Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found them, there I smelt them out. Go to, they are not men o' their words: they told me I was every thing; 'tis a lie; I am not ague-proof.

GLO. The trick of that voice+I do well remember: Is't not the king?

LEAR.

Ay, every inch a king: When I do stare, see, how the subject quakes.5 I pardon that man's life: What was thy cause?Adultery.

Thou shalt not die: Die for adultery? No:
The wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly
Does lecher in my sight.

Let copulation thrive, for Gloster's bastard son
Was kinder to his father, than my daughters
Got 'tween the lawful sheets.

To't, luxury, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers.—
Behold yon' simpering dame,

Whose face between her forks' presageth snow;

4

The trick of that voice-] Trick (says Sir Thomas Hanmer) is a word frequently used for the air, or that peculiarity in a face, voice, or gesture, which distinguishes it from others. We still say, "He has a trick of winking with his eyes, of speaking loud," &c. STEEVENS.

See Vol. X. p. 350, n. 2. MALONE.

[ocr errors]

Ay, every inch a king:

When I do stare, see, how the subject quakes.] So, in Venus and Adonis:

"Who, like a king perplexed in his throne,

"By their suggestion gives a deadly groan,

"Whereat each tributary subject quakes." MALONE.

To't, luxury, &c.]

term for incontinence. Cressida, Act V. sc. ii.

Luxury was the ancient appropriate See Mr. Collins's note on Troilus and STEEVENS.

"Whose face between her forks-] The construction is not

8

That minces virtue, and does shake the head
To hear of pleasure's name;

The fitchew, nor the soiled horse,' goes to't
With a more riotous appetite.

Down from the waist they are centaurs,2
Though women all above:

But to the girdle3 do the gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiends';

darkness,

there's hell, there's

"whose face between her forks," &c. but "whose face presageth snow between her forks." So, in Timon, Act IV. sc. iii: "Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow

"That lies on Dian's lap." EDWards.

To preserve the modesty of Mr. Edwards's happy explanation, I can only hint a reference to the word fourcheure in Cotgrave's Dictionary. STEEVENS.

• That minces virtue,] Whose virtue consists in appearance only; in an affected delicacy and prudery: who is as nice and squeamish in talking of virtue and of the frailer part of her sex, as a lady who walks mincingly along:

66 -and turn two mincing steps

"Into a manly stride." Merchant of Venice. MALONE. This is a passage which I shall not venture to explain further than by recommending a reconsideration of the passage, quoted by Mr. Malone, from The Merchant of Venice. STEEVENS.

1

The fitchew,] A polecat. POPE.

—nor the soiled horse,] Soiled horse is a term used for a horse that has been fed with hay and corn in the stable during the winter, and is turned out in the spring to take the first flush of grass, or has it cut and carried in to him. This at once cleanses the animal, and fills him with blood. STEEVENS.

2 Down from the waist they are centaurs,] In The Malcontent, is a thought as singular as this:

"'Tis now about the immodest waist of night."

STEEVENS.

"But to the girdle &c.] To inherit in Shakspeare is, to posSee Vol. IV. p. 263, n. 4. But is here used for only. MALONE.

sess.

Beneath is all the fiends';] According to Grecian superstition, every limb of us was consigned to the charge of some

[blocks in formation]

there is the sulphurous pit,5 burning, scalding, stench, consumption;-Fye, fye, fye! pah; pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination: there's money for thee. GLO. O, let me kiss that hand!

LEAR. Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.

GLO. O ruin'd piece of nature! This great world Shall so wear out to nought.-Dost thou know me?

LEAR. I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny at me? No, do thy worst, blind Cupid; I'll not love.-Read thou this challenge; mark but the penning of it.

GLO. Were all the letters suns, I could not see

one.

EDG. I would not take this from report ;—it is, And my heart breaks at it.

LEAR. Read.

particular deity. Gower, De Confessione Amantis, enlarges much on it, and concludes by saying:

"And Venus through the letcherie
"For whiche thei hir deifie,

"She kept all doune the remenant
"To thilke office appertainant."

COLLINS.

In the old copies the preceding as well as the latter part of Lear's speech is printed as prose. I doubt much whether any part of it was intended for metre. MALONE.

---

there is the sulphurous pit, &c.] Perhaps these lines should be regulated as follows:

There is the sulphurous pit, stench, burning, scalding,
Consumption: fye, fye, fye! pah! pah! pah!

An ounce of civet, &c. STEEVENS.

Dost thou squiny at me?] To squiny is to look asquint. The word is used by our poet's fellow-comedian, Robert Armin, in A Nest of Ninnies, &c. 4to. 1609: "The world—squinies at this, and looks as one scorning." MALONE.

GLO. What, with the case of eyes?"

LEAR. O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in head, nor no money your in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light: Yet you see how this world goes.

GLO. I see it feelingly.

LEAR. What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes, with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yon' justice rails upon yon' simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: Change places; and, handydandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar?

8

7 What, with the case of eyes?] Mr. Rowe changed the into this, but without necessity. I have restored the old reading. The case of eyes is the socket of either eye. Statius in his first Thebaid, has a similar expression. Speaking of Oedipus he says: "Tunc vacuos orbes crudum ac miserabile vitæ

"Supplicium, ostentat cœlo, manibusque cruentis
"Pulsat inane solum.

"Inane solum, i. e. vacui oculorum loci."

Shakspeare has the expression again in The Winter's Tale: "they seemed almost, with staring on one another, to tear the cases of their eyes." STEEVEns.

In Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 1609, we have the same expression: her eyes as jewel-like,

[ocr errors]

"And cas'd as richly."

Again, ibidem:

"Her eye-lids, cases to those heavenly jewels
"Which Pericles hath lost,

"Begin to part their fringes of bright gold."

This could not have been the author's word; for " this case of eyes" in the language of his time signified-this pair of eyes, a sense directly opposite to that intended to be conveyed.

MALONE.

Change places; and, handy-dandy,] The words change places, and, are not in the quartos. Handy-dandy is, I believe, a play among children, in which something is shaken between two hands, and then a guess is made in which hand it is retained. See Florio's Italian Dictionary, 1598: “Bazzic

GLO. Ay, sir.

LEAR. And the creature run from the cur? There thou might'st behold the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office.

Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand: Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;

Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind

For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.

Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes, and furr'd gowns, hide all.' Plate sin' with gold,

And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks: Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it. None does offend, none, I say, none; I'll able 'em:

chiare. To shake between two hands; to play handy-dandy." Coles in his Latin Dictionary, 1679, renders to play handydandy," by digitis micare; and he is followed by Ainsworth; but they appear to have been mistaken; as is Dr. Johnson in his definition in his Dictionary, which seems to have been formed on the passage before us, misunderstood. He says, Handy-dandy is "a play in which children change hands and places."

MALONE. • Robes, and furr'd gowns, hide all.] So, in The Rape of Lucrece:

"Hiding base sin in pleats of majesty." MALONE. From hide all to accuser's lips, the whole passage is wanting in the first edition, being added, I suppose, at his revisal.

JOHNSON.

Plate sin-] The old copies read-Place sin. Mr. Pope made the correction. MALONE.

So, in King Richard II:

"Thus plated in habiliments of war." STEEVENS. -I'll able 'em :] An old phrase signifying to qualify, or uphold them. So Scogan, contemporary with Chaucer, says: "Set all my life after thyne ordinaunce,

"And able me to mercie or thou deme." Warburton.

« ПредишнаНапред »