ACT III.
Scene 2. Page 329.
Cres. ... For to be wise, and love,
Exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above.
If this be Shakspeare's, he got it from Taverner's translation of Publius Syrus, at the end of Catonis disticha, 1553, 12mo, where it stands thus, "To be in love and to be wyse is scarce graunted to God. It is not one man's propertie both to love and also to be of a sounde mynde."
Scene 2. Page 333.
Pan. ... let all pitiful goers-between be call'd to the world's end after my name, call them all Pandars.
Although the above is, no doubt, the real etymology of the word pandar, the original use of it does not rest with Shakspeare. An earlier instance occurs in Gabriel Harvey's Pierce's supererogation, 1593, 4to, in which "the pandars stew" is mentioned. All other derivations must be rejected, because the term occurs in no language but our own. Nashe, in his Have with you to Saffron Walden, has most extravagantly deduced it from Pandora; and he adds that Sir Philip Sidney fetches it from Plautus. In Sir Philip's Defence of poesie, the author, speaking of Terence's Gnatho and Chaucer's Pandar, says, "we now use their names to signifie their trades."
Scene 3. Page 338.
Cal. ... But this Antenor
I know is such a wrest in their affairs.
If a former explanation should be thought to stand in need of further authority, the following may suffice.
In A treatise between trouth and information, by W. Cornishe, printed among the works of Skelton, are these lines:
"A harpe geveth sounde as it is sette,
The harper may wrest it untunablye;
A harper with his wrest may tune the harpe wrong,
Mystunyng of an instrument shal hurt a true songe."
The same instrument was used for tuning other stringed instruments, as appears from the same poem:
"The claricord hath a tunely kynde,
As the wyre is wrested hye and lowe;
So it turnyth to the players mynde,
For as it is wrested so must it nedes showe,
Any instrument mystunyd shall hurt a trew song,
Yet blame not the claricord the wrester doth wrong."
Again,
"With golden strings such harmonie
His harpe so sweet did wrest;
That he reliev'd his phrenesie
Whom wicked sprites possest."
Archb. Parker's Psalter, sign. B. 1. b.
In King James's edict against combats, &c., p. 45, is this passage, "this small instrument the tongue being kept in tune by the wrest of awe," &c.
And in Swetnam's Arraignment of women, 1615, 4to, "They are always tempering their wits, as fidlers do their strings, who wrest them so high, that many times they stretch them beyond time, tune, and reason."