NOTES. Page 3, line 7, Mall Berry.] In the days when this play was written, all words of one syllable, written with an a, had the broad pronunciation which we now give to those spelt with an o; a custom still retained in Scotland and the North of England. We of the South also preserve this pronunciation in this abbreviation of the name Mary; but, if I had not, in the following play, altered the orthography to Moll, the modern reader would have scarcely recognized the word. Page 5, line 8, quothernicke.] From cothurnus, the buskin. Page 5, line 10, pamping.] I have not met with this word elsewhere. Quære, pimping? Page 7, line 23. Who recks the tree.] Both the editions of 1607 and 1637 read "who wreakes the tree.". See Dyce's Remarks on Collier's and Knight's Shakespeares, p. 163. Page 13, line 7. Away, you want wit.] The edition. 1607 has a hyphen between the two last words. Page 19, line 1. I'll have one venny with her tongue.] "A sweet touch, a quick venny of wit; snip, snap, quick and home." - Love's Labour's Lost, act v., scene 1.-See Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare, vol. 1., p. 233. Page 19, line 20. Page 22, line 9. Yonder wad of groans.] A wad is a bundle. copies read "the sign of the Maidenhead in, &c." Page 22, line 10. not the like simile.] What's her hair? faith, to Bandora wires, there's Music, iii., 345); and, however strange this similitude may now seem, ladies' hairs were often called wires by the poets of these times. "Her hair not truss'd, but scatter'd on her brow, Surpassing Hybla's honey for the view, Or soften'd golden wires." Lodge, in England's Parnassus. "Come, sweet Muses, leave your singinge, Sith you lost your whole desires." Halliwell's Miscel. temp., Jac. i.. p. 41. "I do not love thee for that fair Tho' the wires thereof be drawn Finer than the threads of lawn." The transition was easy from the universal poetical epithet golden hairs to golden wires; but in two contemporary plays, we find that not only metal wires were used in dressing ladies' hair, but that the ladies themselves were called City-wires.-See Gifford's Jonson, iii., 342, and Dyce's Beaumont and Fletcher, i., 233. In both these places, city-wires would make better sense; and I am convinced that in Mr. Dyce's quotation, wires is a mere error of the press for wives. I should have thought the same in Mr. Gifford's passage too, but that there, the word ought to rhyme to Squires. Page 22, line 27. Shall I defy hatbands, &c.] Frank has given us this description of a lover's habits before. It consists in a general indifference to the ligatures of dress, and an exchange of the foppery of neckruffs for the plainness of falling bands, such as divines, lawyers, and charity-boys now wear. Ruffian is a poor pun. There is a good deal of humour in " Shoe-strings-so-and-so!" As if Frank had exhausted the eloquence of his passion. "The hatband" (says Mr. Dilke1) "was a very distinguishing feature of the nobility and gentry of those times; on the adornment of which comparatively large sums were expended." 'Old Eng. Plays, vol. ii., p. 129. "Sir Fastidious Brisk. He again lights me here--I had on a gold cable hatband, then new come up, which I wore about a murrey French hat I had—cuts my hatband, and yet it was massy goldsmith's work."Every Man out of his Humour, act iv., scene 4. Mr. Gifford has no note on this passage. "Laverdure. Set my richest gloves, garters, hats, just in the way of their eyes.”—Marston's What you will, act ii., scene 1. "Garters and roses, fourscore pounds a pair." The Devil is an Ass, act i., scene 1. And see Cunningham's Rich's Honestie of this Age, page 66. Page 23, line 5. The night hath play'd the swift-foot runaway.] "For the close night doth play the runaway," impress me with the conviction that, in the following passage in Romeo and Juliet, the Night is the Runaway, and the Stars are his Eyes, which Juliet hopes will wink on this occasion, -"for night hath many eyes, Whereof, though most do sleep, yet some are spies: "Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Jonson's Sejanus. Towards Phoebus' mansion; such a waggoner As Phaëton would whip you to the west, By their own beauties; or, if love be blind, It best agrees with night. Come, civil Night, Thou sober-suited matron, all in black, &c. Come night, come Romeo, come thou day in night; For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night, Whiter than snow upon a raven's back. Come, gentle Night! come, loving, black-brow'd Night, Give me my Romeo: and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars," &c. Still harping on the Runaway Night's eyes. In another passage, which I cannot immediately refer to, Shakespeare also has attributed winking to the stars: "the stars do wink, As 'twere with over-watching." And in the Midsummer Night's Dream, act iii., scene ii., the stars are called the eyes of night. To cryptogamists the night is always short. On a preceding occasion, in the company of Romeo, Juliet had found the night a runaway. On the coming opportunity, the whole scene is full of her complaints of the swiftness of night. The Rev. N. J. Halpin, in a most ingenious and poetical essay, in the second volume of the Shakespeare Society's Papers, has endeavoured to prove that Cupid is the Runaway here alluded to. But he has not shown (as he asserts) that Runaway was a common pet name for Cupid. He has only proved that Cupid is called so in two Masques, in both of which it was part of the plot that Cupid should be a runaway, which it was not necessary he should be in Juliet's mind, even if we admit to Mr. Halpin that she knew that Cupid was always poetically treated as an absentee at hymeneals. Would Shakespeare have left his meaning to the mercy of the explanation, which two passages from other dramatists might afford, neither of which was written when he produced Romeo and Juliet ? If it had not been for the discovery of these two passages, where would have been the poet's meaning and the commentator's argument? Mr. Halpin says, that unless Cupid is the Runaway, the words "Or if Love be blind" have no relation to the matter. To this I reply, that love is here confounded with lovers: lovers can see by their own light; or if they are blind, no matter. Look at the rest of Juliet's speech. It all runs upon the coming of Night and Romeo. She is not thinking of the heathen mythology, or of epithalamies, which it is not probable a girl of thirteen, even in Shakespeare's days, can have assisted at or witnessed, as Mr. Halpin would make us believe. Her poetry is all the outpouring of her own young, luxuriant, and undisciplined fancy. Shakespeare employs such invocations as this, in other passages besides hymeneal ones, as, for instance, in Macbeth "Come, seeling Night! the tender eye of pitiful Day!" Macbeth, act iii., scene 2. |