I suspect we should read-from Mantua, whence the pedant himself came, and which he would natur ally name, supposing he forgot, as might well happen, that the real Vincentio was of Pisa. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Padua and Verona occur in two different scenes, instead of Milan. MALONE.

P. go, 1.6.and a copatain hat!] Is, I believe, a hat with a conical crown, such as was anciently worn by well-dressed men. JOHNSON.

This kind of hat is twice mentioned by Gascoigne.

In Stubb's Anatomie of Abuses, printed 1595, there is an entire chapter on the hattes of Eng land," beginni thus:

..Sometimes they use them sharpe on the crowne, pearking up like the speare or shaft of a steeple, standing a quarter of a yard above the crowne of their heads, etc. STEEVENS.

P. 81, 1. 2. coney-catch'd in this business; ] i. e. deceived, cheated. STEEVENS.

P. 81, 1. 23. While counterfeit supposes blear'd thine eyne.] The

modern editors read supposers, but wrongly. This is a plain allusion to Gascoigne's comedy entitled Supposes, from which several of the incidents in this play are borrowed. TYRWHITT.

This is highly probable; but yet supposes is a word often used in its common sense, which, on the present occasion is sufficiently commodious. It appears likewise from the Preface to Greene's Metamorphosis, that supposes was a game of some kind. After supposes, and such ordinary sports, were past, they fell to prattle, etc.

To blear the eye, was an ancient phrase sig nifying to deceive. STEEVENS.

P. 81, 1. 24. Here's packing, i. e. plotting, underhand contrivance. STEEVENS.

P. 82, 1. 11. My cake is dough: This is a proverbial expression which also occurs in the old interlude of Tom Tyler and his Wife:

Alas poor Tom, his cake is dough."

STEEVENS.

It was generally used when any project miscarried.
MALONE.

Rather when any disappointment was sustained, contrary to every appearance or expectation. Howell in one of his letters, mentioning the birth of Lewis the Fourteenth, says The Queen is delivered of a Dauphin, the wonderfullest thing of this kind that any story can parallel, for this the three-andtwentieth year since she was married, and hath continued childless all this while. So that now Monsieur's cake is dough." REED.

P. 83, 1. 5. A banquet, or (as it is called in some of our old books) an afterpast, was a slight refection, like our modern desert, consisting of cakes, sweet-meats, and fruit. STEEVENS.

P. 83, 1. 14. 15.

Hortensio fears his widow. Wid. Then never trust me if I be afeared.] To fear, as has been already observed, meant in our author's time both to dread, and to intimidate. The widow understands the word in the latter sense; and Petruchio tells her, he used it in the former. MALONE.

P. 83, last 1.

A hundred marks, my Kate does put her down. This

passage will be best explained by another, in Much ado about Nothing: Lady, you have put him down.- So I would not he should do me, my Lord, lest I should prove the mother of fools" STEEVENS.

P. 84, 1. 23. swift-] besides the original sense of speedy in motion, signified witty, quick-witted. So, in As you Like it, the Duke says of the Clown, He is very swift and sententious." Quick is now used in almost the same sense as nimble was in the age after that of our author. Heylin says of Hales, than he had known Laud for a nimble disputant. JOHNSON.

P. 8, 1. 27. A gird is a sarcasm a gibe.

STEEVENS.

P. 87, 1. 9. Hath cost me an hundred crownsOld copy-five hundred. Corrected by Mr. Pope. In the MS. from which our author's plays were printed, probably numbers were always expressed in figures, which has been the occasion of many mistakes in the early editions. MALONE.

P. 89, 1. 14.

our soft conditions,] The gentle qualities of our minds. MALONE.

P. 88, 1. 23. Then vail your stomachs,] i. e. abate your pride, your spirit. STEEVENS.

P. 88, last 1. We three are married, but you two are sped,] i. e. the fate of you both is decided; for you have wives who exhibit early proofs of disobedience. STEEVENS. P. 89, first 1. 'Twas I won the wager, though you hit the white;] To hit the white is a phrase borrowed from archery: the mark was commonly white. Here it alludes to the name Bianca, or white. JOHNSON,

The following are the observations of Dr. Hurd on the Induction to this comedy. They are taken from his Notes on the Epistle to Augustus: The Induction, as Shakspeare calls it, to The Taming of the Shrew, deserves for the excellence of its moral

design and beauty of execution, throughout, to be set in a just light.

This Prologue sets before us the picture of a poor drunken beggar, advanced, for a short season, into the proud rank of nobility. And the humour of the scene is taken to consist in the surprise and aukward deportment of Sly, in this his strange and unwonted situation. But the poet had a further design, and more worthy his genius, than this farcical pleasantry. He would expose, under cover of this mimic fiction, the truly ridiculous figure of men of rank and quality, when they employ their great advantages of place and fortune, to no better purposes, than the soft and selfish gratification of their own intemperate passions: Of those, who take the mighty privilege of descent and wealth to live in the freer indulgence of those pleasures, which the beggar as fully enjoys, and with infinitely more propriety and consistency of character, than their Lordships.

To give a poignance to his satire, the poet makes a man of quality himself, just returned from the chace, with all his mind intent upon his pleasures, contrive this metamorphosis of the beggar, in the way of sport and derision only; not considering, how severely the jest was going to turn upon himself. His first reflections, on seeing this brutal drunkard, are excellent:

O! monstrous beast! how like a swine he

lies!

Grim death! how foul and loathsome is

thy image!"

The offence is taken at human nature, degraded into bestiality; and at a state of stupid insensibility, the image of death. Nothing can be juster, than this representation. For these lordly sensualists have

a very nice and fastidious abhorrence of such ignoble brutality. And what alarms their fears with the prospect of death, cannot choose but present a fol and loathsome image. It is, also, said in perfect consistency with the true Epicurean character, as given by these, who understood it best, and which is, here, sustained by this noble disciple. For, though these great masters of wisdom made pleasure the supreme good, yet, they were among the first, as we are told, to cry out against the Asotos; meaning such gross sensualists, qui in mensam vomunt et qui de conviviis auferuntur, crudique postridie se rursus ingurgitant.” But as for the mundos, elegantes, optumis cocis, pistoribus, piscatu, aucupio, venatione, his omnibus exquisitis, vitantes cruditatem," these they complimented with the name of beatos and sapientes. [Cic. de Fin. lib. ii. g.]

And then, though their philosophy promised an exemption from the terrors of death, pet the boasted exemption consisted only in a trick of keeping it out of the memory by continual dissipation; so that when accident forced it upon them, they could not help, on all occasions, expressing the most dreadful apprehensions of it.

However, this transient gloom is soon succeeded by gayer prospects. My lord bethinks himself to

raise a little diversion out of this adventure:

Sirs, I will practise on this drunken man:" And, so, proposes to have him conveyed to bed, and blessed with all those regalements of costly luxury; in wich a selfish opulence is wont to find its supreme happiness.

...The project is carried into execution. And now the jest begins. Sly, awakening from his drunken nap, calls out as usual for a cup of ale. On which the lord, very characteristically, and (taking the