ACT III.

Scene I.

2. the better part, the greater part. Compare all points,' i. 3. 113.

3. argument. See i. 2. 262.

4. thou present, that is, thou being present. Compare Richard II, i. 3. 259:

'Joy absent, grief present for that time.'

6. Seek him with candle.

A reference to Luke xv. 8.

16. my officers of such a nature, whose especial duty it is. In modern usage, as compared with that of Shakespeare's time, nature' and 'kind' have been interchanged. Bacon in his Essay of Gardens speaks of lilies of all natures."

17. Make an extent upon his house and lands. Upon all debts of record due to the Crown, the sovereign has his peculiar remedy by writ of extent; which differs in this respect from an ordinary writ of execution at suit of the subject, that under it the body, lands and goods of the debtor may be all taken at once, in order to compel the payment of the debt. And this proceeding is called an extent, from the words of the writ; which directs the sheriff to cause the lands, goods and chattels to be appraised at their full, or extended, value (extendi facias), before they are delivered to satisfy the debt.' Stephen's Commentaries on the Laws of England (sixth ed.), iv. 80. Lord Campbell (Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements) quotes this passage as an example of Shakespeare's 'deep technical knowledge of law,' the writ extendi facias applying to houses and lands, as fieri facias to goods and chattels, and capias ad satisfaciendum to the person. The word extent' is used in the sense of a writ in Massinger, The City Madam, v. 2:

'I grant your person to be privileged

From all arrests; yet there lives a foolish creature

Call'd an under-sheriff, who being well paid will serve
An extent on lords' or lowns' land.'

Compare also A New Way to pay Old Debts, v. I:

'But when

This manor is extended to my use,

You'll speak in an humbler key, and sue for favour.'

18. expediently, speedily, expeditiously. "Expedient' is used for 'expeditious' in King John, ii. 1. 60:

His marches are expedient to this town.'

And in Richard II, i. 4. 39: 'Expedient manage must be made.'

Scene II.

2. thrice-crowned, ruling in heaven, on earth, and in the underworld as Luna, Diana, and Hecate. The memorial lines are given by Johnson: 'Terret, lustrat, agit, Proserpina, Luna, Diana,

Ima, superna, feras, sceptro, fulgore, sagittis.'

Singer quotes from one of Chapman's Hymns (Hymnus in Cynthiam) a passage which may have been in Shakespeare's mind:

'Nature's bright eye-sight, and the night's fair soul,
That with thy triple forehead dost control

Earth, seas, and hell.'

Compare also Midsummer Night's Dream, v. I. 391:

Hecate was frequently represented in ancient art with three heads.
6. character, inscribe. With a different accent in Hamlet, i. 3. 59:
And these few precepts in thy memory

See thou character.'

10. unexpressive, that cannot be expressed. Milton possibly had this passage in his mind in Lycidas, 176:

'And hears the unexpressive nuptial song.'

See also The Hymn to the Nativity, 116. Words similarly formed and used by Shakespeare are directive' (Troilus and Cressida, i. 3. 356), ' plausive' (Hamlet, i. 4. 30), and insuppressive' (Julius Cæsar, ii. 1. 134).

Ib. she, used for woman,' as in Sonnet cxxx. 14:

'I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.'

Compare Cymbeline, i. 3. 29:

'The shes of Italy should not betray

Mine interest and his honour.'

And The Taming of the Shrew, iii. 2. 236:

'I'll bring mine action on the proudest he

That stops my way in Padua.'

See also in the present scene, line 362.

14. naught, bad, worthless. The old English forms of the word are nawiht, nâ-úht, and nâht, the same as 'no whit' and the negative of aught.' See i. I. 31.

16. vile, spelt vild' in the folios.

20. Hast. For the omission of the pronoun compare Twelfth Night, ii. 3. 122: Art any more than a steward?'

28. may complain of good breeding, that is, of the want of good breeding. See ii. 4. 69.

35. all on one side is explanatory of ill-roasted' and not of damned.'

41. parlous, perilous, dangerous. See Richard III, ii. 4. 35: A parlous boy'; where the quartos read 'perilous.' The spelling represents the pronunciation.

42. Not a whit. As 'not' is itself a contraction of nâwiht, or nawhit, 'not a whit' is redundant.

44. mockable, liable to ridicule.

48. still, constantly. Compare Hamlet, ii. 2. 42:

'Thou still hast been the father of good news.'

And The Tempest, i. 2. 229: the still-vex'd Bermoothes.'

Ib. fells, the skins of sheep with the wool on. Compare Lear, v. 3. 24, and Macbeth, v. 5. II:

'My fell of hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir

As life were in 't.'

Florio (Ital. Dict.) has, 'Vello, a fleece, a fell or skin that hath wooll on.' Again in Chapman's translation of the Georgics of Hesiod (ed. Hooper), i. 364:

'In dales

Th' industrious bee her honey sweet exhales,

And full-fell'd sheep are shorn with festivals.'

In Job ii. 4 the earlier of the Wicliffite versions has, Fel for fel, and alle thingus that a man hath he shulde ziue for his soule.'

51. a mutton, a sheep. Like beef,' the word is now only used of the flesh of the slaughtered animal. Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.) gives: Mouton: m. A Mutton, a Weather; also, Mutton.' Compare The Merchant of Venice, i. 3. 168:

'As flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats.'

55. A more sounder instance. For the double comparative see The Tempest, i. 2. 439:

· The Duke of Milan

And his more braver daughter could control thee.'

59. thou worms-meat. It is not impossible that this expression may have struck Shakespeare in a book which he evidently read, the treatise of Vincentio Saviolo (see v. 4. 83), in which a printer's device is found with the motto, O wormes meate: O froath: O vanitie: why art thou so insolent.'

60. perpend, reflect, consider. An affected word put into the mouth of such characters as Polonius and Ancient Pistol. Compare Hamlet, ii. 2. 105, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, ii. 1. 119:

'He loves the gallimaufry: Ford, perpend.'

65. God make incision in thee! As Heath explains, God give thee a better understanding, thou art very raw and simple as yet;' in allusion 'to the common proverbial saying, concerning a very silly fellow, that he ought

to be cut for the simples.'

The reference is to the old method of cure for most maladies by blood-letting. See Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3. 97:

'A fever in your blood! why, then incision

Would let her out in saucers: sweet misprision !'

Ib. raw, untrained, untutored. So in Richard II, ii. 3. 42 :

'I tender you my service,

Such as it is, being tender, raw, and young.

68. glad, that is, am glad.

Ib. content with my harm, patient under my own misfortunes.

77. east, eastern, belongs to Ind.'

Ib. Ind. Compare The Tempest, ii. 2. 61: Do you put tricks upon 's with savages and men of Ind, ha?' And for the pronunciation see Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3. 222:

'Like a rude and savage man of Inde,'
blind.'

where it rhymes with

81. lined, drawn. The first three folios have Linde,' the fourth Lind.' Capell reads limn'd.'

83. face. So the folios. Sidney Walker, with great probability, conjectured 'fair,' to correspond with the following.

84. fair, beauty. Compare Sonnet lxxxiii. 2:

'I never saw that you did painting need

And therefore to your fair no painting set.'

For other instances of adjectives used as substantives see Venus and Adonis, 589:

'Whereat a sudden pale,

Like lawn being spread upon the blushing rose,
Usurps her cheek.'

And A Lover's Complaint, 95:

'Whose bare out-bragg'd the web it seem'd to wear.'

In the present line Rowe in his second edition altered 'fair' to face."

It is open to the rather But it may be used simply in 'rate,' and Grey for rate to I am rather inclined to con

86, 87. it is the right butter-women's rank to market, going one after another, at a jog-trot, like butterwomen going to market. This seems to be the meaning if 'rank' is the true reading. pedantic objection that it makes rank-file. the sense of order.' Hanmer altered it to market' proposed to read 'rant at market.' sider rack' to be the proper word, and I would justify this conjecture by the following quotations from Cotgrave's French Dictionary:

Amble: f. An amble, pace, racke; an ambling, or racking pace; a smooth, or easie gate.'

⚫ Ambler. To amble, pace; racke; to go easily, and smoothly away.' In Holme's Armoury (B. II. c. 10, p. 150) 'rack' is thus defined: 'Rack is a pace wherein the horse neither Trots or Ambles, but is between both.'

92. Florio, in his Second Frutes, p. 179, has, 'Cat after kinde will either hunt or scratch."

94. Winter. So the third and fourth folios. The first and second have 'Wintred,' which Mr. Grant White retains. Compare 'azured' in The Tempest, v. 1. 43, and perhaps damask'd,' in Sonnet cxxx. 5, quoted in note on iii. 5. 122.

96. sheaf, gather into sheaves. See Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.): 'Gerber des javelles. To bind corne of swath into sheaues: to sheafe vp corne.'

102. false gallop, the unnatural pace which a horse is taught to go; apparently the same as a canter or Canterbury gallop, said to be so called from being the pace adopted by pilgrims to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. Compare I Henry IV, iii. 1. 135, where Hotspur says:

I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn'd,

Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree;

And that would set my teeth nothing on edge,
Nothing so much as mincing poetry:

"Tis like the forced gait of a shuffling nag.'

Puttenham (quoted by Caldecott) in his Arte of English Poesie (p. 76, ed. Arber) uses the term 'riding ryme' in speaking of Chaucer's verse in a manner which throws light upon the present passage: His meetre Heroicall of Troilus and Cresseid is very graue and stately, keeping the staffe of seuen and the verse of ten, his other verses of the Canterbury tales be but riding ryme, neverthelesse very well becomming the matter of that pleasaunt pilgrimage in which euery mans part playd with much decency.' Malone quotes from Nash's Apologie of Pierce Pennilesse, 4to. 1593: 'I would trot a false gallop through the rest of his ragged verses, but that if I should retort the rime doggrell aright, I must make my verses (as he doth his) run hobbling, like a brewer's cart upon the stones, and observe no measure in their feet.' See also Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 4. 94:

'Beat. What pace is this that thy tongue keeps?

Marg. Not a false gallop.'

106. graff. The old form of graft,' from French greffer. Compare hoise' and 'hoist'; and see 2 Henry IV, v. 3. 3: 'Nay, you shall see my orchard, where in an arbour we will eat a last year's pippin of my own graffing.' Shakespeare also uses 'graft,' as in Richard II, iii. 4. IOI:

'Pray God the plants thou graft'st may never grow.'

107. a medlar. For the pun upon medlar' compare Timon of Athens,

Tim. Ay, though it look like thee.

Apem. An thou hadst hated meddlers sooner thou shouldst have loved thyself better now.'

Ib. the earliest fruit, not because it ripens soonest, for this is not the case