LOR. Your husband is at hand, I hear his trumpet: We are no tell-tales, madam; fear you not.

POR. This night, methinks, is but the daylight sick,

It looks a little paler3; 'tis a day,

Such as the day is when the sun is hid.

Enter BASSANIO, ANTONIO, GRATIANO, and their Followers.

BASS. We should hold day with the Antipodes, If you would walk in absence of the sun.

POR. Let me give light, but let me not be light;

2 A TUCKET] Toccata, Ital. a flourish on a trumpet

STEEVENS.

It looks a LITTLE PALER;] Hence, perhaps, the following verse in Dryden's Indian Emperor :

"The moon shines clear, and makes a paler day." STEEVENS.

4 We should hold day, &c.] If you would always walk in the night, it would be day with us, as it now is on the other side of the globe. MALONE.

5 We should hold day with the Antipodes,

If

you would walk in absence of the sun.] Thus, Rowe, in his Ambitious Stepmother;

66 Your eyes, which, could the sun's fair beams decay,
"Might shine for him, and bless the world with day."
STEEVENS.

Let me give light, &c.] There is scarcely any word with which Shakspeare so much delights to trifle as with light, in its various significations. JOHNSON.

Most of the old dramatic writers are guilty of the same quibble. So, Marston, in his Insatiate Countess, 1613:

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"By this bright light that is deriv'd from thee So, sir, you make me a very light creature." Again, Middleton, in A Mad World My Masters, 1608:

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- more lights-I call'd for light: here come in two are light enough for a whole house."

Again, in Springes for Woodcocks, a collection of epigrams,

1606:

"Lais of lighter metal is compos'd

“Than hath her lightness till of late disclos'd;

For a light wife doth make a heavy husband,
And never be Bassanio so for me;

But God sort all!-You are welcome home, my lord. BASS. I thank you, madam: give welcome to my friend.

This is the man, this is Antonio,

To whom I am so infinitely bound.

POR. You should in all sense be much bound to him, For, as I hear, he was much bound for you.

ANT. No more than I am well acquitted of. POR. Sir, you are very welcome to our house: It must appear in other ways than words, Therefore, I scant this breathing courtesy 7.

[GRATIANO and NERISSA seem to talk apart. GRA. By yonder moon, I swear, you do me wrong; In faith, I gave it to the judge's clerk; Would he were gelt that had it, for my part, Since you do take it, love, so much at heart. POR. A quarrel, ho, already? what's the matter? GRA. About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring That she did give me; whose poesy was For all the world, like cutler's poetry 9 Upon a knife, Love me, and leave me not.

*

8

* So folio, and quarto H.; quarto R. posie. "For lighting where she light acceptance feels, "Her fingers there prove lighter than her heels."

7

STEEVENS.

- this BREATHING courtesy.] This verbal complimentary form, made up only of breath, i. e. words. So, in Timon of Athens, a senator replies to Alcibiades, who had made a long speech :-"You breathe in vain." MALONE.

So, in Macbeth:

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mouth-honour, breath."

STEEVENS.

8 That she did give me; whose posy was-] For the sake of measure, I suppose we should read:

"That she did give to me;" &c.

So, afterwards :

9

"Now, by this hand, I gave it to a youth." STEEVENS. like cutler's poetry-] Knives, as Sir J. Hawkins observes, were formerly inscribed, by means of aqua fortis, with

NER. What talk you of the poesy, or the value?
You swore to me, when I did give it you,
That you would wear it till your hour of death;
And that it should lie with you in your grave:
Though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths,
You should have been respective', and have kept it.
Gave it a judge's clerk! but well I know

The clerk will ne'er wear hair on his face, that had it.
GRA. He will, an if he live to be a man.
NER. Ay, if a woman live to be a man.
GRA. Now, by this hand, I gave it to a youth,—

A kind of boy; a little scrubbed boy,

No higher than thyself, the judge's clerk;
A prating boy2, that begg'd it as a fee;

* Quartos, no, God's my judge.

short sentences in distich. In Decker's Satiromastix, Sir Edward Vaughan says: "You shall swear by Phœbus, who is your poet's good lord and master, that hereafter you will not hire Horace to give you poesies for rings, or handkerchers, or knives, which you understand not." REED.

1

have been RESPECTIVE,] Respective has the same meaning as respectful. Mr. M. Mason thinks it rather means regardful. See King John, Act I. STEEVENS.

Chapman, Marston, and other poets of that time, use this word in the same sense. [i. e. for respectful.] MALONE.

2

a youth,

A kind of boy; a little SCRUBBED boy,

No higher than thyself, the judge's clerk;

A prating boy, &c.] It is certain from the words of the context and the tenour of the story, that Gratiano does not here speak contemptuously of the judge's clerk, who was no other than Nerissa disguised in man's clothes. He only means to describe the person and appearance of this supposed youth, which he does by insinuating what seemed to be the precise time of his age: he represents him as having the look of a young stripling, of a boy beginning to advance towards puberty. I am therefore of opinion, that the poet wrote:

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a little stubbed boy."

In many counties it is a common provincialism to call young birds not yet fledged stubbed young ones. But, what is more to our purpose, the author of The History and Antiquities of Glastonbury, printed by Hearne, an antiquarian, and a plain un

I could not for my heart deny it him.

POR. You were to blame, I must be plain with

you,

To part so slightly with your wife's first gift;
A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger,
And riveted so with faith unto your flesh.

I gave my love a ring, and made him swear
Never to part with it; and here he stands;
I dare be sworn for him, he would not leave it,
Nor pluck it from his finger, for the wealth

That the world masters. Now, in faith, Gratiano,
You give your wife too unkind a cause of grief;
An 'twere to me, I should be mad at it.

BASS. Why, I were best to cut my left hand off, . And swear, I lost the ring defending it.

[Aside. GRA. My lord Bassanio gave his ring away Unto the judge that begg'd it, and, indeed, Deserv'd it too; and then the boy, his clerk, That took some pains in writing, he begg'd mine : And neither man, nor master, would take aught But the two rings.

affected writer, says, that "Saunders must be a stubbed boy, if not a man, at the dissolution of Abbeys," &c. edit. 1722, pref. signat. n. 2. It therefore seems to have been a common expression for stripling, the very idea which the speaker means to convey. If the emendation be just here, we should also correct Nerissa's speech which follows:

"For that same stubbed boy, the doctor's clerk,
"In lieu of this, did lie with me last night."

T. WARTON.

I believe scrubbed and stubbed have a like meaning, and signify stunted, or shrub-like. So, in P. Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History: but such will never prove fair trees, but skrubs only." STEEVENS.

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Stubbed in the sense contended for by Mr. Warton was in use so late as the Restoration. In The Parliamentary Register, July 30, 1660, is an advertisement enquiring after a person described as "a thick short stubbed fellow, round faced, ruddy complexion, dark brown hair and eyebrows, with a sad gray suit."

REED.

POR.

What ring gave you, my lord ?

Not that, I hope, which you receiv'd of me.

BASS. If I could add a lie unto a fault, I would deny it; but you see, my finger Hath not the ring upon it, it is gone.

POR. Even so void is your false heart of truth. By heaven, I will ne'er come in your bed

Until I see the ring.

Ner.

Till I again see mine.

BASS.

Nor I in yours,

Sweet Portia,

If you did know to whom I gave the ring,
If you did know for whom I gave the ring,
And would conceive for what I gave the ring,
And how unwillingly I left the ring,

When naught would be accepted but the ring,
You would abate the strength of your displeasure.
POR. If you had known the virtue of the ring,
Or half her worthiness that gave the ring,
Or your own honour to contain the ring3,
You would not then have parted with the ring.
What man is there so much unreasonable,
If you had pleas'd to have defended it
With any terms of zeal, wanted the modesty
To urge the thing held as a ceremony * ?

3 contain THE ring,] The old copies concur in this reading. JOHNSON.

Mr. Pope and the other modern editors read—to retain, but contain might in our author's time have had nearly the same meaning. The word has been already employed in this sense: Cannot contain their urine for affection."

66

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So also, in Montaigne's Essaies, translated by Florio, 1603, b. ii. c. iii. : Why dost thou complaine against this world? It doth not containe thee: if thou livest in paine and sorow, thy base courage is the cause of it; to die there wanteth but will." Again, in Bacon's Essaies, 4to. 1625, p. 327: "To containe anger from mischiefe, though it take hold of a man, there be two things." MALONE.

4 What man- -wanted the modesty

To urge the thing held as a CEREMONY?] This is a very licen