"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."