Illustrations of Shakspeare, and of Ancient Manners: / with Dissertations on the Clowns and Fools of Shakspeare; on a Collection of Popular Tales Entitled Gesta Romanorum; and on the English Morris dance.

by Francis Douce

ACT I.

Scene 2. Page 16.

Cel. This is not fortune's work neither, but nature's, who perceiving
our natural wits too dull to reason of such Goddesses,
hath sent this natural for our whetstone.

It must be observed that Touchstone is here called a natural merely for the sake of alliteration and a punning jingle of words; for he is undoubtedly an artificial fool.

Scene 2. Page 29.

Le Beau. More suits you to conceive, than me to speak of.

The old copy had, than I. These grammatical errors in the use of the personal pronoun should either be uniformly corrected or left entirely to themselves. Mr. Steevens in p. [9], note 7, seems to regard them as the anomalies of the play-house editors; but Mr. Malone, probably with more reason, is inclined to place them to the author's own account. If the present correction by Mr. Rowe be retained in future editions, we ought not to find such expressions as "hates nothing more than he," p. 14; "no child but I," p. 15, and who for whom perpetually.