60 And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod! And ask remission for my folly past. That you might kill your stomach on your meat, Jul. What is 't that you took up so gingerly? 70 Jul. Why didst thou stoop, then? Luc. To take a paper up that I let fall. Jul. And is that paper nothing? Luc. Nothing concerning me. Jul. Then let it lie for those that it concerns. Jul. Some love of yours hath writ to you in rhyme. Jul. As little by such toys as may be possible. Luc. It is too heavy for so light a tune. 68. "Stomach" is here used in the double sense of hunger and anger.-H. N. H. Jul. Heavy! belike it hath some burden, then? Luc. Aye; and melodious were it, would you sing it. Jul. And why not you? Luc. I cannot reach so high. Jul. Let's see your song. How now, minion! Luc. No, madam; it is too sharp. Jul. You, minion, are too saucy. Luc. Nay, now you are too flat, 90 And mar the concord with too harsh a descant: There wanteth but a mean to fill your song. Jul. The mean is drown'd with your unruly bass. Luc. Indeed, I bid the base for Proteus. Jul. This babble shall not henceforth trouble me. Here is a coil with protestation. 100 [Tears the letter. Go get you gone, and let the papers lie: You would be fingering them, to anger me. Luc. She makes it strange; but she would be best pleased 94. The simple air in music was called the plain song, or ground; the descant was what is now called variations; the mean what we call the tenor. This use of musical terms before a popular audience would seem to infer, which was indeed the case, that taste and knowledge in music was a characteristic trait of "merry England in the olden time." What with the sour fanaticism of the Commonwealth, and the licentiousness of the Restoration, both of which were equally fatal, this beautiful feature was so blasted, that it has never been fully recovered.-H. N. H. 97. Lucetta is still quibbling, and turns the allusion off upon the rustic game of base, or prison-base, in which one ran and challenged another to catch him.-H. N. H. To be so anger'd with another letter. [Exit. I throw thy name against the bruising stones, And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss. Unto a ragged, fearful-hanging rock, 120 107. Shakespeare has given several proofs of a practical acquaintance with the economy of bees; some of which the naturalist as well as the poet may study with profit; as the fine description in Henry V, Act. i. sc. 2, "for so work the honey-bees," &c. He had doubtless observed how they "make boot upon the summer's velvet buds," and also how the "injurious wasps" plunder them, stinging them to death for the sweetness they yield. Knight says, "The metaphor of the pretty pouting Julia is as accurate as it is beautiful." -H. N. H. And yet I will not, sith so prettily He couples it to his complaining names. Luc. Madam, Dinner is ready, and your father stays. Jul. Well, let us go. 130 Luc. What, shall these papers lie like tell-tales here? Jul. If you respect them, best to take them up. see; I see things too, although you judge I wink. Jul. Come, come; will 't please you go? 140 [Exeunt. SCENE III The same. Antonio's house. Enter Antonio and Panthino. Ant. Tell me, Panthino, what sad talk was that Wherewith my brother held you in the cloister? 137. "I see you have a month's mind to them"; Schmidt in his Shakespeare Lexicon explains the phrase "month's mind" as “a Pan. 'Twas of his nephew Proteus, your son. Pan. He wonder'd that your lordship 10 He said that Proteus your son was meet; And did request me to importune you To let him spend his time no more at home, Which would be great impeachment to his age, In having known no travel in his youth. Ant. Nor need'st thou much importune me to that Whereon this month I have been hammering. I have consider'd well his loss of time, woman's longing," as though the expression had its origin in the longing for particular articles of food shown by women, but this interpretation seems to have no authority. Johnson rightly remarks on this passage:—“A month's mind, in the ritual sense, signifies not desire or inclination, but remembrance; yet I suppose this is the true original expression."-I. G. 10. This passage is all alive with the spirit of Shakespeare's own time, when enterprise, adventure, and study were everywhere the order of the day, and all ranks were stirred with noble agitations; the mind's life being then no longer exhausted in domestic broils, nor as yet stifled by a passion for gain. And, to say nothing of foreign discoveries, where wonder and curiosity were ever finding new stores of food, and still grew hungry by what they fed on; or of Flemish campaigns, where chivalrous honor and mental accomplishment "kissed each other"; what a tremendous perturbation must have run through the national mind, what a noble fury must have enriched the nation's brain, to make it effervesce in such a flood as hath rolled down to us in the works of Spenser, Hooker, Shakespeare, and Bacon!-H. N. H. |