I cannot help suspecting that we should read: "Nay, tis no matter what be leges in Latin, if this be not a lawful cause for me to leave his service. Look you, sir." That is, 'Tis no matter what is law, if this be not a lawful cause, &c. TYRWHITT. 299. -knock me soundly ?] Shakspere seems to design a ridicule on this clipt and ungrammatical phraseology; which yet he has introduced in Othello: "I pray talk me of Cassio." 309. Where small experience grows. STEEVENS. But, in a few,] In a few, means the same as in short, in few words. So, in King Henry IV. Part II. JOHNSON. "In few;-his death, whose spirit lent a fire," &c. STEEVENS. 325. (As wealth is burthen of my wooing dance)] The burthen of a dance is an expression which I have never heard; the burthen of his wooing song had been more proper. JOHNSON. 326. Be she as foul as was Florentius' love,] I suppose this alludes to the story of a Florentine, which is met with in an old book, called, A Thousand Notable Things, and perhaps in other Collections. "He was ravished over-night with the lustre of jewels, and was mad till the marriage was solemnized; but next morning, viewing his lady before she was so gorgeously trim'd up-she was such a leane, yellow, rivell'd, deform'd creature, that he never lived with her afterwards." FARMER. The The allusion is to a story told by Gower in the first book De Confessione Amantis. Florent is the name of a knight who had bound himself to marry a deformed hag, provided she taught him the solution of a riddle on which his life depended. The following is the inscription of her : "Florent his wofull heed up lifte, "And saw this vecke, where that she sit, "That ever man caste on his eye: "Hir nose baas, hir browes hie, Hir front was narowe, hir lockes hore, "She loketh foorth as doth a more : "Hir neck is shorte, hir shulders courbe, " And shortly to describe hir all, "But like unto the woll sacke:" &c. "Though she be the fouleste of all," &c. This story might have been borrowed by Gower from an older narrative in the Gesta Romanorum. Cij See the the Introductory Discourse to the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, vol. iv. p. 153. STEEVENS. 330. Affections edge in me,] Petruchio says, that, if a girl has money enough, no bad qualities of mind or body will remove affection's edge; i. e. hinder him from liking her. JOHNSON. 336. aglet] the tag of a point. So, in the Spanish Tragedy, 1605: "And all those stars that gaze upon her face, An aglet-baby was a small image or head cut on the tag of a point, or lace. That such figures were sometime appended to them, Dr. Warburton has proved, in a former note, by a passage in Mezeray, the French Historian:-"portant même sur les aiguilletes [points] des petites têtes de mort." MALONE. 338. ―as many diseases as two and fifty horses.] I suspect this passage to be corrupt, though I know not well how to rectify it-The fifty diseases of a horse seem to have been proverbial. So, in The Yorkshire Tragedy, 1608: "O stumbling jade? the spavin o'ertake thee! the fifty diseases stop thee!" MALONE. 368. an he begin once, he'll rail in his rope-tricks.] This is obscure, Sir Thomas Hanmer reads, he'll rail in his rhetorick; I'll tell y l you, &c. Rhetorick agrees very well with figure in the succeeding part of the speech, yet I am inclined to believe that rope-tricks is the true word. JOHNSON. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakspere uses ropery for roguery, roguery, and therefore certainly wrote rope-tricks. Rope-tricks we may suppose to mean tricks of which the contriver would deserve the rope. STEEVENS. Rope-tricks is certainly right.—Ropery or rope-tricks, originally signified abusive language, without any determinate idea; such language as parrots are taught to speak. So, in Hudibras: 66 -Could tell what subt'lest parrots mean, "That speak, and think contrary clean; "When they cry rope, and walk knave, walk." The following passage in Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique, 1553; shews that this was the meaning of the term; "Another good fellow in the country, being an officer and maiour of a toune, and desirous to speak like a fine learned man, having just occasion to rebuke a runnegate fellow, said after this wise in a greate heate: Thou yngram and vacation knave, if I take thee any more within the circumcision of my dampnacion, I will so corrupte thee that all vacation knaves shall take ill sample by thee." This the author in the margin calls rope-ripe chiding. So, in May-Day, a comedy by Chapman, 1611: "Lord! how you roll in your rope-ripe terms.' MALONE. 372. —that she shall have no more eyes to see withall than a cat:] The humour of this passage I do not understand. This animal is remarkable for the keenness of its sight. Probably the poet meant to have said-a cat in a bottle. Of this diversion see an açcount in Much Ado about Nothing, act i. to the note on Ciij which, 1 which, the following passages may be added from a poem called Cornu-copiæ, or Pasquill's Night-Cap, or an Antidote for the Head-Ache, 1623, p. 48. "Fairer than any stake in Grey's-inn-field, &c. "Guarded with gunners, bill-men, and a rout "Of bow-men bold, which at a cat do shoot.” Again, ibid: "Nor on the top a cat-a-mount was fram'd, "Or some wilde beast that ne'er before was tam'd; "Made at the charges of some archer stout, "To have his name canoniz'd in the clout." I did not meet with these instances till the play to which they belonged was printed off. They serve, however, to shew that it was customary to shoot at factitious as well as real cats. There are two proverbs which any reader who can, may apply to this allusion of Grumio : "Well might the cat wink when both her eyes were out." "A muffled cat was never a good hunter." The first is in Ray's Collection, the second in Kelly's. STEEVENS. It may seem, that he shall swell up her eyes with blows, till she shall seem to peep with a contracted pupil, like a cat in the light. JOHNSON. 375 in Baptista's keep] Keep is custody. The strongest part of an ancient castle was called the keep. JOHNSON. |