You are so empty of them. Should not our father
Bear the great sway of his affairs with reasons,
Because your speech hath none, that tells him so?

Tro. You are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest,
You fur your gloves with reason. Here are your reasons:
You know, an enemy intends you harm;
You know, a sword employ'd is perilous,
And reason flies the object of all harm:
Who marvels then, when Helenus beholds
A Grecian and his sword, if he do set
The very wings of reason to his heels;
And fly like chidden Mercury from Jove,

Or like a star dis-orb'd:2-Nay, if we talk of reason,
Let's shut our gates, and sleep: Manhood and honour
Should have hare hearts, would they but fat their thoughts
With this cramm'd reason: reason and respect
Make livers pale, and lustihood deject.3

Hect. Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost
The holding.

Tro.

What is aught, but as 'tis valued? Hect. But value dwells not in particular will; It holds his estimate and dignity

As well wherein 'tis precious of itself

As in the prizer: 'tis mad idolatry,

To make the service greater than the god;
And the will dotes, that is attributive

wretched quibble between reasons and raisins, which, in Shakspeare's time, were, I believe, pronounced alike. Dogberry, in Much Ado about Nothing, plays upon the same words: "If Justice cannot tame you, she shall ne'er weigh more reasons in her balance." Malone.

The present suspicion of a quibble on the word-reason, is not, in my opinion, sufficiently warranted by the context. Steevens.

2 And fly like chidden Mercury from Jove,

Or like a star dis-orb'd?] These two lines are misplaced in all

the folio editions. Pope.

3 - reason and respect

Make livers pale, &c.] Respect is caution, a regard to consequences. So, in our author's Rape of Lucrece:

"Then, childish fear, avaunt! debating die!

"Respect and reason wait on wrinkled age!

"Sad pause and deep regard beseem the sage." Malone: 4 And the will dotes, that is attributive-] So the quarto. The folio reads-inclinable, which Mr. Pope says "is better." Malone.

To what infectiously itself affects,
Without some image of the affected merit.5
Tro. I take to-day a wife, and my election
Is led on in the conduct of my will;6
My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears,
Two traded pilots 'twixt the dangerous shores
Of will and judgment: How may I avoid,
Although my will distaste what it elected,
The wife I chose? there can be no evasion

To blench from this, and to stand firm by honour:
We turn not back the silks upon the merchant,

When we have soil'd them; nor the remainder viands We do not throw in unrespective sieve,9

Because we now are full. It was thought meet,

I think the first reading better; the will dotes that attributes or gives the qualities which it affects; that first causes excellence, and then admires it. Johnson.

5 Without some image of the affected merit.] We should read: -the affected's merit.

i. e. without some mark of merit in the thing affected.

Warburton.

The present reading is right. The will affects an object for some supposed merit, which Hector says is censurable, unless the merit so affected be really there. Johnson.

6 in the conduct of my will;] i. e. under the guidance of my will.

7

8

9

Malone.

soil'd them;] So reads the quarto. The folio:

spoil'd them. Johnson.

unrespective sieve,] That is, unto a common voider. Sieve is in the quarto. The folio reads:

unrespective same;

for which the second folio and modern editions have silently printed:

- unrespective place. Johnson.

It is well known that sieves and half-sieves are baskets to be met with in every quarter of Covent Garden market; and that, in some families, baskets lined with tin are still employed as voiders. With the former of these senses sieve is used in The Wits, by Sir W. D'Avenant:

66

apple-wives

"That wrangle for a sieve."

Dr. Farmer adds, that in several counties of England, the baskets us used for carrying out dirt, &c. are called sieves. The cor rection, therefore, in the second folio, appears to have been unnecessary. Steevens.

Paris should do some vengeance on the Greeks:
Your breath with full consent1 bellied his sails;
The seas and winds (old wranglers) took a truce,
And did him service: he touch'd the ports desir'd;
And, for an old aunt,2 whom the Greeks held captive,
He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and fresh-

ness

Wrinkles Apollo's, and makes pale the morning.3
Why keep we her? the Grecians keep our aunt:
Is she worth keeping? why, she is a pearl,
Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships,
And turn'd crown'd kings to merchants.

If you 'll avouch, 'twas wisdom Paris went,
(As you must needs, for you all cry'd—Go, go,)
If you 'll confess, he brought home noble prize,
(As you must needs, for you all clapp'd your hands,
And cry'd-Inestimable!) why do you now
The issue of your proper wisdoms rate;
And do a deed that fortune never did,"
Beggar the estimation which you priz'd

1 Your breath with full consent-] Your breaths all blowing together; your unanimous approbation. See Vol. IX, p. 159, n. 6. Thus the quarto. The folio reads-of full consent. Malone.

2 And, for an old aunt,] Priam's sister, Hesione, whom Hercules, being enraged at Priam's breach of faith, gave to Telamon, who by her had Ajax. Malone.

This circumstance is also found in Lydgate, Book II, where Priam says:

3

"My syster eke, called Exiona

"Out of this regyon ye have ladde away" &c. Steevens.

- makes pale the morning.] So the quarto. The folio and modern editors

makes stale the morning. Johnson.

4 And do a deed that fortune never did,] If I understand this pas sage, the meaning is: "Why do you, by censuring the determi nation of your own wisdoms, degrade Helen, whom fortune has not yet deprived of her value, or against whom, as the wife of Paris, fortune has not in this war so declared, as to make us value her less?" This is very harsh, and much strained. Johnson. The meaning, I believe, is: "Act with more inconstancy and caprice than ever did fortune." Henley.

Fortune was never so unjust and mutable as to rate a thing on one day above all price, and on the next to set no estimation whatsoever upon it. You are now going to do what fortune never did. Such, I think, is the meaning. Malone.

Richer than sea and land? O theft most base;
That we have stolen what we do fear to keep!
But, thieves, unworthy of a thing so stolen,
That in their country did them that disgrace,
We fear to warrant in our native place!

Cas. [within] Cry, Trojans, cry!

Pri.

What noise? what shriek is this?

Tro. 'Tis our mad sister, I do know her voice.

Cas. [within] Cry, Trojans!

Hect. It is Cassandra.

Enter CASSANDRA, raving.6

Cas. Cry, Trojans, cry! lend me ten thousand eyes, And I will fill them with prophetick tears.

Hect. Peace, sister, peace.

Cas. Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled elders, Soft infancy, that nothing canst but cry, Add to my clamours! let us pay betimes A moiety of that mass of moan to come. Cry, Trojans, cry! practise your eyes with tears! Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilion stand;8

5 But, thieves,] Sir T. Hanmer reads-Base thieves,

Johnson. Malone.

That did, in the next line, means-that which did. 6 Enter Cassandra, raving] This circumstance also is from the third Book of Lydgate's Auncient Historie, &c. 1555:

"This was the noise and the pyteous crye

"Of Cassandra that so dredefully

"She gan to make aboute in euery strete
"Through y towne" &c.

Steevens.

7 wrinkled elders,] So the quarto. Folio-wrinkled old.

Malone.

Elders, the erroneous reading of the quarto, would seem to have been properly corrected in the copy whence the first folio was printed; but it is a rule with printers, whenever they meet with a strange word in a manuscript, to give the nearest word to it they are acquainted with; a liberty which has been not very sparingly exercised in all the old editions of our author's plays. There cannot be a question that he wrote:

-mid-age and wrinkled eld.

So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor:

"The superstitious idle-headed eld."

Again, in Measure for Measure:

"Doth beg the alms of palsied eld."

Ritson.

& Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilion stand;] See p. 18, n. 4, and

Unlike young men, whom Aristotle' thought
Unfit to hear moral philosophy:

The reasons, you allege, do more conduce
To the hot passion of distemper'd blood,
Than to make up a free determination

'Twixt right and wrong; For pleasure, and revenge,
Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice

Of any true decision. Nature craves,

All dues be render'd to their owners; Now
What nearer debt in all humanity,
Than wife is to the husband? if this law
Of nature be corrupted through affection;
And that great minds, of partial indulgence
To their benumbed wills,1 resist the same;
There is a law2 in each well-order'd nation,
To curb those raging appetites that are
Most disobedient and refractory.

7

· Aristotle-] Let it be remembered, as often as Shakspeare's anachronisms occur, that errors in computing time were very frequent in those ancient romances which seem to have formed the greater part of his library. I may add, that even classick authors are not exempt from such mistakes. In the fifth Book of Statius's Thebaid, Amphiaraus talks of the fates of Nestor and Priam, neither of whom died till long after him. If on this occasion, somewhat should be attributed to his augural profession, yet if he could so freely mention, nay, even quote as examples to the whole army, things that would not happen till the next age, they must all have been prophets as well as himself, or they could not have understood him.

Hector's mention of Aristotle, however, (during our ancient propensity to quote the authorities of the learned on every occasion) is not more absurd than the following circumstances in The Dialoges of Creatures Moralysed, bl. 1. no date, (a book which Shakspeare might have seen) where we find God Almighty quoting Cato. See Dial. IV. I may add, on this subject, that during an altercation between Noah and his Wife, in one of the Chester Whitsun Playes, the Lady swears by-Christ and Saint John.

Steevens.

3 more deaf than adders -] See Vol. X, p. 197, n. 3.

11

Steevens.

of partial indulgence—] i. e. through partial indulgence.

M. Mason.

benumbed wills,] That is, inflexible, immoveable, no

longer obedient to superior direction. Johnson.

2 There is a law-] What the law does in every nation between individuals, justice ought to do between nations. Johnson.