Dro. S. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair of another man. 75 Ant. S. Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement? Dro. S. Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts: and what he hath scanted men in hair, he hath given them in wit. Ant. S. Why, but there's many a man hath more hair than wit. Dro. S. Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair. 80 Ant. S. Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain 85 dealers without wit. 79. men] Pope ed. 2 (Theobald); them Ff. 75. hair] hair to men Capell. Wives of Windsor, Iv. ii. 225: "If the devil have him not in fee-simple, with fine and recovery." 66 77. excrement] hair, or other things growing out of the body. Compare Love's Labour's Lost, v. i. 109: Dally with my excrement, with my mustachio"; Merchant of Venice, III. ii. 87: "These assume but valour's excrement"; Hamlet, III. iv. 121: "Your bedded hair, like life in excrements"; Winter's Tale, Iv. iv. 734: 66 "Let me pocket up my pedlar's excrement" (where Autolycus refers to his false beard). In Timon of Athens, IV. iii. 445, a composture stolen from general excrement," the meaning more nearly approaches the modern acceptation of the word. Compare, in the other dramatists, Kyd's Soliman and Perseda, 1. iii. 136: "No impression of manhood, Not an hayre, not an excrement"; and Dekker's Guls Horn-booke (Grosart, ii. 228): "Why should the chinnes and lippes of old men lick up that excrement,' etc. 79. men] Theobald's emendation is 66 undoubtedly sound. "The same error," says Malone, "is found in the Induction to K. Henry IV. Part II. edit. 1623; 'Stuffing the ears of them with false reports. 81, 82. more hair than wit] A proverbial phrase found in Two Gentlemen of Verona, III. i. 361, 367, 368, and not uncommon in the dramatists. Compare Marston, The Insatiate Countess, III. iv. 170 (Bullen): "Ushers should have much wit, but little hair"; and Dekker, Satiromastix, 1602 (Pearson, i. 239):'Haire! It's the basest stubble; in scorn of it, 66 This proverb sprung,-He has more hair than wit." 83, 84. he hath the wit to lose his hair] Johnson explains: "Those who have more hair than wit are easily entrapped by loose women, and suffer the consequences of lewdness, one of which, in the first appearance of the disease in Europe, was the loss of hair." Steevens quotes The Roaring Girl, 1611 [Dodsley, vi. 82]: "Your women are so hot, I must lose my hair in their company, I see." Dro. S. The plainer dealer, the sooner lost: yet he loseth it in a kind of policy. Ant. S. For what reason? Dro. S. For two; and sound ones too. Ant. S. Nay, not sound, I pray you. Dro. S. Sure ones then. 90 Ant. S. Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing. Dro. S. Certain ones, then. Ant. S. Name them. Dro. S. The one, to save the money that he spends in tiring; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his porridge. 39.66 ... 95 88. policy] Staunton conj.; jollity F 1. 90. sound ones] Ff 2, 3, 4; sound F 1. 93. falsing] falling Grant White (Heath conj.); false Ingleby conj. 97. tiring] tyring Pope; trying Ff; trimming Rowe; 'tiring Collier (ed. 1). 88. policy] Staunton's conjecture, "false" in Cymbeline, II. iii. 74: meaning "purpose," design," must, "'Tis gold which makes Diana's beyond all question, be adopted. He rangers false themselves”: unless, says: "There is a kind of policy in a indeed, we take it here as an adman's losing his hair to save his jective: but I agree with Dowdenmoney, and to prevent an uncleanly see his note ad loc.-in thinking that addition to his porridge; but where it is the verb, meaning falsify, as in is the jollity?" And the corruption of his quotations from Heywood's Cap'pollitie" into the Folio "iollitie" was tives, ii. I.: " That false their faythes.' quite easy. The phrase "in policy" Possibly also the verb occurs in Romeo occurs in Troilus and Cressida, v. iv. and Juliet, III. i. 182: "Affection 14: "They set me up, in policy, that makes him false," i.e. speak false. mongrel cur"; and Othello, II. iii. Compare also Greene's Looking-Glass 274: "A punishment more in policy for London and England (Dyce, 1831, than in malice"; but the word is quite vol. i. p. 112): My faith unto my common in Shakespeare. King shall not be fals'd"; and Daniel's Compl. Rosamond, xxi.: "The adulterate beauty of a falsed cheek." Grant White, adopting falling, says: "That it is the word, however, is shown by Antipholus' expression 'not sure' (for 'sure' was of old opposed not to 'false,' but to 'uncertain,' 'insecure ') and Dromio's they should not drop'; and besides, in what possible sense is the hair falsing?" 93. falsing] delusive, deceptive. Chaucer has falsen, to falsify, e.g. in Miller's Prol. 66: "I mote reherse Hir tales alle... Or elles falsen som of my matere"; and Spenser, Faerie Queene, ii. 30, uses 'falsed" in the sense of "deceived" : "And in his falsed fancy he her takes To be the fairest wight, that lived yit." Shakespeare however uses the verb 97. tiring] i.e. attiring. Pope's emendation is certain. The expres Ant. S. You would all this time have proved, there is no time for all things. Dro. S. Marry, and did, sir; namely, no time to recover hair lost by nature. Ant. S. But your reason was not substantial, why there is no time to recover. 100 Dro. S. Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and 105 therefore, to the world's end, will have bald followers. Ant. S. I knew 'twould be a bald conclusion. But soft! who wafts us yonder? Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA. Adr. Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown: I am not Adriana nor thy wife. The time was once when thou unurged wouldst vow That never object pleasing in thine eye, That never touch well welcome to thy hand, That never meat sweet-savour'd in thy taste, 115 IOI. no time] Ff 2, 3, 4; in no time F 1; e'en no time Boswell (Capell conj.); is no time Grant White. III. thy] F 1; some Ff 2, 3, 4; your Collier. 112. not. . . nor] but. and Capell conj. 113. unurg'd] unurg'dst Pope. 116. well] were Gould conj. sion, I think, may fairly be used of men, who frequently wore the hair long in Elizabethan times. ivory hand wafts to her." In Ham- ... My musick, then, you could for ever hear, And all my words were musick to your ear." Unless I spake, looked, touched, or carved to thee. Thyself I call it, being strange to me, That, undividable, incorporate, Am better than thy dear self's better part. I 20 118. look'd, touch'd,] Steevens (1793); or look'd, or touch'd, Ff. omitted by Pope; thee S. Walker conj. to thee] 120. then] F 1; thus Rowe. 118. carved] Sidney Walker reads carv'd thee on the ground that "Shakespeare eschews the trisyllabic ending altogether"; and that the expressions "carve her" and "carve him "occur in Beaumont and Fletcher. But it seems much simpler to strike out the first two or's, on the ground that they have been wrongly introduced by the attraction of the final or. Exact parallels are the omission of the verb "was" in the preceding lines 115, 116 and 117; and the omission of the two first or's in the amended text of Iv. ii. 4: "Look'd he red? pale? or sad or merrily?" The word carve in Love's Labour's Lost, v. ii. 323: "He can carve too, and lisp"; Merry Wives of Windsor, 1. iii. 49: "She discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitation "; and Two Noble Kinsmen, Iv. iii. 89 (Leopold ed.): "Carve her, drink to her," seems to be used to describe some particular form of action, some sign of intelligence and favour, made with the fingers; a special meaning which was first pointed out by Hunter in his New Illustrations, i. 215. Compare Greene's Orlando Furioso (Dyce, i. 23): "And mark thou how I will play the carver." Dyce quotes Day's Ile of Gulls, 1606, sig. D: "Her amorous glances are her accusers; her very lookes write sonnets in thy commendations; she carues thee at boord, and cannot sleepe for dreaming of thee in bedde." Grant White says: "In A Very Woman, among the Characters published with Sir Thomas Overbury's wife: Her lightnesse gets her to swim at the top of the table where her wrie little finger bewraies carving; her neighbours at the latter end know they are welcome, and for that purpose she quencheth her thirst'" (ed. 1632). See also Marston's Insatiate Countess, 1. i. 211 (Bullen, iii. 141): "Well, Thais, O you're a cunning carver" (i.e. you 're a clever schemer); and also Chichester Hart's note on the Merry Wives of Windsor, 1. iii. 49 (Arden Shakespeare, 1904). 123. better part] A not uncommon expression in Shakespeare, meaning, I think, the soul, spirit; or simply the mind or mental part as opposed to the body or corporeal part. Compare III. ii. 61: "mine own self's better part"; As You Like It, 1. ii. 261: "My better parts are all thrown down"; ib. III. ii. 155: "Atalanta's better part"; and Macbeth, v. viii. 18: "It hath cowed my better part of man." Peele, in his Arraignment of Paris, II. i. 76 (Bullen, 1888), exactly explains it when he makes Pallas say to Paris : "And look how much the mind, the better part, Doth overpass the body in desert." For know, my love, as easy may'st thou fall As take from me thyself and not me too. 131. but] F1; omitted in Ff 2, 3, 4. 125. fall] i.e. let fall, in the active sense. Shakespeare has at least ten illustrations of this; e.g. MidsummerNight's Dream, v. i. 143: "And as she fled her mantle she did fall"; As You Like It, III. v. 5: "The common executioner Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck "; and Othello, IV. i. 257: "Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile." 130. dearly] seriously, grievously, etc. On Shakespeare's use of this word, Craik, English of Shakespeare, 4th ed. p. 238, remarks: "But perhaps we may get most easily and naturally at this sense which dear sometimes assumes by supposing that the notion properly involved in it of love, having first become generalised into that of a strong affection of any kind, had thence passed on into that of such an emotion the very reverse of love. We seem to have it in this intermediate sense in such instances as the following:→ at me, 136. off] Hanmer; of Ff. 125 130 135 'Some dear cause Will in concealment wrap me up a while' (Lear, iv. 3). 'A precious ring; a ring that I must use In dear employment' (Romeo and Juliet, v. 3). And even when Hamlet speaks of his 'dearest foe,' or when Celia remarks to Rosalind, in As You Like It, i. 3, My father hated his [Orlando's] father dearly,' the word need not be understood as implying more than strong or passionate emotion." 136. stain'd skin] Compare Hamlet, IV. V. 118: "brands the harlot Even here, between the chaste unsmiched brow Of my true mother"; and III. iv. 42 :— "takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love And sets a blister there." |