If I were a woman,3 I would kifs as many of you as had beards that pleas'd me, complexions that lik❜d me, and breaths that I defy'd not:' and, I am sure, as many as have good beards, or good faces, or fweet

bear to men, to approve of as much of this play as affords you entertainment; and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women, [not to fet an example to, but] to follow or agree in opinion with the ladies; that between you both the play may be fuccefsful." The words "to follow, or agree in opinion with, the ladies" are not indeed expressed, but plainly implied in those fubfequent; that, between you and the women, the play may pleafe." In the epilogue to King Henry IV. P. II. the address to the audience proceeds in the fame order: "All the gentlewomen here have forgiven [i. e. are favourable to] me; if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never feen before in fuch an affembly."

The old copy reads-as please you. The correction was made by Mr. Rowe.

Like all my predeceffors, I had here adopted an alteration made by Mr. Rowe, of which the reader was apprized in the note; but the old copy is certainly right, and fuch was the phrafeology of Shakspeare's age. So, in K. Richard III :

"Where every horfe bears his commanding rein,
"And may direct his courfe, as please himself."

Again, in Hamlet:

a pipe for fortune's finger,

"To found what ftop the please."

Again, in K. Henry VIII:

"All men's honours

"Lie like one lump before him, to be fashion'd
"Into what pitch he pleafe." MALONE.

I read and fo I charge you, O men," &c. This trivial addition, (as Dr. Farmer joins with me in thinking,) clears the whole paffage. STEEVENS.

3 If I were a woman,] Note, that in this author's time, the parts of women were always performed by men or boys.

4

HANMER.

complexions that liked me,] i. e. that I liked. So again in Hamlet: "This likes me well." STEEVENS.

5

breaths that I defy'd not:] This paffage ferves to manifeft the indelicacy of the time in which the plays of Shakspeare

breaths, will, for my kind offer, when I make curt'fy, bid me farewell.

[Exeunt.

were written. Such an idea, ftarted by a modern dramatist, and put into the mouth of a female character, would be hooted with indignation from the ftage. STEEVENS.

6 Of this play the fable is wild and pleafing. I know not how the ladies will approve the facility with which both Rofalind and Celia give away their hearts, To Celia much may be forgiven for the heroifm of her friendship. The character of Jaques is natural and well preferved. The comick dialogue is very fprightly, with lefs mixture of low buffoonery than in fome other plays; and the graver part is elegant and harmonious. By haftening to the end of his work, Shakspeare fuppreffed the dialogue between the ufurper and the hermit, and loft an opportunity of exhibiting a moral leffon in which he might have found matter worthy of his highest powers. JOHNSON.

See p. 28. Is but a quintaine, &c.] Dr. Warburton's explana tion would, I think, have been lefs exceptionable, had it been more fimple yet he is here charged with a fault of which he is feldom guilty, want of refinement. "This (fays Mr. Guthrie) is but an imperfect (to call it no worfe) explanation of a beautiful paffage. The quintaine was not the object of the darts and arms; it was a stake, driven into a field, upon which were hung a shield and trophies of war, at which they fhot, darted, or rode with a lance. When the shield and trophies were all thrown down, the quintaine remained. Without this information, how could the reader underftand the allufion of

In the prefent edition I have avoided as much as poffible all kind of controverfy; but in thofe cafes where errors by having been long adopted are become inveterate, it becomes in fome measure neceffary to the enforcement of truth.

It is a common but a very dangerous mistake, to fuppose, that the interpretation which gives molt fpirit to a paffage is the true one. In confequence of this notion two paffages of our author, one in Macbeth, and another in Othello, have been refined, as I conceive, into a meaning that I believe was not in his thoughts. If the moft fpirited interpretation that can be imagined, happens to be inconfiftent with his general manner, and the phrafeology both of him and his contemporaries, or to be founded on a custom

which did not exift in his age, moft affuredly it is a falfe interpretation. Of the latter kind is Mr. Guthrie's explanation of the paffage before us.

The military exercife of the quintaine is as ancient as the time of the Romans; and we find from Matthew Paris, that it fubfifted in England in the thirteenth century. Tentoria variis ornamentorum generibus venuftantur; terræ infixis fudibus fcuta apponuntur, quibus in craftinum quintanæ ludus, fcilicet equeftris, exerceretur. M. Paris, ad ann. 1253. These probably were the very words that Mr. Guthrie had in contemplation. But Matthew Paris made no part of Shakspeare's library; nor is it at all material to our prefent point what were the cuftoms of any century preceding that in which he lived. In his time, without any doubt, the quintaine was not a military exercife of tilting, but a mere ruftic fport. So Minfheu, in his DICT. 1617: "A quintaine or quintelle, a game in request at marriages, when Jac and Tom, Dic, Hob and Will, ftrive for the gay garland." So alfo, Randolph at somewhat a later period [Poems, 1642]:

"Foot-ball with us may be with them [the Spaniards] bal

loone;

"As they at tilts, so we at quintaine runne;
"And thofe old paftimes relish beft with me,

"That have leaft art, and moft fimplicitie."

But old Stowe has put this matter beyond a doubt; for in his SURVEY OF LONDON, printed only two years before this play appeared, he has given us the figure of a quintaine, as represented in the margin.

"I have feen (fays he) a quinten set up on Cornehill, by the Leaden Hall, where the attendants on the lords of merry difports have runne, and made greate paftime; for hee that hit not the broad end of the quinten was of all men laughed to fcorne; and hee that hit it full, if he rid not the faster, had a found blow in his necke with a bagge full of fand hanged on the other end." Here

we fee were no fhields hung, no trophies of war to be thrown down. "The great defign of the fport, (fays Dr. Plott in his Hiftory of Oxfordshire) is to try both man and horfe, and to break the board; which whoever does, is for the time Princeps juventutis." -Shakspeare's fimiles feldom correfpond on both fides. My better parts being all thrown down, my youthful fpirit being fubdued by the power of beauty, I am now (fays Orlando) as inanimate as a wooden quintaine is (not when its better parts are thrown down, but as that lifelefs block is at all times).' Such, perhaps, is the meaning. If however the words "better parts," are to be applied

to the quintaine, as well as to the fpeaker, the board abovementioned, and not any field or trophy, muft have been alluded

to.

Our author has in Macbeth ufed " my better part manly Spirit:

"Accurfed be the tongue that tells me fo,
"For it has cow'd my better part of man.'

of man" for

MALONE.

The explanations of this paffage, as well as the accounts of the quintain, are by no means fatisfactory; nor have the labours of the critic or the antiquary been exhaufted. The whole of Orlando's fpeech fhould feem to refer to the quintain, but not to fuch a one as has been described in any of the preceding notes. Mr. Guthrie is accused of having borrowed his account from Matthew Paris, an author with whom, as it has been already obferved, Shakspeare was undoubtedly not acquainted; but this charge is erroneous, for no fuch paffage as that above cited is to be found in M. Paris. This writer does indeed speak of the quintain under the year 1253, but in very different words. Eodem tempore juvenes Londinenfes ftatuto pavone pro bravio ad ftadium quod quintena vulgariter dicitur, vires proprias & equorum curfus funt experti. He then proceeds to ftate that fome of the King's pages, and others belonging to the houfhold, being offended at thefe fports, abused the Londoners with foul language, calling them fcurvy clowns and greasy rafcals, and ventured to difpute the prize with them; the confequence of which was, that the Londoners received them very briskly, and fo belaboured their backs with the broken lances, that they were either put to flight, or tumbled from their horfes and moft terribly bruifed. They afterwards went before the King, the tears ftill trickling from their eyes, and complained of their treatment, befeeching that he would not fuffer fo great an offence to remain unpunished; and the King, with his ufual fpirit of revenge, extorted from the citizens a very large fine. So far M. Paris; but Mr. Malone has through fome mistake cited Robertus Monachus, who wrote before M. Paris, and has left an extremely curious account of the Crufades. He is defcribing the arrival of fome meffengers from Babylon, who, upon entering the Christian camp, find to their great aftonishment (for they had heard that the Christians were perishing with fear and hunger) the tents curiously ornamented, and the young men practifing themselves and their horfes in tilting against fhields hung upon poles. In the oldeft edition of this writer, inftead of “ quintane ludus," it is "ludus equeftris." However, this is certainly not the quintain that is here wanted, and therefore Mr. Malone has fubftituted another, copied indeed from a contemporary writer, but ftill not illustrative of the paffage in question. I fhall beg leave then to prefent the reader N

VOL. VI.

with fome others, from which it will appear, that the quintain was a military exercife in Shakspeare's time, and not a mere ruftic fport, as Mr. Malone imagines.

1

3

No. 1. is copied from an initial letter in an Italian book, printed in 1560. Here is the figure of a man placed upon the trunk of a tree, holding in one hand a fhield, in the other a bag of fand. No. z. is the Saracen quintain from Pluvinel' inftruction du Roi Louis XIII. dans l'exorcife de monter à cheval. This fort of quintain, according to Meneftrier, was invented by the Germans, who, from their frequent wars with the Turks, accustomed their foldiers to point their lances against the figure of their enemy. The fkill confifted in fhivering the lance to pieces, by ftriking it against the head of the man, for if it touched the fhield, the figure turned round and generally ftruck the horseman a violent blow with his fword. No. 3. is the Flemish quintain, copied from a print after Wouvermans; it is called La bague Flamande, from the ring which the figure holds in his right hand; and here the object was to take away the ring with the point of the lance, for if it ftruck any other part, the man turned round and hit the rider with his fand-bag. This is a mixture of the quintain and running at the ring, which two sports have been fome how or other in like manner confounded by the Italians, who fometimes exprefs the running