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"He that dyed so oft in sport,

"Dyed at last no colour for't." So, Heywood, in his Epigrams, 1562: "Is thy husband a dyer, woman? alack, "Had he no colour to dye thee on but black ? "Dieth he oft? yea, too oft when customers call "But I would have him one day die once for all. "Were he gone, dyer never more would I wed, Dyers be ever dying, but never dead."

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STEEVENS.

He that lives and dies, i. e. he who, to the very end of his life, continues a common executioner. So, in the second scene of the fifth act of this play, "live and die a shepherd.", TOLLET.

632. The cicatrice and capable impressure] Cicatrice is here not very properly used; it is the scar of a wound. Capable impressure, hollow mark. JOHNSON. 639. power of fancy,] Fancy is here used for love, as before in the Midsummer Night's Dream.

See Fancy, in catch-word Alphabet.

JOHNSON.

648. That you insult, exult, and all at once,] The speaker may mean thus: Who might be your mother, that you insult, exult, and that too all in a breath. Such is perhaps the meaning of all at once. STEEVENS.

649. What though you have no beauty] This was the reading of the old copy. It was recommended by a correspondent of Mr. Theobald to drop the no, and the passage in Lodge's Rosalynde, which Shakspere copied, authorises the omission :-"Because thou art beautiful, be not so coy." Mr. Malone however thinks,

Eiij.

thinks, that no was a misprint for mo, and therefore would read-What though you have mo beauty— the word mo being often used by Shakspere for more.

654. Of nature's sale-work:] those works that nature makes up carelessly and without exactness. The allusion is to the practice of mechanicks, whose work bespoke is more elaborate than that which is made up for chance customers, or to sell in quantities to retailers, which is called sale-work. WARBURTON,

659. That can entame my spirits to your worship.] So, in Much Ado about Nothing:

"Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand."

STEEVENS. 673. Foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer:] The ugly seem most ugly, when, though ugly, they are

scoffers,

JOHNSON.

677. the other editions, your foulness.

with her foulness,] So, Sir T. Hanmer,

689.

JOHNSON

though all the world could see, None could be so abus'd in sight as he.]

Though all mankind could look on you, none could be so deceived as to think you beautiful but he.

692.

JOHNSON.

Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of

might:

Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight?] The second of these lines is from Marlowe's Hero and Leander, 1637, sig. B b. where it stands thus:

"Where both deliberate, the love is slight: "Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight?"

This line is likewise quoted in Belvidere, or the Garden of the Muses, 1610, p. 29. and in England's Par- nassus, printed in 1600, p. 261. STEEVENS.

Might not the poet have intended this, as an apostrophe to Marlow himlelf?

HENLEY.

ACT IV.

Line 34. SWAM in a gondola.] That is, been at Venice, the seat at that time of all licentiousness, where the young English gentlemen wasted their fortunes, debased their morals, and sometimes lost their religion.

The fashion of travelling, which prevailed very much in our author's time, was considered by the wiser men as one of the principal causes of corrupt manners. It was therefore gravely censured by Ascham in his Schoolmaster, and by bishop Hall in his Quo Vadis; and is here, and in other passages, ridiculed by Shakspere. JOHNSON.

61. A Rosalind of a better leer than you.] i. e. of a better feature, complexion, or colour, than you. So, in P. Holland's Pliny, B. XXXI. c. ii. p. 403: "In some places there is no other thing bred or growing, but brown and duskish, insomuch as not only the cattel is all of that lere, but also the corn on the ground, &c." The word seems to be derived from the Saxon Hleare, facies, frons, vultus. So it is used in Titus Andronicus, act iv. sc. 2. See leer in catchword Alphabet.

"Here's

"Here's a young lad fram'd of another leer."

TOLLET.

In the notes on the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, vol. iv. p. 321. Lere is supposed to mean skin. So, in Isumbras MS. Cott. Cal. ii. fol. 129.

"His lady is white as wales bone,

"Here lere brygte to se upon,

100.

"So faire a blosme on tre."

STEEVENS.

chroniclers of that age] Sir T. Hanmer reads, coroners, by the advice, as Dr. Warburton hints, of some anonymous critick. JOHNSON. Mr. Edwards proposes the same emendation, and supports it by a passage in Hamlet:

"The coroner hath sat on her, and finds it—Christian burial."

I believe, however, the old copy is right. MALONE. 148. I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain.]

Mr. Malone supposes an allusion here to some well known conduit: See Diana, catch-word Alphabet.

His conjecture is right. The allusion is to the Cross in Cheapside; the religious images with which it was ornamented, being defaced, as we learn from Stowe, in 1595 There was then set up, a curious wrought tabernacle of grey marble, and in the same an image alabaster of Diana, and water conveyed from the Thames, prilling from her naked breast. Stowe, in Cheap Ward.

Statues, and particularly that of Diana, with water conveyed through them to give them the appearance of

weeping

weeping figures, were anciently a frequent ornament of fountains. So in the City Match, act iii. sc. g.

-Now could I cry

Like any image in a fountain, which

Runs lamentations.

And again in Drayton :

150.

Here in the garden, wrought by curious hands,
Naked Diana in the fountain stands.

Rosamond's Epistle to Henry II.

WHALLEY.

I will laugh like a hyen,] The bark of the

hyena very much resembles a loud laugh.

So, in The Cobler's Prophecy, 1594:

"You laugh hyena like, weep like a crocodile." STEEVENS.

156. make the doors] See Doors, catch-word Alphabet.

161. -Wit, whither wilt ?] This was an exclamation much in use, when any one was either talking nonsense, or usurping a greater share in conversation than justly belonged to him. The same expression occurs more than once in Taylor the water-poet, and seems to have been the title of some ludicrous performance. STEEVENS.

Mr. Reed thinks the allusion may be to the following performance: "The Wil of Wit, Wit's Will or Wil's Wit, chuse you whether containing five dis courses, the effects whereof follow: Reade and Judge: Newly corrected and amended, being the fifth time imprinted. Compiled by Nicholas Breton, gentleman, 4to. 1606,"

167.

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