charge you, O men! for the love you bear to women (as I perceive by your simpering, none of you hate them), that between you and the women, the play may please. If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleas'd me, complexions that lik’d me, and breaths that I defy'd not: and, I am sure, as many as have good beards, or good faces, or sweet breaths, will, for my kind offer, when I make curt'sy, bid me farewel.

449

[Exeunt omnes,

THE END.

BY

SAM. JOHNSON & GEO.STEEVENS,

AND

THE VARIOUS COMMENTATORS,

UPON

AS YOU LIKE IT,

WRITTEN BY

WILL. SHAKSPERE.

-SIC ITUR AD ASTRA.

VIRG.

LONDON:

Printed for, and under the Direction of,

JOHN BELL, British-Library, STRAND, Bookseller to His Royal Highness the PRINCE OF WALES.

M DCC LXXXVII.

ANNOTATIONS

UPON

AS YOU LIKE IT.

ACT I.

Line 1. As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will, but a poor thousand crowns, &c.], The grammar, as well as sense, suffers cruelly by this reading. I would read: As I remember, Adam, it was on this fashion. He bequeathed me by will, &c.. Orlando and Adam enter abruptly in the midst of a conversation on this topick; and Orlando is correcting some misapprehension of the other. As I remember (says he) it was thus. He left me a thousand crowns; and, as thou sayest, charged my brother, &c. BLACKSTONE.

8. Stays me here at home, unkept;] We should read stys, i..e. keeps me like a brute. The following

words

words--for call you that keeping

-that differs not

from the stalling of an ox, confirms this emendation.

So Caliban says,

"And here you sty me in this hard rock."

WARBURTON.

Sties is better than stays, and more likely to be Shakspere's.

So, in Noah's Flood, by Drayton :

JOHNSON.

"And sty themselves up in a little room.”

STEEVENS.

36. Be better employed, and be nought a while.] Be content to be a cypher, till I shall think fit to elevate you into consequence.

This was certainly a proverbial saying. I find it in The Storie of King Darius, an interlude, 1565: "Come away, and be nought a whyle,

"Or surely I will you both defyle."

Again, in K. Henry IV. p. ii. Falstaff says to Pistol: "Nay, if he do nothing but speak nothing, he shall be nothing here." STEEVENS.

Naught is the reading of the folio, but I believe nought was intended; for in the early part of the 17th century, nought was generally spelt naught.

1

MALONE. 51. Albeit, I confess your coming before me is nearer to his reverence.] This, I apprehend, refers to the courtesy of distinguishing the eldest son of a knight, by the title of esquire. HENLEY.

57. I am no villain:] The word villain is used by the elder brother, in its present meaning, for a worth

less,