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NOTES.

Act I. Scene I.

1. music...food of love.

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Mr. Wright quotes Antony, ii. 5. 1—
Music, moody food

Of us that trade in love".

2. surfeiting; the intransitive form is now used less frequently than the passive 'to be surfeited'.

4. dying fall, i.e. it sank softly to silence: so Pope (Ode on St. Cecilia's Day)

"The strains decay

And melt away

In

a dying, dying fall".

5. sweet sound, &c. Pope being of opinion that a 'sound' does not 'breathe', substituted 'south' south-wind. The change is wholly needless; and is open to the additional objection that the south wind in Shakespeare is always referred to as very unpleasant. 9. quick, volatile'. So, Julius Caesar, i. 2. 29, “that quick spirit that is in Antony".

10. That. Where we should say 'so that', 'seeing that', and the like, Shakespeare often uses 'that' alone. Abbott, Sh. Gr. 284, &c.

12. validity, 'value'.

12. pitch, 'high worth'. Pitch as a technical term in falconry meant the highest point to which the falcon rose: so being a test of the bird's worth.

14. fancy, i.e. 'love'. me where is fancy bred".

So often, e.g. Merchant, iii. 2. 63, "Tell

15. alone; i.e. 'past comparison'. Cf. Antony, iv. 6. 30, “I am alone the villain of the earth".

16. go hunt. 'Hunt' is infinitive. The old infinitive form had the suffix -en, and, as this gradually dropped out of use, 'to' before the word took its place. After some verbs which we classify as 'auxiliary' it has never been reckoned necessary to use 'to', and with some we can still use it or not, as we choose. In Shakespeare's day this class of doubtful verbs was much larger; so that we have "ought not walk" (Julius Caesar, i. I. 3), and, on the other hand, "I had rather hear you to solicit that" (iii. 1. 120); and at v. i. 364— "let no quarrel nor no brawl to come

Taint the condition of this present hour",

we have 'to' inserted where we should omit it, and omitted where we should usually insert it.

17. hart. Shakespeare makes his characters play upon their words in their most serious moments. So Antony, mourning over Caesar, makes this same pun (Julius Caesar, iii. 1. 207)—

"O world, thou wast the forest to this hart,

And this, O world, the very heart of thee";

and Rosalind, in a lighter mood (As You Like It, iii. 2. 260)— 'Cel. He was furnished like a hunter.

Ros. Oh, ominous! he comes to kill my heart".

19. The Duke in this passage compares himself to Actaeon, who, having beheld Artemis and her attendants bathing, was turned into a stag, and devoured by his own hounds. The idea of the lover as

an Actaeon, torn by the desires which should be under his own control, suffering for the beautiful vision he has seen, occurs frequently in the Elizabethans.

22. fell, fierce'.

23. pursue me.

23. How now.

After 'since' we should say 'have pursued me'.

For the metre, see App. B, § 3 (iv.).

24. so please, for if it so please', or 'may it so please', is a very frequent form of ellipse.

26. element, the air or sky. The universe was supposed to be composed of the four 'elements'-air, earth, water, fire: and the word is used specially of air, cf. Julius Caesar, i. 3. 128

"the complexion of the element

In favour's like the work we have in hand ".

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27. seven years' heat, the heat of seven years, seven summers'. The Folios read years instead of years', and several commentators regard heat as a participle-heated, referring to 'the element'. Cf. King John, iv. 1. 61, "The iron of itself, though heat red-hot" This formation of the participle is common with verbs ending in t, d, te, de (cf. the list in Abbott, 342); but the text as here given and rendered is preferable in itself; while the omission of the apostrophe by the printers is an obviously easy slip.

32. remembrance. Scanned as four syllables, 'rememb(e)rance': a vowel sound often being inserted between a liquid and another consonant. So in i. 2. 21, "The like of him. Know'st thou this count(e)ry". See App. B, § 6 (iv.).

33, 34. that fine frame To pay. 'That' and 'such' are often interchanged in Shakespeare, and the omission of 'as' is common. Abbott, 277.

35. golden shaft, Cupid's love-shaft. It was fabled that Cupid had a golden arrow, creating love, and a leaden one, preventing it.

37. liver, brain and heart: these were regarded as the three supreme organs of the body, through which the soul acts. These, says Steevens, "are admitted in poetry as the residence of passions, judgement, and sentiments".

38, 39. and fill'd Her sweet perfections: 'and her sweet perfections are filled'.

39. perfections, a quadrisyllable. See App. B, § 6 (ii.).

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1, 2. I should prefer printing these two lines and reading them as one; referring to App. B, § 5 (i).

2, 4. Illyria... Elysium. See note on i. 17, 'hart'.

5, 6. perchance. Note the play on the two meanings of 'perhaps' and 'by chance'.

7. This may be scanned as coming under § 3 (iv.) of App. B, or 'brother' may be treated as a monosyllable, as under § 6 (vii.).

10. those poor number. 'Number' may be treated as a noun of multitude, by analogy, though this is unusual. Otherwise we must alter the text reading 'numbers'. The printer's error in this case would be accounted for by the next word beginning with s. Malone reads 'this' for 'those'.

15. Arion-Ff. Orion-an obvious slip. Allusions to classical tales are very frequent throughout the Elizabethans, and cannot be cited as showing an author's acquaintance with Greek or even Latin originals. The tale ran that Arion, a Greek musician, was voyaging from Sicily to Corinth; when the sailors resolved to murder him for his wealth. He leaped into the sea, whereupon a dolphin which had been charmed by his music, bore him safe to land.-Observe that Shakespeare makes a sea captain quote Arion as readily as the Duke quotes Actaeon.

17, 18. These lines fall under the same metrical rule as 1 and 2. 19-21. Line 20 is a parenthesis, qualifying the word 'hope'. The like a like escape for him'.

21. country scanned as a trisyllable. Cf. i. 32, note, and App. B, § 6 (iv.).

22. bred and born: it is curious that this inversion of the order of events has become stereotyped.

35. What's she? We should say 'who', or 'what kind of person is she?' Shakespeare often uses 'what' in this way. Cf. 5. 124, "What is he at the gate?"

40, 41. Ff. read the sight And company. The transposition which gives the proper sense and order, and makes the metre correct, is due to Hanmer.

42. delivered, 'made known'. deliver myself your loyal servant

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Cf. Coriolanus, v. 6. 41, “I'll

43, 44. mellow What my estate is. So the Ff. 'Till I had made my opportunities ripen my present state'. 'Mellow' is a verb. The Globe puts a comma after mellow, rendering 'till I had made my opportunities ripe (for revealing the facts) in regard to my true posi tion'. But this seems distinctly clumsier than the Folio reading.

48. though that. As words like 'when', 'where', 'how', originally interrogatives, came to be used as relatives, 'that' was frequently attached to them; and by analogy to 'if', 'though', &c. Cf. 5. 324, "If that the youth will come this way to-morrow"; and see Abbott, Sh. Gr. 287, 288.

51. character, outward signs of inward qualities. So twice in Coriolanus; but generally in Shakespeare of written marks.

53. Conceal me what I am. In the ordinary form, 'conceal what I am', the clause is the object of the verb: but the insertion of the redundant object is common. So we have at i. 5. 269, "I see you what you are, you are too proud". In the present passage, however, me' may equally well be regarded as a dative (ethic dative), as in iii. 2. 35, "Why, then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of valour". The same alternative explanation is to be found at v. I. 123, "But hear me this ".

55. I'll serve this duke. Johnson thought Viola deliberately designed to make the Duke fall in love with her. Malone supposed that Shakespeare had the story of Duke Apolonius in his mind (see Introduction), and that we are to suppose Viola was already in love with the Duke, at which he takes lines 28 and 29 to be a hint. This seems very needless. Viola felt that she had better take service with some one, and since Olivia-whom she would have preferredis out of the question, and she sees a way of getting at the Duke instead, she promptly takes the way.

59. aliow, commonly acknowledge'; here cause to be acknowledged'; see Glossary.

Scene 3.

1. a plague. It is difficult to know the original form of an interjectional expression. 'In the [plague's] name' is the probable origin of this and similar phrases. The end of the phrase is dropped when the emphatic word has been said, and 'in the' becomes either 'a'in, or 'the', alone.

3. troth, 'faith'.

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