ACT III.
Scene 1. Page 225.
Moth. Master, will you win your love with a French brawl.
The word brawl in its signification of a dance is from the French branle, indicating a shaking or swinging motion. The following accounts of this dance may be found more intelligible than that cited from Marston. It was performed by several persons uniting hands in a circle, and giving each other continual shakes, the steps changing with the tune. It usually consisted of three pas and a pied-joint, to the time of four strokes of the bow; which being repeated was termed a double brawl. With this dance balls were usually opened. Le branle du bouquet is thus described in Deux dialogues du nouveau langage François, Italianizé, &c. Anvers, 1579, 24mo:—"Un des gentilhommes et une des dames, estans les premiers en la danse, laissent les autres (qui cependant continuent la danse) et se mettans dedans la dicte compagnie, vont baisans par ordre toutes les personnes qui y sont: à sçavoir le gentil-homme les dames, et la dame les gentils-hommes. Puis ayans achevé leurs baisemens, au lieu qu'ils estoyent les premiers en la danse, se mettent les derniers. Et ceste façon de faire se continue par le gentilhomme et la dame qui sont les plus prochains, jusques à ce qu'on vienne aux derniers."—P. 385. It is probably to this dance that the puritan Stubbes alludes in the following words: "for what clipping, what culling, what kissing and bussing, what smouching and slabbering one of another: what filthy groping and unclean handling is not practised every where in these dauncings? Yea the very deed and action itselfe which I will not name for offending chaste eares, shall bee purtrayed and shadowed foorth in their bawdy gestures of one to another."—Anatomie of abuses, p. 114, edit. 1595, 4to. And John Northbrooke, another writer ejusdem farinæ, in his invective called A treatise wherein dicing, dauncing, vaine plaies or enterludes, &c. 1579, 4to, exclaims that "the Pagans were better and more sad than wee be, they never knewe this newe fashion of dauncing of ours, and uncleanely handling and groping, and kissings, and a very kindling of lechery: whereto serveth all that bassing, as were pigeons the birdes of Venus?" And again; "they daunce with disordinate gestures, and with monstrous thumping of the feete, to pleasant soundes, to wanton songues, to dishonest verses, maidens and matrons are groped and handled with unchaste hands, and kissed and dishonestly embraced," fo. 64, 66. Amidst a great variety of brawls mentioned in the very curious treatise on dancing by Thoinot Arbeau, entitled Orchesographie, Lengres, 1588, 4to, there is a Scotish brawl, with the music, which is here given as a specimen of an old Scotish tune.
The facetious macaronic poet Antony Sablon, or de Arena, whose work Camden says he "kept as a jewel," has left the following description of a brawl:—
Modus dansandi branlos.
"Ipse modis branlos debes dansare duobus,
Simplos et duplos usus habere solet.
Sed branlos duplos, passus tibi quinque laborent.
Tres fac avantum, sed reculando duos,
Quattuor in mensura ictus marchabis eundo,
Atque retornando quattuor ipse dabis."
This dance continued in fashion in our own country so late as the year 1693, when Playford published a book of tunes in which a brawl composed by Mons. Paisable occurs; and see many of the little French pieces in the Theatre de la foire, 1721.
Scene 1. Page 225.
Moth. Canary it with your feet.
The canary was another very favourite dance. In the translation of Leo's Description of Africa, by Pory, 1600, folio, there is an additional account of the Canary islands, in which the author, speaking of the inhabitants, says, "They were and are at this day delighted with a kind of dance which they use also in Spain, and in other places, and because it took originall from thence, it is called the Canaries." Thoinot Arbeau likewise mentions this opinion, but is himself, in common with some others, inclined to think that the dance originated from a ballet composed for a masquerade, in which the performers were habited as kings and queens of Morocco, or as savages with feathers of different colours. He then describes it as follows:—A lady is taken out by a gentleman, and after dancing together to the cadences of the proper air, he leads her to the end of the hall; this done he retreats back to the original spot, always looking at the lady. Then he makes up to her again, with certain steps, and retreats as before. His partner performs the same ceremony, which is several times repeated by both parties, with various strange fantastic steps, very much in the savage style. This dance was sometimes accompanied by the castagnets. The following Canary tune is from Arbeau.
Scene 1. Page 236.
Cost. Guerdon,—O sweet guerdon!
Mr. Steevens deduces this word from the middle age Latin regardum. It is presumed that few, if any, words are derived from the Latin of that period, which itself was rather corrupted by the introduction of terms from the living languages of Europe Latinized by the Monkish writers. Guerdon, as used by us, is immediately from the French: not equivalent, as some have imagined, with don de guerre, but formed from the Teutonic werd or wurth, i. e. price, value.
Scene 1. Page 237.
Biron. This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy.
If, as Mr. Steevens observes, the advocates for Shakspeare's learning, on a presumption that he might have been acquainted with the Roman flammeum, or seen the celebrated gem of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, had applauded the choice of his epithet, it is certain they would have shown very little skill or critical judgment on the occasion. By wimpled, Shakspeare means no more than that Cupid was hood-winked, alluding to the usual representation in paintings where he is exhibited with a bandage over his eyes. It may be observed here that the blindness of the God of love is not warranted by the authority of any ancient classic author, but appears to have been the invention of some writer of the middle ages; not improbably Boccaccio, who in his Genealogy of the Gods gives the following account: "Oculos autem illi fascia tegunt, ut advertamus amantes ignorare quo tendant; nulla eorum esse indicia, nullæ rerum distinctiones, sed sola passione duci."—Lib. ix. c. 4.
The oldest English writer who has noticed the blindness of love is Chaucer, in his translation of the Roman de la rose:
"The God of love, blind as stone."
But this line is not in the French original. Shakspeare himself has well accounted for Cupid's blindness:
"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind."
M. N. Dream, Act I. Scene 1.
Scene 1. Page 240.
Biron. And I to be a corporal of the field.
Dr. Farmer's quotation of the line from Ben Jonson, "As corporal of the field, maestro del campo," has the appearance, without perhaps the intention, of suggesting that these officers were the same: this, however, was not the fact. In Styward's Pathway to martiall discipline, 1581, 4to, there is a chapter on the office of maister of the campe, and another on the electing and office of the foure corporalls of the fields; from which it appears that "two of the latter were appointed for placing and ordering of shot, and the other two for embattailing of the pikes and billes, who according to their worthinesse, if death hapneth, are to succeede the great sergeant or sergeant major."
Scene 1. Page 241.
Biron. ... like a German clock.
Such part of Mr. Steevens's note as relates to the invention of clocks may, in a future edition, be rendered more correct by consulting Beckman's History of inventions. It is certain that we had clocks in England before the reign of Elizabeth; but they were not in general use till that time, when most, if not all, of them were imported from Germany. These clocks resembled what are still made for the use of the lower classes of people by several ingenious Germans established in London.
Scene 1. Page 242.
Biron. Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.
Alluding to the homely proverb, "Joan's as good as my lady in the dark:" and in Markham's Health to the gentlemanly profession of serving men, sign. I. 3, we have, "What hath Joan to do with my lady?"