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here mentions Kent, seems to require the lines which are inserted from the first edition in the foregoing scene.

JOHNSON.

Line 414. That she fordid herself.] To fordo, signifies to destroy by suicide. STEEVENS.

Line 428. Fall, and cease!] Albany is looking with attention on the pains employed by Lear to recover his child, and knows to what miseries he must survive, when he finds them to be ineffectual. Having these images present to his eyes and imagination, he cries out, Rather fall, and cease to be, at once, than continue in existence only to be wretched. STEEVENS.

Line 448. If fortune brag of two she lov'd and hated,

One of them we behold.] I suppose by the two whom fortune once loved, and then hated, Kent means, Lear and himself; and that each of them, looking on the other, saw a rare instance of her caprice. Line 458. of difference and decay,] Decay for misfortunes. WARBURTON.

MALONE.

Line 474. What comfort to this great decay may come,] This great decay is Lear, whom Shakspeare poetically calls so, and means the same as if he had said, this piece of decay'd royalty, this ruin'd majesty. STEEVENS.

Line 482. And my poor fool is hang'd!] This is an expression of tenderness for his dead Cordelia (not his fool, as some have thought), on whose lips he is still intent, and dies away while he is searching there for indications of life. STEEVENS.

END OF THE ANNOTATIONS ON KING LEAR.

ANNOTATIONS

ON

ROMEO AND JULIET.

LINE 1.

ACT I. SCENE 1.

we'll not carry coals.] The phrase should seem

to mean originally, We'll not submit to servile offices; and thence secondarily, We'll not endure injuries.

Line 34. 66.

MALONE.

-poor John.] is hake, dried, and salted. MAL. thy swashing blow.] To swash seems to have STEEVENS.

meant to be a bully, to be noisily valiant.

Line 78. Clubs, bills, &c.] When an affray arose in the streets, clubs was the usual exclamation.

MALONE.

Line 82. Give me my long sword.] The long sword was the sword used in war, which was sometimes wielded with both hands. JOHNSON.

Line 175. Is the day so young?] i. e. is it so early in the day? STEEVENS.

206. Why, such is love's transgression.] Such is the con

sequence of unskilful and mistaken kindness.

JOHNSON.

Line 222. Tell me in sadness,] That is, tell me gravely, tell

me in seriousness.

JOHNSON.

Line 236. And, in strong proof &c.] As this play was written in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, I cannot help regarding these speeches of Romeo as an oblique compliment to her majesty, who was not liable to be displeased at hearing her chastity praised after she was suspected to have lost it, or her beauty commended in the 67th year of her age, though she never possessed any when she was young. Her declaration that she would continue unmarried, increases the probability of the present supposition. STEEVENS.

Line 242.

with beauty dies her store.] She is rich, says he, in beauty, and only poor in being subject to the lot of humanity, that her store, or riches, can be destroyed by death, who shall, by the same blow, put an end to beauty. JOHNSON.

Line 249. wisely too fair, &c.] There is in her too much sanctimonious wisdom united with beauty, which induces her to continue chaste with the hopes of attaining heavenly bliss. MALONE

ACT I. SCENE II.

Line 298. Inherit at my house;] To inherit, in the language of Shakspeare's age, is to possess. MALONE.

Line 323. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that,] Tackius tells us, that a toad, before she engages with a spider, will fortify herself with some of this plant; and that, if she comes off wounded, she cures herself afterwards with it. Dr. GREY.

Line 358. crush a cup of wine.] This cant expression seems to have been once common among low people. I have met with it often in the old plays.

Line 375. let there be weigh'd

STEEVENS.

Your lady's love against some other maid-] Your

lady's love is the love you bear to your lady, which in our language is commonly used for the lady herself.

HEATH.

ACT I. SCENE III.

Line 399.

-to my teen-] To my sorrow.

JOHNSON.

437. weeping.

it stinted,] i. e. it stopped, it forbore from

STEEVENS.

Line 487. That in gold clasps locks in the golden story ;] The golden story is perhaps the golden legend, a book in the dark ages of popery much read, and doubtless often exquisitely embellished, but of which Canus, one of the popish doctors, proclaims the author to have been homo ferrei oris, plumbei cordis.

JOHNSON.

The poet may mean nothing more than to say, that those books are most esteemed by the world, where valuable contents are embellished by as valuable binding. STEEVENS

ACT I. SCENE IV.

Mercutio,] Shakspeare appears to have formed this character on the following slight hint in the original story: " -another gentleman called Mercutio, which was a courtlike gentleman, very wel beloved of all men, and by reason of his pleasant and curteous behavior was in al companies wel intertained." Painter's Palace of Pleasure, Tom. II. p. 221. STEEVENS.

Line 512. like a crow-keeper;] The word crow-keeper is explained in King Lear.

JOHNSON.

Line 516. We'll measure them a measure,] i. e. a dance.

MALONE.

517. Give me a torch,] The character which Romeo declares his resolution to assume, will be best explained by a passage in Westward Hoe, by Decker and Webster, 1607: * He is just like a torch-bearer to maskers; he wears good cloaths, and is ranked in good company, but he doth nothing." A torch-bearer seems to have been a constant appendage on every troop of masks. STEEVENS.

Line 541. -doth quote deformities?] To quote is to ob→ STEEVENS.

serve.

Line 548. Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels;] It has been already observed, that it was anciently the custom to strew rooms with rushes, before carpets were in use. STEEVENS.

Line 552. Tut! dun's the mouse, the constable's own word:] Dun is the mouse, I know not why, seems to have meant, Peace; be still! and hence it is said to be "the constable's own word;" who may be supposed to be employed in apprehending an offender, and afraid of alarming him by any noise.

[blocks in formation]

MAL.

Line 556. —we burn day-light, ho.] To burn day-light is a proverbial expression, used when candles, &c. are lighted in the day-time. STEEVENS.

Line 573. 0, then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife;] The fairies' midwife does not mean the midwife to the fairies, but that she was the person among the fairies, whose department it was to deliver the fancies of sleeping men of their dreams, those children of an idle brain. STEEVENS. Line 576. —of little atomies-] Atomy is no more than an obsolete substitute for atom. STEEVENS.

Line 597. with sweet-meats-] i. e. kissing-comfits. These artificial aids to perfume the breath are mentioned by Falstaff, in the last Act of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

MALONE.

Line 605. -Spanish blades,] A sword is called a toledo, from the excellence of the Toletan steel. JOHNSON,

Line 611. And bakes the elf-locks &c.] This was a common superstition; and seems to have had its rise from the horrid disease called the Plica Polonica. WARBURTON.

Line 613. when maids &c.] So, in Drayton's Nimphidia: "And Mab, his merry queen, by night

Bestrides young folks that lie upright,

66

(In elder times the mare that hight) "Which plagues them out of measure."

STEEVENS.

Line 637. Direct my sail!] Guide the sequel of the adven

ture.

--

ACT I. SCENE V.

JOHNSON.

Line 640. -he shift a trencher! &c.] Trenchers were still used by persons of good fashion in our author's time. In the Houshold Book of the Earls of Northumberland, compiled at the beginning of the same century, it appears that they were common to the tables of the first nobility. PERCY.

Line 646. -court-cupboard,] A court-cupboard was not strictly what we now call a side-board, but a recess fitted up with shelves to contain plate, &c. for the use of the table. It was afterwards called a buffet, and continued to be used to the time of Pope. MALONE.

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