HERMIONE. Her. You gods, look down,

And from your sacred vials pour your graces
Upon my daughter's head!-Tell me, mine own,
Where hast thou been preserved; where lived;
how found

Thy father's court? for thou shalt hear that I-
Knowing by Paulina that the oracle
Gave hope thou wast in being-have preserved
Myself to see the issue.

Paul. There's time enough for that;
Lest they desire, upon this push, to trouble
Your joys with like relation.-Go together,
You precious winners all; your exultation
Partake to every one. I, an old turtle,

Will wing me to some withered bough; and there My mate, that's never to be found again, Lament till I am lost.

Leon.

O peace, Paulina:

Thou shouldst a husband take by my consent,
As I by thine a wife: this is a match,
And made between's by vows. Thou hast found
mine;

But how is to be questioned: for I saw her,
As I thought, dead; and have in vain said many
A prayer upon her grave: I'll not seek far
(For him, I partly know his mind) to find thee
An honourable husband:-come, Camillo,
And take her by the hand: whose worth and
honesty

Is richly noted, and here justified

By us, a pair of kings.-Let's from this place.What?-look upon my brother:--both your pardons

That e'er I put between your holy looks
My ill suspicion.-This your son-in-law,
And son unto the king (whom heavens directing),
Is troth-plight to your daughter.-Good Paulina,
Lead us from hence; where we may leisurely
Each one demand and answer to his part
Performed in this wide gap of time, since first
We were dissevered.-Hastily lead away. [Exeunt.

"I'll give him my commission

To let him there a month, behind the gest
Prefixed for's parting."-Act I., Scene 2.

The term " gest" is derived from the French giste (which signifies both a bed and a lodging-place). Gests were the names of the houses or towns where the king intended to lie every night during his progress. They were written on a scroll, and probably each of the royal attendants was furnished with a copy.

"We should have answered heaven Boldly, 'Not guilty—the imposition cleared, Hereditary ours."-Act I., Scene 2.

That is, setting aside original sin, bating the imposition from the offence of our first parents, we might have boldly protested our innocence.

sitting below the great standing salt in the centre of the table. Sometimes the messes were served at different tables, and seem to have been arranged into fours, as is the case at present in the halls of the Inns of Court.

"When he,

Wafting his eyes to the contrary, and falling

A lip of much contempt, speeds from me."-Act I., Scene 2. This is a stroke of nature worthy of Shakspere. Leontes had but a moment before told Camillo that he would seem friendly to Polixenes, according to his advice; but on meeting him, his jealousy gets the better of his resolution, and he finds it impossible to restrain his hatred.-MASON.

"There may be in the cup

A spider steeped."-Act II., Scene 1.

That spiders were esteemed venomous, appears by the evidence of a person who was examined in Sir Thomas Overbury's affair:-"The Countess wished me to get the strongest poison that I could, &c. Accordingly, I bought seven great spiders and cantharides."

-"Would I knew the villain,

I would land-dam him."-Act II., Scene 1. "Land-dam" is probably one of those words which caprice brought into fashion, and which, after a short time, reason and grammar drove irrecoverably away. It, perhaps, meant no more than "I will rid the country of him; condemn him to quit the land."-JOHNSON.

"The very thought of my revenges that way
Recoil upon me: in himself too mighty;

And in his parties, his alliance."-Act II., Scene 3. This passage is founded on a similar one in the novel of "DORASTUS AND FAWNIA :"-" Pandosto, although he felt that revenge was a spur to war, and that envy always proffereth steel, yet he saw Egistus was not only of great puissance and prowess to withstand him, but also had many kings of his alliance to aid him, if need should serve; for he married the Emperor of Russia's daughter." Shakspere has made this lady the wife of the Leontes of the play,-not of the Polixenes but it will be seen that Greene, the acknowledged classical scholar, exhibits as much indifference to chronology as the supposed illiterate dramatist.

"A mankind witch! Hence with her."-Act II., Scene 3. A "mankind-woman" is said to be a term used in some counties to designate a female, violent, ferocious, and mischievous. Mr. Tollet suggests that "mankind" may signify one of a wicked and pernicious nature; from the Saxon man, mischief or wickedness, and kind.

"Thou dotard, thou art woman-tired."-Act II., Scene 3. To be "woman-tired" is to be pecked by a woman. The phrase is taken from falconry, and is often employed by So in Decker's writers contemporary with Shakspere. "MATCH ME IN LONDON :"

"The vulture tires Upon the eagle's heart."

"Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou

Tak'st up the princess, by that forced baseness."

Act II., Scene 3. Leontes had ordered Antigonus to "take up the bastard." Paulina forbids him to touch the princess under that appellation. "Forced" is "false,"-uttered with violence to truth.

-"For 't is a bastard,

So sure as this beard's grey."-Act II., Scene 3. Leontes probably means the beard of Antigonus, which, perhaps, both here and on a former occasion, it was intended he should lay hold of.

"The climate's delicate; the air most sweet;
Fertile the isle."-Act III., Scene 1.

The Temple of Apollo at Delphi was not in an island, but in Phocis, on the continent. In this instance, also, as in many others, Shakspere followed the language of his original. In the novel, the queen desires the king to send "six of his noblemen, whom he best trusted, to the Isle of Delphos." The writer was probably thinking of Delos, an island of the Cyclades. The geographical blunder, in considering Bohemia a maritime country, is copied from Greene's narrative.

"Look thee, a bearing-cloth for a squire's child!” Act III., Scene 3.

A "bearing-cloth" is the fine mantle or cloth with which a child is usually covered when it is carried to the church to be baptized.

"It was told me I should be rich by the fairies: this is some changeling."-Act III., Scene 3.

That is, some child left behind by the fairies, in the room of one they had stolen.

"They are never curst but when they are hungry.” Act III., Scene 3. "Curst" signifies mischievous. Thus the adage :-"Curst cows have short horns."

Impute it not a crime

To me, or my swift passage, that I slide
O'er sixteen years."-TIME, as Chorus.

This trespass, in respect of dramatic unity, will appear venial to those who have read the once famous Lily's "ENDYMION" (or, as he himself calls it in the prologue, his "MAN IN THE MOON"). Two acts of this piece comprise the space of forty years; Endymion lying down to sleep at the end of the second, and waking in the first scene of the fifth, after a nap of that unconscionable length. Lily has, likewise, been guilty of much greater absurdity than Shakspere committed; for he supposes that Endymion's hair, features, and person, were changed by age during his sleep, while all the other personages of the drama remained without alteration.-STEEVENS.

Malone states, that, in the comedy of "PATIENT GRISSEL" (by Decker, Chettle, and Haughton), Grissel is in the first act married, and soon afterwards brought to bed of twins, a son and a daughter; and the daughter, in the fifth act, is produced on the scene as a woman old enough to be married.

Some remarks by Dr. Johnson, on the subject of time, in dramatic representations, may be here appropriately introduced:

"By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be extended. The time required by the fable elapses, for the most part, between the acts; for, of so much of the action as is represented, the real and poetical duration is the same. If, in the first act, preparations for war against Mithridates are represented to be made in Rome, the event of the war, may, without absurdity, be represented in the catastrophe as happening in Pontus. We know that there is neither war nor preparation for war; we know that we are neither in Rome nor Pontus; that neither Mithridates nor Lucullus is before us. The drama exhibits successive imitations of successive actions; and why may not the second imitation represent an action that happened years after the first, if it be so connected with it that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene? Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation, we easily contract the time of real actions, and, therefore, willingly permit it to be contracted when we only see their imitation."

"I have missingly noted he is of late much retired from court."-Act IV., Scene 1.

Meaning, probably, I have observed him at intervals; not constantly or regularly, but occasionally.

"The red blood reigns in the winter's pale.”

Act IV., Scene 2.

That is, the red, the spring blood, now reigns o'er the parts lately under the dominion of winter. The "English pale," and the "Irish pale," were frequent expressions in Shakspere's time; and the words red and pale were used for the sake of the antithesis.