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You are attaint with faults and perjury;
Therefore, if you my favour mean to get,
A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest,
But seek the weary beds of people sick."

Dum. But what to me, my love? but what to me? Kath. A wife!-A beard, fair health, and honesty; With three-fold love I wish you all these three.

Dum. O, shall I say, I thank you, gentle wife? Kath. Not so, my lord;-a twelvemonth and a day I'll mark no words that smooth-fac'd wooers say: Come when the king doth to my lady come, Then, if I have much love, I'll give you some. Dum. I'll serve thee true and faithfully till then. Kath. Yet swear not, lest you be forsworn again. Long. What says Maria?

Mar. At the twelvemonth's end, I'll change my black gown for a faithful friend. Long. I'll stay with patience; but the time is long. Mar. The liker you; few taller are so young. Biron. Studies my lady? mistress look on me, Behold the window of my heart, mine eye,

your sins are rack'd;] i. e. extended "to the top of their bent." So, in Much Ado about Nothing:

"Why, then we rack the value."

Mr. Rowe and the subsequent editors read-are rank. Malone. Rowe's emendation is every way justifiable. Things rank (not those which are racked) need purging. Besides, Shakspeare has used the same epithet on the same occasion in Hamlet:

"O! my offence is rank, it smells to heaven:" Steevens.

5 Biron. And what to me, my love? and what to me? Ros. You must be purged too, your sins are rank; You are attaint with faults and perjury:

Therefore, if you my favour mean to get,

A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest,

But seek the weary beds of people sick.] These six verses both Dr. Thirlby and Mr. Warburton concur to think should be expunged; and therefore I have put them between crotchets: not that they were an interpolation, but as the author's draught, which he afterwards rejected, and executed the same thought a little lower with much more spirit and elegance. Shakspeare is not to answer for the present absurd repetition, but his actoreditors; who, thinking Rosaline's speech too long in the second plan, had abridg'd it to the lines above quoted; but, in publishing the play, stupidly printed both the original speech of Shakspeare, and their own abridgment of it. Theobald.

What humble suit attends thy answer there;
Impose some service on me for thy love.

Ros. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Birón,
Before I saw you: and the world's large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks;
Full of comparisons and wounding flouts;
Which you on all estates will execute,
That lie within the mercy of your wit:

To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain;
And, therewithal, to win me, if you please,
(Without the which I am not to be won,)

You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick, and still converse
With groaning wretches; and your task shall be,
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,

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, Whose influence is begot of that loose grace,

Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools:
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear

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,7 Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,

And I will have you, and that fault withal;

But, if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault,

Right joyful of your reformation.

Biron. A twelvemonth? well, befal what will befal, I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.3

6

·fierce endeavour -] Fierce is vehement, rapid. So, in King John:

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66 -fierce extremes of sickness." Steevens.

dear groans,] Dear should here, as in many other places, be dere, sad, odious. Johnson.

I believe dear in this place, as in many others, means only immediate, consequential. So, already in this scene:

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full of dear guiltiness." Steevens.

8 The characters of Biron and Rosaline suffer much by comparison with those of Benedict and Beatrice. We know that Love's

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 twelvemonth and a day And then 'twill end.

Biron.

That's too long for a play.

Enter ARMADO.

Arm. Sweet majesty, vouchsafe me,-
Prin. Was not that Hector?

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-buds1 of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight,

Labour's Lost was the elder performance; and as our author grew more experienced in dramatic writing, he might have 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.

9 When daisies pied, &c.] The first lines of this song that were transposed, have been replaced by Mr. Theobald. Johnson.

1 cuckoo-buds ] Gerard, in his Herbal, 1597, says, that the flos cuculi cardamine, &c. are called "in English cuckoo-flow

The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo,-O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

II.

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and darvs,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo,—O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

III.

Winter. When icicles hang by the wall,2

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,3
And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,

ers, in Norfolk Canterbury-bells, and at Namptwich in Cheshire ladie-smocks." Shakspeare, 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 cowslips are in French, of some called coquu, prime vere, and brayes de coquu. This, he thinks, will sufficiently account for our author's cuckoo-buds, by which he supposes cowslip-buds to be meant; and further directs the reader to Cotgrave's Dictionary, under the articles-Cocu, and herbe a coqu. Steevens.

Cuckoo-buds must be wrong. I believe cowslip-buds, the true reading. Farmer.

Mr. Whalley, the learned editor of Ben Jonson's works, many years ago proposed to read crocus buds. The cuckoo-flower, he observed, could not be called yellow, it rather approaching to the colour of white, by which epithet, Cowley, who was himself no mean botanist, has distinguished it:

"Albaque cardamine," &c. Malone.

Crocus buds is a phrase unknown to naturalists and gardeners. Steevens.

2 When icicles hang by the wall,] i. e. 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. So, in King Henry IV:

When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,

To-who;

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Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.5

"Let us not hang like roping icicles,

"Upon our houses' thatch."

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 winters' drops
"From caves of reeds." Malone.

3 And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,] So, in K. Henry VI, P. III:

"What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,

"Can neither call it perfect day or night." Malone.
nightly sings the staring owl,

To-who; tu-whit, to-who,] So, in Lyly's Mother Bombie:
"To-whit, to-whoo, the owle does cry."

H. White.

Tu-whit, to-who,] These terms were employed also to denote the musick of birds in general. Thus, in the song of Spring, in Summer's Last Will and Testament, 1600:

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"Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds doe sing, "Cuckow, jugge, jugge, pu we, to witta woo. But, in Sidney's verses at the end of the Arcadia, they are confined to the owl:

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"Their angel-voice surpriz'd me now;

"But Mopsa her too-whit, to-hoo,
"Descending through her hoboy nose,
"Did that distemper soon compose;

"And, therefore, O thou precious owl," &c.

Todd.

doth keel the pot.] This word is yet used in Ireland, and signifies to scum the pot. Goldsmith.

So, in Marston's What you will, 1607:-" Faith, Doricus, thy brain boils, keel it, keel it, or all the fat's in the fire." Steevens. To keel the pot is certainly to cool it, but in a particular manner: it is to stir the pottage with the ladle to prevent the boiling over. Farmer.

- keel the pot.] i. e. cool the pot: "The thing is, they mix their thicking of oatmeal and water, which they call blending the litting, [or lithing] and put it in the pot, when they set 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 occasionally, 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.

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