Enter PROSPERO and ARIEL remain invisible. CALIBAN, STEPHANO, and TRINCULO, all wet. CAL. Pray you, tread foftly, that the blind mole may not Hear a foot fall: we now are near his cell. STE. Monster, your fairy, which, you say, is a harmless fairy, has done little better than play'd the Jack with us.' TRIN. Monster, I do fmell all horse-pifs; at which my nose is in great indignation. STE. So is mine. Do you hear, monster? If I fhould take a displeasure against you; look you, TRIN. Thou wert but a loft monster. CAL. Good my lord, give me thy favour ftill: Be patient, for the prize I'll bring thee to Shall hood-wink this mischance: therefore, fpeak foftly; All's hufh'd as midnight yet. TRIN. Ay, but to lose our bottles in the pool,STE. There is not only difgra and dishonour in that, monster, but an infinite lofs. TRIN. That's more to me than my wetting: yet this is your harmless fairy, monster. -the blind mole may not Hear a foot fall:] This quality of hearing which the mole is fuppofed to poffefs in fo high a degree, is mentioned in Euphues, 4to. 1581, p. 64," Doth not the lion for ftrength, the turtle for love, the ant for labour, excel man? Doth not the eagle fee clearer, the vulture smell better, the moale heare lightlyer ?" REED. 5 - has done little better than play'd the Jack with us.] i. e. He has played Jack with a lantern; has led us about like an ignis fatuus, by which travellers are decoyed into the mire. JOHNSON. STE. I will fetch off my bottle, though I be o'er ears for my labour. CAL. Pr'ythee, my king, be quiet: Seeft thou here, This is the mouth o' the cell: no noife, and enter: Do that good mischief, which may make this island Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban, For aye thy foot-licker. STE. Give me thy hand: I do begin to have bloody thoughts. TRIN. O king Stephano! O peer! O worthy Stephano! look, what a wardrobe here is for thee! 6 CAL. Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash. TRIN. O, ho, monfter; we know what belongs to a frippery :-O king Stephano! STE. Put off that gown, Trinculo; by this hand, I'll have that gown. TRIN. Thy grace fhall have it. CAL. The dropfy drown this fool! what do you mean, 6 Trin. O king Stephano! O peer! O worthy Stephano! look what a wardrobe here is for thee!] The humour of these lines confifts in their being an allufion to an old celebrated ballad, which begins thus: King Stephen was a worthy peer-and celebrates that king's parfimony with regard to his wardrobe.There are two ftanzas of this ballad in Othello. WARBURTON. The old ballad is printed at large in The Reliques of Ancient Poetry, Vol. I. PERCY. - 7 - we know what belongs to a frippery :] A frippery was a fhop where old clothes were fold. Fripperie, Fr. Beaumont and Fletcher use the word in this fenfe, in Wit without Money, A&t II: "As if I were a running frippery." So, in Monfieur d'Olive, a comedy, by Chapman, 1606: " Paffing To doat thus on fuch luggage? Let's along, From toe to crown he'll fill our skins with pinches ; Make us ftrange stuff. STE. Be you quiet, monster.-Mistress line, is not this my jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line: now, jerkin, you are like to lose your hair, and prove a bald jerkin. yesterday by the frippery, I fpied two of them hanging out at a ftall, with a gambrell thruft from shoulder to fhoulder." The perfon who kept one of thefe fhops, was called a fripper. Strype, in the life of Stowe, fays, that these frippers lived in Birchin-lane and Cornhill. STEEVENS. 8- Let's along,] Firft edit. Let's alone. I believe the poet wrote: Let it alone, "And do the murder first.' JOHNSON. Caliban had ufed the fame expreffion before. Mr. Theobald reads-let's along. MALONE. Let's alone, may mean-Let you and I only go to commit the murder, leaving Trinculo, who is fo folicitous about the trash of drefs, behind us. STEEVENS. 9-under the line:] An allufion to what often happens to peo ple who pass the line. The violent fevers, which they contract in that hot climate, make them lose their hair. EDWARDS' MSS. Perhaps the allufion is to a more indelicate disease than any peculiar to the equinoxial. So, in The Noble Soldier, 1632: " "Tis hot going under the line there.” Again, in Lady Alimony, 1659: Look to the clime "Where you inhabit; that's the torrid zone: Shakspeare feems to defign an equivoque between the equinoxial and the girdle of a woman. It may be neceffary, however, to obferve, as a further elucidation of this miferable jeft, that the lines on which clothes are hung, are ufually made of twifted horfe-hair. STEEVENS, |