BY SAM. JOHNSON & GEO. STEEVENS, AND THE VARIOUS COMMENTATORS UPON MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, WRITTEN BY WILL. SHAKSPERE. -SIC ITUR AD ASTRA, VIRG. LONDON: Printed for, and under the Direction of, JOHN BELL, British-Library, STRAND, Bookseller to His Royal Highness the PRINCE OF WALES. MDCC LXXXVII. ANNOTATIONS UPON MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. ACT I. Much Ado about Nothing.] INNOGEN (the mother of Hero), in the oldest quarto that I have seen of this play, printed in 1600, is mentioned to enter in two several scenes. The succeeding editions have all continued her name in the Dramatis Personæ. But I have ventured to expunge it; there being no mention of her through the play, no one speech address'd to her, nor one syllable spoken by her. Neither is there any one passage, from which we have any reason to determine that Hero's mother was living. It seems, as if the poet had in his first plan design'd such a character which, on a survey of it, he found would be superfluous; and therefore he left it out. Line 7. of any sort,—] Sort is rank. So, in Chapman's version of the 16th book of Homer's Odyssey: "A ship, and in her many a man of sort." Sort is rather distinction. STEVEENS. 22. joy could not shew itself modest enough without a badge of bitterness.] This is judiciously express'd. Of all the transports of joy, that which is attended with tears is least offensive; because, carrying with it this mark of pain, it allays the envy that usually at, tends another's happiness. This he finely calls a modest joy, such a one as did not insult the observer by an indication of happiness unmixed with pain. WARBURTON. Such another expression occurs in Chapman's version of the tenth book of the Odyssey: -our eyes wore "The same wet badge of weak humanity.” This is an idea which Shakspere seems to have been delighted to introduce. It occurs again in Macbeth: 27. "Wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves STEEVENS. --no faces truer] That is, none honester, none more sincere. JOHNSON, 30. is signior Montanto return'd-] Montante, in Spanish, is a huge two-handed sword, given, with much humour, humour, to one the speaker would represent as a boaster or bravado. WARBURTON. Montanto was one of the ancient terms of the fencingschool. So, in Every Man in his Humour: "-your punto, your reverso, your stoccata, your imbrocata, your passada, your montanto," &c. Again, in the Merry Wives of Windsor: -thy reverse, thy distance, thy montant.” STEEVENS. 32. there was none such in the army of any sort.] Not meaning there was none such of any order or degree whatever, but that there was none such of any quality above the common. WARBURTON. 38. He set up his bills, &c.] In Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humoar, Shift says: "This is rare, I have set up my bills without discovery." Again, in Swetnam Arraign'd, 1620: "I have bought foils already, set up bills, "Hung up my two-hand sword," &c. Again, in Nash's Have with you to Saffron-Walden, &c. 1596: ❝ —setting up bills like a bearward or fencer, what fights we shall have, and what weapons she will meet me at." The following account of one of these challenges, taken from an ancient MS. of which some account is given in a note on the first act and first scene of the Merry Wives of Windsor, may not be unacceptable to the |