SCENE I.-Navarre. A Park, with a Palace in it. Enter the King, BIRON, LONGAVILLE, and Dumain. King. LET fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Therefore, brave conquerors!-for so you are, And the huge army of the world's desires,- You three, Birón, Dumain, and Longaville, Your oaths are past, and now subscribe your names; If you are arm'd to do, as sworn to do, To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die ; Biron. I can but say their protestation over, King. Your oath is past to pass away from these. And stay here in your court for three years' space. King. Why, that to know, which else we should not know. Biron. Things hid and barr'd, you mean, from commcn sense? King. Ay, that is study's god-like recompense. To know the thing I am forbid to know: Study knows that, which yet it doth not know: } King. These be the stops that hinder study quite, And train our intellects to vain delight. [1] By all these the poet seems to mean, all these gentlemen, who have sworn to prosecute the same studies with me. STEEVENS. Biron. Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain, Which, with pain purchas'd, doth inherit pain: As, painfully to pore upon a book, To seek the light of truth; while truth the while Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile : Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed, That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks; Than those that walk, and wot not what they are. King. How well he's read, to reason against reading! Dum. Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding! Long. He weeds the corn, and still lets grow the weeding Biron. The spring is near, when green geese are a breeding. Dum. How follows that? Biron. Fit in his place and time. Biron. Something then in rhyme. Long. Biron is like an envious sneaping frost,* That bites the first-born infants of the spring. Biron. Well, say I am; why should proud summer boast, Before the birds have any cause to sing? Why should I joy in an abortive birth? At Christmas I no more desire a rose, [2] Falsely is here, and in many other places, the same as dishonestly or treache rously. The whole sense of this jingling declamation is only this, that a man by too close study may read himself blind. JOHNSON. [3] The consequence, says Biron, of too much knowledge, is not any real solution of doubts, but mere empty reputation. That is, too much knowledge gives only fame, a name which every godfather can give likewise. JOHNSON. [4] So sneaping winds in The Winter's Tale. To sneap is to check, to rebuke. Thus also, Falstaff, "I will not undergo this sneap, without rely." STEEVENS Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows Climb o'er the house t'unlock the little gate. King. Well, sit you out: go home, Biron; adieu ! Biron. No, my good lord; I've sworn to stay with you. And, though I have for barbarism spoke more, Than for that angel knowledge you can say, And 'bide the penance of each three year's day. King. How well this yielding rescues thee from shame ? Biron. Let's see the penalty.[Reads.] On pain of losing her tongue.-Who devis'd this? Long. Marry, that did I. Biron. Sweet lord, and why? Long. To fright them hence with that dread penalty. Biron. A dangerous law against gentility. [Reads.] Item. If any man be seen to talk with a woman within the term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as the rest of the court can possibly devise. This article, my liege, yourself must break; About surrender-up of Aquitain To her decrepit, sick, and bed-rid father: Therefore this article is made in vain, Or vainly comes the admired princess hither. King. What say you, lords? why, this was quite forgot. Biron. So study evermore is overshot; While it doth study to have what it would, It doth forget to do the thing it should: And when it hath the thing it hunteth most, 'Tis won, as towns with fire; so won, so lost. King. We must, of force, dispense with this decree; She must lie here on mere necessity." [5] By shows the poet means Maygames, at which a snow would be very unwelcome and unexpected; it is only a periphrasis for May. T. WARTON. [6] Lie here, means reside here, in the same sense as an ambassador is said to las Leger. REED Biron. Necessity will make us all forsworn Three thousand times within this three years' space : For every man with his affects is born; Not by might master'd, but by special grace: If I break faith, this word shall speak for me, [Subscribes And he that breaks them in the least degree, Suggestions are to others, as to me; King. Ay, that there is: our court, you know, is haunted A man in all the world's new fashion planted, For interim to our studies, shall relate, Biron. Armado is a most illustrious wight, A man of fire-new words, fashion's own knight. [7] Biron, amidst his extravagancies, speaks with great justness against the folly of vows. They are made without sufficient regard to the variations of life, and are therefore broken by some unforeseen necessity. They proceed commonly from a presumptuous confidence, and a false estimate of human power. JOHNSON. [8] Suggestions-Temptations. JOHNSON. 9Quick recreation-Lively sport, spritely diversion. JOHNSON. This passage, I believe, means no more than that Don Armado was a man nicely versed in ceremonial distinctions, one who could distinguish in the most de licate questions of honour the exact boundaries of right and wrong. Compliment, in Shakespeare's time, did not signify, at least, did not only signify verbal civility, or phrases of courtesy, but, according to its original meaning, the trappings, or ornamental appendages of a character, in the same manner and on the same principles of speech with accomplishment. Compliment is, as Armado well expresses it, the varnish of a complete man. JOHNSON. [2] i. e. I will make a minstrel of him, whose occupation was to relate fabulous stories. DOUCE. [3] i e. (says an intelligent writer in the Edinburgh Magazine,) words newly coined, new from the forge. Fire new, new off the irons, and the Scottish expression bren-new have all the same origin. STEEVENS. |