As love is full of unbefitting strains; All wanton as a child, skipping, and vain; Prin. We have receiv'd your letters, full. of love; But more devout than this, in our respects, Have we not been; and therefore met your loves In their own fashion, like a merriment. Dum. Our letters, madam, show'd much more than jest. Long. So did our looks. Ros. We did not quote them so. King. Now, at the latest minute of the hour, Grant us your loves. Prin. A time, methinks, too short To make a world-without-end bargain in : [9] That is, tempted us. JOHNSON. This line is obscure. Bombast was a kind of loose texture not unlike what is now called wadding, used to give the dresses of that time bulk and protuberance, without much increase of weight; whence the same name is given to a tumour of words unsupported by solid sentiment. The princess, therefore, says, that they considered this courtship as but bombast, as something to fill out life, which not be, ing closely united with it, might be thrown awayat pleasure. JOHNSON. Remote from all the pleasures of the world; Change not your offer made in heat of blood; Come challenge, challenge me by these deserts; For the remembrance of my father's death. King. If this, or more than this, I would deny, Hence ever then, my heart is in thy breast. A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest, Dum. But what to me, my love? but what to me? Dum. I'll serve thee true and faithfully till then. Mar. At the twelvemonth's end, I'll change my black gown for a faithful friend. concur to think [2] These six verses both Dr. Thirlby and Mr. Warburton should be expunged; and therefore I have put them between crotchets: not that they were an interpolation, but as the author's draught, which he afterwards rejected, and executed the same thought a little lower with much more spirit and elegance. THEOBALD. Long. I'll stay with patience; but the time is long. Ros. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Birón, To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain ; To enforce the pained impotent to smile. Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be; it is impossible: Mirth cannot move a soul in agony. Ros. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit, Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears, Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans,3 And I will have you, and that fault withal; Right joyful of your reformation. Biron. A twelvemonth? well, befal what will befal, I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.* JOHNS. [3] Dear should here, as in many other places, be dere, sad, odious. [4] The characters of Biron and Rosaline suffer much by comparison with those of Benedick and Beatrice. We know that Love's Labour's Lost was the elder performance; and as our author grew more experienced in dramatic writing, he might have seen how much he could improve on his own originals. To this circumstance, perhaps, we are indebted for the more perfect comedy of Much Ado about Nothing. STEEVENS. Prin. Ay, sweet my lord; and so I take my leave. [To the King. King. No, madam: we will bring you on your way. Biron. Our wooing doth not end like an old play; Jack hath not Jill: these ladies' courtesy Might well have made our sport a comedy. King. Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth and a day And then t'will end. Biron. That's too long for a play. Enter ARMADO. Arm. Sweet majesty, vouchsafe me,— Dum. The worthy knight of Troy? Arm. I will kiss thy royal finger, and take leave: I am a votary; I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three years. But, most esteemed greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled, in praise of the owl and the cuckoo? it should have followed in the end of our show. King. Call them forth quickly, we will do so. Arm. Holla! approach. Enter HOLOFERNES, NATHANIEL, MOTH, COSTARD, and others. This side is Hiems, winter; this Ver, the spring; the one maintain❜d by the owl, the other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin. SONG. Spring. When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, Do paint the meadows with delight, [5] Gerard, in his Herbal, 1597, says, that the flos cuculi cardamine, &c. are called" in English cuckoo-flowers, in Norfolk Canterbury-bells, and at Namptwich in Cheshire ladie-smocks." Shakespeare, however, might not have been sufficiently skilled in botany to be aware of this particular. Mr. Tollet has observed, that Lyte in his Herbal, 1578 and 1579, remarks, that Cowslips are in French, of some called coquu, prime vere, and brayes de coquu This, he thinks, will sufficiently account for our author's cuckoo-buds, by which he supposes conslip-buds to be meant. STEEVENS. Cuckoo, cuckoo,-O word of fear, II. When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, Mocks married men, for thus sings he, Cuckoo, cuckoo,-O word of fear, III. Winter. When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And milk comes frozen home in pail, Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. [6] i. e. from the eaves of the thatch or other roofing, from which in the morning icicles are found depending in great abundance, after a night of frost. Our author (whose images are all taken from nature) has alluded in The Tempest, to the drops of water that after rain flow from such coverings, in their natural unfrozen stato. "His tears run down his beard, like winter's drops · "From eaves of reeds." MALONE. [7] So, in King Henry VI. Part III: "What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails, MALONE. [8] This word is yet used in Ireland, and signifies to scum the pot. GOLDSMITH. Keel the pot, i. e. cool the pot: "The thing is, they mix their thicking of oatmeal and water, which they call blending the litting (or lithing,) and put it in the pot, when they set it on, because when the meat, pudding and turnips are all in, they cannot so well mix it, but 'tis apt to go into lumps; yet this method of theirs renders the pot liable to boil over at the first rising, and every subsequent increase of the fire; to prevent which it becomes necessary for one to attend to cool it occasionally, by lading it up frequently with a ladle, which they call keeling the pot, and is indeed a greasy office." Gent. Mag. 1760. This account seems to be accurate. RITSON. To keel signifies to cool in general, without any reference to the kitchen. Mr. Lambe observes, in his notes on the ancient metrical History of The Battle of Floddon, that it is a common thing in the North" for a maid servant to take out of |