p. 162.

p. 163.

p. 215.

p. 218.

P. 221.

"

though it has a plain and appropriate meaning, is a very awkward phrase. Launce's caution is of ancient date. It occurs in Ovid's Art of Love, in a passage thus translated by Congreve : —

"And you whose breath is touched this caution take, Nor fasting, nor too near another speak."

Book III.

"By my halidom" :-In the Note on this passage read, "from the Anglo-Saxon halig doom."

=

sacred, and dom=

"Madam, I pity much your grievances":

- This passage

is probably corrupt by omission of a line, or perhaps by a misprint in plac'd.'

The Merry Wives of Windsor.

goot words : - - The folio has " good words," and the like often. But should such irregularity in so incorrectly printed a book as the first folio cause us to doubt a moment that Shakespeare made Sir Hugh's WelshEnglish consistent throughout?

he's a justice of peace in his country":- There can be no doubt as to the correctness of country' in this passage. It is used in like manner in New England to this day.

seese,

66—

there's pippins and cheese," &c. Read" and as elsewhere.

-bully rock." This cant phrase has been hitherto spelled "bully rook," and explained, "sharper, one who lives by his wits," which makes it a very unfit and unlikely epithet for the Host to apply to Falstaff, his "Emperor. Cæsar, Keisar, and Pheazar," a guest who sits "at ten pounds [about $300 with us now] a week," and afterward to Mr. Justice Shallow. That the true signification of the term is, a brave, dashing, overbearing fellow, seems to me to be decided by these lines from the Prologue to Sedley's Bellamira, 4to, 1687, which I have met with since the proofs of this play were corrected:

"What c.... y' have met with, and what punks are sound,
Who are the Bully-rocks, and who gives ground.”
The contrast here is evident. The bully rock is the man
who does not give ground, who, in our slang phrase,
"faces the music." This interpretation seems to be en-
tirely sustained by the following passages: -

What do we fight for? For pay, for pay, my bull
Shirley's Honoria and Memnon, 1659.

rocks."

p. 230.

"And devillishly are they us'd when they meddle with a guard man or any of the Bully Rocks indeed."

The Feign'd Astrologer, 1668. "He, poor soul, must be hectored till he likes 'em, while the more stubborn bully-rock damms and is safe." Shadwell's Sullen Lovers, 1668.

"Thou art mine own sweet Bully."

Thomas of Reading, ed. 1618. E 3. In Rabelais, Book V. Chap. 7, Urquhart translates "Dieu de Battailes," "that bully-rock Mars." This use of bully' has never entirely passed away in this country. Of late it is much heard among the boys, who use it just as it is used in the passages above quoted. The spelling bully rook,' a mere phonographic irregularity, doubtless led to the supposition that there was some connection between this word and 'rook' = sharper, cheat.

66

What, have I 'scap'd love letters?" The folio omits I.

66

-

for though love use reason for his precisian": Dr. Johnson's conjecture that we should read "his physician" probably hits the truth. See the following line in Sonnet 147:

44

My reason, the physician to my love."

p. 238. "I, ay, I myself." So in Seneca's Ten Tragedies, "And sith that I, I Caitife, I, abridged have thy life," (ed. 1581, fol. 73 b,)

p. 259.

where we plainly should read, "I, ay, caitiff, I."

if Fortune thy foe were not, Nature thy friend": -i. e., Nature being thy friend, and having given thee beauty which would grace higher fortunes. Falstaff probably quotes here the burthen of an old song: "It plays Fortune my foe as distinctly as may be." Lingua, Sig. F 2, ed. 1607. And see the following lines from Lilly's Woman in the Moone, Act I.:

Use all these well, and Nature is thy friend; But use them ill, and Nature is thy foe." 66— the reek of a lime kill":- Although both folio and 4to read "lime-kill," kiln is given in all modern editions the very Cambridge edition itself. See in Withal's Short Dictionarie, 15-, "A lyme-kyll - Fornax calcaria," and in Seneca's Ten Tragedies,

"When up he [Hercules] stept on Eta mount, and gazed
on his kill,

Being layd aloft he brake the block, so heavy was he
Ed. 1581, fol. 213.

still."

p. 269.

p. 275.

"

p. 286.

"a posset of sack": See Supplementary Note on "A good sherris sack." King Henry Fourth, Part II. and the numbers of the genders": - I have no doubt that Shakespeare wrote "thy genders."

you must be preeches": - We should read, "be preeched." Parson Evans's faults are not in grammar. The text of the folio is probably the result of a mistake of the final s.

and in that trim":- Read "that tire," as the Note on the passage plainly indicates.

p. 37.

p. 38. p. 49.

p. 84.

p. 147.

VOL. III.

Measure for Measure.

"He hath offended but as in a dream": I am not sure that, strange and contradictory as the original reading, "He hath but as offended," &c., seems to us, it is not warranted by the idiom of Shakespeare's day.

66

to fine the fault": — The folio, “faults.” "Of the all-holding law" :- The critical canon referred to in the Note on this passage is Tyrwhitt's, not Theobald's.

66

I've been sick for ": - Read, "'have been sick for." The folio has, "that longing have been sick for," there being an elision of the pronoun, which was not uncommon in Shakespeare's day.

"One of our convent" :- Read, "our covent." So the folio. This is an old form of the word, still preserved in "Covent Garden."

Comedy of Errors.

Read,

The two

"Who falling there to find his fellow forth": without a doubt, "Who failing there," &c. drops are "in the ocean," and one seeks the other. It does not fall into the ocean.

p. 160. I learn from Mr. Halliwell's folio Shakespeare that my conjectural correction, "forced fallacy," is found on the margins of the Dent folio.

p. 182.

p. 184.

11

expect spoon meat, and bespeak a long spoon": - Read, with Capell, "so bespeak," &c.

by my long ears" :-i. e., my long 'years.' Even

p. 258.

P. 296.

at the present day we hear so many Englishmen from the old country, of even higher grade than Dromio's, pronounce 'ears' years, that there can be no doubt that Shakespeare intended the pun which the Cambridge editors first indicated.

Much Ado about Nothing.

"Into, Hey nonny, nonny" :-- For the hitherto unsuspected significance of this strange burthen see Florio's New World of Words, ed. 1611: "Fossa, a grave, a pit, a Used also for a woman's pleasure-pit, nony-nony, or palace of pleasure."

trench.

"Let them be, in the hands of coxcomb" : - When the Note on this passage was written, I had forgotten, or had not observed, that Theobald made the same distribution of the text. He, however, gave no reasons for his decision.

Love's Labour's Lost.

against gentility": -I am of opinion that we should read, "A dangerous law; against gentility."

p. 353.

64

p. 359.

66

until then, Sit down, Sorrow" :- Read, thee down," &c.

p. 361.

p. 380.

p. 390.

p. 394.

p. 397.

661

:- i. e., a green withe, and a punning allusion

for she had a green wit th having been pronounced as t, (hitherto unnoticed because of the ignorance of the pronunciation of th) being made to the green withes with which Delilah bound Samson. See Vol. XII. p. 431.

66

Of trotting paritors" :- - i. e., apparitors, who were officers of a bishop's court.

"Master Person - quasi pers-on":- As to the pronunciation of person,' see Vol. XII. p. 423.

"In love I hope": The folio assigns this speech to Longaville, with manifest error.

"Thou for whom Jove would swear": The author of the criticism on this edition in the Atlantic magazine, denying by implication that the quantity and accent proper here to thou' make any addition to this line superfluous, says that, if read as it is printed, "the effect would be something of this kind: Thou-ou for whom Jove would swear,' which would be like the bow-wowwow before the Lord' of the country choirs." Enjoying the laugh at my own expense quite as heartily as my

P. 398.

p. 402.

p. 403.

p. 409.

critic did, I do not see that his joke is fatal to my pros
ody. He must know that the vowel sound in thou' is
a junction of ah and oo, the Italian a and u, and that the
least prolongation of this sound will, at a poet's need,
make the diphthong in thou' fill the place of a dissyl-
able just as manifestly as it does in the following lines:-
"For in his male he had a pil webere,

Which (as he said) was our Lady's veil."

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Prol. 1. 696. "Not you to me," &c. I neglected to remark that the folio has, "Not you by me, but I betray'd to you," and that the transposition, imperatively required, was suggested by Monck Mason.

·

of their sweet complexion crack:"-Crack' here means not speak of, talk, but boast; in which sense it is commonly enough used with us in the phrase 'crack up.' Its use to mean gossip' is Lowland Scotch, as in "a crack wi' Monk barns." The Antiquary. As to the use of 'sweet' here, instead of white' or 'fair,' it is to be noticed that in Shakespeare's day and afterward complexion meant, not the tint of the skin, but (See Vol. XI. 169, 197) the whole physical being, what we call now the organization; and that it was to the repulsiveness of this in the Ethiopian, and not to his color only, that Shakespeare makes the King allude.

"For when would you, my lord," &c.:-' - The most casual reader must be struck by the repetitions and want of logical sequence in this speech; and it is more than probable that we have in the old copies both what Shakespeare intended to strike out from the speech, as originally written, and what he substituted. But as there is no guide, except individual judgment, to determine which is the old and which the new matter, the course pursued by Capell and Mr. Dyce, who omit six lines from 66 For when would you, my Lord," &c., and nine from For where is any author," &c., seems very unsafe, if not unwarrantable.

"remember thy courtesy" :- - Mr. Howard Staunton is of opinion that 'remember thy courtesy' was a conventional phrase for pray you put on your hat.' To sustain this interpretation he quotes three passages, of which, upon examining the context of each, it seems to me that only the following one is in point: "To me, sir! What do you mean? - Pray you, remember your court'sy. [Reads.] To his most selected friend Master Edward Knowell.' What might the gentleman's name be, sir, that sent it? Nay, pray you be cover'd." Every Man in