CLAUD. O, ay:-Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits. [Aside to PEDRO.] I did never think that lady would have loved any man. LEON. No, nor I neither; but most wonderful, that she should so dote on signior Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviours seemed ever to abhor. BENE. Is't possible? Sits the wind in that corner? [Aside. LEON. By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think of it; but that she loves him with an • Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits.] This is an allusion to the stalking-horse; a horse either real or factitious, by which the fowler anciently sheltered himself from the sight of the game. So, in The Honest Lawyer, 1616: "Lye there, thou happy warranted case "Of any villain. Thou hast been my stalking-horse Again, in the 25th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion: "One underneath his horse to get a shoot doth stalk." Again, in his Muses' Elysium: "Then underneath my horse, I stalk my game to strike." STEEVENS. 'Again, in New Shreds of the Old Snare, by John Gee, quarto, p. 23: "Methinks I behold the cunning fowler, such as I have knowne in the fenne countries and els-where, that doe shoot at woodcockes, snipes, and wilde fowle, by sneaking behind a painted cloth which they carrey before them, having pictured in it the shape of a horse; which while the silly fowle gazeth on, it is knockt down with hale shot, and so put in the fowler's budget." REED. A stalking-bull, with a cloth thrown over him, was sometimes used for deceiving the game; as may be seen from a very elegant cut in Loniceri Venatus et Aucupium. Francofurti, 1582, 4to. and from a print by F. Valeggio, with the motto "Veste boves operit, dum sturnos fallit edaces.” enraged affection,-it is past the infinite of thought.' 1. D. PEDRO. May be, she doth but counterfeit. CLAUD. 'Faith, like enough. LEON. O God! counterfeit! There never was but that she loves him with an enraged affection,-it is past the infinite of thought.] It is impossible to make sense and grammar of this speech. And the reason is, that the two beginnings of two different sentences are jumbled together and made one. For-but that she loves him with an enraged affection, is only part of a sentence, which should conclude thus,is most certain. But a new idea striking the speaker, he leaves his sentence unfinished, and turns to another,It is past the infinite of thought,-which is likewise left unfinished; for it should conclude thus-to say how great that affection is. Those broken disjointed sentences are usual in conversation. However, there is one word wrong, which yet perplexes the sense; and that is infinite. Human thought cannot surely be called infinite with any kind of figurative propriety. I suppose the true reading was definite. This makes the passage intelligible. It is past the definite of thought,-i. e. it cannot be defined or conceived how great that affection is. Shakspeare uses the word again in the same sense in Cymbeline: "For ideots, in this case of favour, would i. e. could tell how to pronounce or determine in the case. WARBURTON. Here are difficulties raised only to show how easily they can be removed. The plain sense is, I know not what to think otherwise, but that she loves him with an enraged affection: It (this affection) is past the infinite of thought. Here are no abrupt stops, or imperfect sentences. Infinite may well enough stand; it is used by more careful writers for indefinite: and the speaker only means, that thought, though in itself unbounded, cannot reach or estimate the degree of her passion. JOHNSON. The meaning, I think, is,—but with what an enraged affection she loves him, it is beyond the power of thought to conceive. Shakspeare has a similar expression in King John: "Beyond the infinite and boundless reach "Of mercy-." STEEVENS. MALONE. counterfeit of passion came so near the life of passion, as she discovers it. D. PEDRO. Why, what effects of passion shows she? CLAUD. Bait the hook well; this fish will bite. [Aside. LEON. What effects, my lord! She will sit you,You heard my daughter tell you how. CLAUD. She did, indeed. D. PEDRO. How, how, I pray you? You amaze me: I would have thought her spirit had been invincible against all assaults of affection. LEON. I would have sworn it had, my lord; especially against Benedick. BENE. [Aside.] I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it: knavery cannot, sure, hide itself in such reverence. CLAUD. He hath ta'en the infection; hold it up. [Aside. D. PEDRO. Hath she made her affection known to Benedick? LEON. No; and swears she never will: that's her torment. CLAUD. 'Tis true, indeed; so your daughter says: Shall I, says she, that have so oft encountered him with scorn, write to him that I love him? LEON. This says she now when she is beginning to write to him: for she'll be up twenty times a night; and there will she sit in her smock, till she have writ a sheet of paper: 2-my daughter tells us all. 2 This says she now when she is beginning to write to him: for she'll be up twenty times a night; and there will she sit in CLAUD. Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty jest your daughter told us of. LEON. O!-When she had writ it, and was reading it over, she found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet? CLAUD. That. LEON. O! she tore the letter into a thousand her smock, till she have writ a sheet of paper:] Shakspeare has more than once availed himself of such incidents as occurred to him from history, &c. to compliment the princes before whom his pieces were performed. A striking instance of flattery to James occurs in Macbeth; perhaps the passage here quoted was not less grateful to Elizabeth, as it apparently alludes to an extraordinary trait in one of the letters pretended to have been written by the hated Mary to Bothwell: "I am nakit, and ganging to sleep, and zit I cease not to scribble all this paper, in so meikle as rest is thairof." That is, I am naked, and going to sleep, and yet I cease not to scribble to the end of my paper, much as there remains of it unwritten on. HENLEY. Mr. Henley's observation must fall to the ground; the word in every edition of Mary's letter which Shakspeare could possibly have seen, being irkit, not nakit. The French version (as Mr. Whitaker observes in his Vindication of this unfortunate Princess, 2d edit. Vol. I. p. 522, &c.) "we know to talk egregious nonsense at times. It even mistakes irkit for nakit; strips the delicate Queen in the month of January, and at the hour of midnight; and keeps her in this situation toute nuë,' without even the cover of a smock upon her, writing a long letter to her lover." Irkit, Scotch, is likewise rendered " nudatæ," by the Latin translator. "I am irkit" means, I am vexed, uneasy. So, in Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella: "And is even irkt that so sweete comedie "By such unsuted speech should hindred be." Again, in As you like it: "And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools," &c. Again, in King Henry VI: "It irks his heart he cannot be reveng'd." STEEVENS. half-pence; railed at herself, that she should be so immodest to write to one that she knew would flout her I measure him, says she, by my own spirit; for I should flout him, if he writ to me; yea, though I love him, I should. CLAUD. Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses ;-O sweet Benedick! God give me patience! LEON. She doth indeed; my daughter says so: and the ecstasy1 hath so much overborne her, that my daughter is sometime afraid she will do a desperate outrage to herself; It is very true. D. PEDRO. It were good, that Benedick knew of it by some other, if she will not discover it. CLAUD. To what end? He would but make a sport of it, and torment the poor lady worse. D. PEDRO. An he should, it were an alms to 3 O! she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence ;] i. e. into a thousand pieces of the same bigness. So, in As you like it: they were all like one another, as halfpence are. 66 THEOBALD. A farthing, and perhaps a halfpenny, was used to signify any small particle or division. So, in the character of the Prioress in Chaucer : "That in hirre cuppe was no ferthing sene See Mortimeriados, by Michael Drayton, 4to. 1596: MALONE. and the ecstasy-] i e. alienation of mind. So, in The Tempest, Act III. sc. iii: "Hinder them from what this eestasy may now provoke them to." STEEVENS. |