Nurture can never stick 4 ; on whom my pains, (Prospero remains invisible. Enter Ariel loaden with glistering apparel, &c. Enter Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo, all wet. Cal. Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not Hear a foot fall : we now are near his cell. Ste. Monster, your fairy, which, you say, is a harmless fairy, has done little better than play'd the s Jack with us. Trin. Monster, I do smell all horse.piss; at which my nose is in great indignation. Ste. So is mine. Do you hear, monster? If I should take a displeasure against you; look you Trin. T'hou wert but a loft monster. Cal. Good my lord, give me thy favour still : Be patient, for the prize I'll bring thee to Shall hood-wink this mischance : therefore, spcak softly; All's hush'd as midnight yet. Trin. Ay, but to lose our bottles in the pool, Ste. 'There is not only disgrace and dishonour in that, monster, but an infinite loss. Trin. That's more to me than my wetting : Yet this is your harmless fairy, monster. Ste. I will fetch off my bottle, though I be o'er ears for my labour. Cal. Pr'ythee, my king, be quiet : See'st thou herë, This is the mouth o' the cell; 10 noise, and enter : All's hush'd a but to lote ly disgrace 4 Nurture can never llick ;] Nurture is education, STELVENS. s He has play'd fack with a lantern Has led us about like an ignis fatuus, by which travellers are decoyed into the mire. JOHNSON. Do Do that good mischief, which may make this island thoughts. phano! Look, what a wardrobe here is for thee! Cal. Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash. Trin. Oh, ho, monster ; 7 we know what belongs to a frippery :-0, king Stephano! Ste. Put off that gown, Trinculo; by this hand, I'll have that gown. Trin. Thy grace shall have it. mean, And 6 Trin. O king Stephano ! o peer! O worthy Stephano ! Look, what a wardrobe here is for thee! ] The humour of these lines confifts in their being an allufion to an old celebrated ballad, which begins thus : King Stephen was a worthy peer-and celebrates that king's parfimony with regard to his wardrobe. There are two stanzas of this ballad in Othello. WARBURTON. The old ballad is printed at large in The Reliques of Ancient Poetry, vol. i. Percy. ..? we know what belongs to a frippery :-) A frippery was a shop where old cloaths were fold. Fripferie, Fr. Beaumont and Fletcher use it in this sense, in Wit without Money, act II: " As if I were a running frippery.” . So in Monsieur de Olive, a comedy, by Chapman, 1606 : “ Paffing yesterday by the frippery, I spied two of them hanging out at a stall with a gambrell thrust froin shoulder to shoulder." The person who kept one of these shops, was called a fripper. So again in Monsieur de Olive, 1606 : “ Taylors, frippers, brokers.” Again, ibid : “ What is your profession, I pray?-Frippers, my lord.” Again : “ Farewell fripper, farewell petty broker." Strype, in the life of Stowe, says, that these frippers lived in Birchin-lane and Cornhill. STEEVENS. 8 First edit. Let's alone. Johnson. And do the murder first: if he awake; - Ste. Be you quiet, monster.-Mistress line, is not this my jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line : Now, jerkin, you are like to lose your hair, and prove a bald jerkin. Trin. Do, do; We steal by line and level, and't like your grace. Ste. I thank thee for that jest; here's a garment for't : wit shall not go unrewarded, while I am king of this country : Steal by line and level, is an excellent pass of pate; there's another garment for't. Trin. Monster, come, 'put some lime upon your fingers, and away with the rest. Cal. I will have none on’t: we shall lose our time, And all be turn'd' to barnacles, or to apes With foreheads villainous low. Ste. Let's alone may mean-Let you and I only go to commit the murder, leaving Trinculo, who is so solicitous about the trash of dress, behind us. STEEVENS. under the line :] An allusion to what often happens to people who pass the line. The violent severs, which they con. trači in that hot climate, make them lose their hair. EDWARDS' MSS. Perhaps the allusion is to a more indelicate disease than any peculiar to the equinoxial. So in The Noble Soldier, 1632: " "Tis hot going under the line there." Again, in Lady Alimony, 1659: “ Look to the clime “ Yea, there goes the hair away.” Shakespeare seems to design an equivoque between the equinoxial and the girdle of a woman. STEEVENS. - put some lime, &c.] That is, birdlime. JOHNSON. .? to barnacles, or to apes] Skinner says barnacle is Anfer Scoticus. The barnacle is a kind of thell-fifh growing on the bote toms of ships, and which was anciently supposed, when broken off, to become one of these gecse. Hall, in his Virgedemiarum, lib. iv. fat. 2. seems to favour this fupponition: Vol. I. " The Ste. Monster, lay to your fingers; help to bear this away, where my hogshead of wine is, or I'll turn you out of iny kingdom : go to, carry this. Trin. And this. 3 A noise of hunter's heard. Enter divers Spirits in Mape of hounds, hunting them about ; Prospero and Ariel setting them on. Pro. Hey, Mountain, hey! Ari. Silver! there it goes, Silver! Pro. Fury, Fury! there, Tyrant, there! hark, hark !-[To Ariel.] Go, charge my goblins that they grind their joints With dry convulfions ; shorten up their finews WS " The Scottish barnacle, if I might choose, “ That of a worme doth waxe a winged goose,” &c. So likewise Marston, in his Malecontent, 1604 : " like jour Scotch barnacle, now a block, " Instantly a worin, and presently a great goose.” “ There are," (says Gerard, in his Herbal, edit. 1594. page 1391) " in the north parts of Scotland certaine trees, whereon do growe shell-fishes, &c. &c. which, falling into the water, do become fowls, whom we call barnakles; in the north of England brant geeje; and in Lancashire tree geesc," &c. This vulgar error deserves no serious confutation.' Commend me, however, to Holinshed, (vol. I. p. 38.) who declares himfelt to have seen the feathers of these barnacles 't hang out of the thell at least two inches." And in the 27th song of Drayton's Por lyolbion, the fame account of their generation is given. Again, in Valentinian, by B. and Fletcher: -6- -not till barnacles " Breed in my fides.” COLLINS. 3 A noise of hunters heard. - ] Shakespeare might have had in view “ Arthur's Chace, which many believe to be in France, and think that it is a kennel of black' dogs followed by unknown huntsmen with an exceeding great sound of horns, as if it was a very hunting of fome wild beast.” See a Treatise of Speelres translated from the French of Peter de Loier, and publihed in quarto, 1635. Dr. GRAY, T E M P E S T. : 99 With aged cramps; and more pinch-spotted make then, Than pard, or cat o' mountain. Ari. Hark, they roar. Pro. Let them be hunted foundly: At this hour [Exeunt. A CT V. SCENE I. Before the cell. Enter Prospero in his magick robes, and Ariel. Ari. On the sixth hour; at which time, my lord, Pro. I did say fo, Ari. Confin’d together 4 and time Goes upright cuith his carriage.-) Alluding to one carrying a burthen. This critical period of my life proceeds as I could wish. Time brings forward all the expected events, without faultering under his burthen, STEEVENS. H 2 Him |