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"Dapples the drowsy east with spots of grey.

STEEVENS.

248. I must up-fill this ozier cage of ours, &c.] So, in the 13th song of Drayton's Polyolbion :

"His happy time he spends the works of God to

see,

"In those so sundry herbs which there in plenty

grow,

"Whose sundry strange effects he only seeks to know.

"And in a little maund, being made of oziers small,

"Which serveth him to do full many a thing

withal,

"He very choicely sorts his simples got abroad." Drayton is speaking of a hermit. STEEVENS. 250. The earth, that's Nature's mother, is her tomb ;] "Omniparens, eadem rerum commune sepul

chrum."

Lucretius.

"The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave."

Milton.

STEEVENS.

256. powerful grace,] Efficacious virtue.

JOHNSON. 258. For nought so vile that on the earth doth live,] The quarto, 1597, reads:

For nought so vile that vile on earth doth live. STEEVENS. 268. Two such opposed FOES-] Foes is the reading of the oldest copy; kings of that in 1609. Shak

spere

spere might have remembered the following passage in the old play of Misfortunes of King Arthur, 1587: "Peace hath three foes encamped in our breasts,

"Ambition, wrath, and envie.

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STEEVENS.

279. —with unstuft brain, &c.] The copy, 1597, reads,

❝ with unstuff'd brain

"Doth couch his limmes, there golden sleep re

maines."

STEEVENS.

311. Holy Saint Francis ! -] Old copy, Jesu

Maria!

STEEVENS. 336. The two following lines were added since the first copy of this play:

Rom. O, let us hence, &c.

STEEVENS.

354. -The very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's but-shaft ;-] The allusion is to

archery. The clout or white mark at which the arrows were directed, was fastened by a black pin placed in the centre of it. To hit this was the highest ambition of every marksman. So, in No Wit like a Woman's, a comedy, by Middleton, 1657:

"They have shot two arrows without heads,
"They cannot stick i' the but yet: hold out,
knight,

"And I'll cleave the black pin i' the midst of the
white."

Again, in Marlowe's Tamburlaine, 1591:

"For kings are clouts that every man shoots at, "Our crown the pin that thousands seek to

cleave."

MALONE.

Ε

358.

358. More than prince of cats,-] Tybert, the name" given to the Cat, in the story-book of Reynard the Fox.

So, in Decker's Satiromastix:

WARBURTON.

"though you were Tybert, the long-tail'd
prince of rats."

Again, in Have with you to Saffron-Walden, &c. 1598: "-not Tibault, prince of cats," &c.

STEEVENS.

359. -courageous captain of compliments:] A complete master of all the laws of ceremony, the principal man in the doctrine of punctilio.

"A man of compliments, whom right and wrong
"Have chose as umpire ;"

says our author of Don Armado, the Spaniard, in
Love's Labour's Lost.

JOHNSON. 360. keeps time, distance, and proportion;] So, Jonson's Bobadil:

"Note your distance, keep your due proportion of

362.

time."

STEEVENS.

the very butcher of a silk button,- -1 So, in the Return from Parnassus :

"Strikes his poinado at a button's breadth.”
STEEVENS.

363. -a gentleman of the very first house ;—of the first and second cause:— -] i. e. one who pretends to be at the head of his family, and quarrels by the book. See a note on As You Like It, act v. sc. 6.

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Tybalt cannot pretend to be at the head of his family, as both Capulet and Romeo barr'd his claim to that elevation. "A gentleman of the first house ;— of the first and second cause," is a gentleman of the first rank, of the first eminence among these duellists; and one who understands the whole science of quarrelling, and will tell you of the first cause, and the second cause, for which a man is to fight.-The Clown, in As You Like It, talks of the seventh cause in the same sense. STEEVENS.

365. -the hay!] All the terms of the modern fencing-schools were originally Italian; the rapier, or small thrusting sword, being first used in Italy. The hay is the word hai, you have it, used when a thrust reaches the antagonist, from which our fencers, on the same occasion, without knowing, I suppose, any reason for it, cry out, ha! JOHNSON.

367. affecting fantasticoes;] Thus the old copies, and rightly. Modern editors and the folios read, phantasies. Nash, in his Have with you to SaffronWalden, 1596, says "Follow some of these newfangled Galiardos and Signor Fantasticos," &c. Again, in Decker's comedy of Old Fortunatus, 1600: "I have danc'd with queens, dallied with ladies, worn strange attires, seen fantasticos, convers'd with humorists,” &c. STEEVENS.

370. Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire,] Humorously apostrophising his ancestors, whose sober times were unacquainted with the fopperies here complained of. WARBURTON.

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373. these pardonnez-moys,-] Pardonnez-moi became the language of doubt or hesitation among men of the sword, when the point of honour was grown so delicate, that no other mode of contradiction would be endured. JOHNSON.

374. -stand so much on the new form, that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench ?] This conceit is lost, if the double meaning of the word form be not attended FARMER.

to.

A quibble on the two meanings of the word form occurs in Love's Labour's Lost, act i. sc. 1. "-sitting with her on the form, and taken following her into the park; which, put together, is, in manner and form following." STEEVENS.

385. your French slop.] Slops were large breeches, or trowsers.

387. -What counterfeit? &c.

Mer. The slip, the slip, sir ;] Mr. Reed observes, that to understand this play upon the words counterfeit and slip, it should be observed, that in our author's time there was a counterfeit piece of money distinguished by the name of a slip. This will appear in the following instances: "And therefore he went and got him certain slips, which are counterfeit pieces of money, being brasse, and covered over with silver, which the common people call slips." Thieves falling out, True men come by their Goods, by Robert Greene.

Again,

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