She clepes him king of graves and grave for kings. Venus and Adonis. Sorrow chang'd to solace, solace mix'd with sorrow. Lewis. The Passionate Pilgrim. The shadow of your son Becomes a sun and makes your son a shadow. King John, Act ii. Sc. 1. King John. How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds, Makes deeds ill done. Act iv. Sc. 2. Biron. Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths. Love's Labour's Lost, Act i. Sc. 2. Boyet. Be now as prodigal of all dear grace As nature was in making graces dear. Act ii. Sc. 1. Maria. That last is Biron, the merry mad-cap lord: Not a word, but a jest. Boyet. And every jest a word, The only soil of his fair virtue's gloss, Act ii. Sc. 1. If virtue's gloss will stain with any soil, Act ii. Sc. 1. Duke. What pleasure was he given to? Escal. Rather rejoicing to see another merry, than merry at any thing which profess'd to make him rejoice: a gentleman of all temperance. Measure for Measure, Act ii. Sc. 1. Kath. The young Dumain, a well-accomplished youth, Of all that virtue love for virtue loved: ANTIMETAVOLE, OR THE COUNTERCHAUNGE. 49 Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill; Oli. Go to, you're a dry fool: I'll no more of you: besides, you grow dishonest. Clo. Two faults, madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend: for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry: bid the dishonest man mend himself; if he mend, he is no longer dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him. Any thing that's mended is but patched virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue. If that this simple syllogism will serve, so; if it will not what remedy? Twelfth Night, Act i. Sc. 5. : Ye have a figure which takes a couple of words to play with in a verse, and by making them to chaunge and shift one into others place, they do very pretily exchange and shift the sence, as thus: We dwell no there to build us bowres, And halles for pleasure and good cheare : To dwell in them whilest we are here. Meaning that we dwell not here to build, but we build to dwel, as we live not to eate, but eate to live, or thus We wish not peace to maintaine cruell warre, Or thus: If Poesie be, as some have said, D peace. Or as the Philosopher Musonius wrote: With pleasure if we worke unhonestly and ill, A wittie fellow in Rome wrate under the image of Cæsar the Dictator these two verses in Latine, which because they are spoke by this figure of Counterchange, I have turned into a couple of English verses very well keeping the grace of the figure: Brutus for casting out of kings, was first of consuls past, Cæsar for casting consuls out, is of our kings the last. Cato, of any senatour not onely the gravest but also the promptest and wittiest in any civill scoffe, misliking greatly the engrossing of offices in Rome that one man should have many at once, and a great number goe without that were as able, said thus by Counterchange, Againe : It seems your offices are very little worth, Or very few of you worthy of offices. In trifles earnest as any man can be, In earnest matters no such trifler as he. The Arte of English Poesie, Lib. iii. Chap. 19. Shakespeare sometimes uses this figure Antimetavole or the Counterchange, and in some at least of the few passages my memory has enabled me to quote, the reader will see that he takes a couple of words to play with in a verse, and making them to change and shift THE POSY OF A RING.' 51 one into another's place, exchange and shift the sense. For example: dear grace, graces dear; do ill deeds, deeds ill done; not a word but a jest, and every jest a word; lose our oaths to find ourselves, lose ourselves to keep our oaths. First Servant. pane. Good then, save me a piece of march Romeo and Juliet, Act i. Sc. 5. Prologue. For us and for our tragedy Here stooping to your clemency, We beg your hearing patiently. Hamlet. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring? Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 2. Of folded schedules had she many a one, Which she perused, sigh'd, tore, and gave the flood; A Lover's Complaint. There be also other like Epigrammes that were sent usually for new-yeares gifts or to be printed or put upon their banketting dishes of suger plate, or of marchpaines, and such other dainty meates as by the curtesie and custome every gest might carry from a common feast home with him to his owne house, and were made for the nonce: they were called henia or apophoreta, and never contained above one verse, or two at the most, but the shorter the better: we call them Posies, and do paint them now a dayes upon the backe sides of our fruite trenchers of wood, or use them as devises in rings and armes and about such courtly purposes.-The Arte of English Poesie, Lib. i. Chap. 30. Ben. Tut, man, one fire burns out another's burning, One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish : Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning; One desperate grief cures with another's languish : Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die. Romeo and Juliet, Act i. Sc. 2. For love, there is no frailtie in flesh and blood so excusable as it, no comfort or discomfort greater than the good and bad successe thereof, nothing more naturall to man, nothing of more force to vanquish his will and to invegle his judgement. Therefore of death and burials, of th' adversities by warres, and of true love lost or ill bestowed, are th' onely sorrowes that the noble Poets sought by their arte to remove or appease, not with any medicament of a contrary temper, as the Galensistes use to cure contraria contrariis, but as the Paracelsians, who cure similia similibus, making one dolour to expell another, and in this case, one short sorrowing the remedie of a long and grevious sorrow.-The Arte of English Poesie, Lib. i. Chap. 24. Alb. This shows you are above, So speedily can venge! Lear, Act iv. Sc. 2. Lear. It shall be done; I will arraign them straight. [To Edgar] Come, sit thou here, most learned justicer. Act iii. Sc. 6. |