Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

AMI. And I'll go feek the duke; his banquet is [Exeunt feverally.

prepar❜d.

SCENE VI.

The Jame.

Enter ORLANDO and ADAM.

ADAM. Dear mafter, I can go no further: O, I die for food! Here lie I down, and measure out my grave. Farewell, kind master.

ORL. Why, how now, Adam! no greater heart in thee? Live a little; comfort a little; cheer thyfelf a little: If this uncouth foreft yield any thing favage, I will either be food for it, or bring it for food to thee. Thy conceit is nearer death than thy powers For my fake, be comfortable; hold

death awhile at the arm's end: I will here be with thee presently; and if I bring thee not fomething to eat, I'll give thee leave to die: but if thou diest before I come, thou art a mocker of my labour. Well faid! thou look'ft cheerly: and I'll be with thee quickly.-Yet thou lieft in the bleak air: Come, I will bear thee to fome fhelter; and thou fhalt not die for lack of a dinner, if there live any thing in this defert. Cheerly, good Adam!

[Exeunt.

Here lie I down, and measure out my grave.] So, in Romeo and

Juliet:

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[blocks in formation]

A table fet out. Enter Duke Senior, AMIENS, Lords,

and Others.

DUKE S. I think he be transform'd into a beast; For I can no where find him like a man.

1 LORD. My lord, he is but even now gone hence;

Here was he merry, hearing of a fong.

DUKE S. If he, compact of jars,' grow mufical, We shall have fhortly discord in the spheres: Go, seek him; tell him, I would speak with him.

Enter JAQUES.

I LORD. He faves my labour by his own approach.

DUKE S. Why, how now, monfieur! what a life

is this,

That your poor friends must woo your company What! you look merrily.

742. A fool, a fool!I met a fool i' the foreft, A motley fool;-a miferable world! 3

2 compact of jars,] i. e. made up of difcords. In The Comedy of Errors we have "compact of credit," for made up of credulity. Again, in Woman is a Weathercock, 1612:

[ocr errors]

like gilded tombs

"Compacted of jet pillars."

The fame expreffion occurs alfo in Tamburlane, 1590:

"Compact of rapine, piracy, and fpoil."

STEEVENS.

3 A motley fool;-a miferable world!] What! because he met a

As I do live by food, I met a fool;

Who laid him down and bafk'd him in the fun,
And rail'd on lady Fortune in good terms,
In good fet terms, and yet a motley fool.
Good-morrow, fool, quoth I: No, fir, quoth he,
Call me not fool, till heaven bath fent me fortune : *
YAnd then he drew a dial from his poke;
And looking on it with lack-luftre eye,
Lbs Says, very wifely, It is ten o'clock:

Thus may we fee, quoth he, how the world wags:
'Tis but an hour ago, fince it was nine;
And after one hour more, 'twill be eleven;
And fo, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot, and rot,
And thereby bangs a tale. When I did hear
The motley fool thus moral on the time,

motley fool, was it therefore a miserable world? This is fadly blundered; we should read:

a miferable varlet.

His head is altogether running on this fool, both before and after these words, and here he calls him a miferable varlet, notwithftanding he railed on lady Fortune in good terms, &c. Nor is the change we may make, fo great as appears at first fight.

WARBURTON,

I fee no need of changing world to warlet, nor, if a change were neceffary, can I guefs how it fhould certainly be known that varlet is the true word. A miferable world is a parenthetical exclamation, frequent among melancholy men, and natural to Jaques at the fight of a fool, or at the hearing of reflections on the fragility of life. JOHNSON.

4 Call me not fool, till heaven hath sent me fortune] Fortuna favet fatuis, is, as Mr. Upton obferves, the faying here alluded to; or, as in Publius Syrus:

"Fortuna, nimium quem fovet, ftultum facit.”

So, in the prologue to The Alchemift:

"Fortune, that favours fooles, these two short houres
"We wish away."

Again, in Every Man out of his Humour, Act I, fc. iii:

[ocr errors]

Sog. Why, who am I, fir?

"Mac. One of those that fortune favours.

Car. The periphrafis of a foole." REED,

My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,
That fools fhould be fo deep-contemplative;
And I did laugh, fans intermiffion,
An hour by his dial.-O noble fool!
A worthy fool! Motley's the only wear.'
DUKE S. What fool is this?

742. O worthy fool!-One that hath been a
courtier ;

And fays, if ladies be but young, and fair,
They have the gift to know it: and in his brain,-
Which is as dry as the remainder bisket

After a voyage, he hath strange places cramm'd
With obfervation, the which he vents

In mangled forms :-O, that I were a fool!
I am ambitious for a motley coat.

DUKE S. Thou fhalt have one.

[ocr errors]

It is my only fuit;"
Provided, that you weed your better judgments
Of all opinion that grows rank in them,
That I am wife. I must have liberty
Withal, as large a charter as the wind,'

Motley's the only wear.] It would have been unneceffary to repeat that a motley, or party-coloured coat was anciently the drefs of a fool, had not the editor of Ben Jonfon's works been mistaken in his comment on the 53d Epigram:

[ocr errors]

where, out of motley,'s he

"Could fave that line to dedicate to thee?"

Motley, fays Mr, Whalley, is the man who out of any odd mixture,
or old fcraps, could fave, &c. whereas it means only, Who but a
fool, i. e. one in a fuit of motley, &c.

See Fig. XII. in the plate at the end of the first part of King
Henry IV. with Mr. Tollet's explanation. J STEEVENS.

6-only fuit;] Suit means petition, I believe, not dress. JOHNSON.
The poet meant a quibble. So Act V: "Not out of your
apparel, but out of your fuit." STEEVENS.

7 as large a charter as the wind,] So, in K. Henry V:
"The wind, that charter'd libertine, is ftill." MALONE.

The observation

I

-Motley's the only wear, might have been suggested to Shakspeare by the following line in the 4th Satire of Donne :

" Your only wearing is your Grogaram":"

1

To blow on whom I please; for fo fools have:
And they that are most galled with my folly,
They most must laugh: And why, fir, muft they fo?
The why is plain as way to parish church:
He, that a fool doth very wifely hit,
Doth very foolishly, although he fmart,
Not to feem fenfelefs of the bob: if not,
The wife man's folly is anatomiz'd

8

Even by the fquandring glances of the fool."
Invest me in my motley; give me leave

To speak my mind, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of the infected world,'
If they will patiently receive my medicine.

DUKE S. Fie on thee! I can tell what thou wouldst do.

J42. What, for a counter,' would I do, but good?

Not to feem fenfelefs of the bob:] The old copies read onlySeem fenfelefs, &c. Not to were fupplied by Mr. Theobald. See the following note. STEEVENS.

Befides that the third verfe is defective one whole foot in meafure, the tenour of what Jaques continues to fay, and the reafoning of the paffage, fhow it no lefs defective in the fenfe. There is no doubt, but the two little monofyllables, which I have supplied, were either by accident wanting in the manufcript, or by inadvertence were left out. THEOBALD.

9 if not, &c.] Unless men have the prudence not to appear touched with the farcafms of a jefter, they subject themselves to his power; and the wife man will have his folly anatomifed, that is, diffected and laid open, by the fquandring glances or random shots of a fool. JOHNSON.

2 Cleanfe the foul body of the infected world,] So, in Macbeth: "Cleanse the ftuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff.”

DOUCE.

-for a counter,] Dr. Farmer obferves to me, that about the time when this play was written, the French counters (i. e. pieces of falfe money used as a means of reckoning) were brought into use in England. They are again mentioned in Troilus and Creffida: will you with counters fum

66

"The paft proportion of his infinite?" STEEVENS.

« PředchozíPokračovat »