jackanapes must take me up for swearing; as if I borrowed mine oaths of him, and might not spend them at my pleasure.

1 Lord. What got he by that? You have broke his pate with your bowl.

2 Lord. If his wit had been like him that broke it, it would have ran all out.

[Aside. Clo. When a gentleman is disposed to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths: Ha? 2 Lord. No, my lord; nor [aside] crop the ears of them.

і дам

Clo. Whoreson dog!-I give him satisfaction? gam 'Would, he had been one of my rank!

[Aside.

2 Lord. To have smelt like a fool2. Clo. I am not more vexed at any thing in the earth,-A pox on't! I had rather not be so noble as I am; they dare not fight with me, because of the queen my mother: : every jack-slave hath his belly full of fighting, and I must go up and down like a cock that nobody can match.

2 Lord. You are a cock and capon too; and you crow, cock, with your comb on3. [Aside.

Clo. Sayest thou?

1 Lord. It is not fit, your lordship should undertake every companion that you give offence to. Clo. No, I know that: but it is fit, I should commit offence to my inferiors.

2 Lord. Ay, it is fit for your lordship only. Clo. Why, so I say.

1 Lord. Did you hear of a stranger, that's come to court to-night?

Clo. A stranger! and I know not on't!

2 Lord. He's a strange fellow himself, and knows it not.

[Aside.

2 The same quibble has occurred in As You Like It, Act i. Se 2:

'Touch. Nay, if I keep not my rank.
Ros. Thou losest thy old smell.'

3 That is, in other words, you are a corcomb.

4 The use of companion was the same as of fellow now. a word of contempt.

It was

1 Lord. There's an Italian come; and, 'tis thought, one of Leonatus' friends.

Clo. Leonatus! a banished rascal; and he's another, whatsoever he be. Who told you of this stranger?

1 Lord. One of your lordship's pages.

Clo. Is it fit, I went to look upon him? Is there no derogation in't?

1 Lord. You cannot derogate, my lord.

Clo. Not easily, I think.

2 Lord. You are a fool granted; therefore your issues being foolish, do not derogate.

[Aside. Clo. Come, I'll go see this Italian: What I have lost to-day at bowls, I'll win to-night of him. Come, go.

2 Lord, I'll attend your lordship.

[Exeunt CLOTEN and first Lord.

That such a crafty devil as is his mother

Should yield the world this ass! a woman, that
Bears all down with her brain; and this her son
Cannot take two from twenty for his heart
And leave eighteen. Alas, poor princess,
Thou divine Imogen, what thou endur'st!
Betwixt a father by thy step-dame govern'd;
A mother hourly coining plots; a wooer,
More hateful than the foul expulsion is
Of thy dear husband, than that horrid act
Of the divorce he'd make! The heavens hold firm
The walls of thy dear honour; keep unshak'd
That temple, thy fair mind; that thou may'st stand,
To enjoy thy banish'd lord, and this great land!
[Exit.

SCENE II.

A Bedchamber; in one Part of it a Trunk. IMOGEN reading in her Bed; a Lady attending. Imo. Who's there? my woman Helen? Lady.

Please you, madam

Imo. What hour is it?

Lady.

Almost midnight, madam. Imo. I have read three hours then; mine eyes

are weak

Fold down the leaf where I have left: To bed:
Take not away the taper, leave it burning;

And if thou canst awake by four o'the clock,
I pr'ythee, call me. Sleep hath seiz'd me wholly.
[Exit Lady.
To your protection I commend me, gods!
From fairies, and the tempters of the night,
Guard me, beseech ye!

[Sleeps. IACHIMO, from the Trunk. Iach. The crickets sing, and man's o'erlabour'd

sense

Repairs itself by rest: Our Tarquin thus

Did softly press the rushes1, ere he waken'd
The chastity he wounded.-Cytherea,

How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily!
And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch!
But kiss; one kiss!-Rubies unparagon'd,

How dearly they do't!-'Tis her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus2: The flame o'the taper
Bows toward her; and would underpeep her lids,
To see the enclosed lights, now canopied
Under these windows3: White and azure, lac'd
With blue of heaven's own tinct.-But my design?

It was anciently the custom to strew chambers with rushes. This passage may serve as a comment on the ravishing strides of Tarquin, in Macbeth, as it shows that Shakspeare meant softly stealing strides. See vol. iv. p. 228.

2

--no lips did seem so fair

In his conceit; through which he thinks doth flie
So sweet a breath that doth perfume the air.

·

Pygmalion's Image, by Marston, 1598.

3 That is, her eyelids. So in Romeo and Juliet:-
Thy eyes windows fall
Like death when he shuts up the day of life."
And in Venus and Adonis:-

The night of sorrow now is turn'd to day;
Her two blue windows faintly she up-heaveth.'

4 Warburton wished to read:

-White with azure lac'd,

The blue of heaven's own tinct."

[Take out tables. T

To note the chamber:-I will write all down:-
Such, and such, pictures :-There the window:-

Such

The adornment of her bed:-'

-The arras, figures,

Why, such, and such:-And the contents o'the

story,

Ay, but some natural notes about her body,
Above ten thousand meaner moveables
Would testify, to enrich mine inventory:

O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her!
And be her sense but as a monument,
Thus in a chapel lying!-Come off, come off;-
[Taking off her Bracelet.
As slippery, as the Gordian knot was hard!—
"Tis mine; and this will witness outwardly,
As strongly as the conscience does within,
To the madding of her lord. On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I'the bottom of a cowslip: Here's a voucher,
Stronger than ever law could make: this secret
Will force him think I have pick'd the lock, and ta'en
The treasure of her honour. No more. To what end?
Why should I write this down, that's riveted,
Screw'd to my memory? She hath been reading late
The tale of Tereus5; here the leaf's turn'd down,
Where Philomel gave up ;-I have enough:
To the trunk again, and shut the spring of it.

But there is no necessity for change. It is an exact description of
the eyelid of a fair beauty, which is white tinged with blue, and
laced with veins of darker blue. By azure our ancestors under-
stood not a dark blue, but a light glaucous colour, a tinct or effusion
of a blue colour. Drayton seems to have had this passage in his
mind:-

And these sweet veins by nature rightly plac'd,
Wherewith she seems the white skin to have lac'd.

The reader will remember that Shakspeare has dwelt on corres-
ponding imagery in a beautiful passage of The Winter's Tale:-
———-violets dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes.'

5 Tereus and Progne is the second tale in A Petite Palace of Pettie his Pleasure, 4to. 1576. The story is related in Ovid. Metam. 1. vi.; and by Gower in his Confessio Amantis, b. v. fol. 113, b.

Swift, swift, you dragons of the nights!-that

dawning May bare the raven's eye: I lodge in fear; (beare, Zeic Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here.

One, two, three,-Time, time!

[Clock strikes.

[Goes into the Trunk. The Scene closes. Exit

SCENE III.

An Ante-Chamber adjoining Imogen's Apartment.
Enter CLOTEN and Lords.

1 Lord. Your lordship is the most patient man in
loss, the most coldest that ever turn'd up ace.
Clo. It would make any man cold to lose.

1 Lord. But not every man patient, after the noble temper of your lordship; You are most hot, and furious, when you win.

Clo. Winning would put any man into courage: If I could get this foolish Imogen, I should have gold enough: It's almost morning, is't not?

1 Lord. Day, my lord.

Clo. I would this music would come: I am advised to give her music o'mornings; they say, it will penetrate.

Enter Musicians.

Come on; tune: If you can penetrate her with your fingering, so; we'll try with tongue too: if none

6 The task of drawing the chariot of Night was assigned to dragons, on account of their supposed watchfulness. Milton mentions the dragon yoke of night in I Penseroso; and in his Comus:

It may be remarked that the whole tribe of serpents sleep with their eyes open, and therefore appear to exert a constant vigilance.