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>^^}^v 



f^d^<^l 



A NEW VARIORUM EDITION 



OK 



Shakespeare 



EDITED BY 

HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 

HON. PH.D. (HALLB), L. H. D. (COLUMB.), LL.D. (PBNN. BT HARV.) 

HONORARY MEMBER OF THE ' UBUTSCHB SHAKBSPBARB-GBSELLSCHAFT ' OP WEIMAR 

MEMBER OP THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIRTY 

FELLOW OP THE AMERICAN ACAOBMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 



VOL. xr 



The Winters Tale 



PHILADELPHIA 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
LONDON: 6 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 

1898 




K*^lbS\ 



Copyright, 1898, by H. H. FuRNESS. 



/^ci 



-9 



/- 




5 



A. // 



Whstcott & Thomson, 
Electrotypers^ Phila. 



Press of J. 6. Lippincott Company, 
Phila. 



IN MEMORIAM 



SI 



50 



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^ \ l« 



S3^"^-^\^ 



*L r 






PREFACE 



Inasmuch as each volume of this edition is independent of the 
others, it is proper, for the convenience of the reader, that the general 
plan of the work should be briefly set forth. 

In Textual Notes will be found the various readings of the Folios 
and of modem critical editions, together with such conjectural emen- 
dations as have come under the Editor's notice. A feature of this 
edition, — wherein it stands alone, — is that, after each reading recorded 
in the Textual Notes the names follow of those editors who have 
adopted that reading ; the student can thus estimate, at a glance, the 
weight of authority. 

In the Commentary are set forth explanations and criticisms ; some 
of them antiquated ; but useful, — at least, the Editor has so deemed 
them, — as marking the history of Shakespearian criticism. 

In the Appendix are given various discussions, such as 77ie Source 
of the Floty The Date of the Play, etc., together with Criticisms too 
long or too general to be inserted in the Commentary. 

The Text here given is again that of the Editio Princeps, the Folio 
of 1623. At this late hour, when the language of even Chaucer is 
becoming familiar, it is hardly reasonable to insist that the language 
of Shakespeare, in an edition for students like the present, shall be 
divested of the few trifling differences, chiefly in spelling, which dis- 
tinguish it from the language of to-day; where words are obsolete, 
it is not due to the spelling in the First Folio; they will need ex- 
planation howsoever they be spelled ; and where the meaning of a 
phrase is obscure, notes are required whatsoever the text. 

77ie Winter's Tale was published first in the Folio. There is no 
Quarto edition of it; a Quarto edition whereof the mere title ap- 
peared a hundred and fifty years ago, in a list of plays, has never 
been seen, and its existence has been justly discredited. 

In this play, more than in any other, the construction of the sentence 
is involved, and the meaning condensed. Possibly by accident, and a 
happy one, the Play was committed by the publishers of the Folio to 



vi PREFACE 

unusually intelligent compositors, — compositors superior in their craft 
to those from whose hands we have, for instance. King Lear. In 
one regard it stands unparalleled, by any other play, in typography. 
For some years past it has been growing more and more obvious to 
the students of the language of Shakespeare that what has been 
called the * absorption * (not the omission) of certain sounds, in pro- 
nunciation, by similar sounds terminating preceding words, takes place 
to a far greater extent than has been hitherto supposed. Indeed, 
phrases which have been condemned as faulty in construction, and 
even hopelessly obscure, are, by the application of this principle of 
Absorption^ become clear. Thus, Romeo says : * There lies more 
' peril in thine eye than [/. e. tha« in\ twenty of their swords ;' Antonio 
in The Tempest ^% : * Let's all sink with' [/. e. wi/h M'] king ;' Lear 
says: 'This [t\ e. this is"] a good block,' and so on. In three plays 
(there may be, possibly, others, I speak only from my own knowledge) 
the compositors have marked this absorption by an apostrophe, as in the 
speech of Antonio just quoted. This careful and suggestive apostrophe 
occurs twice in The Tempest, once in Measure for Measure, and no 
less than eight times in The Winter^ s Tale, (A list is given in a note 
on II, i, 1 8.) It is in the number of these apostrophes that this play 
thus stands unparalleled. Evidence of the care wherewith this text 
is printed, more conclusive than this, it would be difficult to supply. 
Still more remarkable does this care become when we reflect that in all 
likelihood the compositors had no guide in any MS before their eyes, 
but composed their types, guided solely by the ear, from sentences 
which were read aloud to them, — a practice in early printing offices 
which, had it been known to Steevens and Malone, would have 
removed the necessity of supposing that the plays were occasionally 
taken down by shorthand at a public performance ; what these editors 
held to be the voice of the actor was most probably the voice of the 
reader to the compositor. 

Another characteristic of the typography of the present play is the 
hyphen, which, more frequently than elsewhere, joins a verb and a 
particle, for instance : come-on, go-by, shews-off, talked-of, look-on, 
pluck-back; and also a hyphen joining compound words, such as: 
court-odour, court- contempt, finder-out, etc. These are minute items, 
to be sure, but what else is to be expected from a microscopic exam- 
ination ? 

Twelfth Night, which immediately precedes The Winter's Tale, ends, 
in the Folio, on p. 275. Page 276 is left blank, and The Winter's 
Tale begins on p. 277. For this anomaly several reasons have been 



PREFACE vii 

assigned, such as, that in gathering the plays together Heminge and 
CoNDELL had overlooked The Winter^ s Tale, and added it at the last 
minute, after the series of Comedies was complete, which, it would seem, 
is indicated by a blank page, inasmuch as similar blank pages are found 
separating the Comedies from the Histories, and the Histories from the 
Tragedies, Indeed, a copy of the Folio actually exists wherein The 
Winter's Tale is missing, and King John immediately follows Twelfth 
Night. Again, it has been conjectured that it was not altogether over- 
looked, but originally classed with the Tragedies, and was hastily 
transferred to its proper place among the Comedies, Neither the pagi- 
nation nor the signatures help us; a new numbering and a new 
series begin with King John, One of the very few facts of which we 
are assured in regard to the Folio is that it was printed at the charges 
of four Stationers ; and throughout its pages proofs are abundant that 
the plays were set up by various groups of compositors, possibly by 
journeymen printers in their own homes. Consequently, this blank 
page may indicate nothing more than an instance of badly joined 
piece-work. Inasmuch as the sheets were printed off, as was the cus- 
tom, at different presses, it was undoubtedly easier to leave a whole 
page blank at the end of a signature than to transfer a single page 
of The Winter's Tale to the press which was striking off Twelfth 
Night, Such is the best solution which occurs to me. 

The texts of the Second, Third, and Fourth Folios are substantially 
the same as that of the First, Through what must have been a mere 
accident a whole line (II, iii, 26) was omitted in the Second Folio, 
and as the gap did not leave utter nonsense, or, at least, the sense 
was not thereby rendered more obscure than the compositors found it 
to be for them in many another passage, the omission was followed in 
the Third and Fourth, and, as Rowe printed from the latter, it was 
repeated in his edition also. Other than in this omission the Sec- 
ond Folio differs materially from the First in only five or six places, 
which the Textual Notes will show. It is noteworthy that these dif- 
ferences, when they are additions to the text, are uniformly attempts 
toward improvement in the rhythm, and can have proceeded only from 
an authority higher, assuredly, than that of a compositor^ For in- 
stance, where the First Folio reads : * (Which you knew great) and to 
* the hazard,' the Second Folio has * (Which you knew great) and to the 
^certain hazard,' (III, ii, 181 ; the propriety of the phrase: 'certain 
' hazard ' is not here in question, I give the instance merely as an at- 
tempt to improve the rhythm). Again, three lines further down, where 
the First Folio has, 'Through my rust,' the Second reads, 'Through 



viii PREFACE 

' my darke rust/ an improvement in rhythm and force superior to Ma- 
lone* s emendation: ^Thorough my rust.' In line 191 of the same 
Scene the Second Folio adds burning to the 'flaying? boyling?' of the 
Firsty again an emendation better than any which, for mere rhythm's 
sake, has been since proposed. In III, iii, 65, the Second Folio adds 
the stage-direction Enter a Shepheard^ where in the First Folio there is 
no stage-direction at all. In the twenty- fourth line of Time's solilo- 
quy, the Second Folio improves the metre by adding here : ' I mention 

* here a sonne o' th' King's.' Again, in the Song of Autolycus, ' with 
*• heigh ' is repeated, to the great, nay, almost indispensable, amendment 
of the metre. In IV, iv, 7, the Second Folio reads, ' Is as a merry 

* meeting of the petty gods ' (zeal outdid performance here by two syl- 
lables, but, none the less, it was zeal in a good direction). In line 43 
further on: 'Oh, but dear sir,' etc. etc. These changes betoken a 
more sensitive ear and a more authoritative hand than those of a mere 
mechanical compositor. Indeed, it was the rhythmical element in these 
changes and in others elsewhere, like them, which led Tieck to surmise 
that the Second Folio was edited by Milton. 

As You Like It has its * lion ' in the Forest of Arden, and TJie 
Winter's Tale has its ' sea-coast in Bohemia.' It is so pleasing to find 
ourselves superior to Shakespeare in anything, no matter how trifling, 
that attention to these two violations of History, both Natural and 
Political, has been eagerly called by many a reader and editor. With 
the * lion,' criticism assumed a singular and curiously interesting phase : 
all critics were aware that Shakespeare had a right to introduce in 
an imaginary forest what imaginary tragic brutes he pleased, and yet 
each critic wished to show that he had noticed the incongruity of a 
tropical beast in a temperate zone; thereupon one and all fell to 
reviling and anathematizing 'certain critics' for jeering at Shake- 
speare. Who these jeering scoffers were, try as I would, I could never 
find out, — no names were ever given. Nevertheless, editors and critics 
became for the nonce Don Quixotes and, in defence of Shakespeare, 
belaboured malevolent giants. It was suggested that we should borrow 
a fiction of the Law and adopt a Shakespearian John Doe and Richard 
Roe^ on whom all the indignation in the poet's behalf could be heaped ; 
and thus while all zealous defenders would be exhilarated no one would 
be really one atom the worse. But in The Winter's Tale the case is 
different. No plea of imaginary localities avails the culprit here; 
Sicilia is Sicilia and Bohemia is Bohemia ; and the one is no more on 
the mainland than the other is on the sea-coast. In the eyes of Sir 
Thomas Hanmer the disgrace of the blunder was so indefensible (hat 



PREFACE ix 

he removed it at once from Shakespeare, and, placing it all upon the 
compositors, changed the locality throughout the play from ' Bohemia ' 
to Bithynia. Some time after the baronet's edition appeared, attention 
was called to the fact that the * sea-coast of Bohemia ' was mentioned 
in Greene's novel of Dorastus and Fawnia^ out of which Shake- 
speare had moulded his Winter^ s Tale, Thereupon the geographical 
guUt was shifted from Shakespeare to Greene, who, as Utriusque 
Academia in Artibus Magistevy should have known better; and 
Shakespeare was converted from a culprit to a victim. Then, at the 
beginning of this century, the question assumed a new phase, and it 
turned out that there was no blunder at all. A time has been when 
Bohemia held more than enough sea-coast whereon to wreck Antigonus 
and his shipmates ; and so Greene in turn is exonerated. 

It is noteworthy that the earliest critic of this * sea-coast of Bohe- 

* mia * is Ben Jonson, who, in 1619, said to Drummond of Hawthorn- 
den that, * Shakespear in a play, brought in a number of men saying 

* they had suffered ship- wrack in Bohemia, wher yr is no sea neer by 
'some 100 miles.' This is noteworthy indeed! Here was an inti- 
mate friend of Shakespeare, Jonson, the breath of whose life was 
the drama, whose notice no incident or allusion in a play would be 
likely to escape, who had read everything, was endowed with a pro- 
digious memory, and yet this man, probably the most intelligent and 
keenest-witted of all Shakespeare's auditors, did not recognize an 
allusion taken directly from a very popular novel reprinted but a year 
or two before ! What credence thereafter, may I ask, is to be given to 
the numberless allusions wherewith the commentators and editors would 
fain have us believe that Shakespeare's plays are crammed? — allusions, 
which, unless recognized and appreciated by the audience, lose all their 
point. In the ballad, hawked by Autolycus, of ' a fish that appeared 
'upon the coast, on Wednesday, the fourscore of April,' did not Ma- 
lone find a direct allusion to a * monstruous fish * that was exhibited 
in London ? To be sure, the exhibition took place seven years before 
Autolycus sang his song, but the allusion was so clear and direct that 
it helped that exact but prosaic editor in assigning the date when this 
play was written. And did we not have in A Midsummer Nighfs 
Dream an allusion, down to the minutest detail, to a festivity which 
took place seventeen years before, which every auditor was expected 
instantly to recognize ? With this signal example of Ben Jonson be- 
fore us, * let us hear no more about ' allusions or references which are 
to settle by internal evidence the date of a play, — that most trivial 
question, except in Shakespeare's Biography, on which time can be 
wasted. 



X PREFACE 

The Comments, in the Appendix, which I have been able to glean 
from German sources are rather less in number than in some of the 
other plays. This comedy appears to have attracted less attention in 
Germany than As You Like It, A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, or 
Cymbeline, The comments of Gervinus, of Ulrici, and of Kreyssig 
are, as usual, and as they should be, chiefly for the benefit of German 
readers. Elze makes a stout defence of the allusion to Julio Romano, 
not, to be sure, as a contemporary of the Delphic Oracle, but as at once 
a painter and a sculptor. The most recent translations are by Otto 
GiLDEMEiSTER and by Dr Alexander Schmidt; both were issued 
in the same year. The notes of Dr Schmidt, to whom we owe the 
Lexicon, where they are not reproductions of English notes, will be 
found in due place in the Commentary, Against one of his notes, how- 
ever, a respectful but firm protest should be made. Gratitude for the 
Lexicon ought perhaps to silence criticism, — it will certainly temper it, 
— but this especial note springs from the same pernicious source which 
banishes Dame Quickly, Dogberry, and Verges, and in their places 
gives us Frau Hurtig, Hohapfel, and Schleewein; a sense of personal 
bereavement must have voice. We all know the characteristic song with 
which the charming scoundrel, Autolycus, steps blithely before us : — 

< When daffodils begin to peer, 

With hey, the doxy o'er the dale,' etc. 

Hereupon Dr Schmidt observes: — 'Shakespeare's " daffodil'* is as- 
'suredly not our Narcissus [as Dorothea Tieck had translated it], 
*but the Snowdrop, Leucoium vemum, which belongs to the same 
'family. Unquestionably '*o'er the dale" is dependent on "peer," 
' and the sense is " When the snowdrops and the doxies reappear in the 
' "dale." Only thus do the two lines following form a natural con- 
' elusion.' Accordingly, Dr Schmidt gives us the rollicking song in 
the following demure garb : — 

* Wenn Schneeglockchen sich zeigt im Thai, 

Juchhei ! und du auch, MSldelein gut, 

* Dann sag* ich Valet der Sorg* und Qual, 

Denn warm wird des Winters kaltes Blut.' 

Without stopping to discuss Dr Schmidt's doubtful assertion that 
the Leucoium vernum is the Snowdrop, or to refer to the unanimous 
opinion of Botanists that the * daffodil ' is the Narcissus, it is this free- 
dom in dealing with the language of Shakespeare and with the 
names of his characters against which I wish to protest. An errone- 



PREFACE xi 

ous idea is abroad, even among English readers, that Germany was 
the earliest to appreciate Shakespeare, and our German brothers 
appear to believe, to this hour, that he belongs to them by some 
£uicied right of discovery. Lessing's voice was the first to sound 
in Germany the praises of Shakespeare, — ^a grand and mighty 
voice, it must be gladly confessed, — but when the masterly Hamburg- 
ische Dramaturgic appeared (and before that date Shakespeare's 
name may be said to have been unknown in Germany), Shake- 
speare's works had been edited by Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Han- 
MER, Warburton, Johnson, and Capell, in edition after edition, 
and, possibly, Steevens was at work on the First Variorum, We do 
not wish to blink one atom of indebtedness to our German fellow- 
students for all the indefatigable zeal, and labour, and learning which 
they have brought, and helpfully brought, to the study of Shake- 
speare, — the thirty-thre^ noble Year-books would put us to the blush 
if we did, — ^but it is none the less, befitting that, at least every now and 
then, we should set them up a glass wherein it may be seen how far 
afield the very best of them may grope, by no means owing to any lack 
of knowledge and great learning, but simply because they were not 
bom to the inheritance of the tongue of * the greatest name in English 
* literature, — the greatest name in all literature,* — and of all which that 
inheritance implies. No one to whom the English language is native 
would for a moment think of exchanging the ' daffodils ' in this song 
for any other flower on earth, least of all for the modest snowdrop^ 
the emblem of purity. Lovely as is the daffodil, bewitching even the 
winds of March with its beauty, we are conscious by the very instinct 
of our English blood that in the eyes of Autolycus it is the only 
match and emblem of his flaunting sweetheart, and at the mention 
of it, in his mouth, its hue becomes brassy and it peers with effrontery. 
And as for the idea that, according to Dr Schmidt, it together with 
the doxy peers over the dale, — I doubt that it ever entered an English 
mind. The * with ' betokens no accompaniment ; it is the * with ' of 
innumerable refrains, such as : * With hey, ho, the wind and the rain.' 
The words : * With hey, the doxy o'er the dale ' mean no more than 
' With hey, my sweetheart over in yonder glen. ' 

The mention of Autolycus reminds me that I have found no word 
of gratitude, or even of praise, anywhere bestowed on Capell, that 
excellent but sadly neglected editor, for a stage-direction in the scene 
between Autolycus, that 'rog,' as Dr Simon Forman calls him, and 
the Clown, — a stage-direction which has been adopted by every editor 
since Capell, and, except in the Cambridge Edition, I think, with- 



xii PREFACE 

out acknowledgement. That the Clown's pocket was then and there 
picked by Autolycus we all know by the Clown's confession in a sub- 
sequent scene, but in the scene itself, where the theft is actually com- 
mitted, there is no hint in the Folio of the precise moment. To select 
the very minute, as Capell did, and insert [^picks his pocket] between 
two groans by Autolycus, and, after the deed is done, to give thereby 
a double meaning to 'you ha' done me a charitable office,' — all this 
required the acuteness of a — shall it be said? — 'sharper,* — an acute- 
ness not, in general, deemed requisite to a Shakespearian editor. 

In 1756 Garrick brought out at Drury I^ane a version of The Win- 
ter's Taie, called Florizel and Perdita^ a Dramatic Pastoral y in Three 
Acts, Like all of Garrick' s adaptations, it was designed to meet the 
popular demands of the hour, whereof he was an excellent and success- 
ful judge. Is it not folly to criticise harshly such adaptations ? When 
they are successful, they assuredly reflect the taste of the day, and for 
that taste the manager of a theatre is as little responsible as a book- 
seller for the style of poetry on his counter. We must remember that 
the great literary arbiter of that day asserted that certain lines in Con- 
greve's Mourning Bride were the finest poetical passage he had ever 
read, and that he could recollect none in Shakespeare equal to them. 
When, too, that same ponderous authority had said that there were not 
six, or at most seven, faultless lines in Shakespeare, what excuse in 
omitting or altering scenes did a theatrical manager need ? Certainly 
no compunctious visitings of conscience need Garrick have had after 
receiving such approval as the following, from one who was not only 
a Bishop and an editor of Shakespeare, but a luminary in the world 
of letters but little less brilliant or worshipped in his day than Dr 
Johnson : — 

' Dear Sir : As you know me to be [no] less an idolizer of Shake- 
' speare than yourself, you will less suspect me of compliment when I 
' tell you, that besides your giving an elegant form to a monstrous com- 
' position, you have in your own additions written up to the best scenes 
' in this play, so that you will easily imagine I read the " Reformed 
'" Winter's Tale " with great pleasure. You have greatly improved 
' a fine prologue, and have done what we preachers are so commonly 
' thought unable to do — mend ourselves while we mend others, . . . 
' I am, dear sir. With truest esteem and regard, 

' Your most aff*ectionate and faithful humble servant, 

'W. Warburton.** 

* Garrick' 5 Private Correspondence ^ vol. i, p. 88. 



PREFACE xiii 

However much, therefore, we in these days may, with Othello, 

* yawn at alteration,' let us be lenient with Garrick, who as a theatrical 
manager studied his public, and knew its temper far better than we 
can possibly know it. In feeling the pulse of that public he had as 
a guide the most sensitive of nerves : the pocket ; and we may be very 
sure that its pulsations were to him, as they are to us all, unmistake- 
able. It is not the author of Florizel and Perdita who deserves the 
ferule, but the hands that applauded it. 

Moreover, does it not really betoken small faith in the true quality 
of Shakespeare's plays, by whose 'adamant Time passes without 

* injury,' to suppose that any art of man's device can seriously affect 
them? Who now remembers a line of Drvden's Tempest y or of 
Charles Johnson's Love in a Forest ? The loudest echoes of these 
Versions have long since died away, but Miranda and Rosalind and 
Perdita remain the same, and will reign unchanged and unchangeable 
for ever in our hearts. 

H. H. F. 

December^ 1S97. 



THE WINTERS TALE. 



The Names of the A<9:ors. 

LEonteSy King of Sicillia. 
MafnilluSj yong Prince of Sicillia. 
Camillo. 

Antigonus. I Foure 5 

Cleomines. r Lords of Sicillia. 
Dion. ) 

HermionCy Queene to Leontes. 

1. The Names,.. "] At the end of the 3. Mamillus] F,, Rowe ii, Pope, Han. 
Play in the Folios. Dramatis Personse. Mamilius F^F^. Mamillius Rowe i, et cet. 
Rowe. Persons represented. Cap. yong] young F^F^. 

2, 3, 6. Sicillia] Sicilia Ff, Rowe et 6. Cleomines] Cleomenes Warb. Cj^. 
seq. et seq. 

I. Names of th6 A<5\or8.] Steevens: In the novel of Dorastus and Favmia 
the King of Sicilia, whom Shidcespeare names 

Leontes, is called Egistus,^ 

Polixenes, King of Bohemia Pandosto, 

Mamillius, Prince of Sicilia Garinter, 

Florizel, Prince of Bohemia Dorastus, 

Camillo Franion, 

Old Shepherd Porrus, 

Hermione Bellaria, 

Perdita Fawnia, and 

Mopsa Mopsa. 

[This list Steevens gave first in the Variorum of 1778. By a clerical error Leontes 
and Polixenes have exchanged names, as a ciu-sory glance at the Novel will show. 
And yet this error stands uncorrected in all the succeeding Variorums, including even 
that of 1 82 1, and in comments on this play even down to 1884. — £d.] Hales 
{^Essays y etc. lo6) : In his nomenclature, Shakespeare is never merely servile in 
following his originals ; but exercises a remarkable independence, sometimes simply 
adopting, sometimes slightly var3ring, sometimes wholly rejecting, the names he found 
in them. It is difficult to imagine that this conduct was merely arbitrary and care- 
less. Euphony must of course have had its influence ; often there must have occurred 
other considerations of no trifling interest, if only we could discover and understand 
them. A singular instance of a complete re-christening is to be found in Tlie Winter's 
Tale. To those Greek names [there adopted] may be added Antigonus, Cleomenes, 
Archidamus, Dion, Autolycus, and Dorcas. All these names, except perhaps Dorcas 
and Leontes, are found in Plutarch's Lives. 

8. Hermione] Collier (ed. i, Introd. 427) : It may be noticed that, just anterior 

I 



"I 



2 THE NAMES OF THE ACTORS 

r 

Perditay Daughter to Leontes and Hemtione . 

Paulina J wife to Antigonus . lO 

Emiliay a Lady. 

PolixeneSj King of Bohemia. 

Florizelly Prince of Bohemia. 

Old Shepheardy reputed Father of Perdita. 

Clowney his Sonne. 15 

AutolicuSy a Rogue. 

11. a Lady.] A Lady attending on 16. Autolicus] Autolycus Var. '78 et 
Hermione. Rowe. seq. 

13. Florizell] Florizel FjF^. 

•^ - M ■ 

to the time of our poet, the name he assigns to the Queen of Leontes had been 
employed as that of a male character : in TTie rare Triumphs of Lave and Fortune^ 
acted at court in 158 1 -2, and printed in 1589, Hermione is the lover of the heroine. 
RusKiN {Munera Pulveris, 127) : Shakespeare's names are curiously — often bar- 
barously — much by Providence, — ^but assuredly not without Shakespeare's cunning 
purpose — mixed out of the various traditions he confusedly adopted, and languages 
which he imperfectly knew. . . . Hermione {jtpfia) * pillar-like * (^ eldog ix^ XP^i 
'Aippo^iTifc). C. Elliot Browne {Athetueum, 29 July, 1876) : Hermione, no doubt, 
was named after the daughter of Menelaus, who was carried off by Orestes, but the 
name was not uncommon in contemporary literature. 

12. 13, 17. Bohemia] For a discussion on Uhe desert of Bohemia,' see HI, iii, 5. 
— Hanmer changes * Bohemia ' to Bithynia throughout. 

13. Florizell] Walker (CnV. ii, 33) : Doricles, the assumed name of Florizel, 
occurs in ^n. v, 620, — * Fit Bero€, Tmarii conjux longseva Dorycli.' — C. Elluot 
Browne {AtkemEumy 29 July, 1876) : As in As You Like //, there are traces of the 
Charlemagne romances, so I think in TTie Winter's Tale there are evidences of 
Shakespeare's familiarity with those of Amadis. Florizel, as Don Florisel, is the 
hero of the ninth book of the * Amadis ' series, believed to have been written by Don 
Feliciano de Silva, and originally published at Burgos in 1535- ^° ^^ romance, 
Florisel, in the guise of a shepherd, woos a princess, who is disguised as a shep- 
herdess, and it was therefore an appropriate name for the hero of The Winter's Tale, 
The history of Don Florisel became one of the most popular romances of the cycle, 
and was speedily translated into French and Italian. . . . No English version of it is 
known, but it is possible there may be an abstract of his adventures in The Treasurie 
of Amadis of Fraunce^ London, 1 567, of which only one copy is believed to exist, 
and that in private hands. It is by no means improbable, however, that Shakespeare 
knew the story in the French version of Charles Colet, Champenoisy 1564, a dainty 
little volume, with charming little wood- cuts of pastoral scenes, one of which repre- 
sents the Prince piping to his sheep, with Perdita (Sylvia) sitting by him and busily 
plying her distaff. There is no mention of Don Florisel in Greene's book, but he has 
taken the name of one of his characters (Garinter) from it. 

16. Autolicus] \\^en this character enters on the scene in the Fourth Act, and 
says that he received his name because he was bom under Mercury, the god of thieves, 
Theobald remarks that the allusion is unquestionably to Ovid, Metam. xi, 312 : — 



THE NAMES OF THE ACTORS 3 

Archidamus^ a Lord of Bohemia. 17 

Other Lords ^ and Gentlemen j and Seruants . 
Shepheards ^and Shephearddejfes. 

19. Shepheards...] Goaler, shep- Court of Judicature. A Mariner. Time, 

herds... Rowe. as Chorus. Two other Ladles. Satyrs 

Mopsa. ^Shepherdesses. Added by for a Dance. — ^Added by Theob., and 

Dorcas. J Rowe. followed (subs.) by subsequent editors. 

Another Sicilian Lord. Rogero, a [Scene, partly in Sicilia^ and partly 

Sicilian Gentleman. An Attendant on in Bohemia, Rowe. ...in Bithynia. 

young Prince Mamillius. Officers of a Han. 

'Alipedis de stirpe dei versuta propago Nascitur Autolycus, furtum ingeniosus ad 
omne ;' which Golding thus translates : ' Now when shee [t . e. Chione] full her tyme 
had gon, shee bare by Mercurye A sonne that hyght Avrtolychus who provde a wyly 
pye, And such a fellow as in theft and filching had no peere.' This allusion, War- 
burton, in his wonted dictatorial style, flatly denies, and asserts that it was to *■ Ludan's 
Discourse on Judicial Astrology, where Autolycus talks much in the same manner.' 
Of course, Theobald was right, if any allusion were meant at all. — Douce (i, 353) 
observes that if Autolycus, according to Warburton, talks much in the same manner 
in Lucian, Warburton * must have used some edition of Lucian vastly preferable to 
those which now remain.' — Haluwell quotes Barron Field to the effect that 
* when Warburton pretends that the whole speech of Autolycus, on his first appear- 
ance, is taken from Lucian's book on Astrology, where Autolycus speaks much more 
in the same style, he must have been dreaming. In this book the myth that Autol- 
ycus is the son of Hermes is explained thus : that the art of stealing came to him 
from Hermes, under whose star he was bom ; and, at most, the passage in Shake- 
speare contains only an allusion to this.' — Dyce {^Gloss,^i J. F. Gronovius, in his 
Led, PlauHtuBj p. 161, ed. 1740, after citing Martial, viii, 59, observes: *Celebratur 
autem in fabulis Autolycus maximus furum.* Hales (p. 109) : Whence came this 
prince of pedlars and of pickpockets ? No doubt the man had in some sort been 
espied and watched by him who has painted him for all time, — at some Stratford 
wake, when Mr Shakespeare of New Place was taking Mistress Susanna and her 
sister Judith to see what was to be seen ; or at Bartholomew Fair, as he strolled 
through it perchance with Mr Benjamin Jonson ; but what a name to give him I Yet 
it was carefully chosen. There was an ancient thief of famous memory called 
Autolycus. His name probably is significant of his nature. It should mean All- 
wolf, Very-wolf, Wolf's-self. See Homer, Od. xix, 392-8, where the old nurse 
Eurukleia is bathing the feet of the not yet identified Odusseus. 

Mopsa and Dorcas] Of these two names, Dorcas is Biblical, and, in Dorastus 
and Fawnioy Mopsa is the name of the old shepherd's wife. 



The Winters Tale. 



A6lus Primus. Scoena Prima. 



Arch. 




Enter Catnillo and Archidamus. 

F you (hall ch^xice{Cafnillo) to vifit Bohemiay on 
the like occafion whereon my feruices are now 5 

on-foot, you (hall fee(as I haue faid)great dif- 
ference betwixt our Bohemia^dSid your Sicilia. 7 

7%e Winters Taie."] Winter's Tale. chamber in Leontcs's Palace. Theob. et 

Var. '78, *8S, Rann, Mai. Steev. '93, seq. 

Var. *03, '13, '21, Knt. 4. Bohemia,] Bithynia^ Hani (through- 

1. Sccena] Scena F^. out). 

2. [A Palace. Rowe+. An Anti- 6. on-foot'\ on/ootF^eiseq. 

The Winters Tale.] In the Appendix is given an extract from Forman*s diary 
wherein an account is given of his witnessing a performance of * the Winters Talle 
at the glob.' In reference to the title. Collier {^ew Particulars, 20) remarks that 
* it would prove little that Forman gives the piece the same name as Shakespeare's 
play, because it was not very uncommon for two authors to adopt the same, or nearly 
the same, title, and *' a winter's tale," like ** an old wife's tale " (which Peele adopted 
for one of his dramas), was an ordinary expression. We meet with it, among other 
places, in Marlow and Nash's Dido, Queen of Carthage, 1594, III* iv, where Eneas 
says : " Who would not undergoe all kind of toyle To be well stor'd with such a 
a winter's tale?"*. — Hunter (Ulust, i, 412): There is, perhaps, no very strong 
reason for preferring one to the other, but, on the whole, the indefinite article, A 
Winter's Tale, appears to me to express more exactly the meaning of the author than 
the definite, which is prefixed in the original editions. It is a Tale for Winter, or, as 
in the Book of the Revels, a Winter Night's Tale, such a tale as we may conceive to 
have cheered the dreary hours of a winter's night as a family crowded round the fire, 
the storm beating against the casement, or, as it is ingeniously expressed in the title 
of one of the manuscripts in the library of Martin of Palgrave, written in 1605, as 
if written * of purpose to shorten the lives of long winter nights that lie watching in 
the dark for us.* Shakespeare alludes to this practice of his times both in Macbeth, 
III, iv, and in Richard the Second, V, i. There are passages in the play which 

5 



6 THE WINTERS TALE [act i, sc. i. 

Cam. I thinke, this comming Summer, the King of 8 

8, 14, 16, 22. /] I Fj. 8. comming\ common Yiy Rowe i. 

plainly allude to it. — Lloyd (p. 133) : The title suggests that it is in some manner a 
pendant of the Midsummer Nighfs Dream. The classic and romantic, the pagan 
and chivalric, are huddled and combined here as there, and still more glaringly and 
unscrupulously. In this play, however, we have no night scenes ; the sea-side storm 
is wintry ; there is a hint of season once at the fall of summer, and more significantly 
in the words of Mamilius, that note a tale of sadness as fittest for winter. Perhaps, 
again, the length of time covered by the story is in the spirit of a winter's tale, when 
time is to spare for unstinted narrative; but the main appropriateness of the title 
depends, after all, on the certain abruptness and violence of transition and combina- 
tion which pervade the play> of which the anachronisms are minor tjrpes, associated 
with incongruities, to the full as startling^ in the province of History's other hand- 
maid. Geography. — R. G. White (ed. i, 272) : Shakespeare sought only to put a 
very popular story into a dramatic form ; and of this he advertised his hearers by 
calling this play a Tale, just as before he had called a play similarly wanting in dra- 
matic interest a Dream. — Halliwell {Introd. p. 45) : The title, an acknowledge- 
ment that although a regular drama it was also a romance or tale suited for the even- 
ings of winter, is, perhaps, a reason for the supposition that it originally appeared at 
the Blackfriars, a theatre which restricted its season to the winter months. The 
words of Mamilius in the Second Act can scarcely be imagined to have any intimate 
connection with the selection of the title of the comedy. In Shakespeare's time the 
country fire-side attracted many a narrator, whose knowledge of the vernacular tra- 
ditional and imaginary tales current at the time would have sufHced to explain more 
than one allusion in contemporary literature that has baffled the collective efforts of 
modem enquirers. Many a winter's tale has shared the fate of Wade and his boat 
Guingelot, which was then so universally known that an editor of the time excuses 
himself from giving even an outline of the story, but the slightest further trace of 
which has escaped the careful researches of all who have treated on the series of 
romances to which it is supposed to have belonged. [See Tyrwhitt's note on v. 9298, 
Canterbury Tales, — Ed.] — Ward (i, 437) : It is possible that the pretty title was 
suggested to Shakespeare by that of A Winter Nighfs Vision^ an addition to The 
Mirror for Magistrates^ published by Nichols in 1 610, the year when The Winter's 
Tale was perhaps written. 

4. Coleridge (p. 254) : Observe the easy style of chitchat between Camillo and 
Archidamus as contrasted with the elevated diction on the introduction of the Kings 
and Hermione in the second scene. 

4, 5, 6. on . . . whereon ... on ft)ot] R. G. White (ed. ii) : A marked indica- 
tion of the heedlessness in regard to nicety of style with which Shakespeare wrote 
his plays. [Is not this very * heedlessness * an illustration of the excellence which 
Coleridge detected in this conversation ? The mere fact that the conversation is in 
prose ought to lead us to expect a certain careless, colloquial ease. The disparaging 
tone, undeniably present in some of the comments on the text in White's Second 
Edition, springs, I think, from an honest desire on White's part to be absolutely 
impartial in his literary judgement of Shakespeare. It was White's way, perhaps 
not the happiest, of protesting against indiscriminate and rhapsodical laudation. — Ed.] 

6. as I have said] In itself this parenthetical remark is quite needless, but. 



ACT I. sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 7 

SicUia meanes to pay Bohemia the Vifitation, which hee 

iuftly owes him. 10 

Arch. Wherein our Entertainment (hall Ihame vs: we 
will be iuftified in our Loues : for indeed — 

Cam. 'Befeech you — 

ArchNtxfXy I fpeake it in the freedome of my know- 
ledge : we cannot with fuch magnificence — in fo rare— 15 
I know not what to fay — Wee will giue you fleepie 
Drinkes, that your Sences (vn-intelligent of our infuflS- 
cience) may, though they cannot prayfe vs, as little ac- 
cufe vs. 

Cam. You pay a great deale to deare, for what^s giuen 20 

freely. 

Arch. 'Beleeue me, I fpeake as my vnderftanding in- 
ftru6ls me, and as mine honeftie puts it to vtterance. 

Cam. Sidlia cannot (hew himfelfe ouer-kind to Bohe- 
mia : They were traynM together in their Child-hoods ; 25 
and there rooted betwixt them then fuch an affeftion, 
which cannot chufe but braunch now. Since their more 
mature Dignities,and Royall Neceflities,made feperati- 
on of their Societie, their encounters(though not Perfo- 
nall) hath been Royally attomyed with enter-change of 30 

II. w.*] i«, Theob. et seq. 22. ^Beleeue\ F,. 

13. *^^^^rA] Ff,Rowe+,Cap.Steev. 2$. Child-hoods'^ Child hoods F^. 
Mai. Var. Wh. i, Kdy. childhoods Rowe. 

14. Verely] F,. 2%, feperaHon'\ Y^, 

16. fay — Wee\ say. We Cap. et seq. 29. Societie^ Society ; Rowe, Pope, 

(subs.). 30. hath'\ ^<jv^ Ff et seq. 

20. to deare"] too deare Ff. Royally] so royally Coll. ii. (MS). 

placed here in the first sentence, it conveys the idea of a conversation of which we 
hear only the closing portion. — Ed. 

II. shame vs] Johnson: Though we cannot give you equal entertainment, yet 
the consciousness of our good-will shall justify us. 

25, 26. trayn'd . . . rooted] Possibly, by the association of ideas the training of 
vines and young trees suggested rooted. — Ed. 

26, 27. such . . . which] Abbott (§ 278) : Such was by derivation the natural 
antecedent to which ; such meaning * so-like,* * so-in-kind ;* which meaning * what- 
like,* * what-in-kind.' See also IV, iv, 844, "such secrets . . . which.* 

30. hath] An instance of the third person plural in M, which, in this instance, 
did not survive the First Folio. — Abbott (§ 334) gives two other instances : Mer. of 
Ven. Ill, ii, 33 ; III, ii, 270. 

30. attomyed] Johnson : Nobly supplied by substitution of embassies, etc. 



8 THE WINTERS TALE [act i, sc. i. 

Gifts, Letters, louing Embaflies, that they haue feem'd to 31 

be together, though abfent: (hooke hands, as ouer a Vaft; 
and embrac'd as it were from the ends of oppofed Winds. 
The Heauens continue their Loues. 

Arch. I thinke there is not in the World, either Malice 35 

or Matter, to alter it. You haue an vnfpeakable comfort 
of your young Prince Mamillius: it is a Gentleman of the 
greateft Promife, that euer came into my Note. 

Cam. I very well agree with you, in the hopes of him : 
it is a gallant Child ; one, that (indeed)Phyficks the Sub- 40 

31. Ci//j] Gift F,. 34. Loties\ love Han. Dyce ii, iii. 

32. Va/f\ Vafi Sea Ff, Rowe, Pope, 37. Mamillius] Mamillus Rowe u, 
Han. Pope, Han. 

34. Heauens] Heav'm Rowe+. 40. one, /Aat] one that Yt 

heaven^ 5 Johns. 



31. Vast] Walker (CHt. ii, 38) devotes an article, with many examples, to the 
peculiar use of vast, Lat. vastus, empty, waste, * This use of vast, and in like manner 
of vasty, is common in the poets of Shakespeare's age.' — Steevens called attention- 
to its use as applied to the sea, in Per. HI. i, i : * Thou god of this great vast, rebuke 
these surges.* — Henley suggests, with probability, that there is a reference here to 
' a device, common in the title pages of old books, of two hands extended from 
opposite clouds, and joined as in token of friendship over a wide waste of country.* 
Fast is applied to time as well as space in Temp. I, ii, 327 ; Ham. I, ii, 198. 

34. Loues] Walker (CHt. i, 233) : The interpolation of an s at the end of a 
word, — generally, but not always, a noun substantive, — is remarkably frequent in the 
Folio. Those who are conversant with the MSS of the Elizabethan age may perhaps 
be able to explain its origin. W^ere it not for the different degree of frequency with 
which it occurs in different parts of the Folio, — being comparatively rare in the Com- 
edies (except perhaps in 77te IVinter's Tale), appearing more frequently in the His- 
tories, and becoming quite common in the Tragedies, — I should be inclined to think 
it originated in some peculiarity of Shakespeare's hand- writing. [In the present 
passage Walker (p. 252) would read Love, and rightly, inasmuch as in the next 
speech Archidamus says : * I thinke there is not . . . Malice ... to alter i/.* See 
also * hands,' H, iii, 99, post."] 

35-38. Lady Martin : In this speech two notes are struck which reverberate in 
in the heart, when these bright anticipations are soon afterward turned to anguish and 
dismay by the wholly unexpected, jealous, frenzy of Leontes. 

40. Subiect] Johnson: Affords a cordial to the state; has the power of assuaging 
the sense of misery. [* The Subject ' is plural in sense, like the wicked, the elect, 
Cf. Lear, IV, vi, i lo : * see how the subject quakes,' or Ham. II, ii, 416 : * 'twas 
caviare to the general.' Staunton, while conceding that this may be the meaning, 
thinks that * from the words which immediately follow — " makes old hearts fresh " 
— it has a more particular meaning : The sight and hopes of the princely boy were 
cordial to the afflicted and invigorating to Uie old.' A distinction which I cannot 
say is quite clear. — Ed.] 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 9 

left, makes old hearts frefh : they that went on Crutches 41 

ere he was borne, defire yet their life, to fee him a Man. 

Arch. Would they elfe be content to die ? 

Cam. Yespf there were no other excufe, why they fhould 

defire to Hue. 45 

Arch. If the King had no Sonne, they would defire to 
Hue on Crutches till he had one. Exeunt. 47 



Sco^na Secunda. 



Enter LeonteSyHermioneyMamilliuSy Polixenes^ Catnillo. 

Pol. Nine Changes of the Watry-Starre hath been 
The Shepheards Note, fmce we haue left our Throne 
Without a Burthen : Time as long againe 5 

47. had one] had on F^. 3. Watry-Starre] watry star Rowe 

1. Sccena] Scena F^. et seq. 

[Scene opens to the Presence. hath] have Cap. Steev. Var. Knt, 

Theob. A Room of State in the same. Sing. Coll. Dyce. 

Cap. et seq. (subs.). 4. The Shepheards Note] In poren- 

2. Mamillius] Mamillins F^. thesis, Warb. 

Polixenes, Camillo] Polixenes, and 5. Burthen] burden Johns. 

Attendants. Theob. Warb. Johns. 

3. Nine Changes] John Hunter: That is, nine quarters of the moon; nine 
weeks. — Hudson correctly understands these ' nine changes * as meaning nine lunar 
months ; and adds justly and delicately ' if the time had been but nine weeksy it is 
not likely that Leontes would speak, as he afterward does, touching Perdita.' 

3. Watry-Starre] Dyer (p. 74) : The moisture of the moon is invariably noticed 
by Shakespeare. Cf. Ham, I, i, 118, * the moist star upon whose influence Neptune*s 
empire stands * ; Mid. N. D. H, i, 103, * the moon, the goyemess of floods * ; Rom, 
and Jul, I, iv, 62, * the moonshine's watery beams.' The same idea is frequently 
found in old writers. 

3. hath] This may be the singular by attraction after * Starre * ; it may be a 3d 
pers. plu. in th ; and, lastly, its nominative may be ' Note.' 

4. Shepheards] Hunter (i, 418) ; Why Shepherds ? It is because there was an 
opinion abroad that the shepherds feeding their flocks by night were great observers 
of the heavenly bodies. In an old book, entitled The Shepherd^s Calendar^ a trans- 
lation from the French, there is much relating to the sciences, and especially astronomy ; 
the first chapter has this title : < A great question asked between the Shepherds touch- 
ing the stars, and an answer made to the same question.' Again, another chapter is 
entitled : < How Shepherds, by calculation and speculation, know the Twelve Signs in 
their course.' 

4. Note] Schmidt and others draw a distinction between note here and note in 
1. 38 of the preceding scene. It is hardly necessary. Both are adequately interpreted 
by observation, — Ed. 



lO 



THE WINTERS TALE 



[act I, sc. ii. 



Would be filPd vp(my Brother)with our Thanks, 

And yet we fhould, for perpetuitie, 

Goe hence in debt : And therefore, Hke a Cypher 

(Yet (landing in rich place) I multiply 

With one we thanke you, many thoufands moe. 

That goe before it. 

Leo, Stay your Thanks a while. 
And pay them when you part. 

Pol. Sir, that's to morrow : 
I am queftion'd by my feares, of what may chance, 
Or breed vpon our abfence, that may blow 
No fneaping Winds at home, to make vs fay. 



10 



15 



7. perpetuitie] pepetuity F^. 

10. one we thanke you] one y we thank 
youy Rowe i. one, we thank you, Rowe 
ii. one we-thank-you Cap. Steev. Var, 
Knt, Sing. Coll. Dyce. 

moe] Ff, Cam. Wh. ii. more 
Rowe, et cet. 

12. a while] Ff, Rowe + , Cap. Steev. 
Var. Wh. Cam. awhile Var. '03, et 
cet. 

14. to morrow] to-morrow Cap. 



15. lam] Pm Pope + , Dyce ii, iii, 
Huds. 

feares^ fears Rowe, Pope. 

16. abfence^ Ff, Rowe, Pope, Thcob. 
Warb. Johns. Sing. ii. absence: Han. 
et cet. 

that.,. No] there may blow Some 
Han. Cap. may there blow No Warb. 
Coll. (MS). 

16, 17. blow No...to make] grow To 
...and make Cartwright. 



10. moe] Koch ( Grammatik, ii, 292) i The difference seems to be firmly established 
that more is used with the singular and mo with the plural ; whence it comes that the 
oldest grammarians, like Gil and Wallis, maintain that mo is the comparative of many, 
and more the comparative of much. — W. A. Wright : So far as I am aware, there is but 
one instance in Shakespeare where moe is not immediately followed by a plural, and 
that is in Temp. V, i, 234 (First Folio) : ' And mo diuersitie of sounds.' But in this 
case also the phrase * diversity of sounds * contains the idea of plurality. [See IV, iv, 
301 ; V, ii, I2y,p05t; and As You Like It, IH, ii, 257 ; V, i, 34, in this edition.] 

16. that may blow, etc.] Farmer : Dr. Warburton calls this * nonsense ' ; and 
Dr. Johnson tells us it is a * Gallicism.* It happens, however, to be both sense and 
English. ' That ' for Oh, that, is not uncommon. In an old translation of the famous 
Alcoran of the Franciscans : * St. Francis observing the holiness of friar Juniper, said 
to the priors, " That I had a wood of such Junipers !" ' And, in The Tkuo Noble 
Kinsmen : " In thy rumination. That I, poor man, might eftsoones come between !" 
[Ill, i, 12. In accordance with this note Steevens (1778) adopted as his text: 

* upon our absence : That may blow No . . . say, This . . . too truly P and he was 
followed substantially by all subsequent editors.] — Hanmer, clearly influenced by the 

• sneaping winds,* interprets * put forth * as referring to buds ; hence his change of 
'truly* to early. — Caprll, who adopts Hanmer's reading (see Text. Notes), interprets 
' put forth * as referring to < putting forth towards home,* and rejects Hanmer*8 
'gard'ning, sense,* as he calls it. — Collier (ed. ii) does not adopt his MS corrections, 
which are partly Warburton's and partly Hanmer*s. < The poet*s meaning is clear,* 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 1 1 

This is put forth too truly : befides, I haue ftay^d i8 

To tyre your Royaltie. 

Leo, We are tougher (Brother) 20 

Then you can put vs to't. 

18. Thi5...truly\ As a quotation, 18. / haue\ Vve Dyce ii, iii, 
Theob. Warb. et seq. Huds. 

tt-uly^ early Han. Coll. (MS). 21. Theti^ Than Rowc. 

tardily Cap. 

he adds, 'though the wording of the passage may be defective.* — R. G. White 
(ed. i) considers the whole sentence from * that may blow ' to ' too early ' as paren- 
thetical. * Pohxenes,' he says, < gives his fears as one reason of his departure, and 
before assigning the other pauses to ejaculate a prayer that his apprehensions may not 
have been put forth, 1. e, uttered, too truly.*— John Hunter, Hudson, and Rolfe 
refer * put forth * to * fears.* Hudson, therefore, changes * fears * Uyfear^ so as to make 
it the grammatical antecedent to * This is */ he also reads, with Warburton, * may there 
blow * ; and says he does not see how < the last clause can be understood otherwise 
than as referring to fear.* Abbott (§ 425) says the passage is explained by the 
omission of there : * that (there) may blow No * etc. — Staunton (Athenatim, April, 
1874, p. 461) : How the words * that may blow * can be made equivalent to may there 
blow surpasses my power of perception. I have very little doubt the passage is cor- 
rupt, and that we should get much nearer Shakespeare's meaning by reading : — * that 
may blow In sneaping . . . too early.* The sense being, * that may be developed 
under untoward circumstances which may make me say *' this was too premature.** * 
Does not the expression < put forth * point rather to something blossoming than to the 
blowing of the winds ? [Hereupon follow several quotations from Shakespeare to 
show that < put forth * may mean to ptti forth leaves. These examples are somewhat 
superfluous ; the phrase is quite familiar to us in the Bible. Cf. Matt, xxiv, 32.] — 
Deighton : This is generally taken as a wish. But the expression may be elliptical, 
and as < fears * that a thing may happen necessarily involves * hopes ' that it may not, 
the full expression would be, * I am questioned by my fears as to what may happen, 
and only hope that no sneaping winds,* etc. [This is one of those sentences, whereof 
there are others in this play, from which we obtain at once a meaning, but which 
cannot be reconciled to grammar without some change or addition. I prefer to make 
no change. None can be now proposed which will be acceptable to every one, or it 
would have occurred to every one long ago ; in general, Shakespeare's obscurity is 
quite as clear as any emendation. The interpretation which makes Polixenes inter- 
ject a prayer for protection against sneaping winds at home is not in character ; more- 
over, * sneaping ' is not strong enough to elicit a prayer, or even a perfervid wish. 
Deighton's explanation seems to be the best. — Ed.] 

17. sneaping] Holt White: That is, m)^/f»f winds. So, in Gawin Douglas's 
Translation of Virgils Eneid^ Prologue of the seuynth Booke : 'Scharp soppis of 
sleit, and of the snyppand snaw.* 

19. Royaltie] I doubt that this is here the title. I think it refers to the royal 
dignity or state, as in * Royalties repayre ' V, i, 40. 

21. put V8 to *t] Schmidt {Lex!) has collected many instances of this phrase 
where it is used, as here, in the sense of to drive to extremities. 



12 



THE WINTERS TALE 



[act I, sc. ii. 



Pol, No longer ftay. 

Leo, One Seue'night longer. 

Pol. Very footh, to morrow. 

Leo. Wee'le part the time betweene's then:and in that 
He no gaine-faying. 

Pol. Preffe me not ('befeech you) fo : 
There is no Tongue that moues;none, none i'th'World 
So foone as yours,could win me: fo it fliould now, 
Were there neceflitie in your requeft, although 
'Twere needfull I denyM it. My Affaires 
Doe euen drag me home-ward : which to hinder, 
Were (in your Loue) a Whip to me ; my ftay, 
To you a Charge, and Trouble : to faue both. 
Farewell (our Brother.) 

L^o. Tongue-tyM our Queene ? fpeake you. 

Her. I had thought (Sir) to haue held my peace,vntill 
You had drawne Oathes from him, not to ftay: you(Sir) 
Charge him too coldly. Tell him, you are fure 
All in Bohemians well : this fatisfaftion. 



22 



25 



30 



35 



40 



23. Seue'nighf[ fev'night F^. sev^n 
night Rowe. seven-night Var. '73, Hal, 
€4un. i'en-night White ii. 

25, 26. Prose, Rowe i, Hal. 

27. {^befeech yoti)fo\ ^ beseech you^ so 
Rowe. ^beseech you ! Han. Coll. ii (MS). 
50^ ''beseech you : Cap. 

28. moues ;'\ Ff, Rowe i, Cap. moves. 
Johns, moves^ Rowe ii et cet. 



28. World^ WtmUY^, wor/d, Theoh. 
Warb. et seq. 

29. yours^ your's Coll. ii. 

36. Tongue-tyd^ Yl^ Rowe, Pope, 
Han. Dyce, Cam. Wh. ii. Tongue-tyd^ 
Theob. et cet. 

37. to haue] to *ve Pope, Theob. Warb. 
Johns. 

38. You had] You 'ad Theob. Warb. 
Johns. 



28, 29. Coleridge (p. 254) : How admirably Polixenes* obstinate refusal to Leontes 
to stay, prepares for the effect produced by his afterwards yielding to Hermione. 

28. World] The comma which almost all editors have placed after * world * is, I 
think, needless. The semicolon after * moues * is, of course, wrong; a dash would be 
better, to be repeated after * yours.' — Ed.] 

30. Abbott (§ 499) calls this line an * apparent Alexandrine followed by a foot, 
more or less isolated, containing one accent.* 

32, 33. which ... to me] Deighton thus paraphrases : To hinder which {i, e. my 
return home) would be to make your love to me a punishment. [I think it rather 
means : To hinder which would be a punishment to me, although you inflicted it out 
of love. — Ed.] 

38. drawne oathes] That is, so as to make her success the greater. — Ed. 

40. this satisfaction] Johnson : We had satisfactory accounts yesterday of the 
state of Bohemia. 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 13 

The by-gone-day proclaymM, fay this to him, 41 

He's beat from his beft ward. 

Leo. Well {didy Hermione. 

Her. To tell, he longs to fee his Sonne, were ftrong: 
But let him fay fo then, and let him goe ; 45 

But let him fweare fo, and he fhall not ftay, 
WeeU thwack him hence with Diftaffes. 
Yet of your Royall prefence, He aduenture 
The borrow of a Weeke. When at Bohemia 
You take my Lord, He giue him my Commiflion, 50 

To let him there a Moneth, behind the Geft 

41. by'gone-day\ Ff, Rowe i. by- 50. him\ you Han. Warb. John. Cap. 
'gone day Rowe ii et seq. Walker, Dyce ii, iii, Huds. 

proclaynCdy fay'\ proclaimed fay 51, /?/] set Ktly. 

F^. proclaim' d; say Rowe et seq. (subs.) Mofuth'] Month F^, 

47. vntli] whith F^. Geft'\ Gueft FjF^. geste Han. 

48. [To Polixenes. Rowe et seq. Om. giste Cap. list Heath, Rann. gest-day 
Cam. Wh. ii. Ktly. 

42. best ward] A continuation of the figure of a ' charge * in line 39. — Ed. 

43. Collier (ed. ii) adopts the stage-direction of his MS : ' He walks apart/ and 
remarks that it < shows, most likely, the custom of the actor of the character of Leontes 
to turn away while Hermione urges her suit to Polixenes. This course seems very 
judicious. [It may have been 'very judicious/ but, when Hermione addresses 
Leontes personally, as she does at 1. 52, it was at least awkward to have her speak 
to the empty air. That Leontes retires is certain ; in no other way can we under- 
stand his question, < Is he won yet V except by supposing that he has not heard what 
Polixenes has said to Hermione. Just when he retires it is not easy to determine ; 
most probably, I think, after Hermione's * What lady she her lord.* — Ed.] 

46. he shall not stay] Lady Martin (p. 341) : Note how the mother, to whom 
her own boy was inexpressibly dear, speaks in her allusion to the son of Polixenes, of 
whom no word has hitherto been said. 

51. To let him] Malone: This may be used, as many other reflexive verbs are 
used by Shakespeare, for to let or hinder himself; then the meaning will be : * I'll 
give him my permission to tarry a month,* etc. — Abbott (§ 223) : Him, her, me^ them, 
etc. are often used in Elizabethan, and still more in early English, for himself, her* 
self etc. [To the examples given by Abbott, there may be added, besides the present 
line ; * More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child.' — Lear I, iv, 254 ; * Would 
shut the book and sit him down to die.' — 2 Hen. IV: III, i, 56 ; * Wherein I confess 
me much guilty.' — As You Like It, I, ii, 196.] 

51. Gest] Peck {Mem. of Milton, 239) : This word is derived from the French, 
*^''f a bed, a couch, a lodging, a place to lie on, or to rest in * (Cotgrave). And, to 
come to the point, * Droict de giste, power to lie at the house of a tenant, vassal, or 
subject, in passing along by it; due to the King onely, not to the Queene.' — Id. s. v. 
Droict, So here in England formerly, whenever the King went a progress, his gests 



14 THE WINTERS TALE [act i. sc. ii. 

PrefixM foPs parting : yet(good-deed) LeonteSy 52 

I loue thee not a larre o'th'Clock, behind 

What Lady fhe her Lord. YouMe ftay f 54 

^2, for' s] for his Cap. Steev. Mai. Var. 53. larre] jar F^. 

good deed] good-heed F,. good 54. Lady Jhe] lady should CoW. J^yct 

heed F^F^, Rowe, Pope, Han. Warb. ii, iii. lady-she Sta. Dtn. lady soe'er 

Johns. Ktly. 

(or the seyeral places where he was to be received and lodged in that journey) were 
first settled. The *gestSy then, is a writing containing the names of the houses or 
towns where it is intended the King shall lie or rest every night of his journey. 
Thus Edward VI. in his Journal of his own reign : * 8 June, 1549. The Gests of 
my progress were set forth, which were these. From Greenwich to Westminster. 
From Westminster to Hampton Court. From Hampton Court to Windsor,' etc. — 
Theobald : I have suspected the poet wrote, * the just, i. e. the just, precise time ; 
the instant (where time is likewise understood) by an ellipsis practised in all tongues. 
— Heath (p. 202) : I am inclined to believe that the word is list; * beyond the /«/* 
is beyond the limit. — Steevens: Cranmer, in a letter to Cecil, entreated him *to 
let him have the new resolved upon gests, from that time to the end, that he might 
from time to time know where the King was.* — Staunton : But gest, or jest, also 
signified a show or revelry, and it is not impossible that the sense intended was, — he 
shall have my permission to remain a month after the farewell entertainment. 

52. good deed] Steevens: That is, indeed, in very deed, as Shakespeare in 
another place expresses it. < Good-deed ' is used in the same sense by the Earl of 
Surrey, Sir John Hayward, and Gascoigne. 

Coleridge (p. 244) : The yielding of Polixenes to Hermione is perfectly natural 
from mere courtesy of sex, and the exhaustion of the will by former efforts of denial, 
and well calculated to set in nascent action the jealousy of Leontes. This, when 
once excited, is unconsciously increased by Hermione's speech [here follow the lines 
which Hermione addresses to Leontes], accomp>anied, as a good actress ought to repre- 
sent it, by an expression and recoil of apprehension that she had gone too far. 
[Coleridge must have trusted to his memory; he could hardly have had the text 
before him, or he would have seen that when Hermione thus speaks to Leontes, 
Polixenes had given no sign of yielding. — Ed.] 

53. larre o* th' clock] Steevens : A * jar * is, I believe, a single repetition of the 
noise made by the pendulum of a clock, what children call the ticking of it. So in 
Rich, II.: V, v, 51 : * My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar Their 
watches on unto mine eyes.' — Holt White i To * jar* certainly means to tick; as in 
T. Heywood's Troia Britannica, cant, iv, st. 107; ed. 1 609: * He hears no waking- 
clocke, nor watch to jarre.' — Malonb : So, in The Spanish Tragedy, 1601 : * the owls 
shrieking, the toads croaking, the minutes jarring, and the clocke striking twelve.' 
[—Act IV.] 

54. What] Abbott (§ 255) ; * What * in elliptical expressions assumes the meaning 
any ; as in the present phrase, *• less than any lady whatsoever loves her lord.* 

54. Lady she] The earlier editors found nothing worthy of comment in this 
phrase. They recalled doubtless the many instances in Shakespeare where * she * is 
used as a noun, albeit there is none of them exactly parallel to the present phrase, 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 15 

Pol. No, Madame. 55 

Her. Nay, but you will ? 

55, etc. Madame] Madam F^F^. 

e.g, *Lady, you are the cruelPst she alive.' — Twel. Night, I, v, 259; <Make him 
swear The she's of Italy should not betray,* — Cym, I, iii, 29 ; * Doctor She,' — Alts Wellt 
II, i, 32 ; again, there are the familiar lines of Robert Crashaw : * Whoe'er she be. That 
not impossible she,' etc. (other examples are also given by Abbott, § 224). It was not 
until Collier published his Reasons for a New Edition of Shakespeare, in 1842, that 
a discussion arose. In this pamphlet Collier stated that in a copy of the First Folio, 
belonging to Lord Francis Fgerton, a number of MS corrections had been found, and 
among them was the substitution of should for < she ' in the present passage. ' *^ What 
lady she her lord," Collier says, reads ' very like nonsense ' and terms it a < decided 
error ' ; but with should * the whole difficulty is removed,' and ' probably in the MS 
from which the First Folio was printed should was written with an abbreviation, which 
might easily be misread by the compositor.' This plausible substitution Walker 
( Crit. ii, 63) approved, and pronounced * the true reading. (See note on * acknow- 
ledge,' IV, iv, 468.) R. G. White (ed. i) adheres to the reading of F, as having 
<a quaint fascination which is lost in the proposed emendation.' Staunton con- 
siders should < prosaic enough.' ' The difficulty in the expression arises,' he appre- 
hends, * solely from the omission of the hyphen in 'lady-she'; that restored, the 
sense is unmistakable — I love thee not a tick of the clock behind whatever high-bom 
woman does her husband. So in Massinger's Bondman, I, iii, — ** I'll kiss him for 
the honour of my country. With any she in Corinth " ' ; which is by no means the 
same as * What Lady she her lord,' unless Staunton supposes that * any ' and * she ' 
are to be as closely connected as * lady ' and < she,' and can be joined by a hyphen ; 
otherwise the example falls into the same category with the others given above. — 
Abbott (§ 224) adopts the hyphen proposed by Staunton, and says that « « lady- 
she " means a well-bom woman^ — a meaning which Ingleby {Sh. Hermeneutics, p. 
116), not always a safe guide in matters of interpretation, says 'verges on the ridic- 
ulous,' * as if " a well-bom woman " was something more than a lady.^ Ingleby ap- 
parently approved of Staunton's hyphen ; and he certainly overlooked the fact that 
Abbott adopted both the hyphen and Staunton's paraphrase, merely changing * high- 
bora ' to well-bom, — a fair translation of Lady. — Hudson thinks that should * misses 
the right sense. Not how any lady ought to love, but how any lady does love her 
husband.' He accordingly reads in his text * What lady e'er her lord.' — Deighton 
suggests that possibly * she ' is merely redundant, as in < The skipping King he ambled 
up and down.' — / //en. IV: III, ii, 60; * For God he knows.' — Rich. Ill: III, vii, 
236. To make * What lady she ' exactly parallel, a verb should follow * she ' : * What 
lady she loves her lord,' and, perhaps, this may be the granmiatical solution, — the 
'she' is redundant and the verb Move' is not repeated. Hudson's objection to 
should is, I think, just. We must doggedly adhere to the original text as long as it 
conveys any good intelligible meanii%. Dr Johnson says the compositors who had 
Shakespeare's MS before their eyes are more likely to have read it correctly than we 
who read it only in imagination ; which is true, if we grant that they had Shake- 
speare's MS, or any other, before their eyes — this, I think, is more than doubtful. 
Cf. * I was wont to load my shee with knackes.' — IV, iv, 377. — Ed.] 



l6 THE WINTERS TALE [act i. sc. ii. 

PoL I may not verely. 57 

Her. Verely ? 
You put me off with limber Vowes: but I, 

Though you would feek t'vnfphere the Stars with Oaths, 60 

Should yet fay, Sir, no going : Verely 
You fhall not goe ; a Ladyes Verely ' is 
As potent as a Lords. Will you goe yet ? 
Force me to keepe you as a Prifoner, 

Not like a Gueft : fo you fhall pay your Fees 6$ 

When you depart, and faue your Thanks. How fay you ? 
My Prifoner ? or my Gueft ? by your dread Verely, 
One of them you fhall be. 

Pol. Your Gueft then, Madame : 69 

57, 58. verely\ verify Ff. 6i, 62, 67. Verefy'\ F,. venfy F F^. 

60. fvnsphere] to unsphere Cap. Rann, 62. Verefy* is] F,. verify *s White, 
Steev. Var. Knt, Dyce i, Cam. Walker, Sta. Dyce ii, iii. Cam. verify 

61. Sir, no going] As a quotation, tr F^F^ et cet. 

Cap. etseq. 65. Guejl:] Guest F Rowe, Pope, 

61, 62. Sir., .goe] As a quotation, Theob. i, Han. 
Theob. Warb. Johns. Cap. 67. your] our Gould. 



57. verely] May we not infer from this spelling that the Elizabethan pronun- 
ciation of very was veery ? — Ed. 

60. vnsphere] A reference to the Ptolemaic system, wherein the moon and the 
stars were supposed to be fixed in hollow crystalline spheres, which were made to 
revolve by the highest sphere, the primum mobile, and, in their revolutions of varying 
velocity, made music See notes in this edition on Mid. N. Dream, II, i, 7; Afer. 
of Ven., V, i, 74.— Ed. 

62. Verely'] The apostrophe here is not purposeless. It is a warning, not fully 
carried out by the compositor, to be sure, that the i of the following * is ' is elided in 
pronunciation ; and it has been so indicated in the text by White and others. — Ed. 

64, 65. Force . . . Guest :] The interrogative turn given to this sentence by 
Rowe has hardly received the attention by subsequent editors which it deserves. 
The Cam. Ed. does not even record it. Deighton alone has suggested that it is 
spoken ' possibly interrogatively ' ; he was not aware that Rowe had adopted it. It 
adds a certain vivacity to the next sentence : Will you force me to keep you as a 
prisoner? Then all you will gain will be in saving your thanks. — Ed. 

64-66. Prisoner . . . depart] Lord Campbell (p. 71): There is here an 
allusion to a piece of English law procedure, which, although it might have been 
enforced till very recently, could hardly be known to any except lawyers, or those 
who had themselves actually been in prison on a criminal charge, — ^that, whether 
guilty or innocent, the prisoner was liable to pay a fee on his liberation. I remember 
when the Qerk of Assize and the Clerk of the Peace were entitled to exact their fee 
from all acquitted prisoners, and were supposed in strictness to have a lien on their 
persons for it. I believe there is now no tribunal in England where the practice 
remains, excepting the two Houses of Parliament. 



ACT I. SC. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 1 7 

To be your Prifoner, fhould import offending ; 70 

Which is for me, leffe eafie to commit, 
Then you to punifh. 

Her. Not your Gaoler then. 
But your kind Hofteffe. Come, He queftion you 
Of my Lords Tricks, and yours, when you were Boyes : 75 

You were pretty Lordings then ? 

PoL We were (faire Queene) 
Two Lads, that thought there was no more behind. 
But fuch a day to morrow, as to day, 
And to be Boy etemall. 80 

Her. Was not my Lord 
The veryer Wag o'th' two ? 

Poiy^Q were as twyn'd Lambs, that did frisk i'th'Sun, 
And bleat the one at th^other: what we changed. 
Was Innocence, for Innocence : we knew not 8$ 

The Doftrine of ill-doing, nor dream'd 

70. Prifimer^ prisoner Knt, et seq. 81, 92. Her.] Hel. F,. 

71. for me^ F,. 86. ill-doing] ill-doingness Bulloch. 

72. etc. TTmt] Than F^. nor dream' d] no^ nor dream' d 

73. Gaoler] jailer Cap. Sing. Ff, Rowe + , Cap. Stcev. Mai. Var. Coll. 

74. Hofteffe. Come] Hofteffe^ Come Y^. ii, Dyce ii, iii, Huds. nor dream* d even 
Hofteffe^ come F^F^. Hostess ; come Ktly. nor dreamed we even Id. conj, 
Rowc, Pope. neither dream' d Spedding ap. Cam. 

75. yours] your's Coll. 

70. should] Here used in the sense of must, like the German sollen. 

74. Come, etc.] Walker {Crit. iii, 91) : She sees Polixenes in a state of unea- 
siness, such as is natural to a person who has just given up his better reason (or what 
seems to be such) to importunity; and endeavors to divert his thoughts. 

75. etc. See Dorastus and Fawnia in Appendix, 

76. You were] Walker {Crit. ii, 203) gives this as an example under his 
Article: Tliou wert (sometimes written in the old poets TV wert) you were^ Iwas^ 
etc. occur frequently, both in Shakesi>eare and in contemporary dramatists, in places 
where it is clear they must have been pronounced as one syllable, in whatever manner 
the contraction was effected. 

76. Lordings] Steevens : The diminutive of lord is often used by Chaucer. 

86. The Do^rine . . . dream'd] M alone: < Doctrine' is here used as a trisyl- 
lable. So children, tickling, and many others. The editor of F, inserted no, to sup- 
ply a supposed defect in the metre. [This note Lettsom {ap. Dyce) pronounces * a 
splendid specimen of perverted learning ' ; whereby Lettsom means, I suppose, that 
with the just emendation of F, before his eyes, Malone needlessly resorted to a length- 
ening of syllables. Indeed, the reading of F, (* no, nor dream'd*) is so clearly the 
true one that further attempts to scan the line, as it stands above, seem superfluous ; 
3 



1 8 THE WINTERS TALE [act i, sc. ii. 

That any did : Had we purfu'd that life, 87 

And our weake Spirits ne're been higher reared 
With ftronger blood, we fhould haue anfwer'd Heauen 
Boldly, not guilty ; the Impofition cleared, 90 

Hereditarie ours. 

Her. By this we gather 
You haue tript fince. 

Pol. O my moft facred Lady, 
Temptations haue fince then been borne to's : for 95 

In thofe vnfledg'd dayes,was my Wife a Girle ; 
Your precious felfe had then not crofs'd the ^y^s 
Of my young Play-fellow. 

Her. Grace to boot : 99 

90. the Impofition\ th* imposition 95. tds'\ to us Cap. Steev. Mai. Var. 

Pope+, Cap. Dyce ii. Knt, Sta. Ktly. 

90, 91. tAe... curs'] the inquisition 99. Grace'\ Oh! Grace Han. God^s 

clear' d Heaven would be ours Gould. g^ace Walker, Huds. Good grace Ktly. 

95. bome"] bom F^F^. Heaven^ s Grace Sta. conj. (Athenaeum 

4 Apr. 1874). 

see Abbott, § 505. If, however, the line must remain intact, then the missing syl- 
lable can be supplied by the pause after * doing.' An omission, exactly similar to the 
present, occurs in IV, iy, 497, where F, reads * Lookes on alike ' instead of < Lookes 
on all alike.* — Ed.] 

90,91. the Imposition . . . ours.] Theobald: That is, setting aside origi$usl 
sin ; bating the imposition from the offence of our first parents, we might have boldly 
protested our innocence to Heaven. [This interpretation, which has been generally 
followed, is, I think, wrong. The meaning is not that original sin is excepted, but 
that, even inherited as it was, it was swept clean away. The boys were so innocent 
that they were cleared of even hereditary sin. — Ed.] 

94. my most sacred Lady] Lady Martin (p. 342) : Polixenes' first words in 
reply show the reverence with which the serene purity of Hermione had inspired 
him. [We may be quite sure that before this point, at least, Leontes had retired. 
Had he heard Hermione thus addressed by Polixenes, his jealousy could not have 
started into life. — Ed.] 

99. Grace to boot] Warburton : That is, ' though temptations have grown up, 
yet I hope grace too has kept pace with them.* « Grace to boot,* was a proverbial 
expression on these occasions. Steevens : I have no great faith in the existence of 
such proverbial expressions. Heath : This gentleman [Warburton] seems to think 
the coining of proverbs, which no man besides ever heard of, is one of his own 
peculiar privileges. We have had several instances of it. When he meets with an 
expression which he can make nothing of, he instantly calls it a proverbial one ; and 
then, thinking he hath done the business, he assig^ns it a meaning, whether the words 
will bear it or no, which he can best fit to the context. In the present case I will 
venture to say no such proverb ever existed. The text is certainly corrupt, and I 



ACT I, SC. ii.] 



THE WINTERS TALE 



Of this make no conclufion, lead you fay 
Your Queene and I are Deuils : yet goe on, 
Th'offences we haue made you doe, wee'le anfwere, 
If you firft finnM with vs : and that with vs 
You did continue fault ; and that you dipt not 
With any, but with vs. 

Leo. Is he woon yet ? 

Her. Hee'le (lay (my Lord.) 

Leo. At my requeft,he would not : 
Hermione (my deareft) thou neuer fpoak^ft 
To better purpofe. 

Her. Neuer ? 



19 
100 



105 



no 



100. Uajr\ left F^. 

103. vs .•] usy Rowe. 

106. [Coming forward. Coll. ii. 

woon\ wonne F,F . won F . 
108. As an aside, Cap. 



109. deareft^ dearest Cap. Hal. Wh. 
Walker, Sta. Dyce ii, iii. 

neuer\ n^er Pope + . 
fpoak'Jf^ spokest Ktly, Cam. 



believe we ought to read : — ' Grace to both P that is, Pray spare your reflections on us 
both, your queen as well as myself. Capell (p. 162) : A popular exclamation of old, 
in some parts, that may not have got into print, and so wants examples ; equivalent to 
Grace befriend us ! Grace be merciful ! in which sense it agrees perfectly with the 
context. [One of those exclamations from which we at once gather a meaning, dim 
but satisfactory, and elusive when we come to analyze it, like Rosalind's, ' Good my 
complection !' But I think Murray (N. E. D, s. v. j^.^, c.) gives, on the whole, the 
best explanation when he calls it, like the exclamation, < St George to boot !' an 
'apprecatory phrase,' meaning here < Grace to my help!' — Ed.] 

103, 104. and that] For other instances of that used as a conjunctional affix, see, 
if necessary, Abbott § 287. 

104. continue fault] See the similar construction : < you have made fault,* III, ii, 
235, analogous to ' to find fault.* 

106. Any stage-direction here informing us that Leontes comes forward is need- 
less and obtrusive. 

108. Coleridge : The first working of the jealous fit. 

109. dearest] Walker ( Vers. 168) notes that the e here, as often in superlatives, 
is suppressed. Similar * suppressions * are noted by him in lines 166 and 278 of this 
scene; III, ii, 216; IV, iv, 95; lb. 132 (where, indeed, the Folio has 'fairst*); 
lb. 589; V, i, no. < Suppression* is, I think, too strong a word. Apart from the 
circumstances under which it (III, ii, 216) is uttered, can there be a more strident 
line than, • The sweetst, dearst creature's dead ?' — * a dry wheel grating on the axle- 
tree * is hardly less harsh ; and when we think how Paulina shrieked forth the words, 
every syllable is needed to din the superlatives in the ears of Leontes. When need 
is, the e in superlatives may be slurred^ but surely not suppressed. — Ed. 

III. Neuer?] Lady Martin (p. 343) : In acting, how much should be indicated 
in the tone of Hermione's < Never ?' Have you forgotten, it asks, your long wooing, 



20 THE WINTERS TALE [act i. sc. ii. 

Leo. Neuer, but once. 112 

/T^r.What? haue I twice faid well? when was't before? 

I prethee tell me : cram's with prayfe,and make's 

As fat as tame things: One good deed, dying tongueleffe, 115 

Slaughters a thoufand, wayting vpon that. 

Our prayfes are our Wages. You may ride's 

With one foft Kiffe a thoufand Furlongs, ere 

With Spur we heat an Acre. But to th' Goale : 

My laft good deed, was to entreat his ftay. 120 

What was my firft.^ it ha's an elder Sifter, 

Or I miftake you: O, would her Name were Grace. 122 

113. was't'l 'twas Steev. '78, *85. 119. we heat an Acre. But to th' 
was it M. Mason. Goale .•] we heat an acre^ but to th' goal. 

114. 117. cram's ... make's ... ride's^ Warb. Johns, the heat, an acre, but to 
cram us... make us... ride us Cap. Steev. the goal. Nichols, we heat us an acre: 
Mai. Var. Knt, Hal. Sta. Ktly. but to the goal Ktly. 

115. deed'\ Om. Anon. (Fras. Mag. 120. deed'\ Om. Var. '03; *I3; '21 
1853) ap. Cam. (misprint). 

119. heat'\ heat us Ktly. beat Cart- 122. Grace.] Grace, Rowe i. Grace! 

Wright. Theob. 

and the consent it at last won from me ? Will not the words I then spoke rank for 
ever the highest in your regard ? Leontes, quite taking her meaning, but liking to be 
entreated, only says, * Never but once.* Then comes her charming rejoinder, — so 
pretty, so coaxing, something like Desdemona's to Othello when pleading for a 
gentle answer to Cassio's suit. 

119. heat . . . Goale] Warburton: Editors have imagined that 'But to the 
goal,' meant, * but to come to the purpose ' ; but the sense is different, and plain 
enough when the line is printed thus : — * ere With spur we heat an acre, but to the 
goal.' That is, good usage will win us to anything; but, with ill, we stop short, even 
there where both our interest and our inclination would otherwise have carried us. — 
Capell (p. 162) : The expressions, < But, to the goal ' answer to these at present in 
use with us — But, to come to the point ; and are highly proper in the mouth of one 
who has wandered from it some four or five lines ; her phrase immediately before it, 
* heat an acre,' has not been trac'd anywhere ; yet it is not therefore false, and an 
object for alterers, implying clearly — o*er run it. — Collier (ed. ii), following his 
MS, reads: *With spur we clear an acre. But to the good' : *Hermione,* he 
explains, * reverts from her simile to the " good " Leontes had imputed to her. The 
compositor misread " good " goal, erroneously thinking that the figure derived from 
horsemanship was still carried on.* A. C. C. (Stratford-on-Avon Herald, Jan. 21 ? 
1887) : * Acre * as a measure of length is in constant use in the Midlands; the cus- 
tomary acre is about three roods, but it varies very much on actual survey. [Shake- 
speare in the present passage] probably meant an acre of thirty-two yards (instead of 
twenty-eight as in Nottinghamshire). — Murray {N. E. D.) recognizes 'acre* as a 
lineal measure, and gives an * acre length, 40 poles or a furlong (1. e. furrow -length) ; 
an acre breadth, 4 poles or 22 yards.* [In the last edition of his Lexicon, Schmidt 



ACT I. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 2 1 

But once before I fpoke to th^ purpofe ? when ? 123 

Nay, let me haue't : I long. 

Leo. Why, that was when 12$ 

Three crabbed Moneths had fowr'd themfelues to death. 
Ere I could make thee open thy white Hand: 
A clap thy felfe my Loue ; then didft thou vtter, 
I am yours for euer. 

Her. 'Tis Grace indeed. 130 

Why lo-you now;I haue fpoke to th' purpofe twice : 

'23. fpoke\ /pake FjF^, Rowe+. 130. 'Tis] This is Han. // is Cap. 

speak Var. '73. Rann, Mai. Stcev. Dyce. That was 

purpofe ?'\ purpose: Cap. et seq. Lettsom ap. Dyce. 

128. A clap"] F,. And clepe Rowe 1 31. lo-you'\ lo you Rowe ii, ct seq. 

ii + , Cap. Var. '73. And clap Ff et cet / haue'\ I've Pope + , Dyce ii, 

/elfe'\ self^ Rowe. iii. 

suggests hent for * heat.' We are under lasting obligations to Dr Schmidt as a Lexi- 
cographer, if only for his division into verbs and nouns where a word is used in both 
senses. But ne sutor^ etc. *■ Heat * is right, and * to the goal * meaning < to the point * 
is right, and < goal ' follows * heat * by the association of ideas. — Ed.] 

126. Three crabbed Moneths, etc.] This protracted wooing, extraordinarily long 
for Elizabethan days, is a noteworthy indication of Hermione's character. — Ed.] 

128. A clap] Steevens : She opened her hand to clap the palm of it into his, as 
people do when they confirm a bargain. Hence the phrase — ^* to clap up a bargain,* 
t. e. make one with no other ceremony than the junction of hands. So in Ram-Alley^ 
or Merry Tricks^ 161 1 : — * Speak, widow, is't a match ? Shall we clap it up ?* [IV, i.] 
Again, in Henry V: V, ii, 133: — <and so clap hands, and a bargain.' — Malone: 
This was a regular part of the ceremony of troth-plighting, to which Shakespeare 
often alludes. So in Meas, for Meas. V, i, 209 : < This is the hand, which, with a 
vow'd contract. Was fast belock'd in thine.' Again in King John, H, i, 532 : 
< Command thy son and daughter to join hands. IC. Phi. It likes us well ; young 
princes, close your hands.' So also in Middleton's No Wit Like a Wbman^s : — 
•There these young lovers shall clap hands together' [IV, i]. I should not have 
given so many instances of this custom, but that I know Mr Pope's reading — *• And 
clepe^* etc. has many favourers. 

129. I am yours for euer] Hudson: There is, I think, a relish of suppressed 
bitterness in this last speech, as if her long reluctance had planted in him a germ of 
doubt whether, after all, her heart was really in her words of consent. For the Queen 
is a much deeper character than her husband. It is true, these notices, and various 
others, drop along so quiet and unpronounced, as hardly to arrest the reader's atten- 
tion. Shakespeare, above all other men, delights in just such subtile insinuations of 
purpose ; they belong, indeed, to his usual method of preparing for a given issue, yet 
doing it so slyly as not to preclude surprise when the issue comes. [I cannot agree 
with Hudson in detecting any * suppressed bitterness ' here. — Ed.] 

130. 'Tis Grace] Malone: Referring to what she had just said, — 'would her 
name were Grace !' 



22 THE WINTERS TALE [act i, sc. ii. 

The one, for euer eamM a Royall Husbs^d ; 132 

Th'other, for fome while a Friend. 

Leo. Too hot, too hot : 
To mingle friendfhip farre,is mingling bloods. 135 

I haue Tremor Cordis on me : my heart daunces, 
But not for ioy ; not ioy. This Entertainment 
May a free face put on : deriue a Libertie 
From Heartinefle, from Bountie, fertile Bofome, 
And well become the Agent: 't may; I graunt : 140 

But to be padling Palmes, and pinching Fingers, 
As now they are, and making praftis'd Smiles 142 

133. Th' other\ The other Cap. Rann, 139. Bountie^ fertile bo/ome'] bounty s 
Stecv. Dyce ii, iii. fertile bosom Han. Rann, Coll. ii (MS), 

[Giving her hand to Pol. Cap. Wh. i, Ktly. Dyce ii, iii, Rife. 

134. [Aside. Rowe et seq. 140. well'\ we' I F,F^. wee' I F^. we'll 
Too hot^ too hot ] Too hot Han. Rowe i. 

137. me:,, .ioy; not ioy.'\ me — ,»'joy become] becomes Kawe n. Tope. 
— not joy, — Rowe + . me ; — „.joy, not 7 may ;] F,F . it may, Var. 
joy. Cap. »73, '78, Mai. Steev. Knt, Sing. Ktly. 

138. deriue'] deriues Ff, Rowe, Pope. V may, F^ ct cet. 

134. Too hot] Coleridge: The morbid tendency of Leontes to lay hold of 
the merest trifles, and his grossness immediately afterwards, * — paddling palms,' 
etc., followed by his strange loss of self-control in his dialogue with the little 
boy. 

13^* 143* Abbott (§§ 503, 499) suggests expedients whereby these lines, of 
twelve syllables each, may be reduced to regular iambic pentameters. But such 
attempts are futile, not only in impassioned dialogue, but in soliloquies like the pres- 
^ ent. While this jealous mania possesses Leontes, it is noticeable that his speech 
is disconnected, disjointed, with many repetitions — a characteristic of madness. It 
is sufficient that each sentence, or fragment of a sentence, is in itself rhythmical. 
The ear is satisfied, and to arrange these sentences into set lines of a certain length 
is merely for the eye. It is not clear that in a modem text many of these lines in this 
soliloquy should not be printed, for the eye, with dashes ; it would then be apparent, 
I think, that Hanmer*s change of ' bounty's fertile bosom ' is needless, the * from ' 
being understood : — * But not for joy, — not joy. — This entertainment — ^may a free 
face put on,— derive a liberty From heartiness — from bounty, — fertile bosom ; — And 
well become the agent ; — it may — I grant,' etc. — Ed. 

139. fertile Bosome] Steevens : By this, I suppose, is meant a bosom like that 
of the earth, which yields a spontaneous produce. In the same strain is the address 
of Timon : * Common mother, thou. Whose womb immeasurable, and infinite breast, 
Teems, and feeds all.' — IV, iii, 179. 

141. padling] Used by Shakespeare in an evil, wanton sense. — Ed. 

142. pra<5lis'd Smiles] Cf. * There was never yet fair woman but she made 
mouths in a glass.' — Lear, III, ii, 35. — Ed. 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 23 

As in a Looking-Glaffe ; and then to figh,as 'twere 143 

The Mort o'th'Deere : oh, that is entertainment 

143. Glnjfe;'] glass — Rowe + . 

143. Looking-Glasse] Walker (Crit. iii, 91), in order to get rid of the two 
extra syllables in this line, suggested : * Perhaps, " As in a glass " / but it is dangerous 
to alter without stronger reason than there appears to be in the present case ; and 
glass for looking-glass is not perhaps sufficiently clear.* — Dyce (ed. iii) : In IV, iv, 18, 
we have * To show myself a glass,' 1. e. a looking-glass. 

144. Mort o' th' Deere] Theobald : To blow a Mort is a hunting phrase, signi- 
fying to sound a particular air, called * a Mort,' to give notice that the deer is run 
down or killed. — Steevens: So, in Greene's Carde of Fancie [1587]: *He that 
bloweth the Mort before the fall of the Buck, may vcrie well misse of his fees * 
[vol. iv, p. 83, ed. Grosart]. Again, in the oldest copy of Chevy Chase : * The blewe 
a mort vppone Me bent.* [To these quotations Nares adds : * " Directions at the 
death of a huck or hart. — The first ceremony, when the huntsmen come in at the 
death of a deer, is to cry Ware haunch^ etc. — then having blown the mort^ and all 
the company come in, the best person, that hath not taken say before, is to take up 
the knife."— (7^^//. Recreat., Hart. Hunt., 3, p. 75. Some of the books give the 
notes that are to be sounded on this occasion.'] — Collier (ed. iii) : The * mort ' is 
the death of the deer, when it heaves its last sigh. — Skeat {The Academy, 29 
Oct., 1887), to whom Collier's third edition was evidently unknown, attacked the 
interpretation as given by Theobald, Steevens, and Nares, and asserted that thus 
interpreted no simile could be worse. ' We might as well liken the sound of weep- 
ing to the joyful shout of victory. The fact is,' continues Skeat, * that " mort " just 
means death, neither more nor less — la mort^ sans phrase. The sigh is that of the 
exhausted and dying deer ; and the simile is natural and easy. The commentators 
wanted to air their learning. . . . [The line from the oldest copy of Chevy Chase 
appears in Percy's Relics, as Steevens quotes it, and] I regret to say that ... I have 
so printed the line in my Specimens of English. But I honestly collated the text 
with the MS, and duly made a note that the MS reading is mot. And mot happens 
to be quite right. The careful Cotgrave duly explains the French mot as " the note 
winded by a huntsman on his home," and it is the true and usual word. We have 
Chaucer's authority for it in the Book of the Duchesse, 1. 376. In the Treatise on 
Venery, by Twety, printed in Reliquia Antiqua, i, 153, we read : " And when the hert 
is take, ye shall blowe foure motys." It is clear that the phrase to blow a mot was 
turned into to blow a mort."* [A mot is a single blast, and if • thre motes ' were blown 
at the * uncouplynge of the houndys ' as we learn from Chaucer, and * foure motys * 
when the deer was taken, as we learn from the Treatise on Venery, it is not an undue 
assumption to say that the last four notes were called the * mort,' when we have evi- 
dence as good as in the Carde of Fancie and as in that supplied by Nares. As for 
the line in Chcry Chase, no great stress can be laid on it, either one way or the other. 
Skeat himself has elsewhere said of the MS that it is * a mere scribble, and the spell- 
ing very unsatisfactory.* I confess that my own preference is for the supposition that 
Leontes refers to the dying sighs of the deer rather than to the raucous sound of a 
horn ; and it is possible that Shakespeare, in using a technical term, referred not to a 
process, but to what that process represented. — Ed.] 



24 THE WINTERS TALE [act i. sc. ii. 

My Bofome likes not, nor my Browes. MamUliuSy 145 

Art thou my Boy ? 

Mam, I, my good Lord. 

Leo, I'fecks : 
Why that's my Bawcock:what?has't fmutch'd thy Nofe? 
They fay it is a Coppy out of mine. Come Captaine, 150 

We muft be neat ; not neat, but cleanly, Captaine : 
And yet the Steere, the Heycfer, and the Calfe, 
Are all callM Neat. Still Virginalling 
Vpon his PalmePHow now (you wanton Calfe^ 154 

149. has V] hast Cap. et seq. 152. Heycfer\ F,. Heyfer F^. Heifer 

150. itis\ tyj Theob. ii, Warb. Johns. F^. 

Var. Rann, Mai. Steev. Dyce, Ktly. 153. aU'\ all alike Lettsom (ap. 

Come Captaine"] One line. Cap. Dyce). 

Coll. White i. [Observing Pol. and Herm. 

[Pulling the Boy to him, and Rowe. 

wiping him. Cap. ^7/] Still, still Su. conj. 

151. bui cleanly] cleanly Yi. (Athen. 4 Apr. 1874). 

[Wipes the boy's face. Han. 153, 154. Still... Palme] Aside. Cap. 

145. Browes] Othello makes the same allusion when he complains (III, iii, 283) 
of the pain upon his forehead. Here Leontes is led to it, by having just spoken of 
a « deer.'— Ed.] 

148. I'fecks] Bradley {N. E. D. s. v. Pegs, where many forms, such as feckins^ 
fackins, fac, facks, etc., are given) : A distortion of Fay, Faith, perhaps with suffix 
'kin(s frequent in such trivial quasi-oaths; cf. body kins, byrlakin. 

149. Bawcock] Murray (N. E. D.) : From the French, beau coq. A colloquial 
or burlesque term of endearment : = Fine fellow, good fellow. 

149. smutch'd] Cowden-Clarke : It is reserved for such a poet as Shakespeare 
fearlessly to introduce such natural touches as a passing black, a flying particle of 
smut resting upon a child's nose, and to make it turn to wonderfully effective account 
in stirring a father's heart, agitating it with wild thoughts, and prompting fierce play^ 
upon words and bitter puns. 

150. Coppy out] In this phrase 'out' can hardly be the preposition of origin or 
source, as Schmidt (Z^r.) interprets it — an interpretation which almost provokes a 
smile. With < copy,' it forms one composite idea, and the two words might be joined 
without offence by a hyphen. — Ed. 

151. neat] Johnson: Leontes, seeing his son's nose smutch'd, cries, < We must 
be neat ' ; then recollecting that * neat ' is the ancient term for homed cattle, he says, 
* not neat, but cleanly.' 

153. Virginalling] Johnson: Still pla3ring with her fingers, as a girl pla3ring on 
the virginals. — Chappell (p. 103) : The virginals (probably so called because chiefly 
played upon by young girls) resembled in shape the * square ' pianoforte of the present 
day, as the harpsichord did the * grand.' The sound of the pianoforte is produced 
by a hammer striking the strings, but when the keys of the virginals or harpsichord 
were pressed, the * jacks ' (slender pieces of wood, armed at the upper end with 



ACT I. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 2$ 

Art thou my Calfe / 155 

Mam. Yes, if you will (my Lord J 

Z^^.Thou want'ft a rough pafh, & the fhoots that I haue 
To be full, like me : yet they fay we are 
Almoft as like as Egges ; Women fay fo, 

(That will fay any thing.) But were they falfe 160 

As o're-dyM Blacks, as Wind, as Waters;falfe 

158. /«//, /ti^] full like Pope, et seq. l6l. oWe-dyd^ oWe dVd F^. 

160. Min^.)] thing; Rowe et scq. IVind'] unnds Rowe ii + , Var. 
(subs.). *73, *78, '85, Rann, Dyce iii, Huds. 

quills) were raised to the strings, and acted as plec/ra, by impinging, or twitching 
them. These jacJb were the constant subject of simile and pun. ( P. 486) During 
the great fire of London in 1666, Pepys, who was an eye-witness, tells us [2d of 
September] that the river Thames being full of lighters and boats taking in goods, 
he ' observed that hardly one lighter or boat in three that had the goods of a house 
in, but there was a pair of Virginalls in it.' . . . The virginalls, spinet, and harpsi- 
chord (or hareich^if, as it was about this time more generally called) were the pre- 
cursors of the pianoforte ; and although differing from one another in shape, and 
somewhat in interior mechanism, were essentially the same instrument 

154. wanton] That is, frolicsome. 

155. Calfe] Mackay (Gloss, s. v.) : It is perhaps useless to inquire, after the lapse 
of three centuries, whether * calf was a term of endearment to a child among the 
English people ; but it is worthy of remark that to the present day, among the people 
of the Highlands of Scotland, and of the Gaelic-speaking population of Ireland, 
lacgA, which means a calf or a fawn, is the very fondest epithet that a mother can 
apply to her boy-baby. 

157. pash] Jamieson {Scol. Diet, s. v.) defines ^ Pash^ The head, a rather 
ludicrous term. A bare pash^ a bare or bald head, S. " A mad pash ^ a mad-brains, 
Chesh." Gl. Grose.' Henley in the Var. 1821 paraphrases the sentence : to make 
thee a calfy thou must have the tuft on thy forehead and the young horns that shoot 
up in it, as I have.' But he gives no authority for his explanation of * pash ' by tuft, 
Dyce [Gloss^ quotes him without comment, and also Jamieson's definition, as well 
as the following remark by M alone: * You tell me (says Leontes to his son) that you 
are like me ; that you are my calf. I am the homed bull ; thou wantest the rough 
head and the horns of that animal, completely to resemble your father.' Mackay 
(Gloss.) sajrs that 'pash* is the Gaelic rendering of the word for forehead : bathais 
pronounced bash or pashy and that Leontes' * rough pash ' means * a brow furrowed 
by care.' [' Shoots ' probably means homsy and for * rough pash ' we need seek no 
deeper meaning than rough or shaggy head. — Ed.] 

161. o're-dy'd Blacks] Hanmer : A black dye being used in too great quantity 
doth not only make the cloth to rot upon which it is put, but the colour itself to fade 
and grow rusty much sooner. — Steevens : It may mean those stuffs which have 
received a dye over their former colour. There is a passage in The Old Law of 
Massinger, which might lead us to offer another interpretation : — *■ Blacks are often 
such dissembling mourners. There is no credit given to 't, it has lost All reputation 



26 THE WINTERS TALE [act I. sc. iL 

As Dice are to be wifh'd,by one that fixes 162 

No borne 'twixt his and mine ; yet were it true, 

163. bome\ bom F^F^, Rowe i. bourne Rowe ii. bourn Cap. et acq. 

by false sons and widows.' [ — II, i. Steevens continues the quotation with « I would 
not hear of blacks ' — a line which I cannot find in Gifford's ed. of the play. I should 
not have mentioned the circumstance, but have made the correction silently as in so 
many other quotations, had not Collier and Halliwell also given the line. Either they 
did not verify Steevens or the line is to be found in some edition other than Gifford's.] 
It seems that blacks was the common term for mourning. Thus in A Afad IVorldj 
My Masters : * I'll pay him when he dies in so many blacks ; I'll have the church 
hung round with a noble a yard ' [II, ii]. Blacky however, will receive no other 
colour without discovering itself through it. See Plin. Nat. Hist. viii. — M ALONE: 
The following passage in a book which our author had certainly read, inclines me to 
believe that the last is the true interpretation. * Truly quoth Camilla, my Wooll was 
blacke, and therefore it could take no other colour.' — Lyly's Euphues and his Eng- 
landy 1580 [p. 408, Arber.]. — Collier (ed. ii) adopts and upholds the emendation 
of his MS : * our dead blacks ;' which, he says, means * only our blacks worn for 
the dead ; Leontes emphatically calls this mourning false, inasmuch as it often does 
not represent the real state of feeling of the wearer.' [When Collier published this 
emendation in his Notesy etc. five years before his second edition appeared, he said 
that it means 'blacks worn for the deaths of persons whose loss was not at all 
lamented.' This phrase Lettsom i^BlackivocT s Afaga.y Aug., 1853) selected as his 
only criticism of the change, in the remark : * But surely all persons who wear 
mourning are not hypocrites ; and therefore this new reading falls ineffectual to the 
ground,' which is, I am afraid, feeble ; Collier successfully answered this criticism in 
his edition by saying that mourning * often does not represent,* etc. If, as Collier 
acknowledges, '"blacks" was the ordinary term for mourning in Shakespeare's 
time' (I quote his words), an argument against the phrase 'dead blacks' lies in its 
pleonasm. — Staunton calls Collier's change * absurd ;' which is no argument. * The 
phrase meant,' he says, * such garments as had become rotten and faded by frequent 
immersion in the dye.' Is a garment which is frequently immersed apt to look 
faded ? It may be * rotten,' but it would look fresh, not faded. * If,' continues 
Staunton, * any change in the text be admissible, we should read " oft-AytA blacks." 
Thus, in Webster's Dutchess of Malfi, V, ii : "I do not think but sorrow makes her 
look Like an oft dy'd garment." ' Leontes' primary idea is falseness, and * o*re-dy'd 
Blacks' are, I think, blacks rendered false by o'er-dyeing, which falseness, since 
black is black, must refer to the texture. — El).] 

161. Wind] Dyce (ed. iii) : The context evidently requires the plural winds 
(as in Rowe ii). [PVinds are not false. The North wind remains for ever the 
North wind ; the instant it veers, it ceases to be the North wind. But the * Wind * 
may be as false as there are hours in the day. — Ed.] 

163. borne] Halliwell quotes Warton : That is, any noted cheat, who would as 
readily convert my possessions to his own use and purposes as his own, and trick me 
of them all. In the waste and open countries, * bourns ' are the grand separations, 
or divisions, of one part of the country from another, and are natural limits of districts 
and parishes. For * bourn ' is simply nothing more than a boundary. 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 27 

To fay this Boy were like me. Come(Sir Page) 

Locke on me with your Welkin eye : fweet Villaine, 165 

Mod dear' ft, my Collop : Can thy Dam, may^t be 

Affeftion ? thy Intention ftabs the Center. 167 

164. were] u Han. 166. may* t be] Ff, G)ll. i, Sta. mayt 

165. welkin] welking Rowe ii, Pope, be — Rowe + . may 7 be? Han. Cap.et 
Han. welkin-eye Theob. + , Var. Sleev. seq. (subs.). 

eye:] eye^ Rowe + . 167, 1 75. Affeifliim.^Browes] Erased 

Villaine,] Villaine, Ff. villain I by Coll. (MS). 

Cap. 167. Affe^ion?,.,the] Imagination I 

\(^. dear^ ft y my Collop:] dear est , my thou dost stab to th' Ko'frt-^. Affection, 

Collop — Rowe. :.to the Cap. Coll. ii. Affection,. „tke 

thy Dam,] they dam, F^. thy Coll. i. Affection,., the Sta. Affection I 

dam ? Rowe. thy dam — Johns. ,.,the Steev. et cet. (subs.). 

164. to say . . . were] For other examples of the subjunctive in subordinate 
clauses, see Abbott, § 368. 

165. Welkin] Johnson : Blue eye ; an eye of the same colour with the welkin, 
or sky. 

166. Collop]. Dyce (Gloss.) Used metaphorically, as being a portion of his 
flesh. 

167-175. Affecflion . . . Browes] Capell: The meaning must be this or 
nothing : * Affection,' the thing apostrophised, is told — that when full bent is given it, 
fiill inientiveness, man often receives a stab in his centre, t. e, his heart ; meaning, 
that he is in that case subject to jealousy; thou (this fiill-bent affection) mak*st 
possible, says the sp>eaker, things which others hold not so; hast fellowship with 
dreams, with what's unreal, nay, even with nothing, art that nothing's co-agent in 
working out thy own torment ; And having said this, suddenly (by a wonder-full, but 
natural turn in so sick a mind as this speaker's), out of these reflections, which make 
the passion ridiculous and are of force to have cur'd it, matter is drawn by him to 
give his madness sanction ; by saying, — that since nothings were a foundation for it, 
somethings might be, and were ; — * Then, 'tis very credent, Thou may'st co-join with 
something; and thou dost;' subjoining to this assertion — * And that to the infection 
of my brains. And hard'ning of my brows ' — for this only should follow it ; [line 1 75] 
being, in the editor's judgment, a first draft of the poet's, corrected by what comes 
after, and meant by him for rejection. — Steevens : * Affection,* I believe, signifies 
imagination. Thus in Mer, of Ven. IV, i, 50: * Affection, Mistress of passion, sways 
it,' etc., I. e. imagination governs our passions. * Intention ' is, as Locke expresses it, 

* when the mind with great earnestness, and of choice, fixes its view on any idea, 
considers it on every side, and will not he called off by the ordinary solicitations of 
other ideas.' This vehemence of the mind seems to be what affects Leontes so 
deeply, or in Shakespeare's language, — * stabs him to the centre.' — M. Mason 
(p. 124): 'Affection,' in this place, seems to be taken in its usual acceptation and 
means the passion of love, which, from its possessing the powers which Leontes here 
describes, is often called in Shakespeare by the name of Fancy. ... In answer to 
the question, * may 't be ?' and to show the possibj^^v of ^^^Tpinnp's falp**^*^^, he 
begins to descant upon the power of love, but has no sooner pronounced the word 

* affection,' than, casting his eyes on Hermione, he says to her, or rather, of her in a 



28 THE WINTERS TALE [act i, sc. iu 

[167-175. Affedlion? thy Intention . . . Browes] 
low voice, * thy intention stabs the centre I' After that, he proceeds again in his 
argument for a line and a half, when we have another break — * How can this be ?' 
He then proceeds with more connection, and says < if love can be co-active with what 
is unreal, and have communication with non-entities,' it is probable that it may conjoin 
with something real in the case of Hermione, and having proved it possible, he con- 
cludes that * it certainly must be so/ ... * Intention ' in this passage means eagerness 
of attention, or of desire, and is used in the same sense in The Merry IVives, I, iii, 
731, where Falstaff says : ' She did so course o'er my exteriors, with such a greedy 
intention, that the appetite of the eye did seem to scorch me up like a burning glass.' 
— M ALONE : I think, with Mr. Steevens, that * affection ' means here imagination, or 
perhaps more accurately : * the disposition of the mind when strongly affected or 
possessed by a particular idea.' And in a kindred sense at least to this, it is used in 
the passage quoted from the Mer, of Ven. — Collier, in his first edition, having 
unwisely adopted the punctuation of the Ff in < may 't be Affection ' ? was justly 
criticised by Dyce (Remarks^ etc. p. 79), who concludes his criticism as follows: — 
» Leontes, after saying, «* Can thy dam ? may 't be ?"— (so again, three lines after, 
** how can this be ?") breaks off in an apostrophe to " affection," which is continued 
to the end of the speech, — " Affection, thy intention stabs the centre," * etc. Dyce 
here quotes with approval Malone's note just given above. — Singer (ed. ii) : * Affec- 
tion ' here means sympathy, « Intention * is intemeness. The * centre * is the solid 
globe conceived as the centre of the universe. (See II, i, 126.) The allusion is to 
the powers ascribed to sympathy between the human system and all nature, however 
remote or occult. Hence Leontes, like Othello, finds in his very agitation a proof 
that it corresponds not with a fancy but a reality. [Which is obscurely expressed. — 
Ed.] — R. G. White (ed. i) : That is, the mind, when it is powerfully excited or 
affected, intuitively pierces the very heart, hits the white, touches the ^pot of the 
matter. For a similar use of * affection,' see Mer, of Ven. [above quoted], — Collier, 
in his second edition, returned substantially to the punctuation of Capell, and has the 
following sensible note : ' In all likelihood " affection " is to be taken for imaginatum^ 
and *' intention,*' not for design or purpose, but for intentness, or vehemence of passion. 
Not one of the commentators, ancient or modem, has concurred with another on the 
poet's meaning, and there can be little hesitation in coming to the conclusion that 
mishearing, misrecitation, and misprinting have contributed to the obscuration of what, 
possibly, was never very intelligible to common readers or auditors. All that is clear 
is that Leontes, watching the conduct of Polixenes and Hermione, misinterprets their 
action, and feeds his own jealousy, concluding that their object was criminal and 
that he was to be the sufferer. This notion he gives vent to in various abrupt sen- 
tences, the connexion of which is entirely mental, but their general import is sufficiently 
clear.' — Staunton : * Affection ' here means imagination ; * intention ' signifies inten- 
cion or intensity ; and the allusion, though the commentators have all missed it, is 
plainly to that mysterious principle of nature by which a parent's features are trans- 
mitted to the offspring. Pursuing the train of thought induced by the acknowledged 
likeness between the boy and himself, Leontes asks, *■ Can it be possible a mother's 
vehement imagination should penetrate even to the womb, and there imprint upon the 
embryo what stamp she chooses ? Such apprehensive fantasy, then,' he goes on to 
say, * we may believe will readily co-join with something tangible, and it does,' etc. 
etc. [Are we to believe that the betossed soul of Leontes is here interested in a 



ACT I. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 29 

[167-175. Affedlion? thy Intention . . . Browes] 
recondite physiological speculation? Staunton's punctuation of the passage is, I 
think, better than that of any other editor. Every clause is a question until the 
answer begins: 'Then, *tis very credent,* etc. — Ed.] — Keightley {^Expositor ^ 
p. 198) thinks the whole passage ' rather obscure,' and that the meaning seems to be 
that ^ affection," which is imagination^ fancy y stretches to (expressed by " intention"), 
atid stabs, or pierces, even the centre of the earth.' — ^Joseph Crosby (Am. Bibliopolist^ 
Dec. 1876, p. 121) interprets 'affection' by lust^ and thus paraphrases the first line: 
< O lust I thy intensity,— the lengths thou wilt go to satiate thyself, — stabs the centre, — 
penetrates to, and permeates, every foot of the habitable globe.' The rest of Crosby's 
paraphrase may be here omitted; the difficulty lies in line 167; with the exception 
of 'beyond commission' in line 173, there is no diversity of opinion as regards the 
meaning of the remainder of the speech. — Hudson has ' little doubt that amidst so 
many andi^ that word got repeated out of place [in line 1 73], and that in [line 174] 
"And that" crept in, for the same cause from the line above.' Accordingly he 
changed the former into * as I find it,' and the latter into ' Ay^ even to the infection,' 
etc. He doubts, moreover, * whether " affection " ever bears the sense of imagination 
in Shakespeare ; though he certainly uses it with considerable latitude, not to say 
looseness, of meaning.' He then gives the foregoing notes from M. Mason and from 
Singer. As to the word : * centre,' Hudson does not see how it can bear any other 
sense than that which it has in the next scene. Before quoting a paraphrase of the 
whole passage by Joseph Crosby, Hudson concludes : — * Perhaps, after all, the passage 
in hand was not meant to be very intelligible ; and so it may be an apt instance of a 
man losing his wits in a rapture of jealousy. For how can a man be expected to 
discourse in orderly sort when his mind is thus all in a spasm ?' 

A critic of Grant White's second edition having taken that editor to task for not 
having in his notes explained the passage in hand, Grant White defended himself 
(Atlantic Monthly , June, 1884, p. 817) as follows: — * If I know anything of the 
Sjmtactical construction of the English language, this passage is as simple and clear 
in its arrangement as the simplest and clearest in the writings of Oliver Goldsmith, 
or of Arthur Helps. . . . There is in it not even an involution or an inversion ; unless 
the very simple *' thou coactive art " for thou art coactive, is to be so regarded. The 
thoughts follow each other in the natural, logical order. Nor is there a single strained 
or perverted word in all the seven lines. Every word is used in its plain, and it might 
almost be safely said its primary, sense. I say this advisedly, after careful consideration. 
What, then, is the reason of that sense of incomprehensibleness which led to its 
selection as an example of Shakespeare's characteristic overstraining of language, 
sense, and syntax ? Good reader and good critic, it is simply the thought. Master 
that, and you will see that the expression is as clear as the empyrean atmosphere.' 
[I>oubtless Grant White was honest in the belief that he spoke ' advisedly, after care- 
ful consideration,' but his words smack a little of an exaggeration due to the defense 
of a weak point. Assuredly, if explanatory notes be ever needed, here is the occasion. 
It is easy to say, * master the thought,' but it will hardly do to impute to every editor 
of Shakespeare a failure therein. And what is to be thought of Grant White's own 
mastery of it, when in transferring the passage from his /Riverside Edition to the 
pages of The Atlantic^ which he presumably read with extremest care before pro- 
nouncing judgement, he transferred a misprint, and substituted in the text a word 
which Shakespeare did not here use ? Instead of ' Affection ! thy intention stabs the 



30 THE WINTERS TALE [act I. sc. u. 

Thou do'ft make poflible things not fo held, i68 

Communicat'ft with Dreames(how can this be?) 

With what's vnreall : thou coa6liue art, 170 

And fellow'ft nothing. Then 'tis very credent. 

Thou may'ft co-ioyne with fomething, and thou do'ft, 

(And that beyond Commiflion) and I find it, 173 

168. not f6\ not be fo Ff, Rowe + . Theob.+ dreams,— H<no.„be? With 
not to be so Han. what^s unreal Rann et seq. (subs.). 

1 68, 1 69. held, . . . Dreames (how^ held ? 1 70. coatfliue] co active Theob. ii + , 

,„Dreamsf Howl Sta. Cap. (errata). 

169, 170. Dreames„.vnreall:^ F„ l^l, felloto'yi'] follow' st ViovftW, 
Cap. Var. '73, '78, '85 (subs.). Dreams nothing] nothings Han. noth- 
.„unreally F^F^ Rowe. dreams— hew ing? Sta. 

,,,be With whatU unreal ? Pope, dreams 173 in brackets. Cap. 

—(how,,, be?) With what's unreal^ i^,] 1// Theob. + . 



centre/ the Riverside Edition and The Atlantic Monthly both read : « Affection ! thy 
invention stabs the centre,'— a typographical error, which Grant White afterwards 
acknowledged (see Notes and Qu. VH, i, 235). Possibly had he had the true text 
before him, he would not have been so tickle o' the sere in pronouncing the passage 
as * clear as the empyrean atmosphere * ; something y^»</ is very different from some- 
thing intended. 

The difificulty, to me, lies not in « affection * but in ' intention.' It is possible to take 
' affection ' as meaning lust, but it is not necessary here ; Shakespeare in many places 
draws the distinction between < affections ' and * passions.' Leontes begins with the 
thought merely of affection or love, and then reflects that this love carried to an 
extreme, or becoming to the last degree intense, pierces to the very soul. The 
only other instance where Shakespeare uses the word ' intention ' is in the passage 
from The Merry Wives, quoted by M. Mason ; both there and here it means, I think, 
intenseness, or, as Staunton spells it, intencion. In the rather puzzling phrase : * fellow'st 
nothing ' and in what follows, I think the reasoning of Leontes is : if this intensest love 
can live in dreams and go hand in hand with what is actually nothing. Is fortiori, it 
can mate with what is actually real. If, however, all explanations prove unsatisfac- 
tory, then the student must seek covert under Collier's sensible, prosaic note. — Ed.] 

168. possible things] Johnson : That is, thou dost make those things possible, 
which are conceived to be impossible. — Malone: To express the speaker's meaning, 
it is necessary to make a short pause after the word * possible.* I have therefore put 
a comma there, though perhaps, in strictness, it is improper. 

170. vnreall : thou] All modem editors, without exception I believe, since Rann 
in 1787, have printed this line without any punctuation between * unreal ' and * thou.' 
Theobald, in his correspondence with Warburton, proposed this erasure of all punc- 
tuation, but in his edition he inserted a comma. 

173. beyond Commission] M. Mason (p. 125) : This alludes to the commission 
he had given Hermione to prevail on Polixenes to defer his departure. — SiNGER : 
That is, it is very credent that sjrmpathy shall betray a crime to the injured person, 
not only at the time of commission, but even after — beyond the time of commission. — 
Staunton : It means here, as in line 50, warrant, permission^ authority, [This 
seems to be conclusive. — Ed.] 



ACT I, sc. u.] THE WINTERS TALE 3 1 

(And that to the infeflion of my Braines, 

And hardning of my Browes.) 175 

PoL What meanes SicUia ? 

Her. He fomething feemes vnsetled. 

PoL How? my Lord ? 

Z^^.What cheere? how is't with you, beft Brother? 179 

178. HowF my Lordf^ Nwv^ my 179. What,., Brother ?^ Continued to 

hrd? Cap. Hew now, my lord? Sing. PoL Han. 

(MS). Hoy my lord ! Dyce ii, iii, Huds. i5U...beft Brother'\ is it„.mybest 

Now, my lord ? Mai. et seq. (subs.). brother Rowe, Pope, Han. 

174. And that] Dyce (ed. ii) : <The printer/ says Mr W. N. Lettsom, 'has 
repeated " And that " instead of Find it: [?] 

178. How] Dyce (ed. ii) : I here alter * How * to Ho, for Leontes is evidently 
standing apart from Polixenes and Hermione ; and * how * was frequently the old 
spelling of ho, 

179. Knight, Collier, and Halliwell are the only modem editors, I think, 
who adhere to this distribution of speeches ; all the rest follow Hanmer in giving 
this line to Polixenes. Knight observes : * It is impossible, we think, for any 
alteration to be more tasteless [than Hanmer's] and more destructive of the spirit 
of the author. Leontes, even in his mg&dy reverie, has his eyes fixed upon his 
queen and Polixenes ; and when he is addressed by the latter with ** How, my 
lord?" he replies, with a forced gaiety, "What cheer? how is *t vriihyouf" The 
addition of " best brother " is, we apprehend, meant to be uttered in a tone of bitter 
irony. All this is destroyed by making the line merely a prolongation of the inquiry 
of Polixenes. — Collier (ed. ii) : There is no reason for taking this line from Leontes. 
The old copies are uniform in the present distribution of the dialogue ; Leontes is 
endeavoring to recover himself, and breaks from a fit of abstraction with the line, 
'What cheer?* etc. — Halliwell: In acting the play, the arrangement of the 
original is greatly to be preferred. Polixenes calls Leontes, who is standing aside, 
and, being thus interrupted in his abstraction, hides the agony of his thoughts by an 
assumption of cheerfulness. — R. G. White (ed. i) : I cannot doubt that Hanmer 
was right. Otherwise, not only does Leontes express a solicitude not in keeping with 
his mood, but Polixenes does not put the very question which the situation required 
from him. It is clearly intended, too, that Hermione should continue the enquiry 
which her companion begins ; but this natural course of the dialogue is broken by the 
old arrangement. [White is the only editor who gives any reason for deserting the 
Folio. Dyce sajrs of Collier's return to the original text merely that it is * very 
injudicious, I think,' and Staunton quotes Dyce. To make as radical a change as a 
re-distribution of speeches demands an incontrovertible reason, especially when deal- 
ing with a text printed, as is acknowledged, with unusual care. Shakespeare may 
have intended this line, ending with ' best Brother,' as a flash of Leontes' old-time 
self, — a struggle to shake off the insane delusion which was beclouding his mind. 
There is certainly need of some words or speech from him, to ?pan the gap from 
his turbulent soliloquy to the gay memories of his boyhood. It is hard to say what 
is * natural ' under unnatural conditions, and I, for one, prefer to accept nature under 
what is presumably Shakespeare's lead, than under Hanmer's. — Ed.] 



32 THE WINTERS TALE [act I, sc. ii. 

Her.Yow look as if you held a Brow of much diftraftion: i8o 
Are you mou'd (my Lord?^ 

Leo. No, in good earned. 
How fometimes Nature will betray it^s folly? 
It's tendernefTe ? and make it felfe a Paftime 
To harder bofomes ? Looking on the Lynes 185 

Of my Boyes face, me thoughts I did requoyle 

180. You...hfU'\ You seem to hold iS^,iS4, iSs. /o/fy P,.Jendemeffe ^.., 
Han. bo/omes ?"] Yi. folly ! ...tenderness ! ,„ 

as if...diJlraction\ One line. bosoms I Rowe. 

Theob. et seq. 186. me thoughts^ metkoughts F^, 

181. Are you^ Are notyou'Thcoh. + . Rowe + , Cap. Mai. Steev. Var. Dyce if 
Are you not Han. Cam. Dtn. my thoughts Coll. (Egerton 

182. eam€jt\ earnest^ no. — Cap. MS), Sing. Wh. methought Sta. Ktly, 
183-185. Now... bo/ernes'] Aside. Cap. Dyce ii, iii, Huds. Rife. 

Mai. Steev. Sta. requqy'W] recoyl F recoil F^. 

183. 184. it's... If s^ F,. its... If s recall Grty {\y 246). 
F F 

178-182. Walker (Crit. iii, 91) would arrange these lines 'nearly as follows:' 

* What cheer? how is't with you, | Best brother? You look, as if you held a brow | 
Of much distraction : are you mov'd, my lord ?' | But all these divisions of lines, 
much affected by Germans, are for the eye only, the ear has no need of them. — Ed. 

183, 184, 189. it*8 . . . It's . . . it's] See Notes on Temp. I, ii, 113; Lear^ I, iv, 
209; Ham. I, ii, 216 of this edition, or see Abbott, § 228. According to the Bible 
Word-book (Eastwood and Wright), its occurs ten times in the First Folio, as follows : 
Temp. I, ii, 113; lb. I, ii, 457; Meas.for Meas. I, ii, 4; Wint. Tale^ I, ii, 183, 184, 
189, 310; lb. HI, iii, 53; 2 Hen. VI: IH, ii, 393; Hen. VIII: I, i, 18. K/or U 
is used for * its' fourteen times, as follows : Temp. H, i, 170; Wint. Tale, II, iii, 214; 
lb. Ill, ii, 107; King John, II, i, 160; 2 Hen. IV: I, ii, 131; Hen. V: V, ii, 40; 
Rom. ^ Jul. I, iii, 52; Timon, V, i, 150; Ham. I, ii, 216; V, i, 244; Lear, I, iv, 
236; Ant. <Sr* Cleop. II, vii, 49, 53 ; Cym. Ill, iv, 160. The possessive pronoun 'its' 
does not occur in the Authorised Version of the Bible of 161 1. Levit. xxv, 5, has 

* it ' in place of its. [From these lists it appears that its is more frequently used in 
A Winter's Tale than in any other play, — a possible indication that it was written 
later than the others, and at a time when the adoption of the anomalous its was 
becoming prevalent. It is merely a possible indication. For aught we know, in 
every case where we find * its ' in the printed text, Shakespeare may have written 
it, and we owe the * its ' to a compositor who, as we see in every column, was a 
careful workman. See line 310 infra; and II, iii, 214. — Ed.] 

186. me thoughts] Collier (ed. ii) : A MS correction in Lord EUesmere's copy 
shows that * me * has been inserted for my. — Dyce (ed. ii) : * Methoughts ' is, no doubt, 
a form which we occasionally meet with ; but since, a few lines after, the Folios have 

* me thought,' the variation was evidently introduced by the scribe or the printer, not 
by Shakespeare. ... Mr Knight too has eagerly adopted [Collier's] alteration * my 
thoughts,' wrong as it indubitably is. [This must refer to an edition of Knight which 
I have not seen. Knight's first edition has * methoughts,' his second * methought,' 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 33 

Twentie three yeeres, and faw my felfe vn-breechM, 187 

In my greene Veluet Coat ; my Dagger muzzelM, 

Lead it fliould bite it^s Mafter, and fo proue 

(As Ornaments oft do's) too dangerous : 190 

How like(me thought) I then was to this Kernell, 

This Squafli, this Gentleman. Mine honeft Friend, 

Will you take Egges for Money ? 193 

189. Leafi\ Left F^. 191. me thou^hf] Ff. metkought 
ifs\ Ff, Cap. White. Rowe et seq. 

190. Ornaments oft do^ 5\ F{ (does F^, 193. Egges /or Afoney"] aches from 
Ktly). ornament oft does Cap. Rann. any Bulloch (p. 116). 

ornaments oft do Rowe et cet. 

and his * Second Revised ' returns to * methoughts.' — Ed.] Walker ( Vers. 2S4) sug- 
gests that * methoughts ' is formed by contagion from methinks. He refers to Rich- 
ard III : I, iv, where the Folios have * Me thoughts that I had broken from the 
Tower,* etc. Then presently : * Me thought that Gloster stumbled/ etc. And again, 
within the next twenty lines, ' Me thoughts I saw a thousand fearfull wrackes/ etc. — 
•all these,* Dyce adds, « in the same speech,^ — W. A. Wright {Cam, Ed, ii) : « Me- 
thoughts * is, of course, a form grammatically inaccurate, suggested by the more famil- 
iar methinks. It occurs, however, sufficiently often in the old editions to warrant us 
in supposing that it came from the author's pen. We therefore retain it. [See Mer, 
of Ven, I, iii, 71 : * Me thoughts you said,* etc.] 

187. Twentie three years] An ingenious way of disclosing to us the present age 
of Leontes, and incidentally of differentiating his jealousy from that of Othello, a 
much older man, who in Desdemona*s fall bade farewell to all that made up life for 
him. "Whereas, the younger Leontes hopefully imagines that after Hermione's death 
at least a moiety of the zest of life will return to him. — Ed. 

190. Ornaments] See I, i, 34, where is given Walker's note on the interpolated 
s at the end of a word. Interesting as Walker's speculation may be that we have 
herein a peculiarity of Shakespeare's handwriting, the difference in the degree of 
frequency, in the various plays, points, I am afraid, to the different rules governing 
the several printing offices where the Folio was set up. The uncertainty as to the 
source of this interpolated s in no wise affiscts the value of Walker's article. In the 
present case it is not easy to say whether the s was interpolated after omamettt or 
after do. — Ed. 

192. Squash] The meaning of this word is amply explained in Twelfth Nighty I, 
▼, 166: ' Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a squash is 
before 'tis a peasecod, or a codling when 'tis almost an apple.* Our American word 
' squash,' applied to an edible gourd, is the latter half of the Indian name for it. See 
note in Mid, N. Dream, III, i, 193. — Ed. 

193. Egges for Money] Capell: Who shall trace this expression? the answer 
gives US its import, — that Mamillius is bid to stand and deliver hy it ; nor is it wholly 
chimerical to suppose that some robber in early time made this his expedient to keep 
clear of the law ; we have heard of methods resembling it. — ^Johnson : This seems 
to be a proverbial expression, used when a man sees himself wronged and makes no 

3 



34 THE WINTERS TALE [act i. sc. ii. 

[193. Egges for Money] 
resistance. Its original, or precise meaning, I cannot find, but I believe it means, 
will yon be a cuckold for hire. The cuckow is reported to lay her eggs in another 
bird's nest; he, therefore, that has eggs laid in his nest is said to be cueullatus, 
cuckowed, or cuckold. — Smith (ap. Grey, i, 246) : The meaning of this is, ' will you 
put up affronts?' The French have a proverbial saying, A qui vendez-vous vos 
coquilles ? t. e. whom do yon design to affront ? Mamillius's answer plainly proves 
it. ' No, my lord, I'll fight.' [There might be some appositeness in this reference 
to the French phrase, if coquilles therein meant egg shells, in the first place, and if 
it bore the meaning Smith gives to it, in the second. Cotgrave shows that coquilU 
here refers to the cockle shells (the same word) worn by pilgrims coming from the 
shrine of St. Michel in Normandy or from that of St James of Compoetella. Thus 
Cotgrave : * A qui vendez vous vos coquilles f followed by h ceux qui viennent de S, 
Michel? Why should you tbinke to cousen vs, that are as cunning as your selues? 
tis ill haulting before a criple.' The idea conveyed by the phrase, still current in 
France, is not of < affronting ' but of overreaching. This note of Smith would not 
have been worth repeating had not several editors accepted it without investiga- 
tion. — Ed.] — Steevkns: See A Match at Midnight^ 1633: — 'I shall have eggs 
for my money ; I must hang myself.' [Dodsley, in a note on this passage (vii, 370, 
ed. 1825), remarks that < it seems intended to express the speaker's fears that he shall 
receive nothing, or only trifles, in return for his money.* — Ed.] — Reed: Leontes 
seems only to ask his son if he would fly from an enemy. In the following passage 
the phrase is evidently taken in that sense: <The French infantery skirmisheth 
bravely afarre off, and cavallery gives a furious onset at the first charge ; but after 
the first heat they will take eggs for their money.' — Relations of the most famous King- 
domes and Commonwealths thorowout the Worlds 1630, p. 154. Mamillius's reply to 
his father's question appears so decisive as to the true explanation of this passage, that 
it leaves no doubt with me even after I have read the following note [by Boswell]. 
The phrase undoubtedly sometimes means what Mr Malone asserts, but not here. — 
Boswell : In A Method for Travell. Shewed by taking the view of France as it stoode 
in the yeere of our Lord IS93* by Robert Dallington, no date, we meet with the very 
sentence quoted by Mr Reed, given as a translation from the French. This is the 
original : * L'infanterie Frangoise escaramouche bravement de loin et la Cavallerie a 
une furieuse brut^e k I'afTront, puis apres q'elle s'accomode.* — Malone : This phrase 
seems to me to have meant originally, — *• Are you such a poltroon as to suffer another 
to use you as he pleases, to compel you to give him your money, and to accept of a 
thing of so small a value as a few eggs in exchange for it ?' This explanation appears 
to me perfectly consistent with the passage quoted by Mr Reed. He who will take 
eggs for money, seems to be what, in As You Like It^ and in many old plays, is 
called a *tame snake.' The following passage in Campion's History of Ireland^ 
1633, fully confirms my explanation of this passage, and shows that it means, < Will 
you suffer yourself to be cajoled, or imposed upon ?' — * What my cousin Desmond 
hath compassed, as I know not, so I beshrew his naked heart for holding out so long. 
— But go to, suppose bee never be had ; what is Kildare to blame for it, more than 
my good brother of Ossory, who, notwithstanding his high promises, having also the 
king's power, is glad to take eggs for his money, and to bring him in at leisure.' 
These words make part of the defense of the Earl of Kildare in answer to a charge 
brought against him by Cardinal Wolsey, that he had not been sufficiently active in 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 35 

Mam. No (my Lord) He fight. 

Leo. You will: why happy man he's dole.My Brother 195 
Are you fo fond of your young Prince, as we 
Doe feeme to be of ours? 

Pol. If at home (Sir) 
He^s all my Exercife, my Mirth, my Matter ; 
Now my fwome Friend, and then mine Enemy ; 200 

My Parafite, my Souldier: Statef-man; all : 
He makes a lulyes day, fliort as December, 
And with his varying child-neffe, cures in me 
Thoughts, that would thick my blood* 

Leo. So (lands this Squire 205 

194. (my Lord')'\ Om. Han. 201. Statef-man ;'\ statesman, Rovre. 

195. «^//] Ff. zw^/orzw7// Rowe 202. December] December's Ktly, 
et seq. Huds. 

be^s] Ff, Dyce, Wh. Sta, Cam. 203. childness] childishness Pope, 

Huds. be his Cap. et cet. Han. 

19S-2014. Marked as mnemonic, Pope. 204. would] Jhould Ff, Rowe+. 

199. His] Hee's F,. Here's F,F^. thick] think F^. 

eUlmy] all Rowe i. 

endeavoring to take the Earl of Desmond, then in rebellion. In this passage * to take 
eggs for hb money ' undoubtedly means * to be trifled with, or to be imposed upon.' 
< For money ' means in the place of money. [It is not likely that at this late day the 
origin of the phrase can be discovered. Its connection in the context must be our 
guide to its meaning. Possibly, many Americans would be puzzled now-a-days to 
give the origin of a similar current phrase : * he paid too dear for his whistle,' and 
yet this lattar is but a little over a hundred years old. — Ed.] 

195. dole] Johnson : May his < dole ' or share in life be to be a happy man. — 
Nichols : The alms immemorially given to the poor by the Archbishops of Canterbury 
is still called the *■ dole.' [Cotgrave gives : ' Donn^ : f. A dole, gift or distribution, 
a donatiue.'] - 

199, etc. Deighton compares these lines with AlVs Welly I, i, 180-189. 

201. Parasite] Cotgrave's vigorous definition of this word gives an air of greater 
exaggeration when applied to a little boy than even its present and somewhat 
milder use; it is as follows: <a trencher-friend, or bellie-friend ; a smell-feast, 
and buffoone at feasts; a clawback, flatterer, soother, smoothed for good cheare 
sake.' — Ed. 

202. lulyes] Note the accent on the first syllable. I think Walker has some- 
where noticed this. — Ed. 

204. thick my blood] In Batman vppon Bartholomew lib. iv, cap. II, p. 33, it is 
stated that there is a * kindly melancholy ' that < needeth that it be meddeled with 
bloude, to make the blonde apte and couenable to feede the melancholye members ; 
for it thickeneth the bloude, that it fleete not from digestion, by cleemesse and thin- 
nesse ;' where, apparenUy, thick blood is a blessing. — Ed. 



36 THE WINTERS TALE [act i. sc. ii. 

Offic'd with me : We two will walke(my Lord) 206 

And leaue yoii to your grauer fteps. Hermione, 

How thou lou'ft vs, fhew in our Brothers welcome ; 

Let what is deare in Sicily, be cheape : 

Next to thy felfe,and my young Rouer,he's 210 

Apparant to my heart. 

Her. If you would feeke vs, 
We are yours i'th'Garden : fhalFs attend you there ? 

Leo. To your owne bents difpofe you : you'le be found, 
Be you beneath the Sky: I am angling now, 215 

(Though you perceiue me not how I giue Lyne) 
Goe too, goe too. 
How fhe holds vp the Neb ? the Byll to him ? 218 

207. Hermione,] Hermione. F F . 214-221. you*U,,,on/\ Aside. Cap. 

209. deare] deer F^. 214. you'ie'] you'd F^F^, Rowe i. 

211. Apparant] Apparent F^ctseq. 217. [Aside, observing Her, Rowe. 

212. would] zw7/Theob. Warb. Johns. eying them, as they go out. Cap. 
Var. '73. 218. Neb?] nib! Rowe ii. 

206. Offic'd] Deighton : Id * squire ' and * officed ' there is an allusion to the 
duties of an attendant upon a knight. 

206. walke] See Lear III, iv, iii : < He begins at curfew and walks at first 
cock,* lb. IV, vii, 83 ; 0th, IV, iii, 9 (in this ed.), where * walk * means, as here, to 
withdraw or retire. 

210. Rouer] Halliwell: Literally, an archer; but the term seems here to be 
used as one of familiarity applied to a frolicsome child. In Cynthia's Reveh [I, i], 
Mercury calls Cupid, *my little rover.* [Unquestionably 'rover* may mean an 
archer^ but it not easy to see the force of this meaning in the present passage. As 
applied to Cupid, who immediately after (in Cynthia's Revels) refers to his quiver, it 
has a propriety which is lacking in the case of Florizel. * Rover * refers quite as 
much to one who wanders as to one who shoots with a bow. Sherwood translates 
* Rouer * by Ribleur^ which in turn is defined by Cotgrave as * A disorderlie roauer, 
ietter, swaggerer, outragious reakes-player ; a robber, ramsacker, boot-haler, preyer 
upon passengers, etc.* Again, a terrible array of epithets to apply to little Florizel. 
Clearly * rover,* when not applied to an archer, was formerly a more forcible epithet 
than it is now, and in the present passage marks the playful affection of Leontes. 
There is no hint of archery in Cotgrave. — Ed.] 

211. Apparant] Johnson : That is, heir apparent , or the next claimant 

212. etc. See Dorastus and Fawnia, » 

213. shall's] R. G. White (ed. ii) : That is, shall tis, that is, shall toe. It 
occurs elsewhere. This play is full of such reckless writing. Much of it must be 
left to the reader's own disentanglement. 

218. Neb] It cannot be said with positivcness whether this is the mouth, the 
nose, or the face, — for each one there is authority. Steevens asserts that it refers 




ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 37 

And armes her with the boldneffe of a Wife 

To her allowing Husband. Gone already, 220 

Ynch-thick, knee-deepe;ore head and eares a forked one. 

Goe play (Boy) play : thy Mother playes, and I 

Play too; but fo difgrac'd a part, whofe ifljue 

Will hiffe me to my Graue: Contempt and Clamor 

Will be my Knell. Goe play (Boy) play, there haue been 225 

(Or I am much deceiu'd) Cuckolds ere now. 

And many a man there is(euen at this prefent. 

Now, while I fpeake this) holds his Wife by th'Arme, 

That little thinkes flie ha's been fluycM in^s abfence, 

And his Pond fifh'd by his next Neighbor (by 230 

219. [Exeunt Polix. Her. and Attend- 221. eares a\ ears, — et Var. '73. 
ants. Manent, Leo. Mam. and Cam. 228. Amtell Arm. F . 

Rowe. 229. in's] in his Cap. Rann, Mai. 

221. Ynchthick, knee-deepe'] Inch Steev. Var. Knt, Ktly, Wh. ii. 
thick, knee deep F^F^, Rowe, Pope, Han. 

to the mouth, and cites from Painter's Palace of Pleasure, 1566: — ^<the amorous 
wormes of loue did bitterly gnaw and teare his heart with the nebs of their forked 
heades.' — Anne of Hungarie [vol. ii, p. 229, ed. Haslewood], where, assuredly, 
<gnaw' cannot apply to noses. Halliwell says that the 'neb,' in early English, 
was generally used for the nose, and that < this appears to be the meaning of the word 
in the text. Leontes speaks afterwards of their <* meeting noses." Hence to kiss. 
"Shal's not busse, knight? shaKs not neb," — Two Maids of Moreclacke, 1609.' 
Dyce follows Halliwell and refers to Jamieson, where the word is defined as * the 
DOse ; now used rather in a ludicrous sense ; as long neb, a long nose. Hence Lang- 
nebbUf Sharpnebbit* etc. In Middle English, *neb* meant the face, as in The 
Ancren Riwle : * He com him sQlf a-last, and scheawede hire his feire neb, ase pe 
pet was of alle men veirest for to biholden.' — p. 35, Middle English Primer, ed. 
Sweet It may be readily surmised that the confusion between mouth and nose arises 
in the case of a bird from the fact that its bill is certainly its mouth, and, at the same 
time, it may be supposed, as the most prominent feature, to be the nose. In the pres- 
ent line, I prefer to understand < neb ' as the mouth, especially since * Byll ' immedi- 
ately follows. When < doves sit a-billing * {V. 6t» A. 366) it is hardly to be supposed 
that they do so with their noses. — Ed. 

220. allowing] Johnson: * Allowing' in old language is approving. — R. G. 
'WHrrE (ed. i) : That is, to her accordant husband ; or rather, perhaps, to her hus- 
band, with whom it is allowable that she should be so bold. — Staunton : That is, 
probably, her allowed, her lawful husband. 

224. Clamour] Walker has an Article {Crit. i, 156) on the meaning of * clam- 
our ' in Shakespeare, which he finds in many places means wailing. I doubt that 
the present can be added to his list. ' Gamour ' here is rather the derisive shouts of 
Leontes's subjects. Its use as a verb in IV, iv, 277 has given rise to much discus- 
sion. — Ed. 



38 



THE WINTERS TALE 



[act I, sc. ii. 



Sir Smile y\i\s Neighbor.) nay, there's comfort in't, 
Whiles other men haue Gates, and thofe Gates openM 
(As mine)againft their will. Should all defpaire 
That haue reuolted Wiues, the tenth of Mankind 
Would hang themfelues. Phyfick for't, there's none : 
It is a bawdy Planet, that will ftrike 
Where 'tis predominant;and 'tis powrefull: thinke it : 
From Eaft, Weft, North, and South, be it concluded, 
No Barricado for a Belly. Know't, 
It will let in and out the Enemy, 
With bag and baggage : many thoufand on's 
Haue the Difeafe,and feele't not. How now Boy/ 
Mam, I am like you fay. 



231 



23s 



240 



243 



231. Smile] Smil Y^^. 

235. there 5\ Ff, Rowe, Knt, Wh. Sta. 
Cam. there is Pope et cet. 

237-241. and ^tis,.. baggage"^ In mar- 
gin, Han. * Cashiered, as infamous, 
senseless ribaldry, stuck in by some prof- 
ligate player.* — Warb. 

238. We/l'] WeqftV^. 

South,'] south: Cap. south, 
Var. '73. 

239. Belly, /Tnow^tf'] belly; know't; 



Cap. Dyce, Wh. Sta. Cam. belly. Know 
it Var. *73, Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. Knt, 
Coll. Ktly. 

241. many^.on's'] F^F^,, Cap. Dyce, 
Ktly, Cam. Wh. ii. Rife, Dtn. many a.„ 
one^sF^. Many a„.o/*s Rovre + , many 
a.,.o/ us Var. '73, Mai. Steev. Var. 
many„.of us Knt. many a„.on's Coll. 
Wh. i, Sta. 

243. you /ay] you they fay F( et 
seq. 



231. Sir Smile] Possibly suggested by a smile on the face of Polixenes, whom 
Leontes is furtively watching. — Ed. 

232. Whiles] The temporal genitive of while, * Gates ' is carrying out the simile 
of * fluyc'd.*— Ed. 

236, 237. Planet, that will strike Where 'tis predominant] Cf. Edmund's 
speech in Learf I, ii, 114: < we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and 
the stars ; as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, 
thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance, dnmkards, liars, and adulterers by 
an enforced obedience to planetary influence.* 

241. on's] Collier: If Malone chose to alter on to of, he ought, for the 
sake of the verse, to have read o/*s; *on's' is an abbreviation for the sake 
of the verse, and the language of the time; fidelity, metre, and custom require 
its preservation. [The Textual Notes will show that Malone was not the first to 
make the change to o/, and that Rowe, nigh ninety years before Malone, had 
read o/*s. — Ed.] — R. G. White (ed. i) : * On ' is now commonly used in New 
England for 0/. 

243. you say] Collier (ed. ii) : It may possibly be doubted whether we ought 
not to read, * I am like you, you say,' the old printer having omitted the repetition of 
the pronoun you. Leontes has previously told Mamillius that they are said to be 
alike, ' Yet they say we are Almost as like as eggs.' 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 39 

Leo. Why,that's fome comfort. 
What? Camillo thtvt ? 245 

Cam. I, my good Lord. 

Leo. Goe ^\diy{Mamillius)i\io\x^rt an honeft man : 
CamillOythis great Sir will yet (lay longer. 

Cam. You had much adoe to make his Anchor hold; 
When you caft out, it ftill came home. 250 - 

Leo. Didftnoteit? 

Cam. He would not (lay at your Petitions, made 
His BufmefTe more materiall. 

Leo. Didft perceiue it ? 
They're here with me already; whifp'ring, rounding : 255 

245. lVhai?'\ What? is Han. Johns. 252. Petitions^ mad/} feHHons made ; 

Cap. Pope + . petitions ; made Cap. et cet. 

there ?} art there? Sta. conj. 255. [Aside. Han. Dyce ii, iii, Sta. 

(Athen. 4 Apr. 1874). Rtly, Cam. Wh. ii. 

247. [Exit Mam. Rowe. whiff ring^ rounding} whisf- 

Scene III. Pope, Han. ring round Han. 

249. his Anchor} the anchor Han. 

244, 245. Walker {Crit. iii, 91) would arrange these two lines as one of verse, 
wherein no gain is perceptible either for eye or ear; moreover, it leaves line 243 
a hemistich, while at present it forms a line with 244. — Ed. 

247. thou'rt] Deigiiton thinks that Leontes here compares Mamillius with him- 
self, and means that ' thou art not disgraced as I am.' The comparison is, I think, 
rather with Polixenes, and ' thou ' is strongly emphatic : * thou^ at least, art honest.' 
—Ed. 

250. came home] Steevens : That is, the anchor would not hold. [Note that 
< still ' here means, as usual, continua/fy.} 

252. stay] Heath : This doth not mean, in this place, to tarry ^ but to put off, or 
delay, 

253. more materiall] Steevens: That is, the more you requested him to 
stay, the more urgent he represented that business to be which summoned him 
away. 

255. They're here with me] Thirlby: Not Polixenes and Hermione, but 
casual observers. [Be it remembered that, as in Hanmer's text, this is an aside. — 
Ed.] Collier : This means * they are aware of my condition.' [Staunton, after 
quoting both of these observations, exclaims, < Strange forgetfulness of a common form 
of speech!' and then continues]. By * They're here with me already,' the king 
means, — the people are already mocking me with this opprobrious gesture (the 
cuckold's emblem with their fingers), and whispering, etc. So in Cor. HI, ii, 74, — 
' Go to them, with this bonnet in thy hand ; And thus far having stretch'd it (here be 
with them).' [Staunton strangely omits the next line wherein lies the whole point 
of the speech : — ' Thy knee bussing the stones.' It is this action of kneeling to 
which Volumnia refers when she says to Coriolanus : ' here be with them.' In his 



40 THE WINTERS TALE [act i. sc. ii. 

[255. They're here with me] 
note on Cor. ad loc. Staunton aptly cites from Brome's A Jovial Crew^ or the Merry 
Beggars^ II, i, where Springlove, describing his having solicited alms as a cripple, 
says, — ***For here I was with him." \^Halts.^ In The Atherueum (4 April, 1874) 
Staunton afterwards adduced more examples in support of this interpretation of his, 
which is clearly the right one, though I much doubt that Leontes goes so far as to 
make openly the gesture which Staunton says was the popular sign of derision ; — 
'This gesture was by lifting one hand to the forehead, and spreading forth two 
fingers like a pair of horns.' 'Nothing,' continues Staunton, 'proves the incon- 
ceivable zest with which our forefathers enjoyed every allusion to conjugal infidelity, 
especially on the wife's side, more than the frequent use of the word " cuckold," and 
the sign which was its typical representative. Owing to the paucity of stage directions 
in our early plays, the extent to which the latter practice was carried can only be 
inferred ; but it must have been as common nearly as the word it supplied or accom- 
panied. In Chapman's Bussy d'Amboisy I, i, Monsieur, the brother of the king, 
desiring to insult Mountsurry, a noble of the G>urt, asks, — ^" What if one should 
make Horns at Mountsurry? would it strike him jealous?" etc. He presently 
suits the action to the word, and the dialogue proceeds : " Mount. How mon- 
strous is this? Mons. Why? Mount. You make me horns!" The wife of 
Mountsurry enters, and the husband, in an agony of rage, exclaims, — ^" The man 
that left me . . . stabbed me to the heart, thus, with his fingers." In Decker's Old 
Fortunatus, the stage direction has been preserved, — " Thus shall his sawcie browes 
adorned be. [Makes homsy Even so late as Wycherly, the same instruction is 
sometimes met with. In bis Country Wife^ I, i, ed. 1 7 12 [is an example which it is 
needless to repeat here. It does not illustrate the phrase in hand, but merely repeats 
the stage direction Makes Horns. For the same reason I omitted an example fixim 
Massinger's Fatal Dowry ^ V, ii. — Ed.] But the best illustration of the words of 
Leontes, and a remarkable proof how prevalent this gesture was, occurs in Chapman's 
May Day^ where at the end of Act IV, Faunio says of his Master, — " As often as 
he tumes his backe to me, I shall be here V with him, that's certaine." The V which 
no commentator has understood, representing the actor's fingers in making horns.' 
Staunton then goes on to show at some length that in ' Webster and Decker's North- 
ward Hoy an empty parenthesis * ( ) ' typified a pandar.' Hogarth has given a rep- 
resentation of this gesture in his picture of * The Idle Apprentice,* on his way, in a 
boat, to the Transport Ship. — Ed. 

255. rounding] Deighton quotes from Earle {^Phil. of the Eng. Tongue^ 93, 94) : 
The name Runic was so called from the term which was used by our barbarian ances- 
tors to designate the mystery of alphabetic writing. This was Run^ sing., Rune^ pi. 
. . . This word Run signified mystery or secret ; and a verb of this root was in use 
down to a comparatively recent date in English literature, as an equivalent for the 
verb *to whisper.' In Chaucer's Friar's Tale (7 1 32) the Sompnour is described as 
drawing near to his travelling companion, — ' Ful prively, and rouned in his ere,' f. e. 
quite confidentially, and whispered in his ear. It was also much used in mediaeval 
ballads for the chirping of birds (as being unintelligible except to a few who were 
wiser than their neighbours) ; and again, of any kind of discourse, but mostly of pri- 
vate or privileged communication in council or conference. . . . This roivn became 
rownd and round on the principle of n drawing a d after it. ... As in 7^ Faery 
Queene^ III, x, 30, — 'And in his eare him rownded close behinde.* 



ACT I. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 41 

Sicilia is a fo-forth : ^tis farre gone, 256 

When I (hall guft it laft. How cam't (Camillo) 
That he did ftay ? 

Cam. At the good Queenes entreatie. 

Leo. At the Queenes be't : Gpod fhould be pertinent, 260 
But fo it is, it is not. Was this taken 
By any vnderftanding Pate but thine ? 
For thy Conceit is foaking, will draw in 263 

256. is afo-forth'\ is a — so forth Han. 263. thy Conceit'] the conceit F^F^, 

Raim, Mai. Var. Knt, Coll. Dyce ii, Rowe i. 
Wh. Sta. is — and so forth Mai. conj. is foaking] in soaking Grey. 

256. Sicilia is] Collier's punctuation of this phrase : ' *' Sicilia is a *' — so-forth,* so 
clearly indicates the meaning, and the aversion of Leontes to utter an abhorrent word, 
that the long notes of Steevens and of Malone are, I think, quite needless. — Ed. 

256. 80-forth] Staunton (Athenauniy 27 June, 1874): Neither the peculiar 
phrase to be here^ with^ nor the expression a so forth immediately following it, has 
any right to come under the category of corruptions ; their real pregnancy has been 
hitherto overlooked. We have no evidence to show that a so forth was ever a vox 
signata for a dishonoured husband. When Leontes exclaims, *■ Sicilia is a so- forth,' 
his meaning appears to be no more than that he is already spoken of as a scorned 
and disreputable thing ; and how the expression came to bear this sense is not cer- 
tain. It may have been derived, as the late Rev. Joseph Hunter thought, from the 
abbreviations adopted by Heralds when proclaiming the titles of eminent personages, 
as ' King of Great Britain, France, Ireland, and so-forth.* Or the evil sense may have 
been acquired from the legal proclamations of degraded persons, as *■ Rogues, vaga- 
bonds, sturdy beggars, and soforthJ* Or, which is very probable, it obtained its bad 
meaning from being like — * The shrug, the " hum," or " ha," ' — one of the petty 
brands of Calunmy to sear a victim. There can be no doubt with those well read in 
our old drama that et cetera in like manner, from being used to express vaguely what 
a writer or speaker hesitated to call by its plain name, came at length to signify the 
object itself. * Yea, forsooth,' is possibly another case in point. The Puritanical cit- 
izens, who were afraid of a good air-splitting oath, and indulged only in mealy- 
mouthed protestations, got the name of * yea-forsooths.' [For a continuation of this 
note, see Mid. N, Dream^ III, ii, 419 in this edition.] 

257. gust] Steevens : That is, taste it. — Malone : < Dedecus ille domus sciet 
ultimus.' — Juvenal, Sat, x. [342]. 

261. 80 it is] Staunton: That is. But as you apply the word, it is not. [Rather, 
I think : So it happens, it is not. — Ed.] 

263. Conceit] That is, coBception, thought. 

263. soaking] Steevens : That is, thy conceit is of an absorbent nature, will 
draw in more, etc. 

263. will draw in] R. G. White : The omission of a pronoun or conjunction 
here, as just above, ' made his business more material,' is a characteristic trait of the 
style of Elizabethan dramatic writers. It occurs often in these plays, in none oftener 
than in this. 



42 THE WINTERS TALE [act i, sc. ii. 

More then the common Blocks. Not noted, is't, 

But of the finer Natures? by fome Seueralls 265 

Of Head-peece extraordinarie? Lower Mefles 

Perchance are to this Bufinefle purblind ? fay. 

Cam. Bufinefle, my Lord ? I thinke mod vnderftand 
Bohemia ftayes here longer. 269 

264. Blocks. Not\ Blocks, Not Y^. 7,(iT . purblind ?'\ Yi, Rowe + , Knt, 

Blocks, not F^, Rowe i. Blocks; not Dyce, Wh. Sta. Cam. purblind: Cap. 
Rowe ii, et seq. et cet. (subs.). 

264. Blocks] According to Nares, the wooden mould on which the crown of a 
hat is formed. Hence, it required no great flight of imagination to transfer the 
wood from the mould of the hat to the head which the hat covered. Murray 
(iV. E, D.) gives examples, beginning with Ralph Roister Doister, 1553, where 
* block ' is used for blockhead; and Schmidt gives several examples from Shake- 
speare, among them the present passage ; but I doubt the exact propriety of this 
interpretation here. It is the absorbent quality of wooden hat-blocks which Leontes 
has in mind when he speaks of Camillo*s conceit as ' soaking,' and that ' blocks ' may 
mean blockheads is only a subaudition. — Ed. 

265. Seueralls] For examples of adjectives used as nouns, see Abbott, § 5. 

266. Head-peece] The choice of the word was, possibly, still influenced by 
'block.'— Ed. 

266. extraordinarie] The sense requires that both extra and ordinarie should 
have full expression, but at the cost of rhjrthm, or, rather, of an iambic pentameter. 
Under the influence of deep emotion, and especially in this play, I think the limit 
of five feet gave Shakespeare but little concern, as long as an iambic measure is pre- 
served. It is strange that Walker has not noticed this word ; perhaps fortimately ; 
he would have pronounced it extromary. — Ed. 

266. Messes] Steevens : I believe * lower messes ' is only used as an expression 
to signify the lowest degree about the court. Formerly not only at every great man's 
table the visitants were placed according to their consequence or dignity, but with 
additional marks of inferiority, viz. of sitting below the great salt-cellar placed in the 
centre of the table, and of having coarser provisions set before them. Cf. Beaumont 
& Fletcher : * nor should there stand . . . uncut-up pies at the nether end, filled 
with moss and stones, partly to make a show with, and partly to keep the lower mess 
from eating.' — Woman- Hater, I, ii. Leontes comprehends inferiority of under- 
standing in the idea of inferiority of rank. — Collier (ed ii) : Each four diners at an 
Inn of Court are still said to constitute a mess, 

267. purblind] Skeat (Etym. Diet.) : The original sense was wholly blind, as in 
Rob. of Glouc. p. 376 : * Me ssolde pulte oute hope is eye and makye him pur blind ' 
= they should put out both his eyes and make him quite blind. Sir T. Elyot writes 
poreblind. — The Covernour, b. ii, c. 3. . . . Even in Shakespeare we have both 
senses: (i) wholly blind. Love's L. L. Ill, i, 181 ; Rom. 6* Jul. II, i, 12; and (2) 
partly blind, V. and A. 679; / Hen. VI: II, iv, 21. It is clear that * wholly blind* 
is the original sense . . . whilst * partly blind ' is a secondary sense, due perhaps to 
some confusion with the verb to pore, as shown by the spelling poreblind. Purblind 
— pure-blind, i. e. wholly blind. [As in the present instance.] 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 43 

Leo. Ha ? 270 

Cam. Stayes here longer. 

L^o. I, but why ? 

Cam. To fatisfie your Highneffe^and the Entreaties 
Of our moft gracious Miftresse. 

L^o. Satisfie ? 275 

Th'entreaties of your Miftrefle? Satisfie ? 
Let that fuffice. I haue trufted \h!t^{Camillo) 
With all the neereft things to my heart, as well 
My Chamber-Councels, wherein(Prieft-like)thou 279 

271. Continued to LeoD., Han. 277. I haue\ Vve Pope+, Dyce ii, 

Staye5'\ Bohemia stays Cap. iii. 

274. Afiftrefe] Miftris F,Fj. 278. neereft things to] nearft things to 

275. Satisfie f\ Ff, Rowe, Pope, Han. FjF^, Sta. Walker, Dyce ii, iii. things 
Satisfy ! Cam. Wh. ii. Satisfy Theob. nearest Pope + . 

et cet. as well] with all Han. 

270. Ha ?] Leontes evidently expected a different conclusion to Camillo^s sentence, 
after mentioning Bohemia. — Ed. 

270, 272. Staunton (Athenaum^ 27 June, 1S74): Here the blank verse halts 
sadly. To restore its integrity we might read : ' Leo. Ha ? Ha ? Cam, Stays here 
longer, Sir, Leo, Ay, but why ? Why stays /* Dropped words and letters are not 
unfrequent in this play, and no omissions are more frequent than those of iterated 
words. With regard to the addition of Sir to Camillo*s curt — Stay here longer; it 
is, perhaps, not more called for by the verse than by the respect due from the speaker 
to the exalted personage addressed. — Walker (Crit, ii, 145), to complete the metre 
of line 272 would read : — * Ay, but why, but why /* • Expressive of impatience at 
Camillo's not returning the answer he expected.' 

278. neerest] See Walker's note on * dearest,' line 109 supra. Similar trans- 
positions of the adjective (that is * nearest things to my heart ' instead of < things 
nearest to my heart ') are numberless in Shakespeare. Walker has gathered many 
examples, not alone from Shakespeare, but from the Elizabethan poets generally. If 
necessary, see his Article {Crit, i, 160). 

278. as well] Capell (164) : As after < well ' were useful to give clearness to the 
expression ; the intended sense there being (as 'tis conceived) — as well as with all 
such councils as are entrusted to those of my chamber, meaning — cabinet. [Keightley 
adopted Capell's conjecture.] 

279. Chamber-Councels] SufHcient importance has not been given to the full 
meaning of this passage. Indeed, I do not know that attention has ever been called 
to it, or to the bearing which it has on the sudden jealousy of Leontes. These private 
ehamber- councils involved no questions of state, or government, but were concerned 
with the private life of Leontes, with impure deeds from which the bosom of Leontes 
should be cleansed, and for which he should repent, and depart a penitent. This 
reference to the past life of Leontes brings his character into harmony with what is 
known to experts in Mental Diseases, that those patients who are victims of sudden 
attacks of insane jealousy are, at times, not free from the reproach which they 
insanely ascribe to the objects of their suspicion. — Ed. 



44 1^^^ WINTERS TALE [act i sc. ii. 

Haft cleansM my Bofome: I, from thee departed 280 

Thy Penitent reformed : but we haue been 
Deceiu'd in thy Integritie,deceiuM 
In that which feemes fo. 

Cam. Be it forbid (my Lord.) 

Leo. To bide vpon't : thou art not honeft : or 285 

If thou inclin'ft that way, thou art a Coward, 
Which boxes honeftie behind, reftrayning 
From Courfe required : or elfe thou muft be counted 
A Seruant, grafted in my ferious Truft, 

And therein negligent : or elfe a Foole, 290 

That feeft a Game playM home, the rich Stake drawne, 
And tak'ft it all for ieaft. 

Cam. My gracious Lord , 293 

280. L,.departed'\ I have departed 285. vponU :^ Ff, Rowe, Pope, Han. 

from thee Walker \Crit. iii, 92). uponU^ — Coll. Sing. Dyce, Cam. 

284. (tny Lord.y\ Ff. my lord. Rowe, upotCt; — Theob. et cet. (subs.). 
Pope, my lord — Theob. Warb. Johns. 287. hoxe5\ kockles Han. 

my lord? Han. ii. my lord! Han. i et cet. 292. iea/l"] jejl F^F^. 

280. I, from thee] This excellent reading of the Folio : * Ay, from thee departed * 
has remained quite unnoted. It would not have escaped Walker had the Folio ever 
been before him ; he felt the need of something more than the simple aorist, and 
would not, probably, have offered his conjecture (see Text. Notes) had he noticed 
that * I have ' is in this line continued from line 277, and that < I ' is in reality the 
intensive affirmation of Leontes that not only had Camillo been his ghostly con- 
fessor, but had even reformed him. — Ed. 

283. seexnes so] That is, which seems like integrity. 

285. To bide vpon't] Dyce (Notes, 79) : This is here equivalent to— My abiding 
opinion is. Compare Beaumont & Fletcher's King and No King, IV, iii : — * Cap- 
tain, thou art a valiant gentleman ; To abide up>on't, a very valiant man ' ; and Potts's 
Discoverie of IVitches in the Countie of Lancaster, 1613 : — * the wife of the said Peter 
then said, to abide upon it, I thinke that my husband will neuer mend,' etc. — Murray 
(N. E. D.) gives the present passage, with the meaning: To dwell or insist upon 
(a point). 

287. boxes] Eastwood & Wright: Hough (Josh, xi, 6, 9; 2 Sam. viii, 4) is to 
cut the ham strings or back sinews ( A.-S. hoh) of cattle so as to disable them. In the 
later version of Wiclif the first quoted passage is given, — * Thou schalt hoxe the horsis 
of hem.' While in the earlier version it is : — * The hors of hem thow shalt kut of the 
syne wis at the knees.' IIox is the form found in Shakespeare. The Scotch hoch is 
used in the same way, 

287. restrayning] Staunton (Athenaum, 27 June, 1874) : The sense apparently 
demands that we should read * restraining it ' ; and an additional unaccented syllable, 
or even more, after the tenth, which bears the ictus, violates no rule of English heroic 
verse. 



ACT I, sc. u.] THE WINTERS TALE 45 

I may be negligent, fooHfh, and fearefull, 

In euery one of thefe, no man is free, 295 

But that his negligence, his folly, feare. 

Among the infinite doings of the World, 

Sometimes puts forth in your affaires (my Lord.) 

If euer I were wilfull-negligent, 

It was my folly : if induftrioufly 300 

I playM the Foole, it was my negligence. 

Not weighing well the end : if euer fearefull 

To doe a thing, where I the iflue doubted. 

Whereof the execution did cry out 304 

294. fiare/uil,'] fearful; Rowe ii et 298. Sometime] Sometimes F,, Rowe i, 
seq. Knt, Sta. 

295. thefe,"] thefe; F^, Rowe i. these forth in] FWRowt^Fopc. forth: 
Pope et seq. In Cap. Var. *78, *8s, Mai. Rann, Steev. 

297. Among] Mai. Knt, Sing. Dyce, Knt, Dyce i. forth. In Theob. et cet. 
Ktly, Sta. Cam. Wh. ii. Amongfl Ff, Lord.] lord, Theob. et seq. 

Rowe et cet. 299. wilfull-negligent] wilful negli- 

doings] doing Ff, Rowe. gent Rowe + . 

300. induflriously] injuriously Han. 



298. Much careful punctuation is needed in the Folio to offset the absence of any 
at all in this line, whereof the absurdity neither Rowe nor Pope noticed. 

300, if industriously] Capell (165): * Playing the fool industriously* seems 
unfitly called — negligence; but such handling of an affair, though with industry, is 
negligence if the proper means of conducting it have not been well considered, if it's 
end has not been well weighed. 

304. the execution] Capell thus paraphrases: The execution of which by 
another did cry out against his non -performance who should have done it ; meaning 
—cause him to be condemned, when his * doubted issue * prov'd happy. — Johnson : 
This is one of the expressions by which Shakespeare too frequently clouds his mean- 
ing. This sounding phrase means, I think, no more than a thing necessary to be done, 
— Heath : I think we ought to read — * the ff(7z&-performance,' which gives us this 
very reasonable meaning : — * At the execution whereof, such circumstances discovered 
themselves, as made it prudent to suspend all further proceeding in it.' — ^Johnson : 
I do not see that this attempt does anything more than produce a harsher word with- 
out an easier sense. — M alone: I think [Heath's] note gives a good interpretation 
of the original text. I have, however, no doubt that Shakespeare wrote *»<7/f -per- 
formance,' he having of^en entangled himself in the same manner ; but it is clear 
he should have written, either — * against the performance^ or — ^for the non-perform- 
ance.' — M. Mason (Addit. Com. p. 31) : I do not perceive the obscurity of this 
passage, as Camillo's meaning appears to be this : — ' If ever, through a cautious 
apprehension of the issue, I have neglected to do a thing, the subsequent successful 
execution of which cried out against my former non-performance, it was a species 
of fear,' etc. If the text had read as Mr Malone says it should have read, I should 
not have attempted to extract a meaning from it, because I cannot discover any differ- 



46 THE WINTERS TALE [act i, sc. ii. 

Againft the non-performance, ^twas a feare 305 

Which oft infe6ls the wifeft : thefe (my Lord) 

Are fuch allowM Infirmities,that honeftie 

Is neuer free of. But befeech your Grace 

Be plainer with me, let me know my Trefpas 

By it^s owne vifage ; if I then deny it, 310 

^Tis none of mine. 

Leo. Ha' not you feene Camilla f 
(But that's part doubt : you haue, or your eye-glafle 
Is thicker then a Cuckolds Home) or heard? 314 

y)$, performance^'] performance, F,. 312. Camillo?] CamiUo, Theob. et 

performance; F^F^. seq. (subs.). 

ZQ^. But befeech] But,' beseechlhtoh, z^z. doubt :] doubt, Theob. Warb. 

ii et seq. (subs.). Johns. Dyce, Sta. Cam. doubt — Knt,Wh. 

310. it's] Ff, Cap. its Rowe. 314. heard?] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Han. 

312. /fe'] Ff, Rowe + , Dyce, Wh. heard T^yct,y^h, heard, Thtoh, ti ctX, 
Cam. Have Cap. et cet. (subs.). 

ence between the execution of a thing and the performance of it. [It is not difficult 
to paraphrase a passage in general terms ; the meaning is often evident at a glance. 
The difficulty is to harmonise the construction and the meaning. Here Malone is 
quite right according to modem usage, and Shakespeare is not wrong. Where a 
negative is expressed or implied in the verb, as here : * cried out against,* there was 
not, of old, any harm in adding an additional negative, as here in * non-performance.* 
Two negatives originally strengthened the negation. Thus in Macb. Ill, vi, 8 : — 
' who cannot want the thought,* etc. and in Lear, II, iv, 140: — * You less know how 
to value her desert Than she to scant her duty * ; Cymb. I, iv, 23 : * a beggar without 
less quality.* Indeed, there is another excellent instance in this present play; III, 
ii, 58 : ' That any of these bolder vices wanted Less impudence,* etc., where * Less * 
adds strength to the negative implied in * wanted.'] 

307. such . . . that] For examples of such used with relative words other than 
which see, if needful, Abbott, § 279. 

310. it's] See line 183 supra; and II, iii, 214. 

310. visage] That is, give me a particular instance of my trespass, bring me face 
to face with it. — Ed. 

312-320. Of this passage Hazlitt remarks (p. 278) : Even the crabbed and tor- 
tuous style of the speeches of Leontes, reasoning in his own jealousy, beset with 
doubts and fears, and entangled more and more in the thorny labjrrinth, bears every 
mark of Shakespeare's peculiar manner of conveying the painful struggle of different 
thoughts and feelings, labouring for utterance, and almost strangled in the birth. Here 
Leontes is confounded with his passion, and does not know which way to turn him- 
self, to give words to the anguish, rage, and apprehension which tug at his breast. 

313. eye-glasse] This does not refer to the homely optical instrument, but 
possibly to what Vicary, 1 548, in his Chapter on the Eye, calls * Humor Vitrus, 
because he is lyke glasse in colour very cleare.* — [Anatomic, E. E. Text. Soc. p. 
38). It is not likely that there is any reference to the retina or to the cornea; these 



ACT I, sc. u.] THE WINTERS TALE 47 

(For to a Vifion fo apparant, Rumor 315 

Cannot be mute) or thought? (for Cogitation 

Refides not in that man, that do^s not thinke) 317 

315. apparanf\ apparent F^F^. 317. thinke] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Mai. 

^id. thought F (/or] Ff, Rowe i. Var. Knt, Coll. i, Sing. Dyce, Wh. Cam. 

thought (for Rowe ii, Pope, Dyce i. thinkt Han. Cap. Dyce ii, iii, Huds. 

thought^ Theob. et ceL (subs.). think it Theob. et cet. 

were then regarded merely as coats or < tmiikles * to contain the ' Humors ' wherein 
was set the < syght of the Eye,' * principally in the Crystalline humour,' to which it 
is also possible that < eye-glass ' might apply. * Thicker ' means more opaque, and 
in the ' Cuckold*s horn ' there may be an adumbration of the horn sides of a lan- 
tern. — Ed. 

315, 316. For . . . mute] Deighton: For in cases where the fact is so plain to 
see, there is sure to be plenty of gossip about it. 

317. thinke] Malone (1790) : Theobald in a Letter subjoined to one edition of 
The Double Falsehood has quoted this passage in defence of a well-known line in 
that play : * None but himself [Itself] can be his [its] Parallel * [HI, i].— * Who does 
not see at once (says he) that he who does not think, has no thought in him.' In the 
same light this passage should seem to have appeared to all subsequent editors, who 
read with the editor of the Second Folio < think 1/.' But the old reading, I am per- 
suaded, is right. This is not abstract proposition. The whole context must be taken 
together. Have you not thought (says Leontes), my wife is slippery (for cogitation 
resides not in the man that does not think my wife is slippery) ? The four latter 
words, though disjoined from the word think by the necessity of a parenthesis, are 
evidently to be connected in construction with it; and consequently the seeming 
absurdity attributed by Theobald to the passage, arises only from misapprehension. — 
Steevkns (1793, reading 'think f/*) : The it is supplied from the Second Folio. — 
Collier (ed. i) : The Second Folio adds it after ' think,' but needlessly, the word 
being clearly understood. — Collier (ed. ii) : Some copies of the Second Folio add 
i!^ after 'think,' but in other copies it is wanting; and had we not found it inserted 
in MS in the corr. fo. 1632, we should have been of the opinion that it was need- 
less, being clearly understood. However, as it is printed in some copies of the 
Folio, 1632, and as it is written into that before us, we place it in the text. It cer- 
tainly avoids an apparent truism. — Dyce (ed. ii, iii) : Some copies of the Second 
Folio add it. — Staunton (reading, 'think fV) : The lection of the Second Folio, at 
least in some copies of that edition. — ^W. A. Wright (Cam. Ed. ii) : I have been un- 
able to find any copy of the Second Folio which justifies [Collier's] statement, and 
I believe it was entirely due to the note of Steevens on the passage \ut supra], Mr 
Collier, finding in his annotated copy of the Second Folio * it ' inserted in MS, qual- 
ified Steevens's statement so far as to limit it to ' some copies.' As it is well known 
that in books printed at this period, there are variations in difterent copies, I do not 
undertake to say that no copy of the ed. of 1632 has * it,' but I very much doubt it. 
Her Majesty's Librarian informs me that Steevens's own copy, which formerly belonged 
to Charles I., and is now in the Royal Library at Windsor, reads ' thinke ' and not 
* thinke it.* I have personally examined two copies here in Trinity College Library, 
two in the British Museum, and one in the possession of Mr J. £. Johnson, Cam- 



48 THE WINTERS TALE [act i. sc. ii. 

My Wife is flipperie ? If thou wilt confefle , 318 

Or elfe be impudently negatiue, 

To haue nor Eyes, nor Eares,nor Thought, then fay 320 

My Wife's a Holy-Horfe, deferues a Name 

As ranke as any Flax- Wench, that puts to 

Before her troth-plight : fay%and iuftify't. 

Cam. I would not be a ftander-by, to heare 
My Soueraigne Miftreffe clouded fo, without 325 

My prefent vengeance taken : 'fhrew my heart, 
You neuer fpoke what did become you lefle 
Then this ; which to reiterate, were fm 
As deepe as that, though true. 

Leo. Is whifpe ring nothing? 330 

318. wil{\ wilt, Rowe + , Cap.Var. '78. 322. puts to\ putsto Dyce ii, iii. 

319, 320. Or... Thought'] Inparenthe- 323. /«//, and iujlify't'] say it and 
sis (subs.), Theob. et seq. j^f'fy it Var. '73, Rann, Mai. Steev. 

321. Holy-Horfe] Ff, Rowe i. hoby- Var. Knt, Sing. Ktly. 
horse Cap. hobby hone Rowe ii et cet. 329. thottgh] tho* F , Rowe + . 

bridge [Dr Wright then proceeds to enumerate sixteen other copies, viz. : in Pem- 
broke College Library; two in the Bodleian; in the Advocates' Library; in the 
Signet Library ; in the Edinbui^h Univ. Library ; one formerly belonging to the late 
Mr Cosens ; Mr Huth's copy ; the Birmingham Free Library's copy ; those of Miss 
Blatchford of Cambridge, U. S. A. ; Mr L. Z. Leiter*s copy ; that in the Newberry 
Library, Chicago; Mr H. G. Denny's copy (Boston, Mass.) ; and those owned by the 
present editor; to these may be added two copies owned by Mr H. C. Folger, Jr., 
of Brooklyn, kindly collated for this note ; in all twenty-four copies of the Second 
Folio], including the annotated volume which formerly belonged to Mr Collier, now 
in the Library of the Duke of Devonshire, and it appears that there is not one which 
bears out the original statement of Steevens [Qu. Malone ?] or the qualified assertion 
of Mr Collier. But so profound is my conviction of the vitality of error that I con- 
fidently expect to see them repeated in subsequent editions of Shakespeare. 

318. slipperie] * All women are slippery^ — Burton (Anat. of Melan. p. 598, 6ih 
ed.) that is, unstable. Halm well says that in some copies of F^ this is misprinted 
flippery. It is clearly flipperie in the three copies of that edition belonging to the 
present Ed. 

326. present] That is, instant. 

326. 'shrew] Pronounced Uhrow ; as also shrnv the noun, and shrewd the adj. 

329. As deepe as that] That is, as great as the sin of which you accuse her, 
granting that that sin were true. 

330, etc. Hazlitt (p. 279) : It is only as Leontes is worked up into a clearer con- 
viction of his wrongs by insisting on the grounds of his unjust suspicions to Camillo, 
who irritates him by his opposition, that he bursts out into the following vehement 
strain of bitter indignation ; yet even here his passion staggers, and is, as it were, 
oppressed by its own intensity. 



ACT I, sc. ii.] 



THE WINTERS TALE 



49 



Is leaning Cheeke to Cheeke ? is meating Nofes ? 
Kifling with in-fide Lip ? flopping the Cariere 
Of Laughter, with a figh? (a Note infallible 
Of breaking Honeftie) horfing foot on foot ? 
Skulking in comers ? wifhing Clocks more fwift ? 
Houres, Minutes ? Noone, Mid-night ? and all Eyes 
Blind with the Pin and Web , but theirs; theirs onely, 
That would vnfeene be wicked/ Is this nothing? 
Why then the World, and all that's in't,is nothing, 
The couering Skie is noihing^BoAemia nothing. 
My Wife is nothing, nor Nothing haue thefe Nothings, 
If this be nothing. 

Cam. Good my Lord, be cur'd 



331 



335 



340 



343 



331. m fating] F^F^, Theob. meeting 
F^. meting (i. e. measuriog) Thirlby. 

332. injide] inside Rowe. 
Cariere] Carier F F^. carreer 

Rowe i. career Rowe ii. 

333. Laughter] laughing Glo. 

333» 334- (a,„HoneJlie)] A,.,honesty: 
Rowe. 
336, 337. Houres,., Blind] One line. 



Steev. Reed, Var. Knt, Coll. Sing. Ktly. 

336. Noone] the Noone Ff, Rowe + , 
Cap. Var. *73, '78, '85, Rann. noon- 
day or high noon Anon. ap. Cam. 

Eyes] eyes else Walker, Huds. 

337. Pin and fVed] pin-and-web Dyce 
ii, iii, Wh. ii. 

Web] the 7oeb Ktly. 
341. haue] are Lettsom ap. Dyce iii. 



332. Cariere] A term of horsemanship, meaning a gallop at full speed. — 
Ed. 

336. To reduce this vehement line to plodding rhythm the Second Folio inserted 
the before • Noone.* Next, Steevens purloined * Blind ' from the following line, and 
threw the accent on the second syllable of ♦ mid-night.' Then Walker (Crit, iii, 92) 
soggested * all eyes else* Lastly, Abbott, § 484, makes * noon ' disyllabic ! What 
actor could hope to move his audience who should pronounce with measured rhythm 
a torrent of scornful questions like this ? It is enough that the stress falls on the 
emphatic syllables. — Ed. 

337. Pin and Web] Florio {A Worlde of Wordes^ 1598): * Cateratta, Also a 
disease in the eies called a pin and a web.' It appears that in 1542 the Surgeons of 
London, after becoming a licensed company, regarded more their own profit than the 
general welfare of the public, and sued, as irregular practitioners, 'divers honest 
p^rsones, as well men and woomen, whome God hathe endued with a knowledge of 
the nature, kinde, and operac/on of certeyne herbes, rotes and waters.' An Acte was 
accordingly passed in 34 & 35 Henry VIII., 1542 — ^*that persones being no coj»en 
Surgeons male mynistre medicines outwarde.' Among the ailments to which these 
honest persones, aswell men as woomen, had ' mynisterd ' were : * Womens brestes 
being sore, a Pyn and the Web in the eye, uncomes [whitlows or felons] of handes/ 
etc. — Vicary's Anatomie, 1548, p. 208, Early Eng, Text. Sac. Apparently, the 
' pin ' referred to the sharp pain and the ' web ' to the obscured vision produced 
by a cataract. — Ed. 

4 



so 



THE WINTERS TALE 



[act I, sc. ii. 



Of this difeasM Opinion, and betimes, 
For 'tis moft dangerous. 

Leo. Say it be, 'tis true. 

Cam. No, no, my Lord. 

Leo. It is: you lye, you lye : 
I fay thou lyefl CamUlo^diXiA I hate thee, 
Pronounce thee a g^ofle Lowt, a mindlefTe Slaue, 
Or elfe a houering Temporizer, that 
Canft with thine eyes at once fee good and euill, 
Inclining to them both: were my Wiues Liuer 
Infefted (as her life) fhe would not Hue 
The running of one Glafle. 

Cam. Who do's infeft herf 

L^o. Why he that weares her like her Medull, hanging 
About his neck {Bohemia) who, if \ 
Had Seruants true about me, that bare eyes 
To fee alike mine Honor,as their Profits, 
(Their owne particular Thrifts) they would doe that 
Which fhould vndoe more doing : I, and thou 
His Cup-bearer, whom I from meaner forme 



345 



350 



355 



360 



363 



344. betimes^ betimes F^F^. betimes; 
Theob. et seq. 

353. Wiues'\ wife's Rowe. 

353» 354- Liuer,,. life] life ,„ liver 
Daniel. 

357. her Afedull] her Medul F^. his 
medal Theob. Warb. Johns. Cap. Var. 
*73, Mai. a medal Rann, Coll. (MS), 
Dyce ii, Ktly, Huds. her medal Rowe 
et cet. 

358. neck (Bohemia)] neck; Bohe- 



mia — Theob. Warb. Johns. Var. '73. 
neck^ Bohemia ; Rowe et cet. 

358. who, if] Whor-if Var. '78, 
Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. Knt, Coll. Dyce, 
Wh. 

359. bare] bear F^, Rowe, Pope, Han. 
362. more doing] more Doing Theob. 

Warb. Johns. 

/,] Ay, Cap. et seq. 
S6$'-^66. whom.,. gaird] Inparentbe- 
sis, Theob. Warb. Johns. 



355. Glasse] Malone: That is, of one iw^r-glass. 

357. her Medull] Steeve.ns : I suppose this means, < that Polixenes wore her, as 
be would have worn a medal of her, about his neck.' Sir Christopher Hatton is 
represented with a medal of Queen Elizabeth appended to his chain. — Malone : In 
Ifen. VIII : II, ii, 32 we have the same thought : — * a loss of her, That like a Jewell 
has hung twenty years About his neck.* It should be remembered that it was cus- 
tomary for gentlemen, in our author^s time, to wear jewels appended to a ribbon round 
the neck. So in Markham's Honour in Perfection, 1624, p. 18: — * he hath hung 
about the neck of his noble kinsman, Sir Horace Vere, like a rich jewel.' [* Her 
medal ' is a medal of her ; just as Sir Christopher Hatton's medal was one of Queen 
Elizabeth.— Ed.] 

363. Cup-bearer] See Dorastus and Fawnia, 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 5 1 

Haue BenchM, and reared to Worfhip, who may'ft fee 
Plainely,as Heauen fees Earth, and Earth fees Heauen, 365 

How I am gallM, might^ft be-fplce a Cup, 
To giue mine Enemy a lading Winke ; 
Which Draught to me, were cordiall. 

Cam. Sir (my Lord) 
I could doe this, and that with no rafli Potion, 370 

But with a lingring Dram, that fhould not worke 
Malicioufly, like Poyfon : But I cannot 
Beleeue this Crack to be in my dread Miftrefle 
(So foueraignely being Honorable.) 374 

366. galVd'\ gulVd Grey, Mason, Suspiciously Anon. (Fras. Mag. March, 

Rann. galUd Mai. Steev. Var. Knt, 1853). 

Coll. i, Dyce i, Sta. Ktly. 374, 375. {^So...I haue^ So sovereignly 

tnighVJi\ thou might ^Jl Ff, benign^ and honourably To have 'BjxHXocYk, 

Rowe + , Cap. Var. '73, '78, '85, Rann, 374. Honorable.)'] honourable, — Cap. 

Dyce ii, iii, Coll. ii, Huds. honourable. — 5i>, Sta. (Athen. 27 June, 

372. Malicioujly, lihe] Malicioujly^ 1874). 
like a F^, Rowe. Like a malicious Han. 

366. might'st] Note the thou added by F,, to the improTement both of metre and 
of emphasis. 

367. Winke] Steevens : Compare Temp. II, i, 285 : — ^ To the perpetual wink 
for aye might pnt this ancient morsel.' 

368. Which Draught] Abbott (§ 269) : Here a nomi of similar meaning sup- 
plants the antecedent, giving greater emphasis. 

369. Sir] COLUBR (ed. ii) : The MS has Sure for < Sir,' and it is evidently the 
true text ; Camillo means that he could certainly do it. [Collier abandoned this Sure 
in his Third Edition.] — Staunton: With his usual ignorance of Shakespearian 
phraseology Mr Collier's ever-meddling annotator both here and in III, i, where 
Perdita Wjz : < Sir, my gracious lord,' etc. for < Sir ' reads Sure, And Mr Collier, 
mindless of Paulina's, — ^ Sir, my liege, your eye hath too much youth,' etc. in V, 
i, of this very play ; of Prospero's, — * Sir, my liege, do not infest your mind,' etc. ; 
of Hamlet's, — < Sir, my good friend,' etc., chooses to adopt the substitution, and tells 
us Sure is < evidently the true text !' [See IV, iv, 9, where Collier's MS makes the 
same change.] 

372. Maliciously] Johnson : * Rash ' is hasty, as in ^ Hen. IV: IV, iv, 48 : — 
* rash gunpowder.' * Maliciously ' is malignantly, with effects openly hurtful. — 
Hrard (Sh. as a Lawyer, 99) : In an indictment for murder it is necessary to allege 
that the act by which the death was occasioned was done of * malice aforethought,' 
which is the great characteristic of the crime. * I should suppose,' says Barrington, 
' that the word ^ maliciously " in [the present passage] is used in the sense it bears 
in the common forms of indictment for murder.' — Observations on the Statutes, 527, 
note, 5th ed. 

374. So soueraig^ely]. That is, being so sovereignly, so supremely honourable. 

374-378. Walked {Crit. iii, 93) : The first line :< So s6v^re!gnly bding honour- 



52 THE WINTERS TALE [act i, sc. iL 

I haue lou'd thee, 375 

Leo Make that tliy queftion,and goe rot : 

375. Given to Leon., Theob. Warb. 376. Makethaf\ ^tf V/ Theob.Warb. 

Johns. Var. '73. Transposed to follow Johns. Steev. Var. 

rot! Cap. Tyrwhilt. Make,„rot'\ Mark this questum^ 

I...thee^ I. ..thee, Ff, Rowe + . and go doU Heath. 
io Md. Han. I...thee^ — Var. '78 et 
seq. (subs.). 

libld/ can never have been one of Shakespeare's ; not to mention the singularity of 
iovlreignly and bHng^ both unusual in Shakespeare, coming together in the same line, 
and the improbability of ' Make that * having been corrupted into Make V. Arrange, 
— * So sov'reignly being honourable. — I've [properly ^have^ lov'd thee, — | Leon, 
Make that thy question, and go rot ! Dost think | I am so muddy, so unsettled, | 
T' appoint myself etc. Unsettled^ a quadrisyllable; as (if any particular instance 
were worth adducing) in the passage of How a Man may Choose^ etc., quoted in 
Sh. Vers., Arts, ii, iii, p. 36, — * My settled unkindness doth beget A resolution to be 
unkind still.' See Arts, ii, iii, Sh. Vers, for many examples of this usage. — Dyce 
(ed. i) objected to this lengthening of < unsettled,' and observed that * earlier in this 
scene [line 177] Shakespeare has used unsettled without any such iniKTaaic-* 
Whereupon Lettsom (Walker's Editor) in a footnote to the foregoing note of 
Walker, replied that Dyce's ' argument is even stronger against pronouncing English 
as a trisyllable in / Hen. VI: I, v, as English occurs previously twice in that short 
scene as a disyllabic. Yet there Mr Dyce agrees with Walker in applying the 
Mxraat^ to English in La Pucelle's speech. Both pronimciations were used.' In 
both of Dyce's subsequent additions Walker's note is quoted, but the objection to it 
is withdrawn. 

375, 376. I haue . . . rot] Theobald : This hemistich assigned to Camillo 
must have been wrongly placed to him. It is a strange instance of disrespect and 
insolence in Camillo to his King and Master to tell him that he once loved him. . . . 
I have ventured at a transposition which seems self-evident. Camillo will not be 
persuaded into a suspicion of the disloyalty imputed to his Mistress. The, King, who 
believes nothing but his jealousy, provoked that Camillo is so obstinately diffident, 
finely [finally ?] starts into a rage and cries : — * I've lov'd thee. — Make 't thy ques- 
tion, and go rot,' i. e. I have tendered thee well, Camillo, but I here cancel all former 
respect at once. If thou any longer make a question of my wife's disloyalty ; go 
from my presence, and perdition overtake thee for thy stubbornness.' — Johnson : I 
have admitted this alteration, but am not convinced that it is necessary. Camillo. 
desirous to defend the Queen, and willing to secure credit to his apology, begins, by 
telling the King that he has loved him, is about to give instances of his love, and to 
infer from them his present zeal, when he is interrupted. — Capell (p. 165) : Camillo 
is cut short by his master, and ends abruptly ; his disbelief, making question of what 
the master believed, raises violent passion; and he is (in that case) first bid to 'go 
rot,' and told afterwards [see Text. Notes] — *I have lov'd thee,' making have 
emphatical, which implies that that time was past; This position of the words has 
nothing to make against it that can be suggested ; in its favour, every thing ; . . . this 
speech of Leontes will be found by a good pronouncer, who feels it, equal to most in 
Shakespeare. — Steevbns : I have restored the old reading. Camillo is about to tell 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 53 

Do^ft thinke I am fo muddy, fo vnfetled, 377 

To appoint my felfe in this vexation ? 

Sully the puritie and whiteneffe of my Sheetes 

(Which to preferue,is Sleepe; which being fpotted, 380 

Is Goades, Thomes. Nettles, Tayles of Wafpes) 

378, 379. To,,,SuUy\ One line. 379-381. Lines end ^...^«Vf^...a«j;^j/ 

Theob.+, Cap. Rann, Steev. et seq. Mai. 

378. To appoint^ T appoint Dyct n, 379. whUenfJfe] wUnefsY^. 
iii, Huds. 

Leontes how much he had loved him. The impatience of the King interrupts him 
bj saying : * Make that thj question/ f. e. * make the love of which you boast the 
subject of your future conversation, and go to the grave with it' * Question,* in our 
author, has very often this meaning. — M. Mason : I think Steevens right in restoring 
the old reading, but mistaken in his interpretation of it. Camillo is about to express 
his affection for Leontes, but the impatience of the latter will not suffer him to pro- 
ceed. He takes no notice of that part of Camillo's speech, but replies to that which 
gave him offence, — the doubts he had expressed of the Queen's misconduct, and 
says, — 'Make that thy question and go rot* — M alone: Perhaps the words 'being 
honourable ' should be placed in a parenthesis, and the full point after the latter of 
these words be omitted. . . . However, the text is very intelligible as now regulated. 
[I think ' that * refers to the Queen's misconduct, and that * Make * is not the imper- 
ative but the subjunctive : * If you doubt the queen's unfaithfulness you may go rot' 
—Ed. 

378. To appoint my selfe] Swynfen Jervis {Diet,) gives involve as the 
meaning here of this phrase ; which certainly affords good sense, but then it must 
be accepted on Jervis's authority; he gives no parallel {Missages. Schmidt pro- 
nounces it ' a singular expression,* which is true ; and says it is equivalent to ' dress 
myself in this vexation,* which is doubtful ; he bids us compare it with ' drest in an 
opinion.* — Mer, of Ven, I, 91 ; * attired in wonder.* — Much Ado, IV, i, 146; 'wrapt 
in fears.' — Lucr. 456, in all of which phrases, where the word to dress^ or its precise 
equivalent, is used, it is not easy to detect a parallel to appoint. The general 
definition of appoint^ given by Richardson (Diet. j. z/.) is all sufficient, viz. : * To fix, 
settle, establish,* wherein the word settle is singularly appropriate in the phrase in 
hand : * Dost thou think I am so muddy, so unsettled, as to establish, to settle myself 
in this vexation ?* Richardson cites, among many other examples : ' Appoint not 
heav'nly disposition, father.* — Milton, Samp, Agon, 373, where appoint is used as in 
the present phrase.— Ed. 

381. Is Qoades, etc.] When counted on the fingers this grating, sibilant line 
lacks two syllables. To remedy this sad defect in a passionate utterance of 
Leontes, when, of all times, he should speak in irreproachable rhythm, various 
improvements have been suggested. Hanmer reads : ' Is goads and thorns, nettles 
and tails of wasps.' Capell adds at the end of the line : or would /. Walker 
(Crit. ii, 16) implies that Leontes's sufferings were not sufficiently acute, and that he 
had overlooked vipers which should glide in between ' nettles ' and ' tails of wasps.' 
An Anonymous Emender (recorded in the Cam. Ed.), of a gentler nature than Walker, 
suggests pismires. Keightley upholds iteration and reads : ' Is goads, is thorns, is 



54 ^^^ WINTERS TALE [act i, sc. u. 

Giue fcandall to the blood o'th' Prince, my Sonne, 382 

(Who I doe thinke is mine, and loue as mine) 

Without ripe mouing to't ? Would I doe this ? 

Could man fo blench ? 385 

Cam. I muft beleeue you(Sir) 
I doe, and will fetch off Boliemia for't : 
Prouided,that when hee's remou'd,your Highnefle 
Will take againe your Queene, as yours at firft, 
Euen for your Sonnes fake, and thereby for fealing 390 

The Iniurie of Tongues, in Courts and Kingdomes 
Knowne,and allyM to yours. 

Leo, Thou do'ft aduife me, 
Euen fo as I mine owne courfe haue fet downe : 
He giue no blemifh to her Honor, none. 395 

Cam, My Lord, 
Goe then ; and with a countenance as cleare 
As Friendfliip weares at Feafts, keepe with Bohemia^ 
And with your Queene : I am his Cup-bearer, 
If from me he haue wholefome Beueridge, 400 

Account me not your Seruant. 

384. toU ? „.this ?'\ to^t.,.this? Yi2Ji, ^(^. for fealing] forsealing Anon, b.^, 

386. {Sir)] Sir; Theob. et seq. Cam. for-sealing Wh. ii. 

387. I doe^ I do; Cap. et seq. 400. wholefome Beueridge] wholefome 

388. Prouided, that] Provided that Beveridge F^. wholfome Beveridge F^. 
Pope, Han. Provided^ that^ Theob. + , wholfome Beveridg F^. wholesome bev- 
Cap. Provided that^ Dyce, Coll. ii, Sta. erage Mai. et seq. 

Cam. 

Dettles,* etc. Staunton, to make sure that the nettles are not the mild teazel, but of 
the proper, smarting variety, proposes * stinging neetles.' Abbott (p. 380), not to be 
outdone l)y the * wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore,' would fain have us read : 
* Is go-ads, tho-ms,' etc. — Ed. 

385. blench] Steevens : To * blench is to start off, to shrink.* As in Ham. II, ii, 
626 : < if he but blench, I know my course.' Leontes means — *■ could any man so 
start or fly off from propriety of behaviour ?' 

390, 391. sealing ... of Tongues] Capell (p. 166) : This phrase is one of the 
Poet's hardinesses ; his meaning, — sealing up tongues that are injurious, injure by 
slander. 

395. blemish] Walker ( Vers. 66) has an Article on * certain classes of words 
the greater part of them composed of two short syllables, flourish, nourish, punish, 
etc., trouble, humble, couple, little, etc., suffer, master, finger, etc., which are frequently 
contracted into one syllable, or placed in monosyllabic places in the line.' Of the 
present line, he says : * I susp>ect we should write and arrange, — '* I'll give no blemish 
t' her honour, none. My lord," ' where, of course, * blemish ' is to be contracted into 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 55 

Leo, This is all : 402 

DoH,and thou haft the one halfe of my heart ; 
Do't not, thou fplitt'ft thine owne. 

Cam. He do*t, my Lord. 405 

Leo\ will feeme friendly, as thou haft aduis'd me. Exit 

Cam. O miferable Lady. But for me, 
What cafe ftand I in f I muft be the poyfoner 
Of good PolixeneSy and my ground to do't, 
Is the obedience to a Mafter ; one, 410 

Who in Rebellion with himfelfe, will haue 
All that are his, fo too. To doe this deed, 
Promotion followes : If I could find example 
Of thoufand's that had ftruck anoynted Kings, 
And flourifli'd after, Il'd not do*t : But fince 415 

407. me^ me! Ff, Rowe. 412. To doe\ To Rowe. 

410. Mafter ; one"] Mafter y one F^ 414. thoufand^5\ thou/ands F^F^. 

Rowe, Pope. 415. IVd'\ Fid F^. Td Pope. 

- 

one syllable. It is observable that Walker judiciously says * we should writer etc. 
He certainly never could have so spoken the line. — £d. 
403, 404. See Dorastus and Fawnia. 

408. What case] Abbott, § 86 : That is, In what a position am I ? [See also, 
if need be, this same section for other examples of the omission of a after wAat."] 

412. 80 too] Delius : That is, in rebellion with themselves. — Deighton : Who 
being a rebel to himself, not truly loyal to his own nature, desires that his subjects 
should be equally disloyal by doing deeds which show no real fidelity to him (the 
* obedience,' line 410, demanded of them being no true obedience) ; not as Delius 
explains it. 

414. anojrnted Kings] For Blackstone's note on this line as bearing on the date 
of composition, and for Douce's reply, see Appendix, * Date of Composition.' 

415. ird] R. G. White (ed. i) : The original has « IVd.' So we would is con- 
tracted to we'ldy not we'd. But / had becomes / V, and we had^ we'd. That the / 
was pronounced as well as written in would and should^ and in Tld and we'ld^ as 
late as the beginning of the last century, there can be no doubt. See evidence of it 
in the Dramatis Personse of Farquhar's Twin Rivals^ 1 702, where, and throughout 
the play, the name of the two principal characters is printed not Wouldbe^ but 
IVoWdbe, where the apostrophe marks an omitted sound. [Even more strength 
would have been added to White's just argument had he correctly reprinted the text 
of the Folio, which is, not Tld but * Il'd.' That the / was usually pronounced 
Walker (Crit. ii, 86) has shown by rhymes, e. g. V, and A., 385, — * thy palfrey as 
he should, Welcomes the warm approach of sweet desire. Affection is a coal that 
must be coofd' ; White has instanced Farquhar's Tivin Rivals in 1702 as an instance 
where the contractions wou'd, shoud mark the omission of / in pronunciation. He 
might have cited much later instances. In Garrick's Version of the present play, 
in his Works, printed in 1774, this omission is uniformly indicated. — £d.] 



56 THE WINTERS TALE [act i. sc. u. 

Nor Brafle^nor Stone, nor Parchment beares not one, 416 

Let Villanie it felfe forfwear't I muft 

Forfake the Court : to do't,or no, is certaine 

To me a breake-neck. Happy Starre raigne now, 

Here comes Bohemia. Enter Polixenes. 420 

PoL This is ftrange : Me thinkes 
My fauor here begins to warpe. Not fpeake? 
Good day Camillo. 

Cam. Hayle most Royall Sir. 

PoL What is the Newes i^h'Court ? 425 

Cam. None rare (my Lord.) 

Pol. The King hath on him fuch a countenance. 
As he had loft fome Prouince,and a Region 
LouM, as he loues himfelfe : euen now I met him 
With cuftomarie complement, when hee 430 

Wafting his eyes to th' contrary, and falling 
A Lippe of much contempt, fpeedes from me, and 432 

417. Villanif] villianyY^, 420. [Scene iv. Pope+. 

for/wear' f] for/wer't F,. for- 422. Myfauor\ Me fauor F,. 

swear it Ktly. 424. Hayie^ Hoyle F,. Hoyl F,. 

419. Starred Ff, Rann, Dyce, Sta. Hail F^. 

Cam. Wh. ii. Star, Rowe et cat. 427. on him\ one him F . 

now^ now. Rowe, Pope, Han. 428. he had 1^ had he F^, Rowe i. 
now/ Theob. et seq. 

419. breake-neck] Halliwell: The inversed term, neck-break, is still in use in 
the provinces. 

419. Happy Starre] Deighton : That is, * may some good Providence care for 
my country, now in so evil a plight!' [I think it rather refers to the entrance of 
Polixenes, and means, * may some propitious Star guide me in this interview.' — Ed.] 

422. to warpe] Schmidt says that this means * to change for the worse,' and he 
is followed by the Century Dictionary, [But I think it rather means that the wel- 
come of Polixenes threatens to become shrunken or distorted by the coolness of 
Leontes. It almost seems as though Shakespeare recalled his own song in As You 
Like It; 'Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky . . . Though thou the waters warp. Thy 
sting is not so sharp As friend remembered not.* — Ed.] 

425. What is] The emphasis here falls on * is.' * What can be the news in the 
Court ?'— Ed. 

428. As he had]. For other examples where as is used apparently for or (^ see 
Abbott, § 107. 

432. speedes from me] M. Mason (p. 126) : This is a stroke of nature worthy 
of Shakespeare. Leontes had but a moment before assured Camillo that he would 
seem friendly to Polixenes, according to his advice ; but on meeting him, his jealousy 
gets the better of his resolution, and he finds it impossible to restrain his hatred. 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 57 

So leaues me, to confider what is breeding, 433 

That changes thus his Manners. 

Cam, I dare not know (my Lord.) 435 

PoL How,dare not? doe not? doe you know, and dare not? 

Be intelligent to me, 'tis thereabouts : 

For to your felfe,what you doe know, you muft, 

And cannot fay, you dare not. Good Camilloy 

Your changed complexions are to me a Mirror, 440 

Which fhewes me mine changed too:for I muft be 

A partie in this alteration,finding 

My felfe thus altered with't. 
Cam. There is a fickneffe 

Which puts fome of vs in diftemper,but 445 

434. changes'\ changeth Glo. do not, ,..darenot.,.me ? Cap. do not f 

435' (my Lord y\ Om. Han. ,..dare not.,.mef Var. '78, '85, Rann, 

436. HoWy dare not"] J/oWf date not Mai. Steev. Var. Coll. Sing. Dyce, Wh. 

F,. i, Sta. Ktly. 

doe not?„.notf'\ dare not? you 438. you doe'} do you F^F^, Rowe i. 

do kncwy and dare not Han. 443. with't} with it Rowe ii + , Mai. 

436, 437. doe not?.,, dare not?„,me^ Steev. Var. Knt, Sing. Su. Ktly. 

433. consider] AAer this word Hudson places a full stop, and connects < What is 
breeding ' with the next line, with the following note : *• Does not Camillo's reply 
fairly suppose the clause after << consider *' to be interrogative ? And where is the 
objection to taking <* consider " as used absolutely, or without an object expressed ?* 

433. what] This is the emphatic word. — Ed. 

4369 437* How . . . thereabouts] The punctuation in the Folio of these two 
lines is, to me, satisfactory, except, perhaps, the interrogation after the first < doe not.' 
By changing this question into an afHrmation the sense becomes, < How, you cannot 
mean dare not^ you must mean do not.* Emphatically I prefer the interrogation at the 
end of the line, rather than to continue the question : < and dare not be intelligent to 
me ?* as the majority of editors read. The first line is all astonishment and bewil- 
derment, then Polixenes commands : < Be intelligible — it must be something of this 
nature : that you know and dare not tell ; for what you know must be intelligible to 
yourself, and you cannot say you dare not tell yourself.* * Intelligent ' elsewhere 
means eommunicative^ but that meaning can hardly apply here where Polixenes tells 
Camillo to be * intelligent * to himself. I have therefore paraphrased it by intelligible, 
—Ed. 

440. chang'd complexions] This refers to Camillo's blanched cheeks, the sight 
whereof reacts on Polixenes and causes his to blanch also. The same phraseology 
is used in Hen. V: H, i, 72 : * Why, how now, gentlemen ! What see ye in those 
papers that ye lose So much complexion ? Look ye, how they change I Their cheeks 
are paper.* Possibly, it may refer to Camillo's becoming red and white by turns. 
Schmidt erroneously defines < complexion' here as 'the external appearance,' not 
' the colour of the skin.' — Ed. 



58 THE WINTERS TALE [act i, sc. ii. 

I cannot name the Difeafe, and it is caught 446 

Of you, that yet are welU 

PoL How caught of me ? 
Make me not fighted like the Bafilifque. 

I haue lookM on thoufands, who haue fped the better 450 

By my regard, but killM none fo : Camilloy 
As you are certainely a Gentleman, thereto 452 

448. Haw caught"] Haw! caught Cap. page), rve Popc+, Dyce ii, iii, Huds. 
Var. '78, '85, Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. 452. certainely] cerrainly F^. 
Dyce, Cam. Wh. ii. GentUman^ thereto] Gentleman^ 

450. / haue] I F^Fj (misprint. / Pope + . Gentleman; theretOy\ax,'T^, 
haue is the catchword on preceding Gentleman thereto ; Var. '21. 

449. Basilisque] Halliwell : The popular notion of the basilisk in the six- 
teenth century, derived primarily from Pliny, may be gathered from the following 
extract from Andrewe's edition of The Myrrour and Dyscrypcyon of the IVorlde, 
n. d., * There be in Inde the basilicocks which have the sight so venymous that they 
slee al men, and so do they al foules and bestes.' [* To come now vnto the Basiliske, 
whom all other serpents do flie from and are affraid of : albeit he killeth them with 
his very breath and smel that passeth from him ; yea, and (by report) if he do but set 
his eie on a man, it is enough to take away his life.' — Holland's Plinie^ Bk. xxix, 
Cap. iv. * The Cockatrice is called Basiliscus in Greeke, and Regultis in Latine, 
and hath that name Regulus of a litle King, for he is King of serpents, and they are 
afeard and flye when they see him, for he slayeth them with his smell and with his 
breathe : and slayeth also all thing that hath lyfe, with breathe and with sight. In 
his sight, no fowle, nor birde passeth harmlesse, and though he be farre from the 
foule, yet it is burnt and devoured by his mouthe.' — Batman vppon Bartholomew 
P- 350, verso. * There is some question amongest Writers, about the generation of 
this Serpent ; for some (and those very many and learned) affirme, him to be brought 
forth of a Cockes egge. For they say that when a Cock groweth old, he layeth a 
certaine egge without any shell, instead whereof it is couered with a very thicke 
skinne, which is able to withstand the greatest force of an easie blow or fall. They 
say moreouer, that this Egge is layd onely in the Summer-time, about the beginning 
of Dogge-dayes, being not long as a Hens Egge, but round and orbiculer : Some- 
times of a dusty, sometimes of a Boxie, sometimes of a yellowish muddy colour . . . 
and afterward set vpon by a Snake or a Toad, bringeth forth the Cockatrice, being 
halfe a foot in length, the hinder part like a Snake, the former part like a Cocke, 
because of a treble combe on his forehead. . . . Among all lining creatures, there is 
none that perisheth sooner then dooth a man by the poyson of a Cockatrice, for with 
his sight he killeth him, because the beames of the Cockatrices eyes, doe corrupt the 
visible spirit of a man, which visible spirit corrupted, all the other spirits coming from 
the braine and life of the hart, are thereby corrupted, &'so the man dyeth.' — Topsell, 
History of Serpents^ p. 1 19. — Ed.] 

452. As you, etc.] Inasmuch as the syllables of this line, when counted on the 
fingers, prove to be twelve, three suggestions have been made for its reformation. — 
Capell reads : ' As you are, certain, gentleman ; thereto/ where ' certain ' is used 



ACT I. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 59 

Clerke-like experiencM, which no leffe adornes 453 

Our Gentry, then our Parents Noble Names, 

In whofe fucceffe we are gentle : I befeech you, 455 

If you know ought which do's behoue my knowledge, 

Thereof to be informed, imprifon't not 

In ignorant concealement 

Cam. I may not anfwere. 

PoL A Sickneffe caught of me, and yet I well ? 460 

I muft be anfwer'd. Do'ft thou heare CamUloy 

453. Clerke'like\ clerk-like. Cap. Mai. 455. we are"] we're Huds. 

Steev. Var. Knt, Coll. 456. au^^kt'] aughi Theob. ii et seq. 

experienced '\ expedienc'd Ff, 457. impri/<mW\ ¥(, Rowe + , Cap, 

Rowe. Dyce, Wh. Sta. Cam. Huds. Rife, Dtn. 

adornes] adotns F^. imprison it Var. '73 et cet. 

adverbially, which is quite allowable. — ^Walker ( Vers. 116) finds relief in pronouncing 
* Gentleman * as * a quasi-disyllable,' but, grown bolder, in his Crit. iii, 94, he asserts 
that it is < a disyllable ' without qualification, and adds that * thereto * b accented on 
the first syllable. — Abbott, § 499, pronounces the line, albeit the caesura falls at the 
right Alexandrine stroke, only an * apparent Alexandrine,' and calls it a * regular verse 
of five accents followed by a foot, more or less isolated, containing one accent.' This 
extra foot, * thereto,' Abbott accents on the last syllable. Here we have three attempts 
to correct a line which has no rhythmic fault, except that it does not conform to the 
generality of the lines in its number of feet. Each foot is true in accent, and if spoken 
properly no ear could detect the superfluity of syllables. Two extra feet are less 
shocking to a delicate ear than to hear ' gentleman ' pronounced gcn{man^ a pronun- 
ciation indissolubly associated, in our American ears, with plantation negroes. — Ed. 

452. thereto] It must be that the semicolon after this word in the Var. '21 is a 
misprint. — Ed. 

453. Clerke-like experienc'd] Of the comma inserted by Capell between these 
two words there is much to be said in favour. *• The speaker compliments Camillo,' 
Capell is here speaking of the effect of this comma, < with being a gentleman, a 
scholar, and a man of knowledge in the world, for that is meant by * experienced ' ; 
they have been united till now in one epithet, — * Clerklike experienced,' which is 
both weak'ning and wrong ; for magis magni clerici non sunt magis magni sapienics, 
as wags have said anciently.' 

453. which] For other examples of the use of ' which ' for which thing used 
parenthetically, see Abbott, § 271. 

455. In whose success] That is, < in succession from whom,' as Dr Johnson 
points out. Schmidt gives a similar use of < success ' in 2 Hen. IV: IV, ii, 47. 

458. ignorant concealement] According to Deighton, < ignorant ' is here used 
proleptically, * that concealment which involves ignorance (on my part).' * Ignorant ' 
refers, I think, to Camillo, and the phrase means, ' imprison not your knowledge in 
concealment under the plea of ignorance/ referring to lines 436-438, as is shown by 
the fact that Polixenes reverts at once to Camillo's previous answer that he could not 
name the disease which was caught of one who is well. — Ed. 



6o THE WINTERS TALE [act i, sc. ii. 

I coniure thee, by all the parts of man, 462 

Which Honor do*s acknowledge, whereof the lead 
Is not this Suit of mine, that thou declare 

What incidencie thou do'ft gheffe of harme 465 

Is creeping toward me ; how farre off, how neere, 
Which way to be preuented,if to be : 
If not, how beft to beare it. 
Cam. Sir, I will tell you, 
Since I am chargM in Honor, and by him 470 

That I thinke Honorable: therefore marke my counfaile, 
Which muft be eu'n as fwiftly follo\yed, as 
I meane to vtter it ; or both your fetfe,and me. 
Cry loft, and fo good night. x 474 

465. g^dF^'\ gdF^ F,. gttefs FjF^. 469. /^zw7/] 77/ Pope+, Mai. Steev. 

466. /oward] towards Rowe ii + ,Var. Var. Dyce^ii, iii, Huds. 

'73. 472. fo$owed'\ follow' d Rowc et seq. 

467. if io be] if it be Theob. Warb. 473. utter if] utter *tByct ii, iii. 
Johns. and me] and I CoW, (MS). 

462. coniure] W. A. Wright (Note on Alacb, IV, i, 50) : * Conjure * seems to be 
used by Shakespeare always with the accent on the first syllable, except in Horn, 6f* 
Jul.t II, i, 26, and Oth.^ I, iii, 105. In both these passages Shakespeare says 
'conjhre' where we should say *cbnjure.' In all other cases he uses 'conjure,' 
whether he means (i) 'adjure,' (2) 'conspire,' or (3) 'use magic arts.' 

462. parts of man] That is, all the duties imposed by Honour on man. ' Part ' 
is here used in this sense of allotted duty zs it is in Generydes^ line 3013: 'Syr 
Anasore the knyght, And s^r Darell, | And All the toder knyghtez eurrychone, | 
Eche for his parte quyte hym self full wele.* — {^E. E. Text. Soc,, cited by the Cent, 
Diet.) Schmidt's interpretation of 'part' as 'share of action, particular business, 
task ' is inadequate. Deighton rightly defines it. — Ed. 

465. incidencie ... of harme] That is, 'what impending harm.' An 'inci- 
dencie,' or falling, that * creeps ' is somewhat of a confusion of metaphors. — Ed. 

473. your selfe, and me] If 'me' for / be not mere carelessness, there is but 
one explanation which seems to me at all possible, and this is that it is not Polixenes 
and Camillo- who * cry lost,' but it is the imaginary cry of specUtors who see their 
doom and bid them an everlasting farewell. In the phrase * cry aim ' it was not the 
archer who aimed that so cried ; it was the spectators. That phrase may have been 
hovering in Camillo's mind, and the present passage shaped itself on that formula: 
' both for yourself and for me there is the cry of " lost," and so good night to us.* 
The use of the very phrase ' good night ' implies a gfroup of imaginary friends ; no 
one says it to himself. The two examples of * me ' used for / given by Abbott 
(§210), are not parallel to the present; both are preceded by conjunctions which 
may have had, as Abbott says, a quasi -prepositional force. — Ed. 

474. good night] Schmidt gives several examples besides the present where 
* good night ' means farewell for ever, lost for ever. 



ACT I. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 6 1 

PoL On, good Camillo. 475 

Cam. I am appointed him to murther you. 

PoL By whom, Camilla ? 

Cam. By the King. 

Pol. For what ? 

Cam. He thinkes, nay with all confidence he fweares, 480 
As he had feen't, or beene an Inftrument 
To vice you to't,that you haue toucht his Queene 
Forbiddenly. 483 

^l(i, I am appointed him'\ I appointed appointed by him Yx\y, I appointed am 

him Ff. / am appointed Rowe, Pope. Anon. MS ap. Hal. 

lam appointed Him Theob. Warb. Johns. 476. murther\ murder F^F^. 
/ am appointed f Sir, Han. Cap. / am 

476. appointed him] This * him * seems to have given rise to needless difficulty. 
Abbott (§ 220) (possibly misled by Boswell, who says that fy is understood, and 
that the full phrase is : < I am appointed fy him to murder you)' suggests that * him ' 
is used for fy him in virtue of its representing an old dative. Deighton says that 
* this seems impossible * and that there is a confusion of two constructions : < I am 
i^pointed he who should murder you* and <He appointed me to murder you.' 
Whereas Steevens, the earliest to notice the passage (probably taking his cue from 
Theobald*8 text), gave at the first the simplest explanation, viz. : < I am the person 
appointed to murder you,' or as Staunton paraphrases it :< I am the agent appointed 
to murder you.* — Ed. 

482. To vice] Warburton: That is, to draw, persuade you. The character 
called the Vice^ in the old plays, was the tempter to evil. — Heath : The genuine 
reading is so very obvious, one can scarce miss it : * To ^ntice you.* — Steevens : The 
vice is an instrument well known ; its operation is to hold things together. So the 
Bailiff, speaking of Falstaff : * an a* come but within my vice ' \2 Hen. IV: II, i, 24]. 
It may, indeed, be no more than a corruption of ' to advise you.* — Collier : < To 
vice ' had a very general signification in the time of Shakespeare ; here it means, to 
draw as by a mechanical power. — R. G. White (ed. i) : I have hardly a doubt that 
there has been a slight typographical error, and that we should read < to ''tice you.* — 
Halltwell : The connexion between the terms instrument and vice seems to indi- 
cate that the latter is here a verb in the sense, to screw, or move, like a vice. 
' Tumoir, the vice or winch of a presse.* — G^tgrave. ' Machina lignea, qua quae 
imus geruntur aut fiunt, versatione rotarum spectatoribus ostenduntur, a vice or gin 
of wood, wherewith such things as are done within out of sight, are shewed to the 
beholders by the turning about of wheeles.* — Nomenclator^ ^S^S- — Staunton: That 
is, to screw you to it. So in Tivelfth Nighty V, i, * — I partly know the instrument 
That screws me from my true place in your favour.* [I think that HalliwelPs reason 
is just : the immediate connection of ' instnmient * shows that the text is right, and 
that mechanical force is metaphorically meant. Heath's ^ntice was modified by 
Grant White into Uice^ and in The Parthenon (7 June, 1 862) Uice was strongly urged 
by " W. W.'* (* the late Mr Williams,* says Dyce), the only critic who has, in this 
passage, a good word to say for Warburton, ' who, if not quite right,* says W. W., * I 



62 THE WINTERS TALE [act i, sc. ii. 

Pol. Oh then, my beft blood tume 
To an infefted Gelly,and my Name 485 

Be yoak'd with his, that did betray the Beft : 
Tume then my freflieft Reputation to 
A fauour,that may ftrike the dulleft Nofthrill 
Where I arriue, and my approch be fhunM, 489 

484. bhod^ bloud F^. 487. Reputation\ Repuiaiian F^. 

485. Geliy\ jelly Vva.'-jZ, 488. Nq/lhrill'\ NoftrilY^Y^. 

486. the Befil the £est Knt ct seq. Ali^^<)l. Jhuh'd,.. read '\f ear' d,., read 
(subs.). of Anon. MS ap. Hal. 

think was at least on the right scent.' * An " instrument " being an implement, and 
a vice being an implement/ he goes on to say, *has led to an unquestioning ad- 
mission of the accuracy of the old copies. But an instrument also means an agents 
as in this play, V, ii, 72, " all the instruments [t . e. agents] which aided to expose the 
child " ; and in 0th. ^ IV, ii : — " you my father do suspect An instrument of this your 
calling back." Nor is it necessary to multiply quotations. '* It is used," says John- 
son, "of persons as well as things; but of persons very often in an ill sense." 
Exactly so. Camillo means to say that Leontes is as firmly convinced that Polixenes 
is intriguing with Hermione, as if he (Leontes) had been an instrument, or agent, to 
persuade or entice him to such a course. If we read *tice for " vice," we have then 
an abbreviation of " entice " very common in our old authors, and of which Shake- 
speare himself furnishes a precedent in Tit. And. Ill, iii : — ^" These two have *ticed 
me hither to this place." This reading . . . requires no eccentric illustration from 
clock-work or carpentry.* W. W. commences his note by saying that * upon the sole 
authority of this [present] passage Johnson and Richardson introduce " vice " into 
their Dictionaries as a verb. Explaining the substantive " vice " as " a kind of iron 
press used by workmen," Johnson assigns to it, as a verb, the meaning " to draw by 
a kind of violence." What the " kind " of violence may be, by which a vice — an 
implement for fixing anything firmly in one place, — may become an instrument of 
tractioftf he does not, of course, state.* This criticism of Johnson and Richardson 
for doing their simple duty is unmerited. Dyce was convinced by W. W.'s note, 
and adopted ^tice in the text of both his Second and Third Editions. W. W. says 
that Johnson's definition of the verb is * to draw by a kind of violence,' but he does 
not give the edition of Johnson's Dictionary from which he quotes ; in the Second 
Edition of 1755 tbere is simply *7> Vice, v. n. [from the noun]. To draw.' — Ed. 

486. the Best] Henderson : Perhaps, Judas. The word is spelt with a capital 
letter in the Folio. [Unquestionably Henderson is right in his surmise, but the weak- 
ness of the remark by which he supports it, is evident, at a glance, to any one who has 
before him, as here, the text of the Folio, where almost every noun is spelled with a 
capital. — Ed.] 

487. to] For other examples of unemphatic monosyllables in emphatic places, see 
Abbott, § 357. These monosyllables are a characteristic of this play. See lines 
493* 50' > 504* 5^9> ^"^ 53' infra ^ in this very scene. 

488. sauour] This refers to the prevalent belief, possibly largely due to the Bible, 
and not even yet died out, that infection so taints the air that it can be perceived by 
the nostrils. — Ed. 



ACT I. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 63 

Nay hated too,worfe then the great'ft Infeflion 490 

That ere was heard, or read. 

Cam^ Sweare his thought ouer 
By each particular Starre in Heauen, and 
By all their Influences ; you may as well 494 

491. read^ readofYJXy. thought Theob. conj., Huds. this oath 

492. his thought^ this though Theob. + . Lettsom ap. Dyce. 
this, though. Coll. (MS), Wh. i. this 

492. Sweare . . . ouer] Theobald (Nichols, ii, 359) at first hesitated between 
' Swear this thought over * and *■ Swear this though over/ but eventually, in his edi- 
tion, adopted the latter, with the following note : < Polixenes, in the preceding speech, 
had been laying the deepest imprecations on himself, if he had ever abused Leontes 
in any familiarity with his queen. To which Camillo very pertinently replies : " swear 
this though over,'* etc., i. e. Sir, Though you should protest your innocence never so 
often, and call every Star and Saint in heaven to witness to your adjuration ; yet jeal- 
ousy is so rooted in my Master's bosom, that all you can say and swear will have no 
force to remove it.* — Johnson : * Swear his thought over ' may perhaps mean over- 
swear his present persuasion, that is, endeavour to overcome his opinion, by swearing 
oaths numerous as the stars. — Capell (167) : *His thought* is his conceiv'd jeal- 
ousy ; and by swearing over this thought, is meant — bringing ai^^uments against it 
back'd with oaths, and those oaths as numerous as the stars they are fetch'd from. — 
Malone : The vulgar still use a similar expression : < To swear a person down.^ — 
Halliwell quotes Meas,/or Meas. V, i, 243 : * Though they would swear down each 
particular saint * as a proof that Shakespeare himself uses the phrase which Malone 
mentions. [It is not clear, however, that the citation is exactly parallel. — Ed.] — 
Steevens : In Shakespeare we have * weigh out ' for outweigh, * overcome * for come 
over, etc., and * over-swear * for stfear over in Twelfth Night, V, i, 276 : — * And all 
those sayings will I over-swear.* — R. G. White (ed. i) : The original text, in spite 
of Theobald's indication of the obvious error, has been hitherto retained with the 
extraordinary explanation * over-swear his thought !' [In White's Second Edition the 
original text is retained without comment. — Ed.] — Staunton : Theobald's emenda- 
tion, besides being foreign to the mode of expression in Shakespeare's time, is a 
change quite uncalled for; to swear over = over-swear, is merely to out-swear. — 
Dyce (ed. ii) upholds Staunton in the assertion that * no Elizabethan writer would 
have used though in that manner.* * The old text,* he adds, * if right, means " over- 
swear his thought^*: Camillo has said in his preceding speech, " He thinks, nay, with 
all confidence he swears," * etc. — Keightley {Exp. 199) gives an interpretation dif- 
fering from the others: 'This, if correct,* he says, 'would seem to mean exercise 
his thought, try to banish it.* [Even were the phrase obscure, which it is not, the 
original text should stand when so much can be said in its favour. — Ed.] 

494. Influences] R. G. White (ed. i) : There is little, if any doubt, in my mind 
that Shakespeare wrote influence. See note on * skyey influences * in Meas. for Meas. 
Ill, i, 9 [which is substantially as follows :] The rhythm, both here and [in the 
present passage in \Vint. Tale"], would seem to require influence. For influence in 
Shakespeare's time was a word without a plural, and was used, especially when 
applied to heavenly bodies (to which service it was then almost set ap>art, — see Cot- 



64 THE WINTERS TALE [act i. sc. ii. 

Forbid the Sea for to obey the Moone, 495 

As (or by Oath) remoue, or(Counfaile)(hake 
The Fabrick of his Folly, whofe foundation 
Is pyl'd vpon his Faith, and will continue 
The (landing of his Body. 

Pol. How fhould this grow ? 500 

Cam. I know not: but I am fure 'tis fafer to 
Auoid what's growne,then queftion how 'tis borne. 502 

501. T am\ Tm Pope + , Dyce ii, iii, Huds. 

grave, also Richardson), in its radical sense of * in-flowing/ and then in the singular 
form, even when all those bodies are spoken of. See Milton, who frequently uses the 
word, but never in the plural : — * And happie Constellations on that houre Shed their 
selectest influence.' — Par, Z<?j/, VIII, 512; *and taught the fixt [1. ^. stars] Their 
influence malignant when to shed.' — lb. X, 663 ; * Unmuflle, ye faint stars, and thou 
fair Moon. ... Or if your influence be quite damm*d up.' — Comus^ 330. [This 
note was written in salad-days. At a maturer age White would never have made a 
universal assertion on any question of language, such as, that *■ influence ' was < a word 
without a plural.' For a moment he forgot the music of ' Canst thou bind the sweet 
influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion ?' And in the Bible Word-book^ 
W. Aldis Wright, in reference to this verse in Job, quotes : * The astrologers call the 
evill influences of the Starrs, evill aspects.' — Bacon, Ess, ix, p. 29. Unquestionably, 
White is in the main right. Influence would improve the rhythm both here and in 
Meas.for Meas.; the s sound wherewith the word ends was an ample indication, if 
a plural were at any time needed. — Ed.] 

495. for to] In R. G. White's excellent Essay on the Authorship of Henry F/, 
it is the use of this for to with an inflnitive, which leads him to discriminate between 
Shakespeare's work and Greene's. Greene appears to have had a fondness for this 
idiom, of which White marked more than sixty instances in Greene's works, whereas 

* Shakespeare and Marlowe,' he says (p. 431), * never use ' it. This assertion is some- 
what too broad, as we see in the text before us. But still, neither this present in- 
stance, nor another (given by Abbott, § 152) in Ail's IVell^ V, iii, 181, nor sundry 
others (see note on Ham. Ill, i, 167, of this ed.), really damage White's serviceable 
touchstone. That * for to saint ' occurs in Pass. Pil. 342 is, thanks to White, one of 
the grounds for disbelieving that portion of the medley to have been written by 
Shakespeare. — Ed. 

497, 498. whose . . . Faith] Steevens : That is, this folly which is erected on 
the foundation of settled belief. 

500-502. How . . . borne] Walker {Crit. iii, 95) would divide these lines: 

* How should this grow ? I know not ; but Vm sure, | 'Tis safer to avoid what's 
grown, than question | How it is bom.* * The common arrangement,' he remarks, * is 
anti-Shakespearian — partly as regards the flow, partly on account of the very feeble 
ending, — " — 'tis safer to \ Avoid what's grown," etc. For although Shakespeare 
frequently concludes a line with and, or some other particle equally inadmissible, 
according to our modem pronunciation at least (possibly there may have been some- 
thing in the old mode of accentuation which cleared up this apparent exception to 



ACT I, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 65 

If therefore you dare truft my honeftie, 503 

That lyes enclofed in this Trunke, which you 

Shall beare along impawnd,away to Night, 505 

Your Followers I will whifper to the Bufmefle, 

And will by twoes,and threes, at feuerall Poftemes, 

Cleare them oW Citie : For my felfe. He put 

My fortunes to your feruice(which are here 

By this difcouerie loft.) Be not vncertaine, 510 

For by the honor of my Parents, I 

Haue vttred Truth:which if you feeke to proue, 

I dare not ftand by ; nor fhall you be fafer. 

Then one condemnd by the Kings owne mouth : 

Thereon his Execution fwome. 515 

513. byl byt Han. Rann, Mai. Steev.Var. Knt, Dyce, Cam. 

514. condemnd 1 condemned ¥{, Huds. Wh. ii. 

514, 515. Then ...mouth: Thereon"] 515. Thereon his"] His Han. 

Then. ..mouthy thereon (one line) Cap. 

Shakespeare's general harmony), yet an act of divorce between to and its verb is 
beyond its license.' 

500. How should . . . grow] That is, * how was this (likely) to grow ?' This 
use of should (a word whereof the delicate shade of meaning is frequently difficult 
to catch) seems to increase (as Abbott, § 325 says, in reference to * What should 
this mean?' — Hen. VIII: III, ii, 160) *the emphasis of the interrogation, since a 
doubt about the past (time having been given for investigation) implies more per- 
plexity than a doubt about the future.' 

504, 505. this Trunke . . . ixnpawnd] < Trunk * is here used with a double mean- 
ing. That Camillo means his body^ he shows by * this,' laying his hand on his breast ; 
that he may also mean a chest or coffer, is shown by the word * impawned.' — Ed. 

506. whisper] Again used transitively in IV, iv, 884 : < whisper him in your 
behalfe.' If more examples are needed, see Abbott, § 200. 

508. Cleare] Deighton : This word in such a context looks like an allusion to 
the clearing of goods at a custom-house. 

510. discouerie] That is, revelation, disclosure. 

511. honor of my Parents] Polixenes had referred to <our Parents noble 
names.' — Ed. 

512. 513. seeke . . . stand by] Deighton: That is, < if you should test my 
information by speaking to Leontes, I dare not stay to see the result.' [Or, per- 
haps, < if you seek to prove that what I have said is true, I dare not maintain it.' 
—Ed.] 

514, 515. mouth : Thereon] Walker (Crit. iii, 95) : I think it not impossible 
that Shakespeare wrote : * — by th' King's own mouth, <Sr* thireon, etc. (<Sr* might 
more easily slip through than and.^ 

515. Thereon . . . swome] Deighton: That is, * whose death as a sequel to 
his conviction has been predetermined.' 

5 



es 



THE WINTERS TALE 



[act I, sc. ii. 



Pol. I doe beleeue thee : 
I faw his heart in's face.Giue me thy hand, 
Be Pilot to me, and thy places fhall 
Still neighbour mine. My Ships arc ready, and 
My people did expeft my hence departure 
Two dayes agoe. This lealoufie 
Is for a precious Creature : as fhee's rare, 
Muft it be great ; and, as his Perfon's mightie, 
Muft it be violent : and, as he do's conceiue. 
He is diflionoPd by a man, which euer 
Profefs'd to him : why his Reuenges muft 
In that be made more bitter. Feare ore-fhades me : 
Good Expedition be my friend, and comfort 



516 



520 



52s 



528 



517. irCf\ Vns F^. in his Cap. Var. 
'73» '78, '85, Rann, Mai. Steev. Reed, 
Var. Knt, Ktly. 

519. arc-] F,. 

521. leaioufie] jealousy of his Walker, 
Huds. jealousy^ Camilla^ Cartwright. 

526. to him :"] to him^ Han. love to 
him Ktly. 

528. and comfort] Neav'n comfort 
Han. Cap. Coll. ii (MS). God comfort 



Sing, conj., Ktly. and consort Bulloch 
(transposing this line to follow 530). 

528, 529. and comfort.,. Theame : but 
nothing] and conscrvi,.. Throne ; but 
nothing Anon. ap. Wh. (Sh. Schol.). 
God comfort,,. and pardon his crime, 
but offspring W. W. Lloyd (N. & Qu. 
VHI, i, 471). and comfort ! ,„theme, 
wot nothing F. Adams (N. & Qu. VIH, 
ii, 444). 



517. saw . , , face] Steevens: So in Macbeth : * To find the mind's construc- 
tion in the face.* [A singularly inappropriate quotation. Steevens does not give 
the Act and Scene, possibly in the trust that no one would verify it ; assuredly it 
could not have been verified by succeeding editors who have cited it. Duncan (I, iv, 
11) says : * There's no art To find the mind's construction in the face.* — Ed. 

518. places] M alone: Perhaps Shakespeare wrote — * thy paces shaW,* etc. Thou 
shalt be my conductor, and we will both pursue the same path. The old reading, 
however, may mean, — wherever thou art, I will still be near thee. — Steevens : By 

* places ' Shakespeare me&ns—prefermentSf or honours. 

521. This lealousie] Walker {Crit. ii, 257) : We might read, 'This his jeal- 
ousy ;' but that a syllable would still be wanting. But I think Shakespeare wrote, 

* This jealousy of his ;* the concluding words of the line having dropped out, by an 
accident not altogether unfrequent in the Folio. Walker {Crit. iii, 96) repeats the 
same emendation : of his, and asks : * Can the proximity of is to his have had any 
hand in producing the error?' 

526. Profess'd] Staunton (Athenceum, 27 June, 1874) : The best emendation 
that occurs to me, after long pondering on the passage, is to read : — * Profess'd 
to love him,* etc. Note in Hermione's noble vindication of her conduct, that 
the professed love of Polixenes to her husband is particularly dwelt on; see HI, 

", 74-76. 

528-530. Good . . . suspition] These lines have been pronounced incompre- 



ACT I. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 67 

The gracious Queene, part of his Theame;but nothing 

Of his ill-ta^ne fufpition. Come Camillo^ 530 

529. Queene^ Z^'^] Queen; part ing\ queen* s,,Jhis ikemet but noting K, 
Theob. Queen's; part Warb. Johns. M. Spence (N. & Qu. VII, ix, 24). 
Queen! part Qk^, 529. Theame^ F,. Theam FjF^. 

Queene^.., his TTuame ; but noth- dream QoW. ii (MS). 

but nothing] by his noting Orger. 

hensible and have given rise to much discussion. R. G. White (ed. ii) says that 
* Shakespeare himself might be able to tell us what he meant when he wrote it ; no 
one else.' The various remedies which have b^n proposed in the belief that the lines 
are corrupt will be found in the Textual Notes, and some of them, as defended by 
their authors, in the Commentary. For me the text needs no emendation, and I can- 
not but believe that the main obstruction to an apprehension of the passage lies in the 
failure to comprehend the dramatic situation. It is necessary that we should retain 
our respect for Polixenes, and it is a dramatic necessity that he should be removed 
from the scene. There can be no friendly leave-taking from Leontes, still less can 
there be a hostile one. Polixenes must go away by stealth, there is no other course. 
But, to save himself by flight, and purposely leave behind the queen to bear the full 
brunt of Leontes's revenge would be contemptible, and forfeit every atom of our re- 
spect for him. He must be represented then as entirely ignorant that Hermione is 
included in the worst suspicions of the king, and likewise as fully impressed with the 
idea that this flight of his is all that is needed eventually to restore sunshine to the Court. 
Through his veneration, almost, for Hermione he knew that her gentle heart must sufler ' 
some pang over such an unhappy ending of a visit which had been throughout unclouded 
and prolonged at her earnest entreaty. Some comfort she will therefore need, and 
this she will find in his safe departure. His stealthy flight, abhorrent as it is to him, 
when thus incited by a chivalrous devotion to Hermione, appears in the light of a self- 
sacrifice, and instead of tarnishing our admiration for him, serves but to brighten it. 
Taking this view of the dramatic situation, the lines before us seem to me intelligible 
as they stand, without emendation. < May my hasty departure,' sa3rs Polixenes in 
effect, * prove my best course, and bring what comfort it may to the gracious Queen 
whose name cannot but be linked with mine in the King's thoughts, but who is not 
yet the fatal object of his ill-founded suspicion.' — Ed. 

Here follow the notes of the commentators : — 

Warburton : How could this expedition comfort the queen ? on the contrary, it 
would increase her husband's suspicion. We should read : ' and comfort The gra- 
cious ^jy^^j/ I. e, be expedition my friend, and be comfort the queen's friend. — 
Johnson : Dr Warburton's conjecture is, I think, just ; but what shall be done with 
the following words, of which I can make nothing ? Perhaps the line connecting 

them to the rest is lost : — * but nothing Of his ill ta'en suspicion !' [Wagner 

and Proescholdt make the same conjecture as to the loss of a line.] Jealousy is 
a passion compounded of love and suspicion ; this passion is the theme or subject of 
the King's thoughts. Polixenes, perhaps, wishes the Queen, for her comfort, so much 
of that theme or subject as is good, but deprecates that which causes misery. * May 
part of the King's present sentiments comfort the Queen, but away with his suspicion.' 
This is such meaning as can be picked out. — W. Aldis Wright {Cam. Ed.)^ after 
quoting Dr Johnson's remark about Warburton, and his suggestion that perhaps a line 



68 THE WINTERS TALE [act i, sc. ii. 



[528-530. Good Expedition . . . ill-ta'ne suspition] 
is lost, remarks that, ♦ In fact we should have expected Polixenes to say that his flight 
without Hermione would be the best means not only of securing his own safety, but 
of dispelling the suspicions Leontes entertained of his queen.' — Heath (p. 207) : 
The verb, comfort^ as appears by the stile of our laws, had a double signification. It 
signified, to alleviate sorrow^ and to assist^ or encourage. The poet employs the word 
in both senses in this passage, according to the subject to which it is applied. Bohe- 
mia's wish, therefore, is : That the expedition he was about to use might be fortunate 
to himself and prove a comfort to the Queen too, his partner in the King's imputation, 
as he was assured, from her gracious disposition, that she could not but be very 
deeply affected with grief if any misfortune should befall himself; but at the same 
time he wishes, too, that his flight might not give the least handle or encouragement 
to strengthen the King's ill-grounded suspicion. — Capell (p. 167) : The speaker's 
being in safety might (in fact) be some comfort to the person the wish is made for, 
under the old reading ; but 'tis absurd that he should think of it here ; his first prayer 
is for himself, and is drawn from his *fear:' a short one follows it for the queen; 
and in calling her * gracious ' he is reminded that out of that graciausness rises her 
present danger; that the jealousy of Leontes is built on it, and had no" other founda- 
tion, which he expresses in the words that follow his prayer — • part of his theme, but 
nothing Of his ill ta'en suspicion,' meaning that the graciousness was part of it, but 
was improperly made so of his suspicion. — Steevens : Perhaps the sense is. May 
that good speed, which is my friend, comfort likewise the Queen, who is * part of its 
theme,' i. e. partly on whose account I go away ; but may not the same comfort ex- 
tend itself to the groundless suspicions of the King, i. e, may not my departure sup- 
port him in them ! I/is for its is common with Shakespeare : and Paulina says, in a 
subsequent scene, that she does not choose to appear a friend to Leontes, ' in com- 
forting his evils,' i. e, in strengthening his jealousy by appearing to acquiesce in it. — 
Malone: * Comfort' is, I apprehend, here used as a verb. Good expedition befriend 
me, by removing me from a place of danger, and comfort the innocent Queen, by 
removing the object of her husband's jealousy ; the Queen, who is the subject of his 
conversation, but without reason the object of his suspicion ! We meet with a similar 
phraseology in Twelfth Nighty III, iv, 280: * Do me this courteous office, as to know 
of the knight ; what my offence to him is : it is something of my negligence^ nothing 
of my purpose? [This note and paraphrase of Malone receives the approval of 
Dyce, White (ed. i), and Deighton. Walker {Crii. iii, 96) gives additional 
examples of this use of 'nothing'; Ant. 6* Cleop. II, ii, 79, 'Let this fellow Be 
nothing of our strife ' ; Meas.for Meas. II, iv, 71, * I'll make it my mom prayer To 
have it added to the faults of mine. And nothing of your answer.'] — Staunton : 
We are still wide — toto calo, tola regione — of the genuine text, now, it may be feared, 
irrecoverable. — Halliwell : In other words. May expedition be my friend by re- 
moving me from this scene of danger, and at the same time may my absence, the 
object thus accomplished, comfort the beautiful queen, who is, indeed, partly the sub- 
ject of, but in no degree the reasonable object of, his suspicion. If the words in the 
next line be taken more literally, it must be presumed that Polixenes had misappre- 
hended the exact force of Camillo's former speech, and was thinking that he himself 
was the chief object of the suspicion of Leontes. The meaning then will be : com- 
fort the beautiful queen, who is part of the subject of his thoughts, but who has 
not fallen under his suspicion. There is the difficulty, in this interpretation, arising 



ACT I. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 69 

I will refpeft thee as a Father, if 531 

Thou bear'ft my life off, hence : Let vs auoid. 

532. off, hence\ off hence Rowe. 

from the obvious circumstance that guilt must be shared by both, but Polixenes may 
be presumed to imagine that he alone bad displayed courtesies misinterpreted by 
Leontes, and that the queen, who had not been seriously sus{>ected, would yet receive 
comfort from his absence by the then impossibility of a surmise of her bestowing even 
a faint appreciation on him degenerating into actual suspicion. In Greene's novel, no 
intimation is given to the character answering to Polixenes of the cause of the king's 
anger. — ^The Cowdkn-Clarkes : We think that the reason that this passage has been 
found obscure is because ' expedition ' has been taken in the sense of hasty departure ; 
whereas, if it be taken in the sense of speed (used as it is found in III, ii, 155), — 
for success, process of event, issue or result of occurrence, destined ordination of action 
or incident, — the meaning of the whole passage becomes clear, although condensedly 
and elliptically expressed. We interpret it to signify : * Good speed (or prosperous 
issue of events) befriend me, and comfort the queen ; who is, with myself, the object 
of his anger, but who, like myself, deserves no jot of his misconceived suspicion !' — 
Ingleby (Sh. the Book, i, 147) : Line 528 surely means, < Let us both make good 
speed* That is, * Let me have good speed for my friend, and the Queen have good 
speed for her comfort.' . . . The one archaic phrase is to be part of, meaning to con- 
tribute to. . . . The king's < theame ' was of the Queen and Polixenes ; each contributed 
to it, as he himself says in II, iii, 6-8. There yet remains the obsolete expression — 
' but nothing Of his ill-ta'ne suspition.' To be something of is the same as to be part 
of; f. e. to contribute to : and to be nothing of is not to contribute to. — Hudson's 
text is : Good expedition be my friend and nothing The gracious Queen, part of bis 
theme, discomfort Of bis ill-ta'en suspicion.' His note : I have ventured to try a 
reading not hitherto proposed, so far as I am aware. It makes no literal change 
except that of but into dis ; while it supposes * comfort ' and * nothing ' to have crept 
into each other's place ; perhaps by mistake, perhaps by sophistication. The mean- 
ing seems to be, * May a speedy departure befriend me, and nowise discomfort the 
Queen in respect of his groundless suspicion !' — Rolfe : On the whole Clarke's 
explanation seems satisfactory. If, however, we take * expedition' in its ordinary 
sense, we may perhaps accept Malone's paraphrase. — Perring (p. 176): 'The 
queen is nothing of the king's suspicion ' may mean, * she gives no occasion to the 
king to suspect, however much he may suspect ;' she does nothing to promote it ; 
and in that sense she is * nothing of it.' ... I conceive that Polixenes expressed a 
wish that the good expedition, which he prays may befriend him, may * comfort the 
queen.' I put it thus : where he was, he was already a doomed man, without a chance 
of vindicating his character or escaping the king's vengeance. To get away as fast as 
he could was his only hope ; well, then, he might pray for himself, ' Good expedition be, 
my friend.' . . . His speedy withdrawal — ^his disappearance from the scene — ^bene- 
ficial to himself, would benefit also the queen ; would be the best arrangement, not 
indeed for her justification — for that was impossible — but for her * comfort.' . . . 
Well, then, he might further pray that his expeditious departure might * comfort the 
queen.' 

532. auoid] That is, de[>art, escape. Cf. / Sam. xviii, 1 1 : * And David avoided 
out of his presence twice.' 



70 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii. sc. i. 

Cam, It is in mine authoritie to command 533 

The Keyes of all the Pofternes : Pieafe your Highneffe 
To take the vrgent houre. Come Sir, away. Exeunt, 535 



A6lus Secundus. Scena Prima. 

Enter Hermione , Mamillius , Ladies : LeonteSy 

AntigonuSy Lords. 

Her. Take the Boy to you : he fo troubles me, 
'Tis paft enduring, 5 

Lady. Come(my gracious Lord) 
Shall I be your play-fellow? 

Mam. No, lie none of you. 

Lady. Why(my fweet Lord?) 

Mam. You'lc kiffe me hard, and fpeake to me, as if 10 

I were a Baby ftili. I ioue you better. 

2. Lady ^ And why fo(my Lord ?) 12 

1. Scena Prima] Scacna Prima F^F^. 6. Lady.] I Lady. Rowe. 

The Scene continued. Pope. The Pal- 10, 11. You' U.,. lout] Two lines, end- 
ace. Theob. ing tney„,l&ve Cap. 

2. Enter...] Enter Hermione, Mam- 12. my Lord] pray^ my lord Han. 
millius, and Ladies. Roweetseq. (subs.). my good lord Steev. Var. '03, '13. my 

3. Lords.] Lord. Ff. dear lord Ktly. 

2. Hermione, Mamillius] See Dorastus and Faitmia, 

4. Take, etc.] Macdonald {The Imagination^ p. 156): Note the changefulness 
of Hermione's mood with regard to her boy, as indicative of her condition at the 
time. If we do not regard this fact, we shall think the words introduced only for the 
sake of filling up the business of the play. 

Lady Martin (p. 349) : Is there, even in Shakespeare, any passage more charm- 
ing in itself, or more cunningly devised to reveal to an audience the main purpose of 
the play, than the brief scene with which the Second Act opens ? The boy Mamillius, 
of whom Archidamus had spoken as * the gallant child,' the ' gentleman of the great- 
est promise that ever came into his note,' unconscious of the delicate condition of his 
mother has fatigued her with his caresses and the eager importunity of his questions. 
. . . What mother could long keep such a darling from her side ? Hermione could 
not, and presently she calls him back to her. 

11, 12. I were . . . Lord?] Walker (CW/. iii, 97) : Arrange: * I were a baby 
still I I love you better. And why so, my lord ?' [All these re-arrangements, of 
which Walker is so fond, are solely for the benefit of the eye. No ear could detect 
them, unless the lines were uttered in a song-song rhythmical chant, where each 
speaker takes up the rhythm without a pause. — Ed. 

12. my Lord ?] Steevens (whose text reads * my goodXoxdi ') : The epithet ^<W, 



ACT II. sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 71 

Mam. Not for becaufe 1 3 

Your Browes are blacker (yet black-browes they fay 
Become fome Women beft,fo that there be not 15 

Too much haire there, but in a Cemicircle, 
Or a halfe-Moone, made with a Pen .) 

2.Lady. Who taught ' this ? 

Matn. I learn'd it out of Womens faces: pray now, 19 

16. CemicircWl F,. this Yf, Coll. faug^At ye this Walker, 

17. Or a] Like a Han. Or Steev. Dyce ii, iii, Huds. taught you this 
Var. *03, '13. Rowe et cet. 

18. taught *this] Dyce i, Wh. taught 

which is wanting in the old copies, is transplanted (for the sake of metre) from a 
redundant speech in the following page. [Dyce is fond of exclamation marks ; it 
is strange that he did not quote this note that he might exhaust the compositor's case. 
—Ed.] 

18. Who taught ' this] Rowe inserted you : * who taught you this ?' Thus the 
phrase is to be found in the majority of editions tu this day. Collier was the first 
to discard Rowe's insertion and to restore what he supposed to be the reading of the 
Folio : ' JVho taught this f He failed to see that you or ye is virtually present in the 
Folio in the shape of an apostrophe, just as / is present in * 'beseech you.' The 
apostrophe merely indicates that the presence oi you or ye is to be felt, or, if at all pro- 
nounced, is to be slurred, like *■ This' a good block ' in Lear^ where the full phrase is, 

* This is a good block.' This is not the only place in this play, or in the Folio, where 
an absorption is indicated by an apostrophe ; we have already met with an instance 
in * a Ladyes Verely * is,* in line 62 of the preceding scene ; and in addition to that 
instance and to the present there are the following instances in this and other plajs 
where this apostrophe appears in the text of the Folio : — 

* As boldness from my bosome, le 't not be doubted .... Wint. Tale^ II, ii, 63. 

* We have . . . served you and 'beseech' So to esteem us * . " II, iii, 182. 

« Please 'your Highness ' « II, iii, 231. 

* — ^that goes to bed with' Sun ' « IV, iv, 124. 

• 'Maybe he has paid you more " IV, iv, 269. 

* so I see she must be) 'fore Leontes «« IV, iv, 616. 

« She is i' th' reare 'our Birth ' " IV, iv, 659. 

• 'Pray heartily he be at' Pallace " IV, iv, 800. 

• Let's all sink with' King ' Tempest, I, i, 74. 

< while Stephano breathes at* nostrils ' " II, ii, 68. 

• this' a good Fryer belike * Meas. for Meas.yV/x, i^i. 

There may be others, but these are all I have noted. The number of cases, wherein 
absorption of dentals, liquids, and gutturals occur, which are not indicated in the 
Folio, is legion. It is superfluous to call attention to the large majority which are 
indicated in the present play. Whatever else may be inferred from this majority* 
it certainly points to the carefulness of these especial compositors. — Ed. 

19. I leam'd . . . faces] Deighton : That is, by a careful study of women's 
faces, but possibly with the secondary sense of watching the looks with which women 
examine each other's personal appearance. 



72 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii, sc. L 

What colour are your eye-browes ? 20 

Lady. Blew(my Lord.) 

Mavu Nay, that's a mock: I haue feene a Ladies Nofe 
That ha's beene blew, but not her eye-browes. 

Lady. Harke ye, 
The Queene(your Mother)rounds apace:we (hall 25 

Prefent our feruices to a fine new Prince 
One of thefe dayes, and then youPd wanton with vs. 
If we would haue you. 

2.Lady. She is fpread of late 
Into a goodly Bulke(good time encounter her.) 30 

Her. What wifdome ftirs amongft youPCome Sir, now 
I am for you againe : 'Pray you fit by vs. 
And tell's a Tale. 

Mam. Merry, or fad, fhal't be f 

Her. As merry as you will. 35 

Mam. A fad Tale's beft for Winter : 
I haue one of Sprights,and Goblins. 

Her. Let's haue that (good Sir.) 
Come-on, fit downe, come-on, and doe your beft, 
To fright me with your Sprightsiyou're powrefull at it. 40 

20. arej^our] be your ¥(, Rowe + . 34. Jka/'r] JhaVt, F,. shall it Var. 

27. yotd'd'l F,. you' Id F,. you' I F^, '73, '78, '85, Rann, Mai. 

Rowe-I-. you'd Cap. el cet. 36, 37. A fad.,. one] One line, Dyce, 

ZO. Bulke'\ bulk: Theob. et seq. Walker, Cam. Huds. Wh. ii. 

(sub6.). for... Goblins] One line, Hao. 

32. 'Pray] F,. 37, 40. Sprights] Sprites Cap. 

33. tell's] tell us Cap. Var. '73, '78, 38. good Sir] sir Steev. Var. '03, '13. 
'85, Rann, Mai. 39. downe^] doTtm. F^, Rowe -I- . down : 

Var. '78 et seq. (subs.). 

33. teirs a Tale] Drake {Sh. and kis Times, i, 107) : Burton, in his Anatomy 
of Melancholy, 161 7 [p. 274, sixth ed.] enumerates, among *the ordinary recreations 
which we have in Winter, . . . merry tales of errant Knights, Queens, Lovers, 
Lords, Ladies, Giants, Dwarfs, Theeves, Cheaters, Witches, Fayries, Goblins, 
Friers, etc., . . . which some delight to hear, some to tell; all are well pleased 
with*; and he remarks shortly afterward, *when three or four good companions 
meet, [they] tell old stories by the fire side, or in the Sun, as old folks usually do,' 
etc. Milton also, in his L' Allegro, 1645, gives a conspicuous station — * to the spicy 
nut-brown ale, With stories told of many a feat * ; and adds : < Thus done the tales, to 
bed they creep. By whispering winds soon luU'd to sleep.' 

36. sad Tale's best for Winter] Tyrwhitt : Hence, I suppose, the tiUe of the 
play. — Steevens : This supposition may seem to be countenanced by our author's 



ACT 11, sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 73 

Mam. There was a man. 4^ 

Her, Nay, come fit downe : then on. 

Mam. Dwelt by a Church-yard: I will tell it foftly, 
Yond Crickets (hall not heare it. 

Her. Come on then, and giu't me in mine eare. 45 

Leon. Was hee met there ? his Traine ? Camiilo with 
him ? 

Lord. Behind the tuft of Pines I met them, neuer 
Saw I men fcowre fo on their way : I eyed them 
Euen to their Ships. 5^ 

Leo. How bleft am I 
In my iuft Cenfure? in my true Opinion ? 5^ 

41. man."] man — Rowe ii et seq. 46, 47. One line, Rowe et seq. 

44. Yond'\ Yon' Cap. Yon Var. '78. 48. Lord.] I L. Cap. 

Yond' Coll. Ktly. 49- O'^^] Ff, Cam. Wh. ii. e/d 

Crickets'] CrickUs F^. Rowe et cet. 

45. Come.„eare.'\ Two lines, ending 50. Euen to] On even to Han. Even 
theny.,.eare. Cap. et seq. unto Anon. ap. Cam. 

giu't] give it Han. 51. blejl] blessed then Steev. conj. 

eare^ eare. Enter L. Ff. ^2. Cen/ure K,. Opinion P] censure ! ,„ 

46. Scene ii. Pope + . opinion! Pope + , Var. Knt, Coll. cen- 
Enter Leontes, Antigonus, and sure,... cpinion / Dyce,C&m. 

Lords. Rowe, et seq. (subs.). 

^Sth Sonnet : * Yet not the lays of birds nor the sweet smell Of flowers . . . Could 
make me any summer's story tell.* And yet I cannot help regarding the words— /or 
winter (which spoil the measure) as a play-house interpolation. All children delight 
in telling dismal stories; but why should a dismal story be best for Winter? — 
Malonk: As better suited to the gloominess of the season. — Halliwell: As the 
correctness of the text has been questioned, the following may deserve quotation. It 
is extracted from the Dedicatory Epistle prefixed to the old tragedy of Tancred and 
Osmund, — * And now that weary winter is come upon us, which bringeth with him 
drooping days and tedious nights, if it be true that the motions of our minds follow 
the temperature of the air wherein we live, then I think the perusing of some mourn- 
ful matter tending to the view of a notable example, will refresh your wits in a gloomy 
day, and ease your weariness of the lowering night.' — ^The Cowden-Clarkes : This 
first portion of the play, — full of chilling suspicion, bitter injustice, and cold-blooded 
cruelty, — harmonises finely with the name of The Winter's Tale ; while the warmth 
of youthful beauty, the glow of young love, the return of confidence, the restoration 
to faith and truth, the revival from death to life, in the latter portion of the play, 
poetically consist with the ripeness of summer and rich colouring of the season then 
made its existing time. 

44. Crickets] Dyer (p. 252) : The cricket's supposed keen sense of hearing is 
referred to here. [Rather, Mamillius refers to * yond ' Ladies in waiting, with their 
tittering, and chirping laughter. This maturity of observation in the little boy 



74 ^^^ WINTERS TALE [act ii. sc. i. 

Alack, for leffer knowledge, how accurs'd, 53 

In being fo bleft ? There may be in the Cup 

A Spider fteep'd,and one may drinke ; depart, 55 

And yet partake no venome: (for his knowledge 

Is not infefted) but if one prefent 

Th'abhor^d Ingredient to his eye, make knowne 

How he hath drunke, he cracks his gorge, his fides 

With violent Hefts: I haue drunke, and feene the Spider. 60 

Camillo was his heipe in this, his Pandar: 

There is a Plot againft my Life, my Crowne ; 62 

53. knowledge^ knowUdge ! Han. it deep Jervis. drinky repeat it Cart- 

knowUdge — Johns. wright. 

54-60. Marked as mnemonic lines, 59, 60. drunke"] drank Steev. Var. 

Warb. »03, '13, »2i. 

55. drinke; depart'] drink, depart, 61. Pandar] Pander Ff, Rowe, 

Han. drink apart Coll. (MS), drain Theob. Han. Warb. Johns. Cap. (cor- 
rected in Errata). 

throughout this scene has its purpose. The heart of a less precocious child would 
not have been broken by the ill-treatment of his mother. — Ed.] 

52. Censure] That is, opinion, judgement; not, as now, implying reprehension. 
Deighton thinks that this sentence is uttered ironically. On the contrary, it is, I 
think, an expression of genuine sincerity. — Ed. 

53. lesser knowledge] Johnson : That is, * O that my knowledge were less 1' 
55. Spider] Sir Francis Bacon in the speech (Amos's Great Oyer of Poisoning, 

p. 350) which he had prepared for delivery if the Countess of Somerset had pleaded 
' Not Guilty * on the trial for Overbury's murder, speaks * of a volley of poisons ; 
arsenic for salt, great spiders and cantharides for pig-sauce, or partridge sauce, 
because they resembled pepper.' — Ed. — Staunton: It was a prevalent belief 
anciently that spiders were venomous, and that a person might be poisoned by 
drinking any liquid in which one was infused. From the context it would appear, 
however, that to render the draught fatal, the victim ought to see the spider. So in 
Middleton's No Wit like a Woman's, II, i : « Even when my lip touch'd the contract- 
ing cup, Even then to see the spider.* 

55. drinke ; depart] Collier (ed. ii) : We are strongly tempted to substitute the 
reading of the MS : * one may drink a part* for why after drinking was the drinker 
necessarily to * depart ?* It was easy to mishear a part, and to write it or print it 
* depart.' A part can mean nothing but a portion of the contents of the cup. — 
Staunton : What Shakespeare wrote, we are persuaded, was : one may drink deep 
o'tJ' — Dyce (ed. ii) pronounces the present text *a very doubtful reading * ; but I can 
see neither a doubt nor a difficulty. The words mean • if one may drink, and then 
go his way.' — Ed. 

60. Hefts] Steevens: 'T\i9!i\s^heaznngs,'wYi£X\s heaved \xp. — Collier: Not 'the 
things which are heaved up,' but the act of heaving. In II, iii, 44, we have 'need- 
less heavings,' and not ' hefts.' 



ACT II. sc. L] THE WINTERS TALE 75 

All's true that is miftrufted : that falfe Villaine, 63 

Whom I employM, was pre-employ'd by him : 

He ha's difcouer'd my Defigne, and I 65 

Remaine a pinch'd Thing; yea, a very Trick 

For them to play at will : how came the Poftemes 

So eafily open ? 

Lard. By his great authority, 
Which often hath no lefle preuail'd,then fo, 70 

On your command* 

Leo. I know't too well. 72 

63. w] tt«w or / Lettsom (ap. Dycc). 70, 71. ofien,..On\ hath prevailed 
was Ktlj. / Huds. oftetUimes no less Than so on Han. 

64. pre-employd'\ pree employ' d F^. 70. hathl have F^, Rowe i. 

65. Atf V] hath Rowe + , Rann, Mai. />,] fo FjF^, Rowe + , Cam. Wh. ii. 
68. open'\ opened Cap. (corrected in 72. knawf\ hnow Johns, 

Errata). loo well."] loo well, too well. Anon. 

ap. Cam. 

65. discouer'd] That is, revealed. See discouerie, I, ii, 510. 

66. pinch'd Thing] Heath (p. 208) : That is, a mere child's baby, a thing 
pinched out of clouts, a puppet [< trick '] for them to move and actuate as they please. 
— Stkevens : This sense may be supported by The City Match [H, v] : * Quarlfield, 
Is not the folding of your napkins brought Into the bill ? Roseclap. Pinch'd napkins, 
captain, and laid Like fishes, fowls, or faces.* Again by a passage in AWs Well, IV, 
iii, 140 : < If ye pinch me like a pasty I can say no more,' i. e. the crust round the lid 
of it, which was anciently moulded by the fingers into fantastic shapes. [Steevens 
gives several other examples, not at all applicable to the present phrase, to show that 
io pinch had * anciently a more dignified meaning than at present.'] — Mason (p. 127) : 
« Pinched * here means shrunk ^ or contracted; thus we say, • pinched with cold.* — 
Knight considers Heath's interpretation as < forced ; although " pinch'd " may con- 
vey the meaning of one made petty and contemptible.' — Collier, on the other hand, 
approves and holds it to be * probably the correct interpretation,' adding that < puppets 
are moved and played by pinching them between the finger and thimib.' — Dyce 
( Gloss,) quotes Heath and adds * Perhaps so.' — Staunton : That is, a restrained, 
nipped^ confined thing. [Without denying Heath's interpretation, it is possible, from 
the connection of thought to suppose the meaning of Leontes to be that aAer the 
shape, the proportions, of his design have been ruined by ' discovery,' as a bladder 
when it is pricked, he is reduced merely to a pinched and shrivelled thing, — then the 
association of ideas suggests a trick, a puppet, a toy. — Ed.] 

71. command] Walker (Vers. 127): Commandemenl, I suspeciy poscenle metro. 
So it was pronounced as late, apparently, as 1672. Wallis, the grammarian, lived 
161 6-1 703; the first edition of his Grammar was published in 1653; the third, with 
additions, in 1672; from which latter I quote, p. 52, ad Jin. < — non dubito fuisse 
quondam pronuntiatam [the e in miles, finely, advancement, etc.] non minus quam 
in voce commandement, mandatum, ubi adhuc pronunciari solet.' A writer in The 
Saturday Magazine, Aug. 17, 1 844, * On the Language of Uneducated People,* No. I, 
says that many cockneys still pronoimce it thus. 



76 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii. sc. i. 

Giue me the Boy, I am glad you did not nurfe him : 73 

Though he do's beare fome fignes of me, yet you 

Haue too much blood in him. 75 

Her. What is this ? Sport ? 

Leo. Beare the Boy hence, he fhall not come about her, 
Away with him, and let her fport her felfe 
With that shee's big- with, for 'tis Polixenes 
Ha's made thee fwell thus. 80 

Her. But Il'd fay he had not ; 
And lie be fworne you would beleeue my faying, 
How e're you leane to th' Nay-ward. 

Leo. You (my Lords) 
Looke on her, marke her well : be but about 85 

To fay (he is a goodly Lady, and 
The iuftice of your hearts will thereto adde 
'Tis pitty (hee's not honeft : Honorable ; 
Prayfe her but for this her without-dore-Forme, 
(Which on my faith deferues high fpeech^ and ftraight 90 

The Shrug, the Hum, or Ha, (thefe Petty-brands 
That Calumnie doth vfc; Oh, I am out, 92 

73. I atn^ Fm Pope + , Dyce ii, iii, 8i. had^ ^oj Ktly conj. 

Huds. 86. ^r] F,. 

76. this? Sport f^ thiSf sport f 88. honeft: honorable] honesty hon- 

Theob. + . ourableT)\toh.-\- , honest-honorable ^zi- 

78. [some bear off Mamtllius. Cap. ker, Dyce ii, iii. 

79. big-wilh] big with F^F^. 89. without- dor e- Forme] withotU-door 
81. But IVd] But rid F^. rd form Rowe. 

but Han. 

78, 79, 80. her . . . her selfe . . . shee's . . . thee] M alone (Note on Cym. Ill, 
iii, 104, 105) considers this change in pronouns an * inaccuracy.' It is the punctuation 
which is at fault. There should be a full stop after < big-with.' Then it will be mani- 
fest that the preceding lines are addressed by Leontes to his attendants. Pope changed 
the comma to a colon ; and all subsequent editors have this or a semicolon. — Ed. 

81. But ird say] That is, * Only I would say,' or, perhaps, * I need but say.* 

88. honest: Honorable;] Walker {Crit. i, 22): Write honest-honorable % i.e. 
(if I mistake not) not merely honourable^ by reason of her birth, dignity, and grace 
of person and mind, — but likewise honesty i.e. virtuous; — honourable with honesty. 
Compare Hen. VIII: I, i, — * As I belong to worship, and affect In honour honesty * ; 
and 0th. V, ii, 306, — * But why should honour outlive honesty ?* [Perhaps. — Ed.] 

89. without-dore-Forme] Walker (Crit. iii, 97) : Compare Cym. I, vi, 15: — 
' All of her, that is out of door, most rich !' 

92. I am out] Compare Cor. V, iii, 41 : — * Like a dull actor now, I have forgot 
my part and I am out.* 



ACT II, SC. i.] 



THE WINTERS TALE 



That Mercy do's, for Calumnie will feare 
Vertue it felfe) thefe Shrugs, thefe Hum's, and Ha's, 
When you haue faid fliee's goodly, come betweene, 
Ere you can fay fhee's honest : But be't knowne 
(From him that ha's moft caufe to grieue it (hould be) 
Shee's an Adultreffe. 

Her. Should a Villaine fay fo, 
(The moft replenifh'd Villaine in the World) 
He were as much more Villaine : you (my Lord) 
Doe but miftake. 

Leo. You haue miftooke (my Lady) 
Polixenes for Leontes : O thou Thing, 
(Which He not call a Creature of thy place, 
Leaft Barbarifme (making me the precedent) 
Should a like Language vfe to all degrees. 
And mannerly diftinguifhment leaue out, 
Betwixt the Prince and Begger:) I haue faid 
Shee's an Adultreffe, I haue faid with whom : 
More ; fliee's a Traytor, and Camillo is 
A Federarie with her, and one that knowes 



77 
93 

95 



ICO 



IDS 



no 



112 



93. do5\ doth Han. 
fe<ire\ fear Rowe ii. 

94. felfe) thefe'] self) These Theob. + . 
96. be*t] be it Var. '73, Rann, Mai. it 

be Steev. ('corrected in MS.' ap. Cam.). 

98. Adultreffe] adulfress Han. Coll. 
i, iii, Wh. i. Adulteress Glo. Cam. Wh. 
ii, Dtn. 

106. Leaff] Lest Rowe. 

109. Begger] F,. 



112. Federarie] Federary Rowe i. 
Federaty Rowe ii. feodary Coll. ii, iii 
(MS), fedary Dyce ii, iii, Huds. fed- 
erate Ktly conj. 

and one] one Han. ay^ and one 
Walker (Cri/. iii, 98). 

112, 113. knowes What] knows her 
To be what Ktly. knows Of her what 
Id. conj. (Exp, 384c). 



98. Adultresse] Lady Martin (p. 351) : In a kind of stupor Hermione listens 
to these vituperations, until Leontes brands ber, to the wonder-stricken circle of his 
lords, as an * adultress.* Upon this the indignant denial leaps to her lips. [But at 
the word * villain '] she checks herself. The name * villain ' must not be coupled 
with his. — her husband, and a king, — and with a voice softened, but resolute, she 
adds, < You, my lord, do but mistake.' 

105. Creature . . . place] Deighton : That is, one occupying your lofty position. 

111-115. and Camillo . . . those] Walker {Crit, iii, 98) amends and arranges 
these lines thus : — * and Camillo is | A federary with her ; ay^ and one | That knows 
what she should shame to know herself, | But with her most vile principal, that she \ 
Is a bed-swerver, e^en as bad as those,* etc. ' ay^ having been written, as usual, I, and 
therefore more easily overlooked.* 

112. Federarie] Steevens: A *■ federary* (perhaps a word of our author's coin- 



78 THE WINTERS TALE [act ll, sc. i. 

m 

What fhe (hould fhame to know her felfe, 113 

But with her moft vild Principall : that fhee's 
A Bed-fwaruer, euen as bad as thofe 115 

That Vulgars giue bold'ft Titles ; I, and priuy 
To this their late efcape. 
Her, No (by my life) 
Priuy to none of this : how will this grieue you, 
When you fhall come to clearer knowledge, that 120 

You thus haue publifh'd me ? Gentle my Lord, 
You fcarce can right me throughly, then, to fay 122 

III, Jhame\ be asham' d Hkh, ii6. That Vulgars] That vulgar Y ^^ 

her felfe^ herself with none Rowe, Pope. Tht vulgar Hao. 

Anon. ap. Cam. bold'ft] bold Stecv. boldest Ktly. 

11^, But.,. Principally Om. Cap. /,] ay, Rowe. 
(closing 1. 113 with that she's). 122. throughly, then,] F,Fj. through- 
US. Bed-fwaruer] Bed fwarver F,, ly, then F^. throughly than Rowe i. 
Rowe i. Bed-swerver Rowe ii. throughly then Cam. Wh. ii. throughly 

then, Rowe ii et cet. 



age) is a confederate, an accomplice. — Malone : We should certainly read — Vifeodary 
with her. There is no such word as * federary.' — Collier (ed. ii) : A clear misprint 
for feodary, the word in the MS. Steevens calls it ' a word of our author's coinage,' 
but it was certainly a word of the old printers* manufacture ; for that Shakespeare used 
the right word there is abundant evidence, since it occurs in the sense of confederate 
in Meas.for Meas. II, iv, 122, and in Cym. Ill, ii, 21. — Dyce {^Gloss.) : * Fedary and 
federary in Shakespeare are the same word differently written (having no connection 
whatever with feud or feudatory), and signify a colleague, associate, or confederate.' 
— Richardson's Diet, in v. : But Richardson ought to have said that the term 
* federary,' which the Folio gives in only one passage, is undoubtedly an error of 
the scribe or printer. — Deighton : Fedary throws the emphasis too strongly on her. 
In Hen. V: V. ii, 77, we have * a cursorary eye 'for * a cursory eye,* and there, as 
here, the reduplicated syllable is necessary for the metre. Shakespeare also uses 
contracted forms of words, e. g. ignomy for ignominy, though this form is not peculiar 
to him. In Middleton, The Spanish Gypsy [I, v], we have • temption ' for • tempta- 
tion. [Dyce is, I fear, somewhat too dogmatic in his assertion that * federary ' is an 
error. The rhythm of the line, as Deighton .says, is smoother with * federary ' than 
with fedary. Walker rearranges these lines, as we have just seen^ and finds no 
offence in 'federary.' — Ed.] 

114. But . . . Principall] Capell (p. 167) : [These words] being in the editor's 
apprehension, a disgrace to the passage, to metre hurtful, and no just sentiment, he is 
bold to dismiss them, assuring himself of pardon from all who weigh them consider- 
rately. [Which means that he omits them. — Ed.] 

1 16. That] For « that ' in the sense of to whom, see Abbott, § 201. 

116. Vulgars] Walker (CriV. iii, 98): Compare Marmion, The Antiquary, IV, 
i : — * the budding rose is set by; But stale, and fully blown, is left for vulgars To rub 
their sweaty fingers on.' Chapman and Shirley, Chabot, I, ii : — * Love him, good 
vulgars, and abhor me still.' [See also, if necessary, Abbott, § 433.] 



ACT n, sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 79 

You did miftake. 123 

Leo. No : if I miftake 
In thofe Foundations which I build vpon, 125 

The Centre is not bigge enough to beare 
A Schoole-Boyes Top. Away with her, to Prifon : 
He who fliall fpeake for her, is a farre_off guiltie, 
But that he fpeakes. 

Her, There's fome ill Planet raignes : 130 

124. A'i? .•] A'b, Rowe. A'tf, if^ ; Steev. 128. a furre-off'] F,. afar-off F^, 
Var. Sing. Dyce ii, iii, Ktly, Huds. No ! Cap. far off Pope, Han. Warb. Johns. 
Sta. Var. '73. far of Theob. afar off F^ 

Imifiaie] I mistake, Theob. i. et cet. 
I do mistake Han. Cap. 129. But"] In Hao. By Daniel ap. 

125. tkofe] these Pope ii, Theob. Cam. 

Warb. Johns. Var. '73. 130. THere's'] Thsre's F,. There is 

127. her, to"] Ff, Rowe, Cam. her/ Rowe ii. 

to Wh. ii. her to Pope et cet. raignes"] reigns F^. 

128. her, is] her's Walker {Crit. iii, 
98), Dyce ii, iii, Huds. 

122. to say] Abbott (§ 356) : That is, by saying. [For other examples in this 
play of the gerundive use of the infinitive, see II, ii, 68; III, iii, 12J, and V, i, 24.] 

124. No :] Collier (ed. ii) : Steevens printed * No, no.' There is no re-duplica- 
tion of the negative in the old copies, nor in the MS. Single < No ' is more emphatic. 
— Dyce (ed. ii) : ' Collier's random assertion [that * single *< no " is more emphatic '] 
is the reverse of the truth. Earlier in the present play [I, ii, 347] we have " No, no, 
my lord " ; and in Rom. ^ Jul. IV, iii, " No, no ; — this shall forbid it." Hermione, 
it is true, uses " single No^"* but that not being sufficiently emphatic, she strengthens it 
with an oath.' — ^W. N. Lettsom. 

126. Centre] Johnson: That is, if the proofs which I can offer will not support 
the opinion I have formed, no foundation can be trusted. — Steevens : Compare, 
Milton, Comus, 597 : < — ^if this fail. The pillar'd firmament is rottenness, And earth's 
base built on stubble.' 

128, 129. farre-off . . . speakes] Theobald : Leontes would say : 'I shall hold 
the person in a great measure guilty, who shall dare to intercede for her. And this, 
I believe, Shakespeare ventured to express thus : < is far ^ guilty,' etc., t. e. partakes 
far, deeply, of her guilt. — Heath : That is, he will be considered by me as partici- 
pating in her guilt, at least in a distant degree, though he doth but barely speak. 
Theobald's expression is certainly not English, nor is it the sentiment intended to be 
conveyed. — ^Johnson : That is, guilty in a remote degree. — Malone : * But that he 
speaks ' means * in merely speaking.' — Dyce (ed. iii) : Here * afar off guilty ' is 
explained by * guilty in a remote degree.' — But qy. • He who shall speak for her is 
so far guilty,* etc.? [* Afar off' does not qualify 'guilty,* Leontes was hardly in 
the mood to apportion degrees of guilt. < Afar off' refers, I think, to any one who 
intercedes for the Queen ; such a one, howrver far removed he may de^ is ren- 
dered « guilty ' merely by speaking. The passage in Hen. V: I, ii, 239 : — * Shall we 
sparingly show you far off The dauphin's meaning ' which Malone quotes as parallel. 



8o THE WINTERS TALE [act ii. sc. i. 

I muft be patient, till the Heauens looke 131 

With an afpeft more fauorable. Good my Lords, 

I am not prone to weeping (as our Sex 

Commonly are) the want of which vaine dew 

Perchance fhall dry your pitties : but I haue 135 

That honorable Griefe lodged here, which bumes 

Worfe then Teares drowne: 'befeech you all (my Lords) 

With thoughts fo qualified, as your Charities 

Shall bed inftruft you, meafure me ; and fo 

The Kings will be perform'd. 140 

Leo. Shall I be heard ? 

Her.VJho is't that goes with me? 'befeech your Highnes 
My Women may be with me, for you fee 
My plight requires it. Doe not weepe(good Fooles^ 
There is no caufe:When you (hall know your Miftris 145 

Ha's deferu'd Prifon,then abound in Teares, 
As I come out ; this A6lion I now goe on, 147 

132. an... fauorable] aspect of more 142. ^befeech] F,Fj. befeech F^. 

favour Han. 144. [to her Ladies. Johns. 

140. [to the Guard. Cap. 146. Teares^] tears Dyce, Wh. Sta. 

141. [seeing them delay. Cap. Cam. 

wherein he has been followed by several editors, has not the same meaning. The 
French ambassadors ask whether or not they shall merely hint at the dauphin*s mean- 
ing, instead of uttering his insult explicitly, in round terms. — Ed.] 

132. aspe(5t] Murray {New Eng. Diet.) : Accented on the latter syllable by 
Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, and occasionally by modem poets, but accented on the 
former already in Toumeur, 1609. In Astrology, it is the relative positions of the 
heavenly bodies as they appear to an observer on the earth's surface at a given time. 
(Properly, aspect is the way in which the planets, from their relative positions, look 
upon each other, but, poptdarly, the meaning is transferred to their joint look upon 
the earth.) 

141. Shall I be heard] In line 127 Leontes had commanded, < Away with her, 
to Prison !' PetriBed by astonishment, none of his courtiers had obeyed the com- 
mand. He now asks in his fury, ' Shall I be heard,' f. e. obeyed ? When Lear dis- 
inherits Cordelia (I, i, 128) and cries 'Call France!' the circle of courtiers stand 
as though spell-bound, as they do here about Leontes, until Lear shouts < Who stirs ?' 
—Ed. 

144. Fooles] It is well to note the instances where * fool ' is used as a term of 
affection. We need them all, — to reconcile us to its application to Cordelia by the 
dying Lear, instead of applying it, as I wish it could be applied, to the faithful Fool. 
—Ed. 

147. A(5tion] Johnson: This word is here taken in the lawyer's sense, for 
indictment J charge y or accusation. [Misled by this note, SCHMIDT defines 'action' 



ACT 11. sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 8 1 

Is for my better grace. Adieu (my Lord^ 148 

I neuer wiftied to fee you forry, now 

I truft I fhall : my Women come, you haue leaue. 150 

Leo. Goe, doe our bidding : hence. 

Lx>rd. Befeech your Highneffe call the Queene againe. 

Antig. Be certaine what you do(Sir)leaft your luftice 
Proue violence, in the which three great ones fuffer. 
Your Selfe, your Queene, your Sonne. 155 

Lord. For her (my Lord) 
I dare my life lay downe,and will do't (Sir) 
Pleafe you t'accept it, that the Queene is fpotleffe 
Fth' eyes of Heauen, and to you (I meane 
In this, which you accufe her.^ 160 

Antig. If it proue 
Shee's otherwife, He keepe my Stables where 
I lodge my Wife, He goe in couples with her: 163 

149. forry ^ sorry ; Rowe et seq. Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. Dyce i, Sta. 

150. you kaue\ you've Pope + . KUy, Cam. 

151. [Ex. Qu., guarded ; and Ladies. 159. meane\ mean, F^. 

Thcob. 162. my Stables'\ my Stable F^, Rowe 

152. etc. Lord.] l. L. Cap. i, Johns. Var. '73, '78, '85, Rann, Huds. 

153. leaji"] left F F . me shackles Bulloch, my stabler or my 
158. t*accept'\ to accept Cap. Var. stablers Cam. conj. (withdrawn), con- 
stables Kinnear. 

here by lawsuit f\ — M. Mason (p. 127) : We cannot say that a person goes on an in- 
dictment, charge, or accusation. Hermione means only * What I am now about to 
do.' — Steevens: Mason's supposition may be countenanced by the following in 
Muck AdOf I, i, 299 : * When you went onward in this ended action.'' [An example 
of the need of a vigilant eye in regarding Steevens's quotations. The * action * re- 
ferred to by Gaudio is the military action from which Don Pedro has just returned, 
and, of course, has no parallelism whatever with Hermione's action. It is not clear 
thxU Johnson is not more nearly right than Mason. The interpretation of Mason 
implies that Hermione goes voluntarily, whereas no one goes to prison of his own 
free will. The word • prison * suggested * action * ; but there is not thereby involved 
the whole process of an indictment, trial, and conviction, but merely enough to sug- 
gest a ckarge or an accusation. — Ed.] 

154. the which] See Abbott, § 270, or «the whom,* IV, iv, 595. 

160. In this, which] For other examples of relative sentences where the prepo- 
sition is not repeated, e. g, * In this (in or of) which,' etc., see Abbott, § 394. 

162, 163. Stables . . . couples] Hanmer reads stable-stand in his text, with 
the following note : * Stable-stand {stabilis statio as Spelman interprets it) is a term of 
the Forest-I^ws, and signifies a place where a deer-stealer fixes his stand under some 
convenient cover, and keeps watch for the purpose of killing deer as they pass by. 
From the place it came to be applied to the person, and any man taken in a forest in 
6 



82 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii. sc. i. 

[162, 163. He keepe my Stables . . . couples] 
that situation was presumed to be an offender and had the name of a Stable-stand.^ 
[Hanmer does not venture on the applicability of his amendment to the present 
passage, nor why Antigonus should speak of his stable-stand, seeing that to have a 
stable-stand at all was an unlawful act. Yet Capell pronounced the emendation 
< excellent ' and adopted it, as did Warburton also.] — Malone : If Hermione prove 
unfaithful, I'll never trust my wife out of my sight ; I'll always go in couples with 
her ; and in that respect my house shall resemble a stable where dogs are kept in 
pairs. Though a kennel is a place where a pack of hounds is kept, every one, I 
suppose, as well as our author, has occasionally seen dogs tied up in couples under 
the manger of a stable. . . . < Stables ' or < stable,' however, may mean station^ 
stabilis statio^ and two distinct propositions may be intended. I'll keep my station 
in the same place where my wife is lodged ; I'll run everywhere with her, like dogs 
that are coupled together. — Collier (ed. i) : The meaning is not very clear, unless 
we take ' stable ' in its etjmaological sense from stabulunty a standing-place, abode, or 
habitation. In that case, Antigonus only says he will take care never to allow his 
wife to dwell in any place where he is not. The Rev. Mr Barry recommended this 
interpretation to me ; but if so, we ought to read * stables ' in the singular. — Dyce 
(Remarks, p. 80) : A more wretched • interpretation ' than Mr Barry's could hardly be 
imagined. Perhaps Antigonus means, — If Hermione prove unchaste, I shall then 
have no doubt that my wife is inclined to play the wanton, and therefore I will allow 
her no more liberty than I allow my horses, or my hounds. — Collier in his second 
edition adopted the reading of his MS : ' I'll keep me stable,^ etc. with this note : 
Antigonus means merely that he will take care to keep himself constantly near his 
wife, in order that she may not offend in the way unjustly charged against Hermione. 
— R. G. White (ed. i) : The meaning of this passage seems so plainly * I will 
degrade my wife's chamber into a stable or dog kennel,' that had there not been 
much, quite from the purpose, written about it, it would require no special notice. 
The idea of horses and dogs being once suggested by the word * stable,' the speaker 
goes on to utter another thought connected with it : * I'll go in couples,' etc. — R. G. 
White (ed. ii) : Incomprehensible, but not corrupt. All efforts at explanation 
have been absurd or over-subtle. Possibly there is an obscure allusion to 'They 
were fed as horses in the morning; every one neighed after his neighbor's wife.' 
—Jer. V, 8. * Keep ' possibly is equivalent to guard, shut up,— a use of the word 
not infrequent. — Halliwell: Antigonus probably intends to say that, if Her- 
mione is false, he has then no faith in his own wife, and will keep her in her 
chamber with the same strictness that he does a horse in his stables, he will make 
a stable of his bed-chamber, tie his wife to the manger or rack. The allusion 
afterwards to going in couples does not necessarily refer to the same idea, but 
may be spoken either with a generic meaning, or with a distinct allusion to hounds 
going in couples. — Staunton : A prodigious amount of nonsense has been written 
on this unfortunate passage, but not a single editor or critic has shown the faintest 
perception of what it means. The accepted explanation, that Antigonus declares he 
will have his stables in the same place with his wife ; or, as some writers express it, 
he will « make his stable or dog-kennel of his wife's chamber ' ! sets gravity com- 
pletely at defiance. ^Vhat he means, — and the excessive grossness of the idea can 
hardly be excused, — is, unquestionably, that if Hermione be proved incontinent he 
should believe every woman unchaste; his own wife as licentious as Semiramis 



ACT II, sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 83 

[162, 163. He keepe my Stables . • . couples] 
(* Equum adamatum a Semiramide/ etc. — Pliny, Nat, Hist, viii, 42), and where he 
lodged her he would * keep,' that is, guards or fasten the entry of bis stables. This 
sense of the word * keep ' is so common, even in Shakespeare, that it is amazing no 
one should have seen its application here. See Com. Err, II, ii, 208; Hen, VIII: 
V, iv, 30; Ham. IV, v, II 5; 0th, V, ii, 365. [This interpretation of *keep* ante- 
dates R. G. White's second ed. Dyce ( Gloss.) quotes the foregoing note of Staunton 
and adds : ' As to the words " keep my stables," compare also the following passage 
in Greene's y^m/j the Fourth : — " A young stripling . . . that can wait in a gentle- 
man's chamber when his master is a mile off, keep his stable when 'tis empty ; and his 
purse when 'tis full," etc' — ffW-ij, p. 193, ed. Dyce, 1861. — It is not clear why 
Dyce should have quoted this phrase from Greene. It occurs in the ' bill ' wherein 
Slipper sets forth his own qualities as a servant, and is a specimen of heavy wit (but 
the lightest whereof Greene is capable), and consists of a series of anticlimaxes, such 
as *tL young stripling of the age of thirty years,' who can *worh with the sickest^ 

* keep his stable when it is empty ^ and winds up with the assertion that he * hath 
many qualities worse than all these.' In fact, as far as I can see, the only parallelism 
to the present passage lies in a phrase of three words, repeated. — Ed.] — B. Nichol- 
son (N, &* Qu. 1871, IV, viii, 41): Antigonus, it is to be presumed, like other 
noblemen, had some at least of his horses on his estates. Recurring to them, as he 
afterwards does to his hounds, he exclaims, — * As my stallions and mares are looked 
after, kept apart, and under ward, so shall my wife be kept,' . . . ' if the Queen be 
false, then are women mere animals, and holding my wife as a bestial, I will lodge 
and keep my brood mares with her, and her as them.' The transposition of his 
phrases may be intended to express the first and mingled outnish of his vehemence, 
but is also an attempt to express more strongly that his cattle would be held by him 
equal to his wife. ' Keep,' also by aptness of phrase, is used in both its senses, — of 
lodge, and of shut or fasten. [In Shakespeariana (Feb. 1884, p. 124) Dr Nichol- 
son returned to this passage and expressed the belief that the key to it is to be found 
in a dictum of Aristotle that horses and mares are the most amorous of animals. — 
Cf. Bartholomew xviii, c. 39.] — Ingleby {Sh. HermeneuticSy p. 77) says he intends to 

* settle the matter for good and all,' but throws no new light on it, beyond his asser- 
tion that ' the phrase to keep one's stables was a familiar phrase in Shakespeare's time ; 
and meant to keep personal watch over one's wife's or one's mistress's chastity.' 
When a phrase is a * familiar ' one, we certainly have a right to expect an abundance 
of examples. Ingleby gives only one, and this one fails to bear out his definition. 
It is from Chapman's All Fools^ IV, ii : — * your wife that keeps the stable of your 
honour.' He also quotes finom Dyce's Glossary the words, given above, from Greene's 
James the Fourth^ and says Dyce did not understand them. It is remarkable that 
this * familiar ' phrase escaped GifTord, Collier, Dyce, and Staunton. — Perring {Hard 
KnotSy etc. p. 178) has a note on this passage, but as he says he sees no difficulty, he 
cannot be expected to solve any, nor does he. 

[In obscure passages like the present, an explanation, in order to be accepted, must 
carry instant conviction. It is needless to remark that of none of the explanations 
here recorded can this be affirmed. A comfort, however, remains to us, that, what- 
ever the precise meaning, enough can be surmised of its unsavory drift to render us 
quite indiffisrent were the whole speech, creditable as it is to the head and heart of 
Antigonus, wholly expunged. There is, let me add, one suggestion which has not 



84 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii, sc. i. 

Then when I feele,and fee her, no farther truft her: 

For euery ynch of Woman in the World, 165 

I, euery dram of Womans flefh is falfe. 

If fhe be. 

Leo. Hold your peaces. 

Lard. Good my Lord. 

Antig. It is for you we fpeake,not for our felues: 170 

You are abus'd,and by fome putter on. 
That will be damn'd for't : would I knew the Villaine, 
I would Land-damne him : be fhe honor-flaw'd, 173 

164. Then\ Ff, Rowe, Pope i, Mai. 171. abuid^ and by\ abiu'd^ by TL 

Var. Than Pope ii et cet. abused by Rowe, Pope, Han. 

farther] Cap. Mai. Wh. Sta, 173. Land-damne"] F,Fj. landdamm 

Cam. further Ff et cet. Theob. ii, Han. "Warb. land-dam Johns. 

166. /,] / F^. Ay^ Rowe. lant-dam Huds. land-drum Bulloch. 

169. Lord.] Ff, Rowe, Pope, lord! lent-damn Nicholson (Withdrawn, N. & 

Han. lord, — Theob. et cet. Qu. 3, xi, 435). Land damn F^ et cet. 

been urged, which can only claim for itself that it is not more absurd than its fellows. 
It is, that stables were used not only for horses but also for homed cattle. Where 
Paulina lodged, were she unchaste, would be a fitting stable for her husband. 
Further elaboration can be safely left to the reader, who, after wading through this 
long note, may well sigh : * an ounce of civet, good apothecary.' — Ed.] 

164. Then] M alone: Modem editors read, T^i/zn / certainly not without ground, 
for than was formerly spelt *■ then ' ; but here, I believe, the latter word was intended. 
— Knight : We think the sentence is comparative : I will trust her no farther than 
I see her. [Unquestionably. — Ed.] 

171. putter on] Staunton: This appears to have been a term of reproach, 
implying an instigator, or plotter. It occurs again in Hen. VIII : I, ii, 24. 
[In Schmidt will be found many examples where to put on means to instigate.] 

173. I would Land-damne him] Hanmer : Probably this means the taking 
away a man^s life. For Land or Lant is an old word for the secretion of the kid- 
neys, and to stop the common passages and functions of Nature is to kill. — Capell 
i^Gloss.)'. Rectius — land-damm^Xo pit, or bury; damm or stop up with Land, i.e. 
Earth. — Johnson : * Land-damn ' is probably one of those words which caprice 
brought into fashion, and which, after a short time, reason and grammar drove irre- 
coverably away. It, perhaps, meant no more than I will rid the country of him, con- 
demn him to quit the land. — Heath (p. 909) : I profess my utter ignorance of the 
meaning, unless the poet possibly might have written : * I would half damn him,' 1. e. 
I would give him his portion for this world. — Rann : Bury him alive, stop him up 
with earth. [Rann has received the credit, which belongs to Capell, of having first 
suggested this meaning of * land-damn.' Accordingly, R. G. White (ed. i) speaks 
of * Rann*s conjecture,' and says that it is * not without reason, or the support which 
he neglected to give it. See Tit. And. V, iii, 179: "Set him breast-deep in earth 
and famish him," etc' Staunton and Dyce refer to * Rann's conjectm^,' and both 
give White's quotation from TU. And. (Dyce with credit to White.)] — Malone : I am 



ACT II. sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 85 

[173. I would Land-damne him] 
persuaded that this b a corruption, and that either the printer caught the word damn 
firom the preceding Une, or that the transcriber was deceived by similitude of sounds. 
I believe we should read — < land-^<zM ' / /. e, kill him ; bury him in earth. [See 
Capeirs definition. — £d.] — Steevens : I think we might not unsafely read : * I'd 
laudanum him,' — f . e. poison him with laudanum. So, in Jonson's Silent Woman : 
< Have I no friend that will make her drunk, or give her a little laudanum, or 
opium?' The word is much more ancient than the time of Shakespeare. I owe 
this remark to Dr Farmer. [It is hard to believe that the * Puck of Conmientators ' 
did not take a malicious pleasure in thus recording the solemn nonsense of his learned 
friend. Although he adopted the emendation, he knew well enough that it would not 
be associated with his name. — £d.] — Knight : Farmer's conjecture is, we suppose, 
intended for a joke. — Coluer (ed. i) : *■ Lamback ' occurs in various writers and 
means to beat; but it can hardly have been mistaken by the printer, and it would not 
be forcible enough for Antigonus's state of mind. It occurs in the unique drama of The 
rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune^ 1589 : — * I would lamback the devil out of you, 
for all your gearc.' [Act IV.] Again in Munday and Chettle's Death of Robert Earl 
of Huntington, 1601 : — *• And with this dagger lustily lambackt.' [V, i ; Collier, in a 
note, suggests that < lambackt ' should be lambtaked, to cudgel ; this word Hazlitt in his 
ed. of Dodsley adopts. Collier, in his Second Edition, tells us that his MS Corrector 
had erased <Land-damme' and substituted lamback; wherefore Collier adopted 
lamback in his text; < because there is little doubt that the compositor's eye caught 
the word • danm'd exactly above in the preceding line,' and hence changed lam- 
back to * land-damme.' ' I would lamback him,' says Collier, * means I would beat 
or belabour him, but how it came to mean that is doubtful.' In his Third Edition 
Collier returned to * land-damn.'] — Dyce {Remarks, p. 81): Fanner's conjecture is 
undoubtedly (excepting Mr Collier's) the worst which has been offered on this 
passage. That of Hanmer is at least in keeping with the grossness of the lines 
which follow. In the word * land-damn ' there appears to be an incurable corrup- 
tion ; but I may just notice that a similar compound occurs in the once-popular poem 
of Warner : — * Hence countrie Loutes land-lurch their Lords.' — Albion's England, 
p. 219, ed. 1596. — Halliwell: Unless there be a corruption in the text, this word 
can merely mean, either, to condemn to quit the land, to banish, or to curse through- 
out the land ; the latter explanation better suiting the energetic denunciation obviously 
intended to be conveyed by the speaker. It is barely possible some corruption of the 
word may be preserved in one of the following rustic terms: — *^ Landan, lantam, 
ronton are used by some Glostershire people in the sense of scouring or correcting to 
some purpose, and also of rattling and rating severely, but no certain idea can be 
affixt to these cant phrases.' — MS Glossary, compiled about 1780. — Walker (Crit, 
iii, 99) : It seems possible thdt Shakespeare may have written live-damn. * He is 
sure to be damned for his villainy sooner or later ; and were it in my power I would 
damn him alive, — inflict the torments of hell on him, while yet living.' — Liue-land. 
D and e are often confounded at the end of words. At any rate live-damn may, 
perhaps, served as a makeshift, till the true reading be discovered. ... It may be 
also observed that the hyphen may, perhaps, be a corruption ; as is the case in many 
other passages of the Folio, where the printers, not knowing what to make of the 
word in the MS, substituted a conjectural one of a compound form. — Clark and 
Wright {Cambridge Edition) : With the sense to beat, which Collier assigns to 



86 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii, sc. L 

I haue three daughters : the eldeft is eleuen; 

The fecond, and the third, nine : and fome fiue : 175 

If this proue true, they'I pay for't. By mine Honor 

He gell'd em all : fourteene they fhall not fee 177 

175. ninf: and fome Jiue\ nine : and 1 77. geWd em\ F,. gePd Vot F F^- 

fonnes five Y ^ ^. nine: and fons five geld ^ em Rowe + , Var. '73, Sing. Dyce, 

F^, Rowe, Pope. «iW, and some five Wh. SU. Cam. Ktly. geld them Cap. et 

Theob. et seq. cet. 

lamback^ it seems an anticlimax after the threat in the line preceding. — Keightley 
{Exp. 201) ; There is also a vulgar term lambaste, — Cartwright: Read : * I would 
hang him, Bui be she,' etc. — HuNTLEY ( Gloss. Coiswold Dialect) : Landam. To 
abuse with rancour; Damn throi^h the land.^ — Thorncuffe (A^. 6* Qu. 1875, V, 
iii, 464) : Forty years ago an old custom was still in use in this district [Buxton]. 
When any slanderer was detected, or any parties discovered in adultery, it was usual 
to Ian-dan them. This was done by the rustics traversing from house to house along 
the * country-side ' blowing trumpets and beating drums, or pans, and kettles. When an 
audience was assembled, the delinquents' names were proclaimed, and they were thus 
land-damned. — H. Wedgwood (iV. and Qu. 1875, V, iv, 3) : ThomclifTe's explana- 
tion carries, to me at least, complete conviction. ... It is hardly doubtful that landan, 
like randan, or rantan, is a mere representation of continued noise. — SCHMIDT (Er- 
Iduterungen, etc. p. 281) : The Folio reads : * I would land — damn him.' Perhaps the 
dash should be after * would,' and, in the MS, it read : — * Would I knew the villain, 
I would — Lord, damn him !' [Dr Schmidt repeated this in his Lexicon ! — Ed.] — 
Ingleby {Sh. Hermeneutics^ p. 155) : Land-damning might mean the 'drier death 
ashore ' mentioned by Proteus in Two Gent. I, i. — Peering (p. 180) cites Cym. I, ii, 
15-26, and remarks : — *■ Land-damn him ' in the light of this passage would contain a 
deal in a small compass, — the challenge Antigonus would have sent him ; the duel which 
he would have fought with him ; the resolution with which he would have held his own 
ground ; the fiery vigour with which he would have forced him to give him some of 
his ground ; the stunning blow which he would have dealt him till he had measured 
his length on the ground ; and, having left him no ground to stand upon, whether he 
would damn him further and forbid his body interment, we need not pursue — the 
land-damning would have been thorough and complete. The illiterate multitude of 
Shakespeare's day (and we are no better off than they, so far as accurate knowledge 
of this word goes) would understand the meaning and significance of the last^ if 
they could not of the first portion of this mysterious compound. — Mack ay (G/oss.) 
shows that in bucolic terms for scourging, the Gaelic tongue is superior to ours. [I am 
happy to agree with Perring ; we can all grasp the meaning of the last half of ' Land- 
damne,' and I would add, that to understand half of Shakespeare's meaning in a 
difHcult passage is something to be not a little proud of. — Ed.] 

175. second . . . fiue] Theobald restored the true punctuation to this line, with 
the note that < the eldest was eleven years of age, the second, nine, and the third, some 
five ' ; justifying the use of * some ' by Lear, I, i, 20 : — * a son by order of law, some 
year elder than this ' ; and lb. I, ii, 5 : — ' I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines 
lag of a brother.' — Malone : Shakespeare undoubtedly wrote * some ' ; for were we, 
with F,, to read ' sons five,' then the second and third daughter would both be of the 



ACT II, sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 8/ 

To bring falfe generations : they are co-heyres, 178 

And I had rather glib my felfe, then they 

Should not produce faire iffue. 180 

Leo. Ceafe, no more : 
You fmell this bufineffe with a fence as cold 
As is a dead-mans nofe : but I do fee't, and feel't, 
As you feele doing thus : and fee withall 
The Inftruments that feele. 185 

Antig. If it be fo, 
We neede no graue to burie honefty, 
There's not a graine of it, the face to fweeten 
Of the whole dungy-earth, 

Leo. What? lacke I credit ? 190 

Ij>rd. I had rather you did lacke then I (my Lord) 
Vpon this ground : and more it would content me 
To haue her Honor true, then your fufpition 193 

179. glib'] lib Grey, unsib Heath. 185. that\ I Han. that ym Huds. 

183. dead-mans] dead man's Rowe. [SinkiDg his brows. Johns, (cor- 
but I do] I Popc + , Var. '73, rected to 5i^rf!/(i»^ in Append.). 

Steev. 189. dungy-earth] dungy earih'Royrt, 

184. thus :] thiSf Lettsom (ap. Dyce), 191. Lord.] Antig. Theob. conj. 
Huds. 193. her] your Rowe ii, Pope, Han. 

thus:] thus; [Laying hold of then] Maw F^ et seq. 

his arm. Han. thus^ [Striking him. fufpition] ¥(. suspicion. Coll. 

Rann. Dyce, Cam. Dtn. suspicion; Rowe et 

184, 185. and., feele] Erased by Coll. cet. 
MS. 

same age ; which, as we are not told that they were twins, is not very reasonable to 
suppose. Besides, daughteis are by the law of England * co-heirs,' but sons never. 

179. glib] To geld. 

184, 185. As . . . feele] Heath (p. 209) : The instruments we employ in doing 
anything do not feel, but are felt. ... I propose: — 'The instruments of i^AtX you 
feel. The king had said that he both saw and felt the wrong that had been done 
him, and he now adds, just as you feel the impression on your sense at the present 
moment, and not only feel it, but at the same time see, too, the instruments which are 
the cause or occasion of this your feeling ; that is, in short, I see and feel my wrong 
with the same certainty, as you see and feel the present object of those senses. To 
preserve the metre, I read in the reply of Antigonus If so. — Capell : The king cer- 
tainly makes free with some part of Antigonus' face (his ' nose,' probably), and < feel ' 
has a double sense in that speech ; it's philosophical and proper one, first ; and the 
second * feel ' — touch, a sense given it vulgarly ; for it is of that speaker's fingers that 
the last •feel' is predicated; see * So sure as this beard's gray.' — H, iii, 196. [Dr 
Johnson said that if Capell had only come to him, he would have ' endowed his 
purposes with words.'] — Malone : I see and feel my disgrace, as you Antigonus, 



88 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii. sc. i. 

Be blam'd for't how you might. 

Leo. Why what neede we 195 

Commune with you of this ? but rather follow 
Our forcefull inftigation ? Our prerogatiue 
Cals not your Counfailes, but our naturall goodneffe 
Imparts this : which, if you, or ftupified, 

Or feeming fo, in skill, cannot, or will not 2CX) 

Rellifli a truth, like vs : informe your felues. 
We neede no more of your aduice : the matter, 
The loffe, the gaine, the ordering on't, 
Is all properly ours* 

Antig. And I wifh ( my Liege) 205 

You had onely in your filent iudgement tride it, 

196. of^ for Ff, Rowe, Pope, Han. 201. Rellifli a\ Relish as Cap. Var. 

this /] this, Coll. Dyce, Sta. Rann, Steev. Var. Sing. Ktly. 
Cam. Huds. Rife, Wh. ii, Dtn. 203, 204. The,„Is all] One line, 

dut] not Han. Theob. et seq. 
198. Counfailes] CounfelsY^^, 204. Is all properly] Is properly aU 

199,200. or„.skill] In parenthesis, Pope, are all Properly 'Rtm, 
Theob. et seq. ourr] F . 



now feel me, on my doing thus to you, and as you now see the instruments that feel, 
f . e. my fingers. Leontes must here be supposed to lay hold of either the beard or 
arm, or some other part, of Antigonus. — Henley suggests that perhaps Leontes 
makes the sign on his forehead to which Staunton refers at I, ii, 255. 

196. but rather follow] Abbott (§ 385) : The general rule is that after but the 
finite verb is to be supplied without the negative, as in Macb. HI, i, 47 : — ' To be 
thus is nothing. But to be safely thus (is something).' In the present case, the nega- 
tive is implied in the first verb through the question, * Why need we ?* i . e, * We need 
not.* The second verb must not be taken interrogatively, and thus it omits the nega- 
tive : * Why need we commune with you ? we need rather follow our own impulse.' 
Else, if both verbs be taken interrogatively, * but * must be taken as * and not * : * Why 
need we commune with you, and not follow our own impulse ?* 

197. prerogatiue] Davis (p. 127): The Tudor and Stuart conception of the 
extent of the prerogative is asserted here. It took more than a century and a half 
to quell the exorbitant pretensions of the English sovereigns in this respect. 

199. which] Abbott (§ 249) : Here * which ' means as regards which, and in this 
and in other places approximates to that vulgar idiom which is well known to readers 
of Martin Chwalewit. — Deighton attributes the confusion of construction to the 
parenthesis : * or stupefied ... in skill.' There is another similar example in V, i, 
168 : — < whom ... I desire ... to look on him.' Capell in the present case 
obviates confusion by reading * as a truth,' in line 201, which is an improvement and 
would be allowable if the passage were capable of no other explanation. — Ed. 

200. in skill] That is, cunning, design, purpose. 

201. your selues,] There should be no comma here, I think. 



ACT 11. sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 89 

Without more ouerture. 207 

Leo. How could that be ? 
Either thou art moft ignorant by age, 

Or thou wer't borne a foole : Camillcfs flight 210 

Added to their Familiarity 

(Which was as groffe, as euer touchM conieflure, 
That lack'd fight onely, nought for approbation 
But onely feeing, all other circumflances 

Made vp to'th deed) doth pufh-on this proceeding. 215 

Yet, for a greater confirmation 
(For in an A£le of this importance, 'twere 
Moft pitteous to be wilde) I hane difpatchM in poft. 
To facred DelphoSy to Appollo^s Temple, 

Cleomines and Diotiy whom you know 220 

Of ftuff'^d-fufficiency : Now, from the Oracle 

21^/enng, a//"] feeing ail F^F^, 218. I haml F,. /V^ Han. 

Rowe. seeing; all Theob. 220. Qeomines] Ff, Rowe, Popc + . 

215. pujh-on'] pu/h on Ff et seq. Dion] Deon Ff, Rowe. 

21Z, pitteous] pittious F,F,. pitious 22\. fluff' dfufficimcy] F,. fluffed 

F^, Rowe, Pope, piteous Theob. fufficiency F^F^. 

207. ouerture] That is, openness, disclosure, publicity. 

212. touch'd conle<5ture] *■ Conjecture ' is the subject of *• touched.' not the object 
Their familiarity was as clear as conjecture could reach, that lacked no proof but 
sight Schmidt here interprets * touch ' by movey arouse^ with *■ conjecture ' in the 
accusative. But it was not the grossness which aroused conjecture, but conjecture 
that estimated the amount of grossness. — £d. 

213. lack'd . . . approbation] Johnson : < Approbation * in thb place is put for 
proof, Staunton considers < sight only ' as parenthetical, and incloses it between 
commas. Hb punctuation does not essentially alTect the meaning, which is, as he 
says in a note : — ^ That wanted, seeing excepted, nothing for proof.* His punctuation 
is further complicated by putting a semi-colon after ' approbation.' The punctuation 
of the Folio cannot, I think, be improved. — Ed.] 

218. wilde] Walker {Crit. iii, 279) conjectures wide^ i. e. wide of the truth, and 
gives many instances where the Folio prints * wild * for wide. But inasmuch as * wilde ' 
may very well mean here, as it means elsewhere, rash^ headlong^ it is safest to adhere 
to the text— Ed. 

218. I hane dispatch'd, etc.] In Dorastus and Fawnia^ Bellaria (Hermione) 
fell down on her knees and besought the king to send to the Isle of Delphos, to the 
Oracle. Accordingly, Lloyd (p. 139) observes : — * Shakespeare made the reference 
to the Oracle originate with the accuser, and this proof of respect for it, on his part, 
renders his sense of his impiety in insulting it, and consequent confession of guilt and 
subjection to its predictions, consistent and natural.* 

221. 8tu£r'd-8ufficiency] Johnson: That is, of abilities more than enough. — 



90 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii, sc. i. 

They will bring all, whofe fpirituall counfaile had 222 

Shall flop, or fpurre me. Haue I done well ? 

Lord. Well done (my Lord.) 

Leo. Though I am fatisfide, and neede no more 225 

Then what I know, yet fhall the Oracle 
Giue reft to th'mindes of others ; fuch as he 
Whofe ignorant credulitie, will not 
Come vp to th'truth. So haue we thought it good 
From our free perfon, fhe fhould be confinde, • 230 

Leaft that the treachery of the two, fled hence, 
Be left her to performe. Come follow vs. 
We are to fpeake in publique : for this bufmefTe 
Will raife vs all. 

Antig. To laughter, as I take it, 235 

If the good truth, were knowne. Exeufit 

226. Then'l Than F^ et seq. 231. Leajf)^ Left F^. 

229. haue we] we have Ff, Rowe, 235. [Aside. Han. et seq. 
Pope, Ilan. 

BoswELL: So in Dallington's Method of Travel! i — *I remember a countriman of 
ours well seeue in arts and language, well stricken in years, a mourner for his second 
wife ; a father of marriageable children, who with other his booke studies abroad, 
jo3med also the exercise of dancing ; it was his hap in an honourable Bal (as they 
call it) to take a fall, which in mine opinion was not so disgraceful! as the dancing 
itselfe, to a man of his stuffe.^ [This irrelevant extract would not have been repeated 
here, had it not been quoted by subsequent editors. — Ed.] 

223. spurre me] Dyce (ed. iii) : Ilanmer printed * spur me on,' — ^rightly, I sus- 
pect. 

225-227. Though I ... to th'mindes of others] Hudson (p. 19): Which 
means simply that he is not going to let the truth of the charge stand in issue, and 
that he holds the Divine authority to be a capital thing, provided he may use it, and 
need not obey it ; that is, if he finds the god agreeing with him in opinion, then the 
god's judgement is infallible ; if not, then in plain terms, he is no god. And they 
who have closely observed the workings of jealousy know right well that in all this 
Shakespeare does not one whit * overstep the modesty of Nature.* 

227. such as he] It is not a little strange that modem editors, in their fondness 
for superfluous stage-directions, have not here inserted : * Pointing to Antigonus.' 
— Ed. 

230. free person] Schmidt : That is, accessible to all. — Deighton : * Free ' for 
the sake of the antithesis with * confined.' 

231. fled] For this participial use of a passive verb, see Abbott, § 295. 

232. left her to performe] Johnson : He has before declared, that there is a 
piot against his life and crown^ and that Hermione is federary with Folixenes and 
Camillo. 



ACT II, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 91 



Scena Secunda. 



Enter Paulina ^ a Gentleman ^ Gaoler ^ Emilia. 

Paul. The Keeper of the prifon, call to him : 
Let him haue knowledge who I am. Good Lady, 
No Court in Europe is too good for thee, 5 

What doft thou then in prifon ? Now good Sir, 
You know me, do you not ? 

Gao. For a worthy Lady, 
And one, who much I honour. 9 

1. Scena] Scaena F,F^. 6. prifon f} prison f [Enter Keeper. 
A Prison. Pope. See Note, line 66. Cap. Steev. Mai. Knt. 

2. Enter...] Enter Paulina and a 7. notf'\ not? [Re-enter Gent, with 
Gentleman. Rowe (with other Attend- the Goaler or Keeper. Rowe et seq. 
ants. Han. et seq. subs.). (subs.). 

Gaoler] Goaler F^F^, Rowe + . 8, etc. Gao.] Goa. F^F^, Rowe+. 

3. Aim:'] him. [Exit Gent. Rowe. Kee. or Keep. Cap. et cet. 

him ; [to an Att. Cap. 9. who"] Dyce, Wh. i, Sta. Cam. Huds. 

4. knowledge] the knowledge Rowe. whom Ff et cet. 
who] whom ¥{f Rowe, Pope. 

2. Enter Paulina] Lady Martin (p. 353) : Paulina, the wife of Antigonus, a 
lady of high position, henceforth fills a most important part in the drama, and should 
be impersonated in any adequate representation of the play by an actress of the first 
order. She is a woman of no ordinary sagacity, with a warm heart, a vigorous brain, 
and an ardent temper. Her love for Hermioue has its roots in admiration and rever- 
ence for all the good and gracious qualities of which the queen's daily life has given 
witness. She has been much about her royal mistress, and much esteemed and 
trusted by her. Leontes, knowing this, obviously anticipates that she will not remain 
quiet when she hears of the charge he has brought against the queen, and that he has 
thrust her into prison. Accordingly, he has given express orders that Paulina is not 
to be admitted to the prison, and this fresh act of cruelty she learns from the governor 
only when she arrives there in the hope of being some comfort to her much-wronged 
mistress. 

6. prison ?] See Textual Note. — Collier reads Enter Jailor^ and thus com- 
ments : ' So called in the old copies ; from which there is no reason to vary, by call- 
ing the ' Jailor ' keeper^ as has been done by modem editors. [Capell substituted 
Keeper for ' Gaoler,' I suppose, because he is so called by Paulina. — Ed.] 

9. who] The change by F, of this *■ who ' to whom seems to show that not until 
nine years after F, was printed were compositors fully aware that in certain cases the 
relative pronoun must be inflected. Abbott, § 274, gives many examples of the over- 
sight. It is not worth while to change it here. It misleads no one. If the MS 
were read aloud to the compositors of F,, as is highly probable, the m needed for 
' who ' was heard, as it still may be, in the m of the following * much.' — Ed. 



92 



THE WINTERS TALE 



[act II. sc. ii. 



Pau. Pray you then, 
Condufl me to the Queene. 
Gao. I may not (Madam) 
^ To the contrary I haue expreffe commandment. 
^ Pau, Here's a-do, to locke vp honefty & honour from 
i Th'acceffe of gentle vifitors. \s\ lawfull pray you 
- To fee her Women ? Any of them? Emilia ? 
• Gao, So pleafe you (Madam) 
To put a-part thefe your attendants, I 
Shall bring Emilia forth. 
Pau. I pray now call her : 
^ With-draw your felues. 
Gao, And Madam, 
I muft be prefent at your Conference. 

Pau. Well : be't fo : prethee. 
Heere's fuch a -doe, to make no flaine, a ftaine. 



lO 



IS 



20 



25 



12, 13. I...contrary\ One line, Cap. 
Var. Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. Knt, Coll. 
Dyce, Sing. Wh. i, Sta. Ktly. 

14. Here's a-do] Closing line 13, Cap. 
Var. Rann, Mai, Steev. Var. Knt, Coll. 
Dyce, WTi. i, Sta. Separate line, Cam. 
Wh. ii. 

14-16. /^^* J... Emilia?] Lines end, 
honour ... vifitors ... Women ... Emilia f 
Johns. 

14-17. Here's., .[Madam)"] Lines end, 
a-dOf ...from ... lawfully. ,. them ?„. Mad- 
am^ Han. Cap. Var. Rann, Dyce. 

14-19. Here's... forth] Lines end, ado^ 
...from. ..lawfull,.. .them ?. . . put. . .bring 
...forth. Mai. Steev. Var. Sing. Ktly. 

15. Th'acceffe] Ff, Rowe + , Coll. 
Sing. Wh. The access Cap. et cet. 

IsU] Is it Johns. Var. Rann, Mai. 
Steev. Var. Ktlv. 

17. So pleafe] If it so please Yizxi. 



18. apart] a part F^. apart Cap. 
et seq. 

20, 21. I... felues] Lines divided at 
now Cap. Var. Rann. 

20. pray now] pray you now Ff, 
Rowe, Pope, Theob. Warb. Johns. Cap. 
Var. Rann, Steev. 

21. [Exeunt Gent. &c. Theob. 
21-24. With'draw ... prethee.] Lines 

end, be. .. well :... prethee. Han. 

22. 23. Lines divided 2X present Mai. 
22-26. And... colouring.] Lines end, 

must ... Conference ... ado, ... colouring. 
Cap. 

23. your] all your Han. 

24. Well: bet] Ff, Cap. Coll. Dyce, 
Wh. Cam. Well, well; Be it Han. 
Well; be it Rowe et cet. 

24, 25. [Enter Emilia. Ff, Rowe + . 
Opposite line 26, Johns, et seq. 

24. [Exit Gaoler. Johns. 

25. Heere's] Here is Cap. Var. 



21. your selues] Knight : In these speeches we follow the metrical arrangement 
of the original, which is certainly not improved by the botching which we find in all 
modem editions. 

25, 26. no staine . . . colouring] Detghton : There is here a pun upon the 
word * colour* in its literal sense, with reference to * stain,* and its metaphorical 
sense of palliating, giving a specious appearance. [The punctuation of F^ needs 
revision. The Cambridge Edition and its followers have no commas in the line at 



ACT n, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 93 

As paffes colouring. Deare Gentlewoman, 26 

How fares our gtacious Lady ? 

Emil. As well as one fo great, and fo forlome 
May hold together : On her frights, and greefes 
(Which neuer tender Lady hath borne greater) 30 

She is, fomething before her time, deliuer'd. 

Pau. A boy ? 

£mi/, A daughter, and a goodly babe, 
Lufty, and like to liue : the Queene receiues 
Much comfort in^t : Sayes, my poore prifoner, 35 

I am innocent as you, 

Pau. I dare be fwome: 
Thefe dangerous, vnfafe Lunes i'th'King, befhrew them: 38 

26, 27. Deare.., Lady f'^ One line, 30. bome'\ bom F^F^, Rowe, Pope, 

Cap. MaJ. Steev. Var. Sing. Ktly. Han. Cap. 

26. [Enter Emilia. Johns. Re-enter 36. I am\ Pm Pope 4- . 

Keeper with Emilia. Cap. 38. Vth''\ o' the Cap. conj. Var. Rann, 

27. our] one F^. Mai. Steev. Var. Knt. 
gtacious] F,. 

all ; which is good, but perhaps not as helpful as it might be. All other editions have 
a comma only after * stain ' at the end of the line, which is, I think, wrong. If a 
comma be needful at all, it should follow the first * staine,' as in the Folio, inasmuch 
as the sense is : * Here's such a fuss, to make that which is no stain at all, a stain so 
black that it cannot be coloured.' — £d.] 

31. something] Walker {Crit. i, 222) in speaking of the variable accent of 
something and nothing, adds : < Note that Surrey always lays the stronger accent 
in the final syllable of such words.' So in the present passage: She Is, some- 
thing, etc. ; as if < she had said *' some whit before," etc' So also in IV, iv, 416, 
Perdita says: *1 cannot speak So well (nothing so well),' etc. 

37. swome] Lady Martin (p. 354) : This Paulina exclaims in her hot anger ; 
and in the words that follow shows her clear common-sense and fearless courage, of 
which she gives remarkable proofs at a later stage. From first to last she regards the 
conduct of Leontes as simple madness. 

38. vnsafe Lunes i'th'King] Theobald : I have nowhere, but in our author, 
observed this word adopted in our tongue, to signify frentyy lunacy. But it is a 

, mode of expression with the French, — il y a de la lune, i. e. he has got the moon in 
'' his head ; he is frantick. Cotgrave : Lune, folic. [Cotgrave also gives : < II y a de 
la lune. He is a foolish, humorous, hare-braind, giddie-headed fellow.'] — Steevens : 
A similar expression occurs in The Revenger's Tragedy, 1608 [II, ad fin.] : * I know 
'twas but some peevish moon in him.' — M. Mason : The old copy reads ; < lunes in 
the king,' which should not have been changed. The French phrase has : ' dans la 
tftte ;' and the passage, quoted by Steevens from The Revenger's Tragedy has ' some 
peevish moon in him.' — Schmidt : < Lunes ' has been substituted by modem editors 
for * lines ' in Merry Wives, IV, ii, 22, and Tro. and Cres. II, iii, 1 39 ; for * lunacies ' 



94 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii, sc. ii. 

He muft be told on't, and he (hall : the office 

Becomes a woman bed. He take't vpon me, 40 

If I proue hony-mouth'd, let my tongue blifter. 

And neuer to my red-look'd Anger bee 

The Trumpet any more : pray you {Emilia) 

Commend my beft obedience to the Queene, 44 

39. tf«'/] of it Pope, Han. 41. hony - mouth' d^ honey - motUh 
hejhall^ shall Rowe, Pope, Han. Warb. 

40. takif^ take it Y^, 



in Ham. Ill, iii, 7.~Collier (ed. ii) : The MS changes « unsafe * to unsane, which 
certainly is more appropriate, and to say that the king's * lunes * are * dangerous * and 
unsafe is mere tautolt^. [Is there not tautology also in • unsane lunes ' ?] — Staun- 
ton : The old text needs no alteration ; * dangerous * like its synonym * perilous * was 
sometimes used for biting, caustic, mischievous ; and in some such sense may very 
well stand here. — Grosart, in his edition of Greene's Prose Works, says that two in- 
stances of the use of this word are to be therein found. The passages are as follows : 

* The more she stroue against the streame the lesse it did preuaile, the closer shee 
couered the sparke, the more it kindled : yea, in seeking to vnlose the Lunes, the more 
shee was intangled.' — Mamillia: The second part, 1593 (p. 189, ed. Grosart). 

* Loue, yea, loue it is {d Pharicles) and more if more may be that hath so fettered 
my freedome and tyed my libertie with so short a tedder, as either thou must be the 
man which must vnlose me from the lunes, or else I shal remaine in a lothsome 
Laberinth til the extreme date of death deliuer me.' — Id. (p. 1 98). Whereon Grosart 
remarks (p. 332) : * The context in Greene shows Qarinda in very lunacy and frenzy 
of love-passion for Pharicles. . . . Neither Dr Schmidt in his Lexicon, s. v., nor 
Dyce in his great Glossary, nor any of the editors, has been able to adduce another 
example of the word. This is only one of a multitude of instances wherein Greene 
sheds light on Shakespearian words and cruxes.' Had Greene's learned editor turned 
to Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, Bk. T, chap, ii, sec. ix, and read, in the * Caparison of a 
Hawk ' : * The jesses were made sufficiently long for the knots to appear between 
the middle and the little fingers of the hand that held them, so that the lunes, or 
small thongs of leather, might be fastened to them with two tyrrets, or rings ; and the 
lunes were loosely wound round the little finger * (quoted in Cent. Diet.), I think he 
would not have been so sure that he had found the same word in both Greene and 
Shakespeare. The recurrence of the phrase * unloose the lupes,' in the two passages, 
should have put him on his guard, as well as its occurrence in The Carde of Fancie 
(p. 120, ed. Grosart) : — * no Hauke so haggard, but will stoop at the lure : no Niessc 
[an eyas] so ramage [wild] but will be reclaimed to the Lunes.' — Ed. 

40, 41. me, . . . blister.] The comma and the period should change places. 

44. Commend] Deighton : * In this idiomatic or formal phrase this word [com- 
mend] has acquired a somewhat peculiar signification. The resolution would seem 
to be. Give my commendation to him, or. Say that I commend myself to him, mean- 
ing that I commit and recommend myself to his affectionate remembrance. So, we 
have the Latin, " Me totum tuo amori fideique commendo " (Cicero, Epist. ad Alt. 
iii, 20); and **Tibi me totum commendo atque trado" (Id. Epist. Fam. ii, 6). At 



ACT II, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 95 

If (he dares Iruft me with her little babe^ 45 

rie fhew't the King, and vndertake to bee 

Her Aduocate to th'Iowd^ft. We do not know 

How he may foften at the fight o'th'Childe : 

The filence often of pure innocence 

Perfwades, when fpeaking failes. 50 

Emil. Moft worthy Madam, 
your honor, and your goodneffe is fo euident, 
That your free vndertaking cannot miffe 
A thriuing yffue : there is no Lady liuing 

So meete for this great errand ; pleafe your Ladifhip 55 

To vifit the next roome, He prefenrly 
Acquaint the Queene of your moft noble offer. 
Who, but to day hammered of this defigne, 
But durft not tempt a minifter of honour 
Leaft flie fliould be denyM, 60 

PauL Tell her {Emilia) 

47. to M*] to Uh Ff. to the Cap. 56. presenrly] F,. 

iowd'/t"] loudest Var. Rann, Mai. 58. hammered o/"] Ff, Rowe. ham- 

Stecv. Var. Knt, Sing. Sta. mer'd on Han. hammer d of Pope ct 

52. isfo'\ are so Coll. (MS). cet. 

54. there w] there's Han. Dyce ii, iii. 60. Lea/i'] Left Rowe. 

the same time, in considering the question of the origin and proper meaning of the 
English phrase, the custom of what was called Commendation in the Feudal System 
is not to be overlooked ; the vassal was said to commend himself to the person whom 
he selected for his lord. Commend is etymologically the same word as command ; 
and both forms, with their derivatives, have been applied, in Latin and the modem 
tongues more exclusively based upon it, as well as in English, in a considerable 
variety of ways.' — Craik, Eng. of Shakespeare^ 279. 

45. dares] Skeat {Diet.) : The present tense, I dare ^ is really an old past tense, 
so that the third person is he dare (cf. he shail^ he can) ; but the form he dares is now 
often used, and will probably displace the obsolescent he dare, though grammatically 
as incorrect as he shalls or he cans. 

53. free] Schmidt places the present use of this word under ' guiltless, innocent, 
harmless.' [The value of Schmidt's Lexicon lies in its separation of the verbal and 
substantive uses of the same word. But the manifold divisions and subdivisions of 
meaning, when not based on English authority, are to be accepted with caution. 
Thus here, to suppose that Emilia characterises the undertaking as innocent is to give 
a patronising, commendatory air in her address to Paulina, quite uncalled for. The 
'free undertaking' is ^^ freely offered undertaking. — Ed.] 

56. presenrly] That is, instantly. 

58. hammered of] For examples of the use of of where we should now use on, 
see, if necessary, Abbott, § 175. 



96 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii, sc. ii. 

He vfe that tongue I haue : If wit flow from't 62 

As boldneffe from my bofome, le't not be doubted 
I fliall do good, 

EmiL Now be you bleft for it 65 

He to the Queene : pleafe you come fomething neeren 

Gao. Madam, ift pleafe the Queene to fend the babe, 
I know not what I fliall incurre, to pafle it, 
Hauing no warrant. 

Pau. You neede not feare it (fir) 70 

This Childe was prifoner to the wombe, and is 
By Law and procefle of great Nature, thence 
Free'd, and enfranchised, not a partie to 
The anger of the King, nor guilty of 
(If any be) the trefpafle of the Queene. 75 

Gao, I do beleeue it. 

PauL Do not you feare : vpon mine honor, I 
Will ftand betwixt you, and danger. Exeunt 78 

62. from' q Ff, Rowe + , Cap. Dyce, Mai. Stecv. Var. Coll. Dyce, Huds. 
Wh. Sta. Cam. Huds. Rife, from it 76-78. / do ...dan^^r"] Lines end: 
Var. *73 et cet. upon,.,danger Cap. Mai. Steev. Var. 

63. /^V] let 7 Ff, Rowe + , Cap. Dyce, Sing. Ktly. 

Wh. Sta. Cam. Huds. Rife, let it S^, ^^. betTuixf] 'tivixt Pope + , Var. 

*73 et cet. Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. Sing. Ktly, 

71. This] The Rowe+, Var. Rann, Dyce ii, iii. 

62. wit] Generally, in Shakespeare, this means intellectual power ^ which, to suit 
the passage, can be here modified into keenness^ tact, address. — £d. 

63. le't] Note the tjrpographical care with which the absorption of the / of * let * is 
indicated. See II, i, 18. 

66. please . . . neerer] The only explanation which I can find for this sentence 
is that Paulina is not actually inside the Prison, but stands without at the Gate or 
Entrance, and Emilia asks her to enter or to come further within it. If this be so 
the Scene should not be laid, as it is in many Editions since the days of Pope, in 
* A Prison.' It would be better, I think, to place it * At the Gate of a Prison ;* the 
Gaoler says, < I shall bring Emelia forth^ which does not sound as if they were all 
within the Prison. Moreover, Paulina's very first words, * The keeper of the prison, 
call to him, betoken that she is outside the prison and is summoning him to the 
entrance. Capell, followed, substantially, by many editors also, places the Scene in 
an * Outer-room of a Prison * which would, perhaps, explain the Gaoler's words, but 
hardly account for Paulina's and Emilia's. — Ed. 

68. to passe it] Abbott, § 356 : That is, I know not what penalty I shall incur as 
the consequence of or for, letting it pass. [See II, i, 122.] 

73, 74. partie to . . . guilty of] For other examples of accented monosyllables, 
see Abbott, § 457. 

77* 78. Walker {Crit. iii, 100) expresses his approval of the present metrical 



ACT II. sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 97 



Sccena Tertta. 



Enter LeonieSy SeruantSy Paulina^ AntigonuSj 

and Lords. 

Leo. Nor night, nor day, no reft : It is but weakneffe 
To beare the matter thus : meere weakneffe, if 5 

The caufe were not in being : part o'th caufe, 
She, th'Adultreffe : for the harlot-King 
Is quite beyond mine Arme, out of the blanke 8 

1. Scaena...] Scena... F^. Scene iv. 5. meere\ mear F^, Rowe i. 
Pope+. weakneffe ^ if '\ weakness. ^ Coll. 

The Palace. Pope. Dyce, Sta. Cam. Huds. Wh. ii. 

2. Enter...] Enter Leon. Ant., Lords 6. being :'\ beings Coll. Dyce, Sta. 
and other Attendants. Rowe. Ant. and Cam. Ktly, Huds. Wh. ii (subs.). 
Lords, waiting, and other Attend. En- 7. harlot-King'\ harlot king Cap. et 
ter Leon. Cap. seq. 

division of these lines, in preference to that adopted by Capell, and then goes on to 
say : * I notice this passage, because it gives me occasion to remark, that Shakespeare 
very frequently concludes his scenes with a seven-syllable line ; so that any objection 
to such an arrangement of the lines in such a situation, as being out of place, is 
unfounded. See the present play, Lear^ Macbeth^ and Othello. Note, too, the con- 
clusion of The Two Noble Kinsmen^ as bearing upon the question how far the Fifth 
Act of that play belongs to Shakespeare. 

7. harlot-King] Skeat (Diet.): 'Harlot* was originally used of either sex 
indifferently ; in fact, more commonly of men in Middle English. It has not, either, 
a very bad sense, and means little more than * fellow.' * He was a gentil harlot and 
a kind.* — Chaucer, C. T. 649. Of disputed origin, but presumably Teutonic, viz. 
from the Old High German, karly a man. This is a well-known word, appearing 
also as Icelandic iarl^ a man, fellow, Anglo-Saxon eeorl, a man, and in the modem 
English, churl. The sufHx is the usual French diminutive sufHx -ot^ as in bill-ot from 
bille ; it also appears in the English personal name Charlotte^ which is probably the 
very same word. We actually find the whole word carlot in As You Like It^ HI, v, 
108. [Unfortunately, this note is not given in As You Like It^ in this edition. It 
never occurred to me to look for * carlot * under harlot. — Ed.] 

8. Arme] Johnson : Beyond the aim of any attempt that I can make against 
him, * Blank * and * level * are terms of archery. — Douce : * Blank * and * level * 
mean mark and aim ; but they are terms of gunnery, not archery. [It is hazardous 
to make a positive assertion with regard to Shakespeare's language. Compare * a well- 
experienced archer hits the mark His eye doth level a.V — Pericles, I, i, 164.] — Field 
(Sh. Soc. Papers f iii, 136) : * Arm * is here a misprint for aim. We have * arm * also 
for aim in Tro. and Cres. V, vii, 6, and in Ham. IV, vii, 24. R. G. White (ed. i) : 
Although an object may be out of point-blank shot, nothing can be said to be beyond 

7 



98 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii. sc. iii. 

And leuell of my braine : plot-proofe : but fhee, 

I can hooke to me : fay that fhe were gone, lo 

Giuen to the fire, a moity of my reft 

Might come to me againe. Whofe there ? 

Ser, My Lord. 

Leo^ How do's the boy ? 

Ser. He tooke good reft to night : 'tis hop'd 15 

His fickneffe is difcharg'd. 

Leo. To fee his Nobleneffe, 
Conceyuing the difhonour of his Mother. 
He ftraight declined, droopM, tooke it deeply, 
FaftenM, and fix'd the fhame on't in himfelfe : 20 

Threw-off his Spirit, his Appetite, his Sleepe, 

12. Whofe\ F,. Who's F^F^. 17. To fee] Qosing line 16, Steev. 
[Enter an Alt. Rowe. Var. 

13. Ser.] Atten. Rowe. I. A. Cap. Nobleneffe^ nobleness! Rowe et 
LordJ] Lord, Enrer. F^. Lord, seq. 

Enter. F^F^. lord? [advancing] Cap. 18. Mother.] Mother, Ff etseq. 

15,16. refl,.,IIis'] Lines divided: — 19. declined'] declined and Hzn. de- 
rest To-nightf *tis hop'd his Han. rest clin'd uponU Cap. 
to-night; and it is hofd His Cap. rest deeply] most deeply Han. deeply 
to-night; ^Tis hofd, his Steev. et seq. and Ktly. 
(subs.). 21. Threw off] F,. Threw off Y^^, 

aim. We can aim at the moon. Those who, for the sake of the integrity of the meta- 
phor, would read < beyond mine aim, should also read ^ shot proof for ' plot proof.* 

9. but shee] See Dorastus and Fawnia. 

17, etc. Walker (Vers. p. 23) : I suspect we should write and arrange, — * — ^to 
see I His nobleness ! Conceiving the dishonour | Of 's mother, he straight declin'd,' 
etc. Possibly, however, as in many other passages of this play, something is lost. 

18-22. Conceyuing . . . languish'd] Bucknill (p. 128) : Leontes' descrip- 
tion of the sickness of the young prince, occasioned by grief at the shame of his 
mother, gives exactly the symptoms to be expected in such a case of nervous dis- 
turbance in a child, arising from grief and shame. [Leontes is trying to justify to 
himself his own brutality by attributing to Mamillius emotions far beyond his tender 
years. It is not to be supposed that so young a child, however precocious intel- 
lectually, would know anything of the real disgrace imputed to his mother ; all that 
he saw and appreciated were the terrifying looks and brutal violence of his father 
and his mother's grief; added to this, came the separation from his mother, and his 
little heart broke. — Ed.] 

19. deeply] Dyce (ed. iii) : As this word can hardly be considered as a trisyl- 
lable here (see Walker's Vers. p. 23), the line would seem to be imperfect [But 
Dyce did not fathom the resources of Prosody. Abbott (§ 484) thus scans : * He 
straight I declln | ed, drb \ ofd^ tobk | it deeply;' presumably to give an effect of 
gradual wilting.] 



ACT n, sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 99 

And down-right languifliM. Leaue me folely : goe, 22 

See how he fares : Fie, fie, no thought of him. 

The very thought of my Reuenges that way 

Recoyle vpon me : in himfelfe too mightie, 25 

And in his parties, his Alliance ; Let him be, 

Vntill a time may feme. For prefent vengeance 

Take it on her : Camillo^ and Polixenes 

Laugh at me : make their paftime at my forrow: 

They (hould not laugh, if I could reach them, nor 30 

Shall (he, within my powre. 

Enter Paulina. 

Lord. You muft not enter. 

Paul. Nay rather (good my Lords) be fecond to me : 
Feare you his tyrannous pafsion more (alas) 35 

21, fares :'\fare5y Rowe. fares, [Exit 26, 27. him he^ VntiU^ Han. divides 
Att.] Theob. et seq. and reads : him Be *tiU. 

25. Recoyle'] Recoyl F^F^. Recoih 27. feme,'] ferve^ Ff, Rowe. 
Han. Ktly. 31. Scene v. Pope+. 

26. And] Om. Cap. Rann. 32. Enter...] Enter... with a Child. 
Alliance] alliances O^. conj. Rowe. 

Rann. 33. Lord.] i. Lord. Mai. 

22. solely] M. Mason : That is, leave me alone. 

23. him] Collier : That is, of Polixenes, to whom the thonghts of Leontes nat- 
urally revert without naming him. Coleridge called this, in his lectures, we think, in 
181 2, an admirable instance of propriety in soliloquy, where the mind leaps from one 
object to another, however distant, without any apparent interval ; the operation here 
being perfectly intelligible without mentioning Polixenes. The king is talking to 
himself, while his lords and attendants stand at a distance. 

24, 25. thought of my Reuenges . . . Recoyle] For other examples of a lack 
of agreement between the verb and its nominative arising from proximity, see Ab- 
bott, $412. 

26. And in his parties, his Alliance ; Let him be,] Through an oversight of 
the compositor of F, this line was dropped from the text ; the other Folios followed 
and did the same ; and so likewise Rowe, who printed from F^. Pope restored it. 

26. Alliance] See Daretstus and Faumia, — Capkll (p. 168) was convinced that 
'alliance' is a plural, wherein he was right, and that it should be alliances^ wherein 
he was wrong ; and in order so to read it in his text he omitted < And ' at the begin- 
ning of the line. < Alliance ' is one of that class of words in Shakespeare where the 
sibilant termination of the singular does duty for the plural and even for the genitive ; 
e,g, Portia says, *■ Are there balance here to weigh the flesh ' ; and the Nurse sa3rs to 
Juliet, < He is hid at Laurence cell.' — Ed. 

27. seme] This absolute use, in connection with time, is a conmion phrase, equiv- 
alent to until the chance come. 



lOO THE WINTERS TALE [act ii. sc. iii. 

Then the Queenes life ? A gracious innocent foule, 36 

More free, then he is iealous. 

Antig. That's enough. 

Ser, Madam ; he hath not flept to night, commanded 
None (hould come at him. 40 

Pan. Not fo hot (good Sir) 
I come to bring him fleepe. 'Tis fuch as you 
That creepe like (hadowes by him, and do fighe 
At each his needlefle heauings : fuch as you 
Nourifh the caufe of his awaking. I 45 

Do come with words, as medicinall, as true ; 
(Honeft, as either;^ to purge him of that humor, 
That preffes him from fleepe. 

Leo, Who noyfe there, hoe ? 

Pan. No noyfe (my Lord) but needfull conference, 50 

About fome Gofsips for your Highneffe. 

Leo. How ? 52 

36, 37. Thm„Jhen\ Then*, .than F^. 40. at Aim] mar Aim Rowe. 

38. That^s enough'] As an Aside, 46. medicinall] medicinal Cap. Var. 
Cap. Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. Dyce, Sta. Huds. 

39. Ser.] Atten. [within] Theob. 2. 49. IVho] What Ff. 

A. Cap. 50. [Coming forward. Coll. ii. 

Madam;] Madam F^. 

37. free] This is something more than merely < innocent/ which Paulina has just 
termed the queen. It must mean * more free from that particular taint which is the 
ground of her husband^s jealousy.' — Ed. 

43. creepe] Bucknill (p. 129) quotes Miss Nightingale as saying (Notes on 
Nursings p. 26) that slight noises which excite attention are far more destructive to 
the repose of a patient than much loader noises which are decided and undisguised ; 
* walking on tip-toe, doing anything in the room very slowly, are injurious for exactly 
the same reasons.* * These remarks,* adds Bucknill, * which would appear as novel 
as they are excellent, have, however, been anticipated by Shakespeare [in this pres- 
ent passage], which shows that he was keenly alive to the disturbance which these 
muffled sounds occasion to a restless patient.* 

46. medicinall] I cannot believe that Shakespeare ever intended that this word 
should be pronounced either mid^cinhl or medicinal. It is quite possible to read this 
line without a jar, and yet throw the accent on the second syllable of * medicinal,* 
care being taken to show that * as medicinal * is a parenthesis by a slight pause before 
and after it. — Ed. 

47. Honest] Paulina here refers to herself. She is as honest in intention as 
either healing or truth. — Ed. 

51. Gossips] That is, sponsors whom your Highness will need for your child at 
an approaching baptism. 



ACT II, sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE lOI 

Away with that audacious Lady. AntigonuSy 53 

I charged thee that (he (hould not come about me, 

I knew (he would. 55 

Ant. I told her fo (my Lord) 
On your difpleafures perill, and on mine, 
She (hould not vifit you. 

Leo. What? canft not rule her ? 

Paul. From all di(hone(Ke he can : in this 60 

(Vnleffe he take the courfe that you haue done) 
Commit me, for committing honor, truft it, 
He (hall not rule me: 

Ant. La-you now, you heare. 
When (he will take the raine, I let her run, 65 

But (hee'l not ftumble. 

53. Antigonus,] Antigonus. F^F^. Pope+, Var. '73. Za'^w Cap. Loyou 

61, 62. {Vnleffe,, .honor] In parenthe- Var. '78, Rann, Stcev. Var. Knt, Huds. 
sis. Pope et seq. (subs.). Lo^ you Coll. La' you Var. '85 et cct 

62. tnifl if] trust me Han. 65. raine] rain F^F^. rein Rowe. 
64. La-you] Ff, Rowe. Lo-you 

62. Commit] Deighton : Of course *■ commit ' and ' committing ' are used in two 
different senses, and in the latter case the sarcasm consists in applying to the word 
' honour ' a term which is properly applied to what is dishonourable, sinful, criminal. 
[The Text. Notes show that Pope, followed by all editors, properly enlarged the 
ptarenthesis so as to include *■ Commit me, for committing honor.' Of course ' Com- 
mit ' means, as it still means, imprison. — Ed.] 

64. La-you] Earle (§ 197) : < La ' is that interjection which in modem English 
is spelt to. It was used in Saxon times, both as an emotional cry, and also as a sign 
of the respectful vocative. ... In modem times it has taken the form of lo in liter- 
ature, and it has been supposed to have something to do with the verb to look. In 
this sense it has been used in the New Testament to render the Greek idovi that is, 
< Behold !' But the interjection la was quite independent of another Saxon exclama- 
tion, viz. loc^ which may with more probability be associated with locian^ to look. 
The fact seems to be that the modem lo represents both the Saxon interjections la 
and locy and that this is one among many instances where two Saxon words have 
been merged into a single one. . . . While lo became the literary form of the word, 
la has still continued to exist more obscurely, at least down to a recent date, even if 
it be not still in use. La may be regarded as a sort of feminine lo. In novels of 
the close of the last century and the beginning of this, we see la occurring for the 
most part as a trivial exclamation by the female characters. [If in New England 
much of the pronunciation of Shakespeare's day has survived (as has been main- 
tained), this should be pronounced Law. It is still in every day use, with also a 
plural form. Laws. — Ed.] 

66. stumble] Stearns (p. 146) : It is said that even a stumbling horse will not 
stumble when going at full speed. 



102 THE WINTERS TALE [act li. sc. iiL 

Paul, Good my Liege, I come : 67 

And I befeech you heare me, who profeffes 
My felfe your loyall Seruant, your Phyfitian, 
Your mod obedient Counfailor : yet that dares 70 

Leffe appeare fo, in comforting your Euilles, 
Then fuch as mod feeme yours. I fay, I come 
From your good Queene. 

Leo. Good Queene ? 

Paul. Good Queene (my Lord)good Queene, 75 

I fay good Queene, 

And would by combate, make her good fo, were I 
A man, the worft about you. 78 

67. come:'\ come — Rowe. rate line, Pope+, Cam. Wh. ii. 

68. profejfes] profess Rowe ii + , Cap. 75, 76. One line, Cap. et scq. (except 
Var. Rann, Steev. Var. '03, '13, Dyce ii, Cam. Wh. ii). 

iii, GIo. Wb. ii, Huds. 77. make her] make it Heath. 

70. dares'] dare Steev. Var. Dyce ii, make.„were] make ii good too, 
iii, Glo. Wh. ii, Huds. were Daniel. 

12, feeme] seems Pope ii, Theob. good fo^ tvere] good, were Viont, 

Warb. Johns. Var. *73- g(fody so were Theob. et seq. 

75. Good Queene (my Lord)] Sepa- 78. matit the] man — the Wh. 

68. professes] The Cowden-Cij^rkes : The verb being thus put in the third 
person gives the excellent effect of Paulina's speaking of another, while she thus 
confidently speaks of herself and her own fidelity. [The difficulty in accepting the 
text of the Folio is that *■ professes * is not followed by himself y but by ' m3rself.' — £d.] 

71. comforting] M. Mason (p. 127): This is here used in the legal sense of 
comforting and abetting in a criminal action. 

71. comforting your Euilles] Capell (p. 168) : That is, encouraging you by a 
▼icious compliance to persist in those evils ; in this, sa3r8 the speaker, I have less 
power to shew my obedience than have some about you whom you take for your 
greatest friends ; the words detain'd the editor something, and (he supposed) would 
do others, which occasioned this comment. 

78. the worst] Warburton : Paulina supposes the king's jealousy to be raised 
and inflamed by the courtiers about him. Surely then, she could not say, that were 
she a man, the worst of these, she would vindicate her mistress's honour against the 
king's suspicions, in single combat. Shakespeare, I am persuaded, wrote < A man, 
on tV worst about you,' i. e. were I a man, I would vindicate her honour, on the 
worst of these sycophants that are about you. [Whereupon Edwards (p. 58) re- 
marks :] But surely this emendation is for want of understanding English. If the 
text had been, < a man the best about you,' there would have been a necessity for some 
alteration; but * the worst* man here, does not signify the wickedest; but the Tveak- 
esty or least-warlike ; so a better man, the best man, in company frequently refers to 
courage and skill in fighting; not to moral goodness. [The Cam. Ed. notes that 
Warburton's reading was adopted by Hanmer ; Hanmer's text does not so read in 
my copies of either his First or of his Second Edition. — Ed.] 



ACT II, sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 103 

Leo. Force her hence. 

Pau. Let him that makes but trifles of his eyes 80 

Firft hand me : on mine owne accord, He off, 
But firft, He do my errand. The good Queene 
(For (he is good)hath brought you forth a daughter, 
Heere *tis *. Commends it to your blefsing. 

Leo. Out : 85 

A mankinde Witch ? Hence with her, out oMore : 
A moft intelligencing bawd. 

Paul. Not fo : 
I am as ignorant in that, as you. 

In fo entit^ling me : and no leffe honeft 90 

Then you are mad : which is enough. He warrant 
(As this world goes) to paffe for honeft: 

Leo. Traitors ; 
Will you not pufti her out ? Giue her the Baftard, 
Thou dotard, thou art woman-tyr^d : vnroofted 95 

By thy dame Partlet heere. Take vp the Baftard, 

%2. firft,'\ firft : Ff. 95. dotard^ dotard, [To Ant] Mai. 

S4. [Laying down the child. Rowe thou art'\ that art Cap. 

et acq. thou art woman-tyr d'\ thotiy art 

86. Witch /] Witch ! Rowe. woman-tyr^df Tyrwhitt, MS ap. Cam. 

93. Traitors ;'\ Traitors! Rowe. ty^<i'\ tir'dT^. 

94. [To Ant. Rowe. 96. thy dame] thi dame Rowe ii. 
Baftard^ bastard, Rowe. 

86. mankinde] Theobald : That is, one as bold and masculine, as if she were 
a man. So in Jonson's Silent Woman [V, i] when Morose is teased by his new 
wife's she-friends, he cries out in desperation, * O mankind generation.' And so 
BeaiL and Fl. in their Monsieur Thomas [IV, vi] : * 'Twas a sound knock she gave 
me ; The mankind giri.' — ^Johnson : A mankind woman is yet used in the midland 
counties, for a woman violent, ferocious, and mischievous. It has the same sense in 
this passage. Witches are supposed to be mankind, to put off the softness and deli- 
cacy of women ; therefore Sir Hugh, in The Merry Wives, says of a woman sus- 
pected to be a witch, * that he does not like when a woman has a beard.' — Dycb 
( Gloss,) : That is, masculine, violent, termagant. The epithet was applied even to 
beasts, in the sense of < ferocious,* etc. ; * Manticore. A rauenous and mankind 
Indian A«m/.'-— Cotgrave ; * Tho€. A kind of strong . . . Wolfe . , ,a great friend vnto 
men, whom he . . .fights for, against other mankind wild beasts,* — Id. 

87. intelligencing] That is, one who acts as an intermediary; referring to 
Polixenes and Hermione, as we see by Paulina's retort. 

95. woman-tyr'd] Steevens : That is, peck'd by a woman : hen-^cked. The 
phrase is taken from falconry [* frequently applied to other birds of prey, as well as to 
hawks ;' * meaning to pull, to tear, to seize eagerly.' — Dyce, Gloss, s. v. tire"], 

96. Partlet] Steevens : This is the name of the hen in the old story of Reynard 



I04 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii. sc. iii. 

Take^t vp, I fay : giue^t to thy Croane. 97 

Paul. For euer 
Vnvenerable be thy hands, if thou 

Tak^ft vp the Princeffe, by that forced bafeneiTe 100 

Which he ha's put vpon't. 

Leo. He dreads his Wife. 

Paul. So I would you did : then 'twere part all doubt 
YouPd call your children, yours. 

L^o. A neft of Traitors. 105 

Ant. I am none, by this good light. 

Pau. Nor I : nor any 
But one that's heere : and that's himfelfe : for he, 
The facred Honor of himfelfe, his Queenes, 
His hopefull Sonnes,his Babes, betrayes to Slander, no 

Whofe fting is (harper then the Swords ; and will not 

97. thy Croafu\ the Croane Yi^ Rowe. loo. forced'^ faised Coll. conj. 

99. be thy\ by the F^. no. his Babes] this babe's Cap. 

the Fox, — Halliwell : Partlet is the name of one of the cock's favourite hens in 
Chaucer's Nonne Prestis Tale. [* — the fairest hiewed on hir throte Was cleped fayre 
damjrsel Pertilote.* — 50, ed. Morris.] 

97. Croane] Steevens : < A < crone ' is an old toothless sheep ; thence an old 
woman. 

99. hands] See I, ii, 34, where Walker's note is given in regard to ' the s inter- 
polated at the end of a word.' The present is one of the examples which he gives 
(p. 252) of this s. He would read hand^ *for* he says, *«*upon't" does not relate 
to princess^ but to hand.' Wherein I cannot but think that he is wrong. Apart from 
the objection, somewhat trivial to be sure, that no one would attempt, with only one 
hand, to pick up a small baby, it was not the mere act of taking up the Princess 
which would render his hands for ever unvenerable, but to take it up as a bastard. 
See the next note. — Ed. 

100. forced basenesse] Johnson: Leontes had ordered Antigonus to take up 
the bastard. Paulina forbids him to touch the Princess under that appellation. 
* Forced ' is fabey uttered with violence to the truth. — M alone : A base son was a 
common term in our author's time. So in King Lear : * Why brand they us With 
base ? with baseness ? bastardy ?' [Qu. was not the pronunciation base-tardy f — Ed.] 

106. by this good light] Is it too fanciful to suppose that this unusual oath was 
suggested, though the subtle law of association, by the passionate exclamation of 
Leontes : * A nest of traitors ' ? Is there not somewhat of concealment in the idea 
of a nest which prompts Antigonus to swear by the light of day which shines every- 
where and reveals all things ? or is it that Shakespeare merely wishes us to be made 
conscious of the bright light of heaven shining down on this dark and tragic scene ? 
—Ed. 

III. Swords] Douce: Compare Cym, III, iv, 35: * — slander. Whose edge is 
sharper than the sword.' 



ACT II, sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 105 

(For as the cafe now (lands, it is a Curfe 112 

He cannot be compellM too't) once remoue 

The Root of his Opinion, which is rotten, 

As euer Oake, or Stone was found. 115 

Leo. A Callat 
Of bouqdleffe tongue, who late hath beat her Husband, 
And now bayts me : This Brat is none of mine. 
It is the Iffue of Polixenes. 

Hence with it, and together with the Dam, 120 

Commit them to the fire. 

Paul. It is yours : 
And might we lay th'old Prouerb to your charge. 
So Uke you, ^tis the worfe. Behold (my Lords) 
Although the Print be Httle, the whole Matter 125 

And Coppy of the Father: (Eye, Nofe, Lippe, 

115. /<mnd'\ found Ff, Rowe i. 121. th€ni\ it Cap. conj. 

113. compeU'd too't] That is, on account of his supreme, autocratic posi- 
tion. 

114, 115. is rotten. As] For other examples of the omission of the first or, see 
Abbott, § 276. In this present phrase, however, it is not impossible to suppose that 
the first as is absorbed in * is.' — Ed. 

116. Callat] Murray {N. E, D.)-. Many have suggested its identity with Fr. 
caiiUtte^^iooXtf ninnie, noddie, naturall' (Cotgrave), dim. of caille^ quail (esteemed a 
silly bird) ; but this does not quite answer phonetically, does not quite suit the sense, 
and was in French applied to men as readily as to women. Others have thought of 
Fr. calotte, a kind of small bonnet or cap covering only the top of the head, but no evi- 
dence appears connecting this especially with a ' callet.' The Gael, and Ir. caille, 
girl, has been also suggested. It is not certain which is the earlier sense ; perhaps 
'scold,* as in the verb, and *callety,* u e. dialecticy scolding, * ill-tongued.* — Dyce 
( Gloss. ) : A trull, a drab, a jade. (* GoguenelU : A fained titUy or tearme, for a wench ; 
like our Gixie, Collet, Afinx, etc.* — Cotgrave.) 

117. 118. beat . . . bayts] These two words were pronounced alike. < A quibble,' 
says Dr Johnson, in his Preface, * was to Shakespeare the fatal Cleopatra for which 
he lost the world and was content to lose it.' — Ed. 

118. Brat] Murray (M E. D.)i Of uncertain origin; Wedgwood, E. MQller, 
and Skeat think it the same word as Brat, cloth used as an over-garment, but evi- 
dence of the transition of sense has not been found. In 1 6th and 17th centuries 
sometimes used without contempt, though nearly always implying insignificance ; the 
phrase beggaif^s brat has been common from the first. 

123. old Prouerb] Staunton : Overbury quotes this * old proverb' in his charac- 
ter of 'A Sargeant ' : — * The deuill cals him his white Sonne ; he is so like him, that 
hee is the worst for it, and hee lokes [takes — ed. 1627, Ed.] after his father.' — 
Works, ed. 1616. 



I06 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii, sc. iii. 

The trick oPs Frowne, his Fore-head, nay, the Valley, 127 

The pretty dimples of his Chin, and Cheeke; his Smiles: 

The very Mold, and frame of Hand, Nayle, Finger.) 

And thou good Goddeffe iVb/lKr^, which haft made it 130 

So like to him that got it, if thou haft 

The ordering of the Mind too,*mongft all Colours 

No Yellow in't, leaft (he fufpeft, as he do's. 

Her Children, not her Husbands. 134 

127. ofs\ of his Var. Rann, Mai. 128. of his Chin] of *s chim Byct. 
Steev. Var. Knt, Coll. Sing. Ktly. Chin, and] Om. Ritson. 

ValUy] valleys Han. Cap. Rann, his Smiles'] Om. Cap. Rann. 

Ktly, Dyce ii» iii, Huds. Separate line, Glo. Rife, Wb. ii, Dtn. 

128. pretty] Om. Han. 134. Her] Om. Anon. (Gent. Mag. 
dimples of] dimples, of Cap. 17^9) ap* Cam. 

127. trick] That is, lineament. It is properly a term in Heraldry, '/if Trick : An 
expression used to denote a method of taking down arms by sketching them, letters 
or other abbreviations being employed to mark their tinctures, and numerals to 
denote the repetition of a chaise.' — Glossary of Terms Used in British Heraldry , 
Oxford, 1847. 

127. the Valley] It is possible that Hanmer is right in changing this to valleys, 
albeit that it may very well refer to some characteristic of a frowning forehead (which 
let us hope Perdita outgrew). — Ed. 

128. his Smiles] For the adroit disposition of these two words, so as to avoid the 
bugbear of a twelve-syllabled line, see Textual Notes. 

130. which] For other examples of ' which ' for who or that, see Abbott, § 265. 

133. Yellow] Johnson : The colour of jealousy. — Hunter (i, 418) : * That there 
is a national! as well as a personal respect cannot be denyd, and colours rather than 
other are vulgarly appropriated to special uses, as symbolical to them, so far forth as 
a kind of superstition is growne uppon the avoyding, for you shal seldome see a 
bridgegroom wed in yellow, or a forsaken lover walk in blew. To mourn in black is 
as nationall a custome as for the grave and civill to go therein. Who sees not what 
a religion there is, as it were, in the use of colours ? At a Saint George^s feast, a tilt 
or triumph, no man will usurp his majesties known co\o\m\ yellow and red* — Bolton's 
Elements of Armouries, 1610, p. 1 31. 

134. not her Husbands] Malone: In the ardour of composition Shakespeare 
seems to have forgotten the difference of sexes. No suspicion that the babe in ques- 
tion might entertain of her future husband's fidelity could affect the legitimacy of her 
offspring. However painful female jealousy may be to her who feels it, Paulina, 
therefore, certainly attributes to it, in the present instance, a pang that it can never 
give. — Steevens : I regard this circumstance as a beauty rather than a defect. The 
seeming absurdity in the last clause of Paulina's ardent address to Nature was 
undoubtedly designed, being an extravagance characteristically preferable to languid 
correctness, and chastised declamation. — The Cowden-Clarkes : In Paulina the 
poet has given us a perfect picture of one of those ardent friends whose warmth of 
temper and want of judgement injure the cause they strive to benefit. Paulina, by 



ACT II, sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 107 

Leo. A groffe Hagge : 135 

And Lozell^ thou art worthy to be hang'd, 
That wilt not ftay her Tongue. 

Antig. Hang all the Husbands 
That cannot doe that Feat,youMe leaue your felfe 
Hardly one SubiefL 140 

Leo. Once more take her hence. 

Paul, A moft vnworthy,and vnnaturall Lord 
Can doe no more. 

Leo. He ha* thee burnt. 

Paul. I care not : 145 

It is an Heretique that makes the fire^ 
Not fhe which bumes in^t He not call you Tyrant : 147 

135. /fa^^e:"] Hag! Rowe. 144. hc^ thei^ have thee Var. RaoD, 

137. That wiU'\ Thou wilt Rowe ii, Mai. Steev. Var. Knt, Sta. 

Pope. 146. an Heretique] F,. a heretic 

141. once more] once more^ Theob. Sing. Ktly. an Heretick or heretic F^F^ 

et cet. 

her persevering iterance of the word *■ good ' excites Leontes' opposition, and lashes 
him into fiiry ; and now, when she has made a moving appeal in her reference to the 
infant's inheritance of its father's look, smile, and featiues, she cannot refrain fifom 
merging into reproach, ending in actual extravagance. 

136. Losell] Reed : < A Losel is one that hath lost, neglected, or cast off his 
owne good and welfare, and so is become lewde and carelesse of credit and honesty.* 
Verstegan's Restitution^ 1605, p. 335. — H ALU well: < Lozel ' is a variation of lorel^ 
a term for a bad worthless fellow derived from the Anglo-Norman. ' Lorel, or lozel, or 
lurdene, lurco^ — Prompt, Parv. Cocke Lorel is called Cocke Losel in the rare tract 
called Doctour DoubbU Ale. * Afasche/ouyn, a chulfe, boore, lobcocke, lozell, one 
that's fitter to feed with cattell, then to converse with men.' — Cotgrave. 

138. Hang . . . subject] W. Aldis Wright {Cam. Ed.) records an Anony- 
mous Conjecture to the effect that this speech of Antigonus is spoken aside. The 
plausibility of this conjecture is no whit diminished in the eyes of the present Editor 
by the fact that it occurred to him independently ; what adds to its likelihood is that 
Leontes, by reiterating his previous command, conveys the impression that he has not 
heard Antigonus speak. — Ed. 

144. ha' thee] The change to * have thee ' cannot be justified. — Ed. 

146, 147. It is an Heretique . . . bumes in't] Hudson (p. 26) : If Paulina's 
fiuilts were a thousand times greater than they are, I could pardon them all for this 
one little speech ; which proves that Shakespeare was, I will not say a Protestant, 
bat a true Christian, intellectually at least, and far deeper in the spirit of his religion 
than a large majority of the Church's official organs were in his day, or, let me add, 
have been any day since. And this was written, be it observed, at a time when the 
embers of the old ecclesiastical fires were not yet wholly extinct, and when many a 
priestly bigot was deploring the lay ascendency which kept them from being re- 
kindled. 



I08 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii, sc. iii. 

But this mod cruell vfage of your Queene 148 

(Not able to produce more accufation 

Then your owne weake-hindg'd Fancy) fomthing fauors 150 

Of Tyrannie, and will ignoble make you , 

Yea, fcandalous to the World. 

Leo. On your Allegeance, 
Out of the Chamber with her. Were I a Tyrant, 
Where were her life ? (he durft not call me fo, 155 

If fhe did know me one. Away with her. 

Paul. I pray you doe not pufh me, He be gone. 
Looke to your Babe(my Lord)*tis yowrsxloue fend her 
A better guiding Spirit. What needs thefe hands? 
You that are thus fo tender o're his Follyes, 160 

Will neuer doe him good, not one of you. « 

So, fo : Farewell, we are gone. Exit. 

Leo. Thou(Traytor)haft fet on thy Wife to this. 
My Child? away with't? euen thou, that haft 
A heart fo tender o're it, take it hence, 165 

And fee it inftantly confum'd with fire. 
Euen thou, and none but thou. Take it vp ftraight: 
Within this houre bring me word *tis done, 
(And by good teftimonie) or He feize thy life, 169 

150. y<7»iM/«f] somrtimfs Kovre. i6o. o're'] <?' Anon. 

152. to (Ae] /tf a// ///^ Pope, Han. 162. Scene vi. Pope, Han. Warb. 

155. dur^"] doft F^. Johns. 

158. loue] C7^Anon. ap. Cam. 164. with'tf] with't. Rowe. wiihU ! 
ker^ him Heath. Cap. 

159. better guiding] better-guiding thoUy'\ thou^ thou Theob. Warb. 
Walker. Johns. 

needs'\ Dyce i, Sta. Cam. Wh. ii. 168. Vm] it is Pope, Theob. "Warb. 

neede F,. need F F et cet. Johns. Var. '73. 



150. hindg'd] This cannot refer to the metal double joints to which we are 
accustomed on modern doors, but rather to the hoohs or staples on which doors were 
anciently hung, and of which we have possibly a survival in the * hook-and-eye * 
hinges on which gates swing. Cotgrave gives * Gonds d^vne porte. The hookes, or 
hindges of a doore.* Skeat {Diet.) : * So called, because the door hangs upon it; 
from M. E. hengen^ to hang.' — Ed. 

160, 165. tender o*re] Except in these two places, Shakespeare nowhere uses the 
phrase tender over. There is, * So tender of rebukes* in Cym, III, v, 40. If this 
play were dictated to the compositors, in the printing office, whereof we have indica- 
tions elsewhere, it is not impossible that * tender o ' was misheard * tender o're.' — Ed. 

169. seize] The legal term. 



ACT n, sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 109 

With what thou elfe calPft thine : if thou refufe, 170 

And wilt encounter with my Wrath, fay fo ; 
The Baftard-braynes with thefe my proper hands 
Shall I dafh out Goe, take it to the fire, 
For thou fett'ft on thy Wife. 

Antig. I did not, Sir : 1 75 

Thefe Lords, my Noble Fellowes,if they pleafe, 
Can cleare me in't. 

Lards. We can : my Royall Liege, 
He is not guiltie of her comming hither. 

Leo. You're lyers all. 180 

Lord. Befeech your Highneffe, giue vs better credit: 
We haue alwayes truly feru'd you, and befeech' 182 

170. what thou elfe calVJiyiH that^s 181. Lord.] Lords. Rowc. I L. Cap. 
Han. (reading And,,, seize ^ as one line). 182. We haue'\ We've Pope + , Dyce 

\*J2, Baflard - brayne5\ bastard's ii, iii. 
brains Heath, Walker, Huds. Wh. u. befeech''^ White, beseech you 

174. /^//>?] sett'd'stUzxi, Rowe + , Var. '73, Coll. ii (MS), Ktly, 

176. Thefe"] The Pope, Han. Dyce ii, iii. Cam. Huds. Dtn. befeech 

180. You're"] You are Var. Rann, Ff et cet. 
Mai. Stecv. Var. Knt, Wh. i. 

171. wilt] For other examples of the future for the subjunctive, see Abbott, 

5348. 

172. Bastard-braynes] Dyce (ed. iii) : I am strongly inclined to think, with 
Mr W. N Lettsom [anticipated by Heath, p. 210 — Ed.], that the true reading is 
< bastard's brains ;' for it is unquestionable that, occasionally throughout the Folio, a 
hyphen has usurped the place of the final s ; see Walker, Crit, i, 261. 

175. I did not. Sir] I can recall no other play of Shakespeare^s wherein the 
courtiers address their sovereign in such downright speech as in this. — Ed. 

178, 179. Lords. V\^e • • . hither] It must be confessed that there is some- 
thing slightly unnatural in this harmonious chorus of * Lords.' RoWE changed 
' Lords ' to Lord^ and Capell specified / Lord. An Anonymous conjecture, recorded 
in the Cam. Ed. is certainly plausible. It suggests that, with one voice the Lords all 
say < We can,' which is not too great a tax either on their unanimity or on our cre- 
dulity. Then the * First Lord ' assumes the office of s|x>kesman and completes the 
sentence. — Ed. 

181. Lord.] The Cowden-Clarkes : It is worthy of observation that the cha- 
racter of this speaker is delineated with so much moral beauty throughout (from that 
speech of chivalrous loyalty to his queen, and courageous loyalty to his king : * For 
her, my Lord, I dare my life lay down,* etc., II, i ; down to the present earnest re- 
monstrance), that in the play of any other dramatist it would have assumed name 
and shape as a personage of importance ; whereas, in Shakespeare's wealth of re- 
source, and care in finishing even the most subordinate parts among his dramatis 
personee^ it merely figures as * First Lord.' 

182. beseech'] The apostrophe marks an elision of you. If this was sufficiently 



no THE WINTERS TALE [act ii, sc. iii. 

So to efteeme of vs : and on our knees we begge, 183 

(As recompence of our deare feruices 

Paft,and to come) that you doe change this purpofe, 185 

Which being fo horrible, fo bloody, muft 

Lead on to fome foule Iffue. We all kneele. 

Leo. I am a Feather for each Wind that blows : 
Shall I Hue on, to fee this Baftard kneele. 

And call me Father? better bume it now, 190 

Then curfe it then. But be it : let it liue. 
It (hall not neyther. You Sir, come you hither : 
You that haue beene fo tenderly officious 
With Lady Margerie, your Mid-wife there. 

To faue this Baftards life ; for 'tis a Baftard, 195 

So fure as this Beard's gray. What will you aduenture, 

183. So. ..knees] One line, Han. Ab- 187. [they kneel. Johns. 

bott (§ 499). 188, 190. Feather,,. Father] Father... 

of vs: and on] us : on Anon. Feather F^. fa/her,,. /a/her Rowe, 

ap. Cam. 192. [To Ant. Rowe. 

184. feruices] service Han. 194. Midwife] mild wife Cap. conj. 

187. We all] Lords. Wt all Anon. Rann. 

ap. Cam. 196. this] thy Coll. (Egerton MS), 

kneele.] kneel — Rowe + ,Var.*73. Dyce. >^<?Mr Coll. (MS) ap. Cam. 

clear to readers three hundred years ago, it is a rather humiliating confession of infe- 
rior intelligence that we at this late day should require to have the you inserted in 
full. The same elision is indicated in * Please 'your Highnesse ' in line 231, below. 
See n, i, 18.— Ed. 

185. and to come] Deighton : ' Recompense,' strictly speaking, can be only for 
what is past ; the word we use in such a sense in regard to the future is earnest. 

188. I am, etc.] The constant plea of an obstinate, headstrong man on the point 
of yielding. — Ed. 

194. Mid- wife] Capell (p. 169) : It is possible, certainly, that this may be the 
Author's word; and Paulina's bringing the child in be held a bringing \i forth by the 
person to whom 'tis given; but this conceit is so poor, that he ought not be saddl'd 
with it ; especially when means are at hand to clear him of such a blemish by a read- 
ing of such likelihood as is — mild wife ; terms which, taken ironically, agree with all 
the conceptions of her which the speaker entertain'd at this time. 

196. this] Theobald {Nichols y ii, 360) : I suspect we ought to read, ^his beard,' 
i. e. Antigonus's ; the king cannot mean his own. It is plain from I, i, that the prince 
was a very young boy ; and the king says that looking upon the child, be was moved 
to throw off twenty-three years ; so that allowing the child to be eight years old, the 
father could be but thirty-one. How old Antigonus might be, can scarce be deter- 
mined, neither, with certainty. The Shepherd speaks of him as an * old man ' / but 
how he knew him to be old, I cannot tell. — Malone : The king must mean the beard 
of Antigonus, which, perhaps, both here and on the former occasion [II, i, 184], it 



ACT II, SC. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE \ \ \ 

To faue this Brats life ? 197 

Antig. Any thing (my Lordj 
That my abilitie may vndergoe, 

And Nobleneffe impofe : at leaft thus much ; 2CX) 

He pawne the little blood which I haue left, 
To faue the Innocent : any thing poflible. 

Leo. It fhall be poflible : Sweare by this Sword 
Thou wilt performe my bidding. 

Antig. I will (my Lord.) 205 

Leo. Marke^and performe it : feeft thou .^ for the faile 
Of any point in^t, (hall not onely be 
Death to thy felfe, but to thy lewd-tonguM Wife, 
(Whom for this time we pardon^ We enioyne thee, 209 

200. at lea/l'] at laft Ff. 208. lewd-tongu' d'\ loud-tongued 

202. any thing] whafs Han. Anon. ap. Cam. 

was intended he should lay hold of. . . . He cannot mean his own beard. — Collier 
(ed. ii) : The old MS corrector of Lord Ellesmere*s F, altered * this ' to tky^ which, 
probably, was the true reading. Leontes could not, of course, refer to his own beard ; 
and in order to make ' this beard ' intelligible, he must have touched or plucked that 
of Antigonus. — Halliwell : Leontes is rather rough with Antigonus, and he may 
be supposed to seize his beard as he speaks these words. — Dycb (ed. iii) : That there 
is nothing objectionable in < thy beard ' and *■ will you adventure ' being so placed in 
juxtaposition, might be shown by many passages of Shakespeare ; e,g. we find * Mark 
your divorce . . . thou art too base.' — IV, iv, 466. [If personal accentuation of his 
remarks on the part of Leontes were as common as we may be led to infer from 
this and the preceding incident, where Capell suggests that the king pulls Anti- 
gonus's nose, it would go far to explain the familiar outspoken language which ap- 
parently reigns at this Court. — Ed.] 

203. Sword] Halliwell : It was anciently the custom to swear by the cross on 
the handle of a sword, or by the sacred name of Jesus, which was sometimes en- 
graven on the top of the blade or on the pommel of the sword. According to a MS 
of the time of Queen Elizabeth, in the Sloane Collection, the oath taken by a Master 
of Defence, when his degree was conferred upon him, commenced as follows: 
< First, you shall sweare, so help you God and halidome, and by all the Christendome 
which God gave you at the fount-stone, and by the crosse of this sword which doth 
represent onto yon the crosse which our Saviour suffered his most paynful deathe 
upon,' etc. [See notes in this ed. in Ham, I, v, 147.] 

206. the faile] Failure^ which we should, perhaps, now use, Shakespeare never 
used. It is, so sa3r8 Skeat, *■ an ill-coined and late word, used by Burke, On the 
Sublime, pt. iv, § 24. Bradley, however {N. E. D. s. v. Failure) y says : First found 
in 17th c. in form failer, an adopted form of Anglo-French failer, for French failliry 
to fail. . . . Subsequently the ending was variously confused with the sufHxes -or, 
•our, ure, but the original form did not become obsolete until the end of the century.' 
' Fail ' is used again in V, i, 36. 



112 THE WINTERS TALE [act ii, sc. iii. 

As thou art Liege-man to vs, that thou carry 210 

This female Baftard hence, and that thou beare it 

To fome remote and defart place, quite out 

Of our Dominions ; and that there thou leaue it 

(Without more mercy) to it owne proteftion, 

And fauour of the Climate : as by ftrange fortune 215 

It came to vs, I doe in luftice charge thee, 

On thy Soules perill,and thy Bodyes torture, 

That thou commend it ftrangely to fome place. 

Where Chance may nurfe, or end it : take it vp. 

Antig. I fweare to doe this: though a prefent death 220 

Had beene more mercifull. Come on (poore Babe) 
Some powerfull Spirit inftru6l the Kytes and Rauens 
To be thy Nurfes. Wolues and Beares,they fay, 
(Cafting their fauagenefle afide)haue done 
Like offices of Pitty. Sir, be profperous 22$ 

214. more] much Ff, Rowe, Pope. 218. ftrangely to fome] to some strait- 

it oTune] F^, Wh. Sta. Cam. ii, ger Han. 
Rife, Dtn. 219. CAance] change F^F^. 

214. it owne] Rolfe : It is to be noted that the only instance in which its occurs 
in our present Bible (Lev. xxv, 5), the ed. of 161 1 has *it owne;' and in the Ge- 
neva version of 1579 we find *it owne accorde' in Acts xii, 10. So in Sylvester's 
Du Bartas^ 1 605 : * By little and little it owne selfes consumer. [ The Second Day of 
the first Week^ p. lo, ed. 1 632.] ' These and similar instances would seem to show 
that the old possessive it was often retained in this expression after it had gone out of 
general use ; and they justify us in assuming that * it own ' is what Shakespeare prob- 
ably wrote here. Its own (or ifs own), of which we have a solitary instance in I, ii, 
310, above, maybe the printers' variation from the MS; though it is not improbable 
that the poet may have written it so. [See I, ii, 183, 310.] 

215, 218. strange . . . strangely] Walker (Crit. ii, 288) has collected a 
number of instances where * strange ' has the sense of extraneous, foreign. Thus 
here, * " strange " is alien, foreign ; it being, as Leontes maintains, the child of a for- 
eigner.' — ^Johnson, however, paraphrases 'strangely,' in line 218: 'Commit it to 
some place, as a stranger, without more provision.* — Delius sees in the passage a 
reminiscence of Dorastus and Fawnia : * that seeing (as he thought) it came by 
fortune, so he would commit it to the charge of Fortune.* 

222. Rauens] Grey (i, 253) : Alluding to / Kings, xvii, 2, 3, 4. 

225. Sir, be prosperous] Roderick (p. 250) : Antigonus takes his leave with 
two wishes. The first, that the king may enjoy more prosperity than such a deed as 
this of exposing the child could with any right demand, or in reason expect (for this 
must be the meaning of — *be prosperous in more than this deed does require *). The 
second wish is, that the blessing of Heaven may protect the poor child, condemned to 
be exposed, against the intended effects of its father's cruelty. Read as follows : — 



ACT II, sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 113 

In more then this deed do^s require ; and Blefling 226 

Againft this Crueltie, fight on thy fide 

(Poore Thing, condemnM to loffe.) Exit. 

Leo. No : He not reare 
Anothers IflTue. Enter a Seruant. 230 

Seru. Pleafe 'your Highnefle, Ports 
From thofe you fent to th'Oracle, are come 
An houre fince : Cleatnines and Dioyiy 
Being well arriuM fi-om Delphos,are both landed, 
Hafling to th'Court. 235 

Lard. So pleafe you (Sir) their fpeed 
Hath beene beyond accompt. 

Leo. Twentie three dayes 
They haue beene abfent : 'tis good fpeed : fore-tells 
The great Apollo fuddenly will haue 240 

The truth of this appeare : Prepare you Lords, 
Summon a Seflion, that we may arraigne 
Our mod difloyall Lady : for as fhe hath 
Been publikely accused, fo (hall fhe haue 
A iuft and open Triall. While fhe Hues, 245 

227. /</<?] «V/if / Theob. 236. Lord.] i.L. Cap. 

229. [Exit with the child. Rowe. 237. accofnpt\ account F^. 

229. reare\ rare F,. rear F^F^. 239. *Hs„./peed:'] Uis„./peed F^. this 

230. Seruant] Messenger Rowe. good speed Pope+, Rann. *7« good 

231. Plea/e your"] F,. Plea/e your speedy and w *Tis good speed, it Ktly 
FjF^. conj. 

233. CleomiDes] Cleomenes Cap. 240. The great'\ That great Knim, 

* In more than this deed does require I And blessing Against his cruelty (addressing 
himself to the child') fight on thy side/ etc. 

228. losse] Malone : That is, to exposure, similar to that of a child whom its 
parents have lost. I once thought that *■ loss ' was here licentiously used for destruc- 
tion ; but that this was not the primary sense here intended, appears from III, iii, 57, 
58: * Poor wretch. That ... art thus exposed To loss and what msLy follow P 

231. Please'] Note the apostrophe indicating the elision of you^ which, were it 
present, would make the phrase parallel to ' please you (Sir) ' in line 236. See 
II, i, 18. 

234, 235. are . . • Hasting] The lack of the conjunction and may be evaded by 
punctuating : < are, both landed, Hasting,' etc. 

237. beyond accompt] That is, beyond any of which we have account, unpre- 
cedented. It can hardly mean, beyond computation. Possibly, the modem news- 
paper phrase quite corresponds to it : to break the record. — Ed. 

239. 'tis] Dyce (ed. iii) : I should have followed Pope in substituting this^ had 
not that word occurred in the next line but one. And qy. < That great ' ? (* The ' 
8 



1 14 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi, sc. i. 

My heart will be a burthen to me. Leaue me, 246 

And thinke vpon my bidding. Exeunt. 



A6lus Tertius. Scena Prima. 



Enter Cleomines and Dion. 

Cleo. The Clymat^s delicate, the Ayre mod fweet. 
Fertile the Ifle, the Temple much furpafTmg 
The common prayfe it beares. 5 

246. burthenl F,, Cap. Knt, Wh. Town. Cap. Delphi, near the temple 
Cam. Rife, burden F^F^ et cet. of Apollo. Hal. A Sea-port in Sicilia. 

247. Exeunt.] Exeunt severallyj Cam. 

Theob. 2. Enter...] Enter.. .with Attendants. 

I. Scena] Scaena F^F^. Johns. 

A Part of Sicily near the Sea-side. 4. JJle\ soW^zxh, conj., Han. Cap. 
Theob. The same. A Street in some 

having been caught from the next line); yet in IH, ii, 145 we <M/ ^^o/ Apollo.' 
[Anticipated by Rann.] 

246. burthen] Lady Martin (p. 358) : He had yet to learn how much heavier 
a burden his heart would have to bear. 

247. thinke vpon] This is more than merely < meditate upon my bidding ;* it is, 
rather, < have regard to my bidding ' or, as Deighton paraphrases it : * take care that 
it is performed.' 

I. A(5his Tertius] Theobald {Nichols, ii, 361) : I think this ought rather to be 
the last scene of the Second Act. We find, at II, iii, 234, that Cleomines and Dion 
are arrived from Delphos, but at line 28 of the present scene, they are not yet arrived 
to Court, but want fresh horses for their last stage ; and yet the very next scene opens 
with the session convened for the queen's trial, the determination of which was to 
await the answer of the Oracle. This hurries the action on with somewhat too much 
precipitation ; and, besides, the interval of an Act is absolutely necessary, for placing 
the benches, and other formalities, requisite to represent a Court of Judicature. 
[Theobald did not repeat this in his subsequent edition.] — Koppel (Sh. Jhrbuch, ix, 
289) : The * Sea-port in Sicilia ' of the Cam. Ed. is erroneous ; for in the last scene of 
the preceding Act the messenger has already reached the Court who had left them at 
the harbour, and since they were hasting thence on their way to the Court, they could 
not possibly be still at the sea-port. Moreover, if, while still at the sea-port, they 
called for * fresh horses,^ we should have to assume that they had performed a sea- 
voyage on horseback. — Halliwell : The present scene takes place apparently in 
Delphi, soon after Geomenes and Dion had visited the Oracle, the allusion to the 
happy issue of the journey referring to the accomplishment of the object of their 
mission, not necessarily including their return to Sicily. It is to be assumed the 
temple was some distance from the sea, and they required fresh horses, not for their 



ACT III, sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE \ \ 5 

Dion. I fhall report, 6 

For moft it caught me, the Celeftiall Habits, 
(Me thinkes I fo fhould terme them ) and the reuerence 
Of the graue Wearers. O , the Sacrifice, 
How ceremonious , folemne, and vn-earthly 10 

7. i/] they Han. Rowe. sacrifice — Theob. sacrifice I 

9. Sacrifice^ Sacrifice. Ff. sacrifice ; Cap. 

last stage in Sicily, but to take them with the utmost rapidity down to their ship. The 
opening words of Qeomenes seem conclusively to show that the scene was near the 
temple of the Oracle. [It adds greatly to Halliweirs argument that Cleomenes says 
* The climate is delicate,' not * was delicate.* — Ed.] 

I. Lady Martin (p. 358) : Here follows one of those exquisite scenes with which 
Shakespeare so often enriches his plays, in the creative exuberance of his imagination, 
and prompted by the subtle sense of what is wanted to put his audience in the right 
mood for what is next to follow. After all the prophetic vehemence of Paulina and the 
insane passion of Leontes, he seems to have felt that something in a gentler strain was 
needed to calm the emotions of his hearers, and lift them into a serener air, before 
showing Hermione upon her trial. 

4. Isle] Warburton : But the temple of Apollo at Delphi was not an island, but 
in Phocis, on the continent. Either Shakespeare, or his editors, had their heads 
running on Delos, an island of the Cyclades. If it was the editor's blunder, then 
Shakespeare wrote : < Fertile the soily — which is more elegant, too, than the present 
reading. — ^Johnson : Shakespeare is little careful of geography. There is no need 
of this emendation in a play of which the whole plot depends upon a geographical 
error, by which Bohemia is supposed to be a maritime country. — Theobald was the 
first to note that in representing Delphi as on an island and in giving Bohemia a sea- 
coast Shakespeare merely followed Greene's Dorastus and Fawnia. 

6, 7. I shall report, For most] Warburton : What will he report ? And what 
means the reason of his report, that the celestial habits most struck his observation ? 
We should read, • // shames report. Foremost it,* etc. Cleomines had just before 
said, that the < temple much surpassed the common praise it bore.' The other, very 
naturally, replies — it shames report ^ as far surpassing what report said of it. He then 
goes on to particularise the wonders of the place : * Foremost, or first of all, the 
priests' garments, then their behaviour, their act of sacrifice, etc., in reasonable good 
order. [There is no need of refuting any of Warburton's dogmatic perversions. 
His contemporaries paid but little heed to them (as shown by the financial failure of 
his edition), and posterity still less. Like much else, they find a place in this edition 
merely as belonging to the History of Shakespearian Criticism. — Ed.] 

7. it caught] Johnson : * It ' may relate to the whole spectacle. 

10. ceremonious] Walker ( Crit. ii, 73) adduces examples from Shakespeare's 
contemporaries to prove * that ceremony and ceremonious were pronounced by our 
ancient poets, — very frequently, at least, — ceremony and cer'monous.^ In a footnote, 
Lettsom observes that, * Some of the writers quoted by Walker seem to have even 
pronounced cermny, cermnoits. — Staunton (noted by Lettsom) had already antici- 
pated Walker in detecting this pronunciation. On * ceremony ' in AiPs IVeii, II, iii, 185, 
he remarks, * It has never, that we are aware, been noticed that Shakespeare usually 



Il6 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi. sc. i. 

It was i'th^Offring ? 1 1 

Cleo. But of all, the burft 
And the eare-deaff^ ning Voyce o^th'Oracle, 
Kin to loues Thunder, fo furprizM my Sence, 
That I was nothing. 15 

Dio. If th^euent o'th'Ioumey 
Proue as fucceflefull to the Queene(0 be't fo) 
As it hath beene to vs,rare,pleafant, fpeedie, 
The time is worth the vfe on't. 

Cleo. Great Apollo 20 

Tume all to th'beft : thefe Proclamations^ 
So forcing faults vpon Hemiione^ 
I little like. 

Dio, The violent carriage of it 
Will cleare,or end the Bufmefle, when the Oracle 25 

(Thus by Apollcfs great Diuine feal'd vp ) 
Shall the Contents difcouer : fomething rare 
Euen then will rufh to knowledge. Goe: frefh Horfes, 
And gracious be the iflue. Exeunt. 

11. Offring?'\ offering! Rowe. 2$. Bufineffe^ business; Theob. 

12. of all^ the'\ of all the F^. 27. difcouer :'\ discover y Johns. 

1%. fpeedie,"] speeder; Rowe^ Tope, 28. Goe,„Horfes^ Go—fresh horses — 

19. time„.vfe'\ use.,.time Han. Warb. Johns. [To an Attendant] Go,„horses, 

Cap. Dyce ii. 
21. befl :] best! Rowe. 

pronounces cere in ceremony ^ ceremonies, ceremonials (but not in ceremonious, cere- 
moniously) as a monosyllable, like cere-cloth, cerement.^ In all the examples which 
Staunton quotes, the word in question comes at the end of the line, never the true 
place to test pronunciation. If, as Staunton says, Shakespeare does not contract cere- 
monious, his observation does not apply to the present line, where, if anywhere, a con- 
traction is somewhere needed ; — unless we are willing tamely to submit to the odium 
of a line of twelvp syllables, — a humiliation which is, I think, inevitable if we are to 
hear in the measure of the line the solemn march of the sacrificial priests. — Ed. 

13. 14. eare-deaff 'ning . . . Thunder] Has Shakespeare any authority for this 
fine description of the utterance of an oracle^ other than the hint in Dor, and Fawn. ? 

17. successefull] In F, the first u is imperfect, and its imperfection is faithfully 
reproduced in Booth's Reprint. A microscopic examination shows that in my copy 
of F, it is u and not n. 

19. time . . . on't] Johnson gives this a selfish interpretation by paraphrasing 
it : * the time which we have spent in visiting Delos [jiV] has recompensed us for the 
trouble of so spending it.* But Malone gives the better meaning : * If the event 
prove fortunate to the Queen . . . the happy issue of our journey will compensate 
for the time expended in it, and the fatigue we have undergone.' 



ACT III. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 117 



Sccena Secunda. 



Enter Leontes ^ Lords y Officers : Hermione (as to her 
Triall) Ladies : Cleomines^Dion. 

Leo. This Seflions(to our great griefe we pronounce) 4 

1. Scene represents a Court of Justice. Officers appear properly seated. Theob. 
Tbcob. At tbe upper end, a Tbrone; 3. Cleomines, Dion] Om. Rowe, et 
Lords, on eitber Hand, Judges, and seq. 

otber Officers, seated; People attending. 4. SeJjfions\ session Tbeob+, Cap. Var. 

Cap. Rann, Dyce ii, iii, Huds. 

2. Enter...] Leontes, Lords, and prommnce\ pronounce it Ktly. 

2. Lady Martin (p. 359) : Tbis is a scene wbicb makes a large demand upon tbe 
resources of an actress, botb personal and mental. Witb enfeebled healtb, and placed 
in a most ignominious position, Hermione must be sbown to maintain ber queenly 
dignity, and to control ber passionate emotion under an outward bearing of resigned 
fortitude and almost inconceivable forbearance. 

In my early studies for tbe impersonation of Hermione, and in my acting of tbe 
cbaracter, I used to find myself imagining tbe procession of the queen and ber suite 
tbrougb tbe streets, < i* tbe open air,' from tbe prison, wbere sbe bad spent tbe last 
few weeks, to tbe Hall of Justice. Her ladies are by ber side, not weeping now, for 
tbeir mistress bad sbown tbem bow to bear affliction. Tbe fragile form, tbe sad, far- 
away looking eyes, tbe pale but lovely face, so stricken witb suffering, reveal too well 
all that sbe has been passing through. Whatever impression of tbe queen's guilt 
may have been raised in the people's mind by tbe sudden flight of Polixenes and his 
followers, ber look and bearing, I felt, must dispel every thought save that of the cruel 
indignity with which she had been treated. No taunting voice would be raised. The 
rumour would have gone abroad that tbe young Prince Mamillius had been denied 
access to her, that the newly bom babe, her one solace in her prison, had been taken 
from ber and cast out to die a cruel death. The people would think, too, of the in- 
decent haste which was now hurrying ber to ber trial before the Court of Justice, 
with no allowance for tbe time of rest, which, af^er the pains of maternity, < 'longs to 
women of all fashion.* Had she turned her head towards the crowd, she would 
have seen the men with bowed heads and looks of reverence and pity, — the women 
witb streaming eyes bent tenderly and sympatbisingly upon ber. But, no! her 
thoughts were away upon the scene that awaited her. Would her strength avail for 
the strain wbicb she knew was presently to be put upon it, when alone, unaided, she 
must plead her cause, with more than her life, — ber honour, — at stake, and with him 
for her accuser who should best have known how her whole nature belied his accusa- 
tion ? Sorely, indeed, does she need that the heavens shall look * witb an aspect more 
favourable ' upon her. 

4. Sessions] Dyce (ed. iii) : As Mr W. N. Lettsom observes, in the concluding 
speech of Act II. we have * summon a session J* 



Il8 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi, sc. u. 

Euen pufhes ^gainft our heart The partie try'd, 5 

The Daughter of a King, our Wife, and one 

Of vs too much belouM. Let vs be clear'd 

Of being tyrannous, fince we fo openly 

Proceed in luftice, which fhall haue due courfe, 

Euen to the Guilt, or the Purgation : 10 

Produce the Prifoner. 

Officer. It is his Highneffe pleafure, that the Queene 
Appeare in perfon, here in Court. Silence. 1 3 

5. Euen^ Ever Anon. ap. Cam. Coll. As part of the Officer's speech, 

7. bfloWd.'] bel<n/d, Rowe. Rowe et cet. 

10. Purgation .*] purgation, Rowe. 1 3. [Hermione is brought in guarded ; 

13. Silence.] Silence. Enter Ff. Given Paulina and Ladies attending. Theob. 

to a Crier, after line 14. Cap. (after line Enter Hermione, to the Bar; Paulina, 

13). Dyce, Huds. As a stage-direction, and Ladies, with her; Officers preced- 

ing. Cap. 

5. pushes] Steevens: Compare Afacb. Ill, i, 116: — * — every minute of his 
being thrusts Against my near'st of life.* 

10. Euen] Roderick (Edwards, Canons f^, 251) : This word is to be here under- 
stood, not as an adverb, etiam, but as an adjective, ttqualis ; * Justice shall have its 
due course ; e^ua/ to the guilt, or the innocence, which shall appear in the queen upon 
her trial.' * It may be so,' says R. G. White (ed. i), * but the phrase in its ordinary 
sense, — that justice shall have its course, whether it lead to the guilt or acquittal of 
the prisoner, — is at least as pertinent and forcible.' With this view, Deighton and 
the present Editor agree. 

10. Purgation] I am tempted to believe that this sentence is unfinished. If it be 
so, it indicates, as the preceding sentences indicate, the excessive perturbation of mind 
in Leontes. — Ed. 

13. Silence] Capell (p. 170): This Crier is of the editor's framing; and 
• Silence^ brought from a line above, where 'tis of the officer's uttering after *■ court ;^ 
the reasons are plain enough. [Which, being interpreted, means that Capell intro- 
duces a ' Crier ' who proclaims ' Silence !' after Leontes has said, * Read the indict- 
ment.'] — Collier : Modem editors have chosen to take * Silence^ as an exclamation 
of the officer ; so it might be ; but the printer of F, did not so understand it, and the 
editor of F,, when supplying an obvious omission, did not think fit to alter the read- 
ing. The word Silence was probably meant to mark the suspense that ought to be 
displayed by all upon the stage, on the entrance of Hermione to take her trial. — 
Dyce (Remarks ^ p. 82) : That the word belongs either to the Officer, or to a Crier, is 
proved by the following passage in Henry VIII, at the opening of the trial of Queen 
Katharine : — * IVol. Whilst our commission from Rome is read. Let silence be com- 
manded. K, Hen. What's the need ? It hath already publicly been read . . . you 
may then spare that time. Wol. Be't so. — Proceed.' If the * commission from Rome ' 
had been read in court, the Crier would have previously proclaimed * Silence !' — 
Cambridge Editors : There is no reason why . . . the officer who has already 
spoken should not also command silence. [It is of small moment by whom the com- 



ACT III, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 1 19 

Leo. Reade the. Indifhnent. 

Officer. Hermione, Queene to the worthy Leontes, King 1 5 
of Sicilia^ thou art here accufed and arraigned of High Trea- 
fony in committing Adultery with Polixenes King of Bohemia^ 
and confpiring with Camillo to take away the Life of our Soue- 
raigne Lord the King , thy Royall Husband: the pretence whereof 
being by cirmmflances partly layd open , /A^(Hermione) con- 20 
trary to the Faith and Allegeance of a true SubieU ydidfi coun- 
faile and ayde them^ for their better fafetie^ to flye away by 
Night. 

Her. Since what I am to fay, muft be but that 
Which contradi6ls my Accufation,and 25 

The teftimonie on my part, no other 
But what comes from my felfe, it fhall fcarce boot me 
To fay, Not guiltie : mine Integritie 
Being counted Falfehood, fhall (as I exprefle it) 
Be fo receiuM. But thus, if Powres Diuine 30 

Behold our humane Actions (as they doe) 

1$. Officer.] Off. [reads.] Cap. 22. flye] flee ¥JF^. 

19. pretence] practice Walker {Crit. 26. The] Om. Pope ii. 

ii, 245). 31. humane'] human Rowe. 

20. circumdances] circumflance Ff, 
Rowe i. 

mand is given ; it is sufficient that a certaim amount of formality is maintained to aid 
the illusion that we are present in court. The word * Silence !' is all-sufficient, by 
by whomsoever uttered. — Ed.] 

14. Indi(5tment] Lord Campbell (p. 73) : Though the indictment is not alto- 
gether according to English legal form, and might be held insufficient on a writ of 
error, we lawyers cannot but wonder at seeing it so near perfection in charging the 
treason, and alleging the overt act conunitted by her 'contrary to the faith and 
allegiance of a true subject.' 

19. pretence] Johnson: This is, in this place, taken for a scheme laid^ a design 
formed : to * pretend ' means to design in The Tivo Gent. — Dyce (ed. iii) : * Pretence * 
is quite right [see Text. Notes] ; Shakespeare found the word in Greene's novel : 
* their pretence being partly spyed,* etc. [See Dorastus and Favmia.] 

28. Integritie] Johnson: That is, my virtue being accounted wickedness^ my 
assertion of it will pass but for a lie. Falsehood means both treachery and lie, 

30. But thus] Deighton : But as I have to speak, this is what I say. 

31. humane] No distinction is made in the Folio, between human and humane^ 
either in spelling or pronunciation. The accent is uniformly on the first syllable, 
except in line 178 of this scene. See, also, V, i, 51. 

31. as they doe] The Cowden-Clarkes : The fervour, faith, courage, yet sim- 
plicity, summed in these three monosyllables, it would be difficult to match. 



120 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi, sc. ii. 

I doubt not then, but Innocence fhall make 32 

Falfe Accufation blufh, and Tyrannic 

Tremble at Patience. You (my Lordj bed know 

(Whom lead will feeme to doe fo)my paft life 35 

Hath beene as continent, as cha(le,as true, 

As I am now vnhappy ; which is more 

Then Hiftorie can patteme, though deuisM, 

And playM, to take Speftators. For behold me, 

A Fellow of the Royall Bed, which owe 40 

A Moitie of the Throne : a great Kings Daughter, 

The Mother to a hopefull Prince, here (landing 

To prate and talke for Life, and Honor, fore 

Who pleafe to come, and heare. For Life, I prize it 

As I weigh Griefe (which I would fpare:)For Honor, 45 

'Tis a deriuatiue from me to mine, 

33. Accufation\ Accusations Ff, 43. prate] plead Ktly conj. 

Rowe, Pope, Han. 7^'] !/^' Vo^ et seq. 

3$. IVhom] Who Rowe et seq. 45. Grie/e] speech or breath Daniel. 

40. owel owes Var. '85, 

35. Whom] For many other examples of * whom * for whoy see Abbott, § 274. 
37. which] Malone : That is, which mihappiness. 
40. owe] That is, ouon ; passim, > 

44. For life, etc.] Johnson: 'Life* is to me now only * grief,* and as such only 
is considered by me ; I would, therefore, willingly dismiss it. To * spare * anything is 
to lei it go^ to quit the possession of. — Staunton : It is surprising this passage should 
have passed without question, for * grief ' must surely be an error. Hermione means 
that life to her is of as little estimation as the most trivial thing which she would part 
with ; and she expresses the same sentiment shortly after, in similar terms, — * no life, 
— I prize it not a straw.^ Could she speak of ' grief as a trifle, of no moment or 
importance? [As an answer to Staunton, Dyce quotes Dr Johnson's paraphrase. 
The trace of sad irony in Hermione's < which I would spare ' seems to have escaped 
Staunton's notice. — Ed.] — Cambridge Editors : Is not the meaning this, that Her- 
mione now holds life and grief to be inseparable and would willingly be rid of both ? 
Johnson's note is to this effect. 

45. For Honor] That is, as regards honor; as in Ham. I, v, 39: — *For your 
desire to know what is between us, O'ermaster it,' etc. or Lear^ II, ii, 114: — 'For 
you, Edmund, whose virtue . . . commends itself, you shall be ours,' etc. See Ab- 
bott, § 149. 

46. me to mine] Steevens : This sentiment, which is probably borrowed from 
Ecclesiastic us y iii, II, cannot be too often impressed on the female mind: — *The 
glory of a man is from the honour of his father ; and a mother in dishonour is a 
reproach unto her children.' [So reads the text of the Authorised Version, with which 
in all likelihood Shakespeare was not familiar. In the Bishops^ Bible, of 1568, which 
Shakespeare knew, and knew thoroughly, this verse in Ecclesiasticus reads quite dif- 



ACT ni. sc. u.] THE WINTERS TALE 12 1 

And onely that I (land for. I appeale 47 

To your owne Confcience (Sir) before Polixenes 

Came to your Court, how I was in your grace, 

How merited to be fo : Since he came, 50 

With what encounter fo vncurrant, I 

Haue ftrayn'd t'appeare thus ; if one iot beyond 52 

$1. vncurran/t /] uncurr^n/ / Rowe. M«f ^ Han. Cap. KUy. Jhave.^thusf 
51, $2. / haue^Jhusf^ have /... Var. '73, '78, '85. 

ferently from that which Steevens has chosen as a text for the edification of the 
' female mind ;' it is as follows : — *■ For the worshyp of a mans father, is his owne 
worshyp: and the reproche of the mother, is the dishonestie of the sonne/ where 
' the reproche of the mother ' means the reproach cast on her by her son's dishonesty, 
— a sentiment which cannot be too often impressed on the male mind. — Ed.] 

47. I appeale] See Dorasius and Fawnia, 

51, 52. With what . . . appeare thus] Johnson: These lines I do not under- 
stand; with the licence of all editors, what I cannot miderstand I suppose unintel- 
ligible, and therefore propose that they may be altered thus : * With what encounter 
so uncurrent have I Been stained to appear thus ?' At least, I think it might be read : 
< With what encounter so uncurrent have I Strained to appear thus ?' [Hanmer*s 
text; except that * have ' closes the line.] — Capell (p. 170) : The place's wording is 
cloudy, and not to be commended ; * encounter ' must relate to Polixenes, to her en- 
counter with him, and the light the editor sees it in is as follows : Since he came, in 
what blameable manner have I met his friendship, eagerly met it (for that is conveyed 
in * strain'd '), that I should appear thus, or where I do ? the fault lies in a discordant 
and ill-chosen metaphor, fetch'd from racing. — Steevens : < Uncurrent encounter * 
may be a metaphor taken from tilting^ in which the shock of meeting adversaries 
was so called. The sense would then be : < In what base reciprocation of love have 
I caught this strain ?* Mrs Ford talks of some < strain ' in her character [Mer. IVives, 
II, i, 91], and in Beau. & Fl/s Custom of the Country the some expression occurs: 
* or strain your loves With any base or hir*d persuasions.' — [I, i. For neither of these 
quotations did Steevens give the reference to Act and Scene. Neither of them is 
suffidenUy parallel to the present passage. In Afer. Wives < strain,' a noun, refers 
to natural tendency ; and in the Custom of the Country it means constrain."] — M. 
Mason : Johnson would not have proposed his alteration had he considered, with 
attention, the construction of the passage, which runs thus : * I appeal to your own 
conscience, with what encounter,' etc., that is, * I appeal to your own conscience to 
declare with what encounter I have,' etc. The following words, * if one jot beyond 
the bound of honour,' would induce me to think that we ought to read strayed instead 
of * strayn'd,' but the present reading is sense. — Malone : * I have strain'd ' may 
perhaps mean : < I have swerved or deflected from the strict line of duty.' — Col- 
lier in his First Edition gives a paraphrase by Mr Amyot : * I appeal to your con- 
science how it has happened that I have had to struggle against so untoward a cur- 
rent, as to appear thus before you in the character of a criminal ;' and in his Second 
and Third Editions adopts the reading of his MS Corrector : stray d; wherein the 
Corrector agrees with M. Mason. — R. G. White (ed. i) : * Encounter ' was of old 
nsed in the sense of intercourse^ of whatever nature ; * uncurrent ' may be taken in 



122 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi. sc. ii. 

The bound of Honor, or in a£l,or will 53 

That way enclining, hardned be the hearts 
Of all that heare me, and my neer'ft of Kin 55 

Cry fie vpon my Graue. 

Leo. I neVe heard yet, 
That any of thefe bolder Vices wanted 
Leffe Impudence to gaine-fay what they did, 
Then to performe it firft. 60 

Her. That's true enough, 
Though 'tis a faying (Sir) not due to me. 

Leo. You will not owne it. 

Her. More then Miftreffe of. 
Which comes to me in name of Fault, I muft not 65 

At all acknowledge. For Polixenes 
(With whom I am accusM) I doe confeffe 
I lou'd him, as in Honor he required : 
With fuch a kind of Loue,as might become 
A Lady like me ; with a Loue,euen fuch, 70 

53. bmnd'\ 60uni/sRowe-\-fVai.*y^. 64. Miftreffe of^l mistress of; Rowt. 

54. enclining] inclining Theob. mistress of Pope, rm mistress of, Han. 

58. M^<r] M^<r F^, Rowe+, Var. '73. Ktly. my distress Daniel, Sprenger. 
wanted] vented BaWey (ii, 369). misreport or misprision or my stress of 

59. Impudence] impudence F^. fortune or, line omitted, Anon. ap. Cam. 
60,64. Then] ThanY^, 65. ^>4irA] Witf/Rowe, Pope, Theob. 
61. TTiat's] That is F^. Warb. Johns. Var. '73. 

the sense of unallowable ; and * strained * plainly means to go astray, to swerve from 
the right path, . . . Still it is possible that the passage is corrupted ; in which case the 
misprint is probably in the word *uncurrent.* [In his Second Edition White pro- 
nounces the passage ' very involved, elliptical, obscure, and perhaps corrupt.*] — Hal- 
LIWELL : In other words, I appeal to you to tell me, since Polixenes came to your 
Court, with what conversation or marks of affection beyond those currently allowed 
by society have I passed bounds, to justify my appearance in this manner as a crim- 
inal. — Staunton : That is, By what unwarrantable familiarity have I lapsed, that I 
should be made to stand as a public criminal thus? [Possibly, the first clause, * With 
what encounter so uncurrent, I have strain'd to appear thus,' is unfinished. — £d.] 

58, 59. wanted Lesse Impudence] See Note, I, ii, 304. Also see Dorastus 
and Fawnia, — Johnson : It is apparent that according to the proper, at least accord- 
ing to the present, use of words, * less ' should be more, or < wanted * should be had. 
But Shakespeare is very uncertain in his use of negatives. It may be necessary once 
to observe, that in our language, two negatives did not originally affirm, but strengthen 
the negation. This mode of speech was in time changed, but, as the change was 
made in opposition to long custom, it proceeded gradually, and uniformity was not 
obtained but through an intermediate confusion. 



ACT III. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 123 

So^and no other, as your felfe commanded : 71 

Which, not to haue done, I thinke had been in me 

Both Difobedience,and Ingratitude 

To you, and toward your Friend, who fe Loue had fpoke, 

Euen fince it could fpeake,from an Infant, freely, 75 

That it was yours. Now for Confpiracie, 

I know not how it taftes, though it be difh'd 

For me to try how : All I know of it. 

Is, that Camillo was an honefl man ; 

And why he left your Court, the Gods themfelues 80 

(Wotting no more then I) are ignorant. 

Leo. You knew of his departure, as you know 
What you haue vnderta'ne to doe in's abfence. 

Her. Sir, 
You fpeake a Language that I vnderftand not : 85 

My Life ftands in the leuell of your Dreames, 
Which He lay downe. 

Leo. Your A<5lions are my Dreames. 
You had a Baftard by PolixeneSy 
And I but dream'd it : As you were part all fhame, 90 

73. Jngratitude\ in gratitude Y ^. ending what,,, Sir ^ reading You've in 

74. toward '\ towards F^F^, Rowe + , line 83, Walker, Dyce ii, iii, Huds. 
Var. Rann. 83. in*s] in his Cap. Var. Rann, Mai. 

Friend"] friends Ff, Rowe, Pope. Steev. Var. Knt, Ktly. 

75. Euen"] Ever Ed. conj. 84, 85. One line, Cap. 
82-84. You hnew,,.Sir] As two lines, 90. were] are Han. 

76-78. Conspiracie, . . . how :] Deighton : That is, I am an utter stranger to 
its taste, and should be so even if it were served up for me to try. 

79. was] Both sense and rhythm require an emphasis on this word. — £d. 

86. leuell] See II, iii, 8. — Johnson : This means, by a metaphor from archery to 
be within the reach. — Staiwton : To be in the level is to be within the range or 
compass : — ' and therefore when under his covert or pertision he is gotten within his 
levell and hath the Winde fit and cerfaine, then he shall make choice of bis marke,' 
etc. — Markham*s Hunger's Prevention, 1621, p. 45. The Cowdkn-Clarkes : A 
beautifully poetical way of saying that her life lies at tbe mercy of his false fancies. — 
Deighton : Not exactly within the reach, as Johnson says, but in a direct line with, 
and so in danger of being hit. — Rolfe : My life is at tbe mercy of your suspicions, 
which are like * the baseless fabric ' of a dream. [Whencesoever the metaphor, I 
think that * in ' is here equivalent simply to on, * You speak,' says Hermione, * a 
language I understand not; my life, — the actions you impute to me, — and your 
dreams are on a level.* That this is the meaning is confirmed, I think, by the 
intense scorn with which Leontes repeats almost her very words : * Your actions are 
my dreams ! I dream' d you had a bastard !* — Ed.] 



124 ^^^ WINTERS TALE [act hi, sc. u. 

(Thofe of your Fa£l are fo) fo paft all truth; 91 

Which to deny,concemes more then auailes: for as 

Thy Brat hath been caft out, like to it felfe, 

No Father owning it(which is indeed 

More criminall in thee, then it) fo thou 95 

Shalt feele our luftice ; in whofe eafieft paflagei 

LfOoke for no lefle then death. 

Her. Sir, fpare your Threats : 
The Bugge which you would fright me with, I feeke: 99 

91. are/o)/o\ are) so you' re Han. *o3, *I3, Knt, Dyce ii, iii. G)mmeDciDg 

92. Which'] Om. Cap. line 93, Abbott, § 499. 

Which. ..auailes] One line, Han. 93. BrcU hath been] hrafs Han. 

for cts] Separate line, Steev. Var. 99. me] we Cap. (corrected in Er- 

rata). 

91. Fa(5t] Johnson: I do not remember that 'fact' is used anywhere absolutely 
for ^i/r, which must be its sense in this place. Perhaps we should read /<jr>&. Peuk 
is a low coarse word well suited to the rest of this royal invective. — Farmer. : I 
should guess sect to be the right word. [So also Walker {Crit. iii, loi.)] — 
Steevens : It may, however, mean, — * those who have done as you do.* — Malone : 
That < fact ' is the true reading is proved decisively from the words of the novel : — ^ to 
deny such a monstrous crime, and to be impudent in forswearing theybr/, since she 
had passed all shame,' etc. See Dorastus and Fawnia. — STAUNTON : That is, those 
of your crime. Thus in Per. IV, iii : * Becoming well thy fact.* — R. G. White 
(ed. i) : That is, those who do what you have done, — the radical sense of the word. 
— Lettsom (Footnote to Walker, Crit. iii, loi): *Fact* has been defended on the 
ground that in a passage, which no doubt, Shakespeare imitates here, we find the 
word deny, the phrase 'passed all shame,* and, in particular, the expression 'for- 
swearing the^Tzr/* ; in other words, that, because Greene used fact in one combina- 
tion, Shakespeare used it in another. 

92. concernes] Halliwell : In other words, the denial is your business, but it 
avails thee nothing ; or, perhapis, troubles you without availing with us. 

93. like to it selfe] That is, as a brat should be cast out. Hudson says he could 
make nothing of the phrase, and, therefore, adopted Keightley's suggestion lefi^ 
which, the latter remarked, made * better sense * than • like.' — Ed. 

98-121. Sir, spare your Threats : etc.] Hudson (p. 23) : Hermione's last speech 
at the trial is, I am apt to think, the solidest piece of eloquence in the language. It 
is like a piece of the finest statuary marble, chiselled into perfect form ; so compact 
of grain that you cannot crush it into smaller space ; while its efiect is as wholesome 
and bracing as the atmosphere of an iced mountain when tempered by the Summer 
sun. . . . Noble simplicity of the olden time, when the best and purest of women, with 
the bravest men in presence, thought no shame to hear themselves speaking such 
plain honest words as these ! 

99. Bugge] Murray {N. E. D.) : Middle English dug;^e, possibly from Welsh 
dwj^ ( =^«f) * a ghost,' quoted in Lhwyd's Archceologia Brit. (1707), 214, from the 
MS Welsh Vocabulary of Henry Salesbury (born 1 561). Owen Fugh has bwg. 



ACT III, sc. u.] THE WINTERS TALE 125 

To me can Life be no commoditie ; lOO 

The crowne and comfort of my Life(your Fauor) 

I doe giue loft, for I doe feele it gone, 

But know not how it went My fecond loy, 

And firft Fruits of my body, from his prefence 

I am bar' d, like one infectious. My third comfort 105 

(Star'd moft vnluckily) is from my breaft 

(The innocent milke in it moft innocent mouth ) 

Hal'd out to murther. My felfe on euery Poft 

ProclaymM a Strumpet : With immodeft hatred 

The Child-bed priuiledge deny'd, which longs 1 10 

To Women of all faftiion. Laftly, hurried 

104. And'\ The Roweii+, Var. '73. Rife, Dtn. in Ws Cap. in Us Rowe 

105. I am\ Pm Pope + , Dycc ii, iii. ct cet 

hat'd, like\ barr'd [with a sti- 108. murther] F,, Cap. Knt, Wh. i. 

fled sob in her voice] like Lady Mar- murder F^F^ et cet. 
tin. 109. Strumpet :.„ hatred] strumpet,,, 

107. in it] Ff, Wh. Sta. Ktly, Cam. hatred; Han. Warb. Cap. Rann. 

no. longs] * longs T^^, 

* hobgoblin, scarecrow ' ; but the word is apparently now known chiefly in its deriv- 
atiyes. When ^g became current as the name of an insect, this sense fell into 
disuse, and now survives only in the compound Bugbear. 

107. in it] See II, iii, 214. — Dyce {Pre/, to Second Ed. p. xv) excuses his sub- 
stitution in the present passage of its for * it,* * because/ he says, < unless I were indif- 
ferent about persevering consistency, I could not retain ''it,'* and yet in another 
passage, I, ii, 183, 184, print, with the Folio, " it*s.*' * To make an honest pentameter 
of this line Abbott, § 468, * almost ignores * the ^ in both ' innocents.* 

108. Post] That there were posts to which play-bills were affixed, we know from 
allusions in old plays ; but whether or not they were exclusively reserved for play-bills, 
I do not know. In the Induction to A Warning for Fair IVomen^ IS99» we find : 

• *Ti8 you have kept the theatres so long. Painted in play-bills upon every post.* — 
Collier's Eng. Dram, Poetry^ iii, 188. Furthermore, « at the doors of sherifis were 
usually set up ornamented posts, on which royal and civic proclamations were fixed.* 
— Dyce, GlosSf s. v. Sheriff, It is probable that Hermione refers to these ' posts * to 
which were affixed the royal official summons for a session,' commanded by Leontes 
(II, iii, 242) ; or she may refer to the Proclamation, wherein she was denounced in 
most opprobrious terms; this Proclamation was 'blazed through the country;* see 
Dorastus and Fawnia. — Ed. 

no. longs] See Abbott, § 460, for many examples where prefixes are dropped. 

III. of all fashion] In a Supplement to vol. ii of Walker*s CW/., extracts are 
given from * Ancient Words, Forms of Words,* etc. These extracts are disconnected 
jottings, which doubtless would have been modified had Walker lived to supervise 
them; as we now have them they are valuable hints. No. 22 (p. 348), is as follows: 
— * People, etc., of fashion, for people of rank. Winter's Tale [the present phrase 
here quoted] So, people of rank, quality, condition, for people of the highest rank, 



126 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi, sc. ii. 

Here, to this place, i'th^ open ayre, before II2 

I haue got ftrength of limit. Now(my Liege) 

Tell me what bleffings I haue here aliue, 

That I fhould feare to die ? Therefore proceed : 115 

But yet heare this : miftake me not : no Life, 

112. Here^to\ /^<fr^ /<> Pope et scq. '85, Mai. Steev. Var. Sing. Ktly. no 

113. limit\ /iiw^i FjF^, Rowe. limbs, life — Theob. Warb. Johns, no life; 
And Pope, Han. Cap. Var. '73. No : life^ Coll. my life, 

114. whaf] wat F^. Wh. i, Huds. for life, Dyce ii, iii, Ktly 
116. no Life^ no I life, Han. Var. '78, conj., Rife. 

etc' From which it is to be inferred that Walker interpreted this line in a way 
which differs from that in which, I am quite sure, it is generally understood. It is 
generally supposed to mean: 'women of all degrees, high and low, alike/ but 
Walker takes it as : < all women of the highest rank.* — Ed. 

III. Lastly] BucKNiLL (p. 130) : Hastily is a reading which I yenture to sug- 
gest in place of ' Lastly,' which breaks the construction and sense of the passage, it 
being evident that the denial of child-bed privilege is one and the same offence 
against decency and humanity, as the poor woman's exposure in open court while 
still suffering from parturient debility. 

113. limit] Theobald: That is, strength enough for coming abroad, going 
neyer so little a way, so in Cymb, IH, iii, 35 : — * A prison, for a debtor that not 
dares To stride a limit.' — Heath (p. 212) : That is, before I have recovered that 
degree of strength, which women in my circumstances usually acquire by a longer 
confinement to their chamber. — ^Johnson : I know not well how < strength of limit ' 
can mean strength to pass the limits of the child-bed chamber ; which yet it must 
mean in this place, unless we read in a more easy phrase, < strength of limb. And 
now,' etc. — Halliwell : That is, before even I have regained a limited degree of 
strength. * Strength of limit ' is limited strength. So in Mer. of Ven, * your mind 
of love ' is your loving mind. — R. G, White (ed. i) : Before I have regained strength 
by limit, restraint, confinement, after child-birth. [In the Var. 1785, Steevens asserted 
that < limit was anciently used for limbs^ on the strength of the following passage in 
TUana [sic] and TheseuSy a black letter history of which he had no copy of an 
earlier date than 1636 : — * very strange that nature should endow so fair a face with 
so hard a heart, such comely limits with such perverse conditions.' This note he did 
not repeat in his subsequent editions, possibly because of the absurdity of interpreting 
the * face ' as a limb. Nor would it have been repeated here, had it not misled Nares 
(Glossary). If it could be proved that Mimit' had a special meaning, corresponding 
to what is now called, with a special meaning, confinement, the interpretations refer- 
ring to child-birth would be unquestionable, but, without this proof, I think Halli- 
well's paraphrase the best. — Ed. 

116. no Life,] R. G. White (ed. i): Such an exclamation [as No! life, see 
Text. Notes] is not in place ; and it seems plain that * no ' is a misprint for my, and 
that * my life ' is antithetical to * mine honour.' See Hermione's previous speech in this 
Scene, line 44. — Dyce merely repeats the same reference to line 44. — Rolfe : The 
Folio < no life,' might pass with Hanmer's pointing. It seems more probable, how- 
ever, that < no ' is a misprint. — Deighton : A note of admiration seems necessary 



ACT III. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 127 

(I prize it not a draw) but for mine Honor, 117 

Which I would free: if I fhall be condemned 

Vpon furmizes (all proofes fleeping elfe, 

But what your lealoufies awake) I tell you 120 

'Tis Rigor, and not Law. Your Honors all, 

I doe referre me to the Oracle : 

Apollo be my ludge. 

Lard. This your requeft 
Is altogether iuft : therefore bring forth 125 

(And in Apollo^ 5 Name) his Oracle. 

Her. The Emperor of RuflTia was my Father. 
Oh that he were aliue,and here beholding 
His Daughters Tryall : that he did but fee 

The flatnefle of my miferie ; yet with eyes 1 30 

Of Pitty, not Reuenge. 

Officer.YoM here fhal fweare vpon this Sword of luftice, 132 

123. Scene iii. Enter Dion and Geo- 126. [Exeunt certain officers. Cap. 
mines Pope + . 131. [Re-enter Officers, with Cleom- 

124. Lord.] I. L. Cap. enes and Dion, bringing in the Oracle. 
requefi'\ requeft. Enter Dion Cap. 

and Qeomines. Ff. 132. this Sword'\ the Sword Ff, 

126. Apollo*s] Apoirs F,. Rowe-I-, Var. '73, Rann. 

after *no/ unless for\it the right reading, as Dyce and others edit. [I cannot but 
believe that this phrase has been misunderstood. With line 115, Ilermione ends her 
defence, by commanding the trial to proceed. Then the thought of a sullied name 
flashes upon her, and that she has not with sufficient emphasis contended for the 
preservation of her honour ; she hastily resumes, but fearing lest the king should mis- 
interpret, and suppose that it is to plead for life, and not for what was, for her boy's 
sake, infinitely dearer to her, she exclaims : * Mistake me not ! No life ! Give me 
not that ! I prize it not a straw !' It is really the climax of the speech. Self-com- 
miseration has vanished, and she speaks for her honour with the last fire of her ex- 
hausted strength. The lines from * mistake me not ' to * I would free,' inclusive, are 
parenthetical. < 'Tis rigor and not law !' the last words she ever addresses through- 
out the play to her husband, are full of the sternness of Fate, and mean, of course, 
that her honour will remain unblemished. — Ed.] 

121. Law] See Dorastus and Fawnia, 

130. flatness] Johnson : That is, how low, how ftat I am laid by my calamity. 
[Schmidt's definition is better: completeness."] — Lady Martin: Then thinking with 
what direful vengeance he would have smitten her accuser, she adds with her accus- 
tomed merciful tenderness : * Yet with eyes Of pity, not revenge !' 

132. sweare] Lord Campbell (p. 73) : It is remarkable that Geomenes and 
Dion . . . are sworn to the genuineness of the document they produce almost in the 
very words now used by the Lord Chancellor when an officer presents at the bar of 
the House of Lords the copy of a record of a Court of Justice. 



128 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi, sc. ii. 

That you {Cleomines and Dion) haue 133 

Been both at Delphos, and from thence haue brought 

This feaPd-vp Oracle, by the Hand deliuer'd 135 

Of great Apollo's Prieft ; and that fince then, 

You haue not dar'd to breake the holy Scale, 

Nor read the Secrets in't. 

Cleo Dio. All this we fweare. 

Leo. Breake vp the Scales, and read. 140 

Officer. Hermione is chajl^ Polixenes blamelejfey Camillo 
a true Sublet y Leontes a iealous Tyrant y his innocent Babe 
truly begotteny and the Kingjliall Hue witlumt an Heire, if that 
which is lojl , be not found. 

Lords. Now blefled be the g^eat Apollo, 145 

Her. Prayfed. 

Leo. Haft thou read truth ? 147 

141. Officer.] Off. [reads] Cap. 147. truth"] the truth FjF^, Rowe, 

chad] call F,. Pope, Han. true Jervis (p. 13). 

138, etc. See Dorastus and Fawnia, 

143. King shaU Hue] Collier: The edition of *Pandosto* of 1588 reads 'his 
babe an innocent; the King shall die without an heire/ etc. The editions subsequent 
to that of 1588, read < his babe innocent/ and *the King shall live without an heire/ 
etc. Therefore Shakespeare employed one of the later impressions; probably that 
of 1609, the year before we suppose him to liave commenced this play. [Collier in 
his Shakespeare's Library (i, 21) professes to follow the ed. of 1588, yet he prints 
* his babe innocent, and the King shall live without an heire/ etc. W. C. Hazlitt in 
his Reprint of Collier professes also to follow the ed. of 1588; he gives us < his Babe 
an innocent, and the King shall live without an heire,' etc. Grosart's Reprint 
follows Hazlitt. — Ed.] 

144. found] Coleridge (p. 252) : Although, on the whole, this play is exquisitely 
respondent to its title, and, even in the fault I am about to mention, still a winter's 
tale ; yet it seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have provided in the 
oracular response some ground for Hermione's seeming death and fifteen years' vol- 
untary concealment. This might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence 
of the Oracle, as for example : — * Nor shall he ever recover an heir, if he have a wife 
before that recovery.' [It is difficult to believe that Coleridge, perhaps the very finest 
of Shakespearian critics, could have written this note. With such a clause as he sug- 
gests, Paulina's occupation would thereafter have been gone. It is her part to hold 
Leontes from marrying again by keeping constantly vivid before him the perfections 
of his lost Hermione. But, above all, by such a clause, the meaning and effect of the 
play would have been distorted. It was not * mere indolence ' but knowledge of 
human nature which kept Shakespeare from inserting it. Had Leontes been restrained 
from marriage by the words of an Oracle and not by heart-broken contrition and 
devotion to Hermione's memory, he would never have won from us that pity which 
goes far to help us to forgive him. — Ed.] 



ACT III, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 129 

Offic. I(niy Lord)euen fo as it is here fet downe. 148 

Leo. There is no truth at all i'th'Oracle: 
The Seffions (hall proceed: this is meere falfehood. 150 

Ser. My Lord the King : the King ? 

Leo. What is the bufinefle ? 

Ser. O Sir, I (hall be hated to report it. 
The Prince your Sonne, with meere conceit, and feare 
Of the Queenes fpeed, is gone. 155 

Leo. How? gone? 

Ser. Is dead. 157 

148. Dividing line 2X.fo Cap. 151. [Enter a Servant. Rowe. Enter 

it tr] Om. Han. a Gentleman, hastily. Cap. 

150. Seffi(ms\ 5«j«wf Theob. + , Var. 156. How? gonef'\ How^ gone? 
Rann, Dyce ii, iii. Rowe. Haw gone ?Vo^, Howtgoftef 

151. Kingfl King-- Theob. + . Cap. 
King! Han. Cap. 

154. meere conceit] *Mere' here, and in line 150, is purcy in its Latin sense. 
*Tbe noun "conceit,"* says Craik {Jul. Cas. I, iii, 162), 'which survives with a 
limited meaning (the conception of a man by himself, which is so apt to be one of 
over-estimation), is frequent in Shakespeare with the sense, nearly, of what we now 
call conception, in general.' See Afer. of Ven. I, i, 102 of this ed., where this note 
of Craik is quoted in full. — Ed. 

155. speed] Johnson : Of the event of the queen's trial ; so we still say, he sped 
well or ill. 

157. Is dead] Swinburne (p. 222) : To the very end I must confess that I 
have in me so much of the spirit of Rachel weeping in Ramah, as will not be com- 
forted because Mamillius is not. It is well for those whose hearts are light enough, 
to take perfect comfort even in the substitution of his sister Perdita for the boy who 
died of * thoughts high for one so tender.' Even the beautiful suggestion that Shake- 
speare as he wrote had in mind his own dead little son still fresh and living at his 
heart can hardly add more than a touch of additional tenderness to our perfect and 
piteous delight in him. And even in her daughter's embrace it seems hard if his 
mother should have utterly forgotten the little voice that had only time to tell her just 
eight words of that ghost story which neither she nor we were ever to hear ended. 
Any one but Shakespeare would have sought to make pathetic profit out of the child 
by the easy means of showing him if but once again as changed and stricken to the 
death for want of his mother and fear for her and hunger and thirst at his little high 
heart for the sight and touch of her ; Shakespeare only could find a better way, a 
nobler and a deeper chord to strike, by giving us our last glimpse of him as he 
laughed and chattered with her * past enduring,' to the shameful neglect of those 
ladies in the natural blueness of whose eyebrows as well as their noses he so stoutly 
declined to believe. And at the very end (as aforesaid) it may be that we remember 
him all the better because the father whose jealousy killed him and the mother for 
love of whom he died would seem to have forgotten the little brave sweet spirit with 
all its truth of love and tender sense of shame as perfectly and unpardonably as 

9 



I30 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi, sc. ii. 

Leo. Apoiys angry, and the Heauens themfelues 158 

Doe ftjike at my Iniuftice. How now there ? 
Paul^\i\s newes is mortall to the Queene:Look downe 160 
And fee what Death is doing. 

Leo. Take her hence : 
Her heart is but oVe-charg'd : fhe will recouer. 
I haue too much beleeuM mine owne fufpition : 
^Befeech you tenderly apply to her 165 

Some remedies for life. Apollo pardon 
My great prophaneneffe ^gainft thine Oracle. 
He reconcile me to PolixeneSj 
New woe my Queene, recall the good Cantillo 
(Whom I proclaime a man of Truth, of Mercy: ) 170 

For being tranfported by my lealoufies 
To bloody thoughts, and to reuenge,! chofe 
Camillo for the minifter, to poyfon 
My friend Polixenes : which had been done , 
But that the good mind of Camillo tardied 175 

My fwift command : though I with Death, and with 
Reward, did threaten and encourage him. 
Not doing it, and being done : he(moft humane, 178 

\^^, ftuike\ Y ^, \(iT. prophanenelfe\Y^. 

How now there ?^ How now, 169. New woe'\ New wooeY ^ . New 

there ? Theob. How now ? there ! Johns. woo F^. New-woo Cap. Mai. 

[Her. faints. Rowe. 170. Mercy :)'\ mercy.) Rowe ii. 

163. *[Exeunt Paulina and Ladies, mercy. Han. 

with Hennione. Rowe. 178. humane"] human F , Rowe. 

164. Scene iv. Pope + . 

Shakespeare himself at the close of King Lear would seem to have forgotten one 
who never had forgotten Cordelia. 

Lady Martin: Upon this, a cry echoes through the hall like a death-knell; the 
cry of a soul from which all happiness, all hope, are gone ; the cry of a broken heart, 
which shakes every other in the assembled crowd ; a cry that will ring in the ears of 
Leontes ever after, and that even now chases from his brain every mad delusion. 
Upon the instant his senses return to him, and all his monstrous distrust and cruelty 
and their consequences are seen by him in their true light. . . . Fly to her side, he 
dare not, — ^he, unworthy to touch her whom he had so foully slandered. . . . Then 
follows a burst of contrition, in which those better qualities are seen, which had won 
and kept for him until now the love of his pure, high-hearted queen. They come 
back as suddenly as they had left him. 

176-178. though I . . . being done] An example of what Corson has called 
* respective construction.* Thus : though I with death did threaten him not doing 



ACT III, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE \ 3 1 

And fiird with Honor) to my Kingly Gueft 

Vnclafp'd my praflife, quit his fortunes here 180 

(Which you knew great) and to the hazard 

181. /r^«/] /<?^^/r^tf/ Anon. ap. Cam. '03, '13, Dyce ii, iii. hazard boldly 
Aazard"] certain hazard Ff, Ktly. hazarding Anon. ap. Cam. 
Rowe+, Cap. Var. Rann, Stcev. Var. 

it, and with reward did encourage him, it being done. The carious reader will find 
an extraordinary example of this < respective construction * by Joshua Sylvester in 
his translation of Du Bartas, p. 408, ed. 1632, where seven epigrams from the Latin 
of ' Mr Henry Smith/ on a King, a Lawyer, a Physician, a Divine, a Judge, a Hus- 
bandman, and a Captaine, are summed up in two lines, the first line consisting of 
verbs, each verb governed by its respective subject in the epigram, and the second 
line consisting of the objects of the respective verbs: — ^*So rule, plead, practice, 
preach, doom, delve, direct, | Qimes, causes, cures, Christ, crimes, turves, troops 
select.' There is also a notable example in Sidney's Arcadia: 'Vertue, beautie, 
and speach, did strike, wound, charme,* etc. — ^p. 368, ed. 1598. — Ed. 

1 78. being done] That is, < it being done.' For other examples of participles 
without a noun, see Abbott, § 378. 

178. humane] See line 31, above. This is apparently an exception to the rule 
that Shakespeare uniformly accents this word on the first syllable. Schmidt, in the 
First Ed. of his Lex., asserts that the present instance is not an exception, but his 
scansion of the line to prove it, is so printed as to be almost unintelligible. In his 
Second Ed., grown more cautious, he says that the line < may possibly be scanned 
thus: "Not dd | ing ft | and b^ing (monosyll.) \ done; h€ \ most hiimane;" but the 
much more natural scansion would be: "Not d6ing (monosyll.) \ it And | being 
(moncsyll.) ddne ; | he mdst | humine," ' which virtually retracts the assertion of the 
First Ed. In these abhorrent contractions of doing and bcingy he has, to be sure, the 
countenance of Walker ( Vers. p. 119). But, in comparison with these irredeemably 
harsh unmusical lines, a line of twelve syllables is far preferable : * Not d6 | ing It | 
and bd | ing dbne ; | he mbst | humane.' See Macb. Ill, iv, 76 of this ed. — Ed. 

180. pradtise] Treachery, strategem. 

180. quit] For other examples of 'quit' for quitted^ see Walker (Crit. ii, 324). 

181. hazard] Malone: In this line some word of two syllables has been inad- 
vertently omitted. I believe the omitted word was either doubtful or fearful. The 
editor of F, endeavoured to cure the defect by reading, * certain hazard ' ; the most 
improper word that could have been chosen. — Steevens : I am of a contrary opin- 
ion, and therefore retain the emendation of F,. < Certain hazard ' is quite in our 
author's manner. So in Com. of Err. II, ii, 187 : — * Until I know this sure uncer- 
tainty.* — Collier (ed. ii) : Certain is needed as far as metre is concerned, and as it 
is not erased in the MS we may be pretty sure that it was formerly recited on the 
stage, and ought to be included in our text. — R. G. White (ed. i) : Certain supplies 
the deficiency in metre by a contrast so much in Shakespeare's manner, that were it 
not plain that he often purposely left lines incomplete, the correction might be safely 
received into the text. — Walker {Crit. iii, 102) : * Certain hazard is unquestionably 
right. — Lettsom (footnote to Walker) : As Malone has asserted that certain is * the 
roost improper word that could have been chosen,' I may be allowed to quote a few 



132 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi, sc. ii. 

Of all Incertainties, himfelfe commended, 182 

No richer then his Honor : How he gliders 

Through my Ruft? and how his Pietie 

Do^s my deeds make the blacker ? 185 

Paul. Woe the while : 
O cut my Lace,leaft my heart( cracking it) 
Breake too. 188 

182. Jncertaintie5\ uncertainties F.F^, Rann. Thorough my rust Mai. ct seq. 
Rowe. 186. Scene V. Pope+. 

184. Through my Ruji'\ Through [Enter Paulina. Rowe. 

my dark Rujl Ff, Rowe + , Cap. Var. 187. leaft'\ left F^F^. 

passages: — Sidney, Arcadia^ B. i, p. 13, 1. 44, — <to know the certainty of things to 
come, wherein there is nothing so certain as our continual uncertainty.' [Shake- 
speare's] Lucrecey St. clxxxviii, — * Her certain sorrow writ uncertainly.' Daniel, 
Panegyrick to the King, St. 48 : — * In periods of uncertain certainty.' [Beau. & Fl.] 
Honest Man's Fortune, II, ii : — *■ — that portion I have, I would not hazard upon an 
unknown course, for I see the most certainest is incertainty.' He3rwood's Lover's 
Miseries, V, i : — * Her husband Cupid gave her certain rules For her uncertain jour- 
ney.' [There need be no objection to the adoption of < certain hazard,' if any addi- 
tion be needed for rhythm's sake in a line where there is a necessary pause, as there 
is here after the parenthesis. We should remember that rhjrthm is a servant, not a 
master. — Ed. 

183. Honor :] According to this punctuation, which is, I think, right, the mean- 
ing is that Camillo resigned his great fortune here, and with no riches but his honor, 
committed himself to uncertainties. But Staunton says that this punctuation 
< miserably enfeebles ' the passage. He, therefore, puts a full stop after < com- 
mended,' and only a comma after * honor ;' whereby the meaning is : ' How he, rich 
only in honor, glisters through my rust.' I fail to see here any added force which 
can compensate for loss of the contrast between great wealth with dishonor exchanged 
for poverty with honor. — Ed. 

184. my Rust] The reading of F,, *my dark rust,' has not received that notice 
from the modem editors which I think it deserves. — Ed. 

185. blacker] Johnson: This vehement retractation of Leontes, accompanied 
with the confession of more crimes than he was suspected of, is agreeable to our 
daily experience of the vicissitudes of violent tempers, and the eruptions of minds 
oppressed with guilt. 

187, 188. O cut my Lace . . . too] It is heartily to be wished that we could 
impute this entreaty to Greene's Novel. And yet it may be that Shakespeare wished 
us to perceive by this chilling dash of rant that Paulina lacked the earnestness which 
should be hers if she were really convinced that the queen was truly dead. And 
yet we must not here doubt her sincerity, which Lady Martin vindicates ; nor must 
we examine even the rest of Paulina's speech too curiously. She was not present 
when Leontes made his confession, and yet she knows every detail of it. It is 
enough that such trifles are never noticed in the performance, — Segnius irritant 
animos, etc. — See note on 203. — Ed. 



ACT III. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 133 

Lard. What fit is this.^ good Lady.^ 

PauL What ftudied torments( Tyrant )haft for me ? 190 

What WheelesPRacks? Fires? What flaying? boyling? 
In Leads, or Oyles ? What old, or newer Torture 
Muft I rcceiue?whofe euery word deferues 
To tafte of thy mod worft. Thy Tyranny 

(Together working with thy lealoufies, 195 

Fancies too weake for Boyes, too greene and idle 
For Girles of Nine) O thinke what they haue done, 
And then run mad indeed : ftarke-mad : for all 
Thy by-gone fooleries were but fpices of it 199 

189. Whaf^ Alas! wAa/ Htm, 192. LfodSf or OyUs f'\ lead or oil? 

190. haflil hast thou Ktly. Walker, Dyce ii, iii, Huds. 

191. Racks? Fires ?'\ what racks? newer'\ imw Ff, Kowe. 
what fires? Ktly. 193. euery\ very Ff, Rowe. 

flaying? boyling?"] flaying? 1 99. buf] Om. Theob. i. 

boyling? Burning, Ff, Rowe-f , Var. 0/ it] /or it Ff, Rowe, to CoW, 

'73* fl^yi**i ^ ^ what boiling Dyce ii, MS, ap. Cam. 
iii, Huds. flaying, burning, boiling 
Coll. (MS). 

191. flaying ? boyling ?] To the addition, burning oi F,, Capell (p. 171) objects 
on the score that * deaths by burning are imply'd ' in * fires ' ; and * boiling ' is the 
proper word for < leads or oils * which immediately succeed. He, therefore, reads : 
* What flaying, rather? boiling;' very unhappily, as Dyce truly says. — Walker (Crit. 
ii, 13), not knowing of the reading of F,, said ' it is evident that a word had dropped 
out,' and suggested * flaying, tearing, boiling.' — Abbott (§ 484) scans the last three 
feet : * What fliy | ing b<S | ilfng,' which is repellant, to say the least, in a line composed 
almost of a succession of shrieks, where there should be, as there is, the merest sug- 
gestion of rhythm, and where the addition of two syllables is as harmless as it is 
superfluous. — Halliwell quotes from Grey that death by boiling was adjudged for 
the crime of poisoning in the reign of Hen. VIII., and that two persons suffered it. 
He also gives, as an illustration of the text, a wood-cut of the punishment, copied 
from a MS of the fifteenth century, where the artist, evidently on the principle of 
Dr Primrose's injunction to the painter to put in as many sheep as he could for the 
money, has represented eight persons cosily seated in what appears to be a small 
egg-boiler, with flames beneath it. — Ed. 

192. Leads, or Oyles] Walker (Crit. i, 243), in his Article on the * final s fre- 
quently interpolated and frequently omitted in the First Folio,' suggests that we 
should here read *In lead, or oil* 

194. most worst] For examples of double superlatives, see Abbott, §11. 

194. Thy Tyranny] Lady Martin (p. 366) : Into Paulina's lips Shakespeare 
seems as if he wished to put, as the Greek tragedians put into those of the Chorus, the 
concentrated judgement of every man and woman in his kingdom. 

199. spices] Schmidt {Lex.) : Served only to season it, to give it a zest. [An 
eminently inappropriate definition. * Spices ' may be here equivalent to its doublet. 



1 34 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi. sc. ii. 

That thou betrayed'ft Polixenes^^twdiS nothing, 200 

(That did but (hew thee, of a Foole,inconftant, 

And damnable ingratefull : ) Nor was't much, 202 

200. betrayed ^yi"] betray* dst Rowe et 202. ingrate/uir\ ungrateful Var. '73, 
seq. '78, '85, Steev. Mai. Var. »2I, Ktly. 

201. theey of a Foole^ thee of a soul mucA,"] much F,. much. F F . 
Theob. Han. Wh. ii. 

species ; cf. Elyot's Govemour^ Bk. II, where the heading of Chap, xxi is : — Of 
Moderation the spice of Temperance ;' if so, a paraphrase of the passage may be : — 

* all thy by-gone fooleries were but the same in kind with thy tyranny.* Or it may 
mean (and this seems to be the more probable), a small quantity; cf. Hen, VIII: 
II, iii, 26 : — * and so would you For all this spice of your hypocrisy,* or Cor, IV, vii, 
46 : — * He hath spices of them all, not aiy With this meaning of « spice * the pres- 
ent passage might be paraphrased : * all thy by-gone fooleries were but a modicum 
of thy tyranny,* or * in comparison with it.* Herein the phrase finds a correspond- 
ence with line 204: *poor trespasses More monstrous standing by.* — Ed.] 

201. of a Foole] Theobald : I have ventured at a slight alteration here, and for 

* fool ' read soul. It is certainly too gross and blunt in Paulina, though she might 
impeach the king of fooleries in some of his past actions and conduct, to call him 
downright a Fool. And it is much more pardonable in her to arraign his morals, 
and the qualities of his mind, than rudely to call him idiot io his face. — Warburton : 
We should read, * shew thee off, a fool,* i. e. represent thee in thy true colours ; a fool, 
an inconstant, etc. — Johnson : Poor Mr Theobald's courtly remark cannot be thought 
to deserve much notice. [R. G. White, in his ed. ii, thought differently.] Dr War- 
burton, too, might have spared his sagacity if he had remembered that the present 
reading, by a mode of speech anciently much used, means only, < It show*d ihte first 
a fool, then inconstant and ungrateful !' — Steevens : The same construction occurs 
in Phaer's Second Booke of ySneidos : * When this the yong men heard me speake, 
of wild they waxed wood.'[ — Sig. C4 ad fin. '\ — Staunton : Any change would be 
to destroy a form of speech characteristic of the author's time ;*<?/" a fool ' is the 
same as ^for a fool.* — Halliwell: The genitive case of a noun was sometimes 
used instead of the adjective, so that * of a fool * means simply foolish. A similar 
construction supplied the place of the adverb by the genitive preposition before the 
adjective. Thus * of wild ' in the line from Phaer's Virgil means wildly. — R. G. 
White (ed. i) : I have hardly a doubt that Theobald's emendation is correct; not, 
however, for his reason, that it would be too blunt in Paulina to call the king a fool ; 
but because she does not call him so with sufficient directness, and because there is 
greater fitness in the expression as amended. But as the original text may be 
accepted as an instance of a French construction used by Shakespeare, and as mean- 
ing, *That did but show thee a fool,* etc. it must stand. In his second ed. While 
adopted Theobald's emendation without comment.] — Dyce (ed. iii) : Altered by 
Theobald, wrongly, I believe. — Abbott (§ 173) : That is, as regards a fool,* *in the 
matter of folly.' — Coleridge (p. 255): I think *fool* is Shakespeare's word. I. 
My ear feels it to be Shakespearian ; 2. The involved grammar is Shakespearian ; — 
*show thee, being a fool naturally, to have improved thy folly by inconstancy;* 3. 
The alteration is most fiat, and un-Shakcspearian. As to the grossness of the abuse — 
she calls him ' gross and foolish ' a few lines below. 



ACT III, sc. «.] THE WINTERS TALE .135 

Thou would'ft haue poyfonM good C^mUl<f$ Honor, 203 

To haue him kill a King : poore Trefpaffes, 

More monftrous (landing by : whereof I reckon 205 

The cafting forth to Crowes, thy Baby-daughter, 

To be or none, or little ; though a Deuill 

Would haue fhed water out of fire, ere don't : 

Nor is*t direftly layd to thee, the death 

Of the young Prince, whofe honorable thoughts 210 

(Thoughts high for one fo tender) cleft the heart 

That could conceiue a groffe and foolifh Sire 

Blemifh'd his gracious Dam : this is not, no , 

Layd to thy anfwere : but the laft : O Lords, 

When I haue faid, cry woe: the Queene, the Queene, 215 

The fweet'ft. deer'ft creature's dead:& vengeance for't 

Not drop'd downe yet. 

Lord. The higher powres forbid. 

Pau. I fay (he's dead : He fwear't. If word, nor oath 
Preuaile not, go and fee : if you can bring 220 

Tinfture, or luftre in her lip, her eye 

205. whereof '\ wherefore Ff, Rowe. dear^fl F^. sweetest dearest Rowe, Pope. 

206. to Crowe5\ of Crows F^. sweetest Han. sweetest, dearest Thcob. 
thy\ the Ff. et cet. 

216. fweet 'ft. deer'fl']f7ueet'fi,deeer'fi 217. </r^V] </r<^/ Rowe ii. drop 

F,. fweet'ft, dear'fl F,, Cap. Coll. Dyce, Johns. Var. '78. 
Wh. Sta. Cam. Huds. Rife, fweet'fi 

202. damnable] Malone: Here used adverbially. [See IV, iv, 570, where 
Staunton holds that * irremovable * is, in the same way, used adverbially.] 

203. Honor] Malone: How should Paulina have known this? No one had 
charged the king with this crime except himself, while Paulina was absent. — 
Halliwell: It must be presumed that she derived her knowledge of it from 
Camillo before he left the Court with Polixenes. The acquaintance between Camillo 
and Paulina is alluded to in the last Act. 

207. DeuiU] Steevens : That is, a devil would have shed tears of pity o'er the 
damned, ere he would have committed such an action. The Cowden-Clarkes : 
Dropped tears from burning eyes. [The better interpretation.] 

209. Nor is't] Deighton : Here * it * is redundant ; or rather, perhaps, there is a 
confusion of constructions between < Nor is it laid to thee that thou didst kill,* etc. 
and *Nor is the death of the prince laid to you.' 

216. Bweet'st. deer'st] Both Walker ( Vers. 168) and Abbott (§ 473), using 
some modem text, emend these words to the present abbreviations. See I, ii, 109. 

221. Tindlure] Bucknill (p. 131) : Paulina gives four signs of death, which, if 
they existed, would go a long way to enforce her opinion, although it is confessedly 
a difficult medical problem to fix upon certain signs of the recent cessation of life. 



136 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi, sc. iu 

Heate outwardly, or breath within, He feme you 222 

As I would do the Gods. But, O thou Tyrant, 

Do not repent thefe things, for they are heauier 

Then all thy woes can ftirre : therefore betake thee 225 

To nothing but difpaire. A thoufand knees, 

Ten thoufand yeares together,* naked, fading, 

Vpon a barren Mountaine, and ftill Winter 

In ftorme perpetuall, could not moue the Gods 

To looke that way thou wer't. 230 

Leo. Go on, go on : 
Thou canft not fpeake too much, I haue deferu'd 
All tongues to talke their bittreft. 

Lord. Say no more ; 
How ere the bufmeffe goes, you haue made fault 235 

Fth boldneffe of your fpeech. 

Pau. I am forry for't ; 
All faults I make, when I fhall come to know them, 
I do repent : Alas, I haue (hew'd too much 
The rafhnefle of a woman : he is toucht 240 

To th'Noble heart. What^s gone, and what's pad helpe 

223-230. Marked as mnemonic, Pope, 233. tongues\ tongnes F,. 

Warb. biUrejr\ F,, Cap. Wh. bitterejl 

224. Do\ Dot F,. Doft FjF^, Rowe, F^F^, Rowe, ct cet. 

Pope. 237. J am\ Fm Dyce ii, iii. 

225. woe5\ v<?a;j Han. 239. J kaue\ Pve Pope + , Dyce ii, 
Jtirre :'\ stir /"Pope. iii. 

The signs she gives are the pallor, the lustreless eye, the cessation of breath, and the 
loss of animal heat. 

224, 225. heauier . . . stirre] That is, these things are too heavy for all thy 
afflictions, self-inflicted by way of penance, to remove ; repentance is therefore impos- 
sible, there can be nothing for thee but despair. Paulina then specifies some of these 

* woes * : — * a thousand knees,' etc. 

229. could not] Deighton says that the subject of * could ' is < a thousand knees ' ; 
but can * fasting ' be predicated of * knees ' ? The subject must be a// tAis, or a sim- 
ilar phrase. * Knees * are merely equivalent to prayers ; and * naked ' and * fasting * 
refer to him who offers the prayers. * Still winter ' is */or ever winter.* — Ed. 

233. All tongues to talke] See Abbott (§ 354) for other examples of a noun and 
an infinitive used as the object (as here) or as subject (in V, i, 52). 

237. sorry for't] Johnson: This is another instance of the sudden changes 
incident to vehement and ungovernable minds. 

241, 242. What's . . . greefe] Steevens: Compare Rich. II: 11, iii, 171 : — 

* Things past redress are now with me past care.* [Also Lovers Lab, Lost^ V, ii, 28 ; — 



ACT III. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 137 

Should be pad greefe : Do not receiue afHi£)ion 242 

At my petition ; I befeech you, rather 

Let me be punifh'd, that haue minded you 

Of what you (hould forget. Now (good my Liege) 245 

Sir, Royall Sir, forgiue a foolifh woman : 

242. receiui\ revive Sta. and Lettsom 243. petition ; „.you^ Dyce, Cam. Wb. 
conj. Huds. ii, Ktly. petition f,..yoUi Ff, Huds. pe- 

243. At my petition"] At my relation titiony,,,you ; Rowe et cet. 
Sing. conj. At repetition Coll. ii, iii 245. Jhould] Jhoold F,. 
(MS). At my monition Cartwright. 

'past cure is still past care;' again, Macb. Ill, ii, II : 'Things without all remedy 
Should be without regard.* See Dorastus and Fawnia^ just before The Epitaph.] 

242, 243. receiue . . . petition] Collier (ed. ii) : Paulina sees that she has 
gone too far, and has moved the grieved king too much. She repents, therefore, the 
recapitulation she has made, in her speech beginning * What studied torments,' etc. 
of the consequences of his jealousy, and says, as the text stands corrected in the MS : 
— < do not receive affliction At repetition ;' viz. at the repetition of the misfortunes 
Leontes has brought upon himself. . . . There can be no doubt that * at repetition ' 
is the true language of the poet. — Staunton : We might perhaps read : *■ do not 
revive affliction,' etc., but certainly not * At repetition^ as suggested by Collier's MS 
annotator. — R. G. White : * At my petition ' is at my seeking. Collier's repetition 
indicates a mind of blunt perceptions. — Halliwell : That is, * at my entreaty, I 
beseech you not to give way to affliction,' the word * petition,' which has been objected 
to, making perfect sense. [This paraphrase is a little ambiguous. Does it mean : 
' I beseech you, at my entreaty, not to give way to affliction,' or *• because I have 
entreated you to be afflicted, do not give way to it ' ? If Halliwell intends the latter, 
which I am afraid he does not, then he takes me wholly with him ; this is the mean- 
ing, which, I think all the early editors saw in the passage, until the unhappy hour 
when Collier's MS annotator started a difficulty. Paulina had told the King to think 
on what his tyranny and jealousies had done, and then run mad — stark mad ; and 
had bade him not repent, but betake him to nothing but despair, — she now withdraws 
her words, and begs him not to be afflicted by them. — Ed.] — Lettsom {^Preface to 
Walker^ p. xlii) : According to Collier, * there can be no doubt that at repetition is the 
true language of the poet.' If, however, we compare Alts Welly V, iii : — * We're 
reconcil'd, and the first view shall kill All repetition ' (where Johnson justly inter- 
prets * repetition * by recollection of the past) ; Massinger, Guardian^ V, i, 7 : — 
• — revive not a sorrow long dead;' and Witch of Edmonton^ V, ii, Gifford's Ford^ 
▼ol. ii, p. 552 : — * You will revive affliction almost kiltd With my continual sorrow ;' 
we may be led to suspect that * the true language of the poet ' was : — < — do not revive 
affliction By repetition, I beseech you,' and that Massinger and the authors of 7^ 
Witch of Edmonton imitated this passage as well as that in Airs Well. — Hudson: 
It seems to me that the simplest way out of the difficulty is by slightly changing the 
punctuation [and by adopting Staunton's revive. Accordingly, Hudson's text reads: 
< Do not revive affliction,' etc. Staunton and Lettsom published their conjecture in 
the same year. — Ed.] 

245, 246. my Liege) Sir, Royall Sir] The repetition betokens, I think, here, as 



138 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi. sc. ii. 

The loue I bore your Queene (Lo, foole againe) 247 

He fpeake of her no more, nor of your Children : 

He not remember you of my owne Lord, 

(Who is loft too:) take your patience to you, 250 

And He fay nothing. 

Leo, Thou didft fpeake but well. 
When moft the truth : which I receyue much better, 
Then to be pittied of thee. Prethee bring me 
To the dead bodies of my Queene, and Sonne, 255 

One graue fhall be for both : Vpon them (hall 
The caufes of their death appeare (vnto 
Our fhame perpetuall) once a day, He vifit 
The Chappell where they lye, and teares ftied there 
Shall be my recreation. So long as Nature 260 

Will beare vp with this exercife, fo long 
I dayly vow to vfe it. Come, and leade me 
To thefe forrowes. Exeunt 263 

250. take your\ take you your Rowe ...Come Var. '78, '85, Rann. as...exer' 

ii + , Cap. Dyce ii, iii. cise,..,C0met Steev. Var. /on^... exercise 

to you"] to yoUf Sir, Ktly. . . . Come Ktly. 

260. So"] Om. Han. 263. To"] Unto Walker, Dyce ii, iii, 

260-262. Lines end Nature... exercife "Wh. ii, Huds. Rife. 

...Come, Johns. Var. '73. Nature, ..long forrowes'] my sorrows Han. Cap. 

elsewhere, deep emotion, and entreaty. Paulina imagines that the King does not 
listen to her, so deeply bowed is his head and closely veiled are his eyes. — Ed. 

250,251. Who . . . nothing] Walker (Crit. iii, X02) : Write and arrange, 
* Who's lost too : Take your patience to you, and | / unll say nothing.* [It is dif- 
ficult, if not impossible, to discern the advantage of this modification of these lines, 
dislocating as it does the emphasis in both, which should fall in the first on * too ' and 
in the second on * I'll.' If, in the last resort, rhythm is to be marked by * sawing the 
air with your hand,' then * your ' can be pronounced as a disyllable. — Ed.] 

258. once a day] See Dorastus and Fawnia. 

2.(30. recreation] This is used here in its Latin meaning of restoration to health, 
re-creation. — Ed. 

260-263. After quoting these lines according to the metrical arrangement adopted 
by Steevens (see Text. Notes), Knight goes on to say : We claim no merit for first 
pointing out these abominable corruptions of the text ; but we do most earnestly ex- 
hort those who reprint Shakspere — and the very act of reprinting is in some sort a 
tribute to him — not to continue to present him in this mangled shape. If the free- 
dom and variety of his versification were offensive to those who had been trained in 
the school of Pope, let it be remembered that we have now come back to the proper 
estimate of a nobler rhythm; and that Shakspere, of all the great dramatists, appears 
to have held the true mean, between a syllabic monotony on the one hand, and a 
licence running into prose on the other. 



ACT III. sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 139 



Sccena Tertia. 



Enter AniigonuSy a Marrinery Babcy Sheepe- 

heardy and Clowne. 

^«/.Thou art perfeft then, our fhip hath toucht vpon 
The Defarts of Bohemia. 5 

I. Scene vi. Pope + . 2. Enter.. . Babe, SheepeheardJ Enter 

A desart Country : the Sea at a lit- ...Babe and Shepherd F^. Enter Antig- 

tie distance. Rowe. Changes to Bohe- onus with a child, and a Mariner. Rowe. 

mia. Pope. 5. Bohemia.] Bohemia f Pope. 

1. Scsena Tenia] Hudson (p. 14) : It is to be noted that while the play divides 
itself into two parts, these are skillfully woven together by a happy stroke of art. 
The last scene of the Third Act not only finishes the action of the first three, but by 
an apt and unforced transition begins that of the other two ; the two parts of the 
drama being smoothly drawn into the unity of a continuous whole by the introduction 
of the old Shepherd and his son at the close of the one and the opening of the other. 
This natural arrangement saves the imagination from being disturbed by any yawning 
or obtrusive gap of time, notwithstanding the lapse of so many years in the interval. 

2. Halliwell : This stage-direction is merely a note for the actors as to what 
players were to be in readiness, not a direction for them all to appear upon the stage 
at the commencement of the scene. There were probably more than one mariner 
entering with Antigonus, at least if we may be guided by the note in Drummond's 
account of his Conversations with Ben Jonson, [where the latter speaks of < a number 
of men * who had suffered * ship- wrack.' See note, below.] 

2. Babe] Collier (ed. ii) : We can see no ground for changing, with modem 
editors, * babe ' to child^ and every reason for preserving the word which, we may 
reasonably presume, Shakespeare wrote. 

4. perfedl] Johnson : * Perfect ' is often used by Shakespeare for certain, well 
assured, or toell informed. — Steevkns : It is so used by almost all our ancient writers. 

5. Desarts of Bohemia] Hanmer refused to accept * Bohemia' at all. He 
pronounced it a * blunder and an absurdity of which Shakespear in justice ought not 
to be thought capable,' and that as Shakespeare had changed throughout the names 
of the characters in Greene's Novel, it is probable that he had changed * Bohemia' 
into Bithynia, which the printers had ' corrupted and brought back again to Bohemia by 
a less variation in the letters than they have been guilty of in numberless other places 
of this Work.' Accordingly, in Hanmer's text, Bithynia takes throughout the place 
of < Bohemia.' The blame cannot, however, be thrown on the printers. Ben Jonson 
at one time visited Scotland, and while there spent three weeks with William Drum- 
mond of Hawthomden, who has left a record of his guest's conversation. This 
record was reprinted by The Shakespeare Society, and, on p. 16, we find the follow- 
ing remark by Ben Jonson : — * Shakspear, in a play, brought in a number of men 
saying they had suffered ship-wrack in Bohemia, wher ther is no sea neer by some 
100 miles.' This conversation took place in 1619, and as far as we know The 



I40 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi. sc. Ui. 

[5. Desarts of Bohemia] 

Whiter' s Tale was not printed before 1623. It was not, therefore, firom a printed 
page that Jonson spoke ; he must have heard the *■ sea-coast of Bohemia ' mentioned 
on the stage, or, what is possible but not probable, read it in MS. But Hanmer knew 
nothing of the conversation with Drummond, although it had been printed in 1 7 1 1 , thirty 
years before Hanmer's edition of Shakespeare appeared. The editors who have dis- 
cussed the * sea-coast of Bohemia ' have been chiefly concerned with shielding Shake- 
speare^s reputation by offering reasons why he should have followed Greene. Capell 
(p. 169) supposed that Shakespeare retained the name Bohemia because while it < had 
harmony and was pleasing, it stood connected so with Sicilia in the minds of his 
whole audience, that removing it had been removing foundations ; the fault had been 
over-look*d in the story-book, which was popular and then a great favourite, and he 
was in no fear but it would be so in the play ; his changing all the other names gen- 
erally throughout the fable, arose partly from judgement and partly from his ear's 
goodness which could not put up with Garinter, Franion, and Pandosto, and such 
like, which have neither music in themselves nor relation to the places the scene is 
lay'd in.' — Farmer says that * Cervantes ridicules these geographical mistakes, when 
he makes the princess Micomicona land at Ossuna.' But is this correctly expressed ? 
Cervantes intentionally makes us laugh openly as much as the princess laughed se- 
cretly, over her slip in making Ossuna a sea-port town. Is this ridiculing the mistake ? 
< Corporal Trim's King of Bohemia,' Farmer continues, * *< delighted in navigation, 
and had never a sea-port in his dominions ;" and my lord Herbert tells us that De 
Luines, the prime minister of France, when he was embassador there, demanded, 
whether Bohemia was an inland country, or lay ** upon the sea " ? — There is a similar 
mistake in The Two Gentlemen of Verona^ relative to that city and Milan.* An 
entertaining collection of instances of ignorance of Geography is given in an Essay 
by F. Jacox in Bentleys Miscellany^ February, 1 867. — TiECK (ix, 355) remarks that 
inasmuch as Germany was far less known in Elizabethan times than Italy, Illyria, or 
Spain, Bohemia was purposely selected by Greene, and adopted by Shakespeare, as 
a country seldom mentioned and but little known, and with which there was but 
slight intercourse either in the world of poetry or of commerce, and that to the in- 
different novel-readers and theatre-goers of that day, this mutilation of their map was 
a matter of as little importance as to the newspaper readers of modem times. — 
Collier {New Particulars^ p. 21) is inclined to think that we are apt to impute to 
Shakespeare's audience a geographical knowledge wider than it was in reality. Dr 
Simon Forman, for instance, in his notes on the play (see Appendix, Date of Compo- 
sition) lays the scene in Sicilia and Bohemia and makes no allusion to any geograph- 
ical blunder. Collier quotes from * a popular author of the time, who ridicules a 
vulgar error of the kind,' — Taylor, the Water-poet, * who,' Collier goes on to say, 
* made a journey to Prague in 1620, nine years after The Winter's Tale was acted, 
and on his return published an account of his expedition ; the address to the reader, 
contains the following paragraph, laughing at the ignorance of the Aldermen of 
London on matters of geography — " I am no sooner eased of him, but Gregory 
Gandergoose, an Alderman of Gotham, catches me by the goll, demanding if 
Bohemia be a great town, whether there be any meat in it, and whether the last fleet 
of ships be arrived there ?^'^ ... Sir Gregory Gandergoose had derived his knowledge 
from such sources as Greene's Dorastus and Fawnia and The Winter's Tale.* 
Thus far we have listened to those only, who have acknowledged that a sea-coast 



ACT III, sc, iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 141 

[5. Desarts of Bohemia] 
of Bohemia is a blunder, and have attempted to frame excuses or palliations for it. 
But in a little obscure comer of The Monthly Magazine^ for the first of January, 
181 1, there is a short note, by whom I do not know, which says that there is here 
* no breach of geography.* The note is as follows : — * In the year 1270 the provinces 
of Stiria and Camiola were dependent on the crown of Bohemia. Rudolf, who 
became King of the Romans in 1273, took these provinces from Ottocar, the King 
of Bohemia, and attached them to the possessions of the house of Austria. The 
dependencies of a large empire are often denominated from the seat of government ; 
so that a vessel sailing to Aquileia or Trieste, might, in the middle of the thirteenth 
century, be correctly described as bound for Bohemia. The shipwreck, in The 
Winter's Tale, is no breach of geography.* — In later times George Sand {Jean 
Zyskoy p. 13) * exculpates Shakespeare's memory from a gross geographical blunder.* 
But it is to be feared that her knowledge of the blunder was obtained from hearsay; 
she says in a footnote that it is well known that in one of his dramas Shakespeare 
represents * one of his characters as embarking on a ship in Bohemia. This might 
have been the harlx>ur of Naon which King Ottocar purchased, and which placed a 
splendid limit to his empire on the coast of the Adriatic' — Dr von Lippmann (5^. 
Jahrbuch, xxvii, 115) records another allusion to a * sea-coast of Bohemia* which is 
to be found in Tschamser's Annals of the Bare-footed Friars of Thann (i, 654) 
where it is stated that ^ in 1 481 fourteen pilgrims returned home from their pilgrimage 
to the Holy Land, after having been attacked on the way by Corsairs, but finally 
luckily esca{>ed ; they had landed ** at Bohemia . . ." and brought to St. Theobald's 
Church in Thann fifty pounds of wax in fulfillment of a vow.* < Here again,' says 
Li))pmann, < we meet with a sea-coast of Bohemia, but with it comes an explanation 
also, for following the word " Bohemia " there is, in parenthesis : " whereby Apulia 
is meant.** Whence it is to be inferred that there was a time, and not far removed, 
either, from the days of Greene and Shakespeare, when the south-eastern coast of 
Italy was called Bohemia^ How it acquired this name is a matter of conjecture. 
In default of a better solution Lippmann surmises that it may have been gradually 
evolved from Bohemund I. of Tarentum, who was famous in the First Crusade as one 
of the greatest of soldiers. Hence it is not unlikely that in popular speech Apulia 
came to be known as * the Land of Bohemund,' possibly written, Terra Bohemundi ; 
from which, or from its abbreviation. Terra Bohem.^ arose the erroneous Terra 
Bohemica and Bohemia, Lippmann finds in Humboldt's Critical Investigation of 
the Historical Developement of our Geographical Knonvledge of the New Worlds a 
parallel evolution, which he thinks corroborates his conjecture, in the case of Martin 
Behaim, bom in 1436, and the maker of the celebrated Globe ; his name appears as 
Martinus Bohaimus or Bohemus, and in Pigafetta, De Barros, and Herrera as * Martin 
de Bohemia ' ; and when at a later date a number of leamed men were anxious to 
ascribe to Behaim the discovery of America, or at least to bring it into close connec- 
tion with his voyages, we find his name in this disguised form plays a prominent part; 
the Straits of Magellan are called Fretum Bohemicum, * Here we have,* concludes 
Lippmann, * a misunderstanding quite analogous to that which may have given rise to 
the change of name from Apulia to Bohemia.* The substance of this article Lipi>- 
mann contributed to The New Review^ March, 1891. Indeed it is not easy to decide, in 
reviewing the whole question, which to admire the more, the ingenuity which supplies 
excuses where none is really needed, or the diffusion of geographical knowledge. — Ed. 



142 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi, sc. iii. 

Mar. I (my Lord) and feare 6 

We haue Landed in ill time : the skies looke grimly, 
And threaten prefent blufters. In my confcience 
The heauens with that we haue in hand, are angry, 
And frowne vpon's. lO 

Ant. Their facred wil's be done : go get a-boord, 
Looke to thy barke. He not be long before 
I call vpon thee . 

Mar, Make your bed hafte, and go not 
Too-farre i'th Land : 'tis like to be lowd weather. 1 5 

Befides this place is famous for the Creatures 
Of prey, that keepe vpon't. 

Antig. Go thou away, 
He follow inftantly. 

Mar. I am glad at heart 20 

To be fo ridde o'th bufmefle. Exit 

Ant. Come, poore babe ; 
I haue heard (but not beleeu'd) the Spirits o'th' dead 
May walke againe : if fuch thing be, thy Mother 24 

6. {my LordW Om. Hed. ii. go get'\ get Ff. get thee Rowe + . 

7. We Aatie] We've Pope + , Dyce ii, C7<?, ^^-Z Cap. ct seq. 
iii. 13. vpott] on Han. 

10. vpon's] Ff, Rowe + , Sing. Dyce, 20. I am] I^m Pope + , Dyce ii, iii. 

Wh. Cam. Huds. Rife, upon us Cap. 23. I haue"] Pve Dyce ii, iii. 

ct cet. oUh] of the Theob. ii, Warb. Johns. 

Var. Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. Knt, Sing. 

24. thy Mother] Macdonald (p. 156): Convinced of the reality of the vision, 
Antigonus obeys; and the whole marvellous result depends on this obedience. 
Therefore the vision must be intended for a genuine one. But how could it be such 
if Hermione was not dead, as, from her appearance to him, Antigonus firmly believed 
she was ? I should feel this to be an objection to the art of the play, but for the fol- 
lowing answer : At the time she appeared to him she was still lying in that death-like 
swoon, into which she fell when the news of the loss of her son reached her as she 
stood before the judgement-seat of her husband, at a time when she ought not to 
have been out of her chamber. — E. H. Ranney {Religio- Philosophical Joum,^ Chi- 
cago, 30 Dec. 1893) : It is a probable fact doubted only by the uninformed that in 
times of great personal distress, sorrow, impending calamity, and death, there is a 
something that may leave the body, having sufficient resemblance to the living form 
as to be recognised by others at a distance who naturally are in close sympathy. We 
call it a * phantasm of the living.* Sometimes this entity, or astral body, if we prefer 
so to call it, may be projected at will. In either event there are about the corporeal 
body, at this time, the usual indications of death. Practically it may be called death, 
since the life-giving force is somewhere else. But it may return to its abode and once 



ACT III. sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 143 

Appeared to me laft night : for ne're was dreame 25 

So like a waking. To me comes a creature, 

Sometimes her head on one fide, fome another, 

I neuer faw a veflell of like forrow 

So filPd, and fo becomming : in pure white Robes 29 

26. a •waking'\ awctking Anou. ap. 28. forrow\ sorrow^ Cap. et seq. 
Cam. 2^,filtd'\ j/i7/ Cartwright. 

27. on oni\ is on one Yi, becomming] o^er-running Coll. ii, 
fome] some' Cap. iii (MS), Huds. o^ er-brimming Daniel. 
another] on other Anon. ap. Cam. become it Kinnear. 

more set in motion the machinery necessary to create the visual impression of life. . . . 
[This vision of Antigonus] is a ' phantasm of the living/ and is what The Society for 
Psychical Research would call a good * case.* Doubtless it would require additional 
proof, but as a bare statement it would be hard to improve upon. ... It adds value to 
note that Antigonus is positive that he was awake when the vision appeared. ... In 
the play this scene is made to follow the Trial Scene. . . . We can believe that the 
poet intended to have the two incidents of Hermione's apparent death and the vision 
of her astral form seen by Antigonus, bear a close relationship in point of time. It 
certainly strengthens our < case ' to have it so. Then there would be that coincidence 
of time which is always necessary. There is reason in Hermione's case for this sud- 
den separation of spirit and body : it is the mother's overwhelming love for her baby 
child ; her great anxiety for its welfare ; her fear of impending death in a desert land. 
Her spirit liberated would fly to that most dear to her. . . . Shall we be bold and say 
that we have found another proof of Shakespeare's universality ? That whatever 
direction new thought may take, we find that he has been there before us. 

29. BO becomming] Collier (ed. ii) : < So o'er-running' from the MS appears 
to us incontrovertible. A vessel of sorrow not only * fill'd * but o^er-running from 
abundant tears. That *■ becomming ' is a blunder for o'er-running cannot, we think, 
be disputed ; and we receive the change as a welcome restoration of the poet's orig- 
inal word in a situation where it was much needed. — R. G. White (ed. i) : That is, 
so decent. The expression, considered with the context, is a singular one, it must be 
admitted. Collier's MS most ridiculously reads : — * so overflowings [sic]. — Singer : 
Antigonus describes an expression which only the greatest masters have realised in 
art: grief the most poignant rather enhancing the beauty of a countenance than 
deforming it. — Staunton : Collier's MS alteration at once destroys the meaning of 
the poet, and converts a beauteous image into one pre-eminently ludicrous ! * So 
becoming' here means self- restrain ed ; not as it is usually explained so decent ox so 
dignified. Compare Rom, ^ Jul. IV, ii,— « I gave him what becomed love I might, 
Not stepping o'er the bounds of modesty.' — Lettsom (ap. Dyce, iii) : According to 
Singer \Sh, Vindicated^ p. 75] 'becoming* here means decent Bndi dignified; accord- 
ing to Staunton, self -restrained. The latter quotes, in support of his opinion, a sus- 
picious passage from Rom. 6f JuL^ which, even if correct, is nothing to the purpose. 
I do not understand why he calls the old Corrector's oWr-running * pre-eminently 
ludicrous;' or how Grant White makes it out to be * ridiculous.' According to John- 
son, to over-run is to be more than full. Surely * a vessel filled and over-running ' is 
a rather better expression than * a vessel filled and dignified,' or ' a vessel filled and 



144 ^^^ WINTERS TALE [act hi, sc. iii. 

Like very fan6Hty (he did approach 30 

My Cabine where I lay : thrice bowM before me, 

And (gafping to begin fome fpeech) her eyes 

Became two fpouts ; the furie fpent, anon 

Did this breake from her. Good AntigonuSy 

Since Fate (againft thy better difpofition) 35 

Hath made thy perfon for the Thower-out 

Of my poore babe, according to thine oath, 

Places remote enough are in Bohemia^ 

There weepe, and leaue it crying : and for the babe 

Is counted loft for euer, Perdita 40 

I prethee calPt : For this vngentle bufineffe 

Put on thee, by my Lord, thou ne're fhalt fee 

Thy Wife Paulina more : and fo, with fhriekes 43 

36. Thonoer-ouf^ F,. and ever Rowe ii, Pope, Theob. Warb. 

39. weepe'\ wend Coll. ii, iii (MS), Johns. 

Dyce ii, iii, Huds. land Cartwright. 42. tkee'\ theee F,. 

bear^t Gould. 43. more :'\ more? F^. 

40. euer'\ ever ever Rowe L ever Jhriekes\ Jhrickes F,. Jhrikes F^. 

self-restrained.' Or, if we suppose that here, as elsewhere, Shakespeare has inter- 
mingled the comparison and the thing compared, and that * filled ' relates to * vessel ' 
and * becoming ' to Hermione, how can this adjective be applied to a person ? A 
becoming bonnet^ colour^ or attitude^ I can understand ; but what can be said to a 
becoming young lady^ or a becoming queen? I will not assert that Shakespeare 
wrote * So fill'd, e'en so o'er-runniug ;' but I am quite sure that, if F, had given us 
this reading, and the old Corrector had altered it to * — and so becoming,* he would 
have had the whole vocabulary of vituperation hurled at his head, and nobody would 
have so much as dreamed that e'er-running was ludicrous or ridiculous. — Deighton : 
But it seems allowable to suppose that it was the sorrow that was so < becoming ' to her. 
[If any meaning is to be detected in * becoming,' I think Singer has found it, but at 
such a minute to allude at all to personal beauty strikes a false note, so it seems to 
me. I prefer Collier's change; Antigonus goes on to refer to the vision's unrestrained 
weeping, and says her eyes became two spouts. — Ed.] 

29. pure white Robes] Walker (CViV. iii, 102] : Compare Milton, Sonnet xxiii, 
on his deceased wife, — * Came vested all in white, pure as her mind.' 

39. weepe] Collier (ed. ii) : Here again we are greatly indebted to the MS 
[which changes * weepe '] to wend^ i. e. go. The word * crying ' probably misled the 
compositor, and he fancied that wend was * weep,' and so printed. — R. G. White 
(ed. i) : Ifcnd is a very plausible emendation, and one which should perhaps be 
received into the text. But the subsequent passage, in which Antigonus' oath is 
alluded to, — * Weep I cannot,' etc. by its implication of the duty of shedding tears, 
supports the original reading. [It is these very words : * PfW/ I cannot * which con- 
vinced Dyce (ed. iii) that the * weepe ' of F, could not be defended by appealing to 
them.] 



ACT III, sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 145 

She melted into Ayre. Affrighted much, 

I did in time collect my felfe, and thought 45 

This was fo, and no flumber : Dreames, are toyes, 

Yet for this once, yea fuperftitioufly, 

I will be fquar^d by this. I do beleeue 

Hermione hath fuffer'd death, and that 

Apollo would ( this being indeede the iflue 50 

Of King Polixenes) it (hould heere be laide 

(Either for life, or death) vpon the earth 

Of if s right Father. Bloflbme, fpeed thee well, 

There lye, and there thy charrafler : there thefe, 

Which may if Fortune pleafe, both breed thee (pretty) 5 5 

And ftill reft thine. The ftorme beginnes, poore wretch, 

That for thy mothers fault, art thus exposM 

To loffe, and what may follow. Weepe I cannot, 58 

46. >] /<wM Warb. conj. pretty one, Rowe + , Var. '73, Ktly. 

51. Polixenes] Polixenus F,. breed thee pretty. Harness, Knt, Wh. i. 

53. i^'j] Ff, Cap. iVjRowe. breed thee {pretty !) ^XSi. breed thee pity 
[Laying down the Child. Rowe Gould. 

et scq. 5^- beginnes,"] begins; Rowe. 

54. [Lajring down a bundle. Johns. [Thunder. Dyce. 

55. breed thee (pretty)"] breed thee, 57. art] are Knt. 

46. toyes] * Babioles, Trifles, niphles, trinkets, toyes.' — Cotgrave. 

47. super stitiously] * Superstitieusement, Superstitiously, ouerscrupulously, cere- 
moniously, curiously.* — Cotgrave. 

48. squar'd] Schmidt : Regulate, shape. See V, i, 63. 

53. thee] For other examples of * thee ' used for thou^ see, if necessary, Abbott^ 
§ 212. Also < looke thee here,' lines 117, 120, 121 below. 

54. charra(5ter] Steevens : That is, thy description, the writing afterwards dis- 
covered with Perdita. — Staunton : Some ciphers and the name * Perdita ' by which 
the child hereafter might be recognised. 

56. still rest thine] Staunton : The meaning is manifestly, — < Poor Blossom, good 
speed to thee ! which may happen, despite thy present desolate condition, if Fortune 
please to adop>t thee (thou pretty one !), and remain thy constant friend ;' the interme- 
diate line, — < There lie,' etc., being, of course, parenthetical. From the punctuation 
hitherto adopted : * Which may, if Fortune please, both breed thee pretty. And still rest 
thine,' the editors, one and all, must have supposed Antigonus to anticipate that the 
rich clothes, etc. which he leaves with the child, might breed it beautiful and prove of 
permanent utility to it in its after course of life. [Staunton, unwittingly of course, ex- 
aggerates the number of editors who have, * one and all,' hitherto adopted the read- 
ing he quotes. Harness, Knight, and R. G. White (ed. i) are the only editors 
who have the reading he criticises; the Cam. Ed. ascribes it to * Reed (1813),* but this 
is not the reading in ray copy of that edition, which here follows the Folio. — Ed.] 

58. To losse] See II, iii, 228. 
zo 



146 



THE WINTERS TALE 



[act III, sc. iii. 



But my heart bleedes : and moft accurft am I 
To be by oath enioynM to this. Farewell, 
The day frownes more and more : thou'rt like to haue 
A lullabie too rough : I neuer faw 
The heauens fo dim, by day. A fauage clamor ? 
Well may I get a-boord : This is the Chace, 
I am gone for euer. Exit purfued by a Beare. 

Shep. I would there were no age betweene ten and 
three and twenty, or that youth would fleep out the rest : 
for there is nothing (in the betweene) but getting wen- 
ches with childe, wronging the Auncientry, dealing, 
fighting, hearke you now : would any but thefe boylde- 
braines of nineteene, and two and twenty hunt this wea- 



60 



6S 



70 



61. thou'rf^ FgFj, Cap. Dyce, Wh. 
Sta, Cam. thou art F^, Rowe et cet. 

63. day.'\ day. [Bear roars] Coll. i. 
day. — [Noise without of Hunters and 
Dogs] Sta., Dyce adds * Bears.* 

clamor f^ clamour! F^F^. 

64. a-boord :'\ aboard ! — [sees a Bear.] 
Sta. 

65. Beare.] Beare. Enter a Shep- 
heard. Ff (an old Shepherd. Rowe). 

Scene vii. Pope + . 



66-80. As mnemonic lines, Warb. 
66. ten\ thirteen Han. Cap. sixteen 
Glo. Cam. Wh. ii, Huds. Rife. 

69. Auncientry"] ancientry Rowe. 

70' fig^^t ••• ^^'w •'] fig^l^*^S — ••• 
now — Rowe. 

fighting,] fighting-^ [Horns.] 

Wh. ii. 

70, 71. boylde-braines] F,. boy Id- 
-brains F^. boyld brains F^. boiled- 
'brains Coll. 



62. lullabie] See Dorastus and Fawnia. 

63. clamor ?] Johnson : This clamor was the cry of the dogs and hunters ; then 
seeing the bear, he cries, * This is the chace,* or, the animal pursued, 

66. Shep.] Collier (ed. ii) : It is worth noting that * Crooke ' is written in the 
margin of the corrected F,, to indicate that the Shepherd was to be furnished with 
that appropriate property. 

66. ten] Capell followed the change, silently made by Hanmer, of *ten* to 
thirteen, * because,' as he says, * l,en is rather too early for some of the pranks com- 
plain'd of.* — Cambridge Editors [see Text. Notes] : If written in Arabic numerals 
16 would be more likely to be mistaken for 10 than 13, which Capell suggested. 
Besides, sixteen seems to suit the context better than thirteen. Another mistake of 
one number for another occurs IV, ii, 6, but this may have been an error on the 
author's part. — Gildemeister {Anmerkungen, p. 115): The connection clearly 
demands an age older than < ten ' ; but if a change must be made, nineteen is to be 
preferred, which the old Shepherd himself mentions a few lines further on. A com- 
positor would be as likely to convert 19 into lo, as he would 16. — Deighton : The 
alteration of the Cambridge Editors is by no means an improvement ; * ten ' marks 
extreme boyishness, sixteen does not. 

69. Auncientry] Murray {N. E. D.) : Ancients, elder people, elders. 

70, 71. boylde-braines] When Prospero has woven his spells about his enemies, 
he commands solemn music to sound, with the words : — * A solemn air, and the best 



ACT III. sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 147 

ther ? They haue fcarr^d away two of my bed Sheepe, 72 

which I feare the Wolfe will fooner finde then the Mai- 

fter ; if any where I haue them, 'tis by the fea-fide, brou- 

zing of luy. Good-Iucke (and't be thy will) what haue 75 

we heere ? Mercy on's, a Bame ? A very pretty bame ; A 

boy, or a Childe I wonder? (A pretty one, a verie prettie JJ 

72. fcart'd^ Ff, Sing. Ktly. scared 75. thy\ the Yi, Rowe i. 

Rowe et cet. 76. Bame\ beame Thcob. haint 

73, 74. Maifttr] Ff, Sing. Dyce. 

75. o/Iuy] an ivy Steev. Var. '03/ 13. 77. boy'] god \Vh. i, Huds. boy- Ktly. 

and*i] an't Pope ii, et seq. Childe] maid-child Ktly. 

comforter To an unsettled fancy, cure thy braines, Now useless, boiled within thy 
skull,' V, i, 70. With this clew, and with Theseus's assertion that * Lovers and mad- 
men have such seething brains,' we may understand the old Shepherd's phrase. 
Without this hint, the temptation would be strong to mistrust the word < boylde.' 
There are several words for which it might be plausibly exchanged ; these may be 
safely left to be suggested by those to whom the emendation of Shakespeare is a light 
and airy pastime. — Ed. 

75. of luy] See Dorastus and Fawnia, For other examples of of after verbal 
nouns, see Abbott, $ 178. < luie is called Edera^ and hath that name, for it cleaueth 
to trees, as Isi. saith : or it hath the name of Edus^ a Kid, for it multiplieth milke in 
Goates, that eate thereof, & with that milke Kids be fed and nourished.' — Batman 
vppon Bartholomew p. 289 verso. — Ed. 

75. 76. haue we heere ?] With the exception of Capell and R. G. White (ed. i) 
every editor, from Rowe down to Dyce (ed. ii) has, after these words, the stage- 
direction, substantially : < Taking up the child,' overlooking the fact that in line 83 
the shepherd says he'll wait until his son comes before taking it up ; possibly, the 
child is not lifted from the ground until line 121. It is hardly likely that the old 
man, while listening to his son's account of the ship- wreck, stands holding the child 
in his arms. — Ed. 

76. Bame ?] Murray {N. E. /?.) : The obsolete form oi Bairn, a child; it still 
survives in northern English ; bairn is the Scotch form, occasionally used in literary 
English since 1700. 

77. Childe] Steevens : I am told that in some of our inland counties, a female 
infant, in contradistinction to a male one, is still termed, among the peasantry, — a 
child, — Nares: This may perhaps be referred to the simplicity of the shepherd, 
reversing the common practice, than taken as an authority for it. — R. G. White: 
The true reading [which White adopts], I have not a doubt is * A god or a child ' — 
meaning < a babe of immortal or mortal origin.' The typographical mistake involved 
might easily have been made; and the correspondent passage, hitherto unnoticed, 
of the old tale (the language of which was deeply impressed upon Shakespeare's 
mind) seems quite decisive on the point : — * The sheepeheard . . . thought assuredly 
that it was some little god. . . . The babe began to cry a freshe, whereby the poore 
man knew it was a childe.^ It should be remembered that the time is that of Apollo's 
Oracle, when demigods were begotten upon the Earth, and the children of Jupiter, 
Mars, and Apollo were exposed and found by shepherds. [In his Second Ed. White 



148 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi. sc. iii. 

one) fure fome Scape ; Though I am not bookifli, yet I 78 

can reade Waiting-Gentlewoman in the fcape : this has 

beene fome ftaire-worke, fome Trunke-worke, fome be- 80 

hinde-doore worke : they were warmer that got this, 

then the poore Thing is heere. He take it vp for pity, yet 

He tarry till my fonne come : he hallowM but euen now. 

Whoa-ho-hoa. 

Enter CUnvne. 85 

Clo, Hilloa, loa. 

Shep. What ? art fo neere ? If thou^t fee a thing to 
talke on, when thou art dead and rotten , come hither : 
what ayPft thou, man ? 89 

78. Scape"] 'scape Rowe. lad Var. '21. hallood Coll. hallooed 

So, 81. behinde-doore work] behind- Dyce, Cam. 

-door-work Rowe. 85. Enter...] After hither, line 88, 

83. hallow' d] F^Fj. hollow' d F^, Dyce, Sta. 

Rowe + , Var. '73. halloo' d Cn^. hoi- 86. Clo.] Qo. [within] Dyce. Qo. 

loo'dVtj. '78, '85, Rann. holla'd Mai. [without] Sta. 
Steev. hollaed Var. '03, '13, Knt hoi- 

returns to * child,* but remarks : ' we should probably read •• a god or a child," . . . 
this is the more probable, because in this very play, I, i, a boy (the prince) is em- 
phatically called a child.'] — Halliwell: * A child, a female infant,' — Hole's MS 
Glossary of Devonshire Words, collected about 1780. This is clearly the meaning 
of the term, unless it is supposed that the shepherd blunders in his simplicity, or in 
the excess of his astonishment at the discovery of the infant. [This definition from 
Hole's Gloss, is cited by Dyce and Staunton with approval.] — Murray (N. E. D.) 
gives as one of the definitions of * child,' < a female infant, a girl-baby,' and after 
giving the present passage quotes Ash's Dictionary, 1775 • — * Child, an infant — a son 
or daughter ... a female infant,' which is earlier in date than Hole's Glossary. 
There are several good notes in Series V, vol. v, of Notes &* Queries; on p. 371 
C. Thiriold gives a passage from Beau. & Fl.'s Philaster, H, iv : — * if he have any 
child. It shall be crossly matched; the gods themselves Shall sow wild strife be- 
twixt her lord and h(r.' [There seems to be no doubt that a « child,* especially in 
contradistinction to a * boy,' means a girl. But I much doubt that it was intended 
to bear that meaning here. It is very certain that it does not always bear it, and in 
the mouth of one who tells the Gown that here are sights for him to talk on when 
he is dead and rotten, we may believe that any absurdity is intentionally placed. 
—Ed.] 

83. He tarry] This may mean, of course, * I'll take up the babe and then tarry 
till my son come ' but it may, also, mean * I'll take it up, — yet, no, — I'll wait till my 
son come.* See note on stage-direction, line 76. — Ed. 

84. Whoa-ho-hoa] R. G. White (ed. i) : The final a in the call and reply here, 
seems to have been intended to be pronounced. 



ACT III. SC. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 149 

Qlo. I haue feene two fuch fights, by Sea & by Land: 90 

but I am not to fay it is a Sea, for it is now the skie, be- 
twixt the Firmament and it, you cannot thruft a bodkins 
point 

Shep. Why boy, how is it ? 

Clo. I would you did but fee how it chafes, how it ra- 95 

ges, how it takes vp the fhore, but that's not to the point: 
Oh, the moft pitteous cry of the poore foules, fometimes 
to fee 'em, and not to fee 'em : Now the Shippe boaring 
the Moone with her maine Maft , and anon fwallowed 
with yeft and froth, as you'ld thruft a Corke into a hogf- lOO 
head. And then for the Land-feruice , to fee how the 
Beare tore out his flioulder-bone, how he cride to mee 
for helpe, and faid his name was Antigonus^ a Nobleman: 
But to make an end of the Ship, to fee how the Sea flap- 
dragon'd it : but firft, how the poore foules roared, and 105 
the fea mock'd them:and how the poore Gentleman roa- 

95-108. As mnemonic lines, Warb. loi. for the Land-feruuf] the land' 

96. takes\ rakes Han. tears Cart- -service Rowe ii, Pope, the land-sight 

Wright. Han. 

98. and not'\ and then not Qa:^, 105. roared '\ roar'dY^, 

99. /wallowed'\ swallowed Rowe+ . 

loi. Lrand-seruice] Warburton: Everyone sees the humour of this military 
expression ' land-senrice ' ; and how well it is adapted to the character. [* Land- 
service ' is undoubtedly used in a military sense when dealing with military matters. 
But * service ' among its many meanings signified a course of dishes at table ; thus 
Hamlet uses it when he says < Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable 
service^ two dishes, but to one table.* Again, in Stans Puer in Afensam : — * And til 
thow se afore the thy service. Be nat to hasty on brede for to byte.* — E. E. Text, Soc. 
p. 28. It is, therefore, possible that the clown says, in effect : — * And then to see 
what was dished up on land.' — Ed.] 

104, 105. flap-dra^n*d] Steevens : That is, swallowed it, as our ancient topers 
swallowed Jia^ragons. — Johnson (Note on ^ I/en. IV: II, iv, 267) : A flap-dragon 
is a small combustible body, fired at one end, and put afloat in a glass of liquor. It 
is an act of a toper^s dexterity to toss off the glass in such a manner as to prevent the 
flap-dragon from doing mischief. — Dyce ((7/9jj.) : In former days gallants used to 
▼ie with each other in drinking off flap-dragons to the health of their mistresses, — 
which flap-dragons were generally raisins, and sometimes even candles' ends, swim- 
ming in brandy or other strong spirits, whence, on fire, they were snatched by the 
mouth and swallowed. — Bradley (A^. E. I?.) : The original sense may have been 
identical with a dialectal sense of snapdragon, viz. a figure of a dragon*s head with 
snapping jaws, carried about by the mummers at Christmas ; but of this there is no 
trace in our quotations. 



I50 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi. sc. liL 

red, and the Beare moclcM him, both roaring lowder 107 
then the fea, or weather. 

Shep. Name of mercy, when was this boy ? 

Clo. Now, now : I haue not winkM fince I faw thefe 1 10 
fights : the men are not yet cold vnder water, nor the 
Beare halfe din'd on the Gentleman : he's at it now. 

Shep, Would I had bin by, to haue helpM the olde 
man. 

Clo. I would you had beene by the (hip fide, to haue 1 1 5 

107. mock'd'\ mocked Y^. 113. bin\ beene Y{, 

109. Name'\ ^Name Theob. ii + , Cap. 113, 114. olde man] nobUman Theob. 

Var. Steev. Han. 

III. not yet cold] not cold Rowe i. 1 15. Jhipfidt] Jhipfide F^F^. ship's 

1 13. Would] ' Would Theob. ii, Warb. side Coll. 
Johns. Cap. 

109. Name] Theobald carefully placed before this word an apostrophe which is 
not in the Folio, and before ' Marry ' in line 159 did not place an apostrophe which 
is in the Folio. Of course the same statement reversed may be made of Isaac 
Jaggard and Ed. Blount, who by a lucky fate have escaped all the blame for typo- 
graphical errors which is usually heaped on Heminge and Condell. Theobald might 
urge that there is an omission of * I'th' ' ; and Jaggard and Blount that there is an 
omission of * Ay.* — Ed. 

113, 114. olde man] Theobald : I am persuaded we ought to restore Nobleman, 
The Shepherd knew nothing of Antigonus*s age ; besides, the Clown had just told 
his father, that he said his name was Antigonus, a Nobleman^ and no less than three 
times in this short scene, the Clown, speaking of him, calls him the ' Gentleman.' — 
Capell (p. 172): The character [of the old Shepherd] has not been weigh'd by 
them [Theobald and Hanmer] duly ; the ignorance of the speaker appears in his 
calling the mantle * — a bearing-cloth for a squire's child,' and he knew as little what 
a nobleman was as what a mantle ; the son, though told he was a ' nobleman,' calls 
him * gentleman,' and the father presumes he was old because he himself was. — 
Steevens : I suppose the Shepherd infers the age of Antigonus from his inability to 
defend himself; or perhaps Shakespyeare, who was conscious that he himself designed 
Antigonus for an old man, has inadvertently given this knowledge to the Shepherd 
who had never seen him. — Malone : Perhaps the word old was inadvertently omitted 
before 'Gentleman' in line 112. — R. G. White: Shakespeare knew that Antigonus 
was old, but the Shepherd did not. This is a specimen of the only kind of self- 
obtrusion found in Shakespeare's dramas. — Dyce (ed. iii) : This is an oversight on 
our author's part. 

115. I would] Theobald (Nichols, Ulust. ii, 362) : Does this ungracious Clown 
wish his father to have been by the ship-side to have been drowned ? I suspect here 
we should read : * I would not, etc. [Theobald did not repeat this conjecture in his 
edition, but instead thereof, he converted the whole speech into an Aside^ wherein he 
has been followed by many an editor who has failed to bear in mind that the speech 
is that of a Clown, who aflerwards thought it would be * hard luck not to live to shed 



ACT III, sc. Hi.] THE WINTERS TALE 1 5 1 

helpM her;there your charity would haue lackM footing. 116 

Shep. Heauy matters, heauy matters : but looke thee 
heere boy. Now blefle thy felfe: thou met'ft with things 
dying, I with things new borne. Here's a fight for thee: 
Looke thee, a bearing-cloath for a Squires childe: looke 120 
thee heere, take vp, take vp (Boy: ) open't : fo, let's fee, it 
was told me I (hould be rich by the Fairies. This is fome 
Changeling : open't : what's within, boy ? 

Clo. You're a mad olde man : If the finnes of your 
youth are forgiuen you, you're well to liue. Golde, all 125 
Gold. 

Shep. This is Faiery Gold boy, and 'twill proue fo : vp 
with't, keepe it clofe : home, home, the next way. We 
are luckie (boy) and to bee fo ftill requires nothing but 129 

116. there\ but there Yiwi. 1 24. mad'\ Ff, Rowe, Pope, Warb. 
[Aside. Theob. Warb. Johns. made Theob. et cct. 

Var. Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. Sing. Ktly. 125. y<mWe'\ you are F^, Rowe i. 

lack'd'\ lacked Y^, 1 27. Faiery'\ Fairy ¥ . 

118. met'^] meet'ft F^, Rowe +, Var. 'twUl^ tw// Theob. Warb. Johns. 
'73. mettest Dyce, Cam. Wh. ii. Var. '73' 

119. Her^s\ Here is F^, Rowe i. 128. wUKi'\ Yi^ Rowe i, Cap. Dyce, 
123. what^s\ what is F^, Rowe i. Wh. Cam. with it Rowe ii et cet 

129. Jii//'} stiUf Theob. et seq. 

many more tears, bring in so preposterous an estate/ and from whom any absurd 
sentiment or perverted expression is to be expected — Ed.] 

117. looke thee] See line 53, above. 

120. bearing-cloatb] Percy : This is the Bne mantle or cloth with which a child 
is usually covered when it is carried to the church to be baptized. 

123. Changeling] Steevens: That is, some child left behind by the fairies, in 
the room of one which they had stolen. So in Afid. N. D. [II, i, 22 of the present 
edition. < Changeling ' here does not mean the child left behind, but the child that 
has been stolen away]. 

124. mad] Theobald: I have ventured to correct the text, — ^* You're a made old 
man ;' 1. e. your fortune's made by this adventitious treasure. — Farmer : This emen- 
dation is certainly right. The word is borrowed from the Novel : * The good man 
desired his wife to be quiet ; if she would hold peace, they were made for ever.' 
[See Dorastus and Fawnia.'\ 

125. well to liue] Abbott (§ 356) : That is, you are well off as regards living; 
it resembles our modem, * You are well to do,* [See II, i, 122 ; and also cf. Mer. of 
Ven, II, ii, 50 of this ed.] 

128. keepe it close] Staunton: To divulge the possession of fairies' gifts was 
supposed to entail misfortune. Thus, Ben Jonson, — * A prince's secrets are like £urj 
favours. Wholesome if kept ; but poison if discover'd.' 

128. the next way] Steevens: That is, the nearest way. 



152 THE WINTERS TALE [act hi. sc. iu. 

fecrecie. Let my fheepe go : Come (good boy)the next 130 
way home. 

Clo. Go you the next way with your Findings, He go 
fee if the Beare bee gone from the Gentleman, and how 
much he hath eaten : they are neuer curft but when they 
are hungry : if there be any of him left, He bury it. 135 

Shep. That's a good deed : if thou mayeft difceme by 
that which is left of him, what he is, fetch me to thYight 
of him. 

Clowne. 'Marry will I : and you fhall helpe to put him 
i'th'ground. 140 

Shep. 'Tis a lucky day, boy, and wee'l do good deeds 
on't Exeunt 142 

136. mayeft'l F,, Dyce, Wh. Sta, Cam. maift F^F^. may'st Rowe et cet 

154. curst] Dyce ( Gloss.) : Shrewish, cross-grained, ill-tempered, fierce, irascible, 
angry. 

137. th'sight] Cambridge Editors : CapelPs copy of F, has distinctly ' fight.' 
A copy in the possession of the Rev. N. M. Ferrers, Master of Gonville and Caius 
College, has as distinctly * sight.' [It is * sight ' in the copy of the present Ed.] 

141. good deeds] Walker (Proverbs in Shakespeare — Crii. ii, 170) : ^ Hen, VI: 
IV, iii, near the end, — * If we mean to thrive and do good ^ break open the jails, and 
let out the prisoners.' Thrive and do good was probably a familiar expression. Com- 
pare [the present passage] in Winter's Tale, 



U 



ACT IV, sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 153 



A6lus Quartus. Scena Prima. 



Enter TinUy the Chorus. 
Time. I that pleafe fome, try all : both ioy and terror 
Of good, and bad : that makes, and vnfolds error, 4 

I. A(5lus Quartus] Act IV. (at the 4. makes^ and vnfolds\ Ff, Wh. Cam. 

beginning of the next Scene) Theob. Rife, mask and unfold Theob. make 

Warb. Johns. and unfold Rowe et cet 

3, 4. all : ,„ bad :'\ ally,,, bad ^ F^, /^ error,'] error. ¥i. error; Kowt-^, 
Rowe+, Knt, Wh. Cam. Rife, Dtn. 

1. A(5tu8 Quartus] Hudson (p. 28) : During the Brst three Acts the interest of 
the play is mainly tragic ; the scene is densely crowded with incidents ; the action 
hurried, abrupt, almost spasmodic ; the style quick and sharp, flashing off point after 
point in brief, sinewy strokes ; and all is rapidity and dispatch ; what with the insane 
fury of the King, the noble agony of the Queen, the enthusiasm of the Court in her 
behalf, and the King's violence toward both them and her, the mind is kept on the 
jump ; all which, if continued to the end, would generate rather a tumult and hubbub 
in the thoughts, than that inward music which the title of the play promises ; not to 
say, that such a prolonged hurry of movement would at length become monotonous 
and wearisome. Far otherwise the latter half of the play. Here the anticipations 
proper to a long, leisurely winter evening are fully met ; the general effect is soothing 
and composing ; the tones, dipped in sweetness, fall gently on the ear, disposing the 
mind to be still and listen and contemplate; thus making the play, as Coleridge 
describes it, * exquisitely respondent to the title.' It would seem, indeed, that in these 
scenes the Poet had specially endeavoured how much of silent effect he could pro- 
duce, without diverging from the dramatic form. To this end, he provides resting- 
places for thought ; suspending or retarding the action by musical pauses and periods 
of lyrical movement, and breathing-in the mellowest strains of poetical harmony, till 
the eye is * made quiet by the power of beauty,' and all tumult of mind is hushed by 
the very intensity of feeling. 

2. Heath (p. 213) : I am persuaded, from the insipid flatness of the expression, 
and the poverty of the sentiment, that this Chorus is an interpolation of the players, 
and not the genuine product of Shakespeare's pen. — Capell (p. 172) : The address 
is of the utmost use here, and made judiciously in the person of * Time ' ; and, if for 
these causes only must have been Shakespeare's ; contrary to an opinion [of Heath], 
who sets it lower than it deserves. In truth its punctuation has been such in all parts 
of it, that it was scarce discoverable what it is ; it was besides blemish'd with some 
corruptions. [Capell begins the Fourth Act here, but does not mark this * Chorus ' as 
a Scene. The * Scena Secunda ' of the Folio is his Scene I.] — Cambridge Editors ; 
Johnson followed Theobald and Warburton in printing Time's speech at the end 
of the Third Act, but said in his note : * I believe this speech of Time rather begins 
the Fourth Act than concludes the Third.' He had not referred, apparently, to the 
Folios or to Rowe and Pope. Theobald did not mean to include the speech in either 
Act, but drew a line above it to mark that it was an Interlude between the Third and 



154 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. i. 

[2. Enter Time, the Chorus.] 

Fourth. Warburton, and Johnson after him, omitted the line. [Warbmton and John- 
son omitted the line because they printed from Theobald's Second Edition, where this 
line is omitted. — Ed.] — R. G. White (ed. i) : There could hardly be greater differ- 
ence in style than that between Time's speech as Chorus and the rest of the verse of 
this play. The former is direct, simple, composed of the commonest words used in 
their commonest signification, but bald and tame, and in its versification very con- 
strained and ungraceful ; the latter is involved, parenthetical, having a vocabulary of 
its own, but rich in beauties of thought and expression, and entirely untrammelled by 
the form in which it is written. The Chorus I believe not to have been written by 
Shakespeare. It bears no resemblance to his work at any period of his life. My ear 
cannot err, I think, in deciding that such rhythm as this is not Shakespeare's [see 
lines 11-25]. ^ comparison of this Chorus with the Epilogue to The Tempest^ and 
the Prologue to Henry VIII.^ will, I think, convince any one with an ear that they 
are from the same pen, and that not Shakespeare's. He probably saw, after putting 
the story into dramatic form, that for an audience an explanation was needed to bridge 
over the space between the two Acts, and committed the ungrateful task to willing 
hands. It has been supposed by previous editors, and not without reason, that the 
Prologue to Henry VIII. was written by Ben Jonson. But from the remarkable use 
in that composition of the uncouth and disjointed rhythm produced by the continual 
enjambemeni de vers^ which is noticeable also in the Epilogue to The Tempest^ and in 
a still greater degree in this Chorus, I more than suspect that they were all written 
by Chapman. See Chapman's poetical address To the Header which precedes his 
translation of Homer; and also that translation. — Lueders (Sh. Jahrbuch, 1870, 
vol. V, p. 282) : The idea of thus introducing Time as a deus ex machinA^ so to 
speak, — albeit such personifications were not in those days uncommon, — Shakespeare 
presumably derived from the title of Greene's Novell which is : * Pandosto, or the 
Triumph of Time . . . wherein is discovered that, although by means of sinister 
fortune. Truth may be concealed yet by Time in spight of fortune it is most manifestly 
reuealed.' — Staffer (p. 60) : It would be impossible to speak in a quieter and 
prouder tone than this, and nothing is more striking in Time's speech than its digni- 
fied calmness and serenity. To some critics these words seem to wear an accent of 
revolt and protestation, but what a pitiful mistake ! Shakespear never troubled him- 
self about the legislators of Parnassus, or even did them the honour of recognizing 
their existence. He is far above our paltry wrangling, and from the philosophical 
point of view to which he rises, a space of sixteen years is of no longer duration than 
an interval of twenty- four hours, both alike are nothing in the devouring flight of 
time. [It is to be regretted that Stapfer does not furnish the names of the critics 
to whom he alludes. — Ed.] — Hudson : Certainly, if Shakespeare wrote [this Chorus], 
his hand must have lapsed from, or forgot, its cunning for the time. The texture 
and movement of the verse are very different from what a ripe Shakespearian tastes 
in the rest of the play. As compared with the Choruses in Henry K, the workman- 
ship is at once clumsy, languid, and obscure. Shakespeare indeed is often obscure ; 
but his obscurity almost always results from compression of thought, not from clumsi- 
ness of tongue or brain. 

3, 4. please . . . makes,] For other examples of irregular construction with the 
relative, see Abbott, § 247. 

4. makes, and vnfolds] Theobald : This does not, in my opinion, take in the 



ACT IV. sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 155 

Now take vpon me (in the name of Time) 5 

To vfe my wings : Impute it not a crime 

To me, or my fwift pafTage, that I Aide 

Ore fixteene yeeres, and leaue the growth vntride 8 

poet's thought. Time does not make mistakes, and discover them at different con- 
junctures ; but the poet means, that Time often for a season covers errors ; which he 
afterward displays and brings to light, I choose therefore to read : * that mask and 
unfold error,' etc. — M. Mason (p. 130) : These very comments on Shakespeare prove 
that time can both make and unfold error. — Steevens : Theobald's emendation is 
surely unnecessary. Departed time renders many facts obscure, and in that sense is 
the cause of error. Time to come brings discoveries with it. [It is not easy to under- 
stand how time can be said to make errors. < Time shall unfold what plighted cun- 
ning hides,' is said in Lear^ but how time can create the difficulty which it afterwards 
solves is by no means clear. Error is the result of human dealings which ' Time's 
strong hours ' may reverse, if those who made the error do not of themselves unfold 
it May it not be, then, in the present passage, that * makes ' and * unfolds ' do not 
refer to Time, but to the * good ' and the ' bad ' ? May not the sentence be para- 
phrased thus : — I, who please some, try all, and am both the joy and the terror of 
the good man, as well as the bad man who makes and unfolds error ' ? ( In < both 
joy,* there is, I think, an absorption of the definite article in * both,' that is, both the,) 
This interpretation does away with the irregularity of construction in having two 
verbs in the 3d pers., * makes and unfolds,' placed between two verbs in the 1st pers. : 
' please ' and * take,' and all four with the same nominative. — Ed.] 

5. in the name] Deighton : That is, under the name ; not in behalf of. [With 
the text before us, we know who the speaker is, but, for the sake of the spectators, it 
is necessary that the character should announce himself by name. — Ed.] 

8. sixteene yeeres] See Dorastus and Fawnia. — Steevens: This trespass, in 
respect of dramatic unity, will appear venial to those who have read Lyly*s Endymion, 
. . . Two Acts of his piece comprise the space of forty years, Endymion lying down 
to sleep at the end of the Second, and waking in the First Scene of the Fifth, after 
a nap of that unconscionable length. Lyly has likewise been guilty of much greater 
absurdities than ever Shakespeare committed ; for he supposes that Endymion's hair, 
features, and person, were changed by age during his sleep, while all the other per- 
sonages of the drama remained without alteration. George Whetstone, in the Epistle 
Dedicatory before his Promos and Cassandra, 1 5 79 (on the plan of which Measure for 
Measure is formed), had pointed out many of these absurdities and offences against the 
laws of the Drama. It must be owned that Shakespeare has not fallen into them through 
ignorance of what they were. < The Englishman in this qualitie [he is speaking of 
dramatic action] is most vaine, indiscreete, and out of order. He first grounds his 
worke on impossibilities ; then in three houres ronnes he throwe the worlde ; marryes, 
gets children, makes children men, men to conquer kiugdomes, murder monsters, and 
bringeth goddes from heauen, and fetcheth deuils from hell,' etc. This quotation will 
serve to show that our poet might have enjoyed the benefit of literary laws, but, like 
Achilles, denied that laws were designed to operate on beings confident of their own 
powers, and secure of graces beyond the reach of art. [See Malone's quotation from 
Sir Philip Sidney in the Appendix : Unity of Action."] 

8. growth] Warburton: The 'growth' of what? The reading is nonsense. 



156 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. i. 

Of that wide gap, fince it is in my powre 

To orethrow Law, and in one felfe-bome howre 10 

To plant, and ore-whelme Cuftome. Let me paffe 

The fame I am, ere ancient'ft Order was, 

Or what is now receiu'd. I witneffe to 

The times that brought them in, fo (hall I do 

To th'freflieft things now reigning, and make dale 15 

The gliftering of this prefent, as my Tale 

Now feemes to it : your patience this allowing, 

I tume my glaffe, and giue my Scene fuch growing 

As you had flept betweene : Leontes leauing 19 

13. witnejfe\ witnessed Cap. Sing. 19. leauing] leaving j — Sta. Dyce ii, 

KUy. iii, Cam. Wh. ii. Rife, Huds. Dtn. 

18. Scene"] Sccene F^Fj. 

Shakespeare wrote : * leave the gulf untry'd,' f . e. unwaded through. [Withdrawn, 
according to N. <5r» Qu. VIII, iii, 203.] — ^JOHNSON : Our author attends more to bis 
ideas than to his words, < The growth of the wide gap * is somewhat irregular ; bat 
be means the growth or progression of the time which filled up the gap of the story 
between Perdita's birth and her sixteenth year. < To leave this growth untried ' is 

< to leave the passages of the intermediate years unnoted and unexamined.' ' Un- 
tried ' is not, perhaps, the word he would have chosen, but which his rhyme required. 
— M. Mason (p. 130) : Dr Johnson^s explanation of * growth ' is confirmed by [line 18]. 

9-12. gap, . . . Custome. • . . am,] Singer's text here places a period after 

< gap,' and makes one sentence of the rest, ending with ' am,' and with only a comma 
after * custome.' Again, in the next sentence, there is a comma after 'receiu'd.' 
Much of this punctuation the Cambridge Editors attribute to Lloyd. It may well 
be another's, and not Singer's ; the latter at times adopts the emendations and even 
the words of the notes of other editors without giving credit to their authors ; suum 
cuique seemed to possess for him no meaning. And yet no attacks on Collier for 
what was alleged to be literary dishonesty were more virulent than Singer's ; in read- 
ing his Shakespeare Vindicated one is reminded of what Dr Johnson says of Heath 
and the latter's criticisms of Warburton : he * bites like a viper and would be glad 
to leave inflammations and gangrene behind him.' — Ed. 

10, II. Law . . . Custome] Capell's assertion (p. 173) that these refer to the 
laws and customs of the drama is more than doubtful. — Johnson : The reasoning 
of Time is not very clear ; he seems to mean that he who has broke so many laws 
may now break another; that he who introduced everything may introduce Perdita 
in her sixteenth year; and he entreats that he may pass as of old, before any order 
or succession of objects, ancient or modem, distinguish his periods. 

13. witnesse to] Although the sense demands no change, yet Capell's witnessed 
is extremely plausible ; the d was present to the ear of the compositor in the / of 
« to.'— Ed. 

17. seemes to it] That is, as my Tale now seems stale in comparison with the 
glistering at hand. 

19-21. Leontes . . . me] Staunton: It is hardly credible that, in every edition. 



ACT IV. sc. L] THE WINTERS TALE 157 

Th' effects of his fond iealoufies, fo greeuing 20 

That he (huts vp himfelfe. Imagine me 

(Gentle Speftators) that I now may be 

In faire Bohemia, and remember well, 

I mentioned a fonne o'th'Kings, which Florizell 

I now name to you : and with fpeed fo pace 25 

To fpeake of Perditay now growne in grace 

Equall with wondering. What of her infues 

I lift not prophefie : but let Times newes 

Be knowne when 'tis brought forth . A Ihepherds daugh- 

And what to her adheres, which followes after, (ter 30 

20. Th'ffffils] To th' effects Ktly. Ktly, Cam. Rife, Huds. Dtn. himself; 
iealoufies^ Ff, Rowe + . jeaU Rowe ct cct. 

ousies Sta. Dyce ii, iii, Cam. Wh. ii, 24. I mentioned a\ I mention here a 

Rife, Huds. Dtn. jealousies; Cap. et Ff, Rowe + , Var. *73. There is a ^\9Xi. 

cet. / mentioned a Cap. Rann, Knt, Coll. 

21. him/el/e.'\ him/elf, Ff, Coll. Wh. Dyce. 

which"] whom Pope + . 

not excepting even that of Mr Dyce, which is immeasurably superior to most others 
in the article of punctuation, these lines should stand [as they are in the Folio, except 
in having a semi-colon after * jealousies ' and another, instead of a period, after * him- 
selfe']. If the absurdity of representing Leontes as 'leaving' the consequences of 
his foolish jealousies, and at the same time as so * grieving ' over them that he shuts 
himself up, were not enough to indicate the poet's meaning, how could any editor 
possibly miss it who had bestowed a moment's reflection on the parallel passage in the 
original story : * The epitaph being engraven, Pandosto would once a day repair to 
the tombe. . . . But leaving him to his dolorous passions, at last let us come to shetve 
the tragicall discourse of the young infant.^ [Staunton, therefore, punctuates : — 
* Leontes leaving, — The effects of his fond jealousies so grieving. That he shuts up 
himself; — imagine me,' etc. Herein he has been followed, I believe, by every sub- 
sequent editor, and justly.] 

21. me] Johnson : Time is everywhere alike. I know not whether both sense 
and grammar may not dictate : * imagine we^ Gentle spectators, that you now may be,' 
etc. Let us imagine, that you, who behold these scenes, are now in Bohemia. — M. 
Mason (p. 131) pointed out that me is the Ethical dative. 

24. I mentioned] Walker {Crit. iii, 103) : Certainly not 'mention^//.' But the 
metre proves that the word is corrupt ; I am at present unable to correct it. — Dyce 
(ed. iii) : Mr Lettsom proposes to omit * L' [A proposition which is almost incredible. 
— Ed.] — Hudson : [In line 24] verse and statement are alike at fault ; for so we 
have Time, honest old Chorus as he is, telling a wrong story. It is true, mention has 
been made of a son of Polixenes ; but the Chorus did not make it, nor has he, till 
now, said a word to us on any subject. Most likely / got repeated by mistake from 
the next line, and then a was interpolated, in order to make apparent sense. 
[Hudson's text reads : * remember well A mentioned son o' th' King's,' etc.] 

29, 30. daughter . . . after] The rhyme here, as well as in 7am. of the Shr. 



158 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. ii. 

Is th'argument of Time : of this allow, 3 1 

If euer you haue fpent time worfe, ere now : 

If neuer, yet that Time himfelfe doth fay, 

He wilhes eameftly, you neuer may. Exit. 34 



Scena Secunda. 



Enter PolixeneSj and Camillo. 

Pol. I pray thee ( good Camillo) be no more importu- 
nate : 'tis a fickneffe denying thee any thing : a death to 
grant this. 5 

Cam. It is fifteene yeeres fince I faw my Countrey : 
though I haue ( for the mod part) bin ayred abroad, I de- 7 

33. If\ I Var. *85 (misprint). Court of Bohemia. Warb. Johns. Scene 

neuer, yef^ never yet F^. never i. The same. A Room in Polixenes' 

yety Cap. Var. Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. Palace. Cap. 

Knt, Wh. Ktly. 6. fifteene'\ sixteen Han. Cap. Rann, 

1. Act IV. Scene, the Court of Bo- Dyce ii, iii, Dtn. 

hernia. Theob. Act IV, Scene i. The 7. bin'\ beene F,Fj. being F^, Rowe. 

I, i, 244, 245 : — ^ So could I, faith, boy, to have the next wish after. That Lucentio 
indeed had Baptista's youngest daughter ' affords ground for the belief that daughter 
was sometimes pronounced like laughter. On the other hand, in Lear, I, iv, 312, we 
find daughter rhyming with caught her, and slaughter. See note in this ed. on the 
line in Lear ; or see Ellis, Early Eng. Pronunciation y p. 963. 

31. argument] Johnson : * Argument ' is the same with subject. 

33. that] Keightley {^Exp. p. 202) : This is evidently one of the cases in which 
< that * has taken the place of than, then. 

2. Enter, etc.] Knight {Introd. p. 338) : Shakespeare has exhibited his con- 
summate art in opening the Fourth Act with Polixenes and Camillo, of whom we 
have lost sight since the end of the First. Had it been otherwise, — had he brought 
Autolycus, and Florizel, and Perdita, at once upon the scene, — the continuity of action 
would have been destroyed ; and the conmiencement of the Fourth Act would have 
appeared as the commencement of a new play. Shakespeare made the difficulties of 
his plot bend to his art; instead of wanting art, as Ben Jonson says. 

6. fifteene] Capell (p. 173) : Strange, that only the fourth modem [f. e. Hanmer] 
should have made this correction [/. e. sixteen], when the elaps'd years' number had 
been settl'd so lately as but in the page before. — Steevens : See V, iii, 39 : * Which lets 
go by some sixteen years ;' and lb. line 61 : * Which sixteen Winters cannot blow away.* 

7. for the most part] Are we to understand by this, coupled with the * fifteen 
years,' that Camillo has not been continuously at the Court of Leontes, during the 
sixteen years which are just past ? — Ed. 

7. ayred] Schmidt: To lead forth, to lead about. [It is not easy to see how Dr 



ACT IV. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE \ 59 

fire to lay my bones there. Befides, the penitent King 8 

(my Mafter) hath fent for me, to whofe feeling forrowes 
I might be fome allay, or I oreweene to thinke fo)which 10 

is another fpurre to my departure. 

PoL As thou lou'ft me (JCamillo) wipe not out the reft 
of thy feruices, by leauing me now : the neede I haue of 
thee, thine owne goodnefle hath made : better not to 
haue had thee, then thus to want thee, thou hauing made 1 5 

me Bufineffes, (which none ( without thee) can fuffici- 
ently manage) muft either ftay to execute them thy felfe, 
or take away with thee the very feruices thou haft done : 
which if I haue not enough confidered ( as too much I 
cannot) to bee more thankefull to thee, ftiall bee my ftu- 20 

die, and my profite therein, the heaping friendftiippes. 
Of that fatall Countrey Sicillia, prethee fpeake no more, 
whofe very naming, punnifties me with the remembrance 
of that penitent (as thou calft him) and reconciled King 
my brother, whofe loffe of his moft precious Queene & 25 

Children, are euen now to be a-frefh lamented. Say to 

10. or] [or Ff. 1 6. Bu/tmffes] Bufinefs F^, Rowe. 

15. 7»ant thee^ want thee, or want 21. heaping fnendjhippes'\ heaping 

thee : Rowe ct seq. friendship Han. 

Schmidt can have extracted this definition from the simple phrase equivalent to living 
and breathing abroad. — Ed.] 

21. heaping] Warburton : This is nonsense. We should read * reaping friend- 
ships.' The king had said his study should be to reward his friend's deserts ; and 
then concludes that his profit in this study should be reaping the fruits of his friend's 
attachment to him ; which refers to what he had before said of the necessity of Ca- 
millo's stay, or otherwise he could not reap the fruit of those businesses which Camillo 
had cut out. — Heath (p. 214) : The sense is, All the profit I propose to myself in 
this study of mine to be more friendly to thee for the future is, the heaping still more 
friendships on thee, and by that means laying still stronger obligations on thee to 
continue with me. — Johnson : The sense of heaping friendships^ though like many 
other of our author's unusual [phrases], at least unusual to modem ears, is not very 
obscure. * To be more thankful shall be my study ; and my profit therein the heap- 
ing friendships.' That is, * I will for the future be more liberal of recompence, from 
which I shall receive this advantage, that as I heap benefits, I shall heap friendships, 
as I confer favours on thee I shall increase the friendship between us. — Malone : 
* Friendships ' is, I believe, here used, with sufficient licence, merely iox friendly 
offices. — Deighton : But Polixencs could hardly mean that the heaping of friendly 
offices on Camillo was his profit. 

26, 32. Children, are . . . affayres may be, are] In both instances ' are ' is the 
well-known plural by attraction. See line 58 of the next scene : * the loathfomnefle 



30 



l6o THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. ii. 

me, when faw^ft thou the Prince Flarizell my fon ? Kings 27 

are no lefTe vnhappy, their iflue, not being gracious, then 
they are in loofing them, when they haue approued their 
Vertues. 

Cam. Sir, it is three dayes fince I faw the Princerwhat 
his happier affayres may be, are to me vnknowne : but I 
haue ( mifsingly ) noted, he is of late much retyred from 
Court, and is lefle frequent to his Princely exercifes then 
formerly he hath appeared. 35 

Pol. I haue confidered fo much (Camillo) and with 
fome care, fo farre, that I haue eyes vnder my feruice, 
which looke vpon his remouednefle : from whom I haue 
this Intelligence, that he is feldome from the houfe of a 
moft homely (hepheard : a man (they fay) that from very 40 

nothing, and beyond the imagination of his neighbors, 
is growne into an vnfpeakable eftate. 

Cam. I haue heard (fir) of fuch a man , who hath a 
daughter of moft rare note : the report of her is extended 44 

28. iftf^i] iJfueYi. 35. appeared'\ appear' dViovf^-\-, 

29. looftng\ Iq/ingY^, 36. confidered^ constder'd'Ro\it-\-, 
33. mi/singly] musingly Han. G)ll. 37. care,/ofarrey'\caresofar,'Ro^e-{-. 

ii, iii (MS), Huds. care ; so far Cap. et seq. 

of them offend me more ;* where modern editors, except Dyce and Staunton, follow 
the Folios in changing * offend ' to offends. Thus, in both the present passages Keight- 
LEY changed * are ' to *j, which is grammatical but needless. — Ed. 

33. missingly] Warburton: [I read] * but 1 have {missing him) noted/ etc. 
This accounts for the reason of his taking note, because he often missed him, that is, 
wanted his agreeable company. For a compliment is intended ; and in that sense, it 
is to be understood. — Steevens : * Missingly noted ' means, I have observed him at 
intervals, not constantly or regularly, but occasionally. — M. Mason (p. 132) : I have 
no doubt but Hanmer's amendment [see Text. Note] is right, and the meaning will 
then be : * I have perceived his retirement, and have reflected on it.* There is no 
such word as * missingly,' and were we to coin it, it could not possibly convey the 
sense that Steevens attributes to it. [Collier's MS Corrector makes the same change 
that Hanmer makes, which Collier (ed. ii) says is * evidently right ' and that * miss- 
ingly' is 'a mere error of the press.'] — Knight: Does it not mean, * missing him, 
I have noted,' etc.? — Halliwell: * Missingly' appears to mean, missing him, dis- 
covering him not to be present, or, like a person that has missed him. — DvcE (ed. iii) : 
Richardson {Diet. sub. *■ Miss"*) has *** Missingly noitd,^ /.^.observing him to be 
missing, io be absent, noted, etc' — Staunton thinks Hanmer's change has *some 
plausibility.' — Deighton : To miss, equivalent * to feel the want of, to regret the 
absence of,' is as common in Shakespeare as in modem parlance. 



ACT IV. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE i6l 

more, then can be thought to begin from fuch a cottage 45 

PoL That^s likewife part of my Intelligence : but(I 
feare) the Angle that pluckes our fonne thither. Thou 
(halt accompany vs to the place, where we will (not ap- 
pearing what we are)haue fome queflion with the (hep- 
heard ; from whofe fimplicity, I thinke it not vneafie to 50 
get the caufe of my fonnes refort thether. Trethe be my 
prefent partner in this bufmes,and lay afide the thoughts 
of Sicillia. 

Cam. I willingly obey your command. 

PoL My beft Cijrwi/A?, we muft difguife our felues. Exit 55 

46. parf^ apart Theob. Warb. Johns. fear the angle Var. '78, '85, Rann, Mai. 

Var. '73. Steev. Var. '21. 

46, 47. but {I fear) the Angle"] and, 51. thether] F,. 

I fear, the Engle Theob. and, I fear, ' Prethe] Prithee Ff. 

the angle Han. Cap. Rann, Ktly, Huds. 55. Camillo,] Camillo ! Theob. i. 

and, I fear, the angel Garrick. but, I Exit] Exeunt. Rowe. 

46,47. but (I fear) the Angle] Theobald: The disjunctive, *but,* here, I 
think, makes stark nonsense of the context. As in the Tarn. Shr, [IV, ii, 61], 

• Angel * is mistakenly put for Engle, so, I suspect, * Angle,* by the same easy cor- 
ruption, is here. ... * Ay,' replies the king, * that's a part of my intelligence too; and, 
I fear, [that daughter is] the Siren, the Decoy, the Invitation^ that plucks our son 
thither.* [No editor accepted Theobald's engle, a word which Shakespeare, * to his 
credit,* says Nares, never used.] — Heath agrees with Theol>ald in preferring and to 

* but ;* with the rest of Theobald's note he disagrees. — Staunton : * But,* in this 
place, is the Saxon Botan = to boot, and the king's meaning, * The attractions of that 
girl form part of my intelligence, and they are, I apprehend, the angle which draws 
the prince there.' — Dyce (ed. iii) : Perhaps a»</ with Theobald. — Steevens : * Angle,' 
in this place, means b, fishing rod, which he represents as drawing his son, like a Bsh, 
away. [The reading of Garrick's Version (see Appendix) is angel ; it is included 
in the Text. Notes, but it is possibly a mere printer's error, whereof that Version has 
many. See IV, iv, 147.] 

49. question] That is, conversation, talk, as in Shakespeare, /ojifw. 

II 



l62 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iiL 



Scena Tertia. 



Enter Autolicus Jinging . 
When Daffodils begin to peere J 
With heigh the Doxy ouer the dale^ 4 

1. Scene ii. Warb. Johns. Cap. 2. Enter Autolicus...] Enter Autoly- 
The Country. Rowe. Fields [A cus, very ragged... Sing. 

Road. Coll.] near the Shepherds. Cap. 3. Dafiadils] Daffodils Johns, et seq. 

Coll. 

2. singing] Fynes Moryson {Itinerary^ Part III, Bk i, Chap. 3, p. 48) gives the 
following, as a • Prouerbe * which he had heard in his travels : • For singing Art, 
[they say that] The Spaniards weep, the Italians sigh, the English bleate like Goats, 
the Germans bellow, the French sing.' Evidently a proverb of French origin. — Ed. 
See Appendix, Autoiycus, for Roffe's conclusion that • Autolycus, with his evident 
abilities, his enjoyment in the Daffodils, the songs of the birds (not forgetting the 
tirra-lirra of the lark), his real love for^ and talents in Music, all weighed together, 
will ultimately turn over a new leaf.' 

3. When, etc.] Steevens : * When daffodils begin to peer * and * Jog-on, jog-on, 
the foot-path way' — *Two nonsensical songs by the rogue Autolycus,' says Dr 
Bumey. But could not the many compliments paid by Shakespeare to musical 
science intercede for a better epithet than nonsensical f The Dr subsequently 
observes, that < This Autolycus is the true ancient Minstrel, as described in the old 
Fabliaux.' I believe that many of our readers will push the comparison a little fur- 
ther, and concur with me in thinking that our modem minstrels of the opera, like 
their predecessor Autolycus, are pickpockets as well as singers of nonsensical ballads. 
[This was written in 1793 !] — Douce (i, 351) : [Dr. Bumey's] observation is inaccu- 
rate. Autolycus has nothing in common with the character of a minstrel but the 
singing of a song or two. He is a mere rogue, assuming various shapes, and is 
specifically called so in the dramatis persona. ... It is true that Autolycus declares 
he had been an * ape-bearer ' ; but this was no part of the minstrel's profession in 
Shakespeare's time, though it had been so formerly. 

3. Daffadils] Murray (A^. E. D.) : A variant of AffodeL The initial d has not 
been satisfactorily accounted for. It has been variously suggested as due to childish 
or playful distortion, as in Ted for Edward^ tante {oi aunt; to union of the article 
M' (cf. Cotgrave, Affrodil/e, Th' Affodill, and northern English /' affadil)\ to 6nal 
doi and in (e. g.) * fennell an-^ affodiV \ to union of the Dutch or Flemish article, 
as de affodil=\ht affodil ; and to the French preposition ^', as in /leur d^aphrodille. 
It is noteworthy that as in English the word has gained a letter, in i6th cent. French it 
sometimes lost one : Littr^ (s. v. AsphodMe) quotes from De Serres (i6th cent.), * Des 
racines d'^affrodille^ and also * Decoction de lapace, de frodilles* A third form 
dafrodille is quite conceivable. . . . 

Affodillf and its popular variants, daffodil^ daffodilly^ were originally and properly 
the Asphodel ; then by popular misconception, due apparently to the application to 



ACT IV. sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 163 

Why then comes in the fweet (ftlte yeere^ 5 

For the red blood raigns in f winters pale . 

6. raigns] reigns Rowe et seq. 6. winters pale] winter paU Var. '73. 

in] €^er Han. 

both plants, at their first introduction to England, of the fanciful name Laus tibi (see 
Turner, Libellus B 3 b), it was applied, especially in the popular variations, to species 
of Narcissus, etc Botanists, after resisting this misapplication, compromised the 
matter bj retaining affadil for the Asphodel, and accepting the more popular daffodil 
for Narcissus. Finally affodil was < rectified * to asfodyl and asphodel, and daffodil 
restricted in popular use to the Yellow Narcissus or Yellow Daffodil of English fields 
and gardens. . . . Now restricted to Narcissus pseudo- Narcissus (also called Lent 
Lily), found wild in various parts of England and cultivated as an early spring 
flower. — Ellacombb (p. 56) : The daffodil was the favourite of all English poets 
from the time of Shakespeare to our own time. ... A small volume might be filled 
with the many poetical descriptions of the < delectable and sweet-smelling flower,* but 
there are two which are almost classical and which can never be omitted. These are 
Herrick's well-known lines, * Fair daffodils, we weep to see,' etc. [i, 167, Singer's ed.] 
And Keats's well-known and beautiful lines, which bring the praises of the Daffodil 
down to our day. [See the first sixteen or eighteen lines of Endymion, Schmidt's 
note is given in the Preface^ supra."] 

3. peere] This is not the same verb as that in Afer. of Ven. I, i, 23 : * Peering in 
nups for ports,* etc., but, as Skeat (s. v.) sajrs, ' merely short for appear. Middle 
English /^r^9i, short for aperen. ... As aperen was frequently spelt with one/, the 
prefix a- easily dropped off, as in the case of peal for appeal. In French the simple 
ytrh paroir (Lat.parere) was used in a similar way. **Paroirf to appear, to peep 
out, as the day in a morning, or the sun over a mountain." — Cotgrave.' 

4. Dozy] Cotgrave: *Gneuse: f. A woman begger, a she rogue, a great, lazie, 
and louzie queane ; a Doxie, or Mort.' [For the derivation, see note on * Ducke,* 
IV, iv, 346.] 

6. For the red blood, etc.] Warburton : I think this nonsense should be read 
thus : • Why, then come in the sweet o* th' year ; ^Eore the red blood reins-in the 
winter pale,' i. e. Why then come in, or let us enjoy, pleasure, while the season serves, 
before pale winter reins-in the red or youthful blood ; as much as to say, let us enjoy 
life in youth, before old age comes and freezes up the blood. — Capkll (p. 173): 
That is, for the red blood exercises dominion, begins to exert itself in a season which 
is within the pale or province of winter, when * blood is nipt.' — Farmer : The mean- 
ing of • the winter's pale ' is, * the red, the spring blood now reigns o'er the parts lately 
under the dominion of winter* The English pale, the Irish pale, were frequent 
expressions in Shakespeare's time ; and the words * red ' and * pale ' were chosen for 
the sake of the antithesis. — M. Mason (p. 152) : Dr Thirlby proposes to read runs 
instead of < reigns,' which seems to me to be right ; but I should continue to read 
• winter's ' in the plural number, and then the line would stand : — * For the red blood 
runs in the winters pale,' that is, * the blood runs pale in the winters.' — Croft (p. 1 1) : 
' Pale ' may mean paleness, that the red blood reigns in a state where before it was 
excluded, as to leave only a pale hue. He uses the word pale somewhere else in this 
manner for fairness ; in the spring the blood turns' redder from the nitrous particles 
which the arterial veins inhale from the vegete, elastic, or hvelier air than what 



1 64 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. iii. 

TJie white Jheete bleaching on the hedge j j 

With hey the fweet birds ^ how they Jtng\ 

Dothfet my pugging tooth an edge^ g 

9- P^g^J^g] P^f^ggi^g Han. Warb. 9. an] on Theob. et seq. 

Cap. prigging Coll. (MS). 

remains in a more toxpid state in winter. [It is fortunate tbat we can turn to Shake- 
speare for light. Deighton's note is, I think, just : * Though Shakespeare used 
both the substantive and the verb in this sense * (Deighton is speaking of Farmer's 
mention of * the English pale ' and the * Irish pale *), * it is very doubtful whether he 
here meant anything more than that the red blood of spring reigns in the place of the 
pale blood of winter. Autolycus is hardly to be credited with a knowledge of the 
word in its other sense.* — Ed.] 

9- pugging] Johnson : It is certain that ' pugging * is not now understood. But 
Dr Thirlby observes that it is the cant of g3rpsies. — Steevens : The word * pugging ' 
is used by Greene in one of his pieces [No one, it appears, has yet found this passage 
— Ed.] ; and puggard was a cant name for some particular kind of thief. So in The 
Roaring Girl^ i6il: — *Of cheators, lifters, nips, foists, puggards, curbers.'[ — V, i. 
Dyce, in a note on this passage gives the meanings of these words : * cheators * are 
those who use false dice ; * lifters ' those who lift goods clean away ; * nips * are cut- 
purses ; * foists,' pickpockets ; * curbers,' those who hook goods out of a window, but 
of * puggards ' he can 6nd no mention. Nares says, and he is quoted by Halliwell, 
that * there seems sufficient reason to believe that [* pugging *] means thieving^ in the 
present passage, and adds * I do not see that prigging and proguing have an>'thing 
to do with the word.' * It is very likely,' says Collier (ed. ii), * that " pugging " is 
misprinted for prigging or thieving. The Clown afterwards uses the word " prig " 
for a thief. However, " a puggard " was a well-known kind of cheat, and hence 
Autolycus may have obtained his participle. It is amended to prigging in the MS.* 
The word * pugging' occurs in Appius and Virginia^ 1575, near the beginning: — 
* What tugging, what lugging, what pugging by the ear,' but it has evidently no con- 
nection in sense with the word here used. [From the fact that there is a verb to pug 
with its participle, /«^^w^, used in architecture and in mechanics applied to mills 
for grinding, or to breaking up clay or lime for bricks, a correspondent in Notes <5r» 
Qii. I, vii, 256 contends that * pugging' and not prigging is *the correct word, and 
is most expressive. Autolycus means his molar — his grinding tooth is set on edge.' 
Unquestionably * most expressive ' is not too strong language, if Autolycus longs for 
a sheet in order to chew it. Equally apt is the definition given by Wise (Shakspere^ 
His Birth-place^ etc.) and quoted by Deighton as follows : * Wise says that ^^ pugging 
tooth was the same as pegging or peg tooth, that is the canine or dog tooth," and that 
the expression is still in use in Warwickshire. But it is not easy to see why the sight 
of sheets bleaching should set any one's " canine tooth " on edge.' In a Glossary 
of Words used (1893) in the district round Evesham and Pershore, only about 
twelve miles from Stratford, the compiler, J. Salisbury, gives the verb * Pug, to 
pttll^ and in a note (p. 84) queries, whether it be not probable, inasmuch as the 
sheets would have to be pugged off the hedges, that Autolycus * simply means that 
the sight of the sheets (his traffic), excites his " pugging'^ propensity?' This explan- 
ation would carry conviction if it is to be supposed that Autolycus pulls the sheets 



ACT IV. sc. ui.] THE WINTERS TALE 165 

For a quart of Ale is a dijlifor a King. 10 

The Larke , tliat tirra-Lyra cliaunts , 

With heigh y the Thru/It and the lay : 12 

11. Larke, that] lark with Rowe, heigh Ff, Cap. With hey ^wUh hey ^o^^^ 
Pope. Pope, Han. with hey / with hey ! Theob. 

tirra-Lyra chaunts] F^, Cam, Wh. Warb. with heigh ! with hey ! Var. *2I, 

ii. tirra-Lyrachaunts F^. tirra Lycra- Knt. With heigh ho Walker (Crit, iii, 

chaunts F . tirra-lirra chaunts Cap. 1 04). 

ct seq. 12. lay] lay Fj. Lay F^, Rowe. 

12. With heigh,] With heigh, with 

from the hedges with his teeth. It is merely an accident in connection with this verse 
that Cotgrave gives as a definition of the French, Pillars : * Pilferers, purloyners, 
henne-stealers ; or, such as take (other mens) sheets off hedges.' — Ed.] 

10. For a quart, etc.] Deighton : If this has any real connection with the former 
line, it means * for by the sale of the stolen sheets I could buy a quart of ale.' [Un- 
questionably, this is the point of the stanza, just as in the preceding stanza it is the 
sweet of the year because the red blood is then reigning. If proof were needed, it 
is supplied in a stanza sung by Three Beggars in The Three Ladies of London^ '584: 
' Our fingers are lime-twigs, and barbers we be. To catch sheets from hedges, most 
pleasant to see ; Then to the alewife ipundly we set them to sale. And spend the 
money merrily upon her good ale.' — ^p. 347, ed. Hazlitt-Dodsley. — Ed.] 

11. tirra-Lyra] Holt White: * La gentille allouette avec son tire-lire \ Tire 
lire a lire et tire-lirant tire \ Vers la voute du Ciel, puis son vol vers ce lieu | Vire et 
desire dire adieu Dieu, adieu Dieu.' — Du Bartas, Liv. 5, de sa premiere Semaine. — 
Malone : So, in an ancient poem entitled The Silke Worms and their Flies^ I599» 
* Let Philomela sing, let Progne chide, Let Tyry-tyry-Uerers upward flie.' In the 
margin the author explains * Tyryleerers ' by its synonym, larks, — Hunter (i, 419) : 
Sylvester's rendering of the passage in Du Bartas deserved to have been added for 
its singularity and aptness — * The pretty lark, climbing the welkin clear, Chaunts with 
a chear. Hear peer- 1 neer my deer: Then stooping thence, seeming her fall to rew, 
A dieu f she saith, adieu ^ deer deer^ adieu. ^ 

12. With heigh, etc.] The metre is here so evidently defective that editors are 
justified in adopting the reading of the Ff. For my part, I should prefer : * With 
heigh, the Thrush, and heigh, the Jay,' — the cadence of the line seems to be thereby 
better preserved. Dyce (ed. iii) suggests that * perhaps the name of some bird has 
dropped out.' — Ed. 

12. Thrush] Harting (p. 137): It is somewhat singular that the Thrush 
( Turdus musicus), a bird as much famed for song as either the nightingale or the 
lark, has been so little noticed by Shakespeare ; there are but three passages in which 
this well-known bird is mentioned ; — here, and as a * throstle * in A/id. N. D, III, i, 
and Mer. of Ven. Many naturalists, who have paid particular attention to the song 
of the thrush, have insisted upon its taking equal rank as a songster with the more 
favoured nightingale. Certain it is, that the notes of this bird, although not so varied, 
nor so liquid, so to say, as those of Philomel, are yet of a clear, rich tone, and have 
something indescribably sweet about them. 



l66 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. iii. 

Are Summer fongs for me and my Aunts 1 3 

WhUe we lye tumbling in the hay, 
I haue feru'd Prince Florisellj and in my time wore three i $ 

pile, but now I am out of feruice. 

Butjhall I go moumefor that (my deere) 

the pale Moone Jhines by night : 
And when I wander here ^and there 

I then do mojl go right. 20 

If Tinkers may haue leaue to Hue , 

and beare tlie Sow-skin Bowget , 
Then my account I well may gvue , 

and in the Stockes auouch-it. 
My Trafficke is fheetes : when the Kite builds, looke to 25 

13. Summer] Summers F^. 22. Sow-skin] Show-skin F^. 

20. mod go] go most Pope+, Var. Bowget] Budget "Rovft. 

Rann, Mai. 24. auouch-it] avouch it Ff et seq. 

13. Aunts] Dependent on the connection, this may mean a woman of a character 
rather more free than a mere hoyden. 

15, 16. three pile] Nares: The finest and most costly kind of velvet; worn, 
therefore, only by persons of wealth and consequence. It alludes to something in 
the construction of the velvet. It seems to have been thought that there was a three- 
fold accumulation of the outer surface, or pile. Hence Shakespeare gives the name 
of * Three-pile * to a mercer in Meas.for Meas. IV, iii, 1 1. 

17-24. But, etc.] Deighton : But that is no reason why I should be downcast ; 
by the light of the moon I am able to carry on my petty thefts, and when I seem to 
be going wrong, to have lost my way, I am then going in what is the right path for 
me, I. ^. I am most successful in my thieving. If tinkers are allowed to live and 
wander about the country carrying with them their leathern sack for tools and freely 
plying their trade, then there is no reason why I should not give an account of my 
occupation, or openly avow it when put in the stocks. 

22. Bowget] Cotgrave : *• Bouge : f. A budget, wallet, great pouch, male, or case 
of leather, seniing to carrie things in behind a man on horsebacke.' 

24. auouch-it] Collier (ed. ii) : It will require no proof that these three distinct 
fragments, sung by Autolycus, could not go to the same tune ; and the old Corrector 
of F, marks the fact in his margin, that the first three stanzas were sung to one tune, 
the fourth to another tune, and the fifth to a third tune. We are, nevertheless, no 
nearer the tunes themselves. 

25, 26. My . . . Linnen] In the first three Variorums Steevens interpreted * sheets ' 
as referring to the street ballads in which Autolycus traded ; herein he anticipated 
Walker {Crit. iii, 104); both critics recognised, of course, the quibble involved in 
the two kinds of sheet. In 1785 M. Mason (p. 133) criticised Steevens's interpre- 
tation, which he said was erroneous. * Autolycus does not yet appear,* he continues, 
' in the character of a ballad-singer, which he assumed afterwards occasionally, in 



ACT IV. sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 167 

leffer Linnen. My Father nam'd me AutolicuSj who be- 26 

ing (as I am) lytter'd vnder Mer curie , was likewife a 
fnapper-vp of vnconfidered trifles : With Dye and drab, 28 

27. /j/Z/^rV] lUter'd F^. 

order to have an opportunity of exercising his real profession, that of thievery and 
picking of pockets ; he means here merely to say that his practice was to steal sheets 
and large pieces of linen, leaving the smaller pieces for the kites to build with. He 
sajrs afterwards that ** his revenue was thievery."* In his next edition, in 1793, 
Steevens withdrew his note, substituting therefor a statement, hardly more to be com- 
mended and for which he gives no authority, to the effect that by * lesser linen * was 
meant what * modem laundresses ' term small clothes. — Holt White corroborates 
Mason. 'When the good women,* he says, *in solitary cottages near the woods 
where kites build miss any of their " lesser linen," as it hangs to dry on the hedge in 
Spring, they conclude that the kite has been marauding for a lining to her nest ; and 
there adventurous boys often. Hnd it employed for that purpose.' — To the interpreta- 
tion that Autolycus is here contrasting his thefts and those of the kite, Deighton's 
is, I think, the only dissenting voice ; he considers the contrast * doubtful,* and con- 
tinues, * Autolycus immediately afterwards speaks of himself as resembling in charac- 
ter the original Autolycus in being a snapper up of unconsidered trifles (in that re- 
spect being also like a kite), and goes on to say that all more daring robberies are out 
of his line. He therefore means, I think, " When I am on the tramp, people may 
expect to have their sheets stolen, just as when the kite is building they may expect ' 
to have odd pieces of linen carried off if left on the drying lines aAer washing, or 
exposed anywhere in the open air." He is the human kite that carries oflf everything 
that comes in his way.* The contrast, however, involved in * lesser linen' is, I think, 
unavoidable. 

Harting (p. 46) : This line may be illustrated by giving a description of a kite's 
nest which we have seen, and which was taken many years ago in Huntingdonshire. 
The outside of the nest was composed of strong sticks ; the lining consisted of small 
pieces of linen, part of a saddle-girth, a bit of a harvest glove, part of a straw bon- 
net, pieces of paper, and a worsted garter. In the midst of this singular collection 
were deposited two eggs. The kite is now almost extinct in England, and a kite's 
nest is, of course, a great rarity. 

TiECK, who translates « sheets * by Hemden^ i. e. shirts (wherein he is followed 
by Dr A. Schmidt), observes (vol. ix, p. 356) that the slang word * sheets* can- 
not be reproduced in German, because it is pronounced like 'cheats,* which it 
signifies. 

26. Autolicus, who, etc.] Theobald's text reads, *— nam*d me Autolicus, being 
litter'd under Mercury, who, as I am, was,* etc. (wherein he was followed by War- 
BURTON and Johnson), whereon he remarks as follows : « The slight transposition I 
have ventur'd to make of four short Monosyllables in this passage, was prescrib*d by 
my ingenious Friend Mr Warburton. The Poet's Meaning seems to be this. My 
Father nam'd me Autolicus because I was bom under Mercury ; who was a Thief, 
as I am. [See Names of the Actors, note 16.] 

28. Dye and drab] With gaming and women, I acquired these rags. ' Purchase * 
applies to any mode of acquisition other than that by inheritance. — Ed. 



l68 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iii. 

I purchased this Caparifon, and my Reuennew is the filly 
Cheate. Gallowes, and Knocke, are too powerfuU on 30 

the Highway. Beating and hanging are terrors to mee : 
For the life to come, I fleepe out the thought of it. A 
prize, a prize. 33 

29. this\ Om. Ff, Rowe. Pope, Han. Cheat. „. highway ; Theob. 

filly\ sly Han. Warb. et seq. 

30,31. Cheate. ...Highway, '\ Cheat^.., 30. Knocke'\ hnochs Han. 
Highway^ F^. Cheat. Highway y Rowe, 

29. 30. silly Cheate] Steevens : This is one of the technical terms belonging to 
the art of Coney catching^ or thievery ^ which Greene has mentioned. I think it means 
picking pockets, [As a * technical term ' I have not noted it in Greene, but neither 

* silly ' nor < cheat ' is difHcult of comprehension, nor is any difficulty added when 
they are combined. Greene {Art of Conny -catching, p. 36, ed. Grosart) says that the 

• Qieting law ' is the * play at false dice.* — Ed.] 

30. Gallowes, and Knocke] Johnson : The resistance which a highwayman 
encounters in the fact, and the punishment which he suffers on detection, withhold 
me from daring robbery, and determine me to the silly cheat and petty theft. 

31. Beating and banging] Collier (ed. ii) : He should rather have said hang- 
ing and beating, in order to correspond with * gallows and knock.* [Shakespeare 
does not always use a ' respective * construction. He sometimes uses a chiasm, or 
criss-cross construction, as here, and as in Mer. of Ven. HI, i, 57 : *■ warmed and 
cooled by the same winter and summer;' lb. I, iii, 23: Mand rats and water rats, 
water thieves and land thieves.* —Ed.] 

32. the life to come, etc.] Coleridge (p. 255) : Fine as this is, and delicately 
characteristic of one who had lived and been reared in the best society, and had been 
precipitated from it by dice and drabbing ; yet still it strikes against my feelings as 
a note out of tune, and not as coalescing with that pastoral tint which gives such a 
charm to this Act. It is too Macbeth-like in the * snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.* 
— Lloyd (p. 135): But it is quite consistent with his nature; it expresses a latent 
superstition or conscientiousness that is still more decidedly marked in his last scene, 
and that gives contrast and counterchange to his roguery, even as in the case of Ca- 
millo, we trace a line of prudence darkening almost into duplicity, that permeates 
the very purest and most single-hearted of natures. [Coleridge is wholly right. As 
always, where consistency of character is concerned, his poetic instinct is unerring. 
That the idea of a future existence should be so tremendous to Autolycus that he 
drowned in sleep all thought of it, is as much out of place in his mouth as w^ould be 
a delight in daffodils because they take the winds of March with beauty, and not 
because they are the precursors of his frolics. But does he here refer to a future 
existence ? I think the * life to come ' bears the same meaning to Autolycus that it 
does to Macbeth, who hesitates to risk the peace of his * days and nights to come,* 
because we now have judgement and must drink the poison'd chalice now ; were it 
not for this present punishment Macbeth would risk his coming days, he'd jump the 
life to come. Thus it is with Autolycus ; he'll have no terrors of the gallows hang- 
ing over him ; the thou<:;ht of what the next day may bring shall never break his 
slumber ; all thoughts of his future living shall be forgotten in sleep. — Ed.] 



ACT IV, sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 169 

Enter Clowne. 

Clo^ Let me fee, euery Leauen-weather toddes, euery 35 

tod yeeldes pound and odde (hilling : fifteene hundred 
(home, what comes the wooU too ? 

AiiL If the fprindge hold, the Cocke's mine. 

Clo. I cannot do't without Compters. Let mee fee, 39 

34. Scene iii. Warb. Johns. 36. Jhilling\ Jhillings F^, Rowe i. 

35. Leaum-weather\ eleven Weather 37. too?^ F,, Theob. ii + . tofY^^ 
Rowe + , Var. '73. eleventh weather et cet. 

Han. Ueven weather Cap. Var. '78, '85, 38. fprindge"] fprindg F^. springe 

Rann. Ueven wether — Mai. et seq. Johns. Var. '73 et seq. 

living wether Mai. conj. [Aside. Rowe et seq. 

36. tad] told Ff. 39. ddt] do it FjF^, Rowe i. 
pound and odde] a pound and Compters] counters Cap. et seq. 

one odd Han. 

35. Leauen-weather toddes] Malone: Dr Farmer observes to me thai to tod 
is used as a verb by dealers in wool ; thus, they say : * Twenty sheep ought to tod 
fifty pounds of wool,' etc. The meaning, therefore, of the Clown's words is : Every 
eleven wether tods, /. e. will produce a tod, or twenty-eight pounds of wool ; every 
tod yields a pound and odd shilling,' etc. The occupation of his father furnished our 
poet with accurate knowledge on the subject ; for two pounds and a half of wool is, 
I am told, a very good produce from a sheep at the time of shearing. — Ritso.n : Each 
fleece [at eleven wethers equalling 28 16.] would, therefore, be 2 Id. S os. 11^ dr., 
and the whole produce of fifteen hundred shorn 136 tod, I clove, 2 Id. 6oz. 2 dr., which, 
at a pound and odd shilling per tod, would be 143/. y. od. Indeed, it appears 
from Stafford's Brecfe Conceipte of English Pollicye, 1 58 1, p. 16 [p. 36 Sh. Soc. Re- 
print] that the price of a tod of wool was at that period twenty or two and twenty 
shillings; so that the medium price was exactly * pound and odd shilling.' [It is a 
matter of small moment, but it is doubtful that Stafford means in this passage to give 
the actual current price of wool, inasmuch as he is stating a hypothetical case. — R. G. 
White (ed. i) has made another calculation from Stafford, fols. 14 b, 15, and 15 b, 
with even nicer accuracy, thus : * there had been an advance of prices equal to about 
fifty per cent, within the thirty years previous to the publication of that work (" yee 
sell that yee were wont to sell aforetime [* xxx yeares agoe *] for xx groats now for 
XXX ') and that " aforetime " the husbandman sold " his wooll at a marke the Todde.** 
This, the mark being 13J. 6</., would make "every tod yield pound and odd shilling'* 
in Shakespeare's time.' According to Forby ( Vocabulary of East Anglia) the verb 
to tod was still in use in Norfolk in 1830.] 

39. Compters] Way (Foot-note in Prompt. Parv. s. v. Awgrym) : Towards the 
commencement of the XVIth century the use of the Arabic numerals had in some 
degree superseded the ancient mode of calculating by the abacus; and counters, 
which, at the period when the Promptorium was compiled, were generally used. . . . 
They were not, indeed, wholly disused at a time long subsequent. [See * counter- 
caster,' 0th. I, i, -^i.] — Steevens (Note on * Counter,' As You Like It, II, vii, 66) : 
Dr Farmer observes to me that about 1600 the French counters (x. e. pieces of false 
money used as a means of reckoning) were brought into use in England. They are 
mentioned in Tro. <&• Cress. II, ii, 28. 



I/O THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iii. 

what am I to buy for our Sheepe-fhearing-Feaft? Three 40 

pound of Sugar, fiue pound of Currence, Rice : What 
will this fifter of mine do with Rice ? But my father hath 
made her Miflris of the Feaft, and (he layes it on . Shee 
hath made-me four and twenty Nofe-gayes for the (hea- 
rers (three-man fong-men, all, and very good ones) but 45 
they are moft of them Meanes and Bafes ; but one Puri- 

40. Feaft ?'\ feast, Theob. Warb. 41. Rice :^ rice— Kowe, 
Johns, feast? [Reads] Sta. 44. made~me'\ F^ 

41. Sugar ^ jxffar/ [reading out of a 45. three-man fong-men^ three-man- 
Note] Cap. -song-men Var. '73. 

Currence"] Currants Rowc. 46. Meanes] Mean Rowe i. 

40. Feast] Steevens : The expence attending these festivities appears to have 
afforded matter of complaint. . Thus in Questions of profitable and pleasant Con- 
cemings, 1594 : * If it be a sheep-shearing feast, maister Baily can entertaine you with 
his bill of reckonings to his maister of three shepheards wages, spent on fresh cates, 
besides spices and saffron pottage.' 

45. three-man song-men] Theobald : By a ' three-man ' songster we are to 
understand, a singer of catches, which were then and are now most commonly in 
three parts. — Percy: A *six mens song* is alluded to in The Tournament of 
Tottenham — see Reliques of Anc. Poet, ii, 24. — M alone: Florio renders Berlingotxo, 
— * a dronken song, a threemens song.' Haluwell cites six or seven instances of 
the use of the term. 

[In the first letter from Theobald to Warburton (Nichols's Illustrations, ii, 209), 
Theobald, then in his salad days and very green in judgement, proposed, merely for 
the sake of ' awakening a more curious speculation,' as he says, that the present text 
should read : — * They We men, songmen all,' or * They're main songmen all.' * But 
as,' he continues, * since your note, the Weavers have run much in my head, is it prob- 
able to thinking, as our Shakespeare says, that he might have wrote, " thrum-men, 
songmen all," t. e. Weavers and Songsters ?' This was written in a private letter, five 
years before Theobold published his edition of Shakespeare, wherein no allusion what- 
ever is made to these early conjectures, which never appeared in print until nigh a 
hundred years after they were made. This explanation is due to Theobald (to whom 
and to Capcll we owe our largest debt of gratitude for the text of Shakespeare as it 
stands to-day), inasmuch as Halliwell in his edition quotes these proposed changes 
and attributes them *to the rage for conjectural emendation.' Halliwell gives no 
name as the author, but a reference to the footnotes of the Cambridge Edition fur- 
nishes it, and then the indirect slight put upon Theobald is revealed. There is no 
intimation in Halliwell's note that the conjectures were never published by their 
author, but were practically withdrawn. It behooves us to be sensitive and touchy 
under any slur thrown on Theobald, and, wherever possible, to vindicate his memory, 
as the only reparation now in our power for the unmerited contumely cast on him 
during his unhappy lifetime by Pope and by his 'most affectionate friend' W^ar- 
burton, and after his death by Steevens and Malone, and, I am sorry to add, by Dr 
Johnson. — Ed.] 

46. Meanes] Steevens: That is, tenors.— Chappell (p. 223): The *mean* in 



ACT IV. sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 171 

tan amongft them, and he fings Pfalmes to home-pipes. 47 

I muft haue Saffron to colour the Warden Pies, Mace : 

47. amangfi'\ amtmg F^,Rowe-\-. 48. Warden Pies] Wardens Pus 

Rowe i. vHirden-pus Rowe ii. 

music was the intermediate part between the tenor and treble ; not the tenor itself, as 
explained by Steevens. — TiECK (ix, 356) asserts that * means and bases ' are used 
with a double meaning. 

47. to home-pipes] This is not, I think, he sings Psalms * to the accompaniments 
of horn-pipes,' as Deighton says, for who was there to accompany him ? — but rather, 
he sings Psalms to the lively tunes to which Horn-pipes were danced, — a practice 
which, we know, was extremely popular in France, and from allusions like the present 
we can infer that it was not unknown in England. — £d. 

48. Saffron . . . Warden Pies] In the Two Fifteenth- Century Cookery- Books 
(about 1430 and 1450), reprinted by the E, E, T. Soc., and edited by Thomas Austin, 
* Saffron ' or, as it is spelled, Saferoun^ Safrouny or Sapheron, is a frequent ingredient. 
In one of the Recipes (p. 87) directions are given for its use in colouring, not Warden 
Pies to be sure, but Wardens in syrup, as follows : — * Take Wardons, and cast hem in 
a faire potte, And boile hem til thei ben tendre ; and take hem vppe, and pare hem 
in ij. or in iij. And take powder of Canell [Cinnamon], a good quantite, and cast hit 
in good red wyne. And cast sugur thereto, and put hit in an erthen potte, And lete 
boile ; And then cast the pears thereto. And late hem boile togidre awhile ; take 
powder of ginger. And a litell saffron to colloure hit with, And loke that hit be 
poynante [piquant with vinegar] And also Doucet [sweetish].* On p. 51 is a Recipe 
for a Warden Pie : — * Quyncis or Wardouns in past — Take and make fayre Rounde 
cofyns of fayre past [a * cofyn ' was the crust of a pie, and considering the sequent 
effects of the ingredients which it frequently enclosed was apparently not a misnomer. 
— £d.] ; then take fayre Raw Quyncis, & pare hem with a knyf, & take fayre out the 
core ther-of ; than take Sugre y-now, & a lytel pouder Gyngere, & stoppe the hole 
fulle; & cowche .ij. or .iij. wardonys or quynces in a cofyn, & keuere hem, & lat 
hem bake ; & for defaut of Sugre, take hony ; but then putte pouder Pepir ther-on, 
& Gyngere, in the maner be-for sayd.' ' It [saffron] was especially cultivated,' says 
the Encycl, Brit.^ * near Hinton in Cambridgeshire and in Essex at Saffron Walden 
(f. e. Saffron Woods, not Saffron Walled- in, as the canting crest of the town would 
imply), its cultivators being called " crokers." This industry, though very important 
in the 15th century, . . . appears to have died out about 1768.' * One grain of saffron 
rubbed to powder with sugar and a little water imparts a distinctly yellow tint to ten 
gallons of water.' The cultivation of saffron in the sixteenth century in England was 
important enough for Harrison to devote a chapter to it. See Harrison's Description 
of England^ Bk iii. Chap, viii, ed. 1587 ; Reprint by New Sh. Soc. Part ii, p. 50. — 
Skeat says a * warden * meant a keeping pear, and quotes Cotgrave : — * Poire de garde, 
A warden, or winter Peare; a Peare which may be kept very long.' Minshieu 
(Guide into Tongues) to the same effect : * a Warden, or great Peare. Poire de garde^ 
t, a peare to gard or keepe long.' But Ellacombe (p. 154) says * this is certainly a 
mistake. In an interesting paper by Mr Hudson Turner, " On the State of Horti" 
culture in England in early times, ^^ etc., printed in the Archaeological Journal , v, 301, 
it is stated that ** the Warden Pear bad its origin and name from the horticultural 
skill of the Cistercian Monks of Wardon Abbey in Bedfordshire, founded in the 



172 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. iii. 

Dates, none : that's out of my note : Nutmegges, feuen ; 

a Race or two of Ginger, but that I may begge : Foure 50 

pound of Prewyns, and as many of Reyfons o'th Sun. 

51. Prnuyn5\ Ff. Pruns Rowe i. 51. Reyfom'\ Reafom FjF^. Rosins 

Pruins Rowe ii, Cap. Prunes Pope et Rowe. raisins Pope, 
cet. 



twelfth century. Three Warden Pears appeared in the armorial beanngs of the 
Abbey." '—Ed. 

49. note] Capell inferred from this word that the Clown bad a written list from 
which be read the items ; he, therefore, inserted after * Three pound of sugar * the 
stage-direction * [Reading out of a Note] ' and printed in Italics all the articles which 
the Clown had to buy. This inference was shared by the subsequent editors begin- 
ning with the Var. 1778 down to Dyce, ed. i, and R. G. White, ed. i, but not inclu- 
sive (these two appeared in the same year, 1857), by Collier, by Staunton, who 
adds the stage-direction * [Reads],' by Singer and by Keightley, inasmuch as one 
and all printed the items either in Italics or in quotation marks. — R. G. White para- 
phrases the present passage thus : — * that's not among the matters of which I am to 
take note,' and adds : * not " out of my list " as most editors evidently understand it, 
by printing the items which the Clown enumerates, as if he read them from a list 
Shakespeare would not have represented a Clown in his day reading ; and manu- 
script, too. Had he done so, a shout of laughter, not with him, but at him, would 
have gone up from even the penny-paying part of his audience.' — Dyce remarks : 

* I believe that the Clown is trusting to his memory alone.* That Dyce and White 
are right is evident from the fact that the Clown enumerates * dates,' which those 
who follow Capell print also in italics, thereby representing the Clown as reading 
from his list an item which was not in it. — Ed.] 

50. Race] That is, a root. *01d French, rals^ralz, a root (Burguy) ; cf. Spanish, 
raiZy a root. — Lat. radicem^ ace. of radix, a root.' — Skeat. 

51. Reysons o'th Sun] R. G. White (ed. i) : All raisins were so called. 

• Among us in England they be of two sortes, that is to say great Raysons and smal 
Raysons, otherwise called Corans [Currants]. The greatest sort are called raysons 
of the sunne, the other are commonly to be had and are much used in meats,' etc. — 
The Haucn of Health, 1 584, p. 97. [Raisins were thus called to distinguish them 
from raisins dried artificially. In Holland's Pliny, xiv, cap. iii, mention is made of 
the vine * Scirpula, the grapes whereof seem as if they were Raisins of the sun, dried 
already ;' and in Batman vppon Bartholome, p. 328, verso, we find : — * Reison in the 
singular number is called Vua passa, and is made in many manner wise. For some- 
time the stalke thereof is woue and wounde, so that the humour may no more come 
to the grape from the vine. And so the grape in certeine dayes is fordryed by heate 
of the Sunne. And this Grape and Reison is called Vua passa : for they suffer heate 
of the Sunne : and this is the best to eat. And sometime the grapes be wounde in 
vine leaues, and bee bound with threed, for the grapes should not seede, and be put 
into an Ouen so bound & wrapped after that bread is taken out and be dried, when 
the heate is temperate, and bee Reisons when they be so dr\'ed. In such manner 
they bee called Vue passe, for they suffer a manner of violence of heate of the Ouen. 
In such manner sometime Vua passa is made in chimneyes. . . . Raisons bee made 
in Ouens, Chimneies, and in heat of the Sunne.' — Ed.] 



ACT IV. sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 173 

Atit Oh, that euer I was borne. 5 2 

Clo' rth'name of me. 

52. [Grovelling on the ground. Rowe $3. me.'\ me — Rowe et seq. 
et seq. 

53. of me] Theobald {Nichoisy ii, 363) : I suspect, * I'th' name of the — .* 
The Clown, hearing Autolycus groan, begins to be afraid ; and apprehending a spirit, 
according to the old superstition, falls to invoking the Trinity. [This was not repeated 
in Theobald's edition.] — ^Johnson : I believe * me * should be blotted out. [This 
was not repeated in any of the subsequent Variorum editions. Possibly on account 
of the assault made on it by Kenrick, whose note, albeit of great length over so small 
a matter, is worth reviving as a specimen of the style of criticism among our for- 
bears ; after quoting Johnson's conjecture that * me ' should be blotted out, Kenrick 
proceeds as follows : * Here we have another article of Dr Johnson's critical creed. 
It is certain that, whether * me * be in or out is, in this place, of very little conse- 
quence ; but I so much revere the text of Shakespeare, that, without I see an absolute 
necessity for it, I will never defile it with a blot. It seems as if the very name of 
Johnson was fated to cast invidious reflections on that of Shakespeare ; as if it was 
malignantly formed to absorb the rays diffused by superior lustre, and enviously to 
sully, with a reflected gloom, the fountain of its own light. This scheme of blotting- 
out was originally suggested by o, Johnson \ who, when the players made their boast 
in honour of Shakespeare, that he never blotted a line, replied, " Would he had 
blotted out a thousand." This was Ben Johnson, who only expressed his wish that 
Shakespeare had done what Sam Johnson boldly determined to do for him. For it 
is to be observed that here was no tenderness due to living reputation to stop his hand ; 
and he might think to indulge himself safely in the innocent discussion of a dead 
poefs pretensions to renown. [These are quotations from Dr Johnson's Pre/ace.'] 
If it be not owing to some such antipathy or invidious influence subsisting between 
the names of Johnson and Shakespeare, to what else can we impute Dr John- 
son's objection to the harmless me in the above passage? He very possibly can- 
not find any use for it. But if we consider that the whole line is a mere exclama- 
tion ; testifying the Clown's surprise at hearing Autolicus cry out, and seeing him lie 
groveling on the earth. Had he said In the name of Heaven — or, In the name of 
Mercy, — the line, however bordering on profanity, would have past ; but nothing is 
more common than for conscientious people to check themselves in the middle of 
such exclamations, or to substitute some innocent word in the place of the exception- 
able one. Again, if any objection be made to the supposition of the Clown's stop- 
ping in the middle of the word mercy ; let us take another view of the exclamation, 
and admit the word me to stand as a personal pronoun. It is notorious that persons, 
who, as Hotspur says, "swear like comfit-maker's wives, and give such sarcenet 
security for their oaths, as, in good faith — as true as I live — as God shall mend me — 
and as sure as I live. ^^ I say it is very common for these uncommon swearers, who 
cannot gulp down or digest a good mouth-filling oath, to protest upon their Word. 
Now I cannot see why a person, who, to avoid a profane oath, should protest upon 
his WORD, might not, with equal propriety, in order to avoid a profane exclamation, 
cry out in his NAME. Admitting this, the Clown, instead of crying out in the name 
of heav'n, exclaimed in the name of himself; viz. : Pth^ name of me. And this 
expression may surely pass among expletives of this kind, as well as for the soul of 



174 ^^^ WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iu. 

AuU Oh helpe me, heipe mee : plucke but off thefe 
ragges : and then, death, death. 55 

Clo. Alacke poore foule, thou haft need of more rags 
to lay on thee, rather then haue thefe off. 

AuU Oh fir , the loathfomneffe of them offend mee, 
more then the ftripes I haue receiued, which are mightie 
ones and millions. 60 

Clo. Alas poore man, a million of beating may come 
to a great matter. 

Aut. I am robM fir, and beaten : my money, and ap- 
parrell tane from me, and thefe dereftable things put vp- 
on me. 65 

Clo, What, by a horfe-man, or a foot-man ? 

Aut. A footman (fweet fir) a footman. 

C/o. Indeed, he fhould be a footman, by the garments 
he has left with thee : If this bee a horfemans Coate , it 
hath feene very hot feruice. Lend me thy hand, He helpe 70 

thee. Come, lend me thy hand. 

54. OAAe/p^ll O^, ^^A/Var. '73 (mis- 58. of^fu/} I>yce> Sta. opnds Ff, 
print). Rowe et cet. 

55. </(fflM.] death— Rowe ii. death ! 64. dereftable'\ deteftable Ff. 

Cap. 71. [Helping him up. Rowe et seq. 

me— for the life 0/ me— for the heart of me, etc. — After all, whether I have con- 
vinced the reader or not of the propriety of letting me stand in the text, I most have 
some better reason given ME for expunging it than the ipse-credidit of a Johnson.* — 
Revie^v^ p. 85. [Kenrick's plea for * I'the name of mercy ' might have received some 
support had he recalled the exclamation of the Clown's father, III, iii, 109 : — * Name 
of mercy, when was this, boy.*] — Steevens pronoimces the Clown's speech * a vulgar 
exclamation ' which he had often heard. * So, Sir Andrew Ague-cheek [ Twel. Nighty 
II, iii, 194] :— " Before me, she's a good wench !" ' — Cambridge Edition : A writer 
in The Gent. Mag. 1st Ser. vol. Ix, p. 306, suggests that by « me — 'in this place is 
meant mercy, and that the Clown's exclamation is interrupted by Autolycus. 

58. offend] See note on lines 26, 32 in the preceding Scene. 

62. matter.] Deighton : When you come to reckon it, a million of beating 
amounts to a good deal ; an adage worthy of Dogberry. 

66, 67, 68. foot-man . . . footman] Perhaps it may be to attach too much im- 
portance to the spelling even in this well printed play, but it seems noteworthy that 
in the Gown's question * horse-man ' and * foot-man * are printed with hyphens which 
are omitted in the repetition of the words. May it not be that the meaning intended 
to be conveyed thereby, can be thus freely paraphrased ? * Was it a man on horse- 
back or a man on foot ?* asks the Clown. * It was a footman, a servant,' answers 
Autolycus. * It must indeed have been a fellow who footed it, a downright tramp, to 
judge by his clothes,' responds the Clown. — Ed. 



ACT IV, sc. iu.] THE WINTERS TALE 175 

Aut. Oh good fir, tenderly, oh. 72 

Clo. Alas poore foule. 

AuU Oh good fir, foftly, good fir : I feare (fir) my 
fhoulder-blade is out. 75 

Clo. How now? Canft ftand ? 

Aut. Softly, deere fir : good fir, foftly : you ha done 
me a charitable office. 

Clo. Doeft lacke any mony ? I haue a little mony for 
thee. 80 

Aut. No, good fweet fir : no, I befeech you fir: I haue 
a Kinfman not part three quarters of a mile hence , vnto 
whome I was going : I (hall there haue money, or anie 
thing I want : Offer me no money I pray you, that killes 
my heart. 85 

Cloiv. What manner of Fellow was hee that robb'd 
you ? 

Aut A fellow (fir) that I haue knowne to goe about 
with TroU-mydames : I knew him once a feruant of the 89 

77. deere fir :'\ dear sir ; [picks his 88-101. As mnemonic lines, Warb. 

Pocket] Cap. Var. '78 et seq. (subs.). 89. Troll-my dames] troll-madams 

dear sir : [cuts his purse.] Coll. ii (MS). Han. trol-madames Cap. 

ha"] ha* Rowe et seq. him] him him F,. 

79. Doffi] Dofl FjF^. 

75. out] BUCKNILL (p. 131) says justly that the * shoulder-blade cannot be dis- 
located/ but an oversight by Autolycus in anatomy, under the circumstances, is not to 
be imputed to Shakespeare. — Ed. 

77. deere sir] Capcll's stage-direction here, is noticed in the Preface, 
89. TroU-my-dames] Farmer: 'The ladyes, gentle woomen, wyves, and 
maydes, may in one of the galleries walke ; and if the weather bee not a^^eable 
to theire expectacion, they may have in the ende of a benche eleven holes made, 
intoo the whiche to trowle pummates, or bowles of leade, bigge, little, or meane, or 
also of copper, t)mne, woode, eyiher vyolent or softe, after their owne discretion; 
the pastyme troule-in-madame is termed.* [ — The Benefit of the Ancient Bathes of 
Buckstones^ compiled by John Jones at the King's Mede, nigh Darby, 1572, p. 12. 
The foregoing extract is copied from Brand {Pop. Ant. ii, 445), who gives date and 
page, which Farmer does not give, and who follows the original with greater fidelity, 
apparently, than Farmer.] — Steevens: The old English title of this game was 
Pigeon holes; as the arches in the machine through which the balls are rolled, 
resemble the cavities made for pigeons in a dove-house. [Cotgrave gives : * Trou 
Madame. The Game called Tninkes, or the Hole.* Brand also gives (ii, 447) 
Trunks as another name for Troule-in-madame, and quotes a passage from Poor 
Robin* s Almanack for 171$ where it is mentioned. — Halliwell (Archaic Diet.) 
says that the game is still called trunks^ and that * troll*madam ' appears to have been 
somewhat like the modem game of bagatelle.] 



176 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iii. 

Prince : I cannot tell good fir, for which of his Ver- 90 

tues it was, but hee was certainely Whipt out of the 
Court. 

Gfc.His vices you would fay : there's no vertue whipt 
out of the Court : they cherifli it to make it flay there ; 
and yet it will no more but abide. 95 

Aut. Vices I would fay (Sir.) I know this man well, 
he hath bene fince an Ape-bearer, then a Proceffe-feruer 97 

95. more buf^ more jot or more whit or more bit Perring. 

95. but abide] Capell, after saying that he does not * clearly enter into ' this 
joke, adds, * perhaps the intended sense of " abide *' is one vulgarly given it, viz, 
endure or put up with ; and the joke — that the utmost " virtue " can do for a " court " 
is — to be patient when forc'd upon it.* — ^Johnson : To * abide * here must signify to 
sojourn^ to live for a time without a settled habitation. — Collier (ed. ii) : This inter- 
pretation [of Johnson and of subsequent editors] is clearly wrong, for where can it be 
shown that to < abide * means only to remain for a time ? On the contrary, it means 
most emphatically to continue permanently; Johnson (Diet.) says, *to "abide" is to 
dwell in a place, not to remove, to stay, to remain, to be immoveable ;' and Richardson 
tells us the same. . . . What must have been the language of Shakespeare is restored in 
a moment by a very slight change, the converse of that in Love's Z. Z. V, ii, 747, where 
^/has been, time out of mind, misprinted *not;* in the passage before us not has 
been misprinted * but,* and instead of saying that virtue will * but abide,* we ought to 
say * not abide,* and print the text as we have given it : * and yet it will no more, not 
abide,* meaning that however virtue may be cherished at court, it will not any the 
more stay, or * abide * there. [Collier returned to the present reading in his Third 
Edition with the short note : * It will do no more than remain there for a short time.* 
— Dyce, in his Strictures on Collier (p. 8l), observes that it is * surely easier to be- 
lieve that Shakespeare may have used " abide " in [the sense of dwelling for a time] 
than to believe that he wrote " it will no more, not abide,*' — which enigma Mr Collier 
explains [in the words just quoted].' — Staunton has given what seems to be the just 
interpretation ; according to him, the phrase is equivalent to * And yet it will barely, 
or with difficulty, remain.* For those who prefer to believe (among whom the pres- 
ent editor is not to be reckoned) that * abide ' here means to stay for a time, there are 
several examples so classified in Schmidt's Lexicon. — Ed.] 

97. Ape -bearer] Staunton quotes Gifford's note on The Bondman^ III, iii, 
p. 60, as follows : * Our ancestors certainly excelled in the education which they 
gave to their animals. Banks's horse far surpassed all that have been brought up in 
the academy of Mr Astley ; and the apes of these days are mere* clowns to their 
progenitors. The apes of Massinger*s time were gifted with a pretty smattering of 
politics and philosophy. The Widow Wild had one of them : " He would come over 
for all my friends, but was the dogged'st thing to my enemies ! he would sit upon his 
tail before them, and frown like Jack-a-napes when the Pope is named.** — The 
Parson's Wedding [V, ii]. Another may be found in Ram Alley [IV, i] : " Men 
say you've tricks ; remember, noble captain. You skip when I shall shake my whip. 
Now, sir. What can you do for the great Turk ? What can you do for the pope of 



ACT IV. sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 177 

(a Bayliffe) then hee compaft a Motion of the Prodigall 98 

98. (a Bayliffe)"] to a bailiff Cam. Edd. conj. 

Rome ? Lo ! He stirreth not, he moveth not, he waggeth not. What can you do 
for the town of Geneva, sirrah? [Caplain holds up his hand, etc." * This note, 
which is taken direct from Gifford ad loc. and stands as Staunton has quoted it, is 
incomprehensible if we are to understand it as illustrating the proficiency of apes in 
Elizabethan days. It is to be feared that Staunton did not verify Gifford's quotations, 
and still more that Gifford calculated on their not being verified, otherwise it is impos> 
sible to believe that either Staunton or Gifford would ever have quoted these passages, 
neither of which refers to a genuine ape. In The Parson's Wedding a keen satire 
on the abjectness of lovers is put into the mouth of Widow Wild, and in Ram-Alley 
a braggart Captain is forced to perform antic tricks like an ape, mounted on a table. 
" — Ed.] Staunton continues : This perfect mastery [of the ape-bearer over the ape] 
gave occasion for a saying attributed to James I. — " If I have a Jack-a-napes, I can 
make him bite you; if you have a Jackanapes, you can make him bite me." In the 
Induction to Jonson's Bartholome^v Fair^ the stage-keeper speaks of " a juggler with 
a well-educated ape, to come over the chain for a King of England, and back again 
for the prince ; and sit still for the Pope and the King of Spain." This evolution of 
coming ffver^ etc. was performed by the animal's placing his fore-paws on the ground, 
and turning over the chain on his head, and going back again in the same fashion, as 
the feat is represented in an illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth century.* [Sir 
Thomas Overburie had a supreme contempt for a * Rymer,' he calls him * a Juggler 
with words,' and in his Character (the edition of 1627 is not paged), concludes 
with saying that * there is nothing on the earth so pittifull, no not an Ape-carrier^ 
—Ed.] 

98. Motion] Warburton : That is, a puppet-show, then called motions. A term 
frequently occurring in our author. — Knight: The subjects which were usually 
chosen for these exhibitions were mostly scriptural. In Jonson's Bartholomew Fair 
[V, i,] the puppet-show professor says : ' O the motions that I, Lanthorn Leatherhead, 
have given light to, in my time, since my master Pod died ! Jerusalem was a stately 
thing, and so was Nineveh and the City of Norwich, and J^odom and Gomorrah.* 
The Spectator, No. 14, speaking of Powell, the puppet-show man, says : * There can- 
not be too great encouragement given to his skill in motions, provided he is under 
proper restrictions.* Even in the days of Anne these successors of the old Mysteries 
still presented scriptural subjects. Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes [p. 166, ed. 
1841], has printed a Bartholomew Fair bill of that time, as follows: * At Crawley's 
Booth, over against the Crown Tavern in Smithfield, during the time of Bartholomew 
Fair, will be presented a little Opera, called the Old Creation of the World, yet newly 
revived; with the addition of Noah's Flood; also several fountains playing water 
during the time of the play. — The last scene does present Noah and his family com- 
ing out of the Ark, with all the beasts two and two, and all the fowls of the air seen 
in a prospect sitting upon trees ; likewise over the Ark is seen the Sun rising in a 
most glorious manner ; moreover, a multitude of Angels will be seen in double rank, 
which presents a double prospect, one for the sun and another for a palace, where 
will be seen six Angels ringing of bells. — Likewise, Machines descend from above, 
double and treble, with Dives rising out of Hell and Lazarus seen in Abraham's 
bosom, besides several figures dancing jiggs, sarabands, and country dances to the 
xa 



178 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iii. 

fonne, and married a Tinkers wife, within a Mile where 

my Land and Liuing lyes ; and (hauing flowne ouer ma- 100 

ny knauifh profeflions) he fetled onely in Rogue : fome 

call him Autolicus, 

Clo. Out vpon him : Prig, for my life Prigrhe haunts 
Wakes, Faires,and Beare-baitings. 

AiiL Very true fir : he fir hee : that's the Rogue that 105 
put me into this apparrell. 

Clo. Not a more cowardly Rogue in all Bohemia ; If 
you had but look'd bigge, and fpit at him, hee'ld haue 
runne. 

Aut. I muft confeffe to you (fir) I am no fighter : I am no 
falfe of heart that way, & that he knew I warrant him. 

Clo. How do you now ? 

Aut. Sweet fir, much better then I was : I can (land, 
and walke : I will euen take my leaue of you, & pace foft- 
ly towards my Kinfmans. 115 

Clo. Shall I bring thee on the way ? 

Ant. No, good facM fir, no fweet fir. 

Clo, Then fartheewell, I muft go buy Spices for our 
fheepe-fliearing. Exit . 

Aut. Profper you fweet fir. Your purfe is not hot e- 120 
nough to purchafe your Spice : He be with you at your 
ftieepe-fliearing too : If I make not this Cheat bring out 
another, and the fheerers proue fheepe, let me be vnrold, 
and my name put in the booke of Vertue. 124 

99. where] of where Ktly. 1 1 8. fartheewell "] farewell F,. fare- 

loi. in\ in a Theob. ii, Warb. Johns. wel F^F^, Rowe + . fare thee well Cap. 

Var. Rann. et seq. 

104. baitings'] baiting Rowe i. buy] to buy Ff, Rowe ii + , Var. 

106. this] his Rowe ii, Pope. and buy Rowe i. 

112. do you] do you do F^, Rowe, 119. Exit.] After jt>. in next line, Cap. 

Pope, Han. 123. vnrold] enrolled Coll. ii, iii 

116. the way] thy way F^, Rowe->-, (MS). 
Var. Rann. 1 24. in] into Rowe ii + , Var. Rann. 

admiration of the spectators ; with the merry conceits of squire Punch and sir John 
Spendall.* 

icx). Land and Liuing] Deighton: Almost equivalent to landed property^ ku 
ambitious term used to impress the Clown with an idea of the speaker's social 
position. 

1 23. vnrold] Warburton : Begging gypsies, in the time of our author, were in 
gangs and companies, that had something of the show of an incorporated body. 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 179 

Song. log'Ottj log-on y the foot-path way J 125 

And merrily hent the Stile-a : 
A merry heart goes all the day^ 
Your fad tyres in a Mile-a. Exit. 128 



Scena Qttarta. 



Enter Florizelly Perdita^ Shepherd^ Clowne^ PolixeneSy Ca- 
milloy Mopfa^ Dorcas^ Seruants, Autolicus. 
Flo. Thefe your vnvfuall weeds, to each part of you 
Do's giue a life : no Shepherdeffe, but Flora 5 

126. henf] hendUBn. Cap. Var. '73. Theob. The old Shepherd's House. 

bend Scott ( Guy Mannering^ chap, xxii, Han. A Room in the Shepherd's House, 

motto). Cap. 

1. Scena Quarta] Ff, Rowe + , Glo. 2. Enter... Autolicus] Enter Florizel 

Cam. Rife, Wh. ii. Scene iii. Cap. et and Perdita. Rowe et seq. 

cet. 5. Do'5\ Yi. Does Rowe, Pope, Ktly. 

The Prospect of a Shepherd's Cotte. Do Theob. et cet. 

From this noble society he wishes he may be * unrolled,' if he does not so and so. — 
Collier (ed. ii) : What Autolycus means is that, if he did not perform these cheat- 
ing exploits, he should deserve to have his name enrolled [as it is corrected in the 
MS] in the book of virtue as an incapable thief, and consequently excluded from the 
* fraternity of vagabonds.' — R. G. White (ed. i) : But Autolycus means *let me be 
struck off of the roll of thieves, and put upon that of honest men.* — Dyce (Strictures, 
etc. p. 81) : Woful is the tautology which Collier's MS Corrector introduces into the 
passage, * let me be enrolled, and my name put,' etc. — Dyce (ed. iii) : * But ' observes 
Mr W. N. Lettsom, * unrolled,^ without anything to determine its application, cannot 
well stand alone. I believe it, however, to be a mere blunder of the ear for unrogued.^ 
[This infelicitous emendation Lettsom had already published in Notes &* Qu. I, viii, 

378.] 

125. Song.] The old tune of the song will be found in the Appendix : Music, 

126. hent] Steevens : That is, to take hold of it. 

I. Scena Quarta] Hudson (p. 29) : For simple purity and sweetness, the scene 
which unfolds the loves and characters of the Prince and Princess is not surpassed 
by anything in Shakespeare. Whatsoever is enchanting in romance, lovely in inno- 
cence, elevated in feeling, and sacred in faith, is here concentrated ; forming, all 
together, one of those things which we always welcome as we do the return of Spring, 
and over which our feelings may renew their youth for ever. So long as flowers bloom 
and hearts love, they will do it in the spirit of this scene. 

5. Do*8] A singular by attraction from * each part ;' it is needless to change it. 
—Ed. 

5. Flora] See Dorastus and Faivnia, 



l8o THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Peering in Aprils front. This your flieepe-fhearing, 6 

Is as a meeting of the petty Gods, 
And you the Queene on't. 

Perd. Sir : my gracious Lord, 
To chide at your extreames, it not becomes me : lo 

(Oh pardon, that I name them:) your high felfe 
The gracious marke o'th'Land, you haue obfcur^d 
With a Swaines wearing : and me (poore lowly Maide^ 
Moft Goddeffe-like prank'd vp : But that our Feafts 
In euery MelTe,haue folly ; and the Feeders 15 

6. Peering] Tearing Wh. ii. 7. Is as"] Is Rowe ii. 

Aprils] April F^. meeting] merry meeting Ff, Rowe. 

7. petty Gods] The classical Dii minores. 

9. Perdita.] Mrs Jameson (i, 231): The character of Perdita is properly kept 
subordinate lo that of her mother, Hermione ; yet the picture is perfectly finished in 
every part ; Juliet herself is not more firmly and distinctly drawn. But the colouring 
in Perdita is more silvery-light and delicate ; the pervading sentiment more touched 
with the ideal ; compared with Juliet, she is like a Guldo hung beside a Giorgione, 
or one of Pacsiello's airs heard after one of Mozart's. The qualities which impart to 
Perdita her distinct individuality are the beautiful combination of the pastoral with 
the elegant — of simplicity with elevation — of spirit with sweetness. The exquisite 
delicacy of the picture is apparent. To understand and appreciate its effective truth 
and nature, we should place Perdita beside some of the nymphs of Arcadia, or the 
Cloris and Sylvias of the Italian pastorals, who, however graceful in themselves, 
when opposed to Perdita, seem to melt away into mere poetical abstractions ; as in 
Spenser, the fair but fictitious Florimel, which the subtle enchantress had moulded 
out of snow, * vermeil tinctured,' and informed with an airy spirit, that knew * all 
wiles of woman's wits,' fades and dissolves away, when placed next to the real Flori- 
mel, in her warm, breathing, human, loveliness. 

9. Sir] See I, ii, 369, where, as here, Collier (ed. ii) follows his MS, and changes 

* Sir ' to Sure. 

10. extreames] Johnson: That is, your excesses, the extravagance of your 
praises. — M. Mason : Perdita means rather the extravagance of his conduct in 
obscuring himself *in a swain's wearing,' while he *prank'd her up most goddess- 
like.' The following words, * Oh pardon that I name them,' proves this to be her 
meaning. 

12. marke] Johnson: The object o( all men's notice and expectation. 

13. Swaines wearing] See Dorastus and Fawnia. 

14. prank'd vp] Cotgrave has : * Ajolier. To pranke, tricke vp, set out, make 
fine.' 

15. Messe] Schmidt wrongly gives to *messe' the meaning of dish. Can it be 
that he supposes it is to * mess ' that Perdita refers when she speaks of * digesting it ?' 

* Mess ' has here the same general meaning which it bears in I, ii, 266, and the whole 
sentence may be paraphrased : * were it not that at every table, or in every group, 
there are strange antics, which the guests accept as customary, I should, etc' 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE i8i 

Digeft/with a Cuftome, I fhould blufli i6 

To fee you fo attyr'd : fworne I thinke, 

To (hew my felfe a glaffe. 1 8 

1 6. Digeft-l Difgeji U F^Fj. Digeft Coll. ii, iii (MS), scorn Mitford {Gent. 
U F^, Rowe et seq. Mag. 1844, Aug., p. 127). 

17. fworne] swoon Han. Cap. Rann, 17, 18. fworne,.. glajfe] swoon... Flo. 
Sing. Dyce, Sta. Dtn, Hunter, so worn Ah ! lass Daniel. 

16. Digest] A case of absorption, which in sundry other cases the printers have 
marked with an apostrophe. Thus it should be here : * Digest * [it] with a Custome ;' 
or as it is in the other Folios. See H, i, 18. — Ed. 

17. swome] Theobald {Nichols^ ii, 363) : I venture to read, *swoonj I think, To 
see myself TM' glass,' t. e. she should d/usA to see the Prince so obscured ; and swoon^ 
to see herself so pranked up. [This emendation was written to Warburton in 1729. 
Warburton's response has not been preserved ; (Warburton shrewdly destroyed his 
voluminous correspondence with Theobald ;) but we may infer that he so criticised the 
proposed change that Theobald relinguished it ; no mention is made of it in Theo* 
bald's subsequent edition. Warburton openly accused Hanmer of * trafficking with 
his papers ' and of ' taking his conjectures.' It is barely possible that this present 
emendation of Theobald's might thus, through Warburton, have reached Hanmer, in 
whose edition * sworn ' appears as swoon. Warburton's own note on the passage is as 
follows :] That is, one would think that in putting on this habit of a shepherd, you had 
sworn to put me out of countenance ; for in this, as in a glass, you shew me how much 
below yourself you must descend before you can get upon a level with me. — Capell 
says of Hanmer's emendation, which he adopted, that it is ' a most natural sentiment, 
and of great sweetness ; and following naturally what she has been saying about her 
lover's attirements.' — Johnson : Dr Thirlby inclines rather to Hanmer's emendation, 
which certainly makes an easy sense, and is, in my opinion, preferable to the present 
reading. But concerning this passage, I know not what to decide. — Steevens: 
Warburton has well enough explained this passage according to the old reading. 
Though I cannot help offering a transposition, which I would explain thus : — * and 
the feeders Digest it with a custom (sworn I think). To see you so attired, I should 
blush To show myself a glass,' i. e. But that our rustick feasts are in every part accom- 
panied with absurdity of the same kind, which custom has authorised (custom which 
one would think the guests had sworn to observe), I should blush to present myself 
before a glass, which would shew me my own person adorned in a manner so foreign 
to my humble state, or so much better habited than even that of my prince. — Malone : 
She means only to say, that the prince, by the rustick habit that he wears, seems as if 
he had sworn to show her a glass, in which she might behold how she ought to be 
attired, instead of being * most goddess-like pranked up.' Florizel is here Perdita's 
glass. The words * to shew myself * appear to me inconsistent with Hanmer's read- 
ing. Hanmer probably thought the similitude of the words * sworn ' and swoon 
favourable to his emendation ; but he forgot that sivoon in the old copies of these 
plays is always written sound or swound. [See Dyce, below.] — Collier (ed. ii) : 
* Sworn ' is indubitably a misprint for so worn, which is the emendation of the MS. 
Such too was the suggestion of Zachary Jackson in his Shakespeare Restored. Perdita 
tells Florizel that he is disguised as a shepherd, while she is pranked up like a goddess, 
and that his humble attire is worn, as it were, to show her in a glass how simply she 



1 82 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

[17. swome I thinke, To shew my selfe a glasse.] 
' ought to be dressed. [G>llier repeats Malone's remark about the spelling of 5woon.'\ 
— iNGLEBY {^Notes <Sr» Qu, 1853, I, vii, 378) instead of * sworn * proposed and more^ 
and thus paraphrased : — ^* I should blush to see you attired like a swain : and still 
more should I blush to look at myself in the glass, and see a peasant girl pranked 
up like a princess.* * In MS/ he observes, * <Sr» more might very easily have been 
mistaken for "sworn" by the compositor.* — R. G. White (ed. i) : Perdita says, and 
to my apprehension, as plainly and pertinently as possible, that Prince Florizel, in 
obscuring himself * with a swain's wearing * would seem ... to have sworn to shew 
her, a swain's daughter, a reflex of her own condition, as if in a mirror, and, conse- 
quently, the difference between her actual condition and his. [In the change so worn 
it is forgotten] that * you ' (1. e, Florizel) would then be the antecedent of * worn.* — 
Bailey (i, 210) * hazarded * frown ; and then as * the phrase " I think ** looks very 
much like an excrescence,* he says that * we might read, " sorely shrink To show 
myself i'th' glass.'* * And then, with prophetic insight, he adds : * This emendation 
is by no means so felicitous as to command adoption.* He then 'hazards ' a third : 

* more^ I think, To show myself a glass,* or perhaps better * I'M' glass * ; of this last 
change he remarks that it is ' perhaps, superior in simplicity to any hitherto men- 
tioned:* [See Hudson, infra.'\ — Staunton : The emendation swoon is so con- 
vincingly true, that we are astonished it should ever have been questioned. — DvcE 
(ed. iii) quotes Malone's remark about the old spelling of STvoon, and then replies : 

* Yet Malone might have found in F, : " Many will swoon when they do look on 
bloud,** As You Like //, IV, iii ; " Or else I SWOONE with this dead-killing newes,** 
Rich. Ill: IV, ii; "What? doth shee swowNE,'* j Hen. VI: V, v.* Dyce then 
quotes R. G. White's note and adds : * But surely the passage, with the reading 
"sworn,** cannot possibly bear such an explanation, — ^the word "myself** at once 
refutes it; Perdita could not say, "you . . . sworn to shew myself 9, glass;** she 
must have said, " to show me a glass." * Dyce then quotes Collier's note, and ob- 
serves : * Now, in the first place, " you ... so worn" in the sense of " you ... so 
dressed y' is an intolerable violation of all the proprieties of language ; and secondly, 
the word "myself" is as objectionable with the reading so worn as with the reading 
" sworn." The lection which I adopt [is Theobald's swoon^ which] means of course, 
" I should blush to see you so attired (like a shepherd), and I should swoon, I think, 
to show myself a glass (which would reflect my finery)." In Timon^ IV, iii, 371 : 
" Away, thou issue of a mangy dog ! Choler does kill me that you art alive ; I swoon 
to see theey'' are the words of Timon to Apemantus; and if there be no unfitness in 
the rough misanthrope thus figiuratively declaring that he swoons at the sight of the 
philosopher, much less can there be any in the gentle Perdita's figuratively declaring 
that she should swoon at the sight of her rich apparel. I may add, that though in this 
passage I have printed * attirdd,' it would seem from the spelling of the Folio that here 
the word was formerly pronounced attierd' — The Cowden-Clarkes : To our minds 
swoon would have an affected and exaggerated sound in the mouth of Perdita, who 
is composed of simplicity, rectitude, and innate dignity. . . . The whole tenour of 
Perdita's present speech is to * name ' Florizel's * extremes,* and she dwells upon his 
conduct throughout; finally saying, that by his unbefitting attire he seems determined 
to show her reflectedly how unbefitting is her own. With this interpretation, the 
phrase * to shew myself a glass ' is used figuratively, * to mirror,* *to show by reflection or 
by parallel image * ; but with the interpretation necessary if swoon be adopted, we should 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 183 

Flo. I bleffe the time 
When my good Falcon, made her flight a-crofle 20 

Thy Fathers ground. 

Perd. Now loue affoord you caufe : 
To me the difference forges dread (your Greatneffe 
Hath not beene vsM to feare: ) euen now I tremble 
To thinke your Father, by fome accident 25 

Should paffe this way, as you did : Oh the Fates, 
How would he looke, to fee his worke, fo noble, 
Vildely bound vp ? What would he fay ? Or how 28 

28. Vildely\ F^Fj. Vildly F^, Rowe, Pope, Theob. Warb. ViUly Han. Johns, 
et seq. 

have to imagine Perdita talk of showing herself a looking-glass, of looking at herself 
in an absolute dressing-glass. — Rolfe : To our thinking, the emendation, swoon, is 
ridiculously out of keeping with the character ; and the others that have been pro- 
posed are all as bad in their way. — Hudson : I cannot abide that reading \s7voon\ ; 
Perdita could never speak so. [Hudson's text, a combination of Ingleby's and 
Bailey's, is :] * more, I think. To set myself fiht glass,' whereof he says : * The read- 
ing here printed is something bold indeed, but it gives a sense so charmingly apt, that 
I cannot choose but adopt it.' — Deighton : The attempts of the earlier commentators 
to explain * swome ' are amusing. [It would be pardonable to take refuge in an in- 
decision which even Dr Johnson had openly acknowledged, and say, I know not what 
to decide, and it would be even justifiable, were it not that there is one objection to 
'sworn' which appears insurmountable, and this is the reflexive pronoun 'my self; 
it has not been questioned that * sworn ' refers to Florizel ; and if this be so, then 
* my self* cannot be right. If it were only * me, my self,' then • sworn ' could be re- 
tained without grrammatical impropriety, but, as the text now stands, it seems to be 
irremediably wrong. Whether or not swoon is the proper substitute for * sworn ' is 
another question. There is a weakness about sivoon which does not seem to har- 
monize with the character either of Perdita or of any young girl ; it is appropriate 
enough in Timon's wild and vehement exaggeration, but I doubt that the sight of her- 
self bewitchingly bedecked like Flora would be likely now-a-da\'S to make any young 
girl faint. Dyce quotes the spelling of swoon in As You Like It, sxvoone in Rich. III., 
and swowne in j Hen, VI., and strangely overlooked the present play, where in V, 
ii, 90 we read * some sivownded, all sorrowed.' Inasmuch as the Folio was com- 
posed in certainly more than one office, and possibly piecemeal in half a dozen, no 
conclusive argument can be drawn from the spelling in the various plays, set up as 
they were by various compositors, all of them probably with different rules, or no 
rules. Nevertheless, had swoon been the word in the present passage, I think it ex- 
tremely probable that the same compositor would have spelled it swownd. — Ed.] 

20. Falcon] See Dorastus and Fawnia. 

23. difiference] M. Mason (p. 134) : That is, the difference between his rank and 
hers. So in Mid. N. D : * The course of true love never did run smooth. But either 
it was different in blood,' I, i, 144. 

28. bound vp] Johnson : It is impossible for any man to rid his mind of his pro- 



1 84 T-iV^ WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Should I (in thefe my borrowed Flaunts) behold 

The fternneffe of his prefence ? 30 

Flo. Apprehend 
Nothing but lollity : the Goddes themfelues 
(Humbling their Deities to loue) haue taken 
The fhapes of Beads vpon them. lupiter, 

Became a Bull, and bellow'd : the greene Neptune 35 

A Ram, and bleated : and the Fire-roab'd-God 
Golden Apollo, a poore humble Swaine, 
As I feeme now. Their transformations. 
Were neuer for a peece of beauty, rarer, 

Nor in a way fo chafte : fmce my defires 40 

Run not before mine honor : nor my Lufts 
Burne hotter then my Faith, 

Perd. O but Sir, 
Your refolution cannot hold, when 'tis 44 

29. borrowed'^ Ff, Wb. i. borrowed Mai. Var. Knt. now: — Their,,. beauty 

Rowe i, Pope et seq. rarer^ — Dyce. 

35. the greene'\ sea green Anon. ap. 42. Faith'\ faith does Ktly. 

Cam. 43. 5f>] deere fir F,. dear fir F F , 

38, 39. nmu. Their.,. beauty, rarer ^ Rowe+ , Cap. Var. Rann, Steev. 
now. Their,,. beauty rarer, Rowe + . 44. Your'\ Yur F^. 

now: Their,,. beauty rarer; Cap. Steev. 

fession. The authorship of Shakespeare has supplied him with a metaphor, which, 
rather than he would lose it, he has put with no great propriety into the mouth of a 
country maid. Thinking of his own works, his mind passed naturally to the binder. 
I am glad that he has no hint at an editor. — Steevens cites the passage in /^om. 6* 
y«/. I, iii, 81-92, where there is the same comparison of a lover with a book and 
its binding. Whiter (pp. 107-115) has gathered many more similar passages, which 
show how fond Shakespeare was of the allusion and of the comparison. 

29. borrowed] R. G. White (ed. i) : All modem editions read borrowed ; losing 
by the contraction the pleasing variety of rhj'thm, and the finer flow of the line which 
is secured by the retention of the full participial form. We are bound to attribute this 
to the Poet's intention ; but if it is due to accident, let us thank Fortune, by not reject- 
ing her gift. [In his Second Edition W^hite did reject the gift, and without a syllable 
of apology to Fortune. — Ed.] 

34. shapes of Beasts] See Dorastus and Fawnia, 

■40. in a way] RiTSON [Remarks, p. 70) : In what way ? We should certainly 
read (in the margin at least) : — * Nor any way.^ [So also Collier's MS, but Collier 
did not adopt it in his text. It is an extremely plausible conjecture. The one phrase 
is almost idem sonans with the other, and the two might be easily confounded, espe- 
cially if the compositors set up their types from hearing the copy read aloud to them, 
which is more than likely. — Ed.] 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 185 

OpposM (as it muft be) by th'powre of the King : 45 

One of thefe two muft be necefsities, 

Which then will fpeake, that you muft change this pur- 

Or I my life. (pofe, 

Flo. Thou deer'ft Perdita, 
With thefe forc'd thoughts, I prethee darken not 50 

The Mirth o'th'Feaft : Or He be thine (my Faire) 
Or not my Fathers. For I cannot be 
Mine owne, nor any thing to any, if 
I be not thine. To this I am moft conftant, 
Though deftiny fay no. Be merry (Gentle) 55 

Strangle fuch thoughts as thefe, with any thing 
That you behold the while. Your guefts are comming : 
Lift vp your countenance, as it were the day 
Of celebration of that nuptiall, which 59 

45. of the] Ff, Rowe, Coll. Dyce, Sta. 49. deer'Ji] Wh. i. deerefl F,. dear- 
Cam. <>' M' Pope + , Wh. i. o/ih'W^h, ^ F^F^, Rowe et cet. 

ii. <?' M^ Cap. et cet. 55. {Geniiey] Gentlest! Han. 

46. muft be necefsities] moft be necef 57. behold] be bold Go\x\d, 
siiies F . necessities must be Han. 58. your] you F^. 

as it were] as ''twere Pope + . 

48. Or I my life] The Cowden-Ci-arki-:s, Rolfe, and Deighton, all interpret 
these words of Perdila as meaning that she will forfeit her life. I doubt that her 
despondency went quite so far. She was convinced that, if Florizel persisted in his 
purpose, the king would certainly separate them by forcing Florizel to return to his 
home, and thus leave her to weep out the rest of her days — a changed * life * indeed 
for her. When the blow actually fell she said to her lover : — * I told you what would 
come of this/ * I'll Queen it no inch farther But milk my Ewes and weep.* — Ed. 

49. deer'st] Walker ( Vers, p. 144) : From the frequency of dear'st in Shake- 
speare, I suspect that here also we ought to read dear'st. [Walker quotes from the 
Var. '21, probably]; and so the Folio has it; pronounced dearest. [Is anything 
gained by this pronunciation ? See I, ii, 109, and line 95, below. — Ed.] 

50. forc'd thoughts] M. Mason (p. 134) : That is, thoughts farfetched, and not 
arising from the present objects. 

51. 52. Or . . . Or] For this idiomatic use of * or . . . or,' much more common 
in Beaumont & Fletcher than in Shakespeare, see Abbott, § 136. 

55. Gentle] Collier (ed. ii) follows his MS in reading ^V/ instead of * Gentle,* 
' an epithet,' he says, * that cannot, and never did, stand alone in this way, without 
being followed by * maid,' * lady,' etc. In his Third Edition he terms * gentle ' an 
* old absurd reading which is an easy misprint when girl^ as of old, was printed w^ith 
a final e. — Staunton : The meaning is obviously, — * Be merry, gentle one P So in 
Ant, 6r* Cleop, IV, xv, 47 : * Gentle, hear me.' 

59. nuptiall] Used by Shakespeare's compositors in the singular, as here, except 



1 86 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

We two haue fwome fhall come. 60 

Perd. O Lady Fortune, 
Stand you aufpicious. 

Flo. See, your Guefts approach, 
Addrefle your felfe to entertaine them fprightly. 
And let's be red with mirth. 65 

Shep. Fy (daughter) when my old wife liu'd : vpon 
This day, (he was both Pantler, Butler, Cooke, 
Both Dame and Seruant : WelcomM all : feruM all. 
Would fmg her fong, and dance her tume : now heere 
At vpper end o'th Table; now, i'th middle : 70 

On his fhoulder, and his : her face o'fire 
With labour, and the thing (he tooke to quench it 
She would to each one fip. You are retyred. 
As if you were a feafted one : and not 

The Hoftefle of the meeting : Pray you bid 75 

Thefe vnknowne friends to's welcome, for it is 
A way to make vs better Friends, more knowne. 
Come, quench your blufhes, and prefent your felfe 78 

62. [Enter all. Ff. Enter Shepherd, 72. thing\ things F , Rowe, Pope, 

Clown, Mopsa, Dorcas, Servants; with Han. things Cap. Var. Rann, Mai. 

Pol. and Cam. disguised. Rowe et seq. Steev. Var. 

(subs.). After line 65, Dyce, Sta. Cam. if] it; F^. it. Cap. et seq. 

65. Scene v. Pope, Warb. Johns. 75. the] thee F^. 

66-73. As mnemonic lines, Warb. 76. to's] to us Cap. Var. Rann, Mai. 

71. and] and on Ktly. Steev. Var. Knt, Sing. Sta. Ktly. 

72. labour^ and] Ff, Coll. Dyce, Sta. vnknowne] unhnow F^. 
labour and Cam. labour ; and Rowe 78. your felfe] you f elf F^. 
et cet (subs.). 

in 0th. IT, ii, 9, where the Ff have * nuptiall * and the Qq * nuptialls ' ; and in Per. V, 
iii, 80. It occurs again in line 436 of this scene. 

67. Pantler] The servant (panetier^ in Cotgrave) who had charge of the pantry 
where bread was kept, just as the * Butler {bouteilliery in Cotgrave) was he who had 
charge of the cellar where bottles of wine were kept. 

71, 72. her face o'fire ... it] Whether the fire in the old dame's face was due 
solely to her labour, or to her labour combined with ale, depends on the punctuation. 
The Text. Notes will show the sides of this grave question on which the editors have 
ranged themselves. \Vhen a reputation for sobriety is at stake, and the issue depends 
on a semi-colon, I, personally, prefer to withdraw from the panel. — Ed. 

76. vnknov^rne friends to*s] For many examples of this frequent and peculiar 
construction with the adjective, see either Walker {Crit. i, 160), or Abbott 
(5419 a). See also Corson's note on *vnstain'd shepheard,' line 172, below. 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 187 

That which you are, Miftris o'th'Feaft. Come on, 

And bid vs welcome to your fheepe-fhearing, 80 

As your good flocke fhall profpcr. 

Perd. Sir, welcome : 
It is my Fathers will, I fhould take on mee 
The HoftefTefhip o'th'day : you're welcome fir. 
Giue me thofe Flowres there {Dorcas.) Reuerend Sirs, 85 

For you, there's Rofemary, and Rue, thefe keepe 

82. Sir, welcome] Sirs, welcome 82. [To Polix. and Cam. Rowe. To 

Rowe + . Sirs, you're welcome Han. Pol. Mai. et seq. 

Welcome, sir Cap. Steev. Var. Sir, %^ /tr] jirr Rowc + . jiV. [To Cam. 

you're welcome Ktly. Mai. et seq. 

86-89. As mnemonic lines, Warb. 

79-81. Come . . . prosper] Theobald {Nichols, ii, 363) : I think, verily, Polix- 
enes ought to speak this to Perdita. 

82. welcome] Dyce (ed. iii) : Most probably (as Hanmer reads) * you're wel- 
come.* Compare the next line but one. — Keightley {Exp. 203) : A syllable is lost 
apparently. We might add hither or to us at the end, or, as I have done, ^you're 
welcome.* [Where a line is divided between two characters, it is needless to regard 
the loss of a syllable. Unless the lines are to be chanted in exact time and rhythm, 
regardless of sense or action, the proper pause of respect after * Sir * will supply any 
missing syllable, even were there no pause between the speeches. — Ed.] 

82, 84. welcome] Unquestionably these two * welcomes * are addressed to Polix- 
enes and Camillo respectively. See Text. Notes. 

86. Rosemary] Ellacombe (p. 201) : In Shakespeare*s time this herb was in 
high favour for its evergreen leaves and Bne aromatic scent, remaining a long time 
after picking, so long, indeed, that both leaves and scent were considered almost 
everlasting. This was its great charm, and so Spenser spoke of it as ' the cheerful 
Rosemarie * and ' refreshing Rosemarine,* and good Sir Thomas More had a great 
affection for it. * As for Rosemarine,' he said, * I lett it run alle over my garden 
walls, not onlie because my bees love it, but because tis the herb sacred to remem- 
brance, and therefore to friendship ; whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language that 
maketh it the chosen emblem at our funeral wakes and in our buriall grounds.* The 
name is popularly but erroneously supposed to mean the Rose of Mary. It has no 
connection with either Rose or Mary, but is the Ros marinus or Ros maris — the plant 
that delights in the sea-spray. 

86. Rue] Henley : Ophelia distributes the same plants, and accompanies them 
with the same documents : * There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. There's rue 
for you ; we may call it Herb of Grace.' — Ellacombe (p. 203) : Though at first 
sight there seems to be little or no connection between the two names [Rue and 
Herb of Grace']^ yet really they are so closely connected, that the one name was 
derived from, or rather suggested by, the other. Rue is the English form of the 
Greek and Latin Ruta, a word which has never been explained, and in its earlier 
English form of Rude came still nearer to the Latin original. But rulh was the 
English name for sorrow and remorse, . . . and so it was a natural thing to say that a 



1 88 



THE WINTERS TALE 



[act IV, sc. iv. 



Seeming, and fauour all the Winter long : 
Grace, and Remembrance be to you both, 
And welcome to our Shearing. 

Pol. Shepherdeffe, 
(A faire one are you:) well you fit our ages 
With flowres of Winter. 

Perd. Sir, the yeare growing ancient, 
Not yet on fummers death, nor on the birth 
Of trembling winter, the fayreft flowres o'th feafon 
Are our Carnations, and ftreakM Gilly-vors, 



87 



90 



95 



88. to you)^ unto you Pof>e + . 
93-149. As mnemonic lines, Warb. 

94. Not'\ Nor Rowe, Pope, Han. 

95. fayreft\ fair'st Cap. Walker. 

96. our\ your Brae (MS). 



96. ftreak'd^ Jlreak't F^F^. 

Gilly-vors'] Ff. giltyvors Knt. 
gillyvors Sing. Dyce, Wh. Sta. Ktly, 
Cam. Huds. gillyflowers Rowe et cet. 



plant which was so bitter, and had always borne the name Rue or Rutk, must be con- 
nected with repentance. It was, therefore, the Herb of Repentance, and this was 
soon transformed into the Herb of Grace, repentance being the chief sign of Grace. 
[Its name Herb of Grace is referred to in * Grace, and Remembrance.* In Batman 
vppon Bartholome it says (p. 317, verso) : < Rew is called Ruta, and is a medicinable 
hearbe, and hath that name, for it is full feruent, and thereof is double kinde, wilde 
and tame, and either is full feruent. But the wilde is more feruent then that other, 
as Isidore sayth, li. 1 7, cap. vltima. Weesells teach that this hearbe is contrary to 
venim, and to venimous beastes, for he eateth first Rew, and balmeth himselfe with 
the smell & the vertue therof, before he fighteth with the Serpent, as he sayth. And 
the Weesell knoweth the vertue of Rew and eateth thereof, and fighteth afterward 
safely, and resith [?] on the Cockatrice, and slaieth him, as Plinius, Dioscorides, & 
Constantine saye. . . . Ruta Hortensis, and Ruta Siluestris, hearbe grace, it is called 
Eriphion, and the small Rue, Viperalis, in shops,' etc. — Ed.] 

88. Remembrance] For the spelling, rememberance, adopted by Capell and 
followed by Keightley, see Walker ( Vers, 9) or Abbott (§ 477). 

91. well you] Staunton : From the reply of Perdita, we might conjecture that 
Polixenes had asked reproachfully, — * Will you fit our ages with flowers of winter ?' 

93. ancient] Hunter (i, 421) : The urbanity of Shakespeare's mind is perhaps 
nowhere more strikingly manifested than in the dialogue between Perdita and the two 
old men who had come to the sheep-shearing. She had given them rosemary and 
rue. These, Polixenes says, * well fit their age.' Perdita, perceiving that she might 
have reminded them unpleasantly of their advanced period of life, saj's that she 
would not have presented them with the * flowers of winter ' were not the garden 
barren of such flowers as belonged to the period of life which precedes age, the 
gillivors. 

95. fayrest] See I, ii, 109. 

96. Carnations] Ellacombe (p. 35) : Dr Johnson and others have supposed that 
the flower is so named from the colour. In Lyte's Herball it is spelled * coronations 
or comation.' This takes us at once to the origin of the name. The plant was one 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 189 

(Which fome call Natures baftards) of that kind 97 

Our rufticke Gardens barren, and I care not 
To get (lips of them. 

PoL Wherefore (gentle Maiden^ lOO 

Do you negleft them. 

Perd. For I haue heard it faid, 
There is an Art, which in their pideneflTe fhares 103 

97. call'\ call F,. 103. pidenefe] Rowe + , Cap. pied- 

98. Gardens'] Garden's Ff. ness Theob. ' 

of those used in garlands {corona) ^ and was probably one of the most favourite 
plants used for that purpose, for which it was well suited by its shape and beauty. 
Pliny gives a long list of garland flowers (Coronamentorum genera) used by the 
Romans and Athenians, and Nicander gives similar lists of Greek garland plants in 
which the Carnation holds so high a place that it was called by the name it still has : 
DianthuSy or Flower of Jove. Its second specific name, CaryophylluSy i. e. Nut- 
leaved, seems at first very inappropriate for a grassy-leaved plant, but the name was 
first given to the Indian Clove-tree, and from it transferred to the Carnation, on 
account of its fine Gove -like scent, Its popularity as an English plant is shown by 
its many names : Pink, Carnation, Gilliflower (an easily traced and well-ascertained 
corruption from Caryophyllus), Clove, Picotee, and Sops-in-Wine, from the flowers 
being used to flavour wine and beer. 

96. Gilly-vors] Dyce {Remarks^ p. 83) : * Gillyvor ' (written ^Xio gillofery gillofre^ 
gelofer) cannot properly be termed an old spelling ; it is the old form of the word ; 
for which . . . modem editors ought not to have substituted gillyflorwer. . . . The word 
should be written neither with a hyphen nor as a contraction. — Collier (ed ii) : 
[Mr Dyce] must excuse us for saying that this is the very pedantry of criticism; and 
be himself, not satisfied with the word, even as it stands in the old editions, after 
talking very gravely about hyphens and contractions, supplies an orthography of his 
own. It is amusing to see what false importance is sometimes given to such trifles. 
With regard to the old spelling of the word, both Spenser and Hakluyt, as Richard- 
son proves, have it * gilliflowers,* and in our own day such has been the universal 
orthography. — Cambridge Editors : We have retained here the spelling * gilljrvors * 
in preference to the more familiar form gillyflowersy because the latter is due to an 
etymological error. The original word is caryophyllusy which becomes girofle in 
French, and thence by metathesis gilofre^ gillyvor. [* Gariopillus is the clone 
Gilowflowre.' — Batman vppon Bartholomew p. 297, verso. See further on GWJlffiverSy 
line 116.] 

102. For] For other examples of * for ' in the sense of because^ see Abbott, § 151. 

103. Art] Hunter (i, 421) : The reason which she assigns for not having culti- 
vated the * streaked gillivor ' is in accordance with her character, as one brought up 
amidst the beauties of Nature, and regarding any art but as a debasement of the pro- 
ductions of that Nature which she worshipped. Attempts to modify the form and 
colours of flowers have made part of the art of gardening in all ages. The gillivor 
was one on which, in Shakespeare's time, these attempts were made. Parkinson, 
who regards such eflbrts as * the mere fancies of men, without any ground of 



1 90 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

With great creating-Nature. 

PoL Say there be : I OS 

Yet Nature is made better by no meane, 
But Nature makes that Meane : fo ouer that Art, 
(Which you fay addes to NatureJ is an Art 
That Nature makes : you fee (fweet Maid) we marry 
A gentler Sien, to the wildeft Stocke, lio 

And make conceyue a barke of bafer kinde 
By bud of Nobler race. This is an Art 
Which do's mend Nature : change it rather, but 
The Art it felfe, is Nature. 1 14 

• 

104. creating' Nature] Ff, Rowe. ere- 110. Sien\ Ff, Rowe. ify<wiPope + . 

ating nature Pope et seq. scyen Cap. cyan Var. '78. scion Steev. 

107. ouer"] Ff, Rowe + , Knt, '^Ti. wildejf] itn/der Anon. &p. Cam. 
Cam. o^er Cap. et cet. 

reason or truth/ says that if men would have lilies or gillivors to be of a scarlet red 
colour, they put vermilion or cinnabar between the rind and the small heads growing 
about the root ; if they would have them blue, azure or bisse ; if yellow, orpiment ; 
if green, verdigris, and thus of any other colour. 

106. Yet Nature, etc.] R. G. White (ed. ii) : It is no part of an editor's function 
to utter notes of admiration ; but being obliged to point out so many instances of loose 
and reckless writing in this play, I may be pardoned for calling attention to the mar- 
vellous skill and ease with which a profound philosophy of nature is wrought out in 
this speech, with a union of all the precision of science and all the possible grace of 
poetry. Yet it is but one of the lesser stars in the heaven of this scene. 

107. ouer that Art] Craik (p. 23) : Is it not self-evident that [this phrase] 
should run as follows ? — * So ever that art.' — Schmidt (p. 283) : It is quite incom- 
prehensible to us how any thoughtful reader could have failed to object to this * o'er,* 
or to perceive that it is merely a misprint for e'er; it is even more incomprehensible 
that the meaningless *o'er' should have retained its place in the text after the emen- 
dation of e'er, offered it is true anonymously, had been proposed. — Hudson : With 
'o'er,' I cannot make the expression tally with the context. The reading [even, 
which Hudson adopted] is Craik's. [In both the First and the Second Cambridge 
Edition the emendation even is attributed to Craik, and ever or e'er to an Anonymous 
contributor, — an oversight which, unless Craik elsewhere changed his emendation 
quoted above, misled Hudson. Gould proposed even, but long subsequently to Hud- 
son's text. I think the text should stand and that emendation is needless. What 
Polixenes means is, that over those arts which change Nature there rule laws 
which Nature makes. We may by our art or skill apply vermilion to the roots of a 
plant, but it would there remain inert were it not that by Nature's law it is absorbed 
and driven by an unknown force into the petals of the flower. We may marry a 
gentler scion to the wildest stock, and there our art ends. But by Nature's higher 
over-ruling laws the scion is adopted, and converts the wild sap which feeds it into 
beneficent fruits. — Ed.] 



ACT IV. sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 191 

Perd. So it is. 115 

PoL Then make you Garden rich in Gillj^vors, 
And do not call them baftards. 117 

116. you\ your Ff. 

115. So it is] Perdita, true to her charming feminine nature, instantly makes a 
personal application of what Polixenes has been saying, who, unwittingly, by his simile 
of marrying the gentler scion to the wildest stock has been stating the relative posi- 
tions of his royal son and the shepherd's daughter, and this * So it is ' is uttered with 
a swift, furtive, smiling glance at Florizel. That it is no real assent to the philosophy 
she has just heard is evident from her next words. — £d. 

116. Gilly'vors] Steevens : There is some further conceit relative io gillyflowers 
than has yet been discovered. Giliyvors is a term still used by low people in Sussex 
to denote a wanton. In In a New I'Vonder, or A Woman never Vex^d^ 1632 [III, i] 
a lover is behaving with freedom to his mistress as they are going into a garden, and 
after she has alluded to the quality of many herbs, he adds : * You have fair roses, 
have you not ?* * Yes sir,' says she, * but no gilliflnwers,^ Meaning, perhaps, that 
she would not be treated like a gill-flirty i. e. a wanton, a word often met with in old 
plays, but written « flirt-gill ' in Rom. <5r* Jul. I suppose gill flirt to be derived, or 
rather corrupted, from gilly'flower or carnation. — Douce (i, 356) : The solution of the 
riddle that has embarrassed Mr Steevens is probably this : The gilly-flower or carna- 
tion is streaked, as every one knows, with white and red. It this respect it is a 
proper emblem of a painted or immodest woman ; and therefore Perdita declines to 
meddle with it. She connects the gardener's art of varying the colours of the above 
flowers with the art of painting the face, a fashion very prevalent in Shakespeare's 
time. [It is hardly probable that Steevens would have accepted Douce's 'solution.' 
First, there are not wanting those who deny that the gillyflower and the carnation are 
the same. Secondly, there is many another flower which is streaked, but which has 
not been therefor deemed an emblem of immodesty. Douce is right enough in seeing 
that it is artificiality which Perdita dislikes, but be has not touched the obscure con- 
ceits which Steevens finds in allusions to the gillyflower ; what these conceits are 
belongs more properly than here to the folk-lore of Botany, and can be learned in 
old books of Anatomy, notably Crookes's ; it is suflicient to say that they are founded 
on a fancied anatomical resemblance akin to those supposed to exist in other flowers 
to which * liberal shepherds give a grosser name.' It is here of more importance 
(yet small enough in any event) to decide what that flower is which Perdita calls a 
• gillivor,'— on this point authorities are at variance, which is possibly due to the many 
varieties of the plant. The comment is disproportionate to the value of the question, 
but then Dyce has seen fit to quote in his Glossary what had appeared down to his day, 
and his example is a safe one to follow. — Ed.] — Nares: The name for the whole 
class of carnations, pinks and sweetwilliams ; from the French girofle, which is itself 
corrupted from the Latin caryophyllum. See an ample account of them in Lyte's 
Dodoensy^^. 172-175 [pp. 151-157, ed. 1578]. In Langham's Garden 0/ Health 
they are called galofers. See p. 281. Our modem word gillyflo7uer is corrupted 
from this. See Stocke Gillofer in Lyte's Dodoens^ p. 168 [p. 152, ed. 1578]. — 
Beisly (p. 82) : Carnations and Gillovors^ or gilloflowers, belong to the genus 
Dianthus. Parkinson, in his Garden of all sorts of Pleasant Flowers, dedicated to 



192 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Perd. He not put 1 1 8 

The Dible in earth, to fet one flip of them : 

the Queen of Charles I., and published in 1629, says that * carnations and gilloflowers 
be the chiefest flowers of account in all our English gardens ;' and he calls them the 
pride of our English gardens, and the queen of delight and of flowers , and adds : 
' They flower not until the heat of the year, which is in July, and continue flowering 
until the colds of the Autumn check them, or until they have wholly outspent them- 
selves ; and these fair flowers are usually increased by slips^ Gcrarde in his Herball 
describing the carnation gillofloure, says : ' On the top of the stalks do grow very 
fair flowers, of an excellent sweet smell, and pleasant carnation colour, whereof it 
took its name.' Tusser, in Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, notices gillo- 
flowers red, white, and carnation, as distinct from wall gilloflowers and stock gillo- 
flowers, and adds : * The Gilliflower also, the skillful do know. Doth looke to be 
couered, in frost and in snow' [p. 51, ed. 1614]. Spenser, in 'Hobbinol's Dittie,' 
has the following : * Bring hither the Pincke and CuUumbine, | with Gillifloures : — 
Bring Coronations, and Sops in wine, | Wome of Paramours.' [Shepheard's Calender, 
Aprill, p. 102, ed. Grosart.] — Roach Smith (p. 10) : Perdita objects to the streaked 
gillyflowers, by which, I believe (contrary to the received opinion), Shakespeare 
meant the wallflower : and this is what the people of Stratford-upon-Avon and its 
neighbourhood understand by the word gilliflower at the present day. Mr W. O. 
Hunt, of Stratford-on- Avon, to whom I applied, writes : — * The flower understood 
here as the gilliflower is the common wallflower, of the genus Cheiranthus, which, in 
its wild state grows on old walls and stony places.' In the Isle of Wight the stock 
is termed gilliflower. — Prior (p. 91) : The name was originally given in Italy (Italian, 
garofalo) to plants of the Pink tribe, especially the carnation, but has in England 
been transferred of late years to several cruciferous plants, that of Chaucer and 
Spenser being Dianthus caryophyllus, that of later writers and gardeners, Matthiola 
and Cheiranthus. Much of the confusion in the names of plants has arisen from the 
vague use of the French terms, Giroflie, Oeillet, and Violette, which were, all three of 
them, applied to flowers of the Pink tribe, but subsequently extended, and finally 
restricted in English to very different plants. Giroflbe has become Gilliflower, and 
passed over to the Cnici ferae, Oeillet been restricted to the Sweet Williams, and 
Violette been appropriated to one of the numerous claimants of its name, the genus 
to which the Pansy belongs. [Prior then gives the botanical names of the Clove 
Gilliflower, the Marsh-, the Rogue's, or Winter-, the Stock-, the Wall-, and the 
Water-. And a reference to Ljie (pp. 151-176, ed. 1578) will give several more, 
all called Gilofers, 'with the long' says Prior.] 

118, etc. He not put, etc.] Mrs Jameson (i, 239): It has been well remarked 
of this passage that Perdita does not attempt to answer the reasoning of Polixenes ; 
she gives up the argument, but, woman-like, retains her own opinion, or rather, her 
sense of right, unshaken by his sophistry. She goes on in a strain of poetry, which 
comes over the soul like music and fragrance mingled ; we seem to inhale the blended 
odours of a thousand flowers, till the sense faints with their sweetness ; and she con- 
cludes with a touch of passionate sentiment, which melts into the very heart : ' O 
Proserpina,' etc. 

119. Dible] Steevens: An instrument used by gardeners to make holes in the 
earth for the reception of young plants. — Walker ( Vers, 68) gives this as an example 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 193 

No more then were I painted, I would wifh 120 

This youth fhould fay ^twer well : and onely therefore 

Defire to breed by me. Here's flowres for you : 

Hot Lauender, Mints, Sauory, Mariorum, 123 

120. then were\ than^ were Theob. Warb. et seq. (subs.). 

in his Article showing that there are certain classes of words, the greater part of them 
composed of two short syllables, which are frequently contracted into one syllable, or 
placed in monosyllabic places of the line. This takes place chiefly when they are 
followed by a vowel. [It is not to be supposed that Walker would have this word 
pronounced as a monosyllable, the attempt would be as needless as it is impossible; he 
merely notes the fact that there is a class of disyllabic words which occur in mono- 
syllabic places.] 

122. Here's, etc.] Capell thinks that this is addressed < to a different part of this 
numerous company, and the '* welcome '* there is to that part separately.' [I confess 
that I do not quite understand this last clause, unless the ' welcome ' in line 127 be 
referred to.] 

123. Lauender] Eli^combe (p. 104) : This is not a British plant, but is a native 
of the south of Europe, in dry and barren places, and it was introduced into England 
in the sixteenth century, but it probably was not a common plant in Shakespeare's 
time, for though it is mentioned by Spenser as the * Lavender still gray ' {MuiopotmaSf 
187), and by Gerarde as growing in his garden, it is not mentioned by Bacon in his 
list of sweet-smelling plants. [It is, however, mentioned by Tusser in his list (p. 73) 
of * Strowing hearbs,' in two varieties : * Lauender ' and * Lauender spike ' ; * Lauen- 
der cotten ' ne also mentions, but this is a Lavender only in name. Deighton says : 
•hot,' that is, 'strongly smelling.' But its smell is no stronger than * mint * ; in fact, 
it is not as strong. It is more likely, I think, to refer to the fact that Lavender was 
the flower for an ardent lover. In Robinson's Handful 0/ Pleasant Delights^ I584» 
a popular song-book during Elizabeth's reign, there is (p. 3, ed. Arber) A Nosegaie 
alwates sweet, for Louers to send for Tokens, etc., wherein we find that * Lauander^ 
is for louers true, which euermore be faine : Desiring alwaies for to haue, some pleas- 
ure for their pain : And when that they obtained haue, the loue that they require. Then 
haue they al their perfect ioie, and quenched is the fire.' — En.] 

123. Mints] Walker {Crit. i, 246) says, in effect, that the final s in this word, 
which he once regarded as corrupt, is probably sane; he then goes on to ask: 

* Quere, whether our ancestors in the time of Elizabeth used «* mints " as we do 
cabbages, parsnips, and the like? This was certainly the usage in the time of 
Chaucer ; Romaunt of the Rose, p. 1 76, — I have the quotation from the Encyclo- 
padta Metropolitana, in v. Mint. [Fol. 1 12, ed. 1602], — «*Tho went I forth on my 
right hand {hand) Down by a litel path I fond Of mintes full (/«/) and fenel 
greene (grene),** And a passage of Bacon, Essa}^ of Gardens, near the end of the 
second paragraph, where he associates together <<bumet, wild thyme, and water- 
mints," seems to prove the correctness of the received reading [1. e, * mints ' in the 
present passage] in The Winter's Tale.* [Tusser (pp. 72, 73, 74) in a list of * Seeds 
and hearbs fur the kitchin to be planted in March,' gives, among many others: 

* Mints at all times.' Again among < Hearbs and roots for sallets and sauce ' : 

* Muske-million, in Aprill and May. Mints. Purslaine. Radish,' etc. Again in 

13 



194 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

The Mary-gold, that goes to bed with'Sun, 

And with him rifes, weeping : Thefe are flowres 125 

Of middle fummer, and I thinke they are giuen 

124. WM'] wUh th' Rowe + , Wh. Knt, Sing. Ktly. wi'th' Wh. ii. 
i. Wiethe Cap. Coll. Dyce, Sta. Cam. 126. they are\ they're Dyce ii, iii, 

with the Var. Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. Huds. 

* Hearbs to still io Summer ' : — Endiue. Eiebright Femiell. Fumetory. Isop. Mints. 
Plaintaine,' etc. where, as may be noticed, the nouns are in the singular, as in the 
present line under consideration. It is not, however, to be thence inferred that 

* Mints ' is used in the singular, or even that it is used liked ' Cabbages ' or ' Pars- 
nips,' but merely that there were several varieties. Bartholome speaks of 'Mint 
sodde in Wine ' and < Mint of Gardeines ' and to what Bartholome says. Batman adds : 
' There are sixe kindes of Mintes, Curd mint, crispe mint, Balme, Spere mint. Hart 
mint, horse mint, and water mint.* — Batman vppon Bartholomew p. 305, verso. — Ed.] 

123. Sauory] Ellacombe (p. 216): The name comes from the Latin Satureia^ 
through the Italian Savoreggia. It is a native of the south of Europe, probably 
introduced into England by the Romans, for it is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon 
recipes under the imported name of Savorie. 

123. Mariorum] Ellacombe (p. 122) : In Shakespeare's time several species of 
Marjoram were grown, especially the Common Marjoram (Origanum vuigare\ a 
British plant, the Sweet Marjoram {O. Major ana) ^ a plant of the south of Europe, 
from which the English name comes, and the Winter Marjoram (O. Heracleoticum). 

124. Mary-gold] Again there seems to be some doubt as to the identity of this 
flower. Hunter (i, 422) says that it is * not the plant now so denominated, but the 
sun-flower,' and he has been followed by several editors. What is known in this 
country as the sunflower is the Ilelianthus annuus, which, from the description, must 
be that which Lyte calls Chrysanthemum Peruuianum. The weight of authority, 
however, is in favour of the plant which now bears the name Calendula officinalis. — Ed. 
Beisly (p. 79) calls it Chrysanthemum Coronarium^ and quotes Hyll as saying that, 
< this flower also of certain is called the husbandman*s dyall, for that the same too 
aptly declareth the houres of the morning and eveninge, by the openinge and shut- 
tinge of it ; also named the sunns flozver^ for that after the rysinge of the sunne 
unto noone, this flower openeth larger and larger; but after the noontime with the set- 
ting of the sunne, the flower closeth more and more, and after setting, is wholly shut 
up together.' — Prior (p. 145) and Ellacombe (p. 120) agree that the true name is 
Calendula officinalis. The latter says * I have little doubt this is the flower meant ; it 
was always a great favourite in our forefathers' gardens. . . . The two properties of 
the Marigold, — that it was always in flower, and that it turned its flowers to the sun 
and followed his guidance in their opening and shutting, — made it a very favourite 
flower with the poets and emblem writers. ... It was the Heliotrope, or Solsequium, 
or Tumesol of our forefathers, and is the flower often alluded to under that name.* 

124. with' Sun] Again note the absorption of the definite article. See also lines 
369 and 800 of this scene; and for other absorptions see II, i, i8. — Steevens: 
Lupton, in his Book of Notable Things^ has : — * Some calles it Sponsus Solis, the 
Spowse of the Sunne ; because it sleepes and is awakened with him.' 

126. giuen] Hunter (i, 419) : This word is here heraldic. The old heralds had 
various systems of blazoning, each colour and metal being designated by a planet, a 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 195 

To men of middle age. Y'are very welcome. 127 

Cant, I fhould leaue grafing, were I of your flocke, 
And onely liue by gazing. 

Perd. Out alas : 1 30 

You'ld be fo leane, that blafls of January (Friend, 

Would blow you through and through.Now (my fairft 
I would I had fome Flowres o'th Spring, that might 
Become your time of day : and yours, and yours, 
That weare vpon your Virgin-branches yet 135 

Your Maiden_heads growing : O ProferpinUy 

\ 

127. Y^are\ Ff, Rowe+, Wh. fairest friends Rowe, Pope, fairest 

you're Cap. Cam. Wh. ii. ye* re Dyce, friend Htm, my fairest friend Thtoh, 

Sta. Huds. you are Var. '73 et cet. et cet. 

very'\ Om. F , Rowe, Pope. 135. Virgin-branches'] virgin branches 

132. my fairft Friend] F,. my Cap. et seq. 

fair'fl Friend F^, Cap. Coll. Dyce, Wh. 136. growing] blowing Warb. MS 

Sta. Cam. my fair'fl Friends F^. my (N. & Qu. 18 Mar. 1893). 

precious stone, an age of man, a flower, an element, a season of the year, at the 
pleasure of the blazoner, and sometimes in a fancifull relation to the rank and quality 
of the person whose arms he was describing. This fancy may be traced downward 
to the beginning of the last century, but it has now disappeared, and only the French 
terms are in use. . . . Thus an association was formed between certain flowers and 
certain ages of the life of man — certain flowers were given^ in the heraldic phrase, 
to certain ages. Sir John Feme has a large table of these various modes of blazoning 
(Blazon of Gentry, 1 586, p. 169), from which I extract the part relating to men's 
ages and to flowers: Infancy: The Lilly and Wliite Rose; Puerility: The Blue 
Lilly ; Adolescence : The Mary Gold ; Lusty Green Youth : All manner of verdures 
or green things ; Virility : Gillofer and Red Rose ; Grey Hairs : The Violet ; 
Decrepitude: The Aubifaine. If we look closely at the language of Perdita we 
shall see that Shakespeare had in his mind these associations when he represented 
her distributing flowers to the persons of various ages who had come to the sheep- 
shearing, though using the licence of a poet when he thought he could improve on 
the disposition. Thus to the young she gives, or rather would give, were the season 
of the year favourable, for this sheep-shearing is represented to be in autumn, daflb- 
dils, violets, primroses, oxlips, the crown-imperial, and the various kinds of lilies. To 
the persons of middle age the marygold is the only flower she gives, but she gives 
with it lavender, mint, savory, and marjoram, that is, ' all manner of verdures or green 
things.' Carnations and gillivers, she says, are for persons whose time of life 
approaches old age ; and to the two old men she gives rosemary and rue. 

132. fairst] See I, ii, 109. 

136. Proserpina] Steevens : So in Ovid, Metam.y v, 398 : * et, ut summa vestem 
laniarat ab ora, Collecti flores tunicis cecidere remissis.' Thus translated by Golding 
[p. 63, verso] : * While in this garden Proserpine was taking hir pastime. In gather* 
ing eyther Violets blew, or Lillies white as Lime, . . . Dis spide her: loude hir: 
caught hir vp. . . . The Ladie with a wailing voyce afright did often call. . . . And 



196 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

For the Flowres now, that (frighted) thou let'ft fall 137 

From Dyjfes Waggon : Daffadils, 

That come before the Swallow dares, and take 

The windes of March with beauty : Violets (dim, 140 

138. Dyffes] Diffes Ff, Rowe i. Dis's daffadils Han. Cap. daffodils Johns. 
Rowe ii et seq. yellow daffodils Ktly. golden daffodils 

Daffadtls'\ Deffadils F^. early Coleridge, Huds. 

as she from the vpper part hir garment would haue rent, By chaunce she let hir lap 
slip downe, and out her flowres went.' 

138. Waggon] R. G. White (ed. i) in a long note defends the American use of 
this word as both a vehicle of rapid motion, — a chariot, — and one suited to the slow 
transportation of great burthens, by examples from Shakespeare and fix>m the Bible. 

138. Dafifadils] Coleridge (p. 255) : An epithet is wanted here, not merely or 
chiefly for the metre, but for the balance, for the aesthetic logic. Perhaps golden was 
the word which would set off the * violets dim.* — Walker {Crit. iii, 104) : Coleridge's 
golden is plausible. It would contrast with *• dim violets.' — Keightley i^Exp, 203) : 
An epithet, probably yellow, which I have given, has evidently been lost here. All 
the other flowers, we may see, have epithets. Coleridge also saw the want, and sup- 
plied golden. How ill-qualified he was for emendatory criticism I Ilanmer's early 
was much better. [When Keightley asks us to prefer yellow to golden I am afraid 
we can only say, how ill-qualifled he is for poetic criticism ! But any epithet here, 
by whomsoever placed, is an attempt to improve Shakespeare, which let those attempt 
who list. — Ed.] — E. S. Dallas ( The Gay Science, i, 330) : When the poet makes 
Perdita babble of the daffodils that come before the swallow dares, and take the 
winds of March with beauty, he displays a suggestiveness which outruns the whole art 
of painting. Qui pingit Jiorem, non pingit floris odorem. How can a painter in the 
tinting of a daffodil convey Hne suggestions of the confldence and power of beauty 
in a tender flower. The painter may give us * pale primroses,* but how can he con- 
vey what Perdita means when she tells us they die unmarried ere they can behold 
bright Phebus in his strength. 

138-142. Dafifadils . . . breath] Bagehot (i, 45) : A perfectly poetic appreciation 
of nature contains two elements : a knowledge of facts, and a sensibility to charms. 
Everybody who may have to speak to some naturalist will be aware how widely the 
two may be separated. He will have seen that a man may study butterflies and for- 
get that they are beautiful, or be perfect in the * Lunar theory ' without knowing what 
most people mean by the moon. Generally such people prefer the stupid parts of 
nature — worms and Cochin-China fowls. But Shakespeare was not obtuse. [These 
lines] seem to show that he knew those feelings of youth to which beauty is more 
than a religion. 

139. and take] That is, bewitch, fascinate, as in * no fairy takes, nor witch hath 
power to charm,' in Ham. I. i. 

140-142. Violets (dim . . . breath] Johnson : I suspect that our author mistakes 
Juno for Pallas, who was the goddess of blue eyes. Sweeter than an eye-lid is an odd 
image; but perhaps he uses sweet in the general sense of delightful. — M. Mason 
(p. 135) : But we are not told that Pallas was the goddess of blue eye-lids; besides 
as Shakespeare joins in this comparison the breath of Cytherea with the eye-lids of 



ACT IV. sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 197 

But fweeter then the lids of luncfs eyes, 14 1 

Or Cy thereof s breath) pale Prime-rofes, 

That dye vnmarried, ere they can behold 143 

142. Prime-ro/es] Prim-rofes F . 

Juno, it is evident that he does not allude to the colour but to the fragrance of violets. 
— Steevens, without actually asserting that such is the meaning of the passage, has 
here a note on the fashion which once prevailed of * kissing the eyes as a mark of 
extraordinary tenderness.* If the student be satisfied with the numerous quotations 
in proof of this custom as an elucidation of the present passage, the commentator is 
content. If the student be not satisfied, the commentator can urge that he has done 
his best, and, as a final word, quotes Homer's pocmif ndrvia "Bgij as a proof that 
Juno's eyes were as remarkable as those of Pallas. — Malone rather more pertinently 
quotes Spenser as attributing beauty to the eye-lid : < Vpon her eyelids many Graces 
sate, Vnder the shadow of her euen browes.' — Faerie Queene, II, iii, 222 [ed. Gro- 
sart]. And in his 40th Sonnet : — * When on each eyelid sweetly doe appeare, An 
hundred Graces as in shade to sit.' — Schmidt (L^x.) defines * dim ' by < wanting 
beauty, homely ' a definition which Littledale pronounces, all too leniently, < prosy.' — 
LiTTLEDALE ( Two Noble Kinsmen^ I, i, 9, Note) : In • violets dim ' the sweetness 
of the violet's smell is contrasted with the radiant beauty of the daffodils that con- 
quers the winds of March, * dim ' serving to subordinate the colour to the perfume, 
and perhaps meaning * half-hidden from the eye,' retiring, modest ; or as Chapman 
{Afinor PoemSy p. 130, cf. p. 39) has it: *with bosom-hung and hidden heads.' — 
Edw. Malan {N. &» Qu. 1885, VI, xi, 362) quotes many examples to prove that the 
practice existed of painting with kohl the eye-lids of women. This practice is familiar 
to all readers and has been prevalent horn the earliest times to the present day. This, 
he asserts, is * the custom alluded to,' but he does not point out the allusion. [As 
compared with bright golden daffodils, violets may well be called ' dim ' as well as 
< half-hidden from the eye.' When unspeakable love and tenderness are expressed 
through the eyes, the eye-lids instinctively droop ; then it is, when such love-glances 
beam from the half-veiled eyes of the queen of heaven, that her eye-lids become a 
type of love, as Cytherea's breath becomes a type of sweetness; and in both of 
them the violet excels. — Ed.] 

142. Prime-roses] The printers of the present play use here a more antiquated 
spelling than the printers of A Mid. N. />., who spelled (I, i, 228) this word < Prim- 
rose.' The derivation of the name was for some time in doubt. The popular ety- 
mology, derived from its French name, primavirey is the first rose of spring, the 
prima verts, which could never have been given, as Dr Prior says (p. 183), * to a 
plant that in form and colour is so unlike a rose.' < The true etymology,' says Skeat, 
in a note quoted by Littledale {Tkoo Noble Kins. I, i, 7), • is rather primula veris, if 
the word was taken from Latin ; but Brachet supposes that it was merely borrowed 
from the Ital. primaveray a name used of flowers that come in the early spring.' 
*Pryme rolles is the name,' says Prior, * it bears in old books and MSS. Chaucer 
writes it one word, primeroUy which is an abbreviation of Fr. primeveroUy Ital. pri- 
maveroloy dim. oi prima vera^ {xomjlor di prima zfera, the first spring flower.' [* Pale ' 
here corresponds, I think, with the ^ faint primrose ' in Mid. N. D. in the passage 
above referred to. — Ed.] 

143. vnmarried] Steevens quotes a note of Warton on Milton's line in Lycidas : 



198 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Bright Phoebus in his ftrength (a Maladie 

Mod incident to Maids:) bold Oxlips, and 145 

The Crowne Imperiall : Lillies of all kinds, 

(The Flowre-de-Luce being one.) O, thefe I lacke, 147 

145. bold'\ gold Han. Warb. Johns. 147. Fl€wre-de-Luce\ jFJower-de-Lis 

Var. *73. Rowe. Jbwer-de-luce Cap. 

147. Oy the/e] 0' these Garrick. 

* — the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,* as follows : * But why does the Primrose 
die '* unmarried *' ? Not because it blooms and decays before the appearance of other 
flowers ; as in a state of solitude, and without society. Shakespeare's reason why it 
dies unmarried is unintelligible, or rather, is such as I do not wish to understand. 
The true reason is because it grows in the shade, uncherished or unseen by the sun, 
who was supposed to be in love with some sorts of flowers.' 

145. bold Oxlips] Steevens: The <oxlip* has not a weak flexible stalk like 
the ccwsiipy but erects itself boldly in the face of the sun. Wallis, in his Hist, of 
Northumberland^ says that the great oxlip grows a foot and a half high. It should 
be confessed, however, [in regard to Hanmer's gold^ that the colour of the oxlip is 
taken notice of by other writers. So in The Arraignment of Paris : * — yellow ox- 
lips bright as bumish'd gold.'[ — I, iii.] — Ellacombe (p. 148): The 'bold oxlip' 
(Primula elatior) is so like both the Primrose and the Cowslip that it has been by 
many supposed to be a hybrid between the two. Sir Joseph Hooker, however, con-' 
siders it a true species. 

146. Crowne Imperiall] Ellacombe (p. 52) : This is a Fritillary (F. imperialist 
It is a native of Persia, Affghanistan, and Cashmere, but it was very early introduced 
into England from Constantinople, and at once became a favourite. . . . Gerarde had 
it plentifully in bis garden, and Parkinson gave it the foremost place in his Paradisus 
Terrestris. * The Crown Imperial,' he says, * for its stately beautifulnesse deserveth 
the first place in this our garden of delight, to be entreated of before all other Lillies.* 
And if not in Shakespeare's time, yet certainly very soon after, there were as many 
varieties as there are now. 

147. Flowre-de-Luce] Ellacombe (p. 73): Some writers affirm stoutly that 
this is a Lily, others as stoutly that it is an Iris. For the Lily theory there are the 
facts that Shakespeare calls it one of the Lilies, and that the other way of spelling it 
is Fleur-de-lys. I find also a strong confirmation of this in the writings of St. Francis 
de Sales (contemporary with Shakespeare) : « Charity,' he says, * comprehends the 
seven gifts of The Holy Ghost, and resembles a beautiful Flower-de-luce, which has 
six leaves whiter than snow, and in the middle the pretty little golden hammers.' — 
Philo, bk xi, trans. Mulholland. This description will in no way fit the Iris, but it 
may very well be applied to the White Lily. Chaucer, too, seems to connect the 
Fleur-de-luce with the Lily: * His nekke whit was as the flour-de-lys.'[ — Prol. 238]. 
These are certainly strong authorities for saying that the Flower-de-luce is the Lily. 
But there are as strong, or stronger, on the other side. Spenser separates the Lilies 
from the Flower-de-luces in his pretty lines : * Strow me the ground with Daffadown- 
dillies, I And Cowslips, and Kingcups, and loued Lillies; | The prettie pawnee, | 
And the Chevisaunce, | Shall match with the faire flour Delice.' — [Aprill, 146. But 
in his Glosse Spenser shows that he recognises in the flower neither a lily nor an iris : 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 199 

To make you Garlands of) and my fweet friend, 148 

To drew him o're, and ore. 

Flo. What? like a Coarfe ? 1 50 

149. Jiretu] strew Var. '73, '78, '85, Rann, Mai. 



* Flowre del ice,' he observes, * that which they use to misterme, flowre deluce, being 
in Latine called Flos delitiarum^ — Ed.] Ben Jonson separates them in the same 
way : < Bring rich Carnations, Flower-de-luces, Lillies.' Lord Bacon also separates 
them: * In Aprill follow. The Double white Violet; the Wall-flower; The Stock- 
Gilly-flower; The Couslip, Flower- De-lices, and Lillies of Natures.' [p. 556, cd. 
Arber]. In heraldry, also, the Fleur-de-lis and the Lily are two distinct bearings. 
Then, from the time of Turner in 1568, through Gerarde and Parkinson to Miller, all 
the botanical writers identify the Iris as the plant named, and with this judgement 
most of our modem writers agree. We may, therefore, assume that Shakespeare 
meant the Iris as the flower given by Perdita, and we need not be surprised at his 
classing it among the Lilies. Botanical classification was not very accurate in his 
day, and long after his time two such celebrated men as Redout^ and De Candolle 
did not hesitate to include in the Liliacea not only Irises, but Daflbdils, Tulips, Fritil- 
lanes, and even Orchids. [The student interested in such subjects will And an inves- 
tigation of the origin of the heraldic Fleur-de-lis by * C. H. P.' in Notes &» Qu. 1856, 
II, i, 225 and 245, wherein as an armorial bearing it has been supposed to represent 
successively a toad {crapaud)^ the *fers de Piques, ou de Hallebardes,' and <un 
treflc,' a trefoil.— Ed.] 

147. O, these] Garrick's version, * Florizel and Perdita,' reprinted in his IVorJks, 
1774, contains many typographical errors, albeit on the title page it is said to be * care- 
fully cortected ' ; for instance, where Perdita says to Camillo in line 130* Out alas, 
You'd be as lean, etc., Garrick's version makes Perdita say * You'd be as clean^ etc. ; 
again in line 481 * Farther than Deucalion ' is converted into ' Far than our deucation^ 
etc. Hence a shade of suspicion is cast over any unusual reading. Nevertheless, 
Garrick has one here which has hitherto escaped notice. The present exclamation 

* O,' which we perceive to be almost meaningless here when our attention is called 
to it, Garrick reads as an abbreviation of ofx * 0' tAfse I lack,' etc., which I incline to 
think is the true reading. — Ed. 

148, 149. and my . . , and ore] This phrase is cited by Walker (Crit. i, 56) 
among many others as an instance of what * may, perhaps, be described as an in- 
stinctive striving after a natural arrangement of words, inconsistent, indeed, with 
modem English grammar, but perfectly authorised by that of the Elizabethan age ;' 
and Walker thus translates it into Greek idiom : &(t0' vfiag fihv (rre^vCxjaif tovtov 6k 
Koi ndvra Karaaropkaai. It is not easy to draw a distinction between this * instinctive 
striving after a natural arrangement ' and a change of construction due to change of 
thought. It is perhaps possible to apply the latter explanation to the present passage. 
Perdita begins by wishing for enough flowers to make garlands of for all her com- 
panions and for Florizel, at the mere thought of whom the wish springs up not only 
for enough to make garlands for him, but to strew him o'er and o'er. I am not sure 
whether the following instance from Sidney's Arcadia^ p. 319, ed. 1598, would come 
under Walker's * instinctive striving ' or not : * I must be the death of my mother ; 
who how wicked soever, yet I would she had receiued her punishment by some other.* 
See note on As You Like Ity II, iii, 11, of this edition. — Ed. 



200 



THE WINTERS TALE 



[act IV, sc. iv. 



Perd. No, like a banke, for Loue to lye, and play on: 
Not like a Coarfe : or if : not to be buried, 
But quicke, and in mine armes. Come, take your flours, 
Me thinkes I play as I haue feene them do 
In Whitfon-Paftorals : Sure this Robe of mine 
Do's change my difpofition: 

Flo. What you do, 
Still betters what is done. When you fpeake (Sweet) 



ISI 



ISS 



158 



152. or if:'\ or if^ — Theob. pastorals Johns, whitsun^ pastorals 

155. Whitfon-PaJloraW] Ff, Rowc. Cap. 
Whitsund* pastorals Han. whitsun 158. betters'\ better F . 



152. or if] There may be here either an omission of so^ whereof Abbott, § 64, 
gives several examples, or there may be an omission of * a coarse,' — howsoever ex- 
plained, it is an idiom which is to be found, I suppose, in every language. — Ed. 

155. Whitson- Pastorals] I have not been successful in finding any notice of 
Pastorals which were peculiar to Whitsuntide. Mysteries were performed at that 
season, and all manner of boisterous games. See Harrison's England^ Stubbcs, 
Anatomy of AbuseSy May Games, p. 148, — New Sh, Soc. Reprint^ The Chester Plays, 
and 7'he Coventry Mysteries^ reprinted by The Shakespeare Soe., or Struti', Brande, 
Douce, Chambers's Booh of Days, and Dyer's Folk-Lore, It is a matter of small 
moment. It would hardly be fitting that Perdita should compare her speech and 
actions to anything less refined than a Pastoral, and it was only at Whitsuntide that 
she would be likely to see any theatrical performances at all. — Ed. 

158, etc. When you speake, etc.] C. B. Mount {^N. 6* Qu, 1893, VIII, iii, 305) 
points out the following parallel : * The force of loue . . . doth so enchaine the louers 
judgement vpon her that holdes the raines of his mind, that whatsoeuer she doth is 
euer in his eyes best. And that best, being by the continuall motion of our changing 
life, turned by her to any other thing, that thing againe becommeth best. ... If she 
sit still, that is best ; ... If she walke, no doubt that is best, ... If she be silent, that 
without comparison is best, . . . But if shee speake, he will take it vpon his death that 
is best, the quintescence of each word, being distilled downe into his affected soulc.* 
— Sidney, Arcadia [p. 368, ed. 1598]. * The thought,' adds Monnt, * howsoever true, 
is not trite or obvious, and it can scarcely be doubted that Shakespeare borrowed it 
from Sidney. It is a good example of his power to embellish in borrowing.' — 
Nottelle (Atude^ etc. p. 92) calls attention to the similarity of Florizel's speech to 
a * Cradle Song ' of Victor Hugo, as follows : 



La Berceuse. 



Quand tu chantes, berc^e 
Le soir, entre nies bras, 
Entends-tu ma pensde 
Qui te r6pond tout has ? 
Ton doux chant me rappelle 
Les plus beaux de mes jours ; 
Ah ! chantez, chantez, ma belle, 
Chantez, chantez toujours ! 



Quand tu ris, sur ta bouche 
L' amour s'^panouit, 
Et soudain le farouche 
Soup^on s'^vanouit. 
Ah ! le rire fiddle 
Prouve un coeur sans detours ! 
Ah ! riez, riez, ma belle, 
Ricz, riez toujours 1 



ACT IV, SC. iv.] 



THE WINTERS TALE 



201 



rid haue you do it euer : When you fing, 

rid haue you buy, and fell fo : fo giue Almes, 

Pray fo : and for the ordering your Affayres, 

To fing them too. When you do dance, I wifh you 

A waue o^th Sea, that you might euer do 

Nothing but that : moue ftill, dill fo : 

And owne no other Funftion. Each your doing, 



i6o 



i6s 



159, 160. /'/</] ru F^, Rowe. 
164, 165. Nothing,„And owne\ One 
line, Mai. Steev. Var. Knt, Sing. Huds. 



164. moui\ but so move Ktly. 
to .*] 50^ my fair Cap. 



Quand tu dors calme et pure 
Dans rombre, sous mes yeux, 
Ton haleine murmure 
Des mots harmonieux ; 



Ton beau corps se r^vdle 
Sans voile et sans atours ; 
Ah ! dormez, dormez, ma belle, 
Dormez, dormez toujours ! 



164. niQue still, still so] The Cowden-Clarkes : The iteration of * still ' in the 
peculiar way in which Shakespeare has used it in connection with the two mono- 
syllables * more * and ' so,' gives the musical cadence, the alternate rise and fall, the 
to-and-fro undulation of the water, the swing of the wave, with an effect upon the 
ear that only a poet gifted with a fine perception would have thought of. — Abbott 
(§ 5^) • Here * still,* which means always^ is remarkably emphatic, and may, per- 
haps, be pronounced as a quasi-dissyllable. 

165. Each your doing,] Johnson : That is, your manner in each act crowns the 
act. — Walker {Crit, i, 74) : Here, I think, a line has dropt out, or possibly two, 
which, if preserved, would have obviated the difficulty of construction, which forms 
the only blot in this most exquisite speech. Omissions of the press are, I think, 
remarkably frequent in this play. — The Cowden-Clarkes : The whole sentence 
shows its interpretation to be : — < The grace with which you perform every act is so 
choice in each particular, that it crowns whatever you may at each present moment 
be doing, and renders all your acts queens.' — Hudson: I can hardly assent to 
[Walker's conjecture] as regards the amount lost ; but there is evidently some bad 
corruption in the passage, both sense and verse being out of joint ; and I have no 
doubt that a word or two got lost from the text and one or two other words changed. 
Instead of * what you are doingy the sense clearly requires * what you have done^ 
In this point, my conjecture is, that * doing ' got repeated from the second line before, 
and then you have was altered to * you are,* so as to accord with < doing ' ; thus ren- 
dering the clause incoherent with the context. With the changes I have ventured to 
make, both sense and verse seem brought into proper order. *£ach your doing 
crowns what you are doing, in the present deeds,' is neither English nor sense, and 
no glozing can make it so. [Hudson's text reads : ' — move still, still so, and own | 
No other function. Each your doing is \ So singular in each particular, | Crowning 
what you have done Cthe present deed^ \ That all your acts are queens.*] — Rolfe: 
' Your manner in each act, so unparalleled in each particular, crowns the act so that 
it becomes queenly.' — Deighton : Each movement of yours, every trait of manner, 
so unique of its kind, so individual to yourself, in every part and portion of it, gives 
a crown of glory to whatever you are doing at any particular moment, so that all your 



202 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

(So fingular, in each particular) 1 66 

Crownes what you are doing, in the prefent deeds, 
That all your Aftes, are Queenes. 

Perd. O DoricleSy 
Your praifes are too large : but that your youth 170 

And the true blood which peepes fairely through't, 
Do plainly giue you out an vnflain'd Sphepherd 
With wifedome, I might feare (my Doriclcs) 173 

167. you are] you* re Pope + , Dyce ii, Mai. Var. *2I, Coll. i, Sing. Dyce, Sta. 
iii, Huds. fairly peeps through it Steev. Var. '03, 

deeds'] ^^r^a^ Spedding ap. Cam. *13, Ktly. peeps so. ..through f^ Coll. ii, 

168. Queenes] queen's Sing. Klly. iii (MS), peepeth... through' t Glo. Wh. 
171. peepes... through't] Ff.Knt, Cam. ii, Dtn. 

peeps forth... through i/Rowe-^. peeps 172,173. Sphepherd. ..wifedome^ F,. 

so... through't Cap. Wh. i, Dyce ii, iii, shepherd,, ..wisdom^ Rowe, Pope, shep- 
Rife, peeps... through it War. '78, Rann, herd;... wisdom Theob. el seq (subs.). 

acts are queens, sovereign in nature, supreme in excellence. [Whatever difficulty 
there is in this passage lies in the phrase * in the present deeds.' It does not seem to 
have occurred to any of the critics that in these words Florizel is referring to Perdita's 
present distribution of flowers and to her bearing toward her guests. Had the phrase 
been < at the present time,' which is, I think, its equivalent in meaning, no one, I sup- 
pose, would have deemed the sentence corrupt or mutilated. The whole sentence may 
be paraphrased : Your way of doing everything (so peculiarly your own in every par- 
ticular) crowns what you are at present doing, so that all your acts are queens'. — Ed.] 
168. are Queenes] Singer : * Are queen's,' i. e. the acts of a queen. [A reading, 
which, as Deighton says, is not an improvement.] 

171. peepes fairely] Malone: So Marlowe, in his /Zero and Leander : — 
* Through whose white skin, softer than soundest sleep. With damask eyes the ruby 
blood doth peep.'[7>4«>^ Sestiady lines 39, 40. This is within the limit which is as- 
signed to Marlowe as his share of the Poem]. Both Collier's MS and Capell in- 
sert so before * fairly ' ; the Text. Notes will show other devices to which Editors have 
resorted in order to impart rhythm to this line of prose. — R. G. White is outspoken 
in his confidence that some addition is necessary, and Walker {Crii. iii, 104) pro- 
posed soy unaware that he had been anticipated. * I feel assured,' he sa}-^, * that 
Shakespeare wrote, "which peep so fairly," etc. This, it is true, heightens, — or 
rather makes more palpable, — the unintentional compliment to Florizel ; but this is 
only in keeping with the frank simplicity of the princely shepherdess. Perhaps the 
contiguity of *yairly ' to so [/"and long s being next neighbours in the printer's case — 
Lettsom] misled the compositor.' — Staunton : The rhythm does not require the addi- 
tion [of so] ; we need only make a slight transposition and read : — * And the true 
blood which through it fairly peeps.' [It should be noted that Walker (CViV. ii, 260) 
includes this phrase: *peepj so' among his examples of 'absorption,' under which 
head, I think, it undoubtedly belongs, and that so is really present in the line. — Ed.] 

172, 173. Sphepherd With wisedome,] Corson (Introd. p. 367): All modem 
editors, so far as I know, pervert the true meaning of this passage by changing the 
punctuation of F, ; that is, by putting a comma after * shepherd ' and omitting that 



ACT IV. sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 203 

You wooM me the falfe way. 

Flo. I thinke you haue 175 

As little skill to feare, as I haue purpofe 

176. skiU'\ r<i// Daniel. 176. tofeare] in /gar Han. 



after « wisdom,' thus connecting the phrase * With wisdom ' with * I might fear.' But 
it is properly, as indicated by the Folio punctuation, connected with * unstain'd/ the 
meaning being * a shepherd unstain'd with wisdom,' that is, an unsophisticated shep- 
herd, who, according to Perdita's meaning, says what he thinks, frankly, and without 
reserve, and also without flattery. This construction bad its origin in the inflected 
period of the language. For example, the Anglo-Saxon version of John, i, 9, 
reads : * S<5th Ledht waes, thset onlyht a^lcne cumendne man on thysne middan-eard,' 
that is, * True light [it] was, that lighteth each coming man into this mid-earth,' in- 
stead of ' each man coming into this mid-earth.' [Although this transposition of the 
adjective or participle is common enough in Shakespeare, — Walker {Crt/. i, 160) 
gives nearly twenty pages of examples, and Abbott, § 419^1, cited by Corson, gives 
also many examples, — yet I think it extremely doubtful that there is such a transposi- 
tion in the present instance. * Unstained with wisdom ' conveys an idea which can- 
not be adopted without pause. To imply that the possession of wisdom leaves a 
stain on the character is unusual, to say the least. To paraphrase it by * sophisticated ' 
is to tone down a very strong expression to a mild one. Are we to infer that had 
Florizel given proofs of wisdom Perdita would have been afraid of him ? Such must 
be the case if we believe that while he was * unstained with wisdom ' she could trust 
him. I think the modern editors, following Theobald, are right in the punctuation 
of the present passage. — Ed.] 

176. skill to feare] Warburton : To have skill to do a thing was a phrase then 
in use equivalent to our to have a reason to do a thing. — Heath (p. 216) .- Skill is 
generally obtained by experience and frequent practice. I apprehend Florizel's 
meaning is : ' I have given you so little occasion for fear, since my acquaintance with 
you, that you as little know how to begin to fear me, as I am from giving you any 
just ground for doing it.' [Quoted with approval by Halliwell.] — Capell: This is 
a compliment to his mistress's innocence ; for the innocent themselves are disposed 
to think others so, and unapprehensive of harm to them. — M. Mason (p. 135) : I 
cannot approve of Warburton's explanation of this passage, or believe that to have a 
skill to do a thing ever meant to have reason to do it ; of which, when he offered it, 
he ought to have produced one example at least. The fears of women on such oc- 
casions are generally owing to their experience ; they fear, as they blush, because 
they understand ; it is to this that Florizel alludes when he says that Perdita had 
< little skill to fear.' So Juliet says to Romeo : * But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove 
more true Than those that have more cunning to be strange.' — Malone : * You as 
little know how to fear that I am false, as,' etc. — Dyce (Remarks j p. 83) : Warburton 
was surely right in explaining * skill ' reason. The word with that meaning is very 
common in our earliest writers, and is occasionally found in those of Shakespeare's 
time : * Hence Englands Heires apparant haue of Wales bin Princes, till Our Queene 
deceast conceald her Heire, I wot not for what skill.^ — Warner's Continuance of 
Albion's England^ 1606, p. 415. [In his Gloss. Dyce added : * For in that desert is 
fulle defaute of watre : and often time it fallethe, that where men fynden watre at o 
tyme in a place, it faylethe another tyme. And for that skylle, thei make none habi- 



204 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. iv. 

To put you to't. But come, our dance I pray, 177 

Your hand (my Perdita:) fo Turtles paire 

That neuer meane to part. 

Perd. He fweare for 'em. 180 

Pol. This is the prettied Low-borne Laffe, that euer 

Ran on the greene-ford : Nothing flie do's, or feemes 

But fmackes of fomething greater then her felfe, 

Too Noble for this place. • 184 

180. for V»i] for them Cap. for one 182. greeneford'\ Rowe + , Cap. Ktly. 
Ritson, Theob. conj., Rann. green-sward Var. '73. 

[Music. Dance forming. Cap. feemes] says Coll. ii, iii (MS), 

181. prettiefl\ pettiest Pope i. Wh. i. deems Anon. ap. Cam. 

taciouns there.* — The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Afaundevile^ etc., p. 78, ed. 
1725.] — Collier (ed. ii) : Dyce might find various proofs [that * skill ' means reason"] 
in Richardson's Dict.^ without taking the trouble to search in Warner. I was so 
confident that the passage would be well understood that I did not think any informa- 
tion of the kind necessary. Some notes are written to illustrate an author, others to 
illustrate a commentator ; the latter may be usually omitted. — Halliwell : * Skill,' 
reason. This archaic use of the word was not quite obsolete in Shakespeare's time, 
and it seems most natural to thus interpret it in this passage. — R. G. White : ' Skill ' 
was used in the sense of cunning , knowledge^ and so, of reason i which last is its 
meaning here, as Warburton first pointed out. 

178. Turtles] Harting (p. 191): The Turtle-dove {Columba turtur) has been 
noticed by poets in all ages as an emblem of love and constancy. 

180. He sweare for 'em] Johnson : I fancy this half line is placed to a wrong 
person. And that the king begins his speech aside : — * Pol. * I'll swear for *em, This 
is,' etc. — RiTSON {RemarkSy p. 70) : We should doubtless read thus : — * I'll swear for 
one^ i. e. I will answer or engage for myself. Some alteration is absolutely necessary. 
This seems the easiest, and the reply will then be perfectly becoming her character. 
[That is, * becoming to the character ' of Ritson's Perdita. Theobald made the same 
conjecture in his correspondence with Warburton; see Nichols, Illust. ii, 364. Any 
alteration is absolutely wwnecessary. See Tennyson in Appendix^ p. 359. — Ed.] 

182. greene-sord] Dyce {Few Notes^ p. 80) : The modem editors print * green- 
sward'' ; but the other was undoubtedly Shakespeare's form of the word. Milton 
also wrote it * sord ' ; * I' the midst an altar as the land-mark stood, Rustic, of grassy 
sord.^ — Par. Losty xi, 433 (where Fenton substituted sodx but Newton and Todd 
restored the old reading). . . . Coles, in his English- Latin Diet. (sub. 5w^^), gives: 
* The green sword y Cespes.' 

182. seemes] Collier (ed. ii) : The MS tells us to read says for 'seems,* and 
we readily believe him. — R. G. White (ed. i) : Inasmuch as says was written saies 
in Shakespeare's day, and * nothing she seems ' has no acceptable meaning here, the 
correction of Collier's MS is received into the text. [In his ed. ii, Wliite returned to 
'seems' without comment.] — Daniel (p. 46): Qy. read; 'Nothing she does but 
seems Or smacks,' etc. The reading of Collier's MS is, however, to my mind prefer- 
able, [I can see no need of change. — ^Ed.] 



ACT IV. sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 205 

Cam. He tels her fomething 185 

That makes her blood looke on't : Good footh (he is 
The Queene of Curds and Creame. 

Clo. Come on : ftrike vp. 

Dorcas. Mop/a muft be your Miftris : many Garlick 
to mend her kiffrng with. 190 

186. makes, „onW\ wakes her blood: 189, 1 90. Prose, Ff, Rowe + . Divid- 

look onU Coll. ii (MS). ing lines as in F,, Han. Cap. et seq. 

looke on'{\ Ff, Rowe, Pope i, 189. marry\ marry y Theob. et seq. 

Coll. i, ii, Wh. i, Ktly. look out Theob. 190. with.'\ with.-- Theob. i. with-- 

et cet. Theob. ii, Warb. Johns, with / Cam. 

186. makes her blood look on't] Theobald: I dare say I have restored the 
true reading \put'\ ; and the meaning must be this : the prince tells her something 
that calls the blood up into her cheeks, and makes her blush. She, but a little before, 
uses a like expression to describe the prince's sincerity, which appeared in the honest 
blood rising on his face : — * And the true bloody which peeps forth fairly through t/.' 
— Knight : We are not quite sure that Theobald's correction is necessary. The idea 
reminds one of the fine line in Donne : — * Her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her 
veins, and such expression wrought, You might have almost said her body thought.' 
— Collier (ed. ii, where his text reads : * That wakes her blood : look on't.') : It was 
a not uncommon error for our old printers to use m for w and vice versd. Such, 
according to the MS, was the case here, * makes ' having been inserted for wakes. 
Camillo calls the attention of Polixenes to the innocent blush Florizel has raised upon 
the cheek of Perdita, and he beautifully speaks of it as having * waked her blood,' 
and called it up into her face. . . . Our lection is a most charming restoration ; and 
the colon after * blood ' was also inserted by the MS. In Marlowe's Tamburlaine, 
Pt II, Act V, sc. i, the very same blunder is committed by the printer of the 4to, who 
has given the text, *And make black Jove to crouch and kneel to me,' when it ought 
unquestionably to be, *And wake black Jove,' etc., as, indeed, the text stands in the 
early 8vo edition. [Collier deserted this * charming restoration ' in his subsequent 
edition.]— Lettsom {Blackwod, Aug. 1853, p. 201): Theobald's Mook ^w/' is the 
received reading, and an excellent emendation it is. But on the whole we prefer 
Collier's MS, which, though perhaps not quite so poetical as Theobald's, strikes us as 
more natural and simple when taken with the context. On second thoughts, we are 
not sure that it is not more poetic and dramatic than the other. At any rate, we give 
it our suffrage. — R. G. White (cd. i) : Collier's MS utterly destroys this vivid and 
beautiful figurative expression of the sudden mounting of the blood into a maiden's 
cheek at the words of her lover. — Dyce (Strictures, p. 84) : To my thinking Theo- 
bald's emendation is much more probable, and does much less violence to the old 
text than Collier's MS. The misprint of 'on't' for out is very common in early 
books; e.g. 'Princes may pick their suffering noble on't, etc. — Fletcher's Bloody 
Brother, IV, i. Also Twelfth Night, III, iv, 222 : * And laid my honour too unchary 
^n'/.' — Staunton adds Cym. II, iii, 48 : — * Must wear the print of his remembrance 

189. marry] This is the common expletive. From the absence of a comma after it, 
it is not to be supposed that Dorcas advises the Gown to woo and wed garlick. 



206 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Mop. Now in good time. 191 

Clo. Not a word, a word, we (land vpon our manners, 
Come, ftrike vp. 

Heere a Daunce of Shepheards and 

Shephearddejfes. 195 

PoL Pray good Shepheard, what faire Swaine is this, 
Which dances with your daughter ? 

Shep. They call him Doricles^ and boafts himfelfe 
To haue a worthy Feeding ; but I haue it 199 

1 92, 1 93. Prose, Pope + . 1 98. and boafls] and he boasts Rowe + , 

'93» 196. Come.. .what] One line, Gip. Var. Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. '03, '13, 

Mai. Steev. Var. Sing. Ktly. he boasts Gip. *a boasts Mai. 

\g^. Jlrike vp.] strike up, pipers conj. 

[Dance. Cap. 199. Feeding] breeding Han. Warb. 

[Musick. Mai. Coll. (MS). 

196. Pray] I pray Htm. Pray you but.. .it] I have it but Hunter, 
Walker, Ktly. Sing. Ktly. / but have it Walker , Dyce 

197. IVhich] Who Pope + . ii, iii, Coll. iii, Huds. 



although it is not impossible that such was the interpretation of the compositor. 
Mopsa*s reply is the exclamation, so frequent in Shakespeare, which adapts itself to 
every varying mood. Here, of course, it is that of intense indignation. — Ed. 

192-196. Not , . . Pray] Walker (Crit. iii, 105) proposes to divide, and read : 

* Not a word, a word ; | We stand upon our manners. — Come, strike up. | Pol. Pray 
yoUf good,* etc. * The converse enoTy pray you {or pray ^ he adds, * is very common ; 
in Beaumont and Fletcher alone it has vitiated the metre in some hundreds of places.' 
[Walker failed to see that the Clown's speeches throughout are in prose — a mistake 
into which some modem editors have also fallen. — Ed.] 

199. worthy Feeding] Johnson: I conceive 'feeding' to be k pasture, a.nd a 

* worthy feeding * to be a tract of pasturage not inconsiderable, not unworthy of my 
daughter's fortune. — Steevens : Dr Johnson's explanation is just. So in Drayton's 
Mooncn // [neur the end]: * Finding the feeding, for which he had toil'd To have 
kept safe, by these vile cattle spoil'd.' Again, in the Sixth [^Seventh] Song of 
Polyolbiony * — so much that do rely Upon their feedings, flocks, and their fertility.* 

199. but I haue it] The Text. Notes show the changes here made under the 
cover of transposition. Abbott (§ 128) says that *but' perhaps means only\ *that 
is, ** I have it merely on his own report, and I believe it too." * — Rolfe: We may 
perhaps explain the * but ' here by taking the words that follow as an emphatic addi- 
tion to what precedes : he boasts that he has a good farm ; but as I have his word 
for it, I believe him, for he looks truthful. Or we may say it is one of those cases in 
which an intermediate thought is * understood ' but not expressed : he boasts of his 
farm ; [a mere boast you may say] but I have his word for it, etc. [Instead of tor- 
turing * but ' would it not be simpler to consider the clause : * boasts himself to have 
a worthy feeding ' as an indirect quotation, a continuation, in fact, of the common 
report which gives him the name Doricles ? * They call him Doricles and (they say) 
boasts himself to have,' etc. In this way, the adversative * but ' retains its ordinary 
force : * but, on the other hand, I have it upon his own report,' etc. — Ed.] 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 207 

Vpon his owne report, and I beleeue it : 2CX> 

He lookes like footh : he fayes he loues my daughter, 

I thinke fo too ; for neuer gaz'd the Moone 

Vpon the water, as hee'l (land and reade 

As 'twere my daughters eyes : and to be plaine, 

I thinke there is not halfe a kifle to choofe 205 

Who loues another beft. 

Pol. She dances featly. 

Shep. So flie do's any thing, though I report it 
That fliould be filent : If yong Doricles 

Do light vpon her, flie (hall bring him that 210 

Which he not dreames of. Enter Seruant. 

Ser. O Mafter : if you did but heare the Pedler at the 
doore, you would neuer dance againe after a Tabor and 
Pipe : no, the Bag-pipe could not moue you : hee fmges 
feuerall Tunes, fafter then you'l tell money : hee vtters 215 
them as he had eaten ballads, and all mens eares grew to 
his Tunes. 217 

206. Who...be/l.'] Which loves the 208. Sajhe"] She^'oxh, 

other best. Han. Who loves the other 211. Scene vi. Pope + . 

best. Rann. Who loves the other more, 216. grew"] grow Rowe ii, Pope, Han. 

M. Mason. Huds. 

201. Booth] That is, truth ; of which Schmidt will give many examples. 

203,204. reade . . . eyes] Whiter (p. 114): The following passages, in which 
the author was not led by his subject into this train of ideas, will perfectly convince 
the reader, that the book and the eye of beauty (whatever might be the cause of so 
strange an association) were deeply engrafted on the imagination of the Poet: — 
' Reason becomes the marshal to my will, And leads me to your e)'es\ when I over- 
look Lovers stories, written in Love's richest book.* — Mid. A''. Z?. H, ii, 120; * If that 
the Dauphin there, thy princely son, Can in this book of beauty read, " I love." . . . 
X. Philip. What say'st thou, boy ? look in the lady's face. Lewis. I do, my lord ; 
and in her eye I find A wonder, or a wondrous miracle.* — King John, II, ii, 484-497. 
[To these examples is added the present passage.] 

206. another best] Abbott (§ 88) : An is apparently here put for the. This is, 
however, in accordance with our common idiom : * they love one an other,* which 
ought strictly to be either, * they love, the one the other,* or * they love, one other.* 
The latter form is still retained in * they love each other ;* but as in * one other,' there is 
great ambiguity, it was avoided by the insertion of a second * one ' or * an,' thus, * they 
love one an-other.* This is illustrated by Matt, xxiv, 10 (Tyndale) : * And shall be- 
traye one another and shall hate one the other ;' whereas Wickliffe has, * ech other.* 

211. not dreames of] For many examples of the omission of do before not^ see 
Abbott (§ 305). Also lines 456 and 528, below. 

215. tell] That is, count-, still in use as the title of an officer in a bank. 



208 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Clo. He could neuer come better : hee fliall come in : 218 
I loue a ballad but euen too well, if it be dolefull matter 
merrily fet downe : or a very pleafant thing indeede, and 220 
fung lamentably. 

Ser. He hath fongs for man, or woman, of all fizes : 
No Milliner can fo fit his cnftomers with Gloues : he has 
the prettied Loue-fongs for Maids, fo without bawdrie 
(which is ftrange,) with fuch delicate burthens of Dil- 225 
do's and Fadings : lump-her, and thump-her; and where 

223. cnfiomers] F,. Warb. Cap. Var. Rann. didUdo's 

225. burthens\ burdens Johns. Johns. 

Dado's] dildo's Theob. Han. 226. Fadings'] /apings Rowe ii, Pope. 

fa-dings Theob. + , Cap. 



219, 220. dolefull . . . merrily] Steevens: This seems to be another stroke 
aimed at the title-page of Preston's Cambists : * A lamentable tragedy mixed full of 
pleasant mirth,' etc. [Cf * very tragicall mirth.' — Mid. N, D. V, i, 64.] 

222. of all sizes] Deighton : As though he were talking of fitting a person with 
a garment, and he goes on immediately to speak of a milliner fitting his customers 
with gloves. 

223. his cnstomers] Malone : In the time of our author and long afterward the 
trade of a milliner was carried on by men. 

225. Dildo's] Murray {^N. E. D.) : A word of obscure origin used in the re- 
frains of ballads. [It had also a coarse meaning which at times gave point to the 
refrain. — Ed.] 

226. Fadings] Theobald {Nichols, ii, 364) called attention to this word in Beau. 
& Fl.'s Knight of the Bunting Pestle, III, v : * George, I will have him dance fading 
— Fading is a fine jig * [/. e. a merry song or ballad]. — Tyrwhitt added the follow- 
ing from Jonson's Irish Masque : *and daunsh a fading at te vedding,* [p. 240, where 
Gifford remarks of * fading ' that * this word, which was the burden of a popular Irish 
song, gave the name to a dance frequently noticed by our old dramatists. Both the 
song and the dance apj^ear to have been of a licentious kind.'] From some Irish 
antiquaries to whom he applied Malonk received the following information concern- 
ing this dance: * It is called Rinca Fada, and means literally *the long dance.' 
Though y^^*^ is a reed, the name of the dance is not borrowed from it; **fada is the 
adj., long, and rinca the subst,, dance." In Irish the adj. follows the subst., differ- 
ing from the English construction; hence rinca fada\ faedan is the diminutive, and 
means little reed ; faedan is the first person of the verb to whistle, either with the lips 
or with a reed, f. e, I whistle. This dance is still practised [/. e. in 1803] on re- 
joicing occasions in many parts of Ireland; a king and queen are chosen from 
amongst the young persons who are the best dancers ; the queen carries a garland 
composed of two hoops placed at right angles, and fastened to a handle ; the hoops 
are covered with flowers and ribbands ; you have seen it, I dare say, with the May- 
maids. Frequently in the course of the dance the king and queen lift up their joined 
hands as high as they can, she still holding the garland in the other. The most re- 
mote couple from the king and queen first pass under ; all the rest of the line linked 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 209 

fome ftretch-mouth'd Rafcall, would (as it were) meane 227 
mifcheefe, and breake a fowle gap into the Matter, hee 

228. gap'\ jape Coll. ii, iii (MS), Sing. Wb. Dyce ii, iii. 

together follow in succession ; when the last has passed, the king and queen suddenly 
face about and front their companions ; this is often repeated during the dance, and 
the various undulations are pretty enough, resembling the movements of a serpent. 
The dancers on the first of May visit such newly-wedded pairs of a certain rank as 
have been married since last May-day in the neighbourhood, who commonly bestow 
on them a stuffed ball richly decked with gold and silver lace (this I never heard of 
before), and accompanied with a present of money, to regale themselves after the 
dance. This dance is practised when the bonfires are lighted up, the queen hailing 
the return of summer in a popular Irish song, beginning : ** Thuga mair sein en sour^ 
ving " — We lead on summer, — see ! she follows in our train.* [Quoted by Knight 
and Halliwell.] — Malone gives a stanza with the refrain. With a fadings from a 
song in Sportive IVit, 1656, p. 58; and Chappell (p. 235) gives the whole song and 
the music of it, and remarks that *JVitA a fading {or /adding) seems to be used as a 
nonsense-burden, like Derry dowuy Hey nonny, nonny no, etc' — Lastly, Bradley 
(New Eng. Did.) says the * Etymology is unknown ; the Irish fiaddn, pipe, whistle, 
has been suggested ; but cf. Fade^ " To dance from town to country " (W. Comw. 
Gloss.): 

226. lump-her, and thuihp-her] Collier : The burdens of old songs and bal- 
lads, mentioned in writers of the time, and employed long before and afterwards. 

228. gap] Collier (ed. ii) adopts the word substituted by his MS, Jape, i. e. a jest, 
Lkttsom {B/acJhuood, 1853, -A-ugO approved of it. — R. G. White accepts it not as a 
substitution, but as a variant spelling of * gap,' and says : ' The word meant, not a jest, 
as Collier defines it, but a coarse and boisterous explosion of mirth, and was oftener 
spelled with a g than a j\ though always pronounced jape. See Amim's Nest of 
Ninnies : " So shee, forgetting modesty, gapte out a laughter," p. 32, Shak. Soc. ed.* 
— Dyce, who also prints j'ape, and defines it as a j'est, observes * Grant White is quite 
mistaken when he asserts that it does not mean a jest ; ... in the passage, which he 
cites from the Nest of Ninnies, " gapte " is merely gaped. The verbs to gape and to 
jape are perfectly distinct words.' — Staunton : A * foul gap * means a gross paren- 
thesis. See Puttenham's Arte of Poesie, Lib. iii, cxiii, under Parenthesis or the 
Insertour [where, after giving the example of a parenthesis extending beyond three 
lines, the author remarks : * This insertion is very long and vtterly impertinent to the 
principall matter, and makes a great gappe in the tale,* etc., p. 181, ed. Arber. 
R. G. White, in his Second Edition, abandoned the interpretation given in his First, 
and merely notes that ''jape is equivalent to a coarse jest.' A * foul jape ' is a * coarse 
jest * ; but jape of itself is merely a jest ; and when White adds that, * the word had 
a very indecent sense * he asserts what is only half true, and, moreover, true of the 
verb, not, I think, of the noun. In Elyot's Govemour (ii, 440, ed. Croft) we find : 
* beinge in this wyse foumysshed, translatynge iapes and thynges to mater serious and 
true, he,' etc., whereon there is the following note by the excellent editor : * In the 
author's [1. e. Elyot's] Dictionary we find the Latin verb alludere translated, " to 
doo a thynge in iape, to speake merily or consent ; somtyme it sygnifieth to speake 
some thynge which secretly hath some other understandyng.** The Prompt, Parv, 
gives *' Tape, nuga, frivolum, scurrilitas. laper, nugax, nugaculus. lapyn (or tryflon) 

14 



2IO THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. iv. 

makes the maid to anfwere, Wtwopy doe me no harme good 

man : put's him off, flights him, with Whoops doe mee no 230 

Jiarme good man. 

Pol. This is a braue fellow. 

Clo. Beleeee mee, thou talked of an admirable con- 
ceited fellow, has he any vnbraided Wares ? 234 

233. Beleeee] F,. 234. vnbraided] embroided Coll. ii, 

233, 234. admirable conceited] Hy- iii (MS), Huds. embroider' d Kinnear. 
phened by all edd. after Theob. excq)t Wares f] Warres : F,. 

Sing. Cam. Wh. ii. 

trupho, illudo, ludiBco, delude." While Palsgrave has **Japef a trifyll — Iruffe, s. f." 
and " I jape, I tryfle,^ truffe^ or je truffle, and je me bourdCy prim. conj. I dyd but 
jape with hym, and he toke it in good emest ; je ne me fys que truffer, ox je ne me 
fis que truffler, or je ne me fis que bourder a luy, et il le print a ban esciant" — 
V isclairdssmenty pp. 233, 589. It was also used in a coarse sense which Palsgrave 
renders into [a] French equivalent. We find both verb and substantive constantly in 
Chaucer.' I find two difHculties in accepting jape : first, it is too plausible. It is to 
be always borne in mind that of two readings the less obvious is to be preferred ; 
< gap ' is certainly less obvious than jape. Moreover, White's assertion is doubtful : 
that jape was oftener spelt with a g than a j. This has not been my observation, 
and if the * copy ' were dictated to the compositors, as is probable, the two words 
could not have been confounded. Secondly, the phrase ' to break a jest into the 
matter ' is of doubtful propriety. It is certainly unusual. The same does not hold 
good of the phrase * to break a gap into the matter.' Wherefore, on the whole, I 
prefer the reading of the Folio : * gap.* — Ed.] 

229. Whoop, doe me, etc.] A Bibliography of this old song is given by Chap- 
pell on pp. 208, 774, together with the music. A song with this burden is to be 
found in Fry*s Ancient Poetry , * but,' adds Chappell, * it would not be desh-able for 
republication.' Indeed, the humour, in the whole of this speech by the Qown, 
would be relished by an Elizabethan audience, to whom the praises bestowed by the 
Clown on the decency of the ballads, would be at once recognised as one of the 
jokes. — En. 

232. This . . . fellow] Walker {Vers. 86): I think this is a short line, as 
Polixenes speaks in verse throughout this scene [consequently * This is ' should be 
printed This']. 

234. vnbraided] Johnson: Surely we must read braided, for such are all the 
wares mentioned in the answer. Steevkns : I believe by * unbraided wares * the 
Qown means, has he anything besides laces which are braided, and are the principal 
conunodity sold by ballad-singing pedlars. Yes, replies the servant, * he has ribands,' 
etc., which are things not braided, but woven. The drift of the Clown's question is 
either to know whether Autolycus has anything better than is commonly sold by such 
vagrants ; anything worthy to be presented to his mistress ; or, as probably, by inquir- 
ing for something which pedlars usually have not, to escape laying out his money at 
all. The following passage in Anything for a quiet Life, however, leads me to sup- 
pose that there is here some allusion which I cannot explain : ' She says you vent 
ware that is not warrantable, braided ware, and that you give not London measure ' 



ACT IV. sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 2 1 1 

Ser. Hee hath Ribbons of all the colours i'th Raine- 235 
bow ; Points, more then all the Lawyers in Bohemia^ can 
learnedly handle, though they come to him by th'grofle: 
Inckles, Caddyffes, Cambrickes, Lawnes : why he fmgs 
em ouer, as they were Gods, or Goddeffes : you would 239 

237. t)Cgrqlfe\ Ff, Wh. i. the gross Han. Cap. Dyce, Wh. Sta, Cam. them 
Rowe et cet. Theob. ii et cet. 

239. efn\ Ff, Rowe, Pope, Theob. i, 239. or\ and Pope ii, Theob. Warb. 

Johns, on Ktly (misprint?). 

[Ill, ii]. — ToLLET: 'Unbraided wares' may be wares of the best manufacture. 
• Braid ' signifies deceitful in AWs WeU, IV, ii, 73. « Braided * in Bailey's Diet, 
means faded, or having lost its colour ; and why then may not < unbraided ' import 
whatever is undamaged, or what is of the better sort ? — Malone : The Clown is per- 
haps inquiring not for something better than common, but for smooth and plain goods. 
Has he any plain wares, not twisted into braids ? Ribands, cambricks, and lawns, 
all answer this description. — Mason (p. 136) : Probably it means ware not ornamented 
with braid. — Collier (ed. ii) : Embroided, such is the alteration of the MS, putting, 
we think, an end to the question. — R. G. White (ed. i) conjectures etnbroidedy which, 
he says, has * some support from Collier's MS. The reply of the Servant suits this, 
and the other does not.' — Singer : That is undamaged wares, true and good. So 
Marston, Scourge of Villainies Sat. v : ' Tuscus is trade- falne. . . . For now he makes 
no count of perjuries, . . . Glased his braided ware, cogs, sweares, and lies.' And in 
An Iliade of Metamorphosis , 1600: * Bookes of this nature, being once perused. Are 
then cast by, and as brayed ware refused.' — Staunton : < Unbraided,' that is, un- 
spoiledf unfadedy sterling goods — Mackay ( Gloss.) : * Braid ' originally signified in 
Keltic, braid, a thief, a false man ; bradag, a thievish woman, a false woman. Either 
false or dishonest explains the use of the word by Shakespeare ; and the Clown's query 
signifies 'has he any wares that are genuine, or unfalsified ?' [It is possible that all 
these definitions may be correct. — Murray (A^. E. D.) gives as the definition of 
^Braided wares I goods that have changed colour, tarnished, faded. Obsolete,* If it 
were a matter of any moment, we might consider it unfortunate that the Servant does 
not give an answer which would be a direct response to any of these definitions. — Ed.] 
236. Points] Malone : These points were laces with metal tags to them. AiguiU 
lettes, Fr. [Cotgrave : *AiguiIletter, To trusse, or tye, poynts.' Of course, the double 
meaning : laces and points of an argument, is manifest.] 

238. Inckles] Anon. (ap. Halliwell) : Inkle is a kind of broad linen tape of an 
inferior description. Its use may be gathered from the Accounts of the Corporation 
of Norwich, 1587-8, where are put down the expenses for soldiers' coats, <and for 
whight yncle to laye upon the same coats.' Inckle, or beggars' inckle, is a kind of 
coarse tape used by cooks to secure meat previous to being spitted. 

238. Caddysses] Murray {New Eng, Diet.) : Here two words are apparently 
mixed up : i (in the sense of cotton wool, floss silk, or the like). Properly codas, ea- 
dace. Old French cadaz, codas, cf. Cotgrave ; cadarce, * the tow or coarsest part of 
silke, whereof sleaue is made;' cf. Irish cadcu^cadan, cotton; 2. Fr. cctdis (l5tb c. 
in Littr6), *sorte de serge de laine, de bas pris.' Of both the ulterior history is un- 
known. [The present example Murray gives as] short for caddis ribbon : A worsted 
tape or binding, used for garters, etc. 



212 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

thinke a Smocke were a fhee-Angell, he fo chauntes to 240 
the fleeue-hand, and the worke about the fquare on't. 
Clo. Pre'thee bring him in, and let him approach fm- 

ging. 

Perd. Forewame him, that he vfe no fcurrilous words 

in's tunes. 245 

Clow. You haue of thefe Pedlers, that haue more in 

241. Jleeue-hand'\ sleeve-band Han. 245. i»*j] in his Cap. Var. Rann, 
Warb. Johns. Cap. Rann, Coll. ii (MS). Mai. Steev. Var. Knt, Sing. Ktly. 

242. Pre' thee"] Prethee Ff. [Exit Servant. Cap. 

239. as they were] As one of the two instances in this play of the blind fidelity 
with which, in times past, edition after edition followed its predecessor, it is worth 
noting that Dr Johnson printed this < as ' with an apostrophe, 'oj, undoubtedly by ac- 
cident ; the apostrophe can have no meaning that I can discern. This typographical 
oversight was faithfully copied by the Variorums of 1773, 1778, 1785, 1793, 1803, 
181 3, 1 82 1, and by Rann in 1787. The two exceptions between 1765 and 1821 are 
Malone's ed. in 1790, and the First American Edition^ printed in Philadelphia in 
1795. ^or ^^ second example, see V, i, 82. — Ed. 

241. sleeue-hand] Peck (p. 241) : What, in the name of modesty, is the 'sleeve- 
hand ' of a smock ? Every shirt or shift, it is well known, hath two sleeves for the 
hands and arms to go thro'. But this gives no sense to the passage. ' Sleeve-hand ' 
then, I make no doubt, is a mistake of the transcriber or printer for Silesia or sleasie 
Holland. *■ Sleasie holland,' as Mr Blount observes, ' common people take to be all 
holland cloth which is sleight, or ill-wrought. Whereas,' saith he, * that only is prop- 
erly Slesia or Silesia linnen, which is made in, & comes from Silesia in Germany.' 
This easie emendation makes sense & humor of the passage, & the meaning is : ' You 
would think he imagines everything which wears a shift (tho* the shift be never so 
thred-bare, & the wearer never so great a dowdy) to be a perfect angel.* — Tollet : 
The old reading is right or we must alter some passages in other authors. Thus in 
Leland's Collectanea^ I770» iv, 323: *A surcoat [of crimson velvet] furred with 
mynever pure, the coller, skirts and sleeve-hands garnished with ribbons of gold.' So 
Cotgrave : *Poignet de la chemise. The wrist-band, or gathering at the sleeue-hand, 
of a shirt.' Again, in Leland's Collectaneay iv, 293, King James's * shurt was broded 
with thred of gold,' and on p. 341 the word * sleeve-hand ' occurs, and seems to sig- 
nify the cuffs of a surcoat, as here it may mean the cuffs of a smock. I conceive that 
the * work about the square on't ' signifies the work or embroidery about the bosom 
part of a shift, which might then have been of a square form, or might have a square 
tucker, as Anne Bolen and Jane Seymour have in Houbraken's Portraits. So in 
Fairfax's TassOy xii, st. 64 : * Between her breasts the cruel weapon rives. Her curious 
square^ embossed with swelling gold.' — Steevens : In a poem called * The Paynting 
of a Curtizan,' in John Grange's Garden^ I577» we find: * Their smockes are all 
bewrought about the necke and handej* — M alone : So likewise in Holland's Sue- 
tonius^ 1606, p. 19: *who used to goe in his senatour's purple studded robe, trimmed 
with a jagge or frindge at the sleeve- hand.* 

246. You haue of these Pedlers] If there be any Section in Abbott dealing 
with Partitive Genitives like the present : * You have some of these pedlers,' it has 



ACT IV. sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 213 

them, then youlM thinke (Sifter.) 247 

Pcrd. I, good brother, or go about to thinke. 

Enter Autolicus Jinging. 
Lawne as white as driuen SnoWy 250 

Cyprejfe black e as ere was Crow, 

247. />5«w] *«w Theob. ii, Warb. 251. Cypreffe] Ff, Rowe i, Ktly,Cam. 

Johna. Var. Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. Knt. Cyprus Rowe ii et cet. 

escaped me. Cf. Ham. Ill, ii, 37 : * there be of them that will themselves laugh,* 
where W. A. Wright refers to Levit. iv, 16 : * And the priest that is anointed shall 
bring of the bullock's blood,' etc. ; and, in his Bible Word-book^ to Bacon, Essay 
xxxiii : * Send oft of them, over to the country,' etc. — Ed. 

250. Ward (i, 437) compares this Song with one by Friar Tuck, in The Downfall 
of Robert Earl of Huntington^ acted in 1598 [Hazlitt's Dodsley^ viii, 161] : — < What 
lack ye ? What lack ye ? | What is it you will buy ? | Any points, pins, or laces, | 
Any laces, points, or pins ? | Fine gloves, fine glasses, | Any busks or masks ? | Or any 
other pretty things ?' | etc. 

251. Cypresse] W. A. Wright (Note on *a cypress, not a bosom Hideth my 
heart.' — Twelfth N, III, i, 119) : Cypress is a fine transparent stuff now called crape. 
Compare Milton's PenserosOy 35 : * Sable stole of cypress lawn.' Palsgrave {Les- 
clarcissementy etc.) gives: 'Cypres for a woman's necke — crespe\* and Cotgrave : 
* Crespe : m. Cipres ; also, Cobweb Lawne.' In Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, 
I, iii, the edition of 1 61 6 reads : * And he . . . this man ! to conceale such reall orna- 
ments as these, and shaddow their glorie, as a Millaners wife do's her wrought stom- 
acher, with a smokie lawne, or a black cypresse ?' The etymology of the word has 
been considered doubtful. Skinner (Elymol. Angl.) regards it as a corruption of the 
French crespe^ but suggests that it may be derived from the island of Cyprus, where it 
was first manufactured. The latter derivation is the more probable. There are 
many instances in which articles of manufacture are named from the places where 
they were made, or at which they were commonly sold. For example, arras was so 
called from Arras, baudekyn from Baldacco or Bagdad, calico from Calicut, cambric 
from Cambray, cashmere from Cashmere, damask from Damascus, dimity from 
Damietta, domick from Tournay, dowlas from Dourlans, lockeram from Locrenan, 
muslin from Mosul. The probability that cypress (or sipers, as it is also spelt) has a 
similar origin, is increased by finding that the island of Cyprus is associated with cer- 
tain manufactures. In the Antient Kalendars and Inventories of the Treasury of the 
Exchequer, edited by Sir Francis Falgrave (iii, 358), among the goods and chattels 
belonging to Richard II., and found in the Castle at Haverford, are enumerated: 
< Frim'ement xxv. draps d'or de div'ses suytes dount iiii. de Cipre les autres de Lukes* 
Lukes is here Lucca (Fr. Lucques)^ and Cipre is Cyprus. Again, in a list of draperies 
sold at Norwich in 44 and 45 Elizabeth (quoted by Mr Gomme in Notes and Qu. 
5th Ser. X, 226, from the Appendix to the Thirty-eighth Report of the Deputy Keeper 
of the Public Records^ p. 444), we find *fustyans of Naples . . . Paris clothes . . . 
sattins of Cipres, Spanish sattins.' Further, in the Nomenclator of Hadrianus Junius, 
translated by Higins (ed. Fleming, 1585, p. 157), we find, * Vestis subserica, tra- 
moserica . . . De satin de Cypres. A garment of cypers satten, or of silke grograine.' 



214 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Gloues as fweete as Damaske Ro/eSj 252 

Maskes far faceSj and far nofes : 

Bugle-bracelet^ Necke4ace Amber^ 254 

254. Bugle-bracelet] Bugle-bracelets 254. Necke4ace] Neck lace F^. 

F^, Rowe-I-, Var. '73. 

If therefore there were special fabrics known as * cloth of gold of C3rpre8 ' and < satin 
of Cyprus,* it is evident that these were so called, either because Cyprus was the place 
of their manufacture, or, which is equally probable, because they were brought into 
Europe from the East through Cyprus. In Hall's account {Chronicle^ Hen. VIII., 
fol. 83a) of a masque at the entertainment given to Henry the Eighth by Francis, it 
is said that three of the performers had * on their hedes bonettes of Turkay fashyon, 
of cloth of gold of Tyssue, and clothe of syluer rolled in Cypres kercheffes after the 
Pan3ms fashyon,' which points to an Eastern origin for the use of cypress. From de- 
noting the material only, the word < cypress ' came to signify a particular kind of 
kerchief or veil worn by ladies, as in the present passage [in Twelfth NJ\. So in 
Florio's Italian Diet, : < Velaregli, shadowes, vailes, Launes, Scarfes, Sipres, or 
Bonegraces that women vse to weare one their faces or foreheads to keepe them 
from the Sunne.* And the pedlar in John Heywood's play of The Four P*s has in 
bis pack (Dodsley's Old Eng. Plays^ ed. Hazlitt, i, 350) : * Sipers, swathbands, rib- 
bons, and sleeve laces.' Mr Wheatley, in his edition of Jonson's Every Man in his 
Humour (p. 140) conjectures that the name Cypress is derived from *the plant 
Cyperus textilisy which is still used for the making of ropes and matting.* One of 
the English names of this plant was * cypress.' Gerarde in his Herbal (1597) says, 
' Cyperus longus is called ... in English Cypresse and Galingale.' There are, how- 
ever, great difHculties in the way of such an etymology, which Mr Wheatley was 
driven to suggest by the want of evidence in favour of the derivation from Cypress. 
[See also Wheatley's note in N. &* Qu. V, x, 245.] 

252. Gloues] T. Warton: The introduction of perfumed gloves is thus men- 
tioned in Howes' edition of Stowe's Chronicle : ' Milloners or haberdashers had not 
then any gloves imbroydered, or trimmed with gold or silke . . . neither could they 
make any costly wash or perfume untill about the fourteenth or fifteenth yeere of the 
queene [Elizabeth], the right honourable Edward de Vere, Earle of Oxford, came 
from Italy, and brought with him gloves, sweete bagges, a perfumed leather jerkin, 
and other pleasant things ; and that yeere the queene had a paire of perfumed gloves 
trimmed only with foure tuftes or roses of cullered silke. The queene tooke such 
pleasure in those gloves, that she was pictured with those gloves upon her handes, 
and for many yeeres after it was called the Earle of Oxforde's perfume,' p. 868, ed. 
1614. — Halliwell: In Andrew Boorde's Dyetary [1542, p. 249, ed. E. E, T."] we 
find : * vse to were gloues made of goote-skynnes, perfumed with amber-degreece.' 

253. noses] R. G. White (ed. i) : * Masks' to protect the nose have been worn 
by a few people in this country within the memory of people now living. 

254. bracelet] I can see no reason why the plural of F^ should not have been 
adopted by modem editors, since 1773. — Ed. 

254. Amber] Peck (p. 206) : There are several sorts of amber, as I. raw ambre, 
t. e. just as it grows before made transparent by the fat of a sucking pig. 2. red. 
3. white. 4. blacky the worst sort ; usually mingled with aloes, labdanum, storax, 
& such like aromatic simples for pomander chains. 5. yellow , the ordinary ambre de 



ACT IV. sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 215 

Perfume for a Ladies Chamber : 255 

Golden Quoifes , and Stomachers 

For my LadSy to giue their deers : 

PinSy and poaking'Jlickes ofjleele. 

What Maids lackefrom luad to heele : 
Qome buy of me , come:cofne buy , come buy^ 260 

Buy LadSy or elfe your Laffes cry : Come buy. 

257. to giue] eo give F^. 261. Come buy.] Separate line, Theob. 

258. poaking-dickes] Fating sticks Warb. Johns. Cap. Var. Rann, Mai. 
(bis) Wilson's Cheereful Ayres. Steev. Var. Coll. Sing. Dyce, Cam. Wh. 

260. come :] comt buy ; Ktly. ii, Huds. 

pater-nostre's, or bead amber. Shakespeare brings in Autolicus crying, * necklace 
amber.* 6. Ambergris, amber-greece, or grey amber (the best sort) used in per- 
fumes. It is known to be good, if, when pricking it with a pin, it emit a moisture 
like oil. I am obliged, to an unknown person of the fair sex, for the following un- 
common remarks : * Grey ambre is the ambre our author [Milton] speaks of, & melts 
like butter. It was formerly a main ingredient in every concert for a banquet ; vi*. 
to fume the meat with, & that whether boiled, roasted, or baked. Laid often on top 
of a baked pudding. Which last I have eat of at an old courtiers table. And I 
remember, in an old chronicle, there is much complaint of the nobilities being made 
sick at Cardinal Wolsey's banquets, with rich scented cates & dishes most costly 
dressed with ambergris. I also recollect I once saw a little book writ by a gentle- 
woman of Q. Elizabeth's court, where ambergris is mentioned as the haut-gout of 
that age.' So far this curious lady. [The foregoing note is on Milton's Par, Reg, 
ii, 344, where Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness with * a table richly spread ' where 
from choicest viands *gris-amber steamed.'] — T. Warton: Milton alludes to the 
fragrance of amber. See Sam, Agon, 720 : * An amber scent of odorous perfume, 
Her Harbinger.' 

255. Chamber] R. G. White (ed. i) : The old and analogically correct pronun- 
ciation of this word, which makes it a perfect rhyme to * amber,' survived till of late 
years among educated people in New England. 

258. poaking-stickes] Steevens: These * poking-sticks ' were heated in the 
fire and made use of to adjust the plaits of ruffs. Thus, in Middleton's Blurt^ Mas- 
ter-Constable, 1602, [III, iii] : 'Your ruff must be in print [«. e. in perfect style]; 
and for that purpose, get poking-sticks with fair long handles, lest they scorch your 
lily sweating hands.' Again, in Stubbes, Second part of the Anatomic of Abuses 
['S^S* P- 35» ®^* New Sh, Soc.'\ : * They [tooles to set ruffes] be made of yron and 
Steele, and some of brasse kept as bright as siluer. . . . The fashion whereafter they 
be made, I cannot resemble to anything so well as to a squirt or squibbe, which little 
children use to squirt out water withall ; and when they come to starching, and setting 
of their ruffes then must this instrument be heated in the fire, the better to stiffen the 
ruffe. . . . And if you would know the name of this goodly toole, forsooth the deuill 
hath giuen it to name a putter, or else a putting sticke, as I heare say.' Stowe informs 
us that * about the sixteenth yeare of the queene [Elizabeth] began the making of 
Steele poking- sticks, and untill that time all lawndresses used setting stickes made of 
wood or bone.' — Deighton : They answer to the ' goffering-irons ' of modem fashion. 



2l6 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Clo. If I were not in loue with Mopfa^ thou (houldft 262 
take no money of me, but being enthrallM as I am, it will 
alfo be the bondage of certaine Ribbons and Gloues. 

Mop. I was promised them againfl the Feaft,but they 265 
come not too late now. 

Dor. He hath promisM you more rhen that, or there 
be lyars. 

Mop. He hath paid you all he promised you: 'May be 
he has paid you more, which will ftiame you to giue him 270 
againe. 

Clo. Is there no manners left among maids? Will they 
weare their plackets, where they fhould bear their faces ? 
Is there not milking-time ? When you are going to bed? 
Or kill-hole ? To whiftle. of these fecrets, but you muft 275 
be tittle-tatling before all our guefts ? 'Tis well they are 
whifpring: clamor your tongues, and not a word more. 277 

267. rhen'\ F,. ii + , Cap. Var. Rann, Wh. i. kiiln-hoUy 

269. ^May\ may Cap. Johns. kiln-hoUy Mai. et cet. 

273. bear\ wear Theob. ii, Warb. 275. whiftle of] Ff, Rowe + , Knt 

Johns. Var. '73. a/^iJr/^^Coll. (MS), whistle off HtJCk, 

2 74. milking-time /* . . . bed /] milking- et cet. 
-timey,,.bedy Rowe ii et seq. 277. clamor\ F^. clamour F^F^. 

275. kUlhole?^ Ff. kill- hole, Rowe charm Han. \Vh. Coll. ii (MS), Rife. 

clammer Huds. shame o* Perring. 

269. 'May be] Note the careful apostrophe, indicating that there is an abbrevi- 
ation. See II, i, 18. 

273. plackets] Dyce {Gloss.): Whether or not 'placket* had originally an in- 
delicate meaning is more than I can determine. It has been very variously explained 
— a petticoat, an under-petticoat, a pocket attached to a petticoat, the slit or opening 
in a petticoat, and a stomacher ; and it certainly was occasionally used to signify a 
female, os petticoat is now. — Chappell (p. 518), in a note on the song * Joan's Placket 
is torn,* says, * the word is not altogether obsolete, since the opening in the petticoats 
of the present day is still called " the placket hole " in contradistinction to the pocket 
hole.' [A fuller note is given at Lear, III, iv, 94, and a thorough discussion of the 
unsavory meanings of the word may be found in Grant White's Studies in Shake- 
speare^ 1886, p. 342-350, whereof the sum is to be found in Halliwell's Archaic Diet. 
Readers of the Elizabethan drama are familiar enough with the proper and improper 
meanings of placket. It is quite sufficient to comprehend that the Clown asks in 
effect : Will you wear as an outer garment that which should be an inner one ? — Ed.] 

275. kill-hole] Harris: Kiln-hole is pronounced 'kill-hole,' in the midland 
counties, and generally means the fire place used in making malt ; and is still a noted 
gossipping place. 

277. clamor] Warburton : The phrase is taken from ringing. When bells are 
at the height, in order to cease them, the repetition of the strokes becomes much 



ACT IV. sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 21/ 



[277. clamor your tongues, and not a word more.] 
quicker than before; this is called clamouring them. [Adopted by Capell.] — 
Malone : In a note on Othello, Dr Johnson says that * to clam a bell is to cover the 
clapper with felt, which drowns the blow, and hinders the sound (qy. hinders the blow 
and drowns the sound ?]. If this be so, it affords an easy interpretation of the passage 
before us. — Croft (p. 11): If for * clamour,' clam was read, and indeed it signifies 
to cover a bell with felt, as Johnson says, the difficulty would vanish ; * clamour * [is] 
the same as clam, when applied to the ringing of bells, as in tuning, if they do not 
strike clear of one another ; and when they ring a wedding peal, it is stiled clamming 
them. — Douce (i, 360) : The Clown evidently wishes to keep the damsels' tongues 
from wagging. Now to clam, clem, or cleam are provincial words, signifying to glue 
together or fasten with glue, and metonymically, to starve by contraction. We still 
use clammy for sticking together. All the Northern languages have an equivalent 
term. — GiFFORD (note on Bartholomew Fair, II, i, p. 405 : * He is the man must 
charm you') : That is, silence you. In this sense the word occurs in all the writers 
of Jonson's time. By an evident misprint * clamour your tongues ' is given for charm 
(silence) them, in The Winter's Tale ; and the painful endeavours of the conunen- 
tators to explain the simple nonsense of the text by contradictory absurdities might 
claim our pity, if their unfounded assertions did not provoke our contempt. [Gifford 
should have known that he had been anticipated by Hanmer.] — Nares : An expres- 
sion taken from bell-ringing ; it is now contracted to clam, and in that form is com- 
mon among ringers. The bells are said to be clamm'd, when, after a course of 
rounds or changes, they are all pulled off at once, and give a general crash or clam, 
by which the peal is concluded. This is also called firing, and is frequently prac- 
tised on rejoicing days. As this clam is succeeded by silence, it exactly suits [the 
present passage]. Warburton conjectured rightly that the word had reference to bell- 
ringing, but mistook the application. [Nares misapprehends Warburton, whose note 
is carelessly written. Warburton means that a rapid succession of quick blows is 
followed by a sudden silence, which is exactly the explanation of ' clamour ' given by 
Nares.] Gifford pronounces * clamour ' a mere misprint for charm. But such a mis- 
take seems very improbable, both because the words are unlike, and because charm 
would occur more easily to a compositor than * clamour.' — Hunter (i, 424) : The 
same phrase is found in John Taylor ( Works, 1630). It is in that strange mish-mash 
of words and sentences. Sir Gregory Nonsense his news from no place : * He thus 
began ; Cease friendly cutting throats, Clamour the promulgation of your tongues. 
And yield to Demagorgon's policy,' etc. — James Cornish {N &* Qu, 1852, vol. vi, 
p. 312) : I believe * clamour' is a misprint for chommer. In Cotgrave *chommer' is 
to cease from work, and that is exactly the sense required in the present passage, 
* Hold your tongues.' — W. R. Arrowsmith (iV. <St* Qu, 1853, vol. vii, p. 567) : Most 
judiciously does Nares reject Gifford's corruption of this word into charm, nor will 
the suffrage of the * clever ' old commentator [«. e. Collier's MS] one jot contribute 
to dispel their diffidence of this change, whom the severe discipline of many years' 
study, and the daily access of accumulating knowledge, have schooled into a whole- 
some sense of their extreme fallibility in such matters. Without adding any com- 
ment, I now quote, for the inspection of learned and unlearned, the two ensuing 
extracts : * For Critias manaced and thretened hym, that onelesse he chaumbreed his 
tongue in season, ther should ere log bee one oxe the fewer for hym.' — Apopthegmis of 
Erasmus, trans, by Nicolas Vdall, 1542, the First Booke, p. 10. * From no sorte of 



2l8 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. iv. 

Mop. I haue done ; Come you ptomisM me a tawdry- 278 
lace, and a paire of fweet Gloues . 

278. ptomU'd^ F,. 

menne in the worlde did he refrein or chaumbre the tauntyng of his tongae.' — Id, 
p. 76. — Keightley {^Exp, 205) : Charm in the sense of * silence your tongue * is 
used only by characters of the educated class. ... I think that, except in oithog- 
raphy, the text is right. The real word was probably clammer or clemmer, the same 
as the sinple clam or clem, to squeeze or press, and the phrase answers to Hold your 
tongues, — R. G. White finds it impossible to resist the conclusion that 'clamor' is 
a misprint for charm. — Collier's MS agrees with Hanmer in reading charm, — 
Dyce in his Gloss, thinks that the * attempts to explain this by referring it to bell- 
ringing ought to have ceased long ago ' ; in his editions he expresses no opinion, but 
merely cites Gifford's note and quotes Hunter and Arrowsmith. — Staunton infers 
from Hunter's quotation that the phrase was a familiar one. — Halliwell quotes in 
full Warburton, Malone, Steevens, Nares, Douce, Waldron, and Singer, but expresses 
no opinion. — Delius quotes Hunter's extract from Taylor; the fustian phrases evi- 
dently puzzled him ; he remarks, thereupon, that the meaning of the phrase is clearer 
than the explanation. Were it not one of the objects of this edition to give some- 
what of a history of Shakespearian criticism, it would have been more direct, and 
certainly far more easy, to give at once the following latest and final conclusion, 
wherein the aid contributed by the foregoing commentators may be detected :] — 
Murray {New Eng. Did.) : Clamour. Also clamber (evidently related to Clam 
[when it bears the meaning both of sounding bells together, and of putting an end to 
din, of silencing], of which it may be a frequentative derivative (cf. stutter^ patter)^ 
and so better spelt clammer. The actual spelling shows association with \Clam4mr^ 
to raise an outcry, etc.], and actual relation to that is, of course, also possible. Iden- 
tity with Ger. klammern, or with clamber, seems hardly admissible, though asso- 
ciation with the latter is found by a correspondent skilled in campanology, who says, 
< Clambering describes the way in which the sounds of the bells clamber as it were 
one on the top of another when they get into confusion ; in Yorksh. it is called 
jumbling, i. Bell-ringing.[The reader is referred to the meanings of Clam just 
mentioned.] Todd says, * A term in ringing, according to Warburton, which other 
commentators . . . imagine to be merely his own opinion. It is, however, prob- 
able. To increase the strokes of the clapper on the bell, in falling it.' [Warbur- 
ton's note given above here follows] : c. 1800, W. Jones, Aey to the Art of Ringing, 
4 A true compass makes the ringing pleasant and harmonious . . . the want of it 
produces those clamberings and firings (as it is called) that destroy all music, and is 
very disgusting to every judicious ear. 2. To stop from noise, to silence. [Clam is 
again referred to, when it means * to put an end to din ; to silence, to hush, as in N. 
Fairfax, Bulk. <5r» Selv. 1674, Ep. Ded., * It . . . answers the noise of Talking by the 
stilness of Doing, as the Italians clam rowt and tattle into nodding and beckning.* 
Then is quoted Warburton's supposition that the clamouring of bells is immediately 
followed by silence, next the present passage from The Wint. Tale is given, and 
lastly Hunter's quotation from Taylor.] 

278, 279. tawdry-lace] Steevens : It is thus described in Skinner's Etymologicon 
by Skinner's friend, Dr Ilenshawe: * Tawdry lace, (i. e.) Astrigmenta Fimbriae seu 
Fasciolsc emtse nundinis fano Sanctae Etheldreda celebratis, ut rect^ monet Doct. Th, 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 219 

Clo. Haue I not told thee how I was cozen'd by the 280 
way, and loft all my money. 

AuU And indeed Sir, there are Cozeners abroad, ther- 
fore it behooues men to be wary. 

Clo. Feare not thou man, thou (halt lofe nothing here 

AuU I hope fo fir, for I haue about me many parcels 285 
of charge. 

Clo. What haft heere ? Ballads ? 

Mop. Pray now buy fome : I loue a ballet in print, a 
life, for then we are fure they are true. 

Aut. Here's one, to a very dolefuU tune, how a Vfu- 290 
rers wife was brought to bed of twenty money baggs at 

281. money.'\ money ? Yi, Knt, Sta. Ktly. o'life Coll. Wh. Cam. 

288. balUfl Ballad Y^^, 290. a Vfurersi an usurer's Johns. 

288, 289. a lift"] Ff, Rowe i, Dyce. Var. Rann. 

or a life Rowe ii+, Cap. Var. '73. a'- 291. ^ tToenfy] with twenty F^F^, 

life\2iX. '78, '85, Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. Rowe + , Var. Rann, Mai. 

H.^ — Nares : * Tawdry ' is a vulgar corruption of Saint Audrey, or Auldrey, meaning 
Saint Ethelreda. It implies that the things so called had been bought at the fair of 
Saint Audrey, where gay toys of all sorts were sold. This Fair was held in the Isle 
of Ely on the day of the Saint, the 17th of October. An old English historian makes 
Saint Audrey die of a swelling in her throat, which she considered as a particular 
judgement for having been in her youth much addicted to wearing fine necklaces. 
When dying she said, as he tells us, ' Memini — cum adhuc juvencula essem, collum 
meum monilibus et auro ad vanam ostentationem onerari solitum. Quare plurimum 
debeo divinse providentise, quod mea superbia tam levi poena defungatur, nee ad ma- 
jora tormenta reserver.' The same author particularly describes the tawdry necklace : 
* Solent Anglise nostrse mulieres torquem quendam, ex tenui et subtili serica confec- 
tum, collo gestare ; quam Ethelredse torquem appellamus {tawdry lace)^ forsan in ejus 
quod diximus memoriam.' — Nich. HarpsBeld, Hist. Eccl, Anglicana^ Sac, Sept, p. 
86. — Chambers*s Book of Days (October 17) : At the Fair of St Audry, at Ely, in 
former times, toys of all sorts were sold, and a description of cheap necklaces, which 
under the denomination of tawdry laces^ long enjoyed great celebrity. — Skeat : We 
are quite sure that Tawdry is a corruption of St. Audry \ and we are equally sure 
(as any one living near Ely must be) that Audry is a corruption of Etheldrida^ the 
famous saint who founded Ely Cathedral. 

284. Feare not, etc.] It is possible that Autolycus, under the pretence of looking 
for cozeners, casts furtive glances about him to be sure of his company. If we were 
not in < stage-land ' we might wonder that Autolycus did not recognise Prince Flor- 
izel quite as easily as Polixenes recognised him. — Ed. 

288, 289. a life] Abbott (§ 24) : There is some difficulty in this * a life.' It 
might be considered a kind of oath, * on my life.' Nares explains it as my life^ but 
the passages which he quotes could be equally well explained on the supposition that 
is a preposition. 



220 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. iv. 

a burthen, and how (he longed to eate Adders heads, and 292 
Toads carbonado'd. 

Mop, Is it true, thinke you ? 

AuL Very true, and but a moneth old. 295 

Dor. Bleffe me from marrying a Vfurer. 

AuL Here's the Midwiues name to't : one Mid. Tale- 
Porter^ and fiue or fix honed Wiues, that were prefent. 
Why fhould I carry lyes abroad ? 

Mop' 'Pray you now buy it. 300 

Clo. Come-on, lay it by : and let's firft fee moe Bal- 
lads : Wee'l buy the other rhings anon. 

AuU Here's another ballad of a Fifh, that appeared 
vpon the coa(l,on wenfday the fourefcore of April, fortie 304 

292. burthefi\ burden Johns, birth Rann, Steev. Var. Coll. Dyce, Sta. Ktly. 

AnoD. ap. Cam. 301. moe\ Ff, Rowe i, Cam. Wh. li. 

Adders'] Addars F . more Rowe ii et cet. 

295. moneth'] month F^. 302. rhings] F^. 

296. a Vfurer] an usurer Johns. 303. ballad of] ballad, of Theob. 

297. Midwiues] Midwife^ Rowe. ballad. Of Cap. 

Mijl.] Miflris Ff. 304. wenfday] Wednesday F^F^. 

298. Wiues] wivesi* Var. '78, '8$! we'nsday Cap. 

298. Wiues] Cambridge Editors : We have retained wives in this passage be- 
cause Steevens*s reading wives* is too strictly grammatical to accord with the reckless 
volubility of the charlatan. To be consistent Steevens ought to have pointed wit- 
nessed for witnesses in line 311. [However reckless the volubility of Autolycus, 
unless the ear can detect an apostrophe, he will speak grammatically whether he say 
wives* or wives. — Ed.] 

301. moe] See I, ii. 10. 

303. ballad] Steevens : Perhaps in later times prose has obtained a triumph over 
poetry, though in one of its meanest departments ; for all dying speeches, confessions, 
narratives of murders, executions, etc., seem anciently to have been written in verse. 
Whoever was hanged or burnt, a merry, or a lamentable ballad (for both epithets are 
occasionally bestowed on these compositions) was immediately entered on the books 
of the Company of Stationers. Thus, in a subsequent scene of this play, < Such a 
deal of wonder is broken out within this hour, that ballad-makers cannot be able to 
express it '[ — V, ii, 27]. 

303. of a Fish] Malone: In 1604 was entered on the Stationers' Registers: 
< The most true and strange report of A monstruous fishe that appeared in the forme 
of A woman from the wast vpward Seene in the Sea '[ — III, 258, ed. Arber], To 
this it is highly probable that Shakespeare alludes. [The date of this ballad is 1604. 
Malone places the date of The Winter's Tale in 1611 ; for seven years did Shakespeare 
carry in his breast the memory of this < monstruous * fish. It is not alone the wran- 
gling of the Shakespearian editors among themselves which has brought reproach on 
them. Hall i well devotes five folio pages and a full-page illustration to these ballads 
on fishes and on monstrosities. — Ed.] 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 221 

thoufand fadom aboue water, & fung this ballad againft 305 
the hard hearts of maids : it was thought flie was a Wo- 
man, and was tum'd into a cold fifli, for fhe wold not ex- 
change flefh with one that lou'd her : The Ballad is very 
pittifull, and as true. 

Dor. Is it true too, thinke you. 310 

• Autoh Fiue luftices hands at it, and witneffes more 
then my packe will hold. 

Clo. Lay it by too ; another. 

Aut. This is a merry ballad, but a very pretty one. 

Mop. Let's haue fome merry ones. 315 

Aut. Why this is a pafling merry one, and goes to the 
tune of two maids wooing a man : there's fcarfe a Maide 
weftward but fhe fmgs it: 'tis in requeft, I can tell you. 

Mop. We can both fing it : if thou'lt beare a part, thou 
(halt heare, 'tis in three parts. 320 

Dor. We had the tune on't,a month agoe. 

Aut. I can beare my part, you mud know 'tis my oc- 
cupation : Haue at it with you. 

Song Get you hence , for I ntujl goe 

Aut. Where it fits not you to know. 325 

305. fadoni] fathom Johns. Var. '73 324. Song] Separate line, F^. Om. 

et seq. Theob. Warb. 

307. cold] cod Anon. ap. Cam. 324, 325. Given to Aut. Rowc. 

310. you.] you? Rowe. 325. Where it] Where F^, Rowe i. 

321. month] F,F^. moneth F3. Where, it Cap. Whither Coll. ii (MS). 

304. the fourescore] Walker {Crit. iii, 106) : Second Maiden's Tragedy , II, i, 
'joy Able to make a latter spring in me. In this my fourscore summer,* etc. First 
Part of Jeronimo, I, i, Dodsley, ed. 1825, vol. iii, p. $4' 'i'* Rome They call the 
fifty year the year of jubilee,' etc. Jonson, as reported by Drummond, thought < that 
Quintilian's six, seven, and eight books were not only to be read, but altogether di- 
gested.* Chapman, //. ii, Taylor, vol. i, p. 58 : 'us then, to whom the thrice three 
year Hath filPd,* etc. 

317. two maids, etc.] I can find no reference to this tune in Chappell, and the 
earliest composition mentioned by Roffe (p. 104) and by the New Sh. Soc. (p. 74) is 
one by Dr Boyce, 1759. 

325. Where it] Collier (ed. ii) says that for these two words his MS substitutes 
Whither. 'That the emendation is right,* he adds, 'the echoes of "whither** three 
times over, besides the repetition in the last line, seem to establish.* [In his Third 
Edition Collier judiciously discarded this needless emendation from his text and 
omitted all menUon of it in his notes.] 



222 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Dor. Whether ? 326 

Mop O whether ? 

Dor. Wliether ? 

Mop. // becomes thy oath full welly 

Thou to me thy fecrets telL 330 

Dor: Me too : Ld^ me go thether : 

Mop Or thou goejl to tW Grange ^ or Mill^ 

Dor: If to eitlier thou dofl Uly 

Aut: Neither. 

Dor: What neither ? 335 

Aut: Neither : 

Dor: Thou Jiaflfwome my Loue to be ^ 

Mop. Tliou haflfworne it more to mee. 

Then whether goefl} Say whether f 
Clo. WeeM haue this fong out anon by our felues : My 340 
Father, and the Gent, are in fad talke, & wee'U not trouble 
them : Come bring away thy pack after me, Wenches He 
buy for you both: Pedler let^s haue the firft choice;foIow 
me girles. Aut And you fhall pay well for 'em. 344 

326, 327, 328, 339. Whether] Whither 341. Gent,'\ Gentlemen Rowe et »eq. 

F^ et seq. 343. folotu] fellow F,. 

326, 327, 328. One line, Cap. et seq. 344. girles.] girls, [Exit with Dor. 

(except Knt, Coll. Wh. i). and Mop. Dyce. 

331. LeJ] F,. Vm.] '«» [aside] Johns, et seq. 
thelher] thither F^F^. (except Sta. Dyce ii, Cam. Wh. ii). *em 

334» 335» 336- O'^c line, Cap. et seq. [singing] Sta. 'em. [Follows singing] 
(except Knt, Coll. Wh. i). Cam. Wh. ii. 

326. Whether] The compositors of the Folio made but little distinction in pro- 
nunciation between * whether * and * whither,* or rather, out of the forty-three times 
where the latter occurs (according to Bartlett*s Concordance) they have spelt it 
'whether* thirty-one times. — Ed. 

332. Grange] Hunter (ii, 345; note on 'Mariana in the moated grange*): 
Granges were the chief farm-houses of wealthy proprietors. The religious houses 
had granges on most of their estates. The officer who resided in them was called 
the Grangiarius. He superintended the farm, and at the grange the produce was 
laid up. . . . They were well-built stone houses, often of considerable extent and 
height, and, being placed in a central position to a large estate, they must often have 
been, as Shakespeare's grange, solitary, while the windows being small (as they 
were in all the edifices of that age), they would be gloomy also ; fit scene for the 
moaning Mariana. 

341. sad] That is, earnest, serious. 

343, 344. folow me girles] Collier (ed. ii) : W> may mention as a piece of 
ancient stage-management, that the MS informs us that the practice was for the 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 223 

Song. Will you buy any Tape, or Lace for your Crpef 345 

My dainty Ducke^ my deere-a ? 
Any SilkCy any Thredy any Toyes for your head 
Of the new^tyandfin^tyfin^t weare-a. 
Come to the Pedler^ Moneys a medler^ 
That doth vtter all mens ware-a. Exit 350 

Seruant. Mayfter, there is three Carters, three Shep- 
herds, three Neat-herds, three Swine-herds f haue made 
themfelues all men of haire, they cal themfelues Sal tiers, 353 

345. SongJ] Separate line, F^. 351. Scene vii. Pope + . 

345-350. Nine lines, Johns et seq. [Enter a Servant. Rowe. Re- 

345. buy] by Pope i. enter... Dyce. 

Crpe] F,. Mayfter\ MafterYi. 

346. deere-a] ^^ar-a Theob. there is\ /Aere are Rowe + , War, 

347. Any... any... any] And.., and,,, Rann. « 

any Theob. Warb. Johns. Var. '73. Carters,'] goatherds Theob. Han. 

348. weare-a] ware-a Rowe, Pope. Cap. Rann, Huds. 

350. Exit] Exit Clown, Aut. Dor. and '^^2, three Swine-herds'] and three 

Mop. Rowe. swineherds Rowe + . 

Gown, Dorcas, and Mopsa here to go out, and for Autolycus to follow them as soon 
as he had sung, or, rather, while he was singing * Will you buy,* etc. : exit after them 
is there placed in the margin. 

346. Ducke] Skeat: A pet, a darling; directly derived from E. Friesic dok^ 
dokke, a doll ; cognate with Dan. dukke, a doll, puppet ; cognate with Swed. docka, 
a doll, a baby ; cognate with Old High German tochd. Mid. High Ger. tocke, a doll, 
a term of endearment to a girl. Of uncertain origin. Probably introduced from the 
Netherlands ; cf. note to Piers Plowman, C, vii, 367. This would at once account 
for the form doxy : for the base dok- would, in Dutch, inevitably receive the very 
common double diminutive suffix -et-je, giving dok-et-je, which would be pronounced 
doxy by an English mouth. 

350. vtter] Skeat : To put forth, to circulate. The Mid. Eng. verb outen is to 
put out, to * out with * as we say, and * utter ' is a regular frequentative form of it, 
meaning < to keep on putting out.' Directly derived from the Anglo-Saxon 4/, out. 

351. cartexB] Theobald : In two speeches after this, these are called yiwr threes 
of herdsmen. But could the carters properly be called herdsmen f At least they 
have not the final syllable, herd, in their names; which, I believe, Shakespeare 
intended all the four threes should have. I therefore guess he wrote, goat-herds. 
And so, I think, we take in the four species of cattle usually tended by herdsmen. 
[Walker {Crii. iii, 106) approves of this emendation. But is it not likely that 
Polixenes (1. 362) speaks loosely, his ear having caught a succession of < herds ' ? 
—Ed.] 

353. men of haire] Warburton : That is, nimble, that leap as if they rebounded. 
The phrase is taken from tennis-balls, which were stuffed with hair. So in Henry V: 
III, vii, 14, < He bounds from the earth, as if his entrails were hairs ' [t. e. as if he, the 
horse, were stuffed like a ball]. — Johnson : * Men of hair ' are hairy men, or satyrs. 



224 ^^^ WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

and they haue a Dance, which the Wenches fay is a gal- 
ly-maufrey of Gambols, becaufe they are not in't : but 355 
they themfelues are o'th'minde (if it bee not too rough 

A dance of sat3rrs was no unusual entertainment in the Middle Ages. At a great 
festival celebrated in France, the king and some of the nobles personated satyrs 
dressed in close habits, tufted or shs^ged all over, to imitate hair. They began a 
wild dance, and in the tumult of their merriment one of them went too near a candle, 
and set fire to his satyr*s garb, the flame ran instantly over the loose tufls, and spread 
itself to the dress of those that were next him ; a great number of the dancers were 
cruelly scorched, being neither able to throw off their coats nor extinguish them. The 
king had set himself in the lap of the Duchess of Bui^ndy, who threw her robe 
over him and saved him. — Steevens: The curious reader, who wishes for more 
exact information relative to the foregoing occurrence in 1392, may consult the 
translation of Froissart by John Bourchier, 1525, ii, cap. cxcii. [Knight, Halliwell, 
and Staunton reprint the account in full. But I fail to see in what way it illustrates 
the present passage. Knight and Halliwell also print a long extract, first given by 
Reed in the Variorum, equally irrelevant, from Sir James MelvilFs Memoirs which 
sets forth sundry uncouth antics by noblemen at the Court of Mary, Queen of Scots. 
As to the meaning of * men of hair '—considering who it is that speaks, and the pro- 
ficiency in jumping of those that are spoken of, I incline to think that Warburton^s 
interpretation is correct. — Ed.] 

353. Saltiers] Malone : He means Satyrs, Their dress was perhaps made of 
goat's skin. — Collier : The true explanation may be saultiers^ 1. e, vaulters ; the 
servant says afterwards, that the worst one of the threes * jumps twelve foot and a half 
by the squire.' The stage-direction, in the old copies, after they enter is, < Here a 
dance of twelve satyrs,' and perhaps * saltiers ' is only the servant's blunder. — DoucK 
(>» 361) gives a song for four voices called * The Satyres daunce * from Ravenscroft's 
old collection. — Halliwell : * Saltiers,' or saultiers, meant the vaulters or somer- 
sault throwers. — Walker {Crit. iii, 106) : I suppose the word was pronounced 
Sautters ; whence the play on satyrs, A similar pun occurs in Middleton's Michael- 
mas Termy I, i, Dyce, i, 424 : * — Andrew Gruel ? Rcarage. No. Andrew Lethe. 
Salewood. Lethe? Rearage. Has [H'has] forgot his father's name. Poor Walter 
[1. e. Water] Gruel, that begot him, fed him, And brought him up.' So too the 
ambiguous prophecy in 2 Henry VI: IV, i. In the dedication to Middleton's Father 
Hubbard s Talc, Dyce, v, 251, there is a pun on * poetry ' (then frequently pronounced 
potry) and poultry. Timon of Athens^ III, v, — * He is a man, setting \i\sfate aside. 
Of comely virtues.' Palpably wrong ; read, as some of the critics have suggested, 
fault. Perhaps the printer was deceived by the then ordinary pronunciation of 
fault, which was not obsolete even in the time of Pope ; e. g. Essay on Criticism, 
1. 169 : 'I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts These freer beauties, 
ev'n in them seem faults ;' line 422 : * Before his sacred name flies every fault, And 
each exalted stanza teems with thought ;' and which still flourishes in Ireland, teste 
Miss Edgeworth. . . . Henry V : V, ii, the Folio has: * If I could winne a Lady at 
Leap-frogge, or by vawting into my saddle with my Armour on my backe,' etc. A 
spelling of similar origin. 

354, 355. gally-maufrey] Cotgrave : Hochepot : m. A hotch pot, or Gallimaufrey ; 
a confused mingle mangle of diuers things iumbled, or put together. 



ACT IV. sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 225 

for fome, that know little but bowling) it will pleafe 357 
plentifully. 

Shep. Away : Wee'l none on*t ; heere has beene too 
much homely foolery already. I know (Sir) wee wea- 360 
rie you. 

PoL You wearie thofe that refrefli vs : pray let's fee 
thefe foure-threes of Heardfmen. 

Ser, One three of them, by their owne report (Sir,) 
hath danc'd before the King : and not the word of the 365 
three, but iumpes twelue foote and a halfe by th'fquire. 

Shep. Leaue your prating, fince thefe good men are 
pleafM, let them come in : but quickly now. 

Ser. Why, they ftay at doore Sir. 

Heere a Dance of twelue Satyr cs. 370 

PoL O Father, you'l know more of that heereaften 

363. foure-threes] four threes Han. Company seat themselves. Dance, and 

Cap. et seq. Exeunt Kusticks. Cap. 

366. a halfe"] half F^, Rowe, Pope. 371. Given to Flo. Han. 

f quire] square Rowe + , Cap. 371, 373. (?...»i«r^.] Aside, Johns, et 

Var. Rann. seq. (generally). 

369. Ser. Why y„. Sir.] Om. Rowe + . 371. heereafter :] hereafter, — [rising 
[Exit. Cap. from beside Shep.] Cap. hereafter. [To 

370. Heere, etc.] After line 371, Han. Shep.] Ktly. 
Enter twelve Rusticks, presenting Satyrs. 

357. bowling] Johnson : This is here, I believe, a term for a dance of smooth 
motion, without great exertion of agility. — M. Mason (p. 136) : The allusion is not 
to a smooth dance, as Johnson supposes, but to the smoothness of a bowling-green. 

366. squire] Cambridge Editors : We have adopted the spelling squier here, as 
in Larue's Labour's Lost, V, ii, 474, because the word in this sense is now obsolete, 
and because this spelling comes nearest to esquierre from which it is derived. [Cot- 
grave : Esquierre : f. A Rule or Squire ; an Instrument vsed by Masons, Carpenters, 
loyners, etc. ; also, an Instnunent wherewith Surueyors measure land.] 

369. at doore] An absorption of the defmite article in the /of < at ' ; not exactly 
an omission, as Abbott (§ 90) supposes. See H, i, 18. 

369. Sir] Keightley (Exp. 205): The Folio places *Sir' at the end of the 
speech; but the metre requires the transposition: *\Vhy, Sir, they stay at door,' 
which also makes the reply run more naturally. I neglected to make it in my Edition. 
[It is difficult to see why there should be a regard for the metre in this short speech 
when all the rest that the servant speaks is prose. — Ed.] 

371. heereafter] Warburton: This is replied by the king in answer to the 
Shepherd^s saying, * since these good men are pleased.' — Ritson (Remarks^ 71) : 
This is very unlikely. The dance which has intervened would take up too much 
time to preserve any connection between the two speeches. The line spoken by the 
king seems to be in reply to some unexpressed question from the old Shepherd. 

15 



226 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Is it not too farre gone ?^Tis time to part them, 372 

He*s fimple, and tels much. How now(faire fhepheard) 

Your heart is full of fomething, that do's take 

Your minde from feafting. Sooth, when I was yong, 375 

And handed loue, as you do ; I was wont 

To load my Shee with knackes : I would haue ranfackt 

The Pedlers filken Treafury, and haue powr'd it 

To her acceptance : you haue let him go, 

And nothing marted with him. If your Laffe 380 

Interpretation fliould abufe, and call this 

Your lacke of loue, or bounty, you were flraited 

For a reply at lead, if you make a care 

Of happie holding her. 

Flo, Old Sir, I know 385 

She prizes not fuch trifles as thefe are : 
The gifts fhe lookes from me, are packt and lockt 
Vp in my heart, which I haue giuen already, 
But not deliuer'd. O heare me breath my life 389 

372,373- -^Jf—w«f A] Aside, Cap. [To Theob. Warb. et seq. (generally), re- 

Cam.] Cam. Dyce ii, iii. ply ; at leasts Wh. reply^ at Uast Dyce, 

374. do's] doth Tbeob. ii, Warb. Johns. Cam. 
Var. Rann. 383. a care] rar^ Theob. Warb. Johns. 

376. handed] handled Coll. iii (MS), Cap. Dyce ii, iii, Walker. 
Wh. i. 389. breath] Ff, Rowe, Cap. breathe 

do ;] do^ Rowe. Pope et cet. 

383. reply at leajl^] reply y at leasts life] love Theob. Warb. Johns. 

373. tels much] The Cowden-Clarkes : The king has been cross-questioning 
the old Shepherd as he proposed, and with the success he anticipated. 

376. handed] Warburton (N. &* Qu. VIII, iii, 203) : * And hended love,* etc. 
Warburton's MS note adds, * dallied with my mistress.' — R. G. White (ed. i) : A 
manifest misprint [for handled] strangely left uncorrected hitherto, except in Collier's 
MS. [Collier did not adopt this change until he edited his Third Edition ; White 
deserted it in his Second.] — The Cowden-Cijirkes : * Handed * is peculiarly used 
here ; it means, < held familiarity with love,' and also implies < held my love by the 
hand ;' showing that Florizel has kept Perdita's hand in his ever since he took it 
when they were about to dance with one another, and he said, < Your hand, my 
Perdita.* 

380. marted] Skeat : A contracted form of market^ as in Ham, I, i, 74. 

382. straited] Steevens : That is, put to difficulties. 

383. reply at least,] The punctuation is here decidedly wrong ; the comma, or 
better still, a semi-colon, as White has it, should follow < reply.' 

383. a care] I think Theobald is right in reading care. See V, i, 282 : ' I am 
friend to them,' etc. 



ACT IV, SC. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 227 

Before this ancient Sir, whom (it fhould feeme) 390 

Hath fometime louM : I take thy hand, this hand, 

As foft as Doues-downe, and as white as it, 

Or Ethyopians tooth, or the fan'd fnow, that's bolted 

By th'Northeme blafts, twice ore. 

Pol. What foUowes this ? 395 

How prettily th'yong Swaine feemes to wafh 
The hand, was faire before ? I haue put youout, 397 

390. whom] w/i^Ffetseq. 393> 394* or the,„ore] As mnemonic, 

393. Or,„fnoruj^ Separate line, Ff Warb. 
ct seq. (except Var. *2I, Coll. Dyce, 394. bla/ts\ dlq/l F{,Rowe-\-. 

Cam. Wh. ii). 396,397- Hofw,,,btfore?] Aside, Ktly. 

397. I kaue\ Pve Pope +, Dyce ii,iii. 

390. it would seeme] Of the two, Camillo had been less able than Polixenes to 
conceal his admiration of Perdita ; he it was who said that if he were of her flock 
he would live by gazing ; and when Polixenes could no longer restrain his wonder, 
and exclaimed to Camillo that Perdita was the prettiest low-bom lass that ever ran on 
the green-sward, Camillo rejoined that she was the Queen of curds and cream. The 
lover's eyes have detected an old man's adoration. — Ed. 

392. Doues-downe] Walker ( Vers, 235) thinks that this should be pronounced 
as one word with the accent on the first syllable ; wherein we hear the enthusiast for 
metre. 'Dove's down' is a spondee, with the lover's voice lingering on each 
syllable as though caressing with his voice the hand which he was stroking so gently 
with his own. — Ed. 

393, 394. When these two lines are divided as in the Ff, and as in the majority of 
modem texts, tney have, so Walker says {Crii. iii, 108), ' an anti-Shakespearian flow.' 
' The true arrangement,' he goes on to say, < is preserved in the Folio. The words 
" What follows this ?" which at present (less after Shakespeare's manner, I think) 
constitute a short line of four syllables, will be the complement of " By the Northern," 
etc. I would also place a semi-colon after " tooth," as the additional foot requires 
more of a pause than is implied in a comma.' Dyce, in both his Second and Third 
Editions, judiciously reads < Ethiofs tooth.' For my part I should like to overlook 
altogether this reference to a tooth, mainly for a woman's reason, and incidentally 
because Ethiopians have ceased now-a-days to be the classic curiosities that they 
were in Shakespeare's time, and the mental pictures of ' minstrels ' with corked faces 
which the simile now evokes are not cheerful. Not that it should be erased from 
the text, but omitted merely in reading. The ear cannot detect the loss ; the lines 
are smooth without it. — Ed. 

393. fan'd snow] The same simile of *■ fann'd snow ' is used in Mid, N, D, III, 
ii, 146, except that there the wind is Eastern instead of Northern. 

394. ore.] After this word I think there should be no punctuation, except a dash, 
to indicate a long pause. The sentence is unfinished. Polixenes tells us the reason. 
All the world had vanished for Florizel at the touch of that flower-sofl hand. — Ed. 

397. was faire] For examples of the omission of the relative, see line 561 of tliis 
scene : < I haue a Vessell rides fast by;' line 31 of the next : < one of those would 
have him wed againe ;' Abbott (§ 244) ; and Shakespeare passim. 



228 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. iv. 

But to your proteftation : Let me heare 398 

What you profeffe. 

Flo. Do, and be witneffe too't. 400 

PoL And this my neighbour too ? 

Flo. And he, and more 
Then he, and men : the earth, the heauens, and all ; 
That were I crown'd the mod Imperiall Monarch 
The reof mod worthy : were I the fayreft youth 405 

That euer made eye fwerue, had force and knowledge 
More then was euer mans, I would not prize them 
Without her Loue ; for her, employ them all , 
Commend them, and condemne them to her feruice, 
Or to their owne perdition. 410 

PoL Fairely offered. 

Cam. This fhewes a found affedtion. 

Shep. But my daughter. 
Say you the like to him. 

Per. I cannot fpeake 415 

So well, (nothing fo well) no, nor meane better 
By th'patterne of mine owne thoughts, I cut out 
The puritie of his . 

Shep. Take hands, a bargaine ; 
And friends vnknowne, you fhall beare witneffe to^t : 420 

401,411. Pol.] Plo. F,. 414. him,'\ him? Rowe et seq. 

403. the heauens'] and heavens F^, 416. better] better^ F^F^. better. 

Rowe + . Rowe + . better; Cap. et seq. (subs.). 

406. force] sense Coll. iii (MS). 418. puritie] parity Sing. conj. 

401. And . . . too ?] I think that Polixenes in his secret soul sympathised with 
his boy's adoration of Perdita, and hoped that this protestation would be one, which 
by referring to Florizel's tie to his father, should be heard by him alone. And it was 
this consciousness that had he been in his boy's place he would have been as stead- 
fast to his love as his boy is, which lent an exaggeration to his anger when he revealed 
himself. — Ed. 

406. force] Collier (ed. ii) : In the MS sense is put for ' force.' It is not unlikely 
that the printer blundered between the long/and /; but we do not here feel authorised 
to disturb the old text. 

416. nothing] Walker {Crit, i, 222) lays the accent on the final syllable; see 
II, ii, 31. 

417. patterne . . . cutout] A woman's simile ; just as Imogen exclaims :' Poor 
I am stale, a garment out of fashion ; And, for I am richer than to hang by the wal]<, 
I must be ripp'd — to pieces with me I' — Cym. Ill, iv, 53. — Ed. 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 229 

I giue my daughter to him, and will make 421 

Her Portion, equall his. 

Flo, O, that mud bee. 
Tth Vertue of your daughter : One being dead, 
I fhall haue more then you can dreame of yet, 425 

Enough then for your wonder : but come-on, 
Contraft vs fore thefe Witneffes. 

Shep. Come, your hand : 
And daughter, yours. 

PoL Soft Swaine a- while, befeech you, 430 

Haue you a Father ? 

Flo. I haue : but what of him ? 

PoL Knowes he of this ? 

Flo. He neither do's, nor fhall. 

PoL Me-thinkes a Father, 435 

Is at the Nuptiall of his fonne, a gueft 
That beft becomes the Table : Pray you once more 
Is not your Father growne incapeable 
Of reafonable affayres ? Is he not ftupid 

With Age, and altring Rheumes? Can he fpeake ? heare ? 440 
Know man, from man ? Difpute his owne eftate ? 

4^5* ^^A] ^^^/ Cap. et seq. beseech you; Cap. et seq. (subs.). 

426. yaur'\ you F . 440. altring] aching Gould. 
come-oh] come on Rowe. 441. Difpute] Dispose Coll. iii (MS). 

430. Soft] Soft FjF^. dispense Anon. ap. Cam. 

a-while^ befeech you,] a-while: 441-443. Difpute.,, againe ..he did] 

befeech you, Ff, Rowe + . a while, manage,.,inpain,„h^s bid Go}j\6.. 

425. yet] Staunton : * Yet ' was frequently used in the sense of now, — a mean- 
ing, in the present passage, indispensable to the antithesis [in < Enough then ']. 

427. Witnesses] Walker ( Vers. 244) gives this as an example, among many 
others, of the plural termination added to nouns ending in s, while the metre shows 
that it is not pronounced. 

433-435. Of these three hemistiches, the last, * Me-thinkes a Father ' is usually 
printed as the fragmentary line; Walker (Crit, iii, 109), on the other hand, prefers 
to consider * knowes he of this ?' as the fragment, and that one rhythmical line is made 
of the other two ; all which is merely printing for the eye. — Ed. 

436. Nuptiall] See line 59 above. 

440. altring Rheumes] < In these olde folke kinde heate is quenched, the virtue 
of gouemance and ruling faylcth, and humour is dissolved and wasted.' — Batman 
vppon Bartholome, p. 71. This shows, I think, that the phrase does not mean, as it 
has been interpreted, the < Rheumes ' which alter the man, but the Rheumes which 
are themselves altered. * Altring * is passive, not active. — Ed. 

441. Dispute] Johnson: Perhaps for 'dispute' we might read compute', but 



230 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Lies he not bed-rid ? And againe, do's nothing 442 

But what he did, being childifh ? 

Flo, No good Sir : 
He has his health, and ampler ftrength indeede 445 

Then mod haue of his age. 

PoL By my white beard, 
You offer him (if this be fo) a wrong 
Something vnfilliall : Reafon my fonne 449 

449. tny\ the Anon. i^. Cam. Dyce ii conj. 

< dispute his estate ' may be the same with * talk over his afTairs.' — Steevens : The 
same phrase occurs again in Rom, ^ Jul. Ill, iii, 63 : * Let me dispute with thee of 
thy estate.' — Collier (ed. ii) : ' Dispose^ says the MS, but we leave the passage 
unaltered. Here we may readily imagine that he was recording the variation intro- 
duced by some particular actor of his day, but * dispose his own estate ' may be right. 
— ^White (ed. i) : If * estate * here meant property, Collier's MS emendation would 
have a claim to be received into the text. — Dyce : That is, can he reason upon his 
own affairs. 

442. bed-rid] Skeat (s. v. Bedridden) : That is, confined to one's bed. Derived 
from A. S. bedrida^ beddrida^ glossed by clinicus (Bosworth) ; derived from A. S. 
bed^ a bed, and ridda, a knight, a rider ; thus the sense is a bed-rider, a sarcastic term 
for a disabled man. Prof. Earle in his Philology of the Eng, Tongue^ p. 23, suggests 
that bedrida means ' bewitched,* and is the participle of bedrian, to bewitch, a verb for 
which he gives authority. But it is not shown how the participle took this shape, nor 
can we thus account for the spelling beddrida. Besides which, there is a term of 
similar import, spelt bedderedig in the Bremen WZrterbuch^ i, 65, which can only be 
explained with reference to the Low G. bedde^ a bed. Again, an Old High Ger. 
pettirisot Mid. High Ger. betterise^ modem Ger. bettrise^ is given in Grimm's Ger. 
Diet, i, 1738, which can likewise only be referred to G. betty a bed. In short, the 
suggestion can hardly be accepted, but it seemed best not to pass it over. If there be 
any doubt about the termination, there can be none about the first syllable. I may 
add that we find also Mid. Eng. bedlawer for * one who lies in bed,' which is said, in 
the Prompt. Parv. p. 28, to be a synonym for bedridden. 

449. Something] For examples of this adverbial use, like somewhat, see Abbott 
(§68). 

449. Reason my sonne] R. G. White (Sh.'s Scholar, 296) quotes this passage 
thus : < Reason, my son, Should,' and observes : * This punctuation, which is univer- 
sally followed, seems to me to be wrong. It makes Polixenes say, ** My son. Reason 
should choose himself a wife." ' In his subsequent edition. White paraphrases : Mt is 
reasonable that my son should,' etc. and repeats virtually the same assertion as to what 
the * punctuation ' had been * hitherto.' [So far is this punctuation, given by White, 
from being the punctuation * universally followed,' that, out of the thirty or forty edi- 
tions collated in these Textual Notes, but one solitary edition has it : Knight's, and 
even in this case it was corrected in Knight's Second Edition. Where the editors do 
not follow the Folio, they follow Theobald, who, for the very purpose of avoiding the 
interpretation given by White, places a comma after < Reason ' only, indicating that it 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 23 1 

Should choofe himfelfe a wife, but as good reafon 450 

The Father ("all whofe ioy is nothing elfe 
But faire pofterity) fhould hold fome counfaile 
In fuch a bufineffe. 

Flo, I yeeld all this ; 
But for fome other reafons (my g^ue Sir) 455 

Which ^tis not fit you know, I not acquaint 
My Father of this bufineffe. 

Pol. Let him know^t. 

Flo. He (hall not. 

PoL Prethee let him. 460 

Flo No, he muft not 

Shep. Let him (my fonne) he fhall not need to greeue 
At knowing of thy choice. 

Flo. Come, come, he muft not : 
Marke our Contra6l. 465 

Pol. Marke your diuorce (yong fir) 
Whom fonne I dare not call : Thou art too bafe 
To be acknowledge. Thou a Scepters heire. 
That thus affefts a fheepe-hooke ? Thou, old Traitor, 469 

466. [Discovering himself. Rowe. 469. affet^s'] Ff, Rowe, Cam. Rife. 

468. acknowledge. "^ F,. affecfst Pope et cet. 

stands for the phrase : * There is reason/ that, or * Reason it is,* that. — Ed.] — Dyce : 
Since we have < the father * just after, qy. * reason the son/ etc. ? [A just emendation, 
which would avoid the interpretation of which White complained. Dyce, however, 
was anticipated by * Anon.* recorded in the Cam. Edition. — Ed.] — RoLFE refers to a 
similar ellipsis in King John^ V, ii, 130: < and reason too he should.* 

455. my graue Sir] We have here the reflex of the father's earnest tones. — ^D. 

456. not acquaint] See line 211, above; * He not dreames of.* 

465. Contra^] For a list of words wherein the accent is nearer the end than with 
us, see Abbott, 5 490. Thus * opportune * line 560, below. 

468. acknowledge] This is one of the very many examples collected by Walker 
{Crit. ii, 61) of the confusion of final d and final e. It was due to the frequency of 
this confusion that Walker accepted as the true reading * What lady should her lord * 
(instead of * What lady she her lord,' I, ii, 54). If, in the MS from which the Folio 
was printed, should were written, as Collier suggests, in a contracted form : sh^^ then. 
Walker asserts, the error will come under the present head, of the confusion of final 
d and final ^, and we have shd printed she, 

469. afife^s] Walker {Crit. ii, 128) : Quare^ in cases where st would produce 
extreme harshness, and where at the same time the old copies have j, whether we 
ought not to write the latter? [I think we ought by all means to retain the less harsh 
sound, and read, e. g. * That thou . . . Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon,* Ham, I, 



232 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. iv. 

I am forry, that by hanging thee, I can 470 

but fhorten thy life one weeke. And thou, frefli peece 
Of excellent Witchcraft, whom of force muft know 
The royall Foole thou coap'ft with. 

Shep, Oh my heart. 474 

470. latnl Pm Pope + , Dyce ii, iii. 473. Foole\ food Knl i, ii, iii. 

470, A,1\^ lam.,. bt^f^ One line, Theob. coafjl with.'\ Ff, Rowe. cofdsi 

Warb. Johns. Cap. Van Rann, Mai. vtith ; Cap. coafst with — Pope et cct. 

Steev. Var. Sing. Dyce ii, iii, Huds. (subs.). 

472. whorn^ who Yi. 

iv, 53 ; * Thou hotly lusts,' etc., Lear^ IV, vi, 160 ; * Honest lago, that lookes dead with 
grieving,' 0th, II, ii, 201 ; Every day thou dafts me,' etc. — Id, IV, ii, 206. — Ed.] 

470, 471- I can but] Walker {Crit, iii, 109) apparently overlooked the division 
of this line in the Folio, and accepting, with many of the modern editors, Theobald's 
division (see Text. Notes), remarked, *«*Can but" at the end of a line is, I think, 
more in the manner of Lord Byron's Cain than of a play of Shakespeare's. It is 
a different case from that of and^ shall, with, and other words, with which he fre- 
quently closes a line ; although even these seem so inconsistent with Shakespeare's 
usual felicity of rhythm, that I am led to suspect some difference of accentuation 
between old and modem English, by which this apparent blemish would be removed.' 

471. one weeke] Hunter (i, 424) : There are occasional out-breakings like this 
in Shakespeare for which we know not how to account. Thus Hamlet's reason for 
his not executing his purpose on the king when the king is at prayer, because by 
taking him off at such a moment his soul would go to heaven, is of the same nature. 
It would have suited the circumstances of the case dramatically had Polixenes 
stopped with dooming the Shepherd to death, and have had more moral propriety. 
But, in fact, the whole speech of the king grates so harshly on the ear that it is evi- 
dent it ought not to have been introduced at all in a scene to which it is so exquisitely 
incongruous. That Polixenes should be sorry, displeased, on accoimt of his son's 
choice is natural, but the steps which he meant to take in consequence should have 
been discovered in some other scene, and not have so broken in upon and disturbed 
the beautiful harmony of the present. 

471. shorten] I think we should here read short for the sake of rhythm. 
Walker (CViV. iii, 113) says that the Monger and shorter forms of these verbs [such 
as To blacky like^ weak, ope, dead, etc.] were used in a great measure indiscriminately, 
so that they might easily supplant one another in printing.' It is strange that he over- 
looked the present instance, — so strange, indeed, that I think that I, in turn, must 
have overlooked his emendation, especially as he gives many instances of the verb to 
short. — Ed. 

473. Foole] See Text. Notes for a remarkable misprint, uncorrected in Knight's 
three editions. 

474. Theobald {Nichols, ii, 364) : As the king is, both in the preceding and sub- 
sequent speeches, rating Perdita, I think verily this little distressful exclamation ought 
to be placed to her. Besides, from what follows, it should seem that the old Shepherd 
was perfectly thunderstruck, or struck all of a heap, as the vulgar say, which Camillo 
perceiving, says to him : < how now, father ? speake ere thou dyest.' 



ACT IV. sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 233 

PoL He haue thy beauty fcratcht with briers & made 475 
More homely then thy ftate. For thee (fond boy) 
If I may euer know thou doft but figh, 
That thou no more (halt neuer fee this knacke (as neuer 
I meane thou fhalt) wee'l barre thee from fucceflion, 
Not hold thee of our bloody no not our Kin, 480 

Farre then Deucalion off : (marke thou my words) 
Follow vs to the Court. Thou Churle, for this time 
(Though full of our difpleafure) yet we free thee 
From the dead blow of it. And you Enchantment, 
Worthy enough a Heardfman : yea him too, 485 

That makes himfelfe (but for our Honor therein) 
Vnworthy thee. If euer henceforth, thou 487 

^*j(i. fond'\ found Y^. conj., Cap. Far' r than \Pcl. Farther 

478. Jkalt n€uir\ shalt Rowe + , Cap. than Heath. Far than F^, Rowe et cet. 

Steev. Var. '03, *I3, Dyce ii, iii, Cam. 484. you\ your F^F^. thou Anon. ap. 

Wh. ii. Cam. 

481. Farre then] Farre than FJF^, 487. thee, If\ thee; if Rowe + . 

Rann. Less than Han. Far' than thee, — if Cap. et seq. 

Warb. Dyce ii, iii, Huds. Far as Johns. 

478. shall neuer] Staunton : This < never ' appears to have crept in by the 
inadvertence of the compositor, whose eye caught it from the end of the line. — 
Cambridge Editors : We have followed Rowe in ejecting the first * never ' from the 
line, for these reasons : I. The misprint is of a very common sort. The printer's eye 
caught the word at the end of the line. 2. The metre is improved by the change. 
The line was made doubly inharmonious by the repetition of * never.' 3. The sense 
b improved. Polixenes would rather make light of his son's sighs than dwell so 
emphatically upon their cause. [Unquestionably. — Ed.] 

481. Farre then] Johnson: I think we should read far as. We will not hold 
thee of our kin even so far off as Deucalion, the common ancestor of all. — ^Tyrwhitt : 
The old reading ' farre,' 1. e, further, is the true one. The Mid. Eng. comparative of 
fer Yi^ ferrer. This in the time of Chaucer was softened into ^rr^. — Walker 
(Crit. i, 189, Art. xxx. — Far and near used as comparatives) : Qixa&i farrer, furrer F 
In Chaucer we have/irrr^, further : House of Fame, Bk ii, line 92, * But er I here the 
much ferre, I wol the tel what I am.' [See As You Like It, I, iii, 11$, of this ed.] 

484. dead] The Cambridge Editors recorcf the excellent emendation dread hy an 
Anonymous critic. 

485-487. yea him . . . thee] Deighton : Yea, worthy too of him who (if the 
honour of my family were not concerned) shows himself unworthy of you. [In N. 
6* Qu. (VIII, iv, 443) C. B. Mount asks * in what possible sense was Florizel making 
himself unworthy of Perdita ? He meant no ill ; in fact, his purpose of marriage was 
the very thing that drove his father furious, and if he had made himself unworthy, how 
could ** our honour " therein diminish or affect the un worthiness.' The answer was 
given, fitly, I think, in the main, by H. C. Hart {N, <Sr» Qu, VIII, v, 64), who says 
that Florizel's < present course of unfilial conduct shows him to be unworthy of Per- 



234 '^^^ WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. iv. 

Thefe rurall Latches, to his entrance open, 488 

Or hope his body more, with thy embraces, 
I will deuife a death, as cruell for thee 490 

As thou art tender to't. Exit. 

Perd, Euen heere vndone : 
I was not much a-fear^d : for once, or twice 
I was about to fpeake, and tell him plainely. 
The felfe-fame Sun, that Ihines vpon his Court, 495 

Hides not his vifage from our Cottage, but 
Lookes on alike. Wilt pleafe you (Sir) be gone ? 497 

489. hope] hoope Pope, hoop Johns. 493. a-fear'd] afraid Rowc + , 

et seq. afeard Cap. et seq. 

491. to't] to it Rowc+, Var. Mai. 495. his Court] this court Theob. ii. 
Scene viii. Pope + . 497. on] on all Mai. conj., Hunter, 

492. heere vndone :] here^ undone^ Sing, on it Ktly. on^s Anon. ap. Cam. 
Johns, here undone ! Cap. et seq. Huds. 

493-497 ; 499-501 ; 506-510. As WiU] Wiltt Han. Cap. (Errata), 

mnemonic lines, Warb. Var. '03 et seq. 

gone f] gone f [To Flo.] Rowe. 

dita — except for our honour centred on him.' It was this deceit, practised on a 
father, which rankled in the breast of Polixenes, and which makes Florizel (worthy 
of Perdita as he is in all other respects < but for our Honor therein,* i. e, but for his 
royal blood) im worthy of her. Is there not here an echo of Brabantio*s parting 
words to Othello ? — *• Look to her, Moor, have a quick eye to see ; She has deceived 
her father, and may thee.' This is the interpretation of the text as we have it here in 
the Folio ; but Capell and all subsequent editors, by substituting for the period after 
< thee,' in line 487, a comma and a dash, remove < him ' in line 485 from the same 
construction with * Herdsman,' and make it an accusative of specification. Much 
can be urged in favour of this punctuation ; it removes the awkwardness of making 
Polixenes say in one breath that Florizel was worthy and unworthy of Perdita. — Ed.] 

492. vndone :] Staunton : The accepted punctuation [Capell's] ought not to be 
lightly tampered with ; yet some readers may possibly think with us that the passage 
would be more in harmony with the high-bom spirit by which Perdita is unconsciously 
sustained in this terrible moment, if it were read : * Even here undone, I was not 
much afear*d,' etc. [Staunton, of course, did not know that he had been anticipated 
by Johnson (see Text. Notes), whose good reading has not, I think, been anywhere 
noticed or recorded. — Ed.] 

493. a-fear'd] Warburton: The character is here finely sustained. To have 
made her quite astonished at the king's discovery of himself had not become her 
birth ; and to have given her presence of mind to have made the reply to the king, 
had not become her education. 

496. Hides not, etc.] Malone refers to two parallel passages in Elizabethan 
literature, which shows, it is to be feared, that he was better acquainted with that 
literature than with his New Testament. Douce refers to Matthew, v, 45. 

497. Lookes on alike] Malone (1790): I suspect that a word was omitted at 
the press, and that the poet wrote, either — < Looks on both alike,' or < Looks on all 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 235 

• 
I told you what would come of this : Befeech you 498 

Of your owne ftate take care : This dreame of mine 

Being now awake, He Queene it no inch farther, 500 

But milke my Ewes, and weepe. 

Cam. Why how now Father, 
Speake ere thou dyeft. 

Shep. I cannot fpeake, nor thinke. 
Nor dare to know, that which I know : O Sir, 505 

You haue vndone a man of fourefcore three. 
That thought to fill his graue in quiet : yea. 
To dye vpon the bed my father dy^de. 
To lye clofe by his honeft bones ; but now 
Some Hangman muft put on my Ihrowd, and lay me 510 

498. of M/j] oUhis Wh. i. 500. farther^ further Stcev. Var. 

^i). This. ..mine] from this my dream Dyce, Huds. 

Han. as for this dream of mine, — Cap. 505. Sir,'\ Sir, [To Flo.] Rowe. 

conj. this dream of mine — Johns, ct 508. dyde'\ died on Ktly. 
seq. (subs.). 

alike.' M alone (1821) : To look upon without any substantive annexed, though now 
unusual, appears to have been legitimate in Shakespeare's time. So, in Tro. &* Cres. 
* He is my prize ; I will not /ooh upon * [V, vi, 10] ; again, in j Henry VI: * Why 
stand we . . . here . . . And look upon, as if the tragedy were play'd in jest,' etc. 
[II, iii, 25]. — Steevens : To * look upon^ in more modem phrase, is to look on, i. e, 
be a mere idle spectator. In this sense it is employed in the two preceding instances. 
— Dyce (ed. iii) : Qy. * Looks on's alike ? . . . Here Mr Lettsom (who proposes a very 
bold alteration) observes : * Malone's note on this passage is nothing to the purpose. 
. . . Steevens's note is, in fact, a quiet correction of Malone's.' It seems, indeed, 
plain enough that the present passage is not akin to the two passages cited above by 
Malone, nor to the passage, V, iii, 126 of this play: < Strike all that look upon with 
marvel.' [It is not to be supposed that Dyce was aware that in his conjecture of 
on*s he was anticipated by Anon, in the Cam. Ed. ; any more than it is to be sup- 
posed that Hunter (i, 425) was aware that he had been anticipated by Malone in 
his obvious emendation of ' on all alike,' which Singer adopted, without acknow- 
ledgement, more suo. I cannot find that Lettsom's * very bold alteration ' is any- 
where recorded. — Ed.] 

497. Wilt please you, etc.] Coleridge (p. 256) : O how more than exquisite is 
this whole speech ! And that profound nature of noble pride and grief venting them- 
selves in a momentary peevishness of resentment toward Florizel. [Temerarious as 
it is to criticise one word of Coleridge, I must nevertheless confess that I can see no 
trace of peevishness here. Perdita was heart-broken ; she knew that Florizel must go, 
and the sooner the parting was over the better. — Ed.] 

508. vpon the bed my father dy'de,] For the omission of the preposition, see 
Abbott, § 394, and Shakespeare passim. 



236 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Where no Prieft (houels-in duft. Oh curfed wretch, 5 1 1 

That knew'ft this was the Prince, and wouldft aduenture 

To mingle faith with him. Vndone, vndone : 

If I might dye within this houre, I haue liuM 

To die when I defire. Exit. 515 

Flo. Why looke you fo vpon me ? 
I am but forry, not affear^d : delaid. 
But nothing altred : What I was, I am : 
More ftraining on, for plucking backe ; not following 
My leafli vnwillingly. 520 

Cam. Gracious my Lord, 
You know my Fathers temper : at this time 
He will allow no fpeech : (which I do gheffe 523 

^\\, Jh(mel5'in\ Yi^ Cap. Mai. Steev. 516. vpon me\ Om. Stcev. conj. 

Knt, Dyce. j^fJZ'r/f ?» Rowe et cet. ^i^, affear'd^ a/ratW ^0^^ + . of- 

duft."] dust. [To Perd.] Rowe. fiard ox afeard Cap. et seq. 

513. him.'\ him! Dyce. 522. my] ^tf«r Ff, Rowe et scq. 
515. Scene ix. Pope + . 

511. Where no Priest, etc.] Grey (i, 268) : Meaning that he should be buried 
under the gallows, without the burial service. In the Greek Church the putting earth 
upon the body was thought absolutely necessary, and the priest enjoyned to do it in 
the form of a cross ; and in the Popish office^ before the Reformation^ the priest, or 
person officiating, was ordered to put earth upon the body of the deceased in the 
form of a cross, with other ceremonies. And by the Rubric in the first Liturgy of 
Edward the Sixth, 1549 (to which Shakespeare probably alludes), there was the fol- 
lowing direction : *■ And then the priest casting earth upon the corps^ shall say : *< I 
commend thy soul," etc. In the Reuirw of the Liturgy in 1552, it was altered, and 
ordered by the Rubric: *That the earth should be cast upon the body by some 
standing by,' etc., and has so continued in all our Common Prayer Books to this day. 

511. shouels-in] Walker {Crit, iii, 114): Pronounce shools-in. Shool^ if I 
mistake not, is still the pronunciation in Scotland and in the North of England. 
[Jamieson {^Scottish Diet, Suppl.) gives : * Shool^ A shovel ' and * To shool on^ metaph. 
to cover, as in a grave.' As an example of To shool outy to throw out with violence,* 
he quotes from Sir Walter, The Antiquary y ii, 259 : * Look you, you base old person, 
if you do put another jest upon me, I will cleave your skull-piece with this shovels.* 
— * Hout, tout, Maister Dusterdivel, I hae nae lived sae lang in the warld neither to 
be shoold out o't that gate.' — Ed.] 

514. If I might dye, etc.] Steevens: So in Macb. II, iii, 96: <Had I but died 
an hour before this chance, I had lived a blessed time.* 

519. not following, etc.] That is, not following the leash at all, not even im will- 
ingly. 

522. my] This is one of a large number of examples given by Walker {^Crit. i, 
276-334) of the < substitution of words.* Another example occurs in line 560, below : 
* her neede * for * our neede.* 



ACT IV. sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 237 

You do not purpofe to him:) and as hardly 

Will he endure your fight, as yet I feare ; 525 

Then till the fury of his Highneffe fettle 

Come not before him. 

Flo. I not purpofe it : 
I thinke Camillo. 

Cam. Euen he, my Lord. 530 

Per. How often haue I told you 'twould be thus? 
How often faid my dignity would laft 
But till 'twer knowne ? 

Flo. It cannot faile, but by 
The violation of my faith, and then 535 

Let Nature crufli the fides o'th earth together, 
And marre the feeds within. Lift vp thy lookes : 
From my fucceflion wipe me (Father) I 
Am heyre to my affeflion. 

Cam. Be aduisM. 540 

Flo. I am : and by my fancie, if my Reafon 
Will thereto be obedient : I haue reafon : 542 

525. ftght^ as yef\ sight as yety Han. Rowe. thinks Camillo — Theob. think^ 
Johns, et seq. Camillo ? Johns. 

529. thinke Camillo.] thinky Camillo 534. faile"] fall Anon. ap. Cam. 

538. From my"] From thy Cap. Rann. 

526. his Highnesse] Delius : It is not merely the royal title, but the majesty of 
Polixenes which has received offence by the love-making of Florizel. [As Deighton 
says, ' it is his highness not His Highness.' Capell was the earliest to show an appre- 
ciation of this meaning by discarding the capital H of the Folio and of all the editors 
preceding him ; since his edition, Keightley's is the only one which returns to the 
old spelling: 'his Highness.' — Ed.] 

528. not purpose] See line 211, above. 

531, 532. How often] The Cowden-Clarkes : The repetition of this earnest 
reminder to the prince of her having always striven to show him how unlikely it was 
that his purpose should prosper, marks the noble indignation of Perdita at the king's 
charge that she has sought to win Florizel, and is in strict harmony with her royal 
nature. It is from this imputation that she is most solicitous to free herself; it is this 
which most keenly wounds her; and she remains quietly downcast, with a majesty 
of silent reserve worthy of Hermione's daughter. 

537. marre the seeds] Cf. Afacb. IV, i, 59 : * though the treasure Of nature's 
germens tumble all together' ; and Lear, III, ii, 8: * Crack nature's moulds, all ger- 
mens spill at once.' 

541. fancie] That is, love. See four stages suggested by Arber, of the use of this 
word, from the Elizabethan love to the present like, in As You Like It, II, iv, 32, of 
this edition. 



238 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc iv. 

If not, my fences better pleasM with madneffe, 543 

Do bid it welcome. 

Cam. This is defperate (^fir.) 545 

Flo. So call it : but it do's fulfill my vow: 
I needs muft thinke it honefty. Camilla^ 
Not for Bohemia^ nor the pompe that may 
Be thereat gleaned : for all the Sun fees, or 
The clofe earth wombes, or the profound feas, hides 550 

In vnknowne fadomes, will I breake my oath 
To this my faire belou'd : Therefore, I pray you. 
As you haue euer bin my Fathers honoured friend. 
When he fhall miffe me, as (\n faith I meane not 
To fee him any more) caft your good counfailes 555 

Vpon his pafsion : Let my felfe, and Fortune 
Tug for the time to come. This you may know, 
And fo deliuer, I am put to Sea 
With her, who heere I cannot hold on (hore: 
And moft opportune to her neede, I haue 560 

543. pleas' d with madMjfe\ {pleas' d Var. '73, '78. As you've e'er Dyce ii, Hi. 
with tnadnejfe) Ff. 553. bin\ been F^F^. 

549. thereaf\ thereottt Han. honour' d'\ Om. Ff, Rowe + , 
gleaned '\ glean' dVopt, Cap. Var. Rann. 

all the"] all that the Yi^ 'Rovre. 554. as (/«] (as in Rowe et seq. 

550. feaSf hides'] seas hide Ff, Rowe + , (subs.). 

Mai. Steev. Var. Knt, \Vh. i, Dyce i, 559. who] Dyce. whom Ff et cet. 

Cam. ii. sea hides Cap. et cet. 560. her neede] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Knt, 

551. fadomes] fathoms Johns. Coll. i. the need Cap. our need Theob. 
553. As. ..euer] As. ..e'er Mai. Steev. et cet. 

544. bid it] That is, madness^ unreason. 

546. but it do's] Staunton : As is understood : * but oj it does fulfil my vow I 
must,' etc. [I prefer the tone of calm assurance, free from any limitation. — Ed.] 

550. wombes] For a list of verbs formed from nouns, see Abbott, § 290. We 
have * climate ' as a verb in V, i, 208. 

550. hides] See Abbott (§ 333) also for examples of the third person plural 
in s. 

553. As you haue cuer bin] Walker (Crit. i, 81) : Write, * As y' have e'er been. 
[Malone in 1790 printed e'ery which was continued in every subsequent edition down 
to and including the Var. of 1813. Walker may tell us to write 'y'have,' but he 
could have hardly expected us so to pronounce it. — Ed.] 

560. opportune] See * contrSict ' line 465, above. 

560. her] See * my,' line 522, above. Boswell would fain have it that * " her 
need" is the need we have of her, i. e. the vessel;' herein Knight is his solitary 
adherent. 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 239 

A Veffell rides faft by, but not prepared 561 

For this defigne. What courfe I meane to hold 
Shall nothing benefit your knowledge, nor 
Conceme me the reporting. 

Cam. O my Lord, 565 

I would your fpirit were eafier for aduice, 
Or ftronger for your neede. 

Flo. Hearke Perdita^ 
He heare you by and by. 

Cam. Hee's irremoueable, 570 

Refolu'd for flight : Now were I happy if 
His going, I could frame to ferue my tume, 
Saue him from danger, do him loue and honor, 
Purchafe the fight againe of deere Sicillia, 

And that vnhappy King, my Mafter, whom 575 

I fo much third to fee. 

Flo. Now good Camilloy 
I am fo fraught with curious bufinefle, that 
I leaue out ceremony. 579 

568. [drawing her aside. Cap. et seq. 576. [Aside. Rowe + . 

(subs.). 578. curums] serious Coll. iii (MS), 

569. [To Cam. Theob. Huds. anxious Gould. 

570. irremoutabW] immoveable Anon. 579. [Going. Mai. et seq. (except 
ap. Cam. Dyce ii, iii, Cam. Wh. ii). 

571. Refolu'd^ Refohfd F,. 

561. VesseU rides] See * was faire/ line 397, above. 

568, 569. Hearke Perdita, etc.] The Text. Notes show the interpretation which 
modem editors, following Capell and Theobald, have put on these lines. The 
Cowden-Clarkes : By Florizel's taking Perdita aside, we are made to perceive how 
he sees that she stands silently, — as it were irresponsively and unassentingly by, — 
while he speaks to Camillo ; and how he hastens to confer with her, and convince 
her of his unswerved faith, and persuade her to his views ; moreover, it affords oppor- 
tunity for Camillo*s soliloquy, which tells the audience his plan. 

570. irremoueable] Staunton : < Irremoveable ' is here employed adverbially : 
« He's irremoveably resolved,* etc. So in III, ii, 202 : * And damnable ungrateful.' 
[Consequently, Staunton puts no comma after * irremoveable.'] 

578. curious] Collier (ed. ii): The MS substitutes serious for 'curious,' and 
although we apprehend that the former is the true and more applicable word, we are 
hardly so confident of it as to warrant the insertion of serious in our text. — R. G. 
White (ed. i) : Serious is a very plausible suggestion ; but * curious ' was used in 
Shakespeare's day with great latitude of meaning, and sometimes in the sense of 
requiring of or taking care, solicitous ; and therefore it is not safe to make any change 
in the text. 



240 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Cam. Sir, I thinke 580 

You haue heard of my poore feruices, i^th loue 
That I haue borne your Father ? 

Flo. Very nobly 
Haue you deferuM : It is my Fathers Muficke * 
To fpeake your deeds : not little of his care 585 

To haue them recompencM, as thought on. 

Cam. Well ^my Lord) 
If you may pleafe to thinke I loue the King, 
And through him, what's neereft to him, which is 
Your gracious felfe ; embrace but my direflion, 590 

If your more ponderous and fetled proieft 
May fuffer alteration. On mine honor, 
He point you where you fhall haue fuch receiuing 
As (hall become your Highneffe, where you may 
Enioy your Miftris ; from the whom, I fee 595 

There's no difiunflion to be made, but by 

581. You haue\ You^ve Dyce ii, Hi, 589. wz-^r^] ii/ar'j/ Walker, Dyce ii, 

Huds. iii, Huds. 

589. through him^ whaf5\ Ff, Rowe + , 590. felfe /] self Rowe. 

Cap. Var. Rann, Coll. Sing. "WTi. i, Sta. 592. alteration, On\ alteration : On 

thorough hinty whafs Theob. i. through Ff, Rowe. alterationy on Pope et seq. 

hiniy what is Han. et cet. (subs.). 

579. ceremony] Cambridge Editors: We think Malone's stage-direction 
'going' [see Text. Notes] was inserted under a mistaken view of Florizel's mean- 
ing. He apologises to Camillo for talking apart with Perdita in his presence. At 
the commencement of this whispered conversation he said to Camillo, * I'll hear 
you by and by,' and at the close of it he turns again to him with * Now, good 
Camillo,* etc. 

581. seruices] From what Camillo foretells about the reception of Florizel by 
Leontes, it is evident that Florizel knew of the special service which Camillo had 
rendered in aiding the escape of Leontes from Sicily. 

588. If you may please] Walker (Crit. i, 206): Here si tibi placeat is the 
more suitable meaning. — Abbott (§ 309) : * May * is here used as a modest way of 
stating what ought to be well known. — Deighton: Here *may' is extremely 
deferential. 

589. neerest] This .is one of the superlatives, which Walker cites ( Vers. 169, 
and see I, ii, 109), wherein the e is suppressed, neer'st. But Walker's text was, I am 
sure, the Var. of 182 1, wherein * what's ' of the Folio is printed what is. Hence, a 
contraction which would render the Var. text rhythmical would render the Folio text 
unrhythmical. 

595. from the whom] See * the which,' II, i, 154, or see Abbott, § 270, where 
other examples are given. 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 24I 

(As heauens forefend) your ruine : Marry her, 597 

And with my bed endeuours, in your abfence, 

Your difcontenting Father, ftriue to qualifie 

And bring him vp to liking. 600 

Flo* How Camillo 
May this (almoft a miracle) be done ? 
That I may call thee fomething more then man, 
And after that truft to thee. 

Ctf»/. Haue you thought on 605 

A place whereto you'l go f 

Flo. Not any yet : 
But as th'vnthought-on accident is guiltie 
To what we wildely do, fo we profeffe 609 

598. your\ youe F,. Cap. Var. »78, '85, Rann. / wiU strive 
abfence\ absenciy Pll Daniel ap. Han. Var. *73. 

Cam. 599, 600. to qualifie. ,Mking] One 

599. di/cantenting] discontented line, Han. Var. '73. 
Rowe+. 600. him vp"] Om. Rowe. 

^riue"] ril strive Rowe ii + , 604. thee.'^ M^^? F^, Rowe+. 

609. 7b] CyRowc+. Towards Hvji, 

598. with my best endeuours, etc.] Down to 1790 all editors followed Rowe's 
Second Ed. and completed, as they thought, the meaning of the Folio, by reading 
* ril strive * in the next line. In that year Malonk restored the text of the Folio, 
and revealed its meaning by enclosing in a parenthesis the words : * (with my best 
endeavours in yoiur absence)' ; he has been followed therein substantially by every sub- 
sequent editor. His note is as follows : ' And where you may, by letters, entreaties, 
etc. endeavour to soften your incensed father, and reconcile him to the match ; to 
effect which, my best services shall not be wanting during your absence. ** Discon- 
tenting " is in our author's language the same as discontented.* — Halliwell quotes 
from. 77ie Play of Stuckley^ 1605 [line 2050, ed. Simpson] : * Friend Vernon, leave 
such discontenting speech ; Your melancholy overflows your spleen,' etc. — Abbott 
(S 372) sajrs that * discontenting ' may perhaps be explained by the use of the verb 
' content you ' ; * I discontent (me)' meaning < I am discontented.' [We have * losing ' y 
for * being lost ' in V, ii, 79. — Ed.] 

0o8. vnthought-on accident] M. Mason (p. 137): That is, the unsuspected 
discovery made by Polixenes. [This may be so, but the whole phrase is none the 
less a general truth. — Ed.] 

608, 609. guiltie To] Malone: Cf. Com. of Err. Ill, ii, 168: 'But, lest myself 
be guilty to self-wrong,' etc. — Abbott (§ 188) : In this difficult passage * guilty ' seems 
used for responsible^ and chance is said to be * responsible to* rashness (personified). 
(Or is * to * as to, i. e, as regards ?) [The passage from the Com. of Err. is not pre- 
cisely parallel ; it means : * lest I be guilty to the extent of wronging myself, I'll stop 
my ears,' etc. I prefer the solution involved in Abbott's query, and to take < to ' as 
equivalent to as to, — Ed.] 
16 



242 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Our felues to be the flaues of chance, and flyes 6io 

Of euery winde that blowes. 

Catfty Then lift to me : 
This followes, if you will not change your purpofe 
But vndergo this flight; make for Sicillia, 

And there prefent your felfe, and your fayre Princefle, 615 

(For fo I fee (he muft be) Yore Leontes ; 
She (hall be habited, as it becomes 
The partner of your Bed. Me thinkes I fee 
Leontes opening his free Armes,and weeping 
His Welcomes forthrasks thee there Sonne forgiuenefle, 620 

As ^twere i'th'Fathers perfon: kifles the hands 
Of your frefli Princefle ; ore and ore diuides him, 
'Twixt his vnkindnefle,and his Kindnefle : th'one 
He chides to Hell, and bids the other grow 
Fafter then Thought, or Time. 625 

Flo. Worthy Camilloy 
What colour for my Vifitation, fliall I 
Hold vp before him ? 628 

610. chance'\ chances Rowe i. 622. diuides] divide Long MS ap. 

620. asks"] ask Long MS ap. Cam. Cam. 

thee there"] thee the F^F^. there 623. vnkindneffe] unkindenfs F^. 

/^Ritson. //5^^, M^ Rowe etseq. (subs.). 623. throne] Ff, Rowe +, Coll. Dyce, 

621. kijfes] kiss Long MS ap. Cam. Wh. the one Cap. et cet. 

610. chance] Johnson : As chance has driven me to these extremities, so I com- 
mit myself to chance^ to be conducted through them. 

616. must be) 'fore Leontes] Another instance of careful printing. The apos- 
trophe marks, as it should and does mark in modem editions, the omission, it cannot 
be called the absorption of be^ ; which is not here the ordinary omission authorised 
by poetic license, but is due to the * be ' immediately preceding it. See II, i, 18. — Ed. 

620. thee there Sonne] See Text. Notes for the correction of this error. 

623. th'one] Walker {Crit. ii, 91) observes that * euphony or correct pronunciation 
here requires the pronunciation un? [The pronunciation own is, I think, to be pre- 
ferred; that is, as it is preserved in alone and atone, — Ed.] 

625, Faster] Schmidt ( Trans, p. 284) : According to an illogical conception, 
which is not infrequent in Shakespeare, < faster Ms to be here taken first in the sense 
oi firmer ^ and then in the sense of quicker. [This assertion is virtually repeated by 
Dr Schmidt in his Lexicon^ where he gives * faster ' in this passage as an instance of 
a word used in different sig^nifications. Comment is needless. Of all elements utterly 
lacking stability, * thought ' and * time * are almost the archtypes. — Ed.] 

627. What colour, etc.] Deighton : There may be an idea of a ship hoisting its 
colours as a signal. 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 243 

Cam. Sent by the King your Father 
To greet him, and to giue him comforts. Sir, 630 

The manner of your bearing towards him, with 
What you (as from your Father) (hall deliuer. 
Things knowne betwixt vs three. He write you downe, 
The which (hall point you forth at euery fitting 
What you muft fay: that he fhall not perceiue, 635 

But that you haue your Fathers Bofome there, 
And fpeake his very Heart. 

Flo. I am bound to you : 
There is fome fappe in this. 

Cam, A Courfe more promifing, 640 

Then a wild dedication of your felues 
To vnpathM Waters, vndreamM Shores; moft certaine, 
To Miferies enough : no hope to helpe you. 
But as you (hake off one, to take another : 
Nothing fo certaine, as your Anchors, who 645 

Doe their beft office, if they can but ftay you, 
Where you'le be loth to be : befides you know, 
Profperitie's the very bond of Loue, 
Whofe frefli complexion, and whofe heart together 
Affli6Hon alters. 650 

630. amforfs"] comfort Anon. ap. 634. fitting'\ fitting Theob. Cap. sift- 

Cam. Huds. tw^Thirlby. 

644. another .*] another Han. 

633. betwixt] Murray {N. E. D.) gives examples which show that 'betwixt* 
was used in reference to more than two, and that in early use it was equivalent to 
among. 

634. The which] See *the which,' II, i, 154. 

634. sitting] Theobald : * Every sitting ' methinks gives a very poor idea. 
Eyeryfittingy as I have ventured to correct the text, means, every convenient oppor- 
tunity ; every juncture, when it is fit to speak of such or such a point. — ^Warburton : 
* Sitting * is very expressive and means, at every audience you shall have of the king 
and council. The council-days being, in our author's time, called in common speech 
the sittings, 

642. vndream'd] Warburton (M 6r» Qu. VIII, iii, 203) in a MS marginal note 
conjectures * undeem'^d^ i. e. imtried.* 

644. take another] Steevens : So, in Cym. I, v, 54 : < to shift his being Is to 
exchange one misery for another.' 

645. who] For other examples of reference by * who ' to irrational antecedents, see 
Abbott, § 264, and Shakespeare passim. 



244 



THE WINTERS TALE 



[act IV, sc. iv. 



Perd. One of thefe is true : 65 1 

I thinke Affliftion may fubdue the Cheeke, 
But not take-in the Mind. 

Cam. Yea ? fay you fo ? 
There fhall not, at your Fathers Houfe, thefe feuen yeeres 655 
Be borne another fuch. 

Flo. My good Cantilloy 
She's as forward, of her Breeding, as 
She is i'th' reare ' our Birth. 659 



653. take-in] F^F,, Cap. Var. '73. 
take in F^ et cet. 

654. Yea f] Yea, Rowe. 

655. wko"] which Han. 

658. She's] Ff, Rowe, Sing. Wh. L 
She is Pope et cet. 

658, 659. She*s„.She is] One line, 
Spence (N. & Qu. VII, ix, 24). 

659. She is fth' reare * our Birth] Ff 
{rear F^), Dyce. She is i'th^ rear o* her 
birth Rowe i. Cam. ii. She is i* M* rear 



(f our birth Rowe ii, Pope, Theob. Warb. 
Coll. ii, Cam. i. Rife. /' M' rear of 
birth Han. Cap. Rann, Steev. Var. '03, 
'13, Coll. (MS). She is r th' rear of 
birth Johna. Var. *73, '78, '85, Mai. 
She is V the rear our birth Var. *2I, 
Coll. i, iii, Hal. Del. Dtn. She U V the 
rear of our birth Knt, Sing. Sta, Ktly, 
Hunter. She V th* rear f our birth 
Wh. /* the rear our birth Huds. She 
isj Ifear^ of our birth Bulloch. 



651-653. One of these . . . Mind] Mrs Jameson (i, 236) : Perdita has another 
characteristic, which lends to the poetical delicacy of the delineation a certain strength 
and moral elevation, which is peculiarly striking. It is that sense of truth and recti- 
tude, that upright simplicity of mind, which disdains all crooked and indirect means, 
which would not stoop for an instant to dissemblance, and is mingled with a noble 
confidence in her love and in her lover. In this spirit is her answer to Camillo. 

655, 656. There . . . such] Schmidt (in the Notes to his Translation) ridicules 
Tieck's translation of these lines : * Es wird wol deines Vaters Haus nicht wieder in 
sieben Jahren solch ein Kind gebaren.' * As if,' says Schmidt, * at the end of seven 
years the likelihood would be greater ! * Se7>en years^ he goes on to say, * in Shake- 
speare, means an indefinite, considerable time [which is just. — Ed.], of which fact« 
forsooth, our interpreters and glossarists know nothing,* [which is doubtful. There- 
upon Dr Schmidt thus translates : * Viel Wasser fliesst vom Berg, eh' Eurem Hause 
Ein zweites Kind,' etc.] 

659. i'th 'reare * our Birth] Note the careful apostrophe before * 'our,' 1. e. * of 
our.' See II, i, 18.— Lettsom (ap. Dyce, ii) : Read * as I'th' reftr 0' her birth. The 
second *■ She is ' is, I think, a mere double of the first, as Hanmer saw, if indeed it is 
not a correction out of its proper place. The Folio has * She's ' in the line before, 
and for this probably * She is* was intended to be substituted. The preposition *of * 
in both these lines means in respect of — Abbott (§ 202) inclines to think that here 
is a case where a prepositional phrase, as in the rear of is condensed into a preposition ; 
thus: She is in the rear our birth.' — Deighton: Even if the preposition *of' be 
omitted altogether, the ellipsis, though somewhat harsh, is intelligible : She is as for- 
ward in respect to education and manners, as she is backward in respect to birth com- 
pared to me. The antithesis between < birth ' and < breeding,' between * forward ' and 



ACT IV, sc iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 245 

Cam. I cannot fay/tis pitty 660 

She lacks Inftruflions, for (he feemes a Miftreffe 
To moft that t^ach. 

Perd. Your pardon Sir, for this, 
He blufli you Thanks. 

Flo. My prettieft Perdita. 665 

But O, the Thomes we (land vpon: {CamiUo) 
Preferuer of my Father, now of me. 
The Medicine of our Houfe : how (hall we doe f 
We are not fumifliM like Bohemias Sonne, 
Nor (hall appeare in Sicilia. 670 

CcLtn. My Lord, 
Feare none of this : I thinke you know my fortunes 
Doe all lye there : it (hall be fo my care, 
To haue you royally appointed, as if 674 

663, 664. Sir, for this, I/e] Sir, for 668. Medidne\ med'cin Cap. (Er- 

this. lie Ff, Rowe, Pope. Sir; for rata), medicin Var. '78, Rann, Mai. 

this rU Han. Rann, Coll. Ktly, Cam. Steev. Var. '03, '13. 
Huds. Sir, for this : r//Theob,ttcti. 670. Sicilia.] Dycc, Wh. Col. ii, iii, 

(subs.). Sta. Cam. Huds. Sicily. Ff. Sicilia — 

665. Perdita.] /Vn//Va— Rowe + . Var. '21, Knt, Coll. i, Ktly. Sicily^ 

666. vpon .•] upon, F^. upon, Rowe. Rowe et cet, 
upon I Pope. 

< rear ' shows that there camiot be much corruption in the text, though the Globe 
editors obelize the line. 

668. Medicine] Capell (p. 178): * Medecin* in the sense of ph3rsician, being 
unknown to those printers, they have spelt it medecine. — Theobald {Nichols, \\, 365) : 
I read medecin, Fr. doctor. [The Cam. Ed. gives this emendation to Theobald, who 
undoubtedly made it earlier than Capell ; but Capell's note was the first to be printed ; 
in fact, Theobald himself never printed his conjecture at all.] 

670. Sicilia] Dyce [Remarks, 84) : Here all the modem editors (in opposition to 
the old copies) put a break at the end of the speech, as if it were unfinished. But 
this sense is complete: 'Nor shall appear [like Bohemia's son] in Sicilia.* — Collier 
(eds. ii and iii, reading appear't) : That is, * Nor shall appear <* like Bohemia's son '' 
in Sicilia.' In the old copies V dropped out, making the sentence appear as if un- 
finished. This small addition is firom the MS. — Lettsom (Note, Walker, Crit, \, 
232) : Collier's appear' t is scarcely English, but it suggested to me what I suspect to 
be the genuine reading : ' Nor shall appear so in Sicilia.' *■ My lord ' seems to be 
extra metrum. [Staunton proposed the same emendation.] 

674. as if] Walker {Crit, iii, 114): Note the position of *as if* in the line. 
Pronounce, I think, ds if', since 'j if seems hardly imaginable. — Dyce (ed. ii) : Mr 
Lettsom suspects that here we ought to omit *if' and to i^zA played. [Hudson 
adopted playd."] 



246 



THE WINTERS TALE 



[act IV, sc. iv. 



The Scene you play, were mine. For inftance Sir, 
That you may know you fhall not want: one word. 

Enter Autolicus. 
AuL Ha, ha, what a Foole Honeftie is ? and Truft(his 
fwome brother) a very fimple Gentleman. I haue fold 
ail my Tromperie: not a counterfeit Stone, not a Ribbon, 
Glaffe, Pomander, Browch, Table-booke, Ballad, Knife, 
Tape, Gloue, Shooe-tye, Bracelet, Horne-Ring, to keepe 



675 



680 



682 



675. Scene\ Scone F^F . 
you] yov F,. 

mine] true Coll. MS. 

676. [They talk aside. Rowe. 

677. Scene x. Pof)e + . 



F,F,. 



677. Autolicus] Autolichus 
Autolycus, as a Courtier. Kean. 

681. Brorwch] Ff, Rowe + . brock 
Cap. brooch Var. '73. 



681. Pomander] Grey (i, 269) : A little round ball made of perfumes, and worn 
in the pocket or about the neck, to prevent infection in times of plague. In a tract, 
entitled Certain necessary Directions^ as well for the curing of the Plague ^ as for 
preventing Infection^ 1636, there are directions for making two sorts of pomanders, 
one for the rich, and another for the poor. [Hereupon Grey gives the receipt for the 
rich. Steevens quotes another receipt from Lingua ^ IV, iii (p. 419, ed. Hazlitt- 
Dodsley) which I think is meant to be humourous. Douce gives references to other 
receipts, all different ; and Halliwell devotes six folio pages to the subject, with 
illustrations.] — Knight: We have a passage in Cavendish's Life of IVolsey, in 
which the great Cardinal is described coming after mass into his privy chamber, 
' holding in his hand a very fair orange, whereof the meat or substance within was 
taken out, and filled up again with the part of a sponge, wherein was vinegar and 
other confections against the pestilent airs ; the which he most commonly smelt unto, 
passing among the press, or else when he was pestered with many suitors.' This was 
a pomander. It appears from a passage in Burgon's Life of Sir Thomas Gresham 
that the supposed orange held in the hand in several ancient portraits was in truth a 
pomander. [The Century Diet, : Corrupted from earlier pomeambre^ derived from 
Old Frtnchf pomme d'ambrcy ahal\ of amber. Cotgrave: Pomme de senteurs, A 
Pomander, or sweet Ball.] 

681. Table-booke] Halliwell: The table, or memorandum-books, used in 
England in the sixteenth century, were usually imported from Germany. In the 
Secretes of Mayster Alexis of Piemounty 1 559, is a receipt * to make white tables to 
write in, with the point of a wire, suche as come out of Germanie,* which is as follows : 
* Take plaister called Gipsum, cribled and syfled, and stiepe it, and temper it with 
hartes glue, or other, and geve your parchement leafe one touch with it, and whan it 
is drie, scrape it that it may be even and bright, and cover it over agayne with the 
said plaister called Gipsum, and scrape it as before ; than take ceruse, wel braied and 
sifted, and stiepe it with the oile of linseed sodden ; annoynt your tables with this 
mixtion, and let it drie in the shadowe the space of five or six daies. This doone, 
take a clout or linnen clothe wete in water, wherewith you shall slike and make 
smoothe the sayde tables, but the clothe muste fyrste be wronge harde, and the water 
pressed oute, then leave it so the space of xv or xx dayes, until it be thorowe dry, 
than apply it to your use.' The table-books of the Shakespearian period were occa- 



ACT IV. sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 247 

my Pack from fading : they throng who (hould buy firft, 683 
as if my Trinkets had beene hallowed, and brought a be- 
nediflion to the buyer : by which meanes, I faw whofe 68$ 
Purfe was beft in Pifture ; and what I faw, to my good 
vfe, I remembred. My Clowne (who wants but fome- 
thing to be a reafonable man) grew fo in loue with the 
Wenches Song, that hee would not ftirre his Petty-toes, 
till he had both Tune and Words, which fo drew the reft 690 
of the Heard to me, that all their other Sences ftucke in 
Eares : you might haue pinchM a Placket, it was fence- 
leffe ; ^twas nothing to gueld a Cod-peece of a Purfe : I 
would haue filPd Keyes of that hung in Chaynes : no 694 

683. faftxng'\ faftning Ff, Rowe, 689. Wenches] IVenches* Johns. 

Pope. Petty-toes] Pettytoes Ff. 

throng] thronged Coll. ii, iii 692. Eares] their ears Mason, Rann. 

(MS), Huds. 694. 7vould] could Long MS. ap. 

686. Piiflure] pasture Anon. ap. Gtm. Cam. 

687. remembred.] remember Y^, d^^. filV d Keyes of ] F,. fiVd Keyes 
My] My good Rowe + . off Y^^ (Keys FJ. 

sionally in large oblong quarto, a prepared composition being placed on the parchment 
or vellum. 

683. throng] Dyce (ed. iii) : Is this meant for the past tense, or is Collier s MS 
right in substituting thronged? 

684. hallowed] Johnson : This alludes to beads often sold by the Romanists, as 
made particularly efficacious by the touch of some relic. 

686. best in Pid^ure] R. G. White (ed. i) : No remark has been made upon 
this singular phrase, the meaning of which is not very clear. Is ' picture * used in 
the sense of seeming, and with an eye to a pun upon * pick ' ? [White has no note 
on this ' not very clear ' phrase, in his Second Edition. It is to be presumed, there- 
fore, that his < washerwoman ' (see p. xii of his Preface^ had in the mean time 
< cleared ' it for him, as well as her starch. Having no such help, I must confess 
that the phrase still remains for me obscure. The Rev. John Hunter says that 
'picture' means the 'stamp of coin.' Schmidt {Lex.) observes of the phrase that 
* Autolycus is playing the amateur,' whatever that may mean. Rolfe defines * picture * 
by * had the best look.* Hudson remarks that * in picture ' seems to be * used here as 
a sort of equivoque ; the sense of in picking being implied.' Lastly, Deighton ex- 
plains * best in picture ' by * best to look at, i. e. fullest.' An Anonjrmous critic is 
recorded in the Cambridge Edition as having suggested the substitution of pasture 
for * picture,' which has much to commend it, if the text is to be disturbed at all, 
which is not to be thought of. From pasture to posture the transition is not violent, 
and posture may mean not only appearance, of which Schmidt gives examples, but 
it may mean the position as one which would be convenient for a cut-purse. But 
such phrases must be left undisturbed till time reveals them incontcstably. — Ed.] 

693, 694. I would] It is possible that here, as Hudson says, * would ' is used for 
could. At the same time, the meaning of Autolycus may be : I would have filed 
them off had I wanted to. — Ed. 



248 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

hearing, no feeling, but my Sirs Song, and admiring the 695 
Nothing of it So that in this time of Lethargie, I pickd 
and cut moft of their Feftiuall Purfes : And had not the 
old-man come in with a Whoo-bub againft his Daugh- 
ter, and the Kings Sonne, and feared my Chowghes from 
the Chaffe, I had not left a Purfe aliue in the whole 700 
Army. 

Cam. Nay, but my Letters by this meanes being there 
So foone as you arriue, (hall cleare that doubt. 

Flo. And thofe that you'le procure from King Leontes} 

Cam. Shall fatisfie your Father. 705 

Perd. Happy be you : 
All that you fpeake, (hewes faire. 

Cam. Who haue we here ? 
Wee'le make an Inftrument of this : omit 
Nothing may giue vs aide. 7 ID 

Aut. If they haue ouer-heard me nowrwhy hanging. 

Cam. How now (good Fellow) 
Why (hak'ft thou fo ? Feare not (man) 
Here's no harme intended to thee. 

Aut. I am a poore Fellow, Sir. 715 

696. Nothing] noting ADon. ap. Cam. Rowe et cet. 

Wh. ii. 708. Who] Whom CoU. 

698. old-man] old man F^F^. [Seeing Autol. Theob. 
Whoo-bub] hubbub Steev. 711. [Aside. Theob. 

699. Chowghes] ^ovrt. choughs Vo^, 712-714. As verse, endingyb /.../A/^. 

701. [Cam. Flor. and Perd. come for- Han. Cap. Var. Rann. As prose, MaL 
ward. Theob. et seq. 

702, 703. Prose, Pope. 713. Why] come, why Han. where' 
704. Leontes /*] Ff, Coll. Leontes — fore Cap. 

695. my Sirs] A reminiscence of the French, like * in happy time !* 

696. Nothing] Staunton : It has been suggested that * nothing ' in this place is 
a misprint for noting \ but like 'moth ' for mote^ it is only the old mode of spelling 
that word. 

698. Whoo-bub] The old spelling of hubbub. It occurs in 7\vo Noble Kinsman, 
II, V ; Beau. & Fl. Women Pleased^ IV, i, p. 60, ed. Dyce, and again in Monsieur 
Thomas^ IV, ii, p. 374. 

708. Who] Sec V, i, 137 : « Of who.* Also for other examples of * who * for whom, 
Abbott, § 274, and Shakespeare passim. 

711. hanging] Rye (p. 269) : John Fit [Fitz] John says, in his Diamond most 
Preciousy etc., 1577 : * If you picke or stele above twelve pence, the lawes of this 
realme is death.* 



ACT IV, SC. iv.] 



THE WINTERS TALE 



249 



Cam. Why, be fo ftill : here's no body will fteale that 716 
from thee : yet for the out-fide of thy pouertie, we muft 
make an exchange; therefore dif-cafe thee inftantly(thou 
muft thinke there's a neceffitie in't)and change Garments 
with this Gentleman : Though the penny-worth (on his 720 
fide) be the worft,yet hold thee, there's fome boot. 

Aut I am a poore Fellow, Sir : (I know ye well 
enough. ) 

Cam. Nay prethee difpatch : the Gentleman is halfe 
fled already. 725 

AuU Are you in eameft. Sir ? (I fmell the trick on't.) 

Flo. Difpatch, I prethee. 

AuU Indeed I haue had Eameft, but I cannot with 
confcience take it. 

Cam. Vnbuckle, vnbuckle. 730 



716. Why„.JiiIl'\ Separate line, Han. 

716-721. Seven lines, ending^*//... 
yet,., muft ... instantly ... change,., worth 
...boot. Cap. 

719. fl neceJitW] Ff, Rowe, Pope, 
Han. Theob. i. Cap. Coll. Sing. Dyce, 
Wh. Ktly, Cam. necessity Theob. ii et 
cet 

720. with"] Ttd* Cap. 

722, 723. {/...enough}"] Aside, Han. 
724, 730. As verse, ending Gentleman 
... Sirf ...prethee ... cannot ... vnbuckle 



(reading Nay^ pr'ythee now dispatch^ 
and '5 for is in line 724), Cap. 

^2^.fled'\ Ff. jfUad Rowe. flayd 
Steev. 

726. (/...iwV)] Aside, Han. 

onW\ ofU Cap. Var. Rann, Mai. 
Steev. Var. Coll. i, ii. 

728, 729. [Aside. Cap. 

730. Vnbuckle'\ Come^ unbuckle Cap. 
conj. 

[Flor. and Autol. exchange gar- 
ments. Cap. ...Cloaks. Kean. 



718. dis-case] That is, undress. In The Temp. V, i, 97, the word is not as care- 
fully printed with a hyphen, as it is here. 

721. boot] Johnson: That is, something over and above, or, as we now say, 
something to boot. [After 'hold' Capell inserts a double dagger, which in his 
edition is equivalent to a stage-direction : giving something. Dyce boldly printed : 
Giving money. Is it not a matter of congratulation that we are spared, after * Why 
shakest thou so?' in line 713, a stage-direction: Autolycus trembles.}"] 

725. fled] R. G. White (ed. i) : Possibly we should read « half /hed,' as 
we say of horses, birds, and snakes, that they shed their coats, feathers, and 
skins. 

728. I haue had Earnest] Capell (p. 179) : This should relate to some rich 
thing which he finds about the garments that Florizel reaches to him, which his ' con- 
science' makes him return; this (whatever it may be) he calls his 'earnest,' playing 
upon what he had used before in another sense. [This is certainly an ingenious sug- 
gestion, but it reveals, it is to be feared, a lack of appreciation of Autolycus*s charac- 
ter, in imagining that his conscience would have even remotely prompted the return 
of a jewel. — Ed.] 



2SO THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

Fortunate Miftreffe (let my prophecie 731 

Come home to ye:) you muft retire your felfe 

Into fome Couert ; take your fweet-hearts Hat 

And pluck it ore your Browes, muffle your face, 

Dif-mantle you, and (as you can) difliken 735 

The truth of your owne feeming, that you may 

(For I doe feare eyes ouer) to Ship-boord 

Get vndefcry'd. 

Perd. I fee the Play fo lyes. 
That I muft beare a part. 740 

Cant. No remedie : 
Haue you done there ? 

Flo, Should I now meet my Father 
He would not call me Sonne. 

Cam. Nay, you Ihall haue no Hat : 745 

Come Lady, come : Farewell ( my friend. ) 

Aut. Adieu, Sir. 

Flo. O Perdita : what haue we twaine forgot? 
Tray you a word. 749 

732. ye\ you Cap. Var. Rann, Mai. 741. remedie :'\ remedy — Rowe+. 

Steev. Knt, Coll. Sing. Ktly. 745, 746. no.,. friend.)'] One line, 

734. your Browes"] thy browsVsjc. *2I. Han. Steev. 

737. ouer] Ff, Sing. Dyce, Wh. Sta. 745. [giving it to Perd. Cap. 

Cam. ever Coll. ii, iii (Egerton and 747. [retiring. Cap. 

Coll. MSS). over's Dyce ii, iii. over 749. [talking with her aside. 

us Huds. overt Jervis. over you Rowe Cap. 
et cet. 
« 

731. let my prophecie] Deighton : May the prophecy I have just uttered, viz. : 

* fortunate mistress !* prove a true one. 

737. feare eyes ouer] Without some change, the text is, to me, hopelessly 
obscure. R. G. White, Singer, and Rev. J. Hunter say that *eyes over* means 

* overseeing eyes,* * over-eyeing,' and * being overeyed, overlooked,* which is forced, 
and, to me, quite un-Shakespearian. The various devices which have been urged to 
relieve the obscurity may be found in the Text. Notes. None of them is to be 
heartily commended. Collier's ever makes the remark too general; Dyce's us 
implies that Camillo was to accompany Florizel to the ship, which was not the case. 
"RoviK's you is perhaps least harmful. Schmidt {Lex.) proposes to change the posi- 
tion of the parenthesis so as to include only * (I do fear eyes) * ; the couple may then 

* get over to Shipboard.' 

748. forgot ?] Steevens : This is one of our author's dramatic expedients to 
introduce a conversation apart, account for a sudden exit, etc. So in Mer. IVives. — 
Dr Caius suddenly exclaims: *Od's me! Qu* ai-j' oublie!'[I, iv, 64]; and Mre 
Quickly, * Out upon't! what have I forgot?' [I, iv, 179]. 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 25 1 

Cam. What I doe next, fhall be to tell the King 750 

Of this efcape^and whither they are bound ; 
Wherein, my hope is, I (hall fo preuaile. 
To force him after : in whofe company 
I (hall re-view Sicilia ; for whofe fight, 
I haue a Womans Longing. 755 

Flo. Fortune fpeed vs : 
Thus we fet on {Cafnillo) to th'Sea-fide. 

Cam. The fwifter fpeed, the better. Exit. 

Aut. I vnderftand the bufineffe, I heare it : to haue an 
open eare,a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is neceffary for 760 
a Cut-purfe ; a good Nofe is requifite alfo, to fmell out 
worke for th'other Sences. I fee this is the time that the 
uniuft man doth thriue.What an exchange had this been, 
without boot ? What a boot is here, with this exchange ? 
Sure the Gods doe this yeere conniue at vs, and we may 765 
doe any thing extempore. The Prince himfelfe is about 
a peece of Iniquitie ( ftealing away from his Father, with 
his Clog at his heeles:) if I thought it were a peece of ho- 768 

750. [Aside. Rowe. 759. heare] heard Han. 

Jhall be"] shall be next, ^ovft \, 764. exchange?"] exchange; Ff. 

753. who/e] his Anon. ap. Cam. 766. extempore] F,, Dyce. ex tem- 

754. re-view] F,, Sta. review F^F^ pore F^. extempore F^ et cet. 

et cet. 768. I thought it were] Ff, Mai. Var. 

757. [Exit Flo. and Perd. Rowe. *2i, Knt, Coll. Dyce i, Wh. Sta. Ktly, 

758. Exit.] Exeunt Flo. Perd. and Cam. Rife, Hunt. I thought not it were 
Cam. Cap. Cap. Rann, Sing. I thought it were not 

Scene xi. Pope + . Han. et cet. 

760. a nimble hand] Rye (p. 268) gives the following extract from a report 
written by Fleetwood, the Recorder of London, dated July 7th, 1585 {^Ellis, ii, 297) : 
'Amongest our travells this one matter tumbled owt by the waye, that one Wotton, a 
gentilman borne, kepte an Alehowse att Smarts Keye neere Byllingsegate, and reared 
upp a newe trade of lyffe, and in the same bowse he procured all the Cutt purses 
abowt this Cittie to repaire to his said bowse. There was a Schole Howse sett upp 
to leame younge boyes to cutt pursses. Thare were hunge up two devises, the one 
was a pockett, the other was a purse. The pockett had in yt certen cownters, and 
was hunge abowte with hawkes bells, and over the toppe did hannge a litle sacringe 
bell ; and he that could take owt a cownter without any noyse was allowed to be a 
publique ffoyster\ and he that could take a peece of sylver owt of the purse without 
the noyse of any of the bells, he was adjudged a judiciall Nypper. Nota that a 
ffoister is a Pickpokett and a Nypper is termed a Pickepurse, or a Cutpurse.' * Those 
who have read Oliver Twisty Rye adds, * will be reminded of the curious game played 
by the Artful Dodger and his companions for the edification of the young novice.* 

768, 769. if I thought . . . not do*t] According to Malone the *■ reasoning of 



252 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. iv. 

neftie to acquaint the King withall^ I would not do't : I 

hold it the more knauerie to conceale it ; and therein am 770 

I conftant to my Profeflion. 

Enter Clowne and Shepheard. 
Afide, afide, here is more matter for a hot braine : Eueiy 
Lanes end, euery Shop, Church, Seflion, Hanging, yeelds 
a carefull man worke. 775 

Clowne. See, fee : what a man you are now ? there is no 
other way, but to tell the King (he's a Changeling, and 
none of your flesh and blood. 

Shep. Nay, but heare me. 

Clow. Nay ; but heare me« 780 

Shep. Goe too then. 

Clow. She being none of your flefli and blood, your 
flefli and blood ha's not offended the King, and fo your 
flefli and blood is not to be punifliM by him. Shew thofe 784 

769. / would not] Ff, Mai. Var. *2l, 777. Changeling] Changltng FjF^, 

Knt, Coll. Dyce i, Wh. Sta. Cam. Ktly, Rowe+. 
Rife, Hunt. / ww«A/ Han. et cet 1^, Nay ;] Nay^ FjF^, Rowc et 

772. Enter, etc.] After line 775, Sta. seq. 

773. here is] here's FjF^, Rowe+, 784. thofe] these TcLt^^x, 
Var. Rann, Mai. 

Autolycus is obscure, because something is suppressed,* and Malone's long note, 
supplying what he supposes to be suppressed, constitutes Halliwell's only comment 
I can find nothing obscure in this passage, nor any portion of the reasoning sup- 
pressed. Autolycus has just come to the conclusion that this year the very gods 
connive at rascality, so that even if it were a piece of honesty to tell the king, he 
would not do it ; he will be constant to his knavery and conceal it. Hanmer's change 
seems quite needless. — Ed. 

777. but to tell the King, etc.] See Dorastus and Fawnia, 

778. none of your flesh and blood] Lloyd (Singer's ed. li, p. 137) : The 
unhesitating selfishness of the old man and his son at the approach of danger, 
though otherwise they are creditable rustics enough, the singleness of their anxiety 
to save their own skins from royal vengeance, by proving the foundhng none of their 
blood, without any thought of her fate or fortune, belongs to the revulsions that cha- 
racterise the play ; it also finally detaches her, in our associations, from the class she 
has been reared amongst, and thus she is acquitted of ingratitude as well as of pre- 
ptmiption in moving easily toward the superior rank due to her nature as to her 
descent. Her own courage and collectedness at once place her in contrast to the 
bewildered and frightened hinds, and bring her worthily into sympathy with the 
patience and self-support of her brave mother, Hermione. 

78 1. Goe too] This expression is generally deprecatory in its meaning, as in I, ii, 
217 : ' Go to, go to ! How she holds up the neb !' but here it means, ' Go on/ 



ACT IV, SC. iv.] 



THE WINTERS TALE 



253 



things you found about her (thofe fecret things, all but 785 
what fhe ha's with her:)This being done, let the Law goe 
whiftle: I warrant you. 

Shep. I will tell the King all, euery word, yea, and his 
Sonnes prancks too ; who, I may fay, is no honeft man, 
neither to his Father, nor to me, to goe about to make me 790 
the Kings Brother in Law. 

Clow. Indeed Brother in Law was the fartheft off you 
could haue beene to him, and then your Blood had beene 
the dearer, by I know how much an ounce. 

AuU Very wifely (Puppies. ) 795 

Shep. Well : let vs to the King : there is that in this 
Farthell, will make him fcratch his Beard. 

AuU I know not what impediment this Complaint 
may be to the flight of my Mafter. 

Clo. 'Pray heartily he be at ' Pallace. 800 

-/l«/.Though I am not naturally honeft, I am fo fome- 
times by chance : Let me pocket vp my Pedlers excre- 
ment. How now(Ruftiques) whither are you bound ? 
Shep, To th' Pallace (and it like your Worfhip.) 
Aut. Your Affaires there f what? with whom? the 805 
Condition of that Farthell ? the place of your dwelling ? 



792. farthejl'\ furthest Steev. Van *2I, 
Coll. Dyce. 

794. kn(no\ know not Han. Cap. 
Rann, Ktly, Dyce ii, iii. 

795. [Aside. Rowe. 

797, etc. Farthell^ F.Fj. Farthel F^. 
fardel Steev. 

798. [Aside. Cap. 

800. at 'Pallace'] Dyce i, Wh. ii. at 
the Palace Rowe ii + , Dyce ii, iii, 



Huds. at Palace Ff, Rowe i et cet. 

801-803. Though, ^excrement"] Aside. 
Cap. 

802. [Takes off his false beard. Steev. 

804. and] an Tbeob. ii et seq. 

805-807. there f what ? with whom ? 
„, Farthell ? ... dwelling? ... names? ... 
ages ?...hauing ?] Ff, Rowe, Johns. Wh. 
i. Commas, instead of interrogation 
marks, Pope + , Cap. et seq. (subs.). 



794. I know how much] Hanmer inserted a not afler * know ' and has a respect- 
able following. If the Clown's assertion were accompanied with a knowing wink, no 
change of the text would be needed. — Ed. 

800. at 'Pallace] See II, i, 18. — Cambridge Editors: Perhaps the Qown 
speaks of the king being * at palace ' as he would have spoken of an ordinary man 
being * at home.' 

802. excrement] Nares : From excresco. Everything that appears to grow upon 
the human body ; as hair, beard, nails. Autolycus here means his pedler*s beard. 
[It is not confined to the 'human body;* feathers were so denominated. W, A. 
Wright (note on Ham. Ill, iv, 121) quotes Bacon, Natural Hist,^ cent, l, sect. 58: 



254 ^^-^ WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

your names ? your ages ? of what hauing ? breeding, and 807 
any thing that is fitting to be knowne,difcouer ? 

Clo. We are but plaine fellowes, Sir. 

Aut, A Lye ; you are rough, and hayrie: Let me haue 810 
no lying ; it becomes none but Tradef-men, and they of- 
ten giue vs (Souldiers) the Lye, but wee pay them for it 
with damped Coyne, not ftabbing Steele, therefore they 
doe not giue vs the Lye. 

Clo. Your Worfhip had like to haue giuert vs one, if 815 
you had not taken your felfe with the manner. 

807. ages?'\ tf^^/Roweii + . with stamped,.. but stabbing Daniel. 

808. to be\ for to be Rowe ii + . 814. not\ Om. Warb. Han. 
813. 'Ufithftamped...notftabbing'\ not 816. manner\ tnanour Han. 

' Living creatures put forth (after their period of growth) nothing that is young but 
hair and nails, which are excrements and no parts.'] 

807. hauing] That is, possession, estate. Cf. ' your having in beard is a younger 
brother's revenue.* — As You Like It^ HI, ii, 363. 

813. not stabbing] Theobald (Nichols, ii, 365) : So in 0th. Ill, iv, 5: < to say 
a soldier lies is stabbing.' What if we should read the passage : * if^/^-stabbing steel,' 
f . e. wound-impressing ; and then stamped coin has a regard both to the wound given, 
and to the stamping with the foot in making a pass. 

813, 814. they doe not giue vs the Lye] Heath (p. 218) : That the poet in- 
tended no more than mere puzzle and amusement, and even that Autolycus should 
contradict himself, is evident from the Clown's reply. — ^Johnson : The meaning is, 
they are paid for lying, therefore they do not give us the lie, they sell it us. — Hudson : 
Autolycus appears to be punning on the phrase [to give one the lie"], using it in the 
sense of dealing in lies, or cheating by means of falsehood, as he himself has often 
done in selling his wares. Giving the lie in this sense is paid with money, and not 
with stabbing, as it is in the other sense. And, in lying his customers out of their 
cash, Autolycus has had his lies well paid for ; therefore he did not give them the lie. 
— RoLFE : When Autolycus said that tradesmen * often give us soldiers the lie,' he 
probably meant that they do it by lying about their wares (a trick that he was suf- 
ficiently familiar with) ; but, he adds, * we pay them for it with stamped coin, not with 
stabbing steel * — as they deserve, or as you would suppose. Tradesmen could hardly 
be said to be in the habit of giving soldiers the lie in the literal sense of the phrase. — 
Deighton (not knowing that he had been anticipated by Daniel) remarks : It looks, 
however, as if the words ' stamped coin ' and ' stabbing steel ' had been transposed. 
There is little point in Autolycus' saying that the payment was made in < stamped 
coin,' not *■ stabbing steel,' whereas in his assumed character there would be a point 
in the boast that tradesmen were requited by * us soldiers ' not in the ordinary way, 
but by being run through with the sword. Further, *■ stamped coin ' as an antithesis 
to ' stabbing steel ' seems in itself more likely than * stabbing steel ' as an antithesis 
to stamped coin.' [It is hazardous to attempt to improve the speeches of Shakespeare's 
comic characters. Autolycus was not the man to waste logic on * puppies ' if by 
puzzling their poor brains he could impress them with his importance. — Ed.] 

815. giuen vs one] Capell (p. 179) : This speech of the Clown's imports — ^told 



ACT IV. SC. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 2$$ 

Shep. Are you a Courtier, and't like you Sir? 817 

AuL Whether it Ike me, or no, I am a Courtier. Seed 
thou not the ayre of the Court, in thefe enfoldingsf Hath 
not my gate in it, the meafure of the Court? Receiues not 820 
thy Nofe Court-Odour from me ? Refleft I not on thy 
BafenefTe, Court-Contempt ? Think'ft thou , for that I 
infmuate, at toaze from thee thy Bufmeffe, I am there- 
fore no Courtier ? I am Courtier Cap-a-pe ; and one that 
will eyther pufh-on, or pluck-back, thy Bufmeffe there : 825 
whereupon I command thee to open thy Affaire. 

Shep. My Bufmeffe, Sir, is to the King. 827 

817. you a\ yon a F,. 823. a/] to Cap. and Mai. or Ff, 
andW\ and^ F^. and Rowe, Rowe et cet. 

Pbpe. an Theob. Warb. Johns, an't toa%e\ Ff, Rowe, Cam. tou 

Han. Cap. et seq. Pope, tottze Coll. tome Dyce ii, iii. 

818. lke\ F,. as to axe Bulloch. 

820. gate"] gaite Johns, gait Cap. 825. pluck-back'\ push back Rowe ii, 

823. injtnuate^ at toaze"] insinuate at Pope, Han. 
ease Spence (N. & Qu. VII, ix, 24). 

us one, only : for it refers to Autolycus*s saying first * tAey [tradesmen] o/ifen give us 
soldiers the lie^ and then retracting that saying upon better consideration ; for that, 
being soldiers, they dare not give them the lie, meaning— cheat them : this retracting 
the Clown calls — ^taking himself with the manner. 

816. with the manner] Rushton {Sh. A Lawyer ^ p. 39) * Manner' is mainour, 
Old French manoevre^ meinor^ Latin a manu^ from the hand, or in the work. The old 
law phrase, to be taken as a thief with the mainour^ signifies to be taken in the very 
act of killing venison, or stealing wood, or in preparing to do so ; or it denotes the 
being taken with the thing stolen in his hands or possession [which is the meaning of 
the Gown in the present passage]. 

820. the measure of the Court] Malone: That is, the stately tread of 
courtiers. 

823. insinuate] Malone : This means here to cajole, to talk with condescension 
and humility. So, in Ven. and Adonis, * With Death she humbly doth insinuate ; 
Tells him of trophies, statues,' etc.[ — line ioi2.] 

823. at toaze] Cambridge Editors: This is apparently a corruption [in the 
First Folio]. The subsequent Folios read < or toaze,* which, in default of a more 
certain correction, we have adopted. [As far as concerns the change from ' at * to 
or, this adoption is certainly right. — Ed.] 

823. toaze] Skeat (Diet.) : Touse in Meas.for Afeas. V, i, 313, is much the same 
word as < toaze ' [here], and means to pull about, tear, or rend. Spenser has touse in 
the sense to worry, to tease; — F. ^. ii, ll, 33. Mid. Eng. tosen^ properly to tease 
wool, Prompt. Parv. * And what sheep, that is full of wulle Upon his backe they 
toose and pulle;' Gower, Con, Am. i, 17, 1. 7. — Cambridge Editors: It is not 
improbable that Autolycus may have coined a word to puzzle the clowns, which after- 
wards puzzled the printers. 



256 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv, sc. iv. 

AuU What Aduocate ha^ft thou to him ? 828 

Shep. I know not (and't like you.) 

Clo, Aduocate's the Court-word for a Pheazant: fay 830 
you haue none. 

Shep. None, Sir : I haue no Pheazant Cock, nor Hen. 

Aut. How blefTed are we, that are not fimple men ? 
Yet Nature might haue made me as thefe are, 
Therefore I will not difdaine. 835 

Clo. This cannot be but a great Courtier. 

Shep, His Garments are rich, but he weares them not 
handfomely. 838 

829, 870, 893. andW\ Ff, Rowe, 833-835; 839-841. As mnemonic 
Theob. i. arCt Theob. ii et seq. lines, Warb. 

830, 831. [Aside, Cap. Sta. Dyce ii, 833. bUJf€d'\ Ff, Rowe, Cam. \Vh. ii. 
iii. blfss'd Pope et cet. 

830. Fheazanf] present Kenrick, 835. Iwiil'] I'll Steev. Var. Knt, 

Dyce ii, iii, Coll. iii. Coll. Sta. Ktly, Dyce ii, iii, Huds. 

832. Pheazant Cock] pheasant^ cock 836-841. [Aside. Cap. Dyce ii, iii. 

Cap. et seq. (subs.). 836. be but"] but be Han! Coll. MS. 

830. Pheaxant] Kenrick {Rev. p. 93) : I suspect, but I will not be positive, that 
the Clown should say, * Advocate^s the court word for a present.' — Walker {Crit. 
iii, 115) : Surely [Kenrick] is right. [Those who do not accept Kenrick*s emendatio 
certissima (as I hold it to be), adopt Steevens*s interpretation : * As he was a suitor 
from the country, the Clown supposes his father should have brought a present of 
game J and therefore imagines, when Autolycus asks him what advocate he has, that 
by the word 'advocate ' he means a ' pheasant.'] 

832. Cock, nor Hen] Reed : The allusion here was probably more intelligible in 
the time of Shakespeare than it is at present. Our author might have had in mind 
the following, then a recent instance. In the time of Elizabeth there were Justices 
of the Peace, called Basket Justices^ who would do nothing without a present ; yet, 
as a member of the House of Commons expressed himself, * for half a dozen of 
chickens would dispense with a whole dozen of penal statutes.' — Sir Simon D'Ewes's 
Journals of Parliament, in Queen Elizabeth's Reign. [See Hales's note on * the Just- 
ice In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,' As You Like It, II, vii, 161, of this ed.] 

832, 833. F. J. F. (N. &* Qu. V, X, 244) calls attention to the rhyme of these two 
lines. * Though,' he concludes, * as line 832 is better read with a strong stress on * no,* 
Shakespeare probably intended the line to be prose.* 

837. His Garments are rich] R. G. White : An obvious slip of memory. The 
beggar had changed garments with the Prince indeed ; but the latter was obscured 
with * a swain's wearing.* — Gildemeister (Einleitung^ p. xi) suggests that * per- 
haps Shakespeare was living in Stratford when 77ie IVintet's Tale was put on the 
stage ; had he been present, he would not have failed to remedy the oversight.* — 
Charles Kean in his Acting-copy evaded this diflficulty by having Autolycus enter 
at line 674, dressed ' as a courtier, and by making the subsequent exchange of gar- 
ments with Florizel extend only to the cloaks. 



ACT IV. sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 257 

Clo. He feemes to be the more Noble, in being fanta- 
fticall : A great man, He warrant ; I know by the picking 840 
on's Teeth. 

Aut. The Farthell there f What's in'th' Farthell ? 
Wherefore that Box ? 

Shep. Sir, there lyes fuch Secrets in this Farthell and 
Box, which none muft know but the King, and which hee 845 
Ihall know within this houre, if I may come to th' fpeech 
of him. 

Aut. Age, thou haft loft thy labour. 

Shep. Why Sir? 

AuLT\\^ King is not at the Pallace,he is gone aboord 850 
a new Ship, to purge Melancholy, and ayre himfelfe : for 
if thou bee'ft capable of things ferious, thou muft know 
the King is full of griefe. 

Shep. So 'tis faid (Sir:) about his Sonne, that fliould 
haue marryed a Shepheards Daughter. 855 

Aut. If that Shepheard be not in hand-faft, let him 

841. ofCs\ of's Cap. conj. 842, 843. Prose, Cap. Mai. Dyce, Wh. 

Ktly, Cam. Rife, Huds. 

839. to be] Walker {Crii. Hi, 115) : < To be ' sounds awkward and uncolloquial. 
Qu. * He seems io me^l 

840, 841. picking on's Teetb] Johnson: It seems that to pick the teeth was at 
this time a mark of some pretension to greatness or elegance. [Which is precisely 
what the text reveals. — Ed.] So in King John : * He and his pick- tooth [sic\ at my 
worship's mess.*[ — I, i, 190. Had Dr Johnson added to his quotation the three or 
four preceding words of Faulconbridge : * Now your traveller, He,' etc., they would 
have shown that it was, in that case, the mark of a traveller, wherein consisted the 
elegance.] 

844. there lyes] See Abbott, § 335, for examples of a singrular verb preceding 
a subject in the plural, or Shakespeare passim. For * such Secrets . . . which^ 
see I, i, 26. 

851. a new Ship] Stearns (p. 153) : Why a new ship? Because the air in a 
new ship is much purer than in an old one ; as the bilge-water is less fouled by 
accumulated sediment. 

^54* ^55- ^At should haue] Abbott, §324: That is, ^w<is to have married,' 
etc. not quite ought. 

856. hand-fast] R. G. White (ed. i) mistook the meaning of this phrase, and 
proposed, as a substitution : * band^ fast.' — Staunton : To be in * hand-fast,' equiv- 
alent to mainprise^ is to be at large only on security given. Sometimes this state was 
called ^<2«^/f /If ; thus in The London Prodigal: * Ay, but he is now in huckster's 
handling for (1. e. for fear of) running away.' [Ill, iii]. — Heard (p. 65) : Of the 

17 



25 8 THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. iv. 

flye ; the Curfes he fhall haue^the Tortures he fhall feele, 857 
will breake the back of Man^the heart of Monfter. 

Clo. Thinke you fo, Sir ? 

AuU Not hee alone Ihall fufler what Wit can make 860 
heauie, and Vengeance bitter;but thofe that are lermaine 
to him (though remould fiftie times) fhall all come vnder 
the Hang-man : which, though it be great pitty, yet it is 
necefTarie. An old Sheepe-whiftiing Rogue, a Ram-ten- 
der, to offer to haue his Daughter come into grace/'Some 865 
fay hee fhall be flon'd : but that death is too fofl for him 
(fay I:) Draw our Throne into a Sheep-Coat ? all deaths 
are too few, the fharpefl too eafie. 

Clo, Ha's the old-man ere a Sonne Sir (doe you heare) 
and't like you, Sir? 870 

Aut Hee ha's a Sonne : who fhall be flayd aliue, then 
^noynted ouer with Honey, fet on the head of a Wafpes 
Nefl,then fland till he be three quarters and a dram dead: 
then recouer'd againe with Aquavite, or fome other hot 
Infufion: then, raw as he is(and in the hoteft day Progno- 875 
flication proclaymes) fhall he be fet againfl a Brick-wall, 
(the Sunne looking with a South-ward eye vpon him ; 
where hee is to behold him, with Flyes blown to death.) 
But what talke we of thefe Traitorly-Rafcals, whofe mi- 
feries are to be fmil'd at, their offences being fo capitall p 880 
Tell me(for you feeme to be honefl plaine men)what you 
haue to the King : being fomething gently confider'd, He 882 

861. lermaine] F^. Jermain F F^. 873. thenftand\ there stand Cap. 

Germain Rowe. german Theob. Coll. MS, Walker, Dyce ii, iii. 

864. whijliing] F^. 874. Aquavite"] Aquavita F^. AquO' 

867. Sheep-Coat] sheep-cote Han. -vitce F F . 

writ of mainprize nothing is now known in practice. The distinction between main- 
pernors and bail was technical and well defined in the time of Shakespeare. 

875. Prognostication] Johnson: That is, in the hottest day foretold in the 
almanack. — Malone : Almanacks were published in Shakespeare's time under this 
title : * An Almanack and Prognostication made for the year of our Lord God 1595.* 

879. Traitorly] See Abbott (§ 447) for other examples of adjectives formed with 
-/j/, which represents like^ and is a corruption of it. 

882. being something gently consider*d] Steevens : This means, *■ I having 
a gentlemanlike consideration given me,* i. e. a bribe. So in The Three Ladies of 
London y 1 584: * Sure sir, I'll consider it hereafter if I can. Dissimulation. What, 
consider me ? does thou think that I am a bribe-taker?' [p. 279, ed. Hazlitt-Dodsley.] 



ACT IV, sc. iv.] THE WINTERS TALE 259 

bring you where he is aboord, tender your perfons to his 883 
prefence, whifper him in your behalfes ; and if it be in 
man, befides the King, to effeft your Suites, here is man 885 
fhall doe it. 

Clow. He feemes to be of great authoritie: clofe with 
him, giue him Grold ; and though Authoritie be a ftub- 
bome Beare, yet hee is oft led by the Nofe with Gold : 
fhew the in-fide of your Purfe to the out-fide of his 890 
hand, and no more adoe. Remember ftonM, and flayed 
aliue. 

Shep. And't pleafe you(Sir)to vndertake the Bufinefle 
for vs, here is that Gold I haue : He make it as much 
more, and leaue this young man in pawne, till I bring it 895 
you. 

AuU After I haue done what I promifed ? 

Shep. I Sir. 

AuU Well, giue me the Moitie : Are you a partie in 
this BufmefTe ? 900 

Clow. In fome fort. Sir : but though my cafe be a pit- 
tifuU one, I hope I fhall not be flayd out of it. 

AuU Oh, that's the cafe of the Shepheards Sonne : 
hang him, hee'le be made an example. 

Clow. Comfort, good comfort : We muft to the King, 905 
and fhew our flrange fights : he muft know 'tis none of 
your Daughter, nor my Sifter : wee are gone elfe. Sir, I 
will giue you as much as this old man do's, when the Bu- 
fmefTe is performed, and remaine(as he fayes)your pawne 
till it be brought you. 910 

884. behalf es\ behalf Y^^ Rowe+. 888, 889. Mnemonic lines, Warb. 

885. Suite5\ SuitY^, 894. that gold ^ the gold Kovft \. 
is man] is a man F^F^, Rowe + , 899. parfii\ parting F^, Rowe i. 

Var. '73, '85. the man Klly. 903, 904. Two lines, as verse, Rann. 

887-892. [Aside. Cap. 905, 907. [Aside. Cap. 

888. and though"] for though Daniel. 

888. and though] Walker (Crit. ii, 157) says that and\i9& nothing to do here, — 
it is * an though.* — Abbott (§ 105) says that * and * is used here emphatically for 
even. 

889. hee is] Walker {Crit, ii, 246) : I think the English of Shakespeare's time 
requires is he [which is possibly the reason why the Clown uses * he is.* — Ed.] 

901. my case] It has been thought necessary by some editors to explain this 
evident pun. 



26o THE WINTERS TALE [act iv. sc. iv. 

Aut. I will truft you. Walke before toward the Sea- 911 
fide , goe on the right hand^ I will but looke vpon the 
Hedge, and follow you. 

Clow. We are blefs'd,in this man : as I may fay, euen 
blefs'd. 915 

Shep. Let^s before, as he bids vs : he was prouided to 
doe vs good. 

Aut, If I had a mind to be honeft, I fee Fortune would 
not fuffer mee : (hee drops Booties in my mouth. I am 
courted now with a double occafion:(Gold, and a means 920 
to doe the Prince my Mafter good ; which, who knowes 
how that may tume backe to my aduancement ? ) I will 
bring thefe two Moales,thefe blind-ones, aboord him. if 
he thinke it fit to fhoare them againe, and that the Com- 
plaint they haue to the King, concemes him nothing, let 925 
him call me Rogue, for being fo farre officious, for I am 
proofe againft that Title, and what fhame elfe belongs 
to't : To him will I prefent them, there may be matter in 
it. Exeunt. 929 

911. you^ youy F^F^, Rowe + . you; 922. how that may tume backe\ both 
Han. may turn belike Bailey (ii, 241). 

912. looke'\ leake Theob. conj. backe'\ luck Coll. ii, iii (MS). 
914-917. [Aside. Dyce ii, iii. 923. Moales\ Afoals F^. moles Pope. 
917. [Exeunt. Ff. Exeunt Shep. and 929. Exeunt.] Exit. Rowe. 

Clown. Rowe. 

922. that may tume backe] Collier (ed. ii) : All editors have been in the 
habit of repeating and reprinting nonsense here. To turn luck is a very common 
and intelligible expression, and Autolycus uses it, according to the MS. There is no 
meaning in turning * back to my advancement,* whatever efforts may be made to ex- 
tract one, and back for * luck * was a very likely misprint. — Lettsom {^Preface to 
Walker's Crit. p. xliii) : I agree with Collier that this is nonsense, though formerly 
he as well as all other editors, thought it so clear as to need no explanation. I do 
not, however, see how the matter is much mended by merely turning * back * into 
luck, ... I should say that [to turn luck"] is rather ambiguous than intelligible. 
Possibly Shakespeare may have written *who knows but luck may turn to my 
advancement.' At any rate, it is better English to say that fortune turns an oppor- 
tunity, than that an opportunity turns fortune, to a man's advancement. [Hudson 
adopted I^ttsom's emendation. I cannot see that any is needed. Autolycus has 
two ventures on hand : Gold from the Shepherd, and an experiment on the Prince. 
Of the issue of the former he is certain ; but as to the shape for good or for ill, in 
which the result of the experiment on the Prince will come back to him, he is doubt- 
ful. If he had said : * as to which, who knows how that may recoil to my advance- 
ment,' it could not, 1 think, be termed * nonsense,' although it might be said * recoil ' 
is used in an unusual connection. — Ed.] 



ACT V. sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 26 1 



A6lus Quintus. Scena Prima. 



Enter LeonteSy CleomineSj DioUy Paulina^ Seruants : 

Flarizel^ Perdita. 

Cleo. Sir, you haue done enough, and haue performM 
A Saint-like Sorrow : No fault could you make, 5 

Which you haue not redeemed ; indeed payM downe 
More penitence, then done trefpas : At the laft 
Doe, as the Heauens haue done ; forget your euill. 
With them, forgiue your felfe. 

Leo. Whileft I remember lO 

Her, and her Vertues, I cannot forget 
My blemifhes in them, and fo ftill thinke of 
The wrong I did my felfe : which was fo much. 
That Heire-lefle it hath made my Kingdome, and 
Deftroy'd the fweet'ft Companion, that ere man 15 

Bred his hopes out of, true. 

Paul. Too true (my Lord:) 17 

1. Scena] Scaena F^Fj. 10. WhiUJf] Whilfl F^ et seq. 

A Room in Leontes' Palace. Cap. 16, 17. o/y true. Paul. Too trui^ Ff, 

2. Seruants :] Servants F^F^. Ser- Rowe, Pope, of: true. Paul. Too true 
yants, F^. Coll. i, ii. of, Paul. True^ too true 

3. Florizel, Perdita.] Om. Rowe ct Theob. et cet. 
seq. 

12. in them] See Abbott (§ 162) for other examples of the use of * in' with the 
sense of as regards^ about, etc.; as 'our fears in Banquo stick deep.' — Macb, 
III, i, 49- 

16, 17. true. Too true] Theobald: A very slight examination will convince 
every intelligent reader that true [at the end of Leontes* speech] has jumped out of 
its place in all the editions. What the king would say is absolutely complete without 
it ; and the placing it where the printed copies have done is an embarrassment to the 
sense. These two reasons, I hope, will be sufficient to justify my transposition [of it 
to the beginning of Paulina's speech]. — Collier : We restore here the reading of 
the old editions. Leontes, in grief and remorse, states a fact and adds mournfully 
* true ' ; to which Paulina naturally subjoins that it is * too true.' . . , The word * true,' 
printed, as it is, without a capital in F,, could hardly have found its way into the pre- 
ceding line by a mere error of the press. — R. G. White (ed. i) : As to the effect of 
the two arrangements, it appears that if Paulina, on the close of the king's self- 
accusation, answers in the ordinary phrase, * True, too true,' she is far less bitter than 
if, after he had paused and added *■ true,' she begins her reply, ' too true,' thus mtensi- 



262 THE WINTERS TALE [act v, sc. i. 

If one by one, you wedded all the World, i8 

Or from the All that are,tooke fomething good, 
To make a perfeft Woman ; fhe you kill'd, 20 

Would be vnparallell'd. 

Leo. I thinke fo. Kill'd ? 
She I kiird ? I did fo : but thou ftrik'ft me 
Sorely, to fay I did : it is as bitter 24 

23. She IkilVdf^ KilVdf she I kUVd Theob. Warb. Johns. Walker, Dyce ii, iii, 
Huds. 

fying his self-reproach by her first word, instead of softening it. But this consideration 
is of less consequence than the entire unfitness of * true ' at the end of the king's 
speech ; what was strong before, it makes weak and commonplace. — Dyce (Strictures, 
p. 86) : It is almost inconceivable that any person reading these speeches with mod- 
erate attention should fail to see that the word * true ' at the end of the speech of 
Leontes has been shuffled out of its place, and that it should be restored to Paulina. 
[Walker (Crit. ii, 179) also approves of restoring 'true' to Paulina, whereof the 
propriety is, to me, clear. — Ed.] 

19. from the All that are, etc.] Johnson: This is a favourite thought; it was 
bestowed on Miranda and Rosalind. [See, ' But you, O you. So perfect, and so 
peerlesse, are created Of euerie Creatures best.' — Temp. Ill, i, 57 (of this ed.) ; also, 
' Thus Rosalinde of manie parts, by Heauenly Synode was deuis'd, Of manie faces, 
eyes, and hearts, to haue the touches deerest pris'd.' — As You Like It, III, ii, 148, 
of this ed.] 

22. Kiird ?] Mrs Jameson (ii, 28) : We see in Paulina what we so often see in 
real life, that it is not those who are most susceptible in their own temper and feel- 
ings who are most delicate and forbearing toward the feelings of others. She does 
not comprehend, or will not allow for the sensitive weakness, of a mind less firmly 
tempered than her own. This reply of Leontes to her cutting speech is full of feel- 
ing, and a lesson to those who with the best intentions in the world, force the painful 
truth, like a knife, into the already lacerated heart. We can only excuse Paulina by 
recollecting that it is a part of her purpose to keep alive in the heart of Leontes the 
remembrance of his queen's perfections, and of his own cruel injustice. [For once 
Mrs Jameson seems to have failed fully to grasp the dramatic situation. Paulina had 
to contend, single-handed, against the influence of the whole court, and, peradventure, 
for aught she knew, against the king's own secret inclinations. Not only must Leontes 
be hindered from marrying again, but his repentance must be kept free from the 
influence of * time's strong hours,' and the past be kept ever-present to him, — to effect 
this, no speech can be too cutting, and no stab go too deep. We are not yet recon- 
ciled to Leontes. We must see him quivering under the lash. Nothing that Paulina 
can possibly say to him should be as lacerating as his own memory. We can only 
then begin to forgive him when we find that he cannot forgive himself. — Ed.] 

23. She I kiird] Note Theobald's fine reading, made in the interest of rhythm 
and of pathos. Walker (Crit. ii, 141) proposed the same, not knowing that he had 
been anticipated. — Ed. 

24. to say] See II, i, 122. 



ACT V, sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 263 

Vpon thy Tongue, as in my Thought. Now, good now, 25 

Say fo but feldome. 

Cleo. Not at all, good Lady : 
You might haue fpoken a thoufand things, that would 
Haue done the time more benefit, and gracM 
Your kindneffe better. 30 

PauL You are one of thofe 
Would haue him wed againe. 

Dio. If you would not fo. 
You pitty not the State, nor the Remembrance 
Of his mod Soueraigne Name : Confider little, 35 

What Dangers, by his Highneffe faile of IfTue, 
May drop vpon his Kingdome, and deuoure 
Incertaine lookers on. What were more holy, 38 

28. fpoken] spoke Pope + , Cap. Var. 33. fo"] Om. Han. 

Walker, Dyce ii, iii. 35. Name'] dame Var. '03, '13, '21, 

29. time] King Gould. Sing, i, Harness, Knt. 

31. one] none F^. lUtie] a little Heath. 

25. Now, good now,] R. G. White, in his Second Edition, following Dyce's 
Third, punctuates *now, good now,' and observes that *good here means <'my good 
friend,'' as in Temp. I, i, 14, and elsewhere.' It is simpler to regard good as adding 
force to whatever meaning * now ' may happen to bear ; here * now * is deprecatory, 
and * good ' adds a plaintive emphasis. The phrase may convey as many different 
meanings as the common interjection * Dear me !' ; and it is as difficult to ex- 
plain. — Ed. 

31, 32. those Would] See IV, iv, 397. 

34. pitty] A zeugma, * You pity not the state, nor [regard] the remembrance,* etc. 

35. Name] I am inclined to believe that the substitution, in the Variorum of 
1803, of dame for * Name ' is a typographical error which Reed overlooked; he has 
no note thereon, and he is not the editor to make such a change without referring to 
it. The misprint ran undetected through all subsequent editions until Collier arrested 
it. Of course, * Name ' is the only fit word ; Dion goes on to show the dangers which 
would arise from foi^etting it. — Ed. 

35. Consider little] Heath (p. 218) : Too scrupulous an apprehension for the 
metre hath spoiled the sense. We should read: 'consider a little.' An anapest 
only instead of an iambic. [Not so ; the phrase means : you little consider. — Ed.] 

36. Dangers, by . . . faile of Issue] See in 'Date of Composition,' in the 
Appendix, the application, made by Chalmers, of this passage in determining the 
date of the play. For * fail ' see II, iii, 206. 

38. Incertaine lookers on] Deighton : That is, the bystanders, who will not 
know what to do, who will be paralysed by the anarchy likely to ensue. Schmidt 
explains ' incertain ' by ' indifferent, not taking measures to prevent the calamity;' but 
how they could be said to be * indifferent ' to the dangers, or in what way they could 
' take measures to prevent the calamity,' I do not understand. 



264 THE WINTERS TALE [act v, sc. i. 

Then to reioyce the former Queene is well ? 

What hoIyer,then for Royalties repayre, 40 

For prefent comfort, and for future good, 

To bleffe the Bed of Maieftie againe 

With a fweet Fellow to't ? 

PauL There is none worthy, 
(Refpe6ling her that's gone:) befides the Gods 45 

Will haue fulfill'd their fecret purpofes : 
For ha's not the Diuine Apollo faid / 
Is't not the tenor of his Oracle, 
That King Leontes fhall not haue an Heire, 
Till his loft Child be found ? Which, that it fhall, 50 

Is all as monftrous to our humane reafon. 
As my Antigonus to breake his Graue, 
And come againe to me: who, on my life. 
Did perifh with the Infant. 'Tis your councell. 
My Lord fhould to the Heauens be contrary, 55 

Oppofe againft their wills. Care not for Iffue, 
The Crowne will find an Heire. Great Alexander 
Left his to th' Worthieft : fo his Succeffor 
Was like to be the beft. 

Leo. Good Paulina^ 60 

Who haft the memorie of Hermione 
I know in honor : O, that euer I 
Had fquar'd me to thy councell : then, euen now, 
I might haue look'd vpon my Queenes full eyes, 
Haue taken Treafure from her Lippes. 65 

39. Queene is well?'] Queen? This 55. contrary"] contray F,. 

will. Warb. Han. Cap. 56. Care] [To the King.] Ctfr^Theob. 

46. fulfiird] fulfiirn F,. ct seq. (subs.). 

^T^Jaid?] F^Fj. faid, F^, Rowe ct 60. Good] Ah! good Han. Thou 

seq. good Cap. Huds. My good Ktly. 

51. humane] human Pope. 65. Lippes,] lips, — Cap. et seq. 

52. Antigonus] Antigomus F,. 

39. Queene is well] Malone : See Ant, &* CUop, : * We use To say the dead 
are well,' H, v, 33. 

51. humane] See III, ii, 31 and 178. 

52. Antigonus to breake] See HI, ii, 233. 

64. full eyes] Walker (CnV. iii, 115) : Cf. 'a fair face will wither, a full eye 
wax hollow.' — Hen. V: V, ii, 170. 



ACT V, sc i.] THE WINTERS TALE 265 

Paul. And left them 66 

More rich, for what they yeelded. 

Leo. Thou fpeak'ft truth : 
No more fuch Wiues, therefore no Wife : one worfe, 
And better vs'd, would make her Sainted Spirit 70 

Againe poffeffe her Corps, and on this Stage 
(Where we Offendors now appeare) Soule-vext, 
And begin, why to me ? 73 

71, 72. Stage. ..app€are)'\ Ff (appear ii, Dtn. stage^ Where we offenders show^ 
F F^), Rowe, Pope, Cap. Mai. Steev. appear Orgcr. stage ( Where we offend 
Var. Coll. Sing. Siage^ ( Where we of- her) new appear Spedding ap. Cam. 
fend her now) appear Theob. Warb. stage, ( Where we offenders move) appear 
Johns. Var. Dyce, Ktly, Huds. Coll. iii. Del. conj., Kinnear. 

itage, (Where we offended anew) appear 73. And.., me f] F{{me; F,Fj. me. 
Han. stage (Where we offenders now F^). Begin, And why to me F C&p. MsH. 
appear soul-vex' d) Steev. conj. stage, Steev. Var. Coll. Sing. And begin, why ? 
( Were we offenders now) appear Rann. to me Mason, Rann, Spence. And beck- 
stage, ( Where we offenders now,) appear an tome* Why /* Bulloch. Demanding, 
Knt, Wh. i, Sta. Cam. Hunter, Del. Rife. Why tome? Orger. And bellow ' Why 
stage. Where weWe offenders now, ap- to me /' Kinnear. 
pear Anon. ap. Cam. GIo. Bulloch, Wh. 

72, 73. V^here we Offendors . . . why to me] Theobald : 'Tis obvious that 
the grammar b defective ; and the sense consequently wants supporting. The slight 
change I have made cures both ; and, surely, 'tis an improvement to the sentiment for 
the king to say that Paulina and he offended his dead wife's ghost with the subject 
of a second match, rather than in general terms to call themselves offenders, sinners. 
— Dyce (ed. i) : I adopt the alteration of Theobald, which is by no means violent, 
and which connects (as is evidently required) the word < appear ' with < sainted spirit.' 
(A parenthesis wrongly marked is not unfrequent in the Folio.) [To this note Dyce 
subjoined in his Second and Third Editions Theobald's note in full. Hudson also 
quoted it in full and pronounced it < just.' It is in its favour that, to the ear, ' offender' 
and * offend her ' are, what what would be termed in law, idem sonans. — Ed.] — 
Heath (p. 218) : But how did the king and Paulina offend the deceased Queen at 
the time of this conversation ? Theobald answers, < By making a second match the 
subject of it.' But could she possibly be displeased with the king for rejecting the 
solicitation to it, or with Paulina for earnestly dissuading him from it ? It would be 
unreasonable to suppose it ; and it is necessary therefore to have recourse to some more 
plausible conjecture. For my own part, I have little doubt but that the poet wrote, 

* and on this stage ( Were we offenders now) appear soul-vext,* etc. That is, If we 
should now at last so far offend her. — [Capell (p. 180), in line 73, transposed the 

* And,' thereby reading, in his text, < Begin, And why to me /' In his Notes he 
thinks that this transposition ' may chance to put an end to much controversy.' In 
the Variorum of 1773 Steevens suggested that we might read, * changing the place 
of one word only,' 'And why to me?' which was Capell's text. In 1790 M ALONE 
adopted this reading and gave the credit of it to Steevens, who thereafter spoke of 
it as his own. Mr Cburton Collins lately vindicated the memory of Theobald ; a like 
good oflfice is needed for Capell, whose text, in punctuation and division of lines is 



266 THE WINTERS TALE [act v. sc. L 

PauL Had fhe fuch power, 
She had iuft fuch caufe. 75 

Leo. She had, and would incenfe me 
To murther her I marryed. 

PauL I (hould fo : 
Were I the Ghoft that walkM, IIM bid you marke 
Her eye, and tell me for what dull part in't 80 

You chofe her : then Il'd {hrieke,that euen your eares 
Should rift to heare me , and the words that foUowM, 
Should be, Remember mine. 83 

75. iuft fuch] F„ Theob. i, Var. '73, 82. Should'\ Shou'd Pope ii, Theob. 
*78. such just Gould, jujl F^F^, Rowe (shoud'd Theob. ii), Warb. Johns. Var. 
et cet. 1773, 1778, 1785, Mai. Steev. First Am. 

77. muriher] murder Vfarh, Ed. 1 796, Var. 1803, 1813, 1821, Har- 

79. walk'd'\ wak'd Rowe ii. ness. 

mainly that of the best editors' of to-day. — Ed.] — Malone: Perhaps the author 
intended to point it thus : *■ Again possess her corpse (and on this stage Where 
we offenders now appear soul-vext) And begin, why to me /* Why to me did you 
prefer one less worthy ^ Leontes insinuates would be the purport of Hermione's speech. 
There is, I think, something awkward in the phrase, * Where we offenders now 
appear.^ By removing the parenthesis to the end of the line, and applying the 
epithet < soul-vexed* to Leontes and the rest who mourned the loss of Hermione, 
that difficulty is obviated. — Knight : We have shifted the place of the parenthesis, 
making * her sainted spirit ' the nominative case to * appear.' By this arrangement, 
* Where we offenders now * are must be understood. By any other construction we 
lose the force of the word * appear * as applied to * sainted spirit.* — R. G. White 
(ed. i) adopted Knight's reading, with, substantially, Knight's note ; in his Second 
Edition he attempts no vindication of his own text, which follows that of an Anon- 
jmaous critic as recorded in the Cam. Ed., and remarks only : * corruption here, which 
seems to be hopeless.* — R. M. Spence {^N. <5r* Qu, VII, ix, 24) : I punctuate the last 
line thus : * And begin " Why ?'* to me,* [See Text. Notes.] All were offenders before 
Heaven. Leontes alone had sinned against Hermione. To him alone, were she to 
appear, would she (thought he) address her reproach. The one word * Why ?* would 
be enough to overwhelm him with shame. — The Cambridge Editors: In 'And 
begin, why to me ?* there is possibly a corruption which cannot be removed by simple 
transposition. It ought, however, to be observed that Ben Jonson begins his Execra- 
tion upon Vulcan with the words * And why to me this ?*, which may perhaps be a 
reminiscence of the present passage. [In a strait as desperate as this any version 
may be regarded leniently. For my own part I prefer Spedding's reading : * and 
on this stage, Where we offend her, new appear, soul-vext, And,* etc. — Ed.] 

7$. iust such] Malone : * Such * was, I have no doubt, inserted by the composi- 
tor's eye glancing on the preceding line. 

76. incense] Cotgrave : Prcrvoquer. To prouoke, egge, vrge, moue, stirre, incite, 
incense. 

82. Should] It would be difficult to find a more instructive lesson as regards the 
vitality of error than in this little word < should.* In 1728, Pope*s Second Edition, 



ACT V, sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 267 

Leo. Starres, Starres, 
And all eyes elfe, dead coales : feare thou no Wife ; 85 

lie haue no V^iky Paulina. 

Paul. Will you fweare 
Neuer to marry, but by my free leaue ? 

Leo. Neuer {Paulina) fo be blefsM my Spirit. 

Paul.Then good my Lords, beare witneffe to his Oath. 90 

Cleo. You tempt him ouer-much. 

Paul. Vnlefle another. 
As like I/ermione,as is her Pifture, 
Affront his eye. 

Cleo. Good Madame, I haue done. 95 

S4. starres, Starres'} stars, very stars 95. / haue done"] pray have done 

Han. Cap. Steev. Var. '03, '13. Rowe+, Var. *73. Paul. / have done 

94. eye."] eye; — Knt, Wh. i. Cap. Rann, Mai. Steev. Var. Sing. Dyce, 

95. Madamey'] madam — Cap. Rann, Walker, Sta. Ktly, Cam. Wh. ii, Huds. 
Mai. Steev. Dyce, Sta. Cam. Rife, Dtn, Hunter. 

by a manifest oversight, printed it in the old-fashioned way Should*, directly beneath, 
in the line below, it was spelled Should, If any typographical error be unmistake- 
able, since the days when would, should, and could were printed with an apostrophe 
in place of the /, it is this. And yet for one hundred and eight years, in fourteen 
different, consecutive, critical editions this meaningless < should ' survived, fixed, and 
unaltered. It was transplanted even to these shores, and flourished in The First 
American Edition of 1796; Singer checked its growth in 1826, but it sprang up 
anew in Harness. As far as I know, it is now for the first time detected and its 
venerable longevity recorded. See Dr Johnson's * *as,* IV, iv, 239, which lived only 
fifty-six years. — Ed. 

82. rift] This is used transitively in Temp, V, i, 52. 

84. Starres, Starres] * To assist the metre,' Hanmer reads < Stars, very stars !' 
It is to be regretted that the metre really requires no assistance, so fine and so Shake- 
spearian is this very of Hanmer. — Ed. 

94. Affront] From the Latin through the French. See Ham. Ill, i, 31 : «That 
he . . . may here Affront Ophelia.* Cotgrave : Acarer, To affront, confront, set 
fisice to face, or before the face of, bring neere vnto, or, together. — Ed. 

95. Good Madame, I haue done] Capell (p. 180) : What are quoted as words 
of Paulina's, follow the last speaker's * Good Madam * in all the Folios; which being evi- 
dently wrong from him, his * I * was made/r^y by the first modem [i. e, Rowe], and 
* Good madam, pray have done * is handed down to us silently as a reading authentic : 
Nothing can be more natural, or more in character for Paulina, than the interrupting 
Cleomines, declaring she had done ; and still going on. [A reference to the Text. 
Notes will * endow CapelPs purposes with words ' ; it will be there seen that his 
emendation, which is now fairly adopted into the text, consists in a distribution of the 
speeches, giving *I haue done* to Paulina. In the Var. of 1778 Steevens adopted 
the change as though for the first time, and Malone afterward accredited it to him. 
— Ed.] — Knight dissents. * The vehemence of Paulina,* he observes, * overbears the 



268 THE WINTERS TALE [act v, sc. i. 

PauL .Yet if my Lord will marry : if you will, Sir ; 96 

No remedie but you will : Giue me the Office 
To chufe you a Queene : (he fhall not be fo young 
As was your former, but (he (hall be fuch 

As (walkM your fird Queenes Ghoft) it (hould take ioy \QO 

To fee her in your armes. 

Leo. My true Patdina^ 
We (hall not marry, till thou bidft vs. 

Paul. That 
Shall be when your fird Queene's againe in breath: 105 

Neuer till then. 

96. Sir\ Sirs F^. 98. you a] your Walker, Huds. 

interruption of Cleomenes, and he says, ** I have done." The modem editors give 
** I have done" to Paulina; when she is evidently going on, perfectly regardless of 
any opposition.* Both Collier and Hallfwell are also opposed to the change. 
Collier says that *■ Paulina has anything but concluded,' and that ' the change is on 
every ground objectionable.* — Dyce {Strictures, p. 87) : When, in my own edition, I 
adopted the regulation suggested by Steevens [Dyce should have known better ; in 
his Second Edition he attributed it rightly to Capell — ^but then it was after the pub- 
lication of the Cambridge Edition], my friend, Mr John Forster, favoured me with 
the following remarks : < The only thing that could justify the notion of Qeomenes 
feeling himself overborne by Paulina's vehemence, and retreating with an <' I have 
done," — would be, that the second speech of Paulina should be but a close to the 
impetuous rush of the first. On the contrary, the << Yet " introduces a concession on 
her part, which properly follows the " I have done." * 

105. when your first Queene's, etc.] Lady Martin (p. 382) : It is here the first 
hint is given that Hermione is still alive. How this could be, and how the secret 
could have been so well kept, Shakespeare gives no hint. One is thus driven to work 
out the problem for one's self. My view has been always this : The death-like trance, 
into which Hermione fell on hearing of her son's death, lasted so long, and had so 
completely the semblance of death, that it was so regarded by her husband, her 
attendants, and even by Paulina. The suspicion that animation was only suspended 
may have dawned upon Paulina, when, after the boy Mamillius had been laid by his 
mother's side, the inevitable change began to appear in him, and not in Hermione. 
She would not give voice to her suspicion for fear of creating a false hope, but had 
the queen conveyed secretly to her own home, making arrangements, which her high 
position and then paramount power would enable her to make, that only the boy, and 
his mother's empty cofHn, should be carried to the tomb. When after many da3rs the 
trance gave way, Paulina would be near to perceive the first flickering of the eye- 
lids, the first faint blush of blood returning to the cheek. Who can say how long the 
fearful shock to nerves and brain may have left Hermione in a state of torpor, hardly 
half alive, unconscious of everything that was passing around her, with the piteous 
look in those full eyes, so dear to Paulina, of a wounded, stricken, voiceless animal ? 
And so the uneventful years would pass away, as such years do somehow pass with 
those whose lives are blanks. Gradually, as time wore on, Hermione would recog- 



ACT V, sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 269 

Enter a SeruanU 107 

Ser. One that giues out himfelfe Prince Florizell^ 
Sonne o{ Polixenes^^x^ih his Princeffe ((he 

The faireft I haue yet beheld) defires acceffe i lO 

To your high prefence. 

Leo. What with him ? he comes not 
Like to his Fathers Greatneffe : his approach 
(So out of circumftance, and fuddaine) tells vs, 
'Tis not a Vifitation framM,but forcM 115 

By need, and accident. What Trayne ? 

Ser. But few, 
And thofe but meane. 

Leo. His Princeffe (fay you) with him ? 

Ser. I : the moft peereleffe peece of Earth, I thinke, 120 

'^ That ere the Sunne fhone bright on. 

• 107. Scene ii. Pope + . wo. fairejf\ fairest Cap. Walker, 

Servant.] Gentleman. Theob. et Dyce ii, iii, Huds. 
seq. (subs.). / haue\ Pve Walker, Dyce ii, 

108. out him/eifi] himself out Pope, iii, Huds. 
Han. 120. /.*] Yes; Rowe+. Ay; Gip. 

et seq. (subs.). 

nise her faithful Paulina and such of her other ladies as were in the secret. Their 
tender care would move her in time to wish to live, because they wished it, and be> 
cause Paulina could comfort her with the hope the Oracle had given, that her lost 
daughter might one day be found. Upon this slender hope — ^the words are her own 
—she < preserved herself to see the issue.' The name of Leontes is not mentioned. 
For a while he appears to be mercifully swept from her remembrance. She is not 
unforgiving, but her heart is dead towards him. Paulina feels that she dares not 
speak his name. It might awake too terribly the recollection of the misery he had 
brought upon her mistress, and in her enfeebled state prove fatal. The secret that 
their queen was still alive had been marvellously kept, although it had not escaped 
notice that Paulina had < privately twice or thrice a day, ever since the death of Her- 
mione, visited the removed house,' to which she had been secretly conveyed. Seeing 
the genuine contrition of Leontes, Paulina would not abandon the hope that Hermione 
might in time be reconciled to him. She had therefore the strongest reason to pro- 
test against the projects of marriage which were pressed upon him by his ministers. 

107. Seruant] Collier (ed. ii) : It is obvious from what this character says, and 
is said to him, that he is above the rank of a ' servant.' In the MS a singular, 
and perhaps unprecedented, title is given to him, in the words * Enter a Servant-poet^ 
as if he were a poet retained in the service and pay of Leontes ; such, indeed, appears 
to have been his capacity. 

no. fairest] See I, ii, 109. 

114. circumstance] Schmidt says that this is equivalent to * without ceremony,' 
but it is more than this ; it means everything which should precede and accompany a 
Royal Progress, avant couriers, heralds, military display, etc. — Ed. 



270 THE WINTERS TALE [act v, sc. i. 

PauL Oh Hermioney 122 

As euery prefent Time doth boaft it felfe 
Aboue a better, gone ; fo muft thy Graue 

Giue way to what's feene now. Sir, you your felfe 125 

Haue faid, and writ fo ; but your writing now 
Is colder then that Theame : (he had not beene, 
Nor was not to be equalled, thus your Verfe 
FlowM with her Beautie once ; 'tis fhrewdly ebb'd, 
To fay you haue feene a better. 130 

Ser. Pardon, Madame : 
The one, I haue almoft forgot.(your pardon:) 
The other, when fhe ha's obtaynM your Eye, 
Will haue your Tongue too. This is a Creature, 
Would (he begin a Seft, might quench the zeale 135 

Of all Profeffors elfe ; make Profelytes 
Of who (he but bid follow. 137 

123. euery^ everY^. 1 28. equalVd'\ equalledl^^axAKt, 

124. Graue] graces Han. grace G)ll. 130. you haue] you've Pope+, Dyce 
Sing. n, III. 

126. but] thatUzji. 134. This is] This is such Yizxi.Sittv. 

127. then] on Han. Var. '03, *I3, Huds. 

Theame :] theme, Mai. et scq. Creature] creature who Ktly. 

127, 128. Jhe.,. equalled] As a quota- 137. who] whom Han. Coll. Huds. 
tion, Han. et seq. bid] did Coll. i, iii (misprint). 

1 28. was not] was she Pope + , Var. *73. 

124. Graue] Edwards (p. 152) : This means thy beauties, which are buried in 
the grave ; the continent for the contents. — Collier : The MS Corrector of Lord 
Ellesmere's Folio, 1623, has altered 'grave* to grace ^ which seems the true reading. 
The MS of the Folio 1632 introduces no change here, where it certainly seems re- 
quired. — Staunton : This has been changed to grace^ — to the destruction of a very 
fine idea. — Anon, (quoted by Halliwell) : [In addition to the interpretation given by 
Edwards] Shakespeare had an exquisite reason, for such an expression in the mouth 
of Paulina. It is her object through the whole scene, emphatically, and with a view 
to the project she is so soon to realise, to keep the death of Hermione fresh in the 
minds of all, nor to suffer her grave to be even for an instant closed. 

126. and writ so] Johnson: * So* relates not to what precedes, but to what fol- 
lows; that * She had not been . . . equall'd.* [Note that Hanmer was the first to put 
these words in quotation marks.] 

127. then that Theame] Malone: That is, than the lifeless body of Hermione, 
the * theme ' of your writing. 

134. This is a Creature] Walker ( Vers, 84) : Read, I think. This' a creature. 
[See *This' again for This is or This* in V, iii, 181. Walker {Crit. ii, 20) gives 
many instances where * creature * should be pronounced, as here, a trisyllable, which 
seems, indeed, to be its natural pronunciation as derived from create. — Ed.] 

137- Of who] See IV, iv, 708. 



ACT V, sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 27 1 

Paid. How ? not women ? 138 

Ser . Women will loue her, that fhe is a Woman 
More worth then any Man : Men, that fhe is 140 

The rareft of all Women. 

Leo. Goe CleomineSy 
Your felfe ( affifted with your honored Friends ) 
Bring them to our embracement. Still 'tis flrange, 
He thus fhould fteale vpon vs. Exit 145 

Paul. Had our Prince 
(lewell of Children) feene this houre, he had payr^d 
Well with this Lord ; there was not full a moneth 
Betweene their births. 

Leo. 'Prethee no more ; ceafe : thou know'ft 150 

He dyes to me againe, when talk'd-of : fure 
When I (hall fee this Gentleman, thy fpeeches 
Will bring me to confider that, which may 
Vnfumifh me of Reafon. They are come. 

Enter Florizell, Perdita^ Cle amines , and others. 155 

Your Mother was moft true to Wedlock, Prince, 
For (he did print your Royall Father off, 
Conceiuing you. Were I but twentie one, 
Your Fathers Image is fo hit in you, 159 

143. Y<nirfelfe\ You f elf Y^, Hi, 1 16). 

[Exit Cleom. Johns, Var. Rann. 148. moneth'\ month F^. 

145. Exit.] Exit Cleom. Rowe. 150. ceafe\ Om. Han. Steev. Var. '03, 

148. full «] a full FjF^, Rowe, Pope, '13, Huds. 

Han. ^z^tf So quoted by Walker (CnV. 155. Scene iii. Pope+. 

138. How? not women?] Macdonald (p. 158): What a significant speech is 
this, given to Paulina, who is a thorough partisan, siding with women against men, 
and strengthened in this by the treatment her mistress had received from her husband ! 
Having received assurances that * women will love her,* she has no more to say. 
[The interrogation after < women ' (adopted by all editors) should be, I think, either 
a period or an exclamation mark. It is not a question, but an assertion. Proselytes 
the new Beauty might make of men, but of a woman — never ! — Ed.] 

143. assisted with] For other examples of < with,' where we should use by^ see 
Abbott, § 193 ; and in the next scene, line 64, ' he was torn to pieces with a bear.' 

150. 'Prethee no more; cease] Dyce (ed. iii): Walker {Cri/. iii, 116) says, 
* Perhaps, " Prayy no more," etc' — * Here,' observes Mr W. N. Lettsom, * is an evi- 
dent jumble of two genuine readings, one the correction of the other; " Prethee^ no 
morej'* and " I prithee, cease." ' 

154. Vnfumish me of Reason] See Abbott (§166) for numerous examples of 
the use of * of ' after verbs that signify depriving^ delivering^ etc. 



272 



THE WINTERS TALE 



[act V, sc. i. 



(His very ayre) that I fhould call you Brother, 
As I did him, and fpeake of fomething wildly 
By vs performM before. Moft dearely welcome. 
And your faire Princeffe (Goddeffe) oh: alas, 
I loft a couple, that ^twixt Heauen and Earth 
Might thus haue ftood, begetting wonder, as 
You (gracious Couple) doe : and then I loft 
(All mine owne Folly) the Societie, 
Amitie too of your braue Father, whom 
(Though bearing Miferie) I defire my life 
Once more to looke on him. 

Flo. By his command 
Haue I here touched Sicilian and from him 
Giue you all greetings, that a King (at friend) 
Can fend his Brother : and but Infirmitie 
(Which waits vpon worne times) hath fomething feiz'd 
His wifti'd Abilitie, he had himfelfe 
The Lands and Waters, 'twixt your Throne and his, 
Meafur^d, to looke vpon you ; whom he loues 



i6o 



i6s 



170 



175 



178 



163. And'\ As Theob. "Warb. Johns. 
Var. '73. 

your] you Var. *2I. 
Princeffe {Goddeffey] Ff, Rowe. 
princess: Goddess^ Pope, Han. Prin- 
cess, Goddess : Theob. i. princess, — god- 
dess ! — Dyce i, Wh. Sta. Cam. princess- 
-goddess Walker, Dyce ii, iii, Huds. 
princess, goddess ! Theob. ii et cet. 
166. gracious] gracions F^. 
168. whom] whom, — Mai. 
too] too. Cap. 



170. on him] on Theob. + , Cap. Var. 
Rann. upon Stecv. Var. '03, '13. 

171. By] Sir, by Theob. + , Cap. Var. 
Rann. 

172. /<wr^ V SiciliaJ touched, Sicilia; 
Anon. ap. Cam. 

173. at friend] as friend Ff, Rowe, 
Pope, Han. Coll. Ellesmere MS. and 
friend Mai. conj., Harness, a friend 
Steev. conj., Hazlitt. to friend Anon, 
ap. Dyce. 

175. times ».,feiz^d] limbs ,.. stayed 
Gould. 



163. And your faire] Theobald's reading ^ As your fair,* which has hitherto 
escaped notice, means * You are welcome as well as your fair Princess.* — Ed. 

163. Princesse (Goddesse)] Walker (CnV. i, 24) would make of these a 
compound word : princess-goddess ; from which I dissent. * Goddess * is a climax. 
—Ed. 

164. I lost a couple] Theobald: The king's meaning is this: He had lost a 
pair of children, who might have stood the wonder of two worlds, the objects of 
admiration to gods and men ; as this young prince and princess did, in his opinion. 

168-170. whom ... on him] See II, i, 199. 

173. at friend] For examples of a similar use of *at,* see Abbott, 5 143; and for 
' but * in the next line, in the sense of except, see § 120. 



ACT V, sc. i.] THE WINTERS TALE 273 

(He bad me fay fo)more then all the Scepters, 

And thofe that beare them, liuing, 180 

Leo. Oh my Brother, 
(Good Gentleman) the wrongs I haue done thee, ftirre 
Afrefh within me : and thefe thy offices 
(So rarely kind) are as Interpreters 

Of my behind-hand flacknefle. Welcome hither, 185 

As is the Spring to th'Earth. And hath he too 
ExposM this Paragon to th'fearefuU vfage 
(At lead vngentle) of the dreadfull Neptune y 
To greet a man, not worth her paines ; much leffe, 
Th'aduenture of her perfon ? 190 

Flo. Good my Lord, 
She came from Libia. 

Leo. Where the Warlike SmaluSy 
That Noble honored Lord, is feared, and lou'd ? 

Flo. Mod Royall Sir, 195 

From thence : from him,whofe Daughter 
His Teares proclaym'd his parting with her : thence 
(A profperous South-wind friendly )we haue crofsM, 
To execute the Charge my Father gaue me. 
For vifiting your Highneffe : My bed Traine 200 

I haue from your Sicilian Shores difmifs'd ; 
Who for Bohemia bend, to fignifie 
Not onely my fucceffe in Libia (Sir) 
But my arriuall, and my Wifes, in fafetie 204 

l%l. Brotheri\ Brother !'^G9t^'\-iVzx, Pope i. Libya Pop* ii. Lydia or 

Rann, Coll. Ktly. Lycia Douce. 

182. Gentleman)'\ gentleman / Mai. 195, 196. One line, Han. et seq. 

Steev. Var. Knt, Wh. 197. his parting] his, parting Han. 

188. At ieajl] At best Wh. ii. Cap. etseq. (subs.), her parting 'YMvcVay 

192. Libia] F,. Lybia F^F^, Rowe, (Nichols, ii, 226). at parting Heath. 

her, parting Ktly. 

197. proclaym'd his parting] Johnson: This is very ungrammatical and 
obscure. We may better read : * proclaim'd her parting,* etc. The prince first tells 
that the lady came from Libya ; the King, interrupting him, sajrs, from Smalus ? from 
him, says the Prince, whose tears, at parting, showed her to be his daughter. — 
Steevens : The obscurity arises from want of proper punctuation. By placing a 
comma after *his,* I think the sense is cleared. 

198. South- wind friendly] See Abbott (§ 380) for instances where adjectives 
are used instead of a participle ; here an adverb is so used. 

z8 



274 ^^^ WINTERS TALE [act v, sc. L 

Here, where we are. 205 

Leo. The bleffed Gods 
Purge all Infe6lion from our Ayre, whileft you 
Doe Clymate here : you haue a holy Father, 
A gracefull Gentleman, againft whofe perfon 
(So facred as it is) I haue done fmne, 210 

For which, the Heauens (taking angry note) 
Haue left me Iffue-leffe : and your Father's blefsM 
(As he from Heauen merits it) with you. 
Worthy his goodnefle. What might I haue been, 
Might I a Sonne and Daughter now haue look'd on, 215 

Such goodly things as you ? 

Enter a Lord. 

Lord. Moft Noble Sir, 
That which I (hall report, will beare no credit. 
Were not the proofe fo nigh, Pleafe you(great Sir) 220 

Bohemia greets you from himfelfe, by me : 
f)efires you to attach his Sonne, who ha's 
(His Dignitie, and Dutie both caft off*) 
Fled from his Father, from his Hopes, and with 
A Shepheards Daughter. 225 

Leo. Where's Bohemia ? fpeake : 

LA)rd. Here, in your Citie : I now came from him. 
I fpeake amazedly, and it becomes 
My meruaile,and my Meffage. To your Court 229 

205. we are\ we happily are Han. 220. nigh^ high Theob. ii, Warb. 
Cap. Johns. Var. '73. 

206. Tlie hleJU'ed'\ Oh ! (or And) may 223. No parenthesis, Rowe, Pope. 
the ^/«j^</ Mitford ap. Cam. 227. your\ the Var. '03, *I3, '21. 

207. whiUft'\ whiljl F^ et seq. 229. meruaile'\ marvel F^. 

208. holy'\ noble Coll. MS. Meffage. To\ Meffage, to F^. 
217. Scene iv. Pope + . message: to Rowe + . 

205. Here, where we are.] Malons : Unless both the words * here * and * where * 
were here employed as disyllables, the metre is defective. We might read — the ever- 
blessed gods ; — ^but whether there was any omission is very doubtful for the reason 
already assigned. — RiTSON {Curs. Crit, p. 60) : O by all means let them be employed 
as disyllables ; they are most useful and excellent things, and make the sweetest versi- 
fication imaginable. For instance : * He-hr, whe-Ttr we ar$. The blessed Gods.* Or 
thus, more softly : * He-r^e, ivhe-r^e we are. The blessed Gods.* 

208. Cljrmate] See IV, iv, 550. 

209. gracefuH] M. Mason : That is, full of grace and virtue. 
229. meruaile] This is, my own wonderment. 



ACT V, sc. L] THE WINTERS TALE 275 

Whiles he was haftning (in the Chafe, it feemes, 230 

Of this faire Couple) meetes he on the way 

The Father of this feeming Lady, and 

Her Brother, hauing both their Countrey quitted, 

With this young Prince. 

Flo. Camillo ha's betrayed me ; 235 

Whofe honor, and whofe honeftie till now, 
Endured all Weathers. 

Lord. Lay't fo to his charge : 
He's with the King your Father. 

1^0. Who/ Camillo'^ 240 

Lord. Camillo (Sir:) I fpake with him: who now 
Ha's thefe poore men in queftion. Neuer faw I 
Wretches fo quake : they kneele, they kifle the Earth; 
Forfweare themfelues as often as they fpeake : 
Bohemia ftops his eares,and threatens them 245 

With diuers deaths, in death. 

Perd. Oh my poore Father : 
The Heauen fets Spyes vpon vs,will not haue 
Our Contraft celebrated. 

Leo. You are marryed ? 250 

Flo. We are not (Sir) nor are we like to be : 

230. }VhiUs\ H^i/stRovfe+, Sir, Rowe ii+. Camiilo, sir; Cap. et 

241. Camillo (^iV.*)] Camillo? (Sir:) seq. 

F^. Camillo ? Sir, Rowe i. Camillo, 248. /els Spyes tpon] which sets spies 

on Pope, Han. 

242. in question] Schmidt's definition of this as a * judicial trial/ was probably 
derived from Delius, who explains it as Verhor, — a needless amplification of the ordi- 
nary meaning of * question/ which is simply conversation. Naturally the conversation 
was grave and earnest, but there is no reason to suppose it partook of the nature of a 
legal investigation. — Ed. 

248, 249. The Heauen . . . celebrated] Mrs Jameson (i, 240) : This love of 
truth, this conscientiousness, which forms so distinct a feature in the character of 
Perdita, and mingles with its picturesque delicacy a certain firmness and dignity, is 
maintained to the last. . . . During this [present] scene, Perdita does not utter a 
word. In the strait in which they are placed, she cannot deny the story which 
Florizel relates; she will not confirm it. Her silence, in spite of all the compli- 
ments and greetings of Leontes, has a peculiar and characteristic grace; and, at 
the conclusion of the scene, when they are betrayed, the truth bursts from her 
as if instinctively, and she exclaims with emotion, *The Heavens set spies on 
us,' etc. 



276 THE WINTERS TALE [act v, sc. L 

The Starres (I fee) will kiffe the Valleyes firft : 252 

The oddes for high and low^s alike. 

Leo. My Lord, 
Is this the Daughter of a King? 255 

Flo. She is, 
When once (he is my Wife. 

L^o. That once(I fee) by your good Fathers fpeed, 
Will come-on very flowly. I am forry 

(Moft forry) you haue broken from his liking, 260 

Where you were ty'd in dutie : and as forry, 
Your Choife is not fo rich in Worth, as Beautie, 
That you might well enioy her. 

Flo. Deare, looke vp : 
Though Fortune y vifible an Enemie, 265 

Should chafe vs, with my Father ; powre no iot 
Hath fhe to change our Loues. Befeech you (Sir) 
Remember, fince you ow^d no more to Time 268 

258. once\ As a quotation, Johns. Han. 

Var. '73, Dyce, Cam. Wh. ii. 266. Father; powre] father, power 

262. IVorth'] birth Warb. Han. Knt, Coll. Dyce, Wh. Cam. 

265. Fortune, vt/ible"] Fortune visible, 268. Jince] when Ktly conj. 

253. The oddes . . . alike] Capell (p. 181) : The difficulties of high and low's 
meeting, the * odds ' that lay against them for doing it, were hardly less than that of 
the ' vallejrs and stars ' meeting. [I think it is only fair to infer that in * high and 
low ' Capell refers to rank, in which case he is more correct than Douce, who finds 
in these words a ' quibble upon the false dice so called.' In this opinion of Douce, 
Malone and Steevens silently acquiesce. But I doubt that false dice were ever called 

* high and low ' ; they were termed high-/w^» and Xovr-men. Capell is right as far as 
the interpretation of * high and low ' is concerned, but I cannot extract from his note 
what I think is the full meaning of the line. — Singer paraphrases it thus : ' Fortune 
is as unfavourable to us as Prince and Princess, as when we were Shepherd and 
Shepherdess.' This paraphrase is defective, I think, inasmuch as it makes Fortune 

* unfavourable,' whereas Florizel says that the * odds ' are * alike ' ; this leads us to 
the true meaning, which is, I think, that the degree of probability, the odds, the 
balance in favour, will be the same for the high-bom and the low-bom. Fortune will 
favour Florizel no more than she favours Doricles, and the case is so hopeless that the 
stars will kiss the valleys first, and Fortune will not intervene.— Ed.] 

262. Worth] Johnson: * Worth' signifies any kind of worthiness^ and among 
others that of high descent. The king means that he is sorry the Prince's choice 
is not in other respects as worthy of him as in beauty. — Malone : Our author often 
uses * worth ' for wealth ; which may also, together with high birth, be here in 
contemplation. 

268. since] That is, when; for other examples see Abbott, § 132. 



ACT V, SC. i.] 



THE WINTERS TALE 



277 



Then I doe now: with thought of fuch Affe6Hons, 

Step forth mine Aduocate : at your requeft, 270 

My Father will graunt precious things, as Trifles^ 

Leo. Would he doe fo, I'ld beg your precious Miftris, 
Which he counts but a Trifle. 

Paul. Sir (my Liege^ 
Your eye hath too much youth in't : not a moneth 275 

'Fore your Queene dy'd, (he was more worth fuch gazes^ 
Then what you looke on now, 

Leo. I thought of her, 
Euen in thefe Lookes I made. But your Petition 
Is yet vn-anfwer'd : I will to your Father : 280 

Your Honor not o're-throwne by your defires, 
I am friend to them, and you : Vpon which Errand 
I now goe toward him : therefore follow me. 
And marke what way I make : Come good my Lord« 

Exeunt. 285 



269. Affedlions^ affections, Warb. 
275, monetK^ month F^. 
279. thefe\ those Cap. conj. 
[To Florizel. Theob. 



282. I ain\ Pm Pope+, Dyce ii, in. 
friend'\ a friend Var. '03, *I3, 
'21, Coll. Wh. i. 



272. I*ld beg] Halldvell: The present line would probably not have been 
written, had not the author had in his remembrance the revolting conclusion of the 
original novel. It is true that in the text there is merely the evidence of great kind- 
ness, yet the prose tale has probably exerted an influence in the direction of the dia- 
logue. [This may possibly be so, but mark the delicate and deeply pathetic torn 
which Shakespeare imparts to it in, * I thought of her, even in those looks I made.' 
—Ed.] 

281. not o're-throwne] Abbott (§ 377) : The participle is often used to express 
a condition where, for perspicuity, we should now mostly insert if. 



278 THE WINTERS TALE [act v. sc. iL 



Sccena Secunda. 



Enter AutolicuSj and a Gentleman. 

Aut. Befeech you (Sir) were you prefent at this Re- 
lation ? 

I. Scoena...] Scene v. Pope+. The same. Before the Palace. Cap. 

Near the Court in Sicily. Theob. 2. Autolicus] Autolichus F^F^. 

I. GiLDON (p. 336) : The narration of the Discovery in the last Act is not only 
entertaining but moving, and [Shakespeare] seems accidentally to have hit on some- 
thing like the Ancients, whose catastrophes were generally in narration. And is a 
proof that if our Poets had the genius of Shakespear, the shocking representations 
of the stage might easily and with beauty be thrown into narration, and so leave room 
for the poet to show his eloquence and imagery. — ^Johnson : It was, I suppose, only 
to spare his own labour that the poet put this whole scene into narrative, for though 
part of the transaction was already known to the audience, and therefore could not 
properly be shewn again, yet the two kings might have met upon the stage, and, after 
the examination of the old Shepherd, the young lady might have been recognised in 
sight of the spectators. — Harness : Probably this scene is given in narrative that the 
paramount interest of the play may rest, as it ought to do, with the restoration of 
Hermione. — Hartley Coleridge (ii, 150) : What was Shakespeare*s motive for 
conveying by narrative what he might have made so pathetic in representation? 
This is the more strange and provoking, inasmuch as narrative is by no means his 
forte, except when it is combined with action or passion ; and those euphuistic gen- 
tlemen talk mere epigram and antithesis, very like, I dare say, the newsmongers of 
that day, when it was as essential to be quaint as at present to be commonplace. 
I suspect Shakespeare was hurried in his latter scenes, and could compose this sort 
of dialogue with the least aid from inspiration. — Gervinus (p. 815) : The poet has 
wisely placed this recognition of Perdita behind the scenes, otherwise the play would 
have been too full of powerful scenes. . . . The mere relation of this meeting is in 
itself a rare masterpiece of prose description. — GuizoT (p. 406) : It is easy to see 
that Shakespeare was here in a hurry to conclude ; the play would have been com- 
plete had that which is here narrated been placed on the stage. Segnius irritant 
animos demissa per aureniy etc. — Delius i^Sh, Jahrbuch^ 1870, p. 251) : Shakespeare 
gives merely a description of the reconciliation of Leontes and Polixenes and of the 
recognition of Perdita, either out of regard to the scheme of the play, which is already 
long drawn out, or else to avoid weakening the effect of the final scene by having it 
preceded by one of a similar purport. For a mere narrative, prose was here all-suf- 
ficient, but for the pathetic and touching subject of this narrative there was needed a 
euphuistic prose adorned with all delicacies of style, such as the fashion of Shake- 
speare's day deemed befitting and natural in the mouths of cultivated courtiers. It 
is manifest that the Poet devoted an especial care to this portion of his drama ; the 
antitheses and parallelisms are arranged artistically, the metaphors and the style are 
harmoniously rounded. We have an amusing ofi&et to the ceremonious and artistic 



ACT V, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 279 

Gent. I. I was by at the opening of the Farthell, heard 5 

the old Shepheard deliuer the manner how he found it : 
Whereupon(after a little amazedneffe) we were all com- 
manded out of the Chamber : onely this (me thought) I 
heard the Shepheard fay, he found the Child. 

Aut. I would mod gladly know the iffue of it. 10 

Gent.i. I make a broken deliuerie of the Bufmeffe ; 
but the changes I perceiued in the King, and Camilla, -wert 
very Notes of admiration : they feemM almoft,with fla- 
ring on one another, to teare the Cafes of their Eyes. 
There was fpeech in their dumbneffe. Language in their 1 5 

very gefture : they lookM as they had heard of a World 
ranfom'd, or one deftroyed : a notable paffion of Won- 
der appeared in them : but the wifeft beholder, that knew 18 

5. FartheU'\ Fardel Y^^. 16. oj they\ as if they Rowe, Pope, 

16. very\ every Anon. ap. Cam. Han. 

prose of the earlier portion of the scene in the downright prose of the two Clowns 
with their delicious simplicity over their newly bom nobility. [Is it not allowable to 
suppose that Shakespeare was afraid of his actors ? He knew, none so well, how 
easily deep and tragic emotion may be converted by a single false expression into not 
merely comedy, but even farce. Could a spectator, even the most sympathetic, repress 
a smile at the sight of Shylock with wildly flying hair and distorted features rushing 
hither and thither uttering frenzied shrieks for his ducats, and pursued with laughter 
by all the little boys in Venice ? Even in so small a matter as whetting the knife in 
the Trial Scene of that same play, Edwin Booth said that as Shylock he was 
alwa3rs fearful lest he should overdo it, and make it comic, and in the MS stage- 
directions which he kindly wrote out for this edition it will be noticed that to the 
direction in regard to whetting the knife, he adds * — not too rapidly,' so conscious 
was he of the thin partition between tragedy and comedy. Thus here, merely let 
us vividly picture to ourselves what might be fairly termed the joyous, ebullient 
antics of Leontes, first begging pardon of Polixenes, then hugging Florizel, then 
worrying Perdita with his embraces, then wringing the old Shepherd's hand, who 
was crying vigourously and probably with superfluous noise, — and I think we shall 
be quite aware that unless all the characters were assumed by actors of commanding 
power, the scene would degenerate into farce and end amid uproarious jeers. — Ed.] 

7. after a little amazednesse] Deighton: That is, at flrst the king and 
Camillo were so amazed at the story that no notice was taken of us, but after a little 
time we were all ordered to leave the room. 

14. Cases of their Eyes] Steevens has been followed in defining * Cases ' as 
'sockets,* and in Lear^ IV, vi, 141, such appears to be the meaning; but here the 
meaning is eyelids \ it is expressly so given in Per. Ill, ii, 99: * Behold, Her eyelids, 
the cases to those heavenly jewels,* etc. Schmidt, to be right beyond cavil, gives, as 
the meaning here, both * eyelids and sockets,* thereby imparting to the expression great 
vigour, to say the least. — Ed. 



s 



280 THE WINTERS TALE [act v. sc. ii. 

no more but feeing, could not fay, if th'importance were 

loy, or Sorrow ; but in the extremitie of the one, it muft 20 

needs be. Enter another Gentleman. 

Here comes a Gentleman , that happily knowes more : 

The Newes, Rogero. 

Gent.2^ Nothing but Bon-fires:the Oracle is fulfiU'd: 
the Kings Daughter is found : fuch a deale of wonder is 25 

broken out within this houre, that Ballad-makers cannot 
be able to exprefle it. Enter another Gentleman. 

Here comes the Lady Pauline^ s Steward, hee can deliuer 
you more. How goes it now (Sir.) This Newes (which 
is call'd true) is fo like an old Tale, that the veritie of it is 30 

in ftrong fufpition : Ha's the King found his Heire f 

Gent. I. Moft true, if euer Truth were pregnant by 
Circumftance : That which you heare , you'le fweare 
you fee, there is such vnitie in the proofes. The Mantle 
of Queene Hermiones : her lewell about the Neck of it : 35 

the Letters oi Antigonus found with it, which they know 
to be his Charafler : the Maieftie of the Creature, in re- 
femblance of the Mother : the Affeflion of Nobleneffe, 38 

21. Enter...] Enter Kogero. Sta. 33. Circumjiance] circumstances Cap. 

22. happily] haply Coll. Sing. Ktly, (Corrected in Errata.) 

Cam. Wh. ii. 35. Hermiones] /^<»rwi<wf^*j Cap. Mai. 

27. Enter anotlier...] Enter a third... "Wh. Sta. Dyce ii, iii, Cam. Hermione 

Cap. Enter Paulina's Steward. Sta. Rowe et cet. 

29. 57>.] Sir? FjF^. 

19. importance] Malonk: That is, import, — Collier (ed. ii) : But the word is 
rather to be taken in its etymological sense, from the Fr. emporter. Spenser uses 

* important ' in a kindred manner : * He fiercely at him flew. And with important out- 
rage him assailed.' The meaning of the text seems to be, that a mere beholder could 
not have said whether they were carried away by joy or by sorrow. — R. G. White 
(ed. i) : The meaning seems plainly to be, * if their passion were of joyful or sorrowful 
import.* [Halliwell quotes only Collier, Dyce quotes only R. G. White, whose 
definition is really the same as Mai one's.] 

26. Ballad-makers] See IV, iv, 303. 

32, 33. Truth . . . Circumstance] Delius explains * pregnant ' by clear^ per- 
fectly evident y and Schmidt, who generally follows Delius, gives as its equivalent: 

* probable in the highest degree^ clear^ evident,^ I incline to think that the whole phrase 
means * if ever truth were stored full by circumstance.' Wherever Shakespeare uses 
the word * pregnant * it will be generally found to involve the idea oifulness^ whether 
it be of information, of proof, of fawning, etc. — Ed. 

38. the Affection] Malone : * Affection ' here perhaps means disposition or 
quality. The word seems to be used nearly in the same sense in the following 



ACT V, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 28 1 

which Nature ftiewes aboue her Breeding, and many o- 
ther Euidences, proclayme her, with all certaintie, to be 40 

the Kings Daughter. Did you fee the meeting of the 
two Kings ? 

GenL2. No. 

Gent.7^. Then haue you loft a Sight which was to bee 
feene, cannot bee fpoken of. There might you haue be- 45 

held one loy crowne another, fo and in fuch manner, that 
it feemM Sorrow wept to take leaue of them : for their 
loy waded in teares. There was carting vp of Eyes, hol- 
ding vp of Hands, with Countenance of fuch diftraftion, 
that they were to be knowne by Garment, not by Fauor. 50 

Our King being ready to leape out of himfelfe, for ioy of 
his found Daughter ; as if that loy were now become a 
Lofle, cryes. Oh, thy Mother, thy Mother : then askes 
Bohemia forgiueneffe, then embraces his Sonne-in-Law: 
then againe worryes he his Daughter, with clipping her. 55 

Now he thanks the old Shepheard (which rtands by, like 
a Weather-bitten Conduit, of many Kings Reignes.) I 57 

56. whi€h'\ who Rowe + , Var. '73. 57. Weather-biUen\ weather-beaten 

FjF^, Rowe-f , Cap. Coll. ii (MS). 

title : * The first set of Italian Madrigalls Englished, not to the sense of the Original 
Ditty, but to the Affection of the Noate,' etc., by Thomas Watson, 1590. [* Affection' 
is certainly not used here as it is in I, ii, 167 : * Affection, thy intention stabs the 
center.' In the present Euphuistic language 'the affection of nobleness' means 
simply * the noble affection ' or < the noble quality which Nature reveals above her 
peasants' breeding.' — Ed.] 

46. 80 and in such manner] Ritson : Our author seems to have picked up this 
little piece of tautology in his clerkship. It is the technical language of con- 
veyancers. 

49. Countenance] Deighton : If < countenance ' is to be retained, it may either 
be taken as in reality plural, there being other examples in Shakespeare of nouns in 
'Ce having such forms for their plural ; or as the abstract for the concrete. 

50. Fauor] That is, features^ countenance, 

55. clipping her] That is, embracing her. 

56. which stands by] Although Abbott (§ 265) gives examples of * which ' used 
for who^ yet it is possible that ' which ' is here used proleptically in reference to the 
conduit, in which simile, by the way, we see the ' gentlemanlike tears ' whereof the 
Clown afterward boasted. — Ed. 

57. Weather-bitten] Steevens: Hamlet says, *The air bites shrewdly'; and 
the Duke in As You Like It : * when it bites and blows.* * Weather-bitten ' may, 
therefore, mean corroded by the weather. — Ritson : Antony Munday, in the Preface 
to Gerileon of England ^^<t second part, etc. 1592, has: * winter-bitten epitaph.' — 



282 THE WINTERS TALE [act v. sc. ii. 

neuer heard of fuch another Encounter;which lames Re- 58 

port to follow it, and vndo's defcription to doe it. 

Gent,2. What, 'pray you, became of Antigonus , that 60 

carryed hence the Child ? 

Gent, I. Like an old Tale ftill, which will haue matter 
to rehearfe, though Credit be afleepe, and not an eare o- 
pen ; he was torne to pieces with a Beare : This auouches 
the Shepheards Sonne; who ha's not onely his Innocence 65 

(which feemes much)to iuftifie him, but a Hand-kerchief 
and Rings of his, that Paulina knowes. 

Gent, I. What became of his Barke, and his Fol- 
lowers ? 

Gent. 3. Wrackt the fame inftant of their Mafters 70 

death, and in the view of the Shepheard : fo that all the 
Inftruments which ayded to expofe the Child, were euen 
then loft, when it was found. But oh the Noble Combat, 
that 'twixt loy and Sorrow was fought in Paulina, Shee 
had one Eye declinM for the loffe of her Husband, ano- 75 

ther eleuated, that the Oracle was fulfillM: Shee lifted the 
Princeffe from the Earth, and fo locks her in embracing, 
as if ftiee would pin her to her heart, that fliee might no 
more be in danger of loofing. 79 

59. to doe iV] to draw it Han. to do 70. Wrackt"] Wreckt Theob. ii. 

it justice Sing, conj., Ktly. to show it Wrecked Han. 

Coll. ii, iii (MS). 77. locks] locked Han. 

62. matter] matters F^, Rowe + , Var. 79. looftng] lo/tng Ff. losing her 

Rann. Coll. ii (MS), Ktly, Huds. 

64. with a] of a Cap. conj. 

Henley : Conduits, representing a human figure, were heretofore not uncommon. 
See Romeo and Juliet : * How now ? a conduit, girl ? what still in tears ?* etc. 

58, 59. lames Report to fonow it] Malone : Cf. Temp. IV, i, 10 : * She will 
outstrip all praise And make it halt behind her.* Again in the 103d Sonnet : a * face 
That overgoes my blunt invention quite.' 

59. to doe it] Collier (ed. ii) : The old compositor blundered between * do,' 
which he printed, and show which must have stood in the MS under his eyes ; the 
word * undoes,' just before, probably added to his confusion, and the old Corrector of 
F, erased * do ' and placed show on his margin ; the last is, in all probability right. — 
Deighton : The word < do ' is here used in antithesis to ' undoes it ' in another sense. 

64. with a Beare] See V, i, 143. 

75, 76. one Eye declin'd . . . another eleuated] Cf. Ham. I, ii, 11 : 'With one 
auspicious and one dropping eye.' 

79. loosing] Collier (ed. ii, reading * losing her ' in his text) : Her is from the 



ACT V. sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 283 

Genu I. The Dignitie of this Aft was worth the au- 80 

dience of Kings and Princes ,for by fuch was it afted. 

Gent. 3. One of the prettyeft touches of all, and that 
which angl'd for mine Eyes (caught the Water, though 
not the Filh) was, when at the Relation of the Queenes 
death (with the manner how (he came to't, brauely con- 85 

fefs'd, and lamented by the King) how attentiueneffe 
wounded his Daughter, till (from one figne of dolour to 
another) (hee did(with an Alas) I would faine fay, bleed 
Teares ; for I am fure, my heart wept blood. Who was 
moft Marble, there changed colour : fome fwownded,all 90 

83. caughf^ and caught Ktly. 90. Marble, there'\ F„ Theob. Warb. 

83, 84. (caught „,FiJh)'\ Om. Warb. Johns. Var. '73. Marble there F^, Pope, 

Han. Han. Knt, Coll. Dyce, Wh. Sta. Ktly, 

85. /^7] Ff, Cap. Coll. Dyce, Sta. Cam. Rife, marble there, F^, Rowe et 

Huds. Rife, Wb. ii. to it Rowe et cet. cet. 

85, 86. ^raM^/K*»<Ariit^)] In parenthe- fumtmded'] F^. /wounded Y^^, 

sis, Cap. et seq. (generally). Rowe. swooned Pope. 

85. brauely] heavily Coll. ii, iii (MS). 

MS, and Is absolutely necessary to the completion of the sentence. [Collier aban- 
doned her in his Third Edition, having discovered, it is to be presumed, that < she ' in 
this clause does not refer to Paulina, but to Perdita. We have already had a present 
for a past participle in IV, iv, 599, < your discontenting father,' f. e, your discontented 
father. So here, * losing * is equivalent to being lost. — Ed.] 

83, 84. caught the Water, though not the Fish] Warburton : I dare pro- 
nounce these words a most stupid interpolation of some player, that angled for a witti- 
cism; and therefore have struck them out of the text. — Capell (p. 181): A poor 
conceit certainly ; but not therefore an < interpolation of players.' But, without seek- 
ing to prove its genuineness by example (for which we need go no further than lines 
47 and 48 of this scene), what conception can readers possibly have of the expres- 
sions before them : * angl'd for mine eyes ' when these words are dismissed ? [If it 
were not for the stilted language throughout of all these courtiers, Warburton's te- 
merity might be heartily commended. — Ed.] 

84-86. when at the Relation . . . how attentiuenesse] Abbott (§415) : An 
instance of the construction changed by change of thought. The narrator first intends 
to narrate the point of time, then diverges into the manner, of the action. 

85. brauely confess'd] Collier (ed. ii) : May we not be sure that the word 
* bravely * was a misprint, and that the old MS Corrector was well warranted when 
he changed * bravely * to heavily f The two words were easily confounded. 

90. most Marble] Steevens : That is, most petrified with wonder. — M. Mason 
(p. 138) : It means those who had the hardest hearts. It would not be extraordinary 
that those persons should change colour who were petrified with wonder, though it 
was, that hardened hearts should be moved by a scene of tenderness. — Malone: So 
in Hen, VHI: II, iii, ii : * Hearts of most hard temper Melt and lament for her.' — 
Steevens : Mason and Malone may be right Cf. Ant, &* Cleop, V, ii, 240 : < now 



284 ^^^ WINTERS TALE [act v, sc. ii. 

forrowed : if all the World could haue feen't, the Woe 91 

had beene vniuerfall. 

GenL\. Are they returned to the Court? 

GenL^. No : The Princeffe hearing of her Mothers 
Statue (which is in the keeping of Paulina) a Peece many 95 

yeeres in doing, and now newly performM, by that rare 
Italian Mafter, lulio Romano ^ who (had he himfelfe Eter- 97 

97. he'\ Om. Rowe i. 

from head to foot I am marble-constant/ [The Text. Notes show that the comma 
after * Marble ' is shifted in the Fourth Folio. Perhaps those editors are the wisest 
who evade the difficulty by omitting the comma altogether. — Ed.] 

92. vniuersaU] Collier (ed. ii) : It may deserve a note that the whole of this 
description, from < Did you see the meeting of the two kings' [line 4i]» is struck out 
by the MS, as if not formerly acted. 

96, 97. newly perform'd . . . lulio Romano] Theobald: Julio Romano 
was bom in 1492, and died in 1546. Fine and generous as this tribute of praise 
must be owned, yet it was a strange absurdity, sure, to thrust it into a Tale, the action 
of which is supposed within the period of Heathenism, and whilst the oracles of 
Apollo were consulted. This, however, was a known and wilful anachronism. — 
Warbueton: This passage is quite unworthy Shakespeare, i. He makes his 
speaker say, that was Julio Romano the God of Nature, he would outdo Nature. 
For that is the plain meaning of the words : ' had he himself eternity, and could put 
breath into his work, he would beguile Nature of her custom.' 2ndly, He makes of 
this famous Painter, a Statuary ; but, what is worst of all, a painter of statues, — 
Heath (p. 220) : The plain meaning is no other than this : Were Julio Romano as 
immortal as Nature, and could, like her, put breath into his works, he would be so 
generally preferred as to beguile her of her custom. ... I suppose the painting a 
statue executed under his own direction, on a particular occasion, and for a particular 
purpose, could be no disparagement to him. — Capell (p. 182) : It is not said by the 
Poet that this painter was the supposed statue's carver, but its colourer, for which his 
word is * perform'd ' ; it had been ' many years in doing ' (carving) and was * now 
newly performed ' (finished by having colouring given it) by the hand of * that rare 
master ;' the supposition of colouring being in this case necessary ; And for the com- 
pliment, — that has no fault in it but excess, a thing expected in compliment; nature 
and nature's God are distinct, not confounded as [Warburton] says ; the sense of 
* had he eternity * being only — had he a portion of the Divinity, such portion as 
should enable him to put breath into his work ; and the thing asserted, — that, if he 
had such, he * would beguile of her custom * nature who is God's agent. — ^Johnson : 
By * eternity ' Shakespeare means only immortality, or that part of eternity which is 
to come ; so we talk of eternal renown, and eternal infamy. Immortality may sub- 
sist without divinity ; and therefore the meaning only is, that if Julio could alwajrs 
continue his labours, he would mimic nature. — Tollet calls attention to the following 
passage in Jonson's Magnetic Lady, V, v : ♦ Dr. Rut. I'll have her statue cut now in 
white marble. Sir Moth. And have it painted in most orient colours. Dr. Rut. 
That's right! all city statues must be painted,' etc. Whereon Gifford has this 
note : This practice sir Henry Wotton calls an ' English Barbarism.' If sir Henry 



ACT V, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 285 

[969 97- newly perfonn'd, by that rare Italian Master, lulio Romano] 
were only known by this expression, no great injustice would be done by concluding 
that he had read to as little purpose as he had travelled. The custom of painting 
and gilding statues (however barbarous it may be) is of all ages and countries. — 
Green (p. 1 1 1 ) : Whether any of Julio Romano's works were in England during the 
reign of Elizabeth we cannot affirm positively ; but as there were ' sixteen by Julio 
Romano ' in the fine collection at \Vhiteball, made, or, rather, increased by Charles I., 
of which Henry VIII. had formed the nucleus, it is very probable there were in 
England some by that master as early as the writing of the Winter's TaU, or even 
before. It may therefore be reasonably conjectured that in the statue of Hermione 
Shakespeare has accurately described some figure which he had seen in one of Julio 
Romano's paintings. — Elze (p. 284) : To the question why Shakespeare should have 
selected Julio Romano before all others, some critics may be inclined to answer that 
he picked up the name at random, if we may use the expression. But such an answer 
would be quite unsatisfactory in the face of the fact that the poet most correctly esti- 
mates Romano's merits as an artist, and praises him not only in eloquent, but in the 
most appropriate words. . . . No art-critic or art-historian can find anything to object 
to in his judgement of Romano. Kugler {JCunstgeschichte^ 1S42, p. 728) says that 
Romano's peculiar tendency induced him ' to unfold in rapid strokes, a bold, fresh, 
natural life, unconcerned about the deeper life of the soul.' . . . Burckhardt's judge- 
ment agrees entirely with Kugler's. . . . The question here forces itself upon us as 
to the source whence Shakespeare may have drawn his knowledge. [Fynes Moryson, 
Tom Coryat, etc.], even apart from chronolc^ical impossibility, could not furnish him 
with materials for his judgement of Romano ; they do not treat of art, much less of 
art-criticism. Manuals of the history of art, which he might have consulted, did not 
exist, with the exception of one presently to be mentioned, nor is it likely that there 
existed in London any of Romano's paintings, or copies of them, accessible to Shake- 
speare. Whence then did he obtain his knowledge, if not by having seen Romano's 
paintings himself? The Palazzo del T in Mantua, built by Romano, and filled with 
his paintings and drawings, was one of the wonders of the age. We cannot be sur- 
prised if it was here * that Shakespeare became enchanted by Romano's works in all 
their richness and beauty, and that he here learned to form a correct judgement of 
the peculiar nature of his art. The chief and apparently the most serious objection 
to this hypothesis, is very obvious — Shakespeare makes Romano a sculptor I Does 
not this prove complete ignorance, and could he have committed such an unpardon- 
able mistake if he himself had been at Mantua ? . . . What, however, will be said if 
just this seeming error should most unexpectedly serve to confirm our hypothesis ? 
In Vasari, who, according to his own account, visited Romano at Mantua, we find the 
following two Latin epitaphs of the great painter : ' Romanus moriens secum tres 
Julius arteis Abstulit : baud mirum quatuor unus erat.' The second inscription, which 
in Vasari precedes this distich, runs as follows : ' Videbat Jupiter corpora sculpta 
pictaque Spirare, aedes mortalium aequarier coelo Julii virtute Romani : tunc iratus 
Concilio divorum omnium vocato Ilium aetereis sustulit : quod pati nequiret Vinci aut 
aequari ab homine terrigena.' Tres artes ! Corpora sculpta ! It is true that Vasari 
makes no further mention of Romano's sculptures, neither do his German translators, 
nor, as far as we know, any recent art-historian, say a word about them. But Shake- 

* Be it remembered that Elze's admirable Essay is written to prove that Shake- 
speare must have travelled in Italy. — Ed. 



286 THE WINTERS TALE [act v. sc. ii. 

nitie, and could put Breath into his Worke) would be- 98 

guile Nature of her Cuftome, fo perfeflly he is her Ape: 

He fo neere to Hertnioney hath done Hermionej that they 100 

fay one would fpeake to her, and (land in hope of anfwer. 

Thither (with all greedineffe of afieftion )are they gone, 

and there they intend to Sup. 

Gent. 2. I thought (he had fome great matter there in 
hand, for (hee hath priuately, twice or thrice a day, euer 105 
fmce the death oi Hermione ^ vifited that remoued Houfe. 
Shall wee thither, and with our companie peece the Re- 
ioycing ? 108 

98. put Breath\ F,. btU breath F^. loi. to her\ ro her F^. 
but breathe F^. 

speare is nevertheless right; he has made no blunder, he has not abused poetic 
license by introducing Romano as a sculptor. And more than this, his praise of 
Romano wonderfully agrees with the second epitaph, in which truth to nature and 
to life is likewise praised as being Julio's chief excellence (< if he could put breath into 
his work/ — videbat Jupiter corpora spirare). Is this chance ? Whether the statement 
of the two inscriptions, that Julio Romano was a sculptor as well as a painter and 
architect, be in accordance with historical facts or not, does not matter in the present 
case. Shakespeare had the less reason to doubt it, as the union of the three arts in 
one and the same hand was by no means without illustrious examples among Italian 
artists. In either case we here stand before the dilemma : either Shakespeare must 
have studied Vasari, or he had been in Mantua and had there seen Romano's works 
and read his epitaphs. A third supposition— oral communication — will hardly serve 
the purpose. . . . Vasari's work was first published in 1550, . . . but it was not trans- 
lated into English till three hundred years afterward (1850). Shakespeare must 
therefore have been a perfect master both of the Italian and Latin languages, to have 
made use of the work aiid the epitaphs. Vasari, it is true, repeatedly praises the 
truth to nature by which Julio's works are distinguished, . . . but was Vasari a book 
of so great an attraction for Shakespeare that he should have perused it without occa- 
sion ? [In the Shakespeare Jahrbuchy 1 894, p. 249, Sarrazin attempts to prove that 
the paintings described in the Rape of Lucrece were the frescoes, in Mantua, by Julio 
Romano, of the Trojan War, etc.] 

99. of her Custome] Johnson : That is, of her trade ^ — would draw her cus- 
tomers from her. 

104-106. I thought . . . remoued House] Hudson (p. 27) : Nothing could 
better suggest the history of that quiet, placid intercourse, with its long record of 
patient, self-rewarding service ; a fellowship in which little needed to be said, for 
each knew what was in the other's mind by a better language than words. It 
is such an idea of friendship as it does the heart good to rest upon. . . . What 
a powerful charm of love and loyalty must have been cast upon Paulina's impul- 
sive tongue, that she should keep so reticent of her dear cause through all that 
time ! 



ACT V, SC. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 287 

Gent.i. Who would be thence, that ha's the benefit 
of Acceffe ? euery winke of an Eye, fome new Grace 1 10 
will be borne : our Abfence makes vs vnthriftie to our 
Knowledge. Let's along. Exit. 

AuL Now (had I not the dafti of my former life in 
me) would Preferment drop on my head. I brought the 
old man and his Sonne aboord the Prince ; told him, I 115 
heard them talke of a Farthell,and I know not what : but 
he at that time ouer-fond of the Shepheards Daughter(fo 
he then tooke her to be)who began to be much Sea-fick, 
and himfelfe little better, extremitie of Weather conti- 
nuing, this Myfterie remained vndifcouer'd. But 'tis all 120 
one to me : for had I beene the finder-out of this Secret, 
it would not haue rellifliM among my other difcredits. 

Enter Shepheard and Clowne. 
Here come thofe I haue done good to againfl my will, 
and alreadie appearing in the bloffomes of their For- 125 
tune. 

Shep. Come Boy, I am pad moe Children : but thy 
Sonnes and Daughters will be all Gentlemen borne. 

Clow. You are well met (Sir.) you deny'd to fight 
with mee this other day , becaufe I was no Gentleman 130 

112. Exit] Exeunt. Rowe. Coll. ii (MS). Clown, richly dressed. 

113. had I not] had not I Rowe ii, Dyce ii. 

Pope, Theob. i, Han. 127. moe\ Cam. Wh. ii. more Ff ct 

115. the] the the Y^, cet. 

119. extremitie'] and extremity KAj, 129-135. As mnemonic, Warb. 

123. Scene vi. Pope+ . 130. this other] the other Han. 
Qowne] Clown, in new apparel. 

109-112. Who would be . . . along] Walker (Crit, i, 13) divides this speech 
into four lines : * Who would be thence, that has the benefit | Of access ? every 
winking of an eye | Some new grace will be bom; oiu: absence makes us | Un- 
thrifty to our knowledge ; Let's along.' It is incomprehensible why Walker should 
have wished to turn into verse these four lines in the middle of a scene wholly in 
prose. There might be some justification had he succeeded in the attempt. The 
speech is as genuine prose as ever was written, and Walker's division into lines does 
not change it. — Ed. 

122. not haue rellish'd] That is, would not have been relished by the kings and 
Florizel. 

127. moe] See I, ii, 10. 

128. Gentlemen borne] Douce (i, 363) : Thus in The Booke of Honor and 
Armest 1590: ' In saying a gentleman borne, we meane he must be descended from 
three degrees of gentry, both on the mother's and father's side.' 



288 THE WINTERS TALE [act v, sa u. 

borne. See you thefe Clothes ? fay you fee them not, 131 
and thinke me ftill no Gentleman borne : You were bed 
fay thefe Robes are not Gentlemen borne. Giue me the 
Lye : doe : and try whether I am not now a Gentleman 
borne. 135 

Ant. I know you are now(Sir)a Gentleman borne. 

Clow. I, and haue been fo any time thefe foure houres. 

Shep. And fo haue I, Boy. 

Clow. So you haue : but I was a Gentleman borne be- 
fore my Father : for the Kings Sonne tocke me by the 140 
hand, and calPd mee Brother : and then the two Kings 
callM my Father Brother : and then the Prince (vay Bro- 
ther)and the Princeffe(my Sifter)call'd my Father, Father; 
and fo wee wept : and there was the firft Gentleman-like 
teares that euer we ftied. 145 

Shep. We may Hue (Sonne) to fhed many more. 

Clow. I : or elfe 'twere hard luck, being in fo prepofte- 
rous eftate as we are« 

Aut. I humbly befeech you (Sir) to pardon me all the 
faults I haue committed to your Worihip , and to giue 1 50 
me your good report to the Prince my Mafter. 

Shep. Trethee Sonne doe : for we muft be gentle, now 
we are Gentlemen. 

Clow. Thou wilt amend thy life ? 

Aut. I, and it like your good Worfhip. 155 

Clow. Giue me thy hand: I will fweare to the Prince, 
thou art as honeft a true Fellow as any is in Bohemia. 

Shep. You may fay it, but not fweare it. 

Clow. Not fweare it, now I am a Gentleman ? Let 
Boores and Francklins fay it. He fweare it. 160 

131. fay\ say^ Theob. 147. /.•] Ay, Rowe et seq. 

144. thgrewas] these were Rann. conj. 155. andit'\ an it Theob. ii et seq. 
144, 145. As mnemonic, Warb. 160. Boores] Bores F^. 

132. You were best] For this ungrammatical remnant of ancient usage, see 
Abbott, §§ 230 and 352. 

144, 145. there was . . . teares] Abbott (§ 335) gives this as an example of the 
' inflection in -s preceding a plural subject ' ; of course it is a legitimate example, but 
be it remembered that it is the Clown who is speaking. 

147. preposterous] Walker {Crit. iii, 116): ^«AJt prosperous. 

160. Boores] Halliwell : * It was my chance to meete two clownes, commonly 



ACT V, sc. ii.] THE WINTERS TALE 289 

Shep. How if it be falfe (Sonne/) 161 

Clow. If it be ne're fo falfe, a true Gentleman may 
fweare it, in the behalfe of his Friend : And He fweare to 
the Prince, thou art a tall Fellow of thy hands, and that 164 

162. n^re\ mar Johns, 

called boarest who because thej went in ragged cloatbes, strooke no small terrour into 
mee.' — Coryat's Crudities^ 161 1. *In our English tongue, the name bore or boore 
doth truely explaine their swinish condition, for most of them are as full of humanity 
as a bacon-hog, or a bore, and their wives are as courteous and cleanly as sowes. For 
the most part of the men they are clad in thin buckerom, unlined, bare legged and 
footed, neyther band nor scarce shirt, no woollen in the world about them, and thus 
will they run through all weathers for money by the waggon's side, and though no 
better apparelled, yet all of them have houses, land, or manuall meanes to live by.' — 
Taylor's Warkesy 1630. 

160. Francklins] Johnson: A * Franklin' is a freeholder, or yeoman, a man 
above a villain, but not a gentleman. [I cannot believe that either time or space 
is ill-bestowed in reprinting here the graphic picture which Overbury gives (ed. 1627, 
sig. O4) of ' A Franklin ' : < His outside is an ancient Yeoman of England, though 
his inside may giue armes (with the best Gentleman) and ne're see the Herauld. 
There is no truer seruant in the house then himselfe. Though he be Master he sayes 
not to his seruants, goe to fieM, but let vs goe ; and with his owne eye, doth both 
fatten his flocke, and set forward all manner of husbandrie. Hee is taught by nature 
to bee contented with little ; his owne fold yeeld him both food and rayment : hee is 
pleased with any nourishment God sends, whilest curious gluttonie ransackes, as it 
were, Noah's Arke for food, onely to feed the riot of one meale. Hee is nere knowne 
to goe to Law ; vnderstanding, to bee Law-bound among men, is like to bee hide- 
bound among his beasts ; they thriue not vnder it ; and that such men sleepe as vn- 
quietly, as if their pillowes were stuft with Lawyers pen-kniues. When he builds, no 
poore Tenants cottage hinders his prospect: they are indeed his Almes-houses, 
though there be painted on them no such superscription. He neuer sits vp late, but 
when he hunts the Badger, the vowed foe of his Lambes : nor vses hee any cruelty, 
but when he hunts the Hare, nor subtilty but when he setteth snares for the Suite, 
or pitfals for the Blacke-bird ; nor oppression, but when in the moneth of luly, he 
goes to the next Riuer, and sheares his sheepe. He allowes of honest pastime, and 
thinkes not the bones of the dead anything bruised, or the worse for it, though the 
countrey Lasses dance in the durch-yard after Euen-song. Rocke-Monday, and 
the Wake in Summer, shrouings, the wakeful! ketches on Christmas Eue, the Hoky, 
or Seed-cake, these he yeerely keepes, yet holds them no reliques of Popery. He is 
not so inquisitiue after newes deriued from the priuie closet, when the finding an eiery 
of Hawkes in his owne ground, or the foaling of a Colt come of a good straine, are 
tydings more pleasant, more profitable. Hee is Lord paramount within himselfe, 
though hee hold by neuer so meane a Tenure; and dyes the more contentedly 
(though he leaue his heire young) in regard he leaues him not liable to a couetous 
Guardian. Lastly, to end him ; hee cares not when his end comes, he needs not 
feare his Audit, for his Quietus is in heauen.' — Ed.] 

164. a tall Fellow of thy hands] In a note on Every Man in his Humour^ IV, 

19 



290 THE WINTERS TALE [act v, sc. in. 

thou wilt not be drunke : but I know thou art no tall Fel- 165 
low of thy hands, and that thou wilt be drunke : but He 
fweare it, and I would thou would'ft be a tall Fellow of 
thy hands. 

Aut. I will proue fo (Sir) to my power. 

Clow. I, by any meanes proue a tall Fellow: if I do not 170 
wonder, how thou dar'ft venture to be drunke, not being 
a tall Fellow, truft me not. Harke, the Kings and the Prin- 
ces (our Kindred) are going to fee the Queenes Pifture. 
Come, follow vs: wee'le be thy good Maflers. Exeunt. 174 



Sccena Tertia. 



Enter Leontes^ Polixenes yFlorizelly PerditUy CamillOj 
Paulina: Hermione {like a Statue:) Lords y &c. 

Leo. O graue and good Paulina^'Cci^ great comfort 
That I haue had of thee ? 5 

Paul. What (Soueraigne Sir) 
I did not well, I meant well : all my Seruices 
You haue pay'd home. But that you haue vouchfaf M 
(With your Crown'd Brother, and thefe your contrafted 9 

172. not^ not. [Trumpets] Coll. ii. End, aNich; a Curtain before it. Cap. 

not. [Trumpets within] Dyce ii. 2. Florizell,] Plorizell, F,. 

174. Majlers\ MaflerYiyV^o^t, 3. Hermione (like a Statue:)] Om. 

I. Scene vii. Pope + . Rowe et seq. 

Paulina's House. Pope. The same. 6. Soueraigne] Soveragine F^. 
A Chapel in Paulina's House : at upper 

V, p. 124, GiFFORD remarks: 'There is scarcely a writer of Jonson's age who does 
not frequently use " tall " in the sense of bold or courageous.* For the phrase * Fel- 
low of thy hands,* of which Halliwell gives more than a folio page of quotations 
containing it, I think Cotgrave's definition of Homme d la main (s. v. main) is ample ; 
it is: 'A man of execution or valour; a man of his hands.* 

174. good Masters] Whalley: It was the fashion for an inferior, or suitor, to 
beg of the great man, after his humble commendations, that he would be good master 
to him. Many letters written at this period run in this style. Thus Fisher, Bishop 
of Rochester, when in prison, in a letter to Cromwell to relieve his want of clothing : 
* Furthermore, I beseeche you to be gode master unto one in my necessities, for I have 
neither shirt, nor sute, nor yet other clothes, that are necessary for me to wear.* 

9. With your . . . your contracted] Staunton : This verse reads so uncouthly 
that we suspect the second ' your * to be an interpolation of the compositor. 



ACT V. sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 29 1 

Heires of your Kingdomes) my poore Houfe to vifit ; 10 

It is a furplus of your Grace, which neuer 
My life may laft to anfwere. 

Leo. O Paulina^ 
We honor you with trouble : but we came 
To fee the Statue of our Queene, Your Gallerie 15 

Haue we pafs'd through, not without much content 
In many fmgularities ; but we faw not 
That which my Daughter came to looke vpon, 
The Statue of her Mother. 

Patil. As fhe Hu'd peereleffe , 20 

So her dead likeneffe I doe well beleeue 
Excells what euer yet you lookM vpon, 
Or hand of Man hath done : therefore I keepe it 
Louely, apart. But here it is : prepare 

To fee the Life as liuely mocked, as euer 25 

Still Sleepe mockM Death: behold, and fay 'tis well. 

22. you\ you've Anon. ap. Cam. 26. [Paulina draws a Curtain, and 

24. Louely'\ Lovely Ff. Lonely Han. discovers Hermione standing like a 
Cap. et seq. Statue. Rowe, et seq. (subs.). 

14. We honor you with trouble] Cf. Macb, I, vi, 12-14: Herein I teach you 
How you shall bid God 'ild you for your pains, And thank us for your trouble.' 

24. Louely] Warburton : That is, charily ; with more than ordinary regard and 
tenderness. The Oxford editor [f. e. Hanmer] reads Lonely, As if it could be 
apart without being alone! — ^Johnson : I am yet inclined to lonely ^ which in the 
old angular writing cannot be distinguished finom lovely. To say, that * I keep it 
alone, separate from the rest,' is a pleonasm which scarcely any nicety declines. — 
Malone : In jRich, III. we find this very error : * Advantaging their loue with inter- 
est Of ten times double.* [IV, iv, 323.] Here we have * loue ' instead of lone^ the old 
spelling of loan. — CAMBRIDGE Editors : Halliwell says that < Lonely ' is the reading 
of the First Folio. Capell's copy has ' Louely,' and the same is found in Dr Ferrers' 
copy, and in another copy in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. [It is 
* Louely ' in Vemer and Hood's Reprint, 1807, in Booth's Reprint, in Staunton's 
Photolithograph, and in the First Folio in the Library of the present Ed.] 

26. Collier (ed. ii) : The MS adds these important words to the stage-direction. 
Music playing. — A pause. Such was the mode in his time. [This is not clearly 
expressed. Collier means, I think, that the important words : A pause are added to 
the stage-direction : Music playing. It cannot be that all four words were added to 
the ' stage-direction ' ; there is no stage-direction in the Second Folio. His own stage- 
direction here is virtually Rowe's, except that in his ed. ii he says undraws instead of 
draws as in his ed. iii, and in Rowe.] — Lady Martin (p. 385) : It was necessary 
that Paulina should lay emphasis on the colouring of the statue, as the living Her- 
mione, however skillfully arrayed, must of necessity be very different from an ordi- 



292 THE WINTERS TALE [act v. sc. iu. 

I like your filence,it the more fhewes-off 27 

Your wonder: but yet fpeake, first you (my Liege) 
Comes it not fomething neere ? 

Leo. Her naturall Pofture. 30 

Chide me (deare Stone) that I may fay indeed 
Thou art Hermione ; or rather, thou art (he, 
In thy not chiding : for (he was as tender 
As Infancie^and Grace. But yet {Paulina) 34 

27. Jhewe5-off'\ Om. hyphen, Ff. 

nary statue. My dress in acting this scene was arranged to carry out this eflfect. It 
was composed of soft white cashmere, the draperies and edges bordered with the 
royal purple enriched with a tracery in gold, and thus harmonising with the colouring 
of the lips, eyes, hair, etc., of the statue. ... At the back of the stage, when I acted in 
this play, was a dais which was led up to by a flight of six or eight steps, covered with 
rich cloth of the same material and crimson colour as the closed ciutain. The cur- 
tains when gradually opened by Paulina disclosed, at a little distance behind them, 
the statue of Hermione, with a pedestal of marble by her side. Here, let me say, 
that I never approached this scene without much inward trepidation. You may 
imagine how difficult it must be to stand in one position, with a full light thrown 
upon you, without moving an eyelid for so long a time. I never thought to have the 
time measured, but I should say it must be more than ten minutes, — it seemed like 
ten times ten. I prepared myself by picturing what Hermione's feelings would be 
when she heard Leontes' voice, silent to her for so many years, and listened to the 
remorseful tender words addressed to what he believed to be her sculptured sem- 
blance. Her heart hitherto has been full only of her lost children. She has thought 
every other feeling dead, but she finds herself forgetting all but the tones of the 
voice, once so loved, now broken with the accents of repentance and woe-stricken 
desolation. To her own surprise her heart, so long empty, loveless, and cold, begins 
to throb again, as she listens to the outpourings of a devotion she had believed to be 
extinct. She would remember her own words to him, when the familiar loving tones 
were turned to anger and almost imprecation : * I never wished to see you sorry, now 
I trust I shall.* Of the sorrow she had thus wished for him, she is now a witness, 
and it all but unnerves her. Paulina had, it seemed to me, besought Hermione to 
play the part of her own statue, in order that she might hear herself apostrophised, 
and be a silent witness of the remorse and unabated love of Leontes before her 
existence became known to him, and so be moved to that forgiveness which, without 
such proof, she might possibly be slow to yield. She is so moved ; but for the sake 
of the loving friend, to whom she has owed so much, she must restrain herself, and 
carry through her appointed task. But, even although I had fully thought out all this, 
it was impossible for me ever to hear unmoved what passes in this wonderful scene. 
My first Leontes was Mr Macready, and, as the scene was played by him, the dif- 
ficulty of wearing an air of statuesque calm became almost insuperable. As I think 
over the scene now, his appearance, his action, the tones of his voice, the emotions 
of that time, come back. There was a dead awe-struck silence when the curtains 
were gradually drawn aside by Paulina. She has to encourage Leontes to speak. 



ACT V, SC. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 293 

Hermione was not fo much wrinckled, nothing 35 

So aged as this feemes. 

Pol. Oh, not by much. 

Paul. So much the more our Caruers excellence, 
Which lets goe-by fome fixteene yeeres,and makes her 
As flie liuM now. 40 

Leo. As now (he might haue done, 
So much to my good comfort, as it is 
Now piercing to my Soule. Oh, thus (he flood, 
Euen with fuch life of Maieftie(warme Life, 
As now it coldly flands) when firft I wooM her. 45 

I am afhamM : Do's not the Stone rebuke me. 
For being more Stone then it ? Oh Royall Peece : 
There's Magick in thy Maieftie, which ha's 
My Euils coniur'd to remembrance ; and 

From thy admiring Daughter tooke the Spirits, 50 

Standing like Stone with thee. 

Perd. And giue me leaue. 
And doe not fay 'tis Superftition,that 
I kneele,and then implore her BleflingJ Lady, 
Deere Queene,that ended when I but began, 55 

Giue me that hand of yours, to kifle. 

Paul. O, patience : 
The Statue is but newly fix'd ; the Colour's 
Not dry. 

Cant. My Lord, your Sorrow was too fore lay'd-on, 60 

Which fixteene Winters cannot blow away, 
So many Summers dry : fcarce any loy 
Did euer fo long liue ; no Sorrow, 
But kill'd it felfe much fooner. 64 

50. thy\ my Theob. Warb. Johns. 58. Colour^ s\ colours Walker, Iluds. 

Var. '73. 59. [Staying Perdita. Cap. 

Sptrit5'\ spirit Rowe i. 61. ftxUene Winters cannof] cannot 

54. thenl thus Coll. ii (MS). sixteen winters Var. '85. 

40. As she liu'd] That is, < As if ; see Abbott, § 107. 

54. and then] Collier (ed. ii) : * Then * has always been in the text, and it may 
be right, but it seems much more natural that Perdita should say, * I kneel and thus 
implore your blessing,* seeing that she instantly addresses the supposed statue. 

57. O, patience] Johnson : That is, * stay a while, be not so eager.' 

58. the Colour's] Walker (Crit. iii, 116) : Colours suxeXy. 

63. The syllable lacking in this line, Capell supplied by sir after * sorrow ' ; 



s,' 



294 THE WINTERS TALE [act v, sc. iii. 

PoL Deere my Brother, 65 

Let him, that was the caufe of this, haue powre 
To take-off fo much griefe from you, as he 
Will peece vp in himfelfe. 

PauL Indeed my Lord, 
If I had thought the fight of my poore Image 70 

Would thus haue wrought you (for the Stone is mine) 
IIM not haue fhewM it. 

Leo. Doe not draw the Curtaine. 

Paul. No longer (hall you gaze on^leaft your Fancie 
May thinke anon, it moues. 75 

Leo. Let be , let be : 
Would I were dead, but that me thinkes alreadie. yy 

68. vp in\ upon Wh. i. 74. hajri left F^. 

72. //V] rilVtiX. *2I (misprint?). 75. moues] move Pope + . 

haue Jhew'd] F,. have you 77. alreadie."] already. ¥(. already 

Jhevv^d Fj. have Jhew'd you F^, Rowe, / am but dead, stone looking upon stone. 

Pope, Han. Coll. ii, iii (MS), already— Rowe et 

[Offers to draw the curtain. Coll. cet. 

Keightley by ever. — Abbott (§ 508) suggests that it may be supplied by the pause 
before * no sorrow/ arising from antithesis. Walker ( Vers. 28) says that * perhaps 
we should read (but having absorbed iti) " no sorrow, but | It kill'd," etc' — Hudson 
adopted Walker's change. An Anonymous conjecture, recorded in the Cambridge 
Edition, proposes: *nor ever Sorrow.' 

66-68. Let him . . . himselfe] Deighton: Let him (1. e. myself) who was, 
though unintentionally, the cause of this, have the power by his sjrmpathy to divert 
upon himself so much of this grief as he may justly make his own. Schmidt 
strangely explains * piece up ' as equivalent to * hoard up so as to have his fill.* 

71. Would . . . mine] Warburton (MS) : Read * (For the Stone is mine) would 
thus have wrought you.* — N. <Sr* Qu. VIII, iii, 203. 

71. for the Stone is mine] Tyrwhitt (p. 26) : I do not know whether we 
should not read, without ^ parenthesis : * — for the stone fM* mine I'd not have 
shew'd it.* A mine 0/ stone, or marble, would not at present perhaps be esteemed an 
accurate expression, but it may still have been used by Shakespeare, as it has been 
by Ilolinshed, Description of England, c. ix, p. 235. — ^JoHNSON : To change an 
acciurate expression for an expression confessedly not accurate, has somewhat of 
retrogradation. 

77. Would I . . . alreadie] Warburton: The sentence completed is: *but 
that, methinks, already I converse with the dead.' But there his passion makes him 
break off. — Heath (p. 221) : The poet's meaning was the direct contrary, 'methinks, 
already she is on the point of moving.' [Capell approves.] — TiECK (p. 357) : I thus 
interpret the line : * Would I were dead — if thereby I could reanimate Hermione — 
but that, — methinks, — already — there are signs of life in the Statue.' And then — 
who was he that did make it ? etc. [The play itself was translated by Dorothea 



ACT V, sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 29S 

[77. Would I were dead, but that me thinkes alreadie.] 

Tieck, but this note is presumably her brother's.] — Collier's MS removed the 
period after *■ already ' and added the following line : * I am dead, stone looking upon 
stone/ On which Collier comments {Notes &* Emend, p. 197) : But for this piece 
of evidence, tbat so important an omission has been made by the old printer, or by 
the copyist of the manuscript for the printer's use, it might have been urged, that, 
supposing our great dramatist to have written here no more elliptically than in many 
other places, his sense might be complete at * already ' ; * Would I were dead !' ex- 
claims Leontes, 'but that, methinks, lam already;' in other words, it was needless 
for him to wish himself dead, since, looking upon the image of his lost queen, he 
was, as it were, dead already. However, we see above, that a line was wanting, and 
we may be thankful that it has been furnished, since it is striking and beautiful in 
itself, and adds much to the force and clearness of the speech of Leontes. — Dyce 
{Few Notes, p. 81) : There is room to suspect that something has dropped out; and 
on first reading, the new line [of Collier's MS] it appeared to me so exactly in the 
style of Shakespeare, that, like Mr Collier, I felt * thankful that it had been furnished.' 
But presently I found it was too Shakespearian, Only a few speeches before, Leontes 
has exclaimed : * does not the stone rebuke me. For being more stone than it ?' [and 
a few lines after, speaking of Perdita : * Standing like stone with thee !'] Now, 
which is the greater probability ? — that Shakespeare (whose variety of expression was 
inexhaustible) repeated himself in the line, — * I am but dead, stone looking upon 
stone ' ? or that a reviser of the play (with an ty^ to the passages just cited) in- 
geniously constructed the said line, to fill up a supposed lacuna ? The answer is 
obvious. — Badham (Cam. Essays, 1856, p. 268) : [In answer to Dyce] I confess the 
self-repetition in the case of so monotonous a passkm as grief, does not weigh so 
much with me. Indeed, if we look at it narrowly, it is not a repetition of the same 
thought ; for in the first place, he compares himself to the stone, on account of his 
hardheartedness, and in the second, it is admiration which is said to turn the daughter 
to stone. But the most we can allow [this line of the MS], if taken by itself, is the 
praise of great ingenuity. — Lettsom {Blackwood, Aug. 1853, p. 202) : Here the 
train of emotion is evidently this : Would I were dead, but that methinks already 
(he is about to add) I am, when the life-like appearance of the statue forcibly im- 
presses his senses, whereupon he checks himself and exclaims, *• What was he that 
did make it ' — a god or a mere man, etc. . . . [Collier's MS] is not satisfied with 
making Shakespeare write poorly, he frequently insists on making him write con- 
tradictorily, as in the present instance. I am stone, says Leontes, according to this 
version, looking upon stone, for see, my lord, the statue breathes, these veins do verily 
bear blood. Is not that a proof, my lord, that this statue is mere stone ? Most people 
would have considered this a proof of the very contrary. . . . Mr Collier may be 
assured that the very thing which Leontes says most strongly, by implication, is, that 
he is not stone looking upon stone. — Singer {Sh. Text Vind. p. 81) : If a line were 
wanting, and that is more than doubtful, a much better one [than Collier's MS] has 
been suggested: *but that, methinks, already / am in heaven, and looking on an 
angel. ^ — Staunton : To Mr Collier and his annotator the eloquent abruption, — ^*but 
that, methinks, already — ' is but a blot, and so, to add * to the force and clearness of 
of the speech of Leontes,' they stem the torrent of his passion in mid-stream and 
make him drivel out : * I am but dead, stone looking upon stone ^\ Can an3rthing be 
viler? Conceive Leontes whimpering of himself as *dead,' just when the thick 



296 THE WINTERS TALE [act v, sc. iii. 

(What was he that did make it?) See (my Lord) 78 

Would you not deeme it breath'd ? and that thofe veines 

Did verily beare blood ? 80 

PoL 'Mafterly done : 
The very Life feemes warme vpon her Lippe. 

Leo. The fixure of her Eye ha's motion in't, 
As we are mock'd with Art. 84 

81. *Ma/ieriy] F^. 84. As we are] As we were Rowe ii + . 

83. fixure] fixture F^, Rowe ii, Wh. And we are Cap. Huds. So are we 
ii, Huds. Dtn. fissure Warb. conj. Mason, Rann. 

pulsation of his heart could have been heard I and speaking of the statue as a ' stone ' 
at the very moment when, to his imagination, it was flesh and blood ! Was it thus 
Shakespeare wrought ? The insertion of such a line in such a place is absolutely 
monstrous, and implies, both in the forger and the utterer, an entire incompetence to 
appreciate the finer touches of his genius. But it does more, for it betrays the most 
discreditable ignorance of the current phraseology of the poet's time. When Leontes 
sajTS, * Would I were dead, but that, methinks, already — ' Mr Collier's annotator, and 
Mr Collier, and all the advocates of the intercalated line, assume him to mean, < I 
should desire to die, only that I am already dead or holding converse with the dead ;' 
whereas, in fact, the expression, * Would I were dead,* etc. is neither more nor less 
than an imprecation, equivalent to, * Would I may die,' etc. ; and the king's real 
meaning, in reference to P&ulina's remark, that he will think anon it moves, is, < May 
I die, if I do not think it moves already* In proof of this, take the following exam- 
ples, which might easily be multiplied a hundred-fold, of similar forms of speech : 
•—and would I might be dead. If I in thought,' etc.— The Two Gent. IV, iv. 
« Would I had no being. If this salute my blood a yoV-^IIen. VIII: II, iii. « The 
Gods rebuke me, but it is tidings To wash the eyes of the kings.' — Ant. <5r* Cleop. 
V, i. * Would I with thunder presently might die So I might speak.' — Summer's 
Last Will and Testament, * Let me suffer death If in my apprehension,' etc. — 
Beau. & Fl. The Night Walker, III, vi. * Would I were dead, etc. If I do know,' 
etc. — Jonson's Tale of a Tub, II, i. * Poss Uo morire, an oath much used, as we say, 
I would I were dead, I pray God I may dye, may I dye* — Florio, Worlde of Wordes. 
[Staunton's interpretation carries conviction. — Ed.] 

Lady Martin (p. 387) : Never can I forget the manner in which Mr Macready 
here cried out, * Do not draw the curtain !' and, afterwards, * Let be, let be!* in tones 
irritable, commanding, and impossible to resist. * Would I were dead,' he continues, 
* but that, methinks already — .' Has he seen something that makes him think the 
statue lives ? Mr Macready indicated this, and hurriedly went on * What was he,' 
etc. His eyes have been so riveted upon the figure, that he sees what the others 
have not seen, that there is something about it beyond the reach of art. He continues 
— * Still, methinks, There is an air,' etc. 

81. 'Masterly] What ellipsis is indicated by the apostrophe, I do not know. 

83. fixure] Bradley (New Eng. Diet.): An adaptation of late Lat. fixura\ 
fixture is an altered form, after the analogy of mixture. The earliest example 
(given by Steevens also) is * This dreadfull Commet . . . Whose glorious fixure in 
so faire a sky Strikes the beholder with a chilly feare.' — Drayton, Barons Wars, 



ACT V, sc. iiL] 



THE WINTERS TALE 



297 



Paul. He draw the Curtaine : 
My Lord's almoft fo farre tranfported^that 
Hee'le thinke anon it Hues. 

Leo. Oh fweet Paulina^ 
Make me to thinke fo twentie yeeres together : 
No fetled Sences of the World can match 
The pleafure of that madneffe. Let't alone. 

Paul. I am forry (Sir) I haue thus farre ftir'd you : but 
I could afflift you farther. 

Leo. Doe Paulina : 
For this Affliftion ha's a tafte as fweet 
As anyCordiall comfort. Still me thinkes 
There is an ayre comes from her. What fine Chizzell 
Could euer yet cut breath ? Let no man mock me, 
For I will kiffe her. 

Paul. Good my Lord, forbeare : 
The ruddinefle vpon her Lippe, is wet : 
You'le marre it, if you kiffe it ; ftayne your owne 
With Oyly Painting: (hall I draw the Curtaine. 

Leo. No: not thefe twentie yeeres. 

Perd. So long could I 
Stand-by, a looker-on. 

Paul. Either forbeare, 
Quit prefently the Chappell, or refolue you 
For more amazement : if you can behold it. 



85 



90 



95 



100 



105 



109 



87. Oflfers again to draw, Coll. ii. 

91. Leri\ Let's Y^^, Let Johns. 

92. I am"] I^m Pop€+, Dyce ii, iii. 



93. farther] F,, Cap. Cam. further 



F^Fj, Rowe et cet. 



100. my Lord] me LordT^. 
[She stays him. Coll. ii. 



i, xxxiii. — Edwards (p. 47) : The meaning here is, though her eye be fixed (as the 
eye of a statue always is), yet it seems to have motion in it : that tremulous motion, 
which is perceptible in the eye of a living person, how much soever one endeavour 
to fix it. 

84. As we are] The 'As ' here is hardly the same as that in line 40 : ^As she 
liv'd now,' although Malone and M. Mason so consider it, and say that it is equiv- 
alent to as if The latter suggested that the verb should be changed : *As we were^ 
or else, retaining the verb, read * so we are.* Abbott (§ 1 10) more correctly defines 
its present meaning by * for so,' and classes it with such phrases as : * This Jacob from 
our Holy Abraham was, As his wise mother wrought in his behalf.' — Mer. of Ven. 
If iiif 73 ; cmd ' Who dares receive it other As we shall make our grie& and clamour 
roar,' etc. — Macb, I, vii, 78. 

84. with Art] Cf. line 64 in the preceding scene : < torn with a bear.' 



298 THE WINTERS TALE [act v. sc. iii. 

He make the Statue moue indeed; defcend, no 

And take you by the hand : but then you'le thinke 
(Which I proteft againft) I am aflifted 
By wicked Powers. 

Leo. What you can make her doe, 
I am content to looke on : what to fpeake, 115 

I am content to heare : for 'tis as eafie 
To make her fpeake, as moue. 

Paul. It is required 
You doe awake your Faith : then, all ftand ftill : 
On: thofe that thinke it is vnlawfuU Bufineffe 120 

I am about, let them depart. 

Leo. Proceed : 
No foot (hall ftirre. 123 

1 19, 120. ftill: On : tko/e] F^F^, Knt, those Coll. i. still OrCt : those Nicholson 

Cam. Wh. ii, Dtn. (misprint), ftill. ap. Cam. still : Or those Han. et cet. 
On; thofe F^, Rowe. still. And those 120. (?».•] All CoW. MS. But Gould. 

Pope, Theob. Warb. Johns, still. On^ 

120. On: those] Knight: We understand this as, * Let us go on.* The king 
immediately adds * proceed.' — Collier (ed. i) : The meaning is, * Let those go on, 
and depart, who think it is unlawful business I am about.' ... * On * could hardly 
have been misprinted for or^ because in all the old copies it is followed by a colon. — 
Dyce {Remarks^ p. 84) : Which of these two interpretations [Knight's and Collier's] 
is the most forced and ridiculous it would be difficult to decide. Hanmer's alteration 
of * On ' to Or is obviously necessary : in IV, iv, 823, of this play, where the right 
reading is undoubtedly or, the Folio has * at toaze ' ; and in the 56th Sonnet^ where 
the old copy has *As call it,* etc., Mr Collier has rightly given * Or call it,' etc. As 
to his remark that * " On " could hardly have been misprinted for Or^ because in all 
the old copies it is followed by a colon,' — I have already cited from the First Folio a 
line of this play [I, ii, 170] in the middle of which a colon occurs y while the sense 
positively requires that there should be no point at all ; nor w^ould it be difficult to 
bring forward from various old books a host of passages in which stops are introduced 
with the grossest impropriety ; e. g. * And wish, she were so now, as when my lust 
Forc'd >'<?«/ to quite the Countrey.' — Custom of the Country ^ V, v, p. 22. — Beau. & 
Fletcher's IVorhes, ed. 1647. * I^t's bum this Noble body: Sweetes as many As 
sun- burnt : Neroe \_Meroc'\ breeds, He make a flame of Shall reach his soule in 
heaven.' — Valentinian^ IV, iv, p. 22. — Ibid. — Lettsom (MS note in margin of my 
copy of Dyce) : And in the grave scene in Hamlet, Horatio says in the First Folio, 
* 'Twere to consider : to curiously to consider so.' — CoLLiER (ed. ii) : On recon- 
sideration, we are inclined to think, with Mr Dyce, that Hanmer was right. — Collier 
(ed. iii) : It is *C?r those ' in the Folios, but the old corrector of the Fol. 1632 need- 
lessly altered * Or ' to All. [An oversight in regard to the text of the Folios, which 
no one would have more regretted, or sooner apologised for, than my excellent old 
friend. Collier, himself. I prefer Hanmer's reading. — Ed.] 



ACT V. sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 299 

Paul. Mufick ; awake her: Strike : 
'Tis time: defcend: be Stone no more : approach : 125 

Strike all that looke vpon with meruaile : Come : 
He fill your Graue vp: ftirre : nay, come away: 
Bequeath to Death your numnefle : (for from him, 
Deare Life redeemes you) you perceiue fhe ftirres: 
Start not : her Aflions (hall be holy, as 130 

You heare my Spell is lawfull : doe not fhun her, 
Vntill you fee her dye againe ; for then 
You kill her double : Nay, prefent your Hand : 
When (he was young, you wooM her: now, in age. 
Is (he become the Suitor? 135 

Leo. Oh (he's warme : 

124. [Musick. Rowe. 128. numnejfe^ numbnefs F^. dumb- 

125. time r\ time^ Rowe + . ness Gould. 

126. vpifn^ on you Han. upon you 129. [Hermione comes down. Rowe. 
Ktly. upon't Anon. ap. Cam. 135. Suitor f^ Ff, Rowe i, Knt, Coll. 

meruaile^ mervaile F^. mar- i, iii, Cam. Rife, Dtn. suitor, Rowe ii 
vaiie F . marvail F^. et cet 

136. [Embracing her. Rowe. 

125. be Stone no more] Mrs Jameson (ii, 18) : Here we have another instance 
of that art with which the dramatic character is fitted to the circumstances in which 
it is placed, — that perfect command over her own feelings, that complete self-posses- 
sion necessary to this extraordinary situation, is consistent with all that we imagine 
of Hermione ; in any other woman it would be so incredible as to shock all our ideas 
of probability. 

126. looke vpon] For other instances of 'upon' used adverbially, like on^ after 
the verb look^ see Abbott, § 192. 

135. Suitor?] Dyce {Remarks, 85): Assuredly no question is asked; Paulina 
means, ' you formerly wooed her, and now she wooes you.* The original compositor 
put an interrogation point, because < Is she ' sounded like a question. [I quite agree 
with Dyce, albeit some excellent editors do not agree with him. — Ed.] 

136. Oh she's warme] Staunton : To a reader of taste and sensibility, the art 
by which the emotions of Leontes are developed in this situation, from the moment 
when with an apparent feeling of disappointment he first beholds the *so much 
wrinkled ' statue, and gradually becomes impressed, amazed, enthralled, till at length, 
borne along by a wild, tumultuous throng of indefinable sensations, he reaches that 
grand climax where, in delirious rapture, he clasps the figure to his bosom and faintly 
murmurs, * O, she's warm !' must appear consummate. [Staunton's ' faint murmur > 
seems to me utterly wrong. For Macready's truer acting, see next note. — Ed.] 

Lady Martin (p. 389) : You may conceive the relief I felt when the first strain 
of solemn music set me free to breathe ! There was a pedestal by my side on which 
I leant. It was a slight help during the long strain upon the nerves and muscles, 
besides allowing me to stand in that * natural posture ' which first strikes Leontes, 
and which therefore could not have been rigidly statuesque. By imperceptibly alter- 



300 THE WINTERS TALE [act v, sc. iiL 

If this be Magick, let it be an Art 1 37 

Lawfull as Eating. 
Pol. She embraces him. 139 

ing the poise of the body, the weight of it being on the forward foot, I could drop 
into the easiest position from which to move. The hand and arm still resting quietly 
on the pedestal materially helped me. Towards the close of the strain the head 
slowly turned, the ' full eyes ' moved, and at the last note rested on Leontes. This 
movement, together with the expression of the face, transfigured, as we may have 
imagined it to have been, by years of sorrow and devout meditation, — speechless, yet 
saying things unutterable, — always produced a startling, magnetic effect upon all, — 
the audience upon the stage as well as in front of it. After the burst of amazement 
had hushed down, at a sign from Paulina the solemn sweet strain recommenced. The 
arm and hand were gently lifted from the pedestal ; then, rhythmically following the 
music, the figure descended the steps that led up to the dais, and advancing slowly, 
paused at a short distance from Leontes. Oh, can I ever forget Mr Macready at this 
point I At first he stood speechless, as if turned to stone ; his face with an awe-struck 
look upon it. Could this, the very counterpart of his queen, be a wondrous piece of 
mechanism ? G>uld art so mock the life ? He had seen her laid out as dead, the 
funeral obsequies performed over her, with her dear son beside her. Thus absorbed 
in wonder, he remained until Paulina said, 'Nay, present your hand.' Trem- 
blingly he advanced, and touched gently the hand held out to him. Then what a 
cry came with, < O, she's warm I' It is impossible to describe Mr Macready here. 
He was Leontes' very self I His passionate joy at finding Hermione really alive 
seemed beyond control. Now he was prostrate at her feet, then enfolding her in 
his arms. I had a slight veil or covering over my head and neck, supposed to make 
the statue look older. This fell off in an instant. The hair, which came unbound, 
and fell on my shoulders, was reverently kissed and caressed. The whole change 
was so sudden, so overwhelming, that I suppose I cried out hysterically, for he whis- 
pered to me, * Don't be frightened, my child ! don't be frightened ! Control yourself I* 
All this went on during a tumult of applause that sounded like a storm of hail. Oh, 
how glad I was to be released, when, as soon as a lull came, Paulina, advancing with 
Perdita, said, * Turn, good lady, our Perdita is found.* A broken trembling voice, I 
am very sure, was mine, as I said, * You gods, look down,' etc. It was such a com- 
fort to me, as well as true to natural feeling, that Shakespeare gives Hermione no 
words to say to Leontes, but leaves her to assure him of her joy and forgiveness by 
look and manner only, as in bis arms she feels the old life, so long suspended, come 
back to her again. [See Appendix for additional extracts from these invaluable, 
illuminating Commentaries, which are beyond all praise. — Ed.] 

139. She embraces him] Mrs Jameson (ii, 20) : The effect produced on the 
different persons of the drama by this living statue, — an effect which at the same 
moment is, and is not an illusion, — the manner in which the feelings of the spectators 
become entangled between the conviction of death and the impression of life, the idea 
of a deception and the feeling of a reality ; and the exquisite colouring of poetry and 
touches of natural feeling with which the whole is wrought up, till wonder, expecta- 
tion, and intense pleasure, hold our pulse and breath suspended on the event, — are 
quite inimitable. ... 

The moment when Hermione descends from her pedestal to the sound of soft 



ACT V, sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 30 1 

Cam. She hangs about his necke, 140 

If fhe pertaine to life, let her fpeake too. 

Pol. I , and make it manifeft where (he ha's liu'd, 
Or how ftolne from the dead ? 

Paid. That (he is liuing, 
Were it but told you,(hould be hooted at 145 

Like an old Tale : but it appeares (he Hues, 
Though yet (he fpeake not. Marke a little while : 
Pleafe you to interpofe (faire Madam) kneele. 
And pray your Mothers ble(ring : tume good Lady, 
Our Perdita is found. 150 

Her. You Gods looke downe, 
And from your facred Viols poure your graces 
Vpon my daughters head : Tell me (mine owne) 
Where haft thou bin preferu'd ? Where liu'dPHow found 
Thy Fathers Court? For thou (halt heare that I 155 

Knowing by Paulinaj that rhe Oracle 
Gaue hope thou waft in being, haue preferu'd 
My felfe, to fee the y(rue . 

Patil. There's ttme enough for that, 
Leaft they defire (vpon this pu(h) to trouble 160 

140, 141. She.,, pertaine] One line, 152. Viols] vials Pope. 

Walker (Crii. iii, 116). 154. bin] been F,F^. 

142. iw<7>t^ f]^] Ff, Rowe + , Coll. Sing. 156. rhe] F,. 

Wh. i, Ktly. make Han. make't Cap. 157, 158. Gaue,,, My felfe] One line, 

et cet Steev. 

143. dead?] dead. Cap. dead I Sta. 159. There's] There is F^, Rowe i. 
150. [Presenting Perd., who kneels to ttme] F,. 

Herm. Rowe. 160. Leafl] Left F^F^. 

music, and throws herself witliout speaking into her husband's arms, is one of inex- 
pressible interest. It appears to me that her silence during the whole of this scene 
(except when she invokes a blessing on her daughter's head) is in the finest taste as 
a poetical beauty, besides being an admirable trait of character. The misfortunes of 
Hermione, her long religious seclusion, the wonderful and almost supernatural part 
she has just enacted, have invested her with such a sacred and awful charm, that any 
words put into her mouth, must, I (hink, have injured the solemn and profound 
pathos of the situation. 

160. vpon this push] Delius: Were Perdita to give, here and now, a full re- 
port of her previous life, all the others there present, incited by the same impulse, 
would wish to make and answer similar enquiries. [Hence Schmidt {Lex.), follow- 
ing Delius, defines * push ' by an impulse given, a setting in motion. Rev. Joif N 
Hunter defines it by excitement. The Cowden-Clarkes say that it is used for 
emergency^ special occasion. This last seems to be the best. It is in this sense that 



302 THE WINTERS TALE [act v, sc. ui. 

Your ioyes, with like Relation. Go together i6i 

You precious winners all : your exultation 

Partake to euery one : I (an old Turtle) 

Will wing me to fome withered bough, and there 

My Mate (that's neuer to be found againe) 165 

Lament, till I am lofl. 

Leo, O peace Patdina : 
Thou fhouldft a husband take by my confent. 
As I by thine a Wife. This is a Match, 

And made betweene's by Vowes. Thou haft found mine, 170 
But how, is to be queftion'd : for I faw her 
(As I thought) dead : and haue (in vaine) faid many 
A prayer vpon her graue. He not feeke farre 
(For him, I partly know his minde) to finde thee 
An honourable husband. Come Camilla y 175 

And take her by the hand : whofe worth, and honefty 

164. bough'\ bow F^, Rowe. 176. by the] Om. Coll. ii (MS). 

Macbeth uses it when he says : ' This push Will cheer me ever, or dis-seize me now.' 
— V, iii, 20. — Ed.] 

162. winners] Johnson : That is, You who by this discovery have gained whoi 
you desired, may join in festivity, in which I, who have lost what never can be 
recovered, can have no part. 

163. Partake] M alone: This mesins participate. — Schmidt {Lex.) : To commu- 
nicate. Cf. *our mind partakes her private actions to your secrecy.* — Per. I, i, 153. 

163. Turtle] Schmidt {TranslcUion^ p. 285): Even as early as in the Gesta 
Romanorumy a young widow says to her father-in-law : donee audiam de sponso meo 
dulcissimo, ad instar turturis manebo tecum. 

164. withered] M alone : So, Orpheus, in the exclamation which Johannes 
Secundus has written for him, speaking of his grief for the loss of Eurydice, says : 
Sic gemit arenti viduatus ab arbore turtur. So, in Lodge's Rosalynde, 1592: A 
turtle sat upon a leaveless tree,' etc. [See As You Like It^ Appendix, p. 366, 
of this ed.] 

166. till I am lost] That is, till I, too, am lost. The word Most,' albeit used in 
a different sense, was probably suggested by the fate of Antigonus, referred to in the 
preceding line. It is well that the martyr, Antigonus, should be remembered, — but 
where is the little Mamillius? Possibly the omission was intentional. Any allusion 
to him might have proved too much for Hermione's self-control. — Ed. 

176. take her by the hand] Collier (ed. ii) : The line is ruined by the need- 
less insertion of two particles. We may be confident that they had in some way been 
foisted into the text, almost without the assurance of the MS Corrector, who puts his 
pen through * by the.' 

176. whose worth] M. Mason (p. 139): 'Whose' evidently refers to Camillo, 
though Paulina is the immediate antecedent. 



ACT V, sc. iii.] THE WINTERS TALE 303 

Is richly noted : and heere iuftified 177 

By Vs, a paire of Kings. Let's from this place. 

What? looke vpon my Brother : both your pardons, 

That ere I put betweene your holy lookes 180 

My ill fufpition : This your Son-in-law, 

And Sonne vnto the King, whom heauens direfting 

Is troth-plight to your daughter. Good Paulina y 

Leade vs from hence, where we may leyfurely 

Each one demand, and anfwere to his part 185 

177. /j] //Var. *2i (misprint). /^^rav'iu ariWf/f#f^, Roweii+,Dyce, Sta. 

179. [To Herm. Han. Cam. Rife, from heat/nU directing^ 

181. Tkis\ This is Ktly, Huds. Rife, Han. who, heavens directing. Cap. Var. 
Wh. ii. This' Walker, Dyce ii, iii. *73, '78, *85, Rann, Ktly, Huds. Dtn. 

182. whom heauens direifiing"] Ff. {whom heavens directing^ MaL et cet. 
whom, Heav'ns directing, Rowe i. whom 

179. What? looke vpon my Brother] Staunton: This unfolds a charming 
and delicate trait in Hermione ; remembering how sixteen sad years agone her inno- 
cent freedoms with Polixenes had been misconstrued, and keenly sensible, even 
amidst the joy of her restoration to child and husband, of the bitter penalty they had 
involved, she now turns from him, when they meet, with feelings of mingled modesty 
and apprehension. 

181. This your] Walker {Vers. 81): The construction will be expedited by 
reading, * This' your son-in-law,' etc. We might indeed read This is without any 
violation of metre, but I prefer the other. For the construction, ' whom heavens 
directing,' etc., one may compare Ven. 6r» Ad. 1033, * as the snail, whose tender 
horns being bit [! r^a^hit]. Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain.' — Cym. 
IV, ii, I think, * no nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander Outsweeten'd not 
thy breath.* Compare, too. Temp. I, ii, * Some food we had, and some fresh water, 
which A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo, Out of his charity (who being then appointed 
Master of this design) did give us,* etc. Also Merry Wives, IV, vi, * I have a letter 
from her Of such contents as you will wonder at ; The mirth whereof so larded with 
my matter. That neither singly can be manifested Without the shew of both.* [Dyce 
evidently did not verify Walker's quotations ; in quoting from Walker the line from 
Ven. ^ Ad. he repeated bit', a fatality seems to attend the word; Malone prints 
it hurt, Abbott (§ 410) gives two examples which, I think, are more exactly 
parallel in construction to the present passage than any of those cited by Walker, 
viz.: * Young Ferdinand whom they suppose is drown'd,' — Temp. IH, iii, 92; and 
*0f Arthur whom they say is killed to-night.'— AlVi^ John, IV, ii, 165. In both 
of these cases, as in *whom heauens directing Is troth-plight,* there is a confu- 
sion of two constructions. It is also possible, that in the present passage the com- 
positor supplied the w of * whom * for the sake of euphony. For This is see V, i, 
134.— Ed.] 

184, 185. Leade vs from hence . . . demand . . . answere] Cf. the last lines 
of Mer. of Ven. : * Let us go in. And charge us there upon interrogatories, And we 
will answer all things faithfully.* — Ed. 



304 ^-^^ WINTERS TALE [act v, sc. ui. 

PerformM in this wide gap of Time, fince firft 1 86 

We were diffeuer'd : Haftily lead away. Exeunt. 

187. We were\ Were F^F^. 187. Exeunt.] Exeunt omnes. Rowe. 

' 187. Exeunt] Warburton : This play, throughout, is written in the very spirit 
of its author. And in telling this homely and simple, tho* agreeable, country tale, 
' Our sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child, Warbles his native wood-notes wild.* This 
was necessary to observe in mere justice to the Play, as the meanness of the fable, 
and the extravagant conduct of it, had misled some of great name into a wrong 
judgement of its merit : which, as far as it regards sentiment and character, is scarce 
inferior to any in the whole collection. — Dr Johnson : This play, as Dr Warburton 
justly observes, is, with all its absurdities, very entertaining. The character of 
Autolycus is naturally conceived, and strongly represented. [By 'some of great 
name' Warburton refers to Pope and Dryden, for whose remarks see Appendix, 
Unity of Time, etc.— Ed.] 



APPENDIX 



so 



APPENDIX 



THE TEXT 



The Winter^ s Tale was first published in the Folio of 1623, wherein it appears 
as the last of the series of The Comedies, It was never printed in Quarto, although 
in a list of the editions of Shakespeare's plays, inserted in The British Theatre, 
Dublin, 1750, there appears : *A winter Nighte Tale, an excellent Comedie, 1606.' 
This list was compiled, so the editor of The British Theatre says, from the papers of 
one Chetwood, a bookseller, and also prompter for twenty years in Drury Lane 
Theatre.* Of many of the Quartos in this list, there is no record of their having 
been seen elsewhere, and the whole list is regarded as spurious.f 

When the license to publish the First Folio was obtained, the following entry was 
made in The Registers of the Stationer:^ Company J : — 

8® Itonnnlms 1029 

Master Blounte Entred for their Copie vnder the hands of Master Doctor Wokrall 
Isaak Jaggard and Master Cole warden Master William Shakspeers Comedyes 

Histories, and Tragedy es soe manie of the said Copies as are not 
formerly entred to other men. wV. vij*. 

The Tempest 

The two gentlemen of Verona 
Measure for Measure 

Comedyes The Comedy of Errors 
As you like it 
Airs well that ends well 

Twelfe night 

The winters tale 



Histories ^^' ^^«>^^ parte of Henry ye S/att 
Henry the Eight 



CORIOLANUS 

TiMON of Athens 

TRAGEDIES /"^'"^C*"' 
Mackbeth 

A NTH ON IE and Cleopatra 

Cymbeunb 



* Malone's Inquiry, 1796, p. 350. 

f See Midsummer Nighfs Dream, p. 247, of this edition. 

X Arber's Transcript, iv, 107. This entry, with slight variations in spelling and 
substance, is given in The Variorum of 1 82 1, ii, 641. 

307 



308 APPENDIX 

In the Folio the play is divided into Acts and Scenes. This division has been 
followed in all subsequent editions, except in the allotment of the Chorus, which 
Theobald, Warburton, and Johnson place at the end of the Third Act, and do 
not regard as a separate Scene. 

Twelfth Night, which immediately precedes The Winter's Tale, ends in the 
Folio on p. 275. Page 276 is left blank and The Winter's Tale begins on p. 277. 
This leads Hunter (New Illust, i, 417) to suppose that < we had been in some 

* danger of losing * The Winter's Tale. The blank page gives colour, he thinks, to 
the inference that Twelfth Night ended The Comedies, and The Histories were about 
to begin, * and,' he adds, « my copy of the First Folio actually wants The Winter's 

* Tale, the play of King John following immediately on the Twelfth Night* The 
pagination does not help us. A new pagination begins with King John, Nor do 
the signatures give us any aid. Twelfth Night ends with the alphabet Z 3 ; like 
Winter's Tale begins a new series, A a, which, however, lasts only through this play. 
A different series of signatures begins with King John. R. Grant White (ed. i, p. 
275) concedes the possibility of Hunter's suggestion that this play may have been 
overlooked and inserted only at the last minute, but thinks it more probable that, 

* finding it no more tragical in its course, or its catastrophe, than Cymbeline, [Heminge 

* and Condell] at first intended to class it with the Tragedies, and after it was ready 

* to be struck off restored it to its proper place among the Comedies.* If The Win- 
ter's Tale was restored from The Tragedies to The Comedies^ it is not clear why the 
same restoration was not bestowed on Cymbeline. The best explanation of this blank 
page which I am able to offer is given in the Preface to this volume. 

Whenever an opinion has been expressed in regard to the general accuracy of the 
text of this play in the Folio, it has been, with two exceptions, favourable. 

* The original text,' says Knight, ' is remarkably correct ; and although the in- 

* volved construction, which is peculiar to Shakespeare's later writings, and the free- 
< dom of versification, which contrasts with the regularity of his earlier works, have 

* occasionally tempted the commentators to try their hands at emendation, the ordi- 

* nary text is upon the whole pretty accurate.' 

* The corruptions of the text,' remarks R. G. White (ed. i, p. 274), * are com- 

* paratively few, far fewer than we might reasonably expect from the style of the play, 

* which is more open to the chaise of obscurity than any other of Shakespeare's 

* works. It abounds in elliptical passages, in which the gap to be bridged is unpre- 

* cedently great ; parentheses within parentheses, even to the third and fourth degree, 

* require sustained attention and a clear head to unravel their involutions ; thoughts 

* incompletely stated, or only suggested, tantalize and bewilder the untrained or super- 

* ficial reader. Under such circumstances, it is rather surprising that the text has 

* come down to us in so pure a state ; and the absolute incomprehensibility of one or 

* two passages may safely be attributed to the attempt, on the part of the printers, to 

* correct that which they thought corrupt in their copy, but which was only obscure.' 
In the same paragraph, WTiite, still speaking of the text, says that * it is printed with 

* unusual care ; the very punctuation, which throughout that volume [the First 

* Folio] is extremely irregular and careless, being in a great measure reliable.' In 
his Second Edition he is still of the same mind, — and in Second Editions editors do 
not always adhere to the opinions expressed in their First ; he there remarks : * in the 

* Folio its text appears in noteworthy purity, notwithstanding a few very doubtful 

* passages.' 

ITie first 'of the two exceptions to this favourable judgement is W. Sidney 



DATE OF COMPOSITION 309 

Walker, who observes (CnV. i, 87) that the * text of this play in the Folio is printed, 

< by the way, with rather more than usual inaccuracy/ Walker^s opinions are at all 
times worthy of respect, but in the present instance, having before him two examples 
of what he held to be misprints, I think that on the spur of the moment his general- 
isation was hasty. It was given, as we see, * by the way,' and, on more thought, he 
would probably have modified it, — possibly, reversed it. 

The second dissenting voice is that of my excellent and lamented friend, Staun- 
ton, who {Athetutumt 4 April, 1874) quotes Walker, with approval, to the effect that 
the text is more than usually inaccurate. But be it borne in mind that, at the outset 
of an undertaking confessedly to detect * unsuspected corruptions ' in Shakespeare's 
text, Staunton assumed somewhat the position of a special pleader who was bound to 
find numerous flaws, and wished us to accede in advance to the existence of errors 
which he was about to emend. In his previous admirable edition he had made no 
such charge against this text. 

In the logical and metrical structure, and diction of the play, W. W. Lloyd 
(Singer's Second Edition^ p. 131) fincis a sympathy with the temper of the leading 
characters and incidents. < The versification starts, breaks, and divides as in no other 

< play of Shakespeare's, and is in most marked contrast to that of The Tkoo Gentle- 

* men of Verona^ which shuns a cadence unless at the end of a line, the very position 

* where it is here more constantly avoided.' 

For what may be fairly termed a peculiar excellence in the printing of the text of 
this play, see II, i, 18, where a list is given of the instances where an apostrophe 
indicates the absorption of one syllable, or sound, by another. This absorption is of 
frequent occurrence throughout all the plays (of more frequent occurrence than is 
commonly supposed). Here, in The Winter's 7tf/(f, more than in any other, it ha£ 
been indicated by the printers. 

The text of the Four Folios is substantially the same. When a variation occurs, 
the Second as a rule follows the First and the Fourth follows the Third. The spell- 
ing in the Fourth Folio shows, as is natural, the effect of the sixty-two years which 
separate it from the First. Of the metrical improvements attempted in the Second 
Folio I have spoken in the Preface. 



DATE OF COMPOSITION 



In a work like the present, where there is an endeavour to make each volume 
independent and self-contained, a certain amount of repetition is inevitable when 
treating of the same subject. In one regard, however, when dealing with the Date 
of Composition^ repetition is needless. It is not needful that in each successive play 
the Editor should set forth in full his own individual opinion. It is sufficient briefly 
to state his ihdifference to the present subject, and his mistrust of the literary value 
of any investigations of the dates when the plays were written, as far as concerns any 
help to be thereby gained in comprehending their meaning or their charm. Let these 
investigations be relegated to their proper department, Biography^ where the fullest 
scope may well be allotted to them, especially since the authentic facts of Shake- 
speare's Life are so meagre (most happily !) that these investigations must needs com- 
prise the largest share of the duties of his bi(^[rapher. 



3IO 



APPENDIX 



All evidence as to the date of a play must be found either within the play itself 
or without it, that is, it must be either internal or external. Of these, the interned 
proofs are, in general, less important and less trustworthy than the external. They 
are to be detected in allusions in the play itself to contemporaneous or to past events. 
They are, however, not only open to the suspicion of being later insertions to catch 
the passing hour, either by the author or by actors, but are also subject to * every gale 
and vary ' of learned, unlearned, or fanciful commentators, who may set their imag- 
inations at work to discover an allusion where none exists, and thereby see Helen's 
beauty in a brow of Egypt. These internal proofs are to be detected also, it is 
alleged, in the structure of the verse, in < end-stopped ' lines, in ' feminine endings ' 
in the use of rhymes, Alexandrines, etc. This method is but approximate, and only 
then receives full conHrmation when it agrees with external allusions, which are gen- 
erally documentary, and consist of references to the play or quotations from it. There 
is no gainsaying these external proofs, whereof the dates are fixed, and that provide 
a limit before which the play referred to, or quoted from, must have existed. 

Capell was the earliest to attempt an arrangement of the pla3rs in chronological 
succession. The Winter's Tale he places between Henry VIII. and TTie Tempest 
(which he holds to be Shakespeare's last play), and from one item of internal evi- 
dence and another of external evidence, infers that it was written in 1 613, probably 
after Shakespeare retired to Stratford. His internal evidence {Notes^ ii, 176) is in 
the Song, beginning * Get you hence, for I must go,* etc. — IV, iv, 324. * From what 
' is said of it,' he remarks, ' in that speech of Autolicus which begins, [" "WHiy, this is 
* " a passing merry one, and goes to the tune of two maids wooing a man : there's 
< *' scarse a Maide westward but she sings it "], from parts of the song itself (its men- 
*tion of "grange & mill"), and from a stroke upon "usurers** [line 290], which 

* John-a-G)mbe might give birth to, a writfng /or Stratford, or a writing at it, of this 

* simple and irregular play, is no unlikely conjecture ; the matter of the speech first 

* refer'd-to seems a banter on that town's lasses, that would have great relish there, 

* upon a London stage little : — And yet it should have come there too, and that a 

* small matter earlier than a play which Jonson connects it with, [This is Capcll's 

* item of external evidence.] if a passage of his has been rightly seen into which a 

* former note speaks of [viz : Jonson's allusion to " those who beget Tales, Tempests, 
'"and such like Drolleries "], in which case the Poet's " Henry M^ eighth*' will 

* have been its fore-runner, and at no greater distance, and that play the occasion of 

* his setting down to the present.' Jonson's allusion, referred to above, is in the In- 
duction to his Bartholomew Fair, and will be discussed further on by Halliwell and 
Fleay. It is sufficient here to mention that the belief dates from Theobald that Jon- 
son there refers to The Tempest^ and that it was Whalley, I think, who first sug- 
gested that in * the nest of antiques ' lies an allusion to the rustic dance of Satyrs in 
Tlie Winter's Tale. (For GifTord's note on this subject see also The Tempest^ pp. 
282, 283 of this edition.) 

Horace Walpole {Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the 
Third, 1768, p. 114) was the next to propose a date for the composition of The 
Winter's Tale\ this he did vaguely, not specifying any particular year, but merely 
placing it during Queen Elizabeth's lifetime, that is, before 1 603. * It may not be 

* unentertaining to observe,' he says, * that there is another of Shakespeare's plays, 

* that may be ranked among the historic, though not one of his numerous critics and 

* commentators have discovered the drift of it ; I mean The Winter Evenings Tale^ 



DATE OF COMPOSITION 31 1 

* which was certainly intended (in compliment to queen Elizabeth) as an indirect 

* apology for her mother, Anne Boleyn. The address of the poet appears nowhere to 

< more advantage. The subject was too delicate to be exhibited on the stage without 

< a veil ; and it was too recent, and touched the queen too nearly, for the bard to have 

* ventured so homely an allusion on any other ground than compliment. The un- 

< reasonable jealousy of Leontes, and his violent conduct in consequence, form a true 
« portrait of Henry the Eighth, who generally made the law the engine of his boister- 

< ous passions. Not only the general plan of the story is most applicable, but several 
'passages are so marked, that they touch the real history nearer than the fable. 

* llermione on her trial says, * — " for honour, *Tis a derivative from me to mine, 

* " And only that I stand for." This seems to be taken from the very letter of Anne 

* Boleyn to the king before her execution, where she pleads for the infant princess, 

* his daughter. Mamillius, the young prince, an unnecessary character, dies in his 

* infancy ; but it confirms the allusion, as queen Anne, before Elizabeth, bore a still- 
' bom son. But the most striking passage, and which had nothing to do in the 

* tragedy but as it pictured Elizabeth, is, where Paulina, describing the new-bom 

* princess, and her likeness to her father, says : "she has the very trick of his frown." 

* There is one sentence indeed so applicable, both to Elizabeth and her father, that I 

* should suspect the poet inserted it after her death. Paulina, speaking of the child, 

* tells the king : " 'Tis yours ; And might we lay the old proverb to your charge. So 

* " like you, 'tis the worse." The Winter Evening's Tale was therefore in reality a 

* second part of Henry the Eighth.* 

In the Variorum of 1778 Malone published his first Attempt to Ascertain the 
Order in which the Plays attributed to Shakespeare were Written ; in it he gives, 
with hesitation, the date of the present play as 1594, on the ground that < it was,/^r- 
' hapSt entered on the Stationers' books. May 22, 1594, under the name of A Wynter 

* Nyghfs Pastime^ He adds, however, in reference to the theory of Horace Walpole, 

* that his * respect for that very judicious and ingenious writer, [together with] the 

< silence of Meres, and the circumstance of there not being one rhyming couplet 

* throughout this piece [see IV, iv, 832, ^'^'^y except in the Chorus,* made him doubt 
whether it ought not to be ascribed to the year 1601 or 1602. 

In his own edition of 1790, Malone republished his Attempt^ and, abandoning 
the date 1594, proposed the year 1604. *The doubts which I then entertained [in 

< 1778],' he says, ' a more attentive examination of this play has confirmed ; and I am 

* now persuaded that it was not near so early a composition as the entry [in the 
Stationers' books] led me to suppose. . . . 

* Sir William Blackstone has pointed out a passage in the first Act of this play, 
which had escaped my observation, and which, as he justly observes, fumishes a 
proof that it was not written till after the death of queen Elizabeth : " If I could 
** find example Of thousands that had stmck anointed kings, And flourished after, 
" I'd not do it." These lines could never have been intended for the ear of her who 
had deprived the queen of Scots of her life. To the son of Mary they could not 
but have been agreeable. . . . Perhaps our author laid the scheme of the play in 
the very year the queen died, and finished it in the next. ... I have therefore 
attributed it to 1604. 

* In that year was entered on the Stationers' books : " A strange reporte of a mon- 
" strous fishy that appeared in the form of a woman from the waist upward, scene 
" in the sea." To this perhaps the poet alludes in [IV, iv, 303]. There is, says 
one of the characters in this piece, " but one Puritan among them, and he sings 



312 APPENDIX 

* ** psalms to horn-pipes." The precise manners of the Puritans were at this time 
' much ridiculed by Protestants ; and the principal matters in dispute between them 

* (whether the surplice should be used in the celebration of divine service, the cross 

* in baptism, and the ring in marriage) were gravely discussed at Hampton Court 

* before the king, who acted as Moderator, in the beginning of 1604. . . . Every 

* stroke at the Puritans, for whom king James had a hearty detestation, must have 

* been very agreeable to him as well as to the frequenters of the theatres, against 
'which that sect inveighed in the bitterest terms.' 

Malone did not long remain of the opinion that the date was 1604. Before his 
edition (1790) was through the press, in the Emendations and Additions (vol. i, pt. ii, 
p. 286), he acknowledges the force of the argument derived from Ben Jonson's ridi- 
cule of TAe Tempest and Wintet^s Tale^ and is now * inclined to think that Jonson 

* joined these plays in the same censure, in consequence of their having been pro- 
< duced at no great distance of time from each other; and that The Winter's Tale 

* ought to have been ascribed to the year 1613.' 

Two years after the publication of Malone*s edition the Rev. James Hurdis 
issued a mild little treatise, wherein he gave an entirely different Order of Succession, 
The condensed, heavily freighted style, and lack of rhymes in The Winter's Tale, 
which are deemed by other commentators proofs of Shakespeare's maturity, are held 
by Hurdis to be proofs of the < earliest efforts of our poet's muse.' Accordingly, in 
Hurdis's Order the present play stands second, preceded by Anthony and Cleopatra 
only ; no year is assigned to it. The passage which Blackstone thinks could not have 
been written till after the death of Queen Elizabeth, Hurdis suggests might have 
been inserted after the accession of James. Inasmuch as Hurdis displays neither 
learning nor research, but merely a weak preference, it is not surprising that his book- 
let made but little impression at the time it was published, and has made none since. 

In 1799, George Chalmers published his Supplemental Apology for the Believers 
in the Supposititious Shakspeare- Papers, He appears to have been an Ishmael among 
commentators, — ^his hand was against every man and every man's hand was against 
him. This Supplemental Apology was avowedly written in answer to Steevens's re- 
iterated sneer that Chalmers * could not possibly know anything of Shakespeare,' and 
although from beginning to end it is marred by its belligerent tone, it displays unusual 
learning, and indicated many sources, unthought of by Malone and Steevens, where 
external evidence concerning the chronology of the plays might be found. Chalmers 
conceded the utter falseness of the Ireland forgeries, but cavilled at Malone's method 
of refuting them. Malone never answered him, although, it is said, he frequently 
threatened to do so. 

In regard to the date of The Winter's Tale, Chalmers (p. 396) addresses himself 
chiefly to the refutation of the argument founded on Blackstone's remark that the 
allusion to those who had * struck anointed kings' could not have been made in 
Elizabeth's life-time. * Now, mark,' says Chalmers, exultingly, * how a plain tale 

* shall put down a confident assumption.' But after this roaring so loud and thundering 
in the index the ' plain tale ' amounts to nothing more than quoting from Strype (An, 
Reform, iv, 354) certain passages wherein * anointed Magistrates ' are mentioned in 
certain prayers which were to be used in the churches * after the rebellion of the 

* Earl of Elssex.' * Shakespeare, then,' Chalmers continues, * seems to have merely 

* translated the sentiments of those public prayers into dramatic poetry, . . . and to 

* have adopted the emphatical expression, anointed Kings, instead of anointed Mag- 

* istrates. , . . During that momentous period, neither Elizabeth nor her people enter- 



DATE OF COMPOSITION 313 

' tained one thought of Mary Stuart, who fell by the stroke of a legal instrument, at 

* least ; which was used in consequence of an address of Parliament, and of a popular 
' call. . . . Blackstone's remark discovers, then, a mind which was not very amply 

* stored with historical knowledge relating to that eventful age. There is in the first 
' Act a passage which was much more likely to tent Elizabeth to the quick : *' Thou 

* ** mightst bespice a cup. To give mine enemy a lasting wink ... I could do this, 

* ** and that with no rash potion. But with a lingering dram,*' etc. It is an historical 

* fact, which is incontrovertibly certain, that Elizabeth employed agents to take off her 
' hated rival by a lingering dram,* Malone's allusion to the Puritans Chalmers takes 
as an additional proof that the play was written about the period of Essex's conspir- 
acy. * History,' he says, * has recorded the popular tricks of that ambitious anarchist ; 

* how he courted the Puritans ; how he had psalm-singing in Essex-house. . . . There 

< is another note of time, in the first Scene of the fiAh Act, which furnishes a decisive 

* proof against the theory of the commentators. Leontes laments the wrong he did 

* himself: <' which was so much, that heirless it hath made my kingdom." Dion re- 

< monstrates to Paulina that '< you consider little What dangers by his highness' faU 

* " of issue ^ May drop upon his kingdom, and devour Incertain lookers on." . . . The 

* whole allusion was finely adapted to the state of the public mind ; which had been 

* harassed by the dispute about the succession. The suspense, wherein the whim of 

< Elizabeth kept incertain lookers on^ to the last, about her successor, no longer ex- 

* isted after the accession of James, who was far from heirless. After this event, the 
' audience would have disdained that fine passage as idle declamation. The crown 

* had now found an heir. And, to have longer talked about the dangers of uncer- 
' tainty, when none were felt, nor foreseen, would have been rejected by the audience 

* as senseless fiction. ... I presume to think that the proofs which I have adduced 

* are quite sufficient to satisfy any reasonable mind that The Winter's Tale was writ- 

< ten in the troublous year 1601.' 

• If,* says Douce (i, 347), * as Mr Blackstone supposes, this [speech of Camillo in 
*■ I, ii, 414] be an allusion to the death of the queen of Scots, it exhibits Shakespeare 

* in the character of a cringing flatterer accommodating himself to existing circum- 

< stances, and is moreover an extremely severe one. But the perpetrator of that 

* atrocious murder did flourish many years afterward. May it not rather be designed 

* as a compliment to king James on his escape from the Gowrie conspiracy, an event 

* often brought to the people's recollection during his reign, from the day on which it 

* happened being made a day of thanksgiving ?' 

While his edition was going through the press Malone obtained the use of the 
Office-book of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels to James the First. Therein 
he found an entry concerning The Winter's Tale^ but its full bearing on the date does 
not seem to have occurred to him until the appearance of the Variorum of 1 82 1, 
when we find that he changed his date for the fourth time. The entry, given by 
Malone (vol. i, pt. ii, 226, ed. 1790; Var, 1821, iii, 229), is as follows: 

* For the kings players. An olde playe called Winters Tale, formerly allowed of 

* by Sir George Bucke and likewyse by mee on Mr Hemminges his worde that there 

< was nothing prophane added or reformed, thogh the allowed booke was missinge : 

* and I therefore returned it without a fee this 19 of August 1623.' 

Whereupon Malone remarks {Var, 182 1, ii, 463): * Though Sir George Buck 

* obtained a reversionary grant of the office of Master of the Revels in 1603, ... it 

* appears . . . that he did not get complete possession of his place till August, 1610. 

* I, therefore, suppose The Winter's Tale to have been originally licensed by him in 



314 APPENDIX 

' the latter part of that year or the beginning of the next. The allowed manuscript 
' was probably destroyed by the fire which consumed the Globe Theatre in Jmie, 

* 1613. ... It was acted at Court in 1613.* 

In 1603, Sir George Buc received a reversionary grant of the Office of Master of the 
Revels, expectant on the death of Sir Edward Tylney. Tylney died in October, 1610. 
Malone and other editors after him lay stress on the fact that Sir George Buc did not 
get possession of his office until August, 1610, only a month or two before Tylney *8 
death, and their argument founded thereon for the date of TAt IVinter's Tale is 
clear : that if Sir George Buc licensed it he could not have done so before he assumed 
office in 1610. But Chalmers {^Supplement, ApoL p. 200) shows from The Stationers' 
Registers that Buc began to license plays only two or three years after he received his 
reversionary grant ; and quotes twenty-six titles from the Stationers* Registers thus 
licensed between the twenty-first of November, 1606, and the sixth of October, 1608. 
I have verified by Arber's Reprint half a dozen of these entries, and, except trivial 
mistakes of the day of the month here and there, they are correctly given ; there is 
no reason to suppose that they are not all substantially correct, — two or three are 
enough to prove Chalmers's assertion. Among these entries is that of King Lear, 
on the 26 November, 1607. (See King Lear, p. 354, of this edition.) There is no 
mention of The Winter's Tale\ all that Chalmers proves is that Malone is not justified 
in founding any argument on the date of Sir George Buc's assumption of office. In 
connection with this subject Halliwell remarks : * In the absence of any direct 

* evidence to the contrary, it seems, however, unnecessary to suggest that The Winter^ s 

* Tale may have been one of the dramas that passed under Buck's review during the 
' tenancy of Tylney in the office ; and it may fairly, at present, be taken for granted 

* that the comedy was not produced until after the month of August, 16 10.' 

Malone*s final sentence is: * It was acted at Court in 161 3.' This is clearly a 
reference to what is known as the * Vertue MSS.' For an account of these MSS, see 
The Tempest, p. 275, of this edition. It suffices to state here that among these MSS 
there is a list of • Plaies acted at Court, Anno 161 3 (from the Accounts of Lord 

* Harrington, Treasurer of the Chamber to King James I.).* This list was printed 
for The Shakespeare Society {Papers yii, 1 23) by Peter Cunningham; the items re- 
lating to the several plays are given separately in the Introductions to the plays by 
Halliwell ; and, lastly, they are collectively reprinted in the New Shakspeare Society's 
Transactions, 1 875, p. 419. These reprints, supposed to be exact copies of the orig- 
inal, vary, however, in words and in spelling ; Cunningham does not agree with Halli- 
well (there is even a pound's difference in the sum disbursed by the Treasurer), 
Halliwell not only does not agree with the New Sh. Soc, but he does not agree even 
with himself; the extract given in his Introduction to The Tempest varies in the spell- 
ing of some words from that given in his Introduction to The Winter s Tale, I think 
it safest to follow the New Sh. Soc. except in the use of Italics for the titles of Shake- 
speare's plays, — a practice which has little to commend it. The item relating to The 
Winter's Tale is as follows : * Item paid to John Heminges vppon the Cowncells 

* warr<2w/ dated att Whitehall xx° die Maij 1613, for presentinge before the Princes 

* Highnes [Hignes ap. Hal.'] the \joudy Elizabeth and the Prince Pallatyne Elector 

* fowerteene severall playes, viz. : one playe called ffilaster. One other called the 

* Knott df ffooles, One other Much adoe abowte nothinge, The Mayeds Tragedy, The 

* merye dyvell of Edmonton, The Tempest, A kinge and no kinge / The Twins 
•« Tragedie / The Winters Tale, S/r John ffalstaffe, The Moore of Venice, The Noble- 

* man, Caesars Tragedye / And one other called Love lyes a bleedinge. All wAich 



DATE OF COMPOSITION 315 

< Flayes weare played w(th-in the tyme of this Accompte, viz. : pa/d the some of 

* iiijx* xiij li yj s viij d [;f 93 : 6 : 8] /.' 

Capell, as we have seen, suggests that Ben Jonson in his Induction to Bartholomew 
Fair may have alluded to the present play in the following passage (wherein, as Hal- 
liwell says, < the distinction of italics and capital letters [in the origrinal edition], not 
' being peculiar to this quotation, is of little value in the consideration of the opinion 

* respecting the allusion *) : * If there#be never a Servant-monster i* the Fair^ who can 

* help it, be says ? nor a nest of Anticks f He is loth to make nature afraid in his 

* Flayes^ like those that beget Tales^ Tempests^ and such-like Drolleries* Whereon 
Halliwell sensibly remarks: *As The Tempest and the Winter's Tale were both 

* acted at Court shortly before the production of Bartholomew Fair^ and were then 

* in great estimation with the public, there would be some grounds for the conjectiu« 

* that Shakespeare's plays are here alluded to, were it not for the circumstance that 
' Jonson can hardly be considered to refer to regular dramas. In the comedy of Bar- 

* tholomew Fair he ridicules those primitive dramatic exhibitions, which, known as 

< motions or puppet-shows, were peculiar favourites with the public at that festival. 

< In some of these, tempests and monsters were introduced, as in the motion of Jonah 

* and the Whale, The " nest of anticks," which is supposed to allude td the twelve 

< satyrs who are introduced at the sheep-shearing festival, does not necessarily refer 

* even to the spurious kind of drama here mentioned. The " servant-monster " and 

* the " nest of anticks " may merely mean individual exhibitions. If the latter really 

* does relate to a dramatic representation, it may very likely be in allusion to the fan- 

* tastic characters so often introduced in the masques of that period ; but the context 

< seems to imply that Jonson is referring to devices exhibited at the fair.' 

Fleay i^Life of Shakespeare^ p. 65) says that * Winter's Tale was certainly pro- 

* duced early this year [1610], before Jonson's Alchemist, . . . The "Address to the 

* " Reader" [in the latter] (no doubt dating in 1610) contains one of Jonson's numer- 
* ous allusions to the "dance of antics" in Winter's Tale.* Jonson's 'allusion' is 
not complimentary. May we venture to ask if it be likely that, at a time when he was 
one of the King's Players, shoulder to shoulder with Shakespeare, he would be will- 
ing, even were it permitted, to sneer at a play acted by his own company ? Fleay 
pronounces (p. 164) Malone's * h3rpothesis ' formed on the actual date of the entrance 
of Sir George Buck on the Mastership of the Revels * worthless,* because (p. 247) 
Buck had full power to * allow ' plays from 1607 onwards. * We are,' he proceeds, 
' after all, left in great measure to internal evidence. One really helpful fact is Jon- 

* son's allusion in Bartholomew Fair to a " nest of ninnies " and " those that beget 

* " Tales, Tempests and such-like drolleries." This was written in 1 614, and at that 

* date he would of course allude to the latest productions of Shakespeare, if to any.* 

Halliwell has conclusively shown, I think, how weak is the support which any 
argument can derive from this allusion in Bartholomew Fair. In addition, there are 
two other reasons against accepting this allusion, which have weight, at least with roe. 
First, to assume that Jonson would give public utterance to such a sneer is to debase 
his character as a man (it is a covert blow), as a friend (he loved Shakespeare to 
idolatry), and as a poet, with an aim in his art far too lofty to stoop to such petty mean- 
ness. Secondly, unless an allusion be appreciated by the audience it falls flat. To 
give point to this present allusion, then, we must assume that the audience at the 
Hope Theatre in 1614 was not only substantially the same as that at the Globe 
Theatre in 161 1, but that they were all of so intellectual a stamp and of so tenacious 



3i6 APPENDIX 

a memory that they instantly chuckled over a sneering reference to what they had 
heard three years before. And as for reading it — that they could not do till 1631-41, 
when Bartholomew Fair first appeared in print. 

In his Introduction to the Reprint of Dorastus and Fawnia^ Collier gives a fine- 
drawn reason why The Winter's Tale should have been written after The Tempest. 
In the novel, Fawnia (Shakespeare's Perdita) is turned adrift at sea in a boat, ' very 

* much in the same manner as Prospero describes what had happened to himself and 

* Miranda under similar circumstances. Shakespeare having already employed this 

* species of incident in The Tempest was obliged to vary it in The Winter's Tale, or 

* he would probably have followed Greene's description, which is certainly one of the 

* prettiest and most natural portions of his narrative.' 

To H ALLIWELL this reason appears too finely drawn. * Indications of this kind,' he 
says {Introd. p. 44) ' are clearly insufficient in themselves, even to be useful as pieces 
' of corroborative evidence. The incident of the exposure of the child in an open 

* boat is a very common one in early English romances, and as Shakespeare has 

< made other variations from [Dorastus and Fawnia] in The Winter's Tale^ it is an 
*■ unnecessary assumption to presume that the alteration was effected with reference 

< to any other play. With equal probability, it might be conjectured that Shakespeare, 

* having omitted the incident in the construction of The Winter's Tale^ introduced it 

< in The Tempest as one especially suited to a romantic drama of that description.' 

Thus far we have been dealing, as exclusively as is possible, with evidence drawn 
from internal allusions or inferences. We now turn to the second division of internal 
evidence, — namely, that derived from rhythm, now called * The Metrical Tests.* I 
believe the credit of first calling attention to certain peculiarities of rhjrthm and of 
verse, as characteristics of a certain play, belongs to Roderick, who, however, did 
not cite this peculiarity as a means of determining the Date of Composition, but 
merely noted the fact as strange. It is quite possible that Capell has somewhere in 
his * Notes ' alluded to the bearing of style on the question of date, but flesh recoils 
from delving in that ' rudis indigestaque moles,' merely to award historical priority 
to any one. 

In his Remarks on Henry the Eighth Mr Roderick (Edwards, Canons of Crit- 
icism^ 1765, p. 263, Seventh Ed.) calls attention to the * number of verses in that 

* play, many more than in any other, which end with a redundant syllable ;' also to the 

* great number of verses which have the pause on the seventh syllable ;' and, lastly, to 
the fact that the * emphasis, arising from the sense of the verse, very often clashes with 

* the cadence that would naturally result from the metre, 1. e. syllables that have an 

* emphasis in the sentence upon the account of the sense or meaning of it, are put in 

* the uneven places of the verse ; and are in the scansion made the first syllable of the 

* foot, and consequently short.' Roderick, however, pursued the subject no further. 

Malone was the earliest to call attention to the metre as an element in the deter- 
mination of the Date of Composition. In the Variorum of lyyS (i, 280) he con- 
jectured that Love's Labour Lost was Shakespeare's earliest play from the frequent 
rhymes therein, and in a foot-note he further explains his theory, which is that it is 
not * merely the use of rhymes, mingled with blank verse, but their frequency , that is 

* here urged, as a circumstance which seems to characterise and distinguish our poet's 

* earliest performances. In the whole number of pieces which were written ante- 

* cedent to the year 1600, and which, for the sake of perspicuity, have been called his 



DATE OF COMPOSITION 317 

' early compositions^ more rhyming couplets are fomid than in all the plays composed 

* subsequently to that year ; which have been named bis late productions. Whether, 

* in process of time, Shakespeare grew weary of the bondage of rhyme, or whether 
' he became convinced of its impropriety in a dramatic dialogue, his neglect of rhym- 

* ing (for he never wholly disused it) seems to have been gradtial* 

In Remarks on the Differences in Shakespeare's Versification in different Periods 
of his Lifcy 1857, the author, Charles Bathurst, attempted to divide the plays 
into four periods, following each other chronologically, indicated by the use of the 

* unbroken * and of the ' interrupted ' verse. By < unbroken ' Bathurst means a verse 
where the sense is not broken by the ending of the line ; by * interrupted,' where the 
sense is broken to such an extent that ' you cannot dwell on the end,' that is, where 
the verses end with what are called * weak endings,' such as monosyllables, and^ if, 
as, etc. His four periods he thus, not very clearly, defines (indeed, his little volume, 
valuable as it is, lacks clearness of outline, which is, perhaps, no more than to be ex- 
pected in one who enters a path where all is misty and vague) : * The first is not so 

* much distinguished from the second in the nature of the verse, as in the general in- 

* completeness of the style, or, at least, however beautiful many passages may be, the 

* absence of that entire boldness and freedom, which so singularly, according to com- 

* mon ideas, goes with quite unbroken passages, not unfrequently, in what I have 

< marked as his second style. To this last King John, for instance, and Romeo and 
^Juliet belong. In what I call the third style, his peculiar manner of unbroken 

* verse is altered, but without as yet falling into the opposite peculiarity of his later 

* plays, which will form his fourth style. Measure for Measure will serve for a 

* specimen of the third ; Anthony and Cieopatray and The Winter's Tale remarkably, 

< of the fourth style.' Having thus laid down his Periods, Bathurst analyses each 
play in turn and remarks as follows on The Winter's Tale, after accepting Collier's 
decisive proof that it was brought out in 1610 or 161 1 : * It is very overloaded in 

* thought, and strained language ; and very obscure. Parenthetical. The metre in 

* the fourth style, to an excessive degree. Double endings. The breaks between 

< the speeches regular and stiff; especially in the (extraneous) scene, between Cleom- 

< enes and Dion. It is a play of immense force ; and in some parts, according to 
*• the subject, of most delightful tenderness, and pleasant, natural, simplicity of feel- 

* ing ; though not quite of ideas and language. But the verse is the same in all. 

* This enables us to see, how two plays, unlike in matter and turn of feeling, might 

* be of the same date. As Coriolanus and The Tempest \ Othello and Twelfth Night, 
' The versification, then, is a still better internal guide than any other, to the chro- 
' nology. The rhyming Chorus is remarkable ; still in the same verse. It ranks 

* very much with CymbelinCy but has much more of the strong, not to say harsh, in 
' the serious parts. It has more good comedy than any other play, I think, of this 

* class.' 

In the Transactions of The New Shakspere Society (1874, vol. i, p. 442) there is 
an excellent account of * the History of the Verse-Tests in General,' by Dr J. K. 
Ingram, and a tabulated result of Dr Ingram's own application to all the Plays of 
the test involved in the number of Light Endings^ such as am, are^ arty ercy is, like, 
mayy etc., and of Weak EndingSy such as andy asy aty byy m, of than, etc. His valu- 
able Table gives an ascending series from Love's Labour's Lost, wherein there are but 
three Light Endings, up to The Winter's TalCy wherein out of 1825 lines of verse in 
the play, 57 have a Light Ending and 43 a Weak Ending, or a percentage of both 
together, of 5.48. This, with the exception of portions of Henry Vlll.y is the 



3i8 APPENDIX 

highest percentage reached by any play, and would indicate a date of composition of 
the very latest. 

Thus much of internal evidence. We now turn to an item of external evidence, 
which, inconclusive as it may be of the very earliest date, is incontrovertible as to one 
limit, at least, before which the play must have been written. From this time on* 
ward an unparalleled harmony reigns over editors. The discussion is practically 
closed. Hereafter, with one exception, there is a divergence of views as to date 
of no greater amount than from Spring to Autunm, from Summer to Winter. 

In 1836, Collier printed a small book, entitled : New Particulars regarding the 
Works of Shakespeare, These * new particulars' were obtained from a MS (No. 208, 
in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford) bearing the following title: *The Booke of 
< Plaies and Notes thereof, ^ Formans, for common PoUicie,' and written by Dr 
Simon Forman, a notorious Astrologer and Physician ; possibly he was what would 
be now called a * Spiritual Medium ' ; several stories are told of his * clairvoyance ' ; 
he prophesied, for instance, the day of his own death and had the grace to fulfil the 
prophecy ; he was implicated in that insoluble mystery, the murder of Sir Thomas 
Overbury, but died before the trial of Somerset. The last date in his Booke of Plaies^ 
Collier says, is the 15th of May, 161 1, shortly before his death. *The words "for 
' common PoUicie " mean that he made these remarks upon plays he saw represented, 
* because they afforded a useful lesson of prudence or " policy " for the ** common " 
*■ affairs of life.' The extract from Forman's diary relating to the present play, which 
is here given, is taken from the Facsimile by Halliwell (Introd. p. 41). I have merely 
transliterated the badly written court-hand. Neither Halliwell nor The New Shak- 
spere Society (Trans. 1875-6, p. 416) gives what may be termed an absolutely faith- 
ful transliteration of this Facsimile. The g which follows * Maye ' in the superscrip- 
tion is interpreted Wednesday by the former without comment, and the latter gives it 
not at all. Moreover, both are liberal in punctuation, where there is none in the 
original. In the Facsimile the date looks very much more like 1 61 2 than 1611. 
But Collier says that the Register of Forman's death states that he died in Septem- 
ber, 161 1. 

* In the Winters Talle at the glob 
161 1 the 15 of Maye g 

* Obserue ther howe Lyontes the Kinge of Cicillia was overcom ^ lelosy of his 
wife with the Kinge of Bohemia his frind that came to se him. and howe he con- 
triued his death and wold haue had his cup berer to haue poisoned, who gaue the 
King of bohemia warning therof & fled with him to bohemia / Remeber also howe 
he sent to the Orakell of appollo & the Aunswer of apoUo. that she was giltles. and 
that the king was lelouse &c and howe Except the child was found Agane that was 
loste the Kinge should die with out yssue. for the child was caried into bohemia & 
ther laid in a forrest & brought vp by a sheppard And the kinge of bohemia his 
sonn maried that wentch & howe they fled into Cicillia to Leontes and the sheppard 
hauing showed the letter of the nobleman by whom Leontes sent a [jiV] was that 
child and the lewells found about her. she was knowen to be Leontes daughter and 
was then 16 yers old 

* Remember also the Rog that cam in all tottered like coll pixci / * and howe he 
feyned him sicke & to haue bin Robbed of all that he had and howe he cosoned the 

'"' Staunton thinks that this was < some noted vagabond, whose nickname has not 
come down to us correctly.* Halliwell gives it * roll pixci ' and Collier * Coll Pipci.' 



DATE OF COMPOSITION 319 

por man of all his money, and after cam to the shep sher* with a pedlers packe & 
there cosoned them Again of all their money And howe he changed apparrell wt 
the Kinge of bomia his sonn. and then howe he turned Courtiar &c / beware of trust- 
inge feined beggars or fawninge fellouse.' 

The task is practically finished. There is but one voice, Hunter's, which will not 
join in assent. All but he agree in the belief that The Winter's Tale is one of 
Shakespeare's latest plays and that Forman gives us the earliest, positive, downward 
limit But before turning to Hunter, it is necessary to refer to a contribution to the 
discussion which bore its influence for over forty years, until in 1868 it was pronounced 
in whole or in part, a forgery. 

In 1842, Peter Cunningham edited, for The Shakespeare Society^ Extracts from 
the Accounts of the Revels at Court during the reigns of Elizabeth and James. 
Selections from these * Accounts,* made by Malone, were published in the Vari- 
orum of 1821 (iii, 360-409), and at the close of the list, which was restricted to the 
titles of plays only, and did not include the sundry expenses, and furthermore ended 
with the year 1588, Malone remarks : « There is no subsequent Revels Account in 
' the reign of Queen Elizabeth now extant.' Cunningham reprinted the entire Ac- 
coimts, and, moreover, alleged that he had discovered two additional books. Book 
Xn. and Book XHI. covering the years 1604 and 1611-12 respectively. In Book 
XII. there are the records of no less than eight performances of Shakespeare's plays, 
and in Book XIII. there are two, whereof one states that there was acted by * The 

* King's players' ' on * The 5th of Nouember [161 1] : A play called y« winters nighte 
' Tayle.' The original MS from which Cunningham printed his Book XII. has been 
pronounced a forgery.f But in regard to that from which Book XIII. was printed, 
opinions seem to vary; Halliwell-Phillipps, in his Outlines (p. 194, 5th ed.), 
accepts as genuine the item in regard to the performance of The Winter's Tale^ just 
quoted, while Dyce and Fleay reject the whole list as spurious, the latter (^Hist, of 
the StagCy p. 174) maintains, by dates and companies of Players, that the record of 
the performances is utterly false. Luckily a performance of The Winter's Tale in 
November, 161 1, has no bearing, in the present instance, on the date of composition, 
inasmuch as Dr Forman witnessed a performance of it six months previously. 

So much for this unsavory subject. We now turn to Hunter, whose remarks are 
always entitled to respect. 

Joseph Hunter (New Ulust. i, 413) is * very much inclined * to give an early 
date to the present play. * Nothing can be clearer,' he sa3rs, < than that the mere fact 

< that Forman witnessed the performance in 161 1 is no proof whatever that the play 

* had not been written and performed many years before. He saw also about the 

* same time Macbeth^ King Richard the Second^ and Cymbeline ; and yet no person 
' will, I conceive, be disposed to contend that these plays were written and first per- 

< formed in 1610 or 161 1. . . . We do not know from anything else that Forman has 

* written that he was one of those who never visit the theatre except on first nights ; 

* but we do know that plays which were not new were performed at Court . . . there- 

* fore, that A Winter's Tale was performed at Court on November 5, 161 1 [This was 

* written before Cunningham*s forgery had been detected] is no proof whatever that 

* Sheep-shearing. 

t For a full account of these forged Revels Books and the attendant mystery, see 
OtheUot pp. 351-355, and The Tempest^ pp. 280, 295, of the present edition. 



320 ' APPENDIX 

' it was then a new play, nor does it raise the slightest probability in that direction. 
' . . . The internal evidence for date is, indeed, exceedingly slight ; of which no 

* better proof can be given than the great discordancy of the commentators on this 

* point.' The reason for a late date (drawn from Sir Henry Herbert's Register) by 
Malone, viz. : that Sir George Buck was Master of the Revels from October, l6lo, 
until May, 1622; and that Sir George Buck must, therefore, have licensed The Win- 
ter's Tale between October, 1 610, when he was appointed to office, and May, 161 1, 
when Fonnan saw it, * appears decisive,' says Hunter, * but it only appears so,' for 
from the Stationers' Registers we have proof that Sir George Buck began to license 
long before October, 1 6 10; thus he licensed The Fleire on or before May 6, 1606; 
in June, 1607, Chapman's Bussy Damboisey etc. *The argument for the late date of 

* The Winter's Tale drawn from the date of Sir George Buck's appointment to office 

< is, I submit, untenable. [See Halliwell's remarks on this subject, given above.] 

< On the whole I should incline very much to Chalmers's opinion, slight as the 
*■ indications are, and place this play in near succession to Twelfth Nighty and not 

< later than 1 601 or 1602. If its having been licensed by Sir George Buck compel 

< us to look for a later date, I should place it about the time of the Gunpowder Plot, 

< 1606 (a year in which we know that Sir George Buck did license plays), the passage 

< about striking anointed kings admitting so easily of being construed into an intended 

< allusion to that dreadful conspiracy.' 

By way of recapitulation, the various items of internal evidence are as follows : 

Walpole : veiled compliment to Queen Elizabeth. 

Capell : Song : * Get you hence, for I must go.* 

Blackstone : < If I could find example 

Of thousands, that had struck anointed kings,' etc. 

Malone : ' but one Puritan amongst them,' etc. 

Chalmers : * Thou might'st bespice a cup,' etc. Leontes heirless. 

Collier : Different treatment in The Tempest in reference to the Exposure to the 
Sea. 

Among the items of internal evidence are to be included the general belief that 
the condensed, parenthetical, involved style of the play points to late composition, 
and the Metrical Tests. 

The external evidence is as follows : 

Ben Jonson's ridicule in his Bartholomew Fair, 

Sir Henry Herbert's Office-book, 

Dr Simon Forman's Note-book. 

To recapitulate, chronologically : — 
Capell (1767) . . between Hen. VIIL and The Tempest^ 1613 

Walpole (1768) before 1603 

Malone (1778) 1594 

(1790) »6o4 

1613 

Chalmers (1799) 1601 

Drake (i^'T) . • . • written at close of 1 610, performed 161 1 

Malone (1821) end of 1610, or beginning of 161 1 

Campbell (1838) 161 1 

Knight (1840) 1611 






Collier i, ii 

Hunter 

Gervinus 

Singer ed. ii 

R. G. White 

Halliwell 

Staunton 

Dyce 

Keightley 

Ward 

furnivall 

Stokes 

ROLFE 

Hudson 

Fleay 

Deighton 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 32 1 

1842-58) autumn and winter of 1610-161 1 

1845) not later than 1601 or 1602 

1849) 1611 

1856) 1611 

1857) 1611 

1859) winter of 1610-1611 

1864) autumn and winter of 16 10-161 1 

1866) . . cannot be assigned to a much earlier period than 161 1 

1867) not earlier than 1610 

1875) 1610 

1877) 1611 

1878) 1610, 1611 

1880) 1611 

1880) 1611 

1886) early in 1610 

1889) . . . . : 1611 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 

At this late day it is quite impossible to decide to whom the credit is to be given 
of having first detected the source whence Shakespeare derived the plot of The Win- 
ter's Tale, GiLDON, in his Remarks on the Plays of Shakespeare (p. 336), observes 
that this * Tale is taken from an old story book of Dorasttis and Fawnia.* RowE, in 
his Account of the Life of Shakespeare (p. xxvii), says: *The fVinter's Tale ... is 

* taken from an old Book, called The Delectable History of Dorastus and Fawnia? 
Both of these remarks were printed in the same year, 1709; the question of priority, 
therefore, if it be of the slightest interest, must be left imdecided. 

Collier : * As early as the year 1588, Robert Greene printed a tract called Pan- 

* dosto : The Triumph of TimCf better known as The History of Dorastus and Faw- 

* nia, the title it bore in some of the later copies. As far as we now know, it was 

* not reprinted until 1607, and a third impression appeared in 1609; it afterwards 

* went through many editions ; but it seems not unlikely that Shakespeare was di- 

* rected to it, as a proper subject for dramatic representation, by the third impression, 

* which came out the year before we suppose him to have commenced writing his 

* fVinter's Tale. How long [the Novel] continued popular may be judged from the 
' fact that it was printed as a chap-book as recently as the year 1735, when it was 

* called The Fortunate Lovers ; or the History of Dorastus^ Prince of Sicily , and of 

* Faztmia, only daughter and heir to the King of Bohemia.^ 

Dyce (Greene's IVorks, ed. 1831, p. liii) : * To those who may read the Novel for 

* the first time, having a previous acquaintance with the play of Shakespeare, — and 

* to what reader is it altogether unknown ? — ^the former will appear cold and uninter- 
' esting on a recollection of the marvellous truth and reality of the latter. But Pan- 

* dosto b far from a contemptible production ; if portions of it are disfigured by bad 
' taste and coarseness of feeling, there are also portions composed in a very pleasing 

* and affecting manner. The story, there is every reason to believe, was the inven- 

* tion of Greene.* [See Caro, infra. — Ed.] 

Inasmuch as the Novel of Dorastus and Faztmia is reprinted on the following 

21 



322 APPENDIX 

pages, a comparison of it with The Winter s Tale is needless. Words or phrases 
in it which seem to have remained in Shakespeare's memory are frequently re- 
ferred to in the foregoing Commentary ; more copious references are placed in the 
margin of the Reprint, whereby the student can see for himself the extent to which 
Shakespeare was indebted to Greene, — an interesting and not unprofitable exam- 
ination. Delius, in many words which somewhat darken counsel, has made a^ 
comparison of the Novel and the drama; it is to be found in the Shakespeare Jahry 
buch^ XV, 22-43. 

It is nowhere denied that Greene*s Novel is the direct source of 7%e Winter's \ 
Tale. One indirect source has been brought forward, however, which, not impossibly, 
supplied the germ of this story, hitherto supposed to be entirely of Greene's own 
invention. (See Dyce, supra.) 

J. Caro {Englische Studien, 1 878, Bd. ii, hft. i, s. 167) gives a tragic narrative from 
a Lithuanian MS of the 1 6th century, of which I here give briefly the outlines as 
follows : Semovit, the Elder, duke of Masovia, some time after the death of his wife, 
fell desperately in love with a daughter of the duke of Miinsterberg, the beautiful 
Ludomila, and married her. She was a paragon of every virtue, and their happi- 
ness was unbounded. In an evil hour, a wicked, lying woman slanderously told 
Ludomila's sister and her sister's husband that Ludomila had been unfaithful, and 
named, as her guilty partner, a highly honoured courtier and cup>bearer, named 
Dobek. This story finally reached the ears of Semovit, who, in a fit of desperate 
frenzy, threw his wife into prison ; but when he dispatched officers for Dobek it was 
found that Dobek had gone on a pilgrimage with an aged priest. Wliile in prison 
Ludomila gave birth to a son, whom Semovit commanded one of his old retainers to 
kill secretly. Shortly after Ludomila was suffocated with fumes of charcoal. A 
daughter of Semovit by his first wife having learned that the infant had not been 
killed by the old retainer, but had been entrusted to an old woman, succeeded in 
stealing the child, and brought him up secretly in her own castle, in Stettin, in a 
style befitting his rank. About seven years after the death of Ludomila, word was 
brought to Semovit that the cup-bearer, Dobek, had returned from the Holy Land and 
was living in Prussia. Semovit succeeded in enticing him to Masovia, and he was 
brought in chains into the presence of the Duke, who, beside himself with rage at the 
sight, struck the ill-starred youth on the head with a mace; executioners hurried him 
from the spot and he was immediately torn asunder by horses. But this cruel deed 
revealed, not only the innocence of Ludomila, but also that of the cup-bearer ; it was 
discovered that Dobek had been a woman in disguise. Further investigations revealed 
that the poor young girl was the daughter of a divine, who had brought her up as a 
boy, and in his old age had taken her with him to the Holy Land, where he died, and 
his daughter had returned to her home only to meet with a horrible and unmerited 
death. 

The shock of this discovery proved almost fatal to Semovit's health and his 
reason. To add, if possible, to his bitter repentance, a monk disclosed to him that 
the wicked author of the original slander had, on the news of the death of Ludomila, 
fallen into a lethargy from which she had just awakened (as Caro remarks, the syn- 
cope must have lasted seven years), and on her death-bed had begged the monk to 
make known to Semovit the baseless falsehood she had knowingly uttered. Semovit 
erected a magnificent tomb to his w^ife and enriched all churches. To calm his grief 
he paid a visit to his daughter in Stettin. At the entrance to his daughter's palace, he 
was met by a boy of dazzling beauty, who bade him welcome in a charming speech. 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 323 

Before he could recover from his astonishment, his daughter took the young Henry 
by the hand, and falling at her father's feet disclosed the whole story of Henry's birth 
and abduction. The duke, deeply moved, recognised his own features in those of the 
boy, and from that moment Henry became his favorite child. To show to Heaven 
his deep repentance for his unparalleled cruelty to Ludomila and to Dobek, he destined 
Henry for the church. 

Caro is moderate in his claims for this story as the prototype of The IVintet's Tale, 
He finds in the Delphic oracle a reminiscence of the priestly revelation of Ludomila's 
chastity; that both Dobek and Camillo were cup>bearers he considers noteworthy, 
and that the tearing to pieces of Antigonus by the bear reminds us of the tearing of ' 
Dobek to pieces by the horses, and, finally, that the zeal and actions of Semovit's 
daughter irresistibly recall Paulina. However weak we may find these parallels, in ( 
his general conclusions we can all agree with the learned historian. It is by no 
means his intention to deny that Greene's story is the source whence Shakespeare 
borrowed his materials ; he wishes merely to suggest that the tragic and romantic 
story of Semovit might have found its way to England and been told by some of the 
followers of Anne of Bohemia, Richard the Second's Queen, to whom it must have 
been familiar, or it might have been learned in the intercourse with Russia and North- 
em Prussia, which sprang up in Richard's reign, and might thus eventually form the 
germ of Greene's Novel, 

It has been asserted (most stoutly, I think, by J. L. Klein) that there is an : 
affinity between The fVinfer^s Tale and Lope's El Martnol de Felisardo. Klein 
( Geschichte des Dr.^ x, 494) affirms that there is a remarkable similarity between the 
two dramas. 

Let the reader judge : Felisardo, who passes as the son of noble parents, and is a 
student, wins the love of Elisa, the daughter of an Alcalde, and, at last, the consent 
of her father to their marriage. It turns out, however, that Felisardo is a natural son 
of the king, who, by the death of his lawful heir, is obliged either to recall Felisardo 
or to die heirless. Accordingly the King sends an Admiral to bring the young man 
to Court. It now appears that Elisa has a twin brother, Celio ; and the resemblance 
of these twins to each other is so exact that when the Alcalde wished to fit out Celio 
as a page to the Court, he takes Elisa by mistake, and dispatches her, dressed in boy's 
clothes, as a page to Felisardo. A marriage is arranged between Felisardo and the 
daughter of the Admiral, but the young prince will not listen to it, and, on the advice 
of his merry servant, Tristan, feigns himself in love with a marble statue in the gar- 
den, and to such an extreme did he carry this feigned fascination that at last, to save 
him from drooping into his tomb, the King consented that he should wed the statue. 
Of coiurse, Elisa was dressed up as the statue ; whereupon the King was obliged to 
keep his word and sanction the marriage. 

After listening to this, we may assuredly say, in Johnsonian phrase, * let us hear 

* no more ' of El Marmol de Felisardo as a source of The Winter's Tale, 

W. Carew Hazlitt, in his Reprint of Collier's Shakespeare's Library^ observes 
that * there is little doubt that, in writing the Winter's Tale^ the author had also an 

* eye to Gascoigne's paraphrase of the Phomissa of Euripides, presented at Gray's 

* Inn in 1566, and printed in the works of that interesting old Maker, 1573, I575f 
*■ 1587, and as edited in 1869-70. As regards the character of Autolycus, it is a 

* matter for speculation whether Shakespeare had not in his recollection that extra- 

* ordinarily curious production by Thomas Newbery, The Book of Dives PragmatictiSy 

* 1563, repeated in Mr Huth's Fugitive Tracts^ 1875.* 



324 APPENDIX 

The 'copy' used for the following Reprint of Greene's Navel is W. drew 
Hazlitt's Reprint of Collier's Shakespeare Library. The original is dated 1588; 

* the only known copy of this edition,' says Collier, * is in the British Museum ; but it 

* is defective in one place, and we have necessarily been compelled to complete our 

* impression from a later copy. Whether the story were the invention of Greene, or 

< whether, as was not unusual with him, he adopted it from a foreign language, can- 
' not be now ascertained ; but it is not known abroad in any other form than that in 

< which it has been received from this country.' < Robert Greene,' says Collier else- 
where, in his Introduction to the Reprint^ * was a man who possessed all the advan- 

* tages of education ; he was a graduate of both Universities, he was skilled in ancient 

* learning and in modem languages, he had, besides, a prolific imagination, a lively 

* and elegant fancy, and a grace of expression rarely exceeded ; yet let any person 

* well acquainted with The Winter's Tale read the novel of Pandosto^ upon which it 

* was foimded, and he will be struck at once with the vast pre-eminence of Shake- 

< speare, and with the admirable manner in which he has converted materials supplied 
' by another to his own use.' 

To save space the Address ' to the Gentlemen Readers,' and The Epistle Dedi- 
calorie have been omitted. The Title reads as follows: — 

PANDOSTO. I IF THE TRIUMPH | OF TIME. | tyHEREiN is discouerbd \ 
by a pleafant Hillorie, that although by the meanes | of sinifler fortune. Truth may 
be concea | led yet by Time in fpight of fortune it \ is mofl manifeftly reuealed. \ 
Pleafant for age to auoyde drowfie thoughtes^ \ profitable for youth to eschue other 
wanton | pastimes^ and bringing to both a de \ fired content, \ Temporis filia Veritas. | 
\ By Robert Greene^ Maister of Artes | in Cambridge. \ Omne tulit punctimi qui 
miscuit vtile dulci. | Imprinted at London by Thomas Orwin for Thomas \ Cadman, 
dwelling at the Signe of the Bible, \ neere vnto the North doore of Paules, | 15S8. 

The Historic of Dorastus and Fawnia. 



AMONG al the passions wherewith humane mindes are perplexed, there is none 
that so galleth with restlesse despight, as the infectious soare of lealousie : for 
all other griefes are eyther to bee appeased with sensible perswasions, to be cured with 
wholesome counsel, to be relieved in want, or by tract of time to be wome out, (leal- 
ousie only excepted) which is so sawsed with suspitious doubtes, and pinching mis- 
trust, that whoso seckes by friendly counsaile to rase out this hellish passion, it foorth- 
with suspecteth that he geveth this advise to cover his owne guiltinesse. Yea, who so 
is payned with this restlesse torment doubteth all, dystrusteth him-sclfe, is alwayes 
frosen with feare, and fired with suspition, having that wherein consisteth all his joy 
to be the breeder of his miscrie. Yea, it is such a heavy enemy to that holy estate 
of matrimony, sowing betweene the married couples such deadly seeds of secret 
hatred, as Love being once rased out by spightful distrust, there oft ensueth bloudy 
revenge, as this ensuing Hystorie manifestly prooveth : wherein Pandosto (furiously 
incensed by causelesse lealousie) procured the death of his most loving and loyal! 
wife, and bis owne endlesse sorrow and misery. 

In the Countrey of Bohemia there raygned a King called Pandosto, whose for- 
timate successe in warres against his foes, and bountifull curtesie towardes his fnendes 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 325 

in peace, made him to be greatly feared and loved of all men. This Pandosto had 
to Wife a Ladie called Bellaria, by birth royall, learned by education, faire by nature, 
by vertues famous, so that it was hard to judge whether her beautie, fortune, or vertue, 
wanne the greatest commendations. These two lincked together in perfect love, led 
their lives with such fortunate content, that their Subjects greatly rejoyced to see their 
quiet disposition. They had not beene married long, but Fortune (willing to increase 
their happines) lent them a sonne, so adorned with the gifts of nature, as the perfec- 
tion of the Childe g^reatly augmented the love of the parentes, and the joys of their 
commons ; in so much that the Bohemians, to shewe their inward joyes by outwarde 
actions, made Bone-fires and triumphs throughout all the Kingdome, appointing Justes 
and Tumeyes for the honour of their young Prince : whether resorted not onely his 
Nobles, but also divers Kings and Princes which were his neighbours, willing to 
shewe their friendship they ought to Pandosto, and to win fame and glory by their 
prowesse and valour. Pandosto, whose minde was fraught with princely liberality, 
entertayned the Kings, Princes, and noble men with such submisse curtesie and mag> 
nifical bounty, that they all sawe how willing he was to g^atifie their good wils, mak> 
ing a feast for Subjects, which continued by the space of twentie dayes ; all which 
time the Justes and Turneys were kept to the g^at content both of the Lordes and 
Ladies there present. This solemne tryumph being once ended, the assembly, taking 
their leave of Pandosto and Bellaria : the young Sonne (who was called Garinter) 
was nursed up in the house to the great joy and content of the parents. 

Fortune envious of such happy successe, willing to shewe some signe of her in* 
constancie, turned her wheele, and darkned their bright simne of prosperitie, with the 
mistie cloudes of mishap and misery. For it so happened that Egistus, King of 
Sycilia, who in his youth had bene brought up with Pandosto, desirous^ to shewe that 
neither tracte of time, nor distance of place could diminish their former friendship, 
provided a navie of ships, and sayled into Bohemia to visite his old friend and com- 
panion, who hearing of his arrivall, went himselfe in person, and his wife Bellaria, 
accompanied with a great traine of Lords and Ladies, to meet Egistus : and esp3ring 
him, alighted from his horse, embraced him very lovingly, protesting that nothing in 
the world could have happened more acceptable to him then his comming, wish- 
ing his wife to welcome his olde friend and acquaintance: who (to shewe how 
she liked him whom her husband loved) intertayned him with such familiar curtesie, 
as Egistus perceived himselfe to bee verie well welcome. After they had thus saluted 
and embraced eche other, they mounted againe on horsebacke and rode towards the 
the Citie, devising and recounting, howe being children they had passed 
their youth in friendely pastimes : where, by the meanes of the Citizens, * * 
Egistus was receyved with triumphs and showes in such sort, that he marvelled how 
on so small a warning they coulde make such preparation. 

Passing the streetes thus with such rare sightes, they rode on to the Pallace, where 
Pandosto entertained Egistus and his Sycilians with such banqueting and sumptuous ^ 
cheare, so royally, as they all had cause to commend his princely liberality ; yea, the 
verie basest slave that was knowne to come from Sycilia was used with such curtesie, 
that Egistus might easily perceive how both hee and his were honored for his friendes 
sake. Bellaria (who in her time was the flower of curtesie), willing to show how 
unfaynedly shee looved her husband by his friends intertainement, used him likewise 
so familiarly that her countenance bewraied how her minde was affected towardes 
him : oftentimes comming her selfe into his bed chamber, to see that nothing should 
be amis to mislike him. This honest familiarity increased dayly more and more be- 



326 APPENDIX 

twixt them; for Bellaria, noting in Egistus a princely and bountifull minde, adorned 
M'ith sundrie and excellent qualities, and Egistus, finding in her a vertuous and cur- 
teous disposition, there grew such a secret uniting of their affections, that the one 
could not well be without the company of the other : in so much that when Pandosto 
was busied with such urgent affaires, that hee could not bee present with his friend 

Egistus, Bellaria would walke with him into the Garden, where they 
* ' * two in privat and pleasant devises would passe away the time to both 
their contents. This custome still continuing betwixt them, a certaine melancholy 
passion entring the minde of Pandosto drave him into sundry and doubtfull thoughts. 
First, he called to minde the beauty of his wife Bellaria, the comelines and braverie 
of his friend Egistus, thinking that Love was above all Lawes and therefore to 
be staied with no Law ; that it was hard to put fire and flaxe together without burn- 
ing ; that their open pleasures might breede his secrete displeasures. He considered 
with himselfe that Egistus was a man, and must needes love: that his wife was 
a woman, and therefore subject unto love, and that where fancy forced, friendship 
was of no force. 

These and such like doubtfull thoughtes a long time smoothering in his stomacke, 
beganne at last to kindle in his minde a secret mistrust, which increased by suspition, 
grewe at last to be a flaming lealousie, that so tormented him as he could take no 
rest. He then began to measure all their actions, and to misconstrue of their too 
private familiarite, judging that it was not for honest affection, but for disordinate 
fancy, so that hee began to watch them more narrowely to see if hee coulde gette any 
true or certaine proofe to confirme his doubtfull suspition. While thus he noted their 
lookes and gestures, and suspected their thoughtes and meaninges, they two seely 
soules who doubted nothing of this his treacherous intent, frequented daily eache 
others companie, which drave him into such a franticke passion, that he beganne to 
beare a secret hate to Egistus, and a lowring countenance to Bellaria, who marvelling 
at such unaccustomed frowns, began to cast beeyond the Moone, and to enter into a 
thousand sundrie thoughtes, which way she should offend her husband : but finding 
in her selfe a cleare conscience, ceassed to muse, until such time as she might find fit 
opportunitie to demaund the cause of his dumps. In the meane time Pandostoes 
minde was so farre charged with Jealously, that he did no longer doubt, but was 
assured (as he thought) that bis Friend Egistus had entered a wrong pointe in his 
tables, and so had played him false play : wherupon desirous to revenge so great an 
injury, he thought best to dissemble the grudge with a faire and friendly countenance : 
and so under the shape of a friend, to shew him the tricke of a foe. Devising with 
himself a long time how he might best put away Egistus without suspition of treach- 
erous murder, hee concluded at last to poyson him : which opinion pleasing his 

humour, he became resolute in his determination, and the better to 
* ' bring the matter to passe he called unto him his cupbearer, with whom 
in secret he brake the matter : promising to him for the performance thereof to 
geve him a thousande crownes of yearcly revenues ; his cupbearer, eyther being of 
a good conscience, or willing for fashion sake, to deny such a bloudy request, began 
with great reasons to perswade Pandosto from his determinate mischief: shewing him 
what an offence murther was to the Gods : how such unnaturall actions did more dis- 
please the heavens, than men, and that causelesse cruelty did seldome or never escape 
without revenge : he layd before his face, that Egistus was his friend, a King, and 
one that was come into his Kingdome, to confirme a league of perpetuall amilie be- 
twixt them; that he had, and did shew him a most friendly countenance: how 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 327 

Egistus was not onely honoured of bis owne people by obedience, but also loved of 
the Bohemians for bis curtesie. And that if he now should, without any just or 
manifest cause, poyson him, it would not onely be a g^eat dishonour to his Majestic, 
and a meanes to sow perpetuall enmity between the Sycilians and the Bohemians, 
but also his owne subjects would repine at such treacherous cruelty. These and such 
like perswasions of Franion (for so was his Cup-bearer called) could no whit prevaile 
to disswade him from his divellish enterprize : but remaining resolute in his deter- 
mination (his fury so fired with rage, as it could not be appeased with reason) he 
began with bitter taunts to take up his man, and to lay before him two 
baites; preferment and death: saying that if he would poyson Egis- * 
tus, he would advance him to high dignities : if he refused to doe it of an obsti- 
nate minde, no torture should be too great to requite his disobedience. Franion, 
seeing that to perswade Pandosto any more, was but to strive against the streame, 
consented, as soone as an opportunity would give him leave, to dispatch Egistus : > 
wherewith Pandosto remained somewhat satisfied, hoping now he should be fully 
revenged of such mistrusted injuries, intending also as soon as Egistus was dead, to 
give his wife a sop of the same sawce, and so be rid of those which were the cause 
of his restles sorrow. "While thus he lived in this hope, Franion being secret in his 
chamber, began to meditate with himselfe in these terms. 

Ah Franion, treason is loved of many, but the Traitor hated of all ; unjust offences 
may for a time escape without danger, but never without revenge. Thou art servant 
to a King, and must obey at command ; yet Franion, against law and conscience, it 
is not good to resist a tyrant with armes, nor to please an unjust King with obedience. 
What shalt thou doe ? Folly refused gold, and frenzie preferment : wisdome seeketh 
after dignity, and counsell keepeth for gaine. Egistus is a stranger to thee, and Pan- 
dosto thy Soveraigne : thou hast little cause to respect the one, and oughtest to have 
great care to obey the other. Thinke this Franion, that a pound of gold is worth a 
tunne of Lead, great gifts are little Gods : and preferment to a meane man is a whet- 
stone to courage ; there is nothing sweeter than promotion, nor lighter then report : 
care not then though most count thee a traitor, so all call thee rich. Dignity (Franion) 
advaunceth thy posteritie, and evil report can but hurt thy selfe. Know this, where 
Eagles builde, Falcons may prey ; where Lyons haunt, Foxes may steale. Kings are 
knowne to commaund, servants are blamelesse to consent : feare not thou then to lift 
at Egistus, Pandosto shall beare the burthen. Yea but Franion, conscience is a worme 
that ever biteth, but never ceaseth : that which is rubbed with the stone Galactites 
will never bee hot. Flesh dipped in the Sea iEgeum will never bee sweete : the 
hearbe Trigion beeing once bit with an Aspis, never groweth, and con- 
science once stayned with innocent blood, is alwaies tyed to a guiltie re- » » • 
morse. Prefer thy content before riches, and a cleare minde before dignity; so 
beeing poore, thou shalt have rich peace, or else rich, thou shalt enjoy disquiet 

Franion having muttered out these or such like words, seeing either he must die 
with a cleare minde, or live with a spotted conscience, he was so cumbred with divers 
cogitations that bee could take no rest : untill at last he determined to breake the 
matter to Egistus ; but fearing that the King should ejrther suspect or heare of such 
matters, he concealed the device till opportunitie would permit him to reveale it. 
Lingping thus in doubtfuU feare, in an evening he went to Egistus lodging, and de- 
sirous to breake with him of certaine affaires that touched the King, after all were 
commaunded out of the Chamber, Franion made manifest the whole conspiracie 
which Pandosto had devised against him, desiring Egistus not to account him a 



\- 



328 APPENDIX 

Traytor for bewraying his Maisters counsaile, but to thinke that be did it for con- 
science : hoping that although his Maister inflamed with rage, or incensed by some 
sinister reportes, or slanderous speeches, had imagined such causelesse mischiefe : yet 
when time should paciBe his anger, and try those talebearers but flattering Parasites, 
then he would count him as a faithfull Seruant that with such care had kept his Mais- 
ters credite. Egistus had not fully heard Franion tell forth his tale, but a quaking 
feare possessed all his limmes, thinking that there was some treason wrought, and 
that Franion did but shaddow his craft with these false colours : wherefore he began 
to waxe in choUer, and saide that he doubted not Pandosto, sith he was his friend, 
and there had never as yet beene any breach of amity : he had not sooght to invade 
his lands, to conspire with his enemies, to disswade his Subjects from their allegeance ; 
but in word and thought he rested his at all times : he knew not therefore any cause 
that should moove Pandosto to seeke his death, but suspected it to be a compacted 
knavery of the Bohemians to bring the King and him to oddes. 

Franion staying him the middst of his talke, told him, that to dally with Princes 
was with the swannes to sing against their death, and that if the Bohemians had in- 
tended any such mischiefe, it might have beene better brought to passe then by re- 
vealing the conspiracie : therefore his Majesty did ill to misconstrue of his good 
meaning, sith his intent was to hinder treason, not to become a traytor ; and to con* 
firme his promises, if it pleased his Majestic to fly into Sicilia for the safegarde of his 
life, hee would goe with him, and if then he found not such a practise to be pre- 
tended, let his imagined treacherie be repayed with most monstrous torments. Egis- 
tus hearing the solemne protestation of Franion, beganne to consider, that in Love 
and Kingdomes, neither faith, nor lawe is to bee respected : doubting that Pandosto 
thought by his death to destroy his men, and with speedy warre to invade Sycilia. 
These and such doubtes throughly weyghed, he gave great thankes to Franion, prom* 
ising if hee might with life retume to Syracusa, that hee would create him a Duke in 
Sycilia : craving his Counsell how hee might escape out of the Countrie. Franion, 
who having some small skill in Navigation, was well acquainted with the Ports and 
havens, and knew every daunger in the Sea, joyning in counsell with the Maister of 
Egistus Navie, rigged all their ships, and setting them a flote, let them lie at anchor, 
to be in the more readines, when time and winde should serve. 

Fortune although blind, yet by chaunce favouring this just cause, sent them within 
six dayes a good gale of winde ; which Franion seeing fit for their purpose, to put 
Pandosto out of suspition, the night before they should sayle, he went to him, and 
promised, that the next day he wold put the device in practise, for he had got such 
a forcible poyson, as the very smell thereof wold procure suddain death. Pandosto 
was joyfull to heare this good newes, and thought every houre a day, till he might be 
glutted with bloudy revenge ; but his suit had but ill successe. For Egistus fearing 
that delay might breede danger, and willing that the grass should not be cut from 
under his feete, taking bagge and baggage, by the helpe of Franion, 
* ' conveied hiraselfe and his men out of a posteme gate of the Ciltie, 
so secretly and speedily that without any suspilion they got to the Sea shoare ; 
where, with many a bitter curse taking their leave of Bohemia, they went aboord. 
Weighing their Anchors and hoisting sayle, they passed as fast as wind and sea would 
permit towards Sycilia : Egistus being a joyfull man that he had safely past such 
treacherous perils. But as they were quietly floating on the sea, so Pandosto and his 
Ciltizens were in an oproare ; for seeing that the Sycilians without taking their leave, 
were fled away by night, the Bohemians feared some treason, and the King thought 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 329 

that without question his suspition was true, seeing the Cup-bearer had bewrayed 
the sum of his secret pretence. Whereupon he began to imagine that 
Franion and his wife Bellaria had conspired with Egistus, and that ' 
the fervent affection shee bare him, was the onely meanes of his secret departure ; in 
so much that incensed with rage, he commaunded that his wife should be carried 
straight to prison, untill they heard further of his pleasure. The Guarde unwilling to 
lay their hands one such a vertuous Princesse, and yet fearing the Kings fury, went 
very sorrowfull to fulfill their charge: comming to the Queenes lodg- 
ing, they found her playing with her yong Sonne Garinter : unto whom 
with teares doing the message, Bellaria astonished at such a hard censure, and find- 
ing her cleere conscience a sure advocate to pleade in her cause, went to the prison 
roost willingly : where with sighes and teares shee past away the time, till she might 
come to her triall. 

But Pandosto whose reason was suppressed with rage, and whose unbridled foUie 
was incensed with fury : seeing Franion had bewrayed his secrets, and that Egistus 
might well be rayled on, but not revenged : determined to wreake all 
his wrath on poore Bellaria. He therefore caused a generall procla- 
mation to be made through all bis Realme, that the Queene and Egistus had by 
the helpe of Franion, not onely committed most incestuous adultery, but also had ^ 
conspired the Kings death; whereupon the Traitor Franion was fled away with 
Egistus, and Bellaria was most justly imprisoned. This proclamation t 

being once blazed through the country, although the vertuous disposi- * ^ 
tion of the Queene did halfe discredit the contents, yet the suddaine and speedy 
passage of Egistus, and the secret departure of Franion, induced them (the circum- ^ 
stances throughly considered) to thinke that both the proclamation was true, and the 
King greatly injured : yet they pityed her case, as sorrowful that so good a Lady 
should be crossed with such adverse fortune. But the King, whose restlesse rage 
would remit no pitty, thought that although he might sufficiently requite his wives 
falshood with the bitter plague of pinching penury, yet his minde should never be 
glutted with revenge, till he might have fit time and opportunity to repay the treach- 
ery of Egistus with a totall injury. But a curst Cow hath oftentimes short homes, 
and a willing minde but a weake arm. For Pandosto although he felt that revenge 
was a spurre to warre, and that envy alwaies proffereth Steele, yet he saw, that 
Egistus was not onely of great puissance and prowesse to withstand him, 
but had also many Kings of his alliance to ayde him, if neede should ' * 
serve : for he married the Emperours daughter of Russia. These and the like con- 
siderations something daunted Pandosto his courage, so that hee was 
content rather to put up a manifest injurie with peace, then hunt after ' * 
revenge, dishonor and losse ; determining since Egistiis had escap>ed 
scot-free, that Bellaria should pay for all at an unreasonable price. ' * 

Remayning thus resolute in his determination, Bellaria continuing still in prison 
and hearing the contents of the Proclamation, knowing that her minde was never 
touched with such affection, nor that Egistus had ever offered her such discurtesie, 
would gladly have come to her answere, that both shee might have knowne her just 
accusers, and cleared her selfe of that guiltlesse crime. 

But Pandosto was so inflamed with rage, and infected with Jelousie, as he would 
not vouchsafe to heare her, nor admit any just excuse ; so that shee was faine to make 
a vertue of her neede and with patience to beare those heavie injuries. As thus shee 
lay crossed with calamities (a great cause to increase her griefe) she found her selfe 



330 APPENDIX 

quicke with childe : which as soone as she felt stirre in her body, she burst forth into 
bitter teares, exclayming against fortune in these termes. 

Alas, Bellaria, how infortunate art thou, because fortunate: Better thou hadst 
beene borne a beggar, then a Prince, so shouldest thou have bridled Fortune with 
want, where now shee sporteth her selfe with thy plentie. Ah happy life,* where 
poore thoughts, and meane desires live in secure content, not fearing Fortune because 
too low for Fortune. Thou seest now, Bellaria that care is a companion to honor, 
not to povertie ; that high Cedars are crushed with tempests, when low shrubs are 
not touched with the winde ; pretious Diamonds are cut with the file, when despised 
pibbles lye safe in the sand. Delphos is sought to by Princes, not beggers : and For- 
tunes Altars smoke with kings presents, not with poore mens gifts. Happie are such 
Bellaria, that curse Fortune for contempt, not feare : and may wish they were, not 
sorrow they have beene. Thou art a Princesse Bellaria, and yet a prisoner ; borne to 
the one by descent, assigned to the other by dispite : accused without cause, and 
therefore oughtest to dye without care : for patience is a shield against Fortune, and 
a guiltlesse minde yeeldeth not to sorrow. Ah but infamy galleth unto death, and 
liveth after death: Report is plumed with times feathers, and En vie oftentimes 
soundeth Fames trumpet: the suspected adultery shall fly in the ayre, and thy 
knowne vertues shall lye hid in the Earth ; one Moale staineth a whole Face : and 
what is 'once spotted with infamy can hardly be wome out with time. Die then 
Bellaria, Bellaria die : for if the Gods should say thou art guiltlesse, yet envie would 
heare the Gods, but never beleeve the Gods. Ah haplesse wretch, cease these 
tearmes : desperate thoughtes are fit for them that feare shame, not for such as hope 
for credite. Pandosto hath darkened thy fame, but shall never discredite thy vertues. 
Suspition may enter a false action, but proofe shall never put in his plea : care not 
then for envie, sith report hath a blister on her tongue : and let sorrow baite them 
which offend, not touch thee that art faultlesse. But alas poore soule, how canst thou 
but sorrow ? Thou art with childe, and by him, that in steed of kind pittie, pincheth 
thee in cold prison. 

And with that, such gasping sighes so stopping her breath, that shee could not 
utter more words, but wringing her hands, and gushing forth streames of teares, shee 
passed away the time with bitter complaints. The Jaylor pitying those her heavie 
passions, thinking that if the King knew she were with childe, he would somewhat 
appease his fury and release her from prison, went in al hast, and certified Pandosto, 
what the effect of Bellarias complaint was ; who no sooner heard the Jailor say she 
was with childe, but as one possessed with a phranzie, he rose up in a rage, swearing 
that shee and the basterd "brat she was [big] withall should die, if the Gods them- 
selves said no ; thinking that surely by computation of time, that Egistus and not he 
was father to the childe. This suspitious thought galled a fresh this halfe healed 
sore, in so much as he could take no rest, untill he might mittigate 
* * * his choller with a just revenge, which happened presently after. For 
Bellaria was brought to bed of a faire and beautifull daughter : which no sooner 
Pandosto hearde, but he determined that both Bellaria and the young infant 
should be burnt with fire. His Nobles, hearing of the kings cruell sentence, 
sought by perswasions to divert him from his bloodie determination : 
laying before his face the innocencie of the childe, and vertuous 
disposition of his wife, how she had continually loved and honoured him so ten- 
derly, that without due proofe he could not, nor ought not to appeach her of that 
crime. And if she had faulted, yet it were more honourable to pardon with mercy. 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 331 

then to punish with extremity, and more kingly, to be commended of pitty, than 
accused of rigour: and as for the childe, if he should punish it for the mothers 
offence, it were to strive against nature and justice ; and that unnatural actions doe 
more offend the Gods then men : how causelesse cruelty, nor innocent blood never 
scapes without revenge. These and such like reasons could not appease his rage, 
but he rested resolute in this, that Bellaria beeing an Adultresse, the childe was a 
Bastard, and he would not suffer that such an infamous brat should call him Father. 
Yet at last (seeing his Noble men were importunate upon him) he was content to 
spare the childes life, and yet to put it to a worse death. For he found out this 
devise, that seeing (as he thought) it came by fortune, so he would com- 
mit it to the charge of Fortune, and therefore caused a little cock-boat ' ' 
to be provided, wherein he meant to put the babe, and then send it to the mercies 
of the Seas and the destenies. From this his Peeres in no wise could perswade him, 
but that he sent presently two of his guard to fetch the childe : who being come to 
the prison, and with weeping teares recounting their Maisters message : Bellaria no 
sooner heard the rigorious resolution of her mercilesse husband, but she fell downe 
in a swound, so that all thought she had bin dead : yet at last being come to her selfe, 
shee cryed and screeched out in this wise. 

Alas sweete infortunate babe, scarce borne, before envied by fortune, would the 
day of thy birth had beene the terme of thy life : then shouldest thou have made an 
ende to care and prevented thy Fathers rigour. Thy faults cannot yet deserve such 
hatefuU revenge, thy dayes are too short for so sharpe a doome, but thy untimely 
death must pay thy Mothers Debts, and her guiltlesse crime must bee thy gastly 
curse. And shalt thou, sweete babe be committed to Fortune, when thou art already 
spited by Fortune ? Shall the Seas be thy harbour, and the hard boate thy cradle ? 
Shall thy tender Mouth, in steede of sweete kisses, be nipp>ed with bitter stormes ? 
Shalt thou have the whistling windes for thy Lullabie, and the Salt 
Sea fome in steede of sweete milke? Alas, what destinies would as- * * * 
signe such hard hap? What Father would be so cruell? or what Gods will not 
revenge such rigor ? Let me kisse thy lippes (sweete Infant) and wet thy tender 
cheekes with my teares, and put this chayne about thy necke, that if fortune save 
thee, it may helpe to succour thee. This, since thou must goe to surge in the gastfull 
Seas, with a sorrowfull kisse I bid thee farewell, and I pray the Gods thou maist fare 
well. 

Such, and so great was her griefe, that her vitall spirits being suppressed with 
sorrow, she fell againe down into a trance, having her sences so sotted with care, that 
after she was revived yet shee lost her memorie, and lay for a great time without 
moving, as one in a trance. The guard left her in this pcrplexitie, and carried the 
child to the King, who quite devoide of pity commanded that without delay it should 
bee put in the boat, having neither saile nor rudder to guid it, and so to bee carried 
into the midst of the sea, and there left to the wind and wave as the destinies please 
to appoint. The very shipmen, seeing the sweete countenance of the yong babe, began 
to accuse the King of rigor, and to pity the childs hard fortune : but feare constrajmed 
them to that which their nature did abhorre ; so that they placed it in one of the ends 
of the boat, and with a few green bows made a homely cabben to shrowd it as they 
could from wind and weather : having thus trimmed the boat they tied it to a ship, 
and so haled it into the mayne Sea, and then cut in sunder the coarde, which they 
had no sooner done, but there arose a mighty tempest, which tossed the little Boate 
so vehemently in the waves, that the shipmen thought it could not long continue 



332 APPENDIX 

without sincking, yea the storme grewe so great, that with much labour and perill 
they got to the shoare. 

But leaving the Childe to her fortunes. Againe to Pandosto, who not yet glutted 
with sufficient revenge, devised which way he should best increase his Wives calam- 
itie. But first assembling his Nobles and Counsellors, hee called her for the more 
reproch into open Court, where it was objected against her, that she had committed 
adulterie with Egistus, and conspired with Franion to poyson Pandosto her husband, 
but their pretence being partely spyed, she counselled them to flie away 
by night for their better safety. Bellaria, who standing like a pris- 
oner at the Barre, feeling in her selfe a cleare Conscience to withstand her false 
accusers : seeing that no lesse then death could pacific her husbands wrath, waxed 
bolde, and desired that she might have Lawe and Justice, for mercy shee neyther 
craved nor hoped for; and that those perjured wretches, which had falsely accused 
her to the King, might be brought before her face, to give in evidence. But Pandosto, 
whose rage and Jcalousie was such, no reason, nor equitie could appease : tolde her, 
that for her accusers they were of such credite, as their wordes were sufficient wit- 
nesse, and that the sodaine and secret flight of Egistus and Franion confirmed that 
which they had confessed : and as for her, it was her parte to deny such a mon- 
strus crime, and to be impudent in forswearing the fact, since shee had 
past all shame in committing the fault: but her stale countenance 
should stand for no coyne, for as the Bastard which she bare was served, so she 
should with some crucll death be requited. Bellaria no whit dismayed with this 
rough reply, tolde her Husband Pandosto, that he spake upon choller, and not con- 
science : for her vertuous life had beene ever such, as no spot of suspition could ever 
staine. And if she had borne a friendly countenaunce to Egistus, it was in respect 
he was his friende, and not for any lusting affection : therefore if she 
* * * were condemned without any fuilher proofe, it was rigour, and not Law. 
The noble men which sate in judgement, said that Bellaria spake reason, and in- 
treated the king that the accusers might be op>enly examined, and swome, and if then 
the evidence were such, as the Jury might finde her guilty (for seeing she was a Prince 
she ought to be tryed by her peeres) then let her have such punishment as the ex- 
tremitie of the Law will assigne to such malefactors. The king presently made an- 
swere, that in this case he might, and would dispence with the Law, and that the 
Jury being once panneld, they should take his word for sufficient evidence, otherwise 
he would make the proudest of them repent it. The noble men seeing the king in 
choler were all whist, but Bellaria, whose life then hung in the ballaunce, fearing 
more perpetuall infamie then momentarie death, tolde the king, if his furie might 
stand for a Law that it were vaine to have the Jury yeeld their verdit ; and therefore 
she fell downe upon her knees, and desired the king that for the love he bare to his 
young Sonne (larinter, whome she brought into the world, that hee would graunt 
her a request, which was this, that it would please his majestie to send 
' * sixe of his noble men whome he best trusted, to the Isle of Delphos, 

there to enquire of the Oracle of Apollo, whether she had committed adultery with 
Egistus, or conspired to poyson with Franion : and if the God Apollo, who by his 
devine essence knew al secrets, gave answere that she was guiltie, she were con- 
tent to suffer any torment, were it never so terrible. The request was so reasonable, 
that Pandosto could not for shame deny it, unlesse he would bee counted of all his 
subjects more wilfull then wise, he therefore agreed, that with as much speede as 
might be there should be certaine Embassadores dispatched to the He of Delphos ; 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 333 

and in the meane season he commanded that bis wife should be kept in close 
prison. 

Bellaria having obtained this graimt was now more carefuU for her little babe that 
floated on the Seas, then sorrowful for her owne mishap. For of that she doubted : 
of her selfe shee was assured, knowing if Apollo should give Oracle according to the 
thoughts of the hart, yet the sentence should goe one her side, such was the clearenes 
of her minde in this case. But Pandosto (whose suspitious heade still remained in 
one song) chose out six of his Nobility, whom bee knew were scarse indifferent men 
in the Queenes behalfe, and providing all things fit for their journey, sent them 
to Delphos: they willing to fulfill the Kinges commaund, and desir- 
ous to see the situation and custome of the Hand, dispatched their * 
affaires with as much speede as might be, and embarked themselves to this voyage, 
which (the wind and weather serving fit for their purpose) was soone 
ended. For within three weekes they arrived at Delphos, where they ' * 
were no sooner set on lande, but with great devotion they went to the Temple of 
Apollo, and there offring sacrifice to the god, and giftcs to the Priest, as the cus- 
tome was, they humbly craved an aunswere of their demaund : they 
had not long kneeled at the Altar, but Apollo with a loude voice saide : 
Bohemians, what you finde behinde the Alter take and depart. They forthwith 
obeying the Oracle founde a scroule of parchment, wherein was written these words 

in letters of Golde, — 

The Oracle. 

Suspition is no proofe : iealousie is an unequall iudge : Bellaria HI, U, 141. 

is chast; Egistus blamelesse; Franion a true subject: Pandosto 

treacherous : his babe an innocent, and the King shal live with- jj J "i**5a. 

out an heire : if that which is lost be not founde. 

As soone as they had taken out this scroule, the Priest of the God commaunded 
them that they should not presume to read it, before they came in the presence of 
Pandosto: unlesse they would incurre the displeasure of Apollo. The Bohemian 
Lords carefully obeying his commaund, taking their leave of the Priest, with great 
reverence departed out of the Temple, and went to their ships, and assoone as wind 
would permit them, sailed toward Bohemia, whither in short time they safely arrived, 
and with great tryumph issuing but of their Ships went to the Kinges pallace, whom 
they found in his chamber accompanied with other Noble men : Pandosto no sooner 
saw them, but with a merrie countenaunce he welcomed them home, asking what 
newes : they told his Majestie that they had received an aunswere of the God 
written in a scroule, but with this charge, that they should not read the 
contents before they came in the presence of the King, and with that ' ' 
they delivered him the parchment: but his Noble men entreated him that sith 
therein was conta3med either the safetie of his Wives life, and honesty, or her death, 
and perpetuall infamy, that he would have his Nobles and Commons assembled in 
the judgement Hall, where the Queene brought in as prysoner, should heare the con- 
tents : if shee were found guilty by the Oracle of the God, then all should have cause 
to thinke his rigour proceeded of due desert : if her Grace were found fauUlesse, then 
shee should bee cleared before all, sith she bad bene acciised openly. This pleased 
the King so, that he appointed the day, and assembled al his Lords and Com- 
mons, and caused the Queene to be brought in before the judgement 
seat, commaunding that the inditement shoulde bee read, wherein she * ' 
was accused of adultery with Egistus, and of conspiracy with Franion: Bel- 



334 APPENDIX 

laria hearing the contentes, was no whit astonished, but made this chearefull 

. aunswer: 

f If the devine powers bee privy to humane actions (as no doubt they are) I hope 

my patience shall make fortune blushe, and my unspotted life shall 

' ' ' staine spightful discredit. For although lying Report hath sought 

to appeach mine honor, and Suspition hath intended to soyle my credit with 

infamie: yet where Vertue keepeth the Forte, Report and suspition may assayle, 

but never sack: how I have led my life before Egistus comming, I 

appeale Pandosto to the Gods and to thy conscience. What hath 

past betwixt him and me, the Gods only know, and I hope will presently reveale : 

' ......«<« ^^^ I loved Egistus I can not denie : that I honored him I shame 

III, ii, 66-8x. , y.1 -r *.,.,. ,. 

not to confesse : to the one I was forced by his vertues, to the other 

for his dignities. But as touching lascivious lust, I say Egistus is honest, and hope 
my selfe to be found without spot: for Franion, I can neither accuse him nor 
excuse him, for I was not privie to his dep>arture, and that this is true which I have 
heere rehearsed, I referre myself to the devine Oracle. 

Bellaria had no sooner sayd, but the King commaunded that one of his Dukes 
should read the contentes of the scroule; which after the conmions 
had heard, they gave a great showt, rejoysing and clapping their 
hands that the Queene was cleare of that false acciisation: but the king whose 
conscience was a witnesse against him of his witlesse furie, and false suspected lea- 
lousie, was so ashamed of his rashe folly, that he entreated his nobles to perswade 
Bellaria to forgive, and forget these injuries : promising not onely to shew himselfe a 
loyall and loving husband, but also to reconcile himselfe to Egistus, and Franion : 
revealing then before them all the cause of their secrete flighte, and how treach- 
erously hee thought to have practised his death, if the good minde of 

* ' 'his Cupbearer had not prevented his purpose. As thus he was relating 
the whole matter, there was worde brought him that his young sonne Garinter was 
sodainly dead, which newes so soone as Bellaria heard, surcharged before with ex- 
treame joy, and now suppressed with heavie sorrowe, her vital spirites were so stopped, 
that she fell downe presently dead, and could never be revived. This sodaine sight 
so appalled the Kings Sences, that he sancke from his seat in a sound, so as he was 
fayne to be carried by his nobles to his Pallace, where hee lay by the space of three 
dayes without speech : his commons were as men in dispaire, so diversely distressed : 
there was nothing but mourning and lamentation to be heard throughout al Bohemia : 
their young Prince dead, their vertuous Queene bereaved of her life, and their King 
and Soveraigne in great hazard : this tragicall discourse of fortune so daunted them, 

as they went like shadowes, not men ; yet somewhat to comfort their 

* * heavie hearts, they heard that Pandosto was come to himselfe, and had 
recovered his speache, who as in a fury brayed out these bitter speaches : 

O miserable Pandosto, what surer witnesse then conscience ? what thoughts more 
sower then suspition ? What plague more bad then lealousie ? Unnaturall actions 
offend the Gods more than men, and causelesse crueltie never scap>es without re- 
venge : I have committed such a bloudy fact, as repent I may, but recall I cannot. 
Ah lealousie, a hell to the minde, and a horror to the conscience, suppressing reason, 
and inciting rage ; a worse passion then phrenzie, a greater plague then madnesse. 
Are the Gods just ? Then let them revenge such brutishe crueltie : my innocent 
Babe I have drowned in the Seas ; my loving wife I have slaine with slaunderous 
suspition ; my trusty friend 1 have sought to betray, and yet the Gods are slacke to 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 335 

plague such offences. Ah unjust Apollo, Pandosto is the man that hath committed 
the faultc: why should Garinter, seely childe, abide the paine?* Well sith the 
Gods meane to prolong my dayes, to increase my dolour, I will offer my guiltie bloud 
a sacrifice to those sackles * soules, whose lives are lost by my rigorous folly. 

And with that he reached at a Rapier, to have murdered himselfe, but his Peeres 
being present, stayed him from such a bloudy acte : perswading him to think, that 
the Commonwealth consisted on his safetie, and that those sheep could not but perish, 
that wanted a sheepheard ; wishing that if hee would not live for himselfe, yet he 
should have care of his subjects, and to put such fancies out of his 
minde, sith in sores past help, salves do not heale, but hurt: and 
in things past cure, care is a corrosive : with these and such like perswasions the 
Kinge was overcome, and began somewhat to quiet his minde : so that assoone as he 
could goe abroad, hee caused his wife to be embalmed, and wrapt in lead with her 
young Sonne Garinter : erecting a rich and famous Sepulchre, wherein hee intombed 
them both, making such solemn obsequies at her funeral, as al Bohemia might per- 
ceive he did greatly repent him of his forepassed folly : causing this epitaph to be 
ingraven on her Tombe in letters of Gold : 

^ The Epitaph. 

herb lyes entombde bellaria fairs, 

falsly accused to be unchaste: 
cleared by appollos sacred doome, 

yet slaine by jealousie at last. 

what ere thou be that passest by, 

cursse him, that causde this queene to die. 

This epitaph being ingraven, Pandosto would once a day repaire to the Tombe, 
and there with watry plaintes bewaile his misfortune; coveting no 
other companion but sorrowe, nor no other harmonic, but repentance. * ' 
But leaving him to his dolorous passions, at last let us come to shewe 
the tragicall discourse of the young infant. ' * 

Who being tossed with Winde, and Wave, floated two whole daies without suc- 
cour, readie at every puffe to bee drowned in the Sea, till at last the Temp>est ceassed 
and the little boate was driven with the tyde into the Coast of Sycilia, where sticking 
uppon the sandes it rested. Fortune minding to be wanton, willing to shewe that as 
she hath wrinckles on her browes : so shee hath dimples in her cheekes ; thought 
after so many sower lookes, to lend a fayned smile, and after a puffing storme, to 
bring a pretty calme : shee began thus to dally. It fortuned a poore mercenary 
Sheepheard, that dwelled in Sycilia, who got his living by other mens flockes, missed 
one of his sheepe, and thinking it had strayed into the covert, that was hard by, 
sought very diligently to find that which he could not see, fearing 
cither that the Wolves or Eagles had undone him (for hee was so poore, * * 
as a sheepe was halfe his substaunce), wandered downe toward the Sea cliffes, 
to see if perchaunce the sheepe was browsing on the sea Ivy, whereon they greatly 
doe feede, but not finding her there, as he was ready to retume to his flocke, hee 
beard a child crie ; but knowing there was no house nere, he thought be had mis- 
taken the sound, and that it was the bleatyng of his Sheepe. Wherefore looking 
more narrowely, as he cast his eye to the Sea, he spyed a little boate, from whence 

* [Guiltless.] 



336 APPENDIX 

as he attentively listened, he might heare the cry to come : standing a good while in 

a maze, at last he went to the shoare, and wading to the boate, as he looked in, he 

saw the little babe lying al alone, ready to die for hunger and colde, wrapped in a 

^^"^^^ ®^ Scarlet, richely imbrodered with Golde, and having a chajTie 

III, III, xio. 1 « 1 

about the necke. 
The Sheepcheard, who before had never seene so faire a Babe, nor so riche 
lewels, thought assuredly, that it was some little God, and began with great devocion 
to knock on his breast. The Babe, who wrythed with the head, to seeke for the pap, 
began againe to cry a fresh, whereby the poore man knew that it was a Childe, which 
by some sinister meanes was driven thither by distresse of weather ; marvailing how 
such a seely infant, which by the Mantle, and the Chayne, could not be but borne of 
Noble Parentage, should be so hardly crossed with deadly mishap. The poore sheep* 
heard perplexed thus with divers thoughts, tooke pitty of the childe, and determined 
with himselfe to carry it to the King, that there it might be brought up, according to 
the worthinesse of birth ; for his ability coulde not afforde to foster it, though his 
good minde was willing to further it. Taking therefore the Chylde in his armes, as 
he foulded the mantle together, the better to defend it from colde, there fell downe 
at his foote a very faire and riche purse, wherein he founde a great summe of golde : 
which sight so revived the shepheards spirits, as he was g^reatly ravished with joy, 

and daunted with feare ; loyfuU to see such a summe in his power, and 
' * feareful if it should be knowne, that it might breede his further daunger. 
Necessitie wisht him at the least, to retaine the Golde, though he would not keepe 
the childe : the simplicity of his conscience scared him from such deceiptfull briberie. 
Thus was the poore manne perplexed with a doubtfull Dilemma, until at last the 
covetousnesse of the coyne overcame him : for what will not the greedy desire of 
Golde cause a man to doe ? So that he was resolved in himselfe to foster the child, 
and with the summe to relieve his want : resting thiis resolute in this point he left 
seeking of his sheepe, and as covertly, and secretly as he could, went by a by way to 
his house, least any of his neighbours should perceave his carriage : as soone as he 
was got home, entring in at the doore, the childe began to crie, which his wife hear- 
ing, and seeing her husband with a yong babe in his armes, began to bee somewhat 
jelousse, yet marveiling that her husband should be so wanton abroad, sith he was so 
quiet at home : but as women are naturally given to beleeve the worste, so his wife 
thinking it was some bastard : beganne to crowe against her goodman, and taking up 
a cudgel (for the most maister went breechles) sware solemnly that shce would make 
clubs trumps, if hee brought any bastard brat within her dores. The goodman, see- 
ing his wife in her majeslie with her mace in her hand, thought it was time to bowe 
for feare of blowes, and desired her to be quiet, for there was non such matter ; but 

if she could holde her peace, they were made for ever : and with that he 

* * told her the whole matter, how he had found the childe in a little boat, 
without any succour, wrapped in that costly mantle, and having that rich chaine 
about the neck ; but at last when he shewed her the purse full of gold, she began to 
simper something sweetely, and taking her husband about the neck, kissed him after 
her homely fashion : saying that she hoped God had seene their want, and now ment 
to relieeve their poverty, and seeing they could get no children, had sent them this 
little babe to be their heire. Take heede in any case (quoth the shepherd) that you 

be secret, and blabbe it not out when you meete with your gossippes, for 

* * if you doe, we are like not only to loose the Golde and lewels, but our 
other goodes and lives. Tush (quoth his wife), profit is a good hatch before the 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 337 

doore : feare not, I have other things to talke of then of this ; but I pray you let us 
lay up the money surely, and the lewels, least by any mishap it be spied. 

After that they had set all things in order, the shepheard went to his sheepe with 
a merry note, and the good wife learned to sing lullaby at home with her yong babe, 
wrapping it in a homely blanket in sted of a rich mantle ; nourishing it so clenly and 
carefully as it began to bee a jolly girle, in so much that they began both of them to 
be very fond of it, seeing, as it waxed in age, so it increased in beauty. The shep- 
heard every night at his comming home, would sing and daunce it on his knee, and 
prattle, that in a short time it began to speake, and call him Dad, and her Mam : at 
last when it grew to ripe yeeres, that it was about seven yeares olde, the shepheard 
left keeping of other mens sheepe, and with the money he found in the purse, he 
bought him the lease of a pretty farme, and got a smal flocke of sheepe, which when 
Fawnia (for so they named the child) came to the age of ten yeres, hee set her to 
keepe, and shee with such diligence performed her charge as the sheepe prospered 
marveilously under her hand. Fawnia thought Pomis had been her father, and 
Mopsa her mother, (for so was the shepheard and his wife called) honoured and 
obeyed them with such reverence, that all the neighbours praised the duetifull obe- 
dience of the child. Forms grewe in a short time to bee a man of some wealth, and 
credite ; for fortune so favoured him in having no charge but Fawnia, that he began 
to purchase land, intending after his death to give it to his daughter; so that diverse 
rich farmers sonnes came as woers to his house : for Fawnia was something clenly 
attired, beeing of such singular beautie and excellent witte, that whoso sawe her, 
would have thought shee had bene some heavenly nymph, and not a mortal creature : 

in so much, that when she came to the age of sixteene yeeres, shee so 

IV i 8 
increased with exquisite perfection both of body and minde, as her * * 

natural disposition did bewray that she was borne of some high parentage ; but the 

people thinking she was daughter to the shephard Forms, rested only amazed at hir 

beauty and wit ; yea she won such favour and commendations in every mans eye, as 

her beautie was not only praysed in the countrey, but also spoken of in 

the Court : yet such was her submisse modestie, that although her praise * * 

daily increased, her mind was no whit puffed up with pride, but humbled her selfe as 

became a country mayde and the daughter of a poore sheepheard. Every day she 

went forth with her sheepe to the field, keeping them with such care and diligence, 

as al men thought she was verie painfull, defending her face from the heat of the 

sunne with no other vale, but with a garland made of bowes and flowers : 

• . IV iv 5. 

which attire became her so gallantly, as shee seemed to bee the Goddesse ' ' 

Flora her selfe for beauty. 

Fortune, who al this while had shewed a frendly face, began now to tume her 

back, and to shewe a lowring countenance, intending as she had given Fawnia a 

slender checke, so she would give her a harder mate : to bring which to passe, she 

layd her traine on this wise. Egistus had but one only son called Dorastus, about 

the age of twenty yeeres : a prince so decked and adorned with the gifts of nature : 

so fraught with beauty and vertuoiis qualities, as not onely his father joyed to have so 

good a Sonne, and al his commons rejoyced that God had lent them such a noble 

Frince to succeede in the Kingdom. Egistus placing al his joy in the perfection of 

his Sonne : seeing that he was now mariage-able, sent Embassadors to the king of 

Denmarke, to intreate a manage betweene him and his daughter, who willingly con- 

senting, made answer, that the next spring, if it please Egistus with his sonne to 

come into Denmarke, hee doubted not but they should agree upon reasonable condi- 

32 



338 APPENDIX 

tioDS. Egistus resting satisfied with this friendly answer, thought convenient in the 
meane time to breake with his sonne : finding therefore on a day fit opportunity, he 
spake to him in these fatherly tearmes : 

Dorastus, thy youth wameth me to prevent the worst, and mine age to provide the 
best Opportunities neglected, are signes of folly : actions measured by time, are 
seldome bitten with repentance : thou art young, and I olde : age hath taught me 
that, which thy youth cannot yet conceive. I therefore will counsell thee as a father, 
hoping thou wilt obey as a childe. Thou seest my white hayres are blossomes for 
the grave, and thy freshe colour finite for time and fortune, so that it behooveth me 
to thinke how to dye, and for thee to care how to live. My crowne I must leave by 
death, and thou enjoy my Kingdome by succession, wherein I hope thy vertoe and 
prowesse shall bee such, as though my subjectes want my person, yet they shall see 
in thee my perfection. That nothing either may faile to satisfie thy minde, or in- 
crease thy dignities : the onely care I have is to see thee well marryed before I die, 
and thou become olde. 

Dorastus, who from his infancy, delighted rather to die with Mars in the Fielde 
then to dally with Venus in the Chamber, fearing to displease his father, and yet not 
willing to be wed, made him this reuerent answere. 

Sir, there is no greater bond then duetie, nor no straiter law then nature : disobe- 
dience in youth is often galled with despight in age. The commaund of the fiaither 
ought to be a constraint to the childe : so parentes wiUes are laws, so they passe not 
all laws : may it please your Grace therefore to appoint whome I shall love, rather 
then by deniall I should be appeached of disobedience : I rest content to love, though 
it bee the only thing I hate. 

Egistus hearing his sonne to flie so farre fipom the marke, began to be somewhat 
choUericke, and therefore made him his hasty aunswere. 

What Dorastus canst thou not love? Commeth this cynicall passion of prone 
desires or peevish frowardnesse ? What durst thou think thy selfe to good for all, or 
none good inough for thee ? I tell thee, Dorastus, there is nothing sweeter then 
youth, nor swifter decreasing while it is increasing. Time past with folly may bee 
repented, but not recalled. If thou marrie in age, thy wives fireshe couloures will 
breede in thee dead thoughtes and suspition, and thy white hayres her lothesomnesse 
and sorrowe. For Venus affections are not fed with Kingdomes, or treasures, but 
with youthfuU conceits and sweet amours. Vulcan was allotted to shake the tree, 
but Mars allowed to reape the fruite. Yeelde Dorastus to thy Fathers perswasions, 
which may prevent thy perils. I have chosen thee a Wife, faire by nature, royall by 
birth, by vertues famous, learned by education and rich by possessions, so that it is 
hard to judge whether her bounty, or fortune, her beauty, or vertue bee of greater 
force : I mean, Dorastus, Euphrania daughter and heire to the King of Denmarke. 

Egistus pausing here a while, looking when his son should make him answere, 
and seeing that he stoode still as one in a trance, he shooke him up thus sharply. 

Well Dorastus take heede, the tree Alpya wasteth not with fire, but withereth 
with the dewe : that which love nourisheth not, perisheth with hate : if thou like 
Euphrania, thou breedest my content, and in loving her thou shalt have my love, 
otherwise ; and with that hee flung from his sonne in a rage, leaving him a sorrow- 
full man, in that he had by deniall displeased his Father, and halfe angrie with him 
selfe that hee could not yeelde to that passion, whereto both reason and his Father 
perswaded him : but see how fortune is plumed with times feathers, and how shee 
can minister strange causes to breede straunge effects. 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 



339 



It happened not long after this that there was a meeting of all the Fanners 

Daughters in Sycilia, whither Fawnia was also bidden as the mistres of 

the feast, who having attired her selfe in her best garments, went among ' ' 

the rest of her companions to the merry meeting : there spending the day in such 

homely pastimes as shepheards use. As the evening grew on, and their sportes 

ceased, ech taking their leave at other, Fawnia desiring one of her companions to 

beare her companie, went home by the flocke, to see if they were well folded, and as 

they returned, it fortuned that Dorastus (who all that daye had bene 

Iv iv 90> 

hawking, and kilde store of game) incountred by the way these two ' ' 
mayds, and casting his eye sodenly on Fawnia, he was halfe afraid, fearing that with 
Acteon he had scene Diana ; for hee thought such exquisite perfection could not be 
founde in any mortall creature. As thus he stoode in a maze, one of his Pages told 
him, that the maide with the garland on her heade was Fawnia, the faire shepheard, 
whose beauty was so much talked of in the Court. Dorastus desirous to see if nature 
had adorned her minde with any inward qualities, as she had decked her body with 
outward shape, began to question with her whose daughter she was, of what age and 
how she had bin trained up, who answered him with such modest reverence and 
sharpnesse of witte, that Dorastus thought her outward beautie was but a counterfait 
to darken her inward qualities, wondring how so courtly behaviour could be found in 
so simple a cottage, and cursing fortune that had shadowed wit and beauty with such 
hard fortune. As thus he held her a long while with chat. Beauty seeing him at dis- 
covert, thought not to lose the vantage, but strooke him so deeply with an invenomed 
shafle, as he wholy lost his libertie, and became a slave to Love, which before con- 
temned love, glad now to gaze on a poore shepheard, who before refused the offer of 
a riche Princesse ; for the perfection of Fawnia had so fired his fancie as he felt his 
minde greatly chaunged, and his affections altered, cursing Love that had wrought 
such a chaunge, and blaming the basenesse of his mind, that would make such a 
choice : but thinking these were but passionat toies that might be thrust out at pleas- 
ure, to avoid the Syren that inchaunted him, he put spurs to his horse, and bad this 
faire shepheard farewell. 

Fawnia (who all this while had marked the princely gesture of Dorastus) seeing 
bis face so wel featured, and each lim so perfectly framed, began greatly to praise his 
perfection, commending him so long, till she foimd her selfe faultie, and perceived 
that if she waded but a little further, she might slippe over her shooes : shee therefore 
seeking to quench that fire which never was put out, went home, and faining her 
selfe not well at ease, got her to bed : where casting a thousand thoughts in her head, 
she could take no rest : for if she waked, she began to call to minde his beautie, and 
thinking to beguile such thoughts with sleepe, she then dreamed of bis perfection : 
pestered thus with these unacquainted passions, she passed the night as she could in 
short slumbers. 

Dorastus (who all this while rode with a flea in his eare) could not by any meanes 
forget the sweete favour of Fawnia, but rested so bewitched with her wit and beauty, 
as hee could take no rest. He felt fancy to give the assault, and his wounded mind 
readie to yeeld as vanquished : yet he began with divers considerations to suppresse 
this frantick affection, calling to minde, that Fawnia was a shepheard, one not worthy 
to bee looked at of a Prince, much less to bee loved of such a potentate, thinking 
what a discredite it were to himself, and what a griefe it would be to his father, 
blaming fortune and accusing his owne follie, that should bee so fond as but once to 
cast a glaunce at such a country slut. As thus he was raging against him selfe, Love 



340 APPENDIX 

fearing if sbee dallied long, to loose her champion, stept more nigh, and gave him 
such a fresh wounde as it pearst him at the heart, that he was faine to yeeld, maugre 
his face, and to forsake the companie and gette him to his chamber : where being 
solemnly set, hee burst into these passionate tearmes. 

Ah, Dorastus, art thou alone ? No not alone, while thou art tired with these un- 
acquainted passions. Yeld to fancy, thou canst not by thy fathers counsaile, but in a 
frenzie thou art by just destinies. Thy father were content, if thou couldest love, 
and thou therefore discontent, because thou doest love. O devine Love, feared of 
men because honoured of the Gods, not to be suppressed by wisdome, because not to 
be comprehended by reason : without Lawe, and therefore above all Law. How 
now Dorastus, why doest thou blaze that with praises, which thou hast cause to blas- 
pheme with curses ? yet why should they curse Love that are in Love ? Blush Do- 
rastus at thy fortune, thy choice, thy love : thy thoughts cannot be uttered without 
shame, nor thy affections without discredit. Ah Fawnia, sweete Fawnia, thy beautie 
Fawnia. Shamest not thou Dorastus to name one unfitte for thy biilh, thy dignities, 
thy Kingdomes ? Dye Dorastus, Dorastus die. Better hadst thou perish with high 
desires, then live in base thoughts. Yea but, beautie must be obeyed, because it is 
beauty, yet framed of the Gods to feede the eye, not to fetter the heart. Ah but he 
that striveth against Love, shooteth with them of Scyrum against the wind, and with 
the Cockeatrice pecketh against the Steele. I will therefore obey, because I must 
obey. Fawnia, yea Fawnia shall be my fortune, in spight of fortune. The 

' ' Gods above disdain not to love women beneath. Phcebus liked Sibilla, 
Jupiter To, and why not I then Fawnia ? one something inferiour to these in birth, 
but farre superiour to them in beautie, borne to be a Shepheard, but worthy to be a 
Goddesse. Ah Dorastus, wilt thou so forget thy selfe as to suffer affection to sup* 
presse wisedome, and Love to violate thine honour ? How sower will thy choice be 
to thy Father, sorrowfull to thy Subjects, to thy friends a griefe, most gladsome to thy 
foes ! Subdue then thy affections, and cease to love her whome thou couldst not love, 
unlesse blinded with too much love. Tushe I talke to the wind, and in seeking to 
prevent the causes, I further the effectes. I will yet praise Fawnia ; honour, yea and 
love Fawnia, and at this day followe content, not counsaile. Doo Dorastus, thou 
canst but repent : and with that his Page came into the chamber, whereupon hee 
ceased from his complaints, hoping that time would weare out that which fortune had 
wrought. As thus he was pained, so poore Fawnia was diversly perjilexed : for the 
next morning getting up very earely, she went to her sheepe, thinking with hard 
labours to passe away her new conceived amours, beginning very busily to drive them 
to the field, and then to shifle the foldes, at last (wearied with toile) she sate her 
down, where (poore soule) she was more trj'ed with fond affections : for love beganne 
to assault her, in so much that as she sale upon the side of a hill, she began to accuse 
her owne folly in these tearmes. 

Infortunate Fawnia, and therefore infortunate because Fawnia, thy shepherds 
hooke sheweth thy poore slate, thy proud desires an aspiring mind : the one declareth 
thy want, the other thy pride. No bastard hauke must soare so high as the Hobbie, 
no Fowle gaze against the Sunne but the Eagle, actions wrought against nature reape 
despight, and thoughts above Fortune disdaine. Fawnia, thou art a shepheard, 
daughter to poore Porrus : if thou rest content with this, thou art like to stande, if 
thou climbe thou art sure to fal. The Herb Anita growing higher then sixe ynches 
becommeth a weede. Nylus flowing more then twelve cubits procureth a dearth. 
Daring affections that passe measure, are cut shorte by time or fortune : suppresse 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 341 

then Fawnia those thoughts which thou mayest shame to expresse. But ah Fawnia, 
love is a Lord, who will commaund by power, and constraine by force. Dorastus, ah 
Dorastus is the man I love, the woorse is thy hap, and the lesse cause hast thou to 
hope. Will Eagles catch at flyes, will Cedars stoupe to brambles, or mighty Princes 
looke at such homely truUes ? No, no, thinke this, Dorastus disdaine is greater then 
thy desire, hee is a Prince respecting his honour, thou a beggars brat forgetting thy 
calling. Cease then not onely to say, but to thinke to love Dorastus, and dissemble 
thy love Fawnia, for better it were to dye with griefe, then to live with shame ; yet in 
despight of love I will sigh, to see if I can sigh out love. 

Fawnia somewhat appeasing her griefes with these pithie perswasions, began after 
her wonted maner to walke about her sheepe, and to keepe them from straying into 
the come, suppressing her affection with the due consideration of her base estate, and 
with the impossibilities of her love, thinking it were frenzy, not fancy, to covet that 
which the very destinies did deny her to obteine. 

But Dorastus was more impatient in his passions ; for love so fiercely assayled him, 
that neither companie, nor musicke could mittigate his martirdome, but did rather far 
the more increase his maladie : shame would not let him crave counsaile in this case, 
nor feare of his Fathers displeasure reveyle it to any secrete friend ; but hee was 
faine to make a Secretarie of himselfe, and to participate his thoughtes with his owne 
troubled mind. Lingring thus awhile in doubtfull suspence, at last stealing secretely 
from the court without either men or Page, hee went to see if hee could espie Fawnia 
walking abroade in the field ; but as one having a great deale more skill to retnve 
the partridge with his spaniels, then to hunt after such a straunge pray, he sought, but 
was little the better : which crosse lucke drave him into a great choler, that he began 
to accuse love and fortune. But as he was readie to retire, he sawe Fawnia sitting 
all alone under the side of a hill, making a garland of such homely flowers as the 
fields did afoord. This sight so revived his spirites that he drewe nigh, with more 
judgement to take a view of her singular perfection, which hee found to bee such as 
in that countrey attyre she stained al the courtlie Dames of Sicilia. While thus he 
stoode gazing with pearcing lookes on her surpassing beautie, Fawnia cast her eye 
aside, and spyed Dorastus, with sudden sight made the poore girle to blush, and to 
die her christal cheeks with a vermilion red ; which gave her such a grace, as she 
seemed farre more beautiful. And with that she rose up, saluting the Prince with 
such modest curtesies, as he wondred how a country maid could afoord such courtly 
behaviour. Dorastus, repaying her curtesie with a smiling countenance, began to 
parlie with her on this manner. 

Faire maide (quoth he) either your want is great, or a shepheards life very sweete> 
that your delight is in such country labor#w> I can not conceive what pleasure you 
should take, unless you meane to imitate the nymphes, being yourself so like a 
Nymph. To put me out of this doubt, shew me what is to be commended in a shep- 
herdes life, and what pleasures you have to countervaile these drudging laboures. 

Fawnia with blushing face made him this ready aunswere. Sir, what richer state 
then content, or what sweeter life then quiet ? we shepheards are not borne to honor, 
nor beholding unto beautie, the less care we have to feare fame or fortune : we count 
our attire brave inough if warme inough, and our foode dainty, if to suffice nature : 
our greatest enemie is the wolfe ; our onely care in safe keeping our flock : in stead 
of courtlie ditties we spend the daies with country songs : our amorous conceites are 
homely thoughtes ; delighting as much to talke of Pan and his countrey prankes, as 
Ladies to tell of Venus and her wanton toyes. Our toyle is in shifting the fouldes, 



342 



APPENDIX 



and looking to the Lambes, easie labours : oft singing and telling tales, homely pleas- 
ures ; our greatest welth not to covet, our honor not to climbe, our quiet not to care. 
Envie looketh not so lowe as shepheards : Shepheards gaze not so high as ambition : 
we are rich in that we are poore with content, and proud onely in this, that we have 
no cause to be proud. 

This wittie aunswer of Fawnia so inflamed Dorastus fancy, as he commended him 
selfe for making so good a choyce, thinking, if her birth were aunswerable to her wit 
and beauty, that she were a fitte mate for the most famous Prince in the worlde. He 
therefore beganne to sifle her more narrowely on this manner. 

Fawnia, I see thou art content with Gauntry labours, because thou knowest not 
Courtly pleasures : I conmiend thy wit, and pitty thy want : but wilt thou leave thy 
Fathers Cottage and serve a Courtlie Mistresse ? 

Sir (quoth she) beggers ought not to strive against fortune, nor to gaze after 
honour, least either their fall be greater, or they become blinde. I am borne to toile 
for the Court, not in the Court, my natiure unfit for their nurture : better live then in 
meane degree, than in high disdaine. 

Well saide, Fawnia (quoth Dorastus) I gesse at thy thoughtes; thou art in love 
with some Countrey Shephearde, 

No sir (quoth she) shepheards cannot love, that are so simple, and maides may not 
love that are so young. 

Nay therefore (quoth Dorastus) maides must love, because they are young, for 
Cupid is a child, and Venus, though olde, is painted with fresh coloures. 

I graunt (quoth she) age may be painted with new shadowes, and youth may have 
imperfect affections ; but what arte concealeth in one, ignorance revealeth in the other. 
Dorastus seeing Fawnia held him so harde, thought it was vaine so long to beate about 
the bush : therefore he thought to have given her a fresh charge : but he was pre- 
vented by certaine of his men, who missing their maister, came posting to seeke him ; 
seeing that he was gone foorth all alone, yet before they drewe so nie that they might 
heare their talke, he used these speeches. 

Why Fawnia, perhappes I love thee, and then thou must needes yeelde, for thou 
knowest I can commaunde and constraine. Trueth sir (quoth she) but not to love ; 
for constrained love is force, not love : and know this sir, mine honesty is such, as I 
hadde rather dye then be a concubine even to a King, and my birth is so base as I 
am unfitte to bee a wife to a poore farmer. Why then (quoth he) thou canst not love 
Dorastus. Yes saide Fawnia, when Dorastus becomes a shepheard, and with that the 
presence of his men broke off their parle. so that he went with them to the palace 
and left Fawnia sitting still on the hill side, who seeing that the night drewe on, 
shifted her fouldes, and busied her selfe about other worke to drive away such fond 
fancies as began to trouble her braine. But all this could not prevaile, for the beautie 
of Dorastus had made such a deepe impression in her heart, as it could not be wome 
out without cracking, so that she was forced to blame her owne folly in this wise. 

Ah Fawnia, why doest thou gaze against the Sunne, or catch at the Winde ? starres 
are to be looked at with the eye, not reacht at with the hande : thoughts are to be 
measured by Fortunes, not by desires : fallcs come not by sitting low, but by climing 
too hie : what then shal al feare to fal, because some happe to fall ? No luck 
commeth by lot, and fortune windeth those threedes which the destinies spin. Thou 
art favored Fawnia of a prince, and yet thou art so fond to reject desired favours : 
thou hast deniall at thy tonges end, and desire at thy hearts bottome; a womans 
fault, to spume at that with her foote, which she greedily catcheth at with her hand. 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 343 

Thou lovest Dorastus, Fawnia, and yet seemest to lower. Take heede, if hee retire 

thou wilt repent ; for unles hee love, thou canst but dye. Dye then Fawnia ; for 

Dorastus doth but jest : the Lyon never prayeth on the mouse, nor Faulcons stoupe 

not to dead stales. Sit downe then in sorrow, ceasse to love, and content thy selfe, 

that Dorastus will vouchsafe to flatter Fawnia, though not to fancy Fawnia. Heigh 

ho ! Ah foole, it were seemelier for thee to whistle as a Shepheard, then to sigh as a 

lover. And with that she ceassed from these perplexed passions, folding her sheepe, 

and hying home to her poore Cottage. 

But such was the incessant sorrow of Dorastus to thinke on the witte and beautie 

of Fawnia, and to see how fond hee was being a Prince ; and how froward she was 

being a beggar, then he began to loose his wonted appetite, to looke pale and wan ; 

instead of mirth, to feede on melancholy ; for courtly daunces to use cold dumpes ; 

in so much that not onely his owne men, but his father and all the court began to 

marvaile at his sudden change, thinking that some lingring sickenes had brought him 

into this state : wherefore he caused Phisitions to come, but Dorastus neither would 

let them minister, nor so much as suffer them to see [him ;] but remained stil so 

oppressed with these passions, as he feared in him selfe a farther inconvenience. 

His honor wished him to ceasse from such folly, but Love forced him to follow 

fancy : yea and in despight of honour, love wonne the conquest, so that his hot 

desires caused him to find new devises, for hee presently made himselfe a .. . 

IV iv x^ 
shepheards coate, that he might goe unknowne, and with the lesse sus- * ' 

pition to prattle with Fawnia, and conveied it secretly into a thick grove hard joyn- 

ing to the Pallace, whether finding fit time, and opportunity, he went all alone, and 

putting off his princely apparel got on tliose shepheards roabes, and taking a great 

hooke in his hand (which he had also gotten) he went very anciently \sic\ to find out 

the mistres of his affection : but as he went by the way, seeing himselfe clad in such 

unseemely ragges, he began to smile at his owne folly, and to reprove his fondnesse, 

in these tearmes. 

Well said Dorastus, thou keepest a rich decorum, base desires and homely attires : 
thy thoughtes are fit for none but a shepheard, and thy apparell such as only become 
a shepheard. A strange change from a Prince to a pesant! What is it? thy 
wretched fortune or thy wilful folly ? Is it thy cursed destinies ? Or thy crooked 
desires, that appointeth thee this penance ? Ah Dorastus thou canst but love, and 
unlesse thou love, thou art like to perish for love. Yet fond foole, choose flowers, 
not weedes; Diamondes, not peables; Ladies which may honour thee, not shep- 
heards which may disgrace thee. Venus is painted in silkes, not in ragges ; and 
Cupid treadeth on disdaine, when he reacheth at dignitie. And yet Dorastus shame 
not at thy shepheards weede : the heavenly Codes have sometime earthly thoughtes : 
Neptune became a ram, Jupiter a Bui, Apollo a shepheard : they Gods, 
and yet in love ; and thou a man appointed to love. ' ' 

Devising thus with himselfe, he drew nigh to the place where Fawnia was keep- 
ing her shepe, who casting her eye aside, and seeing such a manerly shepheard, per- 
fectly limmed, and comming with so good a pace, she began halfe to forget Dorastus, 
and to favor this prety shepheard, whom she thought shee might both love and ob- 
taine : but as shee was in these thoughts, she perceived then, that it was the yong 
prince Dorastus, wberfore she ro<^ up and reverently saluted him. Dorastus taking 
her by the hand, repaied her curtesie with a sweete kisse, and praying her to sit downe 
by him, he began thus to lay the batterie. 

If thou marvel Fawnia at my strange attyre, thou -wouldest more muse at my 



344 APPENDIX 

unaccustomed thoughtes : the one disgraceth but my outward shape, the other dis- 
turbeth my inward sences. I love Fawnia, and therefore what love liketh I cannot 
mislike. Fawnia thou hast promised to love, and I hope thou wilt performe no lesse : 
I have fulfilled thy request, and now thou canst but graunt my desire. Thou wert 
content to love Dorastus when he ceast to be a Prince and to become a shepheard, 
and see I have made the change, and therefore not to misse of my choice. 

Trueth, quoth Fawnia, but all that weare Cooles are not Monkes : painted Eagles 
are pictures, not Eagles. Zeusis Grapes were like Grapes, yet shadowes : rich cloth- 
ing make not princes : nor homely attyre beggers : shepheards are not called shep- 
heardes, because they were hookes and bagges, but that they are borne poore, and 
live to keepe shcepe ; so this attire hath not made Dorastus a shepherd, but to seeme 
like a shepherd. 

Well Fawnia, answered Dorastus, were I a shepherd, I could not but like thee, 
and being a prince I am forst to love thee. Take heed Fawnia be not proud of 
beauties painting, for it is a flower that fadeth in the blossome. Those which dis- 
dayne in youth are despised in age : Beauties shadowes are trickt up with times 
colours, which being set to drie in the sunne are stained with the sunne, scarce pleas- 
ing the sight ere they beginne not to be worth the sight, not much unlike the herbe 
Ephemeron, which flourisheth in the morning and is withered before the sunne set- 
ting : if my desire were against lawe, thou mightest justly deny me by reason ; but I 
love thee Fawnia, not to misuse thee as a Concubine, but to use thee as my wife : I 
can promise no more, and meane to performe no lesse. 

Fawnia hearing this solemne protestation of Dorastus, could no longer withstand 
the assault, but yeelded up the forte in these friendly tearmes. 

Ah Dorastus, I shame to expresse that thou forcest me with thy sugred speeche to 
confesse : my base birth causeth the one, and thy high dignities the other. Be^ars 
thoughts ought not to reach so far as Kings, and yet my desires reach as high as 
Princes. I dare not say, Dorastus, I love thee, because I am a shepherd ; but the 
Gods know I have honored Dorastus (pardon if I say amisse) yea and loved Dorastus 
with such dutiful aflection as Fawnia can performe, or Dorastus desire : I yeeld, not 
overcome with prayers, but with love, resting Dorastus handmaid ready to obey his 
wil, if no prejudice at all to his honour, nor to my credit. 

Dorastus hearing this frcendly conclusion of Fawnia embraced her in his armes, 
swearing that neither distance, time, nor adverse fortune should diminish his affec- 
tion : but that in despight of the destinies he would remaine loyall unto death. Hav- 
ing thus plight their troath each to other, seeing they could not have the full fruition 
of their love in Sycilia, for that Egistus consent woulde never bee graunted to so 
meane a match, Dorastus determined, assone as time and opportunitie would give 
them leave, to provide a great masse of money, and many rich and costly jewels, for 
the easier cariage, and then to transporte themselves and their treasure into Italy, 
where they should leade a contented life, until such time as either he could be recon- 
ciled to his Father, or els by succession come to the Kingdome. This devise was 
greatly praysed of Fawnia, for she feared if the King his father should but heare of 
the contract, that his furie would be such as no lesse than death would stand for pay- 
ment : she therefore tould him, that delay bred daunger : that many mishaps did fall 
out betweene the cup and the lip, and that to avoid danger, it were best with as much 
speed as might be to pass out of Sycilia, least fortune might prevent their pretence 
with some newe despight : Dorastus, whom love pricked forward with desire, prom- 
ised to dispatch his afifaires with as great hast, as either time or oportunitie would 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 345 

geve him leave : and so resting upon this point, after many imbracings and swcete 
kisses they departed. 

Dorastus having taken his leave of his best beloved Fawnia, went to the Grove 
where hee had his rich i^parel, and there uncasing himself as secretly as might be, 
hiding up his shepheards attire, till occasion should serve againe to use it : he went to 
the pallace, shewing by his merrie countenaunce, that either the state of his body was 
amended, or the case of his minde greately redressed : Fawnia poore soule was no 
less joyful, that being a shepheard, fortune had favoured her so, as to reward her 
with the love of a Prince, hoping in time to be advaunced from the daughter of a 
poore farmer to be the wife of a riche King : so that she thought every houre a yeere, 
till by their departure they might prevent danger, not ceasing still to goe every daye 
to her sheepe, not so much for the care of her flock, as for the desire she had to see 
her love and Lord Dorastus : who oftentimes, when oportunitie would serve, repaired 
thither to feede his fancy with the sweet content of Fawnias presence : and although 
he never went to visit her, but in his shepheards ragges, yet his ofte repaire made 
him not onely suspected, but knowne to divers of their neighbours : who for the good 
will they bare to old Porrus, tould him secretly of the matter, wishing him to keepe 
his daughter at home, least she went so ofte to the field that she brought him home a 
yong Sonne : for they feared that Fawnia being so beautifuU, the yong prince would 
allure her to folly. Porrus was stricken into a dump at these newes, so that thanking 
his neighboures for their good will : he hyed him home to his wife, and calling her 
aside, wringing his handes and shedding foorth teares, he brake the matter to her in 
these tearmes. 

I am afraid wife, that my daughter Fawnia hath made her selfe so fine, that 
she will buy repentance too deare. I heare newes, which if they be true, some 
will wish they had not proved true. It is tould me by my neighbours, that Doras- 
tus the Kinges sonne begins to looke at our daughter Fawnia : which if it be so, 
I will not geve her a halfepeny for her honestie at the yeeres end. I tell thee wife, 
nowadaies beauty is a great stale to trap yong men, and faire wordes and sweete 
promises are two great enemies to a maydens honestie : and thou knowest where 
poore men intreate, and cannot obtaine, there Princes may commaund, and wil ob- 
taine. Though Kings sonnes daunce in nettes, they may not be seene:* but 
I)Oore mens faultes are spied at a little hole : Well, it is a hard case where Kinges 
lustes are lawes, and that they should binde poore men to that, which they them- 
selves wilfully breake. 

Peace husband (quoth his wife) take heede what you say : speake no more than 
you should, least you hcare what you would not : great streames are to be stopped by 
sleight, not by force : and princes to be perswaded by submission, not by rigor : doe 
what you can, but no more than you may. , . . Take heede I say, it is ill jesting with 
edged tooles, and bad sporting with Kinges. The Wolfe had his skinne puld over 
his eares for but looking into the Lions den. Tush wife (quoth he) thou speakest 
like a foole, if the King should knowe that Dorastus had begotten our daughter with 
childe (as I feare it will fall out little better) the Kings furie would be such as no 
doubt we should both loose our goodes and lives : necessitie therefore hath no lawe, 

* Alluding to the old story of the fisherman's daughter, who was ordered to dance 
before a great lord, so that she might be seen, yet not seen, to effect which she cov- 
ered herself with one of her father's nets. The Italian fool and jester Gonella for 
the same purpose is said to have put himself behind a sieve. — Hazlitt, 



346 APPENDIX 

and I will prevent this mischiefe with a newe devise that is come into my head, which 
shall neither offend the King, nor displease Dorastus. I meane to take the chaine and 
the jewels that I found with Fawnia, and carrie them to the King, letting 
' ' ' him then to understand how she is none of my daughter, but that I found 
her beaten up with the water alone in a little boate wrapped in a rich Mantle, wherein 
was inclosed this treasure. By this meanes I hope the King will take Fawnia into 
his service, and we whatsoever chaunceth shal be blamelesse. This device pleased 
the good wife very well, so that they determined assoone as they might know the 
King at leisure, to make him privie to this case. 

In the meane time Dorastus was not slacke in his afi&ires, but applyed his matters 
with such diligence, that he provided all thinges fitte for their journey. Treasure 
and Jewels he had gotten great store, thincking there was no better friend then money 
in a strange countrey : rich attire he had provided for Fawnia, and, because he could 
not bring the matter to passe without the helpe and advice of some one, he made an 
old servant of his called Capnio, who had served him from his childhood, privie to 
his affaires : who seeing no perswasions could prevaile to divert him from his setled 
determination, gave his consent and dealt so secretly in the cause, that within short 
space hee had gotten a ship ready for their passage : the Mariners seeing a fit gale 
of winde for their purpose, wished Capnio to make no delayes, least if they pre- 
termitted this good weather, they might stay long ere they had such a fajrre winde. 
Capnio fearing that his negligence should hinder the journey, in the night time con- 
veyed the tnmckes full of treasure into the shippe, and by secrette meanes let Fawnia 
understand, that the next morning they meant to depart : she upon this newes slept 
verie little that night, but gotte up very early, and wente to her sheepe, looking every 
minute when she should see Dorastus, who taried not long, fur feare delay might 
breede daunger, but came as fast as he could gallop, and without any great circum- 
stance took Fawnia up behinde him and rode to the haven, where the shippe lay, 
which was not three quarters of a mile distant from that place. He no sooner came 
there, but the Marriners were readie with their Cockboate to set them aboard, where 
being coucht together in a Cabben they past away the time in recounting their old 
loves, til their man Capnio should come. Forms who had heard that this morning 
the King would go abroad to take the ayre, called in haste to his wife to bring him 
his holyday hose and his best Jacket, that he might goe like an honest substantial! 
man to tell his tale. His wife a good cleanly wenche, brought him all things fitte, 
and spungd him up very handsomlie, giving him the chaines and lewels in a little 
boxe, which Porrus for the more safety put in his bosom. Having thus all his 
trinkets in readines, taking his staffe in his hand he bad his wife kisse him for 
good lucke, and so hee went towards the Pallace. But as he was going, for- 
tune (who meant to shewe him a little false play) prevented his purpose in this 
wise. 

He met by chaunce in his way Capnio, who trudging as fast as he could with a 
little coffer under his arme to the ship, and spying Forms whome he 
knewe to be Fawnias Father, going towardes the Fallace, being a wylie 
fellow, began to doubt the worst, and therefore crost him the way, and askt him 
whither he was going so earely this morning. Forms (who knew by his face that he 
was one of the Court) meaning simply, told him that the Kings son Dorastus dealt 
hardly with him ; for he had but one daughter who was a little Beautiful!, and that 
his neighboures told him the young Prince had allured her to folly, he went therefore 
now to complaine to the King how greatly he was abused. 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 2,A7 

Capnio (who straight way smelt the whole matter) began to soth him in bis talke, 
and said that Dorastus dealt not like a Prince to spoyle any {)oore manes 
daughter in that sort : he therefore would doe the best for him he could, * ' 
because he knew he was an honest man. But (quoth Capnio) you lose your labour 
in going to the Pallace, for the King meanes this day to take the aire of 
the Sea, and to goe aboord of a shippe that lies in the haven. I am going ' * 
before, you see, to provide all things in redinesse, and if you will follow my coun- 
saile, tume back with me to the haven, where I will set you in such a fitte place as 
you may speake to the King at your pleasure. Forms giving credit to Capnios 
smooth tale, gave him a thousand thanks for his frendly advise, and went with him 
to the haven, making all the way his complaintes of Dorastus, yet concealing secrellie 
the chaine and the Jewels. Assone as they were come to the Sea side, the marriners 
seeing Capnio, came a land with their cock-boate, who still dissembling the matter, 
demaunded of Porrus if he would go see the ship ? who unwilling and fearing the 
worst, because he was not well acquainted with Capnio, made his excuse that he 
could not brooke the Sea, therefore would not trouble him. 

Capnio seeing that by faire meanes hee could not get him aboord, commaunded 
the mariners that by violence they should carrie him into the shippe, who like sturdy 
knaves hoisted the poore shepheard on their backes, and bearing him to the boate, 
lanched from the land. 

Porrus seeing himselfe so cunningly betraied durst not crie out, for hee sawe it 
would not prevaile, but began to intreate Capnio and the mariners to be good to him, 
and to pittie his estate, hee was but a poore man that lived by his labour : they laugh- 
ing to see the shepheard so afraide, made as much haste as they could, and set him 
aboorde. Porrus was no sooner in the shippe, but he saw Dorastus walking with 
Fawnia, yet he scarse knew her : for she had attired her selfe in riche apparell, 
which so increased her beauty, that shee resembled rather an Angell then a mortall 
creature. 

Dorastus and Fawnia, were halfe astonbhed to see the olde shepherd, marvailing 
greatly what wind had brought him thither, til Capnio told them al the whole dis- 
course ; how Porrus was going to make his complaint to the King, if by pollicie he 
had not prevented him, and therefore now sith he was aboord, for the avoiding of 
further danger, it were best to carrie him into Italy. 

Dorastus praised greatly his mans devise, and allowed of his counsaile ; but Faw- 
nia (who stil feared Porrus, as her father) began to blush for shame, that by her 
meanes he should either incure daunger or displeasure. 

The old shephard hearing this hard sentence, that he should on such a sodaine be 
caried from his Wife, his country, and kinsfolke, into a forraine Lande amongst 
straungers, began with bitter teares to make his complaint, and on his knees to in- 
treate Dorastus, that pardoning his unadvised folly he would give him leave to goe 
home ; swearing that hee would keepe all thinges as secret as they could wish. But 
these protestations could not prevaile, although Fawnia intreated Dorastus very earn- 
estly, but the mariners hoisting their maine sailes waied ankers, and hailed into the 
deepe, where we leave them to the favour of the wind and seas, and retume to 
Egistus. 

Who having appointed this day to hunt in one of his Forrests, called for his sonne 
Dorastus to go sport himselfe, because bee saw that of late hee began to loure ; but 
his men made answer that hee was gone abroade none knew whither, except he were 
gone to the grove to walke all alone, as his custome was to doe every day. 



348 APPENDIX 

The King willing to waken him out of his dumpes sent one of his men to goe 
seeke him, but in vaine, for at last he returned, but finde him he could not, so that 
the King went himselfe to goe see the sport ; where passing away the day, returning 
at night from hunting, hee asked for his Sonne, but he could not be heard of, which 
drave the King into a great choler : where upon most of his Noblemen and other 
Courtiers, poasted abroad to seek him, but they could not heare of him through all 
Sicilia, onely they missed Capnio his man, which againe made the King suspect that 
hee was not gone farre. 

Two or three daies being passed, and no newes heard of Dorastus, Egistus began 
to feare that he was devoured with some wilde beastes, and upon that made out a 
great troupe of men to go seeke him; who coasted through all the Country, and 
searched in everie daungcrous and secrete place, untill at last they mette with a 
Fisherman that was sitting in a little covert hard by the sea side mending his nettes, 
when Dorastus and Fawnia tooke shipping ; who being examined if he either knewe 
or heard where the Kings Sonne was, without any secrecie at all revealed the whole 
matter, how he was sayled two dayes past, and had in his company his man Capnio, 
Pomis and his faire Daughter Fawnia. This heavie newes was presently caryed to 
the King, who halfe dead for sorrow conmiaunded Forms wife to bee sent for : she 
being come to the Pallace, after due examination, confessed that her neighbours had 
oft told her that the Kings Sonne was too familier with Fawnia, her Daughter; 
whereuppon, her husband fearing the worst, about two dayes past (hearing the King 
should goe an himting) rose earely in the morning and went to make his complaint, 
but since she neither hcarde of him, nor saw him. Egistus perceiving the womans 
unfeyned simplicity, let her depart without incurring further displeasure, conceiving 
such secret greefe for his Sonnes recklesse foUie, that he had so forgotten his honour 
and parentage, by so base a choise to dishonor his father, and discredit himselfe, that 
with very care and thought be fel into a quartan fever, which was so unfit for his aged 
yeeres and complexion, that he became so weake, as the Phisitions would graunt him 
no life. 

But his Sonne Dorastus little regarded either father, countrie, or Kingdome in re- 
spect of his Lady Fawnia, for fortune smyling on this young novice, lent him so 
lucky a gale of winde, for the space of a day and a night, that the mar>'ners lay and 
slept upon the hatches ; but on the next morning about the breake of the day, the 
aire began to be overcast, the winds to rise, the seas to swel, yea presently there arose 
such a fearfull tempest, as the ship was in danger to be swallowed up with every sea, 
the maine mast with the violence of the wind w^as thrown over boord, the sayles were 
tome, the tacklings went in sunder, the storme raging still so furiously that poore 
Fawnia was almost dead for feare, but that she was greatly comforted with the pres- 
ence of Dorastus. The tempest continued three dayes, at which time the Mariners 
everie minute looked for death, and the aire was so darkned with cloudes that the 
Maister could not tell by his compasse in what Coast they were. But upon the fourth 
day about ten of the clocke, the wind began to cease, the sea to waxe 
calme, and the sky to be cleare, and the Mariners descr>'ed the coast of 
Bohemia, shooting of their ordnance for joy that they had escaped such a fearefull 
tempest. 

Dorastus hearing that they were arrived at some harbour, sweetly kissed Fawnia, 
and bad her be of good cheare : when they tolde him that the port belonged unto the 
cheife Cittie of Bohemia where Pandosto kept his Court, Dorastus began to be sad, 
knowing that his Father hated no man so much as Pandosto, and that the King him- 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 349 

self had sought secretly to betray Egistus : this considered, he was halfe afraide to 
goe on land, but that Capnio counselled him to chaunge his name and his countrey, 
until such time as they could get some other barke to transport them into Italy. Do- 
rastus liking this devise made his case privy to the Marriners, rewarding them boun- 
tifully for their paines, and charging them to saye that he was a Gentleman of 
Trapalonia called Meleagrus. The shipmen willing to shew what friendship they 
could to DorastuSi promised to be as secret as they could, or hee might wish, and 
uppon this they landed in a little village a mile distant from the Citie, where after 
they had rested a day, thinking to make provision for their manage ; the fame of 
Fawnias beauty was spread throughout all the Citie, so that it came to the eares of 
Pandosto; who then being about the age of fifty, had notwithstanding yong and 
freshe affections : so that he desired greatly to see Fawnia, and to bring this matter 
the better to passe, hearing they had but one man, and how they rested at a very 
homely house ; he caused them to be apprehended as spies, and sent a dozen of his 
garde to take them : who being come to their lodging, tolde them the Kings message. 
Dorastus no whit dismayed, accompanied with Fawnia and Capnio, went to the court 
(for they left Porrus to keepe the stufTe) who being admitted to the Kings presence, 
Dorastus and Fawnia with humble obedience saluted his majestic. 

Pandosto amased at the singular perfection of Fawnia, stood halfe astonished, 
viewing her beauty, so that he had almost forgot himselfe what hee had to doe : at 
last with steame countenance he demaunded their names, and of what countrey they 
were, and what caused them to land in Bohemia, Sur (quoth Dorastus) know that my 
name Meleagrus is a Knight borne and brought up in Trapalonia, and this gentle- 
woman, whom I mcane to take to my wife is an Italian borne in Padua, from whence 
I have now brought her. The Cause I have so small a trayne with me is 
for that her friends unwilling to consent, I intended secretly to convey * ' 
her into Trapalonia ; whither as I was sailing, by distresse of weather I was driven 
into these coasts : thus have you heard my name, my country, and the cause of 
my voiage. Pandosto starting from his seat as one in choller, made this rough 
reply. 

Meleagrus, I feare this smooth tale hath but small trueth, and that thou coverest a 
foule skin with faire paintings. No doubt this Ladie by her grace and beauty is of 
her degree more meete for a mighty Prince, then for a simple knight, and thou like a 
perjured traitour hath bereft her of her parents, to their present griefe, and her insu- 
ing sorrow. Till therefore I heare more of her parentage and of thy calling, I wil 
stay you both here in Bohemia. 

Dorastus, in whome rested nothing but Kingly valor, was not able to suffer the 
rcproches of Pandosto, but that he made him this answer. 

It is not meete for a King, without due proofe to appeach any man of ill beha- 
viour, nor upon suspition to inferre beleefe : straungers ought to bee entertained with 
courtesie, not to bee intreated with cmeltie, least being forced by want to put up in- 
juries : the Gods revenge their cause with rigor. 

Pandosto hearing Dorastus utter these wordes, commaunded that he should straight 
be committed to prison, untill such time as they heard further of his pleasure, but as 
for Fawnia, he charged that she should be entertained in the Court, with such cur- 
tesie as belonged to a straunger and her calling. The rest of the shipmen he put 
into the dungeon. 

Having thus hardly handled the supposed Trapalonians, Pandosto contrarie to his 
aged yeares began to be somwhat tickled with the beauty of Fawnia. 



350 APPENDIX 

[Four pages of the Reprint are here omitted, partly to save space, and partly be- 
cause they contain no word or phrase which recalls the drama, unless it be two 
phrases which might be thus, most remotely, construed : one is where Fawnia in a 
soliloquy says of herself: * better had it beene for thee, by sitting lowe to have had 

< quiet, then by climing high to have fallen into miserie ;' Florizel says (V, i, 253) : 

< The oddes for high and low's alike.' The second is where Fawnia says ' the body 

< is subject to victories, but the minde not to be subdued by conquest ;' Perdita says 
(IV, iv, 625] : < Affliction may subdue the cheek, But not take in the mind.* There 
is one other passage in the drama which, while it repeats no word or phrase in these 
omitted pages, has been deemed nevertheless to have been prompted by the subject 
here treated ; it is where Paulina tells Leontes that his eye hath too much youth in't 
when he looks at Perdita, and Leontes replies with tender reproach. But mainly 
these pages are omitted because in them is detailed the repulsive episode wherein 
the aged, amorous Pandosto persecutes with love his own unrecognised daughter, 
Fawnia. — Ed.] 

Pandosto seeing that there was in Fawnia a determinate courage to love Meleagrus, 
and a resolution without feare to hate him, flong away from her in a rage : swearing 
if in shorte time she would not be wonne with reason ; he would forget all courtesie, 
and compel her to graunt by rigour : but these threatning wordes no whit dismayed 
Fawnia ; but that she still both despited and dispised Pandosto. While thus these 
two lovers strove, the one to winne love the other to live in hate : Egistus heard cer- 
taine newes by the Merchauntes of Bohemia, that his sonne Dorastus was imprisoned 
by Pandosto, which made him feare greatly that his sonne should be but hardly en- 
treated : yet considering that Bellaria and hee was cleared by the Oracle of Apollo 
from that crime wherewith Pandosto had unjustly charged him, hee thought best to 
send with all speed to Pandosto, that he should set free his sonne Dorastus, and put 
to death Fawnia and her father Pomis : finding this by the advise of Counsaile the 
speediest remedy to release his sonne, he caused presently too of his shippes to be 
rigged, and thoroughly furnished with provision of men and victuals, and sent divers 
of his men and nobles Embassadoures into Bohemia ; who willing to obey their King, 
and relieve their yong Prince : made no delayes, for feare of danger, but with as 
much speed as might be, sailed towards Bohemia : the winde and seas favored them 
greatly, which made them hope of some good happe, for within three daies they were 
landed : which Pandosto no soner heard of their arrivall, but hee in person went to 
meete them, intreating them with such sumptuous and familiar courtesie, that they 
might well perceive how sory he was for the former injuries hee had offered to their 
King, and bow willing (if it might be) to make amendes. 

As Pandosto made report to them, how one Maleagrus, a Knight of Trapolonia, 
was lately arived with a Lady called Fawnia in his land, comming very suspitiously, 
accompanied onely with one servant, and an olde shepheard. The Embassadours 
perceived by the halfe, what the whole tale ment, and began to conjecture, that it was 
Dorastus, who for feare to bee knowne, had chaunged his name : but dissembling the 
matter, they shortly arived at the Court, where after they had bin verie solemnly and 
sumptuously feasted, the noble men of Sicilia being gathered togither, they made re- 
porte of their Embassage : where they certified Pandosto that Meleagrus was sonne 
and heire to the King Egistus, and that his name was Dorastus : how contrarie to the 
Kings minde he had privily convaied away that Fawnia, intending to marrie her, 
being but daughter to that poore shepheard Pomis : whereupon the Kings request 
was that Capnio, Fawnia, and Pomis, might bee murthered and put to death, and 



SOURCE OF THE PLOT 351 

that his Sonne Dorastiis might be sent home in safetie. Pandosto having attentively 
and with great mervaile heard their Embassage, willing to reconcile himselfe to Egis- 
tus, and to shew him how greatly he esteemed his favour : although love and fancy 
forbad him to hurt Fawnia, yet in despight of love hee determined to execute Egistus 
will without mercy ; and therefore he presently sent for Dorastus out of prison, who 
mervailing at this unlooked for curtesie, found at his comming to the Kings presence, 
that which he least doubted of, his fathers Embassadours : who no sooner sawe him, 
but with great reverence they honored him : and Pandosto embracing Dorastus, set 
him by him very lovingly in a chaire of estate. Dorastus ashamed that his follie was 
bewraied, sate a long time as one in a muse, til Pandosto told him the summe of his 
Fathers embassage : which he had no sooner heard, but he was toucht at the quicke, 
for the cruell sentence that was pronounced against Fawnia : but neither could his 
sorrow nor perswasions prevaile, for Pandosto commaunded that Fawnia, Porrus, and 
Capnio, should bee brought to his presence ; who were no sooner come, but Pandosto 
having his former love turned to a disdainfuU hate, began to rage against Fawnia in 
these tearmes. 

Thou disdainfuU vassal, thou currish kite, assigned by the destinies to base fortune, 
and yet with an aspiring minde gazing after honour : how durst thou presume, being 
a beggar, to match with a Prince ? By thy alluring lookes to inchant the sonne of a 
King to leave his owne countrie to fulfill thy disordinate lusts? O despightfuU 
minde, a proud heart in a beggar is not unlike to a great (ire in a smal cottage, which 
warmeth not the house, but bumeth it : assure thy selfe that thou shalt die, and thou 
old doating foole, whose follie hath bene such, as to suffer thy daughter to reach 
above thy fortune ; looke for no other meede, but the like punishment. But Capnio, 
thou which hast betrayed the King, and hast consented to the unlawfull lust of thy 
Lord and maister, I know not how justly I may plague thee : death is too easie a 
punishment for thy falsehood, and to live (if not in extreme miserie) were not to 
shew thee equitie. I therefore award that thou shall have thine eyes put out, and 
continually while thou diest, grinde in a mil like a brute beast. The feare of death 
brought a sorrow full silence upon Fawnia and Capnio, but Porrus seeing no hope of 
life, burst forth into these speeches. 

Pandosto, and ye noble Embassadours of Sicilia, seeing without cause I am con- 
demned to die ; I am yet glad I have opportunitie to disburden my conscience before 
my death : I will tel you as much as I know, and yet no more than is true : whereas 
I am accused that I have bene a supporter of Fawnias pride, and shee disdained as a 
vilde begger, so it is that I am neither Father unto her, nor she daughter unto me. 
For so it happened that I being a poore shepheard in Sicilia, living by keeping others 
mens flockes ; one of my sheepe straying downe to the sea side, as I went to seeke 
her, I saw a little boat driven upon the shoare, wherein I found a babe of sixe daies 
olde, wrapped in a mantle of skarlet, having about the necke this chaine : I pittying 
the child, and desirous of the treasure, carried it home to my wife, who with great 
care nursed it up, and set it to keepe sheepe. Here is the chaine and the Jewels, and 
this Fawnia is the childe whome I found in the boate, what shee is, or of what 
parentage I knowe not, but this I am assured that she is none of mine. 

Pandosto would scarce suffer him to tell out his tale, but that he enquired the 
time of the yeere, the manner of the boate, and other circumstances, which when he 
found agreeing to his count, he sodainelie leapt from his seate, and kissed Fawnia, 
wetting her tender cheeks with his teares, and crying my daughter Fawnia, ah sweete 
Fawnia, I am thy Father, Fawnia. This sodaine passion of the King drave them all 



352 APPENDIX 

into a maze, especially Fawnia and Dorastus. But when the King had breathed 
himselfe a while in this newe joy, he rehearsed before the EmbaAsadours the whole 
matter, how he hadde entreated his wife Bellaria for jealousie, and that this was the 
childe whome hee sent to floate in the seas. 

Fawnia was not more joyfuU that she had found such a Father, then Dorastus was 
glad he should g6t such a wife. The Embassadors rejoyced that their yong prince 
had made such a choice, that those Kingdomes, which through enmitie had long time 
bin dissevered, should now through perpetual amitie be united and reconciled. The 
Citizens and subjects of Bohemia (hearing that the King had found againe his Daugh- 
ter, which was supposed dead, joyfull that there was an heire apparent to 

' ' * his Kingdome) made BonHres and showes throughout the Cittie. The 
Courtiers and Knights appointed Justs and Tumeis to signifie their willing mindes in 
gratifying the Kings hap. 

Eighteene daies being past in these princely sports, Pandosto willing to recom- 
pence old Porrus, of a shepheard made him a Knight : which done, providing a suf- 
ficient Navie to receive him and his retinue, accompanied with Dorastus, Fawnia, and 
the Sicilian Embassadours, he sailed towards Sicilia, where be was most princelie 
entertained by Egistus; who hearing this comicall event, rejoyced greatly at his sonnes 
good happc, and without delay (to the perpetuall joy of the two yong Lovers) cele- 
brated the marriage : which was no sooner ended, but Pandosto (calling to mind how 
first he betraied his friend Egistus, how his jealousie was the cause of Bellarias death, 
that contrarie to the law of nature hee had lusted after his owne Daughter) moved 
with these desperate thoughts, he fell into a mclancholie fit, and to close up the Com- 
edie with a Tragicall stratageme, he slewe himselfe, whose death being many daies 
bewailed of Fawnia, Dorastus, and his deere friend Egistus, Dorastus taking his 
leave of his father, went with his wife and the dead corps into Bohemia, where after 
they were sumptuouslie intoombed, Dorastus ended his daies in contented quiet 

Finis. 



ENGLISH CRITICISMS 



Mrs Lennox [Shakespear Illustrated^ I753» ^^' "» P- 75) • ^^ ^^ \i^tti mentioned 
as a great praise to Shakespear that the old paltry story of Dorastus and FoTvnia 
served him for a Winter's Tale, but if we compare the conduct of the incidents in 
the Play with the paltry Story on which it is founded, we shall find the original much 
less absurd and ridiculous. If Shakespear had even improved the story and cleared it 
of great part of its inconsistencies, yet he would still have been accountable for what 
remained, for why, indeed, did he chuse a subject so faulty for the story of a play ? His 
claim to praise would have been but very vsmall, by making what was bad better, since 
he was free in the choice of his subject ; but certainly he can have no pretension to 
it at all by changing bad to worse ; that he has done so will be easily proved by ex- 
amining some of the principal incidents, as they are differently managed by the . 
novelist and the poet. . . . This account of the king's jealousy [in the novel] does 
(not absolutely clash with probability. But let us see how Shakespear manages it 
in the play. . . . All this conversation passes in the presence of I^eontes, who from 
hence takes occasion to be jealous, and passes in an instant from ^he greatest con- 



f 



ENGLISH CRITICISMS 353 

fidence, security, and friendship imaginable, to the last extremity of jealousy and 
rage. What wonderful contrivance is here? The Legerdemain, who shows you a 
tree that buds, blossoms, and bears ripe fruit in the space of five minutes, does not 
put so great a cheat on the senses as Shakespear does on the understanding ; for this 
jealousy of one minute's growth we see take root before our eyes, and so far from 
there being the smallest progression in the several actions of budding, blossoming, 
and bearing ripe fruit, that we have the first and the last at one and the same instant. 
The extravagant effects of the king's rage and jealousy are carried far enough in all 
conscience in the Novel, and Shakespear is not a whit more moderate ; only he has 
altered a circumstance which entirely destroys the little probability the Novelist had 
preserved in the relation. . . . Shakes()ear makes the king in the heighth of his frenzy 
of jealousy send himself to the Oracle of Apollo, and in the mean time commit the 
most barbarous cruelties on his Queen and child. How inconsistent is this! why 
does he consult the Oracle if he is resolved to proceed to extremities before the 
answer arrives ? The request comes very naturally from the Queen in the Novel, 
and the king's compliance with it is very well accounted for, but in the play nothing 
can be more absurd than that the king should be reasonable enough to consult volun- 
tarily the Gods concerning the infidelity of his wife ; and while the answer was 
expected, and her guilt yet doubtful, punish her with as much rigour as if the Oracle 
had declared her an adultress. Here again the paltry story has the advantage of the/ 
play. . . . Antigonus obeys, and this done, it is absolutely necessary he should never 
return to Sicily, . . . therefore a bear rushes out of the woods and devours him ; the 
good natured bear, as it should seem, resolved not to spoil the story, passes by the 
little princess, who is to make so great a figure hereafter, and a convenient storm 
arising, splits the ship, so that all the sailors perishing, though they were near enough 
the shore to have saved themselves, no one is left to carry back any account of the 
affair to Sicily. ... In the play the king coines very opportunely to hear the prince, 
his son, declare his passion for the fair shepherdess publicly, and his intentions of 
marrying her ; nay, he carries his indiscretion so far as to join hands with her before 
all the country people who are present ; can any thing be more absurd ? ... Is it not 
natural to suppose that the enraged king will keep his son in strict confinement to 
prevent this unequal match ? but it happens quite otherwise ; for the king, after some 
severe menaces, goes back to his palace and leaves his son at liberty to run away with 
the country girl, which he accordingly does. . . . Perdita, though her father and 
brother are in the same vessel with her, never sees or speaks to them ; the old Shep- 
herd and his son make no attempts to speak to her; and the Prince has so little con- 
sideration for the father and brother of his beloved that he takes no notice of them ; 
how wonderful! is all this ! . . . Shakespear seems to have preserved the queen alive 
for the sake of her representing her own statue in the last scene, — a mean and absurd 
contrivance : for how can it be imagined that Hermione, a virtuous and affectionate 
wife, would conceal herself during sixteen years in a solitary house, though she was 
sensible that her repentant husband was all that time consuming away with grief 
and remorse for her death : and what reason could she have for chusing to live in 
such a miserable confinement when she might have been happy in the possession of 
her husband's affection and have shared his throne ? How ridiculous also in a great 
Queen, on so interesting an occasion, to submit to such buffoonery as standing on a 
pedestal, motionless, her eyes fixed, and at last to be conjured down by a magical 
command of Paulina. . . . The novel has nothing in it half so low and improbable 
as this contrivance of the statue ; and indeed wherever Shakespear has altered or 

33 



354 APPENDIX 

invented, his Winter^ s Tale is greatly inferior to the old paltry story that furnished 
him with the subject of it. 

[In Campbell's Introduction to his edition, there is a foot-note to his remarks 
which I think can be read with more satisfaction here than where it originally occurs. 
It is as follows : * My dislike to Mrs Lennox's memory for having misapplied her 
' little talent, and still less learning, in an effort to prove that Shakespeare has spoilt 
' every story on which his plays were founded, is softened by the perusal of her his- 

* tory. She was the prot^g^e of Dr Johnson, who is said to have written the preface 

* to her Shakespeare Illustrated. She began her literary career in 1747, with publish- 
< ing a collection of poems under her maiden name of Charlotte Ramsay. Subse- 
' quently came out her Female Quixote^ which has considerable merit, and was very 

* favourably received. Others of her works appeared later ; an account of them is 

* given in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes^ vol. iii, p. 200. Towards the latter end of 

* her days she was afflicted with poverty and sickness. She died Jan. 4, 1804, at the 

* age of eighty- four, after having depended for some time on the boimty of the " Liter- 
' ary Fund." Without genius she possessed talents, and her industry and misfortunes 

* have a claim on our interest.' Mrs Lennox was bom in New York, where her father, 
Colonel James Ramsay, was Lieutenant-Governor, and where she lived until she was 
fifteen years old, when, in 1735, ^^^ 'vtnl to England. 

Mrs Inchbald {British Theatre, London, 1822, vol. xii) : The Winter's Tale 
was very successful at Drury Lane Theatre a few years ago ; and yet, it seems to 
class among those dramas that charm more in perusal than in representation. The 
long absence from the scene of the two most important characters, Leontes and his 
wife, and the introduction of various other persons to fill their places, divert, in some 
measure, the attention of an audience ; and they do not so feelingly unite all they see 
and all they hear into a single, story, as he who, with the book in his hand, and 
neither his eye nor ear distracted, combines, and enjoys the whole grand variety. 
Besides the improbability of exciting equal interest by the plot of this drama, in per- 
formance as in the closet ; some of the poetry is less calculated for that energetic 
delivery which the stage requires, than for the quiet contemplation of one who 
reads. The conversations of Florizel and Perdita have more of tenderness, than 
the fervour, of love ; and consequently their passion has not the force of expression 
to animate a multitude, though it is properly adapted to steal upon the heart of an 
individual. 

Shakespeare has said in Othello that a man is * jealous, because he is jealous.* 
This conceit of the poet seems to be the only reason that can be possibly alleged for 
the jealousy of Leontes; his unfounded suspicion of Ilermione is a much greater 
fault, and one with which imagination can less accord, than with the hasty strides of 
time, so much censured by critics, between the Third and Fourth Acts. It is easier 
for fancy to overleap whole ages than to overlook one powerful demonstration of in- 
sanity in that mind which is reputed sane. . . . There are two occurrences in this 
drama, quite as improbable as the unprovoked jealousy of Leontes, — the one, that the 
gentle, the amiable, the tender Perdita should be an unconcerned spectator of the . 
doom which menaced her foster, and supposed real, father ; and carelessly forsake 1 
him in the midst of his calamities. The other disgraceful improbability is, — that the | 
young prince Florizel should introduce himself to the Court of Sicilia, by speaking | 
arrant falsehoods. 

There is a scene in this play which is an exception to the rest, in being far more 



ENGLISH CRITICISMS 355 

grand in exhibition than the reader will possibly behold in idea. This is the scene 
of the Statue, when Mrs Siddons stands for Hermione. 

Campbell {^Introduction^ 1838, p. Ixii) : After a hundred perusals of this play I 
sat down to it, for the last time, fresh from reading Mrs Lennox's objections to it ; 
and a dreadful list of them she seems at Hrst sight to make out ; but when you come 
to the piece itself, some of those objections disappear, as if conscious of their false- 
hood, and the rest insensibly melt away. The jealousy of Leontes, though rash and! 
irrational, is not unnatural in a hasty and wilful man. The lapse of time is explained I 
by an apology from the lips of Time himself. The silence of Florizel towards his 
Perdita, and her supposed father and brother, on shipboard, has a fair excuse in the 
impossibility of the Poet's representing dramatically a narrated event ; and the great- 
est of the alleged improbabilities, namely, that of Hermione refusing reconciliation 
with her husband, may be explained by the conceivableness of a mother being un- 
willing to re-embrace a husband who had ordered the murder of her child, until that 
husband had repented, and the lost Perdita had been restored. Mrs Lennox says, 
that the Statue scene is low and ridiculous. I am sure Mrs Siddons used to make it 
appear to us in a different light. I^t Mrs Lennox and her followers, if she has any, 
get a patent for this belief. When a projector asked a reward from James I. for hav- 
ing invented the art of flying, the King offered him a patent for it ; the humbler priv- 
ilege of an exclusive right to crawl upon all-fours ought to be given to the believers 
of Shakespeare's Statue scene being low and ridiculous. Mrs Lennox says that the 
original story of Greene is more purely moral than that of our Poet. Now in the 
original tale, the father of Fawnia attempts to seduce his own daughter. Shakespeare 
has omitted this exquisite trait of morality. 

Hallam {^Literature of Europe, 1839, iii, 574) : The name of Shakespeare is 
the greatest in our literature, — it is the greatest in all literature. No man ever came 
near to him in the creative powers of the mind ; no man had ever such strength at 
once, and such variety of imagination. Coleridge has most felicitously applied to 
him a Greek epithet, given before to I know not whom, certainly none so deserving 
of it, fivpt6vov^t the thousand-souled Shakespeare. The number of characters in his 
plays is astonishingly great, without reckoning those, who although transient, have 
often their individuality, all distinct, all types of human life in well defined differ- 
ences. Yet he never takes an abstract quality to embody it, scarcely perhaps a defi- 
nite condition of manners, as Jonson does ; nor did he draw much, as I conceive, 
from living models; there is no manifest appearance of personal caricature in his 
comedies, though in some slight traits of character this may not improbably have been 
the case. Above all, neither he nor his contemporaries wrote for the stage in the 
worst, though most literal, and of late years the most usual sense ; making the ser- 
vants and hand-maids of dramatic invention to lord over it, and limiting the capaci- 
ties of the poet's mind to those of the performers. If this poverty of the representa- 
tive department of the drama had hung like an inctunbent fiend on the creative power 
of Shakespeare, how would he have poured forth with such inexhaustible prodigality 
the vast diversity of characters that we find in some of his plays ? This it is in which 
he leaves far behind not the dramatists alone, but all writers of fiction. Compare 
with him Homer, the tragedians of Greece, the poets of Italy, Plautus, Cervantes, 
Moli^re, Addison, Le Sage, Fielding, Richardson, Scott, the romancers of the elder 
or later schools,— one man has far more than surpassed them all. Others may have 



356 APPENDIX 

been as sublime, others may have been more pathetic, others may have equalled him 
in grace and purity of language, and have shunned some of his faults ; but the phil- 
osophy of Shakespeare, his intimate searching out of the human heart, whether in 
the gnomic form of sentence, or in the dramatic exhibition of character, is a gift pe- 
culiarly his own. It is, if not entirely wanting, very little manifested in comparison 
with him, by the English dramatists of his own and the subsequent period. 

These dramatists are hardly less inferior to Shakespeare in judgement. To this 
quality I particularly advert, because foreign writers, and sometimes our own, have 
imputed an extraordinary barbarism and rudeness to his works. They belong indeed 
to an age sufficiently rude and barbarous in its entertainments, and are of course to 
be classed with what is called the romantic school, which has hardly yet shaken off 
that reproach. But no one who has perused the plays anterior to those of Shake- 
speare, or contemporary with them, or subsequent to them down to the closing of the 
theatres in the civil war, will pretend to deny that there is far less regularity, in re- 
gard to everything where regularity can be desired, in a large proportion of these 
(perhaps in all the tragedies), than in his own. We need only repeat the names of 
The Merchant of Vcnicey Romeo 2Md Juliet^ Macbeth^ Othello^ The Merry Wives of 
Windsor^ Measure for Measure, The plots in these are excellently constructed, and 
in some with uncommon artifice. But even where an analysis of the story might 
excite criticism, there is usually a unity of interest which tones the whole. The 
Winter's Tale is not a model to follow, but we feel that The Winter's Tale is a 
single story; it is even managed as such with consummate skill. It is another proof 
of Shakespeare's judgement, that he has given action enough to his comedies without 
the bustling intricacies of the Spanish stage. If his plots have any little obscurity in 
some parts, it is from copying his novel or history too minutely. 

Hartley Coleridge {Essays^ etc., London, 185 1, ii, 148) : In this wild drama 
the comedy is excellent, the pastoral is exquisite ; but of the scenes which carry on 
the plot, some appear to me to be harsh in the thought, and infelicitous in diction : — 
Shakespeare throughout, but not always Shakespeare in a happy vein. The sudden 
jealousy of Leontes, though unaccountable, is not impossible. I am not sure that 
the ready soliciting of Hermione, and the easy compliance of Polixenes might not 
produce, in a better mind, a momentary cloud, a wish that the request had not been 
made, an impatience for Polixenes' departure. How slight a spark may cause ex- 
plosion in the foul atmosphere of a despot's heart it is hard to say. Irresponsible 
power is tyranny without, and moral anarchy within. We should little wonder at 
the conduct of Leontes iti an Eastern tale. Many of the sultans in the Arabian 
Nights act as madly and wickedly, whom yet the inventors evidently meant for wise 
and gracious princes; nay, history records abundant instances of like abjuration of 
reason in men not incapable of generosity or incidental greatness, to say nothing of 
taste and sensibility, for which some of the worst of kings have been conspicuous. 
But the exhibition of such madness of the heart, if fit for drama at all, should be 
confined to the sternest tragedy. The grossness of Leontes' imaginations, his mur- 
derous suggestions, and inaccessibility to reason, remorse, or religion, is naturally 
consequent on the base passion, say rather the unclean dremon, that possesses him. 
It is nature such as may still be found in St. Giles's. But is it possible that one who 
had once fallen thus, could ever again be worthy of a restoration to happiness ? In 
the constituted order of human progression, — surely never. Remorse, the tyrant 
would feel ; but it would urge him to vengeance on the instruments of his crimes, — 



ENGLISH CRITICISMS 357 

perhaps to some superstitious rite, — some self-sought atonement ; but never to a heart- 
cleansing repentance. For the improbability of the events I care as little as for the 
violation of the unities and the outrages on geography. Except Autolycus, none of 
the characters show much of Shakespeare's philosophic depth. On him I think I 
could lecture very psychologically. Hermione is frank and noble, rising in dignity as 
she falls in fortune, — not unlike Marie Antoinette, whose unsuspecting levity, though it 
alienated not her husband, exposed her to the slander of foul minds that had not even 
the excuse of jealousy, — in sunshine a butterfly, in misery a martjrr. Paulina is an 
honest scold. Perdita a pretty piece of poetry. Polixenes not very amiable, nor, in 
truth, much of anything. The length of time be remains witness to his son's court- 
ship, before he discovers himself, is a sacrifice to effect Camillo is an old rogue 
whom I can hardly forgive for his double treachery. The Shepherd and his son are 
well enough in their way ; but Mopsa and Dorcas might be countrified enough with 
better tongues in their heads. Of the rest nothing need be said. The progressive 
interest of the play, malgri the vast hiatus for which Shakespeare himself thought it 
necessary to apologise, is well sustained; but the catastrophe is hurried, and the 
queen's reanimation beyond all dramatic credibility. Yet it acts well, and the whole 
b pleasing and effective on the stage. 

W. W. Lloyd (Singer, ed. ii, 1856, p. 131) : The Alcestis of Euripides, both in 
treatment and incident, has many points of analogy with Tke Winter's Tale. . . . Ad- 
metus, fated to die, is by favour of Apollo permitted to prolong his life by furnishing 
Death with a volimtary substitute. He urges the duty upon his aged parents, who 
repudiate the proposal with very marked reflections on its unreasonableness, and on 
his coolness in the proposition, but they fail to bring home to him this view of his 
conduct ; and when his wife, Alcestis, becomes the volunteer, he grieves at her fate 
as he would at an inevitable blow, is inconsolable at his bereavement, would fain ac- 
company her, but, wrapt up in blind selfishness, never once contrasts her conduct, 
which he so much admires, with his own. His position is placed before him most 
forcibly by his father, but he can see only his father's selfishness, not his own, and 
drives on in dark obstinacy upon the path that must end in his being undeceived to 
humiliation the most degrading. No word of reproach passes the lips of Alcestis ; 
but her parting appeal to him, to spare her children the unhappiness of a step-mother, 
speaks expressively. If she says a word to set forth her sacrifice and the contrast of 
her self-devotion to the coldness of others, it is to urge a claim to this consideration 
for those she leaves behind, and she places them solemnly in his hands upon formal 
declaration of the stipulation. There is no mistaking in the comparative coldness of 
her adieu to him, a sense of the forfeiture he has incurred of that respect without 
which love lives not. She dies on the stage like Hermione, and her sorrowing hus- 
band forthwith prepares her solemn funeral, rejecting his father's contribution, as he 
regards him as the impersonation of cowardice and selfishness. It is when he re- 
turns from the entombment, and stands before the doors of his widowed household, 
that his nobler heart recovers, and he passionately avows that too late he learns his 
wife has the nobler and the better fate ; he has forfeited happiness and fame together, 
his dwelling must henceforth be unbearable, and elsewhere he can only expect the 
vituperation he utterly deserves. The Chorus comfort him, and urge the reparation 
of funeral honour. In the mean time Hercules brings back Alcestis veiled, rescued 
by his arm from the already closed clutches of Thanatos, hateful to God and man. 
Hercules pretends that his companion is a prize won in games, and offering to leave 



3S8 APPENDIX 

her with Admetus, and even referring to renewed wedlock, draws from him expres- 
sions soothing to the revived queen, as those that Paulina draws from the penitent 
I..eontes. Yet, like Leontes gazing at the statue, he looks till the force of resemblance 
raises him to the highest pitch of agitation. At length, by gradation like that in 
Shakespeare's play, the form of his wife is unveiled, and he recognises her and falls 
on her neck. But she still stands speechless ; the purifications due to the infernal 
gods must first be performed, and a three days* interval elapses before he may hear 
her voice ; and thus in her silent presence the play concludes. 

The elevated dignity and majesty thus expressed in the figure of Alcestis, the vin- 
dication of the self-devoted womanhood from the selfish neglect of a stronger power, 
but an inferior nature, is admirably realised, and is parallel to the reparation accorded 
to Hermione, who suffers with dignity as well as patience, and preserves herself not 
from consideration for a husband who has forfeited his nobler title, but for the sake 
of a daughter lost, but promised by the Oracle to be found. The silence of Alcestis 
is not more satisfactory and expressive than the circumstance that, in the single short 
speech of Hermione, her words recognize and address alone her recovered daughter. 
She extends her hand to Leontes, and when he embraces her in joyful astonishment, 
full forgiveness is sealed by her frank embrace and entire reconciliation. * She hangs 
' upon his neck ;' but it is when the recovered Perdita kneels that her mother's voice 
18 heard again, and then, as if in the same awe of the powers of death from whom 
Hermione and Perdita seem, like Alcestis, to have been recovered, the scene hastily 
closes and the play is at an end. 

F. J. FURNIVALL {Leopold Shakespeare^ Introd. p. xci) : The last complete play 
of Shakspere, as it is, the golden glow of the sunset of his genius is over it, the 
sweet country air all through it ; and of few, if any of his plays, is there a pleasanter 
picture in the memory than of Winter's Tale, As long as men can think, shall Per- 
dita brighten and sweeten, Hermione ennoble, men's minds and lives. How happily, 
too, it brings Shakspere before us, mixing with his Stratford neighbours at their shee[>- 
shearing and country sports, enjoying the vagabond pedlar's gammon and talk, de- 
lighting in the sweet Warwickshire maidens, and buying them * fairings,' telling 
goblin stories to the boys, * There was a man dwelt by a church-yard,' — opening his 
heart afresh to all the innocent mirth, and the beauty of nature around him. . . . 
The play is late in metre, in feeling, in purpose. It has no five-measure rhyme in 
the dialogue, its end-stopt lines are only one in 2- 1 2, its double-endings are as 
many as one in 2-85 ; it has passages in Shakspere's latest budding style, * What 
* you do, still betters what is done,' etc. Its purpose, its lesson, is to teach forgive- 
ness of wrongs, not vengeance for them ; to give the sinner time to repent and amend, 
not to cut him off in his sin ; to frustrate the crimes he has purpost. And, as in 
PericleSy father and lost daughter, and wife and mother thought dead, meet again ; 
as in Cymbeliftey father and injured daughter meet again, she forgjiving her wrongs ; 
as there, too, friends meet again, the injured friend forgiving his wrongs, so here do 
lost daughter, injured daughter and injuring father, meet, he being forgiven ; so in- 
jured friend forgiving, meets injuring friend forgiven ; while above all rises the figure 
of the noble, long-suffering wife Hermione, forgiving the base though now repentant 
husband who had so cruelly injured her. She links this play to Shakspere's last 
fragment Henry VI 11.^ and makes us believe that this twice-repeated reunion of 
husband and wife, in their daughter, late in life, this twice-repeated forgiveness of 
sinning husbands by sinned-against wives, have somewhat to do with Shakspere's 



ENGLISH CRITICISMS 359 

reunion with his wife, and his renewed family life at Stratford. . . . The attempt of 
Polyxenes to get Camillo to poison Polyxenes is more direct than even John's with 
Hubert to murder Arthur, Richard's with Tyrrel to strangle the innocents, Henry the 
Fourth's with Exton to clear Richard the Second from his path. 

Baynes (Encycl. ^rt/., Ninth Ed. 1886; Shakespeare Studies, 1896, p. 130): In 
the third period of Shakespeare's dramatic career years had evidently brought en- 
larged vision, wider thoughts, and deeper experiences. While the old mastery of art 
remains, the works belonging to this period seem to bear traces of more intense moral 
struggles, larger and less joyous views of human life, more troubled, complex, and 
profound conceptions and emotions. Comparatively few marks of the lightness and 
animation of the earlier works remain, but at the same time the dramas of this period 
display an unrivalled power of piercing the deepest mysteries and sounding the most 
tremendous and perplexing problems of human life and human destiny. To this 
period belong the four great tragedies, — Hamlet^ Macbeth ^ Othello^ Lear. ... In the 
four grand tragedies the central problem is a profoundly moral one. It is the supreme 
internal conflict of good and evil amongst the central forces and higher elements of 
human nature, as appealed to and developed by sudden and powerful temptation, 
smitten by accumulated wrongs, or plunged in overwhelming calamities. As the re- 
sult, we learn that there is something infinitely more precious in life than social ease 
and worldly success, — nobleness of soul, fidelity to truth and honour, human love and 
loyalty, strength and tenderness, and trust to the very end. In the most tragic ex- 
periences this fidelity to all that is best in life is only possible through the loss of life 
itself. But when Desdemona expires with a sigh, and Cordelia's loving eyes are 
closed, when Hamlet no more draws bis breath in pain, and the tempest-tossed Lear 
is at last liberated from the rack of this tough world, we feel that, Death having set 
his sacred seal on their great sorrows and greater love, they remain with us as pos- 
sessions for ever. In the three dramas belongring to Shakespeare's last period, or 
rather which may be said to close his dramatic career, the same feeling of severe but 
consolatory calm is still more apparent. If the deeper discords of life are not finally 
resolved, the virtues which soothe their perplexities and give us courage and endur- 
ance to wait, as well as confidence to trust the final issues, — the virtues of forgiveness 
and generosity, of forbearance and self-control, — are largely illustrated. This is a 
characteristic feature in each of these closing dramas, in The Winter's Tate, Cym- 
beline, and The Tempest. The Tempest is supposed, on tolerably good grounds, to 
be Shakespeare's last work, and in it we see the great magician, having gained by 
the wonderful experience of life, and the no less wonderful practice of his art, serene 
wisdom, clear and enlarged vision, and beneficent self-control, break his magical wand 
and retire from the scene of his triumphs to the home he had chosen amidst the 
woods and meadows of the Avon, and surroimded by the family and friends he loved. 

Tennyson (Memoir^ by his Son, London, 1897, vol. ii, p. 290) : There are three 
repartees in Shakespeare which always bring tears to my eyes from their simplicity. 
One is in King Lear when Lear says to Cordelia, * So young and so untender,' and 
Cordelia lovingly answers, * So young, my lord, and true.* And in TTie IVinter's 
TaUy when Florizel takes Perdita's hand to lead her to the dance, and says, *■ So tur- 
' ties pair that never mean to part,' and the little Perdita answers, giving her hand to 
Florizel, * I'll swear for 'em.* And in Cymbeline^ when Imogen in tender rebuke says 
to her husband : — 



1 



360 APPENDIX 

* Why did you throw your wedded lady from you ? 
Think that you are upon a rock : and now 
Throw me again I* 

and Posthumus does not ask forgiveness, but answers, kissing her : — 

< Hang there like fruit, my soul. 
Till the tree die !' 



HERMIONE 

Mrs Jameson (ii, 2) : When, by the presence or the agency of some predominant 
and exciting power, the feelings and affections are upturned from the depths of the 
heart, and flung to the surface, the painter or the poet has but to watch the workings 
of the passions, thus in a manner made visible, and transfer them to his page or his 
canvas, in colours more* or less vigorous; but where all is calm without, and around, 
to dive into the profoundest abysses of character, trace the affections where they lie 
hidden like the ocean springs, wind into the most intricate involutions of the heart, 
patiently unravel its most delicate fibres, and in a few graceful touches place before 
us the distinct and visible result, — to do this, demanded power of another and a rarer 
kind. 

There are several of Shakespeare's characters which are especially distinguished 
by this profound feeling in the conception, and subdued harmony of tone in the 
delineation. To them may be particularly applied the ingenious simile which 
Goethe has used to illustrate generally all Shakespeare's characters, when he com- 
pares them to the old-fashioned watches in glass cases, which not only showed the 
index pointing to the hour, but the wheels and springs within, which set that index 
in motion. 

Imogen, Desdemona, and Hermione, are three women placed in situations nearly 
similar, and equally endowed with all the qualities which can render that situation 
striking and interesting. They are all gentle, beautiful, and innocent ; all are models 
of conjugal submission, truth, and tenderness ; and all are victims of the unfounded 
jealousy of their husbands. So far the parallel is close, but here the resemblance 
ceases; the circumstances of each situation are varied with wonderful skill, and the 
characters, which are as different as it is possible to imagine, conceived and discrim- 
inated with a power of truth and a delicacy of feeling yet more astonishing. 

Critically speaking, the character of Hermione is the most simple in point of 
dramatic effect, that of Imogen the most varied and complex. Hermione is most 
distinguished by her magnanimity and her fortitude, Desdemona by her gentleness 
and refined grace, while Imogen combines all the best qualities of both, with others 
which they do not possess ; consequently, she is, as a character, sup>erior to either ; 
but considered as women, I suppose the preference would depend on individual 
taste. . . . 

The character of Hermione exhibits what is never found in the other sex, but 
rarely in our own, — yet sometimes, — dignity without pride, love without passion, 
and tenderness without weakness. To conceive a character, in which there enters 
so much of the negative, required perhaps no rare and astonishing effort of ge- 



CRITICISMS— HERMIONE 36 1 

nius, such as created a Juliet, a Miranda, or a Lady Macbeth: but to delineate 
such a character in a poetical form, to develope it through the medium of action and 
dialogue, without the aid of description ; to preserve its tranquil, mild, and serious 
beauty, its imimpassioned dignity, and at the same time keep the strongest hold upon 
our sympathy and our imagination ; and out of this exterior calm, produce the most 
profound pathos, the most vivid impression of life and internal power : — it is this, 
which renders the character of Hermione one of Shakespeare's masterpieces. 

Hermione is a queen, a matron, and a mother ; she is good and beautiful, and 
royally descended. A majestic sweetness, a grand and gracious simplicity, an easy, 
unforced, yet dignified self-possession, are in all her deportment, and in every word 
she utters. She is one of those characters, of whom it has been said proverbially, 
that * still waters run deep.' Her passions are not vehement, but in her settled mind 
the sources of pain or pleasure, love or resentment, are like the springs that feed 
mountain lakes, impenetrable, unfathomable, and inexhaustible. 

[Page 14.] The character of Hermione is considered open to criticism on one 
point. I have heard it remarked that when she secludes herself from the world for 
sixteen years, during which time she is mourned as dead by her repentant husband, 
and is not won to relent from her resolve by his sorrow, his remorse, his constancy to 
her memory ; such conduct, argues the critic, is unfeeling as it is inconceivable in a 
tender and virtuous woman. Would Imogen have done so, who is so generously 
ready to grant a pardon before it be asked ? or Desdemona, who does not forgive 
because she cannot even resent ? No, assuredly ; but this is only another proof of 
the wonderful delicacy and consistency with which Shakespeare has discriminated 
the characters of all three. The incident of Hermione*s supposed death and con- 
cealment for sixteen years, is not indeed very probable in itself, nor very likely to 
occur in every-day life. But besides all the probability necessary for the purposes 
of poetry, it has all the likelihood it can derive from the peculiar character of Her- 
mione, who is precisely the woman who could and would have acted in this manner. 
In such a mind as hers, the sense of a cruel injury, inflicted by one she had loved 
and trusted, without awakening any violent anger or any desire for vengeance, would 
sink deep, — almost incurably and lastingly deep. So far she is most unlike either 
Imogen or Desdemona, who are portrayed as much more flexible in temper ; but then 
the circumstances under which she is wronged are very different, and far more un- 
pardonable. The self-created, frantic jealousy of Leontes is very distinct from that 
of Othello, writhing under the arts of lago ; or that of Posthumus, whose understand- 
ing has been cheated by the most damning evidence of his wife's infidelity. The 
jealousy which in Othello and Posthumus is an error of judgement, in Leontes is a 
vice of the blood ; he suspects without cause, condemns without proof; he is without 
excuse, — unless the mixture of pride, passion, and imagination, and the predisposition 
to jealousy with which Shakespeare has portrayed him, be considered as an excuse. 
Hermione has been openly insulted ; he to whom she gave herself, her heart, her 
soul, has stooped to the weakness and baseness of suspicion ; has doubted her truth, 
has wronged her love, has sunk in her esteem and forfeited her confidence. She has 
been branded with vile names ; her son, her eldest hope, is dead,— dead through the 
false accusation which has stuck infamy on his mother's name ; and her innocent babe, 
stained with illegitimacy, disowned, and rejected, has been exposed to a cruel death. 
Can we believe that the mere tardy acknowledgement of her innocence could make 
amends for wrongs and agonies such as these ? or heal a heart which must have bled 
inwardly, consumed by that untold grief, ' which burns worse than tears drown ' ? 



362 APPENDIX 

Keeping in view the peculiar character of Hermione, such as she is delineated, is 
she one either to forgive hastily or forget quickly ? and though she might, in her soli- 
tude, mourn over her repentant husband, would his repentance suffice to restore him 
at once to his place in her heart ? to efface from her strong and reflecting mind the 
recollection of his miserable weakness ? or can we fancy this high-souled woman, — 
left childless through the injury which has been inflicted on her, widowed in heart by 
the un worthiness of him she loved, a spectacle of grief to all, — to her husband a 
continual reproach and humiliation, — walking through the parade of royalty in the 
court which had witnessed her anguish, her shame, her degradation, and her despair ? 
Methinks that the want of feeling, nature, delicacy, and consistency, would lie in 
such an exhibition as this. In a mind like Hermione's, where the strength of feel- 
ing is founded in the power of thought, and where there is little of impulse or imag- 
ination, — < the depth, but not the tumult of the soul,' * — there are but two influences 
which predominate over the will, — time and religion. And what then remained, but 
that, wounded in heart and spirit, she should retire from the world ? — not to brood 
over her wrongs, but to study forgiveness, and wait the fulflllment of the Oracle which 
had promised the termination of her sorrows. Thus a premature reconciliation would 
not only have been painfully inconsistent with the character ; it would also have de- 
prived us of that most beautiful scene, in which Hermione is discovered to her hus- 
band as the statue or image of herself. 

[Page 22.] There are several among Shakespeare's characters which exercise a 
far stronger power over our feelings, our fancy, our understanding, than that of Her- 
mione ; but not one, — unless perhaps Cordelia,— constructed upon so pure and high 
a principle. It is the union of gentleness with power which constitutes the perfec- 
tion of mental grace. Thus among the ancients, with whom the graces were also the 
charities (to show, perhaps, that while form alone may constitute beauty, sentiment is 
necessary to grace), one and the same word signifled equally strength and virtue. 
This feeling, carried into the fine arts, was the secret of the antique grace, — the grace 
of repose. The same eternal nature, — ^the same sense of immutable truth and beauty, 
which revealed this sublime principle of art to the ancient Greeks, revealed it to the 
genius of Shakespeare ; and the character of Hermione, in which we have the same 
largeness of conception and delicacy of execution, — the same effect of suffering with- 
out passion, and grandeur without effort, is an instance, I think, that he felt within 
himself, and by intuition, what we study all our lives in the remains of ancient art. 
The calm, regular, classical beauty of Hermione's character is the more impressive 
from the wild and gothic accompaniments of her stor}', and the beautiful relief af- 
forded by the pastoral and romantic grace which is thrown around her daughter 
Perdita. 

Anon. (Blackwood's Magazine, Feb. 1 833, p. 149) : In the lustre of virtue, and 
the gloom of agony, the childless widow, — for though forgiving her husband all, she 
has pronounced a solemn divorce, — retires into seclusion from love and life, deep, 
dark, and incommunicable as the grave. Into that sixteen years' penance, — not for 



« ( 



-The gods approve 



The depth, and not the tumult of the soul.' — Wordsworth. 

* II pouvait y avoir des vagues majestueuses et non de I'orage dans son coeur,* was 
finely observed of Madame de Sta€l in her maturer years ; it would have been true 
of Hermione at any period of her life. 



CRITICISMS^HERMIONE 363 

ber own sin, for she is pure, but for ber busband's, with wbom she doubtless has 
vowed to be reconciled on the bed of death (but Heaven brings, in its own good 
time, a more blissful reconciliation), — ^imagination fears, in its reverence, even for one 
moment to enter. It could not have been wholly unhappy, self-sustained as Her- 
mione was by her devotion to one holy purpose ; and that she acted right all hearts 
feel on her wondrous reappearance among the Uving as from the dead. That is the 
moment when we should have felt that Shakespeare had erred, if erred he had, in 
that long sunless immurement. But our whole nature leaps up in a fit of joy, to hail 
the apparition. . . . 

We have been somewhat too hard on poor Leontes. We must not blame him for 
having breathed a disease. He has dree'd a rueful punishment. All the atonement 
that could be made for his ciiine he did make, — and the heavens had been long hung 
with black over his head. His crown was worthless in his eyes, — his throne the scat 
of misery. Never for one day, we may believe, had he not been haunted by the 
ghost of his little son, who died of a broken heart,— of the baby exposed in the 
wild, and never heard of more, either she or Antigonus. ... It would be unchristian 
not to forgive Leontes. 

Hudson {Introd. p. 21) : We can scarce call Hermione sweet or gentle, though 
she is both ; she is a noble woman, — one whom, even in her greatest anguish, we 
hardly dare to pity. The whole figure is replete with classic grace, is shaped and 
finished in the highest style of classic art. As she acts the part of a statue in the 
play, so she has a statue-like calmness and firmness of soul. A certain austere and 
solid sweetness pervades her whole demeanour, and seems, as it were, the essential 
form of her life. It is as if some masterpiece of ancient sculpture had warmed and 
quickened into life from its fulness of beauty and expression. Appearing at first as 
the cheerful hostess of her husband's friend, and stooping from her queenly elevation 
to the most winning affabilities, her behaviour rises in dignity as her sorrow deepens. 
With an equal sense of what is due to the King as her husband, and to herself as a 
woman, a wife, and a mother, she knows how to reconcile all these demands ; she 
therefore resists without violence, and submits without weakness. And what her wise 
spirit sees to be fit and becoming, that she always has strength and steadiness of cha- 
racter to do; hence, notwithstanding the insults and hardships wantonly put upon 
her, she still preserves the smoothnesses of peace ; is never betrayed into the least 
sign of anger or impatience or resentment, but maintains, throughout, perfect order 
and fitness and proportion in act and speech ; the charge, so dreadful in itself, and 
so cruel in its circumstances, neither rouses her passions, as it would Paulina's, nor 
stuns her sensibilities, as in the case of Desdemona; but like the sinking of lead 
in the ocean's bosom, it goes to the depths without ruffling the surface of her 
soul. Her situation is, indeed, full of pathos, — a pathos the more deeply-moving 
to others, that it stirs no tumults in her; for her nature is manifestly fitted up 
and furnished with all tender and gentle and womanly feelings ; only she has the 
force of mind to control them, and keep them all in the right place and degree. 
•They are the patient sorrows that touch nearest.' And so, under the worst that 
can befall, she remains within the reg^ion of herself, calm and serenely beautiful, 
stands firm, yet full of grace, in the austere strengths of reason and conscious 
rectitude. And when, at her terrible wrongs and sufferings, all hearts are shaken, 
all eyes wet, but her own, the impression made by her stout-hearted fortitude is 
of one whose pure, tranquil, deep-working breast is the home of sorrows too 



364 APPENDIX 

big for any eye-messengers to report : < Calm pleasures there abide, majestic 
* pains/ . . . 

The Queen's long concealing of herself has been censured by some as repugnant 
to nature. Possibly they may think it somewhat strained and theatrical, but it is not 
so; the woman is but true to herself, in this matter, and to the solid and self-poised 
repose in which her being dwells. So that the thing does not seem repugnant to 
nature as individualised by her reason and will ; nor is her character herein more 
above or out of nature than the proper ideal of art abundantly warrants. For to her 
keen sensibility of honour the King's treatment is literally an infinite wrong ; nor does 
its cruelty more wound her affection, than its meanness alienates her respect ; and one 
so strong to bear injury might be equally strong to remember it. Therewithal she 
knows full well that, in so delicate an instrument as married life, if one string be out 
of tune, the whole is ajar, and will yield no music ; for her, therefore, all things must 
be right, else none is so. And she is both too clear of mind and too upright of heart 
to put herself where she cannot be precisely what the laws of propriety and decorum 
require her to seem. Accordingly, when she does forgive, the forgiveness is simply 
perfect \ the breach that has been so long a-healing is at length completely \itxl\^^\ 
for to be whole and entire in whatever she does, is both an impulse of nature and a 
law of conscience with her. When the King was wooing her, she held him off three 
months, which he thought unreasonably long ; but the reason why he did so is rightly 
explained when, for his inexpressible sin against her, she has locked herself from his 
sight sixteen years, leaving him to mourn and repent. Moreover, with her severe 
chastity of principle, the reconciliation to her husband must begin there where the 
separation grew. Thus it was for Perdita to restore the parental unity which her 
being represents, but of which she had occasioned the breaking. Such is Hermione, 
in her < proud submission,' her * dignified obedience,' with her Roman firmness and 
integrity of soul, heroic in strength, heroic in gentleness, the queenliest of women, 
the womanliest of queens. She is, perhaps, the Poet's best illustration of the great 
principle, which I fear is not so commonly felt as it should be, that the highest 
beauty always has an element or shade of the terrible in it, so that it awes you while 
it attracts. 



PAULINA 

Mrs Jameson (ii, 23) : The character of Paulina, though it has obtained but little 
notice, and no critical remark, (that I have seen,) is yet one of the striking beauties 
of the play; and it has its moral too. As we see running through the whole uni- 
verse that principle of contrast which may be called the life of nature, so we behold 
it everywhere illustrated in Shakespeare : upon this principle he has placed Emilia 
beside Desdemona, the Nurse beside Juliet ; the clowns and dairymaids, and the 
merry pedlar thief, Autolycus, round Florizel; — and made Paulina the friend of 
Hermione. 

Paulina does not fill any ostensible ofHce near the person of the queen, but is a 
lady of high rank in the Court, — the wife of the Lord Antigonus. She is a character 
strongly drawn from real and common life, — a clever, generous, strong-minded, 
warm-hearted woman, fearless in asserting the truth, firm in her sense of right, 
enthusiastic in all her affections ; quick in thought, resolute in word, and energetic in 
action ; but heedless, hot-tempered, impatient, loud, bold, voluble, and turbulent of 



CRITICISMS^PA ULINA 365 

tongue ; regardless of the feelings of those for whom she woald sacrifice her life, and 
injuring from excess of zeal those whom she most wishes to serve. How many such 
there are in the world ! But Paulina, though a very termagant, is yet a poetical ter- 
magant in her way ; and the manner in which all the evil and dangerous tendencies 
of such a temper are placed before us, even while the individual character preserves 
the strongest hold upon our respect and admiration, forms an impressive lesson, as 
well as a natural and delightful portrait. ... It is admirable that Hermione and 
Paulina, while sufficiently approximated to afford all the pleasure of contrast, are 
never brought too nearly in contact on the scene or in the dialogue ; for this would 
have been a fault in taste, and have necessarily weakened the effect of both charac- 
ters ;^-either the serene grandeur of Hermione would have subdued and overawed 
the fiery spirit of Paulina, or the imp>etuous temper of the latter must have disturbed 
in some respect our impression of the calm, majestic, and somewhat melancholy 
beauty of Hermione. 

[Georg Br ANDES (p. 924) asserts that Mrs Jameson omitted Paulina in her 

* Female Characters,' which is true only of the Table of Contents. 

For once, Mrs Jameson has failed to do justice ; and Paulina's indignation at out- 
rageous injustice and oppression has been mistaken for ' hot temper ' and * turbulence 

* of tongue.* * Oppression maketh the wise man mad,' — it is this madness which is 
Paulina's, — the furthest possible remove from that of a * loud, bold, voluble * scold. 
A hot temper distorts the judgement, but in the midst of Paulina's vehemence, her 
vision is clear enough, and her judgement calm enough to utter one of the deepest 
of truths : * it is an heretic which makes the fire, not she which bums in it.' As 
for * injuring through excessive zeal those whom she would serve,' — where is the 
proof of it ? Can it be supposed that any words of hers could or did add to the 
heaviness of Hermione's estate, or increase the frenzied wrath of one who blasphemed 
the very Oracle of a God ? It is to be feared that Mrs Jameson was influenced in her 
estimate by some stage- Paulina, who had failed to grasp the moral grandeur of the 
character, and took as the kejMiote Paulina's unfortunate threat against the eyes of 
any one who should interfere in her momentous struggle with Leontes. At the very 
beginning of her stormy interview with the King, her persistent iteration of * good 
< Queen,' ought to show us that hers was an absolutely unselfish nature, stirred to its 
depths by the sight of injustice, — the true stuff whereof mart3rrs are made who will 
pursue their path, though all the tiles on the houses are devils. — Ed.] 

W. W. Lloyd (Singer, ed. ii, p. 131) : The character of Paulina is a necessity to 
the play ; without the support derived from her constant presence, it would not be 
intelligrible how such a mind as that of Leontes could have the force and freshness 
of feeling, after sixteen years elapsed, that are required to give interest to the recog- 
nition, and to satisfy our S3rmpathies with the honour of Hermione. She is the thorn 
in the flesh that may irritate, but only to preserve it from callosity ; the spiked girdle 
of the penitent that forbids him to omit his vigil. ... It is the very harshness of the 
virtue of Paulina that gives effect to the more delicate strength and graceful vigour 
of the virtue of Hermione, and saves by contrast the coolness of her temperament 
from the thought of coldness, — nay, gives to it a glow of nature's warmth ; while the 
softening and humanizing that her character has undergone, encourages our faith in 
the mellowing traits of Leontes, whom her care and comfort has reclaimed. 



366 APPENDIX 



LEONTES 

Coleridge {Lectures^ 1818?, London, 1849, p. 253) : The idea of this delightful 
drama is a genuine jealousy of disposition, and it should be immediately followed by 
the perusal of Othello^ which is the direct contrast of it in every particular. For 
jealousy is a vice of the mind, a culpable tendency of the temper, having certain 
well known and well defined effects and concomitants, all of which are visible in 
Leontes, and, I boldly say, not one of which marks its presence in Othello : — such 
as, first, an excitability by the most inadequate causes, and an eagerness to snatch at 
proofs ; secondly, a grossness of conception, and a disposition to degrade the object 
of the passion by sensual fancies and images ; thirdly, a sense of shame of his own 
feelings exhibited in a solitary moodiness of humour, and yet from the violence of 
the passion forced to utter itself, and therefore catching occa.«ions to ease the mind 
by ambiguities, equivoques, by talking to those who cannot, and who are known not 
to be able to, understand what is said to them, — in short, by soliloquy in the form 
of dialogue, and hence a confused, broken, and fragmentary manner; fourthly, a 
dread of vulgar ridicule, as distinct from a high sense of honour, or a mistaken 
sense of duty; and lastly, and immediately consequent on this, a spirit of selfish 
vindictiveness. 

Lady Martin (p. 344) : A sudden access of madness can alone account for the 
debasing change in the nature of Leontes. Such inexplicable outbreaks of jealousy, 
I have been told, do occasionally occur in real life. While they last, the very nature 
of their victims is transformed, and their imagination, wholesome and cleanly till 
then, becomes, like that of Leontes, * foul as Vulcan*s stithy.' 

It was easy for Greene, with the greater latitude which the narrative form allows, 
to lead up to and explain the ultimate explosion of Pandosto*s jealousy, which bad 
been silently growing through the protracted stay of Egistus at his Court, until at last 
he began to put a vile construction upon his wife's simplest acts of courtesy and hos- 
pitality. But drama allows no scope for slow development. Shakespeare has there- 
fore dealt with Leontes as a man in whom the passion of jealousy is inherent ; and 
shows it breaking out suddenly with a force that is deaf to reason, and which, stimu- 
lated by an imagination tainted to the core, finds evidences of guilt in actions the 
most innocent. How different is such a nature from Othello*s ! He was * not easily 
'jealous;* but, having become * perplexed in the extreme* by lago's perversion of 
circumstances innocent in themselves, — * trifles light as air,' — he loses for a while his 
faith in the being he loved as his very life. Even then, grief for the fall of her whom 
he had made his idol, — * Oh the pity of it, the pity of it, lago !' — surges up through 
the wildest paroxysms of his passion. Tenderness for a beauty so exquisite that * the 
* sense ached at it,' stays his uplifted dagger. In his mind Desdemona is, to the last, 
the * cunning'st pattern of excelling nature.' As the victim of craftily devised strat- 
egem, he never himself quite forfeits our sympathy. 

Of the jealousy that animates Leontes, the jealousy that needs no extraneous 
prompting to suspicion, Emilia, in Othello^ gives a perfect description. In answer 
to the hope which she expresses to Desdemona that Othello's harsh bearing 
towards her is due to state affairs, and to ' no conception, nor no jealous toy con- 
cerning you,' Desdemona replies, * Alas the day, I never gave him cause !* To this 
Emilia rejoins, — 



CRITICISMS^LEONTES 367 

* But jealous souls will not be answered so ; 
They are not ever jealous for the cause, 
But jealous for they are jealous ; 'tis a monster 
Begot upon itself, bom on itself.* 

This is the jealousy which Shakespeare has portrayed in Leontes, — a jealousy with- 
out cause,-— cruel, vindictive, and remorseless almost beyond belief. Othello, more- 
over, had been wedded, so far as we see, but a few brief weeks. He had not had 
time to prove how deeply Desdemona loved him. But years of happy wedlock had 
assured Leontes of Hermione's affection, — years in which he had tested the inward 
nobility which expressed itself in that majastic bearing, of which he speaks again 
and again, long after he has reason to believe her to be dead. Maintaining through 
all her life the charm of royal graciousness and dignity, she has inspired the chival- 
rously enthusiastic admiration and devotion of every member of the Court ; a woman, 
in short, with whom no derogatory thought could be associated, being, as she is de- 
scribed by one of them, to be ' so sovereignly honourable.' 

Hudson {Introduction^ p. 15) : In the delineation of Leontes there is an abrupt- 
ness of change which strikes us, at first view, as not a little a-clash with nature ; we 
cannot well see how one state of mind grows out of another ; his jealousy shoots 
comet-like, as something unprovided for in the general ordering of his character. 
Which causes this feature to appear as if it were suggested rather by the exigencies 
of the stage than by the natural workings of human passion. And herein the Poet 
seems at variance with himself; his usual method being to unfold a passion in its rise 
and progress, so that we go along with it freely from its origin to its consummation. 
And, certainly, there is no accounting for Leontes' conduct, but by supposing a pre- 
disposition to jealousy in him, which, however, has been hitherto kept latent by his 
wife's clear, firm, serene discreetness, but which breaks out into sudden and frightful 
activity as soon as she, imder a special pressure of motives, slightly overacts the con- 
fidence of friendship. There needed but a spark of occasion to set this secret maga- 
zine of passion all a-blaze. 

The Pandosto of the novel has, properly speaking, no character at all ; he is but 
a human figure going through a set of motions ; that is, the person and the action are 
put together arbitrarily, and not under any law of vital correspondeuce. Almost any 
other figure would fit the motions just as well. It is true Shakespeare had a course 
of action marked out for him in the tale. But then he was bound by his own prin- 
ciples of art to make the character such as would rationally support the action, and 
cohere with it. For such is the necessary law of moral development and transpira- 
tion. Nor is it by any means safe to affirm that he has not done this. For it is to 
be noted that Polixenes has made a pretty long visit, having passed, it seems, no less 
than nine lunar months at the home of his royal friend. And he might well have 
found it not always easy to avoid preferring the Queen's society to the King's ; for 
she is a most irresistible creature, and her calm, ingenuous modesty, itself the most 
dignified of all womanly graces, is what, more than anything else, makes her so. 
What secret thoughts may have been gathering to a head in the mind of Leontes 
during that period, is left for us to divine from the after-results. And I believe there is 
a jealousy of friendship, as well as of love. Accordingly, though Leontes invokes the 
Queen's influence to induce a lengthening of the visit, yet he seems a little disturbed 
on seeing that her influence has proved stronger than his own. ... In his seeming 



368 APPENDIX 

abruptness Leontes, after all, does but exemplify the strange transformations which 
sometimes occur in men upon sudden and unforeseen emergencies. And it is observ- 
able that the very slightness of the Queen*s indiscretion, the fact that she goes but a 
little, a very little too far, only works against her, causing the king to suspect her of 
great effort and care to avoid suspicion. And on the same principle, because he has 
never suspected her before, therefore he suspects her all the more vehemently now ; 
that his confidence has hitherto stood unshaken, he attributes to extreme artfulness on 
her part ; for even so to an ill-disposed mind perfect innocence is apt to give an im- 
pression of consummate art. A passion thus groundless and self-generated might 
well be full-grown as soon as bom. The more greedy and craving, too, that it has 
nothing real to eat ; it therefore proceeds at once to * make the meat it feeds on,' 
causing him to magnify whatever he sees, and to imagine many things that are not. 
That jealousy, however, is not the habit of his mind, appears in that it finds him 
unprepared, and takes him by surprise ; insomuch that he forthwith loses all self- 
control, and runs right athwart the rules of common decency and decorum, so that 
he becomes an object at once of pity, of hatred, and scorn. I think the Poet hardly 
anywhere shows a keener and juster insight of nature than in the behaviour of this 
man while the distemp>er is upon him. He is utterly reason-proof, and indeed acts as 
one literally insane. For the poison infects not only his manners, but his very modes 
of thought ; in fact, all his rational and imaginative forces, even his speech and lan- 
guage, seem to have caught the disease. And all the loathsome filth which had 
settled to the bottom of his nature is now shaken up to the surface, so that there 
appears to be nothing but meanness and malignity and essenrial coarseness in him. 
Meanwhile an instinctive shame of his passion and a dread ^^ilgar ridicule put him 
upon talking in dark riddles and enigmas ; hence the confd|^l^ broken, and disjointed 
style, an odd jumble of dialogue and soliloquy, in which he tries to jerk out his 
thoughts, as if he would have them known, and yet not have them known. . . . The 
Poet manages with great art to bring Leontes off from the disgraces of his passion, 
and repeal him home to our sympathies, which had been freely drawn to him at first 
by his generosity of friendship. To this end, jealousy is represented as his only fault, 
and this as a sudden freak, which passes on directly into a frenzy, and whips him 
quite out of himself, temporarily overriding his characteristic qualities, but not com- 
bining with them ; the more violent for being unwonted, and the shorter-lived for 
being violent. In his firm, compact energy of thought and speech, after his passion 
has cleared itself, and in his perennial flow of repentance after his bereavement, are 
displayed the real tone and texture of his character. We feel that, if his sin has 
been great, his suffering is also great, and that if he were a greater sinner, his suffer- 
ing would be less. Quick, impulsive, headstrong, he admits no bounds to anger or 
to penitence; condemns himself as vehemently as he does others; and will spend 
his life in atoning for a wrong he has done in a moment of passion ; so that we are 
the more willing to forgive him, inasmuch as he never foi^ves himself. 



PERDITA 

Hudson {^Introduction^ p. 31) : Perdita, notwithstanding she occupies so little 
room in the play, fills a large space in the reader's thoughts, almost disputing preced- 
ence with the Queen. And her mother's best native qualities reappear in her, sweetly 




CRITICISMS^A UTOL YCUS 369 

modiHed by pastoral associations ; her nature being really much the same, only it has 
been developed and seasoned in a different atmosphere ; a nature too strong indeed 
to be displaced by any power of circumstances or supervenings of art, but at the 
same time too delicate and susceptive not to take a lively and lasting impress of them. 
So that, while she has thoroughly assimilated, she nevertheless clearly indicates, the 
food of place and climate, insomuch that the dignities of the princely and the sim- 
plicities of the pastoral character seem striving which shall express her goodliest. 
We can hardly call her a poetical being ; she is rather poetry itself, and everything 
lends and borrows beauty at her touch. A playmate of the flowers, when we see her 
with them, we are at a loss whether they take more inspiration from her, or she from 
them ; and while she is the sweetest of poets in making nosegays, the nosegays be- 
come in her hands the richest of crowns. If, as Schlegel somewhere remarks, the 
Poet is < particularly fond of showing the superiority of the innate over the acquired,' 
he has surely done it nowhere with finer effect than in this unfledged angel. 

There is much to suggest a comparison of Perdita and Miranda ; yet how shall I 
compare them ? Perfectly distinct indeed as individuals, still their characters are 
strikingly similar; only Perdita has perhaps a sweeter gracefulness, the freedom, sim- 
plicity, and playfulness of nature being in her case less checked by external restraints ; 
while Miranda carries more of a magical and mysterious charm woven into her cha- 
racter from the supernatural influences of her whereabout So like, yet so different, 
it is hard saying which is the better of the two, or rather one can hardly help liking 
her best with whom he last conversed. It is an interesting fact, also, for such it 
seems to be, that these two glorious delineations were produced very near together, 
perha{)s both the same year ; and this too when Shakespeare was in his highest ma- 
turity of poetry and wisdom ; from which it has been not unjustly argued that his 
experience both in social and domestic life must have been favourable to exalted con- 
ceptions of womanhood. The Poet, though in no sort a bigot, was evidently full of 
loyal and patriotic sentiment ; and I have sometimes thought that the government of 
Elizabeth, with the grand national enthusiasm which clustered round her throne and 
person, may have had a good deal to do in shaping and inspiring this part of his 
workmanship. Be that as it may, with but one great exception, I think the world 
now finds its best ideas of moral beauty in Shakespeare's women. 



A UTOL YCUS 

Henry Giles {Human Life in Shakespeare, Boston, 1868, p. 199) : But for 
Autolycus, the ideal world would have wanted its most admirable rascal, — the actual 
world would have been deprived of a t3rpe for characters that are like him in every- 
thing but his brilliancy. For he is a brilliant scape-grace ; a knave of many facul- 
ties ; of sparkling versatility of parts ; with wit equal to his thievery ; quick, sharp, 
and changeable. Most thoroughly Autolycus despises those whom he cheats ; and 
he never loses his self-respect being detected, or by failure. He is equally perfect in 
the rogue's philosophy and practice. Next to the disgrace of being outwitted would 
be the infamy of being a stupid rustic and an honest man. < How blessed are we,' 
he says, ' that are not simple men ! Yet nature might have made me as these ; there- 
' fore 1*11 not disdain.' Excellent humility ! the moderation of a mind really elevated, 
which is never insolent in superiority, because it feels that no human greatness is self- 

24 



%> 



X 



370 APPENDIX 

derived, but comes by Genius, Destiny, Opportunity. Autolycus is the generic 
charlatan, and is consummate in those arts of lying, fraud, and imposition, which 
constitute the character. The character has innumerable degrees and diversities; 
still, a brief summary will include all its essential qualities. The charlatan is a man 
with the rogue genius in him like a natural instinct, who is vain of his talent, and 
who employs the skill and success of gainful deceit as much for the sense of power 
which they gratify as for the money which they bring. . . . The charlatan represents 
the lowest qualities of an age as noble forms represent its highest ; as the sage repre- 
sents its wisdom, the saint its goodness, the hero its courage, and the martyr its moral 
grandeur, the charlatan represents its ignorance, its selfishness, its venality, its 
hypocrisy, its vulgarities, and all its sordid materialisms. 

Alfred Roffe (^ Musical Triadj etc., London, 1872, p. 14) : Autolycus, ques- 
tionable, and indeed, utterly indefensible as he is morally^ must certainly be placed 
amongst Shakespeare's musical characters y and looked at from that special aspect, he 
must be allowed to have a grain of geniality about him, which grain of geniality has 
made it possible for him to be one of the figures in The Winter^ s Tale^ and to be artis- 
tically fitted into his position in the piece. Our very first acquaintance with this 
roguish pedlar is made as he is wending his way along the road near to the old Shep- 
herd's cottage, when we hear him singing his half nature-enjoying, half-thievish song, 
< When Daffodils begin to peer,' the words of which seem to show that Autolycus has 
his bad enjoyment of the * white sheet blanching on the hedge * (by means of which he 
hopes to obtain that * quart of ale, which is a dish for a king '), yet there seems to be 
an equal enjojrment of the * daffodils ' which * begin to peer,' of * the sweet birds, oh ! 
' how they sing,' and of ' the lark that tirra-lirra chants.' This song of enjo3rment by 
Autolycus is then followed by certain soliloquizing disclosures of his antecedents, and 
of his present cogitations, which would afford matter sufficient for some moral spec- 
ulation, but that the vocal qualities of Autolycus form the most urgent subject now. 
That those vocal qualities were something quite remarkable we must perforce infer, 
from the enthusiastic praises bestowed by the servant who rushes in to announce the 
approach of the wonderful Pedlar, exclaiming: *0 Master, if you did but hear the 
Pedlar at the door . . . he sings several tunes faster than you can tell money . . . all 
men's ears grow to his tunes.^ From this living description, it must be most clearly 
evinced, that Autolycus sings of his wares with a truly, thorough, actual sense of en- 
joyment, over and above his merely commercial motives in promoting the quickest 
sale of his * inkles,' etc., which articles, as the Servant afterward declares, * he sings 
over as they were gods and goddesses.* In fact, Autolycus is a true Artist (not only 
in his most questionable doings) but musically ^ as far as his style of song is concerned. 
It is most evident that Autolycus sings his Songs with just the right feeling, and 
does not merely announce his wares, but actually makes people in love with them. 
When he puts forth what he designates as being * a merry ballad, but a very pretty 

* one,' and which ballad he tells Dorcas and Mopsa * goes to the tune of " Two 
* " Maids wooing a Man," ' we can feel no sort of doubt that Autolycus, while he most 
earnestly desires to sell his ballads, is also equally in the vein for singing in a Trio ! 
That, in itself, is clearly a pleasure to him, and when the two Lasses tell him that 
they * can both sing it ;' that * it is in three parts,' and that if he will * bear a part he 

* shall ;' — only note his answer. He is indeed a most roguish Pedlar, but he is also 
right willing to sing, even for singing's sake, he joyfully exclaims, * I can bear my 

* part ; you must know 'tis my occupation ; have at it with you.* Whether in Shake- 



CRITICISMS— A UTOLYCUS 371 

speare's view of such a character as that of Autolycus, with its total want of principle, 
any redeemabU pointy any possibility of future amendment^ be mixed up, is a question 
concerning which a few words may now, it is submitted, be offered ; not altogether 
unproBtably. Supposing it granted that our case is allowed, as to the possession by 
Autolycus of a certain degree of geniality in his appreciation both of Music and of 
the beauty in external nature, may not that geniality seem to indicate that a germ of 
some possible progress in good may after all lie within this notable Pedlar ? Perhaps, 
for instance, from something like this point of view, those remarkable words of Au- 
tolycus, that * for the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it,' are really suggestive 
of something, not merely more^ but quite different too, from what at first sight might 
appear to be the case. Do not, then, these brave words indicate really, the very 
reverse of what they express ? Is it not a well-known fact, that when a man tells us 
(unasked) that he is not at all afraid of a given thing, we frequently infer, at once, 
that in his * heart of heart,' the speaker is really very much afraid ! Now with 
regard to Autolycus, a strong presumption arises, that Shakespeare intended to imply 
that this * thought ' of * the life to come * did occasionally visit the mind of the reflec- 
tive Pedlar in such a way that he could not so comfortably * sleep out the thought of it.* 
In conformity with every view of Shakespeare's admitted greatness, we are irresistibly 
led on -to believe that he never writes anything without a purpose ; — in fact, that 
something in the moral world, or in the mind of man, is always meant to be painted 
in everything that is said or done, which would be the reason that we can and do 
speculate concerning Shakespeare's characters, just as we can and do speculate upon 
the mental qualities of those we encounter in actual life. If a true geniality as to 
Music be allowed to Autolycus, and likewise a certain amount of faculty for enjoying 
the beauties of external nature in birds and flowers, it would be hard to say that these 
qualities do not imply some small germ of possible good in him ; — but, we may go 
still further, for it must be conceded that, even expressed in words, a few faint glim- 
merings of just thinking in Autolycus do appear, even as to his immoral state. He 
begins to perceive that his dishonesty tells against him, and he can exclaim, *-Now had 
*I not the dash of my former life in me^ would preferment drop on my head;' — and 
again, after running over several circumstances as he is soliloquizing, he comes to this 
sensible conclusion — *^But *tis all one to me ; for had I been the finder-out of this 
secret, it would not have relished among my other discredits.' It is curious too, that 
at the very moment when Autolycus has finished this reflection, which at least shows 
that he is coming upon the right track of thought (whether he will finally come to 
one of right action or not), the old Shepherd and his Son appear before him, with the 
marks of their new-found prosperity bright upon them. This suggests a train of 
thought to Autolycus, which is anything but encouraging as to his former ways. He 
is prompted to exclaim, as well as he might, * Here come those I have done good to 
* against my will, and already appearing in the blossoms of their good-fortune.' 

Upon the whole, one can hardly help being half inclined to think that Autolycus, 
with his evident abilities, his enjoyment in the Daflbdils, the songs of the birds (not 
forgetting the tirra-lirra of the lark), his real love for^ and talents in Music, all 
weighed together, will ultimately turn over a new leaf in his course of life ; — or, — 
which comes to the same thing,— one can hardly help fancying that it was Shake- 
speare's intention to point at some such possibility for this very remarkable Pedlar of 
the * Winter's Tale.' 

F. J. FURNIVALL (^Leopold Shakspere^ Tntrod. p. xcii) : Not only do we see Shak- 



372 APPENDIX 

spere's freshness of spirit in his production of Perdita, but also in his creation of Au- 
tolycus. That, at the close of his dramatic life, after all the troubles he had passed 
through, Shakspere had yet the youngness of heart to bubble out into this merry rugue, 
the incarnation of fun and rascality, and let him sail off successful and unharmed, is 
wonderful. And that there is no diminution of his former comic power is shown, 
too, in his Clown, who wants but something to be a reasonable man. 

D. J. Snider (vol. ii, p. 72) : Autolycus is not wholly a product of shepherd life, 
but apparently of the court also, having been formerly a servant of Prince Florizel. 
He is, moreover, negative only to the honesty of the pastoral character, while he par- 
ticipates in its free joyousness and sportive nature. . . . He is a rogue not so much from 
malice as from pleasure ; he takes delight in thievery for its own sake rather than for 
its gains. He is aware of his misdeeds, and laughs at them ; his life is folly, to be 
sure, — but then, he wants to enjoy his own folly. His cunning is a source of a con- 
tinuous chuckling to himself; the property won is of far less account He is comic 
to himself and plays a comic part for his own special amusement. He, therefore, 
belongs to the class of consciously comic characters, who make fun and enact folly 
for themselves. He celebrates his vagabond life and thievish disposition in verse ; it 
is a theme for Art with him. Such a person stands in contrast with the simple hon- 
est shepherds ; but, still, he is of them, and harmoniously blends with their world. 
He furnishes the intrigue and disguise of this little realm, and is, hence, the source 
of its comic situations. . . . He will assist in breaking up the pastoral world and trans- 
ferring it to Sicilia, where he will repent. 

J. N. Hetherington (Comhill Magazine y 1879, I^ec, p. 733) : We often hear 
of what Shakespeare's characters might have said or done when off the stage ; and it 
is no great stretch of imagination to suppose that, before we make his acquaintance, 
Autolycus, amongst other callings, honest or otherwise, may have been a jester. 
Certainly his songs and witticisms would have found favour in any court ; and he, 
like Touchstone, loved the court, and affected the manners thereof. . . . But, instead 
of a Fool in the guise of a professional jester, we have the most delightful of rogues, 
who simply plays the fool. In the early plays, the humourous and pathetic characters 
are kept quite separate. Each has a marked sphere of action allotted to him, beyond 
which he never passes. But in the later periods the various characters are combined ; 
wise men play the fool, whilst fools talk and act like wise men. Humour and pathos 
run together, and the result is a picture more true to nature than was the first. So, 
after showing the possibilities of the Fool's part in Touchstone and Lear's Fool, 
Shakespeare discarded the character and gave the part to a rogue, combining the ele- 
ments of folly and knavery so closely that we can no longer separate them. Is not 
this more natural and nearer to real life ? Does not the man who plays the fool for 
us in society often prove rather slippery ? I think this is what Shakespeare felt and 
acted on ; and as we laugh at the jests of Autolycus and condone his snappings up 
of * unconsidered trifles,' we know that some such character might meet us any day 
and cheat us before our eyes. We get to like the rogue so well that we end by tak- 
ing his part, and rejoicing in the success of his schemes. How is it possible to find 
fault with a * merry heart ' that * goes all the day,' laughing and singing as it goes, 
whom * Fortune will not suffer to be honest ' ? Touchstone, and Lear's Fool may be 
more pathetic, more philosophic, and greater in poetic intensity; but they are not 
more true to human nature than this prince of knaves and fools. 



GERMAN CRITICISMS— SCHLEGEL 373 

A goodly Hgure this to close the procession, which began with the twin Dromios 
and Launce, and which includes a host of worthies, who are as dear to us as all the 
heroes of old romance. 

As they pass by, one by one, they serve not only to amuse us and arrest attention, 
to move alike smiles and tears, but they also serve to show that Shakespeare's laugh- 
ter is as truly human as aught else in him ; that tragedy becomes more tragic when 
the humour of every day life surrounds it ; and that even these minor characters, as 
they have been called, reflect each varying phase of thought in the growth of their 
author*s genius. The joyous and, at times, boisterous merriment of youth, the stead- 
ier mirth of manhood, the bitter irony of disappointment, and the wild laugh of de- 
spair, are all presented by the Fools. 

[See, also, W. C. Hazlitt, on Source of the Ploi^ p. 323.] 



GERMAN CRITICISMS 



A. W. ScHLEGEL {Lectures^ etc., 181 1, trans, by J. Black, 1815, ii, 181): The 
Winter's Tale is as appropriately named as A Midsummer Night *s Dream, It is 
one of those tales which are peculiarly calculated to beguile the dreary leisure of a 
long winter evening, which are attractive and intelligible even to childhood, and 
which, animated by fervent truth in the delineation of character and passion, invested 
with the decoration of a poetry lowering itself, as it were, to the simplicity of the sub- 
ject, transport even manhood back to the golden age of imagination. The calcula- 
tion of probabilities has nothing to do with such wonderful and fleeting adventures, 
ending at last in general joy ; and accordingly Shakespeare has here taken the great- 
est liberties with anachronisms and geographical errors ; he opens a free navigation 
between Sicily and Bohemia, makes Giulio Romano the contemporary of the Delphic 
Oracle, not to mention other incongruities. . . . 

[Page 182.] The jealousy of Leontes is not, like that of Othello, developed with 
all its causes, symptoms, and gradations ; it is brought forward at once, and is por- 
trayed as a distempered frenzy. It is a passion with whose effects the spectator is 
more concerned than with its origin, and which does not produce the catastrophe, but 
merely ties the knot of the piece. In fact, the poet might perhaps have wished to 
indicate slightly that Hermione, though virtuous, was too active in her efforts to please 
Polixenes ; and it appears as if this germ of an inclination first attained its proper 
maturity in their children. Nothing can be more fresh and youthful, nothing at once 
so ideally pastoral and princely as the love of Florizel and Perdita ; of the Prince, 
whom love converts into a voluntary shepherd ; and the Princess, who betrays her 
exalted origin without knowing it, and in whose hands the nosegays become crowns. 
Shakespeare has never hesitated to place ideal poetry close by the side of the most 
vulgar prose ; and this is also generally the case in the world of reality. Perdita's 
foster-father and his son are both made simple boors, that we may the more distinctly 
see that whatever ennobles her belongs to herself. The merry pedlar and pickpocket 
Autolycus, so inimitably portrayed, is necessary to complete the rustic feast, which 
Perdita, on her part, seems to render fit for an assemblage of deities in disguise. 

F. Kreyssig ( Vorlesungetty Berlin, 1862, vol. iii, p. 497) : There is one charac- 



374 APPENDIX 

teristic of Shakespeare, which must not be overlooked, and this is : how small was 
the admiration which this Court-actor and poet of the theatre had for the manners or 
culture of a Court. If against Shakespeare's bitter and manifold attacks on plebeian, 
presumptuous ignorance, we should balance his representations of preposterous, aristo- 
cratic folly, it would not be hard to see that the be-feathered and musk-scented 
Cavaliers have not one atom of preference, in the poet's aversion, over sweaty caps 
and dirty hands. Everywhere and at all times Shakespeare pursues them ; he treats 
them as game, small, big, or medium ; he attacks them with the bird-bolts of his wit 
as well as with the inevitable arrows of his ruthless satire and the sharp sword of 
moral indignation. From the learned Pedant at the Court of Navarre, from Touch- 
stone's courtier who was politic with his friend, smooth with his enemy, and had 
undone three tailors, — down to the flatterers of Richard the Third, and the down- 
right malice of Cloten, no single symptom of the moral sickness in this sphere of life 
did Shakespeare spare. In this regard the Comedies, the Histories, and the Trag- 
edies vied with each other. Love's Labour's Lost, As You Like It^ King John, 
Henry VL, Richard IIL^ Hamlet^ and Lear, Cymbeline, and The Tempest all alike 
show how small the advantage, in the eyes of a poet who knows the heart, have the 
darlings of fortune over the stepchildren of society, and how, under all circumstances, 
like his mistress, Nature, he shows, incorruptibly and with truth, virtue her own 
feature, and scorn her own image. To all these delineations of a class, favoured by 
fortune and by power, this Winter's Tale presents an unmistakeable contrast. Not 
that dark heavy shadows are lacking in the Court-life here shown us. The murder 
plotted against Polixenes, a guest and friend from boyhood, and the trial of Her- 
mione are not calculated to reveal the highest circle as a paradise of happiness and 
virtue ; but we should take note that all these enormities spring from the moral dis- 
ease of one single person, although he, to be sure, is the highest in rank. But of that 
band of flatterers and hypocrites, an unfailing group in all other night-scenes of the 
highest classes, of envenomed slanderers and fortune hunters, always on the alert to 
convert their rulers' bad thoughts into acts — of all these there is here no trace. No 
assassin can Leontes find for the man, against whom jealousy has goaded him to 
frenzy ; not a single accuser of his disowned wife, nor a single false witness against 
her. Rather than purchase the favour of his lord at the price of his conscience, 
Camillo takes to flight ; in the circle of courtiers not one will step forward as an ac- 
cuser of the queen or as a witness against her. All counsel circumspection, calm 
deliberation, unintimidated by the frenzy of their king. The application to the Oracle 
is conducted throughout honestly and honourably ; it never occurs to Cleomines and 
Dion to give to the interpreters of the God a hint of their lord's wishes. When An- 
tigonus assents to the exposure of the infant he has, quite apart from the danger 
threatening his own life, no choice other than either to see the helpless creature mur- 
dered before his eyes by the king or else to deliver it to an unknown fate. 

[Page 509.] Florizel's whole character represents the sovereign power of true, gen- 
uine love over the external forces of the world. Not for an iastant do the thoughts 
of his birth, of his rank, of his duty to his father in the present and to his country 
in the future, make him waver in the choice which he has made for life. The re- 
monstrances of his disguised father awaken in him not a single thought of repent- 
ance, or of misgiving. The only thing that occurs to him after the unwelcome dis- 
closure is flight, and an independent completion of his plans. We can hardly avoid 
the thought that we are on the verge of a second tragedy, deeper than the discords 
of the first. It must not and it should not be denied that in the conflict now before 



GERMAN CRITICISMS— BULTHAUPT 375 

us, between the youthful impulses of the heart and the positive duties of life, the poet 
has spoken less earnestly than in Ronuo «Sr» Juliet, or in Otkello^ and Cymbeline, 
Feelings and fancy outweigh the laws of the understanding, as is natural in a < Tale.' 
Not the heart, but life must yield in the conflict between Mmt and May, and then to 
a gentle-hearted benign fate be the task committed of converting the follies of youth 
into happiness and blessing. 

Heinrich Bulthaupt (Dramaturgie der Classiker, 1884, 2d ed. vol. ii, p. 378) : 
The speed with which Leontes, one of the most disagreeable men on God's earth, 
talks himself into a jealous madness, is certainly in the worst sense * more than hu- 

* man.* Merely because his wife converses earnestly with his guest, his most trusted 
friend, after her request had induced that guest to remain longer in Sicilia, this hor- 
rible, bloodthirsty creature turns to a manifold murderer. Othello is nothing in 
comparison, — he had a handkerchief to show, and the insinuations of lago, — Leontes 
has not a word to say for himself. It goes on to the Third Act with steadily increas- 
ing madness, — then comes the rebound. If up to this point Shakespeare reveals his 
boundless art in portraying elemental passion, then of a sudden he betrays the weak- 
ness peculiar to him in the denouement. The mental conversion of Leontes, who has 
just called the Delphic Oracle a lie and a fraud, is accomplished in two lines ! This 
is intolerable. A man who has been raving mad through three Acts cannot become 
sane in the twinkling of an eye ; we do not believe it. [The long speech of Leontes 
following his conversion] is painfully and psychologically false. Hereupon sixteen 
years elapse, and then comes the enchanting Fourth Act with its charming vision of 
Perdita and that genuine Shakespearian character, Autolycus. Everywhere the imcon- 
fined play of sovereign genius. No sooner have we resigned ourselves unrestrainedly 
to it, when, alack ! the Fifth Act yields another monstrosity. Leontes has repented. 
"We must well believe it, although it may be permitted to doubt whether sixtem years 
roust not either put penitence asleep or wear away the penitent. Enough, Leontes, 
deeply stricken, still bears in mind his wife so shamefully slandered by him and be- 
lieved to be dead. And Hermione ? The royal, exalted Hermione, who in the First 
Act, especially in the Trial-scene, is on a level with the grandest that Shakespeare 
has created, who walks in the ranks of innocent, afHicted, injured women, whose suf- 
fering souls no one but Shakespeare has laid so bare, this Hermione, still loving her 
husband, when she is again to appear before him, consents to this farce of a statue. 
Fully to realise the blemish of it all, the impossibility of the situation, just picture 
Desdemona on a pedestal. Can a loving wife after sixteen years of separation play 
such a comedy ? If she still loves him with the old strength must not her heart fly 
to meet him, yearning to break every fetter ? . . . What trace is there here of a 

* Tale ' ? is it not avoided almost on purpose ? If some friendly god had watched 
over the poor ill-treated one for sixteen years in a death-like sleep, and then, when 
the cycle was complete, had awakened her to a fairer life, — who would not have will- 
ingly accepted it ? "Who does not look with a tender awe at the glass coflin wherein 
the lovely princess slumbers in the hut of the dwarfs, aAer she has tasted the poi- 
soned apple of the wicked stepmother ? To whom is the slumber, even longer, of 
The Sleeping Beauty, and of her whole castle, incredible ? Freed from the fetters 
of the flesh we glide with true delight into the dazzling realm of wonder. But here, 
— is not every charm put to flight with the ever-recurring, dense, rationalistic prepa- 
ration of the scene ? Instead of using some means full of the miraculous, Shake- 
speare lets Paulina play Providence. Thus the scaffolding creaks in all its joints ; 



3/6 APPENDIX 

human passion and grandeur are inconceivably mingled with the afiectation of a 
comedian. Our tragic sympathy, our moral indignation has been quickened, — but 
she, whom we commiserated, trifles away our sympathy with a living statue which 
she represents, and the man, for whom we wished the heaviest punishment, gamers 
the fiEurest harvest of indulgent fate. A plot which should have been treated only as 
a tragedy, is, without intrinsic justification, conducted to a superficial end of recon* 
cillation. Happily the poet appeases us with a hundred wondrous details. The 
Hermione of the earlier part is innocent grandeur itself; Paulina, harsh and ready in 
deed and word, is thoroughly original. And he who can contemplate the lovely scene 
of the little Mamillius, the genial boldness wherewith the droll Autolycus turns every 
situation to use, finally the whole Fourth Act with its charming love of Perdita and 
Florizel, — he who can contemplate all this without delight is beyond human help. 
The sheep-shearing festival abounds in humour and life, and overflows with flowery 
beauties. It is one of the loveliest pearls from the clearest, stillest depths in the lyric 
soul of Shakespeare. 

[All the first part of this Essay is devoted to proving that the Novel written by 
Greene {John Greene in the German) is a finer work as a story than The Wintet^s 
Tale, It would have been needless to translate it, inasmuch as it has been antici- 
pated by Mrs Lennox. — Ed.] 

Louis Lewes {Shakespeare's Frauengestalten^ Stuttgart, 1893, P- 3^6) : For six- 
teen years Hermione permits her husband and the world to believe that she is dead, 
and, only when her daughter h^ been found, does she, in the celebrated Statue 
scene, return to life and to her penitent husband. This conduct has been pronounced 
heartless and unnatural. The reproach is unmerited. Hermione's husband with 
base suspicion has mistrusted her faithfulness, and thereby forfeited her respect. 
She has been publicly branded, her innocent daughter exposed to a horrible death, 
her promising son is dead, killed by her dbgrace. For such injuries and pain a mere 
tardy acknowledgement of her innocence is no sufficing compensation ; the instant 
repentance of her husband does not suffice again to restore him to a place in her 
heart. Can the higb-souled wife, in royal array, again walk proudly at a Court which 
had witnessed her degradation, childless, widowed in heart by the unworthiness of 
that husband to whom she will be a constant reproach, an ever present humiliation ? 
Therein is neither true feeling nor nature. Wounded in heart and soul, nothing re- 
mained to her but to retire from life, not to brood over her injuries, but to learn for- 
giveness, and through a penitence long sustained by her husband, to have him become 
worthy of her. 

Georg Brandes ( Williani Shakespeare^ 1S96, p. 932) : In the mode and manner 
in which the relationship between Florizel and Perdita is portrayed, there are certain 
peculiarities which are not to be found in the work of Shakespeare's youth, but which 
again appear in the description of Ferdinand and Miranda in The Tempest, namely, 
a certain aloofness from the world, a certain tenderness for those who may still hope 
and yearn for happiness, a renunciation, as it were, by the author of all thought of 
happiness for himself. He is standing above and beyond the band who hope. When, 
in earlier days he portrayed love, the poet stood on the same level with the lovers ; it 
is so now no longer ; they are now regarded with a father's eye. He is looking down 
on them from alxjve. 

[If the foregoing be not gossamer fancy, as is not unlikely, it is a fresh illustration 



FRENCH CRITICISMS— MilZlkRES 377 

in this, the latest work on Shakespeare of any magnitude from foreign hands, of the 
difficulty, almost the impossibility, of comprehending Shakespeare, except in broad, 
lines, which besets those whose native tongue is not that which Shakespeare spoke. 
—Ed.] 



FRENCH CRITICISMS 



A. M£ziftRES {Shakespeare^ ses (EuvreSy etc., Paris, 1865, p. 428) : One of the 
most striking marks of this tendency of the poet [to soften tragic outlines] is the in- 
dulgence which he accords to the courtiers whom he had so often covered with ridi- 
cule in his comedies and with contempt in his tragedies. In The WirUet's Tale be 
endows them with generous sentiments and with virtues. Not one of them does he 
represent as either approving of the suspicions of Leontes against his wife or as en- 
couraging them, but on the contrary they testify a profound respect for the queen, and 
all endeavour to vindicate the crime whereof she is unjustly accused. Ah, rare ex- 
ample of courage in a court where the will of the master is law, and where the fear 
of offending him is greater than that of crushing the innocent ! It is the very wife 
of a courlier, it is Paulina, who fills the most noble rdle in the play when she takes 
up the defence of Hermione, when she braves the anger of the king by presenting 
to him his new-bom babe, and when she overwhelms him with reproaches alter the 
supposed death of the queen. And withal she knows when to stop and not abuse her 
good qualities, for the poet will have nothing exaggerated, not even excellence. . . . 

[Page 429.] The pastoral scene, introduced into The Winter's Tale as in Cym- 
beliney is not intended to set off the vices of the court. It is a simple picture of 
country manners which the poet adorns with natural colours, and which be every- 
where embellishes with the poetic presence of Perdita. I cannot go so far as to say, 
with some critics, that herein is found a chcf-d^cetwre of the Eclogue. On the contrary, 
what proves that Shakespeare does not take the peasants of bis comedy seriously, is 
that he repeatedly mystifies them through the cunning of Autolycus, and that the two 
chief characters of the bucolic scenes, Florizel and Perdita, are, neither the one nor 
the other, peasants. The graceful and charming language of Perdita proves nothing 
in favour of the country, for she expresses herself thus naturally only because by her 
birth she belongs to the highest class of society. Her style no more resembles the 
genuine pastoral manner than she herself resembles a peasant. If her supposed 
father and brother are types traced from nature, as they seem to be, assuredly she 
neither speaks nor thinks en campagnarde^ inasmuch as she has nothing in common 
with them. She introduces, therefore, a foreign element into the eclogue. Seeing 
that this is so, bow can it be said that it is a model of its class ? A genuine eclogue 
is not set forth with princes and princesses in disguise. Do not let us try to give to a 
simple play of the imagination, to a romantic tale divided into Acts, the serious cha- 
racter of a chef'd^ auvre. Let us gather the flowers which a great genius has sown 
along his wandering path, but do not by any means let us attempt to arrange them 
into a bouquet. In very sooth, Shakespeare has here no more written a pastoral than 
a comedy or a tragedy. He touches the three kinds, but does not settle in one. For 
my part, I admire all the beauties of detail which this play contains, but I see there 
only what really is, — a triple outline, where we acknowledge the band of a master. 
I find there a rapid sketch of three pieces, whereof none is perfect 



3/8 APPENDIX 

E. MoNTfeGUT ( CEuvres Completes de Shakespeare^ Paris, 1867, vol. iii, p. 242) : 
Of all the traDsformations which the characters in Greene's novel underwent, cer- 
tainly the most curious is that of Pandosto. Ordinary jealousy, jealousy pure and 
simple, such as we commonly see, cannot be explained by such a story, thought Shake- 
speare to himself; either the story is false, and this is the epithet it deserves if it re- 
mains as Greene tells it, or else it is true only of a particular shade of jealousy which 
must be determined and illustrated. It is evident that to treat it as he has done, this 
king must be, of necessity, a thoroughly sensual man, dominated by his temperament, 
and, like all such men, incapable of reflection, and the slave of his imagination. 
Men of flesh and of blood can neither read the souls of others nor their own, for the 
violence of their bestiality is such, that they identify their own emotions with the emo- 
tions of others. This very domination of the flesh which begets jealousy in Leontes 
could just as well under other circumstances have begotten a credulous confidence, 
and have made him, the case occurring, as blind to the faults of his wife as he is blind 
to her innocence. Another particular : to men of this character, the difference between 
physical love and moral love does not exist, hence the demonstration of their feelings 
exceeds the bounds of all measure and all decency. If we are to judge by appear- 
ances, we can believe that they love even more deeply than men of a more moral 
character ; for they are, of necessity, forced to misuse the resources which this sensu- 
ousness supplies to the passion which controls them : such as tears, convulsions, rage, 
humiliating supplications, prayers of repentance. Thus it is with Leontes. He loved 
Hermione less with his soul than with his senses. Violent and impetuous as a brute, 
like a brute he is also weak. His repentance is as sudden as his fault; but in his 
repentance, as in his fault, he inspires the same sentiment of scorn, for he betrays in 
both the lower nature. A moment ago he excited our indignation, and we shrugged 
our shoulders; now he excites our pity. Leontes would have tried in vain, — it would 
have been absolutely impossible for him, — to excite horror and dismay ; for he is, what 
Italians so fitly call, una bestia, with all the shades of dulness, indecency, and good 
nature which this word conveys. 

Accordingly the most remarkable stroke of genius in this play of Shakespeare is 
that he turned only into a comedy a subject which could furnish the most sombre of 
tragedies. He understood admirably that however violent and tragic were the acts, 
such a character would be necessarily comic. Indeed, so comic, that it is exactly the 
one which our Molifere has drawn in SganarelUy ou le Cocu imaginaire. Leontes is 
formidable otherwise than the poor bourgeois of MoliSre, for his folly is supplied with 
far different means of action ; but they are brothers, if not in rank yet in nature, and 
their souls plunge into the same grotesque element 

Francois- Victor Hugo {^CEuvres Compl>tes de Shakespeare^ 1868, p. 38) : From 
its earliest publication this play has been the subject of a mistake ; placed by the ed- 
itors of the First Folio in the list of Comedies, it has been accepted according to its 
label, and held to be an old wife's tale or as a light and fanciful improvisation, and 
not, as it should have been, one of the most serious and profound dramas of the poet. 
The Winter's Tale is no comedy ; it is a tragedy, more tragic even than Cymbeline. 
Assuredly the death of Antigonus, and far more that of Mamillius, move us more deeply 
than the death of Clolen. But it is not alone by this double catastrophe that The 
Winter's Tale is a drama ; it is so by its general composition, by its impassioned tone, 
and by the ascending scale of its chief scenes. Therein Shakespeare's style is no 
longer that of Much Ado about Nothing. In this latter comedy Shakespeare care- 



UNITY OF TIME, PLACE, AND ACTION 379 

fully spares the spectator all painful emotions ; he admits him beforehand into the se- 
cret of all situations, whereby the spectator, already set at ease by the very title of the 
play, need never distress himself over imaginary misfortunes whereof he foresees the 
issue. When Claudio leaves us to pray at the tomb of his betrothed, we never let 
ourselves be moved at this grief; we know the tomb is empty; we have been ex- 
pressly told that Hero is not dead, and that at the decisive moment she will reappear. 
But on the contrary in The Winter^ 5 TaU, the poet keeps the secret to himself; not 
for a single instant does he admit us to the councils of Fate. He wishes us to be 
involved in the despair of his characters ; he would have us, like Leontes, believe in 
the death of Hermione, and to the very last he leaves us the dupes of Paulina's 
device. Hence it is that the ddnoument is profoundly solemn. Then, then our 
anxiety is at its height ; and when the statue stirs, when marble becomes flesh, when 
the queen descends from the pedestal, it cannot be but that we are present at some 
magic invocation by a supernatural power, and at this unexpected resurrection, we 
feel an indescribable emotion of wonder and surprise. 



UNITY OF TIME, PLACE, AND ACTION 

Pope {Preface ^ 1725, p. xx) : From what has been said, there can be no question 
but had Shaktspear published his works himself (especially in his latter time, and 
after his retreat from the stage) we should not only be certain which are genuine ; but 
should find in those that are, the errors lessened by some thousands. If I may judge 
from all the distinguishing marks of his style, and his manner of thinking and writ- 
ing, I make no doubt to declare that those wretched plays, Pericles, Locrine, Sir John 
Oldcastle, Yorkshire Tragedy, Lord Cronrwell, The Puritan, and London Prodigal, 
cannot be admitted as his. And I should conjecture of some of the others (partic- 
ticularly Lovers Labour's Lost, The IVittter's Tale, and Titus Andronicus), that only 
some characters, single scenes, or perhaps a few particular passages, were of his 
hand. [To the foregoing plays in parenthesis, Pope added in his Second Edition : 
' and a thing called The Double Falsehood,^ a play now generally supposed to have 
been written by Theobald, but published by Theobald as Shakespeare's. — Ed.] 

Dryden [quoted by Malone from. * the Essay at the end of the second Part * of 
The Conquest of Granada"] : Witness the lameness of their plots [the plots of 
Shakespeare and Fletcher] ; many of which, especially those which they wrote first, 
(for even that age refined itself in some measure,) were made up of some ridiculous 
incoherent story, which in one play many times took up the business of an age. I 
suppose I need not name, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, nor the historical plays of 
Shakespeare ; besides many of the rest, as The Winter's Tale, Love's Labour's Lost^ 
Measure for Measure, which were either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so 
meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your 
concernment. 

Malone (Preliminary Remarks, p. 233) : None of our author's plays has been 
more censured for the breach of dramatic rules than The Winter's Tale, In con- 
firmation of what Mr Steevens has remarked in another place : — *■ that Shakespeare 



38o APPENDIX 

* was not ignorant of these rules, but disregarded them,' — it may be observed, that the 
laws of the drama are clearly laid down by a writer once universally read and ad- 
mired. Sir Philip Sidney, who, in his Defence of Poesie, I595> ^^as pointed out the 
very improprieties into which our author has fallen in this play. After mentioning 
the defects of the tragedy of Gorboduc^ he adds : *■ But if it be so in Garboducke, 

* how much more in all the rest ? where you shall haue Asia of the one side, and 

< Affricke of the other, and so many other vnder-kingdomes, that the Player when he 

< comes in, must euer begin telling where hee is, or else the tale will not be conceiued. 

< [Now you shall haue three Ladies walke to gather flowers, and then we must beleeue 
' the stage to bee a garden. By and by we heare newes of shipwracke in the same 

* place, then we are too blame if we accept it not for a rocke. Vpon the backe of 

* that comes out a hideous monster with fire and smoke, and then the miserable be- 

* holders are bound to take it for a caue : while in the meane time two armies flie in, 
*■ represented with foure swords and bucklers, and then what hard hart will not receiue 

* it for a pitched field ?] Now of time they are much more liberal. For ordinarie it 

* is, that two young Princes fall in loue, after many trauerses she is got with child, 
*■ deliuered of a faire boy : he is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, & is readie to get 

< another child : & all this in 2 houres space : which how absurd it is in sence, euen 

< sence may imagine : [& Art hath taught, & all ancient exaples iustified, & at this 

* day the ordinary Players in Italie will not erre it. Yet wil som bring in an exam- 

* pie of Eunuch in Terence^ that containeth matter of 2 dayes, yet far short of twentie 

< yeares. True it is, & so was it to be played in two dayes, and so fitted to the time 

< it set forth. And though Plautus haue in one place done amisse, let vs hit it with 

< him, and not misse with him. But they will say, how then shall wee set forth a 
' storie which containes both many places, and many times ? And do they not know 

* that a Tragedie is tied to the lawes of Poesie, and not of Historic.' — ed. 1598, p. 
514. See, also, notes on IV, i, 8. — Ed.] 

I know of no place more appropriate than here, to bring in Dr Johnson's mas- 
terly defence of Shakespeare's alleged violation of the Law of Unity. It was not 
written with especial reference to The Winter^ 5 Tale, but is in his general Preface, 
which every Shakespeare student should read over and over again : — 

* It will be thought strange [p. xxiv] that, in enumerating the defects of [Shake- 
speare], I have not mentioned his neglect of the Unities ; his violation of those laws 
which have been instituted and established by the joint authority of poets and of 
critics. 

* For his other deviations from the art of writing, I resign him to critical justice, 
without making any other demand in his favour, than that which must be indulged 
to all human excellence ; that his virtues be rated with his failings. But, from the 
censure which this irregularity may bring upon him, I shall, with due reverence to 
that learning which I must opjx)se, adventure to try how I can defend him. 

* His histories, being neither tragedies nor comedies, are not subject to any of their 
laws ; nothing more is necessary to all the praise which they expect, than that the 
changes of action be so prepared as to be understood, that the incidents be various 
and affecting, and the characters consistent, natural, and distinct. No other Unity 
is intended, and therefore none is to be sought. 

* In his other works he has well enough preserved the Unity of Action. He has 
not, indeed, an intrigue regularly perplexed and regularly unravelled ; he does not 
endeavour to hide his design only to discover it, for this is seldom the order of real 



UNITY OF TIME, PLACE, AND ACTION 38 1 

events, and Shakespeare is the poet of nature : But his plan has commonly what 
Aristotle requires, a beginning, a middle, and an end ; one event is concatenated 
with another, and the conclusion follows by easy consequence. There are perhaps 
some incidents that might be spared, as in other poets there is much talk that only 
fills up time upon the stage ; but the general system makes gradual advances, and 
the end of the play is the end of expectation. 

* To the Unities of Time and Place he has shown no regard, and perhaps a nearer 
view of the principles on which they stand will diminish their value, and withdraw 
from them the veneration which, from the time of ComeilUy they have very gener- 
ally received, by discovering that they have given more trouble to the poet than 
pleasure to the auditor. 

* The necessity of observing the Unities of Time and Place arises from the sup- 
posed necessity of making the drama credible. The critics hold it impossible, that 
an action of months or years can be possibly believed to pass in three hours ; or that 
the spectator can suppose himself to sit in the theatre, while ambassadors go and 
return between distant kings, while armies are levied and towns besieged, while an 
exile wanders and returns, or till he whom they saw courting his mistress, shall la- 
ment the untimely fall of his son. The mind revolts from evident falsehood, and 
fiction loses its force when it departs from the resemblance of reality. 

< From the narrow limitation of time necessarily arises the contraction of place. 
The spectator, who knows that he saw the first act in Alexandria, cannot suppose 
that he sees the next in Rome, at a distance to which not the dragons of Medea 
could, in so short a time, have transported him ; he knows with certainty that he has 
not changed his place; and he knows that place cannot change itself; that what 
was a house cannot become a plain ; that what was Thebes can never be Persepolis. 

* Such is the triumphant language with which a critic exults over the misery of an 
irregular poet, and exults commonly without resistance or reply. It is time therefore 
to tell him, by the authority of Shakespeare, that he assumes, as an unquestionable 
principle, a position, which, while his breath is forming it into words, his understand- 
ing pronounces to be false. It is false, that any representation is mistaken for real- 
ity; that any dramatic fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a single 
moment, was ever credited. 

* The objection arising from the impossibility of passing the first hour at Alexaft' 
dria, and the next at Rome, supposes that when the play opens the spectator really 
imagines himself at Alexandria, and believes that his walk to the theatre has been 
a voyage to Egypt, and that he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra, Surely 
he that imagines this, may imagine more. He that can take the stage at one time 
for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of 
Actium. Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation ; if the spec- 
tator can be once persuaded that his old acquaintance are Alexander and Casar, 
that a room illuminated with candles is the plain of Pharsalia, or the bank of Gran- 
icus, he is in a state of elevation above the reach of reason, or of truth, and, from 
the heights of empyrean poetry, may despise the circumscriptions of terrestrial na- 
ture. There is no reason why a mind thus wandering in ecstasy should count the 
clock, or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brains that 
can make a stage a field. 

< The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the 
first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. 
They come to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant 



382 APPENDIX 

modulation. The lines relate to some action, and an action must be in some place ; 
but the different actions that complete a story may be in places very remote from 
each other; and where is the absurdity of allowing that space to represent first 
Athens^ and then Sicily , which was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens^ 
but a modem theatre. 

*■ By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be extended ; the time required 
by the fable elapses for the most part between the acts ; for, of so much of the action 
as is represented, the real and poetical duration is the same. If, in the first act, 
preparations for war against Mithridates are represented to be made in Rotncy the 
event of the war may, without absurdity, be represented, in the catastrophe, as hap- 
pening in Pontus ; we know that there is neither war, nor preparation for war ; we 
know that we are neither in Rome nor Pontus ; that neither Mithridates nor Lucul- 
lus are [ffV] before us. The drama exhibits successive imitations of successive 
actions, and why may not the second imitation represent an action that happened 
years afler the first ; if it be so connected with it that nothing but time can be sup- 
posed to intervene. Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the 
imagination ; a lap)se of years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In con- 
templation we easily contract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly permit 
it to be contracted when we only see their imitation. ... 

* A play read, affects the mind like a play acted. It is therefore evident that the 
action is not supposed to be real, and it follows that between the acts a longer or 
shorter time may be allowed to pass, and that no more account of space or duration 
is to be taken by the auditor of a drama, than by the reader of a narrative, before 
whom may pass in an hour the life of a hero or the revolution of an empire. 

* Whether Shakespeare knew the imities and rejected them by design, or deviated 
from them in happy ignorance, it is, I think, impossible to decide and useless to 
enquire. We may reasonably suppose, that, when he rose to notice, he did not want 
the counsels and admonitions of scholars and critics, and that he at last deliberately 
persisted in a practice, which he might have begun by chance. As nothing is essen- 
tial to the fable, but Unity of Action, and as the Unities of Time and Place arise 
evidently from false assumptions, and, by circumscribing the extent of the drama, 
lessen its variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known 
to him, or not observed : Nor, if such another poet could arise, should I very vehe- 
mently reproach him, that his first act passed at Venice^ and his next at Cyprus, 
Such violations of rules merely positive, become the comprehensive genius of 
Shakespeare y and such censures are suitable to the minute and slender criticism of 
Voltaire. . . . 

* The result of my enquiries, in which it would be ludicrous to boast of impar- 
tiality, is that the Unities of Time and Place are not essential to a just drama, that 
though they may sometimes conduce to pleasure, they are always to be sacrificed 
to the nobler beauties of variety and instruction ; and that a play, written with nice 
observation of critical rules, is to be contemplated as an elaborate curiosity, as the 
product of superfluous and ostentations art, by which is shewn, rather what is pos- 
sible, than what is necessary. 

* He that, without diminution of any other excellence, shall preserve all the unities 
unbroken, deserves the like applause with the architect, who shall display all the 
orders of architecture in a citadel, without any deduction from its strength ; but the 
principal beauty of a citadel is to exclude the enemy ; and the greatest graces of a 
play, are to copy nature and instruct life. 



UNITY OF TIME, PLACE, AND ACTION 383 

* Perhaps, what I have here not dogmatically but deliberately written, may recall 
the principles of the drama to a new examination. I am almost frightened at my 
own temerity ; and when I estimate the fame and strength of those who maintain 
the contrary opinion, am ready to sink down in reverential silence ; as y^neas with- 
drew from the defence of Troy, when he saw Neptune shaking the wall, and Juno 
heading the besiegers.' 

It will not be out of place, I trust, to give here an extract from the Dramaturgie 
of Lessing, the finest Shakespeare-scholar Germany has given us. It was written in 
1767, two years after Dr Johnson's Preface, just quoted, and is one of those sledge- 
hammer blows, with which, delivered in the interest of Shakespeare, Lessing demol- 
ished Voltaire and Voltaire's influence in Germany : 

* It is one thing to circumvent rules, another to observe them. The French do 

* the former, the latter was understood only by the ancients. 

* Unity of Action was the first dramatic law of the ancients ; Unity of Time and 

* Place were mere consequences of the former which they would scarcely have ob- 

* served more strictly than exigency required had not the combination with the Chorus 

* arisen. For since their actions required the presence of a large body of people and 

< this concourse always remained the same, who could go no further from their dwell- 

* ings nor remain absent longer than is customary to do from mere curiosity, they were 

< almost obliged to make the scene of Action one and the same spot, and confine the 
« Time to one and the same day. They submitted bon& fide to this restriction ; but 
' with a suppleness of understanding such that in seven cases out of nine they gained 

* more than they lost thereby. For they used this restriction as a reason for simpli- 

< fying the action and to cut away all that was superfluous, and thus, reduced to essen- 
' tials, it became only the ideal of an action which was developed most felicitously in 
' this form which required the least addition from circumstances of time and place. 

* The French, on the contrary, who found no charms in true Unity of Action, who 

* had been spoilt by the wild intrigues of the Spanish School, before they had learnt 

* to know Greek simplicity, regarded the Unity of Time and Place not as conse- 

* quences of Unity of Action, but as circumstances absolutely needful to the repre- 

* sentation of an action, to which they must therefore adapt their richer and more 

* complicated actions with all the severity required in the use of a Chorus, which, 

* however, they had totally abolished When they found how difficult, nay, at times, 

< how impossible this was, they made a truce with the tyrannical rules against which 

* they had not the courage to rebel. Instead of a single place, they introduced an 

< uncertain place, under which we could imagine now this, now that spot ; enough, if 

* the places combined were not too far apart and none required special scenery, so 

< that the same scenery could fit the one alx)ut as well as the other. Instead of the 

* unity of a day, they substituted unity of duration, and a certain period during which 

* no one spoke of sunrise or sunset, or went to bed, or at least did not go to bed more 

< than once ; however much might occur in the space, they allowed it to pass as 

* one day. 

* Now no one would have objected to this ; for unquestionably even thus, excellent 

* plays can be made, and the proverb says : hew the wood where it is smallest. But 

* I must also allow my neighbour the same privilege. I must not always show 
*him the thickest part, and cry, "You must cut there! That is where I cut!" 

* Thus the French critics all exclaitn, especially when they speak of the dramatic 

* works of the English. What a to-do they then make of regularity, that regularity 



384 APPENDIX 

' which they had made so easy for themselves ! But I am weary of dwelling on this 

* point ! 

* As far as I am concerned, Voltaire's and Maflfei's Merope may extend over eight 

* days and the scene be laid in seven places in Greece ! if only it had the beauties to 

* make me forget these pedantries ! The strictest observation of rules cannot outweigh 
< the smallest fault in a character.' — [Mr Beasley's and Miss Zimmem's translation, 
Bohn's Series, p. 369.] 



DURATION OF ACTION 

In the ' fierce light which beats * on Shakespeare's plays the time over which the 
action extends has not escaped scrutiny. To count the evening and morning of the 
First day, and of the Second, and of the Third, and so on, requires, it might be sup- 
posed, no great skill beyond a careful reading of the play, and an elementary know- 
ledge of arithmetic. But in carrying out this simple process it is found that some- 
thing more is needed than a mere enumeration on the fingers ; a strange interlacing 
of past and present time is revealed ; yesterdays are crowded into to-day, and to-day 
is swept backward into the past ; yet no jar is noted in the steady onward movement 
of time. In Othello^ probably the most striking example, by counting the time in the 
right butterwoman's rank to market, we find that from the hour when Othello lands 
in C3rprus to the minute when his hands stop the breath of Desdemona, barely thirty- 
six hours of solar (not dramatic) time have passed. In Tlte Merchant of Venice, 
Shylock's bond for three months runs its full course in three days, yet nothing amiss 
is perceived. Something more, then, than simple arithmetic is needed. This strange 
compression of days into hours, and expansion of hours into days, cannot be fortui- 
tous, it must be the effect of art. It behooves us, therefore, to trace, if we can, the 
artist's work. 

To all who have read the preceding volumes of this edition, what has just been 
said is familiar enough. The subject, therefore, has been only thus briefly recalled. 

In the present play, owing to its plot, but little necessity exists for any unusual 
treatment of dramatic time. Like other * Tales,' its march is direct and onward. 
And yet there is one regard wherein we feel the need of Shakespeare's thaumatui^. 

A pronounced feature of the play is the sudden onset of the jealousy of I^ontes. 
It cannot be overlooked. It strikes every reader. There is no gradual development 
of the passion, as in Othello ; there is no growth ; almost as swift as thought Leontes 
is at the height of frenzy. Whether this is intentional on Shakespeare's part, or care- 
lessness, or l)ecause, as has been suggested by Deighton, the novel of Greene, 
wherein the jealousy is of a gradual growth, was so familiar to Shakespeare that he 
imagined it was as familiar to his auditors, no one can ever know. But, after the 
attack of mania has once set in, I think we can detect an intention to make us lose 
sight of the electric flash with which it apparently began, and, apart from the memory 
of its utter groundlessness, which neither can, nor should, be obliterated, to make us 
glide insensibly into a belief that the jealousy is really the result of long observation 
by Leontes, who has been for many a day past watching the conduct of Hermione, 
and that her victory over the resolution of Polixenes to depart, was all that was needed 
to set the long smouldering passion in a blaze. It almost seems as though in this 



DURATION OF ACTION 385 

play Shakespeare had disdained to show us a gradual growth of jealousy as in Othello^ 
but that, after imparting to its earliest manifestation a dramatic suddenness, he was 
conscious of his power to sway us at his will and to make us accept this jealousy of 
Leontes as really gradual and natural, that is, as natural as such an unnatural frenzy 
can be made. That Shakespeare did not wholly over-rate his power is found in 
the fact that some critics have gone so far as to suppose that Hermione had been 
actually imprudent in her behaviour toward Polixenes. 

The first note transferring the present into the past is struck in an Aside^ where 
Leontes says, in his conversation with Camillo, * 'tis far gone when I shall gust it 
' last !' Be it that this is merely Leontes's imagination, it conveys, nevertheless, an 
impression of a gradual growth of gossip, busy for many a day throughout the palace 
and even abroad, concerning acts of the Queen in the past, which Leontes is the last 
to notice. The impression may be but a mere vanishing touch, yet it is felt and 
leaves a mark. Again, Leontes speaks in wrath of * seeing a game played home,* 
and that < rumour cannot be mute,* and then, his frenzy at white heat, he unfolds 
picture after picture which his memory supplies of scenes, which, grossly misinter- 
preted as we know they must be, we have to accept as drawn from actions which 
happened before the opening of the play: — 

* Is whispering nothing ? 
Is leaning cheek to check ? is meeting noses ? 
Kissing with inside lip ? stopping the career 
Of laughter, with a sigh ? — a note infallible 
Of breaking honesty, — ^horsing foot on foot ? 
Skulking in comers ? wishing clocks more swift ? 
Hours, minutes ? noon, midnight ?' 

It may be urged that it is only now, in the retrospect, that Leontes thus puts a 
wicked interpretation on the innocent actions of Hermione. How do we know? 
The mere fact that he recalls them, shows that they must have made some impression 
on him at the time. We all know that they are the wild distortions of madness, but 
when we listen to the play, these allusions serve the purpose of lessening the sudden- 
ness of the madman's jealousy. Although we do not actually see the growth of his 
jealousy, what might have been its stages are made to pass in review before us. 
Herein lies the only need that I can detect, in this play, of any art in the manage- 
ment of dramatic time, and herein also the only evidences of it. Deighton has cited 
nearly all of these passages as indications that the growth of Leontes's jealousy had 
been really gradual. I have merely added their effect in regard to the dramatic 
time. 

Mr P. A. Daniel has made a < Time- Analysis ' of this Play {New Shakspere Soc. 
Trans., 1877-79, P« '77) whereof the synopsis is as follows: — 
Day I. Act I, i and ii. 
" 2. Act II, i. 

An interval oi twenty-three days. 
<* 3. Act II, ii and iii, and Act III, i. 
" 4. Act III, ii! 

An interval. Antigonus's voyage to Bohemia. 
" 5. Act III, iii. 

An interval (Act IV, i) of sixteen years. 

as 



386 APPENDIX 

Day 6. Act IV, ii and iii. 
" 7. Act IV, iv. 

An iniervaL The journey to Sicilia. 
" 8. Act V, i-iii. 
According to this computation the < Play comprises eight days represented on the 

* stage, with intervals.* 

I am inclined to think that there are but seven days, and that Mr Daniel has not 
sufficiently extended the first day. Mr Daniel says in effect : — 

* Day I. Act I, sc. i. Camillo and Archidamus meet and converse. 

**■ Act I, sc. ii. Polixenes yields to Hermione's request to prolong his visit. 

< Leontes, smitten with jealousy, engages Camillo to poison Polixenes. Camillo reveals 
*■ the plot to Polixenes, and together they fly from Sicilia that same night. 

< Day 2. Act II, sc. i. Leontes orders Hermione to be imprisoned pending the 

< return of Cleomenes and Dion, whom he has dispatched to Delphos. 

< I am not sure that a separate day should be given to this scene ; but, on the 
*■ whole, the proposed departure of Polixenes and Camillo on the night of the first 

< day, and the mission since then^ of Qeomenes and Dion to Delphos, make this 

* division probable.* 

I believe the sequence of events to be rather as follows : While I^eontes is unfold- 
ing his jealousy to Camillo, Polixenes and Hermione are walking in the garden ; when 
they have finished their stroll, they separate ; Hermione goes to her apartments, and 
Polixenes goes to his, but on the way meets, first, Leontes coming away from Camillo, 
and, next, Camillo himself, from whom he learns of the plot against his life. Camillo 
begs him to leave ' to-night,* supposing that some time would be consumed in getting 
the ships ready, but when Polixenes says that his ships are even then ready and had 
been so for two days, Camillo concludes by begging him < to take the urgent hour,* 
that is, the hour that was even then pressing upon them. They accordingly fly at 
once with the utmost haste ; one of the lords says afterward ' he never saw men scour 

* so on their way, he eyed them even to their ships,* which he could not have done 
had it been in the dark night. In the meanwhile, Leontes, after parting from 
Camillo, and under the full sway of his fury, determines to have divine sanction 
for his procedure, and accordingly dispatches Cleomenes and Dion to Delphos ; he 
then goes to Hermione's apartment, possibly to upbraid her and to tell her of his ap- 
peal to the God. On the threshold he is told of the flight of Polixenes, and Camil- 
lo's treachery is disclosed to him ; then follows Hermione's imprisonment as an ac- 
complice in high treason, and the day, on which the play opens, ends. Clearly the 
whole action thus far has consumed not more than four or five hours. It would be 
monstrous to suppose that after his maniacal outburst in his interview with Camillo, 
Leontes could have seen Hermione, or have talked with her in the old familiar way, 
or that he could have disguised that hatred which he could not refrain from display- 
ing to Polixenes, although he had just promised Camillo that he would seem friendly 
to him. He afterward says that he could find no rest night or day, — and to sup- 
pose that on the first night of the out-break of his madness he could rest without 
seeking Hermione, and revealing to her his fury at her infidelity is to show little 
knowledge, I fear, of human nature. And yet this supposition must be made if we 
are to assume that Polixenes fled that night and that Leontes knew nothing of the 
flight till the next day, when he was about to visit Hermione's apartments. 

Mr Daniel himself doubts, as we have seen, his correctness in assigning two days 
to this much of the action. He was misled, I think, by Camillo's ' to-night,* and did 



MUSIC 



387 



not give sufficient weight to *■ the urgent hour.* With the exception, then, of changing 
< eight days * to seveUy all the rest of his computation appears to be right. 



MUSIC 

There have been in this Play six Songs set to music : — 

* When daffodils begin to peer.' — IV, iii, i. 

* But shall I go mourn for that, my dear.' — IV, iii, 17. 

* Jog-on, jog-on, the footpath way.' — IV, iii, 125. 

* Lawn, as white as driven snow.* — IV, iv, 250. 
« Get you hence, for I must go.' — IV, iv, 324. 

* Will you buy any tape ?' — IV, iv, 345. 

Of these, the music of only two is of an earlier date than the middle of the last 
century. These two are : < Jog-on, jog-on, the footpath way,' and ' Lawn, as white as 
' driven snow.* For the names of the composers of the music for the remaining six, 
the student is referred to *A List of All the Songs 6* Passages in Shakspere which 
' have been set to Music,* published by the New Sh, Soc. London, 1884. Of the two 
just mentioned, the tune of ' Jog-on, jog-on,' etc. is the earlier ; it is found, according 
to Chappell (p. 211), in * The Dancing Mastery from 1650 to 1698, called Jog on, 

* and also in Queen Elizabeth^ s Virginal Book under the name of Hanskin.* ( Queen 
Elizabeth^ s Virginal Book has a misleading title. It is a manuscript in the Fitz- 
william Museum at Cambridge, and Chappell says (p. xiv), < can never have been the 
' property of Queen Elizabeth. It is written throughout in one handwriting, and in 

* that writing are dates 1603, 1605, and 1612.') Another name for the tune is Sir 
Francis Drake, or Eighty-eight. 

The words of the Song are in The Antidote against Melancholy, 1661 ; the first 
stanza is the same as that which Autolycus sings ; the last is as follows : — *■ Cast care 

* away, let sorrow cease, A fig for melancholy ; Let's laugh and sing, or, if you please, 

* We'll frolic with sweet Dolly.* 

Both Knight and Chappell give the musical notation, but the simplest arrange- 
ment appears to be that in Shakespeare and Music, by £dw. W. Naylor, London, 
1896, p. 192, as follows: — 




Jog on, jog on, the foot - path way, And mer - rily hent the stile - a : A 



gM ^ ru 




mer - ry heart goes all the day. Your sad tires in a mile - a. 

The second song is *■ Lawn, as white as driven snow.* The music for this is found 
in Wilson's Cheerfull Ayres or Ballads, Oxford, 1660. The composer is John Wil- 
son himself, and although the date is somewhat late, yet the fact that there is ground 
for believing that John Wilson as a boy was the identical * Jack Wilson * who, as Bal- 



388 



APPENDIX 



thazar, sang, *• Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more/ etc. in Muck Ado^ brings us very 
near to Shakespeare. 

It is here reproduced by Levytype, as was Ariel's song in Tht Tempest (p. 352 
of this ed.), and for the same reason : — 

Cmm Frhm. [ ^4 1 7* tTUfuL 

Awne u white ai dcivcnSnow, Cyprcfle black ti err was Crow, 




WWVSK 




pe^=g|:^j| I 1 1 III! I iiiijj^i 

Qhm at fweecas Damaske RoTes, Muket for Faces and for Nofci, Bugle Bracelcto 



Necklace Amber, Perfumrt for a Ladyrs Chamber, Golden Coyfb-md flomi- 




C<5l 



-chen for my Ladds, tor :Q: To ^ve their Deer*s Finns and Poting fiicb 



Bg=^il^^^ ^^ g^=fegfe ^3=i 



Finns qj* And podng flicks of fteele what Maids lack what in: 



^^ . ^ 



Whac'Q! from hod to lieeV, what :{|: 




lumt 



JORDAN'S BALLAD 



389 



r«i 



Come buy of mcc come, Come buy come buy, buy Udd* or die your 



^^^^^^^^i^pi 




^''"t fl T S^^ 



Lafles ccf come buy. 

< Poting sticks * is not a misprint for ' poaking-sticks/ but for putting sticks^ as 
these instruments were sometimes called. — Ed. 




JORDAN'S BALLAD 

In Collier's Second Edition, a ballad from the Royal Arb^r of Loyal Poesie^ 1664, 
is given in full. It was written by Thomas Jordan, and the main incidents of The 
Winter's Tale form the subject. It is as devoid of interest as of rhythm. Collier's 
feeble excuse for introducing it is : * to show how much at that date the incidents of 

* Shakespeare's drama had gone out of popular recollection.' At the conclusion of 
the Ballad, whereof the scene is laid in Padua and Parma, Collier thinks that ' it de- 

* serves remark ' that * in Jordan's time the error of making Bohemia a sea-coast country 

* had become so apparent, that he [Jordan] felt it necessary, even when addressing him- 

* self to the population of the thoroughfares of London, to make [a change in locality]. 

< The close relationship established by James I. between England and Bohemia had 

* called general attention to the geographical situation of the latter. In our own day, 
' it has been thought necessary to restore what some may consider << dramatic pro- 

< *< priety," and at the same time to smother the poetry and pathos of Shakespeare 

* in the trumpery of tinsel and the daubery of scene -painting. It is the greatest 
'literary blessing that could have been conferred on our nation, that Shakespeare 
' wrote at a period when the mechanical deficiencies of his art in a manner com- 
Spelled him to gratify the ears rather than glut the eyes of his contemporaries. 
' It cannot be too often stated, that from the period of the introduction of scenery 
*■ we date the decline of English dramatic poetry.' 



ACTORS 

BoADEN {Life of JCembUy ii, 314) : It was on the 24th of this month [March, 
1802] that Mr Kemble presented his revival of The fVinter^s Tale, in all the splen- 
dor of decoration and power of acting, that he could impress upon it. In Paulina's 
chapel Mrs Siddons stood as one of the noblest statues that even Grecian taste ever 



390 APPENDIX 

invented. The figure composed something like one of the Muses, in profile. The 
drapery was ample in its folds, and seemingly stony in its texture. Upon the magical 
words, pronounced by Paulina : * Music ; awake her ! strike !' the sudden action 
of the head absolutely startledy as though such a miracle really vivified the mar- 
ble; and the descent from the pedestal was equally graceful and affecting. In 
Leontes Mr Kemble was everything that either taste or feeling could require ; and 
the affection of Paulina never had a representative equal to Mrs Powell. The Per- 
dita was a very delicate and pretty young lady of the name of Hickes, thus much 
I remember of her ; but whether she had more or fewer of the requisites than other 
candidates for this lovely character, I am now unable to decide. I incline to think 
that this part is one of the few upon the stage that never was adequately performed. 
It is so difficult, at the proper age of the debutante, to find a simplicity, almost rustic, 
combining with the princely impulses that urge their way either to brave disaster, or 
partake the kindling wonders of unexpected restoration. Our stage princesses are so 
seldom personally at their ease, and are too sensible of an audience, to be much like 
the royal virgin. Our Perdita seems, in spite of the Fifth Act of the play, condemned 
never to be found. Perhaps no revival ever drew greater crowds than this did. 

Campbell i^Life of Mrs Siddons^ ii, 264) : On the 25th of March, 1802, Mrs 
Siddons for the first time performed Hermione. . . . She must have long foreseen the 
transcendant charm which her performance would bestow on [this part] ; yet there 
was a policy in reserving it for the years of her professional appearance when her 
form was becoming too matronly for the personation of juvenile heroines. At the 
same time, she still had beauty enough left to make her so perfect in the statue-scene, 
that assuredly there was never such a representative of Hermione. Mrs Yates had 
a sculpturesque beauty that suited the statue, I have been told, as long as it stood 
still ; but, when she had to speak, the charm was broken, and the spectators wished 
her back to her pedestal. But Mrs Siddons looked the statue, even to literal illusion ; 
and, whilst the drapery hid her lower limbs, it showed a beauty of head, neck, shoul- 
ders, and arms, that Praxiteles might have studied. This statue-scene has hardly its 
parallel for enchantment even in Shakespeare's theatre. The star of his genius was 
at its zenith when he composed it ; but it was only a Siddons that could do justice to 
its romantic perfection. The heart of every one who saw her when she burst from 
the semblance of sculpture into motion, and embraced her daughter, Perdita, must 
throb and glow at the recollection. 

It so happened, however, that our great actress, whilst performing a part, in which 
she will never have her equal, very narrowly escaped from a death more than fanci- 
fully tragic. I have heard her say, that she could never think of The Winter's Tale 
without a palpitation of her heart, from the recollection of the incident to which she 
alludes in the following letter: * The other night had very nearly terminated all my 

* exertions ; for, whilst I was standing for the statue in The Winter's Tale, my 

* drapery flew over the lamps which were placed behind the pedestal ; it caught fire, 

* and, had it not been for one of the scene-men, who most humanely crept on his knees 

* and extinguished it, without my knowing anything of the matter, I might have been 

* burnt to death, or, at all events, I should have been frightened out of my senses. 

* Surrounded as I was with muslin, the flame would have run like wildfire. The 

* bottom of the train was entirely burned. But for the man's promptitude, it would 

* seem as if my fate would have been inevitable. I have well rewarded the good 

* man, and I regard my deliverance as a most gracious interposition of Providence.' 



A CTORS-LAD Y MAR TIN 39 1 

Lady Martin (p. 390) : I was called upon to play Hermione very soon after my 
dibut, I was still very young, and by my years and looks most unfit even to appear 
as the mother of young Mamillius. Why Mr Macready selected me for the task I 
could not imagine, and most gladly would I have declined it. But his will was law. 
Any remonstrance or objection was met by reasons and arguments so broad and 
strong, — you were so earnestly reminded of your duty to sacrifice yourself to the 
general good, and the furtherance of the effort he was making to regenerate the 
drama, — that there was nothing lefl but to give way. All you could urge seemed so 
small, so merely personal. Therefore play Hermione I must, even as I had not long 
after to play Constance of Bretagne, a still severer trial and much greater strain upon 
my young shoulders. Hermione was a character which had not then come within 
the circle of my favorite Shakespearian heroines. It was, therefore, quite new to me. 
Mrs Warner had been for years the recognised Hermione of the London stage. On 
this occasion she was cast for Paulina, a character for which nature had eminently 
fitted her by a stately figure, fine voice, and firm, earnest manner. How admirably 
she acted Emilia in Othello I must ever remember, especially the way she turned on 
Othello in the last scene, in which Mr Macready was also very grand. On the audi- 
ence, who could see their looks and gestures, the impression they made must have 
been very great indeed. I, as the smothered Desdemona, could hear only. 

My first appearance as Hermione is indelibly imprinted on my memory by the 
acting of Mr Macready, as I have described it in the statue scene. Mrs Warner had 
rather jokingly told me, at one of the rehearsals, to be prepared for something extra- 
ordinary in his manner, when Hermione returned to life. But prepared I was not, 
and could not be, for such a display of uncontrollable rapture. I have tried to give 
some idea of it ; but no words of mine could do it justice. It was the finest burst 
of passionate speechless emotion I ever saw, or could have conceived. My feelings 
being already severely strained, I naturally lost something of my self-command, and 
as Perdita and Florizel knelt at my feet I looked, as the gifted Sarah Adams * after- 
wards told me, * like Niobe, all tears.' Of course, I behaved better on the repetition 
of the play, as I knew what I had to expect and was somewhat prepared for it ; but 
the intensity of Mr Macready's passion was so real, that I could never help being 
moved by it, and feeling much exhausted afterwards. 

The Winters Tale makes heavy demands upon the resources of a theatre both in 
actors and in mise en sc^ne. It was therefore only in such cities as Dublin, Glasgow, 
and Edinburgh that I was able to have it acted. But in all these cities, even with 
such inadequate resources as they supplied, the play used to produce a profound im- 
pression. The sympathies of my audience for the suffering Hermione were reflected 
back upon me so warmly as to make me feel that they entered into my conception of 
her beautiful nature. There, as in London, the statue scene always produced a re- 
markable effect. This I could feel in the intense hush, as though every one present 
* held his breath for a time.' In Edinburgh, upon one occasion, I have been told by 
a friend who was present that, as I descended from the pedestal and advanced toward 
Leontes, the audience simultaneously rose from their seats, as if drawn out of them 

* This sweet accomplished lady wrote many poems and hymns. Her drama, in 
blank verse, founded on the story of * Vivia Perpetua,' one of the first Christian mar- 
tyrs, was greatly admired in a wide literary circle. Her beautiful hymn ♦ Nearer, my 
' God, to Thee,' we all know, and are moved by, when sung in our churches, as it 
often is. 



392 



APPENDIX 



by surprise and reverential awe at the presence of one who bore more of heaven than 
of earth about her. I can account for this only by supposing that the soul of Her- 
mione had for the time entered into mine, and ' so divinely wrought, that one might 
< almost say/ with the old poet, my < body thought.' Of course I did not observe 
this movement of the audience, for my imagination was too full of what I felt was 
then in Hermione*s heart, to leave me eyes for any but Leontes. You may judge of 
the pleasure it was to play to audiences of this kind. As * there is a pleasure in po> 
' etic pains, which only poets know,' so there is a pleasure in the actor's pains, which 
only actors know, who have to deal with the ' high actions and high passions ' of 
which Milton speaks. Unless they know these pains, and feel a joy in knowing them, 
their vocation can never rise to the level of an art. 

The Scotchman (Edinburgh, 3d March, 1847) « Miss Helen Faucit has, in 
Hermione, given life to another of < Shakespeare's Women,' in embodying whom her 
genius seems alone to find its full scope. . . . Here, as in all Miss Faucit's delinea- 
tions, while other performers force us back on our imagination, we feel that oiur imag- 
ination has been raised into a loftier region, and our critical apprehension widely ex- 
panded. The character is one with which only the most refined womanly nature can 
identify itself, at the same time that it demands from the artist the most subtle powers 
of execution, and affords scope for touching the deepest chords of imaginative emo- 
tion. The characteristic features of Hermione, as expressed by Miss Faucit in the 
early scenes, of confiding openness of disposition, frank in its spotless purity, and 
loving her lord so entirely that she loves nothing else but for his sake, prepare us for 
the shock of his insane jealousy, and for the reconciliation at the close of the play, 
which, without a love so absolute, must have been impossible. In her worst agony 
this devotion to Leontes is apparent. . . . The Trial Scene was throughout fine, grand, 
and majestic, with a majesty consonant with the sweetness and mild dignity of the 
character as shown in the previous scenes. We can only advert to the striking effect 
produced by Miss Faucit's expression and attitude, when she rises from the chair, 
forgetting all physical weakness in the earnestness of her emotion, with the words : 

* If powers divine 
Behold our human actions, as they do, 
I doubt not then but innocence shall make 
False accusation blush, and tyranny 
Tremble at patience.' 

Raphael's pencil might have caught inspiration here. We were reminded at first 
of his Saint Cecilia, but so great a variety of expression and perfect gesture succeeded 
that all comparison or suggestion was quickly lost. But the triumph of the perform- 
ance, perhaps the crowning achievement of all Miss Faucit's performances, is the last 
scene. The thrill that passed through the audience on the first raising of the curtain 
from the seeming statue, told how intensely the spiritual beauty of Miss Faucit's at- 
titude and expression was felt. It is not only no praise, it is altogether unfit to say 
they were statue-like. What statue was ever like that form? What statue ever 
breathed out the soul that modulated that face ? It was the realizing of a sculptor's 
hopeless dream. There was there the sjinraetry of the most consummate statue, but, 
superadded to this, there were also the flowing outline and living colour which accom- 
pany only life. The spectator became an actor in the scene, and all * Held their breath 



ACTORS^LADY MARTIN 393 

* for a time.' The turning of the head, and the earnest gaze of the full eyes by which 
Miss Faucit, with the skill of a great artist, breaks the transition from repose to mo- 
tion, was magical in effect, and made the suspended blood to throb. And when she 
descended from the pedestal, with a slow and gliding motion, and wearing the look 
of a being consecrated by long years of prayer and sorrow and seclusion, it seemed 
to us (and we cannot have been singular) as if we looked upon a being almost too 
pure to be gazed on with unveiled eyes. What words can paint the mingled expres- 
sion of wistfulness, of regret, of forgiving sadness, with which she gazed on Leontes ? 
The memory of all that fearful wrong — her slandered honour — ^her dead son — her 
outcast daughter — her long years of isolation and grief — was to be read on that won- 
drous spirit-face, and with it a forgiveness that one felt to be divine. The penitence 
and * saint-like sorrow * of Leontes in * that wide gap of time,* during which he had 
mourned ' The sweet'st companion that e'er man Bred his hopes out of,' had purified 
him again, so that even she might hold out her hand in token that he might approach 
her. He takes the outstretched hand, — his touch brings back all the woman into her 
heart, and she falls upon his neck with a tenderness exceeding that of former days. 
In the mingling of this strong human affection with an elevation so lofty and spiritual, 
there was a moral impressiveness beyond all that we have experienced. It seemed 
as if that stillness should never be broken, — as if we could not bear, for a season, at 
least, — to hear the utterance of a creature that looked and moved so, — upon the earth, 
but not of it. The solemn tone of Hermione's feelings appeared to communicate 
itself to the audience, and they felt with what fitness and beauty Shakespeare con- 
fines her words to a blessing on her daughter. We write warmly, and yet we feel 
how poor and meagre all words must be to express the exquisite beauty of this scene. 
Parts may be indicated, but how portray the continuous beauty of each phase of 
feeling, each modulation of gesture ? Poetry, painting, sculpture, — the best of each, 
— and something more than these, were there. 

Dublin University Magazine (April, 1848) : Must we think that Shakespeare 
had no foreboding of future Juliets, who should lend a more than silver sweetness to 
the tremulous passion-laden accents of maiden love; of future Imogens, investing 
that * most perfect wife ' with a dignity, and grace, and delicate tenderness, beautiful 
as the ideal being revealed to his inward eye in his hour of inspiration ? Scott, we 
know, declared that some of his own conceptions were reflected from the stage with 
force beyond what he had himself believed to be inherent in them. Is it, then, too 
much to suppose, if Shakespeare had witnessed a Barry, a Pritchard, or a Siddons, 
he might have acknowledged that the creations of his own thought received from 
their impersonation a charm more exquisite, and a more vivid completeness? It 
could not, indeed, have been otherwise, if these illustrious performers fulfilled, as 
they did, the great purpose of their art, * to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature.* 
For never yet did fancy portray womanhood so fair, but a real woman, endowed with 
the intense sympathies of genius, and inspired for the time with the soul of Juliet or 
Desdemona, must have eclipsed the ideal dream. Not one, but all the faculties are 
charmed, * Verse ceases to be airy thought. And sculpture to be dumb.* The breast 
thrills, while the imagination is rapt, and the memory is enriched for ever, with a 
vision, the mere poet's painting. Let any one who doubts this see Rachel or Helen 
Faucit, and if he does not straightway renounce his heresy, let him distrust not the 
genius of these gifled artists, but his own capacity. 

In this matter, one illustration is worth pages of argument. Let us then take one 



394 APPENDIX 

from many, which present themselves among the impersonations of the latter of these 
ladies, — Hermione, in the last, or as it is called, the statue-scene in The Winter's Tale, 
Two acts have intervened since the outraged queen has been left for dead, — slain, 
as it seemed, by the tidings of her boy's death, that crowning stroke to her affliction. 
The actress has, therefore, in a manner, lost her hold upon the sympathies of her 
audience, which it is important to retain without interruption. She has, moreover, 
throughout this long scene, not one word allotted to her, and yet upon her its whole 
interest depends. Here is a task for genius and skill, — to engage the very souls of 
the audience, and to transport them, without the aid of tone or gesture, so thoroughly 
into the scene, that the words of Leontes and Perdita shall be the very echo of their 
own thoughts and emotions. A reader of high imaginative power may, perhaps, be 
able to do this in some measure for himself; but still his picture will be vague and 
soulless, — a mere colourless phantom, in contrast to the thrilling reality which this 
great actress places before us, and which words, must, alas ! be ever inadequate to 
portray. Let us, however, essay the sketch. 

We pass into the scene, conscious that it is no *■ dead likeness * that we are to be 
shown; but how little anticipating to see the form so instinct with thought, and 
almost spiritual beauty, which the withdrawal of the curtain reveals ! At once, with 
electric force, an awe strikes us, like that which subdues Leontes to silence, as noted 
by Paulina thus : — * I like your silence : it the more shows off Your wonder.* Her- 
mione stands before us as she appeared to Antigonus in his dream, < In pure white 

* robes, like very sanctity.* We think not then of the symmetry of form, the perfec- 
tion of outline, so far beyond the rarest achievements of art. For the spirit which 
breathes from the face, where grief has long grown calm, and suffering brightened 
into a heavenly pity, in the pure world of thought where she has sojourned during 

* that wide gap of time,' — the spirit which bears within it so much of heaven, with 
all that is best of earth, alone possesses our every faculty. We feel how impossible 
it is for Perdita not to kneel, as she does, before a presence so saintly and august. 
Our gaze is riveted with the intensity of fascination, and, like Leontes, we would fain 
dwell upon the vision for ever. Serene, majestic, spirit-like, it stands before us, — the 
the perfection of sculpture, yet more ; for * What fine chisel Did ever so cut breath ?* 
Stand ever so ! is the dominant thought, so unwilling are we that a spell so exquisite 
should be broken. Anon the solemn music begins to sound, which Shakespeare knew 
so well to employ in resolving one high-strung mood into another; and Hermione, 
turning her averted bead, gazes with full, sad eyes — oh, so full, and sad, and tender ! 
— upon Leontes. Other motion were for a time too sudden. A little space, which 
Shakespeare has filled up with a few lines from Paulina, and Hermione descends 
from her pedestal, and advances, gliding, like no thing of earth, towards her awe- 
stricken lord. You see she has forgiven him, and, oh, how divinely shows that for- 
giveness in the deep calm eyes 1 The anguish of these sixteen winters (less had been in- 
sufficient) has expiated his sin. All this we see and feel, and yet no sound has escaped 
those earnest lips, for Hermione is now at a point beyond words — and, in looking at 
the actress here, we are grateful that it is so, — for we dare not listen yet to the voice 
of what has bowed us with so much awe. What wonder, then, that Leontes recoils 
from a thing so radiantly pure, and fears to take the hand that is extended in token 
of forgiveness ! Nay, says Paulina — * Nay, present your hand ; W^hen she was young, 

* you woo'd her ; now in age Is she become the suitor.' 

And who shall paint the forgiveness, the tenderness, the mingled pity and joy of 
the look with which she welcomes him to her embrace ? The long, long night of 



ACTORS-^MARY ANDERSON 395 

sorrow is past, — the dawn of joy has come, — a sacred, tempered joy, more exquisite 
for the trials out of which it has grown. * She hangs about his neck,' and then the 
fountain of her words is again unsealed, and most fitly are her words those of solemn 
blessing. ' You gods, look down And from your sacred vials pour your grace Upon 
' my daughter's head !' She ceases, and with the close of this strain of heavenly 
music the solemnized hearts of the spectators are free to beat once more. 

The Glasgow Herald (14 March, 1848) : The charm and fascination of Her- 
mione consists in the celebrated Statue-scene ; and there the taste and genius of Miss 
Faucit shone forth in their fullest lustre. Whoever has not witnessed that exquisite 
performance has not seen the finest combination of Grecian sculpture, Italian paint- 
ing, and British acting, that has in our day been seen on the stage. It was absolute 
perfection. The graceful figure, motionless and pale as marble, arrayed in the finest 
classic folds, and displaying to the highest advantage the fine arms and beautiful con- 
tour of the actress, riveted every eye when the curtain was withdrawn. So complete 
was the illusion, so still the figure, so sightless the eyeballs, that you seemed insensibly 
to forget it was a living being who stood before you ; and when amidst the melody of 
music, she turned her head towards the king, the whole house started as if struck by 
an electric shock, or as if they had seen the dead arise. 

The Glasgow Citizen (April, 1848) : Miss Helen Faucit's delicate prepara- 
tory management of the first scene in which she appears, though of a character less 
strongly marked, surprised and delighted us nearly as much as any after part of the 
performance. . . . We had there before us to the life * the very woman,' too happy in 
herself and her domestic relations not to wish to communicate a portion of her happi- 
ness to all with whom she is brought in contact. Nothing could possibly be more 
skilful than the method by which she contrived, — while in nothing * overstepping the 
• modesty of nature * and of the wife, — to assume towards Polixenes that air of 
caressing entreaty and balf-coquettish fondness which should at once exhibit her 
own right feminine anxiety to please, and afford a true dramatic justification of the 
unworthy suspicions of her husband. . . . We really do not know what to say in order 
to speak worthily of the statue scene. ... It was the most entrancing thing we ever 
remember to have seen, — actually suspending the blood, and taking the breath away. 
It was something supernatural almost ; and till the descent was fully accomplished, 
and the stone turned to palpable woman again, something of a fine fear sat upon us 
like a light chilliness. 



Mary Anderson 

Charles Henry LIjders {Afary Anderson in The Winter's Tale, The American^ 
19 January, 1889) : From the first note of the Overture to the last recall of the star, 
beauty reigns supreme. The costumes, designed by eminent artists, the suburb stage- 
settings, coloured so as to harmonise perfectly with the hues of the costumes, and 
themselves the work of artists foremost in their profession ; softly blended lights so 
disposed as to enhance the effect of every stage picture ; music and song rising, fall- 
ing, and melting away in the distance ; beautiful women and children lounging or 
disporting themselves upon the striped and spotted skins of wild beasts ; handsome 
men moving in and out among the fluted colunms of a king's palace ; jeweled slaves, 



396 APPENDIX 

picturesque musicians with strange, old-world instruments set to their lips for the 
breathing of sweet melodies ; flowers, incense, and the wine of happy hearts ; — these 
are some of the choice dishes of this feast of loveliness. After all these splendours, 
how gloomy seem the dark corridors of the prison, in one of whose cells lies the 
falsely accused Flermione. Then the sombre Court of Justice with its imposing array 
of soldiery, its noisy, pushing, quarrelling mob of on-lookers ; the cold cruelty of the 
king, and the sweet, pale face of his victim. . . . That a great success was achieved 
by Miss Anderson in the Fourth Act, when, as Perdita, she led the rinca fada^ or 
long dance, the dance of the shepherds and shepherdesses, there is not the sUghtest 
doubt. ... It is worth travelling miles to see, as a marvel of conception, arrangement, 
and execution ; and it is with genuine regret that one sees the fawn-skin coats of the 
pipe-players vanish among the trees on the hill-side after the last note of their instru- 
ments has died away. Miss Anderson's dancing is a revelation of sylph-like grace 
and joyous abandonment to the spirit of innocent revelry. It possesses an indefinable 
and irresistible charm. ... Of Miss Anderson's acting throughout the play there is 
little to be said but commendation. While her slender physique and maidenly beauty 
fit more naturally into the part of Perdita, her portrayal of the character of Hermione 
is a beautiful and touching piece of acting, finished and elaborated with much skill 
and artistic insight. In the closing scene, in which she appears as the mock statue 
that comes to life to gladden the repentant king, she is a feast for the eye, and brings 
to a befitting close a surpassingly lovely impersonation. 

William Winter (Shadows of the Stage^ New York, 1892, i, 105) : Mary An- 
derson doubled the characters of Hermione and Perdita. This had not been con- 
spicuously done until it was done by her, and her innovation, in that respect, was met 
with grave disapproval. The moment the subject is examined, however, objection to 
that method of procedure is dispelled. Hermione, as a dramatic person, disappears 
in the middle of the Third Act and comes no more mitil the end of the piece, when 
she emerges as a statue. Her character has been entirely expressed and her part in 
the action of the drama has been substantially fulfilled before she disapp>ears. There 
is no intermediate passion to be wrought to a climax, nor is there any intermediate 
mood, dramatically speaking, to be sustained. The dramatic environment, the dra- 
matic necessities are vastly unlik^, for example, those of Lady Macbeth, — one of the 
hardest of all parts to play well, because exhibited intermittently, at long intervals, 
yet steadily constrained by the necessity of cumulative excitement. The repre- 
sentative of Lady Macbeth must be identified with that character, whether on the 
stage or off, from the beginning of it to the end. Hermione, on the contrary, is at 
rest from the moment when she faints upon receiving information of the death of her 
boy. A lapse of sixteen years is assumed, and then, standing forth as a statue, she 
personifies majestic virtue and victorious fortitude. When she descends from the 
pedestal she silently embraces Leontes, speaks a few pious, maternal, and tranquil 
hues (there are precisely seven of them in the original, but Mary Anderson added 
two from Airs WeU)^ and embraces Perdita, whom she has not seen since the girl's 
earliest infancy. This is their only meeting, and little is sacrificed by the use of a 
substitute for the daughter in that scene. Perdita's brief apostrophe to the statue has 
to be cut, but it is not missed in the representation. The resemblance between 
mother and daughter heightens the effect of illusion, in its impress equally upon 
fancy and vision ; and a more thorough elucidation is given than could be provided 
in any other way of the spirit of the comedy. It was a judicious and felicito\]S 



ACTORS— MARY ANDERSON 397 

choice that the actress made when she selected these two characters, and the fact that 
her impersonation of them carried a practically disused Shakespearian comedy through 
a season of one hundred and fifty nights at the Lyceum Theatre in London furnishes 
an endorsement alike of her wisdom and her ability. She played in a stage version 
of the piece, in five acts, containing thirteen scenes, arranged by herself. 

While Mary Anderson was acting these two parts in London, the sum of critical 
opinion seemed to be that her performance of Perdita was better than her perform- 
ance of Hermione ; but beneath that judgement there was, apparently, the impression 
that Hermione is a character fraught with superlatively great passions, powers, and 
qualities, such as are only to be apprehended by gigantic sagacity conveyed by her- 
culanean talents and skill. . . . But in truth Hermione, although a stronger part than 
Perdita, is neither complex, dubious, nor inaccessible ; and Mary Anderson, although 
more fascinating in Perdita, could and did rise, in Hermione, to a noble height of 
tragic power, — an excellence not possible for her, nor for anybody, in the more 
juvenile and slender character. . . . 

In Hermione is seen a type of the celestial nature in woman — infinite love, infinite 
charity, infinite patience. Such a nature is rare; but it b possible, it exists, and 
Shakespeare, who depicted everything, did not omit to portray that. To comprehend 
Hermione the observer must separate her absolutely and finally from association with 
the passions. . . . Her mind predominates. Her life is in the affections, and therefore 
is one of thought. She sees clearly the facts of her experience and condition, and 
knows exactly how those facts look in the eyes of others. She is one of those per- 
sons who possess a keen and just prescience of events, who can look far into the 
future and discern those resultant consequences of the present which, under the ope* 
ration of inexorable moral law, must inevitably ensue. Self-poised in the right and 
free from the disturbing force of impulse and desire, she can await the justice of time ; 
she can live, and she can live in the tranquil patience of resignation. True majesty 
of the person is dependent on repose of the soul, and there can be no repose of the 
soul without moral rectitude and a far-reaching, comprehensive, wise vision of events. 
Mary Anderson embodied Hermione in accordance with that ideal. 

The conspicuous, predominant, convincing artistic beauty in Mary Anderson's 
impersonation of Hermione was her realisation of the part, in figure, face, presence, 
demeanour, and temperament. . . . She made you conscious of the presence of a 
queen. This, obviously, is the main thing, — that the individuality shall be imperial, 
not merely wearing royal attire, but being invested with the royal authenticity of di- 
vine endowment and consecration. . . . The delivery of Hermione's defensive speeches 
was profoundly earnest and touching. The simple cry of the mother's breaking heart, 
and the action of veiling her face and falling like one dead, upon the announcement 
of the prince's death, were perfect denotements of the collapse of a grief-stricken 
woman. The skill with which the actress, in the monument scene, — which is all 
repose and no movement, — contrived nevertheless to invest Hermione with steady 
vitality of action, and to imbue the crisis with a feverish air of suspense, was in a 
high deg^e significant of the personality of genius. 

It is one thing to say that Mary Anderson was better in Perdita than in Hermione, 
and another thing to say that the performance of Perdita was preferred. Everybody 
preferred it, — even those who knew that it was not the better of the two ; for every- 
body loves the sunshine more than the shade. Hermione means grief and endur- 
ance. Perdita means beautiful youth and happy love. It does not take long for an 
observer to choose between them. Suffering is not companionable. . . . The perform- 



398 APPENDIX 

ance of HermioDe was higher and more significant than that of Perdita. But the 
higher form of art is not always the most alluring, — never the most alluring when 
youthful beauty smiles and rosy pleasure beckons another way. All hearts respond 
to happiness. By her presentment of Perdita the actress became the glittering image 
and incarnation of glorious youthful womanhood and fascinating joy. No exercise 
of the imagination was needful to her in that. There was an instantaneous corre- 
spondence between the part and the player. The embodiment was as natural as a 
sunbeam. Shakespeare has left no doubt about his meaning in Perdita. The speeches 
of all around her continually depict her fresh and piquant loveliness, her innate su> 
periority, her superlative charm; while her behaviour and language as constantly 
show forth her nobility of soul. . . . 

In the thirty-seven plays of Shakespeare there is no strain of the poetry of senti- 
ment and grace essentially sweeter than that which he has put into the mouth of Per- 
dita ; and poetry could not be more sweetly spoken than it was by Mary Anderson in 
that delicious scene of the distribution of the flowers. The actress evinced compre- 
hension of the character in every fibre of its being, and she embodied it with the 
affluent vitality of splendid health and buoyant temperament, — presenting a creature 
radiant with goodness and happiness, exquisite in natural refinement, piquant with 
archness, soft, innocent, and tender in confiding artlessness, and, while gleeful and 
triumphant in beautiful youth, gently touched with an intuitive pitying sense of the 
thorny aspects of this troubled world. The giving of the flowers completely be- 
witched her auditors. The startled yet proud endurance of the king's anger was in 
an equal degree captivating. Seldom has the stage displayed that rarest of all combi- 
nations, the passionate heart of a woman with the lovely simplicity of a child. Noth- 
ing could be more beautiful than she was to the eyes that followed her lithe figure 
through the merry mazes of her rustic dance, — an achievement sharply in contrast 
with her usually statuesque manner. It * makes old hearts fresh ' to see a spectacle 
of grace and joy, and that spectacle they saw then and will not forget. The value 
of those impersonations of Hermione and Perdita, viewing them as embodied inter- 
pretations of poetry was great, but they possessed a greater value and a higher 
significance as denotements of the guiding light, the cheering strength, the elevating 
loveliness of a noble human soul. They embodied the conception of the poet, but at 
the same time they illumined an actual incarnation of the divine spirit. They were 
like windows to a sacred temple, and through them you could look into the soul of a 
true woman, — always a realm where thoughts are gliding angels, and feelings are the 
faces of seraphs, and sounds are the music of the harps of heaven. 

Mme. DE Navarro [Miss Mary Anderson] {A Few Memories, 1896, p. 243) : 
The Winter's Tale had never been a very successful play. ... In studying the play, the 
reason of its non -success appeared to me to be the undue prominence given to several 
of the less important characters, and the comparatively short and interrupted appear- 
ance of the two heroines, which breaks the continued interest of the spectator. The 
first difficulty was to cut these secondary parts without marring the beauty or meaning 
of the text ; and the next, to keep alive the sympathies of the audience with both 
Hermione and Perdita from beginning to end. ... As to keeping alive an unbroken 
interest in the mother and child, who are separated for the best part of two acts, I 
thought, after careful consideration, that the best way was to follow the suggestion of 
Mr Thomas Hall, and have the two parts played by the same person, my chief author- 
ity for doing so being the strong resemblance between Hermione and Perdita. 



• • • 



GARRICK'S VERSION 399 

To entrust Perdita to a person unlike the queen in looks, voice, or manner would, I 
thought, give the lie to the king's words [where he says that he thought of Hermione 
wlien he looked at Perdita], lessen the interest in the last two acts, and, from an 
acting point of view, spoil the continuity of the play. Had doubling the parts necessi- 
tated cutting out the important speeches of either character, the idea would have been 
abandoned. But as only six of Perdita's lines were sacrificed, I did not feel guilty 
of any vandalism in doing so. We produced the play for the first time in Nottingham, 
to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday. It proved a great success with the people of that 
city and with the numerous Londoners who came especially to see it. 

My surprise and disappointment may be imagined when, in the following Septem- 
ber, it was not received with any marked enthusiasm on its first night in London. . . . 
I heard that many of the * first-nighters * voted it dull and heavy, and prophesied that 
it could not run for more than two weeks. My pet play looked very like a failure. 
But after that, * the actor's greatest judge,* — the public, — continued to fill the house 
nightly, and received it with increasing warmth. It kept the stage for a hundred 
and sixty-four nights ; and had not my tenancy of the Lyceum then expired, it would 
probably have run on for another hundred. 



} 



GARRICK'S VERSION: 

Florizel and Perdita 

All of Garrick's share is given on the following pages. 

At the first performance of Florizel and Perdita^ the part of Leontes was taken by 
Garrick ; Polixenesy by Havard ; Hermione by Mrs Pritchard, and Perdita by 
Mrs Gibber. The Prologue is as follows : — 

To various things the stage has been compared. 

As apt ideas strike each humorous bard : 

This night, for want of better simile, 

Let this our Theatre a Tavern be : 

The poets vintners, and the waiters we. 

So as the cant, and custom of the trade is, 

You're welcome GenCmin ; kindly welcome, ladies. 

To draw in customers, our bills are spread ; \Shewing a Play-biU, 

You cannot miss the sign, 'tis Shakespear^s Head. 

From this same head, this fountain-head divine, 

For different palates, springs a different wine ! 

In which no tricks, to strengthen, or to thin 'em — 

Neat as imported, — no French brandy in 'em — 

Hence for the choicest spirits flow Champaign ; 

Whose sparkling atoms shoot thro' every vein. 

Then mount in magic vapours to th' enraptur'd brain 1 

Hence flow for martial minds potations strong : 

And sweet love potions, for the fair and young. 

For you, my hearts of oak, for your regale [ To the upper gallery. 

There's good old English stingOy mild and stale. 



} 



400 APPENDIX 

For high luxnnous souls, with luscious smack, 

There's Sir John Falstaffj is a butt of sack : 

And if the stronger liquors more invite ye, 

Bardolph is gin, and Pistol aqua vitae. 

But shou'd you call for Falstaffj where' to find him 

He*s gone,* — nor left one cup of sack behind him. 

Sunk in his elbow-chair, no more he'll roam 

No more with merry wags to Eastcheap come ; 

He's gone, — to jest, and laugh, and give his sack at home. 

As for the learned critics, grave and deep, 

Who catch at words, and catching fall asleep ; 

Who in the storms of passion, — hum, — and haw ! 

For such, our master will no liquor draw, — 

So blindly thoughtful, and so darkly read, 

They take Tom Durfys for the Shakespeare's head. 

A vintner once acquir'd both praise and gain 
And sold much perry for the best champaign. 
Some rakes this precious stuff did so allure ; 
They drank whole nights — what's that ? — when wine is pure. 

* Come, fill a bmnper, Jack ! ' — * I will, my lord.' — 

* Here's cream ! — damn'd fine ! — immense ! upon my word I* 
' Sir William y what say you ?' — * The best, believe me, — 

* In this — Eh, Jack / — the devil can't deceive me.' 
Thus the wise critic too mistakes his wine. 
Cries out with lifted hands * Tis great ! — divine !* 
Then joggs his neighbour, as the wonders strike him ; 

' This Shakespear! Shakespcar !^0\ there's nothing like him 

In this night's various, and enchanted cup. 

Some little /^rry'j mixt for filling up. 
r "The five long acts from which our three are taken 

Stretch'd out to sixteen years, lay by, forsaken. 

Lest then this precious liquor run to waste, 

'Tis now confin'd and bottled for your taste. 

'Tis my chief wish, my joy, my only plan 
^To lose no drop of that immortal man ! 



} 



Scene I. — The Court of Bohemia. — Enter Camillo and a Gentleman. 

Cam. The Gods send him safe passage to us ; for he seems embarked in a tem* 
pestuous season. 

Gent. I pray thee, lord Camillo, instruct me, what concealed matter there is in 
the coming of Leontes to Bohemia, should so wrap our king in astonishment ? 

Cam. Good sign your knowledge in the court is young, if you make that your 
question. 

Gent. I would not be thought too curious, but, I prithee, be my tutor in this 
matter. 

* Mr Quin had then left the stage. 



GARRICK'S VERSION 40 1 

Cam, To be short then, — Give it thy hearing, for my tale is well worthy of it : 
these two kings, Leontes of Sicily and Polixenes of Bohemia^ were trained together 
in their childhoods, and there rooted betwixt 'em such an affection as could not choose 
but branch as it grew up. One unhappy summer (and full sixteen as unhappy have 
followed it) our Polixenes went to repay Sicily the visitation he justly owed him. — 
Most royally, and with the utmost freedom of society, was he entertained both by 
LeonteSf and his queen Hermione ; a lady, whose bodily accomplishments were un- 
paralleled, but by those of her own mind. The free strokes of youth and gaiety, in 
her extended civility to Polixenes (pleased as she was to see her lord delighted) bred 
in him suspicion of her conduct. 

Gent. And that is an evil weed, that once taking root, needs no manure. 

Cam, I then waited about the person of Leontes^ and was alone thought worthy 
the participation of his jealousy. Into my bosom he disgorged his monstrous secret, 
with no tenderer injunction than to take off his innocent, abused guest by poison. 

Gent, To kill Polixenes / 

Cam, Even so. — What could I do ? What ran evenest with the grain of my 
honesty I did, and have not since repented me : — whispered Polixenes of the mat- 
ter, — left my large fortunes, and my larger hopes in Sicily^ and on the very wing of 
occasion flew with him hither, no richer than my honour ; and have since been ever 
of his bosom. 

Gent, I tremble for the poor queen, left to the injuries of a powerful king, and a 
jealous husband. 

Cam, Left, too, in her condition I for she bad some while promised an heir to 
Sicily, and now, mark me, — for the occasion — 

Gent, Cannot surpass my attention. 

Cam, Scarcely settled in Bohemia here, we are alarmed with the arrival of 
Paulina (that excellent matron, and true friend of her unhappy queen) from whom 
we too soon learn how sad a tragedy had been acted in Sicily^ — the dishonoured 
Hermione clapped up in prison, where she gave the king a princess, — the child (the 
innocent milk yet in her innocent mouth), by the king's command, exposed ; exposed 
even on the desarts of this kingdom,— our Polixenes being falsely deemed the father. 

Genl, Poor babe I unhappy queen I tyrant Leontes / 

Cam, What blacker title will you fix upon him, when you shall hear that Her- 
mione, in her weak condition (the child-bed privilege denied, which belongs to 
women of all fashion), was hauled out to an open mockery of trial ; that on this in- 
human outrage (her fame being killed before) she died ; — in the very prison where 
she was delivered, died; and that on her decease, Paulina (whose free tongue was 
the king's living scourge and perpetual remembrancer to him of his dead queen) fled 
with her effects, for safety of her life, to Bohemia here — I tire you ? 

Gent. My king concerned, I am too deeply interested in the event, to be indif- 
ferent to the relation. 

Cam, All this did Leontes in defiance of the plain answer of the oracle, by him 
consulted at Delphi; which now, after sixteen years occurring to his more sober 
thoughts, he first thinks it probable, then finds it true, and his penitence thereupon is 
as extreme, as his suspicions had been fatal. In the course of his sorrows, as we 
are informed, twice attempted on his life ; and this is now his goad to the present 
expedition; to make all possible atonement to his injur'd brother Bohemia, and 
to us the fellow-sufferers in his wrongs; we must break off, — the king and good 
Paulina — 
36 



402 APPENDIX 

Enter Polixenes and Paulina. 

Polix, Weep not now, Paulina^ so long-gone-by misfortunes ; this strange and 
unexpected visit from Leontesy calls all your sorrows up anew ; but, good Paulina^ 
be satisfied that heaven has willed it so. That sixteen yeazs absence should pass 
unnoticed by this king, without exchange of gifts, letters, or embassies ; and now ! — 
I am amazed as thou art ; but not grieved — 

Paul, Grudge me not a tear to the memory of my queen, my royal mistress ; and 
there dies my resentment ; now, Leontes^ welcome. 

Polix, Nobly resolved; of him think we no more of \Hc\ till he arrives. 

Cam. Hail, royal Sir. If the king of Sicily escape this dreadful tempest, I shall 
esteem him a favourite of the gods, and his penitence effectual. 

Polix, Of that fatal country Sicily and of its penitent (as we must think him) 
and reconciled king, my brother (whose loss of his most precious queen and child are 
even now afiresh lamented), I prithee, speak no more : — say to me, when saw'st thou 
prince Flarizely my son ? Fathers are no less unhappy, their issue not being gradous, 
than they are in losing 'em, when they have approved their virtues. 

Cam, Sir, it is three days since I saw the Prince ; what his happier affairs may 
be are to me unknown. [The dialogue now continues as in IV, ii, 32 to 55 word for 
word except that musingly is adopted for ' missingly ' and angel (pt ' Anghe ' in line 
47. Instead of departing after ' we must disguise ourselves ' in line 55 the scene 
continues thus :] 

Paul. Lest your royalty be discovered by the attendance of any of your own train, 
my steward, Dum^ shall provide disguises, and accompany your design with all secrecy. 

Polix. It is well advised — I will make choice of some few to attend u/, who 
shall wait at distance from the cottage — ^you instruct Dion in the matter, while we 
prepare ourselves. [Exit Polix. and Cam. 

Paul, What fire is in my ears ! can it be so ? 
Or are my senses cheated with a dream ? 
Leontes in Bohemia / — O most welcome. 
My penitent liege — my tears were those of joy. 
Paulina^ for her royal mistress* sake. 
Shall give thee welcome to this injured coast ; 
Such as the riches of two mighty kingdoms, 
Bohemia join'd with fruitful Sicily y 
Would not avail to buy — LeonteSy welcome. 
Let thy stout vessel but the beating stand 
Of this chaf 'd sea, and thou art whole on land. [Exit Paulina. 

[Scene II begins with the Old Shepherd's soliloquy before finding Perdita, III, iii, 
66 : * I would there were no age,' etc., but, of course, as there is no Perdita to be 
found, the Old Shepherd's anxiety is merely for his lost sheep, and he determines to 
await the approach of his son, who enters terrified at the storm which he has seen 
raging at sea, and continues the description of the shipwreck word for word as in the 
original, of course omitting all the references to Antigonus and the bear, down to 
line 117, where the Old Shepherd says * Heavy matters ! heavy matters !' Thereupon 
the dialogue continues :] 

Clown. Look ! look, father — there are two of 'em cast ashore, and crawling up 
the rock, — now they are down again — poor souls, they have no strength to keep their 
hold ; — I will go help them. 



GARRICK'S VERSION 403 

Old Skep, Run, run, boy ! thy legs are youngest. 

Clown. Stay, they have found the road to the beach, and come toward us. 

Old Shtp. Some rich men, I warrant 'em ; that are poorer than we now. 

Clffum, Lord, father! look — they are out-landish folk; their fine cloaths are 
shrunk in the wetting. 

Enler Leontes, supported by Qeominef. 

Cleom, Bear up, my liege ; — again welcome on shore. 

Leon. Flatter me not, — In death, distinctions cease — 
Am I on shore ; walk I on land, firm land, 
Or ride I yet upon the billows backs ? 
Methinks I feel the motion — who art thou ? 

Cleom. Know you me not ? — ^Your friend Cleomines. 

Leon. Where are my other friends ? — What, perished all ! 

CUom. Not a soul saved ! ourselves are all our crew. 
Pilot, shipmaster, boatswain, sailors, all. 

Leon, Laud we the gods I Yet wherefor perish'd they. 
Innocent souls ! and I, with all my guilt. 
Live yet to load the earth ? — O righteous Gods ! 
Your ways are past the line of man to fathom. 

Cleom. Waste not your small remaining strength of body 
In warring with your mind. This desart waste 
Has some inhabitants, — Here's help at hand — 
Good day, old man — 

Old Shep. Never said in worse time — a better to both your worships— command 
us, Sir. 

Clown. You have been sweetly soaked ; give the Gods thanks that you are alive 
to feel it. 

Leon. We are most thankful, Sir. 

CUom. What desarts are these same ? 

Old Shep. The desarts of Bohemia. 

Leon. Say'st thou Bohemia f ye Gods, Bohemia I 
In every act your judgements are sent forth 
Against Leontes ! — Here to be wrecked and saved ! 
Upon this coast ! — All the wrongs I have done. 
Stir now afresh within me — Did I not 
Upon this coast expose my harmless infant 
Bid Polixenes (falsely deemed the father) 
To take this child — O hell-bom jealousy ! 
All but myself most innocent — and now 
Upon this coast — Pardon, Hermione I 
'Twas this that sped thee to thy proper heaven ; 
If from thy sainted seat above the clouds, 
Thou see'st my weary pilgrimage thro* life, 
Loath'd, hated life, 'cause unenjo/d with thee — 
Look down, and pity me. 

Cleom. Good sir, be calm ; 
What's gone and what's past help should be past grief; 
You do repent these things too sorely. 

Leon. I can't repent these things; for they are heavier 



404 APPENDIX 

Than all my woes can stir; I must betake me 
To nothing but despair, — a thousand knees 
Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting 
Upon a barren mountain, and still winter, 
In storms perpetual, could not move the Gods 
To look this way upon me. 

Clorum. What says he, pray ? The sea has quite washed away the poor gentle- 
man's brains. Come bring him along to our farm ; and we'll give you both a warm 
bed, and dry clothing. 

Cleom, Friends, we accept your offered courtesy. 
Come, sir — ^bear up — ^be calm — compose your mind ; 
If still the tempest rages there, in vain. 
In vain the Gods have saved you from the deep. 

Leon, I'll take thy counsel, friend ; — lend me thy arm — Oh Hermione f 

[Z^ans OH him. 
Cleom. Good shepherd, shew us to the cottage. 

Old Shep. This way, this way — 

Claum. And now the storm's blown over, father ; we'll send down Nicholas and 
his fellow to pick up the dead bodies, if any may be thrown ashore, and bury them. 

Old Shep. 'Tis a good deed, boy. — Help the gentlemen, and bring them after 
me. [Exetmt. 

[The next scene, where Autolycus enters singing, is the same throughout as IV, 
iii. With this scene the First Act ends. The Second Act begins with IV, iv, which 
it follows literally, with omissions merely of a line or two here and there (the longest 
is the omission of lines 93-122), down to line 180, where, after Perdita has said * I'll 
swear for 'em,' the Old Shepherd says :] 

Come, come, daughter, leave for awhile these private dalliances, and love-whis- 
perings, clear up your pipes, and call, as custom is, our neighbours to our sheep- 
shearing. 

Perd. I will obey you. 

Song. 

Come J come J my good shepherds ^ our flocks we must shear; 

In your holyday suttSy with your lassies appear .• 

The happiest of folk are the guiltless andfree^ 

And who are so guiltless, so happy as we ? 

We harbour no passions, by luxury taught. 

We practise no arts, with hypocrisy fraught; 

What we think in our hearts^ you may read in our eyes ; 

For knowing no falsehood, we need no disguise. 

By mode and caprice are the city dames led. 

But we, as the children of nature are bred; 

By her hand alone we are painted and dress* d ; 

For the roses will bloom when there'' s peace in the breast. 

That giant, ambition, we never can dread ; 
Our roofs are too low, for so lofty a head ; 
Content and sweet cheerfulness open our door. 
They smile with the simple, and feed with the poor. 



GARRICK'S VERSION 405 

When lave has possessed us, that lave we reveal^ 
Like the flocks that wefeed^ are the passions we feel; 
So, harmless and simple we sport, and we play. 
And leave to fine folks to deceive and betray, 

[Of this song, Genest says (iv, 449) that as ' Morgan's Floriul and Perdita is 
' said to have been printed in 1754, Garrick must be supposed to have borrowed Per- 

< dita's song from it.* On what compulsion must Garrick be supposed to have bor- 
rowed this song from Morgan ? — it is neither above Garrick's abilities nor below them ; 
had it been none of his he would have repudiated it quickly enough, when the in- 
cident occurred which Genest proceeds to quote: ' Boswell, in his Life of Johnson 
' (vol. i, p. 536), says: "Mrs Thrale then praised Garrick's talents for light gay 

* " poetry ; and, as a specimen, repeated his song in Floriul and PerdUa, and dwelt 

* ** with peculiar pleasure on this line : 

** I'd smile with the simple, and feed with the poor.'' 

' Johnson : <* Nay, my dear lady, this will never do. Poor David I Smile with the 
' ** simple. What folly is that ? And who would feed with the poor that can help 
' " it ? No, no ; let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich." I repeated this 
' sally to Garrick, and wondered to find his sensibility as a writer not a little irritated 

< by it. To soothe him I observed, that Johnson spared none of us ; and quoted the 
' passage in Horace, in which he compares one who attacks his friends, for the sake 

< of a laugh, to a pushing ox, that is marked by a bunch of hay put upon his horns : 
*fatnum habet in comu, "Ay," said Garrick, vehemently, " he has a whole mew of 

< « it." ' As Genest points out, Mrs Thrale did not quote the line correctly. Had 
she quoted it correctly, it is impossible to say that Dr Johnson would have been 
silenced, — that miracle never happened, — but his * sally' might have taken another 
shape which possibly might not have irritated Garrick. At any rate, it is quite un- 
likely that Garrick would have felt this irritation had he not been the author. 
George Daniel (Oxberry's edition, 1823) says that when Kemble brought out The 
Winter's Tale in 1802 this song was omitted, and in its place Perdita sang the fol- 
lowing by Sheridan : — 

"As shepherds, through the vapoozs grey, 
Behold the dawning light, 
Yet doubt if 'tis the rising day 
Or meteor of the night ; 

So varying passions in my breast. 

My former calm destroy ; 
With hope and fear at once opprest, 

I tremble at my joy." 

At the conclusion of the Song the original text is resumed at lin6 l8l and con- 
tinues as far as Dorcas's little tilt with Mopsa, which is enlarged by a dozen lines 
of witless, rather coarse quarrelling which ends with the assertion by Dorcas * tha( 

< some folks have been proud, and courtly, and falsehearted ever since some folk's 
' father found a pot of money by the sea-side here. — But I say nothing.' < Come, 



406 APPENDIX 

* come, strike up,' says the Clown, and then the original continues to line 350 where 
Autolycus, the Clown, Dorcas and Mopsa exeunt. Then instead of the entrance of 
a servant, as in the original, Leontes and Qeomines ' enter finom the Fann- House :*] 

Cleom. Why will you not repose, Sir ? these sports. 
The idle merriment of hearts at ease, 
But ill will suit the colour of your mind. 

Leon. Peace — I enjoy them in a better sort — 
Cleomines, look on this pretty damsel ; [Pointing to Perdita. 

Haply such age, such innocence, and beauty, 
Had our dear daughter owned, had not my hand — 
Oh, had I not the course of nature stopped 
On weak surmise, — I would not think that way — 
And yet I must, always, and ever must 

Cleom, No more, my liege — 

Leon, Nay, I will gaze upon her; each salt drop 
That trickles down my cheek, relieves my heart. 
Which else would burst with anguish 

Polix, [to Cam.]. Is it not too far gone ? 'tis time to port *em ; 
He's simple, and tells much, — ^how now fair shepherd [ To Flor. 
Your heart is full, etc. [and so it continues as in the original, except that Leontes 
joins in the conversation, dividing some of the speeches of Polixenes and Camillo, 
and taking the whole of Polixenes' speech in lines 447-455 : < By my white beard,' 
etc. ; and so on, until Polixenes discovers himself, and at the words : < Thou, a scep- 
' ter's heir. That thus affect'st a sheep-hook I' Leontes exclaims (Anuu^d) :] 
How 1 Polixenes / what misery is this ? 
I want the power to throw me at his feet, 
Nor can I bear his eyes — [Leon, learn on Cleom. and they go apart, 

Polix. And thou, old traitor, [etc. ; at the end of this speech both Polixenes and 
Camillo depart ; and the share in the conversation which is borne in the original by 
Camillo is now borne by Leontes. After Perdita has said * I'll milk my ewes and 

♦ weep,' Leontes comes forward and says * How now, old father,' etc. When the Old 
Shepherd concludes his speech and Exit, the scene continues :] 

Leon, [to Cleom.]. The honest wretch, he helpt us at our need — 
I will no longer vail me in this cloud. 
But plead, unmask' d, this good old shepherd's cause 
Before my own ; e'en at Bohemians knees. 

PJor, [to Perd.]. Why look you so upon me ? 
I am but too sorry, not afraid ; delay'd. 
But nothing altered ; what I was, I am, 
And ever shall be thine, my Perdita / 

Perd, Alas, alas ! my lord ; these hopes are fled f 
How often have I told you 'twould be thus ? 
How often said, my dignity would last 

But 'till 'twere known. [Florizel replies as in the original ; Leontes, bearing Camil- 
lo's part, says to Florizel : ' This is desperate, sir !' and the latter replies :] 
So call it ; but it does fulfill my vow ; 
I needs must think it honesty ; my heart 
Is anchor'd here, as rooted as the rocks. 
Who stand the raging of the roaring deep. 



GARRICK'S VERSION 407 

Immoveable and fix'd — ^let it come on ! — 
1*11 brave the tempest ! 

Perd, Be patient, DoricUs, 

Leon, Passion transports yoo, prince ; be calm a while 
Nor scorn my years and counsel, but attend : — 
My lowly seeming and this outward garment, 
But ill denote my quality and office, — 
Trust to my words, tho* mystery obscures 'em — 
I know the king your father, and if time 
And many antecedents (cease foolish tears) 
Have not effaced my image from his breast, 
Perhaps he'll listen to me. — I am sorry. 
Most sorry, you have broken from his liking, 
Where you were tied in duty ; and as sorry 
Your choice is not so rich in worth as beauty 
That 3rou might well enjoy her, — Prince, you know 
Prosperity *s the very bond of love 
Whose fresh complexion, and whose heart together 
Affliction alters. 

Perd, One of these is true, 
I think affliction may subdue the cheek. 
But not take in the mind. 

Leon, Y«a, say you so ? 
There shall not at your father's house, these sev'n years. 
Be bom another such. 

Fior. O reverend. Sir 1 
As you would wish a child of your own youth 
To meet his happiness in love, speak for me ; 
Remember since you ow*d no more to time 
Than I do now ; and with thought of like affections, 
Step forth my advocate. 

Leon. You touch me deep. 
Deep, to the quick, sweet prince ; alas 1 alas 1 
I lost a daughter, that 'twixt heaven and earth 
Might thus have stood begetting wonder, as 
Yon lovely maiden does— of that no more ; — 
I'll to the king 3rour father, — this our compact, 
Your honour not o'er thrown by your desires, 
I am friend to them and you. [Exit Leon, and Qeom. 

Flor, Dear, look up : 
Tho' fortune, visible an enemy. 
Should chase us with my father; power, no jot 
Hath she to change our loves. 

Perd, Alas, my lord, 
Bethink yourself, as I do me. Heav'n knows. 
All faults I make, when I do come to know 'em 
I do repent — Alas ! I've shown too much 
A maiden's simpleness ; I have betray'd, 
Unwittingly divorced a noble prince 



4o8 APPENDIX 

From a dear father's love ; have caused him sell 

His present honour, and his hop'd reversion. 

For a poor sheep-hook, and its lowly mistress, 

Of lesser price than that — beseech you, sir, 

Of your own state take care, drown the remembrance 

Of me, my father's cot, and these poor beauties 

Wrong'd by your praise too often. 

Flcr, My Perdita^ 
How sweetly thou dost plead against thyself? 
I^t us retire, my love, — again I swear. 
Not for Bohemia nor the pomp that may 
Be there-cut glean'd ; for all the sun sees, or 
The close earth wombs, or the profound seas hide 
In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath. 
To thee, my fair betroth' d,— with thee I'll fly 
From stormy regions, and a lowering sky ; 
Where no base views our purer minds shall move ; 
And all our wealth be innocence and love. 

Act III. — Another Part of the Country j— Enter Autolycus in rich clothes. 

Atitol, How fortune drops into the mouth of the diligent man 1 See, if I be not 
transformed courtier again ! — four silken gamesters, who attended the king, and were 
revelling by themselves, at some distance from the shepherds, have drank so plente- 
ously, that their weak brains are turned topsy-turvy, — I have found one of 'em, an 
old court comrade of mine, retired from the rest, sobering himself with sleep under 
the shade of a hawthorn ; I made use of our ancient familiarity to exchange gar- 
ments with him: the pedler's clothes are on his back, and the pack by his side, as 
empty as his pockets, for I have sold all my trumpery. [Hereupon the soliloquy 
continues, made up of lines 680-700, and ending with 773^775, as the Qown and 
Old Shepherd enter, the scene then continues to the end as in the original. The 
next scene opens in Paulina's bouse. Enter Paulina and a gentleman.] 

Paul. Beseech you, Sir, now that my first burst of joy is over, and my ebbing 
spirits no longer bear down my attention, give my ear again the circumstances of this 
strange story. Leontes arrived I escaped from the fury of the sea I vailed in the sem- 
blance of a poor shepherd ! and has now thrown himself into the arms of Polixenes I 
'tis a chain of wonders ! 

Gent. Yet the tale is not more wonderful than true; I was present at the 
interview, 

Paul. Speak, Sir, speak ; tell me all. 

Gent. Soon as our king returned from the palace, he retired with the good 
Camillo, to lament the unhappy and ill-placed affection of his son ; yet, as gleams of 
sunshine ofl break in upon a storm, so, through all his indignation, there burst out 
at intervals paternal love and sorrow ; 'twas brought him that a person of no great 
seeming intreated admittance ; a refusal was returned to his bold request ; but the 
stranger, unawed by this discouragement, advanced to the king's presence ; his bold- 
ness had met with an equal punishment, bad he not on the sudden assumed a majesty 
of mien and feature, that threw a kind of radiance over his peasant garb, and fixt all 
who saw him with silent wonder and admiration. 

Paul. Well, but Polixenes ? 



GARRICK'S VERSION 409 

Gent, He stepped forth to the stranger; but ere he could enquire the reasons of 
his presumption, — behold, said Leontes^ bursting into grief, behold [the ?] unhappy 
king, that much hath wronged you, — behold Leontes ! — On this the king started from 
him, — true, I have wronged, cried Leontes ; but if penitence can atone for guilty be- 
hold these eyes, wept dry with honest sorrow; — this breast, rent with honest anguish; 
and if you can suspect that my heart yet harbours those passions which once infested 
it, I offer it to your sword ; lay it open to the day ! 

Paul, Oh, the force, the charm, of returning virtue I 

Gent. Its charm was felt, indeed, by the generous king; for at once forgetting 
that fatal enmity that had so long divided them, he embraced the penitent Leontes, 
with the unfeigned warmth of one who had found a long-lost friend, returned beyond 
hope from banishment or death ; while Leontes^ overwhelmed with such unlooked- 
for goodness, fell on his neck and wept ; thus they stood embracing and embraced, 
in dumb and noble sorrow ! Their old friendship being thus renewed, Leontes began 
his intercession for prince Floriul; but Polixenes — break we off— here comes the good 
Camilla; speak, thou bear'st thy tidings in thy looks. 

Enter Camillo. 

Cam. Nothing but bonfires ! — the oracle is fulfilled ! 
O Paulina, the beatings of my heart, will scarce 
Permit my tongue to tell thee what it bears. 

Paul. I know it all, my friend ; the King of Sicily is arrived. 

Cam. Not only the King of Sicily is arrived, but his daughter, his long-lost 
daughter, is found. 

Paul, Gracious God, support me ! his daughter found ! can it be ? how was she 
saved ? and where has she been concealed ? 

Cam. That shepherdess, our prince has so long and so secretly affected, proves \ 
Sicilians heiress ; the old shepherd, her supposed father, delivered the manner how 
he found her on the coast, produced a fardel, in which are incontested proofs of every 
circumstance. 

Paul. Can this be true ? 

Cam. Most true, if ever truth were pregnant by circumstance. [The dialogue 
here reverts to the original at V, ii, 32, which it follows literally, except, of course, 
that Camillo takes the speeches of the different gentlemen, and all mention of An- 
tigonus and the bear is omitted. At the close Paulina says :] 

Camillo, haste thee ; this royal assembly is entering now the city. Haste thee 
with Paulina* s greeting to the double majesty, and our new-fo«nd princess; give 
them to know I have in my keeping a statue of Hermume, performed by the most 
rare master in Italy. He, so near to Hermione, hai done Hermione, that they will 
speak to her, and stand in hope of answer. Invite them to the sight of it, put thy 
message into what circumstance of compliment the time and sudden occasion may 
admit, and return with best speed to prepare for their unprovided entertainment. 

[Exit, 

Cam, I obey you, madam. [Exeunt severally. 

[The scene which follows is the latter part of V, ii, where Avtolycus meets the 
Old Shepherd and Clown appearing in the blossoms of their fortune. It adheres to 
the original, except that the delicate hint conveyed by the phrase ' being gently con- 
* sidered ' is here amplified to an open demand for a bribe :] 

Clown. Thou wilt amend thy life ? 



410 APPENDIX 

Autol, Ay, an't like your good worship. 

Clown, No, it does not like my worship now ; but it is like it may like my wor- 
ship when it is amended ; therefore have heed that thou dost amend it. 

AutoL I will, an't like you. 

Clown, Give me thy hand ; hast nothing in 't ? am not I a gentleman ? I must 
be gently considered, — am not I a courtier? Seest thou not the air of the Court in 
these enfoldings ? Hath not my gait in it the measure of the Court ? 

Autol, Here is what gold I have. Sir, — so, I have bribed him with his own 
money. [Aside, 

Clown. And when am I to have the other moiety ? and the young man in pawn 
till you bring it me ? 

Autol, After you have done the business. Sir. 

Clown, Well, I'll swear to the prince, thou art as honest a tall fellow as any in 
Bohemia [and so forth to the end of the scene as it stands in the original. The next 
scene and last is a combination. It opens with the first twenty-six lines of V, i, where 
Qeomenes remonstrates with Leontes for the excessive indulgence of his grief; here 
Polixenes takes the speeches of Cleomenes; then follow three or four lines from III, 
ii, where Paulina apologises for her freedom of speech. Then we revert to V, i, 60- 
65, and lastly settle down on V, iii, 7 : ' all my poor services,* etc. At line 51, < stand- 
< ing like stone with thee,' a stage-direction bids Leontes to ' burst into tears.' Alter 
Perdita has said ' I kneel and then implore her blessing,' Florizel says :] 
Rise not yet ; 

I join me in the same religious duty ; 
Bow to the shadow of that royal dame, 
Who, dying, gave my Perdita to life 
And plead an equal right to blessing. 

Leon. O master-piece of art ! nature's deceived 
By thy perfection, and at every look 
My penitence is all afloat again. [ Weeps, 

Cleom. My lord, your sorrow was too sore laid on 
Which sixteen winters cannot blow away 
So many summers dry ; scarce any joy 
Did ever so long live ; no sorrow, 
But kiird itself much sooner. 

Polix. Dear, my brother 
I^t him that was the cause of this, have power 
To take off so much grief from you, as he 
Will piece upon himself. 

Perd. Let Perdita 
Put up her first request, that her dear father 
Have pity on her father, nor let sorrow 
Second the stroke of wonder. 

Paul. Indeed, my lord 
If I had thought the sight of my poor image [and so on, as in the original, as far as 
where Perdita says, line 105, * So long could I stand by a looker-on,* when Florizel 
adds : * So long could I Admire her royal image stampt on thee. Heiress of all her 
* qualities.* The original is then resumed, and continues as far as line 121, where 
Paulina says : * Strike all that look on you with marvel !' and the statue descends. 
Thereupon :] 



GARRICK'S VERSION 411 

Leant, [retiring]. Heavenly Powers ! 

Paul, [to Leont.]. Start not ! — her actions shall be as holy, as 
You hear my spell is lawful ; do not shun her, 
Until you see her die again, for then 
You kill her double ; nay, present your hand 
When she was young, you wooed her ; now in age 
She is become your suitor. 

Leont, Support me, Gods ! 
If this be more than visionary bliss 
My reason cannot hold ; my wife ! my queen I 
But speak to me, and turn me wild with transport, 
I cannot hold me longer fjx>m these arms ; 
She's warm I she lives I 

Polix, She hangs about his neck ; 
If she pertain to life, let her speak too. 

Perd. O Floriul! [PerdiU leans m Florizers bosom, 

Flor, My princely shepherdess 1 
This is too much for hearts of thy soft mold. 

Leont. Her beating heart meets mine, and fluttering owns 
Its long-lost half; these tears that choke her voice 
Are hot and moist, — it is Hermione / [Emhrace, 

Polix, I'm turned myself to stone ! where has she liv'd ? 
Or how so stolen from the dead ? 

Paul, That she is living. 
Were it but told you, should be hooted at 
Like an old tale ; but it appears she lives, 
Tho' yet she speak not. Mark them yet a little. 
'Tis past all utterance, almost past thought; 
Dumb eloquence beyond the force of words. 
To break the charm. 

Please you to interpose ; fair maiden, kneel. 
And pray your mother's blessing ; turn, good lady. 
Our Perdita is foimd, and with her found 
A princely husband, whose instinct of royalty, 
From under the low thatch where she was bred, 
Took his untutor'd queen. 

Herm, You Gods look down 
And from your sacred vials pour your graces 
Upon their princely heads ! 

Leont. Hark ! hark ! she speaks — 
O pipe, through sixteen winters dumb ! then deem*d 
Harsh as the raven's note ; now musical 
As nature's song, tun'd to th' according spheres. 

Herm. Before this swelling flood o'erbear our reason. 
Let purer thoughts, unmixed with earth's alloy, 
Flame up to heaven, and for its mercy shown 
Bow we our knees together. 

Leont. Oh ! if penitence 
Have power to cleanse the foul sin-spotted soul, 



412 APPENDIX 

Leonte^ tears have washed away his guilt. 
If thanks unfeigned be all that you require, 
Most bounteous Gods, for happiness like mine. 
Read in my heart, your mercy's not in vain. 

Herm, This firstling duty paid, let transport loose 
My lord, my king, — there's distance in those names, — 
My husband ! 

Leant. O my Hermione ! — have I deserved 
That tender name ? 

Herm, No more ; by all that's past 
Forgot in this enfolding, and forgiven. 

Leant, Thou, matchless saint ! — ^Thou paragon of virtue ! 

Ptrd. Oh, let me kneel, and kiss that honoured hand. 

Herm, Thou Perdita, my long-lost child, that fill'st 
My measure up of bliss — ^tell me, my own. 
Where hast thou been preserved ? where lived ? how found 
Bohemians court ? for thou shalt hear, that I 
Knowing, by Paulina^ that the oracle 
Gave hope thou wast in being, have preserved 
Myself to see the issue. 

Paul, There's time enough 
For that, and many matters more, of strange 
Import, — how the queen escap'd from Sicily, 
Retired with me, and vailed her from the world— 
But at this time no more ; go, go together. 
Ye precious winners all, your exultation 
Partake to every one ; I, an old turtle, 
Will wing me to some withered bough, and there 
My mate, that's never to be found again, 
Lament, 'till I am lost. 

Leant. No, no, Paulina, 
Live bless'd with blessing others,— my Polixenes ! [Presenting Polix. to Herm. 

What ? look upon my brother ; both your pardons. 
That e'er I put between your holy looks 
My ill-suspicion. — Come, our good Camilla, 
Now pay the duty here, — thy worth and honesty 
Are richly noted and here justified 
By us, a pair of kings ; and last, my queen. 
Again I give you this your son-in-law, 
And son to this good king by heaven's directing 
Long troth-plight to our daughter. [Leon., Herm., and Polix. join their hands. 

Perd. I am all shame 
And ignorance itself, how to put on 
This novel garment of gentility, 
And yield a patch' d behaviour, between 
My country-level, and my present fortunes, 
That ill becomes this presence. I shall learn, 
I trust I shall with meekness, — but I feel, 
(Ah, happy that I do) a love, an heart 



GARRICK'S VERSION 413 

Unaltered to my prince, my HoriuL 

Flor. Be still my queen of May, my shepherdess, 
Rule in my heart ; my wishes be thy subjects. 
And harmless as thy sheep. 

Leont, Now, good Paulina^ 
Lead us from hence, where we may leisurely 
Each one demand, and answer to his part 
Performed in this wide gap of time, since first 
We were dissevered — ^then thank the righteous Gods, 
Who, after tossing in a perilous sea. 
Guide us to port, and a kind beam display, 
To gild the happy evening of our day. \Exeunt, 

[This Statue-scene, with all its tinsel sentiment, retained its place in Mrs Inch- 
bald's British Drama, in Oxberry's (1823), and in Cumberland's (n. d.).] 

Garrick's success with Florizel and Perdita inspired one, Charles Marsh, to put 
forth in 1756, another alteration of The Wintet's Tale, The ambition which fired 
Marsh (of whom, by the way, Allibone records no other fact than that he wrote this 
alteration and another of Cymbeline) may be gathered from his title page, which bears 
the following: — 

< Think'st thou, the Swan of Avon spreads her Wings, 
Her brooding Wings, for thee alone to plume. 
And nestle there, O Garrick ? — ^Thou deserv*st 
Indeed, much cherishing : thy Melody 
Charms ev'ry Ear. But sure, it ill beseems 
One Cygnety thus to stretch its little Pinions, 
Ambitiously intent, to fill that Nest, 
Wliose roomy Limits well may shelter Numbers.' 

Marsh's chiefest alteration consists in opening the play at the end of the sixteen 
years during which Hermione has been imprisoned, without a trial ; nor would that 
trial even now be granted to her ^ ere it not that life in Sicily has become rather 
precarious, certainly uncomfortable, owing to the fact that ' volcanoes ' ' fi^ught with 
* raging fires ' * issue from the mouth of thund'ring iEtna' and * tear up seated rocks,' 
while * large Flakes of Embers involve in pitchy Clouds the dusky Air !' The infer- 
ence to be drawn from these portents is clear to the most clouded intellect that the 
gods are angry because of Hermione's prolonged imprisonment ; and that of course 
she must be brought to instant trial. Leontes' jealousy is set forth by an aged cour- 
tier with a remarkable memory, as an event which happened in his youth. The rest 
of the play is a gallimaufry of the original, and as it was never acted, as far as I 
can make out, I think we can dismiss it without lasting regret or more space. 



414 APPENDIX 

SCENERY AND COSTUME 

In 1856, Charles Kean brought out, in London, a noteworthy reproduction of 
The Winter's Tale. Possibly, no play of Shakespeare has been ever acted with 
more scrupulous fidelity to the text (even emendations from Collier's MS, when 
adopted, were carefully noted) or with more laborious zeal in representing ancient 
classical costumes and customs, even the flowers painted on the scenes were copies 
of Athenian plants, — apparently realism could no further go. In the libretto pre- 
pared for the occasion, at the end of each Act there are Notes, compiled from the 
best authorities, concerning Grecian life in all its phases, its music, its dancing, its 
musical and warlike instruments, its religion, its festivals, its architecture, its theatres, 
etc. etc. From the Preface^ written by Charles Kean, himself, are taken the 
following extracts: — 

* It is evident that when an attempt is made to combine truth with history, conflict- 
ing epochs cannot all be illustrated ; and I have therefore thought it permissible to 
select a period which, while it accords with the spirit of the play, may be consid- 
ered the most interesting, as well as the most instructive. The pivot on which the 
story revolves is, in fact, the decision pronounced by the Oracle of Delphi ; and tak- 
ing this incident as the comer-stone of the whole fabric, I have adopted a period 
when Syracuse, according to Thucydides, had, from a mere Doric colony, increased 
in magnificence to a position in no way inferior to that of Athens herself when at the 
summit of her political prosperity. An opportunity is thus afforded of reproducing a 
classical era, and placing before the eyes of the spectator, tableaux vivants of the 
private and public life of the ancient Greeks, at a time when the arts flourished to a 
perfection, the scattered vestiges of which still delight and instruct the world. As- 
suming that the civilization of Athens was reflected by Syracuse, I feel that no period 
could have been selected more interesting and suggestive, or more likely to give addi- 
tional zest to those who wish to contemplate the manners and habits of a country once 
"the centre of ancient civilisation and the fruitful mother of so many sons,*' but which 
can now, alas ! boast of nothing beyond its history and its ruins. 

* To connect the country knows as " Bohemia " with an age so remote, would be 
impossible ; I have therefore followed the suggestion of Sir Thomas Ilanmcr, by the 
substitution of Bitkynia, The difference of name in no way affects the incidents 
or metre of the play, while it enables me to represent the costume of the inhabit- 
ants of Asia Minor at a corresponding period, associated so intimately with Greece, 
and acquiring additional interest from close proximity to the Homeric kingdom of 
Troy. 

* The Phrygian dress presents a marked distinction between the two races that con- 
stitute the chief actors in the drama, while at the same lime scope is afforded for the 
introduction of customs common to both. A leading instance is furnished in the pas- 
toral scene of the Fourth Act, where the festivities applicable to the season of sheep- 
shearing take place, and in which Shakespeare brings in, for the purpose of a dance, 
twelve rustics, " who have made themselves all men of hair, and called themselves 
** Satyrs." I have here ventured to introduce one of those festivals in honour of 
Bacchus, known under the title of Dionysia, wherein similar disguises were used, 
while the actors indulged in mad enthusiasm and extravagant merriment. 

* For the purpose of presenting with closer accuracy the domestic manners of the 
period, Leontes and his Queen Hermione, together with their Kingly guest, are first 
discovered, towards the termination of a Feastj on the evening before the intended 



SCENERY AND COSTUME 415 

departure of Polixenes. As dancing and music invariably formed a portion of such 
entertainments, a representation of the celebrated Pyrrhic Dance^ so popular through- 
out the principal states of Greece for its martial character, has been attempted. 

< Later in the play, Time, as Chorus, has been restored, in accordance with the 
poet's conception. ... To carry out the idea, a classical figure, more in accordance 
with the character of the play as now represented, has been preferred to the ordinary 
old man with his scythe and hour-glass, who was unknown in classic ages. Chronos, 
the ancient representative of Time, has been chosen, and I have ventured to associate 
him with an allegorical tableau of Luna and the Stars (personified), sinking before 
the Car of Phoebus, which rises with all its attributes of ^lendour. Each figure is 
taken from an antique, or from the works of Flaxman. 

< The theatre at Syracuse has been selected for the ceremony of the trial of Her- 
mione, as it is known that in Greece such edifices were frequently used for legislative 
or judicial proceedings, and an opportunity is thus afforded for the introduction of a 
scenic display, equally novel and interesting. 

< To give completeness to the whole, an endeavour has been made to assimilate the 
music to the action. As all writers on the subject afford but meagre information, the 
difficulty here becomes very great ; nevertheless, using such authorities as we possess, 
including the Hymn to Apollo^ which many consider genuine Greek, and the descrip- 
tions given by Dr Bumey and other eminent Professors, Mr J. L. Hatton has com- 
posed the overture, entre-actes, and incidental airs, with the exception of the Hymn^ 
which is played at the opening of the Second Scene of the First Act, during the 
progress of the Banquet. . . . Although spectacular effects have been introduced, it has 
only been where such are in accordance with the subject and incidents of the play. . . . 
The combination may be considered less an exhibition of pageantry appealing to the 
eye, than an illustration of history addressed to the understanding.' 

[The following are the Costumes : — ] 
Leontes (First Dress). — From a Figure of the Lycian King, Jobates, on a 

Vase in the Hamilton Collection. Engraved in Tischbein's Hamilton Vases^ 

i, pi. I. 
Leontes (Second Dress). — ^The black Himation, or Mantle, was the peculiar 

sign of mourning among the Greeks of the most refined period. 
Antigonus (First Dress).— From a Figure of Priam, on a Vase in the Museum 

of the Vatican. Museum Gregorianumj ii, tav. 60. 
Camillo (Second Dress). — From Figure of a Paedagogos, on a Vase belonging 

to the Due de Blacas, Paris. Panofka, Mus^e Blacas, pi. 7. 
AUTOLYCUS (First Dress). — Wears the felt cap, still used in Asia Minor. 
** (Second Dress). — Hamilton Vases, i, pi. 43. 

" (Third Dress). — From a Vase, engraved in Gerhard's Auserlesene 

Vasenbilder, taf. 166. 
Cleomenes and Dion. — From Figures of the Dioscuri consulting the Oracle at 

Delphi. Engraved in Gerhard's Denkmdler und Forschungen^ taf. 59. 
First Attendant. — From a Figure published as Ulysses, by Millin, Peintures 

de Vases Antiques^ i, pi. 14. 
Second Attendant. — From a Figure on a Vase in the British Museum, repre- 
senting the story of Pelops and Hippodamia. 
Second Lord. — From a Figure of Castor on the celebrated Vase, painted by 

Meidias, in the British Museum. 
Polixenes (First Dress). — From a Figure on a large Vase at Naples, repre- 



4l6 APPENDIX 

senting a company of tragedians at full dress rehearsal. Monumenti intditi 
deir Instituto di Roma, Atlas, iii, tav. 31. 

The Tiara from a Figure of Minos on a Vase in Munich. Millin, Tombeaux 
de Canosa^ pi. 7. 

PoLDCENES (Second Dress). — From a Figure of Castor on a large Vase at Naples, 
belonging to M. Jatta, representing the Dioscuri with Talos. 

Mariner. — From a Figure of Charon wearing the Exomis, a one-sleeved dress, 
on an Athenian Lecythus Vase, found at Athens. Engraved in Stackelberg, 
Grdber der Hellenen^ pi. 47. 

Old Shepherd wears the Bardocucullus, a Hood seen in statues of Telesphorus, 
the same as the Capote of the modem Greeks. 

The Clown wears the thick casing still used by the Shepherds of Asia Minor. 

Heralds, Squires, and Ofhcers of the Court. — From a Vase in the Louvre, 
representing the departure of Achilles and Patroclus, and the combat between 
Achilles and Telephus. Millingen, Unedited Monuments^ and Hope's Cos- 
tumes^ pi. 81. 

The Elders of the Council. — Paintings in Tischbein's Hamilton Vases, pis. 
3, 20, and 54. And Gerhard^s Vases et Coupes, taf. 23 and 24. 

Guards. — From a Vase in the Brit Mus., representing the departure of Lycaon. 
Engraved by G. Scharf in Smith's Smaller Diet, of Ant., s. v. Arma. 

Officers. — From a Vase at Naples, representing the Fall of Troy. Museo 
Borbonico, xiv, tav. 41. 

Mamillius. — From a Vase in the Collection of Mr Rogers. The Toy from an 
actual Greek one in terra cotta, preserved in the Brit. Mus. 

Trumpeters. — With the Laseion, or curtained shield, from Vases in the Brit. 
Mus. Nos. 756, 757, and 873. 

Men with Skins over their Heads, from an Ancient Cameo. Tassie's Gems, 
No. 4867. 

Attendants on Polixenes. — From a painted Vase, representing King Midas 
with his Attendants. — Atlas of the Monumenti deW Instituto di Roma, i, pi. 
50, and a Vase at Rome. — Gerhard's Auserlesene Vasenbilder, taf. 166. 

The Butler, or Symposiarch. — From a Vase at Berlin. Gerhard's Vases et 
Coupes, taf. 20. 

Musicians. — From the Frieze of the Parthenon. — Pompeian Paintings. The 
walls of a tomb in the Necropolis at Tarquinii, and painted Vases in the 
Brit. Mus. 

Florizel and Bithynian Shepherds. — Adapted from the dress of the beau- 
tiful Phrygian youth, Atys. Zoega's Bassi-rilievi, tav. 13; and Hope's Cos- 
tumes, pi. 19. 

Florizel. — From a Figure of Paris on a Vase found at Ruvo, now in the 
Carlsruhe Collection. Gerhard's Vases Apuliens, taf. D. 

Time was personi6ed by the Greeks under the name Chronos, a later version of 
Kronos, and under that of ^vum. The one was represented in Ancient Art, 
with the head veiled and holding the Falx, or pruning hook ; the other of 
terrible aspect, with key and sceptre. Both Figures were provided with 
wings. Vide Pompeian painting, Aluseo Borbonico, ix, tav. 26; The Apo- 
theosis of Homer in the Bnt. Mus. ; and a sculpture in the Villa Albani, at 
Rome, engraved in Zoega's Bassi-rilievi, tav. 59. 

The Group of Silene, the Moon, sinking into the Ocean, and the Stars setting. 



PLAN OF THE WORK 417 

is composed from Greek Bas-relie& relating to Endymion; from puntings 
found in Tombs at Canosa, and a beautiful Vase Painting in the Mus^ 
Blacas, at Paris. 

The Rising Phcebus. — From the centre of the Shield of Achilles, by Flax- 
man, and a Vase in the Imperial Collection of Vienna, engraved in Gerhard's 
Archdologische Zeiiung, No, 20. 

Hermione. — From a Painted Vase in the Royal Museum at Berlin, represent- 
ing the Marriage of Hercules and Hebe. — Gerhard's Vases Apuliensy taf. 15. 

Ferdita. — From a Painted Vase at Naples, representing a Sacrifice to Venus. — 
Millingen, Peintures Antiques de Vases Grecs^ pi. 41. 

Pauuna. — From a personage of high rank on a Vase in the Hamilton G>llec- 
tion. Tischbein, i, pi. 9. 

Emilia. — From Vase Paintings. — Gerhard, Antike Bildwerke^ taf. 17, and 
Tischbein's Hamilton Vases, i, pi. 15. 

Satyrs. — From a Statue of Silenus in the Palazzo Gentili, at Rome. — Gerhard, 
Antike Bildwerke, taf. cv., No. 3. 

Swineherds. — From a Mosaic found in the Tablinum of the house of the 
Tragic Poet at Pompeii. — Afuseo Borbonico^ ii, tav. 56. 

Rustic Boys with Bells. — From Bassi-rilievi in the Capitol and the Vatican, 
at Rome. — Foggini, Museum Capitolinum^ iii, pi. 49 ; and Visconti, Mus, Pio 
Clem, iv, tav. 20. 



PLAN OF THE WORK, Etc. 

In this Edition the attempt is made to give, in the shape of Textual Notes, on 
the same page with the Text, all the Various Readings of The Wintet's Tale, from 
the Second Folio, down to the latest critical Edition of the play ; then, as Commen- 
tary, follow the Notes which the Editor has thought worthy of insertion, not only 
for the purpose of elucidating the text, but at times as illustrations of the History of 
Shakespearian criticism. In the Appendix will be found discussions of subjects, 
which on the score of length could not be conyeniently included in the Commentary. 

LIST OF EDITIONS COLLATED IN THE TEXTUAL NOTES. 

The Second Fouo [FJ 163a 

The Third Fouo [F,] 1664 

The Fourth Fouo [FJ 1685 

N. RoWE (First Edition) [Rowe i] 1709 

N. RoWE (Second Edition) [Rowe ii] 1714 

A. Pope (First Edition) [Pope i] 1723 

A. Pope (Second Edition) [Pope ii] 1728 

L. Theobald (First Edition) [Theob. i] 1733 

L. Theobald (Second Edition) . . . . [Theob. ii] 1740 

Sir T. Hanmer [Han.] 1744 

W. Warburton [Warb.] 1747 

Dr Johnson [Johns.] 1765 

E. Capbll [Cap.] .. .. (?) 1765 

27 



4i8 



APPENDIX 



Johnson and Steevens 

Johnson and Steevens 

Johnson and Steevens 

J. Rann 

£. Malone 

Geo. Steevens 

Reed's Steevens 

Reed's Steevens 

Boswell's Malone 

C. Knight 

J. P. Collier (First Edition) 

J. O. Halliwell (Folio Edition) 
S. W. Singer (Second Edition) 

A. Dyce (First Edition) 

H. Staunton 

J. P. Collier (Second Edition) 

R. G. White (First Edition) 

Cambridge Edition ( W. G. Clark and W. A. 
Wright) 

X • ivEIGHTLEY •• •• •• »^» •■ 

Charles and Mary Cowden-Clarke 

A. Dyce (Second Edition) 

A. Dyce (Third Edition) 

J. P. Collier (Third Edition) 

H. N. Hudson 

Dr W. J. ROLFE 

R. G. White (Second Edition) 

K. Deighton 

Cambridge (Second Edition, W. A. Wright) 



[Var. »73] 
[Var. »78] 
[Var. '85] 
[Rann] 
[Mai.] 
[Steev.] 
[Var. »03] 
[Var. '13] 
[Var.] 
[Knt.] 
[Coll. i] 
[Hal.] 
[Sing, ii] 
[Dyce i] 
[Sta.] 
[Coll. ii] 
[Wh.i] 

[Cam.] 
[Ktly] 
[Cla.] 
[Dyce ii] 
[Dyce iii] 
[Coll. iii] 
[Huds.] 
[Rife] 
[Wh. ii] 
[Dtn] 
[Cam. ii] 



W. Harness 

Globe Edition (Clark and Wright) 
N. Delius (New Edition) 
Rev. John Hunter (Longman's Series) 
F. A. Marshall \^Hmry Irving Edition) 



[Glo.] 
[Del.] 



(?) 



(?) 



773 

778 

785 

787 
790 

793 
803 

813 

821 

840 
842 
856 
856 

857 

857 
858 

858 

863 
864 
864 
866 

875 

877 
880 

880 

883 

889 

891 

830 
864 
869 
872 
890 



The last five editions I have not collated beyond referring to them in disputed 
passages. The text of Shakespeare has become, within the last twenty-five years, so 
settled that to collate, word for word, editions which have appeared within these 
years, would be a work of supererogation. The case is different where an editor 
revises his text and notes in a second or a third edition ; it is then interesting to mark 
the effect of maturer judgement. 

The Text is that of the First Folio of 1623. Every word, I might say almost 
every letter, has been collated with the original. 

In the Textual Notes the symbol Ff indicates the agreement of the Seccmd^ 
Thirds and Fourth Folios. 

I have not called attention to every little misprint in the Folio. The Textual 
Notes will show, if need be, that they are misprints by the agreement of all the 
Editors in their correction. 



PLAN OF THE WORK 419 

Nor is notice taken of the first Editor who adopted the modem spelling, or who 
substituted commas for parentheses, or changed ? to I. 

The sign + indicates the agreement of RowE, Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, War- 
burton, and Johnson. 

When Warburton precedes Hanmer in the Textual Notes^ it indicates that 
Hanmer has followed a suggestion of Warburton's. 

The words et ceL after any reading indicate that it is the reading of all other 
editions. 

The words et seq, indicate the agreement of all subsequent editions. 

The abbreviation {subs.") indicates that the reading is substantially given, and that 
immaterial variations in spelling, punctuation, or stage-directions are disregarded. 

An Emendation or Conjecture given in the Commentary is not repeated in the 
Textual Notes, unless it has been adopted by an Editor in his Text ; nor is conj, 
added in the Textual Notes to the name of the proposer of the conjecture unless the 
conjecture happens to be that of an Editor, in which case its omission would lead to 
the inference that such was the reading of his text. 

Coll. (MS) refers to Collier's copy of the Second Folio bearing in its margin 
Manuscript annotations by an unknown hand. 

In citations from plays, other than The fVinter's Tale^ the Acts, Scenes, and Lines 
of The Globe Edition are followed, unless otherwise stated. 



LIST OF BOOKS FROM WHICH CITATIONS HAVE BEEN MADE. 

To economise space in the Commentary I have frequently cited, with the name of 
an author, an abbreviated title of his work, and sometimes not even as much as that. 
In the following List, arranged alphabetically, enough of the full title is given to 
serve as a reference. 

Be it understood that this List gives only those books in my own Library where- 
from Notes have been taken at first hand ; it does not include books which have been 
consulted or have been used in verifying quotations. Were these included the List 
would be many times as long. 

E. A. Abbott: Shakespearian Grammar London, 1870 

C. Badham: {Cambridge Essays, p. 261) London, 1 856 

W. Bagehot : Literary Studies London, 1895 

S. Bailey : The Received Text of Shakespeare London, 1862 

C. Bathurst: Remarks on the Differences of Shakespeare^ s 

Versification, etc, London, 1 857 

Batman vppon Bartholome, his Booke De Proprietatibus Rerum London, 1582 

T. S. Baynes : Shakespeare Studies London, 1896 

S. Beisly: Shakspere's Garden London, 1864 

"RoKHB.^ I Life of J. P, JCemble London, 1 825 

Brand: Popular Antiquities, etc. (Bohn*s ed.) Ix)ndon, 1873 

Georg Br ANDES : William Shakespeare Manchen, 1896 

J. C. BucKNiLL: The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare . . London, i860 

J. Bulloch : Studies of the Text of Shakespeare . . . . London, 1878 

H. BuLTHAUPT: Dramaturgie der Classiker (2te Aufl.) . . Oldenburg, 1884 



420 APPENDIX 

Burton: 7^ Analomy ef Melaiuhaly {Antii»ixai) .. .. Oxfoid, 1651 

T. Campbell; Dramatic Wortt a/ Shakispiart LondoD, 1838 

" Lift ef Mn Siddotu London, 1834 

XjMDCKavviXA.: Shakispiart' s Ltgttl AeqviretHetm .. .. New York, 1859 

E. Capell Kotti, ctf. London, 1779 

J. Caro {Engthchi Studiin, Bd. II. hft. i) Hdlbnioo, 1878 

R. CABTWWiiHT Ncul /iia^/ip^i iH Sioitftrt London, 1866 

G. Chalmers: Suppltnuntal Apology far tht BtHevtn at ikt 

Shakapiart Paptn, tie. London, 1799 

^.CwKttKvs.^: Bookof Dayt Edinbrn^b, 1863 

\i.C^KYYr.iA.: Popular Music of thi Oldtn Tint .. .. London, D. d. 

S. T. CoLUtiDGB : /ifola ami Ltttuni L4]adi»i, 1849 

Haltlbv Coleridge Eaayi and Marginalia London, 1851 

yY.CmAA-a.: Ntv> Particulars, ^ti. London, 1S36 

" Reasmi for a New Edition of Shakisptart .. London, 1S43 

" Srven LectHfcs ef Coleridge, ttc. London, 1856 

H.CORSOH: AnhtToductiBtttotkiStudyofShaiesptare Boiitoa, 18S9 

COTGEAVB: DictionarU of the Frmch and English Toi^tU . . London, 1632 

TheCowden-ClarkbS: Tht Skaktiptare iCcy London, 1879 

G. L. Craik : Tht EnglUk ef Shakesptare London, 1857 

JOHK Ckoft; Annolalions m tkt Playi of Skaitsptar . . .. York, 1 8 10 

E. S. Dallas : The Gay Science London, 1866 

P. A. Oaviel; Mofei and Emendations Lcodon, 1870 

C. K. Davis: Tie lavtiK^Aahspeare St I^ul, 1SS4 

N. Dblius : J?ie Praia in Shaitipiaret Dramen [Jahtbncb, t) Berlin, 1870 

F.DoacE: /llus/ra/iBHsafSAaitipeare,ete. Lcaidon, 1807 

N. Dkake: Shaiespeart and his Timet London, 1817 

Drayton: tVorit London, 1740 

A. DVCB : Remarks en Colliei't and KnigAfs editions . . • . London, 1844 

" A Frai Notes on Sha&espeare London, 1853 

" Strictures on Mr. Collier's Nne Edition .. .. London, I S59 

T.F.T.Dyer Folk-lore of Shaiespiare (Kepnal) .. .. NewYork,i884 

J. Earlb: Philology of the English Tongue Oiford, 1S79 

J. EASTWOODandW. A.Wright; Tht BibU Word-Book .. London, 1866 

T. Edwards ; Canons of Criticism London, 1765 

H. N, Ellacombe: Plant Lort and Gardtn Crafi ef Shakt- 

speart London, 1878 

A. J. Ellis : Early English Pronunciation (E. E. T. Soc.) . . London, 1869 
Sir Thomas Elyot: Tht Boki named The Geuemeur (ed. 

H. H. S. Croft from ed. 1531) London, 18S3 

K. ELEEri"«aj'i OK 5ia*tj/<-arr(lrans. bj L.Dora Schmili) . . London, 1874 

R.FarmeK: Essay on the Learning of Skakcsptare .. .. London, 1767 

F. J. Fleay; I.ifeand Work of Shakespeare London, 1886 

" History of the Stage, ^$9-1642 London, 189O 

" Biographical Chronicle of tht English Drama . . London, 1891 

John Florio A Worldeof IVotJis L^mdon, 1598 

R. Forby: Vocabulary of Etist Anglia London, I S30 

F. J. FURNIVALL: Introduction to tht Ltifold Shaksptre . . London, 1877 

David GAS.EKK: Uramatit IVorhs London, 1774 



PLAN OF THE WORK 



421 



David Gauiick: PrivaSe Cerrtsfvndtnct LoDdoo, 1831 

G. G. GkeVINUS Shakelptart {us K^:) Leipsie, i86a 

O. CiLDEMBIsTER: Das WintermSrihen L«ip«ic, 1870 

Chakles Gildon! Semarki on Skaieiptar's Pl^i, tie. 

(Rone's ed. vol. ni) LondoD, 1710 

Heney Giles Human Lift in Shakespeare BoMod, 186S 

ArthukGoldinc The XV. BtxAt af p. Ottidiia Naso .. London, 1567 

G. Gould: Corrigenda, etc London, 1884 

^.QtxeX: Skakiipeari and Ike Emblem Wriieri .. .. London, I S70 

Z.Grbvi Critical, Riitorical.nnJ Eifhtialiiry Notes. . .. London, 175+ 

A. B. Grosart Compute Workssf Robert Greene .. .. London, 18S1-86 

M, GUIZOT ! <Euvret Complilet Je Shakespeare Paris, 1868 

y^.HMXs: Notes and Bssays on Skakt^ean .. London, 1884 

^.YiK\.\JM: Liitratureef Europt .. London, 1839 

J. O. Haluwkll: DictUMoiy c/ Archaic and Provimtial 

mrdi London, 1S68 

W. Harness: Shake^are'i Dramatic Warkt London, 1830 

J. E. HarTING Ornithology 0/ Shakespeare Lcmdon, 187! 

\}.Y\.Kl.\XVl: Characters ef Shakespeare sPlayt ,. .. London, l8t 7 

B. HtATH: Xefisale/ SAaiesfear/i 7 ejrt .. .. London, 1765 

F.T.HZAU): SAahespeareasaLawy/er BoUon, 1883 

J. N. Hethesington: Shaifper/s Foolt (Cornbill MagMJne, 

December) 1879 

P. Holland Plittie s Natural History London, 1635 

FnAS-gots-VlcToR. Hugo (Eirvrts Cemplites de Shakespeare . . fana, 1868 
Joseph Hunter New llluslraHoits of the Life, Studies and 

tVri/ings of Shaktspean London, 1845 

R. W. Huntley : Cluisary of the Cotsinold Dialed .. .. London, 1868 
J. HuRDis; Cursory Remarks upon the ArrangemttU of tit 

Plays of Shaieipear London, 1793 

Mxs Inciibald British Theatre London, i8l3 

C. M. Ingi.eby: Shattspeart Hermeneutics London, 1S75 

Mrs Jameson CkaracliristiiS of Women, etc. London, 1833 

SWYNFSN Jervis-- Dictionary of the Language of Shahesptari London, 1858 
Chables Keak: maier't Tale, Arranged for JtepresentaHon 

al lie Princess's 7%eatre a6 April London, 1 856 

T.'KjiaHiis.y. Tie Shakespeare Expositor London, 1 867 

W. Kenkick ! Peviaa of Johnson's Shakespeare . . . . London, 1765 

B. G. Kinnear; Cmces Shaiespeariame London, 1883 

J, L. Klein: Cesehichtt dts Dramas (vol x) Berlin, 1866 

C. F. Koca: Jiistorisehe Grammatik der EngHscien Spradie . , Weimar, 1863 

F.KkeVSSIG: Vorletungen aef'/r Shakespeare Berlin, 1 86a 

Mrs Lennox: Shakesptar lUuitraltd London, 1753 

G. E. Lessing: Selciitd Prose Works (Tr«a» bjr E. C. Beuley 

Rnd Helen Zlmmem) London, 1879 

W. N. Lbttsom : Nem Readings in Skaie^eare (Bl&dcwood'i 

Maguia«, Angust} 1853 

Louis LE1^■ES : ^akespeart's Frauengestalten .. . . Stnltgut, 1893 

E. V. LiPFHANN : Dit KSsti von BikmeH (Johitnicli, xxvii) . . Berlin, 1891 



423 APPENDIX 

H. Littledale: 7^ Two NebU Kinsmen {Nan Sh. Sec.) . . London, 1S76 

Vi.Vi.lAJOVO: {Singet'i Stcoiui EdUi<m) London, 1S56 

F. LUEDER3 : Prolog und EpUeg hei Skatiipeare (Jalirbacb, t) Berlin, 1S70 
H.L,YTE: A /i/uwtJferiaU Loadon, 1578 

G. MacUonalo Orit, London, 18S1 (Reprinted u 7%e 

Imaginalkm) BoUoD, j88j 

C. MaOCAV : Clasiary ef Obtcurt Werdi in Shaieipeart, etc. . . Loodon, 1887 

Charles Marsh: TAe Wiitltri Ta!c,ailrT'a/tcm ShaJusfcare London, 1756 

LA.DY Marten On Scmi 0/ Skaktsptarc s Ftmait Character! Edinburgh, 1891 

J. MoNCK Mason: Commentt att the [Vor. 177S.] London, 1785 

" " Comments an Bsaumenl and Fletiker . . London, 1798 

A. M&lftRES; Shakespeare, les (Eitvraeises Critiques . . P«ri», 1865 
E. MoNTteUT ; CEuvres Camflites de Shakespeare . . . . Pint, 1867 

FvKES MoRYSON : Alt Itinerary London, 1617 

Nabes Glossary ed. Halliwell and Wright) London, 1S67 

Mme.deNav4rro AFcwMcntoncs NewVork.iSge 

J.Nichols Literary JUuslralians, etc London, 1S17 

B. Nicholson: [A4a*fj;v<ina««, Feb.) Philadelphia, 1S84 

L. Nottelle: &tude Fjntaisiste ttir Shakespeare , . . . Paris, 1866 

J. G. Orges : Crilical Natei on Shaiesf care's CamtdUt . . London, n. d. 

Sir Thomas Overburve A H^/e, etc. London, 1627 

V.tax: MrwAfcmoirse/MiitBn London, 1 740 

T. Percy : Reliqites of Ancient English Poetry London, 1765 

Sir PHIUP Perring Hard k'aaliin Shakafear/ (ed. ii) . . London, 1886 
J. O. HALLlwEl-L-pHlLLTPrs Ootlines of the Life ef Shaie- 

speare London, iSSs 

R. C. A. Prior ; Popular Namti af British Plants, etc. . . London, 1 863 

E. H. RanneY: {Religie- Philosophical JouTTial, 30 December) Chicago, 1893 

y9.VKa»: Cursory Criticism London. 1 79I 

" Remarks, Critical and niuslralivc, etc. .. .. London, 1 7S3 
Clement Robinson: A Handefull of Pleasant Delitts (Arbet'a 

Reprint) London, 1584 

A. Roffe: A Musical Triadfrom Shakespeare London, 1872 

W. I,. RlisilTON Shakespeare a Lawyer London, 1858 

J. RusKiN : Munrra Pukieris (Reprint) New York, iSjJ 

V.S.RVE: England as Seen iy Eoriignen,ftt. ,. .. London, 1865 

J.Salisbury: Glossary of S. E. WarceslersAire, etc London, 1893 

GiOfiCt. ^\f!B: Jean Zysta Parii, 18S4 

G.Sarrazin: Shakespeare in Mantua f []i^ibac\ Xi.\x) .. Berlin, 1S94 

A. W. Schlet.el: Lectures (trans, by BInck) London, 1815 

SCHLEGEL and TiECK : Shakspear's dramatische Werke . . Berlin, 1833 

A. SCHVltyti SAatcsp/are- Lexicon {eH.ii) Berlin, 18S6 

" liBs il'int/TmSrch/n, uebersetit von L. Tieck, 

Bearbeitel, eingeleilet uttd ertdultrt Berlin, 1 870 

H.W.Seacer; Natural History in Shaiespcar^s Time .. London, 1S96 

W-W-SkeAT: E/ymo/^gical Dictionary Oxford, 1882 

(The Academy, 29 Oi:lober) London, 1887 

C. Roach Smith : The Sural Life af Shakespeare . . . . London, 1B70 
P. Staffer : Shakespeare and Classical Antijuity . . . . London, iSSo 



PLAN OF THE WORK 



423 



H. Staunton: {Athentmmt June) London, 1874 

C. W. Stearns : Shakespeare Treasury New York, 1882 

H. P. Stokes : Chronological Order of Shakespeare^ s Plays . . London, 1878 

J. Strutt : Sports and Pastimes London, 1841 

H. Sweet : First Middle English Primer Oxford, 1884 

A. C. Swinburne: A Study of Shakespeare London, 1880 

JosvAH Sylvester : Du Bartas his Weekes and IVorkes . . London, 1632 

Alfred Lord Tennyson : A Memoir of London, 1897 

L. TiECK : Shakespeare's Dram, Werke, Uebersetxt von A, IV. 

von SchUgel^ ergSnzt und erlSutert Berlin, 1833 

Edward Topsell: Historie of FoureFooted Beastes . . . . London, 1608 

Thomas Tusser : Five Hvndred Points of Good Husbandry . . London, 1614 

T. Tyrwhitt : Observations and Conjectures^ etc, , , , , London, 1766 

H. Ulrici : Shakespeare^ s dramatische JCunst Leipsic, 1847 

J. Upton: Critical Observations on Shakespeare , , , , London, 1746 

W. S. Walker : Shakespeare's Versification London, 1854 

*< Critical Examination of the Text of Shake- 

speare London, 1859 

Horace Walpole : Historic Doubts on the Life of Richard 

the Third London, 1768 

W.Wagner and L. Proescholdt: The Works of Shakspere , . Hamburg, 1882 

A. W. Ward : History of Dramatic Poetry London, 1875 

T. Warton: History of English Poetry London, 1775 

A. Way: (Promptorium Parvulorum) London, 1865 

P. Wh ALLEY: Enquiry into the Learning of Shakespeare . . London, 1748 

R. G. White : Shakespeare's Scholar New York, 1854 

W. Whiter : Specimen of a Commentary on Shakespeare . . London, 1794 

J. Wilson : Cheerfull Ayres London, 1660 

J. R. Wise: Shakespeare: His Birthplace^ etc London, 1861 



AUde 176 

AbwKptioa . . 181, 335, 334 

" imdicattd ty an afoi- 

infke .. 71,194,343.344.353 

AcccDled -moDDSrltables . . . . 96 

Acre, a measure of hngth . . . , 30 

Action — an indUtmtnt 80 

Adjective uitd ai netm . , 43 

" formtd ivitk Ay . . . . 358 

Ad«A used for a participle .. 373 

Affection of nobleneu — tuiU afftc- 

Han 380 

Affection 1 Thy intention , , , , %^ 

Aftont 366 

Aited 158 

Alcettii of Euripides . . . . 357 

m' life 319 

All foiMon 115 

AUiuice, m afhtral . , ,, 99 

Allowing 37 

Aloi^ 3S7 

Alread]', methinks 194 

Altering rbeoma 239 

Amber 314 

Ancientry 146 

Aodenon, Mot;, ker acting . , 395 

Angle 161 

Another 307 

Ape-beuer 1 76 

Apostrophe, iiiJicating Aisorftum 71 

Appout 53 

Appointed him 61 

Approbuioa— /fv^ . . 89 

Argnment 158 

Ann, ar um 97 

At — M if 56, 393 

" -/■"■ " »97 

A ■ 10 forth ' 41 

Aa, omitttd 105 

Aspect, itt acetnt 80 



At friend 373 

Attraction, ploral by .. .. 159 

AonU 166 

Antolycns, origin efnami . . . . a 

" Cri/iciiBU on . . . , 369 

Kya\A — dtpart 69 

B»im 147 

Bathurst 317 

Basilisque 58 

Bawcock 34 

Baynea 359 

Beard'igrey 110 

Beat and bait 105 

Becoming 143 

Bed-rid 330 

BeM, in picture 247 

Best, the 63 

Beit, you wete 38S 

Belwin 343 

Bide Qpon it — oJuAi^ opinion , , 44 

Blackslonc. Sir William . . . . 3II 

Blactwood's Magfl. en ffirmione. . 363 

'B\a.Ti]i,irt AreAfry 97 

Blemish, eentracted in prennntia- 

tien S4 

Blench 54 

Block 43 

Blood look ont 305 

Boaden, on Mrs Siddam .. . . 389 

Boil'd braint 146 

Boors 38S 

Bound up 183 

Booro 36 

Bowget 166 

Brandes, CrUititm 376 

Br«I 105 

Breik-neck 56 

Brows 34 

Bdc, Sir George 314 

4^ 



426 



Bag 

Bnlthaupt, CrtiUiim 

But abide 

But, viUA the finilt verb . . 

B7 thU gtx>d light 

CaddiMM 

Cai[=term of atdearmtnl . . 

Callat 

Campbell, Criticiim 

" en Mrs Siddvns . . 

Camatiaos 

Caro, indirect Source of Plot 
Cases of tbeir eyes 

Ceremony, its pronunciation 

Certain biuaid 

Chalmers 

Chamber- couDC lis 

Changed compLeiion 

Changeling 

Cheale 

Cbelwood's Quarto 

Child— i^W 

Clamor, of hounds 146 

" — taailing 

Clap — confirm a bargain . . 

Clipping 

Coleridge, on Leonles . . . . 366 

Coleridge, Hartley 356 

Collier's added line 

Collop 

Comforting 

CwamaaATaerA, fronunciatioH 

Commend 

Commission 

Commit 

ComplexioD, changed 

Compters 169 

Conceit 

Confusion of final i/and e . . 

Conjure, accent of 

Consideration = *nir . . . . Z58 

Construction changed by change of 

thought 283 

Contract, accent 



Copy oDt of mine 24 

Costume 414 

Couples, go in 81 

Creep 100 

Crickets 73 

Crone 104 

Cry lost 60 

Cunningham 319 

Curious 339 

Curst 152 

Cypress M3 

Daffodils 161, 196 

Daniel, Timi-anafyat . . 3S5 

Damnable, an adverb 135 

Dares 95 

Date of CompositioD . . . . 309 

Daughlcr.rijOTini'jetfj* after .. I57 

Dtad — dread 333 

Dear'st for dearest . . . . 135, 185 

Desert of Bohemia 139 

Dibble 193 

Dis-cise 349 

Discovery — diic/oture . . 65, 75 

Dispute -mwOTi 330 

DistribudoD of speecbes, 

31, 51, 109, 118,304,333,361, 367 

Doctrine, a trisyllable 17 

Doing tlms 87 

Dole 3S 

Dorastus and Fawuia . . ■ - 324 
Iiovible iiegii lives Btrengthening ne- 

K-illoQ 45 

Double superlali»ea . . ■ ■ 133 

Doxy 163 

Doxy, derivation 313 

Dryden, Criticism 379 

Duck 223 

Duration of Action . . . , 384 

E, suppressed in superlatiTes, 

>9. 43. '95. 240 

Each your doing 30l 

Eggs for money 33 

Encounter sc 
Ethical dative 
Euripides, Alceslii 
Even — due. Just 



Eicrement 253 

Expedition be ntj friend 66 
External Evidence of Date ; Reca- 

piluIalioD 330 

Extremes iSo 

Eye-gloas 46 

Fact 134 

Fading! 3o8 

Ftil^/aiiure lit 

Fancy 237 

Fann'd snow 317 

Fat, <u a csmfaraHvi .. . . 233 

Far-off guilty 79 

FasbioD, women of all . . . . 125 

Faster 232 

Favour 2S1 

Fear eyes over 350 

Federarie 77 

Feeding 206 

Feel doing thus 87 

Fellow of (by hands , . . , 289 

Fertile bosom 22 

Fertile (be Isle 115 

Fish 230 

Fixure 296 

Flap-diagon'd 149 

V]kA, participial mt , . . . 90 

Flower-de-luce 198 

Fool, term f/ affection . . .. 80 

Fool, of a 134 

Fool-maa and Footman . . 174 

Forman, Simon 318 

Tofiecause 189 

For to 64 

Fourscore, the 201 

Franklin 289 

Free 95,100 

Function, no other 301 

Famivoll, CrUiciim . . . . 35S 

" on Aulelyatt . . 371 

'SvR.vsx, far mhjtaictiai .. 109 



Gallimaufry 

Cap 

Gatrick's f^rnon . . 
" Song far Ptrdiia 



234 



Gentle— fAMlfr amt 185 

GentlenuD bom 1S7 

Genuidive use of infinitive, 79, 162 

Gest 13 

Gildon, m Sourci of Plot . . . . 331 

Giles, en Autofyaa 360 

Gillivors 189, 191 

Give u« the lie 354 

GUi&~h<mr-glasl 50 

GUb 87 

Gloves, perftmuJ 314 

Go in couples Si 

Good deed 14 

Good expedition be my friend . . 66 

Good Master 290 

Good night '—farewtU for ever . . 60 

Good now 363 

Go lo^^on 353 

Grace to boot 18 

Grange 323 

Greek names I 

Green-sward 204 

Guilty to 341 

Gust 41 

Hillam 3SS 

HundtA — iandleii 2z6 

Hand-fast 357 

Harlot 97 

H&vii^ —pestettiim 254 

Haiard, certain . . , . . . 131 

Hazlitt. W C 323 

Heaping friendship I59 

Heedlessness in style . . . . 6 

Heft 74 

Hent 179 

Herbett, Sir Henry 313 

Here, a disyllable 274 

Here with me 39 

Heretic 107 

Hermione 360 

" its Greek meaning . . 3 

" ber coacealment . . 268 

Hetberington, oh AuSotyaa . . 372 

Him, hcT — iimit!/, Atrse//, etc. .. 13 

Hinge loS 



428 im 

His highaett 337 

Honest : Honourable . . . . 76 

Honour with (roable . , . . 191 

Horn-pipes 171 

Howl -An/ 31 

How should tbi< grow . . . . 65 

Hoxes 44 

HndEOD, mt Hcrmione . . 363 

" en Lientit . . 367 

" an Ptrdita . , , , 368 

Hugo, Victor, CradU Sang . . 300 

Hugo, Fran^oii- Victor, CrUicitm . . 378 
Humane 119, 131, 164 

Hucdjt 311 

l-'iy 44 

If you may pleue 340 

™ a 

I'll sweai Tor 'em , . 304, 359 

Impoitance 380 

ImposittoD cleared 18 

In astegards 36t 

Incense incile 366 

Incertatn loolcen-«n . . . . 363 

Incbbaia, Mn 354 

Incidencj 60 

Indictment 119 

Infinitive, oi gerandive . . . . 79 

Influences 63 

Ingram, an Veru-Testi . . . . 317 

Inkle 211 

Insinuate — fii/o/f 255 

Inlclligencini;; 103 

Inleraal Evidence of Date: Reca- 

pitulalion 330 

InlerpoUtion of 1 . . 8, 33, 104 

Iiremoveable, advrri . . . . 339 

Isa'io forth' 41 

I'tb' rear 'our birth Z44 

It own 113 

Il» 3*. "5 

W 147 

Jameson, Mrs, on Hirmitme . . 360 

" "an Paulina . . . . 364 

Jape 309 



Jar o' th' clock 14 

Johnson, Or, an the IMiHa . . 380 

Jonson's AUhemitt 315 

" Jndu^lieH la Bartkelamew 

Pair 315 

Jordan's BalUd 389 

Julio Romano 384 

July, acftmt 35 

Kean, Charles, Acting C^ . . 414 

Keep my itahles 81 

Kiln-hole 316 

Kite 166 

Klein 333 

KrejlB^ Criticism 373 

Lady Martin, en Leaniii , . . . 366 

Iju]y she her lord 14 

Land-damne 84 

Land-serrice 149 

Lavender 193 

La-yon tot 

Lennox, Mn 353 

Level -iWm in Arehtry , . 97, 133 

Lewes, Criticiim 376 

Life to come 168 

Limit . . ' 116 

line added by Collier's MS , . 394 

Lloyd, on Iht Alcestit • • 357 

" an Paulina 365 

\ja^. El Marmot dt Fitisardo .. 333 

Lording 17 

Losing — ^iff /hi/ 283 

LoM tI3, t4S 

Lost 303 

lately - lonely f 391 

Loiell 107 

Lilders, en Mary Anderson . . 395 

Lunes 93 

Maliciously 51 

Manltind t03 

Manner — maRcwr 355 

Marigold 194 

Maijoram 194 

Marmol de Felisaido . . . . 333 

Marsh, Charles, Vtrsian .. .. 413 

Marted 336 



INDEX 



429 



PACE 

Martin, Lady, on Leontes . . . . 366 

•* " flj Hermione . . 391 

Mean, in music 170 

Medal 50 

Medicinal, its accent . . . . 100 

Medicine ^physician . . , . 245 

Men of hair 223 

Mere=/tfr^ 129 

Messes 42, iSo 

Methinks already 294 

Methoughts 32 

Metrical Tests 316 

M^zidres, Criticism 377 

Midwife 1 10 

Mints 193 

Misprint, its vitality . • . . 266 

Missingly 160 

Moe, with the plural . . lo, 220, 287 
Monosyllables, unemphatic in em- 

photic places , . 62 

•* accented . . . , 96 

Montigut, Criticism . . . . 378 

Mort' o' th' Deer 23 

Most marble 283 

Motion 177 

Music, of * Jog on * 387 

« of < Lawn as white ' . . 388 

Name, in the 155 

Name of me 173 

Narrative prose 278 

de Navarro, Mme 398 

Neat 24 

Neb 36 

Negatives, double 45 

New ship 257 

Nexts-if^tffYx/ 151 

Nimble hand 251 

No more but abide 176 

No other function 201 

Note 9 

Note (the Down's) 172 

Nothing »m<7//m^ 248 

" variable accent . . 93, 208 

Noun and infinitive, a subject or 

an object 136 



Odds . . . alike 



276 



PAGB 

Oer-dyed 25 

Of a fool 134 

Offenders now appear . . . . 265 

Officed 36 

Of, used after verbs of depriving^ etc. 27 1 

Of, where on now used . . . . 95 

Old man 150 

Omission of a line in F, . . . . 99 

oi as 105 

of do before not 207, 231, 237 

of the preposition . . 235 

of the relative . . 227, 239 

On : those that think . . . . 298 

Opportune, accent 238 

Or ... or 185 

0,ihtat==o' these 199 

Over that art 190 

OweB^n/if 120 

Oxlips 198 



(t 



a 



« 



« 



Paddling 

Pantler 

Parasite 

V9Xisk^== participate 
Participle, used conditionally 
Participles without nouns . . 
Partitive genitive 

Partlet 

VdiXis^duties 

Pash 

Pattern ... cut out . • 

Paulina 

Peer 

Perdita 

Perfect 

Petition 

Phantom of the living 
Pheasant «/r^x/if/ . . 
Picking on's teeth . . 
Picture, best in 
Pin and web 
Pinched thing 
V\^cts^ honours 

Placket 

Please 'your 

Plural by attraction . . 
Plural termination . . 
Points 



22 
186 

35 
302 

277 

131 
212 

103 

60 

25 
228 

364 

163 
368 

139 

137 
142 

256 

257 

247 

49 

75 
66 

216 

"3 

159 
229 

211 



Poking-slicks 

Pomander 246 

Port 

Practise 

Fnnk'd up 

Prefixea, dri^ptd 

Pregnant by drctunstance . . 

Prerogative 

Present deeds 

Preseolt]' — instaittfy 

Friniroses 

Pn^oslicatiOQ 258 

Pralepsit 

Prou, why nted 378 

Proserpuia 

IVoxinu^, amd the Mumier ef tht 

Pugging tooth 

PurbliDd 

Push 

Putter 00 

Put us to it 

Quarto, Chetwood'* 307 

Qoea'ion 

Qnit-'fuitted 

Race — reo/ 

Raisins of tb' Sun 

Read . . . eyta 

Rear 'our Birth 

Reason my son 

Recreation 

'Rfmeaibtanre.iti firanuneiafien . . 
Respective constniclion . . 130, 
BcvelH Account Buoks 

Rhyming couplet 256 

Rift Z67 

Roderick 316 

RolTe, OH AiHolycui 370 

Rosemary . . 187 

Rounding — toAi];jVn«^ 

Rover 

Rowe, on Sourci of Plot . . 
Royalty 



UA-eamtit 2ia 

Saflion 171 

Saltten 134 

Savory 194 

Savour — smfll 63 

Scblegel, Criticum 373 

Second ... five 86 

Seiit, a Irgai term loS 

Seven years, uuif inJefiniteiy . ■ 344 

Shall's si^ll'c! 36 

Sheridnn's Song for PerdiU ,. 405 

Short s>,or/fn 333 

Should — ffitu/ 17 

" this grow 65 

Shovels in 336 

'Shrew 4S 

Siddoni, Mis . . 389, 390 

Sidney, Sir FfalUp 380 

tintirficlalcd .. .. 8,33,133 

s iHsttad ef R 33 1 

t, third pen. fin. in .. ..338 

Silence! 118 

Since^wArM 376 

Singular by atirattimt . . 9i 1 79 

" with plural lerminatien 339,381 
" vert, preeedittg plural sui- 



jeet 



Sir (Collier's mre) . 

SV.SW'^purfase 

Skill to fear . . 

Siceve.band . . 

Slippery 

Smutched 

Sneaping 

Snider, on Aulofycus 

Soaking 

So forth 

Something, advetiial u 

Source of the Plot . . 

Speed 

Spi« 

Squash 

Stables, I'll keep my 
Stage- directions, Ain/s 



357,388 



5' 



Stain 9* 

Slay —put off, delay .. 39 

Slrained lil 

Straited 326 

Strike, ef plantts 38 

Stufled sufficicDCj 89 

Suited, fiJural in rnise .. 8 

Sul^uDctive, in luhardinatt clausa 37 

Sutetitution of word* . . 336, 238 

Success -ti(««jiii» 59 

Such . . . (hot 46 

Sweat his thought ovcT ■ ■ • • 63 

Sweet'st for tireetest . . , . 131 

Sword, netariug Ay Ike . . . . Ill 

Swom or swoon 181 

Table-book 346 

TtVe — ifonfri 196 

Tall 289 

Tawdiy-Uce al8 

Tell-owK/ 3oy 

Tender o'er 108 

Tennyson 359 

Te«, ofiinims enlAt , . . . 307 

T^ti, eenjunctiimal affix .. .. I9 

" - eh, that 10 

" — to whom 78 

Thte^thoH 145 

The which 81, 243 

The whom 8t, 240 

They're here with me . . • ■ 39 

Thick my blood 35 

Think [it] in F, 47 

Third pen. pin. in i . . . . 338 

This Ihiiii , . ., 370, 303 



Th--o 



243 



Thou wett, as tnu syttabh 

Three-man Bong men . . . . 170 

Three-pile 166 

Thnuh l6s 

Toaze 355 

Tod 169 

To pass— ^ falsing . . . . 96 

To say - if saying 79 

Toys 145 

Trick 106 

TroU-my- dames 175 



Trunk 6$ 

Tambadi- turn lucif .. 360 

Turtle 304, 302 

Two negatives strengthen negation 45 

Unhraided 3tO 

Uuemphatic inoiiasyllables in em- 
phatic places 63 

Unknown friends (o tis . . . . 186 

Unrolled 178 

Unsphere 16 

Unstained shepherd 203 

Upon, Mitii adverUally Ml on a/ttr 

look 399 

XaH,feeu/rariisio/ .. 8 
Vfthiformtd from nouns.. 338,374 

Verely 16 

Veitue MSS 314 

Vice, a verb 61 

Violets dim 196 

Virginalling 34 

Vitality or misprint . . . , ' , . 366 

Vulgats 78 

Walk - vritkdraw 36 

Walpole, Crititism 310 

Wanted less impndencc . . . . 132 

Warp 56 

Walry star 9 

Weather-bitten 281 

Weep, Corner's emmdoHen . , 144 

Welkin -j/iv 37 

Well to live 151 

What-any 14 

What case — fnla/nfruf .. 55 

Where we ofTenden now appear . . 365 

Which — as rigards whith , . 88 

" ~vriieh thing 59 

Whiles 38 

Whisper, tisid transitively . . 65, 3S9 

Whillier^r/jl/fi/whether .. ,. 333 

Whi (son- Pastoral 300 

Who/orwhom . . . . 91, 248 

Whoo-bub 248 

Who, If/erring to irrational antt- 

"'l""'' 343 

W\\iit printed for ^Mk .. 89,120 



432 



INDEX 



rAGB 

Wind 24 

Wink SI 

W. Winter, on Mary Anderson . . 396 

Winter's Tale, origin of title . . 6 

"^iX,^ keenness^ tact 96 

With' son 194 

" used for hy .. 271,282,297 

VfitasssXo^ttntnessedto .. .. 156 



PACK 

Woman-tyred 103 

Worth 276 

Yellow 106 

Yet»iM?w 229 

Yoo feel, doing thus . . . . 87 

Yoo were best 288 

Yon were, as one syllable . . • . 17 



PR 27g8.F5 v.11 



CI 




3 6105 038 536 139 



\ 



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