SCENE IV. AR om in the Duke's Palace. Enter DUKE, VIOLA, CURIO, and others. Duke. Give me some musick :-Now, good mor- Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song, Cur. He is not here, so please your lordship, that should sing it. Duke. Who was it? Cur. Feste, the jester, my lord: a fool, that the lady Olivia's father took much delight in: he is about the house. Duke. Seek him out, and play the tune the while. [Exit CURIO.-Musick. Come hither, boy; if ever thou shalt love, In the sweet pangs of it, remember me: For, such as I am, all true lovers are; Unstaid and skittish in all motions else, Save, in the constant image of the creature That is belov'd.-How dost thou like this tune? Vio. It gives a very echo to the seat Where Love is thron'd2. Duke. Thou dost speak masterly: My life upon't, young though thou art, thine eye Vio. A little, by your favour3. 1 Recalled, repeated terms, alluding to the repetitions in songs. 2 i. e. to the heart. 3 The word favour is ambiguously used. In the preceding speech it signified countenance. Vio. About your years, my lord. Duke. Too old, by heaven; Let still the woman take An elder than herself; so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband's heart. Vio. I think it well, my lord. Duke. Then let thy love be younger than thyself, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent: For women are as roses; whose fair flower, Re-enter CURIO and Clown. Duke. O fellow,come, the song we had last night:Mark it, Cesario; it is old, and plain : The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, And the free5 maids that weave their thread with bones, 4 i. e. consumed, worn out. 5 i. e. chaste maids, employed in making lace. This passage has sadly puzzled the commentators; their conjectures are some of them highly amusing. Johnson says 'free is perhaps vacant, unengaged, easy in mind.' Steevens once thought it meant unmarried; then that it might mean cheerful: and at last concludes that its precise meaning cannot easily be pointed out.' Warton mentions, in his notes on L'Allegro of Milton, that it was a common attribute of woman, coupled mostly with fair, but he did not venture upon an explanation. The following extracts will show that Do use to chaunt it; it is silly sooth 6, in our older language free was often used for chaste, pure. Thus Chaucer in the Prioress's Tale : 'O mother maide, O maide and mother fre.'-Verse 13397. 'This song, I have heard say Was makid of our blissful Lady fre.'-Verse 13594. In honour of that blisful maiden fre.' Mr. Tyrwhitt notices one of these instances in his Glossary, and, strange to say, explains it 'liberal, bountiful.' In the Speculum Vitæ of Richard Rolle, MS. I find it thus again applied to the Virgin Mary : For our Lorde wolde boren be Of a weddid woman that was fre, That was blessid Marye mayde clene.' The force of the word will be best understood by the following examples of its use from the same poem : Again: • Wherfor God sais in the Gospelle- Whatever ye of my fadir craue, Withoute doute ye sal haue.' 'When he praied to God with hert fre.' Its occurrence in Spenser and our old Metrical Romances is so frequent, coupled with fair, that I am surprised it had not struck some of the commentators that beauty and chastity were the highest gifts with which the sex could be endowed; but Drayton uses it in his fourth Eclogue 'A daughter cleped Dowsabel, a maiden fair and free.' And Ben Jonson makes part of the praise he lavishes on Lucy Countess of Bedford : 'I meant to make her fair, and free (i. e. chaste), and wise, Of greatest blood, and yet more good than great.' Mr. Todd was acquainted with this and other instances, and has yet erroneously interpreted the word ' accomplished, genteel, charming!' 6 Silly sooth, or rather sely sooth, is simple truth. 7 The old age is the ages past, times of simplicity. [Musick. Clo. Are you ready, sir? Duke. Ay; pr'ythee, sing. SONG. Clo. Come away, come away, death, I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, My part of death no one so true On Did share it. Not a flower, not a flower sweet, my black coffin let there be strown; My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown : Sad true-love never find my grave, Duke. There's for thy pains. Clo. No pains, sir; I take pleasure in singing, sir. Clo. Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid one time or another. Duke. Give me now leave to leave thee. 8 It is not clear whether a shroud of the stuff now called crape, anciently called cypress, is here meant, or whether a coffin of cypress wood was intended. The cypress was used for funeral purposes; and the epithet sad is inconsistent with a white shroud. It is even possible that branches of cypress only may be meant. We see the shroud was stuck all with yew, and cypress may have been used in the same manner. In Quarles's Argalus and Parthenia, a knight is introduced, whose 'horse was black as jet, His furniture was round about beset Clo. Now, the melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffata, for thy mind is a very opal9-I would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business might be every thing, and their intent every where; for that's it, that always makes a good voyage of nothing. Farewell. [Exit Clown. Duke. Let all the rest give place. [Exeunt CURIO and Attendants. Get thee to yon' same sovereign cruelty: her, The parts that fortune hath bestow'd upon you must. Vio. Can bide the beating of so strong a passion 9 The opal is a gem which varies its hues, as it is viewed in different lights. 10 That beauty which nature decks her in. |