ACT II. SCENE, I. The same. Enter HERMIONE, MAMILLIUS, and Ladies. HER. Take the boy to you: he so troubles me, 'Tis past enduring. 1 LADY. Shall I be your play-fellow? MAM. Come, my gracious lord. No, I'll none of you. 1 LADY. Why, my sweet lord? MAM. You'll kiss me hard; and speak to me as if I were a baby still.-I love you better. 2 LADY. And why so, my good lord? 6 MAM. Not for because Your brows are blacker; yet black brows, they say, Become some women best; so that there be not Too much hair there, but in a semi-circle, Or half-moon made with a pen. 2 LADY. Who taught you this?" MAM. I learn'd it out of women's faces.-Pray now What colour are your eye-brows? 1 LADY. Blue, my 6 my good lord?] The epithet-good, which is wanting in the old copies, is transplanted (for the sake of metre) from a redundant speech in the following page. STEEVENS. lord. 7 Who taught you this?] You, which is not in the old copy, was added by Mr. Rowe. MALone. MAM. Nay, that's a mock: I have seen a lady's nose That has been blue, but not her eye-brows. 2 LADY. Hark ye: The queen, your mother, rounds apace: we shall 1 LADY. She is spread of late I am for you again: Pray you, sit by us, Merry, or sad, shall't be? will. MAM. HER. As merry as you A sad tale's best for winter : HER. Let's have that, sir." Come on, sit down :-Come on, and do your best To fright me with your sprites: you're powerful at it. MAM. There was a man, A sad tale's best for winter:] Hence, I suppose, the title of the play. TYRWHITT. This supposition may seem to be countenanced by our author's 98th Sonnet: "Yet not the lays of birds, &c. "Could make me any Summer's story tell." And yet I cannot help regarding the words for winter (which spoil the measure,) as a playhouse interpolation. All children delight in telling dismal stories; but why should a dismal story be best for winter? STEEVENS. 'Let's have that, sir.] The old copy redundantly reads-good sir. STEEVENS. HER. Nay, come, sit down; then on. MAM. Dwelt by a church-yard;-I will tell it softly; Yon crickets shall not hear it. HER. And give't me in mine ear. Come on then, Enter LEONTES, ANTIGONUS, Lords, and Others. LEON. Was he met there? his train? Camillo with him? 1 LORD. Behind the tuft of pines I met them; never Saw I men scour so on their way: I ey'd them LEON. How bless'd am I1 4 1 How bless'd am I-] For the sake of metre, I suppose, our author wrote-How blessed then am I. STEEVENS. 2 In my just censure? in my true opinion?] Censure, in the time of our author, was generally used (as in this instance) for judgment, opinion. So, Sir Walter Raleigh, in his commendatory verses prefixed to Gascoigne's Steel Glasse, 1576: "Wherefore to write my censure of this book-.' MALONE. Alack, for lesser knowledge!] That is, O that my knowledge were less. JOHNSON. * A spider steep'd,] That spiders were esteemed venomous, appears by the evidence of a person who was examined in Sir T. Overbury's affair: "The Countesse wished me to get the strongest poyson I could, &c. Accordingly I bought seven- -great spiders, and cantharides." HENDERSON. This was a notion generally prevalent in our author's time. And yet partake no venom; for his knowledge Is not infected: but if one present The abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make known Camillo was his help in this, his pander :- 6 66 So, in Holland's Leaguer, a pamphlet published in 1632: -like the spider, which turneth all things to poison which it tasteth.' MALONE. 99 5 up. violent hefts:-] Hefts are heavings, what is heaved So, in Sir Arthur Gorges' translation of Lucan, 1614: "But if a part of heavens huge sphere "Thou chuse thy pond'rous heft to beare." STEEVENS. • He has discover'd my design, and I Remain a pinch'd thing;] The sense, I think, is, He hath now discovered my design, and I am treated as a mere child's baby, a thing pinched out of clouts, a puppet for them to move and actuate as they please. Heath. This sense is possible; but many other meanings might serve as well. JOHNSON. The same expression occurs in Eliosto Libidinoso, a novel by one John Hinde, 1606: "Sith then, Cleodora, thou art pinched, and hast none to pity thy passions, dissemble thy affection, though it cost thee thy life." Again, in Greene's Never too late, 1616: "Had the queene of poetrie been pinched with so many passions," &c. Again, in Chapman's version of the eighth Iliad: "Huge grief, for Hector's slaughter'd friend pinch'd in his mighty mind.” These instances may serve to show that pinched had anciently a more dignified meaning than it appears to have at present. Spenser, in his Fairy Queen, B. III. c. xii. has equipped grief with a pair of pincers: VOL. IX. For them to play at will:-How came the posterns So easily open? 1 LORD. By his great authority; Which often hath no less prevail'd than so, On your command. LEON. I know't too well. Give me the boy; I am glad, you did not nurse him: Though he does bear some signs of me, yet you Have too much blood in him. HER. Away with him :-and let her sport herself HER. But I'd say, he had not, And, I'll be sworn, you would believe my saying, Howe'er you lean to the nayward. LEON. You, my lords, Look on her, mark her well; be but about To say, she is a goodly lady, and The justice of your hearts will thereto add, "A pair of pincers in his hand he had, "With which he pinched people to the heart." The sense proposed by the author of The Revisal may, however, be supported by the following passage in The City Match, by Jasper Maine, 1639: "Pinch'd napkins, captain, and laid "Like fishes, fowls, or faces." Again, by a passage in All's well that ends well :-" If you pinch me like a pasty, [i. e. the crust round the lid of it, which was anciently moulded by the fingers into fantastick shapes,] I can say no more." STEEVENS. The subsequent words" a very trick for them to play at will," appear strongly to confirm Mr. Heath's explanation. MALONE |
