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In my green velvet coat; my dagger muzzled,
Lest it should bite its master, and so prove,
As ornaments oft do, too dangerous.

How like, methought, I then was to this kernel,
This squash, this gentleman :-Mine honest friend,
Will you take eggs for money?

Mam. No, my lord, I'll fight.

Leo. You will? why, happy man be's dole !"—
My brother,

Are you so fond of your young prince, as we
Do seem to be of ours?

Pol. If at home, sir,

He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter:
Now my sworn friend, and then mine enemy;
My parasite, my soldier. statesman, all :
He makes a July's day short as December;
And, with his varying childness, cures in me
Thoughts that would thick my
blood.

Leo. So stands this squire

Offic'd with me: We two will walk, my lord,

And leave you to your graver steps.-Hermione,

How thou lov'st us, show in our brother's welcome :

Let what is dear in Sicily, be cheap :

Next to thyself, and my young rover, he's

Apparent to my heart.7

Her. If you would seek us,

We are yours i' th' garden: Shall's attend you there?
Leo. To your own bents dispose you: you'll be found,
Be you beneath the sky:-I am angling now,

Though you perceive me not how I give line.
Go to, go to!

[Aside, observing POLIX. and Her.

[4] A squash is a pea-pod, in that state when the young peas begin to swell in it. HENLEY.

[5 The meaning of this is, will you put up affronts? The French have a prover bial saying, A qui vendez vous coquilles ? i. e.whom do you design to affront? Mamillius's answer plainly proves it. Mam. No, my lord, I'll fight. SMITH.

Leontes seems only to ask his son if he would fly from an enemy. In the following passage the phrase is evidently to be taken in that sense: "The French infantery skirmisheth bravely afarre off and cavallery gives a furious onset at the first charge; but after the first heat they will take eggs for their money. REED.

[6] The expression is proverbial. Dole was the term for the allowance of provisions given to the poor, in great families. STEEVENS.

The alms immemorially given to the poor by the Archbishops of Canterbury is still called the dole. NICHOLS.

[7] That is, heir apparent, or the next claimant. JOHNSON.

How she holds up the neb," the bill to him!
And arms her with the boldness of a wife

[Exeunt POLIX. HER. and Attendants

To her allowing husband! Gone already;

Inch-thick, knee-deep; o'er head and ears a fork'd

one.9—

Go, play, boy, play ;-thy mother plays, and I
Play too; but so disgrac'd a part, whose issue
Will hiss me to my grave; contempt and clamour
Will be my knell.-Go, play, boy, play ;-There have
been,

Or I am much deceiv'd, cuckolds ere now;

And many a man there is, even at this present,
Now, while I speak this, holds his wife by th' arm,
That little thinks she has been sluic'd in his absence,
And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour,' by
Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't,
Whiles other men have gates; and those gates open'd,
As mine, against their will: Should all despair,
That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
Would hang themselves. Physic for't there is none;
It is a bawdy planet, that will strike

Where it is predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it,
From east, west, north, and south: Be it concluded,
No barricado for a belly; know it;

It will let in and out the enemy,

With bag and baggage: many a thousand of us
Have the disease, and feel't not.-How now, boy?

Mam. I am like you, they say.

Leo. Why, that's some comfort.

-What! Camillo there?

Cam. Ay, my good lord.

Leo. Go play, Mamillius; Thou'rt an honest man.—

[Exit MAMILLIUS.

Camillo, this great sir will yet stay longer.

Cam. You had much ado to make his anchor hold:

When you cast out, it still came home."

[8] This word is commonly pronounced and written nib. It signifies here the mouth. STEEVENS.

[9] That is, a horned one; a cuckold. JOHNSON.

[1] This metaphor perhaps owed its introduction and currency, to the once frequent depredations of neighbours on each other's fish, a complaint that often occurs In ancient correspondence. STEEVENS.

[2] This is a sea-faring expression, meaning, the anchor would not take hold.

STEEVENS

Leo. Didst note it?

Cam. He would not stay at your petitions; made His business more material.

Leo. Didst perceive it?→→

They're here with me already; whispering, rounding,' Sicilia is a so-forth: 'Tis far gone,

When I shall gust it last.—How cam't, Camillo,

That he did stay?

Cam. At the good queen's entreaty.

Leo. At the queen's, be't: good, should be pertinent; But so it is, it is not. Was this taken

By any understanding pate but thine?

For thy conceit is soaking, will draw in

More than the common blocks :-Not noted, is't,
But of the finer natures? by some severals,
Of head-piece extraordinary? lower messes,"
Perchance, are to this business purblind: say.

Cam. Business, my lord? I think, most understand
Bohemia stays here longer.

Leo. Ha?

Cam. Stays here longer.

Leo. Ay, but why?

Cam. To satisfy your highness, and the entreaties Of our most gracious mistress.

Leo. Satisfy

The entreaties of your mistress ?-satisfy ?-
Let that suffice. I have trusted thee, Camillo,
With all the nearest things to my heart, as well
My chamber-councils: wherein, priest-like, thou
Hast cleans'd my bosom ; I from thee departed
Thy penitent reform'd: but we have been

[3] Not Polixenes and Hermione, but casual observers, people accidentally pre

sent. THIRLBY.

[4] To round in the ear is to whisper or to tell secretly. The expression is very copiously explained by M. Casaubon, in his book de Ling. Sax. JOHNSON.

[5] This was a phrase employed when the speaker, through caution or disgust, wished to escape the utterance of an obnoxious term. A commentator on Shakespeare will often derive more advantage from listening to vulgar than to polite conversation. At the corner of Fleet Market, I lately heard one woman describing another, say-"Every body knows that her husband is a so-forth." As she spoke the last word, her fingers expressed the emblem of cuckoldom. STEEVENS. [6] Gust it-i. e. taste it. STEEVENS.

[7] I believe lower messes is only used as an expression to signify the lowest degree about the court. Formerly not only at every great man's table the visitants were placed according to their consequence or dignity, but with additional marks of inferiority, viz. of sitting below the great saltseller placed in the center of the table, and of having coarser provision set before them. STEEVENS

Deceiv'd in thy integrity, deceiv'd

In that which seems so.

Cam. Be it forbid, my lord!

Leo. To bide upon't ;-Thou art not honest: or, If thou inclin'st that way, thou art a coward; Which hoxes honesty behind, restraining

From course requir'd: Or else thou must be counted

A servant, grafted in my serious trust,

And therein negligent; or else a fool,

That seest a game play'd home, the rich stake drawn, And tak'st it all for jest.

Cam. My gracious lord,

I may be negligent, foolish, and fearful;
In every one of these no man is free,
But that his negligence, his folly, fear,
Amongst the infinite doings of the world,
Sometime puts forth: In your affairs, my lord,
If ever I were wilful-negligent,

It was my folly; if industriously

I play'd the fool, it was my negligence,
Not weighing weli the end; if ever fearful
To do a thing, where I the issue doubted,
Whereof the execution did cry out
Against the non-performance, 'twas a fear
Which oft affects the wisest: these, my lord,
Are such allow'd infirmities, that honesty
Is never free of. But, 'beseech your grace,
Be plainer with me; let me know my trespass
By its own visage: If I then deny it,

'Tis none of mine.

Leo. Have not you seen, Camillo,

(But that's past doubt: you have; or your eye-glass Is thicker than a cuckold's horn ;) or heard,

(For, to a vision so apparent, rumour

Cannot be mute,) or thought, (for cogitation

Resides not in that man, that does not think it,)
My wife is slippery? If thou wilt confess,

(Or else be impudently negative,

To have nor eyes, nor ears, nor thought,) then say,
My wife's a hobbyhorse; deserves a name

As rank as any flax-wench, that puts to

[8] To hox is to ham-string.

STEEVENS.

The proper word is, to hough, i. e. to cut the hough, or ham-string. MAL.

Before her troth-plight: say it, and justify it.
Cam. I would not be a stander-by, to hear
My sovereign mistress clouded so, without
My present vengeance taken: 'Shrew my heart,
You never spoke what did become you less
Than this; which to reiterate, were sin
As deep as that, though true."

Leo. Is whispering nothing?

Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughter with a sigh? (a note infallible
Of breaking honesty :) horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes
Blind with the pin and web,' but theirs, theirs only,
That would unseen be wicked? is this nothing?
Why, then the world, and all that's in't, is nothing;
The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing;
My wife is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings,
If this be nothing.

Cam. Good my lord, be cur'd

Of this diseas'd opinion, and betimes;

For 'tis most dangerous.

I

Leo. Say, it be; 'tis true.

Cam. No, no, my lord.

Leo. It is; you lie. you lie :

say, thou liest, Camillo, and I hate thee;

Pronounce thee a gross lout, a mindless slave;

Or else a hovering temporizer, that

Canst with thine eyes at once see good and evil,

Inclining to them both: Were my wife's liver
Infected as her life, she would not live

The running of one glass.

Cam. Who does infect her?

Leo. Why he, that wears her like her medal, hanging About his neck, Bohemia: Who-if I

Had servants true about me: that bare eyes

To see alike mine honour as their profits,

[9] i. e. Your suspicion is as great a sin as would be that (if committed,) for which you suspect her. WARBURTON.

Disorders in the eye. STEEVENS.

[2] It should be remembered that it was customary for gentlemen, in our author's time, to wear jewels appended to a ribbon round the neck. The Knights of the Garter wore the George in this manner till the time of Charles I. MALONE.

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