HER. It is Grace, indeed." Why, lo you now, I have spoke to the purpose twice: The one for ever earn'd a royal husband; LEON. [Giving her hand to POLIXENES. Too hot, too hot: [Aside. To mingle friendship far, is mingling bloods. I have tremor cordis on me:-my heart dances; But not for joy,-not joy.-This entertainment May a free face put on; derive a liberty From heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom,' And well become the agent: it may, I grant: But to be paddling palms, and pinching fingers, As now they are; and making practis'd smiles, "This is the hand, which with a vow'd contráct "Was fast belock'd in thine." Again, in King John: "Phil. It likes us well. Young princes, close your hands. "Aust. And your lips too, for I am well assur'd, "That I did so, when I was first assur'd." So, also, in No Wit like a Woman's, a comedy, by Middleton, 1657: "There these young lovers shall clap hands together." I should not have given so many instances of this custom, but that I know Mr. Pope's reading-" And clepe thyself my love," has many favourers. The old copy has-A clap, &c. The correction was made by the editor of the second folio. MALONE. 9 It is Grace, indeed!] Referring to what she had just said— "O, would her name were Grace!" MALOne. -from bounty, fertile bosom,] I suppose that a letter dropped out at the press, and would read—from bounty's fertile bosom. MALONE. By fertile bosom, I suppose, is meant a bosom like that of the earth, which yields a spontaneous produce. In the same strain is the address of Timon of Athens: "Thou common mother, thou, As in a looking-glass;-and then to sigh, as 'twere The mort o' the deer;2 O, that is entertainment My bosom likes not, nor my brows.-Mamillius, Art thou my boy? MAM. LEON. Ay, my good lord. I'fecks?3 Why, that's my bawcock. What, hast smutch'd thy nose? 5 They say, it's a copy out of mine. Come, captain, [Observing POLIXENES and HERMIONE. The mort o' the deer;] A lesson upon the horn at the death of the deer. THEOBALD. So, in Greene's Card of Fancy, 1608: “ He that bloweth the mort before the death of the buck, may very well miss of his fees." Again, in the oldest copy of Chevy Chace: 3 "The blewe a mort uppone the bent." STEEVENS. Ifecks?] A supposed corruption of-in faith. Our present vulgar pronounce it fegs. STEEvens. 4 Why, that's my bawcock.] Perhaps from beau and coq. It is still said in vulgar language that such a one is a jolly cock, a cock of the game. The word has already occurred in TwelfthNight, and is one of the titles by which Pistol speaks of King Henry the Fifth. STEEVENS. We must be neat;] Leontes, seeing his son's nose smutch'd, cries, we must be neat; then recollecting that neat is the ancient term for horned cattle, he says, not neat, but cleanly. So, in Drayton's Polyolbion, Song 3: JOHNSON. "His large provision there of flesh, of fowl, of neat." STEEVENS. Still virginalling-] Still playing with her fingers, as a girl playing on the virginals. JOHNSON. A virginal, as I am informed, is a very small kind of spinnet. Queen Elizabeth's virginal-book is yet in being, and many of the lessons in it have proved so difficult, as to baffle our most expert players on the harpsichord. VOL. IX. Upon his palm?-How now, you wanton calf? MAM. Yes, if you will, my lord. LEON. Thou want'st a rough pash, and the shoots that I have, So, in Decker's Satiromastix, or the Untrussing of the humorous Poet, 1602: "When we have husbands, we play upon them like virginal jacks, they must rise and fall to our humours, else they'll never get any good strains of musick out of one of us." Again, in Ram-alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611: "Where be these rascals that skip up and down "Faster than virginal jacks?" STEEVENS. A virginal was strung like a spinnet, and shaped like a piano forte. MALOne. 7 Thou want'st a rough pash, and the shoots that I have,] Pash, (says Sir T. Hanmer,) is kiss. Paz. Spanish, i. e. thou want'st a mouth made rough by a beard, to kiss with. Shoots are branches, i. e. horns. Leontes is alluding to the ensigns of cuckoldom. A mad-brained boy, is, however, called a mad pash in Cheshire. STEEVENS. Thou want'st a rough pash, and the shoots that I have, in con-nection with the context, signifies to make thee a calf thou must have the tuft on thy forehead and the young horns that shoot up in it, as I have. Leontes asks the Prince: How now, you wanton calf! Art thou my calf? Mam. Yes, if you will, Leon. Thou want'st a rough pash, and the shoots that I have, To be full like me. To pash signifies to push or dash against, and frequently occurs in old writers. Thus, Drayton: "They either poles their heads together pasht." Again, in How to choose a good Wife from a bad, 1602, 4to: "learn pash and knock, and beat and mall, "Cleave pates and caputs.' When in Cheshire a pash is used for a mad-brained boy, it is designed to characterize him from the wantonness of a calf that blunders on, and runs his head against any thing. HENLEY In Troilus and Cressida, the verb pash also occurs: 66 waving his beam Upon the pashed corses of the kings "Epistrophus and Cedius." To be full like me :-yet, they say, we are And again, (as Mr. Henley on another occasion observes,) in The Virgin Martyr: 66 when the battering ram "Were fetching his career backward, to pash "Me with his horns to pieces." STEEVENS. I I have lately learned that pash in Scotland signifies a head. The old reading therefore may stand. Many words, that are now used only in that country, were perhaps once common to the whole island of Great Britain, or at least to the northern part of England. The meaning, therefore, of the present passage, suppose, is this: You tell me, (says Leontes to his son,) that you are like me that ; you are my calf. I am the horned bull: thou wantest the rough head and the horns of that animal, completely to resemble your father. MALONE. To be full like me :] Full is here, as in other places, used by our author, adverbially;-to be entirely like me. MALONE. • As o'er-died blacks,] Sir T. Hanmer understands blacks died too much, and therefore rotten. JOHNSON. It is common with tradesmen, to die their faded or damaged stuffs, black. O'er died blacks may mean those which have received a die over their former colour. There is a passage in The old Law of Massinger, which might lead us to offer another interpretation: 66 Blacks are often such dissembling mourners, "There is no credit given to't, it has lost "All reputation by false sons and widows: "I would not hear of blacks." It seems that blacks was the common term for mourning. So, in A mad World my Masters, 1608: 66 in so many blacks "I'll have the church hung round-" Black, however, will receive no other hue without discovering itself through it: "Lanarum nigræ nullum colorem bibunt.” Plin. Nat. Hist. Lib. VIII. STEEVENS. The following passage in a book which our author had certainly read, inclines me to believe that the last is the true inter As dice are to be wish'd, by one that fixes Affection! thy intention stabs the center : 4 pretation."Truly (quoth Camillo) my wool was blacke, and therefore it could take no other colour." Lyly's Euphues and his England, 4to. 1580. MALONE. 2 1 No bourn -] Bourn is boundary. So, in Hamlet : 66 from whose bourn "No traveller returns-." STEEVENS. welkin-eye :] Blue-eye; an eye of the same colour with the welkin, or sky. JOHNSON. 3 my collop!] So, in The First Part of King Henry VI: "God knows, thou art a collop of my flesh." STEEVENS. 4 Affection! thy intention stabs the center:] Instead of this line, which I find in the folio, the modern editors have introduced another of no authority: Imagination! thou dost stab to the center. Mr. Rowe first made the exchange. I am not sure that I understand the reading I have restored. Affection, however, I believe, signifies imagination. Thus, in The Merchant of Venice: affection, 66 "Mistress of passion, sways it," &c. i. e. imagination governs our passions. Intention is, as Mr. Locke expresses it, "when the mind with great earnestness, and of choice, fixes its view on any idea, considers it on every side, and will not be called off by the ordinary solicitations of other ideas." This vehemence of the mind seems to be what affects Leontes so deeply, or, in Shakspeare's language,—stabs him to the center. STEEVENS. Intention, in this passage, means eagerness of attention, or of desire; and is used in the same sense in The Merry Wives of Windsor, where Falstaff says-" She did so course o'er my exteriors, with such a greedy intention," &c. M. MASON. I think, with Mr. Steevens, that affection means here imagination, or perhaps more accurately: "the disposition of the mind |
