I say, at once let your brief plagues be mercy, And linger not our sure destructions on! ENE. My lord, you do discomfort all the host. TRO. You understand me not, that tell me so: I do not speak of flight, of fear, of death; But dare all imminence, that gods and men Address their dangers in. Hector is Hector is gone! Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba? Let him, that will a screech-owl aye be call'd, Go in to Troy, and say there-Hector's dead: There is a word will Priam turn to stone; Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives," Cold statues of the youth; and, in a word, Scare Troy out of itself. But, march, away: Hector is dead; there is no more to say. Stay yet;-You vile abominable tents, Thus proudly pight upon our Phrygian plains, Lord shall have them in derision." Ps. ii. 4. "The Lord shall laugh him to scorn; for he hath seen that his day is coming.' Ps. xxxvii. 13. In the passage before us, (he adds,)" the heavens are the ministers of the Gods to execute their vengeance, and they are bid to frown on; but the Gods themselves smile at Troy; they hold Troy in derision, for its day is coming." MALONE. * Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives,] I adopt the conjecture of a deceased friend, who would read-welland, i. e. weeping Niobes. The Saxon termination of the participle in and, for ing, is common in our old poets, and often corrupted at the press. So, in Spenser : "His glitterand armour shined far away." Where the common editions have-glitter and. WHALLEY. 8 There is surely no need of emendation. STEEVENS. • Cold-] The old copy-Coole. STEEVENS. 9-pight-] i. e. pitched, fixed. The obsolete preterite and participle passive of to pitch. So, Spenser: "Then brought she me into this desert vast, STEEVENS. Let Titan rise as early as he dare, I'll through and through you!-And thou, greatsiz'd coward! No space of earth shall sunder our two hates; [Exeunt ÆNEAS and Trojans. AS TROILUS is going out, enter, from the other side, PANDARUS. TRO. Hence, broker lackey!2 ignomy and shame3 Pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name! 1 with comfort go: [Exit TROILUS. Hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe.] This couplet affords a full and natural close of the play; and though I once thought differently, I must now declare my firm belief that Shakspeare designed it should end here, and that what follows is either a subsequent and injudicious restoration from the elder drama, mentioned in p. 223, or the nonsense of some wretched buffoon, who represented Pandarus. When the hero of the scene was not only alive, but on the stage, our author would scarce have trusted the conclusion of his piece to a subordinate character, whom he had uniformly held up to detestation. It is still less probable that he should have wound up his story with a stupid outrage to decency, and a deliberate insult on his audience. But in several other parts of this drama I cannot persuade myself that I have been reading Shakspeare. As evident an interpolation is pointed out at the end of Twelfth-Night. See Vol. V. p. 419. STEEVENS. Hence, broker lackey!] Thus the quarto and folio. For broker the editor of the second folio substituted brother, which, in the third, was changed to brothel. PAN. Agoodly med' cine for my aching bones !--O world! world! world! thus is the poor agent despised! O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a' work, and how ill requited! Why should our endeavour be so loved, and the performance so loathed? what verse for it? what instance for it?Let me see: Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing, Till he hath lost his honey, and his sting: And being once subdued in armed tail, Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail.Good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted cloths.5 As many as be here of pander's hall, It should be now, but that my fear is this,- Broker, in our author's time, signified a bawd of either sex, So, in King John: "This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word," &c. See Vol. X. p. 408, n. 9. MALone. 3 -ignomy and shame-] Ignomy was used, in our author's time, for ignominy. See Vol. XI. p. 426, n. 9. 5 -loved,] Quarto; desir'd, folio. JOHNSON. MALONE. -set this in your painted cloths.] i. e. the painted canvas with which your rooms are hung. See Vol. VIII. p. 103, n. 8. STEEVENS. Some galled goose of Winchester-] The publick stews were anciently under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester. POPE. Till then I'll sweat," and seek about for eases; [Exit.s Mr. Pope's explanation may be supported by the following passage in one of the old plays, of which my negligence has lost the title: "Collier! how came the goose 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 Isle of Wight thither, &c. there were many punks in the town," &c. A particular symptom in the lues venerea was called a Winchester goose. So, in Chapman's comedy of Monsieur D'Olive, 1606: the famous school of England call'd Winchester, famous I mean for the goose," &c. Again, Ben Jonson, in his poem called An Execration on Vulcan: 66 this a sparkle of that fire let loose, "That was lock'd up in the Winchestrian goose, "When Venus there maintain'd her mystery." In an ancient satire, called Cocke Lorelles Bote, bl. 1. printed by Wynkyn de Worde, no date, is the following list of the different residences of harlots: "There came such a wynd fro Winchester, "That blewe these women over the ryver, "In wherye, as I wyll you tell: "Some at saynt Kateryns stroke agrounde, "And many in Holborne were founde, "Some at sainte Gyles I trowe: "Also in Ave Maria Aly, and at Westmenster; "And some in Shoredyche drewe theder, "With grete lamentacyon; "And by cause they have lost that fayre place, "They wyll bylde at Colman hedge in space," &c. Hence the old proverbial simile-" As common as Coleman Hedge:" now Coleman Street. STEEVENS. As the publick stews were under the controul of the Bishop of Winchester, a strumpet was called a Winchester goose, and a galled Winchester goose may mean, either a strumpet that had the venereal disease, or one that felt herself hurt by what Pandarus had said. It is probable that the word was purposely used to express both these senses. It does not appear to me, from the passage cited by Steevens, that any symptom of the venereal disease was called a Winchester goose.” M. MASON. Cole, in his Latin Dict. 1669, renders a Winchester goose by pudendagra. MALONE. There are more hard bombastical phrases in the serious part of this play, than, I believe, can be picked out of any other six plays of Shakspeare. Take the following specimens: Tortive,persistive,-protractive,-importless,-insisture,-deracinate,dividable. And in the next Act: Past-proportion,-unrespective, propugnation,-self-assumption,-self-admission,-assubjugate,-kingdom'd, &c. TYRWHITT. 7 I'll sweat,] i. e. adopt the regimen then used for curing what Pistol calls "the malady of France." Thus, says the Bawd, in Measure for Measure: " what with the sweat, See note on Timon of Athens, &c. I am custom-shrunk." Act IV. sc. iii. STEEVENS. 7 This play is more correctly written than most of Shakspeare's compositions, but it is not one of those in which either the extent of his views or elevation of his fancy is fully displayed. As the story abounded with materials, he has exerted little invention; but he has diversified his characters with great variety, and preserved them with great exactness. His vicious characters disgust, but cannot corrupt, for both Cressida and Pandarus are detested and contemned. The comick characters seem to have been the favourites of the writer; they are of the superficial kind, and exhibit more of manners than nature; but they are copiously filled and powerfully impressed. Shakspeare has in his story followed, for the greater part, the old book of Caxton, which was then very popular; but the character of Thersites, of which it makes no mention, is a proof that this play was written after Chapman had published his version of Homer. JOHNSON. The first seven Books of Chapman's Homer were published in the year 1596, and again in 1598. They were dedicated as follows: To the most honoured now living instance of the Achilleian virtues eternized by divine Homere, the Earle of Essexe, Earl Marshall, &c. The whole twenty-four Books of the Iliad appeared in 1611. An anonymous interlude, called THERSYTES his Humours and Conceits, had been published in 1598. Puttenham also, in his Arte of Englishe Poesie, 1589, p. 35, makes mention of "Thersites the glorious Noddie" &c. STEEVENS. The interlude of Thersites was, I believe, published long before 1598. That date was one of the numerous forgeries of 21 VOL. XV. |