written in the time of king James, these obnoxious words might be safely repeated.

-the blind mole may not

MALONE.

Hear a foot fall :— ] Thus, in Euphues,

p. 64. "Doth not the eagle see clearer, the vulture smell better, the mole beare lightlyer ?"

REED. 240. Trin. O king Stephano! O peer! O worthy Stephano!

Look, what a wardrobe here is for thee !] The humour of these lines consists in their being an allusion to an old celebrated ballad, which begins thus: King Stephen was a worthy peer-and celebrates that king's parsimony with regard to his wardrobe. There are two stanzas of this ballad in Othello.

WARBURTON.

The old ballad is printed at large in The Reliques of Ancient Poetry, Vol. I. PERCY.

243. —we know what belongs to a frippery:-] A Frippery was a shop where old clothes were sold. Fripperie, Fr.

Beaumont and Fletcher use it in this sense, in Wit without Money, act ii.

"As if I were a running frippery."

So, in Monsieur de Olive, a comedy, by Chapman, 1606: "Passing yesterday by the frippery, I spied two of them hanging out at a stall, with a gambrell thrust from shoulder to shoulder."

The person who kept one of these shops, was called a fripper.

Strype,

Strype, in the life of Stowe, says, that these frippers lived in Birchin-Lane and Cornhill.

249. First edit. Let's alone.

I believe the poet wrote,

-Let it alone,

And do the murder first.

STEEVENS.

JOHNSON.

The same expression had been just before used by Caliban.

MALONE. Let's alone may mean-Let you and I only go to commit the murder, leaving Trinculo, who is so solicitous about the trash of dress, behind us.

254.

STEEVENS.

-under the line:] An allusion to what often happens to people who pass the line. The vio'lent fevers, which they contract in that hot climate, make them lose their hair. EDWARDS's MSS.

Perhaps the allusion is to a more indelicate disease than any peculiar to the equinoxial.

So in The Noble Soldier, 1632:

"Tis hot going under the line there."

Again, in Lady Alimony, 1659:

"" -Look to the clime

"Where you inhabit; that's the torrid zone.

"Yea, there goes the hair away."

Shakspere seems to design an equivoque between

the equinoxial and the girdle of a woman.

STEEVENS.

263. -put some lime, &c.] That is, birdlime.

266.- -to barnacles, or to apes] Skinner says barnacle is Anser Scoticus. The barnacle is a kind of shell-fish growing on the bottoms of ships, and which was anciently supposed, when broken off, to become one of these geese. Hall, in his Virgodemiarum, Lib. IV. sat. 2. seems to favour this supposition:

"The Scottish barnacle, if I might choose,

"That of a worme doth waxe a winged goose," &c.

So likewise Marston, in his Malecontent, 1604:

-like your Scotch barnacle, now a block, "Instantly a worm, and presently a great goose." "There are (says Gerard, in his Herbal, edit. 1597, page 1391) in the north parts of Scotland, certaine trees, whereon do grow shell-fishes, &c. &c. which, falling into the water, do become fowls, whom we call barnakles; in the north of England brant geese; and in Lancashire tree geese," &c.

This vulgar error deserves no serious confutation, Commend me, however, to Holinshed (Vol. I. p. 38.) who declares himself to have seen the feathers of these barnacles "hang out of the shell at least two inches." And in the 27th song of Drayton's Polyelbion, the same account of their generation is given.

COLLINS.

267. With foreheads villanous low.] Low foreheads were anciently reckoned among deformities. So in the old bl. let. ballad, entitled, A Peerlesse Paragon: "Her beetle brows all men admire, "Her forehead wondrous low."

STEEVENS.

-] Shakspere

273. A noise of hunters heard. might have had in view “ Arthur's chace, which many believe to be in France, and think that it is a kennel of black dogs followed by unknown huntsmen with an exceeding great sound of horns, as if it was a very hunting of some wild beast." See a Treatise of Spectres translated from the French of Peter de Loier, and published in quarto, 1605.

GREY.

Goes upright with his carriage.-] Alluding to one carrying a burthen. This critical period of my life proceeds as I could wish. Time brings forward all the expected events, without faultering under his burthen. STEEVENS.

25. —a touch, a feeling] A touch is a sensation. So in Cymbeline:

-a touch more rare

"Subdues all pangs, all fears.”

So in the 141st sonnet of Shakspere :

"Nor tender feeling to base touches prone.”

Again, in the Civil Wars of Daniel, B. I.

"I know not how their death gives such a touch."

27.

-that relish all as sharply,

Passion as they,- -] Passion is à verb in Shakspere. I feel every thing with the same quick sensibility, and am moved by the same passions as they are. So in his Venus and Adonis:

"Dumbly she passions, frantickly she doateth." Again, in Love's Labour's Lost, act i. sc. 1. 66 —I passion to say wherewith." A similar thought occurs in K. Richard II.

"Taste grief, need friends, like you," &c.

STEEVENS.

38. Ye elves of hills, of standing lakes, and groves ;] This speech Dr. Warburton rightly observes to be borrowed from Medea's in Ovid: and, " it proves, says Mr. Holt, beyond contradiction, that Shakspere was perfectly acquainted with the sentiments of the ancients on the subject of inchantments." The original lines are these:

"Auræque, et venti, montesque, amnesque, lacusque,

"Diique omnes nemorum, diique omnes noctis, adeste."

The translation of which, by Golding, is by no means literal, and Shakspere hath closely followed it. FARMER.

Whoever will take the trouble of comparing this whole passage with Medea's speech as translated by Golding, will see evidently that Shakspere copied the translation, and not the original. The particular

expressions