Long. I'll stay with patience; but the time is long. Ros. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Birón, To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain; With groaning wretches; and your task shall be, To enforce the pained impotent to smile. Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be; it is impossible: Mirth cannot move a soul in agony. Ros. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit, Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools: Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears, Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans, And I will have you, and that fault withal; Right joyful of your reformation. Biron. A twelvemonth? well, befal what will befal, I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.* [3] Dear should here, as in many other places, be dere, sad, odious. JOHNS. [4] The characters of Biron and Rosaline suffer much by comparison with those of Benedick and Beatrice. We know that Love's Labour's Lost was the elder performance; and as our author grew more experienced in dramatic writing, he might bave seen how much he could improve on his own originals. To this circumstance. perhaps, we are indebted for the more perfect comedy of Much Ado about Nothing. STEEVENS. Prin. Ay, sweet my lord; and so I take my leave. [To the King. King. No, madam: we will bring you on your way. Biron. Our wooing doth not end like an old play; Jack hath not Jill: these ladies' courtesy Might well have made our sport a comedy. King. Come, sir, it wants a twelve month and a day, And then t'will end. Biron. That's too long for a play. Enter ARMADO. Arm. Sweet majesty, vouchsafe me,- Dum. The worthy knight of Troy? Arm. I will kiss thy royal finger, and take leave: I am a votary; I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three years. But, most esteemed greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled, in praise of the owl and the cuckoo? it should have followed in the end of our show. King. Call them forth quickly, we will do so. Arm. Holla! approach. Enter HOLOFERNES, NATHANIEL, MOTH, COSTARD, and others. This side is Hiems, winter; this Ver, the spring; the one maintain'd by the owl, the other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin. SONG. Spring. When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, The cuckoo then, on every tree, [5] Gerard, in his Herbal, 1597, says, that the flos cuculi cardamine, &c. are called" in English cuckoo-flowers, in Norfolk Canterbury-bells, and at Namptwich in Cheshire ladic-smocks." Shakespeare, however, might not have been sufficiently skilled in botany to be aware of this particular. Mr. Tollet has observed, that Lyte in his Herbal, 1578 and 1579, remarks, that conslips are in French, of some called coque, prime vere, and brayes de coquu. This, he thinks, will sufficiently account for our author's cuckoo-buds, by which he supposes conslip-buds to be mevut. STEEVENS. Cuckoo, cuckoo,-O word of fear, II. When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, Mocks married men, for thus sings he, Cuckoo, cuckoo,-O word of fear, III. Winter. When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,7 And milk comes frozen home in pail, Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note, greasy Joan doth keel the pot. [6] ie from the eaves of the thatch or other roofing, from which in the morning icicles are found depending in great abundance, after a night of frost. Our author (whose images are all taken from nature) has alluded in The Tempest, to the drops. of water that after rain flow from such coverings, in their natural unfrozen state: "His tears run down his beard, like winter's drops "From eaves of reeds." MALONE. [7] So, in King Henry VI. Part III: "What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails, MALONE. [8] This word is yet used in Ireland, and signifies to scum the pot. GOLDSMITH. Keel the pot, i. e. cool the pot: "The thing is, they mix their thicking of oatmeal and water, which they call blending the litling (or lithing.) and put it in the pot, when they set it on, because when the meat, pudding and turnips are all in. they cannot so well mix it, but 'tis apt to go into lumps; yet this method of theirs renders the pot liable to boil over at the first rising, and every subsequent increase of the fire to prevent which it becomes necessary for one to attend to cool it oecasionally, by lading it up frequently with a ladle, which they call keeling the pot, and is indeed a greasy office" Gent. Mag. 1760. This account seems to be accurate. RITSON To keel signifies to cool in general, without any reference to the kitchen. Mr. Lambe observes, in his notes on the ancient metrical History of The Battle of Floddon, that it is a common thing in the North" for a maid servant to take out of ACT V. IV. When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw,' And Marian's nose looks red and raw, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-who; Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note, Joan doth keel the pot. 239 Arm. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You, that way; we, this way. [Exeunt. a boiling pot a wheen, i. e. a small quantity, viz a porringer or two of broth, and then to fill up the pot with cold water. The broth thus taken out, is called the keeling wheen. In this manner greasy Joan keeled the pot. "Gie me beer, and gie me grots. STEEVENS. [9] Saw seems anciently to have meant, not as at present, a proverb, a sentence, but the whole tenor of any instructive discourse. STEEVENS. Yet in As you like it, our author uses this word in the sense of a sentence, or maxim: "Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might," &c. It is, I believe, so used here. MALONE. [1] ie. the wild apples so called. STEEVENS. MALONE. The bowl must be supposed to be filled with ale; a toast and some spice and sugar being added, what is called lamb's wool it produced. |