I am from humble, he from honour'd name; COUNT. Nor I your mother? HEL. You are my mother, madam; 'Would you were (So that my lord, your son, were not my brother,) Indeed, my mother!-or were you both our mothers, I care no more for, than I do for heaven, God shield, you mean it not! daughter, and mother, 9 or were you both our mothers, I CARE NO MORE FOR, than I do for heaven, So I were not his sister:] There is a designed ambiguity: "I care no more for," is, "I care as much for. I wish it equally." FARMER. In Troilus and Cressida we find- "I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus." There the words certainly mean, I should not be sorry or unwilling to be, &c. According to this, then, the meaning of the passage before us should be, "If you were mother to us both, it would not give me more solicitude than heaven gives me, -so I were not his sister." But Helena certainly would not confess an indifference about her future state. However, she may mean, as Dr. Farmer has suggested, I should not care more than, but equally as, I care for future happiness; I should be as content, and solicit it as much, as I pray for the bliss of heaven." MALONE. I 66 Can't no other, But, I your daughter, he must be my brother?] The meaning is obscured by the elliptical diction. Can it be no other way, but if I be your daughter, he must be my brother? JOHNSON. - strive-] To strive is to contend. So, in Cymbeline : "That it did strive in workmanship and value!" STEEVENS. The mystery of your loneliness, and find Your salt tears' head 3. Now to all sense 'tis gross, To say, thou dost not: therefore tell me true; That truth should be suspected: Speak, is't so? HEL. Good madam, pardon me! COUNT. Do you love my son? HEL. 3 Your pardon, noble mistress! Now I see The mystery of your LONELINESS, and find STEEVENS. The mystery of her loveliness is beyond my comprehension : the old Countess is saying nothing ironical, nothing taunting, or in reproach, that this word should find a place here; which it could not, unless sarcastically employed, and with some spleen. I dare warrant the poet meant his old lady should say no more than this: "6 I now find the mystery of your creeping into corners, and weeping, and pining in secret." For this reason I have amended the text, loneliness. The Steward, in the foregoing scene, where he gives the Countess intelligence of Helena's behaviour, says― "Alone she was, and did communicate to herself, her own words to her own ears." THEOBALD. The late Mr. Hall had corrected this, I believe, rightly,―your lowliness. TYRWHITT. I think Theobald's correction as plausible. To choose solitude is a mark of love. STEEVENS. "Your salt tears' head." The source, the fountain of your tears, the cause of your grief. JOHNSON. 4 - in their KIND] i. e. in their language, according to their nature. STEEVENS. COUNT. Love you my son ? HEL. Do not you love him, madam? COUNT. Go not about; my love hath in't a bond, Whereof the world takes note: come, come, dis close The state of your affection; for your passions HEL. Then, I confess, My friends were poor, but honest; so's my love: That he is lov'd of me: I follow him not By any token of presumptuous suit ; Nor would I have him, till I do deserve him; 5 CAPTIOUS and INTENIBLE sieve,] The word captious I never found in this sense; yet I cannot tell what to substitute, unless carious for rotten, which yet is a word more likely to have been mistaken by the copiers than used by the author. JOHNSON. Dr. Farmer supposes captious to be a contraction of capacious. As violent ones are to be found among our ancient writers, and especially in Churchyard's Poems, with which Shakspeare was not unacquainted. STEEVENS. By captious, I believe Shakspeare only meant recipient, capable of receiving what is put into it; and by intenible, incapable of holding or retaining it. How frequently he and the other writers of his age confounded the active and passive adjectives, has been already more than once observed. The original copy reads-intemible. The correction was made in the second folio. MALONE. 6 And lack not to LOSE Still:] Perhaps we should read"And lack not to love still." TYRWHITT. I believe lose is right. So afterwards, in this speech: whose state is such, that cannot choose 66 "But lend and give, where she is sure to lose." Religious in mine error, I adore The sun, that looks upon his worshipper, My dearest madam, Wish chastly, and love dearly, that your Dian HEL. Madam, I had. Wherefore? tell true 9. Helena means, I think, to say that, like a person who pours water into a vessel full of holes, and still continues his employment, though he finds the water all lost, and the vessel empty, so, though she finds that the waters of her love are still lost, that her affection is thrown away on an object whom she thinks she never can deserve, she yet is not discouraged, but perseveres in her hopeless endeavour to accomplish her wishes. The poet evidently alludes to the trite story of the daughters of Danaus. MALONE. 7 Whose aged honour CITES a virtuous youth,] i. e. whose respectable conduct in age shows, or proves, that you were no less virtuous when young. As a fact is proved by citing witnesses, or examples from books, our author, with his usual licence, uses to cite, in the same sense of to prove. MALONE. 8 Wish chastly, and love dearly, that your Dian Was both herself and LOVE ;] i. e. Venus. Helena means to say" If ever you wished that the deity who presides over chastity, and the queen of amorous rites, were one and the same person; or, in other words, if ever you wished for the honest and lawful completion of your chaste desires." I believe, however, the words were accidentally transposed at the press, and would read "Love dearly, and wish chastly, that your Dian," &c. MALONE. -tell true.] This is an evident interpolation. It is needless, HEL. I will tell truth: by grace itself, I swear. You know, my father left me some prescriptions Of rare and prov'd effects, such as his reading, And manifest experience, had collected For general sovereignty; and that he will'd me To cure the desperate languishes, whereof COUNT. For Paris, was it? speak. This was your motive HEL. My lord your son made me to think of this; Else Paris, and the medicine, and the king, Had, from the conversation of my thoughts, If COUNT. But think you, Helen, you should tender your supposed aid, He would receive it? He and his physicians Are of a mind; he, that they cannot help him, Embowell'd of their doctrine2, have left off There's something hints, HEL. More than my father's skill, which was the greatest Of his profession, that his good receipt 3 because it repeats what the Countess had already said: it is injurious, because it spoils the measure. I STEEVENS. - notes, whose faculties INCLUSIVE] Receipts in which greater virtues were inclosed than appeared to observation. JOHNSON. 2 EMBOWELL'D of their doctrine,] i. e. exhausted of their skill. So, in the old spurious play of K. John: "Back war-men, back; embowel not the clime." STEEVENS. |