form, that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench?” O, their bons, their bons!?

Enter ROMEO.

BEN. Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo. MER. Without his roe, like a dried herring: O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!-Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in: Laura, tohis lady, was but a kitchen-wench ;-marry, she had a better love to be-rhyme her: Dido, a dowdy; Cleopatra, a gipsy; Helen and Hero, hildings and harlots; Thisbé, a grey eye or so, but not to the

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stand so much on the new form, that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench ?] This conceit is lost, if the double meaning of the word form be not attended to. FARMER.

A quibble on the two meanings of the word form occurs in Love's Labour's Lost, Act I. sc. i: "-sitting with her on the form, and taken following her into the park; which, put together, is, in manner and form following." STEEVENS.

O, their bons, their bons!] Mercutio is here ridiculing those frenchified fantastical coxcombs whom he calls pardonnezmoi's: and therefore, I suspect here he meant to write French

i. e. how ridiculous they make themselves in crying out, good, and being in ecstasies with every trifle; as he had just described them before:

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a very good blade!" &c. THeobald.

The old copies read-O, their bones, their bones! Mr. Theobald's emendation is confirmed by a passage in Green's Tu Quoque, from which we learn that bon jour was the common salutation of those who affected to appear fine gentlemen in our author's time: "No, I want the bon jour and the tu quoque, which yonder gentleman has." MALONE.

Thisbé, a grey eye or so,] He means to allow that Thisbé had a very fine eye; for from various passages it appears that a grey eye was in our author's time thought eminently beautiful. This may seem strange to those who are not con

purpose. Signior Romeo, bonjour! there's a French salutation to your French slop." You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.

ROM. Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?

MER. The slip, sir, the slip;' Can you not conceive?

versant with ancient phraseology; but a grey eye undoubtedly meant what we now denominate a blue eye. Thus, in Venus and Adonis:

"Her two blue windows faintly she upheaveth,' i. e. the windows or lids of her blue eyes. In the very same poem the eyes of Venus are termed grey :

"Mine eyes are grey and bright, and quick in turning.” Again, in Cymbeline:

"To see the inclosed lights, now canopy'd

"Under these windows: white and azure lac'd;

"With blue of heaven's own tinct."

In Twelfth Night, Olivia says, "I will give out divers schedules of my beauty;-as item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them," &c. So Julia, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, speaking of her rival's eyes, as eminently beautiful, says

"Her eyes are grey as glass, and so are mine."

And Chaucer has the same comparison:

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-hire eyes gray as glas."

This comparison proves decisively what I have asserted; for clear and transparent glass is not what we now call grey, but blue, or azure. MALONE.

If grey eyes signified blue eyes, how happened it that our author, in The Tempest, should have styled Sycorax a-blue-eyed hag, instead of a grey-eyed one? See Vol. IV. p. 34; and Vol. XXI. p. 42, n. 5. STEEVENS.

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-your French slop.]

Slops are large loose breeches or trowsers, worn at present only by sailors. STEEVENS.

See Vol. VII. p. 104, n. 2. MALONE.

1 What counterfeit &c.?

Mer. The slip, sir, the slip;] To understand this play upon the words counterfeit and slip, it should be observed that in our author's time there was a counterfeit piece of money distin

ROM. Pardon, good Mercutio, my business was great; and, in such a case as mine, a man may strain courtesy.

MER. That's as much as to say-such a case as yours constrains a man to bow in the hams. ROM. Meaning-to court'sy.

MER. Thou hast most kindly hit it.

ROM. A most courteous exposition.

MER. Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy."

guished by the name of a slip. This will appear in the following instances: "And therefore he went and got him certain slips, which are counterfeit pieces of money, being brasse, and covered over with silver, which the common people call slips.' Thieves falling out, True Men come by their Goods, by Robert Greene. Again:

"I had like t' have been

"Abus'd i' the business, had the slip slur'd on me,

"A counterfeit." Magnetick Lady, Act III. sc. vi. Other instances may be seen in Dodsley's Old Plays, Vol. V. p. 396, edit. 1780. REED.

Again, in Skialetheia, a collection of epigrams, satires, &c. 1598:

"Is not he fond then which a slip receives

"For current money? She which thee deceaves
"With copper guilt, is but a slip."

It appears from a passage in Gascoigne's Adventures of Master F. I. no date, that a slip was "a piece of money which was then fallen to three halfpence, and they called them slippes." P. 281. STEEVENS.

The slip is again used equivocally in No Wit like a Woman's, a comedy, by Middleton, 1657:

"Clown. Because you shall be sure on't, you have given me a nine-pence here, and I'll give you the slip for it." [Exit.] MALONE.

pink of courtesy.] This appears to have been an ancient formulary mode of encomium; for in a ballad written in the time of Edward II. (MS. Harl. No. 2253,) we have the following lines:

"Heo is lilie of largesse,

"Heo is paruenke of prouesse,

"Heo is solsecle of suetnesse," &c. STEEVens.

ROM. Why, then is my pump well flowered.3 MER. Well said: Follow me this jest now, till thou hast worn out thy pump; that, when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain, after the wearing, solely singular.

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ROM. O single-soled jest, solely singular for the singleness!

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then is my pump well flowered.] Here is a vein of wit too thin to be easily found. The fundamental idea is, that Romeo wore pinked pumps, that is, punched with holes in figures.

JOHNSON.

See the shoes of the morris-dancers in the plate at the conclusion of The First Part of King Henry IV. with Mr. Tollet's remarks annexed to it.

It was the custom to wear ribbons in the shoes formed into the shape of roses, or of any other flowers. So, in The Masque of Flowers, acted by the Gentlemen of Gray's-Inn, 1614:"Every masker's pump was fasten'd with a flower suitable to his cap." STEEVENS.

* Well said:] So the original copy. The quarto of 1599, and the other ancient copies, have-Sure wit, follow, &c. What was meant, I suppose, was-Sheer wit! follow, &c. and this corruption may serve to justify an emendation that I have proposed in a passage in Antony and Cleopatra, where I am confident sure was a printer's blunder. See Vol. XVII. p. 107, n. 8.

By sure wit might be meant, wit that hits its mark.

MALONE.

STEEVENS.

* O single-soled jest,] i. e. slight, unsolid, feeble. This compound epithet occurs likewise in Hall's second Book of Satires:

"And scorne contempt it selfe that doth excite
"Each single-sold squire to set you at so light.”

Again, in Decker's Wonderful Yeare, 1603, we meet with "a single-sole fidler."

Again, in A short Relation of a long Journey, &c. by Taylor, the water-poet: "There was also a single-soal'd gentlewoman, of the last edition, who would vouchsafe me not one poor glance of her eye-beams," &c. STEEVENS.

MER. Come between us, good Benvolio; my wits fail.

ROM. Switch and spurs, switch and spurs; or I'll cry a match.

MER. Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chace, I have done; for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits, than, I am sure, I have in my whole five: Was I with you there for the goose?

ROM. Thou wast never with me for any thing, when thou wast not there for the goose.

MER. I will bite thee by the ear3 for that jest.

This epithet is here used equivocally. It formerly signified mean or contemptible; and that is one of the senses in which it is used here. So, in Holinshed's Description of Ireland, p. 23: "which was not unlikely, considering that a meane tower might serve such single-soale kings as were at those daies in Ireland." MALONE.

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my wits fail.] Thus the quarto, 1597. The quarto, 1599, and the folio-my wits faints. STEEVENS.

"if thy wits run the wild-goose chace, I have done ;] One kind of horse-race, which resembled the flight of wild-geese, was formerly known by this name. Two horses were started together; and which ever rider could get the lead, the other was obliged to follow him over whatever ground the foremost jockey chose to go. That horse which could distance the other, won the race. See more concerning this diversion in Chambers's Dictionary, last edition, under the article CHace.

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This barbarous sport is enumerated by Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, as a recreation much in vogue in his time among gentlemen: Riding of great horses, running at ring, tilts and turnaments, horse races, wild-goose chases, are the disports of great men. ." P. 266, edit. 1632, fol.

This account explains the pleasantry kept up between Romeo and his gay companion. "My wits fail," says Mercutio. Romeo exclaims briskly-" Switch and spurs, switch and spurs." To which Mercutio rejoins-" Nay, if thy wits run the wildgoose chace," &c. HOLT WHite.

I will bite thee by the ear-] So, Sir Epicure Mammon to Face, in Ben Jonson's Alchemist: STEEVENS.

"Slave, I could bite thine ear."