SIR AND. Excellent! Why, this is the best fooling, when all is done. Now, a song. SIR TO. Come on; there is six-pence for you: let's have a song. SIR AND. There's a testril of me too: if one knight give a CLO. Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?" SIR TO. A love-song, a love-song. SIR AND. Ay, ay; I care not for good life. SONG. CLO. O mistress mine, where are you roaming? SIR AND. Excellent good, i'faith! CLO. What is love? 'tis not hereafter; 7 Present mirth hath present laughter ; of good life?] I do not suppose that by a song of good life, the Clown means a song of a moral turn; though Sir Andrew answers to it in that signification. Good life, I believe, is harmless mirth and jollity. It may be a Gallicism: we call a jolly fellow a bon vivant. STEEVENS. From the opposition of the words in the Clown's question, I incline to think that good life is here used in its usual acceptation. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, these words are used for a virtuous character: "Defend your reputation, or farewell to your good life for ever." MALONE. Then come kiss me, sweet-and-twenty, SIR AND. A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight. SIR TO. A contagious breath. SIR AND. Very sweet and contagious, i̇'faith. SIR TO. To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion. But shall we make the welkin dance' • In delay there lies no plenty ;] No man will ever be worth much, who delays the advantages offered by the present hour, in hopes that the future will offer more. So, in K. Richard III. Act IV. sc. iii: "Delay leads impotent and snail-pac'd beggary." Again, in K. Henry VI. P. I: "Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends." Again, in a Scots proverb: "After a delay comes a let.” See Kelly's Collection, p. 52. STEEVENS. 9 Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,] This line is obscure; we might read: Come, a kiss then, sweet and twenty. Yet I know not whether the present reading be not right, for in some counties sweet and twenty, whatever be the meaning, is a phrase of endearment. JOHNSON. So, in Wit of a Woman, 1604: "Sweet and twenty: all sweet and sweet." Again, in The Life and Death of the Merry Devil of Edmonton, &c. by T. B. 1631: "his little wanton wagtailes, his sweet and twenties, his pretty pinckineyd pigsnies, &c. as he himself used commonly to call them." STEEVENS. Again, in The Merry Wives of Windsor: 1 “Good even, and twenty." MAlone. make the welkin dance-] That is, drink till the sky seems to turn round. JOHNSON. So, in Antony and Cleopatra, Act II. sc. vii: 66 Cup us till the world go round." indeed? Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch, that will draw three souls out of one weaver? 2 shall we do that? SIR AND. An you love me, let's do't: I am dog at a catch. Again, Mr. Pope : "Ridotta sips and dances, till she see "The doubling lustres dance as fast as she." STEEVENS. draw three souls out of one weaver?] Our author represents weavers as much given to harmony in his time. I have shewn the cause of it elsewhere. The expression of the power of musick is familiar with our author. Much Ado about Nothing: "Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's-guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?"-Why, he says, three souls, is because he is speaking of a catch of three parts; and the peripatetic philosophy, then in vogue, very liberally gave every man three souls. The vegetative or plastic, the animal, and the rational. To this, too, Jonson alludes, in his Poetaster: "What, will I turn shark upon my friends? or my friends' friends? I scorn it with my three souls." By the mention of these thrée, therefore, we may suppose it was Shakspeare's purpose, to hint to us those surprizing effects of musick, which the ancients speak of, when they tell us of Amphion, who moved stones and trees; Orpheus and Arion, who tamed savage beasts; and Timotheus, who governed, as he pleased, the passions of his human auditors. So noble an observation has our author conveyed in the ribaldry of this buffoon character. WARBURTON. In a popular book of the time, Carew's translation of Huarte's Trial of Wits, 1594, there is a curious chapter concerning the three souls, "vegetative, sensitive, and reasonable." FARMER. I doubt whether our author intended any allusion to this division of souls. In The Tempest, we have-" trebles thee o'er;" i. e. makes thee thrice as great as thou wert before. In the same manner, I believe, he here only means to describe Sir Toby's catch as so harmonious, that it would hale the soul out of a weaver (the warmest lover of a song) thrice over; or in other words, give him thrice more delight than it would give another man. Dr. Warburton's supposition that there is an allusion to the catch being in three parts, appears to me one of his unfounded refinements. MALONE. CLO. By'r lady, sir, and some dogs will catch well. SIR AND. Most certain : let our catch be, Thou knave. CLO. Hold thy peace, thou knave, knight? I shall be constrain'd in't to call thee knave, knight. SIR AND. 'Tis not the first time I have constrain'd one to call me knave. Begin, fool; it begins, Hold thy peace. CLO. I shall never begin, if I hold my peace. [They sing a catch.3 They sing a catch.] This catch is lost. JOHNSON. A catch is a species of vocal harmony to be sung by three or more persons; and is so contrived, that though each sings precisely the same notes as his fellows, yet by beginning at stated periods of time from each other, there results from the performance a harmony of as many parts as there are singers. Compositions of this kind are, in strictness, called Canons in the unison; and as properly, Catches, when the words in the different parts are made to catch or answer each other. One of the most remarkable examples of a true catch is that of Purcel, Let's live good honest lives, in which, immediately after one person has uttered these words, "What need we fear the Pope?" another in the course of his singing fills up a rest which the first makes, with the words "the devil.” The catch above-mentioned to be sung by Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and the Clown, from the hints given of it, appears to be so contrived as that each of the singers calls the other knave in turn; and for this the Clown means to apologize to the knight, when he says, that he shall be constrained to call him knave. I have here subjoined the very catch, with the musical notes to which it was sung in the time of Shakspeare, and at the original performance of this comedy: Enter MARIA. MAR. What a catterwauling do you keep here"! If my lady have not called up her steward, Malvolio, and bid him turn you out of doors, never trust me. SIR TO. My lady's a Cataian, we are politicians; Malvolio's a Peg-a-Ramsey, and Three merry A 3 voc. ? Hold thy peace and I pree thee hold thy peace Thou knave, thou knave: hold thy peace thou knave. The evidence of its authenticity is as follows: There is extant a book entitled, "PAMMELIA, Musickes Miscellanie, or mixed Varietie of pleasant Roundelays and delightful Catches of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Parts in one." Of this book there are at least two editions, the second printed in 1618. In 1609, a second part of this work was published with the title of DEUTEROMELIA, and in this book is contained the catch above given. SIR J. HAWKINS. 4 a Cataian,] It is in vain to seek the precise meaning of this term of reproach. I have already attempted to explain it in a note on The Merry Wives of Windsor. I find it used again in Love and Honour, by Sir W. D'Avenant, 1649: 5 "Hang him, bold Cataian." STEEVENS. Peg-a-Ramsey,] In Durfey's Pills to purge Melancholy, is a very obscene old song, entitled Peg-a-Ramsey. See also Ward's Lives of the Professors of Gresham College, p. 207. PERCY. Nash mentions Peg of Ramsey among several other ballads, |
