That Katharine and Petruchio should be married, What will be said? what mockery will it be, KATH. No shame but mine: I must, forsooth, be forc'd To give my hand, oppos'd against my heart, He'll woo a thousand, 'point the day of marriage, TRA. Patience, good Katharine, and Baptista too; KATH. Would Katharine had never seen him though! [Exit, weeping, followed by BIANCA, and others. BAP. Go, girl; I cannot blame thee now to weep; 9 - -full of SPLEEN;] That is, full of humour, caprice, and inconstancy. JOHNSON. So, in The First Part of King Henry IV.: "A hare-brain'd Hotspur, govern'd by a spleen." M. MASON. 1 Make friends, invite them, and proclaim the banns ;] Them is not in the old copy. For this emendation I am answerable. The editor of the second folio, to supply the defect in the metre, reads, with less probability in my opinion Make friends, invite, yes, and proclaim, &c." MALONE. For such an injury would vex a very saint 2, Enter BIONDELLO. BION. Master, master! news, old news', and such news as you never heard of! BAP. Is it new and old too? how may that be? BION. Why, is it not news, to hear of Petruchio's coming? BAP. Is he come ? BION. Why, no, sir. BAP. What then? BION. He is coming. BAP. When will he be here? BION. When he stands where I am, and sees you there. TRA. But, say, what:-To thine old news. BION. Why, Petruchio is coming, in a new hat, and an old jerkin; a pair of old breeches, thrice turned; a pair of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled, another laced; an old rusty sword ta'en out of the town armory, with a broken hilt, and chapeless; with two broken points: His horse 2 saint. vex a saint,] The old copy redundantly reads-vex a very STEEVENS. 3 of THY impatient humour.] Thy, which is not in the old copy, was inserted by the editor of the second folio. MALONE. -old news,] These words were added by Mr. Rowe, and necessarily, for the reply of Baptista supposes them to have been already spoken; old laughing-old utis, &c. are expressions of that time merely hyperbolical, and have been more than once used by Shakspeare. See note on Henry IV. P. II. Act II. Sc. IV. STEEVENS. 5 a pair of boots-one buckled, another laced; an old rusty sword ta'en out of the town armory, with a broken hilt, and chapeless; with TWO BROKEN POINTS:] How a sword should have two broken points, I cannot tell. There is, I think, a transposition caused by the seeming relation of point to sword. I read, a pair of boots, one buckled, another laced with two broken points; an old rusty sword-with a broken hilt, and chapeless. JOHNSON hipped with an old mothy saddle, the stirrups of no kindred besides, possessed with the glanders, and like to mose in the chine; troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped with spavins, raied with the yellows, past cure of the fives', stark spoiled with the staggers, I suspect that several words giving an account of Petruchio's belt are wanting. The belt was then broad and rich, and worn on the outside of the doublet.-Two broken points might therefore have concluded the description of its ostentatious meanness. STEEVENS. The broken points might be the two broken tags to the laces. TOLLET. that have been CANDLE-CASES" That is, I suppose, boots long left off, and after having been converted into cases to hold the ends of candles, returning to tir ist offi ce. I do not know that I have ever met with the word candle-case in any other place, except the following preface to a dramatic dialogue, 1604, entitled, The Case is Alter'd, How?" I write upon cases, neither knife-cases, pin-cases, nor candle-cases." And again, in How to Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, 1602: "A bow-case, a cap-case, a comb-case, a lute-case, a fiddlecase, and a candle-case." STEEVENS. 6the stirrups of NO KINDRED :] So, in Sidney's Arcadia, lib. iii. : To this purpose many willing hands were about him, letting him have reynes, pettrell, with the rest of the furniture, and very brave bases; but all comming from divers horses, neither in colour nor fashion showing any kindred one with the other." STEEVENS. 7 infected with the FASHIONS, -past cure of the FIVES.] Fashions. So called in the West of England, but by the best writers on farriery, farcens, or farcy. "Fives." So called in the West: vives elsewhere, and avives by the French; a distemper in horses, little differing from the strangles. GREY. Shakspeare is not the only writer who uses fashions for farcy. So, in Decker's comedy of Old Fortunatus, 1600: Again, in The New Ordinary, by Brome: 66 My old beast is infected with the fashions, fashion-sick.” Again, in Decker's Guls Hornbook, 1609: counted a disease, and horses died of it." 66 Fashions was then STEEVENS. begnawn with the bots; swayed in the back, and shoulder-shotten; ne'er-legged before, and with a half-checked bit, and a head-stall of sheep's leather; which, being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often burst, and now repaired with knots: one girt six times pieced, and a woman's crupper of velure', which hath two letters for her name, fairly set down in studs, and here and there pieced with packthread. BAP. Who comes with him? BION. O, sir, his lackey, for all the world caparisoned like the horse; with a linen stock 2 on one leg, and a kersey boot-hose on the other, gartered with a red and blue list; an old hat, and The humour of forty fancies pricked in't for a feather": 8 SWAYED in the back,] The old copy has-waid. Corrected by Sir T. Hanmer. MALONE. So, in Philemon Holland's translation of the 28th book of Pliny's Natural History, ch. iv. p. 300: for let them be swaied in the backe, or hipped by some stripe," &c. STEEVENS. 9 — NE'ER legg'd before,] i. e. founder'd in his fore-feet; having, as the jockies term it, never a fore leg to stand on. The subsequent words-" which, being restrained to keep him from stumbling,"-seem to countenance this interpretation. The modern editors read-near-legg'd before; but to go near before is not reckoned a defect, but a perfection, in a horse. MALONE. Velure is velvet. Velours, Fr. So, in The World Tossed at Tennis, by Middleton and Rowley: Come, my well-lined soldier (with valour, I crupper of VELURE,] 66 "Not velure,) keep me warm." Again, in The Noble Gentleman, by Beaumont and Fletcher : 66 an old hat, "Lin'd with velure." STEEvens. 2-stock] i. e. stocking. So, in Twelfth-Night: "-it [his leg] does indifferent well in a flame-coloured stock." 3 STEEVENS. an old hat, and THE HUMOUR OF FORTY FANCIES pricked in't for a feather:] This was some ballad or drollery at that time, which the poet here ridicules, by making Petruchio prick it up in his foot-boy's hat for a feather. His speakers are perpetually quoting scraps and stanzas of old ballads, and often very obscurely; for, so well are they adapted to the occasion, that a monster, a very monster in apparel; and not like a christian footboy, or a gentleman's lackey. they seem of a piece with the rest. In Shakspeare's time, the kingdom was over-run with these doggrel compositions, and he seems to have borne them a very particular grudge. He frequently ridicules both them and their makers, with excellent humour. In Much Ado About Nothing, he makes Benedick say: "Prove that ever I lose more blood with love than I get again with drinking, prick out my eyes with a ballad-maker's pen." As the bluntness of it would make the execution of it extremely painful. And again, in Troilus and Cressida, Pandarus in his distress having repeated a very stupid stanza from an old ballad, says, with the highest humour : There never was a truer rhyme; let's cast away nothing, for we may live to have need of such a verse. We see it, we see it." WARBURTON. 66 I have some doubts concerning this interpretation. A fancy appears to have been some ornament worn formerly in the hat. So, Peacham, in his Worth of a Penny, describing "an indigent and discontented soldat," says, he walks with his arms folded, his belt without a sword or rapier, that perhaps being somewhere in trouble; a hat without a band, hanging over his eyes; only it wears a weather-beaten fancy for fashion-sake. lackey therefore did not wear a common fancy in his hat, but some fantastical ornament, comprizing the humour of forty different fancies. Such, I believe, is the meaning. A couplet in one of Sir John Davies's Epigrams, 1598, may also add support to my interpretation: "Nor for thy love will I once gnash a bricke, "Or some pied colours in my bonnet sticke." 66 This A fancy, however, meant also a love-song or sonnet, or other poem. So, in Sapho and Phao, 1591: I must now fall from love to labour, and endeavour with mine oar to get a fare, not with my pen to write a fancy." So, in Goffe's Careless Shepherdess, 1656. "'Cause you sell fancies, and can cast account, * Do you think your brain conceives poetick numbers?" If the word was used here in this sense, the meaning is, that the lackey had stuck forty ballads together, and made something like a feather out of them. The term to prick in is used by Bacon in the same sense as it is in this passage :"Let it appear that he doth not change his country manners, for those of foreign parts; but only prick in some flowers of that he hath learned abroad into the customs of his own country." Essuies or Counsels, 4to. 1625, p. 104. MALONE. Dr. Warburton might have strengthened his supposition by ob |