BEAT. Too curst is more than curst: I shall lessen God's sending that way: for it is said, God sends a curst cow short horns; but to a cow too curst he sends none. LEON. So, by being too curst, God will send you no horns. BEAT. Just, if he send me no husband; for the which blessing, I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening: Lord! I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face; I had rather lie in the woollen.3 LEON. You may light upon a husband, that hath no beard. BEAT. What should I do with him? dress him in my apparel, and make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard, is more than a youth; and he that hath no beard, is less than a man: and he that is more than a youth, is not for me; and he that is less than a man, I am not for him: Therefore I will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-herd, and lead his apes into hell. LEON. Well then, go you into hell ? * BEAT. No; but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say, Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get 3 in the woollen.] I suppose she means- -between blankets, without sheets. STEEVENS. * Well then, &c.] Of the two next speeches Dr. Warburton says, All this impious nonsense thrown to the bottom, is the players', and foisted in without rhyme or reason. He therefore puts them in the margin. They do not deserve indeed so honourable a place; yet I am afraid they are too much in the manner of our author, who is sometimes trying to purchase merriment at too dear a rate. JOHNSON. I have restored the lines omitted. STEEVEns. you to heaven; here's no place for you maids: so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long. ANT. Well, niece, [To HERO.] I trust, you will be ruled by your father. BEAT. Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make courtesy, and say, Father, as it please you:-but yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another courtesy, and say, Father, as it please me. LEON. Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband. BEAT. Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be over-mastered with a piece of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of way. ward marl? No, uncle, I'll none; Adam's sons are my brethren; and truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred. LEON. Daughter, remember, what I told you: if the prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer. BEAT. The fault will be in the musick, cousin, if you be not woo'd in good time: if the prince be too important, tell him, there is measure in every thing, and so dance out the answer. For hear me, if the prince be too important,] Important here, and in many other places, is importunate. JOHNSON. 6 So, in King Lear, Act IV. sc. iv; .66 great France "My mourning, and important tears hath pitied." STEEVENS. there is measure in every thing,] A measure in old language, beside its ordinary meaning, signified also a dance. MALONE. Hero; Wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave. LEON. Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly. BEAT. I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by day-light. LEON. The revellers are entering; brother, make good room. Enter Don PEDRO, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK, BALTHAZAR; Don JOHN, BORACHIO, MARGARET, URSULA, and others, masked. D. PEDRO. Lady, will you friend? 8 So, in King Richard II: walk about with your 66 My legs can keep no measure in delight, "When my poor heart no measure keeps in grief.” STEEVENS. Balthazar ;] The quarto and folio add—or dumb John. STEEVENS. Here is another proof that when the first copies of our author's plays were prepared for the press, the transcript was made out by the ear. If the MS. had lain before the transcriber, it is very unlikely that he should have mistaken Don for dumb: but, by an inarticulate speaker, or inattentive hearer, they might easily be confounded. MALONE. Don John's taciturnity has been already noticed. It seems therefore not improbable that the author himself might have occasionally applied the epithet dumb to him. REED. 8 your friend?] Friend, in our author's time, was the common term for a lover. So also in French and Italian. MALONE. HERO. So you walk softly, and look sweetly, and say nothing, I am yours for the walk; and, especially, when I walk away. D. PEDRO. With me in your company? HERO. I may say so, when I please. D. PEDRO. And when please you to say so? HERO. When I like your favour; for God defend, the lute should be like the case!' D. PEDRO. My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove.2 Mr. Malone might have added, that this term was equally applicable to both sexes; for, in Measure for Measure, Lucio tells Isabella that her brother had "got his friend with child.” STEEVENS. 9 for God defend,] i. e. forbid. So in the ancient MS. Romance of the Sowdon of Babyloyne, p. 38: "But saide, damesel, thou arte woode; "Both mete and drinke, and other goode See Othello, Act I. sc. iii. STEEVENS. 1 the lute should be like the case !] i. e. that your face should be as homely and coarse as your mask. THEOBALD. 2 My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove.] The first folio has-Love; the quarto, 1600-Iove; so that here Mr. Theobald might have found the very reading which, in the following note, he represents as a conjecture of his own. STEEVENS. 'Tis plain, the poet alludes to the story of Baucis and Philemon from Ovid: and this old couple, as the Roman poet describes it, lived in a thatch'd cottage: 66 stipulis & canna tecta palustri." But why, within this house is love? Though this old pair lived in a cottage, this cottage received two straggling Gods, (Jupiter and Mercury) under its roof. So, Don Pedro is a prince; and though his visor is but ordinary, he would insinuate to Hero, that he has something godlike within: alluding either to his dignity, or the qualities of his mind and person. By these circumstances, I am sure, the thought is mended: as, I think ve HERO. Why, then your visor should be thatch'd. MARG. So would not I, for your own sake; for I have many ill qualities. BENE. Which is one? MARG. I say my prayers aloud. BENE. I love you the better; the hearers may cry, Amen. MARG. God match me with a good dancer! MARG. And God keep him out of my sight, when the dance is done!-Answer, clerk. BALTH. No more words; the clerk is answered. URS. I know you well enough; you are signior Antonio. ANT. At a word, I am not, URS. I know you by the waggling of your head. ANT. To tell you true, I counterfeit him. URS. You could never do him so ill-well,3 unless rily, the text is too, by the addition of a single letter-within the house is Jove. Nor is this emendation a little confirmed by another passage in our author, in which he plainly alludes to the same story. As you like it: "Jaques. O, knowledge ill inhabited, worse than Jove in a thatched house!" THEOBALD. The line of Ovid above quoted is thus translated by Golding, 1587: "The roofe thereof was thatched all with straw and fennish reede." MALONE, 3 You could never do him so ill-well,] A similar phrase occurs in The Merchant of Venice: |