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SIR TO. Taste your legs, sir, put them to motion. V10. My legs do better understand me, sir, than I understand what you mean by bidding me taste my legs.

SIR TO. I mean, to go, sir, to enter.

VIO. I will answer you with gait and entrance: But we are prevented."

Enter OLIVIA and MARIA.

Most excellent accomplished lady, the heavens rain odours on you!

SIR AND. That youth's a rare courtier! Rain odours! well.

VIO. My matter hath no voice, lady, but to your own most pregnant and vouchsafed ear.1

SIR AND. Odours, pregnant, and vouchsafed:I'll get 'em all three ready.2

8

Taste your legs, sir, &c.] Perhaps this expression was employed to ridicule the fantastic use of a verb, which is many times as quaintly introduced in the old pieces, as in this play, and in The True Tragedies of Marius and Scilla, 1594:

"A climbing tow'r that did not taste the wind." Again, in Chapman's version of the 21st Odyssey:

66 he now began

"To taste the bow, the sharp shaft took, tugg'd hard.” In the Frogs of Aristophanes, however, a similar expression occurs, v. 465: “TEUZAI Tηs Oupas;" i. e. taste the door, knock gently at it. STEEVENS.

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prevented.] i. e. our purpose is anticipated. So, in the 119th Psalm:

1

"Mine eyes prevent the night-watches." STEEVENS.

most pregnant and vouchsafed ear.] Pregnant for ready; as in Measure for Measure, Act I. sc. i. STEEVENS. Vouchsafed for vouchsafing. MALone.

all three ready.] The old copy has all three already. Mr. Malone reads "all three all ready." STEEVENS.

OLI. Let the garden door be shut, and leave me to my hearing.

[Exeunt Sir TOBY, Sir ANDREW, and MARIA. Give me your hand, sir.

VIO. My duty, madam, and most humble service. OLI. What is your name?

V10. Cesario is your servant's name, fair princess. OLI. My servant, sir! 'Twas never merry world, Since lowly feigning was call'd compliment: You are servant to the count Orsino, youth.

V10. And he is yours, and his must needs be yours;

Your servant's servant is your servant, madam. OLI. For him, I think not on him: for his thoughts,

'Would they were blanks, rather than fill'd with me!

V10. Madam, I come to whet your gentle

thoughts

On his behalf:

OLI.

O, by your leave, I pray you; I bade you never speak again of him : But, would you undertake another suit, I had rather hear you to solicit that, Than musick from the spheres.

V10.

Dear lady,

The editor of the third folio reformed the passage by reading only-ready. But omissions ought always to be avoided if possible. The repetition of the word all is not improper in the mouth of Sir Andrew. MAlone.

Præferatur lectio brevior, is a well known rule of criticism; and in the present instance I most willingly follow it, omitting the useless repetition-all. STEEVENS.

OLI. Give me leave, I beseech you :3 I did send, After the last enchantment you did here,*

I beseech you :] The first folio reads

"'beseech you." STEEVENS.

This ellipsis occurs so frequently in our author's plays, that I do not suspect any omission here. The editor of the third folio reads-I beseech you; which supplies the syllable wanting, but hurts the metre. MALONE.

I read with the third folio; not perceiving how the metre is injured by the insertion of the vowel-I. STEEVENs.

you did here,] The old copy reads-heare.

Nonsense. Read and point it thus:

After the last enchantment you did here,

i. e. after the enchantment your presence worked in tions. WARBURTON.

STEEVENS.

my affec

The present reading is no more nonsense than the emendation. JOHNSON.

Warburton's amendment, the reading, "you did here," though it may not perhaps be absolutely necessary to make sense of the passage, is evidently right. Olivia could not speak of her sending him a ring, as a matter he did not know except by hearsay; for the ring was absolutely delivered to him. It would, besides, be impossible to know what Olivia meant by the last enchantment, if she had not explained it herself, by saying" the last enchantment you did here." There is not, perhaps, a passage in Shakspeare, where so great an improvement of the sense is gained by changing a single letter.

M. MASON. The two words are very frequently confounded in the old editions of our author's plays, and the other books of that age, See the last line of K. Richard III. quarto, 1613:

"That she may live heare, God say amen." Again, in The Tempest, folio, 1623, p. 3, l. 10: "Heare, cease more questions."

Again, in Love's. Labour's Lost, 1623, p. 139:

"Let us complain to them what fools were heare."

Again, in All's well that ends well, 1623, p. 239:

"That hugs his kicksey-wicksey heare at home." Again, in Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, Vol. I. p. 205: to my utmost knowledge, heare is simple truth and verity."

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A ring in chase of you; so did I abuse
Myself, my servant, and, I fear me, you :
Under your hard construction must I sit,
To force that on you, in a shameful cunning,
Which you knew none of yours: What might you

think?

Have you not set mine honour at the stake,
And baited it with all the unmuzzled thoughts
That tyrannous heart can think? To one of

receiving 5

6

your

Enough is shown; a cyprus, not a bosom,
Hides my poor heart: So let me hear you speak."
VIO. I pity you.

OLI. That's a degree to love.

8

VIO. No, not a grise; for 'tis a vulgar proof," That very oft we pity enemies.

I could add twenty other instances, were they necessary. Throughout the first edition of our author's Rape of Lucrece, 1594, which was probably printed under his own inspection, the word we now spell here, is constantly written heare.

Let me add, that Viola had not simply heard that a ring had been sent (if even such an expression as-" After the last enchantment, you did heare," were admissible;) she had seen and talked with the bearer of it. MALONE.

To one of your receiving-] i. e. to one of your ready apprehension. She considers him as an arch page. WARBURTON. See page 281, n. 8. STEEVENS.

6

a cyprus,] is a transparent stuff. JOHNSON.

7 Hides my poor heart: So let me hear you speak.] The word hear is used in this line, like tear, dear, swear, &c. as a dissyllable. The editor of the second folio, to supply what he imagined to be a defect in the metre, reads-Hides my poor heart; and all the subsequent editors have adopted his interpolation. MALONE.

I have retained the pathetic and necessary epithet poor. The line would be barbarously dissonant without it. STEEVENS.

8

a grise ;] is a step, sometimes written degres, French. JOHNSON.

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OLI. Why, then, methinks, 'tis time to smile

again:

O world, how apt the poor are to be proud!
If one should be a prey, how much the better
To fall before the lion, than the wolf?

[Clock strikes.
The clock upbraids me with the waste of time.-
Be not afraid, good youth, I will not have you:
And yet, when wit and youth is come to harvest,
Your wife is like to reap a proper man :
There lies your way, due west.

V10.

Then westward-hoe:1 Grace, and good disposition 'tend your ladyship! You'll nothing, madam, to my lord by me?

OLI. Stay:

I pr'ythee, tell me, what thou think'st of me.
VIO. That you do think, you are not what you

are.

OLI. If I think so, I think the same of you.

V10. Then think you right; I am not what I am. OLI. I would, you were as I would have you be! VIO. Would it be better, madam, than I am, I wish it might; for now I am your fool. OLI. O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful

So, in Othello:

9.

"Which, as a grise or step, may help these lovers." STEEVENS.

'tis a vulgar proof,] That is, it is a common proof. The experience of every day shews that, &c. MAlone.

1 Then westward-hoe:] This is the name of a comedy by T. Decker, 1607. He was assisted in it by Webster, and it was acted with great success by the children of Paul's, on whom Shakspeare has bestowed such notice in Hamlet, that we may sure they were rivals to the company patronized by himself.

be

STEEVENS.

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