MAR. Get ye all three into the box-tree: Malvolio's coming down this walk; he has been yonder i'the sun, practising behaviour to his own shadow, this half hour: observe him, for the love of mockery; for, I know, this letter will make a contemplative ideot of him. Close, in the name of jesting! The men hide themselves.] Lie thou there; [throws down a letter.] for here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling.3 [Exit MARIA.

Enter MALVOLIO.

Maria

MAL. 'Tis but fortune; all is fortune. once told me, she did affect me: and I have heard herself come thus near, that, should she fancy, it should be one of my complexion. Besides, she uses.

So Lyly, in his Euphues and his England, 1580: "I saw that India bringeth gold, but England bringeth goodness."

Again, in Wily Beguil'd, 1606: " Come, my heart of gold, let's have a dance at the making up of this match."-The person there addressed, as in Twelfth-Night, is a woman. The old copy has mettle. The two words are very frequently confounded in the early editions of our author's plays. The editor of the second folio arbitrarily changed the word to nettle; which all the subsequent editors have adopted. MALOne.

Nettle of India, which Steevens has ingeniously explained, certainly better corresponds with Sir Toby's description of Maria-here comes the little villain. The nettle of India is the plant that produces what is called cow-itch, a substance only used for the purpose of tormenting, by its itching quality. M. MASON.

here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling.] Cogan, in his Haven of Health, 1595, will prove an able commentator on this passage: "This fish of nature loveth flatterie: for, being in the water, it will suffer it selfe to be rubbed and clawed, and so to be taken. Whose example I would wish no maides to follow, least they repent afterclaps." STEEVENS.

me with a more exalted respect, than any one else that follows her. What should I think on't?

SIR TO. Here's an over-weening rogue!

FAB. O, peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him; how he jets under his advanced plumes!

SIR AND. 'Slight, I could so beat the rogue :SIR To. Peace, I say.

MAL. To be count Malvolio ;

SIR To. Ah, rogue!

SIR AND. Pistol him, pistol him.
SIR TO. Peace, peace!

MAL. There is example for't; the lady of the strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe.

5

how he jets] To jet is to strut, to agitate the body by a proud motion. So, in Arden of Feversham, 1592: "Is now become the steward of the house,

And bravely jets it in a silken gown."

Again, in Bussy D'Ambois, 1607:

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"To jet in others' plumes so haughtily." STEEVENS.

the lady of the strachy-] We should read Trachy, i. e. Thrace; for so the old English writers called it. Mandeville says: "As Trachye and Macedoigne, of the which Alisandre was kyng." It was common to use the article the before names of places; and this was no improper instance, where the scene was in Illyria. WARBURton.

What we should read is hard to say. Here is an allusion to some old story which I have not yet discovered. JOHNSON.

Straccio (see Torriano's and Altieri's Dictionaries) signifies clouts and tatters; and Torriano, in his Grammar, at the end of his Dictionary, says that straccio was pronounced stratchi. So that it is probable that Shakspeare's meaning was this, that the lady of the queen's wardrobe had married a yeoman of the king's, who was vastly inferior to her. SMITH.

Such is Mr. Smith's note; but it does not appear that strachy

SIR AND. Fie on him, Jezebel!

was ever an English word, nor will the meaning given it by the Italians be of any use on the present occasion.

Perhaps a letter has been misplaced, and we ought to read— starchy; i. e. the room in which linen underwent the once most complicated operation of starching. I do not know that such a word exists; and yet it would not be unanalogically formed from the substantive starch. In Harsnet's Declaration, 1603, we meet with "a yeoman of the sprucery;" i. e. wardrobe; and in the Northumberland Household-Book, nursery is spelt nurcy. Starchy, therefore, for starchery, may be admitted. In Romeo and Juliet, the place where paste was made is called the pastry. The lady who had the care of the linen may be significantly opposed to the yeoman, i. e. an inferior officer of the wardrobe. While the five different coloured starches were worn, such a term might have been current. In the year 1564, a Dutch woman professed to teach this art to our fair country-women. "Her usual price (says Stowe) was four or five pounds to teach them how to starch, and twenty shillings how to seeth starch." The alteration was suggested to me by a typographical error in The World toss'd at Tennis, no date, by Middleton and Rowley; where straches is printed for starches. I cannot fairly be accused of having dealt much in conjectural emendation, and therefore feel the less reluctance to hazard a guess on this desperate passage. STEEVens.

The place in which candles were kept, was formerly called the chandry; and in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, a gingerbread woman is called lady of the basket.-The great objection to this emendation is, that from the starchy to the wardrobe is not what Shakspeare calls a very "heavy declension." In the old copy the word is printed in Italicks as the name of a placeStrachy.

The yeoman of the wardrobe is not an arbitrary term, but was the proper designation of the wardrobe-keeper, in Shakspeare's time. See Florio's Italian Dictionary, 1598: Vestiario, a wardrobe-keeper, or a yeoman of a wardrobe."

The story which our poet had in view is perhaps alluded to by Lyly in Euphues and his England, 1580: "assuring myself there was a certain season when women are to be won; in the which moments they have neither will to deny, nor wit to mistrust. Such a time I have read a young gentleman found to obtain the love of the Dutchess of Milaine: such a time I have heard that a poor yeoman chose, to get the fairest lady in Mantua." MALONE.

FAB. O, peace! now he's deeply in; look, how imagination blows him."

MAL. Having been three months married to her, sitting in my state,

8

SIR TO. O, for a stone-bow, to hit him in the eye!

MAL, Calling my officers about me, in my branched velvet gown; having come from a daybed, where I left Olivia sleeping:

SIR To. Fire and brimstone!

blows him.] i. e. puffs him up. So, in Antony and

"There is a vent of blood, and something blown."

STEEVENS.

7-my state,-] A state, in ancient language, signifies a chair with a canopy over it. So, in K. Henry IV. P. I: "This chair shall be my state." STEEVENS.

stones.

stone-bow,] That is, a cross-bow, a bow which shoots JOHNSON.

This instrument is mentioned again in Marston's Dutch Courtesan, 1605: “—whoever will hit the mark of profit, must, like those who shoot in stone-bows, wink with one eye." Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's King and no King:

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66

children will shortly take him

"For a wall, and set their stone-bows in his forehead."

STEEVENS.

come from a day-bed,] i. e. a couch. Spenser, in the first Canto of the third Book of his Fairy Queen, has dropped a stroke of satire on this lazy fashion:

"So was that chamber clad in goodly wize,
“And round about it many beds were dight,
"As whilome was the antique worldes guize,

"Some for untimely ease, some for delight." STEEVENS.

Estifania, in Rule a Wife and have a Wife, Act I. says, in answer to Perez:

"This place will fit our talk; 'tis fitter far, sir;
"Above there are day-beds, and such temptations
"I dare not trust, sir." REED.

FAB. O, peace, peace!

MAL. And then to have the humour of state: and after a demure travel of regard,-telling them, I know my place, as I would they should do theirs, -to ask for my kinsman Toby:

SIR To. Bolts and shackles !

FAB. O, peace, peace, peace! now, now.

MAL. Seven of my people, with an obedient start, make out for him: I frown the while; and, perchance, wind up my watch,' or play with some rich jewel. Toby approaches; court'sies there to me:3

1

wind up my watch,] In our author's time watches were very uncommon. When Guy Faux was taken, it was urged as a circumstance of suspicion that a watch was found upon him. JOHNSON.

Again, in an ancient MS. play, entitled The Second Maiden's Tragedy, written between the years 1610 and 1611:

"Like one that has a watche of curious making;

Thinking to be more cunning than the workman, "Never gives over tamp'ring with the wheels, ""Till either spring be weaken'd, balance bow'd, "Or some wrong pin put in, and so spoils all." In the Antipodes, a comedy, 1638, are the following passages : -your project against

Again:

"The multiplicity of pocket-watches."

when every puny clerk can carry "The time o' th' day in his breeches."

Again, in The Alchemist:

"And I had lent my watch last night to one

"That dines to-day at the sheriff's.' STEEVENS.

Pocket-watches were brought from Germany into England,

about the year 1580. MALONe.

—or play with some rich jewel.] The old copy has-
"Or play with my some rich jewel." MALONE.

The reading of the old copy, however quaint and affected, may signify-and play with some rich jewel of

my own, some ornament appended to my person. He is entertaining himself with ideas of future magnificence. STEEVENS.