DUKE S. Come, shall we go and kill us venifon? And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools,Being native burghers of this defert city,3Should, in their own confínes, with forked heads 4 Have their round haunches gor'd. I LORD. Indeed, my lord, The melancholy Jaques grieves at that; :5 3 Native burghers of this defert city,] In Sidney's Arcadia, the deer are called "the wild burgeffes of the forest." Again, in the 18th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion : "Where, fearless of the hunt, the hart securely ftood, " And every where walk'd free, a burgess of the wood." STEEVENS, A kindred expression is found in Lodge's Rosalynde, 1592: " About her wond'ring ftood Our author afterwards uses this very phrafe: 4 Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens." MALONE. with forked heads-] i. e. with arrows, the points of which were barbed. So, in A Mad World my Masters: 5 "While the broad arrow with the forked head as he lay along Under an oak, &c.] "There at the foot of yonder nodding beech "That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, "His liftless length at noon-tide would he stretch, " And pore upon the brook that babbles by." Gray's Elegy. STEEVENS. That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat DUKE S. But what faid Jaques ? Did he not moralize this spectacle? I LORD. O, yes, into a thousand fimiles. First, for his weeping in the needless stream; " Poor deer, quoth he, thou mak'ft a testament As worldlings do, giving thy fum of more To that which had too much : Then, being alone, Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends; 'Tis right, quoth he; thus mifery doth part The flux of company: Anon, a careless herd, Full of the pasture, jumps along by him, 6 - the big round tears, &c.] It is said in one of the marginal notes to a fimilar passage in the 13th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion, that "the harte weepeth at his dying: his tears are held to be precious in medicine." STEEVENS. 7 in the needless stream;) The stream that wanted not fuch a fupply of moisture. The old copy has into, caught probably by the compofitor's eye from the line above. The correction was made by Mr. Pope. MALONE. 8 To that which had too much:] Old copy-too muft. Corrected by the editor of the second folio. MALONE. Shakspeare has almost the same thought in his Lover's Com plaint: _ in a river Upon whose weeping margin she was fet, " Like ufury, applying wet to wet." Again, in K. Henry VI. P. III. Act V. fc. iv: 9 "With tearful eyes add water to the fea, STEEVENS. -Then, being alone,) The old copy redundantly reads Then being there alone. STEEVENS. And never stays to greet him; Ay, quoth Jaques, DUKE S. And did you leave him in this contem plation? 2 LORD. We did, my lord, weeping and comment ing Upon the fobbing deer. DUKE S. Show me the place; I love to cope him in these sullen fits, 2 LORD. I'll bring you to him straight. [Exeunt. The body of the country,] The oldest copy omits-the; but it is supplied by the second folio, which has many advantages over the first. Mr. Malone is of a different opinion; but let him speak for himself. STEEVENS. Country is here used as a trifyllable. So again, in Twelfth Night: "The like of him. Know'st thou this country?" The editor of the second folio, who appears to have been utterly ignorant of our author's phraseology and metre, reads-The body of the country, &c. which has been followed by all the subsequent editors. MALONE. Is not country used elsewhere also as a dissyllable? See Coriolanus, Act I. sc. vi: "And that his country's dearer than himself." Besides, by reading country as a trifyllable, in the middle of a verse, it would become rough and dissonant. STEEVENS. 3-to cope him-] To encounter him; to engage with him. JOHNSON. : : SCENE II. A Room in the Palace. Enter Duke FREDERICK, Lords, and Attendants. DUKE F. Can it be possible, that no man faw them? It cannot be fome villains of my court I LORD. I cannot hear of any that did fee her. 2 LORD. My lord, the roynish clown, at whom Your grace was wont to laugh, is also missing. 4 the roynish clown,] Roynish from rogneux, Fr. mangy, scurvy. The word is used by Chaucer, in The Romaunt of the Rofe, 988: "That knottie was and all roinous." Again, by Dr. Gabriel Harvey, in his Pierce's Supererogation, We are not to fuppofe the word is literally employed by Shak- 5 of the wrestler-] Wrestler, (as Mr. Tyrwhitt has observed in a note on The Two Gentlemen of Verona,) is here to be founded as a trifyllable, STEEVENS. ! Π And she believes, wherever they are gone, DUKE F. Send to his brother; fetch that gallant hither; If he be absent, bring his brother to me, [Exeunt. Enter Orlando and Adam, meeting. ORL. Who's there? ADAM. What! my young master?-O, my gentle master, 8 O, my sweet master, O you memory 6 Send to his brother; I believe we should read-brother's. For when the Duke says in the following words: "Fetch that gallant hither;" he certainly means Orlando. M. MASON. 7-quail] To quail is to faint, to fink into dejection. So, in Cymbeline: 8 which my false spirits Quail to remember." STEEVENS. O you memory-] Shakspeare often uses memory for memorial: and Beaumont and Fletcher sometimes. So, in the Humorous Lieutenant: " I knew then how to feek your memories." Again, in The Atheist's Tragedy, by C. Turner, 1611: "And with his body place that memory "Of noble Charlemont." Again, in Byron's Tragedy: "That statue will I prize past all the jewels "Within the cabinet of Beatrice, "The memory of my grandame." STEEVENS. |