Full merrily the humble-bee doth fing, Till he hath loft his honey, and his fting: And being once fubdu'd in armed tail, Sweet honey and fweet notes together fail.Good traders in the flesh, fet this in your painted cloths. As many as be here of pander's hall, Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar's fall: Till 3 Some galled goofe of Winchester-] The publick ftews were anciently under the jurifdiction of the bishop of Winchester. POPE. Mr. Pope's explanation may be fupported by the following paffage in one of the old plays of which my negligence has lost the title: "Collier! how came the goofe to be put upon you? "I'll tell thee: The term lying at Winchester in Henry the Third's days, and many French women coming out of the Ine of Wight thither, &c. there were many punks in the town," &c. A particular fymptom in the lues venerea was called a Winchester goofe. So, in Chapman's comedy of Monfieur D'Olive, 1606: "-the famous fchool of England call'd Winchester, famous, I mean, for the goofe," &c. Again, Ben Jonfon, in his poem called, An Execration on Vulcan : this a sparkle of that fire let loose, "That was lock'd up in the Winchestrian goofe, "Bred on the Bank in time of popery, "When Venus there maintain'd her mystery." In an ancient fatire called Cocke Lorelles Bote, bl. 1. printed by Wynkyn de Worde, no date, is the following list of the different refidences of harlots: "There came fuch a wynde fro Winchester, "That blewe these women over the ryver, "In wherye, as I wyll you tell : "Some at faynt Kateryns ftroke agrounde, "Some at faynt Gyles I trowe : "Alfo in Ave Maria Aly, and at Weftmenfier; VOL. VIII. X "And Till then, I'll fweat, and feek about for eases; "And fome in Shoredyche drewe theder, "With grete lamentacyon; "And by cause they have loft that fayre place, "They wyll bylde at Colman bedge in space," &c. Hence the old proverbial fimile, "As common as Coleman Hedge:" now Coleman-freet. STEEVENS. Some galled Winchester goofe may mean, either a ftrumpet that had the venereal difeafe, or one that felt herself hurt by what Pandarus had faid. It is probable that the word was purposely used to express both these fenfes. MASON. 4 This play is more correctly written than most of Shakspeare's compofitions, but it is not one of thofe in which either the extent of his views or elevation of his fancy is fully difplayed. As the story abounded with materials, he has exerted little invention; but he has diverfified his characters with great variety, and preserved them with great exactnefs. His vicious characters fometimes difguft, but cannot corrupt, for both Creffida and Pandarus are detefted and contemned. The comick characters feem to have been the favourites of the writer; they are of the fuperficial kind, and exhibit more of manners than nature; but they are copioufly filled and powerfully impreffed. Shakfpeare has in his ftory followed, for the greater part, the old book of Caxton, which was then very popular; but the character of Therfites, of which it makes no mention, is a proof that this play was written after Chapman had published his verfion of Homer. JOHNSON. The first feven books of Chapman's Homer were published in the year 1596, and again in 1598. They were dedicated as follows: To be moft bonoured now living inftance of the Achilleian virtues eternized by divine Homere, the Earle of Effexe, Earl Marshall, &c. and an anonymous Interlude, called THERSYTES bis Humours and Conceits, had been published in 1598. STEEVENS. The interlude of Therfites was, I believe, published long before 1598. That date was one of the numerous forgeries of Chetwood the Prompter, as well as the addition to the title of the piece,-"Ther. fites bis bumours and conceits ;" for no fuch words are found in the catalogue published in 1671, by Kirkman, who appears to have seen kt. MALONE. There are more hard, bombastical phrases in the serious part of this play, than, I believe, can be picked out of any other fix Plays of ShakSpeare. Take the following fpecimens :—Tortive,—persistive,—pro tractive, importless, infifture,deracinate, dividable. And in the nextAct, paft-proportion,-unrefpective, propugnation,-felf-affumption-felf-admiffion,—assubjugate,—kingdom'd, &c. TYR WHITT. 1 -Perfons Represented. Cymbeline, king of Britain. Cloten, fon to the queen by a former husband. Guiderius,difguifed under the names of Polydore and Italians. A French Gentleman, friend to Philario. Cornelius, a Phyfician. Two Gentlemen. Two Gaolers. Queen, wife to Cymbeline. Imogen, daughter to Cymbeline by a former queen. Lords, Ladies, Roman Senators, Tribunes, Apparitions, SCENE, fometimes in Britain; fometimes in Italy. ACT I. SCENE I. Britain. The Garden behind Cymbeline's Palace. Enter two Gentlemen. 1. Gent. You do not meet a man, but frowns: our No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers; 1 Mr. Pope fuppofed the ftory of this play to have been borrowed from a novel of Boccace; but he was mistaken, as an imitation of it is found in an old ftory-book entitled, Weftward for Smelts. This imitation differs in as many particulars from the Italian novelist, as from Shakspeare, though they concur in the more confiderable parts of the fable. It was published in a quarto pamphlet 7603. This is the only copy of it which I have hitherto feen. There is a late entry of it in the books of the Stationers' Company, Jan. 1619, where it is faid to have been written by Kitt of King fon. STEEVENS. The tale in Weftward for Smelts which I published fome years ago, I fhall fubjoin to this play. The only part of the fable, however, which can be pronounced with certainty to be drawn from thence, is, Imogen's wandering about after Pifanio has left her in the foreft; her being almost famished; and being taken, at a subsequent period, into the fervice of the Roman General as a page. The general scheme of Cymbeline is, in my opinion, formed on Boccace's novel (Day 2, Nov. 9.) and Shakspeare has taken a circumftance from it, that is not mentioned in the other tale. See p. 364, n. 6. It appears from the preface to the old tranflation of the Decamerone, printed in 1620, that many of the novels had before received an English drefs, and had been printed feparately: "I know, moft worthy lord, (fays the printer in his Epiftle Dedicatory) that many of them [the novels of Boccace] bave long fince been published before, as stolen from the original authour, and yet not beautified with his fweete ftyle and elocution of phiale, neither favouring of his fingular morall applications." Cymbeline, I imagine, was written in the year 1605. See An Attempt to afcertain the order of Shakspeare's plays, Vol. I. The king from whom the play takes its title began his reign, according to Holinfhed, in the 19th year of the reign of Auguftus Cæfar; and the play commences in or about the twenty-fourth year of Cymbeline's reign, which was the forty-fecond year of the reign of Augustus, and the fixteenth of the Chriftian æra: notwithstanding which Shakspeare has peopled Rome with modern Italians; Philario, Iachimo, &c. Cymbeline is faid to have reigned thirty-five years, leaving at his death two fons, Guiderius and Arviragus. MALONE. X 3 Still |