SEB. Ay, or very falsely pocket up his report. GON. Methinks, our garments are now as fresh as when we put them on first in Africk, at the marriage of the king's fair daughter Claribel to the king of Tunis. SEB. "Twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper well in our return. ADR. Tunis was never graced before with such a paragon to their queen. GON. Not since widow Dido's time. ANT. Widow? a pox o' that! How came that widow in? Widow Dido 4! SEB. What if he had said, widower Æneas too? good lord, how you take it! ADR. Widow Dido, said you? you make me study of that: She was of Carthage, not of Tunis. GON. This Tunis, sir, was Carthage. ADR. Carthage? GON. I assure you, Carthage. ANT. His word is more than the miraculous harp'. SEB. He hath rais'd the wall, and houses too. ANT. What impossible matter will he make easy next? SEB. I think he will carry this island home in his pocket, and give it his son for an apple. ANT. And, sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring forth more islands. 3 - Claribel-] Shakspeare might have found this name in the bl. 1. History of George Lord Fauconbridge, a pamphlet that he probably read when he was writing King John. CLARIBEL is there the concubine of King Richard I. and the mother of Lord Falconbridge. MALONE. -Widow Dido!] The name of a widow brings to their minds their own shipwreck, which they consider as having made many widows in Naples. JOHNSON. 5-the miraculous harp.] Alluding to the wonders of Amphion's music. STEEVENS. GON. Ay? ANT. Why, in good time. GON. Sir, we were talking, that our garments seem now as fresh, as when we were at Tunis at the marriage of your daughter, who is now queen. ANT. And the rarest that e'er came there. SEB. 'Bate, I beseech you, widow Dido. ANT. O, widow Dido; ay, widow Dido. GON. Is not, sir, my doublet as fresh as the first day I wore it? I mean, in a sort. ANT. That sort was well fish'd for. GON. When I wore it at your daughter's mar riage? ALON. You cram these words into mine ears, against 6 The stomach of my sense: Would I had never Married my daughter there! for, coming thence, My son is lost; and, in my rate, she too, Who is so far from Italy remov'd, I ne'er again shall see her. O thou mine heir FRAN. Sir, he may live I saw him beat the surges under him, And ride upon their backs; he trod the water, The surge most swoln that met him: his bold head 'Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oar'd Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke To the shore, that o'er his wave-worn basis bow'd, 6 The stomach of my SENSE :] By sense, I believe, is meant both reason and natural affection. So, in Measure for Measure : "Against all sense do you impórtune her." Mr. M. Mason, however, supposes 66 feeling." STEEVens. sense, in this place, means ALON. No, no, he's gone. SEB. Sir, you may thank yourself for this great loss That would not bless our Europe with your daughter, But rather lose her to an African; Where she, at least, is banish'd from your eye, ALON. Pr'ythee, peace. SEB. You were kneel'd to, and impórtun'd other wise By all of us; and the fair soul herself Weigh'd, between lothness and obedience, at Which end o' the beam she'd bow". We have lost your son, I fear, for ever: Milan and Naples have More widows in them of this business' making, Than we bring men to comfort them: the fault's Your own. ALON. So is the dearest of the loss. 7 WEIGH'D, between lothness and obedience, at Which end o' the beam SHE'D bow,] Weigh'd means deliberated. It is used in nearly the same sense in Love's Labour's Lost, and in Hamlet. The old copy reads-should bow. Should was probably an abbreviation of she would, the mark of elision being inadvertently omitted [sh'ould]. Thus he has is frequently exhibited in the first folio-h'as. Mr. Pope corrected the passage thus: "at which end the beam should bow." But omission of any word in the old copy, without substituting another in its place, is seldom safe, except in those instances where the repeated word appears to have been caught by the compositor's eye glancing on the line above, or below, or where a word is printed twice in the same line. MALONE. Than we bring men to comfort them:] It does not clearly appear whether the king and these lords thought the ship lost. This passage seems to imply, that they were themselves confident of returning, but imagined part of the fleet destroyed. Why, indeed, should Sebastian plot against his brother in the following scene, unless he knew how to find the kingdom which he was to inherit? JOHNSON. GON. My lord Sebastian, The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness, SEB. ANT. And most chirurgeonly. Very well. GON. It is foul weather in us all, good sir, When you are cloudy. SEB. ANT. Foul weather? Very foul. GON. Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,— SEB. Execute all things: for no kind of traffick 9 for NO KIND OF TRAFFICK Would I admit; NO NAME OF MAGISTRATE, &c.] Our author has here closely followed a passage in Montaigne's Essaies, translated by John Florio, fol. 1603:"It is a nation (would I answer Plato) that hath no kind of trafficke, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politic superioritie; no use of service, of riches, or of povertie, no contracts, no successions, no partitions, no occupation, but idle; no respect of kindred but common; no apparel but natural; no use of wine, corne, or metal The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulations, covetousness, envie, detraction and pardon, were never heard amongst them."-This passage was pointed out by Mr. Capell, who knew so little of his author as to suppose that Shakspeare had the original French before him, though he has almost literally followed Florio's translation. Montaigne is here speaking of a newly discovered country, which he calls "Antartick France." In the page preceding that already quoted, are these words: "The other testimonie of antiquitie to which some will refer the discoverie is in Aristotle (if at least that little book of unheard-of wonders be his) where he reporteth that certain Carthaginians having sailed athwart the Atlanticke sea, without the strait of Gibraltar, discovered a great Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, fertil island, all replenished with goodly woods, and deepe rivers, farre distant from any land." Whoever shall take the trouble to turn to the old translation here quoted, will, I think, be of opinion, that in whatsoever novel our author might have found the fable of The Tempest, he was led by the perusal of this book to make the scene of it an unfrequented island. The title of the chapter, which is—“ Of the Caniballes,"-evidently furnished him with the name of one of his characters. In his time almost every proper name was twisted into an anagram, Thus,-" I moyl in law," was the anagram of the laborious William Noy, Attorney General to Charles I. By inverting this process, and transposing the letters of the word Canibal, Shakspeare (as Dr. Farmer long since observed) formed the name of Caliban. MALONE. 1 And use of service, none; contract, succession, Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none :] The defective metre of the second of these lines affords a ground for believing that some word was omitted at the press. Many of the defects however in our author's metre have arisen from the words of one line being transferred to another. In the present instance the preceding line is redundant. Perhaps the words here, as in many other passages, have been shuffled out of their places. We might read "And use of service, none; succession, "Contract, bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none."] -succession being often used by Shakspeare as a quadrisyllable. It must however be owned, that in the passage in Montaigne's Essays the words contract and succession are arranged in the same manner as in the first folio. MALONE. "Letters should not be known; no use of service, "Of riches or of poverty; no contracts, "Successions; bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none:" The words already quoted from Florio's Translation (as Dr. Farmer observes to me) instruct us to regulate our author's metre as it is exhibited in my text. Probably Shakspeare first wrote (in the room of partition, which did not suit the structure of his verse) bourn; but recollecting that one of its significations was a rivulet, and that his island would have fared ill without fresh water, he changed bourn to bound of land, a phrase that could not be misunderstood. At the same time he might have forgot to strike out bourn, his original word, which is now rejected; for if not used for a brook, |