Dro. E.

I mean not cuckold-mad;

60

But, sure, he is stark mad.
When I desired him to come home to dinner,
He ask'd me for a thousand marks in gold:
“'Tis dinner-time," quoth I; "My gold!" quoth he:
"Your meat doth burn," quoth I; "My gold!" quoth he:
"Will you come home?" quoth I; "My gold!" quoth
he:

"Where is the thousand marks I gave thee, villain ?" 65
"The pig," quoth I, "is burn'd;" "My gold!" quoth he:
"My mistress, sir," quoth I; "Hang up thy mistress!
I know thy mistress not: out on thy mistress!"

Luc. Quoth who?

Dro. E. Quoth my master:

70

"I know," quoth he, "no house, no wife, no mistress." So that my errand, due unto my tongue,

I thank him, I bare home upon my shoulders;

For, in conclusion, he did beat me there.

58, 59. not

stark mad] one line in Collier (ed. 2).

59. he is] he's Pope, reading I mean stark mad as one line; omitted by Hanmer. 61. a thousand] F 4; a hundred F 1; a 1000 Ff 2, 3. 64. home] Hanmer; omitted in Ff. 68. I know thy mistress not; mistress !] Seymour conj.; I know not thy mistress; out on thy mistress. F 1 I know no mistress; out upon thy mistress! Steevens conj. 71-74. As in Pope; prose in Ff. 72. errand] F 4; arrant Ff 1, 2, 3. 73. bare] bear Steevens (1773). my] thy F 2. 74. there] thence Capell conj.

68. I know... mistress] I think we are driven to adopt Seymour's simple conjecture, viz. the transposition of the negative from before to after "thy mistress." There are, apparently, some fifteen passages in this play in which the word mistress occurs, viz. I. ii. 46, 56, 63, 76, 83; 11. i. 57, 67 (twice), 68 (twice), 71; II. ii. 10, 18, III; I. ii. 29; IV. iii. 49; v. i. 168 (twice); and in no single instance

is the word accented on the second syllable. I believe that in all the numerous passages in the plays where the word is used it is uniformly accented on the first syllable. Marshall instances Pericles, II. vi. 18, to the contrary, but this passage is not Shakespeare's. It seems to me therefore simple nonsense to say that we must put the accent on the second syllable,

Adr. Go back again, thou slave, and fetch him home. 75 Dro. E. Go back again, and be new beaten home?

For God's sake, send some other messenger.

Adr. Back, slave, or I will break thy pate across.
Dro. E. And he will bless that cross with other beating:
Between you I shall have a holy head.

Adr. Hence, prating peasant! fetch thy master home.
Dro. E. Am I so round with you as you with me,

That like a football you do spurn me thus?

80

You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither:
If I last in this service, you must case me in leather. 85

[Exit.

Luc. Fie, how impatience loureth in your face!

Adr. His company must do his minions grace,
Whilst I at home starve for a merry look.
Hath homely age the alluring beauty took

83. thus?] F 4; thus: Ff 1, 2, 3. 85. [Exit] omitted in F 1. loureth] lowreth Ff. 86. SCENE III. Pope.

80. a holy head] Craig says: "Perhaps 'holy' is 'broken,' full of holes (quibbling)."

82. round with] Johnson says: "He plays upon the word 'round,' which signified spherical applied to himself, and unrestrained or free in speech or action, spoken of his mistress. So the King in Hamlet [III. i. 191] bids the queen be round with her son." In this sense, see also Twelfth Night, II. iii. 102; Henry V. IV. i. 216; Hamlet, III. iv. 5; and Timon of Athens, II. ii. 8. Craig refers to North's Plutarch (ed. 1595), p. 874: "for the common people very round with him, and called him tyrant and murderer."

were

85. case me in leather]" Still alluding to a football [line 83], the bladder of which is always covered with leather" (Steevens).

86.

87. minions] Cotgrave, "Minion: pleasing, kind, gentle." Skeat, Ety. Dict., suggests that the use of the word with a sinister meaning was probably borrowed from the Italian mignone, "a minion, a favorite, a dilling, a minikin, a darling" (Florio). But the transition was not difficult. The word also occurs in . i. 54, 59, IV. iv. 59 of this play, and frequently elsewhere, e.g. compare Dekker's Honest Whore, pt. ii. (Pearson, 1873, p. 136): "Say the world made thee Her minnion, that thy head lay in her lap."

88. starve for a merry look] Malone compares Sonnet xlvii.: "When that mine eye is famish'd for a look"; but there is an equally pointed reference in Sonnet lxxv.: And by-and-by clean starved for a look.”

From my poor cheek? then he hath wasted it:
Are my discourses dull? barren my wit?
If voluble and sharp discourse be marr'd,
Unkindness blunts it more than marble hard:
Do their gay vestments his affections bait?
That's not my fault; he's master of my state:
What ruins are in me that can be found
By him not ruin'd? then is he the ground
Of my defeatures. My decayed fair

A sunny look of his would soon repair:
But, too unruly deer, he breaks the pale,
And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale.
91. wit?] F 4; wit, Ff 1, 2, 3.
98. defeatures] defeature Collier.

98. defeatures] disfigurements, "alteration of features" (Steevens). Compare v. i. 300: "Strange defeatures in my face"; Venus and Adonis, 736: " pure perfection with impure defeature.'

98. fair] beauty, fairness. Very common in this sense in the poems and plays; e.g. in Midsummer-Night's Dream, 1. i. 182: "Demetrius loves your fair."

100. deer... pale] See the same play on these words in Venus and Adonis, 229 sqq. :—

66

Fondling, she saith, since I have
hemm'd thee here,
Within the circuit of this ivory
pale,

I'll be thy park and thou shalt be
my deer."

IOI. stale] i.e. his pretended or ostensible wife,-the stalking horse under cover of which he pursues the game of his amours. This word has several meanings, which, however, do not seem to be capable of exact definition, and are more or less blended in meaning, the sense of something standing being more or less common

90

95

100

93. blunts] F 1; blots Ff 2, 3, 4.

66

66

to all. (1) A decoy or bait, a term in
fowling, says Dyce, either a real bird,
or the form of a bird set up as a lure.
Cotgrave gives Estalon: .. a
stale (as a Larke, etc.) wherewith
Fowlers traine sillie birds vnto their
destruction." Originally the form
of a bird set up to allure a hawk"
(Nares). This seems to be the mean-
ing in Lyly's The Woman in the
Moone, III. ii. (Fairholt, ii. 187):
"Lear. Shall I sit here thus to be
made a stale?"; (p. 190): "Melos. Or
that swaine blest, that she makes but
a stale? Stes. My love? No, shep-
heards, this is but a stale"; and also
in Greene's Never too Late (Dyce, 1831,
vol. i. p. xx.): "for she thought that
Francesco was such a tame foole that
he would be brought to strike at any
stale." And in his Groatsworth of
Wit (ib. p. xxvi.): "Suppose (to make
you my stale to catch the Woodcock
your brother) that," etc. And in his
Looking Glass for London, etc. (ib. p.
100): "You stales of impudence," and
(p. 129) " Stales of temptation." Com-
pare also Taming of the Shrew, III. i.
90:
"To cast thy wandering eyes on

Luc. Self-harming jealousy! fie, beat it hence!

Adr. Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense.
I know his eye doth homage otherwhere;

every stale"; and The Tempest, IV. i. 187:" for stale to catch these thieves," where Steevens says it undoubtedly means a fraudulent bait. This may be the meaning in Dekker's Roaring Girl (Dodsley, vi. 77): “Did I for this lose all my friends, refuse Rich hopes and golden fortunes to be made A stale to a common whore." Compare also Lodge's Wounds of Civil War, III. i. (Dodsley, viii. 38): "These stales of fortune are the common plagues, That still mislead the thoughts of simple men." (2) A stalking-horse, a pretence, a mask; which seems to be the meaning in the present passage. Steevens says: "Here it seems to imply the same as stalking-horse, pretence. I am, says Adriana, but his pretended wife, the mask under which he covers his amours. So in [T. Hughes's] The Misfortunes of Arthur, 1587 [Collier's Five Old Plays and Hazlitt's Dodsley, iv.]:

the meaning of harlot has sometimes been assigned to the word, but it there means, I think, nothing more than a laughing-stock. (4) A cant term for a prostitute. See Much Ado About Nothing, II. ii. 25, "a contaminated stale"; and iv. i. 66, "a common stale." Dyce quotes the Faire Maide of Bristow, 1605:

"For what is she but a common
stall [stale]

That loues thee for thy coine,
not for thy name?
Such loue is beastly, rotten,
blind and lame."

(5) The urine of horses. See Antony
and Cleopatra, 1. iv. 62: “ Thou didst
drink the stale of horses." Compare
Merry Wives of Windsor, II. iii. 30,
where the expression "bully stale"
seems to be used by the host in deri-
sion of the method of Dr. Caius. See

"Was I then chose and wedded Chichester Hart's excellent notes on for his stale,

To looke and gape for his retire-
less sayles

Puft back and flittering spread to
every winde?"
Malone remarks that in the phrase
borrowed from the translation of the
Menaecmi, Act v., "he makes me a
stale and a laughing-stocke to all the
world," "Adriana unquestionably
means to compare herself to a stalk-
ing-horse behind whom [i.e. which]
Antipholus shoots at such game as
he selects." (3) Laughing-stock,
dupe, as in 3 Henry VI. III. iii. 260:
"Had he none else to make a stale
but me?"; and Titus Andronicus, 1.
i. 304: "Was there none else in Rome
to make a stale But Saturnine?" In
Taming of the Shrew, 1. i. 58;—

bully-stale, Castalion-King-Urinal, and Mock-water, in his edition of the Merry Wives of Windsor, 11. iii. 30, 34, 60, in the Arden Shakespeare, 1904. (6) The more modern use of the word seems to prevail in passages such as Merchant of Venice, II. v. 55: "A proverb never stale in thrifty mind"; Richard II. v. v. 104: "Patience is stale and I am weary of it "; 1 Henry IV. III. ii. 41: “So common-hackney'd in the eyes of men, So stale and cheap"; Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii. 240: "Age cannot wither her nor custom stale Her infinite variety and Cymbeline, 1. iv. 53: "Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion." As Johnson put it, "not something offered to allure or attract, but something vitiated with use."

Or else what lets it but he would be here?
Sister, you know he promised me a chain;
'Would that alone alone he would detain,
So he would keep fair quarter with his bed!
I see the jewel best enamelled

Will lose his beauty; yet the gold bides still
That others touch, and often touching will
Wear gold; and so no man, that hath a name,
By falsehood and corruption doth it shame.

105

IIO

alone, alone Ff 2, 3, 4; alone, alas ! alone o' love Ed. conj.

107. alone alone] alone, a loue F 1; Hanmer; alone, O love, Capell conj.; he] she Staunton conj. IIO. lose] loose F 1. IIO, III. yet the and] Ff; and the . . . yet Theobald; and tho' yet Hanmer; yet the... though Heath conj.; yet though an Collier. III, 112. will Wear] Theobald x (Warburton); will,Where F1. 112, 113. So Ff 2, 3, 4; Rowe and Pope omit these two lines, putting a colon at will in line III. 112. and so no man] Theobald; and no man F 1; and e'en so, man Capell. hath] honoureth Kinnear conj. 113. By] F 1; But Theobald.

107. alone alone] The emphasis involved in the repetition of "alone" seems to me rather weak, though the repetition may be paralleled by III. ii. 44 in this play, "Far more, far more, to you do I decline"; v. i. 46, " much much different"; Lucrece, 795, “But I alone alone must sit and pine"; and King John, III. i. 170, "Yet I alone alone do me oppose Against the pope" (where, however, the need for emphasis is plain). It is just possible that the true reading may be o' love, i.e. of love, of all love; for love's sake; possibly with a reference to "keep fair quarter " in the next line. This preserves the Folio reading as nearly as possible. Compare" of all loves,' Midsummer-Night's Dream, 11. ii. 154; Merry Wives of Windsor, II. ii. 119; and Othello, III. i. 13, where it is the reading of the first Quarto, the Folio changing it to "for love's sake." And see particularly the Menaecmi, v. i. 46 (Appendix II.): "desire him of

all love to come over quickly to my house."

66

108. keep fair quarter] act fairly towards. Compare II. ii. 145: keep, then, fair league and truce with thy true bed." This is the full expression, which is a military term. Compare King John, v. v. 20: "Keep good quarter and good care to-night"; and Othello, III. iii. 180: "In quarter and in terms like bride and groom": in his note whereon in the Arden Shakespeare, 1904, Chichester Hart quotes Day's Blind Beggar, 1600 (Bullen, p. 87): "Every one to his court of guard and keep fair quarter." Craig quotes from Nash's Lenten Stuff (Works, McKerrow, 1905, vol. iii. p. 181): "Therefore I will keep fair quarter with thee and expostulate the matter more tamely."

109-113. I see

shame] For

an explanation of this somewhat vexed and difficult passage, see Appendix I.