Scena Septima. Enter Duke Sen. & Lord, like Out-lawes. Du. Sen. I thinke he be transform'd into a beast, For I can no where finde him, like a man. 1. Lord. My Lord, he is but euen now gone hence, Heere was he merry, hearing of a Song. Du. Sen. If he compact of iarres, grow Musicall, We shall haue fhortly difcord in the Spheares: Enter Iaques. 1. Lord. He faues my labor by his owne approach. 1. Out-lawes] out-lawes Ff. A table set out. Rowe. 2. be] is Pope +. 5 1Ο 13 9. Enter...] After line 10, Dyce, Sta. 13. What,] And cannot have 't? What, Cap. 2. think he be] See Abbott, § 299, for instances of 'be' used after verbs of thinking. The standard example, to which all others might be referred, is that mnemonic line: I think my wife be honest, and think she is not,' Oth. III, iii, 443.-ED. 4. euen now] ABBOTT, § 38: 'Even now' with us is applied to an action that has been going on for some time and still continues, the emphasis being laid on ' now.' In Shakespeare the emphasis is often to be laid on 'even,' and 'even now' means 'exactly or only now,' i. e. 'scarcely longer ago than the present.' 5. hearing of] See II, iv, 45 or Abbott, § 178. 6. compact] STEEVENS: That is, made up of discords. DYCE: Compacted, composed. 7. Spheares] See Mer. of Ven. V, i, 74 and notes in this edition, where the music of the spheres is discussed. WRIGHT: Compare Batman uppon Bartholome (ed. 1582), fol. 123, b: 'And so Macrobius saith: in putting & mouing of the roundnesse of heauen, is that noyse made, and tempereth sharpe noyse with lowe noyse, and maketh diuers accordes and melodie: but for the default of our hearing, and also for passing measure of that noyse and melodie, this harmony and accord is not heard of vs.’ 13. The comma at the close of the preceding line led CAPELL to suppose that the sentence was not complete; he thereupon supplied the omission (see Textual Notes), and thus justified the addition in his notes: Which circumstance [the comma after 'company'] alone indicates an omission; but it further appears from the sense, if a little attended to: For what great crime is it, that Jaques must be woo'd for his company? but that he makes his friends woo it, and won't let them have it after all, is an accusation of some weight. The words now inserted carry this charge.' Iaq. A Foole, a foole : I met a foole i'th Forrest, A motley Foole (a miferable world :) 14. foole i'th] fol i'th F ̧. 15. world] varlet Han. Warb. 15 15. A motley Foole] DOUCE (ii, 317): The costume of the domestic fool in Shakespeare's time was of two sorts. In the first of these the coat was motley or parti-coloured, and attached to the body by a girdle, with bells at the skirts and elbows, though not always. The breeches and hose close, and sometimes each leg of a different colour. A hood resembling a monk's cowl, which, at a very early period, it was certainly designed to imitate, covered the head entirely, and fell down over part of the breast and shoulders. It was sometimes decorated with asses' ears, or else terminated in the neck and head of a cock, a fashion as old as the fourteenth century. It often had the comb or crest only of the animal, whence the term cockscomb or coxcomb was afterwards used to denote any silly upstart. This fool usually carried in his hand an official sceptre or bauble, which was a short stick ornamented at the end with the figure of a fool's head, or sometimes with that of a doll or puppet. To this instrument there was frequently annexed an inflated skin or bladder, with which the fool belaboured those who offended him or with whom he was inclined to make sport; this was often used by itself, in lieu, as it would seem, of a bauble. . . . It was not always filled with air, but occasionally with sand or pease. . . . . In some old prints the fool is represented with a sort of flapper or rattle ornamented with bells. It seems to have been constructed of two round and flat pieces of wood or pasteboard, and is, no doubt, a vestige of the crotalum used by the Roman mimes or dancers. This instrument was used for the same purpose as the bladder, and occasionally for correcting the fool himself whenever he behaved with too much licentiousness. . . . . In some old plays the fool's dagger is mentioned, perhaps the same instrument as was carried by the Vice or buffoon of the Moralities; and it may be as well to observe in this place that the domestic fool is sometimes, though it is presumed improperly, called the Vice. The dagger of the latter was made of a thin piece of lath, and the use he generally made of it was to belabour the Devil. It appears that in Queen Elizabeth's time the Archbishop of Canterbury's fool had a wooden dagger and a coxcomb. . . . . The other dress, and which seems to have been more common in Shakespeare's time, was the long petticoat. This originally appertained to the idiot or natural fool, and was obviously adopted for the purpose of cleanliness. Why it came to be used for the allowed fool is not so apparent. It was, like the first, of various colours, the materials often costly, as of velvet, and guarded or fringed with yellow. A manuscript note in the time of the Commonwealth states yellow to have been the fool's colour. This petticoat dress continued to a late period, and has been seen not many years since in some of the interludes exhibited in Wales. But the above were by no means the only modes in which the domestic fools were habited. The hood was not always surmounted with the cockscomb, in lieu of which a single bell, and occasionally more, appeared. Sometimes a feather was added to the comb. A large purse or wallet at the girdle is a very ancient part of the fool's dress. Tarlton, who personated the clowns in Shakespeare's time, appears to have worn it. .. We may suppose that the same variety of dress was observed on the stage which we know to have actually prevailed in common life. .... .... 15. world] WARBURTON: What, because he met a motley fool, was it therefore a miserable world? This is sadly blundered; we should read a miserable varlet: As I do liue by foode, I met a foole, Who laid him downe, and bask'd him in the Sun, In good fet termes, and yet a motley foole. 16 20 22 His head is altogether running on this fool, both before and after these words, and here he calls him a miserable varlet, notwithstanding he 'railed on Lady Fortune in good terms,' &c. JOHNSON: I see no need of changing 'world' to varlet, nor, if a change were necessary, can I guess how it should certainly be known that varlet is the true word. 'A miserable world' is a parenthetical exclamation, frequent among melancholy men, and natural to Jaques at the sight of a fool, or at the hearing of reflections on the fragility of life. CAPELL: [It was a miserable world] in the esti mation of Jaques and others equally cynical, who disrelish the world; arraigning the dispensations of Providence in a number of articles, and in this chiefly—that it has created such beings as fools. HUNTER (i, 347) acknowledges that there is no real need of disturbing the text, and that the meaning, as given by Capell, is not unambiguous, but, he continues, if this be not thought a satisfactory explanation of the passage, there is a word which would suit it so well if substituted for "world," and which might so easily become changed into "world" that I cannot but think that it may have been what Shakespeare wrote. . . . . The word is ort. "A motley fool! a miserable ort!" "Ort," says Tooke, "means anything vile or worthless"; but it seems to contain the idea of remnant or fragment. Shakespeare uses it thus in Tro. & Cres. V, ii, 158, and in Timon, IV, iii, 400. Fragments of victuals were orts; so that the word may have led to the idea which next entered the mind of the poet: "As I do live by food, I met a fool," and in the course of what he says of him he still keeps to the idea which the word ort would naturally introduce, and speaks of the clown's brains as "being dry as the remainder biscuit After a voyage," which was eminently an ort. [Whenever we wish to think of the excellent Hunter at his best, let us wipe from our memory every vestige of an ort of this emendation.-ED.] CowDEN-CLARKE: A parenthetical exclamation, whereby Jaques for the moment laughs at his own melancholy view of the world, having just heard it echoed by a professional jester. Moreover, he seems to exclaim, 'This a miserable world! No, it contains a fool and food for laughter.' .... 21. fortune] REED: Fortuna favet fatuis is, as Upton observes, the saying here alluded to, or, as in Publius Syrus: Fortuna, nimium quem fovet, stultum facit. So in the Prologue to The Alchemist: Fortune, that favours fooles, these two short hours We wish away.' Again, in Every Man Out of his Humour, I, i [p. 38, ed. Gifford]: 'Sogliardo. Why, who am I, sir? Macilente. One of those that fortune favours. Carlo. [Aside] The periphrasis of a fool.' HALLIWELL: Fortune favours fools, or fools have the best luck.'-Ray's Proverbs. MOBERLY: The proverb, Coleridge wittily and wisely suggests, has something the same meaning as Sterne's saying, 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.' WEISS (p. 115): Thus, indeed, like the wise men, Touchstone will have a social chance to show, as they do, what his folly is. 22. diall] KNIGHT: There's no clock in the forest,' says Orlando, and it was not very likely that the Fool would have a pocket clock. What, then, was the 'dial' that And looking on it, with lacke-luftre eye, 23 Sayes, very wifely, it is ten a clocke: 25 Thus we may fee (quoth he) how the world wagges: 'Tis but an houre agoe, since it was nine, And after one houre more, 'twill be eleuen, And fo from houre to houre, we ripe, and ripe, 27. one] an Var. '03 (misprint?) Var. '13, Harness. sun. 28 27. eleuen] a eleven Cap. (corrected in Errata). he took from his poke? We have lately become possessed with a rude instrument. .... It is a brass circle of about two inches in diameter; on the outer side are engraved letters indicating the names of the months, with graduated divisions; and on the inner side the hours of the day. The brass circle itself is to be held in one position by a ring; but there is an inner slide in which there is a small orifice. This slide being moved so that the hole stands opposite the division of the month when the day falls of which we desire to know the time, the circle is held up opposite the The inner side is of course then in shade; but the sunbeam shines through the little orifice and forms a point of light upon the hour marked on the inner side. HALLIWELL: The term 'dial' appears to have been applied, in Shakespeare's time, to anything for measuring time in which the hours were marked, so that the allusion here may be either to a watch or to a portable journey-ring or small sun-dial. . . . . Ringdials were manufactured in large number at Sheffield so lately as the close of the last century, and were commonly used by the lower orders. [Halliwell gives three or four descriptions of various patterns, accompanied with wood-cuts; the frontispiece of his volume is an engraving of an ivory 'viatorium or pocket sun-dial.'] 22. poake] If the Fool were habited in the orthodox fashion, this pocket was probably the large purse or wallet' referred to above by Douce.-ED. 25. wagges] See Schmidt for instances of both its transitive and intransitive sense. Hamlet's use of it is noteworthy: 'I'll fight. . . . Until my eyelids will no longer wag.'-V, i, 255. 28. ripe] Thus, stay the very riping of the time,' Mer. of Ven. II, viii, 43. Used as a verb in only two or three other instances, according to Schmidt. MOBERLY: Probably most readers of the play will have remarked that the Fool's utterances, as here given, are not in Touchstone's style. He is not the kind of fool who rails in good set terms,' which are ridiculous from their grave senselessness. It would appear that the Poet allowed himself to turn aside for a moment here to satirize and parody some of the current dramas of the day. The original of these lines seems to have been The Spanish Tragedy of Kyd, where a father, finding his son hanged on an apple-tree, vents his grief by saying of it, 'At last it grew and grew, and bore and bore; Till at the length it grew a gallows.' The pun on 'gallows' and 'thereby hangs a tale' is quite Shakespearian. [But we must remember that it is Jaques who reports Touchstone's words. We hear Touchstone only through Jaques's ears. And as for the parody on Hieronimo—it is not impossible. Kyd's fellow-dramatists found in that tragedy a rich vein of Termagant o'erdone, and worked it with ridicule merci. lessly. It was not, however, at the substance, the plot of the tragedy, that they laughed, it was only at the wild rant of the expression, such as What outcry plucks me from my naked bed?' 'let my hair heave up my nightcap,' &c. And so it seems And then from houre to houre, we rot, and rot, An houre by his diall. Oh noble foole, A worthy foole : Motley's the onely weare. 33. deepe contemplatiue] deep-contemplative Mal. Steev. Knt, Dyce, Cam. 330 35 to me doubtful that there can have been here any thought in Shakespeare's mind of The Spanish Tragedy: it comes too near ridiculing the very substance of that drama, which was a bitter tragedy, to have compared the 'hanging of a tale' with the hanging of an idolised son in his own father's orchard.-ED.] 30. tale] A phrase used several times by Shakespeare. WEISS (p. 115): What tale? Why, the everlasting tedious one of over-accredited common-place behavior. Only a Touchstone, with his sly appreciation, can lend any liveliness to that. 31. morall] This is generally interpreted as a verb, equivalent to moralise. But SCHMIDT, S. v., says it is probably an adjective,' a view which is strengthened, I think, by the preposition 'on.' If the verb, moralise, needs no preposition after it (cf. 'Did he not moralize this spectacle ?'-II, i, 48), it is not easy to see why 'moral,' if used as an equivalent verb, should need one. Had Shakespeare intended to convey the force of moralise, would he not have used the word? there is no exigency of rhythm to prevent it. The line, The motley Fool thus moralise the time,' runs smoothly.-ED. 32. crow] WRIGHT: That is, to laugh merrily. Cf. You were wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock,' Two Gent. II, i, 28, [From what Speed says to Valentine it is to be inferred, I think, that this crowing' was laughter, not so much, perhaps, of a merry, as of a boisterous, kind. The contrast lies in Valentine's present lovesick condition, when he speaks puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas,' with his former manly estate, when he was wont to crow like a cock when he laughed.-ED.] 32. Chanticleere] SKEAT, s. v. chant: Chant-i-cleer, i. e. clear-singing; equivalent to Middle English chaunte-cleer; Chaucer, Nun's Prestes, T. 1. 29. 33. deepe contemplatiue] For other compound adjectives, see Abbott, § 2. 34. sans] WRIGHT (Note on Temp. I, ii, 97): This French preposition appears to have been brought into the language in the fourteenth century, and occurs in the forms saun, sanz, sauntz, saunz, and saunce. It may, perhaps, have been employed at first in purely French phrases, such as 'sans question.'-Love's Lab. L. V, i, 91; sans compliment,' King John, V, vi, 16. But Shakespeare uses it with other words, as here, and in Ham. III, iv, 79. Nares quotes instances from Jonson, Beau. & Fl., Massinger, and others. So that it appears to have had an existence for a time as an English word. Cotgrave gives: 'Sans. Sanse, without, besides'; and Florio has, 'Senza, sans, without, besides.' 36. Motley] CALDECOTT: There was a species of mercery known by that name, 'Polymitus. He that maketh motley. Polymitarius.'-Withal's little Dict., 1568. 'Frisadoes, Motleys, bristowe frices' are in the number of articles recommended for northern traffic in 1580. Hakluyt's Voyages, 1582. |