“Unvalued” in the above quotation is here used for our modern word “invaluable.” Shakespeare uses the word in both its ancient and modern definitions, namely, “Inestimable stones, unvalued Jewels,” in “Richard III,” and once in “Hamlet,” “He may not as unvalued persons do Carve for himself.”
An actor of to-day still refers to the words of his part as his lines. A further instance of ranting occurs in Churchill’s “Roliad,” where he speaks disparagingly of an actor in the following couplet:
He mouths a sentence
As a cur mouths a bone.
Shakespeare himself refers to his “untutored lines” in the dedication of “Lucrece” to the Earl of Southampton.
PART.
The humourous-man shall end his part in peace.
II, 2, 336.
In this passage the “humourous man” has no connection with the funny or comical character in our present day melodramas. The meaning in this latter sense is first used at the end of the seventeenth century. The Shakesperean sense was moody, peevish, or capricious, ever ready in entering into a quarrel, and represented by such characters as Mercutio, Jacques, and Faulconbridge.
PLAY.