The rugged Pyrrhus,-be, whofe fable arms, Queen of Carthage." I had not then the means of juftifying or confuting his remark, the piece alluded to having efcaped the hands of the most liberal and industrious collectors of fuch curiofities. Since, however, I have met with this performance, and am therefore at liberty to pronounce that it did not furnish our author with more than a general hint for his defcription of the death of Priam, &c.; unless with reference to the whiff and wind of his fell fword "The unnerved father falls, we read, ver. *: "And with the wind thereof the king fell down;" and can make out a refemblance between "So as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus ftood;" and ver. **: "So leaning on his fword, he ftood stone ftill." The greater part of the following lines are furely more ridiculous in themselves, than even Shakspeare's happiest vein of burlefque or parody could have made them: "At last came Pirrhus fell and full of ire, "His harneffe dropping bloud, and on his speare "With balles of wild-fire in their murdering pawes, "Dido. Ah, how could poor Æneas fcape their hands? "Convaid me from their crooked nets and bands: "So I efcapt the furious Pirrhus wrath, Beating their breafts and falling on the ground, "He with his faulchions point raifde up at once; "And with Megeras eyes ftared in their face, "Threatning a thoufand deaths at every glaunce. "To whom the aged king thus trembling fpoke: &c.-"Not mov'd at all, but fmiling at his teares, "This butcher, whil'ft his hands were yet held "Treading upon his breaft, ftroke off his hands. "Dido. O end, Æneas, I can hear no more, up, When he lay couched in the ominous borse, 8 "En. At which the franticke queene leapt on his face, "And in his eyelids hanging by the nayles, "A little while prolong'd her husband's life: "At laft the fouldiers puld her by the heeles, "And fwong her howling in the emptie ayre, "Which fent an echo to the wounded king: "Whereat he lifted up his bedred lims, "And would have grappeld with Achilles fonne, Forgetting both his want of ftrength and hands; "Which he difdaining, whifkt his fword about, ✦" And with the wound thereof the king fell downe: "Then from the navell to the throat at once, "He ript old Priam; at whofe latter gaspe 66 66 Jove's marble ftatue gan to bend the brow, "As lothing Pirrhus for this wicked act: "Through which he could not paffe for flaughtred men: **So leaning on his fword he ftood ftone ftill, Viewing the fire wherewith rich Ilion burnt." A& II. The exact title of the play from which thefe lines are copied, is as follows: The-Tragedie of Dido | Queen of Carthage | Played by the Children of her Majesties Chappel. | Written by Chriftopher Marlowe, and Thomas Nafb, Gent. | Actors | Jupiter. | Ganimed. | Venus. Cupid. | Juno. | Mercurie, or-Hermes, | Eneas. | Afcanius. Dido. | Anna. Achates. | Ilioneus. | Iarbas. | Cloanthes. Sergeftus. At London, | Printed, by the Widdowe Orwin, for Thomas Woodcocke, and | are to be folde at his fhop, in Paules Churchyeard, at the figne of the black Beare. 1594. STEEVENS. 7 Now is he total gules;] Gules is a term in the barbarous jargon. peculiar to heraldry, and fignifies red. Shakspeare has it again in Timon of Athens: With man's blood paint the ground; gules, gules." Heywood in his Second Part of the Iron Age, has made a verb from it: 8 66 old Hecuba's reverend locks "Be gul'd in flaughter." STEEVENS. - trick'd-] i. e. fmeared, painted. An heraldick term. See Vol. VI. p. 193, n. 2. MALONE. With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, fons; Bak'd and impafted with the parching streets, That lend a tyrannous and a damned light To their lord's murder: Roafted in wrath, and fire, And thus o'er-fized with coagulate gore, With eyes like carbuncles, the bellifh Pyrrhus Old grandfire Priam feeks,―So proceed you.2 POL. 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken; with good accent, and good difcretion. I. PLAY. Anon he finds him Striking too short at Greeks; his antique fword, But, as we often fee, against fome storm, 9 With eyes like carbuncles,] So, in Milton's Paradife Loft, B. IX. 1. 500: 66 and carbuncles his eyes." STEEVENS. 2 So proceed you.] Thefe words are not in the folio. MALONE. 3-as a painted tyrant,] Shak fpeare was probably here thinking of the tremendous perfonages often reprefented in old tapestry, whofe uplifted swords stick in the air, and do nothing. MALONE. As bufh as death: anon, the dreadful thunder 5 Out, out, thou ftrumpet, Fortune! All you gods, Break all the Spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, As low as to the fiends! POL. This is too long. HAM. It fhall to the barber's, with your beard.Pr'ythee, fay on:-He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry," or he fleeps:-fay on: come to Hecuba. as we often fee, against some storm,- "Even as the wind is hush'd before it raineth.” This line leads me to fufpect that Shakspeare wrote-the bold wind fpeechlefs. Many fimilar miftakes have happened in these pla s, where the word ends with the fame letter with which the next begins. MALONE. 5 And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall On Mars's armour, &c.] This thought appears to have been adopted from the 3d Book of Sidney's Arcadia: "Vulcan, when he wrought at his wive's requeft Æneas an armour, made not his hammer beget a greater found than the fwords of thofe noble knights did" &c. STEEVENS. 66 6 He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry,] See note on your only jig-maker," A&t III. fc. ii. STEEVENS. A jig, in our poet's time, fignified a ludicrous metrical compofition, as well as a dance. Here it is used in the former fenfe. So, in Florio's Italian Dict. 1598: "Frottola, a countrie jigg, or round, or countrie fong, or wanton verfes. See The Hiftorical Account of the English Stage, &c. Vol. II. MALONE, 1. PLAY. But who, ab woe!" bad feen the mobled queen 8 HAM. The mobled queen? POL. That's good? mobled queen is good. I. PLAY. Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning the flames woe. 7 But who, ah woe!] Thus the quarto, except that it has-a A is printed instead of ah in various places in the old copies. Woe was formerly ufed adjectively for woeful. So, in Antony and Cleopatra: " Woe, woe are we, fir, you may not live to wear "All your true followers out.” The folio reads-But who, O who, &c. MALONE. 8 -the mobled queen--] Mobled or mabled fignifies veiled. So, Sandys fpeaking of the Turkish women, fays, their heads and faces are mabled in fine linen, that no more is to be seen of them than their eyes. Travels. WARBURTON. Mobled fignifies huddled, grossly covered. JOHNSON. I meet with this word in Shirley's Gentleman of Venice: "The moon does mobble up herself." FARMER. Mobled, is, I believe, no more than a depravation of muffled. It is thus corrupted in Ogilby's Fables, Second Part: "Mobbled nine days in my confidering cap, In the Weft this word is ftill ufed in the fame fense; and that is the meaning of mobble in Dr. Farmer's quotation. HOLT WHITE. The mabled queen, (or mobled queen, as it is fpelt in the quarto,) means, the queen attired in a large, coarfe, and careless head-drefs. A few lines lower we are told the had " a clout upon that head, where late the diadem ftood." To mab, (which in the North is pronounced mob, and hence the fpelling of the old copy in the prefent inftance,) fays Ray in his Dict. of North Country words, is "to dress carelessly. Mabs are flatterns." The ordinary morning head-drefs of ladies continued to be diftinguished by the name of a mab, to almost the end of the reign of George the Second. The folio reads-the inobled queen. MALONE. In the counties of Effex and Middlefex, this morning cap has always been called—a mob, and not a mab. My fpelling of the word therefore agrees with its moft familiar pronunciation, STEEVENS, |