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Line 396.

a prostitute.

Line 398.

411.

417.

ACT IV. SCENE IV.

-your customers ?] A customer was the term for

companion:-) A term of contempt, a fellow.

Perdy,] For Pardieu, the French oath.
Certes,] i. e. certainly.

417.-kitchen-vestal-] Her charge being like that

of the vestal virgins, to keep the fire burning.

JOHNSON.

Line 511. Fetch our stuff-] i. e. Goods or furniture.

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a house.

Line 115.

ACT V. SCENE I.

get within him,] i. e. Master him.

take a house.] i. e. Take to a house, get within

-a formal man again:] i. e. To bring him back to his senses, and the forms of sober behaviour. So in Measure for Measure:-informal women for just the contrary. STEEV. Line 151. At your important letters,] Important means importunate.

JOHNSON.

Line 186. Whose beard they have singed off with brands of fire;]

Such a ludicrous circumstance is not unworthy of the farce in which we find it introduced; but is rather extraordinary to be met with in an epic poem, amidst all the horrors and carnage of a battle. STEEVENS.

Line 191. His man with scissars niçks him like a fool:] It appears to have been the custom for the established fools to have

their hair cut close to their heads in a very ludicrous manner.

Line 200. To scorch your face,] We should read scotch, i. e.

hack, cut.

WARBURTON.

To scorch I believe is right. He would have punished her as

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of feature. The meaning is, time hath cancelled my features.

strange defeatures.] Defeature is the privative

JOHNSON.

Line 359. All these old witnesses (I cannot err,)] By old wit

nesses I believe he means experienced, accustomed ones, which are therefore less hkely to err. STEEVENS.

Line 451. Twenty-five years) In former editions, thirtythree years.

'Tis impossible the poet could be so forgetful, as to design this number here: and therefore I have ventured to alter it to twentyfive, upon a proof, that, I think, amounts to demonstration. The number, I presume, was at first wrote in figures, and, perhaps, blindly; and thence the mistake might arise. THEOBALD.

Line 456. and go with me ;) We should read, and gaude with me: i. e. rejoice, from the French gaudir. WARBURTON. The sense is clear enough without the alteration, STEEVENS. Line 457. After so long grief, such nativity !) We should surely read, After so long grief, such festivity!

Nativity lying so near, and the termination being the same of both words, the mistake was easy.

JOHNSON.

Mr. Steevens is of opinion, nativity is the right reading, as she alludes to her sons.

Line 484. In this play we find more intricacy of plot than distinction of character; and our attention is less forcibly engaged, because we can guess in great measure how it will conclude. Yet the poet seems unwilling to part with his subject, even in the last and unnecessary scene, where the same mistakes are continued, till they have lost the power of affording any entertainment at all. STEEVENS.

END OF THE ANNOTATIONS ON THE COMEDY OF ERRORS,

ΑΝΝΟΤATIONS

ON

KING JOHN.

ACT I. SCENE I.

LINE 5. In my behaviour,] The word behaviour seems here to have a signification that I have never found in any other author. The king of France, says the envoy, thus speaks in my behaviour to the majesty of England; that is, the king of France speaks in the character which I here assume. I once thought that these two lines, in my behaviour, &c. had been uttered by the ambassador as part of his master's message, and that behaviour had meant the conduct of the king of France towards the king of England; but the ambassador's speech, as continued after the interruption, will not admit this meaning. JOHNSON,

Line 19. -control-] Opposition, from controller. JOHNS. -30. Be thou, as lightning-] The simile does not suit well: the lightning indeed appears before the thunder is heard, but the lightning is destructive, and the thunder innocent. JOHNSON.

Line 34. Sullen presage-) By the epithet sullen, which cannot be applied to a trumpet, it is plain, that our author's imagination had now suggested a new idea. It is as if he had said, be a trumpet to alarm with our invasion, be a bird of ill omen to croak out the prognostick of your own ruin. JOHNSON.

Line 58. and Philip, his bastard brother.] Holinshed says, that Richard I. had a natural son named Philip, who killed the viscount De Limoges to revenge the death of his father.

STEEVENS.

In expanding the character of the Bastard, Shakspeare seems to have proceeded on the following slight hint in the original play: "Next them, a bastard of the king's deceas'd,

"A hardie wild-head, rough, and venturous."

Line 87. But whe'r-] i. e. whether.

MALONE.

98. He hath a trick of Cœur-de-lion's face,] Our author often uses this phrase, and generally in the sense of a peculiar air or cast of countenance or feature. MALONE.

Line 140. This concludes,] This is a decisive argument. As your father, if he liked him, could not have been forced to resign him, so, not liking him, he is not at liberty to reject him. JOHNS. Line 153. And I had his, sir Robert his, like him ;) This is obscure and ill expressed. The meaning is; If I had his shape-Sir Robert's-as he has.

Sir Robert his, for Sir Robert's, is agreeable to the practice of that time, when the 's added to the nominative was believed, I think erroneously, to be a contraction of his. JOHNSON. Line 155.

my face so thin,

That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose, Lest men should say, Look where three-farthings goes!] The allusion is to a silver coin of three-farthings in the reign of Elizabeth which had the impression of a rose on one side, and being extremely thin was liable to be cracked; hence the humour of the passage.

Line 162. I would not be sir Nob-) Sir Nob is used contemptuously for sir Robert. MALONE.

Line 188. Madam, by chance, but not by truth; what though?] I am your grandson, madam, by chance, but not by honesty-what

then?

JOHNSON.

Line 190. Something about, a little from the right, &c.] This speech, composed of allusive and proverbial sentences, is obscure. I am, says the sprightly knight, your grandson, a little irregularly, but every man cannot get what he wishes the legal way. He that

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