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Pro.
Thou hast done well, fine Ariel!-Follow me.—

It works: Come on.

[TO FER. and MIRA.

[To ARI.

Be of comfort;

Hark, what thou else shalt do me.
Mira.

My father's of a better nature, sir,

Than he appears by speech; this is unwonted,
Which now came from him.

Pro.

Thou shalt be as free

As mountain winds: but then, exactly do
All points of my command.

Ari.

To the syllable.

Pro. Come, follow: speak not for him.

[Exeunt.

ACT II....SCENE I.

Another part of the Island.

Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO, ADRIAN, FRANCISCO, and others.

Gon. 'Beseech you, sir, be merry: you have cause (So have we all) of joy; for our escape

Is much beyond our loss: Our hint of woe
Is common; every day, some sailor's wife,

The masters of some merchant,7 and the merchant,

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Our hint of woe-] Hint is that which recalls to the memory. The cause, that fills our mind with grief, is common. Dr. Warburton reads-stint of woe. Johnson.

Hint seems to mean circumstance.

"A danger from which 'they had escaped (says Mr. M. Mason) might properly be called a hint of woe!' Steevens.

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7 The masters of some merchant, &c.] Thus the old copy. If the passage be not corrupt (as I suspect it is) we must suppose, that by masters, our author means the owners of a merchant's ship, or the officers, to whom the navigation of it had been trusted, I suppose, however, that our author wrote

"The mistress of some merchant," &c.

Hence,

Mistress was anciently spelt-maistresse or maistres. perhaps, arose the present typographical error. See Merchant of Venice, Act IV. sc. i. Steevens.

Have just our theme of woe: but for the miracle,
I mean our preservation, few in millions

Can speak like us: then wisely, good sir, weigh
Our sorrow with our comfort.

Alon.

Pr'ythee, peace.

Seb. He receives comfort like cold porridge.
Ant. The visitor will not give him o'er so.

Seb. Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.

Gon. Sir,

Seb. One:Tell.

Gon. When every grief is entertain'd, that's offered, Comes to the entertainer

Seb. A dollar.

Gon. Dolour comes to him, indeed;1 you have spoken truer than you purposed.

Seb. You have taken it wiselier than I meant you should.

Gon. Therefore, my lord,

Ant. Fye, what a spendthrift is he of his tongue!
Alon. I pr'ythee, spare.

Gon. Well, I have done: But yet

Seb. He will be talking.

Ant. Which of them, he, or Adrian, for a good wager,

first begins to crow?

Seb. The old cock.

Ant. The cockrel.

Seb. Done: The wager?

Ant. A laughter.

Seb. A match.

8 Have just our theme of woe: but for the miracle,] The words -of woe, appear to me as an idle interpolation. Three lines before, we have "our hint of woe —." Steevens.

9 The visitor -] Why Dr. Warburton should change visitor to 'viser, for adviser, I cannot discover. Gonzalo gives not only advice, but comfort, and is, therefore, properly called, The Visitor, like others, who visit the sick or distressed, to give them consolation. In some of the Protestant churches there is a kind of officers, termed consolators for the sick. Johnson.

1 Gon. Dolour comes to him, indeed;] The same quibble occurs in The Tragedy of Hoffman, 1637:

"And his reward be thirteen hundred dollars,

"For he hath driven dolour from our heart." Steevens.

8. prom here down to next bracket on p 48 is crossed ent in ms. fol. 1632. must likely to shorten the performance

Adr. Though this island seem to be desert,-
Seb. Ha, ha, ha!

Ant. So, you've pay'd.

Adr. Uninhabitable, and almost inaccessible,
Seb.. Yet,

Adr. Yet

Ant. He could not miss it.

Adr. It must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate temperance.2

2

Ant. Temperance was a delicate wench.3

Seb. Ay, and a subtle; as he most learnedly delivered. Adr. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. Seb. As if it had lungs, and rotten ones.

Ant. Or, as 'twere perfumed by a fen.

Gon. Here is every thing advantageous to life.
Ant. True; save means to live.

Seb. Of that there's none, or little.

Gon. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green! Ant. The ground, indeed, is tawny.

and delicate temperance.] Temperance here means temperature. Steevens.

3 Temperance was a delicate wench.] In the puritanical times, it was usual to christian children from the titles of religious and moral virtues.

So, Taylor, the water-poet, in his description of a strumpet: Though bad they be, they will not bate an ace,

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"To be call'd Prudence, Temperance, Faith, or Grace."

Steevens.

4 How lush, &c.] Lush, i. e. of a dark full colour, the opposite to pale and faint. Sir T. Hanmer.

The words, how green? which immediately follow, might have intimated to Sir T. Hanmer, that lush here signifies rank, and not a dark full colour. In Arthur Golding's translation of Julius Solinus, printed 1587, a passage occurs, in which the word is explained." Shrubbes lushe and almost like a grystle." So, in A Midsummer Night's Dream:

"Quite over-canopied with lushious woodbine." Henley. The word lush has not yet been rightly interpreted. It appears from the following passage in Golding's translation of Ovid, 1587, to have signified juicy, succulent :

"What! seest thou not, how that the year, as representing plaine

"The age of man, departes himself in quarters foure: first,

baine

"And tender in the spring it is, even like a sucking babe,

Seb. With an eye of green in't."

Ant. He misses not much.

Seb. No; he doth but mistake the truth, totally. Gon. But the rarity of it is (which is indeed almost beyond credit)

Seb. As many vouch'd rarities are.

Gon. That our garments, being, as they were, drenched in the sea, hold, notwithstanding, their freshness, and glosses; being rather new dy'd, than stain'd with salt

water.

Ant. If but one of his pockets could speak, would it not say, he lies?

Seb. Ay, or very falsely pocket up his report.

Gon. Methinks, our garments are now as fresh as when we put them on first in Africk, at the marriage of the king's fair daughter, Claribel," to the king of Tunis. Seb. 'Twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper well in

our return.

Adr. Tunis was never graced before with such a paragon to their queen.

Gon. Not since widow Dido's time.

"Then greene and void of strength, and lush and foggy is the blade;

"And cheers the husbandman with hope."

Ovid's lines (Met. XV.) are these:

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Quid? non in species succedere quatuor annum "Aspicis, ætatis peragentem imitamina nostræ ? "Nam tener et lactens, puerique simillimus ævo, "Vere novo est. Tunc herba recens, et roboris expers, "Turget, et insolida est, et spe delectat agrestem." Spenser, in his Shepheard's Calender, (Feb.) applies the epithet lusty to green:

"With leaves engrain'd in lustie green." Malone.

5 With an eye of green in't.] An eye is a small shade of colour: "Red, with an eye of blue, makes a purple." Boyle. Again, in Fuller's Church History, p. 237, xvii. Cent. Book XI: "-some cole-black (all eye of purple being put out therein) -." Again, in Sandys's Travels, lib. i: " cloth of silver, tissued with an eye of green." Steevens.

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Claribel-] Shakspeare might have found this name in the bl. 1. History of George Lord Faukonbridge, a pamphlet that he probably read when he was writing King John. CLARABEL is there the concubine of King Richard I. and the mother of Lord Falconbridge. Malone.

Ant. Widow? a pox o'that! How came that widow in? Widow Dido!7

Seb. What if he had said, widower Eneas too? good lord, how you take it!

Adr. Widow Dido, said you? you make me study of that: She was of Carthage, not of Tunis.

Gon. This Tunis, sir, was Carthage.

Adr. Carthage?

Gon. I assure you, Carthage.

Ant. His word is more than the miraculous harp.
Seb. He hath rais'd the wall, and houses too.

Ant. What impossible matter will he make easy next? Seb. I think he will carry this island home in his pocket, and give it his son for an apple.

Ant. And sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring forth more islands.

7

Gon. Ay?

Widow Dido!] The name of a widow brings to their minds their own shipwreck, which they consider as having made many widows in Naples. Johnson.

Perhaps our author remembered "An inscription for the statue of Dido," copied from Ausonius, and inserted in Davison's Poems:

"O most unhappy Dido,

"Unhappy wife, and more unhappy widow!
Unhappy in thy mate,

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"And in thy lover more unfortunate!" &c.

The edition from whence I have transcribed these lines, was printed in 1621, but there was a former in 1608, and another some years before, as I collect from the following passage in a letter from Dr. John Chamberlain to Mr. Carleton, July 8, 1602: "It seems young Davison means to take another course, and turn poet, for he hath lately set out certain sonnets and epigrams." Chamberlain's Letters, Vol. I. among Dr. Birch's MSS. in the British Museum. Malone.

A ballad of Queen Dido is in the Pepysian collection, and is also printed in Dr. Percy's Reliques. It appears at one time to have been a great favourite with the common people. "O you ale-knights," exclaims an ancient writer, "you that devoure the marrow of the mault, and drinke whole ale-tubs into consumptions; that sing QUEEN DIDO over a cupp, and tell strange newes over an ale-pot," &c. Jacke of Dover, his quest of Inquirie, or his privy Search for the veriest Foole in England, 4to. 1604, sig. Ritson.

F.

8

the miraculous harp.] Alluding to the wonders of Amphion's music. Steevens.

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