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only figures uncertainty and vicissitude, with the destiny that spins the thread of life, though not indeed with a wheel. JOHNSON.

Line 250. you'll be whipped for taxation,] Taxation means, satire or accusation.

Line 254. since the little wit, that fools have, was silenced,] Shakspeare probably alludes to the use of fools or jesters, who for some ages had been allowed in all courts an unbridled liberty of censure and mockery, and about this time began to be less tolerated. JOHNSON.

Line 271. -laid on with a trowel.] I suppose the meaning is, that there is too heavy a mass of big words laid upon a slight subject. JOHNSON.

Line 274. You amaze me, ladies:] To amaze, here, is not to astonish or strike with wonder, but to perplex; to confuse; as, to put out of the intended narrative. JOHNSON.

Line 289. With bills on their necks, &c.] I cannot see why Rosalind should suppose, that the competitors in a wrestling match carried bills on their shoulders; I believe the whole conceit is in the poor resemblance of presence and presents. JOHNSON.

Line 307.

-is there any else longs to see this broken musick in his sides?] We say every day, see if the water be hot; I will see which is the best time. In this sense see may be here used. Rosalind hints at a whimsical similitude between the series of ribs gradually shortening, and some musical instruments, and therefore calls broken ribs, broken.musick. JOHNSON.

Line 342. if you saw yourself with your eyes, or knew yourself with your judgment,] If you were not blinded and intoxicated, says the princess, with the spirit of enterprise, if you could use your own eyes to see, or your own judgment to know yourself, the fear of your adventure would counsel you. JOHNSON. Line 419. -one out of suits with fortune;] This seems

ACT I.]

AS YOU LIKE IT.

an allusion to cards, where he that has no more cards to play of any particular sort is out of suit.

.JOHNSON. One out of suits with fortune,] I believe means turned out of her service, and stripped of her livery. STEEVENS.

Line 427. Is but a quintain, a mere lifeless block.] The quintaine was a stake driven into a field, upon which were hung a shield and other trophies of war, at which they shot, darted, or rode, with a lance. When the shield and the trophies were all thrown down, the quintaine remained.

GUTHRIE.

Line 443. —the Duke's condition,] The word condition means character, temper, disposition. So Anthonio, the merchant of Venice, is called by his friend the best conditioned man. JOHNSON.

Line 499: By this kind of chase,] That is, by this way of following the argument. Dear is used by Shakspeare in a double sense, for beloved, and for hurtful, hated, baleful. Both senses are authorised, and both drawn from etymology, but properly beloved is dear, and hateful is dere. Rosalind uses dearly in the good, and Celia in the bad sense. JOHNSON. Line 600. We'll have a swashing, &c.] i. e. We'll make a good shew of valour. To swash, means to bully.

ACT II.

Line 14. Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head:] It was the current opinion in Shakspeare's time, that in the head of an old toad was to be found a stone, or pearl, to which great virtues were ascribed. This stone has been often sought, but nothing has been found more than accidental or perhaps morbid indurations of the skull. JOHNSON. Line 25. - -with forked heads- -] i. e. With arrows, the points of which were barbed.

STEEVENS.

Line 73.

gage with him.

Line 155.

ANNOTATIONS ON

[ACT II.

-to cope him--] To encounter him; to en

JOHNSON.

Even with the having:] Even with the promotion gained by service, is service extinguished. JOHNSON. Line 181. -yet I should bear no cross,] A cross was a piece of money stamped with a cross. On this our author is perpetually quibbling. STEEVENS. Line 221. -two cods,] For cods it would be more like sense to read peas, which having the shape of pearls, resembled the common parents of lovers. JOHNSON.

Peas-cods was the old term for peas, as they are brought to market, or, as Mr. Dance will have it, as the pea hangs upon the stalk.-The ornament which was anciently worn called a peas-cod, was the resemblance of a pea half open, and rows of pearls within.

Line 224. -so is all nature in love, mortal in folly.] This expression I do not well understand. In the middle of counties, mortal, from mort, a great quantity, is used as a particle of amplification; as mortal tall, mortal little. Of this sense I believe Shakspeare takes advantage to produce one of his darling equivocations. Thus the meaning will be, so is all nature in love abounding in folly. JOHNSON.

Line 332. ducdame ;] For ducdame Sir T. Hanmer very acutely and judiciously reads, duc ad me, That is, bring him

to me.

JOHNSON.

-the first-born of Egypt.] A proverbial ex

JOHNSON.

Line 339. pression for high-born persons. Line 375. A motley fool; a miserable world!] A miserable world is a parenthetical exclamation, frequent among melancholy men, and natural to Jaques at the sight of a fool, or at the hearing of reflections on the fragility of life. JOHNSON. Line 408. -only suit;] Suit means petition, I believe,

not dress.

The poet meant a quibble.

JOHNSON.

STEEVENS.

АСТ III.]

AS YOU LIKE IT.

Line 419. If not, &c.] Unless men have the prudence not to appear touched with the sarcasms of a jester, they subject themselves to his power, and the wise man will have his folly anatomised, that is, dissected, and laid open by the squandering glances or random shots of a fool. JOHNSON. Line 552. Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,] "Thou winter "wind," says the Duke, "thy rudeness gives the less pain, 66 as thou art not seen, as thou art an enemy that dost not "brave us with thy presence, and whose unkindness is "therefore not aggravated by insult." JOHNSON.

Line 562. Though thou the waters warp,] The surface of the waters, so long as they remain unfrozen, is apparently a perfect plain; whereas, when they are, this surface deviates from its exact flatness, or warps. This is remarkable in small ponds, the surface of which, when frozen, forms a regular concave ; the ice on the sides rising higher than in

the middle.

Dr. KENRICK.

To warp was probably, in Shakspeare's time, a colloquial word, which conveyed no distant allusion to any thing else, physical or medicinal. To warp is to turn, and to turn is to change: when milk is changed by curdling, we now say, it is turned: when water is changed or turned by frost, Shakspeare says, it is curdled. To be warped is only to be changed from its natural state. JOHNSON.

АСТ III.

Line 4. -an absent argument-] An argument is used for the contents of a book, thence Shakspeare considered it as meaning the subject, and then used it for subject in yet another sense. JOHNSON. Line 20. Make an extent upon his house and land:] This is a law phrase.

ANNOTATIONS ON

[ACT In

Line 94.

-make incision in thee !] To make incision was a proverbial expression then in vogue for, to make to under

stand.

Line 95. 104.

WARBURTON. -thou art raw.] i. e. Thou art inexperienced. -bawd to a bell-wether;] Wether and rum had anciently the same meaning. Line 122. ―rate to market,] Sir T. Hanmer reads rate, instead of rank, to market, as in the old copies.

JOHNSON.

Line 152. That shall civil sayings show.] Civil is here used in the same sense as when we say civil wisdom or civil life, in opposition to a solitary state, or to the state of nature. This desert shall not appear unpeopled, for every tree shall teach the maxims or incidents of social life. JOHNSON.

Line 171. Atalanta's better part ;] I know not well what could be the better part of Atalanta here ascribed to Rosalind. Of the Atalanta most celebrated, and who therefore must be intended here where she has no epithet of discrimination, the better part seems to have been her heels, and the worse part was so bad that Rosalind would not thank her lover for the comparison. There is a more obscure Atalanta, a huntress and a heroine, but of her nothing bad is recorded, and therefore I know not which was the better part. Shakspeare was no despicable mythologist, yet he seems here to have mistaken some other character for that of Atalanta. JOHNSON.

Line 202. I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras's time, that I was an Irish rat.] Rosalind is a very learned lady. She alludes to the Pythagorean doctrine, which teaches that souls transmigrate from one animal to another, and relates that in his time she was an Irish rat, and by some metrical charm was rhymed to death. The power of killing rats with rhymes Donne mentions in his Satires, and Temple in his Treatises. Dr. Grey has produced a similar passage from Randolph. JOHNSON.

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