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deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors fit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.

ANT. Weli, niece, [To HERO] I trust, you will be ruled by your father.

BEAT, Yes, faith; it is my coufin's duty to make courtesy, and fay, Father, as it picafe you :-but yet 'for all that, coufin, let him be a handfome fellow, or elle make another courtesy, and fay, Father, as it please me.

LEON. Well, niece, I hope to fee you one day fitted with a husband.

BEAT. Not till God make men of fome other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be over-mafter'd with a piece of valiant duft? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's fons are my brethren; and truly, I hold it a fin to match in my

kindred.

LEON. Daughter, remember, what I told you: if the prince do folicit you in that kind, you know your answer.

BEAT. The fault will be in the musick, cousin, if you be not woo'd in good tine: if the prince be too important,*tell him, there is measure in every thing," and fo dance out the answer. For hear me, Hero;

if the prince be too important, ] Important here, and in many other places, is importunate. JOHNSON.

So, in King Lear, Ad IV. fc. iv:

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great France

"My mourning, and important tears hath pitied." STEEVENS. there is measure in every thing,] A measure in old lanbefide its ordinary meaning, fignified alfo a dance. MALONE. So, in King Richard II:

guage,

"My legs can keep no measure in delight,

"When my poor heart no measure keeps in grief." Steevens.

Wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the firft fuit is hot and hafty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modeft, as a measure full of flate and ancientry; and then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinquepace fafter and fafler, till he fink into his grave.

LEON., Coufin, you apprehend paffing fhrewdly. BEAT. I have a good eye, uncle; I can fee a church by day-light.

LEON. The revellers are entering; brother, make good room.

Enter Don PEDRO, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK, BALTHAZAR; Don JOHN, BORACHIO, MARGARET, URSULA, and others, mafk'd.

D. PEDRO. Lady, will you walk about with friend? 7

your HERO. So you walk foftly, and look fweetly, and fay nothing, I am yours for the walk; and, efpecially, when I walk away.

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Balthazar; ] The quarto and folio add or dumb John.

STEEVENS.

Here is another proof that when the firft copies of our author's plays were prepared for the prefs, the tranfcript was made out by the ear. If the MS. had lain before the tranfcriber, it is very unlikely that he thould have miflaken Don for dumb but, by an inarticulate fpeaker, or inattentive hearer, they might easily be confounded. MALONE.

Don John's taciturnity has been already noticed. It feems therefore not improbable that the author himself might have occafionally applied the epithet dumb to him. REED.

7 - your friend?] Friend, in our author's time, was the common term for a lover. So alfo in French and Italian. MALONE. Mr. Malone might have added, that this term was equally applicable to both fexes; for, in Meafure for Meafure, Lucio tells Isabella that her brother had got his friend with child." STEEVENS.

D. PEDRO. With me in your company?
HERO. I may fay fo, when I please.

D. PEDRO. And when pleafe you to fay fo? HERO. When I like your favour; for God defend, the lute fhould be like the cafe!

8

D. PEDRO. My vifor is Philemon's roof; within the houfe is Jove."

HERO. Why, then your vifor fhould be thatch'd. D. PEDRO. Speak low, if you fpeak love.

[Takes her afide. BENE. Well, I would you did like me. MARG. So would not I, for your own fake; for I have many ill qualities.

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the lute fhould be like the cafe!] i. e. that your face fhould be as homely and coarfe as your mask. THEOBALD.

-

My vifor is Philemon's roof, within the house is Jove.] The firft folio has -Love; the quarto, 1600 - Iove; fo that here Mr. Theobald might have found the very reading which, in the following note, he represents as a conje&ure of his own. STEEVENS.

Tis plain, the poet alludes to the ftory of Baucis and Philemon from Ovid: and this old couple, as the Roman poet defcribes it, lived in a thatch'd cottage:"

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But why, within this houfe is love? Though this old pair lived in a cottage, this cottage received two fraggling Gods, (Jupiter and Mercury) under its roof. So, Don Pedro is a prince; and though his vifor is but ordinary, he would infinuate to Hero, that he has something godlike within: alluding either to his dignity or the qualities of his mind and perfon. By thefe circumftances, I am fure, the thought is mended; as, I think verily, the text is too, by the addition of a fingle letter within the houfe is Jove. Nor is this emendation a little confirmed by another paffage in our author, in which he plainly alludes to the fame ftory. As you like it: Jaques. O, knowledge ill inhabited, worfe than jove in a thatcked houfe!" THEOBALD.

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The line of Ovid above quoted is thus tranflated by Golding, 1587:

The roofe thereof was thatched all with ftraw and fennish reede." MALONE.

BENE. Which is one?

MARG. I fay my prayers aloud.

BENE. I love you the better; the hearers may cry amen.

MARG. God match me with a good dancer!
BALTH. Amen.

MARG. And God keep him out of my fight, when the dance is done! - Anfwer, clerk.

BALTH. No more words; the clerk is anfwer'd. URS. I know you well enough; you are fignior Antonio.

ANT. At a word, I am not.

URS. I know you by the waggling of your head. ANT. To tell you true, I counterfeit him.

URS. You could never do him fo ill-well, 2 unless you were the very man: Here's his dry hand 3 up and down; you are he, you are he.

ANT. At a word, I am not.

URS. Come, come; do you think I do not know you by your excellent wit? Can virtue hide itself? Go to, mum, you are he: graces will appear, and there's an end.

BEAT. Will you not tell me who told you fo? BENE. No, you shall pardon me.

BEAT. Nor will you not tell me who you are?

BENE. Not now.

2 You could never do him fo ill-well, ] A fimilar phrafe occurs in The Merchant of Venice:

He hath a better bad habit of frowning, than the Count Palatine." STEEVENS.

3

his dry hand - ] A dry hand was anciently regarded as the fign of a cold constitution. To this, Maria, in Twelfth-Night, alludes, A& I. fc. iii. STEEVENS.

BEAT. That I was disdainful,—and that I had my good wit out of the Hundred merry Tales; -Well, this was fignior Benedick that faid fo.

BENE. What's he?

BEAT. I am fure, you know him well enough.

Hundred merry Tales; ] The book, to which Shakspeare alludes, might be an old tranflation of Les Gent Nouvelles Nouvelles. The original was published at Paris, in the black letter, before the year 1500, and is faid to have been written by fome of the royal family of France. Ames mentions a tranflation of it prior to the

time of Shakspeare.

1

In The London Chaunticleres, 1659, this work, among others, is cried for fale by a ballad-man. "The Seven Wife Men of Gotham;

a Hundred merry Tales; Scoggin's Jefts," &c.

Again, in The Nice Valour, &c. by Beaumont and Fletcher:

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the Almanacs,

"The Hundred Novels, and the Books of Cookery."
Of this collection there are frequent entries in the register of the
Stationers' Company. The firft I met with was in Jan. 1581.
STEEVENS.

This book was certainly printed before the year 1575, and in much repute, as appears from the mention of it in Lancham's Letter concerning the entertainment at Kenelworth-Caftle. Again, in The English Courtier and the Cuntrey Gentleman, bl. 1. 1586. fig. H. 4: " -wee want not alfo pleasant mad headed knaves that bee properly learned and well reade in diverse pleasant bookes and good authors. As Sir Guy of Warwicke, the Foure Sonnes of Aymon, the Ship of Fooles, the Budget of Demaundes, the Hundredth merry Tales, the Booke of Ryddles, and many other excellent writers both witty and pleasaunt." It has been fuggefted to me that there is no other reason than the word hundred to fuppofe this book a tranflation of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. I have now but little doubt that Boccace's Decameron was the book here alluded to. It contains juft one hundred Novels. So, in Guazzo's Civile Converfation, 1586, p. 158: "we do but give them occafion to turne over the Hundred Novelles of Boccace, and to write amorous and lafcivious, letters." REED.

The Hundred merry Tales can never have been a tranflation of Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, many of which are very tragical relations, and none of them calculated to furnish a lady with good wit. It fhould seem rather to have been a fort of jest-book. RITSON,

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