ADR. I will attend my husband, be his nurse, Diet his sickness, for it is my office, And will have no attorney but myself; And therefore let me have him home with me. It is a branch, and parcel of mine oath, Therefore depart, and leave him here with me. And ill it doth beseem your holiness, To separate the husband and the wife. ABB. Be quiet, and depart, thou shalt not have him. [Exit Abbess. Luc. Complain unto the duke of this indignity. ADR. Come, go; I will fall prostrate at his feet, And never rise until my tears and prayers Have won his grace to come in person hither, And take perforce my husband from the abbess. MER. By this, I think, the dial points at five; Anon, I am sure, the duke himself in person Comes this way to the melancholy vale; 3 The place of death and sorry execution 4, 2 -a FORMAL man again :] i. e. to bring him back to his senses, and the forms of sober behaviour. So, in Measure for Measure," informal women," for just the contrary. STEEVENS. 3 The place of DEATH-] The original copy has-depth. Mr. Rowe made the emendation. MALONE. 4 SORRY execution,] So, in Macbeth: "Of sorriest fancies your companions making." Sorry had anciently a stronger meaning than at present. Thus, in Chaucer's Prologue to the Sompnoures Tale, v. 7283, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edition : "This Frere, whan he loked had his fill 66 Upon the turments of this sory place." Behind the ditches of the abbey here. MER. To see a reverend Syracusian merchant, Who put unluckily into this bay Against the laws and statutes of this town, ANG. See, where they come; we will behold his death. Luc. Kneel to the duke, before he pass the abbey. Enter DUKE attended; ÆGEON bare-headed; with the Headsman and other Officers. If DUKE. Yet once again proclaim it publickly, any friend will pay the sum for him, He shall not die, so much we tender him. ADR. Justice, most sacred duke, against the abbess! DUKE. She is a virtuous and a reverend lady; It cannot be, that she hath done thee wrong. ADR. May it please your grace, Antipholus, my husband, Whom I made lord of me and all I had, Again, in The Knightes Tale, where the temple of Mars is described: "All full of chirking was that sory place." Again, in the ancient MS. Romance of The Sowdon of Babyloyne, &c. "It was done as the kinge cōmaunde "His soule was fet to helle "To daunse in that sory lande "With develes that wer ful felle." STEEVENS. Thus, Macbeth looking on his bloody hands after the murder of Duncan : "This is a sorry sight." HENLEY. Mr. Douce is of opinion, that sorry, in the text, is put for sorrowful. STEEVENS. The word dismal, I conceive, fully expresses what is meant by sorry here. MALONE. At your important letters,-this ill day By rushing in their houses, bearing thence 5 Whom I made lord of me and all I had, At your IMPORTANT letters,] Important seems to be used for importunate. JOHNSON. So, in Much Ado About Nothing: "If the Prince be too important, tell him there is a measure in every thing." MALONE. So, in King Lear: 66 great France "My mourning and important tears hath pitied." Again, in George Whetstone's Castle of Delight, 1576: "-yet won by importance accepted his courtesie." Shakspeare, who gives to all nations the customs of his own, seems from this passage to allude to a court of wards in Ephesus. The court of wards was always considered as a grievous oppression. It is glanced at as early as in the old morality of Hycke Scorner : 66 66 - these ryche men ben unkinde: Wydowes do curse lordes and gentyllmen, "For they contrayne them to marry with their men ; 66 Ye, wheder they wyll or no." STEEVENS. In the passage before us, Shakspeare was thinking particularly on the interest which the king had in England in the marriage of his wards, who were the heirs of his tenants holding by knight's service, or in capite, and were under age; an interest which Queen Elizabeth in Shakspeare's time exerted on all occasions, as did her successors till the abolition of the Court of Wards and Liveries; the poet attributes to the Duke the same right to choose a wife or a husband for his wards at Ephesus. MALONE. to take ORDER -] i. e. to take measures. 6 Act V: "Honest lago hath ta'en order for it." So, in Othello, STEEVens. 7 by what STRONG escape,] Though strong is not unintel He broke from those that had the guard of him : Nor send him forth, that we may bear him hence. mand, Let him be brought forth, and borne hence for help. DUKE. Long since, thy husband serv'd me in my wars; And I to thee engag'd a prince's word, When thou didst make him master of thy bed, ligible, I once suspected that we should read-strange. The two words are often confounded in the old copies. But I am now satisfied that the text is right. MALONE. A strong escape, I suppose, means an escape effected by strength or violence. STEEVENS. 8 And, with his mad attendant AND himself,] We should read: mad himself. WARBURTON. We might read: And here his mad attendant and himself. Yet, as Mr. Ritson observes, the meeting to which Adriana alludes, not having happened before the abbey, we may more properly suppose our author wrote— STEEVENS. And then his mad attendant and himself. Here we have another attempt to re-write our author's plays; but these efforts at emendation are wholly unnecessary. Though our poet has expressed himself loosely, he plainly meant to say, that Antipholus broke loose: and his mad servant and himself, being full of ire and furnished with drawn swords, they met Adriana, &c. The text, I have no doubt, is what the author intended it to be. MALONE. And bid the lady abbess come to me; Enter a Servant. SERV. O mistress, mistress, shift and save yourself? 9 My master and his man are both broke loose, Beaten the maids a-row1, and bound the doctor, Whose beard they have singed off with brands of fire 2: 9 My master and his man ARE both broke loose, BEATEN the maids-] Here our authour has fallen into a slight inaccuracy; for he should have written have instead of are in the first of these lines, which would have governed both broke and beaten. But I suspect no errour of the press. MALONE. I Beaten the maids A-ROW,] i. e. successively, one after another. So, in Chaucer's Wife of Bathes Tale, v. 6836, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edition: "A thousand time a-row he gan hire kisse." Again, in Turberville's translation of Ovid's Epistle from Penelope to Ulysses: 66 and drawes with wine "The Troian tentes arowe." Again, in Hormanni Vulgaria, p. 288: STEEVENS. "I shall tell thee arowe all that I sawe." "Ordine tibi visa omnia exponam." DOUCE. 2 Whose beard they have singed off with brands of fire ;] Such a ludicrous circumstance is not unworthy of the farce in which we find it introduced; but it is rather out of place in an epick poem, amidst all the horrors and carnage of a battle: "Obvius ambustum torrem Corinæus ab ara 66 66 Corripit, et venienti Ebuso, plagamque ferenti, Shakspeare was a great reader of Plutarch, where he might have seen this method of shaving in the Life of Dion, p. 167, 4to. See North's translation, in which panes may be trans·lated brands. S. WESTON. North gives it thus-" with a hot burning cole to burne his goodly bush of heare rounde about." STEEVens. Phaer's translation of Virgil, 1584, however, has the word which Mr. Weston was in quest of: |