Extremely stretch'd, and conn'd with cruel pain, To do you service. THE. I will hear that play: Go, bring them in ;—and take your places, ladies. [Exit PHILOSTRate. HIP. I love not to see wretchedness o'ercharg'd, And duty in his service perishing. THE. Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing. HIP. He says, they can do nothing in this kind. THE. The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing. Our sport shall be ", to take what they mistake: Noble respect takes it in might, not merit 3. use several instances are given in a note on the third scene of the first Act of Othello. Intents therefore may be put for the object of their attention. We still say a person is intent on his business. STEEVENS. 5 - never any thing can be amiss, When simpleness and duty tender it.] Ben Jonson in Cynthia's Revels has employed this sentiment of humanity on the same occasion, when Cynthia is preparing to see a masque: "Nothing which duty and desire to please, "Bears written on the forehead, comes amiss." STEEVENS. 6 Our sport shall be, &c.] Voltaire says something like this of Louis XIV. who took a pleasure in seeing his courtiers in confusion when they spoke to him. I am told, however, by a writer in the Edinburgh Magazine, for Nov. 1786, that I have assigned a malignant instead of a humane sentiment to Theseus, and that he really means-We will accept with pleasure even their blundering attempt. STEEVENS. 7 And what poor duty cannot do,] The defective metre of this line shews that some word was inadvertently omitted by the transcriber or compositor. Mr. Theobald supplied the defect by reading "And what poor willing duty," &c. MALONE. 8 And what poor duty cannot do, Noble respect takes it in might, not merit.] The sense of Where I have come, great clerks have purposed" I read as much, as from the rattling tongue Love therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity, this passage, as it now stands, if it has any sense, is this:-What the inability of duty cannot perform, regardful generosity receives as an act of ability, though not of merit. The contrary is rather true-What dutifulness tries to perform without ability, regardful generosity receives as having the merit, though not the power, of complete performance. We should therefore read: And what poor duty cannot do, Noble respect takes not in might, but merit. JOHNSON. In might, is, perhaps, an elliptical expression for what might have been. STEEVENS. If this passage is to stand as it is, the meaning appears to be this-and what poor duty would do, but cannot accomplish, noble respect considers as it might have been, not as it is. M. MASON. And what dutifulness tries to perform without ability, regardful generosity receives with complacency, estimating it not by the actual merit of the performance, but what it might have been, were the abilities of the performers equal to their zeal.-Such, I think, is the true interpretation of this passage; for which the reader is indebted partly to Dr. Johnson, and partly to Mr. Steevens. MALone. 9 Where I have come, great CLERKS have purposed, &c.] So, n Pericles: "She sings like one immortal, and she dances "As goddess like to her admired lays ; Deep clerks she dumbs." It should be observed, that periods in the text is used in the sense of full points. MALONE. Enter PHILOSTRATE. PHILOST. So please your grace, the prologue is addrest 1. THE. Let him approach. [Flourish of trumpets'. Enter PROLOgue. PROL. If we offend, it is with our good will. That you should think, we come not to offend, But with good-will. To shew our simple skill, That is the true beginning of our end. Consider then, we come but in despite, We do not come as minding to content you, Our true intent is. All for your delight, We are not here. That you should here repent you, The actors are at hand; and, by their show, You shall know all, that you are like to know. THE. This fellow doth not stand upon points. Lys. He hath rid his prologue, like a rough colt; he knows not the stop. A good moral, my lord: It is not enough to speak, but to speak true. HIP. Indeed he hath played on his * prologue, like a child on a recorder3; a sound, but not in government 1. 1 *So folio; quartos, this. - addrest.] That is, ready. So, in King Henry V.: "To-morrow for our march we are addrest." STEEVENS. 2 Flourish of trumpets.] It appears from The Guls Hornbook, by Decker, 1609, that the prologue was anciently ushered in by trumpets. "Present not yourselfe on the stage (especially at a new play) until the quaking prologue hath (by rubbing) got cullor in his cheekes, and is ready to give the trumpets their cue that hee's upon point to enter." STEEVENS. The speaker of the prologue immediately entered after the third sounding of the trumpet, or as we should now say, after the third musick, and in this sense only, was ushered in by trumpets. MALOne. 3 — on a RECORDER ;] Lord Bacon in his Natural History, cent. iii. sect. 221, speaks of recorders and flutes at the same instant, and says, that the recorder hath a less bore, and a greater, above and below; and elsewhere, cent. ii. sect. 187, he speaks THE. His speech was like a tangled chain; nothing impaired, but all disordered. Who is next? Enter PYRAMUS and THISBE, Wall, Moonshine, and Lion, as in dumb show3. PROL. "Gentles, perchance, you wonder at this show; "But wonder on, till truth make all things plain. "This man is Pyramus, if you would know; "This beauteous lady Thisby is, certáin. of it as having six holes, in which respect it answers to the Tibia minor or Flajolet of Mersennus. From all which particulars it should seem that the flute and the recorder were different instruments, and that the latter in propriety of speech was no other than the flagelet. Hawkins's History of Musick, vol. iv. p. 479. REEd. Shakspeare introduces the same instrument in Hamlet; and Milton says: 66 The Dorian mood "Of flutes and soft recorders." The recorder is mentioned in many of the old plays. STEEVENS. 4- but not in GOVERNMENT.] That is, not regularly, according to the tune. STEEVENS. Hamlet, speaking of a recorder, says :-" Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb; give it breath with your mouth; and it will discourse most eloquent music."-This explains the meaning of government in this passage. M. MASON. 5 In this place the folio, 1623, exhibits the following prompter's direction-Tawyer with a trumpet before them. STEEVENS. 6 This beauteous lady Thisby is, CERTAIN.] A burlesque was here intended on the frequent recurrence of "certain" as a bungling rhyme in poetry more ancient than the age of Shakspeare. Thus in a short poem entitled "A lytell Treatise called the Dysputacyon or the Complaynte of the Herte through perced with the Lokynge of the Eye. Imprynted at Lodon in Fletestrete at the Sygne of the Sonne by Wynkyn de Worde: " "And houndes syxescore and mo certayne "To whome my thought gan to strayne certayne— "To loke upon a fayre Lady certayne "As moch as is in me I am contente certayne— "This man, with lime and rough-cast, doth pre sent "Wall, that vile wall which did these lovers sun der: "And through wall's chink, poor souls, they are content "To whisper; at the which let no man wonder. "This man, with lantern, dog, and bush of thorn, "Presenteth moon-shine: for, if you will know, "By moon-shine did these lovers think no scorn 66 "To meet at Ninus' tomb', there, there to woo. "This grisly beast, which by name lion hight 3, "The trusty Thisby, coming first by night, "Did scare away, or rather did affright: 66 They made there both two theyr promysse certayne— "All armed with margaretes certayne "Towardes Venus when they sholde go certayne," &c. Again, in the ancient MS. romance of the Sowdon of Baby loyne : "He saide the xii peres bene alle dede, Again, ibid.: "The kinge turned him ageyn, "And alle his ooste him with, "Towarde Mountribble certeyne," &c. STEEVENS. 7 To meet at NINUS' tomb, &c.] So, in Chaucer's Legend of Thisbe of Babylon : 66 Thei settin markes ther metingis should be, "There king Ninus was graven undir a tre." STEEVENS. Again: "And as she ran her wimple she let fall," &c. Again, Golding in his version of Ovid's Metamorphosis, b. iv. has a similar line: 8 "And as she fled away for haste, she let her mantle fall." STEEVENS. which by name lion hight,] As all the other parts of this speech are in alternate rhyme, excepting that it closes with a couplet; and as no rhyme is left to name, we must conclude, either a verse is slipt out, which cannot now be retrieved; or, by a transposition of the words, as I have placed them, the poet intended a triplet. THEOBALD. |
