Long. It did move him to passion, and therefore let's hear it. Dum. [gathers up the pieces]. It is Biron's writing, and here is his name.

200

Biron. [To Costard.] Ah! you whoreson loggerhead, you were born to do me shame.

Guilty, my lord, guilty! I confess, I confess.

King. What?

Biron. That you three fools lack'd me, fool, to make up the

mess;

He, he, and you, and you, my liege, and I,

Are pick-purses in love, and we deserve to die.
O! dismiss this audience, and I shall tell you more.
Dum. Now the number is even.

Biron.

King.

Will these turtles be gone?

True, true; we are four.

Hence, sirs; away!

Cost. Walk aside the true folk, and let the traitors stay.

205

210

[Exeunt Costard and Jaquenetta.

Biron. Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O! let us embrace.

As true we are as flesh and blood can be:
The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face;
Young blood doth not obey an old decree:
We cannot cross the cause why we are born;
Therefore, of all hands must we be forsworn.

King. What! did these rent lines show some love of thine?

215

213. show] shew Q1; will shew Ff, Q 2.

v. ii. 361, and 3 Henry VI. 1. iv. 73. A good example occurs in Lodge's Euphues Golden Legacie (Shakes. Lib. 1875, p. 118), 1590: "which Ganimede espying thinking hee [Saladyne] had had his Mistresse long inough at shrift, sayd: what, a match or no? A match (quoth Aliena) or els it were an ill market. I am glad (quoth Ganimede), I wold Rosader were wel here to make up a messe."

205. and you, and you] Both referring to "my liege." Reed omitted one "and you."

216. of all hands] on every side.

Biron. Did they? quoth you. Who sees the heavenly Rosaline,

That, like a rude and savage man of Inde,
At the first opening of the gorgeous east,
Bows not his vassal head, and strooken blind,
Kisses the base ground with obedient breast?
What peremptory eagle-sighted eye

220

Dares look upon the heaven of her brow,

That is not blinded by her majesty?

225

King. What zeal, what fury hath inspir'd thee now?
My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon;

She an attending star, scarce seen a light.
Biron. My eyes are then no eyes, nor I Biron :
O! but for my love, day would turn to night.
Of all complexions the cull'd sovereignty
Do meet, as at a fair, in her fair cheek;

218. quoth you] omitted Capell. F 4, Cambridge.

219. man of Inde] Craig quotes from Ascham's Toxophilus (Arber, p. 212): "The men of Inde had theyr bowes made of a rede." Inde was a common early name for India, abundantly illustrated in New Eng. Dict.

220. gorgeous cast] Milton (Todd, ii. 373) has this in the mundane sense (the Orient). Biron repeats this eastern adoration, to Rosaline, at v. ii. 201, 202. 223. peremptory] "unawed, regardless" (Schmidt). See King John, II. i. 454; 1 Henry IV. 1. iii. 17, etc. Arrogant, over-confident.

eagle-sighted] A reference to the eagle's supposed power, alone of all birds, of looking at the sun. It is mentioned in Chaucer's Assembly of Foules. See Pliny, I. xxvii. (Holland's translation, p. 160); and Greene, Menaphon (Grosart, vi. 105), 1589: “ Pardon me, faire shepheardesse, . for I cannot chuse, being Eagle-sighted, but gaze on the Sunne the first time I see it"; and in his Mourning Garment (ix. 157): "I am not Eagle-sighted, and therefore feare to flie too nigh the Sunne."

230

221. strooken] Qq, Ff 1, 2, 3; strucken

as an obscured shadow: in this, not unlike unto the Morning-star, which looketh very cheerfully on the world, so long as the Sun looketh not on it." It is ascribed to Horace in Entertainment of Ambassador to Landgrave of Hesse, 1596: "There was the Lady Anna

and many that waited on the Princess. And she herselfe, as Horace says of Julium Sidus, stood by her bedside, velut inter ignes luna minores" (Nichols' Progresses, iii. 388-9).

228. attending star] Staunton says: "It was a prevailing notion formerly that the moon had an attending star.

Sir Richard Hawkins, in his Observations on a Voyage to the South Seas in 1593, remarks: "Some I have heard say, and others write, that there is a starre which never separateth itself from the moon, but a small distance." Lodge mentions Hawkins's star in Euphues Golden Legacie (Shakes. Lib. 1875, p. 79), 1590: "for as the Moone never goes without the starre Lunisequa, so a lover never goeth without the unrest of his thoughts." I doubt if Shakespeare refers to it here. He is not definite enough. See v. ii. 205.

230, 236, 243, 247, 280, 284, 286, etc. O] For Biron's ejaculation "O!" see above, III. i. 164, note.

Where several worthies make one dignity,
Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek.
Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues,—
Fie, painted rhetoric! O! she needs it not:
To things of sale a seller's praise belongs;

235

She passes praise; then praise too short doth blot.

240

A wither'd hermit, five-score winters worn,
Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye:
Beauty doth varnish age, as if new-born,
And gives the crutch the cradle's infancy.
O! 'tis the sun that maketh all things shine.
King. By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.
Biron. Is ebony like her? O wood divine!

A wife of such wood were felicity.
O! who can give an oath? where is a book?
That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack,
If that she learn not of her eye to look :
No face is fair that is not full so black.
King. O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,

The hue of dungeons and the school of night;
And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well.

246. wood] Rowe (ed. 1); word Qq, Ff.

245

250

252. school] Qq, Ff; scowl Theobald; stole Hanmer; soul, soil, shade, scroll, shroud, seal and suit various conjectures and lections.

233. worthies] excellencies, things of worth. See Two Gentlemen of Verona, II. iv. 166.

235, 236. flourish... rhetoric] "letting pass the flowers of rhetoric" occurs in Sidney's Arcadia, bk. v.

236. Fie] Gascoigne says, in The Complaint of Philomene (Arber, p. III), 1576: "Hir second note is fye, In Greeke and Latin phy, In english fy and every toong, That ever yet read I." painted rhetoric] Compare Lodge, Euphues Golden Legacie (Shakes. Lib. 1875, p. 18): "A painted tongue may shroud a subtle heart"; and R. Edwards, Damon and Pithias (Hazlitt's Dodsley, iv. 88), ante 1566: "these need no subtle sleight, No painted speech the matter to convey."

242. crutch... cradle] " From cradle to crutch, from infancy to old age," was a symbolical expression used several times by Greene: "from the cradle to the crouch, and from the crouch had one legge in the grave" (Penelope's Web [Grosart, v, 224], 1587). He has it later

in A Looking-Glass for London. In other places the antithesis is between "cradle" and "saddle."

244. black as ebony] Compare Hakluyt's Voyages (ed. 1811, iii. 502), Francis de Ulloa: "a conie blacke as heben-wood" (1540).

as

252. school of night] "Night' is frequently used in Shakespeare as emblematic of ugliness,' or 'of sorrow,' and the 'nurse of crime'" (Schmidt). It is not a great stretch of imagination to give a suitable meaning to the words, especially as we have "school" in this play (v. ii. 71) in the sense of "learning"; and elsewhere in the common sense of a system of doctrine. The teachings of night are as black as night itself. Schools were not beloved institutions at this time; and if we add to this the augmented objectionableness of a night-school, we get a good type of ugliness. But if this note does not satisfy the reader, let him turn to the weedy wilderness of words collected by Furness at the passage,

Biron. Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.
O! if in black my lady's brows be deck'd,
It mourns that painting and usurping hair
Should ravish doters with a false aspect;
And therefore is she born to make black fair.
Her favour turns the fashion of the days,
For native blood is counted painting now:
And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise,
Paints itself black, to imitate her brow.

Dum. To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.
Long. And since her time are colliers counted bright.
King. And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack.
Dum. Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.
Biron. Your mistresses dare never come in rain,

For fear their colours should be wash'd away.
King. 'Twere good, yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain,
I'll find a fairer face not wash'd to-day.

255

260

265

270

Biron. I'll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.
King. No devil will fright thee then so much as she.
Dum. I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear.
Long. Look, here's thy love: my foot and her face see.

[Showing his shoe.

Biron. O! if the streets were paved with thine eyes,

Her feet were much too dainty for such tread. Dum. O vile! then, as she goes, what upward lies

The street should see as she walk'd overhead.

275

253. crest] dress, crete, crage, cresset and best various conjectures and lections. 256. and] F 4; omitted Qq, F 1; an Ff 2, 3. 263. black] blake Q 1. 265. sweet] swart anonymous conjecture. crack] Q 2, Ff 3, 4; crake Q 1, Ff 1, 2. 268. their] her Q 2. 274. [Showing his shoe] Johnson, Steevens, Craig, etc.

253. beauty's crest] i.e. lightness or brightness, as shown by the words 'spirits of light" in the next line. Blackness," "hell" and "night" stand for ugliness, as "brightness," "heaven' and "light" stand for beauty. 254. Devils spirits of light] Compare 2 Corinthians xi. 14; and Measure for Measure, 11. iv. 17 (note, Arden edition).

258,259. black . . . turns the fashion] Lyly has the same thought: "such a common thing it is amongst you to commend, that oftentimes for fashion's

King. But what of this? Are we not all in love?
Biron, O! nothing so sure; and thereby all forsworn.
King. Then leave this chat; and, good Biron, now prove
Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn.

Dum. Ay, marry, there; some flattery for this evil.
Long. O! some authority how to proceed;

280

Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the devil.
Dum. Some salve for perjury.
Biron.

285

O! 'tis more than need.

Have at you then, affection's men-at-arms :
Consider what you first did swear unto,
To fast, to study, and to see no woman;
Flat treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth.

Say, can you fast? your stomachs are too young,
And abstinence engenders maladies.
And where that you have vow'd to study, lords,
In that each of you have forsworn his book,
Can you still dream and pore and thereon look ?
For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,
Have found the ground of study's excellence
Without the beauty of a woman's face?
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They are the ground, the books, the academes,

280. O! nothing] Qq, F 1; Nothing Ff 2, 3, 4, Cambridge. O tis Qq, Ff 2; 'Tis Cambridge.

285. quillets] subtleties. Compare 2 Henry VI. III. i. 261: "do not stand on quillets how to slay him: Be it by gins, by snares, by subtlety, sleeping or waking, 'tis no matter how." The use in the text is the earliest in New Eng. Dict. Origin obscure, but perhaps a variant of "quiddit." Gabriel Harvey has "quillity" earlier. Compare also Holland's Plinie, xi. 3 (1601): "to judge and determine of these doubtful quillets and their causes.' Shakespeare uses the word several times later.

289. To fast... no woman] So Lucio says in Measure for Measure, 1. iv. 60, 61: "Blunt his natural edge with profits of the mind, study and fast." 296-301. For when would you true Promethean fire] Dyce omits these

290

295

300

286. O! 'tis]