Biron. Our wooing doth not end like an old Play; Jack hath not fill; thefe ladies' courtesy Might well have made our iport a Comedy. King. Come, Sir, it wants a twelve-month and a day, And then 'twill end. Biron. That's too long for a Play. Enter Armado. Arm. Sweet Majefty, vouchfafe me- Dum. That worthy Knight of Troy. Arm. I will kifs thy royal finger, and take leave. I am a Votary; I have vow'd to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her fweet love three years. But, most efteemed Greatnefs, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled, in praife of the owl and the cuckow? it should have follow'd in the end of our Show. King. Call them forth quickly, we will do fo. Enter all, for the Song. This fide is Hiems, winter. This Ver, the spring; the one maintained by the owl, The other by the cuckow. Ver, begin. The SONG. SPRIN G.. When daizies pied, and violets blue, And cuckow-buds of yellow bue, The first lines of this fong that were transposed, have been The replaced by Mr. Theobald. The cuckow then on every Tree Mocks married men, for thus fings he, Cuckow! cuckow! O word of fear, When Shepherds pipe on oaten straws, Mocks married men; for thus fings he, Cuckow! cuckow! O word of fear, WINTER. When ificles bang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail; And milk comes frozen bome in pail; -A merry note, While greafy Jone doth keel the pot. When all aloud the wind doth blow, delight;] This is a pretty rural fong, in which the images are drawn with great force from nature. But this fenfelefs expletive of painting with delight, I would read thus, Do paint the meadows MUCH BEDIGHT, i. e. much bedecked or adorned, as they are in fpring-time. The epithet is proper, and the compound not inelegant. WARBURTON, Much less elegant than the present reading. When When roasted crabs hifs in the bowl, Then nightly fings the flaring owl A merry note, While greafy Jone doth keel the pot. Arm. The words of Mercury *In this play, which all the editors have concurred to cenfure, and fome have rejected as unworthy of our Poet, it must be confeffed that there are many paffages mean, childish, and vulgar; and fome which ought not to have been exhibited, as we are told they were, to a maiden queen. But there are fcattered, through the whole, many fparks of genius; nor is there any play that has more evident marks of the hand of Shakespeare. ACT. I. SCENE I. Page 119. This child of fancy, that Armado hight, &c.] This, as I have fhewn, in the note in its place, relates to the ftories in the books of Chivalry. A few words therefore concerning their Origin and nature may not be unacceptable to the reader. As I don't know of any writer who has given any tolerable account of this matter and especially as Monfieur Huet, the Bishop of Avranches who wrote a formal treatife of the Origin of Romances, has faid little or nothing of thefe in that fuperficial work. For having brought down the account of romances to the later [Exeunt omnes*. Greeks, and entered upon those compofed by the barbarous weftern writers, which have now the name of Romances almost appropriated to them, he puts the change upon his reader, and, inftead of giving us an account of these books of Chivalry, one of the moft curious and interefting parts of the fubject he promifed to treat of, he contents himself with a long account of the Poems of the Provincial Writers, called likewife Romances : and fo, under the equivoque of a common term, drops his proper fubject, and entertains us with another that had no relation to it more than in the name. The Spaniards were of all others the fondeft of these fa bles, as fuiting best their extravagant turn to gallantry and bravery; which in time grew fo exceffive, as to need all the efficacy of Cervantes's incomparable fatire to bring them back to their fenfes. The French fuffered an easier cure from their Doctor Rabelais, who enough difcredited the books of Chivalry, by only using the extravagant ftories of its Giants, &c. as a cover for another kind of fatire against the refined Politicks of twelve Peers; to whom, instead of his father, they affigned the task of driving the Saracens out of France and the South parts of Spain: the other, our Geoffry of Monmouth. Two of thofe Peers, whom the old Romances have rendered most famous, were Oliver and Rowland. Hence Shakespeare makes Alanfon, in the first part of Henry VI. fay, "Froylard, "a countryman of ours, re"cords, England all Olivers and Rowlands bred, during "the time Edward the Third did reign." In the Spani Romance of Bernardo del Carpio, and in that of Roncesvalles, the feats of Roland are recorded under the name of Roldan el ent cantador; and in that of Palme rin de Oliva, or fimply Oliva, thofe of Oliver: for Oliva is the fame in Spanish as Olivier is in French. The account of their exploits is in the highest degree monftrous and extravagant, as appears from the judgment paffed upon them by the Prieft in Don Quixote, when he delivers the Knight's library to the fecular arm of the house-keeper: "Eccetuando à un Bernardo The fenfe of which is to this effect This Gentleman, fays the fpeaker, ball relate to us the celebrated Stories recorded in the old Romances, and in their very file. Why he fays, from tawny Spain, is because, thefe Romances being of Spanish Original, the Heroes and the Scene are generally of that country. He fays, loft in the world's debate, because the fubject of thofe Romances were the Crufades of the European Chriftians against the Sara-"del Carpio que anda por ay, cens of Afia and Africa. y à otro llamado Roncefval"les; que eftos en Ilegando a "mis manos, an de eftar en las "de la ama, y dellas en las des Indeed, the wars of the Chriftians against the Pagans were the general fubject of the Romances of Chivalry. They all feem to have had their ground-work in two fabulous Monkish hiftorians: The one, who, under the name of Turpin Archbishop of Rheims, wrote the History and Atchievements of Charlemagne and his a B. i. c. 6. VOL. II. 66 the Bernardo del Carpio, which tells us, that the cleft called Roldan, to be feen on the fummit of an high mountain in the kingdom of Valencia, near the town of Alicant, was made with a fingle back-ftroke of that hero's broad fword. Hence came the proverbial expreffion of our plain and fenfible Ancestors, who were much cooler readers of these extravagances than the Spaniards, of giving one a Rowland for his Oliver, that is, of matching one impoffible lye with another: as, in French, faire le Roland means, to fwagger. This driving the Saracens out of France and Spain, was, as we say, the fubject of the elder Romances. And the first that was printed in Spain was the famous Amadis de Gaula, of which the Inquifitor Prieft fays:"fegun he oydo dezir, efte "libro fuè el primero de Caval"lerias que fe imprimiò en Ef pana, y todos los demás en tomado principio y origen "defte ; and for which he humourously condemns it to the fire, como à Dogmatizador de una fecta tan mala. When this fubject was well exhausted, the affairs of Europe afforded them another of the fame nature. For after that the weftern parts had pretty well cleared themfelves of thefe inhofpitable Guefts: by the excitements of the Popes, they carried their arms against them into Greece and Afia, to fupport the Byzantine empire, and recover the holy Sepulchre. This gave birth to a new tribe of Romances, which we may call of the fecond race or clafs. And as Amadis de Gaula was at the head of the first, fo, correfpondently to the fubject, Amadis de Grecian was at the head of the latter. Hence it is, we find, that Trebizonde is as celebrated in these Romances as Roncefvalles is in the other. It may be worth obferving, that the two famous Italian epic poets, Ariofto and Tao, have borrowed, from each of thefe claffes of old Ro mances, the fcenes and subjects of their several stories: Ariofta choofing the first, the Saracens in France and Spain; and Tasso, the latter, the Crusade against them in Afia: Ariofto's hero being Orlando or the French Roland: for as the Spaniards, by one way of tranfpofing the letters, had made it Roldan, fo the Italians, by another, make it Orland. The main fubject of these fooleries, as we have faid, had its original in Turpin's famous history of Charlemagne and his twelve peers. Nor were the monftrous embellishmentsofenchantments, &c. the invention of the Romancers, but formed upon eastern tales, brought thence by travellers from their crufades and pilgrimages; which indeed have a caft peculiar to the wild imaginations of the eastern people. We have a proof of this in the travels of Sir J. Maundevile, whofe exceffive fuperftition and credulity, together with an impudent monkish addition to his genuine work, have made his veracity thought much worfe of than it deferved. This voyager, fpeaking of the isle of Cos, in the Archipelago, tells the foliow c Ibid. |