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 II.

Scene 1. Page 429.

Beat. ... that I had my good wit out of the hundred merry tales.

From the unfortunate loss of these Merry tales, a doubt has arisen from whence they were translated, it being pretty clear that they were not originally written in English. Two authorities have been produced on this occasion, the Cent nouvelles nouvelles, and the Decameron of Boccaccio.

Mr. Steevens is an advocate for the first of these, and refers to an edition of them mentioned by Ames. This, it is to be presumed, is the Hundred merry tales noticed under the article for James Roberts. To this opinion an objection has been taken by Mr. Ritson, on the ground that many of the tales in the Cent nouvelles nouvelles are "very tragical, and none of them calculated to furnish a lady with good wit." Now it appears that out of these hundred stories only five are tragical, viz. novels 32, 47, 55, 56, and 98. In the old editions they are entitled Comptes plaisans et recreatiz pour deviser en toutes compaignies, and Moult plaisans á raconter par maniere de joyeuseté.

Mr. Reed has "but little doubt that Boccace's Decameron was the book here alluded to." If this gentleman's quotation from Guazzo's Civile conversation, 1586, be meant to establish the existence of the above work in an English dress it certainly falls short of the purpose; because it is no more than a translation of an author, who is speaking of the original Decameron. But there is a more forcible objection to Mr. Reed's opinion, which is, that the first complete English translation of Boccaccio's novels was not published till 1620, and after Shakspeare's death. The dedication states indeed, that many of the tales had long since been published; but this may allude to those which had appeared in Painter's Palace of pleasure, or in some other similar work not now remaining. There are likewise two or three of Boccaccio's novels in Tarlton's Newes out of purgatory, which might be alluded to in the above dedication, if the work which now remains under the date of 1630 was really printed in 1589, as may be suspected from a license granted to Thomas Gubbin. There seems to have been some prior attempt to publish the Decameron in English, but it was "recalled by my Lord of Canterbury's commands." See a note by Mr. Steevens prefixed to The two gentlemen of Verona. There is a remarkable fact however that deserves to be mentioned in this place, which is, that in the proem to Sacchetti's Novelle, written about the year 1360, it appears that Boccaccio's novels had been then translated into English, not a single vestige of which translation is elsewhere to be traced.

A third work that may appear to possess some right to assert its claim on the present occasion is the Cento novelle antiche, which might have been translated before or in Shakspeare's time, as it has been already shown in a note on the story of Twelfth night that he had probably seen the 13th novel in that collection. It may likewise be worth mentioning that Nashe in his Pappe with an hatchet, speaks of a book then coming out under the title of A hundred merrie tales, in which Martin Marprelate, i. e. John Penry, and his friends were to be satirized.

On the whole, the evidence seems to preponderate in favour of the Cent nouvelles nouvelles. As the greatest portion of this work consists of merry stories, there is no impropriety in calling it The hundred merry tales; the term hundred being part of the original title, and the epithet merry in all probability an addition for the purpose of designating the general quality of the stories. The Decameron of Boccaccio, which contains more tragical subjects than the other, is called in the English translation A hundred PLEASANT novels.

Whatever the hundred merry tales really were, we find them in existence so late as 1659, and the entire loss of them to the present age might have been occasioned by the devastation in the great fire of London.

Scene 1. Page 432.

Bene. Come, will you go with me?

Claud. Whither?

Bene. Even to the next willow, about your own business, Count. What
fashion will you wear the garland of?

It was the custom for those who were forsaken in love to wear willow garlands. This tree might have been chosen as the symbol of sadness from the verse in psalm 137, "We hanged our harps upon the willows, in the midst thereof;" or else from a coincidence between the weeping willow and falling tears. Another reason has been assigned. The Agnus castus or vitex, was supposed by the ancients to promote chastity, "and the willow being of a much like nature," says an old writer, "it is yet a custom that he which is deprived of his love must wear a willow garland." Swan's Speculum mundi, chap. 6. sect. 4. edit. 1635. Bona, the sister of the king of France, on receiving news of Edward the Fourth's marriage with Elizabeth Grey, exclaims, "In hope he'll prove a widower shortly, I'll wear a willow garland for his sake." See Henry the Sixth, part iii. and Desdemona's willow song in Othello, Act IV. Two more ballads of a similar nature may be found in Playford's Select ayres, 1659, folio, pp. 19, 21.

Scene 1. Page 438.

Beat. Civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion.

This reading of the older copy has been judiciously preferred to a jealous complexion. Yellow is an epithet often applied to jealousy by the old writers. In The merry wives of Windsor, Nym says he will possess Ford with yellowness. Shakspeare more usually terms it green-eyed.

Scene 3. Page 447.

Bene. ... now will he lie ten nights awake, carving the fashion of a new doublet.

The print in Borde of the Englishman with a pair of shears, seems to have been borrowed from some Italian or other foreign picture in ridicule of our countrymen's folly. Coryat, in his Crudities, p. 260, has this remark; "we weare more phantasticall fashions than any nation under the sunne doth, the French onely excepted; which hath given occasion both to the Venetian and other Italians to brand the Englishman with a notable marke of levity, by painting him starke naked with a paire of shears in his hand, making his fashion of attire according to the vaine invention of his braine-sicke head, not to comelinesse and decorum." Purchas, in his Pilgrim, 1619, 8vo, speaks of "a naked man with sheeres in one hand and cloth in the other," as a general emblem of fashion. Many other allusions to such a figure might be cited, but it was not peculiar to the English. In La geographie Françoise, by P. Du Val d'Abbeville, 1663, 12mo, the author, speaking of the Frenchman's versatility in dress, adds, "dans la peinture des nations on met pres de luy le cizeau."

The inconstancy of our own countrymen in the article of dress is described in the following verses from John Halle's Courte of vertue, 1565, 12mo.

"As fast as God's word one synne doth blame
They devyse other as yll as the same,
And this varietie of Englyshe folke,
Dothe cause all wyse people us for to mocke.

For all discrete nations under the sonne,
Do use at thys day as they fyrst begonne:
And never doo change, but styll do frequent,
Theyr old guyse, what ever fond folkes do invent.

But we here in England lyke fooles and apes,
Do by our vayne fangles deserve mocks and japes,
For all kynde of countreys dooe us deryde,
In no constant custome sythe we abyde
For we never knowe howe in our aray,
We may in fyrme fashion stedfastly stay."

Randle Holme complained that in his time (1680) Englishmen were as changeable as the moon in their dress, "in which respect," says he, "we are termed the Frenchmen's apes, imitating them in all their fantastick devised fashions of garbs." Acad. of armory, book iii. ch. 5.

Scene 3. Page 452.

Claud. Stalk on, stalk on, the fowl sits.

It has been already shown that the stalking bull was equally common with the stalking horse. It was sometimes used for decoying partridges into a tunnelling net, or cage of net work, in the form of a tun, with doors. The process is described at large, with a print, in Willughby's Ornithology, 1678, folio, p. 34, where an account is also given of the stalking-horse, ox, stag, &c.

Howel in his Vocabulary, sect. xxxv. seems to have mistaken the tun or net into which the birds were driven, for the stalking bull itself. Sometimes, as in hunting the wolf, an artificial bush and a wooden screen were used to stalk with. See Clamorgan, Chasse du loup, 1595, 4to, p. 29.

Scene 3. Page 455.

Leon. She tore the letter into a thousand halfpence.

Mr. Theobald explains this "into a thousand pieces of the same bigness," as if Beatrice had torn the letter by rule and compass. Mr. Steevens more properly supposes halfpence to mean small pieces; but his note would have been less imperfect if he had added that the halfpence of Elizabeth were of silver, and about the size of a modern silver penny.