people called, gentry; but what the French express by, gentilesse, i, e. elegantia, urbanitas. And then the meaning is this: Such a law for banishing women from the court, is dangerous, or injurious, to politeness, urbanity, and the more refined pleasures of life. For men without women would turn brutal, and savage, in their patures and behaviour. THEOBALD.

P. 7, 1. 17. lie here] Means reside here, in the same sense as an ambassador is said to lie leiger. REED.

P. 7, 1. 22. Biron, amidst his extravagances, speaks with great justness against the folly of Vows. They are made without sufficient regard to the variations of life, and are therefore broken by some unforeseen necessity. They proceed commonly from a presumptuous confidence, false estimate of human power.

་་ ་་

JOHNSON, P. 7, 1. 29. Suggestions - Temptations.

and a

JOHNSON.

P. 7, 1. 32. -quick recreation] Lively sport, spritely diversion. JOHNSON.

P. 8, 1. 4. 5. A man of complements, whom right and wrong

Have chose as umpire of their mutiny:] As very bad a play as this is, it was certainly Shakspeare's, as appears by many fine master strokes scattered up and down. An excessive com plaisance is here admirably painted, in the person, of one who was willing to make even right and wrong friends and to persuade the one to recede from the accustomed stubbornness of her nature, and wink at the liberties of her opposite, rather than he would incur the imputation of ill-breeding in keeping up the quarrel. And as our

:

author, and Jonson his contemporary, are con fessedly the two greatest writers in the drama that our nation could ever boast of, this may be no improper-occasion to take notice of one material difference between Shakspeare's worst plays and the other's. Our author owed all to his prodigious natural genius; and Jonson most to his acquired parts and learning. This, if attended to, will explain the difference we speak of. Which is this, that, in Jouson's bad pieces, we do not discover the least traces of the author of the Fox and Alchemist; but in the wildest and most extravagant notes of Shakspeare, you every now and then encounter strains that recognize their divino composer. And the reason is this, that Jonson owing his chief excellence to art, by which he sometimes strained himself to an uncommon pitch, when he unbent himself, had nothing to support him; but fell below all likeness of himself; while Shakspeare, indebted more largely to nature than the other to his acquired talents, could never, in his most negligent hours, so totally divest himself of his genius, but that it would frequently break out with amazing force and splendour.

WARBURTON.

This passage, I believe, means no more than that Don Armado was a man nicely versed in ceremonial distinctions, one who could distinguish in the most delicate questions of honour the exact boundaries of right and wrong. Compliment, in Shakspeare's time, did not signify, at least did not only signify verbal civility, or phrases of courtesy, but according to its original meaning, the trappings, or ornamental appendages of a character, in the same manner, and on the same principles of

speech with accomplishment. Complement is, 25 Armado well expresses it, the varnish of a com plete man. JOHNSON.

P. 8, 1. 6. This child of fancy,] This fantastick. The expression, in another sense, has been adopted by Milton in his L'Allegro:

,,Or sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child

P. S,

1. 6.

MALONE.

that Armado hight,] Who is called Armado. MALONE.

P. 8, 1. 7-9. For interim to our studies, shall

In high-born words, the worth of many a

knight

From tawny, Spain, lost in the world's debate.] i. e. he shall relate to us the celebrated stories recorded in the old romances, and in their very stile. Why he says from tawny Spain is, because those romances, being, of Spanish original, the heroes, and the scene were generally of that country. Why he says, lost in the world's debate is, because the subject of those romances were the crusades of the European Christians against the Saracens of Asia and Africa. WARBURTON.

I have suffered this note to hold its place, though Mr. Tyrwhitt has shewn that it is wholly unfounded, because Dr. Warburton refers to it in his dissertation at the end of this play.

MALONE.

The world seems to be used in a monastick sense by the King, now devoted for a time to a monastic life. In the world, in seculo, in the bustle of human affairs, from which we are now

happily

happily sequestred, in the world, to which the votaries of solitude have no relation,

JOHNSON. Warburton's interpretation is clearly preferable to that of Johnson. The King had not yet so weaned himself from the world, as to adopt the language of a cloister. M. MASON.

P. g, l. 12. And I will use him for my minstrelsy.] I will make a whose occupation was to relate DoucE.

minstrel of him, fabulous stories.

P. 8, L. 14. fire new words,],,i. e. (says an intelligent writer in the Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1786) words newly coined, new from the forge. Fire-new, new off the irons, and the Scottish expression bren- new, have all the same origin." STEEVENS."

P. 8, 1. 19. Which is the Duke's own person?] The King of Navarre in several passages, through all the copies, is called the Duke: but as this must have sprung rather from the inadvertence of the editors than a forgetfulness in the poet, I have every where, to avoid confusion, restored

King to the text. THEOBALD. 1 The Princess in the next act calls the King ,,this virtuous Duke;" a word which, in our author's time, seems to have been used with great laxity. And indeed, though this were not the case, such a fellow as Costard may well be supposed ignorant of his true title.

MALONE.

I have followed the old copies. STEEVENS. P. 8, 1. 22. Tharborough] Thirdborough, a peace officer, alike in authority with a headborough or a constable, SIR J. HAWKINS. P. 9, 1. 3. Well, Sir, be it as the stile shall give us cause to climb in the merriness.] A

VOL. IV.

14

quibble between the stile that must be climbed to pass from one field to another, and style, the term expressive of manner of writing in regard to language. STEEVENS.

P. 9, 1. 7. I was taken with the manner.] i, e. in fact.

STEEVENS.

A forensick term. A thief is said to be taken with the manner, i. e. mainour or manour, (for so it is written in our old law - books,) when he is apprehended with the thing stolen in his possession. The thing that he has taken was called mainour, from the Fr, manier, manu tractare. MALONE.

P. 10, 1. 18. curious - knotted garden:] Ancient gardens abounded with figures of which the lines interfected each other in many direc tions. STEEVENS.

P. 10, 1. 19. The base minnow of thy mirth, is the contemptible little object that contributes to thy entertainment. Shakspeare makes Coriolanus characterize the tribunitian insolence of Sicinius, under the same figure.

P. 11, 1. 3. I keep her as a vessel of thy law's fury; This seems to be a phrase adopted from scripture. See Epist. to the Romans, ix. 22. ,,the vessel of wrath." Mr. M. Mason would read vassal instead of vessel. STEEVENS.

P. 12, 1. 24. Imp was anciently, a term of dig nity. Lord Cromwell, in his last letter to Henry VIII. prays for the Imp his son. It is now used only in contempt or abhorrence: perhaps in our author's time it was ambiguous, in which state it suits well with this dialogue. JOHNSON.

Pistol salutes King Henry V. by the same title.

STEEVENS.