Bedewed, as 't were, with tears till he returns; Wherewith we court these earthly things below, 118. Dis's waggon! daffodils:-The story how, at the coming of Dis in his chariot, Proserpine, affrighted, let fall from her lap the flowers which she had gathered, is told in the fifth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Of course, from Dis's waggon means at the approach of Dis's waggon. Coleridge says, "An epithet is wanted here [before daffodils], not merely or chiefly for the metre, but for the balance, for the æsthetic logic. Perhaps golden was the word which would set off the violets dim." 121, 122. lids of Juno's eyes or Cytherea's breath :-The beauties of Greece and some Asiatic nations tinged their eyelids of an obscure violet colour by means of some unguent, which was doubtless perfumed like those for the hair, etc., mentioned by Athenæus. Hence Hesiod, in a passage which has been rendered 'Her flowing hair and sable eyelids Breathed enamouring odour, like the breath Shakespeare may not have known this, yet of the beauty and propriety of the epithet violets dim, and the transition at once to the lids of Juno's eyes and Cytherea's breath, no reader of taste and feeling need be reminded. 160. makes her blood look out:-This recalls beautiful lines in Donne's Elegy on Mrs. Elizabeth Drury: "We understood Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood 227. poking-sticks:-These poking-sticks are described by Stubbes in his Anatomie of Abuses, Part ii.: " 'They be made of yron and steele, and some of brasse, kept as bright as silver, yea, some of silver itselfe; and it is well if in processe of time, they grow not to be of gold. The fashion whereafter they be made, I cannot resemble to anything so well as to a squirt or a little squibbe, which little children used to squirt water out withal; and when they come to starching or setting of their ruffes, then must this instrument be heated in the fire, the better to stiffen the ruff." Stowe informs us that about the sixteenth yeare of the queene began the making of steele poking-sticks, and until that time all lawndresses used setting stickes made of wood or bone." They were heated and used for setting the plaits of ruffs. 281. ballad :—All extraordinary events were then turned into ballads. In 1604 was entered on the Stationers' books, "A strange report of a monstrous fish that appeared in the form of a woman from her waist upward." 328. men of hair :-It is most probable that they were dressed in goatskins. A dance of satyrs was no unusual entertainment in Shakespeare's time, or even at an earlier period. A disguising or mummery of this kind, which had like to have proved fatal to some of the actors in it, whose hairy dresses took fire, is related by Froissart as occurring at the court of France in 1392. Bacon, Essay 37, says of antimasques, "They have been commonly of fools, satyrs, baboons, wild men, antics, beasts, sprites, witches, Ethiopes, pigmies, turquets, nymphs, rustics, Cupids, statues moving, and the like." 348. you'll know more, etc.:-This is in answer to something which the Shepherd is supposed to have said to Polixenes during the dance. 446-455. Even here. weep:-Coleridge says, "O, how more than exquisite is this whole speech! And that profound nature of noble pride and grief venting themselves in a momentary peevishness of resentment towards Florizel: 'Wilt please you, sir, be gone? "For my part," adds Hudson, "I should say, how more than exquisite is everything about this unfledged angel!" 449-451. The selfsame sun alike:-Sir John Davies in his Nosce Teipsum, 1599, has a similar thought :— "Thou like the sunne dost with indifferent ray And Habington in his Queen of Arragon has imitated it thus: "The stars shoot An equal influence on the open cottage, Where the poor shepherd's child is rudely nursed, And on the cradle where the prince is rock'd With care and whisper." 463. no priest shovels in dust:-Before the change in the old burial service, it was the custom for the priest to throw earth on the body in the form of a cross, and then sprinkle it with holy water. 466, 467. If I might die, etc.:-Some of the critics have been rather hard on the old Shepherd, for what they call his characteristic selfishness in thinking so much of his own life, though he be fourscore and three, and showing so little concern for Perdita and Florizel. But it is the thought, not so much of dying, as of dying like, a felon, that troubles and engrosses his mind. His unselfish honesty in the treatment of his precious foundling is quite apparent throughout. The Poet was wiser than to tempt nature overmuch by making the innate qualities of his heroine triumphant over the influences of a selfish father. 589. My prettiest Perdita!-"The delineation of the love between Florizel and Perdita," says Brandes, "is marked by certain features not to be found in Shakespeare's youthful works, but which reappear with Ferdinand and Miranda in The Tempest. There is a certain remoteness from the world about it, a tenderness for those who are still yearning and hoping for happiness and a renunciation of any expectation as far as himself is concerned. He stands outside and beyond it all now. In the old days the Poet stood on a level, as it were, with the love he was portraying; now he looks upon it from above with a fatherly eye." 835, 836. 'tis none of your daughter nor my sister:-The unhesitating selfishness of the old man and his son at the approach of danger, though otherwise they are creditable rustics enough, the singleness of their anxiety to save their own skins from royal vengeance, by proving the foundling none of their blood, without any thought of her fate and fortune, belongs to the revulsions that characterize the play; it also finally detaches her, in our associations, from the class she has been reared amongst, and thus she is acquitted of ingratitude as well as presumption in moving easily towards the superior rank due to her nature as to her descent. Her own courage and collectedness at once place her in contrast to the bewildered and frightened hinds, and bring her worthily into sympathy with the patience and self-support of her brave mother Hermione. 66 ACT FIFTH. Scene II. I. et seq. The finely written prose scene of the conversing gentlemen," says Lloyd, smooths the transition to the concluding scene by presenting the agitating incidents of the recognition of Perdita in narrative form, and this is also a concession to the superior dignity and interest of the revelation of Hermione. Here all spirits are attempered to modesty and reconciliation; the weak are strengthened, the vehement subdued, the wise contented; and although a change more startling than any in the play is to take place the revival of the very dead-the moving and speaking of a statue, yet so easily is all conducted, with such orderly and tender sequence does the discovery take place, in such tranquillized purity of mind is all set forth and received, that the full discovery takes place at last rather with motion than speech, is acknowledged with embraces rather than words, is for contemplation rather than discourse." 106. eternity:—It would appear that a painted statue was no singularity in that age; Ben Jonson, in his Magnetic Lady, makes it a reflection on the bad taste of the city. Rut. I'd have her statue cut now in white marble. Sir Moth. And have it painted in most orient colours. Else they be worth nought in their subtle judgements. Sir Henry Wotton, who had travelled much, calls it an English barbarism. The arts of sculpture and painting were certainly with us in a barbarous state compared with the progress which they had made elsewhere. But painted statues were known to the Greeks, as appears from the accounts of Pausanias and Herodotus. Scene III. 62. already- -The passion of Leontes causes him to break off in the midst of his sentence; or rather, from his very intentness of thought, to leave it unspoken. Perhaps it was in his mind to say, “Would I were dead, but that, methinks, already I am with my queen, and need not pass through death to have her society." 68. mock'd with art:-Here we have indeed a wonder of dramatic or representative skill. The illusion is all on the understand ings, not on the feelings of the spectators: they think it to be a statue, yet feel as if it were the living original; seem to discern the power without the fact of motion; have a sense of mobility in a vision of fixedness. And the effect spreads through them into us; insomuch that we almost fancy them turning into marble, as they fancy the marble turning into flesh. |