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KING reads.

"Upon his many protestations to marry me when his wife was dead, I blush to say it, he won me. Now is the Count Rousillon a widower; his vows are forfeited to me, and my honour's paid to him. He stole from Florence, taking no leave, and I follow him to his country for justice. Grant it me, O King in you it best lies: otherwise a seducer flourishes, and a poor maid is undone.

"DIANA CAPULET."

Laf. I will buy me a son-in-law in a fair, and toll for this: I'll none of him.

King. The heavens have thought well on thee, Lafeu,

To bring forth this discovery.-Seek these suitors: Go speedily, and bring again the Count.

[Exeunt the Astringer and some Attendants. I am afeard the life of Helen, lady, Was foully snatched.

Count.

Now, justice on the doers!
Enter BERTRAM, guarded.

King. I wonder, sir, since wives are monsters

to you, And that you fly them as you swear them lordship, Yet you desire to marry.-What woman's that? Re-enter the Astringer, with Widow, and DIANA. Dia. I am, my lord, a wretched Florentine, Derived from the ancient Capulet: My suit, as I do understand, you know, And therefore know how far I may be pitied. Wid. I am her mother, sir, whose age and honour Both suffer under this complaint we bring; And both shall cease, without your remedy. King. Come hither, Count: do you know these women?

Ber. My lord, I neither can nor will deny But that I know them: do they charge me further? Dia. Why do you look so strange upon your wife?

Ber. She's none of mine, my lord.

Dia. If you shall marry, You give away this hand, and that is mine; You give away heaven's vows, and those are mine; You give away myself, which is known mine: For I by vow am so embodied yours, That she which marries you must marry me; Either both or none.

Laf. Your reputation [to BERTRAM] comes too short for my daughter; you are no husband for her. Ber. My lord, this is a fond and desperate creature,

Whom sometime I have laughed with: let your

highness

Lay a more noble thought upon mine honour Than for to think that I would sink it here.

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Ask him upon his oath, if he does think
He had not my virginity.

King. What sayst thou to her?

Ber. She's impudent, my lord; And was a common gamester to the camp.

Dia. He does me wrong, my lord: if I were so, He might have bought me at a common price: Do not believe him. O, behold this ring, Whose high respect and rich validity Did lack a parallel; yet for all that, He gave it to a commoner o' the camp, If I be one.

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Methought you said

You saw one here in court could witness it.

Dia. I did, my lord, but loath am to produce
So bad an instrument: his name's Parolles.
Laf. I saw the man to-day, if man he be.
King. Find him, and bring him hither.
Ber.
What of him?

He's quoted for a most perfidious slave,
With all the spots o' the world taxed and deboshed;
Whose nature sickens but to speak a truth :
Am I or that or this for what he 'll utter,
That will speak anything?

King.

She hath that ring of yours.

Ber. I think, she has : certain it is I liked her, And boarded her i' the wanton way of youth: She knew her distance, and did angle for me, Madding my eagerness with her restraint, As all impediments in fancy's course Are motives of more fancy; and, in fine, Her insuit coming with her modern grace, Subdued me to her rate. She got the ring; And I had that which any inferior might At market-price have bought.

Dia.

I must be patient: You that turned off a first so noble wife, May justly diet me. I pray you yet (Since you lack virtue I will lose a husband), Send for your ring; I will return it home; And give me mine again.

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King. Tell me, sirrah, but tell me true, I charge you,

Not fearing the displeasure of your master (Which on your just proceeding I'll keep off'), By him and by this woman here what know you? Par. So please your majesty, my master hath been an honourable gentleman: tricks he hath had in him, which gentlemen have.

King. Come, come, to the purpose: did he love this woman?

Par. 'Faith, sir, he did love her but how? King. How, I pray you?

Par. He did love her, sir, as a gentleman loves a woman.

King. How is that?

Par. He loved her, sir, and loved her not. King. As thou art a knave and no knave.What an equivocal companion is this!

Par. I am a poor man, and at your majesty's command.

Laf. He's a good drum, my lord, but a naughty orator.

Dia. Do you know he promised me marriage? Par. 'Faith, I know more than I'll speak. King. But wilt thou not speak all thou knowest? Par. Yes, so please your majesty: I did go between them, as I said; but more than that, he loved her,- for indeed he was mad for her, and talked of Satan, and of limbo, and of furies, and I know not what: yet I was in that credit with them at that time that I knew of their going to bed; and of other motions, as promising her marriage, and things that would derive me ill-will to speak of; therefore I will not speak what I know.

King. Thou hast spoken all already, unless thou canst say they are married. But thou art too fine in thy evidence; therefore stand aside.— This ring, you say, was yours?

Dia.

Ay, my good lord.

King. Where did you buy it, or who gave it you?
Dia. It was not given me, nor I did not buy it.
King. Who lent it you?

Dia. It was not lent me, neither.
King. Where did you find it, then?

Dia.

I found it not.

King. If it were yours by none of all these

ways,

How could you give it him?

Dia. I never gave it him.

Laf. This woman's an easy glove, my lord; she goes off and on at pleasure.

King. This ring was mine; I gave it his first wife. Dia. It might be yours or hers, for aught I know.

King. Take her away, I do not like her now; To prison with her: and away with him.— Unless thou tell'st me where thou hadst this ring, Thou diest within this hour.

Dia.
King. Take her away.

I'll never tell you.

Dia.

I'll put in bail, my liege.

King. I think thee now some common customer.
Dia. By Jove, if ever I knew man, 't was you.
King. Wherefore hast thou accused him all
this while?

Dia. Because he's guilty, and he is not guilty:
He knows I am no maid, and he'll swear to't:
I'll swear I am a maid, and he knows not.
Great King, I am no strumpet, by my life;
I am either maid, or else this old man's wife.
[Pointing to LAfeu.
King. She does abuse our ears; to prison with
her.

Dia. Good mother, fetch my bail.-Stay, royal
sir;
[Exit Widow.

The jeweller that owes the ring is sent for,
And he shall surety me. But for this lord,
Who hath abused me, as he knows himself,
Though yet he never harmed me, here I quit him:
He knows himself my bed he hath defiled;
And at that time he got his wife with child:
Dead though she be, she feels her young one kick;
So there's my riddle,- --one that's dead is quick:
And now behold the meaning.

Re-enter Widow, with HELENA.
King. Is there no exorcist
Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes?
Is't real that I see?

Hel. No, my good lord: "Tis but the shadow of a wife you see; The name, and not the thing.

Ber.

Both, both, O pardon!

Hel. O, my good lord, when I was like this maid, I found you wondrous kind. There is your ring, And look you, here's your letter: this it says: "When from my finger you can get this ring, And are by me with child," &c.-This is done : Will you be mine, now you are doubly won? Ber. If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly,

I'll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly.

Hel. If it appear not plain, and prove untrue, Deadly divorce step between me and you!-O, my dear mother, do I see you living?

Laf. Mine eyes smell onions, I shall weep anon: -Good Tom Drum [to PAROLLES], lend me a handkerchief: so, I thank thee; wait on me home, I'll make sport with thee. Let thy courtesies alone, they are scurvy ones.

King. Let us from point to point this story know,

To make the even truth in pleasure flow.-
If thou beest yet a fresh uncroppéd flower,
[TO DIANA.
Choose thou thy husband, and I'll pay thy dower;

For I can guess that, by thy honest aid,
Thou kept'st a wife herself, thyself a maid.--
Of that, and all the progress, more and less,
Resolvédly more leisure shall express :
All yet seems well; and if it end so meet,
The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.
[Flourish.

Advancing.

The King's a beggar, now the play is done : All is well ended, if the suit be won, That you express content: which we will pay With strife to please you, day exceeding day. Ours be your patience, then, and yours our parts: Your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts. [Exeunt.

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NOTES.

"O, that 'had!' how sad a passage 't is !”—Act I., Scene 1. Passage is anything that passes; as we now say, a passage in an author; and, as was said formerly, the passage of a reign. When the Countess mentions Helena's loss of a father, she recollects her own loss of a husband, and stops to observe how heavily that word "had" passes through her mind.

"Where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity; they are virtues and traitors too."-Act I., Scene 1.

The meaning probably is, that estimable and useful qualities, joined with an evil disposition, give that evil disposition power over others; who, by the virtue, are betrayed to the malevolence. The "TATLER," mentioning the sharpers of his time, observes, that some of them are men of such elegance and knowledge, that a young man who falls into their way is betrayed as much by his judgment as his passions.

"If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal."-Act I., Scene 1.

That is, if the living do not indulge grief, grief destroys itself by its own excess. As in the "WINTER'S TALE:"

"Scarce any joy

Did ever live so long; no sorrow

But killed itself much sooner."

--"I think not on my father:

And these great tears grace his remembrance more Than those I shed for him."-Act I., Scene 1. Helena's meaning appears to be, that the great tears which were then falling from her eyes appear to do more honour to her father's memory than those less copious ones which she actually shed for him on his death.

"In his bright radiance and collateral light Must I be comforted, not in his sphere."

Act I, Scene 1.

That is, I cannot be united with him, and move in the same sphere, but must be comforted at a distance by the radiance that shoots on all sides from him.

"He that hangs himself is a virgin: virginity murders itself."-Act I., Scene 1.

A virgin, and he that hangs himself, are in this circumstance alike-they are both self-destroyers.

"PAR. Will you anything with it?

HEL. Not my virginity yet.—

There shall your master have a thousand loves: A mother, and a mistress, and a friend," &c. Act I., Scene 1. Something is plainly wanting here, to connect Helena's reply with the question of Parolles. Mr. Tyrwhitt plausibly proposes to read, "Will you anything with us?" that is, "Will you send anything with us to court?" to which Helena's answer would be proper enough:-"Not my virginity

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"The mightiest space in fortune, nature brings
To join like likes, and kiss like native things."
Act I., Scene 1.

The meaning appears to be, that the affections given us by nature often unite persons between whom fortune or accident has placed the greatest distance or disparity; and cause them "to join like likes."-like persons in the same station or rank of life. A corresponding phrase occurs in "TIMON OF ATHENS:"

"Thou solderest close impossibilities,
And mak'st them kiss."

"The Florentines and Senoys are by the ears."

Act I., Scene 2.

The "Senois," as the term is translated by Painter, are called by Boccaccio the "Sanesi." They formed a small republic, of which Sienna was the capital.

"He had the wit which I can well observe
To-day in our young lords; but they may jest
Till their own scorn return to them unnoted,
Ere they can hide their levity in honour."

Act I., Scene 2.

Honour does not here signify dignity of birth or rank, but acquired reputation. "Your father," says the King, "had the same airy flights of satirical wit with the young lords of the present time; but they do not what he did,- hide their unnoted levity in honour; cover petty faults with great merit."-This is an excellent observation. Jocose follies and slight offences are only allowed by mankind in him that overpowers them by great qualities.-JOHNSON.

"What's the matter,

That this distempered messenger of wel, The many-coloured Iris, rounds thine eye?" Act I., Scene 3. There is something exquisitely beautiful in this representation of that suffusion of colours which glimmers around the sight, when the eyelashes are wet with tears. The poet has described the same appearance in his "RAPE OF LUCRECE:"

"And round about her tear-distainéd eye

Blue circles streamed, like rainbows in the sky."-HENLEY.

--"Or were you both our mothers,

I care no more for than I do for heaven,

So I were not his sister."—Act I., Scene 3.

"I care no more for," here signifies, "I care as much for; I wish it equally."

"Let higher Italy

(Those 'bated, that inherit but the fall

Of the last monarchy) see that you come

Not to woo honour, but to wed it."-Act II., Scene 1. This passage is confessedly obscure, and probably corrupt. The meaning, according to Dr. Johnson, is this:— "Let Upper Italy, where you are to exercise your valour, see that you come to gain honour, to the abatement (that is, to the disgrace and depression) of those that have now lost their ancient military fame, and inherit but the fall of the last monarchy." Hanmer proposed to read "bastards" for "bated;" and the whole tenour of the passage makes the suggestion highly probable.

"I have spoke

With one that, in her sex, her years, profession, Wisdom, and constancy, hath amazed me more Than I dare blame my weakness."-Act II., Scene 1. Lafeu, perhaps, means that the amazement Helena excited in him, was so great, that he could not impute it merely to his own weakness, but to the wonderful qualities of the object that occasioned it.

"I am not an impostor, that proclaim Myself against the level of mine aim." Act II., Scene 1. That is, I am not an impostor that proclaim one thing and design another; that proclaim a cure, and aim at a fraud: I think what I speak.

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"Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, all

That happiness and prime can happy call."

Act II., Scene 1. Prime is here used as a substantive, and means that sprightly vigour which usually accompanies the prime of life. So in Montaigne's " ESSAYS," translated by Florio:Many things seem greater by imagination than by effect. I have passed over a good part of my age in sound and perfect health: I say, not only sound, but blithe and wantonly lustful. That state, full of lust, of prime, and mirth, made me deem the consideration of sicknesses so irksome, that, when I came to the experience of them, I have found their fits but weak."

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Milton says of Death and the King of Hell, preparing to combat:

"So frowned the mighty combatants, that hell
Grew darker at their frown."

Perhaps this is the same thought, though more solemnly expressed, that we meet with in "KING HENRY IV.," Part I.:"He's as tedious

As a tired horse, a railing wife;
Worse than a smoky house."

"You have made shift to run into't, boots and spurs and all, like him that leaped into the custard."-Act II., Scene 5.

Our old dramatists abound with pleasant allusions to the enormous size of their "quaking custards," which were served up at the city feasts, and with which such gross fooleries were played. Thus Glapthorne:

"I'll write the city annals,

In metre which shall far surpass Sir Guy Of Warwick's History, or John Stow's, upon The custard with the four-and-twenty nooks, At my lord-mayor's feast."--WIT IN A CONSTABLE. Indeed, no common supply was required; for, besides what the corporation (great devourers of custards) consumed on the spot, it appears that it was thought no breach of city manners to send or take some of it home with them, for the use of their ladies.-GIFFORD.

"Why, he will look upon his boot, and sing; mend the ruff, and sing."-Act III., Scene 2.

The tops of the boots, in Shakspere's time, turned down, and hung loosely over the leg. The folding part, or top, was the ruff: it was of softer leather than the boot, and often fringed. Ben Jonson calls it the ruffle :-" Not having leisure to put off my silver spurs, one of the rowels catched hold of the ruffle of my boot."-EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. To this fashion, also, Bishop Earle alludes in his "CHARACTERS" (1638):-" He has learned to ruffle his face from his boot, and takes great delight in his walk to hear his spurs jingle."

-"Come thou home, Rousillon,

Whence honour but of danger wins a scar;
As oft it loses ali."-Act III., Scene 2.

The sense is-Come from that place where all the advantage that honour usually reaps from the danger it rushes upon, is only a scar in testimony of its bravery; as, on the other hand, it often is the cause of losing all, even life itself.

"Where do the palmers lodge, I do beseech you?”
Act III., Scene 5.

Palmers were so called from a staff or bough of palm they were wont to carry, especially such as had visited the holy places at Jerusalem. A pilgrim and a palmer are said to have differed thus: a pilgrim had some dwelling-place, a palmer had none; the pilgrim travelled to some certain place, the palmer to all, and not to any one in particular; the pilgrim must go at his own charge, the palmer must profess wilful poverty; the pilgrim might give over his profession, the palmer must be constant.

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If you give him not John Drum's entertainment, your inclining cannot be removed."-Act III., Scene 6.

"John Drum's entertainment" (the Christian name varying) appears to have been a common phrase to signify illtreatment. There is an old motley interlude (printed in 1601), called "JACK DRUM'S ENTERTAINMENT," in which Jack Drum is a servant of intrigue, who is ever aiming at projects, and always foiled. Holinshed, in his description of Ireland, speaking of the hospitality of Patrick Sarsfield (mayor of

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