EPILOGUE. Ros. It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue: but it is no more unhandsome, than to see the lord the prologue. If it be true, that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true, that a good play needs no epilogue: Yet to good wine they do ufe good bufhes; and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a cafe am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue, nor cannot infinuate with you in the behalf of a good play? I am not furnifh'd like a beggar,' therefore to beg will not become me: my way is, to conjure you; and I'll be 7 no bush,] It appears formerly to have been the custom to hang a tuft of ivy at the door of a vintner. I fuppofe ivy was rather chofen than any other plant, as it has relation to Bacchus. So, in Gafcoigne's Glafs of Government, 1575: "Now a days the good wyne needeth none Ivye Garland.” Again, in The Rival Friends, 1632: ""Tis like the ivy-bush unto a tavern." Again, in Summer's laft Will and Teftament, 1600: "Green ivy-bushes at the vintners' doors." STEEVENS. The practice is ftill obferved in Warwickshire and the adjoining counties, at ftatute-hirings, wakes, &c. by people who fell ale at no other time. And hence, I fuppofe, the Bush tavern at Bristol, and other places. RITSON. 8 What a cafe am I in then, &c.] Here feems to be a chaẩm, or fome other depravation, which deftroys the fentiment here intended. The reasoning probably stood thus: Good wine needs no bush, good plays need no epilogue; but bad wine requires a good bush, and a bad play a good epilogue. What cafe am I in then? To reftore the words is impoffible; all that can be done without copies is, to note the fault. JOHNSON. Johnfon mistakes the meaning of this paffage. Rofalind fays, that good plays need no epilogue; yet even good plays do prove the better for a good one. What a cafe then was the in, who had neither prefented them with a good play, nor had a good epilogue to prejudice them in favour of a bad one? M. MASON. 9 furnish'd like a beggar,] That is, dressed: fo before, he was furnished like a huntfman. JOHNSON. gin with the women. I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please them: and so I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women, (as I perceive by your fimpering, none of you hate them,) that between you and the women, the play may please." 2 I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please them: and so I charge you, &c.] The old copy reads I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you: and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women, -that between you and the women, &c. STEEVENS. This paffage fhould be read thus: I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as pleafes them; and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women, -to like as much as pleases them, that betweeen you and the women, &c. Without the alteration of You into Them, the invocation is nonsense; and without the addition of the words, to like as much as pleafes them, the inference of, that between you and the women the play may pafs, would be unfupported by any precedent premifes. The words feem to have been ftruck out by fome senseless player, as a vicious redundancy. WARBURTON. The words you and ym written as was the cuftom in that time, were in manuscript scarcely diftinguishable. The emendation is very judicious and probable. JOHNSON. Mr. Heath obferves, that if Dr. Warburton's interpolation be admitted ["to like as much, &c."] "the men are to like only juft as much as pleased the women, and the women only just as much as pleased the men; neither are to like any thing from their own tafte: and if both of them disliked the whole, they would each of them equally fulfil what the poet defires of them.-But Shakspeare did not write fo nonfenfically; he defires the women to like as much as pleafed the men, and the men to fet the ladies a good example; which exhortation to the men is evidently enough implied in these words, that between you and the women the play may please." Mr. Heath, though he objects (I think very properly) to the interpolated fentence, admits by his interpretation the change of "-pleafes you" to "-pleafes them;" which has been adopted by the late editors. I by no means think it neceffary; nor is Mr. Heath's expofition in my opinion correct. The text is fufficiently clear, without any alteration. Rofalind's addrefs appears to me fimply this: "I charge you, O women, for the love you If I were a woman,' I would kifs as many of you as had beards that pleas'd me, complexions that lik'd me,+ and breaths that I defy'd not: and, I am fure, as many as have good beards, or good faces, or fweet bear to men, to approve of as much of this play as affords you entertainment; and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women, [not to fet an example to, but] to follow or agree in opinion with the ladies; that between you both the play may be fuccefsful." The words "to follow, or agree in opinion with, the ladies" are not indeed expreffed, but plainly implied in thofe fubfequent; " that, between you and the women, the play may pleafe." In the epilogue to King Henry IV. P. II. the addrefs to the audience proceeds in the fame order: "All the gentlewomen here have forgiven [i. e. are favourable to] me; if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never feen before in fuch an affembly." The old copy reads-as pleafe you. The correction was made by Mr. Rowe. Like all my predeceffors, I had here adopted an alteration made by Mr. Rowe, of which the reader was apprized in the note; but the old copy is certainly right, and fuch was the phrafcology of Shakspeare's age. So, in K. Richard III: "Where every horfe bears his commanding rein, "And may direct his course, as please himself." Again, in Hamlet: 66 a pipe for fortune's finger, "To found what ftop the pleafe." Again, in K. Henry VIII: "All men's honours "Lie like one lump before him, to be fashion'd 66 I read and fo I charge you, O men," &c. This trivial addition, (as Dr. Farmer joins with me in thinking,) clears the whole paffage. STEEVENS. 3 If I were a woman,] Note, that in this author's time, the parts of women were always performed by men or boys. HANMER. complexions that liked me,] i. e. that I liked. So again STEEVENS. in Hamlet: "This likes me well." - breaths that I defy'd not :] This paffage ferves to manifeft the indelicacy of the time in which the plays of Shakspeare breaths, will, for my kind offer, when I make curt'fy, bid me farewell. [Exeunt. were written. Such an idea, ftarted by a modern dramatist, and put into the mouth of a female character, would be hooted with indignation from the ftage. STEEVENS. 6 Of this play the fable is wild and pleafing. I know not how the ladies will approve the facility with which both Rofalind and Celia give away their hearts, To Celia much may be forgiven for the heroifm of her friendship. The character of Jaques is natural and well preferved. The comick dialogue is very fprightly, with lefs mixture of low buffoonery than in fome other plays; and the graver part is elegant and harmonious. By haftening to the end of his work, Shakspeare fuppreffed the dialogue between the ufurper and the hermit, and loft an opportunity of exhibiting a moral leffon in which he might have found matter worthy of his higheft powers. JOHNSON. See p. 28. Is but a quintaine, &c.] Dr. Warburton's explanation would, I think, have been lefs exceptionable, had it been more fimple yet he is here charged with a fault of which he is feldom guilty, want of refinement. "This (fays Mr. Guthrie) is but an imperfect (to call it no worfe) explanation of a beautiful paffage. The quintaine was not the object of the darts and arms; it was a stake, driven into a field, upon which were hung a fhield and trophies of war, at which they fhot, darted, or rode with a lance. When the fhield and trophies were all thrown down, the quintaine remained. Without this information, how could the reader underftand the allufion of— - my better parts Are all thrown down.” In the prefent edition I have avoided as much as poffible all kind of controverfy; but in thofe cafes where errors by having been long adopted are become inveterate, it becomes in fome measure neceffary to the enforcement of truth. It is a common but a very dangerous miftake, to fuppose, that the interpretation which gives moft fpirit to a paffage is the true one. In confequence of this notion two paffages of our author, one in Macbeth, and another in Othello, have been refined, as I conceive, into a meaning that I believe was not in his thoughts. If the moft fpirited interpretation that can be imagined, happens to be inconfiftent with his general manner, and the phrafeology both of him and his contemporaries, or to be founded on a custom which did not exift in his age, moft affuredly it is a falfe interpre tation. Of the latter kind is Mr. Guthrie's explanation of the paffage before us. The military exercife of the quintaine is as ancient as the time of the Romans; and we find from Matthew Paris, that it fubfifted in England in the thirteenth century. Tentoria variis ornamentorum generibus venuftantur; terræ infixis fudibus fcuta apponuntur, quibus in craftinum quintanæ ludus, fcilicet equeftris, exerceretur. M. Paris, ad ann. 1253. Thefe probably were the very words that Mr. Guthrie had in contemplation. But Matthew Paris made no part of Shakspeare's library; nor is it at all material to our prefent point what were the cuftoms of any century preceding that in which he lived. In his time, without any doubt, the quintaine was not a military exercife of tilting, but a mere ruftic fport. So Minfheu, in his DICT. 1617: "A quintaine or quintelle, a game in request at marriages, when Jac and Tom, Dic, Hob and Will, ftrive for the gay garland." So alfo, Randolph at somewhat a later period [Poems, 1642]: "Foot-ball with us may be with them [the Spaniards] bal- "As they at tilts, fo we at quintaine runne; "That have leaft art, and most fimplicitie." But old Stowe has put this matter beyond a doubt; for in his SURVEY OF LONDON, printed only two years before this play appeared, he has given us the figure of a quintaine, as represented in the margin. "I have feen (fays he) a quinten set up on Cornehill, by the Leaden Hall, where the attendants on the lords of merry difports have runne, and made greate paftime; for hee that hit not the broad end of the quinten was of all men laughed to fcorne; and hee that hit it full, if he rid not the fafter, had a found blow in his necke with a bagge full of fand hanged on the other end." Here we fee were no fhields hung, no trophies of war to be thrown down. "The great defign of the fport, (fays Dr. Plott in his Hiftory of Oxfordshire) is to try both man and horse, and to break the board; which whoever does, is for the time Princeps juventutis.” -Shakspeare's fimiles feldom correfpond on both fides. "My better parts being all thrown down, my youthful spirit being fubdued by the power of beauty, I am now (fays Orlando) as inanimate as a wooden quintaine is (not when its better parts are thrown down, but as that lifeless block is at all times)." Such, perhaps, is the meaning. If however the words "better parts," are to be applied |