Ham. 66 Your poor servant ever. Sir, my good friend, I'll change that 313. "The still-piecing air." Still-piecing is, I think, right; there is the same idea in the 5th Chapter of the Wisdom of Solomon, ver. 12, "Or like as when an arrow is shot at a mark it parteth the air, which immediately cometh together again, so that a man cannot know where it went through." LORD CHEDWORTH. 350. ACT IV. SCENE III. "Our virtues would be proud if our faults We should exult too much on the merit of our virtues, if we were not humbled by reflecting on the frailties that belong to us; and the contemplation of our crimes would drive us to despair if we were not animated and encouraged by confidence in our virtues. 1 354. "Theorick." Thus in Othello "The bookish Theorick. 355. If I were to live this present hour.” Perhaps "live" emphatically for commence the life eternal, mors janua vita. In this conjecture I have little confidence. Parolles may only mean, if I were this hour assured that my life would be spared by the general, in whose hands it was. ACT V. SCENE III. 386. "We lost a jewel of her; and our esteem Was made much poorer by it." "Esteem," perhaps, for what is the object of esteem: the stock of what was estimable was reduced by her death: or it may be, when her worth departed the rate of my esteem for any thing remaining was much lessened. 390. Oft our displeasures to ourselves unjust, Destroy our friends, and after weep their dust: "Our own love waking, cries to see what's done, While shameful hate sleeps out the after noon." Our anger, that destroys our friends, does an injury to ourselves, and we lament our rashness; our self-love is continually awake to affliction at the loss we endure, while the enmity, of which we are now ashamed, is extinct, or sleeps throughout the remainder of our life. 396. "I will buy me a son-in-law in a fair, and toll him." By to "toll" him, I suppose Lafeau meant, I will find him out by proclamation of the bell-man. "I will buy me a son-in-law," &c. I take the meaning to be, I will buy, &c. and pay toll for him. Lord Coke, in his reading on Stat. Westm. (3 Edw. I.) says, "Toll to the fair or market is a reasonable sum of money, due to the owner of the fair or market, upon sale of things tollable within the fair or market; or for stallage, piccage, or the like; and this was first invented that contracts might have good testimony, and be made openly, for, of old time, privy or secret contracts were forbidden." 398. If you shall marry, 2 Inst. 220. LORD CHEDWORTH. "You give away this hand, and that is mine." This is an inaccurate expression: though this and that, except for the lines that follow, are, not without a meaning, distinguished: Diana takes hold of Bertram's hand, and what she now calls "this" hand, when alienated and bestowed upon another, she might naturally enough term "that" hand; but as Bertram's perfidy is yet only suspected, or hypothetical, syntax requires the subjunctive form of the verb "to be." "If you shall marry, "You give away this hand, and that were mine." But a more obvious correction will better agree with what succeeds : "You give away this hand, and this is mine, "You give away heaven's vows, and those are mine," &c. 399. "Than for to think that I would sink it here." I wish this miserable expletive "for" could be ejected; "e'er" might readily supersede it. THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. INDUCTION. 20. "And when he says he is-say, that he dreams." Sir T. Hanmer's emendation, which Mr. Steevens approves, "And when he says he's poor, say that he dreams," as well as Dr. Johnson's, "And when he says he's sly, say that he dreams," appears not only unnecessary, but injurious to the design of the poet, who very naturally makes the lord pass-by what he could not be supposed to have known, either, the name or the peculiar circumstances of the sot." And when he says he is (howsoever he shall describe himself)-say that he dreams. This is Shakspeare. ACT I. SCENE I. 39. "I am arriv'd for fruitful Lombardy." The scene being in Padua, and Padua being |