Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

"Oh, ye mistook; ye should have snatch'd his

wand,

"And bound him fast; without his rod revers'd, "And backward mutterings of dissevering power, 66 We cannot free the lady."- STEEVENS.

[ocr errors]

Remember

First to possess his books, for, without them,
He's but a sot as I am, nor hath not

One spirit to command. They all do hate him
As rootedly as 1. Burn but his books;

He has brave utensils (for so he calls them), &c.]

237.

MALONE.

-Will you troul the catch,] Ben Jonson uses

the word in Every Man in his Humour :

"If he read this with patience, I'll troul ballads." Again in the Cobler's Prophecy, 1594:

"A fellow that will troul it off with tongue.

"Faith, you shall hear me troll it after my fashion."

To troul a catch, I suppose, is to dismiss it trippingly from the tongue. STEEVENS.

245. This is the tune of our catch, play'd by the picture of nobody.] A ridiculous figure, sometimes represented on signs. Westward for Smelts, a book which our author appears to have read, was printed for John Trundle in Barbican, at the signe of the Nobody. MALONE. 252.affeard?] Thus the old copy. To affear is an obsolete verb, with the same meaning as to affray.

So in the Shipmannes Tale of Chaucer, v. 13330:

F

"This

"This wif was not aferde ne affraide." Between aferde and affraide, in the time of Chaucer, there might have been some nice distinction which is at present lost. STEEVENS.

271. Wilt come? I'll follow, Stephano.] The first words are addressed to Caliban, who, vexed at the folly of his new companions idly running after the musick, while they ought only to have attended to the main point, the dispatching Prospero, seems for some little time to have staid behind. REVISAL.

272. By'r lakin,] i. e. The diminutive only of our lady, i. e. ladykin.

STEEVENS.

296. A living drollery:] Shows, called drolleries, were in Shakspere's time performed by puppets only. From these our modern drolls, exhibited at fairs, &c. took their name.

So in Beaumont and Fletcher's Valentinian: "I had rather make a drollery till thirty."

STEEVENS.

A living drollery, i. e. a drollery, not represented by wooden machines, but by personages who are alive. MALONE.

298. --one tree, the phonix throne;--] For this idea our author might have been indebted to Phil. Holland's Translation of Pliny, B. XIII. ch. 4. "I myself verily have heard straunge things of this kind of tree; and namely in regard of the bird Phenix, which is supposed to have taken that name of this date tree [called in Greek on]; for it was assured unto me, that the said bird died with that tree, and 3

revived

revived of itselfe as the tree sprung again."

STEEVENS.

307. For, certes, &c.] Certes is an obsolete word,

signifying certainly.

315.

STEEVENS.

too much muse.] To muse, in ancient language, is to admire.

So in Macbeth:

"Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends."

STEEVENS.

319. Praise in departing.] i. e. Do not praise your entertainment too soon, lest you should have reason to retract your commendation. It is a proverbial

saying.

So, in the Two Angry Women of Abington, 1599: "And so she doth; but praise your luck at parting."

Again, in Tom Tyler and his Wife, 1598:

"Now praise at thy parting.”

Stephen Gosson, in his pamphlet entitled Playes confuted in five Actions, &c. (no date) acknowledges himself to have been the author of a morality called Praise at Parting. STEEVENS.

326. -that there were mountaineers, &c.] Whoever is curious to know the particulars relating to these mountaineers, may consult Maundeville's Travels, printed in 1503, by Wynkyn de Worde; but it is yet a known truth that the inhabitants of the Alps have been long accustomed to such excrescences or

tumours,

Fij

Quis

Quis tumidum guttur miratur in Alpibus ?

STEEVENS.

Or he might have had it from Hackluyt's Voyages, 1598: "On that branch which is called Caora, are a nation of people, whose heads appear not above their shoulders. They are reported to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouthes in the middle of their breasts." MALONE.

[blocks in formation]

Whose heads stood in their breasts?- -] Our author might have had this intelligence, likewise, from the translation of Pliny, B. V. chap. 8: "The Blemmyi, by report, have no heads, but mouth and eies both in their breast." STEEVENS.

330. Each putter out, &c.] This passage alluding to a forgotten custom, is very obscure: the putter out must be a traveller, else how could he give this account? the five for one is money to be received by him at his return. Mr. Theobald has well illustrated this passage by a quotation from Jonson. JOHNSON.

The ancient custom was this: In this age of travelling it was customary for those who engaged in long expeditions, to place out a sum of money on condition of receiving great interest for it at their return home. So Puntarvolo (it is Theobald's quotation) in Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour: "I do intend, this year of jubilee coming on, to travel; and (be. cause I will not altogether go upon expence) I am determined to put some five thousand pound, to be

paid me five for one, upon the return of my wife, myself, and my dog, from the Turk's court in Constantinople."

To this instance I may add another from The Ball, a comedy, by Chapman and Shirley, 1639:

"I did most politickly disburse my sums

"To have five for one at my return from Venice." Again, in Amends for Ladies, 1639:

"I would I had put out something upon my re

turn;

"I had as lieve be at the Bermoothes."

STEEVENS.

Considerable sums of money were borrowed at the rate here mentioned, and squandered in making discoveries, and pursuing adventures with the hopes of acquiring immense treasures. In The Merry Wives of Windsor the poet speaks of Guiana, as a region, all gold and bounty; and Falstaff, in allusion to the same idea, bids Nym sail like his pinnace to these golden shores.

336.

HENLEY

Enter Ariel like a harpy, &c.] Milton's Par. Reg. B. II.

[ocr errors][merged small]

"Both table and provisions vanish'd quite,
"With sound of harpies' wings, and talons heard.”
"At subitæ horrifico lapsu de montibus adsunt

"Harpyiæ, & magnis quatiunt clangoribus alas

Diripiuntque dapes."

Fiij

Virg. Æn. iii.

STEEVENS

337

[ocr errors]
« AnteriorContinuar »