these things?" Cardinal, v. 2, p. 339,-" And how, and how?" ii. 1,—“ — the base, the bitter disposition of Beatrice." I doubt. Bettris, the beloved of George-a-Green in Greene's play, is undoubtedly an English form of Beatrice. Hence I conjecture that in Much Ado &c., where Beatrice is a dissyllable, the name is to be pronounced Bettris; where a trisyllable, Betteris. Ibid.,-"- huddling jest upon jest with such impossible conveyance upon me," &c. Drayton, Odes, Love's Conquest, "S'impossibly I love you" &c. Note by the way, in the passage of Drayton, S' for So. Barons' Wars, B. vi. St. xvii.,— Ib., "By him to daunt whos'ever sat below." 66 if her breath were as terrible as her terminations," &c. Folio, " as terminations." Palpably wrong; possibly Shakespeare wrote "her minations," 2-one of his many coinages from the Latin. The great objection to this is, that it seems quite unlike comedy. 1 Both quarto and folio read " (though bitter)." The is Johnson's conjecture. See his note in Var. 1821.-Ed. 2 This is very ingenious, but, as the quarto reads "her terminations," we have probably in the folio merely one of the omissions so common in that edition. When these occur in verse, they of course produce those limping lines of nine syllables which some editors receive as part of Shakespeare's metrical system. The word termination, however, never occurs elsewhere in Shakespeare; nor, indeed, does mination.—Ed. Ib.,-" Here, Claudio," &c. What follows-perhaps the whole speech-is a kind of verse, "I' faith, Lady, I think your blazon to be true; I have wooed in thy name, and fair Hero is won; I have broke with thy father, and his good will obtain'd; 3,-" And I take him to be valiant. Don Pedro. As Hector, I assure you." Possibly with an under-allusion to the incident of Hector's running away from Achilles. (Too far-fetched, I fear. Yet see context.) Conrade. No; Ib.,—“ Didst thou not hear somebody? 'twas the vane on the house." Fol. vaine. Read raine. See above; "stand thee close under this penthouse, for it drizzles rain." I know not whether the spelling vaine for vane was uncommon; if it was, this would be another argument in addition to the internal evidence. Minshieu (ed. 2, 1627,3 the edition which I have consulted) has both vaine and vane, each in its place according to the order of the letters; and in the only other two passages of Shakespeare beside the present, in which the indices mention it as occurring, it is spelt in the folio vane (Much Ado, iii. 1, p. 110, col. 1,— "If speaking, why a vane blowne with all windes ;") and 3 In my copy, which is dated 1625, the word occurs twice, thus written :-"13689 a Vaine, or Wether-cocke. Vi. Wether-cock in Cock," and "13706 a Vane. Vi. Weather-Cocke sub voce Cocke."-Ed. veine (L. L. L., iv. 1, p. 130, col. 2,-" What plume of feathers is hee that indited this letter? What veine? What Wethercocke ?" This part of the L. L. L. is most corruptly printed in the folio.) I do not remember noticing the spelling vaine in other old books. iv. 1, "Leon. Are these things spoken? or do I but dream? D.John. Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true. This looks not like a nuptial. Bene. Hero. This refers to Don John's speech. True? O God!" Ib., O, she is fall'n Into a pit of ink! that the wide sea Hath drops too few to wash her clean again," &c. I conjecture that we should point,— "Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea" &c. i.e., into such a pit of ink that " &c. v. 1,— villains, That dare as well answer a man, indeed, Point, answer a man indeed," i.e., one who is indeed a man. See the whole context. And so understand indeed Hamlet, iii. 4,— "A combination and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal," &c. Shirley, Love Tricks, i. 1, Gifford and Dyce, vol. i. p. 16,— "(Pygmalion)-made the picture of a woman so to the life, that he fell in love with it, courted it, lay in bed with it, and, by [the] power of love, it became a soft-natured wench, indeed, and he begot I know not how many children of her." Dele comma after wench. Ib., I think he be angry indeed. Claud. If he be, he knows how to turn his girdle.". This phrase occurs as late as Swift, Polite Conversation, Dial. i. ed. 1784, vol. viii. p. 318, "Mr. Neverout, if Miss will be angry for nothing, take my counsel, and bid her turn the buckle of her girdle behind her." 2,-"—I can find out no rhyme to lady, but baby, an innocent rhyme; for scorn, horn, a hard rhyme; for school, fool, a babbling rhyme; very ominous endings." Innocent here means silly. 3,-Epitaph, "Done to death by slanderous tongues Was the Hero that here lies." Can there be a play upon the word hero here, and iv. 1 ? "O Hero! what a Hero hadst thou been," &c. It seems too forced for Shakespeare. [Does S. ever use the word?-Ed.] Ib., "Graves, yawn, and yield your dead, Till death be uttered, Heavily, heavily." The folio, Knight, and (I think) Collier, read Heavenly, heavenly; a most absurd error, generated (ut sæpe) by the 4 Mr. Collier, though thinking the folio might be right, retained heavily as "the reading of the oldest authority." This was before he discovered the Old Corrector, who corrected the blunder of the folios.-Ed. VOL. III. 3 corruption of an uncommon word to a common one. So Hamlet, ii. 2," it goes so heavily with my disposition," -the folio (p. 262, col. 2) has heavenly; as Dyce has also noticed, Remarks. My note, however, was suggested by the sense of the passage. So in Peele, King Edward I., Dyce, 2nd ed., vol. i. p. 173,-"Sweet lady, abate not thy looks so heavenly to the earth," '-we should read heavily; and also abase for abate. This alteration ought also to be made, I think, in Coriolanus, iii., near the end, c deliver you, as most Abated captives, to some nation For what would abated mean here? With regard to the words, "Graves, yawn," &c., I know not why we should consider them as anything more than an invocation-after the usual manner of funeral dirges in that age, in which mourners of some description or other are summoned to the funeral- -a call, I say, upon the surrounding dead to come forth from their graves, as auditors or sharers in the solemn lamentation? Uttered, expressed, commemorated in song. Compare the dirge in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, iv. 4, Moxon, vol. ii. p. 92, col. 1, ર Come, you whose loves are dead," &c. ; the "Threnos" which concludes Shakespeare's verses printed at the end of Chester's Love's Martyr; also, I think, that in the play of Fuimus Troes, iii. 7, Dodsley, vol. vii. p. 424; and the summoning together of the birds in Skelton's Philip Sparrow. The explanation of uttered, as signifying ousted, is one of the many unfortunate exhibitions of half-learning to which our poet has given occasion. |