V. ii. 75. Well said, whetstone.' Cp. the subjoined illustrative drawing from an old book of emblems.

'The whettstone is a knave that all men know,
Yet many on him doe much cost bestowe:
Hee's us'd almost in every shoppe, but whye?
An edge must needs be set on every lye.'

6

V. iii. 20-21. as lawful, For we would give much, to use violent thefts'; Tyrwhitt's conj.; Folios read, as lawfull: For we would count give much to as violent thefts.'

V. iii. 112. The Folio here inserts:

"PAND. Why, but heare you?

TROY. Hence brother lackie; ignomie and shame
Pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name."

Cf. Sc. x.

V. vii. 6. aims'; so Capell; Quarto, Folio 2, 'armes'; Folio 1, 'arme'; Folios 3, 4, ' arms.'

Explanatory Notes.

The Explanatory Notes in this edition have been specially selected and adapted, with emendations after the latest and best authorities, from the most eminent Shakespearian scholars and commentators, including Johnson, Malone, Steevens, Singer, Dyce, Hudson, White, Furness, Dowden, and others. This method, here introduced for the first time, provides the best annotation of Shakespeare ever embraced in a single edition.

PROLOGUE.

"This Prologue," says White, "is found only in the Folio; and Steevens conjectured, perhaps with reason, that it was not written by Shakespeare. Its style is not unlike Chapman's; and he was just the man to be called upon (perhaps by Shakespeare himself) to write it. May it not be his?"

I. In Troy there lies the scene:-Brandes remarks: "The last work which had lain ready on his [Shakespeare's] table was Antony and Cleopatra. He had there, for the second time, given his impression of the subversion of a world. There was a pendant to this war of the East (which was in reality waged for Cleopatra's sake), a war fought by all the countries of the Mediterranean for the possession of a loose woman; the most famous of all wars, the old Trojan war. Here was stuff for a tragi-comedy of right bitter sort. From childhood he, and every one else, had been filled with the fame and glory of this war. All its heroes were models of bravery, magnanimity, wisdom, friendship, and fidelity, as if such things existed! For the first time in his life he feels a desire to mock-to shout 'Bah!' straight out of his heart-to turn the wrong side out, the true side."

ACT FIRST.
Scene I.

[Pandarus.] It is Chaucer who first submits the character of Pandarus to an important change, and makes it the transition point of the Pandarus we find in Shakespeare. In his poem

Troilus's young friend has become the elderly kinsman of Creseyde, and he brings the young pair together, mostly out of looseness. It was not Chaucer's intention, as it was Shakespeare's, to make the old fellow odious. His rôle is not carried out with the cynical and repulsive lowness of Shakespeare's character. Chaucer endeavours to ward off any painful impression by making the shameless old rascal the wit of his poem. He did not achieve his object; his readers saw only the procurer in Pandarus, whose name became thenceforward a by-word in the English language, and it was as such that Shakespeare drew the character in downright, unmistakable disgust.

66

83. to stay behind her father:-Calchas, according to Caxton in The Destruction of Troy, was a great learned bishop," who was sent by Priam to consult the oracle of Delphi concerning the result of the war. As soon as he had made "his oblations and demands for them of Troy, Apollo answered unto him saying, Calcas, Calcas, beware thou returne not back againe to Troy, but goe thou with Achylles unto the Greekes, and depart never from them, for the Greekes shall have victorie of the Trojans, by the agreement of the gods." Chaucer's version of the story is much like this.

104. Ilium was properly the name of the city; but by Caxton it is thus described: "In the most open place of the cittie, upon a rock, the king Priamus did build his rich pallace, which was named Ilion: that was one of the richest pallaces and the strongest that ever was in all the world."

Scene II.

38 et seq. The long scene between Cressida and Pandarus is but an exhibition of the art of stimulating reluctance or hesitation, as she pertinaciously foils the pertinacious go-between in his recommendations of Troilus, only at last (291-293) to bespeak his services more certainly in bringing him to her :

Pandarus. I will be with you, niece, by and by.

Cressida. To bring, uncle?

Pand. Ay, a token from Troilus.

The inspiration of Shakespeare is due here less to Chaucer than to Homer, and he has caught exactly the intention so often misunderstood, of the pert reply of Helen to the inviting Aphrodite on the Trojan walls.

197. That's Antenor: he has a shrewd wit:-In the Troy Book of Lydgate, Antenor is thus described:

Copious in words, and one that much time spent

To jest, whenas he was in companie,

So driely, that no man could it espie;
And therewith held his countenance so well,
That every man received great content
To heare him speake, and pretty jests to tell,
When he was pleasant and in merriment:

For though that he most commonly was sad,
Yet in his speech some jest he always had."

292. To bring:-Of this Dyce says: "The expression, to be with a person to bring, is one of which I can more easily adduce examples than explain the exact meaning." As an instance in point, he quotes the following from Kyd's Spanish Tragedy: And heere Ile have a fling at him, that's flat; and Balthazar, Ile be with thee to bring, and thee, Lorenzo." Also this from Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady:

Lady. You have been with my sister?

Wel. Yes, to bring.

E. Love. An heir into the world, he means.

Of course, Pandarus catches at the word bring, and construes it in the sense commonly understood.

Scene III.

49 et seq. the tiger

sympathize:-It was formerly said that in violent storms tigers were wont to rage and roar most furiously.

83-101. Degree being vizarded, etc. :-This may have been suggested by a magnificent strain of eloquence in the first book of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, 1594: "If nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws; if those principal and mother elements, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have; if the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions, and by irregular volubility turn themselves any way as it might happen; if the prince of the lights of heaven, which now as a giant doth run his unwearied course, should as it were through

a languishing faintness begin to stand and rest himself; if the moon should wander from her beaten way, the times and seasons of the year blend themselves by disordered and confused mixtures, the winds breathe out their last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, the earth be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruits of the earth pine away as children at the withered breasts of their mother no longer able to yield them relief;-what would become of man himself, whom these things do all now serve? See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world?"

94, 95. when the planets, etc. :-The apparently irregular motions of the planets were supposed to portend some disasters to mankind; indeed the planets themselves were not thought formerly to be confined in any fixed orbits of their own, but to wander about, as the etymology of their name demonstrates.

127-129. this neglection, etc.:-Of course, where each man strives to overtop or kick back his superiors, others will be moved to do the same by him, so that his way of climbing will result in a progress downwards; as men, by despising the law of their fathers, teach their children to despise them.

155. wooden dialogue:-" The epithet wooden," as Clarke observes, "has admirable significance here; not only conveying to the ear the resounding tread of the strutting player on the boards, but bringing to our eye his puppet hardness and stiffness as well as the awkward stupidity of his look and action."

272. this challenge:-Steevens remarks upon the Poet's anachronism in putting this challenge in a style more suitable to Palmerin or Amadis than to Hector or Eneas. But is not the whole play a binding up of the characters and incidents of classic times with the manners and sentiments of Gothic chivalry? Shakespeare learned this from the romance writers, and from none more than from Chaucer, who, nevertheless, seems to have known that Greece was neither a Gothic nor a Christian nation. The incident of the challenge was most likely taken from Chapman's translation of Homer.

ACT SECOND.

Scene I.

[Thersites.] Recall the friendship, the brotherhood, existing between Achilles and Patroclus as drawn by Homer, and then