In recompense whereof, he hath married her. OLI. Alas, poor fool!3 how have they baffled thee!" CLO. Why, some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrown upon them. I was one, sir, in this interlude; one sir Topas, sir; but that's all one:-By the Lord, fool, I am not mad ;-But do you remember? Madam, why laugh you at such a barren rascal? an you smile not, he's gagg'd: And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges. MAL. I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you. [Exit. OLI. He hath been most notoriously abus❜d. DUKE. Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace:He hath not told us of the captain yet; 3 Alas, poor fool!] See notes on King Lear, Act V. sc. iii. REED. how have they baffled thee!] See Mr. Tollet's note on a passage in the first scene of the first Act of King Richard II: "I am disgrac'd, impeach'd, and baffled here." STEEVENS. $ But do you remember? Madam,] The old copy points this passage erroneously: "But do you remember, madam," &c. I have followed the regulation proposed in the subsequent note. STEEVENS. As the Clown is speaking to Malvolio, and not to Olivia, I think this passage should be regulated_thus—but do you remember?-Madam, why laugh you, &c. TYRWHItt. 6 and entreat him to a peace:] Thus, in Fletcher's Two Noble Kinsmen : "And fluently persuade her to a peace." STEEVENS. VOL. V. E E When that is known and golden time convents," Of our dear souls-Mean time, sweet sister, SONG. CLO. When that I was and a little tiny boy," A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it raineth every day. 7-convents,] Perhaps we should read-consents. To convent, however, is to assemble; and therefore, the count may mean, when the happy hour calls us again together. STEEVENS. convents,] i. e. shall serve, agree, be convenient. DOUCE. • When that I was and a little tiny boy, &c.] Here again we have an old song, scarcely worth correction. Gainst knaves and thieves must evidently be, against knave and thief. When I was a boy, my folly and mischievous actions were little regarded; but when I came to manhood, men shut their gates against me, as a knave and a thief. Sir Thomas Hanmer rightly reduces the subsequent words, beds and heads, to the singular number; and a little alteration is still wanting at the beginning of some of the stanzas. Mr. Steevens observes in a note at the end of Much Ado about Nothing, that the play had formerly passed under the name of Benedict and Beatrix. It seems to have been the court-fashion to alter the titles. A very ingenious lady, with whom I have the honour to be acquainted, Mrs. Askew, of Queen's Square, has a fine copy of the second folio edition of Shakspeare, which formerly belonged to King Charles I. and was a present from him to Sir Thomas Herbert. Sir Thomas has altered five titles in the list of the plays, to "Benedick and Beatrice,-Pyramus and Thisby,-Rosalinde,-Mr. Paroles, and Malvolio." It is lamentable to see how far party and prejudice will carry the wisest men, even against their own practice and opinions. 66 But when I came to man's estate, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, But when I came, alas! to wive, But when I came unto my bed, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, A great while ago the world begun, But that's all one, our play is done, [Exit. Milton, in his Exovoxλacles, censures King Charles for reading one whom (says he) we well knew was the closet companion of his solitudes, William Shakspeare." FARMER. I have followed the regulations proposed by Sir T. Hanmer and Dr. Farmer; and consequently, instead of knaves, thieves, beds, and heads, have printed " knave, thief," &c. Dr. Farmer might have observed, that the alterations of the titles are in his Majesty's own hand-writing, materially differing from Sir Thomas Herbert's, of which the same volume affords more than one specimen. I learn from another manuscript note in it, that John Lowine acted King Henry VIII. and John Taylor the part of Hamlet. The book is now in my possession. To the concluding remark of Dr. Farmer, may be added the following passage from An Appeal to all rational Men concerning King Charles's Trial, by John Cooke, 1649: "Had he but studied scripture half so much as Ben Jonson or Shakspeare, he might have learnt that when Amaziah was settled in the kingdom, he suddenly did justice upon those servants which killed his father Joash," &c. With this quotation I was furnished by Mr. Malone. A quarto volume of plays attributed to Shakspeare, with the cypher of King Charles II. on the back of it, is preserved in Mr. Garrick's collection. Though we are well convinced that Shakspeare has written slight ballads for the sake of discriminating characters more strongly, or for other necessary purposes, in the course of his mixed dramas, it is scarce credible, that after he had cleared his stage, he should exhibit his Clown afresh, and with so poor a recommendation as this song, which is utterly unconnected with the subject of the preceding comedy. I do not therefore hesitate to call the nonsensical ditty before us, some buffoon actor's composition, which was accidentally tacked to the Prompter's copy of Twelfth-Night, having been casually subjoined to it for the diversion, or at the call, of the lowest order of spectators. In the year 1766, I saw the late Mr. Weston summoned out and obliged to sing Johnny Pringle and his Pig, after the performance of Voltaire's Mahomet, at the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane. STEEVENS. The copy of the second folio of Shakspeare, which formerly belonged to King Charles, and mentioned in the preceding notes, is now in the library of his present Majesty, who has corrected a mistake of Dr. Farmer's, relative to Sir Thomas Herbert, inadvertently admitted by Mr. Steevens, but here omitted. REED. This play is in the graver part elegant and easy, and in some of the lighter scenes exquisitely humorous. Ague-cheek is drawn with great propriety, but his character is, in a great measure, that of natural fatuity, and is therefore not the proper prey of a satirist. The soliloquy of Malvolio is truly comic; he is betrayed to ridicule merely by his pride. The marriage of Olivia, and the succeeding perplexity, though well enough contrived to divert on the stage, wants credibility, and fails to produce the proper instruction required in the drama, as it exhibits no just picture of life. JOHNson. T. Davison, Lombard-street, END OF VOL. V. |