Enter Sir ANDREW AGUE-CHEEK, with his head

broke.

SIR AND. For the love of God, a surgeon; send one presently to Sir Toby.

OLI. What's the matter?

SIR AND. He has broke my head across, and has given sir Toby a bloody coxcomb too: for the love of God, your help: I had rather than forty pound, I were at home.

OLI. Who has done this, sir Andrew?

SIR AND. The count's gentleman, one Cesario: we took him for a coward, but he's the very devil incardinate.

DUKE. My gentleman, Cesario?

SIR AND. Od's lifelings, here he is :-You broke my head for nothing; and that that I did, I was set on to do't by sir Toby.

V10. Why do you speak to me? I never hurt you: You drew your sword upon me, without cause; But I bespake you fair, and hurt you not.

SIR AND. If a bloody coxcomb be a hurt, you have hurt me; I think, you set nothing by a bloody coxcomb.

Enter Sir TOBY BELCH, drunk, led by the Clown.

Here comes sir Toby halting, you shall hear more: but if he had not been in drink, he would have tickled you othergates than he did.

DUKE. How now, gentleman? how is't with you?

SIR To. That's all one; he has hurt me, and

there's the end on't.-Sot, did'st see Dick surgeon, sot?

CLO. O he's drunk, sir Toby, an hour agone; his eyes were set at eight i'the morning.

SIR TO. Then he's a rogue. After a passy-measure, or a pavin, I hate a drunken rogue.

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Then he's a rogue. After a passy-measure, or a pavin, &c.] The old copy reads" and a passy measures panyn." As the u in this word is reversed, the modern editors have been contented to read" past-measure painim."

A passy-measure pavin may, however, mean a pavin danced out of time. Sir Toby might call the surgeon by this title, because he was drunk at a time when he should have been sober, and in a condition to attend on the wounded knight.

This dance, called the pavyn, is mentioned by Beaumont and Fletcher, in The Mad Lover:

"I'll pipe him such a pavan.

And, in Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse, containing a pleasant invective against poets, pipers, &c. 1579, it is enumerated as follows, among other dances:

"Dumps, pavins, galliards, measures, fancyes, or newe streynes."

I do not, at last, see how the sense will completely quadrate on the present occasion. Sir W. D'Avenant, in one of his interludes, mentions "a doleful pavin." In. The Cardinal, by Shirley, 1652: "Who then shall dance the pavin with Osorio?" Again, in 'Tis Pity she's a Whore, by Ford, 1633: "I have seen an ass and a mule trot the Spanish pavin with a better grace." Lastly, in Shadwell's Virtuoso, 1676: "A grave pavin or almain, at which the black Tarantula only moved; it danced to it with a kind of grave motion much like the benchers at the revels." STEEVENS.

Bailey's Dictionary says, pavan is the lowest sort of instrumental music; and when this play was written, the pavin and the passamezzo might be in vogue only with the vulgar, as with Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet; and hence Sir Toby may mean--he is a rogue, and a mean low fellow. TOLLET.

Ben Jonson also mentions the pavin, and calls it a Spanish dance, Alchemist, p. 97, [Whalley's edition]; but it seems to come originally from Padua, and should rather be written pávane, as a corruption of paduana. A dance of that name

OLI. Away with him: Who hath made this havock with them?

(saltatio paduana) occurs in an old writer, quoted by the annotator on Rabelais, B. V. c. 30.

Passy measures is undoubtedly a corruption, but I know not how it should be rectified. TYRWHITT.

The pavan, from pavo a peacock, is a grave and majestick dance. The method of dancing it was anciently by gentlemen dressed with a cap and sword, by those of the long robe in their gowns, by princes in their mantles, and by ladies in gowns with long trains, the motion whereof in the dance resembled that of a peacock's tail. This dance is supposed to have been invented by the Spaniards, and its figure is given with the characters for the step, in the Orchesographia of Thoinet Arbeau. Every pavin has its galliard, a lighter kind of air, made out of the former. The courant, the jig, and the hornpipe, are sufficiently known at this day.

Of the passamezzo little is to be said, except that it was a favourite air in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Ligon, in his History of Barbadoes, mentions a passamezzo galliard, which in the year 1647, a Padre in that island played to him on the lute; the very same, he says, with an air of that kind which in Shakspeare's play of Henry IV. was originally played to Sir John Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet, by Sneak, the musician, there named. This little anecdote Ligon might have by tradition; but his conclusion, that because it was played in a dramatic representation of the history of Henry IV. it must be so ancient as his time, is very idle and injudicious. Passy-measure is therefore undoubtedly a corruption from passamezzo. SIR J. HAWKINS.

With the help of Sir John Hawkins's explanation of passymeasure, I think I now see the meaning of this passage. The second folio reads after a passy measures pavin. So that I should imagine the following regulation of the whole speech would not be far from the truth:

Then he's a rogue. After a passy-measure or a pavin, I hate a drunken rogue, i. e. next to a passy measure or a pavin, &c. It is in character, that Sir Toby should express a strong dislike of serious dances, such as the passamezzo and the pavan are described to be. TYRWHITT.

From what has been stated, I think, it is manifest that Sir Toby means only by this quaint expression, that the surgeon is a rogue, and a grave solemn coxcomb. It is one of Shakspeare's

SIR AND. I'll help you, sir Toby, because we'll be dressed together.

SIR TO. Will you help an ass-head, and a coxcomb, and a knave? a thin-faced knave, a gull ? OLI. Get him to bed, and let his hurt be look'd to.

[Exeunt Clown, Sir TOBY, and Sir ANDREW.

Enter SEBASTIAN.

SEB. I am sorry, madam, I have hurt your kins

man;

But, had it been the brother of my blood,

unrivalled excellencies, that his characters are always consistent. Even in drunkenness they preserve the traits which distinguished them when sober. Sir Toby, in the first Act of this play, shewed himself well acquainted with the various kinds of the dance.

The editor of the second folio, who, when he does not understand any passage, generally cuts the knot, instead of untying it, arbitrarily reads--" after a passy-measures pavyn I hate a drunken rogue." In the same manner, in the preceding speech, not thinking" an hour agone" good English, he reads "O he's drunk, Sir Toby, above an hour agone." There is scarcely a page of that copy in which similar interpolations may not be found. MALONE.

I have followed Mr. Tyrwhitt's regulation, which appears to be well founded on one of the many judicious corrections that stamp a value on the second folio. STEEVENs.

6

an ass-head, and a coxcomb, &c.] I believe, Sir Toby means to apply all these epithets either to the surgeon or Sebastian; and have pointed the passage accordingly. It has been hitherto printed, "Will you help an ass-head," &c. but why should Sir Toby thus unmercifully abuse himself?

MALONE.

As I cannot help thinking that Sir Toby, out of humour with himself, means to discharge these reproaches on the officious Sir Andrew, who also needs the surgeon's help, I have left the passage as I found it. Mr. Malone points it thus: "Will you help? An ass-head," &c.! STEEVENS.

I must have done no less, with wit, and safety.
You throw a strange regard upon me, and
By that I do perceive it hath offended you;
Pardon me, sweet one, even for the vows
We made each other but so late ago.

DUKE. One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons;

A natural perspective, that is, and is not.
SEB. Antonio, O my dear Antonio!

How have the hours rack'd and tortur'd me,
Since I have lost thee.

ANT. Sebastian are you?

A natural perspective,] A perspective seems to be taken for shows exhibited through a glass with such lights as make the pictures appear really protuberant. The Duke therefore says, that nature has here exhibited such a show, where shadows seem realities; where that which is not appears like that which is.

JOHNSON.

I apprehend this may be explained by a quotation from a duodecimo book called Humane Industry, 1661, p. 76 and 77: "It is a pretty art that in a pleated paper and table furrowed or indented, men make one picture to represent several facesthat being viewed from one place or standing, did shew the head of a Spaniard, and from another, the head of an ass.""A picture of a chancellor of France presented to the common beholder a multitude of little faces; but if one did look on it through a perspective, there appeared only the single pourtraicture of the chancellor himself." Thus that, which is, is not, or in a different position appears like another thing. This seems also to explain a passage in King Henry V. Act V. sc. ii: "Yes, my lord, you see them perspectively, the cities turned into a maid." TOLLet.

I believe Shakspeare meant nothing more by this natural perspective, than a reflection from a glass or mirror. M. MASON.

Perspective certainly means a glass used for optical delusion, or a glass generally. In Franck's Northern Memoirs, p. 16, Theophilus, one of the discoursers, says-" he that reads his own heart without a perspective, reads all the world." The book was written in 1658. Douce.