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To one, his lands with-held; and to the other,
A land itself at large, a potent dukedom.
Firft, in this foreft, let us do thofe ends
That here were well begun, and well begot :
And after, every of this happy number,

That have endur'd fhrewd days and nights with us
Shall fhare the good of our returned fortune,
According to the measure of their states.
Meantime, forget this new-fall'n dignity,
And fall into our ruftick revelry:-

Play, mufick;-and you brides and bridegrooms all,
With measure heap'd in joy, to the measures fall.

Faq. Sir, by your patience :-If I heard you rightly,
The duke hath put on a religious life,

And thrown into neglect the pompous court?
Jaq. de B. He hath.

Jaq. To him will I: out of thefe convertites
There is much matter to be heard and learn'd.-
You to your former honour I bequeath;

[TO DUKE S. Your patience, and your virtue, well deferve it:You [To ORLANDO] to a love, that your true faith doth

merit :

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You [To OLIVER] to your land, and love, and great

allies:

You [To SILVIUS] to a long and well deferved bed

And you [To ToUCHSTONE] to wrangling; for thy loving

voyage

Is but for two months victual'd:-So to your pleasures;
I am for other than for dancing measures.

Duke S. Stay, Jaques, ftay.

Jaq. To fee no paftime, I:-what you would have I'll stay to know at your abandon'd cave.7

[Exit. Duke S.

7 Amidft this general festivity, the reader may be forry to take his Leave of Jaques, who appears to have no fhare in it, and remains behind unreconciled to fociety. He has, however, filled with a gloomy fenfibility the space allotted to him in the play, and to the laft preferves that refpect which is due to him as a confiftent character, and an amiable though folitary moralift.

It may be obferved, with fcarce lefs concern, that Shakspeare has on this occafion forgot old Adam, the fervant of Orlando, whofe fidelity fhould

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Duke S. Proceed, proceed: we will begin thefe rites,
As we do truft they'll end, in true delights.

EPILOGUE.

[A dance.

Rof. It is not the fashion to fee the lady the epilogue: but it is no more unhandfome, than to fee the lord the prologue. If it be true, that good wine needs no buf, 'tis true, that a good play needs no epilogue: Yet to good wine they do ufe good bushes; and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a cafe am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue, nor cannot infinuate with you in the behalf of a good play? I am not furnish'd like a beggar, therefore to beg will not become me: my way is, to conjure you; and I'll begin with the women. I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please them: and fo I charge you, a

men,

fhould have entitled him to notice at the end of the piece, as well as to that happiness which he would naturally have found, in the return of fortune to his mafter. STEEVENS.

It is the more remarkable, that old Adam is forgotten; fince at the end of the novel, Lodge makes him captain of the king's guard. FARMER, ૪ It appears formerly to have been the cuftom to hang a tuft of ivy. at the door of a vintner. I fuppofe ivy was rather chofen than any other plant, as it has relation to Bacchus. So, in Summer's laßt Will and Teftament, 1600:

t « Green ivy-bushes at the vintners' doors." STEEVENS.

The practice is ftill obferved in Warwickshire and the adjoining Counties, at ftatute-hirings, wakes, &c. by people who fell ale at no other time. And herce, I fuppofe, the Bufp tavern at Bristol, and other places. RITSON.

9 Here feems to be a chafm, or fome other depravation, which deftroys the fentiment here intended. The reafoning probably flood thus → Good wine needs no bush, good plays need no epilogue; but bad wine requires a good tufh, and a bad play a good epilogue. What cafe am I in iben? To reftore the words is impoffible; all that can be done without Copies is, to note the fault. JOHNSON.

Johnfon mistakes the meaning of this paffage. Roflind fays, that good plays need no epilogue; yet even good plays do prove the betterfor a good one. What a cafe then was the in, who had neither prefented them with a good play, nor had a good epilogue to prejudice them in favour of a bad one? M. MASON.

2 That is, dressed: fo before, he was furnished like a huntsman.”

practice: the French,

It seems not necest havese to this ad JOHNSON. 4 Bauchon is a bottle stopper. 4 you vin il negant bruge tour to the meaning good wine wants no cork for none will be Bouchon haver does also mean a any thing-dbouchon de Cabaret is a

men,

for the love you bear to women, (as I perceive by your fimpering, none of you hate them,) that between you and the women, the play may please. If I were a woman,+ I would kifs 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 fure, as many as have good beards, or good faces, or fweet breaths, will, for my kind offer, when I make curt'fy, bid me farewell. [Exeunt.

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3 The old copy reads-I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as pleafe you: and I charge you, O men, for the love bear to women,— -that between you and the women, &c.

you

STEEVENS

This paffage should be read thus: I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as pleases them; and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women, -to like as much as pleafes them, that between you and the women, &c. Without the alteration of You into Them, the invocation is nonfenfe; and without the addition of the words, to like as much as pleases them, the inference of, that between you and the women the play may pafs, would be unfupported by any precedent premifes. The words feem to have been ftruck out by fome fenfeless player, as a vicious redundancy. WARBURTON.

The words you and ym written as was the custom in that time, were in manufcript fcarcely diftinguishable. The emendation is very judicious and probable. JOHNSON.

I read and fo I charge you, O men," &c. This trivial addition, (as Dr. Farmer joins with me in thinking,) clears the whole paffage.

STEEVENS.

4 Note, that in this author's time, the parts of women were always performed by men or boys. HANMER.

5 i. e. that I liked. So again in Hamlet: "This likes me well."
STEEVENS

6 This paffage ferves to manifeft the indelicacy of the time in which the plays of Shakspeare were written, Such an idea, ftarted by a modern dramatist, and put into the mouth of a female character, would be hooted with indignation from the stage. STEEVENS.

7 Of this play the fable is wild and pleafing. I know not how the ladies will approve the facility with which both Rofalind and Celia give away their hearts. To Celia much may be forgiven for the heroism of her friendship. The character of Jaques is natural and well preserved. The comick dialogue is very fprightly, with lefs mixture of low buffoonery than in fome other plays; and the graver part is elegant and harmonious. By baftening to the end of his work, Shakspeare fuppreffed the dialogue between the ufurper and the herm't, and loft an opportunity of exhibiting a moral leffon in which he might have found matter worthy of his highest powers. JoHNSON.

Tavern für

perhap 3 originally a Seeh often, yet seenit as the Sign of the house, but a

of superadded as the general signesan dur

9.7

See pp. 484-5. Is but a quintaine, &c.] Dr. Warburton's explanation would, I think, have been lefs exceptionable, had it been more fimple: yet he is here charged with a fault of which he is feldom guilty, want of refinement. "This (fays Mr. Guthrie) is but an imperfect (to call it no worfe) explanation of a beautiful paffage."

In the prefent edition I have avoided as much as poffible all kind of controversy; but in thofe cafes where errors by having been long adopted are become inveterate, it becomes in fome measure neceffary to the enforcement of truth.

It is a common but a very dangerous mistake, to suppose, that the interpretation which gives moft fpirit to a paffage is the true one. In confequence of this notion two paffages of our author, one in Macbeth, and another in Othello, have been refined, as I conceive, into a meaning that I believe was not in his thoughts. If the most fpirited interpretation that can be imagined, happens to be inconfiftent with his general manner, and the phrafeology both of him and his contemporaries, or to be founded on a cuftom which did not exift in his age, most affuredly it is a falfe interpretation. Of the latter kind is Mr. Guthrie's explanation of the paffage before us.

The military exercise of the quintaine is as ancient as the time of the Romans; and we find from Matthew Paris, that it fubfifted in England in the thirteenth century. Tentoria variis ornamentorum generibus venuftantur; terræ infixis fudibus fcuta apponuntur, quibus in craftinum quintang ludus, feilicet equeftris, exerceretur. M. Paris, ad ann. 1253. Thefe probably were the very words that Mr. Guthrie had in contemplation. But Matthew Paris made no part of Shakspeare's library; nor is it at all material to our prefent point what were the customs of any century preceding that in which he lived. In his time, without any doubt, the quintaine was not a military exercife of tilting, but a mere ruftic fport. So Minfheu, in his DICT. 1617: " A quintaine or quintelle, a game in requeft at marriages, when Jac and Tom, Die, Hob and Will, ftrive for the gay garland." So alfo, Randolph at fomewhat a later period [Poems, 1642]:"Foot-ball with us may be with them [the Spaniards] balloone; "As they at tilts, fo we at quintaine runne;

"And thofe old paftimes relish best with me,
"That have leaft art and moft fimplicitie."

But old Stowe has put this matter beyond a doubt; for in his SURVEY OF LONDON, printed only two years before this play appeared, he has given us the figure of a quintaine, as reprefented in the margin. "I have feen (fays he) a quinten fet up on Cornehill, by the Leaden Hall, where the attendants on the lords of merry difports have runne, and made greate paftime; for hee that hit not the broad end of the quinten was of all men laughed to fcorne; and hee that hit it full, if he rid not the fafter, had a found blow in the necke with a bagge full of fand hanged on the other end." Here we fee were no fhields hung, no trophies of war to

T

1

be thrown down.

"The great defign of the fport, (fays Dr. Plott in his Hiftory of Oxfordshire) is to try both man and horfe, and to break the board; which whoever does, is for the time Princeps juventutis.”—Shak fpeare's fimiles feldom correfpond on both fides. "My better parts being all thrown down, my youthful spirit being fubdued by the power of beauty, I am now, (fays Orlando) as inanimate as a wooden quintaine is (not when its better parts are thrown down, but as that lifeless block is at all times)." Such, perhaps, is the meaning. If however the words "better parts," are to be applied to the quintaine, as well as to the speaker, the board abovementioned, and not any fhield or trophy, must have been alluded to.

Our author has in Macbeth ufed my better part of man" for manly Spirit:

"Accurfed be the tongue that tells me fo,
"For it has cow'd my better part of man."

MALONE.

The explanations of this paffage as well as the accounts of the quintain, are by no means fatisfactory; nor have the labours of the critic or the antiquary been exhaufted. The whole of Orlando's speech fhould feem to refer to the quintain, but not to fuch a one as has been defcribed in any of the preceding notes. Mr. Guthrie is accufed of having borrowed his account from Matthew Paris, an author with whom, as it has been already obferved, Shakspeare was undoubtedly not acquainted; but this charge is erroneous, for no fuch paffage as that above cited is to be found in M. Paris. This writer does indeed fpeak of the quintain under the year 1253, but in very different words. Eodem tempore juvenes Londinenfes ftatuto pavone pro bravio ad ftadium quod quintena vulgariter dicitur, vires proprias equorum curfus funt experti. He then proceeds to state that fome of the King's pages, and others belonging to the houshold, being offended at thefe fports, abuf:d the Londoners with foul language, calling them fcurvy clowns and greafy rafcals and ventured to difpute the prize with them; the confequence of which was, that the Londoners received them very brifkly, and fo belaboured their backs with the broken lances, that they were either put to flight, or tumbled from their horfes and most terribly bruifed. They afterwards went before the King, the tears still trickling from their eyes, and complained of their treatment, befeeching that he would not suffer f) great an offence to remain unpunished; and the King, with his ufual spirit of revenge, extorted from the citizens a very large fine. So far M. Paris; but Mr. Malone has through fome miftake cited Robert Monachus, who wrote before M. Paris, and has left an extremely curious account of the Crufades. He is defcribing the arrival of fome meffengers from Babylon, who upon entering the Chriftian camp, find, to their great aftonishment (for they had heard that the Christians were perifhing with fear and hunger) the tents curioufly ornamented, and the young men practifing themfelves and their horfes in tiking against shields hung upon poles. In the oldeft edition of this writer, inftead of "quintanæ ludus" it is "ladus equeftris." However, this is sertainly not the quintain that is here wanted, and therefore Mr. Malone

has

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