ANNOTATIONS

UPON

THE WINTER'S TALE.

Wherein our entertainment, &c.] Though we cannot give you equal entertainment, yet the consciousness of our good will shall justify us.

JOHNSON.

2-royally attornied,] Nobly supplied by substitution of embassies, &c.

JOHNSON.

3 That may blow no sneaping winds.] That may blow is a Gallicism, for May there blow.

4

-behind the gest.] In the time of royal progresses the king's stages, as we may see by the journals of them in the heralds office, were called his GESTS; from the old French word GISTE, diversorium.

WARBURTON.

Hereditary ours.] i. e. setting aside original sin; bating the imposition from the offence of our first parents, we might have boldly protested our innocence to heaven.

6 With spur we heat an acre.] is as if he said run an acre.

WARBURTON.

We heat an acre, In horse-racing the

term is in constant use. A heat of four miles, is a race of four miles, and to run a heat, is to run a

race.

And clap thyself my love;] Mr. Steevens has adopted clap from some old copy, but I prefer the ordinary reading of clepe, that is, call or denominate thyself my love.

8 We must be neat;] Leontes, seeing his son's nose smutched, cries, we must be neat, then recollecting that neat is the term for horned cattle, he says, not neat, but cleanly. JOHNSON. 9 Still virginalling-] Still playing with her fingers, as a 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 lessons in it have proved so difficult, as to baffle our most expert players on the harpsichord. 10 As o'er-dy'd blacks,-] Sir T. Hanmer understands, blacks dyed too much, and therefore rotten.

STEEVENS.

JOHNSON.

It is common with tradesmen to dye their faded or damaged stuffs, black. O'er-dy'd blacks may mean those which have received a dye over their former colour.

"Welkin-eye,] i. e. blue-eye.

12 Will you take eggs for money?] The meaning of this is, will you put up affronts? The French have a proverbial saying, A qui vendez vous coquilles?

i. e. whom do you design to affront? Mamillius's answer plainly proves it. Mam. No, my lord, I'll fight. SMITH.

I meet with Shakspeare's expression in a comedy, call'd A match at Midnight, 1633.-" I shall have eggs for my money; I must hang myself."

STEEVENS.

13 —whispering, rounding:] To round in the ear, is to whisper, or to tell secretly. The expression is very copiously explained by M. Casaubon, in his book de Ling. Sax.

JOHNSON.

14 But with a ling'ring dram, that should not work, Maliciously, like poison.] The thought is here beautifully expressed. He could do it with a dram that should have none of those visible effects that detect the poisoner. These effects he finely calls the malicious workings of poison, as if done with design to betray the user. But the Oxford editor would mend Shakespeare's expression, and reads,

-that should not work

Like a malicious poison:

So that Camillo's reason is lost in this happy emendation.

15 Swear his thought over

WARBURTON.

By each particular star in heaven, &c.] The transposition of a single letter reconciles this passage to good sense; Polixenes, in the preceding speech, had been laying the deepest imprecations on himself, if he had ever abus'd Leontes in any familiarity with his queen. To which Camillo very pertinently replies:

Swear this though over, &c. THEOBALD.
Swear his thought over

May however perhaps mean, overswear his present persuasion, that is, endeavour to overcome his opinion, by swearing oaths numerous as the stars.

16 Fear o'ershades me:·

JOHNSON.

-but nothing

Of his ill-ta'en suspicion.] Jealousy is a passion compounded of love and suspicion, this passion is the theme or subject of the king's thoughts.Polixenes, perhaps, wishes the queen, for her comfort, so much of that theme or subject as is good, but deprecates that which causes misery. May part of the king's present sentiments comfort the queen, but away with his suspicion. This is such meaning as can be picked out.

JOHNSON.

17 He who shall speak for her is far off guilty,

But that he speaks.] This cannot be the speaker's meaning. Leontes would say, I shall hold the person, in a great measure guilty, who shall dare to intercede for her: and this, I believe, Shakespeare ventured to express thus:

He, who shall speak for her, is far of guilty, &c. i. e. partakes far, deeply, of her guilt. THEOBALD. It is strange that Mr. Theobald could not find out that far off guilty, signifies, guilty in a remote degree. -this action- -] The word action is here taken in the lawyer's sense, for indictment, charge, or accusation.

18

JOHNSON.

20

19 I had rather glib myself.] To lib, and sometimes to glib, is to geld, in the dialect of the north. -lunes o'the king!] I have no where, but in our author, observed this word adopted in our tongue, to signify, frenzy, lunacy. But it is a mode of expression with the French.- Il y a de la lune: (i. e. He has got the moon in his head; he is frantick.) Cotgrave. Lune. folie. Les femmes ont des lunes dans la tete.

21

Richelet.

-out of the blank

THEOBALD.

And level of my brain;] Beyond the aim of any attempt that I can make against him. Blank and level are terms of archery.

22

JOHNSON.

-the worst about you.] The worst in this place means the least in consequence, the lowest.

23 thou art woman-tir'd;] Woman-tir'd, is peck'd by a woman. The phrase is taken from falconry, and is often employed by writers contemporary with Shakspeare. So in The Widow's Tears by Chap. man, 1612:

"He has given me a bone to tire on." STEEVENS. 24 Unvenerable by thy hands, if thou

Tak'st up the princess by that forced baseness.] Leontes had ordered Antigonus to take up the bastard, Paulina forbids him to touch the princess under that appellation. Forced is false, uttered with violence to truth.

JOHNSON.

25 No yellow in't.] Yellow is the colour of jealousy.

26 Fertile the isle,-] But the temple of Apollo at