that liked me, and breaths that I defied not: and, I am fure, as many as have good beards, or good faces, or fweet breaths, will, for my kind offer, when I make curt'fy, bid me farewell. [Exeunt.1 note; but the old copy is certainly right, and fuch was the phrafeology of Shakspeare's age. So, in K. Richard III: "Where every horfe bears his commanding rein, "And may direct his course, as please himself." Again, in Hamlet: 66 -a pipe for fortune's finger, "To found what stop the please." Again, in K. Henry VIII: "All men's honours "Lie like one lump before him, to be fashion'd I read and fo I charge you, O men," &c. This trivial addition (as Dr. Farmer joins with me in thinking) clears the whole paffage. STEEVENS. 7 If I were a woman,] Note, that in this author's time, the parts of women were always performed by men or boys. HANMER. 8 complexions that liked me,] i. e. that I liked. So again in Hamlet: "This likes me well." STEEVENS. 9 breaths that I defied not:] This paffage ferves to manifeft the indelicacy of the time in which the plays of Shakfpeare were written. Such an idea, started by a modern dramatift, and put into the mouth of a female character, would be hooted with indignation from the ftage. STEEVENS. Of this play the fable is wild and pleafing. I know not how the ladies will approve the facility with which both Rofalind and Celia give away their hearts. To Celia much may be forgiven for the heroifm of her friendship. The character of Jaques is natural and well preferved. The comick dialogue is very sprightly, with lefs mixture of low buffoonery than in fome other plays; and the graver part is elegant and harmonious. By haftening to the end of this work, Shakspeare fuppreffed the dialogue between the ufurper and the hermit, and loft an opportunity of exhibiting a moral leffon in which he might have found matter worthy of his highest powers. JOHNSON. See p. 29. Is but a quintaine, &c.] Dr. Warburton's expla nation would, I think, have been lefs exceptionable, had it been more fimple: yet he is here charged with a fault of which he is feldom guilty-want of refinement. "This (fays Mr. Guthrie) is but an imperfect (to call it no worfe) explanation of a beautiful paffage. The quintaine was not the object of the darts and arms; it was a ftake, driven into a field, upon which were hung a fhield and trophies of war, at which they shot, darted, or rode with a lance. When the fhield and trophies were all thrown down, the quintaine remained. Without this information, how could the reader understand the allufion of my better parts Are all thrown down. In the present edition I have avoided, as much as poffible, all kind of controversy; but in those cases where errors, by having been long adopted, are become inveterate, it becomes in fome measure neceffary to the enforcement of truth. It is a common, but a very dangerous mistake, to fuppofe that the interpretation which gives moft fpirit to a paffage is the true one. In confequence of this notion, two paffages of our author, one in Macbeth, and another in Othello, have been refined, as I conceive, into a meaning that I believe was not in his thoughts. If the most spirited interpretation that can be imagined happens to be inconfiftent with his general manner, and the phrafeology both of him and his contemporaries, or to be founded on a custom which did not exift in his age, moft affuredly it is a false, interpretation. Of the latter kind is Mr. Guthrie's explanation of the paffage before us. The military exercife of the quintaine is as ancient as the time of the Romans; and we find from Matthew Paris, that it fubfifted in England in the thirteenth century. Tentoria variis ornamentorum generibus venuftantur; terræ infixis, fudibus Scuta apponuntur, quibus in craftinum quintanæ ludus, fcilicet equeftris, exerceretur. M. Paris, ad ann. 1253. These probably were the very words that Mr. Guthrie had in contemplation. But Matthew Paris made no part of Shakspeare's library; nor is it at all material to our prefent point what were the cuftoms of any century preceding that in which he lived. his time, without any doubt, the quintaine was not a military exercife of tilting, but a mere ruftic sport. So Minfhieu, in his DICT. 1617: "A quintaine or quintelle, a game in request at marriages, when Jac and Tom, Dic, Hob and Will, ftrive for the gay garland." So alfo, Randolph at fomewhat a later period [Poems, 1642]: VOL. VIII. In "Foot-ball with us may be with them [the Spaniards] "As they at tilts, fo we at quintaine runne; "That have leaft art, and moft fimplicitie." But old Stowe has put this matter beyond a doubt; for in his Survey of London, printed only two years before this play appeared, he has given us the figure of a quintaine, as represented in the margin. "I have feen (fays he) a quinten fet up on Cornehill, by the Leaden Hall, where the attendants on the lords of merry difports have runne, and made greate paftime; for hee that hit not the broad end of the quinten was of all men laughed to fcorne; and hee that hit it full, if he rid not the fafter, had a found blow in his necke with a bagge full of fand hanged on the other end." Here T we fee were no fhields hung, no trophies of war to be thrown down. "The great defign of the sport, (fays Dr. Plott, in his Hiftory of Oxfordshire,) is to try both man and horse, and to break the board; which whoever does, is for the time Princeps juventutis." Shakfpeeare's fimiles feldom correfpond on both fides. "My better parts being all thrown down, my youthful Spirit being fubdued by the power of beauty, I am now (fays Orlando) as inanimate as a wooden quintaine is (not when its better parts are thrown down, but as that lifeless block is at all times)." Such, perhaps, is the meaning. If, however, the words "better parts," are to be applied to the quintaine, as well as to the speaker, the board above-mentioned, and not any Shield or trophy, must have been alluded to. Our author has, in Macbeth, ufed " my better part of man" for manly Spirit. "Accurfed be the tongue that tells me fo, "For it has cow'd my better part of man." MALONE. The explanations of this paffage, as well as the accounts of the quintain, are by no means fatisfactory; nor have the labours of the critick or the antiquary been exhausted. The whole of Orlando's speech fhould feem to refer to the quintain, but not to fuch a one as has been defcribed in any of the preceding notes. Mr. Guthrie is accused of having borrowed his account from Matthew Paris, an author with whom, as it has been already obferved, Shakspeare was undoubtedly not acquainted; but this charge is erroneous, for no fuch paflage as that above cited is to be found in M. Paris. This writer does indeed speak of the quintain under the year 1253, but in very different words. Eodem tempore juvenes Londinenfes ftatuto pavone pro bravio ad Stadium quod quintena vulgariter dicitur, vires proprias & equorum curfus funt experti. He then proceeds to ftate that fome of the King's pages, and others belonging to the houshold, being offended at these sports, abused the Londoners with foul language, calling them fcurvy clowns and greafy rafcals, and ventured to dispute the prize with them; the confequence of which was, that the Londoners received them very briskly, and fo belaboured their backs with the broken lances, that they were either put to flight, or tumbled from their horfes and moft terribly bruised. They afterwards went before the King, the tears ftill trickling from their eyes, and complained of their treatment, beseeching that he would not fuffer fo great an offence to remain unpunished; and the King, with his usual Spirit of revenge, extorted from the citizens a very large fine. So far M. Paris; but Mr. Malone has through some mistake cited Robertus Monachus, who wrote before M. Paris, and has left an extremely curious account of the Crusades. He is describing the arrival of fome meffengers from Babylon, who, upon entering the Chriftian camp, find to their great aftonishment (for they had heard that the Chriftians were perishing with fear and hunger) the tents curiously ornamented, and the young men practifing themselves and their horfes in tilting against shields hung upon poles. In the oldeft edition of this writer, instead of" quintance ludus," it is " ludus equeftris." However, this is certainly not the quintain that is here wanted, and therefore Mr. Malone has substituted another, copied indeed from a contemporary writer, but still not illustrative of the paffage in queftion. I fhall beg leave then to present the reader with fome others, from which it will appear, that the quintain was a military exercise in Shakspeare's time, and not a mere ruftic fport, as Mr. Malone imagines. No. 1, is copied from an initial letter in an Italian book, printed in 1560. Here is the figure of a man placed upon the trunk of a tree, holding in one hand a fhield, in the other a bag of fand. No. 2, is the Saracen quintain from Pluvinel, inftruction du Roi Louis XIII. dans l'exercife de monter à cheval. This fort of quintain, according to Meneftrier, was invented by the Germans, who, from their frequent wars with the Turks, accustomed their foldiers to point their lances against the figure of their enemy. The fkill confifted in fhivering the lance to pieces, by ftriking it against the head of the man, for if it touched the fhield, the figure turned round and generally ftruck the horfeman a violent blow with his fword. No. 3, is the Flemish quintain, copied from a print after Wouvermans; it is called La bague Flamande, from the ring which the figure holds in his left hand; and here the object was to take away the ring with the point of the lance, for if it ftruck any other part, the man turned round and hit the rider with his fand-bag. This is a mixture of the quintain and running at the ring, which two fports have been fome how or other in like manner confounded by the Italians, who fometimes exprefs the running at the ring by correre alla quintana. The principle of all thefe was the |