I.i.33 (231,5) [be better employ'd, and be nought a while] Warburton explained ["be nought a while" as "a mischief on you">[ If be nought a while has the signification here given it, the reading may certainly stand; but till I learned its meaning from this note, I read,
Be better employed, and be naught a while.
In the same sense as we say, it is better to do mischief, than to do nothing.
I.i.59 (233,7) [I am no villain] The word villain is used by the elder brother, in its present meaning, for a worthless, wicked, or bloody man; by Orlando in its original signification, for a fellow of base extraction.
I.ii.34 (237,9) [mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel] The wheel of Fortune is not the wheel of a housewife. Shakespeare has confounded Fortune, whose wheel only figures uncertainty and vicissitude, with the Destiny that spins the thread of life, though indeed not with a wheel.
I.ii.87 (239,1)
[Clo. One, that old Frederick your father loves. Cel. My father's love is enough to honour him]
[T. invoking the Dramatis Personae: Celia] Mr. Theobald seems not to know that the Dramatis Personae were first enumerated by Rowe.
I.ii.95 (239,2) [since the little wit that fools have, was silenc'd] Shakespeare probably alludes to the use of fools or jesters, who for some ages had been allowed in all courts an unbridled liberty of censure and mockery, and about this time began to be less tolerated.
I.ii.112 (240,3) [laid on with a trowel] I suppose the meaning is, that there is too heavy a mass of big words laid upon a slight subject.