DIA.

Mine honour's such a ring:

My chastity's the jewel of our house,
Bequeathed down from many ancestors;
Which were the greatest obloquy i'the world
In me to lose: Thus your own proper wisdom
Brings in the champion honour on my part,
Against your vain assault.

BER.

Here, take my ring:" My house, mine honour, yea, my life be thine, And I'll be bid by thee.

DIA. When midnight comes, knock at my chamber window;

I'll order take, my mother shall not hear.
Now will I charge you in the band of truth,
When you have conquer'd my yet maiden bed,
Remain there but an hour, nor speak to me:
My reasons are most strong; and you shall know
them,

When back again this ring shall be deliver❜d:
And on your finger, in the night, I'll put
Another ring; that, what in time proceeds,
May token to the future our past deeds.
Adieu, till then; then, fail not: You have won
A wife of me, though there my hope be done.

BER. A heaven on earth I have won, by wooing

thee.

[Exit.

DIA. For which live long to thank both heaven and me!

You may so in the end.

My mother told me just how he would woo,
As if she sat in his heart; she says, all men
Have the like oaths: he had sworn to marry me,
When his wife's dead; therefore I'll lie with him,

3

When I am buried. Since Frenchmen are so braid,
Marry that will, I'll live and die a maid:
Only, in this disguise, I think't no sin
To cozen him, that would unjustly win.

[Exit.

Marry that will, I'll live and die a maid:] Braid signifies crafty or deceitful. So, in Greene's Never too late, 1616: "Dian rose with all her maids,

66

Blushing thus at love his braids."

Chaucer uses the word in the same sense; but as the passage where it occurs in his Troilus and Cressida is contested, it may be necessary to observe, that Bred is an Anglo-Saxon word, signifying fraus, astus. Again, in Thomas Drant's translation of Horace's Epistles, where its import is not very clear:

66

Professing thee a friend, to plaie the ribbalde at a brade."

In The Romaunt of the Rose, v. 1336, braid seems to mean forthwith, or, at a jerk. There is nothing to answer it in the French, except tantost.

In the ancient song of Lytyl Thanke, (MS. Cotton, Titus A. xxvi.) "at a brayd" undoubtedly signifies at once, on a sudden, in the instant:

"But in come ffrankelyn at a brayd." STEEVENS.

SCENE III.

The Florentine Camp.

Enter the two French Lords, and two or three Soldiers.

1 LORD. You have not given him his mother's letter?

2 LORD. I have delivered it an hour since: there is something in't that stings his nature; for, on the reading it, he changed almost into another man.

1 LORD. He has much worthy blame laid upon

1 Lord.] The latter editors have with great liberality bestowed lordship upon these interlocutors, who, in the original edition, are called, with more propriety, capt. E. and capt. G. It is true that captain E. in a former scene is called lord E. but the subordination in which they seem to act, and the timorous manner in which they converse, determines them to be only captains. Yet as the latter readers of Shakspeare have been used to find them lords, I have not thought it worth while to degrade them in the margin. JOHNSON.

These two personages may be supposed to be two young French Lords serving in the Florentine camp, where they now appear in their military capacity. In the first scene, where the two French lords are introduced, taking leave of the king, they are called in the original edition, Lord E. and Lord G.

G. and E. were, I believe, only put to denote the players who performed these characters. In the list of actors prefixed to the first folio, I find the names of Gilburne and Ecclestone, to whom these insignificant parts probably fell. Perhaps, however, these performers first represented the French Lords, and afterwards two captains in the Florentine army; and hence the confusion of the old copy. In the first scene of this Act, one of these captains is called throughout, 1. Lord E. The matter is of no great importance. MALONE.

him, for shaking off so good a wife, and so sweet a lady.

2 LORD. Especially he hath incurred the everlasting displeasure of the king, who had even tuned his bounty to sing happiness to him. I will tell you a thing, but you shall let it dwell darkly with

you.

1 LORD. When you have spoken it, 'tis dead, and I am the grave of it.

2 LORD. He hath perverted a young gentlewoman here in Florence, of a most chaste renown; and this night he fleshes his will in the spoil of her honour: he hath given her his monumental ring, and thinks himself made in the unchaste composition.

1 LORD. Now, God delay our rebellion; as we are ourselves, what things are we!

2 LORD. Merely our own traitors.

5

And as in

the common course of all treasons, we still see them reveal themselves, till they attain to their abhorred ends; so he, that in this action contrives against his own nobility, in his proper stream o'erflows himself.6

1 LORD. Is it not meant damnable in us," to be

till they attain to their abhorred ends;] This may mean-they are perpetually talking about the mischief they intend to do, till they have obtained an opportunity of doing it. STEEVENS.

6

-in his proper stream o'erflows himself.] That is, betrays his own secrets in his own talk. The reply shows that this is the meaning. JOHNSON.

"Is it not meant damnable in us,] I once thought that we ought to read-Is it not most damnable; but no change is necessary. Adjectives are often used as adverbs by our author and his contemporaries. So, in The Winter's Tale:

trumpeters of our unlawful intents? We shall not then have his company to-night?

2 LORD. Not till after midnight; for he is dieted to his hour.

1 LORD. That approaches apace: I would gladly have him see his company anatomized; that he might take a measure of his own judgments, wherein so curiously he had set this counterfeit."

2 LORD. We will not meddle with him till he come; for his presence must be the whip of the other.

1 LORD. In the mean time, what hear you of these wars?

2 LORD. I hear, there is an overture of peace. 1 LORD. Nay, I assure you, a peace concluded.

"That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant,
"And damnable ungrateful.”

Again, in Twelfth-Night: "—and as thou drawest, swear horrible-"

Again, in The Merry Wives of Windsor:

"Let the supposed fairies pinch him sound.”

Again, in Massinger's Very Woman:

"I'll beat thee damnable." MALONE.

Mr. M. Mason wishes to read-mean and damnable.

8

STEEVENS.

his company-] i. e. his companion. It is so used in King Henry V. MALONE.

9

·he might take a measure of his own judgments,] This is a very just and moral reason. Bertram, by finding how erroneously he has judged, will be less confident, and more easily moved by admonition. JOHNSON.

wherein so curiously he had set this counterfeit.] Parolles is the person whom they are going to anatomize. Counterfeit, besides its ordinary signification,-[a person pretending to be what he is not,] signified also in our author's time a false coin, and a picture. The word set shows that it is here used in the first and the last of these senses. MALONE.