ACT I. · Section 13

ACT I.

SCENE 2. Page 27.

LEON. And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour.

This is not the only gross and offensive metaphor of the kind that our poet has used. In _Measure for measure_, we have "groping for trouts in a peculiar river."

SCENE 2. Page 30.

LEON. ... I have trusted thee Camillo, With all the nearest things to my _heart_---- ... wherein, priest-like thou _Hast cleans'd my bosom_.

So in Macbeth we have,

"_Cleanse the stuff'd bosom_ of that perilous stuff, Which weighs upon the _heart_."

SCENE 2. Page 39.

CAM. ... If I could find example Of thousands that had struck anointed kings And _flourish'd after_, I'd not do't.

If, as Mr. Blackstone supposes, this be an allusion to the death of the queen of Scots, it exhibits Shakspeare in the character of a cringing flatterer accommodating himself to existing circumstances, and is moreover an extremely severe one. But the perpetrator of that atrocious murder _did flourish_ many years afterwards. May it not rather be designed as a compliment to King James on his escape from the Gowrie conspiracy, an event often brought to the people's recollection during his reign, from the day on which it happened being made a day of thanksgiving? See _Osborne's traditional memoyres_, and the almanacks of the time under the 5th of August.

SCENE 2. Page 41.

POL. In whose success we are _gentle_.

So in Act V. Scene 2, the old shepherd says, "we must be gentle now we are gentlemen." What our ancestors conceived to be the true definition of a gentleman may be seen at large in _The booke of honor and armes_, 1594, 4to, book iii. In Morgan's _Sphere of gentry_, the silly author has gravely stated that _Jesus Christ_ was a _gentleman_ and bore arms. Of the latter assertion he has given no proof, though he might have adduced a sort of armorial bearing made up from the implements of the passion, and often exhibited as such in some of the _horæ_ and other service books of the church, before the reformation. Such a coat of arms was likewise used as a stamp on the covers of old books, with the motto REDEMPTORIS MUNDI ARMA. _Gentle gentlemen_ is an alliteration that is very frequent in writers of the age of Shakspeare. In the preface to Gerard Leigh's _Accedence of armorie_, 1597, 4to, three sorts of _ungentiles_ are described, "the first whereof are _gentle ungentle_. Such be they as wil rather sweare armes then beare armes. Who of negligence stop mustard pots with their fathers pedegrees, or otherwise abuse them. The second sort are _ungentle gentlemen_, who being enhaunced to honor by their fathers, on whom (though it were to their owne worship) yet can they not keepe so much money from the dice, as to make worshipful obsequies for their sad fathers with any point of armory. The third sort, and worst of all, are neither _gentle ungentle_, or _ungentle gentile_, but verie stubble curs, and be neither doers, sufferers, or wel speakers of honors tokens."

SCENE 2. Page 42.

CAM. I am appointed _him_ to murder you.

"_i. e._" says Mr. Steevens, "I am the person appointed to murder you." This is certainly the meaning, but the grammatical construction is, "I am appointed the person to murder you." The lines quoted from _King Henry VI._ are ungrammatical, and not, as is conceived, an exemplification of the foregoing passage.

SCENE 2. Page 42.

POL. ... and my name _Be yok'd with his that did betray the best_.

Mr. Henderson's conjecture that Judas is here meant is certainly well founded. A clause in the sentence against excommunicated persons was, "let them _have part with Judas that betrayed Christ_. Amen;" and this is here imitated.