Occasions, noble Gloster, of some poize To answer from our home; the several messengers From hence attend despatch. Our good old friend, Lay comforts to your bosom; and bestow Your needful counsel to our business", Which craves the instant use. Enter KENT and Steward, severally. . Good dawning to thee, friend": Art of the OSWALD house?? 66 ▪ threat'ning dark-ey'd night." JOHNSON. Shakspeare uses the former of these expressions in Coriolanus, Act III.: 3 66 They would not thread the gates." STEEVENS. - of some POIZE,] i. e. of some weight or moment. So, in Othello : 66 full of poize and difficulty, "And fearful to be granted." Thus the quartos A and C. Quarto B, and the folio, have prize. MALONE. Here again both my quartos read with Mr. Malone's quarto B— prize; though poize is undoubtedly the preferable reading. 4 STEEVENS. from our home;] Not at home, but at some other place. JOHNSON.. Thus the folio. The quartos A and C read "which I lest thought it fit to answer from our home." The quarto B, “—which I best thought it fit to answer from our hand." MALONE. Both my quartos-best, and "from our hand." STEEVENS. -to our BUSINESS,] Thus the quartos. sinesses. MALONE. Folio-to our bu KENT. Ay. STEW. Where may we set our horses ? KENT. I' the mire. STEW. Pr'ythee, if thou love me, tell me. STEW. Why, then I care not for thee. KENT. If I had thee in Lipsbury pinfold, I would make thee care for me. 6 Good DAWNING to thee, friend :] Thus the folio. The quartos-Good even. Dawning is again used, in Cymbeline, as a substantive, for morning : that dawning May bare the raven's eye." It is clear, from various passages in this scene, that the morning is now just beginning to dawn, though the moon is still up, and though Kent, early in the scene, calls it still night. Towards the close of it, he wishes Gloster good morrow, as the latter goes out, and immediately after calls on the sun to shine, that he may read a letter. MALONE. We should read with the folio-" Good dawning to thee, friend." The latter end of this scene shows that it passed in the morning; for when Kent is placed in the stocks, Cornwall says, "There he shall sit till noon; " and Regan replies, "Till noon, till night: and it passed very early in the morning; for Regan tells Gloster, in the preceding page, that she had been threading dark-ey'd night to come to him. M. MASON. 7 of THE house?] So the quartos. Folio-of this house? MALONE. 8 - Lipsbury pinfold,] The allusion which seems to be contained in this line I do not understand. In the violent eruption of reproaches which bursts from Kent, in this dialogue, there are some epithets which the commentators have left unexpounded, and which I am not very able to make clear. Of a three-suited knave I know not the meaning, unless it be that he has different dresses for different occupations. Lily-livered is cowardly; whiteblooded and white-livered are still in vulgar use. An one-trunkinheriting slave, I take to be a wearer of old cast-off clothes, an inheritor of torn breeches. JOHNSON. I do not find the name of Lipsbury: it may be a cant phrase, with some corruption, taken from a place where the fines were arbitrary. Three-suited should, I believe, be third-suited, wearing clothes at the third hand. Edgar, in his pride, had three suits only. FARMER. STEW. Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not. Lipsbury pinfold may be a cant expression importing the same as Lob's Pound. So, in Massinger's Duke of Milan : 66 To marry her, and say he was the party "Found in Lob's Pound." A pinfold is a pound. Thus, in Gascoigne's Dan Bartholomew of Bathe, 1587: "In such a pin-folde were his pleasures pent." 66 Three-suited knave might mean, in an age of ostentatious finery like that of Shakspeare, one who had no greater change of raiment than three suits would furnish him with. So, in Ben Jonson's Silent Woman : wert a pitiful fellow, and hadst nothing but three suits of apparel:" or it may signify a fellow thrice-sued at law, who has three suits for debt standing out against him. A onetrunk-inheriting slave may be a term used to describe a fellow, the whole of whose possessions are confined to one coffer, and that too inherited from his father, who was no better provided, or had nothing more to bequeath to his successor in poverty; a poor rogue hereditary, as Timon calls Apemantus. A worsted-stocking knave is another reproach of the same kind. The stockings in England, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, (as I learn from Stubbs's Anatomie of Abuses, printed in 1595,) were remarkably expensive, and scarce any other kind than silk were worn, even (as this author says) by those who had not above forty shillings a year wages. So, in an old comedy, called The Hog hath Lost its Pearl, 1614, by R. Tailor: good parts are no more set by in these times, than a good leg in a woollen stocking." 66 Again, in The Captain, by Beaumont and Fletcher: "With greasy breeches, and in woollen stockings." Again, in The Miseries of inforc'd Marriage, 1607, two sober young men came to claim their portion from their elder brother, who is a spendthrift, and tell him: "Our birth-right, good brother this town craves maintenance; silk stockings must be had," &c. Silk stockings were not made in England till 1560, the second year of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Of this extravagance Drayton takes notice, in the 16th Song of his Polyolbion : "Which our plain fathers erst would have accounted sin, STEEVENS. This term of reproach also occurs in the Pheenix, by Middleton, 1607: "Mettreza Auriola keeps her love with half the cost that I am at; her friend can go afoot, like a good husband; walk in worsted stockings, and inquire for the sixpenny ordinary.” MALONE. KENT. Fellow, I know thee. STEW. What dost thou know me for? KENT. A knave; a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, threesuited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver'd, action-taking knave1; a whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical * rogue 2; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldest be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition 3. STEW. Why, what a monstrous fellow art thou, thus to rail on one, that is neither known of thee, nor knows thee? KENT. What a brazen-faced varlet art thou, to deny thou knowest me? Is it two days ago, since I tripped up thy heels, and beat thee, before the king? Draw, you rogue: for, though it be night, the moon shines; I'll make a sop o' the moonshine of you: Draw, you whoreson cullionly barbermonger, draw. [Drawing his Sword. * Quartos omit superserviceable, and read superfinical. 9-hundred-pound,] A hundred-pound gentleman is a term of reproach used in Middleton's Phoenix, 1607. STEEVENS. I -action-taking knave:] i. e. a fellow, who, if you beat him, would bring an action for the assault, instead of resenting it like a man of courage. M. MASON. 2 a whoreson, GLASS-GAZING,-rogue ;] This epithet none of the commentators have explained; nor am I sure that I understand it. In Timon of Athens, "the glass-fac'd flatterer" is mentioned, that is, says Dr. Johnson, "he that shows in his own look, as by reflection, the looks of his patron." Glass-gazing may be licentiously used for one enamoured of himself; who gazes often at his own person in a glass. MALONE. 3 - addition.] i. e. titles. The Statute 1 Hen. V. ch. 5, which directs that in certain writs a description should be added to the name of the defendant, expressive of his estate, mystery, degree, &c. is called the statute of Additions. MALONE. 4 - I'll make a sop o' the moonshine of you:] This is equiva STEW. Away, I have nothing to do with thee. KENT. Draw, you rascal: you come with letters against the king; and take vanity the puppet's part, lent to our modern phrase of making the sun shine through anyone. But, alluding to the natural philosophy of that time, it is obscure. The Peripateticks thought, though falsely, that the rays of the moon were cold and moist. The speaker therefore says, he would make a sop of his antagonist, which should absorb the humidity of the moon's rays, by letting them into his guts. For this reason Shakspeare, in Romeo and Juliet, says: 66 the moonshine's watry beams." And, in A Midsummer Night's Dream : "Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watry moon." WARBURTON. I much question if our author had so deep a meaning as is here imputed to him by his more erudite commentator. STEEVENS. "I'll make a sop o' the MOONSHINE of you." Perhaps here an equivoque was intended. In The Old Shepherd's Kalendar, among the dishes recommended for Prymetyne, "One is egges in moneshine." FARMER. Again, in some verses within a letter of Howell's to Sir Thomas How: "Could I those whitely stars go nigh, STEEVENS. I suppose he means, that after having beaten the Steward sufficiently, and made his flesh as soft as moistened bread, he will lay him flat on the ground, like a sop in a pan, or a tankard. So, in Troilus and Cressida : "And make a sop of all this solid globe." MALone. -barber-monger,] Of this word I do not clearly see the force. JOHNSON, 5 Barber-monger may mean, dealer in the lower tradesmen: a slur upon the steward, as taking fees for a recommendation to the business of the family. FARMER. Barber-monger perhaps means one who consorts much with barbers. MALONE. A barber-monger; i. e. a fop who deals much with barbers, to adjust his hair and beard. M. MASON. 6-vanity the puppet's part,] Alluding to the mysteries or allegorical shows, in which vanity, iniquity, and other vices, were personified. JOHNSON. So, in Volpone, or the Fox : "Get you a cittern, Lady Vanity." STEEVENS. |