Ducks to the golden fool: All is oblique ; fair; Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant. Ha, you gods! why this? What this, you gods? Why this Will lug your priests and servants from your sides*; 9 "Who can come in, and say, that I mean her, MALONE. for every GRIZE of fortune-] Grize for step, or degree. POPE. See vol. xi. p. 438, n. 8. MALone. I-FANG mankind!] i. e. seize, gripe. This verb is used by Decker in his Match Me at London, 1631: 66 bite any catchpole that fangs for you." STEEVENS. -no idle votarist.] No insincere or inconstant supplicant. Gold will not serve me instead of roots. JOHNSON. 2 3 you CLEAR HEAVENS!] This may mean either ye cloudless skies, or ye deities exempt from guilt. Shakspeare mentions the clearest gods in King Lear; and in Acolastus, a comedy, 1540, a stranger is thus addressed: "Good stranger or alyen, clere gest," &c. Again, in The Rape of Lucrece : "Than Collatine again by Lucrece' side, "In his clear bed might have reposed still." i. e. his uncontaminated bed. STEEVENS. --Why this Will lug your priests and servants from your sides;] Aristophanes, in his Plutus, Act V. Sc. II. makes the priest of Jupiter desert his service to live with Plutus. WARBURTON. Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads": Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs'd; 5 Pluck STOUT men's pillows from below their heads ;] i. e. men who have strength yet remaining to struggle with their distemper. This alludes to an old custom of drawing away the pillow from under the heads of men in their last agonies, to make their departure the easier. But the Oxford editor, supposing stout to signify healthy, alters it to sick, and this he calls emending. WARBURTON. the foul white - the hoar leprosy -] So, in P. Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History, book xxviii. ch. xii. : " leprie called elephantiasis." STEEVENS. 7 this is it,] Some word is here wanting to the metre. We might either repeat the pronoun-this; or avail ourselves of our author's common introductory adverb, emphatically used 66 why, this it is." STEEVENS. 8 That makes the WAPPEN'D widow wed again ;] Waped or wappen'd signifies both sorrowful and terrified, either for the loss of a good husband, or by the treatment of a bad. But gold, he says, can overcome both her affection and her fears. WARBURTON. Of wappened I have found no example, nor know any meaning. To awhape is used by Spenser in his Hubberd's Tale, but I think not in either of the senses mentioned. I would read wained, for decayed by time. So, our author, in King Richard III. : 66 A beauty-waining, and distressed widow." JOHNSON. In the comedy of The Roaring Girl, by Middleton and Decker, 1611, I meet with a word very like this, which the reader will easily explain for himself, when he has seen the following pas sage: "Moll. And there you shall wap with me. "Sir B. Nay, Moll, what's that wap? "Moll. Wappening and niggling is all one, the rogue my man can tell you." Again, in Ben Jonson's Masque of Gypsies Metamorphosed : "Boarded at Tappington, "Bedded at Wappington." Again, in Martin Mark-all's Apologie to the Bel-man of London, 1610: "Niggling is company-keeping with a woman: this She, whom the spital-house, and ulcerous sores Would cast the gorge at 9, this embalms and spices word is not used now, but wapping, and thereof comes the name wapping-morts for whores." Again, in one of the Paston Letters, vol. iv. p. 417: "Deal courteously with the Queen, &c. and with Mrs. Anne Hawte for wappys," &c. Mr. Anmer observes, that "the editor of these same Letters, to wit, Sir John Fenn, (as perhaps becometh a grave man and a magistrate,) professeth not to understand this passage." It must not, however, be concealed, that Chaucer, in The Complaint of Annelida, line 217, uses the word in the sense in which Dr. Warburton explains it: My sewertye in waped countenance." Wappened, according to the quotations I have already given, would mean," The widow whose curiosity and passions had been already gratified." So, in Hamlet: "The instances that second marriage move, "Are base respects of thrift, but none of love." And if the word defunct, in Othello, be explained according to its primitive meaning, the same sentiment may be discovered there. There may, however, be some corruption in the text. After all, I had rather read-weeping widow. So, in the ancient bl. 1. ballad entitled, The Little Barley Corne: ""Twill make a weeping widow laugh, "And soon incline to pleasure." STEEVENS. The instances produced by Mr. Steevens fully support the text in my apprehension, nor do I suspect any corruption. Unwapper'd is used by Fletcher in The Two Noble Kinsmen, for fresh, the opposite of stale: and perhaps we should read there unwappen'd. Mr. Steevens's interpretation however, is, I think, not quite exact, because it appears to me likely to mislead the reader with respect to the general import of the passage. Shakspeare means not to account for the wappen'd widow's seeking a husband, (though "her curiosity has been gratified,") but for her finding one. It is her gold, says he, that induces some one (more attentive to thrift than love) to accept in marriage the hand of the experienced and o'er-worn widow.-Wed is here used for wedded. So, in The Comedy of Errors, Act I. Sc. I.: "In Syracusa was I born, and wed Again, in The Taming of the Shrew, vol. v. p. 426: Again, in The Maid's Tragedy: 66 He that understands "Whom you have wed needs not to wish you joy." To the April day again'. Come, damned earth, Thou common whore of mankind, that put'st odds If wed is used as a verb, the words mean, "that effects or produces her second marriage." MALONE. I believe, unwapper'd means undebilitated by venery, i. e. not halting under crimes many and stale. STEEVENS. Mr. Tyrwhitt explains wap'd in the line cited from Chaucer, by stupified; a sense which accords with the other instances adduced by Mr. Steevens, as well as with Shakspeare. The wappen'd widow, is one who is no longer alive to those pleasures, the desire of which was her first inducement to marry. HENLEY. I suspect that there is another error in this passage, which has escaped the notice of the editors, and that we should read"woo'd again," instead of "wed again." That a woman should wed again, however wapper'd, [or wappen'd] is nothing extraordinary. The extraordinary circumstance is, that she should be woo'd again, and become an object of desire. M. MASON. Mr. Malone's remark that wed is frequently used for wedded is one answer to Mr. Mason's objection; another is, that there must be two parties to a marriage, and that the widow could not be wedded unless she could persuade some one to wed her. BOSWELL. 9 She, whom the spital-house, and ulcerous sores 66 Or, should the first line be thought deficient in harmonyShe, at whose ulcerous sores the spital-house "Would cast the gorge up——." So, in Spenser's Fairy Queen: "And all the way, most like a brutish beast, The old reading is nonsense. I must add, that Dr. Farmer joins with me in suspecting this passage to be corrupt, and is satisfied with the emendation I have proposed. STEEVENS. In Antony and Cleopatra, we have honour and death, for honourable death. "The spital-house and ulcerous sores," therefore, may be used for the contaminated spital-house; the spitalhouse replete with ulcerous sores. If it be asked, how can the spital-house, or how can ulcerous sores, cast the gorge at the female here described, let the following passages answer the question : "Heaven stops the nose at it, and the moon winks." Othello. Among the rout of nations, I will make thee Do thy right nature 2.-[March afar off.]-Ha! a drum ?-Thou'rt quick 3, Again, in Hamlet: "Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff'd, Again, ibidem: 66 66 till our ground Singing his pate against the burning zone," &c. Again, in Julius Cæsar: "Over thy wounds now do I prophecy, 66 Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips-." Again, in The Merchant of Venice: 66 when the bag-pipe sings i' the nose.” Again, in the play before us: 66 when our vaults have wept "With drunken spilth of wine." In the preceding page, all sores are said to lay siege to nature; which they can no more do, if the passage is to be understood literally, than they can cast the gorge at the sight of the person here described.-In a word, the diction of the text is so very Shakspearian, that I cannot but wonder it should be suspected of corruption. The meaning is,-Her whom the spital-house, however polluted, would not admit, but reject with abhorrence, this embalms, &c. or, (in a looser paraphrase) Her, at the sight of whom all the patients in the spital-house, however contaminated, would sicken and turn away with loathing and abhorrence, disgusted by the view of still greater pollution, than any they had yet experience of, this embalms and spices, &c. Tocast the gorge at," was Shakspeare's phraseology. So, in Hamlet, Act V. Sc. I.: "How abhorr'd in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it." To the various examples which I have produced in support of the reading of the old copy, may be added these: "Our fortune on the sea is out of breath, "And sinks most lamentably." Antony and Cleopatra. Again, ibidem: "Mine eyes did sicken at the sight." Again, in Hamlet: "Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults." Again, ibidem: 66 we will fetters put upon this fear, "Which now goes too free-footed." Again, in Troilus and Cressida : "His evasions have ears thus long." MALONE. |