Dogb. Moreover, sir (which, indeed, is not under] good swimmer, Troilus the first employer of panwhite and black,) this plaintiff here, the offender, did call me ass: I beseech you, let it be remembered in his punishment: And also, the watch heard them talk of one Deformed: they say, he wears a key in his ear, and a lock hanging by it; and borrows money in God's name; the which he hath used so long, and never paid, that now men grow hard-hearted, and will lend nothing for God's sake: Pray you, examine him upon that point.

Leon. I thank thee for thy care and honest pains. Dogb. Your worship speaks like a most thankful and reverend youth: and I praise God for you. Leon. There's for thy pains.

Dogb. God save the foundation.2

Leon. Go, I discharge thee of thy prisoner, and 1 thank thee.

Dogb. I leave an errant knave with your worship; which, I beseech your worship, to correct yourself, for the example of others. God keep your worship; I wish your worship well; God restore you to health: I humbly give you leave to depart; and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it.-Come, neighbour.

[Exeunt DOGBERRY, VERGES, and Watch. Leon. Until to-morrow morning, lords, farewell. Ant. Farewell, my lords; we look for you to

morrow.

D. Pedro. We will not fail.
Claud.

To-night I'll mourn with Hero. [Exeunt DON PEDRO and CLAUDIO. Leon. Bring you these fellows on; we'll talk with Margaret,

How her acquaintance grew with this lewd fellow. [Exeunt. Enter BENE

SCENE II. Leonato's Garden.

DICK and MARGARET, meeting.
Bene. Pray thee, sweet mistress Margaret, de-

serve well at my hands, by helping me to the speech

of Beatrice.

Marg. Will you then write me a sonnet in praise of my beauty?

Bene. In so high a style, Margaret, that no man living shall come over it; for, in most comely truth, thou deservest it.

Marg. To have no man come over me? why, shall I always keep below stairs ?4

Bene. Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound's mouth, it catches.

Marg. And your's as blunt as the fencer's foils, which hit, but hurt not.

Bene. A most manly wit, Margaret, it will not hurt a woman; and so, I pray thee, call Beatrice : I give thee the bucklers."

Marg. Give us the swords, we have bucklers of

That sits above,

And knows me, and knows me,
How pitiful I deserve,—

[Singing.

I mean, in singing; but in loving,-Leander the

1 It was one of the fantastic fashions of Shakspeare's time to wear a long hanging lock of hair dangling by the ear; it is often mentioned by cotemporary writers, and may be observed in some ancient portraits. The humour of this passage is in Dogberry's supposing the lock to have a key to it.

2 A phrase used by those who received alms at the gates of religious houses. Dogberry probably designed to say,God save the founder."

3 Here lewd has not the common meaning; nor do I think it can be used in the more uncommon sense of ignorant; but rather means knavish, ungracious, naughty, which are the synonymes used with it in explaining the latin pravus in dictionaries of the sixteenth century.

ders, and a whole book full of these quondam carpet mongers, whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse, why, they were never so truly turned over and over as my poor self, in love: Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried; I can find out no rhyme to lady but baby, an innocent rhyme; for scarn, horn, a hard rhyme; for school, fool, a babbling rhyme; very ominous endings: No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms."

Enter BEATRICE.

Sweet Beatrice, would'st thou come when I called
thee?

Beat. Yea, signior, and depart when you bid me.
Bene. O, stay but till then!

Beat. Then, is spoken; fare you well now:which is, with knowing what hath passed between and yet, ere I go, let me go with that I came for, you and Claudio.

Bene. Only foul words; and thereupon I will kiss thee.

Beat. Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.

right sense, so forcible is thy wit; But, I must tell Bene. Thou hast frighted the word out of his thee plainly, Claudio undergoes my challenge; and either I must shortly hear from him, or I will subscribe him a coward. And, I pray thee now, tell me, for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?

Beat. For them all together; which maintained so politic a state of evil, that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with them. But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?

Bene. Suffer love; a good epithet! I do suffer love, indeed, for I love thee against my will.

Beat. In spite of your heart, I think; alas! poor heart! If you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours; for I will never love that which my friend

hates.

Bene. Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably. Beat. It appears not in this confession: there's himself. not one wise man among twenty that will praise

Bene. An old, an old instance, Beatrice, that lived in the time of good neighbours: if a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monument, than the bell rings, and the widow weeps.

Beat. And how long is that, think you?

Bene. Question!"-Why, an hour in clamour, and a quarter in rheum: Therefore it is most expedient for the wise (if Don Worm, his conscience, find no impediments to the contrary,) to be the trumpet of his own virtues, as I am to myself: So much for praising myself, (who, I myself will bear witness, is praise-worthy,) and now tell me, How

doth

your cousin?
Beat. Very ill.

Bene. And how do you?
Beat. Very ill too.

Bene. Serve God, love me, and mend: there will I leave you too, for here comes one in haste.

Enter URSULA.

Urs. Madam, you must come to your uncle ;

4 Theobald proposed to read, above stairs; and the sense of the passage seems to require some such alteration: perhaps a word has been lost, and we may read why, shall I always keep them below stairs?" Of this passage Dr. Johnson says, 'I suppose every reader will find the meaning.'

5 i. e. 'I yield.'

6 i. e. in choice phraseology.

7 Is under challenge, or now stands challenged, by me.

8 i. e. when men were not envious, but every one gave another his due.'

9 This phrase appears to be equivalent to-You ask a question indeed or that is the question!

Have been deceived; for they swore you did.
Beat. Do not you love me?
Bene.

Troth, no, no more than reason.
Beat. Why, then my cousin, Margaret, and
Ursula,

Are much deceiv'd; for they did swear you did. Bene. They swore that you were almost sick for me.

Beat. They swore that you were well-nigh dead for me.

Bene. 'Tis no such matter:-Then you do not
love me?

Beat. No, truly, but in friendly recompense.
Leon. Come, cousin, I am sure you love the

gentleman.

Claud. And I'll be sworn upon't, that he loves her;
For here's a paper, written in his hand,
A halting sonnet of his own pure brain,
Fashion'd to Beatrice.

And here's another,

Hero
Writ in my cousin's hand, stolen from her pocket,
Containing her affection unto Benedick.

Bene. A miracle! here's our own hands against our hearts!-Come, I will have thee; but, by this light, I take thee for pity.

Beat. I would not deny you; but, by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion; and, partly, to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.

Bene. Peace, I will stop your mouth. [Kissing her D. Pedro. How dost thou, Benedick the married man?

Bene. I'll tell thee what, prince; a college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humour: Dost thou think, I care for a satire, or an epigram? No: if a man will be beaten with brains, he shall wear nothing handsome about him: In brief, since I do propose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion. For thy part, Claudio, I did think to have beaten thee; but in that' thou art like to be my kinsman, live unbruised and love my cousin.

Claud. I had well hoped, thou wouldst have

1 Because.

nied Beatrice, that I might have cudgelled thee out of thy single life, to make thee a double dealer, which, out of question, thou wilt be, if my cousin do not look exceeding narrowly to thee.

Bene. Come, come, we are friends:-let's have a dance ere we are married, that we may lighten our own hearts, and our wives' heels.

Leon. We'll have dancing afterwards.

Bene. First o'my word: therefore play, musicPrince, thou art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife: there is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn.2

Enter a Messenger.

Mess. My lord, your brother John is ta'en in flight, And brought with armed men back to Messina." Bene. Think not on him till to-morrow; I'll devise thee brave punishments for him.-Strike up, pipers. [Dance. Exeunt.

THIS play may be justly said to contain two of the most sprightly characters that Shakspeare ever drew. The wit, the humourist, the gentleman, and the soldier are combined in Benedick. It is to be lamented, indeed, that the first and most splendid of these distinctions is disgraced by unnecessary profaneness; for the good

ness of his heart is hardly sufficient to atone for the liflashes out in the conversation of Beatrice, may be excence of his tongue. The too sarcastic levity, which cused on account of the steadiness and friendship so apparent in her behaviour, when she urges her lover to risk his life by a challenge to Claudio. In the conduct of the fable, however, there is an imperfection similar to that which Dr. Johnson has pointed out in The Merry Wires of Windsor :-the second contrivance is less insame incident is become stale by repetition. I wish genious than the first-or, to speak more plainly, the some other method had been found to entrap Beatrice, than that very one which before had been successfully practised on Benedick.

Much Ado about Nothing, (as I understand from one of Mr. Vertue's MSS.) formerly passed under the title on the 20th of May, 1613, the sum of forty pounds, and of Benedick and Beatrix. Heming the player received, twenty pounds more as his Majesty's gratuity, for exde-hibiting six plays at Hampton Court, among which was this comedy.

STEEVENS.

2 Steevens, Malone, and Reed, conceive that there 3 Mr. Pye thus answers the objection of Steevens. is an allusion here to the staff used in the ancient trialThe intention of the poet was to show that persons of by wager of battle; but Mr. Douce thinks it is more either sex might be made in love with each other by probable the walking stick or staff of elderly persons was supposing themselves beloved, though they were before intended, such sticks were often tipped or headed with enemies; and how he could have done this by any other horn, sometimes crosswise, in imitation of the crutched means I do not know. He wanted to show the sexes sticks or potences of the friars, which were borrowed were alike in this case, and to have employed different from the celebrated tau of St. Anthony. motives would have counteracted his own design,

MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

WE may presume the plot of this play to have been dew, and spring-perfumes are the element of these ten

the invention of Shakspeare, as the diligence of his commentators has failed to trace the sources from whence it is derived. Steevens says that the hint for it was probably received from Chaucer's Knight's Tale. In the Midsummer Night's Dream,' says Schlegel, there flows a luxuriant vein of the boldest and most fantastical invention; the most extraordinary combination of the most dissimilar ingredients seems to have arisen without effort by some ingenious and lucky accident, and the colours are of such clear transparency that we think that the whole of the variegated fabric may be blown away with a breath. The fairy world here described resembles those elegant pieces of Arabesque, where little Genil, with butterfly wings, rise half embodied above the flower cups. Twilight, moonshine,

der spirits; they assist nature in embroidering her carpet with green leaves, many coloured flowers, and dazzling insects; in the human world they merely sport in a childish and wayward manner with their beneficent or noxious influences. Their most violent rage dissolves in good-natured raillery; their passions, stripped of all earthly matter, are merely an ideal dream. To correspond with this, the loves of mortals are painted as a poetical enchantment, which, by a contrary enchant ment, may be immediately suspended, and then renewed again. The different parts of the plot; the wedding of Theseus, the disagreement of Oberon and Titania, the flight of the two pair of lovers, and the theatrical operations of the mechanics, are so lightly and happily interwoven, that they seem necessary to each other for

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