DUKE. This discipline shows thou hast been in love. THU. Andthyadvice this night I'll put in practice: To sort some gentlemen well skill'd in musick: DUKE. About it, gentlemen. PRO. We'll wait upon your grace till after supper: And afterward determine our proceedings. DUKE. Even now about it; I will pardon you." [Exeunt. ACT IV. SCENE I. A Forest, near Mantua. Enter certain Out-laws. 1 OUT. Fellows, stand fast; I see a passenger. 2 OUT. If there be ten, shrink not, but down with 'em. Enter VALENTINE and SPEED. 3 OUT. Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about you; Milton, who in his Comus has-" disinherit Chaos,"-meaning only, dispossess it. STEEVENS. To sort - i. e. to choose out. So, in K. Richard III: "Yet I will sort a pitchy hour for thee." STEEvens. S I will pardon you.] I will excuse you from waiting. JOHNSON. If not, we'll make you sit, and rifle you." SPEED. Sir, we are undone! these are the villains That all the travellers do fear so much. VAL. My friends, 1 OUT. That's not so, sir; we are your enemies. 2 OUT. Peace; we'll hear him. 3 OUT. Ay, by my beard, will we; For he's a proper man. 8 VAL. Then know, that I have little wealth to lose; A man I am, cross'd with adversity: My riches are these poor habiliments, Of which if you should here disfurnish me, You take the sum and substance that I have. 2 OUT. Whither travel you? VAL. To Verona. 1 OUT. Whence came you? VAL. From Milan. 3 OUT. Have you long sojourn'd there? VAL. Some sixteen months; and longer might have staid, If crooked fortune had not thwarted me. 1 OUT. What, were you banish'd thence? "If not, we'll make you sit, and rifle you.] The old copy reads as I have printed the passage. Paltry as the opposition between stand and sit may be thought, it is Shakspeare's own. My predecessors read" we'll make you, sir," &c. STEEVENS. Sir, is the corrupt reading of the third folio. MAlone. a proper man.] i. e. a well-looking man; he has the appearance of a gentleman. So, afterwards: "And partly, seeing you are beautified Again, in Othello: "This Ludovico is a proper man." STEEVENS. VAL. I was. 2 OUT. For what offence? VAL. For that which now torments me to rehearse: I kill'd a man, whose death I much repent; But yet I slew him manfully in fight, Without false vantage, or base treachery. 1 OUT. Why ne'er repent it, if it were done so: But were you banish'd for so small a fault? VAL. I was, and held me glad of such a doom. 1 OUT. Have you the tongues? VAL. My youthful travel therein made me happy; Or else I often had been miserable. 9 3 OUT. By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar,9 Robin Hood's fat friar,] Robin Hood was captain of a band of robbers, and was much inclined to rob churchmen. JOHNSON. So, in A mery Geste of Robin Hoode, &c. bl. 1. no date: "These byshoppes and these archebyshoppes "Ye shall them beate and bynde," &c. But by Robin Hood's fat friar, I believe, Shakspeare means Friar Tuck, who was confessor and companion to this noted outlaw. So, in one of the old songs of Robin Hood: "And of brave little John, "Of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlett, Again, in the 26th song of Drayton's Polyolbion: "Of Tuck the merry friar which many a sermon made, "In praise of Robin Hoode, his out-lawes, and his trade." Again, in Skelton's Play of Magnificence, f. 5. 6: And boyes to the pylery gan me plucke, See figure III. in the plate at the end of the first part of King Henry IV. with Mr. Tollet's observations on it. STEEVENS. Dr. Johnson seems to have misunderstood this passage. The speaker does not swear by the scalp of some churchman who had This fellow were a king for our wild faction. 1 OUT. We'll have him: sirs, a word. SPEED. Master, be one of them; It is an honourable kind of thievery. VAL. Peace, villain! 2 OUT. Tell us this: Have you any thing to take to? VAL. Nothing, but my fortune. 1 3 OUT. Know then, that some of us are gentlemen, Such as the fury of ungovern'd youth Thrust from the company of awful men: Myself was from Verona banished, For practising to steal away a lady, An heir, and near allied unto the duke." been plundered, but by the shaven crown of Robin Hood's chaplain." We will live and die together, (says a personage in Peele's Edward I. 1593,) like Robin Hood, little John, friar Tucke, and Maide Marian." MALONE. 1 awful men : Reverend, worshipful, such as magistrates, and other principal members of civil communities. JOHNSON. Awful is used by Shakspeare, in another place, in the sense of lawful. Second part of K. Henry IV. Act IV. sc. ii: "We come within our awful banks again." TYRWwhitt, So, in King Henry V. 1600: 66 creatures that by awe ordain "An act of order to a peopled kingdom." MALONE. I believe we should read-lawful men-i. e. legales homines. So, in The Newe Boke of Justices, 1560: "-commandinge him to the same to make an inquest and pannel of lawful men of his countie." For this remark I am indebted to Dr. Farmer. STEEVENS. Awful men means men well governed, observant of law and authority; full of, or subject to awe. In the same kind of sense as we use fearful. RITSON. ? An heir, and near allied unto the duke.] All the impressions, from the first downwards, read-An heir and niece allied unto the duke. But our poet would never have expressed himself so 2 OUT. And I from Mantua, for a gentleman, Whom, in my mood, I stabb'd unto the heart." 1 OUT. And I, for such like petty crimes as these. With goodly shape; and by your own report 2 OUT. Indeed, because you are a banish'd man, Therefore, above the rest, we parley to you: Are you content to be our general? stupidly, as to tell us, this lady was the duke's niece, and allied to him: for her alliance was certainly sufficiently included in the first term. Our author meant to say, she was an heiress, and near allied to the duke; an expression the most natural that can be for the purpose, and very frequently used by the stagepoets. THEOBALD. A niece, or a nephew, did not always signify the daughter of a brother or sister, but any remote descendant. Of this use I have given instances, as to a nephew. See Othello, Act I. I have not, however, disturbed Theobald's emendation. STEEVENS. Heir in our author's time (as it sometimes is now) was applied to females, as well as males. The old copy reads-And heir. The correction was made in the third folio. MALONE. 3 Whom, in my mood, I stabb'd unto the heart.] Thus, Dryden : Again, Gray: 66 Moody madness, laughing, wild." HENLEY. Mood is anger or resentment. MALONE. 4 -in our quality-] Our quality means our profession, calling, or condition of life. Thus, in Massinger's Roman Actor, Aretinus says to Paris the tragedian: "In thee, as being chief of thy profession, "I do accuse the quality of treason:" that is, the whole profession or fraternity. Hamlet, speaking of the young players, says, "will they pur sue the quality no longer than they can sing?" &c. &c. M. MASON. |