Methought all his senses were lock'd in his eye,
As jewels in crystal for some prince to buy;
Who tending their own worth, from where they
were glass'd

Did point you to buy them along as you pass'd.
His face's own margent' did quote such amazes,
That all eyes saw his eyes enchanted with gazes;
I'll give you Aquitain, and all that is his,
An you give him for my sake but one loving kiss.
Prin. Come, to our pavilion: Boyet is dispos'd-
Boyet. But to speak that in words, which his eye
hath disclos'd:

I only have made a mouth of his eye,
By adding a tongue which I know will not lie.
Ros. Thou art an old love-monger, and speak'st
skilfully.

Mar. He is Cupid's grandfather, and learns news

of him.

and your love perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love?

I

Arm. Almost I had.

Moth. Negligent student? learn her by heart.
Arm. By heart, and in heart, boy.

Moth. And out of heart, master: all those three
will prove.

Arm. What wilt thou prove?

Moth. A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and without, upon the instant: By heart you love her, because your heart cannot come by her: in heart you love her, because your heart is in love with her; and out of heart you love her, being out of heart that you cannot enjoy her.

Arm. I am all these three.

Moth. And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all.

Arm. Fetch hither the swain; he must carry me a letter.

Moth. A message well sympathised; a horse to be an embassador for an ass!

Arm. Ha, ha! what sayest thou?

Moth. Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse, for he is very slow-gaited: But I go. Arm. The way is but short; away.

Moth. As swift as lead, sir,

Arm. Thy meaning, pretty ingenious?
Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?
Moth. Minime, honest master; or rather, mas-

ter, no.

He [Singing.

Arm. Sweet air!-Go, tenderness of years; take I this key, give enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately hither; I must employ him in a letter to my love.

Moth. Master, will you win your love with a French brawl ?4

a

Arm. How mean'st thou? brawling in French? Moth. No, my complete master: but to jig off tune at the tongue's end, canary" to it with your feet, humour it with turning up your eye-lids; sigh a note, and sing a note; sometime through the throat, as if you swallowed love with singing love; sometime through the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling love; with your hat penthouselike o'er the shop of your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin belly-doublet, like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in your pocket, like a man after the old painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away. These are complements, these are humours; these betray nice wenches-that would be betrayed without these; and make them men of note, (do you note, men?") that most are affected to these. Arm. How hast thou purchased this experience? Moth. By my penny of observation." Arm. But 0,-but 0,

Moth. -the hobby-horse is forgot.

Arm. Callest thou my love, hobby-horse?"
Moth. No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt,

1 In Shakspeare's time, notes, quotations, &c. were usually printed in the exterior margin of books.

2 A song is apparently lost here. In old comedies the Bongs are frequently omitted. On this occasion the stage direction is generally Here they sing-or Cantun'. 3 i. e. hastily.

4 A kind of dance; spelt bransle by some authors: being the French name for the same dance.

5 Canary was the name of a sprightly dance, sometimes accompanied by the castanets.

6 i. e. accomplishments.

7 One of the modern editors, with great plausibility, proposes to read do you note me?

s' The allusion is probably to the old popular pamphlet. A Pennyworth of Wit.

9 The Hobby-horse was a personage belonging to the ancient Morris dance, when complete. It was the figure of a horse fastened round the waist of a man, his own legs going through the body of the horse, and enabling him to walk, but concealed by a long footcloth: while false legs appeared where those of the man should be at

reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that's he ;-shoot thee at the swain. Moth.

Thump then, and I flee.

[Erit. Arm. A most acute juvenal: voluble and free of grace!

By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face:
Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.
My herald is return'd.

Re-enter MOTH and CoSTARD.

Moth. A wonder, master; here's a Costard11 broken in a shin.

Arm. Some enigma, some riddle ;-come,-thy l'envoy;12--begin.

C st. No egma, no riddle, no l'envoy: no salve in the mail,13 sir: O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain; no l'envoy, no l'envoy, no salve, sir, but a plantain!

Arm.

tue, thou enforcest laughter; the silly thoug. y spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous smiling; O, pardon me, my stars! Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l'envoy, and the word, l'envoy, for a salve?

Moth. Do the wise think them other? is not l'envoy a salve?

Arm. No, page; it is an epilogue or discourse,
to make plain

Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.
I will example it:

The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,
Were still at odds, being but three.
There's the moral: Now the l'envoy.

the sides of the horse. Latterly the Hobby-horse was
frequently omitted, which appears to have occasioned a
popular ballad, in which was this line, or burden
io Quick, ready.

11 i. e. a head; a name adopted from an apple shaped like a man's head. It must have been a common sort of apple, as it gave a name to the dealers in apples who were called costar-mongers.

12 An old French term for concluding verses, which served either to convey the moral, or to address the poem to some person.

13 A mail or male was a budget, wallet, or portmanteau. Costard, mistaking enigma, riddle, and Denrey for names of salves, objects to the application of any salve in the budget, and cries out for a plantain leaf. There is a quibble upon salve and salve, a word with which it was not unusual to conclude epistles, &c. and which therefore was a kind of l'envoy.

Moth. I will add the l'envoy: Say the moral again.
Arm. The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,
Were still at odds, being but three :
Moth. Until the goose came out of door,

And stay'd the odds by adding four.

Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with my l'envoy.

The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee, Were still at odds, being but three: Arm. Until the goose came out of door, Staying the odds by adding four.

Moth. A good l'envoy, ending in the goose, Would you desire more?

Cost. The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose; that's flat:

Sir, your pennyworth is good, an your goose be
fat.-

To sell a bargain well, is as cunning as fast and loose:
Let me sec a fat l'envoy; ay, that's a fat goose.
Arm. Come hither, come hither: How did this
argument begin?

Moth. By saying that a Costard was broken in
a shin.

Then call'd you for the l'envoy.

Cost. True, and I for a plantain; Thus came your argument in;

Then the boy's fat l'envoy, the goose that you bought;

And he ended the market.'

Arm. But tell me; how was there a Costard broken in a shin?

Moth. I will tell you sensibly.

Cost. Thou hast no feeling of it, Moth; I will speak that l'envoy.

I, Costard, running out, that was safely within,
Fell over the threshold, and broke my shin.

Arm. We will talk no more of this matter.
Cost. Till there be more matter in the shin.
Arm. Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.
Cost. O, marry me to one Frances:-I smell
some l'envoy, some goose, in this.

Arm. By my sweet soul, I mean, setting thee at liberty, enfreedoming thy person; thou wert immured, restrained, captivated, bound.

Cost. True, true; and now you will be my purgation, and let me loose.

Cost. Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon
may a man buy for a remuneration?
Biron. What is a remuneration?
Cost. Marry, sir, half-penny farthing.
Biron. O, why then, three-farthings-worth of silk.
Cost. I thank your worship: God be with you!
Biron. O, stay, slave; I must employ thee:
As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave,
Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.

Cost. When would you have it done, sir?
Biron. O, this afternoon.

Cost. Well, I will do it, sir: Fare you well.
Biron. O, thou knowest not what it is.
Cost. I shall know, sir, when I have done it.
Biron. Why, villain, thou must know first.
Cost. I will come to your worship to-morrow
morning.

Biron. It must be done this afternoon. Hark, slave, it is but this ;-

The princess comes to hunt here in the park,
And in her train there is a gentle lady;
When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her

A very beadle to a humorous sigh; A critic; nay, a knight-watch constable; A domineering pedant o'er the boy, Than whom no mortal so magnificent!" This wimpled,, whining, purblind, wayward boy; This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid; Regent of love rhymes, lord of folded arms, The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans, Liege of all loiterers and malcontents, Dread prince of plackets," king of codpieces, Sole imperator, and great general Of trotting paritors1-O my little heart'-Arm. I give thee thy liberty, set thee from du- And I to be a corporal of his field,11 rance; and, in lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing And wear his colours12 like a tumbler's hoop! but this: Bear this significant to the country maid What? I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife! Jaquenetta: there is remuneration; [Giving him A woman, that is like a German clock,13 money.] for the best ward of mine honour, is, re- Still a-repairing; ever out of frame; warding my dependants. Moth, follow. [Exit. And never going aright, being a watch, Moth. Like the sequel, I.--Signior Costard, adieu. But being watch'd that it may still go right? Cost. My sweet ounce of man's" my in-Nay, to be perjur'd, which is worst of all; . xit MOTH. And, among three, to love the worst of all; Now will I look to this remuneratio... Remunera- A whitely wanton with a velvet brow, tion! O, that's the Latin word for three farthings: With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes; three farthings-remuneration.-What's the price of Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deed, this inkle? a penny :-No, I'll give you a remunera- Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard: tion: why, it carries it.-Remuneration!--why, it And I to sigh for her! to watch for her! is a fairer name than French crown. I will never To pray for her! Go to; it is a plague buy and sell out of this word. That Cupid will impose for my neglect Of his almighty dreadful little might. Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan;

cony Jew!

Enter BIRON.

Biron. O, my good knave Costard! exceedingly Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.

well met.

1 Alluding to the proverb, Three women and a goose make a market,

2 See p. 196, note 11.

3 Armado sustains his character well; he will not give any thing its vulgar name, he calls the letter he would send to Jaquenetta, a significant.

4 Incony. The meaning and etymology of this phrase is not clearly defined, though numerous instances of its use are adduced. Sweet, pretty, delicate seem to be some of its acceptations; and the best derivation seems to be from the northern word canny or conny, meaning pretty, the in will be intensive and equivalent to very. 5 Guerdon, Fr. is reward.

6 With the utmost nicety.

7 Magnificent here means glorying, boasting.

8 To wimple is to veil, from guimple, Fr. which Cotgrave explains, The crepine of a French hood,' 1. e. the cloth going from the hood round the neck. Kersey explains it, The muffler or plaited linen cloth

[Exit.

which nuns wear about their neck.' Shakspeare means
no more than that Cupid was hood-rinked.
9 Plackets were stomachers. See Note on Winter's
Tale, Act iv. Sc. 3.

10 The officers of the spiritual courts who serve citations.

11 It appears from Lord Stafford's Letters, vol. ii. p. 199, that a corporal of the field was employed, as an aid-de-camp is now, in taking and carrying to and fro the directions of the general, or other higher officers of the field.

12 It was once a mark of gallantry to wear a lady's colours. So in Cynthia's Revels by Jonson, despatches his lacquey to her chamber early, to know what her colours are for the day. It appears that a tumbler's hoop was usually dressed out with coloured ribands.

13 Clocks, which were usually imported from Germany at this time, were intricate and clumsy pieces of mechanism, soon deranged, and frequently out of frame,'

6 The ballad of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid may be seen in the Reliques of Ancient Poetry, vol. i. The beggar's name was Penelophon. Shakspeare alludes to the ballad again in Romeo and Juliei; Henry IV. Part ii.; and in Richard II. 7 i. e. lately.

'I who erewhile the happy garden sung.' Milton, Par. Reg. A pun is intended upon the word stile.

8 The allusion is to a fantastical character of the time. Popular applause (says Meres in Wit's Treasurie, p. 178,) doth nourish some, neither do they gape after any other thing but vaine praise and glorie,-as in our age Peter Shakerlye of Paules, and Monarcho that lived about the court,'

Prin. Thou hast mistaken his letter. Come, lords, | Armatho o' the one side,-O, a most dainty man!
away.
To see him walk before a lady, and to bear her fan!
To see him kiss his hand! and how most sweetly

Here, sweet, put up this; 'twill be thine another day.
[Exit Princess and Train.
Boyet. Who is the suitor? who is the suitor ?
Ros
Shall I teach you to know?
Boyet. Ay, my continent of beauty.
Ros.
Why, she that bears the bow.

Finely put off!

Boyet. My lady goes to kill horns; but, if thou

Ros. Shall I come upon thee with an old saying, that was a man when king Pepin of France was a little boy, as touching the hit it?

Boyet. So I may answer thee with one as old, that was a woman when queen Guinever of Britain was a little wench, as touching the hit it.

Ros. Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it, [Singing.
Thou canst not hit it, my good man.

Boyet. An I cannot, cannot, cannot,
An I cannot, another can.

[Exeunt Ros. and KATH. Cost. By my troth, most pleasant! how both did fit it!

Mar. A mark marvellous well shot! for they both did hit it.

Boyet. A mark! O, mark but that mark; A
mark, says my lady!

Let the mark have a prick in't, to mete at, if it may be.
Mar. Wide o'the bow hand! I'faith your hand
Cost. Indeed, a' must shoot nearer, or he'll ne'er

is out.

hit the clout.

1 An equivoque was here intended; it should appear that the words shooter and suitor were pronounced alike in Shakspeare's time.

2 This is a term in archery still in use, signifying a good deal to the left of the mark. Of the other expressions, the clout was the white mark at which archers took aim. The pin was the wooden nail in the centre of it.

3 i. e. grossly. This scene, as Dr. Johnson justly remarks, deserves no care,'

4 To rub is a term at bowls.

5 Pathetical sometimes meant passionate, and metimes passion-moving, in our old writers; but is here used by Costard as an idle expletive, as Rosalind's 'pathetical break-promise,' in As You Like It. 6 Pomerater, a species of apple.

a' will swear!

And his page o' t' other side, that handful of wit!
Ah, heavens, it is a most pathetical' nit!
Sola, sola! [Shouting within. Exit CoST. running.
SCENE II. The same. Enter HOLOFERNES,
SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL.

the testimony of a good conscience.
Nath. Very reverent sport, truly; and done in

Hol. The deer was, as you know, in sanguis,blood; ripe as a pomewater, who now hangeth like heaven; and anon falleth like a crab, on the face of a jewel in the ear of coelo, the sky, the welkin, the terra,-the soil, the land, the earth."

sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least; But, sir,
assure ve, it was a buck of the first head.
Hol. Sir Nathaniel, haud credo.

Nath. Truly, master Holofernes, the epithets are

I

Dull. "Twas not a haud credo, 'twas a pricket. Hol. Most barbarous intimation! yet a kind of insinuation, as it were, in via, in way, of explication; facere, as it were, replication, or, rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his inclination,-after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, unfirmed fashion,-to insert again my haud credo for a trained, or rather unlettered, or, ratherest, uncon

deer.

Dull. I said, the deer was not a haud credo ; 'twas a pricket.

Hol. Twice sod simplicity, bis coctus!--O thou monster, ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!

Nath. Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts ;

And such barren plants are set before us, that we

thankful should be

(Which we of taste and feeling are) for those parts
that do fructify in us more than he.
For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet,
or a fool,

So,

were there a patch set on learning, to see him

in a school:10

Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.
But, omne bene, say I; being of an old father's mind,

Dull. You two are book-men: Can you tell by
your wit,

What was a month old at Cain's birth, that's not five weeks old as yet?

Hol. Dictynna, good man Dull; Dictynna,11 good man Dull.

Dull. What is Dictynna?

Nath. A title to Phoebe, to Luna, to the moon.
Hol. The moon was a month old, when Adam

was no more;

And raught12 not to five weeks, when he came to fivescore.

8 In The Return from Parnassus, 1606, is the following account of the different appellations of deer at their different ages. Amoretto. I caused the keeper to sever the rascal deer from the bucks of the first head. Now, sir, a buck is the first year, a fawn; the second year, a pricket; the third year, a sorrel; the fourth year, a soare; the fifth, a buck of the first head; the sixth year, a complete buck. Likewise your hart, is the first year, a calfe; the second year, a brocket; the third year, a spade; the fourth year, a stag; the sixth year, a hart. A roe-buck is the first year, a kid; the second year, a gird: the third year, a hemuse; and these are your special beasts for chase.'

9 The length of these lines was no novelty on the English stage. The Moralities afford whole scenes of the like measure.

7 Warburton's conjecture that Florio, the author of the Italian Dictionary, was ridiculed under the name of Holofernes would derive some strength from the follow10 The meaning is, to be in a school would as ill be. ing definition: cielo, heaven, the skie, firmament or come a patch, or low fellow, as folly would become me. wilkin. Terra, the element called earth, anie ground, 11 Shakspeare might have found this uncommon title earth, countrie, land, soile. But Florio's Dictionary for Diana in the second book of Golding's translation of was not published until 1598; and this play appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses.

have been written in 1594, though not printed until 1598.. 12 Reached.

thee not, loves thee not.-Ut, re, sol, la, mi, fa— Under pardon, sir, what are the contents? or, rather, as Horace says in his-What, my soul, verses? Nath. Ay, sir, and very learned.

Hol. Let me hear a staff, a stanza, a verse: Lege, domine.

Nath. If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?

Ah, never faith could hold, if not to beauty vowed! Though to myself forsworn, to thee I'll faithful prove; Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers

Hol. You find not the apostrophes, and so miss Hol. This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; the accent; let me supervise the canzonet. Here a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, are only numbers ratified; but, for the elegancy, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, re-facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret. volutions: these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater; and deliver'd upon the mellowing of occasion: But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.

2 i. e. I will use or practise alliteration. To affect is 7 He hums the notes of the gamut, as Edmund does thus used by Ben Jonson in his Discoveries: Spen-in King Lear, Acti. Sc. 2. ser, in affecting the ancients, writ no language; yet I s These verses are printed, with some variations, would have him read for his matter, but as Virgil read Cnnius.'

3 For the explanation of the terms pricket, sore or soar, and sorel in this quibbling rhyme, the reader is prepared, by the extract from The Return from Parnassus, in a note at the beginning of the scene,

4 Talon was often written talent in Shakspeare's time. Honest Dull quibbles. One of the senses of to claw is to flatter.

5 The Eclogues of Mantuanus were translated be fore the time of Shakspeare, and the Latin printed on