LEON. Too hot, too hot: [Afide. 9 To mingle friendship far, is mingling bloods. Art thou my boy? MAM. LEON. 2 Why, that's my bawcock. 4 What, hast smutch'd 9 thy nofe? from bounty, fertile bosom, ) I suppose that a letter dropped out at the press, and would read - from bounty's fertile bosom. MALONE. By fertile bosom, I suppose, is meant a bosom like that of the earth, which yields a spontaneous produce. In the same strain is the address of Timon of Athens: 2 "Thou comnon mother, thou, "Teems and feeds all!" STEEVENS. The mort o'the deer; ) A leffon upon the horn at the death of the deer. THEOBALD. So, in Greene's Card of Fancy, 1608: "He that bloweth the mort before the death of the buck, may very well miss of his fees." Again, in the oldest copy of Chevy Chafe: 3 " The blewe a mort uppone the bent." STEEVENS. I'fecks? A fuppofed corruption of-in faith. vulgar pronounce it-fegs. STEEVENS. 4 Our present Why, that's my bawcock. ) Perhaps from beau and coq. It is still faid in vulgar language that such a one is a jolly cock, a cock of the game. The word has already occurred in Twelfth Night, and is one of the titles by which Pistol fpeaks of K. Henry the Fifth. STEEVENS. 5 They say, it's a copy out of mine. Come, captain, We must be neat; not neat, but cleanly, captain : And yet the steer, the heifer, and the calf, Are all call'd, neat. -Still virginalling [Obferving POLIXENES and HERMIONE. Upon his palm? - How now, you wanton calf? Art thou my calf? MAM. Yes, if you will, my lord. LEON. Thou want'st a rough pash, and the shoots that I have, ' * We must be neat;] Leontes, seeing his son's nose smutch'di cries, we must be neat; then recolleting that neat is the ancient term for horned cattle, he says, not neat, but cleanly. JOHNSONa 6 So, in Drayton's Polyolbion, song 3: " His large provision there of flesh, of fowl, of neat." - STEEVENS. Still virginalling-] Still playing with her fingers, as à girl playing on the virginals. JOHNSON. A virginal, as I am informed, is a very small kind of spinnet. Queen Elizabeth's virginal-book is yet in being, and many of the leffons in it have proved so difficult, as to baffle our most expert players on the harpsichord. So, in Decker's Satiro-mastix, or the Untruffing of the Humorous, Port, 1602: " When we have husbands, we play upon them like virginal jacks, they must rife and fall to our humours, or else they'll never get any good strains of musick out of one of us." Again, in Ram-alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611: "Where be these rascals that skip and down A virginal was strung like a spinnet, and shaped like a piano forte. MALONE. Thou want'ft a rough path, and the shoots that I have, Pash (fays Sir T. Hanmer) is 'kifs. Paz. Spanish, i. e, thou want'ft a mouth made rough by a beard, to kiss with. Shoots ate branches, i. e. horns. Leontes is alluding to the ensigns of cuckoldom. A mad. brain'd boy is, however, call'd a mad pash in Cheshire. STEEVENS Thou want'st a rough pash, and the shoots that I have, in conneaion with the context, fignifies--to make thee a calf thou must 8 To be full like me: * - yet, they say, we are That will say any thing: But were they false have the tuft on thy forehead and the young horns that shoot up in it, as I have. Leontes asks the Prince: How now, you wanton calf! Art thou my calf? Mam. Yes, if you will, my lord. Leao. Thou want'st a rough pash, and the shoots that I have, To be full like me. To pash signifies to push or dash against, and frequently occurs in old writers. Thus Drayton: "They either poles their heads together pasht. " Again, in How to choose a good Wife from a bad, 1602. 4to: learn pash and knock, aud beat and mall, "Cleave pates and caputs." When in Cheshire a pash is used for a mad-brained boy, it is designed to characterize him from the wantonness of a calf that blun ders on, and runs his head against any thing. HENLEY. In Troilus and Creffida, the verb pash also occurs: 66 --waving his beam "Upon the pashed corses of the kings " Epiftrophus and Cedius." And again (as Mr. Henley on another occasion observes) in the Virgin Martyr: when the battering ram " Were fetching his career backward to pash I have lately learned that pash in Scotland signifies a head. The old reading therefore may stand. Many words, that are now used only in that country, were perhaps once common to the whole ifland of Great Britain, or at least to the northern part of England. The meaning therefore of the present paffage, I suppose, is this. You tell me (says Leontes to his fon) that you are like me; that you are my calf. I am the horned bull thou wanteft the rough head and the horns of that animal, completely to resemble your father. 4 MALONE. • To be full like me: ] Full is here as in other places, used by our author, adverbially; to be entirely like me. MALONE. • As. o'er-died blacks, ) Sir T. Hanmer understands blacks died too much, and therefore rotten. JOHNSON. : As dice are to be wish'd, by one that fixes be? Affection! thy intention stabs the center: 5 It is common with tradefmen to die their faded or damaged fluffs, black. O'er died blacks may mean those which have received a die over their former colour. There is a passage in The old Law of Maffinger, which might lead us to offer another interpretation: Blacks are often such dissembling mourners, "There is no credit given to't, it has loft " All reputation by false sons and widows: It seems that blacks was the common term for mourning. So, in A Mad World my Masters, 1608: in so many blacks "I'll have the church hung round" Black, however, will receive no other hue without discovering it felf through it. " Lanarum nigræ nullum colorem bibunt." Plin. Nat. Hist. Lib. VIII. STEEVENS. The following passage in a book which our author had certainly read, inclines me to believe that the last is the true interpretation. Truly (quoth Camillo) my wool was blacke, and therefore it could take no other colour." Lyly's Euphues and his England, 4to. 1580. * No bourn - Bourn is boundary. So, in Hamlet: 3 " No traveller returns--." STEEVENS. MALONE. welkin-eye:] Blue-eye; an eye of the same colour with the welkin, or sky. JOHNSON. 4 5 my collop!) So, in The First Part of K. Henry VI: "God knows, thou art a collop of my flesh." STEEVENS. Affection! thy intention flabs the center:] Instead of this line, which I find in the folio, the modern editors have introduced another of no authority: Imagination! thou doft flab to the center. Mr. Rowe first made the exchange. I am not fure that I un 1 Thou dost make possible, things not so held, Communicat'st with dreams; - (How can this be?) With what's unreal thou coactive art, And fellow'st nothing: Then, 'tis very credent,'' Thou may'st co-join with fomething; and thou dost; (And that beyond commiffion; and I find it,) And that to the infection of my brains, And hardening of my brows. POL. What means Sicilia? HER. He something seems unfettled. derstand the reading I have restored. Affection, however, I believe, fignifies imagination. Thus, in The Merchant of Venice: affection, " Mistress of paffion, Iways it," &c. i. e. imagination governs our paffions. Intention is, as Mr. Locke expreffes it, " when the mind with great earnestness, and of choice, fixes its view on any idea, confiders it on every fide, and will not be called off by the ordinary follicitation of other ideas. vehemence of the mind feems to be what affects Leonies so deeply, or, in Shakspeare's language,-ftabs him to the center. STEEVENS. " This Intention, in this paflage, means eagerness of attention, or of defire; and is ufed in the fame sense in The Merry Wives of Windfor, where Falflaff says" She did fo course o'er my exteriors, with fuch a greedy intention," &c. M. MASON. I think, with Mr. Steevens, that affection means here imagination, or perhaps more accurately, "the difpofition of the mind when trongly affected or poffeffed by a particular idea And in a kindred sense at least to this, it is used in the paffage quoted from The Merchant of Venice. MALONE. Thou doft make poffible, things not so held,] i. e. thou dost make those things possible, which are conceived to be impossible. JOHNSON. To express the speaker's meaning, it is necessary to make a short pause after the word possible. I have therefore put a comma there, though perhaps in stricaness it is improper, MALONE. 7 credent, i. e. credible. So, in Measure for Measure, A& V. fc. v: "For my authority bears a credent bulk." STEEVENS. |