ACT V.
Scene 1. Page 302.
Hol. His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed.—
Mr Steevens has remarked that Chaucer, Skelton, and Spenser are frequent in their use of this phrase, but he has offered no explanation. It signifies polished language; thus Turbervile, in his translation of Ovid's epistles, makes Phyllis say to her lover—
"Thy many smooth and filed wordes
Did purchase credites place."
Scene 1. Page 306.
Arm. ... a sweet touch, a quick venew of wit.
The cut and thrust notes on this occasion exhibit a complete match between the two great Shakspearean maisters of defence. "A venew," says Mr. Steevens, "is the technical term for a bout (or set-to, as he had before called it in vol. iii. p. 317,) at the fencing school." On the other hand, Mr. Malone maintains that "a venue is not a bout at fencing, but a hit;" and his opponent retorts on the ground of positiveness of denial. As the present writer has himself been an amateur and practitioner of the noble science of defence, he undertakes on this occasion the office of umpire between the sturdy combatants.
The quotations adduced on either side are not calculated to ascertain the clear and genuine sense of the word venew, and it is therefore necessary to seek for more decisive evidence respecting its meaning. Howel in his Lexicon tetraglotton, 1660, mentions "a veny in fencing; venue, touche, toca;" and afterwards more fully in his vocabulary, sect. xxxii. "A foin, veny, or stoccado; la botta; la touche, le coup." In Sir John Harrington's Life of Dr. Still, is the following expression, "he would not sticke to warne them in the arguments to take heede to their answers, like a perfect fencer that will tell afore-hand in which button he will give the venew." Nugæ antiquæ, vol. ii. p. 158, edit. 1804, by Park. In Ben Jonson's Every man in his humour, Act I. Scene 5, Bobadil, in answer to Master Matthew's request for one venue, says, "Venue! fie: most gross denomination as ever I heard; O, the stoccata, while you live, sir, note that." On this passage, Mr. Reed, in a note on the play of The widow's tears, Dodsley's Old plays, vol. vi. 152, observes that "the word appears to have been out of fashion with the fantastic gallants of the time very early." Its occurrence however so late as the time in which Howel's dictionary was published seems to render this ingenious remark very questionable, and suggests another explanation of Bobadil's wish to change the word, namely, his coxcombly preference of the terms of the Spanish and Italian schools of fencing to those used in the English, which, it is presumed, were more immediately borrowed from our Gallic neighbours. That the terms stoccado and imbrocato denoted a hit or thrust, may be collected from many passages in Vincent Saviolo's Use of the rapier and dagger, 1595, 4to; and in Florio's Italian dictionary, 1598, folio, stoccata is rendered, a foyne, a thrust given in fence; and tocco, a venie at fence, a hit. All the above circumstances considered, one should feel inclined to adjudge the palm of victory to Mr. Malone.
It is however remarkable enough that Mr. Steevens is accidentally right in defining a venew a bout, without being aware of the signification of the latter word. Florio renders botta, a blowe, a stroake. In the best of all the ancient French treatises on the art of fencing, entitled Traicté sur l'espée seule, mere de toutes armes, &c., by Henry De Sainct Didier, Paris, 1573, 4to, it is said, "bottes en Napollitain, vaut autant à dire, que coups en François." He then mentions five sorts of bottes, viz. maindrette, renverse, fendante, estoccade, and imbroucade. Nevertheless the word bout had been used in the sense of a set-to in Shakspeare's time. In The first part of King Henry the Sixth, Act I. Scene 5, Talbot says to the Pucelle, "I'll have a bout with thee." It retained, however, its original meaning long afterwards. Howel, and Sherwood likewise in his English dictionary at the end of Cotgrave have "a boute, coup," and so it is defined by Skinner: but the following passage from the account given by Sir Thomas Urquhart in his singular book entitled A discovery of a most exquisite jewel found in the kennel of Worcester streets, &c. 1652, 12mo, of the combat between the admirable Crichton and the celebrated Mantuan duellist, will put the matter beyond all doubt. "Then was it that to vindicate the reputation of the duke's family and to expiate the blood of the three vanquished gentlemen, he alonged a stoccade de pied ferme; then recoyling, he advanced another thrust, and lodged it home; after which retiring again, his right foot did beat the cadence of the blow that pierced the belly of this Italian, whose heart and throat being hit with the two former stroaks, these three franch bouts given in upon the back of other ... by them he was to be made a sacrifice of atonement for the slaughter of the three aforesaid gentlemen who were wounded in the very same parts of their bodies by other such three venees as these." The same mode of expression is also used by the same writer in a subsequent account of a duel between Francis Sinclair, a natural son of the Earl of Caithness, and a German, at Vienna; where it was agreed that he who should give the other the first three bouts, should have a pair of golden spurs, in the event of which combat Sinclair "gave in two venees more than he was obliged to."
On the whole therefore it appears that venew and bout equally denote a hit in fencing; that both Mr. Steevens and Mr. Malone are right in this respect; but that the former gentleman is inaccurate in supposing a venew to mean a set-to, and the latter equally so in asserting that "a venew is not a bout."
Scene 1. Page 311.
Dull. I will play on the tabor to the worthies, and let them dance
the hay.
This dance was borrowed by us from the French. It is classed among the brawls in Thoinot Arbeau's Orchesographie, already mentioned in page [135].
Scene 2. Page 312.
Ros. For he hath been five thousand years a boy.
Kath. Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too.
This description of Cupid is borrowed from some lines in Sidney's Arcadia, B. ii. See them already quoted on another occasion by Dr. Farmer in Much ado about nothing, Act III. Scene 2.
Scene 2. Page 316.
Ros. That he should be my fool, and I his fate.
Dr. Warburton's conclusion that fate here signifies death is not satisfactory. Death would be an awkward character for Rosaline to assume, but that of dame fortune infinitely more natural.
It must be owned that destiny and fortune are, strictly speaking, very different characters; yet they have sometimes been confounded. Even Pindar, as Pausanias observes, has made fortune one of the Parcæ. In Julius Cæsar, the expression, "he is but fortune's knave," seems to resemble the present, and to mean, "he is the servant of fortune and bound to obey her." Shakspeare is very fond of alluding to the mockery of fortune. Thus we have
"O I am fortune's fool."
Romeo and Juliet.
"Ye fools of fortune."
Timon of Athens.
"I am the natural fool of fortune."
King Lear.
In the last of which passages a pointed allusion is made to the idiot fool. Sir J. Suckling uses the same expression in his play of The goblins; and Hamlet speaks of "the fools of nature," precisely in the same sense.
Scene 2. Page 327.
Bovet. Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things.
The word bullets is doubtless an interpolation in the manuscript by some ignorant person who thought it more appropriate than arrows, on account of the substitution of fire-arms for archery. It might very properly be omitted in the text, without any diminution of editorial accuracy.
Scene 2. Page 330.
Bovet. Fair ladies mask'd are roses in their bud;
Dismask'd their damask sweet commixture shown,
Are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown.
Of the several explanations here offered of vailing, Dr. Johnson's is the best. The poet compares a lady unmasking to an angel dispelling the clouds in his descent from heaven to earth. The term is from the old French avaler to put or let down; the true etymology of which appears in the phrase à mont et à val, from top to bottom, from mountain to valley, which very often occurs in old romances. In that of the Saint Graal, MS. we have "et avalerent aval le vessel." In Spenser's Shepherd's calendar, under January, "By that the welked Phœbus gan availe."
Scene 2. Page 339.
Biron. Three pil'd hyperboles.
So in Fennor's Compter's commonwealth, 1617, 4to, p. 14, we have "three pil'd, huge Basilisco oaths, that would have torne a roring-boyes eares in a thousand shatters."
Scene 2. Page 345.
Cost. You cannot beg us, sir.
It has been already stated that it was not the next relation only who begged the wardship of idiots in order to obtain possession of their property, but any person who could make interest with the sovereign to whom the legal guardianship belongs. Frequent allusions to this practice occur in the old comedies. In illustration of it, Mr. Ritson has given a curious story, which, as it is mutilated in the authority which he has used, is here subjoined from a more original source, a collection of tales, &c., compiled about the time of Charles the First, preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, No. 6395. "The Lord North begg'd old Bladwell for a foole (though he could never prove him so), and having him in his custodie as a lunaticke, he carried him to a gentleman's house, one day, that was his neighbour. The L. North and the gentleman retir'd awhile to private discourse, and left Bladwell in the dining roome, which was hung with a faire hanging; Bladwell walking up and downe, and viewing the imagerie, spyed a foole at last in the hanging, and without delay drawes his knife, flyes at the foole, cutts him cleane out, and layes him on the floore; my L. and the gentl. coming in againe, and finding the tapestrie thus defac'd, he ask'd Bladwell what he meant by such a rude uncivill act; he answered Sr. be content, I have rather done you a courtesie than a wrong, for if ever my L. N. had seene the foole there, he would have begg'd him, and so you might have lost your whole suite." The same story, but without the parties' names, is related in Fuller's Holy state, p. 182. Powel, in his Attourney's academy, 1630, 4to, says, "I shall neede to give you this monitorie instruction touching an ideot; that you be assured that yourselfe is somewhat the wiser man before you goe about to beg him, or else never meddle with him at all, lest you chance to play at handy-dandy, which is the guardian or which is the foole? and the case alter, è converso, ad conversum." In A treatise of taxes, 1667, 4to, p. 43, there is the following passage: "Now because the world abounds with this kind of fools, (Lottery fools,) it is not fit that every man that will may cheat every man that would be cheated; but it is rather ordained that the sovereign should have the guardianship of these fools, or that some favourite should beg the sovereign's right of taking advantage of such men's folly, even as in the case of lunatics and ideots." To this practice too, Butler alludes, in Hudibras, part iii. canto I, l. 590.
"Beg one another idiot
To guardians, ere they are begot."
Mr. Justice Blackstone, in treating of idiots, has spoken of it; and adds in a note, that the king's power of delegating the custody of them to some subject who has interest enough on the occasion, has of late been very rarely exerted.
Scene 2. Page 350.
Biron. The Pedant, the Braggart, the Hedge-priest, the Fool And the boy:—
Abate a throw at novum; and the whole world again,
Cannot prick out five such, take each one in his vein.
The game of novum or novem, here alluded to, requires further illustration to render the whole of the above passage intelligible. It is therefore necessary to state that it was properly called novum quinque, from the two principal throws of the dice, nine and five; and then Biron's meaning becomes perfectly clear, according to the reading of the old editions. The above game was called in French quinquenove, and is said to have been invented in Flanders.
Scene 2. Page 351.
Pageant of the nine worthies.
The genuine worthies were Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bulloigne, or sometimes in his room Guy of Warwick. Why Shakspeare, in the five of them only whom he has introduced by name, has included Hercules and Pompey, remains to be accounted for. It was a great pity to omit, on this occasion, the very curious specimen of an ancient pageant given by Mr. Ritson, who, in stating that nothing of the kind had ever appeared in print, seems to have forgotten the pageants of Dekker, Middleton, and others, a list of which may be found in Baker's Biographia dramatica, vol. ii. 270.
Scene 2. Page 353.
Biron. Your nose smells no, in this, most tender smelling knight.
He is addressing, or rather ridiculing Alexander. Plutarch in his life of that hero relates, on the authority of Aristoxenus, that his skin "had a marvellous good savour, and that his breath was very sweet, in so much that his body had so sweet a smell of itselfe that all the apparell he wore next unto his body, tooke thereof a passing delightfull savour, as if it had been perfumed." This Shakspeare had read in Sir Thomas North's translation.
Scene 2. Page 353.
Cost. Your lion, that holds his poll-ax sitting, &c.
The clown's Cloacinian allusion to the arms of Alexander is a wilful blunder, for the purpose of introducing his subsequent joke about Ajax. These are the arms themselves copied from the Roman des neuf preux, Abbeville, 1487, folio, showing that the chair is not a chaise-perçée.
The modern patent Bramahs were in Shakspeare's time called Ajaxes. Thus in The hospitall of incurable fooles, 1600, 4to, fo. 7: "Whoever saw so many odd mechanicks as are at this day, who not with a geometricall spirite like Archimedes, but even with arte surpassing the profoundest Cabalistes, who instead of a pigeon loft, place in the garrets of houses, portable and commodious Ajaxes." The marginal explanation comes closer to the point. Again, "the Romans might well be numbered amongst those three-elbowed fooles in adoring Stercutio for a God, shamefully constituting him a patron and protector of Ajax and his commodities," fo. 6.
Scene 2. Page 360.
Cost. I will not fight with a pole, like a northern man.
On this passage Dr. Farmer says, "Vir borealis, a clown, See glossary to Urry's Chaucer." The Doctor's notes are generally clear and instructive, but in this instance he is obscure. It is presumed that he intends to refer the reader to the word borel in Urry's glossary, where it is properly explained a clown. Whether borel be derived from borealis may be questioned; but Shakspeare in all probability was unacquainted with this word and its etymology. Does he not refer to the particular use of the quarter staff in the Northern counties?
Scene 2. Page 367.
Prin. As bombast, and as lining to the time.
Bombast is from the Italian bombagia, which signifies all sorts of cotton wool. Hence the stuff called bombasine. The cotton put into ink was called bombase. "Need you any inke and bombase?" Hollyband's Italian schole-maister, 1579, 12mo, sign. E. 3.