Divinest patroness, and midwife, gentle Enter LYCHORIDA, with an Infant. LYC. Here is a thing. Too young for such a place, who if it had 3 Conceit, would die as I am like to do. Take in your arms this piece of your dead queen. PER. How! how, Lychorida! Lic. Patience, good sir; do not assist the storm.* Here's all that is left living of your queen,A little daughter; for the sake of it, Be manly, and take comfort. Divinest patroness, and midwife, &c.] The quarto, 1609, and the subsequent copies, read-and my wife. Mr. Steevens's happy emendation, which I have inserted in the text, is so clearly right, that it requires neither support nor illustration. If it wanted the latter, Horace would furnish it: "Montium custos nemorumque virgo, "Quæ laborantes utero puellas "Ter vocata audis, adimisque leto, "Diva triformis." Again, in the Andria of Terence: "Juno Lucina, fer opem; serva me, obsecro!" -who if it had MALONE. Conceit,] If it had thought. So, in King Richard III: "There's some conceit or other likes him well, "When that he bids good morrow with such a spirit." MALONE. Patience, good sir; do not assist the storm.] Our author uses the same expression, on the same occasion, in The Tempest: "You mar our labour;-keep your cabins; you do assist the storm." MALONE. PER. O you gods! Why do you make us love your goodly gifts, Vie honour with yourselves.5 Lyc. Even for this charge. PER. Patience, good sir, Now, mild may be thy life! For a more blust'rous birth had never babe: 5 Vie honour with yourselves.] Old copy-Use honour &c. STEEVENS. The meaning is sufficiently clear.-In this particular you might learn from us a more honourable conduct.-But the expression is so harsh, that I suspect the passage to be corrupt. MALONE. I suspect the author wrote-Vie honour, a phrase much in use among Shakspeare and his contemporaries. Thus, in Chapman's version of the twentieth Iliad: "What then need we vie calumnies; like women-?" See also Vol. IX. p. 89, n. 1. Mr. M. Mason has offered the same conjecture. I read, however, for the sake of measure,yourselves. STEEVENS. The meaning is evidently this: "We poor mortals recal not what we give, and therefore in that respect we may contend with you in honour." I have therefore no doubt but we ought to read: And therein may Vie honour with &c. The same expression occurs in the introduction to the fourth Act, where Gower says: "The dove of Paphos might with the crow "Vie feathers white." The trace of the letters in the words vie and use is nearly the same, especially if we suppose that the v was used instead of the u vowel; which is frequently the case in the old editions: "Nature wants stuff, "To vie strange forms with fancy." Antony and Cleopatra. M. MASON. Quiet and gentle thy conditions!" For thou'rt the rudeliest welcom'd' to this world, That e'er was prince's child. Happy what follows! Thou hast as chiding a nativity, 8 As fire, air, water, earth, and heaven can make, To herald thee from the womb: even at the first, • Quiet and gentle thy conditions!] Conditions anciently meant qualities; dispositions of mind. So, in Othello: "And then of so gentle a condition!" He is speaking of Desdemona. Again, in King Henry V: "Our tongue is rough, coz, and my condition is not smooth." "The late Earl of Essex (says Sir Walter Raleigh) told Queen Elizabeth that her conditions were as crooked as her carcase but it cost him his head." See also Vol. XII. p. 521, n. 7. MALONE. —welcom'd-] Old copy-welcome. For this correction I am answerable. MALONE. 7 8 -as chiding a nativity,] i. e. as noisy a one. So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Hippolyta, speaking of the clamour of the hounds: 66 never did I hear "Such gallant chiding." See note on that passage, Vol. IV. p. 450, n. 5. STEEVENS. See Vol. XV. p. 263, n. 8. MALONE. 9 To herald thee from the womb:] The old copy reads: To harold thee from the womb: For the emendation now made, the reader is indebted to Mr. Steevens. So, in Macbeth : 66 only to herald thee into his "Not pay thee." presence, This word is in many ancient books written harold, and harauld. So, in Ives's SELECT PAPERS relative to English Antiquities, quarto, 1773, p. 130: "-and before them kings of armes, harolds, and pursuyvaunts." Again, in The Mirrour for Magistrates, 1610: "Truth is no harauld, nor no sophist, sure." See also Cowel's Interpreter, in v. Herald, Heralt, or Harold; which puts Mr. Steevens's emendation beyond a doubt. MALONE. So, more appositely, in the Preface to Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature, &c. 4to. bl. 1. by Edward Fenton, 1569: "-the Thy loss is more than can thy portage quit,' Enter Two Sailors. SAIL. What courage, sir? God save you. PER. Courage enough: I do not fear the flaw; It hath done to me the worst.3 Yet, for the love elementes have been harolds, trumpetters, ministers, and executioners of the justice of heaven.” 1 STEEVENS. Thy loss is more than can thy portage quit,] i. e. thou hast already lost more (by the death of thy mother) than thy safe arrival at the port of life can counterbalance, with all to boot that we can give thee. Portage is used for gate or entrance in one of Shakspeare's historical plays. STEEVENS, Portage is used in King Henry V. where it signifies an open space: "Let it [the eye] pry through the portage of the head." Portage is an old word signifying a toll or impost, but it will not commodiously apply to the present passage. Perhaps, however, Pericles means to say, you have lost more than the payment made to me by your birth, together with all that you may hereafter acquire, can countervail. MALONE. I do not fear the flaw;] i. e. the blast. See Hamlet, Act V. sc. i. MALONE. So, in Chapman's version of the eleventh Iliad: "Wraps waves on waves, hurls up the froth beat with a vehement flaw." STEEVENS. It hath done to me the worst.] So, in the Confessio Amantis: a wife! 66 "My joye, my lust, and my desyre, "My welth and my recoverire! 66 Why shall I live, and thou shalt die? "Ha, thou fortune, I thee defie, "Now hast thou do to me thy werst; "A herte! why ne wilt thou berst?" MALONE. Of this poor infant, this fresh-new sea-farer;+ 1 SAIL. Slack the bolins there; 5 thou wilt not, wilt thou? Blow, and split thyself." 2 SAIL. But sea-room, an the brine and cloudy billow kiss the moon, I care not." 1 SAIL. Sir, your queen must overboard; the sea works high, the wind is loud, and will not lie till the ship be cleared of the dead. this fresh-new sea-farer,] We meet a similar compound epithet in King Richard III: "Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current." MALONE. * Slack the bolins there;] Bowlines are ropes by which the sails of a ship are governed when the wind is unfavourable. They are slackened when it is high. This term occurs again in The Two Noble Kinsmen: 66 the wind is fair, "Top the bowling." They who wish for more particular information concerning bolings, may find it in Smith's Sea Grammar, 4to. 1627, p. 23. 7 6 1 Sail. Blow, and split thyself. STEEVENS. 2 Sail. But sea-room, &c.] So, in The Tempest: MALONE. an the brine and cloudy billow kiss the moon, I care not.] So, in The Winter's Tale: "Now the ship boring the moon with her main-mast." An is used here, as in many other places, for if, or though. MALONE. 9 till the ship be cleared of the dead.] So, in Twine's translation: "My lord, plucke up your hearte, and be of good cheere, and consider, I pray you, that the ship may not abide to carry the dead carkas, and therefore commaund it to be cast into the sea, that we may the better escape." This superstitious belief is also commemorated by Fuller in his Historie of the Holy Warre, Book IV. ch. 27: "His body was carried into France there to be buried, and was most miserably tossed; it being observed, that the sea cannot digest the crudity |
