1

If ever he go alone again, I'll never wrestle for
prize more: And so, God keep your worship!
[Exit.

OLI. Farewell good Charles. Now will I stir this gamester I hope, I shall fee an end of him; for my foul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than he. Yet he's gentle; never school'd, and yet learned; full of noble device; of all forts + enchantingly beloved; and, indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprised: but it shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all: nothing remains, but that I kindle the boy thither, which now I'll go about.

SCENE II.

A Lawn before the Duke's Palace.
Enter ROSALIND and CELIA

[Exit.

CEL. I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry. Ros. Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of; and would you yet I were merrier?

3

- this gamester:] Gamefter, in the present instance, and fome others, does not fignify a man viciously addicted to games of chance, but a frolicksome person. Thus, in King Henry VIII:

"You are a merry gamefter, my lord Sands." STEEVENS. of all forts-] Sorts in this place means ranks and degrees of men. RITSON.

4

skindle the boy thither, A fimilar phrase occurs in Macbeth, Act I. fc. iii:

6

- enkindle you unto the crown." STEEVENS.

I were merrier?] I which was inadvertently omitted in

the old copy, was inferted by Mr. Pope. MALONE.

:

Unless you could teach me to forget a banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any extraordinary pleasure.

CEL. Herein, I fee, thou lovest me not with the full weight that I love thee: if my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me, I could have taught my love to take thy father for mine; fo would'st thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteoufly temper'd as mine is to thee.

Ros. Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to rejoice in yours.

CEL. You know, my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to have; and, truly, when he dies, thou shalt be his heir: for what he hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render thee again in affection; by mine honour, I will; and when I break that oath, let me turn monster: therefore, my sweet Rose, my dear Rose, be

merry.

Ros. From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports: let me fee; What think you of falling in love?

CEL. Marry, I pry'thee, do, to make sport withal: but love no man in good earnest; nor no further in sport neither, than with safety of a pure blush thou may'st in honour come off again.

Ros. What shall be our sport then?

CEL. Let us fit and mock the good housewife, Fortune, from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.

7

mock the good housewife, Fortune, from her wheel,] The wheel of Fortune is not the wheel of a housewife. Shakspeare has confounded Fortune, whose wheel only figures uncertainty and Ros. I would, we could do fo; for her benefits are mightily misplaced: and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women.

CEL. 'Tis true: for those, that she makes fair, she scarce makes honeft; and those, that she makes honest, she makes very ill-favour'dly.

Ros. Nay, now thou goeft from fortune's office to nature's: fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of nature.

Enter TOUCHSTONE.

CEL. NO? When nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by fortune fall into the fire?Though nature hath given us wit to flout at fortune, hath not fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument?

Ros. Indeed, there is fortune too hard for nature; when fortune makes nature's natural the cutter off of nature's wit.

CEL. Peradventure, this is not fortune's work neither, but nature's; who perceiving our natural wits too dull to reason of fuch goddesses, hath sent this natural for our whetstone: 8 for always the dulnefs of the fool is the whetstone of the wits. - How now, wit? whither wander you?

viciffitude, with the destiny that spins the thread of life, though not indeed with a wheel. JOHNSON.

Shakspeare is very fond of this idea. He has the same in Antony and Cleopatra:

and rail so high,

"That the false housewife, Fortune, break her wheel." STEEVENS.

8 who perceiving our natural wits too dull to reason of fuch goddeffes, bath fent, &c.] The old copy reads" perceiveth-." Mr. Malone retains the old reading, but adds" and hath fent," &C. STEEVENS.

TOUCH. Mistress, you must come away to your father.

CEL. Were you made the messenger?

TOUCH. No, by mine honour; but I was bid to come for you.

Ros. Where learned you that oath, fool?

Touch. Of a certain knight, that swore by his honour they were good pancakes, and swore by his honou. the mustard was naught: now, I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught, and the mustard was good; and yet was not the knight forsworn.

CEL. How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge?

Ros. Ay, marry; now unmuzzle your wisdom. TOUCH. Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave. CEL. By our beards, if we had them, thou art. Touch. By my knavery, if I had it, then I were : but if you swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn: no more was this knight, swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away, before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard.

CEL. Pr'ythee, who is't that thou mean'st? TOUCH. One that old Frederick, your father, loves. CEL. My father's love is enough to honour him.

9 Touch. One that old Frederick, your father, loves.

Rof. My father's love is enough to honour him.] This reply to the Clown is in all the books placed to Rosalind; but Frederick was not her father, but Celia's: I have therefore ventured to prefix the name of Celia. There is no countenance from any passage in the play, or from the Dramatis Perfonæ, to imagine, that both the Brother-Dukes were namesakes; and one called the Old, and the other the Younger-Frederick; and without some such authority, it would make confufion to suppose it. THEOBALD.

Enough! speak no more of him; you'll be whip'd for taxation, one of these days.

2

TOUCH. The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely, what wife men do foolishly.

CEL. By my troth, thou say'st true: for fince the little wit, that fools have, was filenced, the

Mr. Theobald feems not to know that the Dramatis Perfonce were first enumerated by Rowe. JOHNSON.

Frederick is here clearly a mistake, as appears by the answer of Rosalind, to whom Touchstone addresses himself, though the question was put to him by Celia. I suppose some abbreviation was used in the MS. for the name of the rightful, or old duke, as he is called, [perhaps Fer. for Ferdinand, which the tranfcriber or printer converted into Frederick. Fernardyne is one of the perfons introduced in the novel on which this comedy is founded. Mr. Theobald folves the difficulty by giving the next speech to Celia, inftead of Rosalind; but there is too much of filial warmth in it for Celia: befides, why should her father be called old Frederick? It appears from the last scene of this play that this was the name of the younger brother. MALONE.

Mr. Malone's remark may be just; and yet I think the speech which is still left in the mouth of Celia, exhibits as much tenderness for the fool, as respect for her own father. She stops Touchstone, who might otherwise have proceeded to say what the could not hear without inflicting punishment on the speaker. Old is an unmeaning term of familiarity. It is still in use, and has no reference to age. The Duke in Measure for Measure is called by Lucia "the old fantastical Duke," &C. STEEVENS.

2

you'll be whip'd for taxation,] This was the discipline ufually inflicted upon fools. Brantome informs us that Legat, fool to Elizabeth of France, having offended her with some indelicate speech, "fut bien föuetté à la cuisine pour ces paroles." A representation of this ceremony may be seen in a cut prefixed to B. II. ch. c. of the German Petrarch already mentioned in Vol. V. p. 44. DOUCE.

Taxation is cenfure, or fatire. So, in Much ado about Nothing: "Niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much; but he'll be meet with you." Again, in the play before us :

my taxing like a wildgoose flies--." MALONE. 3-fince the little wit, that fools have, was filenced,] Shak-. speare probably alludes to the use of fools or jesters, who for fome ages had been allowed in all courts an unbridled liberty of cenfure and mockery, and about this time began to be less tolerated.

JOHNSON.