Ang. This touches me in reputation :Either consent to pay this sum for me, Or I attach you by this officer. Ant. E. Consent to pay thee that I never had! Ang. Here is thy fee; arrest him officer;- Offi. I do arrest you, sir; you hear the suit. Ang. Sir, sir, I shall have law in Ephesus, To your notorious shame, I doubt it not. Enter DROMIO of Syracuse. Dro. S. Master, there is a bark of Epidamnum, Blows fair from land: they stay for nought at all, Ant. E. How now! a madman? Why thou peevish sheep, What ship of Epidamnum stays for me? Dro. S. A ship you sent me to, to hire waftage. Ant. E. Thou drunken slave, I sent thee for a rope; And told thee to what purpose, and what end. Dro. S. You sent me, sir, for a rope's-end as soon: You sent me to the bay, sir, for a bark. Ant. E. I will debate this matter at more leisure, 7 And then, sir, bears away:] The old copy redundantly readsAnd then, sir, she bears away. Steevens. 8 66 - thou peevish sheep,] Peevish is silly. So, in Cymbeline : 9 You sent me, sir, for a rope's-end as soon:] I suppose, a word has been casually omitted in the old copy, and that we should read as I have printed. So, above, the same speaker says"And then, sir, bears away: our fraughtage, sir,· Steevens. And teach your ears to listen with more heed. Give her this key, and tell her, in the desk And that shall bail me: hie thee, slave; be gone. [Exeunt Mer. ANG. Offi. and ANT. E. SCENE' II. The same. Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA. Adr. Ah, Luciana, did he tempt thee so? Might'st thou perceive austerely in his eye That he did plead in earnest, yea or no? [Exit. Look'd he or red, or pale; or sad, or merrily? What observation mad'st thou in this case, Of his heart's meteors tilting in his face?1 Luc. First, he denied you had in him no right. 1 - meteors tilting in his face?] Alluding to those meteors in the sky, which have the appearance of lines of armies meeting in the shock. To this appearance he compares civil wars in another place-King Henry IV, P. I, sc. i: "Which like the meteors of a troubled heaven, "Did lately meet in the intestine shock Warburton. The allusion is more clearly explained by the following comparison in the second Book of Paradise Lost: "As when, to warn proud cities, war appears "Wag'd in the troubled sky, and armies rush "To battle in the clouds, before each van "Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears "Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms "From either end of heaven the welkin burns." Steevens. The original copy reads-Oh, his heart's meteors, &c. The correction was made in the second folio. Malone. Luc. Then swore he, that he was a stranger here. Adr. And true he swore, though yet forsworn he were. Luc. Then pleaded I for you. Adr And what said he? Luc. That love I begg'd for you, he begg'd of me. Adr. With what persuasion did he tempt thy love? Luc. With words, that in an honest suit might move. First, he did praise my beauty; then, my speech. Adr. Didst speak him fair? Luc. Have patience, I beseech. Adr. I cannot, nor I will not, hold me still; My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will. Luc. Who would be jealous then of such a one? Adr. Ah! but I think him better than I say, And yet would herein others' eyes were worse: Far from her nest the lapwing cries away; 4 My heart prays for him, though my tongue do curse. Enter DROMIO of Syracuse. Dro. S. Here, go; the desk, the purse; sweet now, make haste. 3 Stigmatical in making,] That is, marked or stigmatized by nature with deformity, as a token of his vicious disposition. So, in The Wonder of a Kingdom, 1635: "If you spy any man that hath a look, Johnson. "Stigmatically drawn, like to a fury's," &c. Steevens. Far from her nest the lapwing &c.] This expression seems to be proverbial—I have met with it in many of the old comick writers. Greene, in his second Part of Coney-Catching, 1592, says," But again to our priggers, who, as before I said, cry with the lapwing farthest from the nest, and from their place of residence where their most abode is." Nash, speaking of Gabriel Harvey, says "he withdraweth men, lapwing-like, from his nest, as much as might be." See this passage yet more amply explained in a note on Measure for Measure, Vol. III, p. 337, n. 4. Steevens. Luc. How hast thou lost thy breath? Dro. S. By running fast. Adr. Where is thy master, Dromio? is he well? Dro. S. No, he 's in Tartar limbo, worse than hell: A devil in an everlasting garments hath him, One, whose hard heart is button'd up with steel; A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough;6 A wolf, nay, worse, a fellow all in buff; A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that countermands The passages of alleys, creeks, and narrow lands;7 5 — an everlasting garment —] The sergeants, in those days, were clad in buff, as Dromio tells us the man was who arrested Antipholus. Buff is also a cant expression for a man's skin, a covering which Tasts him as long as his life. Dromio therefore calls buff an everlasting garment: and in pursuance of this quibble on the word buff, he calls the sergeant, in the next scene, the "Picture of old Adam;" that is, of Adam before his fall, whilst he remained unclad: " - What, have you got the picture of old Adam new apparelled?" So, in The Woman-Hater, Pandar says,-" Were it not for my smooth citizen, I'd quit this transitory trade, get me an everlasting robe, and turn sergeant." M. Mason 6 A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough;] Dromio here bringing word in haste that his master is arrested, describes the bailiff by names proper to raise horror and detestation of such a creature, such as, a devil, a fiend, a wolf, &c. But how does fairy come up to these terrible ideas? we should read, a fiend, a fury, &c. Theobald. There were fairies like hobgoblins, pitiless and rough, and described as malevolent and mischievous. Johnson. So, Milton: "No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine, "Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity." Malone. "It is true that there is a species of malevolent and mischievous Fairies; but Fairy, as it here stands, is generical. T. Warton. 7 A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, &c. of alleys, creeks, and narrow lands;] It should be written, I think, narrow lanes, as he has the same expression in King Richard II, Act V, sc. vi: "Even such they say as stand in narrow lanes." Grey. The preceding rhyme forbids us to read-lanes. Lands, I believe, in the present instance, mean, what we now call landingplaces at the water-side. A shoulder-clapper is a bailiff. So, in Decker's Satiremastix, 1602: fear none but these same shoulder-clappers." Steevens 8 A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry-foot well; One that, before the judgment, carries poor souls to hell.9 Narrow lands is certainly the true reading, as not only the rhyme points out, but the sense; for as a creek is a narrow water, forming an inlet from the main body into the neighbouring shore, so a narrow-land is an outlet or tongue of the shore that runs into the water. Besides, narrow Lanes and Alleys are synonymous. Henley. 8 A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry-foot well;] To run counter is to run backward, by mistaking the course of the animal pursued; to draw dry-foot is, I believe, to pursue by the track or prick of the foot; to run counter and draw dry-foot well are, therefore, inconsistent. The jest consists in the ambiguity of the word counter, which means the wrong way in the chace, and a prison in London. The officer that arrested him was a sergeant of the counter. For the congruity of this jest with the scene of action, let our author answer. Johnson. Ben Jonson has the same expression-Every Man in his Humour, Act II, sc. iv: "Well, the truth is, my old master intends to follow my young, dry-foot over Moorfields to London this morning," &c. To draw dry-foot, is when the dog pursues the game by the scent of the foot: for which the blood-hound is famed. Grey. So, in Ram-Alley, or Merry Tricks: "A hunting, Sir Oliver, and dry-foot too!" Again, in The Dumb Knight, 1633: "I care not for dry-foot hunting." Steevens. A hound that draws dry-foot, means what is usually called a blood-hound, trained to follow men by the scent. The expression occurs in an Irish statute of the 10th of William III, for preservation of the game, which enacts, that all persons licensed for making and training up of setting dogs, shall, in every two years, during the continuance of their license, be compelled to train up, teach, and make, one or more hounds, to hunt on dryfoot. The practice of keeping blood-hounds was long continued in Ireland, and they were found of great use in detecting murderers and robbers. M. Mason. 9 poor souls to hell. Hell was the cant term for an obscure dungeon in any of our prisons. It is mentioned in The CounterRat, a poem, 1658: "In Wood-street's-hole, or Poultry's hell." The dark place into which a tailor throws his shreds, is still in possession of this title. So, in Decker's If this be not a good Play, the Devil is in it, 1612: "Taylors. 'tis known "They scorn thy hell, having better of their own." There was likewise a place of this name under the Exchequer Chamber, where the king's debtors were confined till they had 'paid the uttermost farthing." Steevens. 66 |
