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"The man, as you know all, hath a contemptible spirit." Act II., Scene 3. Contemptuous. The difference of these two words was not yet accurately settled. In the argument to "DARIUS," a tragedy, by Lord Sterline (1603), it is said, that Darius wrote to Alexander "in a proud and contemptible manner."

"If black, why Nature, drawing of an antic, made a foul blot."-Act III., Scene 1.

The "antic" was the fool or buffoon of the old farces. By the word black is meant only (as in the "Two GENTLEMEN OF VERONA") a man of a dark or swarthy complexion, and sometimes one with merely a black beard.

"Press me to death with wit.'-Act III., Scene 1.

By a barbarous law, the punishment called “peine fort et dure" was inflicted on those persons who refused to plead to their indictment. They were pressed to death by weights placed upon their stomachs.

"What fire is in mine cars ?”—Act III., Scene 1.

It is a proverbial saying, that our ears burn when others are talking about us. This notion is of great antiquity. In Philemon Holland's Translation of " PLINY" (b. 27), we find this "Moreover, is not this an opinion genepassage: rally received, that when our ears do glow and tingle, some there be that in our absence do talk of us?"

"As to shew a child his new coat, and forbid him to wear it." Act III., Scene 2. Shakspere very seldom repeats himself; but we do occasionally meet with a contrary instance, which may be noted merely as a curiosity. In "ROMEO AND JULIET,” there is a passage very similar to the above:

"As is the night before some festival,

To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them.'

"The little hangman dare not shoot at him.” Act III., Scene 2. The term "little hangman," applied to Cupid, is used, probably, in a general sense, to signify executioner. The same ignominious office is ascribed to the blind god in Sidney's "ARCADIA" (b. ii., chap. 14):

"Millions of years this old drivel Cupid lives; Where still more wretch, more wicked, he doth prove: Till now at length, that Jove him office gives (At Juno's suit, who much did Argus love), In this our world a hangman for to be, Of all those fools that will have all they see."

"You must hang it first, and draw it afterwards." Act III., Scene 2. This is an allusion to the sentence passed upon traitors, to be "hung, drawn, and quartered."

"The old ornament of his cheek hath already stuffed tennis balls."-Act III., Scene 2.

This is said in ridicule of great beards. In Nashe's "WONDERFUL, STRANGE, AND MIRACULOUS ASTROLOGICAL PROGNOSTICATIONS" (1591), he says, they may sell their hair by the pound, to stuff tennis-balls."

"Enter DOGBERRY and VERGES.'-Act III., Scene 3. The name of the first of this immortal pair is probably derived from the dog-berry-the female cornel, a shrub that grows wild all over England. Verges is the vulgar or provincial version of verjuice. A cognomen less indicative of sourness, would possibly have better suited this amusing specimen of harmless imbecility.

"Have a care that your bills be not stolen." Act III., Scene 3. The bill was a formidable weapon in the hands of the old English infantry. "It gave," says Temple, "the most ghastly and deplorable wounds." Dr. Johnson states that, when he wrote, the bill was still carried by the watchmen of Litchfield, his native town. It was a long weapon, with a point shaped somewhat like an axe.

"If you hear a child cry in the night."-Act III., Scene 3.

This part of the sapient Dogberry's charge may have been suggested by some of the amusing provisions contained in "THE STATUTES OF THE STREETS," imprinted by Wolfe, in 1595. For instance:-" 22. No man shall blowe any horne in the night, within the citie, or whistle after the houre of nyne of the clock in the night, under paine of imprisonment. -30. No man shall, after the houre of nyne at night, keep any rule, whereby any such suddaine outcry be made in the still of the night; as making any affray, or beating his wife or servant, or singing or revyling [revelling] in his house, to the disturbance of his neighbours, under paine of iiis. iiii d." &c. &c.

"I know that Deformed."—Act III., Scene 3.

In the Induction to his "BARTHOLOMEW FAIR," we find Ben Jonson ing a satirical stroke at this humorous scene:-" And then a substantial watch to have stole in upon 'em, and taken them away, with mistaking words, as the fashion is in the stage practice." Johnson himself, however, in his "TALE OF A TUB," makes his wise men of Finsbury blunder in the same manner. Mr. Boswell, in his edition of Malone's "SHAKSPERE," observes, that mistaking words was a source of merriment before Shakspere's time. Nash, in his "ANATOMY OF ABSURDITIE" (1589), speaks of "a misterming clowne in a comedie;" and in "SELIMUS, EMPEROR OF THE TURKS" (1594), this speech is put into the mouth of Bullithrumble, a shepherd :-" Well, if you will keepe my sheepe truly and honestly, keeping your hands from lying and slandering, and your tongue from picking and stealing, you shall be Maister Bullithrumble's servitures."

"I know him, he wears a lock."—Act III., Scene 3. It was one of the fantastic fashions of Shakspere's day, for men to cultivate a favourite lock of hair, which was brought before, tied with ribbons, and called a love-lock. It was against this practice that Prynne wrote his treatise on "THE UNLOVELYNESS OF LOVE-LOCKS." The portrait of Edward Sackville, Earl of Dorset, painted by Vandyck, and now at Knowle, exhibits this lock with a large knotted ribbon at the end of it.

"If the hair were a thought browner."-Act III., Scene 4. Meaning the false hair attached to the cap.

"BEAT. By my troth, I am exceeding ill:—hey ho!
MARG. For a hawk, a horse, or a husband!
BEAT. For the letter that begins them all—H."
Act 111., Scene 4.

This conceit shews that the word which we now pronounce ake, was, in Shakspere's time, pronounced aitch. Beatrice says, she is ill for an H (aitch), the letter that begins each of the three words-hawk, horse, and husband. John Kemble had a long contention with the public on this point. When playing Prospero, he always persisted in saying, "Fill all thy bones with aitches," and the public (particularly those of the upper regions, who are always most intolerant of singularity) as pertinaciously hissed him for presuming to be right out of season.

"The Gods and Cato did in this divide."

Another instance in the actor's favour may be derived from Heyward's "EPIGRAM8" (1566), among which is one on the letter H:

"His worst among letters in the cross-row; For if thou find him, either in thine elbow, In thine arm or leg, in any degree;

In thine head, or teeth, or toe, or knee;

Into what place soever H may pike him,
Wherever thou find ache, thou shalt not like him."

"An you be not turned Turk."-Act III., Scene 4.

This phrase was commonly applied to express a change of condition or opinion. Hamlet talks of his fortune turning Turk.

"Get you some of this distilled Carduus Benedictus." Act III., Scene 4.

An allusion, of course, to Benedick. Cogan says, in his "HAVEN OF HEALTH" (1595), "This herbe may worthily be called Benedictus, or Omnimorbia; this is a salve for every sore," &c.

"Well, God's a good man."-Act III., Scene 5.

"Man" is here used in the general sense of "being." The term has a strange and irreverent effect at present, but was not uncommon in the old writers. In the morality or interlude of "LUSTY JUVENTUS," we have

"He wyl say, that God is a good man;

He can make him no better, and say the best he can "

It will be observed, that many of the weak and ignorant but well-meaning comic characters of Shakspere (such as Dogberry, Mrs. Quickly, &c.), use the sacred name with a frequency and levity that is anything but agreeable to better instructed notions of the reverence due to it. Yet the author is, in some measure, justified by what we observe to be the practice with such persons even at present. He doubtless copied their diction in the same simple and innocent spirit that they used it. Cervantes, a congenial spirit in every sense of the word, makes Sancho speak continually in the same strain of ultra-religious feeling.

"The story that is printed in her blood.”—Act IV., Scene 1. The story that her blushing discovers to be true.

"Being that I flow in grief,

The smallest twine may lead me."-Act IV., Scene 1.

"This," says Johnson, "is one of our author's observations upon life. Men, overpowered with distress, eagerly listen to the first offers of relief, close with every scheme, and believe every promise."

"A stool and a cushion for the sexton."—Act IV.; Scene 2.

This "sexton" would more properly be called, the sacristan. In the original Italian the word is probably sagristano, rendered "sexton" in the novel on which the play is founded. This officer was an ecclesiastic of one of the inferior orders. In the folio edition, throughout the greater part of this scene, the name of the actor (Kempe) is prefixed to the speeches of Dogberry; and Cowley, to those of Verges.

"Cry, 'Sorrow, wag;' and hem, when he should groan." Act V., Scene 1.

If he will jocosely cry, "Sorrow, begone." It was once customary to exclaim, "Care, away," in a similar sense. To wag, is in various places used by Shakspere in the sense of, to go, or move. "Hem," was also an exclamation of a comic description.

"Make misfortune drunk

With candle-wasters.”—Act V., Scene 1.

By the term "candle-wasters in this place, is probably meant drunkards, or midnight revellers. There, is however, a passage in Ben Jonson's "CYNTHIA'S REVELS" (act iii., scene 2), which seems to shew that the epithet was applied in ridicule to students :-"Spoiled by a whoreson bookworm, a candle-waster." Leonato may mean to say, that a misfortune like his is not to be drugged or made drunk by the book philosophy of mere theorists. The whole tenor of his speech is directed against comforters of this description.

"If he be, he knows how to turn his girdle."-Act V., Scene 1.

Steevens says that the Irish have an expression corresponding to that quoted :-"If he is angry, let him tie up his brogues." He supposes both phrases merely to mean, that the angry man should employ himself till he is in a better humour. Instances are quoted to shew that it was a common expression of defiance. Mr. Holt White plausibly accounts for the origin of the term, by saying that the buckle was usually worn in front of the belt; but, for wrestling, it was turned behind, in order to give the adversary a fairer grasp at the girdle.

"Shall I not find a woodcock too?"-Act V., Scene 1.

The woodcock was used to typify a foolish fellow, on account of its being supposed to have no brains.

"And she alone is heir to both of us."—Act V., Scene 1.

This appears to be a lapse of memory in the author, as mention is made, in Act I., Scene 2, of a son of Antonio.

"God save the foundation."-Act V., Scene 1. This was a customary phrase with those who received alms at the gates of religious houses.

"I give thee the bucklers."-Act V., Scene 2. To give up the shield or buckler, was equivalent to surrendering.

"Get thee a wife; there is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn."-Act V., Scene 4.

Benedick su\\poses

The staff here alluded to is marriage. it to be a welcome and respectable support to so "giddy a thing as man," although he cannot avoid a final flout at the horn which forms the handle of the staff, and forms an emblem of the destiny which he has all along attributed to married men. Witness the "recheat in the forehead," &c. To this day, it is common to see old-fashioned sticks or canes surmounted with horn handles, probably from the facility with which the material can be moulded to a convenient shape for the hand to lean upon. It has been supposed that the allusion in the text is to the "baston," used by combatants in the wager of battle; but we are not informed how the passage in the text is at all explained by the use of these weapons on such occasions.

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HRISTOPHERO SLY, thou wert a grace-
less varlet: thy contempt of legal authority
is fearful to contemplate; and thy private

friends must have had frequent cause for regret
that thy ale-bibbing propensities should have
made thee obnoxious to so odious a comparison
as this-(go to):-

"O monstrous beast! how like a swine he lies!

Grim Death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!"

Yet certes it is, most impudent of pot-menders, that "there is some soul of goodness in things evil, would men observingly distil it out;" and truly, upon the whole, it was a lucky moment for thee and the world when thou wert caught napping upon Barton Heath, where thou snor'dst thyself into immortal fame, and becamest the hero of as rich a piece of character, for its length, as any in the teeming pages of thy myriad-eyed Delineator.

The humour, indeed, of the Induction to this amusing drama, is as closely packed as pemican for an arctic voyage. The first indication that Sly gives of the risible aspect of drunkenness, is the boast of his family: "The Slys are no rogues: look in the chronicles; we came in with Richard Conqueror." This is a capital and ever-recurring bit of truth. It was but the other day we encountered a droll fellow (one of the Sly genus), in a state somewhat between beggary and selling matches; and about the third word he uttered, was the commencement of a rigmarole concerning his mother's relationship to a certain duke. In the same short speech of the indignant Christopher, we have another specimen of no less characteristic self-importance- the affectation of acquaintance with foreign tongues; "Paucas pallabris; let the world slide. Sessa!" Peculiar revelations, on subjects of language and history, are very apt to "come trippingly off the tongue" of your shallow toper, whose bemuddled faculties are exceedingly liable to mistake the inspirations of Bacchus for those of Apollo or Minerva. But a still closer touch of tavern life is the fat alewife's fiery indignation about the broken glass, and Christopher's plump and heroic refusal to pay for it. Any one who has been in the habit of "taking his ease at his inn," well knows that one of the most trying moments to be encountered in this vale of tears-of shivered hopes and shivered glasses-is that in which an impassioned elbow movement condemns him to produce a silver equivalent for the still more shining, but, alas! more brittle material. Sly's mode of settlement is altogether more obvious, common, and convenient, but requires nerve.

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Both the present play and its admirable induction are founded on an older drama, by an unknown author, called THE TAMING OF 'A' SHREW." A few specimens of the parent production will be found in the Notes. Shakspere has pretty closely followed his original in the incidents relating to the Shrew and her Tamer, prodigally enriching the dialogue both comic and serious, as he proceeds. The language rises into poetry, or broadens into humour, with the Poet's usual elastic felicity. Petruchio is a goodnatured fellow at heart; a worldling of the wiser sort:- and Kate, whose shrewishness has actually attained the culminating point of beating her younger sister, may well bear some degree of personal coercion, without any violent shock to the most chivalrous sensibility. But after all, it is not pleasant to contemplate the triumph of mere physical force. That superiority of Man over Woman which results from predominance of bluster and bodily strength, is much of the same class as that of Bull over Man, -when the infuriated Taurus has driven one of the pseudo lords of creation into the corner of a disputed field of argument, with the manifest intention of sticking him on one or both of the horns of as interesting a dilemma as any given domestic tyrant could wish or deserve to be placed in. Shakspere's "TAMING OF THE SHREW" was first published in the original folio of 1623.

J. O

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Sly. Y'are a baggage; the Slys are no rogues: look in the chronicles; we came in with Richard Conqueror. Therefore, paucas pallabris; let the world slide. Sessa! Host. You will not pay for the glasses you have Durst?

Sly. No, not a denier: go by, says Jeronimy ;go to thy cold bed, and warm thee.

Host. I know my remedy; I must go fetch the thirdborough.

[Exit.

Sly. Third, or fourth, or fifth borough, I'll answer him by law: I'll not budge an inch, boy; let him come, and kindly.

[Lies down on the ground, and falls asleep. Wind horns. Enter a Lord, from hunting, with Huntsmen and Servants.

Lord. Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well
my hounds:

Brach Merriman,-the poor cur is embossed;
And couple Clowder with the deep-mouthed brach.
Saw'st thou not, boy, how Silver made it good
At the hedge-corner, in the coldest fault?
I would not lose the dog for twenty pound.

1st Hun. Why, Belman is as good as he, my
lord;

He cried upon it at the merest loss,
And twice to-day picked out the dullest scent:
Trust me, I take him for the better dog.

Lord. Thou art a fool: if Echo were as fleet,
I would esteem him worth a dozen such.
But sup them well, and look unto them all;
To-morrow I intend to hunt again.
1st Hun. I will, my lord.

Lord. What's here: one dead, or drunk? See,
doth he breathe?

2nd Hun. He breathes, my lord: were he not

warmed with ale,

This were a bed but cold to sleep so soundly.
Lord. O monstrous beast! how like a swine he

lies!

Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!

Sirs, I will practise on this drunken man.

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