on the People's Physitian in Whitlock's Zootomia, or Observations on the Present Manners of the English. London, 1654" or at most, if his English Library can furnish him with but the confused Notions of some Diseases, and he can but discourse them to fit all Waters, their Patient is ready to admire and cry," &c. P. 64. The Winter's Tale. p. 294. "By all their influences": - I think it more than probable that the true text is, "By all their influence." The rhythm demands but three syllables, and the addition of a superfluous & was common enough. See the Note on "Servile to all the skyey influences." Measure for Meas ure, Act III. Sc. 1. p. 300. "I'll keep my stables," &c. :- - Mr. Staunton, explains this passage, "I'll fasten, bar up my stables," saying that the allusion is to the unnatural passions of Semiramis. The suggestion is very ingenious and plausible, but I think over subtle and far-fetched. Would Shakespeare have made so remote an allusion so obscurely? I am inclined to doubt that he would. But keep' may well be used in the sense of bar, defend; and in that case is not the allusion rather to these passages of Jeremiah? – "They were fed as horses in the morning: every one neighed after his neighbor's wife." Chap. v. 8. "I have seen thy adulteries and thy neighings." I doubt if Shakespeare knew the whole story of Semiramis. p. 316. p. 325. "With what encounter so uncurrent," &c. : — ' Uncurrent' is the only difficult word in this passage. May it not be a misprint for occurrent' ? "Another ridiculous foole of Venice thought his shoulders and buttocks were made of glasse, wherefore he shunned all occurrents, and never did sit downe to meat," &c. Optic Glasse of Humors, p. 139. Bacon used occurrent' in the sense of incident. See Webster's Dictionary. a god or a child":- Steevens's definition of 'child' a girl, has been adopted in two or three recently published glossaries; but the authors of these works have cited in support of that gloss always and only this very passage! I offer them instead the following lines, which furnish the only instance known to me in which 'child' may possibly mean girl distinctively: "The gentlemen whose titles you have bought p. 334. p. 341. While Hob, your son, and Sib [Isabella], your nut browne child Are gentlefolks, and gentles are beguil'd." Greene's James the Fourth, p. 146, ed. Dyce. But notice here the rhyme needed for beguil'd,' and see in the passage quoted below, from King Lear, son and child both used to mean a man child, filius. In regard to my reading in this passage, the Honorable Charles Daly, Chief Justice of the Superior Court of New York, a careful and discriminating student of Shakespeare, said to me, in support of the old reading, that he had been told by a Warwickshire man that in that county 'child' was used to mean a girl. But see that Greene, a Warwickshire man, in the tale makes the seeking for the pap and crying-acts common, of course, to babes of both sexes unmistakable signs that this one was "a childe;" and Warwickshire Shakespeare, in King Lear, Act I. Sc. 2, has this passage: "This villain of mine comes under the prediction; there's son against father: the king falls from bias of nature; there's father against child." Child,' too, is used in this play by this very Shepherd, both before and after the passage in question, in the general sense of infant. Would Shakespeare, after having put the word in this sense in the mouth of the peasant, have used it afterward in another and a distinctive sense, when 'girl' or 'wench' would have answered the purpose just as well, and when Greene, in the passage which he was dramatizing, and which he had before him, used it merely to mean an infant, a human child, as opposed to "a little god"? In the Promptorium Parvulorum, 'child' is defined, puer, infans. And finally, in Wise's Glossary of Words still used in Warwickshire to be found in Shakspere, London, 1861, Child girl, does not appear, although Childing to bring forth a child, does. It would seem that Steevens's hearsay and the Warwickshire man's testimony must yield to Shakespeare, to Greene's novel which Shakespeare was using, Wise's Warwickshire Glossary, and to the usage of all the ballad writers. sworn, I think, to shew myself a glass": Mr. Dyce remarks, that the passage, with the reading 'sworn,' cannot possibly mean that Perdita thinks Florizel, in donning a swain's costume, to have sworn to show her a reflex of her own condition, because the word myself' at once refutes it." I cannot but think that my honored friend Mr. Dyce forgot, when he wrote this note, that 'myself' was and is continually used only as a strong me.' break a foul jape" : — - The Note upon this passage is inexact in saying that 'jape' did not mean a jest. p. 355. p. 377. It was used in that sense, but was by no means confined thereto. It was coarse slang of a very wide signification. See Florio's Dictionary in v. Fottere. 11 and admiring the nothing of it": i. e., the noting, &c., such having been the pronunciation of 'nothing,' and a pun being intended here, as in the name of Much Ado about Nothing. 11 thou art no tall fellow of thy hands":- In this phrase, so common among our early writers, I am now convinced that my first impression was right, and that 'hands' is put metaphorically for bodily strength. p. 45. p. 210. VOL. VI. King John. "This widow'd lady":- When I wrote the Note upon this passage I forgot the story of the widow woman and her cruse of oil, told in the seventeenth chapter of the first book of Kings. The old reading must stand. King Richard the Second. I should have remarked that certain unimportant variations of the 4to of 1615 are not mentioned in the Notes on this play. "We at time of year": - I am inclined to think that the true reading is "at time of vere;' vere being ver = spring. See Skelton's verses on Time: - "The rotys take theyr sap in time of vere; In time of winter the north wynde waxeth kene, have, "Nor muddy beggars," which may be the true text. Moody' and 'muddy' were pronounced alike. p. 434. P. 454. p. 496. King Henry the Fourth. Part II. - I would I might never spit white again":- The following passage from Urquhart's translation of Rabelais seems to show that to spit white,' meant to be thirsty; a very appropriate sense here: "- - for every man found himself so altered and a-dry with drinking these flat wines, that they did nothing but spit, and that as dry as Maltha cotton; saying, We have of the Pantagruel, and our throats are salted." Book II. Chap. 7. "Sneak's noise" : — - i. e., Sneak's band of music. 'Noise' was commonly used in this sense. "A good sherris sack": The following decision in the Court of King's Bench was made A. D. 1648, a period quite near enough to Shakespeare's day for the settlement of the question as to what sack was. Parmenter v. Cresy, Trinity Term, 23 Car. I. Defendant promised to deliver to plaintiff so many pipes of sack which he had then lying in a cellar. Decided, inter alia, that defendant must show plaintiff the wine in the cellar, "to the intent that he might make his choice, which is not to be of the species of Sack, viz., whether Canary or Sherry, etcetera, for then indeed the Plaintiff should [i. e., would] have made his choice before he could have requested delivery, but of the goodness of it." Aleyn's Select Cases in Banco Regis, 22, 23, 24 Car. I. fol. London, 1681. Plainly, therefore, sack was not a " brewage," but any kind of dry wine, and was kept in pipes in cellars; and, consequently, Falstaff could not have requested Bardolph to "brew" him a pottle (or measure) of sack. Sack,' although strictly applicable to any kind of dry wine, seems to have been generally applied only to sherry; just as corn,' which is a generic word applicable to wheat, rye. barley, or maize, is applied in Great Britain specially to wheat, the principal grain there; but in the United States to maize, the grain which is most important to the people there in their daily life. 6 p. 107. VOL. VII. King Henry the Fifth. There "Pass our accept and peremptory answer": can be no doubt that this, the old, reading is correct. See in Browne's Pastorals, "Things worthy their accept, our offering." II. 5. p. 152. King Henry the Sixth. Part I. "He ne'er lift up his hand but conquered": - Perhaps it should have been noticed that this form of the preterite was in common use in the Elizabethan era. "When Jesus then lift up his eyes." John vi. 5; and so the earlier translations. p. 281. King Henry the Sixth. Part II. our supplications in the quill” : — A correspondent of the London Athenæum of February 27, 1864, suggests that "in the quill" means together, ex compacto agere; and supports his gloss by a reference to Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary, ed. 1773. p. 377. "So lie thou there," &c.: - The 4to of 1619 has, "So lie thou there, and tumble in thy blood." p. 180. p. 326. 66 VOL. VIII. King Richard the Third. Of you, and you, Lord Rivers, and of Dorset King Henry the Eighth. "Must fetch him in he papers":-This, the old, reading is the true text. "Set is the soveraigne Sunne did shine when paper'd last our penne." Albion's England, Chap. 80, ed. 1606. p. 175. VOL. IX. Coriolanus. the store-house and the shop": As to the true meaning of shop,' see these lines from Juliana Berners' Boke of St. Albans, - |