8 GRU. Help, masters, help! my master is mad. PET. Now, knock when I bid you: sirrah! villain! Enter HORTENSIO. HOR. How now? what's the matter?-My old friend Grumio! and my good friend Petruchio!— How do you all at Verona? PET. Signior Hortensio, come you to part the fray? Con tutto il core bene trovato, may I say. HOR. Alla nostra casa bene venuto, Molto honorato signor mio Petruchio. Rise, Grumio, rise; we will compound this quarrel. GRU. Nay, 'tis no matter, what he 'leges in Latin.-If this be not a lawful cause for me to Help, masters,] The old copy reads here; and in several other places in this play mistress, instead of masters. Corrected by Mr. Theobald. In the MSS. of our author's age, M was the common abbreviation of Master and Mistress. Hence the mistake. See The Merchant of Venice, Act V. 1600, and 1623: "What ho, M. [Master] Lorenzo, and M. [Mistress] 9 Lorenzo." MALONE. what he 'leges in Latin.] i. e. I suppose, what he alleges in Latin. Petruchio has been just speaking Italian to Hortensio, which Grumio mistakes for the other language. STEEVENS. I cannot help suspecting that we should read-Nay, 'tis no matter what be leges in Latin, if this be not a lawful cause for me to leave his service. Look you, sir.-That is, 'Tis no matter what is law, if this be not a lawful cause," &c. TYRWHITT. Tyrwhitt's amendment and explanation of this passage is evidently right. Mr. Steevens appears to have been a little absent when he wrote his note on it. He forgot that Italian was Grumio's native language, and that therefore he could not possibly mistake it for Latin. M. MASON. I am grateful to Mr. M. Mason for his hint, which may prove leave his service,-Look you, sir,-he bid me knock him, and rap him soundly, sir: Well, was it fit for a servant to use his master so; being, perhaps, (for aught I see,) two and thirty,-a pip out?1 Whom, 'would to God, I had well knock'd at first, Then had not Grumio come by the worst. PET. A senseless villain!-Good Hortensio, I bade the rascal knock upon your gate, And could not get him for my heart to do it. GRU. Knock at the gate ?-O heavens! Spake you not these words plain,-Sirrah, knock me here, Rap me here, knock me well, and knock me soundly ?? And come you now with-knocking at the gate? PET. Sirrah, be gone, or talk not, I advise you. HOR. Petruchio, patience; I am Grumio's pledge: beneficial to me on some future occasion, though at the present moment it will not operate so forcibly, as to change my opinion. I was well aware that Italian was Grumio's native language, but was not, nor am now, certain of our author's attention to this circumstance, because his Italians necessarily speak English throughout the play, with the exception of a few colloquial sentences. So little regard does our author pay to petty proprieties, that as often as Signior, the Italian appellation, does not occur to him, or suit the measure of his verse, he gives us in its room, "Sir Vincentio," and "Sir Lucentio." STEEvens. 1a pip out?] The old copy has-peepe. Corrected by Mr. Pope. MALONE. 2 -knock me soundly?] Shakspeare seems to design a ridicule on this clipped and ungrammatical phraseology; which yet he has introduced in Othello: " I pray talk me of Cassio." It occurs again, and more improperly, in heroic translation : 66 upon advantage spide, "Did wound me Molphey on the leg," &c. STEEVENS. 3 Why, this a heavy chance 'twixt him and you; Your ancient, trusty, pleasant servant Grumio. And tell me now, sweet friend,-what happy gale Blows you to Padua here, from old Verona ? PET. Such wind as scatters young men through the world, To seek their fortunes further than at home, And I have thrust myself into this maze, may: Crowns in my purse I have, and goods at home, And so am come abroad to see the world. HOR. Petruchio, shall I then come roundly to thee, And wish thee to a shrewd ill-favour'd wife? PET. Signior Hortensio, 'twixt such friends as we, Few words suffice: and, therefore, if thou know One rich enough to be Petruchio's wife, (As wealth is burthen of my wooing dance,3) 3 Why, this a heavy chance &c.] I should read: Where small experience grows. But, in a few,] In a few, means the same as in short, in few words. JOHNSON. So, in King Henry IV. Part II: 5 "In few ;-his death, whose spirit lent a fire," &c. STEEVENS. (As wealth is burthen of my wooing dance,)] The burthen of a dance is an expression which I have never heard; the burthen of his wooing song had been more proper. JOHNSON. Be she as foul as was Florentius' love," As old as Sybil, and as curst and shrewd • Be she as foul as was Florentius' love,] I suppose this alludes to the story of a Florentine, which is met with in the eleventh Book of Thomas Lupton's Thousand Notable Things, and perhaps in other Collections: "39. A Florentine young gentleman was so deceived by the lustre and orientness of her jewels, pearls, rings, lawns, scarfes, laces, gold spangles, and other gaudy devices, that he was ravished overnight, and was mad till the marriage was solemnized. But next morning by light viewing her before she was so gorgeously trim'd up, she was such a leane, yellow, riveled, deformed creature, that he never lay with her, nor lived with her afterwards; and would say that he had married himself to a stinking house of office, painted over, and set out with fine garments: and so for grief consumed away in melancholy, and at last poysoned himself. Gomesius, Lib. 3, de Sal. Gen. cap. 22." FARMER. The allusion is to a story told by Gower in the first Book De Confessione Amantis. Florent is the name of a knight who had bound himself to marry a deformed hag, provided she taught him the solution of a riddle on which his life depended. The following is the description of her: "Florent his wofull heed up lifte, "And saw this vecke, where that she sit, "That ever man caste on his eye: "Hir nose baas, hir browes hie, "Hir necke is shorte, hir shulders courbe, "And shortly to descrive hir all, "But like unto the woll sacke :" &c. "Though she be the fouleste of all," &c. This story might have been borrowed by Gower from an older As Socrates' Xantippe, or a worse, She moves me not, or not removes, at least, I come to wive it wealthily in Padua ; 8 GRU. Nay, look you, sir, he tells you flatly what his mind is: Why, give him gold enough and marry him to a puppet, or an aglet-baby; or an old trot with ne'er a tooth in her head, though she have as many diseases as two and fifty horses: why, nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal. HOR. Petruchio, since we have stepp'd thus farin, I will continue that I broach'd in jest. I can, Petruchio, help thee to a wife With wealth enough, and young, and beauteous; narrative in the Gesta Romanorum. See the Introductory Discourse to The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edition, Vol. IV. p. 153. STEEVENS. ·were she as rough-] The old copy reads were she is as rough. Corrected by the editor of the second folio. 8 MALONE. aglet-baby ;] i. e. a diminutive being, not exceeding in size the tag of a point. So, in Jeronimo, 1605: "And all those stars that gaze upon her face, STEEVENS. An aglet-baby was a small image or head cut on the tag of a point, or lace. That such figures were sometimes appended to them, Dr. Warburton has proved, by a passage in Mezeray, the French historian::-"portant meme sur les aiguillettes [points] des petites tetes de mort." MALONE. 9 as many diseases as two and fifty horses :] I suspect this passage to be corrupt, though I know not how to rectify it. -The fifty diseases of a horse seem to have been proverbial. So, in The Yorkshire Tragedy, 1608: "O stumbling jade! the spavin o'ertake thee! the fifty diseases stop thee!" MALONE. |