Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Let not my sister read it in your eye;

Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator; Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty; Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger:

Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted;
Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint:

Be secret-false; What need she be acquainted?
What simple thief brags of his own attaint?
"Tis double wrong, to truant with your
bed,
And let her read it in thy looks at board:
Shame hath a bastard fame, well managed;
Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word.
Alas, poor women! make us but believe,
Being compact of credit3, that you love us;
Though others have the arm, show us the sleeve;
We in your motion turn, and you may move us.
Then, gentle brother, get you in again;

Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife: 'Tis holy sport, to be a little vain,

When the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife. Ant. S. Sweet mistress (what your name is else, I know not,

Nor by what wonder you do hit on mine),

Less, in your knowledge, and your grace, you show not,

Than our earth's wonder; more than earth divine. Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak; Lay open to my earthy gross conceit, Smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak,

The folded meaning of your words' deceit. Against my soul's pure truth why labour you, To make it wander in an unknown field? Are you a god? would you create me new? Transform me then, and to your power I'll yield.

2 Old copy, not. 3 i. e. being made altogether of credulity. 4 Vain is light of tongue.

[ocr errors]

But if that I am I, then well I know,
Your weeping sister is no wife of mine,
Nor to her bed no homage do I owe;

Far more, far more, to you do I decline 5. O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note, To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears; Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote :

Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs7, And as a bed I'll take thee, and there lie;

8

And, in that glorious supposition, think

He gains by death, that hath such means to die:Let love being light, be drowned if she sink 9! Luc. What, are you mad, that you do reason so? Ant. S. Not mad, but mated 10; how, I do not know.

Luc. It is a fault that springeth from your eye. Ant. S. For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by.

Luc. Gaze where you should, and that will clear your sight.

Ant. S. As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night.

5 To decline; to turne, or hang toward some place or thing." BARET.

6 Mermaid for siren.

7 So in Macbeth:

'His silver skin laced with his golden blood.'

8 The first folio reads:

'And as a bud I'll take thee, and there lie ;' Which Malone thus explains :-'I, like an insect, will take thy bosom for a rose, or other flower,' and there

"Involved in fragrance, burn and die."'

It appears to me that the context requires that we should read bed, with the second folio. Edwards proposed to read :

And as a bed I'll take them (i. e. the waves), and there lie,' &c. 9 Malone says that by love here is meant the queen of love. In Venus and Adonis, Venus, speaking of herself, says:

[ocr errors]

Love is a spirit, all compact of fire,

Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire.'

10 Mated means matched with a wife, and confounded. A quibble is intended.

Luc. Why call you me love? call my sister so.
Ant. S. Thy sister's sister.

Luc.

Ant. S.

That's my sister.

No;

It is thyself, mine own self's better part;
Mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart;
My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope's aim 11,
11,
My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim.
Luc. All this my sister is, or else should be.
Ant. S. Call thyself sister, sweet, for I aim 12 thee:
Thee will I love, and with thee lead my life;
Thou hast no husband yet, nor I no wife:
Give me thy hand.

Luc.
O, soft, sir, hold you still;
I'll fetch my sister, to get her good will. [Exit Luc.

Enter, from the House of ANTIPHOLUS of Ephesus, DROMIO of Syracuse.

Ant. S. Why, how now, Dromio? where runn'st thou so fast?

Dro. S. Do you know me, sir? am I Dromio? am I your man? am I myself?

Ant. S. Thou art Dromio, thou art my man, thou art thyself.

Dro. S. I am an ass, I am a woman's man, and -besides myself.

Ant. S. What woman's man? and how besides thyself?

Dro. S. Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a woman: one that claims me, one that haunts me, one that will have me.

11 i. e. all the happiness I wish for on earth, and all that I claim from heaven hereafter.

12 The old copy reads I am thee. The present reading is Steevens's. Others have proposed I mean thee: but aim for aim at was sometimes used; as in Drayton's Legend of Robert Duke of Normandy :

'I make my changes aim one certain end?'

Ant. S. What claim lays she to thee?

Dro. S. Marry, sir, such claim as you would lay to your horse; and she would have me as a beast: not that, I being a beast, she would have me; but that she, being a very beastly creature, lays claim

to me.

Ant. S. What is she?

Dro. S. A very reverend body; ay, such a one as a man may not speak of, without he say, sirreverence 13: I have but lean luck in the match, and yet is she a wondrous fat marriage?

Ant. S. How dost thou mean, a fat marriage? Dro. S. Marry, sir, she's the kitchen-wench, and all grease; and I know not what use to put her to, but to make a lamp of her, and run from her by her own light. I warrant, her rags, and the tallow in them, will burn a Poland winter: if she lives till doomsday, she'll burn a week longer than the whole world.

Ant. S. What complexion is she of?

Dro. S. Swart 14, like my shoe, but her face nothing like so clean kept: For why? she sweats, a man may go over shoes in the grime of it.

Ant. S. That's a fault that water will mend.

13 This is a very old corruption of save reverence, salva reverentia. See Blount's Glossography, 1682. 'To speake words of reverence before, as when we say, saving your worship, saving your reverence, and such like.' BARET.-Shakspeare has very properly put this corruption into the mouth of Dromio.

14 Swart, or swarth, i. e. dark, dusky, infuscus. Steevens says, 'black, or rather of a dark brown:' but hear Shakspeare, King Henry VI. Part I. :

It

And whereas I was black and swart before.' Malone says, Mr. Steevens's first definition is right. Swart is a Dutch word; and the Dutch call a blackamoor a swart!' is certainly a Dutch word; but it is an English word also, and unquestionably not derived from the Dutch. It runs through all the northern dialects; we have it from the Saxon sweart, or the Gothic swarts.

Dro. S. No, sir, 'tis in grain; Noah's flood could not do it.

Ant. S. What's her name?

Dro. S. Nell, sir;-but her name and three quarters, that is, an ell and three quarters, will not measure her from hip to hip 15.

Ant. S. Then she bears some breadth?

Dro. S. No longer from head to foot, than from hip to hip: she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries in her.

Ant. S. In what part of her body stands Ireland? Dro. S. Marry, sir, in her buttocks; I found it out by the bogs.

Ant. S. Where Scotland?

Dro. S. I found it by the barrenness; hard, in the palm of the hand 16.

Ant. S. Where France?

Dro. S. In her forehead; arm'd and reverted, making war against her heir 17.

Ant. S. Where England?

Dro. S. I look'd for the chalky cliffs, but I could find no whiteness in them: but I guess, it stood in her chin, by the salt rheum that ran between France and it.

15 This poor conundrum is borrowed by Massinger in The Old Law.

16 Had this play been revived after the accession of James, it is probable that this passage would have been struck out; as was 'that relative to the Scotch lord in The Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 1.

17 An equivoque,' says Theobald, 'is intended. In 1589, Henry III. of France, being stabbed, was succeeded by Henry IV. of Navarre, whom he had appointed his successor; but whose claim the states of France resisted on account of his being a protestant. This I take to be what is meant by France making war against her heir. Elizabeth had sent over the Earl of Essex with four thousand men to the assistance of Henry of Navarre, in 1591. This oblique sneer at France was therefore a compliment to the poet's royal mistress.' The other allusion is not of a nature to admit of explanation.

« AnteriorContinuar »