Volume Viii Part 99 (1/2)

[97] Old copy, _Hope_.

[98] Old copy, _as this, like_.

[99] Old copy, _Will_.

[100] The ”shepherd that now sleeps in skies” is Sir Philip Sidney, and the line, with a slight inversion for the sake of the rhyme, is taken from a sonnet in ”Astrophel and Stella,” appended to the ”Arcadia”--

”Because I breathe not love to every one, Nor do I use set colours for to wear, Nor nourish special locks of vowed hair, Nor give each speech a full point of a groan, The courtly nymphs, acquainted with the moan Of them who in their lips love's standard bear, 'What he?' say they of me, 'now I dare swear He cannot love: no, no; let him alone.'

And think so still, so Stella know my mind: Profess, indeed, I do not Cupid's art; But you, fair maids, at length this true shall find, That his right badge is but worn in the heart.

Dumb swans, not chattering pies, do lovers prove: They love indeed who quake to say they love.”

--P. 537, edit. 1598.

It may be worth a remark that the two last lines are quoted with a difference in ”England's Parna.s.sus,” 1600, p. 191--

”Dumb swans, not chattering pies, do lovers prove; They love indeed who _dare not say_ they love.”

In the quarto copy of Nash's play the word _swains_ is misprinted for _swans_. The introduction to the pa.s.sage would have afforded Mr Malone another instance, had he wanted one, that shepherd and poet were used almost as synonymes by Shakespeare's contemporaries.

[101] Perhaps we ought to read _feign_ instead of _frame_; but _frame_ is very intelligible, and it has therefore not been altered.

[102] The quarto gives this line thus--

”Of secrets more desirous _or_ than men,”

which is decidedly an error of the press.

[103] [Old copy, every.]

[104] [Old copy, true h.e.l.l.]

[105] See act i. sc. 3 of ”Macbeth”--

2D WITCH. I'll give thee a wind.

1ST WITCH. Thou art kind.

3D WITCH. And I another.

From the pa.s.sage in Nash's play, it seems that Irish and Danish witches could sell winds: Macbeth's witches were Scotish.

[106] [Old copy, _party_.]

[107] [Old copy, _Form'd_.]

[108] As usual, Nash has here misquoted, or the printer has omitted a word. Virgil's line is--

”_Fama malum, quo non aliud velocius ullum_.”

--”Aeneid,” iv. 174.