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 27.

Leon. And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour.

This is not the only gross and offensive metaphor of the kind that our poet has used. In Measure for measure, we have "groping for trouts in a peculiar river."

Scene 2. Page 30.

Leon. ... I have trusted thee Camillo,
With all the nearest things to my heart——
... wherein, priest-like thou
Hast cleans'd my bosom.

So in Macbeth we have,

"Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff,
Which weighs upon the heart."

Scene 2. Page 39.

Cam. ... If I could find example
Of thousands that had struck anointed kings
And flourish'd after, I'd not do't.

If, as Mr. Blackstone supposes, this be an allusion to the death of the queen of Scots, it exhibits Shakspeare in the character of a cringing flatterer accommodating himself to existing circumstances, and is moreover an extremely severe one. But the perpetrator of that atrocious murder did flourish many years afterwards. May it not rather be designed as a compliment to King James on his escape from the Gowrie conspiracy, an event often brought to the people's recollection during his reign, from the day on which it happened being made a day of thanksgiving? See Osborne's traditional memoyres, and the almanacks of the time under the 5th of August.

Scene 2. Page 41.

Pol. In whose success we are gentle.

So in Act V. Scene 2, the old shepherd says, "we must be gentle now we are gentlemen." What our ancestors conceived to be the true definition of a gentleman may be seen at large in The booke of honor and armes, 1594, 4to, book iii. In Morgan's Sphere of gentry, the silly author has gravely stated that Jesus Christ was a gentleman and bore arms. Of the latter assertion he has given no proof, though he might have adduced a sort of armorial bearing made up from the implements of the passion, and often exhibited as such in some of the horæ and other service books of the church, before the reformation. Such a coat of arms was likewise used as a stamp on the covers of old books, with the motto REDEMPTORIS MUNDI ARMA. Gentle gentlemen is an alliteration that is very frequent in writers of the age of Shakspeare. In the preface to Gerard Leigh's Accedence of armorie, 1597, 4to, three sorts of ungentiles are described, "the first whereof are gentle ungentle. Such be they as wil rather sweare armes then beare armes. Who of negligence stop mustard pots with their fathers pedegrees, or otherwise abuse them. The second sort are ungentle gentlemen, who being enhaunced to honor by their fathers, on whom (though it were to their owne worship) yet can they not keepe so much money from the dice, as to make worshipful obsequies for their sad fathers with any point of armory. The third sort, and worst of all, are neither gentle ungentle, or ungentle gentile, but verie stubble curs, and be neither doers, sufferers, or wel speakers of honors tokens."

Scene 2. Page 42.

Cam. I am appointed him to murder you.

"i. e." says Mr. Steevens, "I am the person appointed to murder you." This is certainly the meaning, but the grammatical construction is, "I am appointed the person to murder you." The lines quoted from King Henry VI. are ungrammatical, and not, as is conceived, an exemplification of the foregoing passage.

Scene 2. Page 42.

Pol. ... and my name
Be yok'd with his that did betray the best.

Mr. Henderson's conjecture that Judas is here meant is certainly well founded. A clause in the sentence against excommunicated persons was, "let them have part with Judas that betrayed Christ. Amen;" and this is here imitated.