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