Methinks, your maw, like mine, fhould be your clock,2 And ftrike you home without a meffenger. ANT. S. Come, Dromio, come, these jests are out of feafon; Referve them till a merrier hour than this: me. ANT. S. Come on, fir knave, have done your foolishness, And tell me, how thou haft difpos'd thy charge. DRO. E. My charge was but to fetch you from the mart Home to your house, the Phoenix, fir, to dinner; My mistress, and her fifter, stay for you. ANT. S. Now, as I am a chriftian, answer me, In what fafe place you have beftow'd my money; Or I fhall break that merry fconce of yours,' That stands on tricks when I am undifpos'd: Where is the thousand marks thou hadft of me? DRO. E. I have fome marks of yours upon my pate, Some of my miftrefs' marks upon my fhoulders, But not a thousand marks between you both.— If I should pay your worship those again, 2 Methinks, your maw, like mine, should be your clock,] The old copy reads " your cook." Mr. Pope made the change. MALONE. merry fconce of yours,] Sconce is head. So, in Hamlet, why does he fuffer this rude knave now to knock him about the fconce?" 3 A& V: " that Again, in Ram Alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611: 66 I fay no more, "But 'tis within this Sconce to go beyond them." Perchance, you will not bear them patiently. ANT. S. Thy mistress' marks! what mistress, flave, haft thou? DRO. E. Your worship's wife, my mistress at the Phoenix; She that doth faft, till you come home to dinner, And prays, that you will hie you home to dinner. ANT. S. What, wilt thou flout me thus unto my face, Being forbid? There, take you that, fir knave. DRO. E. What mean you, fir? for God's fake, hold your hands; Nay, an you will not, fir, I'll take my heels. [Exit DROMIO. E. ANT. S. Upon my life, by fome device or other, The villain is o'er-raught of all my money. They fay, this town is full of cozenage; As, nimble jugglers, that deceive the eye, Dark-working forcerers, that change the mind, Soul-killing witches, that deform the body;" 4 — o'er-raught-] That is over-reached. JOHNSON. So, in Hamlet: certain players We d'er-raught on the way." Again, in Spenfer's Faery Queen, B. VI. c. iii: 66 Having by chance a clofe advantage view'd, "He over-raught him," &c. STEEVENS. 5 They fay, this town is full of cozenage;] This was the character the ancients give of it. Hence 'Esσia & Papμana was proverbial amongst them. Thus Menander uses it, and'EQα spœpepeceta, in the fame fenfe. WARBURTON. 6 As, nimble jugglers, that deceive the eye, Dark-working forcerers, that change the mind, Soul-killing witches, that deform the body;] Thofe, who attentively confider these three lines, muft confefs, that the poet intended the epithet given to each of these mifcreants, fhould declare the power by which they perform their feats, and which would there Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks, fore be a juft characteristic of each of them. Thus, by nimble jugglers, we are taught, that they perform their tricks by flight of band: and by foul-killing witches, we are informed, the mischief they do is by the affiftance of the devil, to whom they have given their fouls: but then, by dark-working forcerers, we are not inftructed in the means by which they perform their ends. Befides, this epithet agrees as well to witches as to them; and therefore certainly our author could not design this in their characteristic. We should read: Drug-working forcerers, that change the mind, and we know by the hiftory of ancient and modern fuperftition, that thefe kind of jugglers always pretended to work changes of the mind by these applications. WARBURTON. The learned commentator has endeavoured with much earnestnefs to recommend his alteration; but, if I may judge of other apprehenfions by my own, without great fuccefs. This interpretation of foul-killing is forced and harsh. Sir T. Hanmer reads. foul-felling, agreeable enough to the common opinion, but without fuch improvement as may juftify the change. Perhaps the epithets have only been mifplaced, and the lines fhould be read thus: Soul-killing forcerers, that change the mind, Dark-working witches, that deform the body; This change feems to remove all difficulties. By foul-killing I understand destroying the rational faculties by fuch means as make men fancy themselves beafts. JOHNSON. Dark-working forcerers, may only mean forcerers who carry on their operations in the dark. Thus fays Bolingbroke, in the fecond part of King Henry VI: 66 wizards know their times: Deep night, dark night, the filent of the night," &c. Witches themselves, as well as thofe who employed them, were fuppofed to forfeit their fouls by making ufe of a forbidden agency. In that fenfe they may be faid to deftroy the fouls of others as well as their own. The fame compound epithet occurs in Chriftopher Middleton's Legend of Humphrey Duke of Glocefter, 1600: They charge her, that the did maintaine and feede Soul-killing witches, and convers'd with devils.” The hint for this enumeration of cheats, &c. Shak fpeare might have received from the old tranflation of the Menæchmi, 1595: "For this affure yourfelfe, this towne Epidamnum is a place of outrageous expences, exceeding in all ryot and lafciviousneffe; and (I heare) as full of ribaulds, parafites, drunkards, catchpoles, conycatchers, and fycophants, as it can hold: then for curtizans," &c. And many fuch like liberties of fin: " [Exits ADR. Neither my husband, nor the flave return'd, That in fuch hafte I fent to feek his master! Sure, Luciana, it is two o'clock. Luc. Perhaps, fome merchant hath invited him, And from the mart he's fomewhere gone to dinner. Good fifter, let us dine, and never fret: A man is master of his liberty: Time is their mafter; and, when they fee time, They'll go, or come: If fo, be patient, fifter. 7 ADR. Why fhould their liberty than ours be more? Luc. Because their business ftill lies out o' door. ADR. Look, when I serve him fo, he takes it ill. Luc. O, know, he is the bridle of your will. liberties of fin:] Sir T. Hanmer reads, libertines, which, as the author has been enumerating not acts but perfons, feems right. JOHNSON. . By liberties of fin, I believe Shakspeare means licenfed offenders, fuch as mountebanks, fortune-tellers, &c. who cheat with impunity. STEEVENS. 8 ill.] This word, which the rhime feems to countenance, was furnished by the editor of the fecond folio. The firft has—thus. MALONE. ADR. There's none, but affes, will be bridled fc. Luc. Why, headstrong liberty is lafh'd with woe." There's nothing, fituate under heaven's eye, But hath his bound, in earth, in fea, in sky: The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls, Are their males' fubject, and at their controls: Men, more divine, the mafters of all these," Lords of the wide world, and wild watry feas, Indued with intellectual fenfe and fouls, Of more pre-eminence than fifh and fowls, 9 Adr. There's none, but affes, will be bridled fo. Luc. Why headstrong liberty is lafh'd with woe.] Should it not rather be leaf'd, i. e. coupled like a headftrong hound? The high opinion I muft neceffarily entertain of the learned Lady's judgement, who furnished this obfervation, has taught me to be diffident of my own, which I am now to offer. The meaning of this paffage may be, that those who refufe the bridle muft bear the lab, and that woe is the punishment of headftrong liberty. It may be obferved, however, that the fcamen ftill use lah in the fame fense as leafh; as does Greene in his Mamillia, 1593: "Thou didst counfel me to beware of love, and I was before in the lab." Again, in George Whetstone's Caftle of Delight, 1576: "Yet both in lafbe at length this Creffid leaves." Lace was the old English word for a cord, from which verbs have been derived very differently modelled by the chances of pronunciation. So, in Promos and Caffandra, 1578: "To thee Caffandra which doft hold my freedom in a lace." When the mariner, however, lafbes his guns, the fportfman leafbes his dogs, the female laces her clothes, they all perform one act of faftening with a lace or cord. Of the fame original is the word windlass, or more properly windlace, an engine, by which a lace or cord is wound upon a barrel. To lace likewife fignified to beftow correction with a cord, or rope's end. So, in the 2nd. Part of Decker's Honest Whore, 1630: the lazy lowne "Gets here hard hands, or lac'd correction." Again, in The Two Angry Women of Abingdon, 1599: "So, now my back has room to reach; I do not love to be laced in, when I go to lace a rafcal." STEEVENS. Men-the mafters.] The old copy has Man--the mafler &c. and in the next line-Lord. Corrected by Sir T. Hanmer. MALONE, |