8

'Tis dinner-time, quoth I; My gold, quoth he: Your meat doth burn, quoth I; My gold, quoth he: Will you come home? quoth I; My gold, quoth he: Where is the thousand marks I gave thee, villain? The pig, quoth I, is burn'd; My gold, quoth he: My mistress, sir, quoth I; Hang up thy mistress ; I know not thy mistress; out on thy mistress !9 Luc. Quoth who?

DRO. E. Quoth my master:

I know, quoth he, no house, no wife, no mistress;—
So that my errand, due unto my tongue,

I thank him, I bare home upon my shoulders;
For, in conclusion, he did beat me there.

ADR. Go back again, thou slave, and fetch him home.

DRO. E. Go back again, and be new beaten home?

For God's sake, send some other messenger.

ADR. Back, slave, or I will break thy pate across. DRO. E. And he will bless that cross with other beating:

Between you I shall have a holy head.

ADR. Hence, prating peasant; fetch thy master home.

DRO. E. Am I so round with you, as you with me,1

• Will you come home? quoth I;] The word home, which the metre requires, but is not in the authentick copy of this play, was suggested by Mr. Capell. MALONE.

9 I know not thy mistress; out on thy mistress!] I suppose this dissonant line originally stood thus:

1

I know no mistress; out upon thy mistress! STEEVENS.

Am I so round with you, as you with me,] He plays upon the word round, which signified spherical, applied to himself,

That like a football you do spurn me thus?
You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither:
If I last in this service, you must case me in leather.2
[Exit,
Luc. Fye, how impatience lowreth in your face!
ADR. His company must do his minions. grace,
Whilst I at home starve for a merry look.3
Hath homely age the alluring beauty took
From my poor cheek? then he hath wasted it:
Are my discourses dull? barren my wit?
If voluble and sharp discourse be marr'd,
Unkindness blunts it, more than marble hard.
Do their gay vestments his affections bait?
That's not my fault, he's master of my state:
What ruins are in me, that can be found
By him not ruin'd? then is he the ground
Of my defeatures: My decayed fair5
A sunny look of his would soon repair:

and unrestrained, or free in speech or action, spoken of his mistress. So the King, in Hamlet, bids the Queen be round with her son. JOHNSON.

2

·case me in leather.] Still alluding to a football, the bladder of which is always covered with leather. STEEVENS. 3. Whilst I at home starve for a merry look.] So, in our poet's 47th Sonnet:

4

"When that mine eye is famish'd for a look.”

MALONE.

Of my defeatures:] By defeatures is here meant alteration of features. At the end of this play the same word is used with a somewhat different signification. STEEVENS.

5

My decayed fair-] Shakspeare uses the adjective gilt, as a substantive, for what is gilt, and in this instance fair for fairness. To ue xaλov, is a similar expression. In A Midsummer-Night's Dream, the old quartos read:

"Demetrius loves your fair."

Again, in Shakspeare's 68th Sonnet:

"Before these bastard signs of fair were born.”

But, too unruly deer, he breaks the pale,
And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale.”

Again, in his 83d Sonnet:

"And therefore to your fair no painting set."

Pure is likewise used as a substantive in The Shepherd to the Flowers, a song in England's Helicon, 1614:

"Do pluck your pure, ere Phœbus view the land.”

STEEVENS.

Fair is frequently used substantively by the writers of Shakspeare's time. So, Marston, in one of his Satires:

6

"As the greene meads, whose native outward faire
"Breathes sweet perfumes into the neighbour air.”

FARMER.

too unruly deer,] The ambiguity of deer and dear is borrowed, poor as it is, by Waller, in his Poem on The Ladies Girdle:

"This was my heaven's extremest sphere,

“The pale that held my lovely deer." JOHNSON.

Shakspeare has played upon this word in the same manner in his Venus and Adonis :

"Fondling, saith she, since I have hemm'd thee here, "Within the circuit of this ivory pale,

"I'll be thy park, and thou shalt be my deer,

"Feed where thou wilt on mountain or on dale." The lines of Waller seem to have been immediately copied from these. MALONE.

7

poor I am but his stale.] The word stale, in our author, used as a substantive, means not something offered to allure or attract, but something vitiated with use, something of which the best part has been enjoyed and consumed. JOHNSON.

I believe my learned coadjutor mistakes the use of the word stale on this occasion. "Stale to catch these thieves," in The Tempest, undoubtedly means a fraudulent bait. Here it seems to imply the same as stalking-horse, pretence. I am, says Adri-` ana, but his pretended wife, the mask under which he covers his amours. So, in King John and Matilda, by Robert Davenport, 1655, the Queen says to Matilda:

Again:

66

I am made your stale,

"The king, the king your strumpet," &c.

Luc. Self-harming jealousy!-fye, beat it hence. ADR. Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense.

I know his eye doth homage otherwhere;
Or else, what lets it but he would be here?
Sister, you know, he promis'd me a chain ;-
Would that alone alone he would detain,
So he would keep fair quarter with his bed!
I see, the jewel, best enamelled,

8

Will lose his beauty; and though gold 'bides still,
That others touch, yet often touching will
Wear gold and so no man, that hath a name,
But falshood and corruption doth it shame."

Again, in The Misfortunes of Arthur, 1587:

"Was I then chose and wedded for his stale,
"To looke and gape for his retireless sayles

"Puft back and flittering spread to every winde?" Again, in the old translation of the Menæchmi of Plautus, 1595, from whence, perhaps, Shakspeare borrowed the expression:

"He makes me a stale and a laughing-stock."

STEEVENS.

In Greene's Art of Coney-catching, 1592, a stale is the confederate of a thief; "he that faceth the man," or holds him in discourse. Again, in another place, "wishing all, of what estate soever, to beware of filthy lust, and such damnable stales," &c. A stale, in this last instance, means the pretended wife of a cross-biter.

Perhaps, however, stale may have here the same meaning as the French word chaperon. Poor I am but the cover for his infidelity. COLLINS.

8 Would that alone alone he would detain,] The first copy reads

Would that alone a love &c.

The correction was made in the second folio. MALONE.

9 I see, the jewel, best enamelled,

Will lose his beauty; and though gold 'bides still,

That others touch, yet often touching will

Wear gold: and so no man, that hath a name,

But falshood and corruption doth it shame.] The sense is

Since that my beauty cannot please his eye,
I'll weep what's left away, and weeping die.
Luc. How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!.
[Exeunt.

this: "Gold, indeed, will long bear the handling; however, often touching will wear even gold; just so the greatest character, though as pure as gold itself, may, in time, be injured, by the repeated attacks of falshood and corruption."

Mr. Heath reads thus:

-yet the gold 'bides still,

WARBURTON.

That others touch, though often touching will
Wear gold and so a man that hath a name,

By falshood and corruption doth it shame. STEEVENS.

This passage in the original copy is very corrupt. It reads— yet the gold bides still

That others touch; and often touching will
Where gold; and no man, that hath a name
By falshood &c.

The word though was suggested by Mr. Steevens; all the other emendations by Mr. Pope and Dr. Warburton. Wear is used as a dissyllable. The commentator last mentioned, not perceiving this, reads-and so no man, &c. which has been followed, I think improperly, by the subsequent editors.

The observation concerning gold is found in one of the early dramatick pieces, Damon and Pithias, 1582:

gold in time does wear away,

"And other precious things do fade: friendship does ne'er decay." MALONE.