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To make him curse this cursed crimeful night:
Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright;
And the dire thought of his committed evil
Shape every bush a hideous shapeless devil".

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Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances
Afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans;
Let there bechance him pitiful mischances,
To make him moan; but pity not his moans;
Stone him with harden'd hearts, harder than stones";
And let mild women to him lose their mildness,
Wilder to him than tygers in their wildness.

Let him have time to tear his curled hair 1,
Let him have time against himself to rave,
Let him have time of Time's help to despair,

7 Shape every BUSH a hideous shapeless DEVIL.] So, in A Midsummer Night's Dream :

"How easy is a bush suppos'd a bear?”

Again, in King Henry VI. Part III. :

"The thief doth fear each bush an officer." STEEvens.

8 Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright,

Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances, &c.] Here we find in embryo that scene of King Richard III. in which he is terrified by the ghosts of those whom he had slain. MALONE. with harden'd hearts, harder than stones ;] So, in Othello: my heart is turn'd to stone;

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"I strike it, and it hurts my hand."

Again, in Antony and Cleopatra :

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throw my heart

Against the flint and hardness of my fault,

"Which, being dried with grief, will break to powder,

"And finish all foul thoughts." MALONE.

1 Let him have time to tear his CURLED hair, &c.] This now common fashion is always mentioned by Shakspeare as a distinguishing characteristick of a person of rank. So, in Othello:

"The wealthy curled darlings of our nation-."

Again, in Antony and Cleopatra :

"If she first meet the curled Antony-."

This and the next stanza, and many other passages both of the present performance and Venus and Adonis, are inserted with very slight variations, in a poem entitled Acolastus his After-witte, by

Let him have time to live a loathed slave,
Let him have time a beggar's orts to crave;

And time to see one that by alms doth live,
Disdain to him disdained scraps to give.

Let him have time to see his friends his foes,
And merry fools to mock at him resort:
Let him have time to mark how slow time goes
In time of sorrow, and how swift and short
His time of folly, and his time of sport:
And ever let his unrecalling crime 2

2

Have time to wail the abusing of his time.

O Time, thou tutor both to good and bad,
Teach me to curse him that thou taught'st this ill!
At his own shadow let the thief run mad,
Himself, himself seek every hour to kill!

Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill:

For who so base would such an office have
As slanderous death's-man to so base a slave 3 ?

S. Nicholson, 1600; a circumstance which I should hardly have thought worth mentioning, but that in the same poem is also found a line taken from The Third Part of Henry VI. and a passage evidently copied from Hamlet; from whence we may, I think, conclude with certainty, that there was an edition of that tragedy (probably before it was enlarged) of an earlier date than any yet discovered. MAlone.

Surely a passage short as the first of these referred to, might have been carried away from the play-house by an auditor of the weakest memory. Of Hamlet's address to the ghost, the idea, not the language, is preserved. Either of them, however, might have been caught during representation. STEEVENS.

2 And ever let his UNRECALLING CRIME-] His crime which cannot be unacted. Unrecalling for unrecalled, or rather for unrecallable. This licentious use of the participle is common in the writings of our author and his contemporaries.

The edition of 1616, which has been followed by all subsequent, reads his unrecalling time. MALONE.

3 As slanderous DEATH'S-MAN to so base a slave ?] i. e. executioner. So, in one of our author's plays [Lear vol. x. p. 239]:

The baser is he, coming from a king,
To shame his hope with deeds degenerate.
The mightier man, the mightier is the thing
That makes him honour'd, or begets him hate;
For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.
The moon being clouded presently is miss'd,
But little stars may hide them when they list.

The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire,
And unperceiv'd fly with the filth away;

But if the like the snow-white swan desire,
The stain upon his silver down will stay.
Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious
day.

Gnats are unnoted wheresoe'er they fly,
But eagles gaz'd upon with every eye.

Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools!
Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators!
Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools;
Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters;
To trembling clients be you mediators:

For me, I force not argument a straw,
Since that my case is past the help of law.

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he's dead; I am only sorry

"He had no other death's-man." STEEVEens. SIGHTLESS night,-] So, in King John:

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thou and eyeless night

"Have done me shame." STEEVENS.

5 OUT, idle words,-] Thus the quarto. The octavo 1607, has our idle words,-which has been followed by that of 1616. Dr. Sewell reads without authority: O, idle words-. Out is an exclamation of abhorrence or contempt yet used in the north.

6 For me, I FORCE not argument a straw,] I do not value or esteem argument. So, in The Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet, 1562:

"But when he, many monthes, hopeless of his recure,

"Had served her, who forced not what paynes he did endure-." Again, in Love's Labour's Lost:

"Your oath broke once, you force not to forswear." MALONE.

In vain I rail at opportunity,

At time, at Tarquin, and uncheerful night';
In vain I cavil with mine infamy,

In vain I spurn at my confirm'd despite :

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This helpless smoke of words doth me no right. The remedy indeed to do me good,

Is to let forth my foul, defiled, blood.

Poor hand, why quiver'st thou at this decree ?
Honour thyself to rid me of this shame;
For if I die, my honour lives in thee,
But if I live, thou liv'st in my defame;
Since thou could'st not defend thy loyal dame,
And wast afear'd to scratch her wicked foe,
Kill both thyself and her for yielding so.

This said, from her be-tumbled couch she starteth,
To find some desperate instrument of death:
But this no slaughter-house no tool imparteth,
To make more vent for passage of her breath;
Which, thronging through her lips, so vanisheth
As smoke from Etna, that in air consumes,
Or that which from discharged cannon fumes.

In vain, quoth she, I live, and seek in vain
Some happy mean to end a hapless life.
I fear'd by Tarquin's falchion to be slain,
Yet for the self-same purpose seek a knife:
But when I fear'd, I was a loyal wife;

So am I now:-O no, that cannot be;
Of that true type hath Tarquin rifled me.

7 At time, at Tarquin, and UNCHEERFUL night;] The octavo 1607, and all the subsequent copies, have-unsearchful night. Uncheerful is the reading of the quarto 1594. MALONE.

8 This helpless SMOKE OF WORDS -] So, in King John : "They shoot but calm words folded up in smoke."

STEEVENS.

O! that is gone, for which I sought to live,
And therefore now I need not fear to die.
To clear this spot by death, at least I give
A badge of fame to slander's livery";
A dying life to living infamy:

Poor helpless help, the treasure stol'n away,
To burn the guiltless casket where it lay!

Well, well, dear Collatine, thou shalt not know
The stained taste of violated troth;

I will not wrong thy true affection so,
To flatter thee with an infringed oath ;
This bastard graff shall never come to growth':
He shall not boast, who did thy stock pollute,
That thou art doting father of his fruit.

Nor shall he smile at thee in secret thought,
Nor laugh with his companions at thy state;
But thou shalt know thy interest was not bought
Basely with gold, but stolen from forth thy gate.
For me, I am the mistress of my fate;

And with my trespass never will dispense,
Till life to death acquit my forc'd offence.

I will not poison thee with my attaint,
Nor fold my fault in cleanly-coin'd excuses;
My sable ground of sin I will not paint,

9 A BADGE of fame to slander's LIVERY;] In our author's time the servants of the nobility all wore silver badges on their liveries, on which the arms of their masters were engraved.

MALONE.

This bastard GRAFF shall never come to growth :] The edition of 1616, and all the moderns, have-This bastard grass.The true reading was supplied by the earliest сору. MALONE.

This sentiment is adopted from the Wisdom of Soloman, ch. 4, v. 3: "But the multiplying brood of the ungodly shall not thrive, nor take deep rooting from bastard slips, nor lay any fast foundation." The same allusion is employed in one of our author's historical plays. STEEVENS.

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