For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Vio. I think it well, my lord Duke. Then let thy love be younger than thyself, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent: For women are as roses; whose fair flower, Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour. Vio. And so they are: alas, that they are so; To die, even when they to perfection grow! Re-enter CURIO and Clown. Duke. O fellow, come, the song we had last night:Mark it, Cesario: it is old, and plain: The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, And the free 5 maids that weave their thread with bones, i. e. consumed, worn out. This passage 5 i. e. chaste maids, employed in making lace. has sadly puzzled the commentators; their conjectures are some of them highly amusing. Johnson says free is perhaps vacant, unengaged, easy in mind. Steevens once thought it meant unmarried; then that it might mean cheerful; and at last concludes that its precise meaning cannot easily be pointed out." Warton mentions, in his notes on L'Allegro of Milton, that it was a common attribute of woman, coupled mostly with fair, but he did not venture upon an explanation. The following extracts will show that in our older language free was often used for chaste, pure. Thus Chaucer in the Prioress's Tale: 'O mother maide, O maide and mother fre.-Verse 13397. Mr. Tyrwhitt notices one of these instances in his Glossary, and, In the Speculum Vitæ of Richard Rolle, MS.. I find it thus again applied to the Virgin Mary: For our Lorde wolde boren be Of a weddid woman that was fre, The force of the word will be best understood by the following examples of its use from the same poem: "Wherfor God sais in the Gospelle Yf two of yow with hert fre (i. e. pure,) Accorden togethir with me, Whatever ye of my fadir crane, Withoute doute ye sal haue. Do use to chaunt it; it is silly sooth 6, Clo. Are you ready, sir? SONG. Malai[Music. Clo. Come away, come away, death, Again: My part of death no one so true Not a flower, not a flower sweet, My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown; "When he praied to God with hert fre.. Its occurrence in Spencer and our old Metrical Romances is so frequent, coupled with fair, that I am surprised it had not struck some of the commentators that beauty and chastity were the highest gifts with which the sex could be endowed; but Drayton uses it in his fourth Eclogue: A daughter cleped Dowsabel, a maiden fair and free.' And Ben Jonson makes part of the praise he lavishes on Lucy Countess of Bedford : 'I meant to make her fair, and free (i. e. chaste), and wise, Of greatest blood, and yet more good than great." Mr. Todd was acquainted with this and other instances, and has yet erroneously interpreted the word 'accomplished, genteel, charming! 6 Silly sooth, or rather sely sooth, is simple truth, The old age is the ages past, times of simplicity. 8 It is not clear whether a shroud of the stuff now called crape, anciently called cypress, is here meant, or whether a coffin of cypress wood was intended. The cypress was used for funeral purposes; and the epithet sad is inconsistent with a white shroud. It is even possible that branches of cypress only may be meant. We see the shroud was stuck all with yew, and cypress may have been used in the same manner. In Quarles's Argalus and Parthenia, a knight is introduced, whose 'horse was black as jet, His furniture was round about beset With brauches slipt from the sad cypress tree." est Lay me, 0, where Sad true-love never find my grave, To weep there. Duke. There's for thy pains. Clo. No pains, sir; I take pleasure in singing, sir. Clo. Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid one time or another. Duke. Give me now leave to leave thee. Clo. Now, the melancholy god protect thee; and [Exeunt CURIO and Attendants. The parts that fortune hath bestow'd upon her, That nature pranks 10 her in, attracts my soul. Vio. Can bide the beating of so strong a passion The opal is a gem which varies its hues, as it is viewed in different lights. 10 That beauty which nature decks her in. VOL. I. 14 So big, to hold so much; they lack retention. Vio. Ay, but I know, Duke. What dost thou know? Vio. Too well what love women to men may owe: In faith, they are as true of heart as we. My father had a daughter lov'd a man, As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman, I should your Lordship. Duke. And what's her history? Vio. A blank, my lord: She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud 11, Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought; And, with a green and yellow melancholy, She sat like patience on a monument, Smiling at grief 12. Was not this love, indeed? We men may say more, swear more: but, indeed, 11 So in the fifth Sonnet of Shakspeare: "Which like a canker in the fragrant rose Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name.* And in the Rape of Lucrece : "Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud.' Again in Richard II. - But now will canker sorrow eat my buds, And chase the native beauty from my cheek. 12.So Middleton in The Witch, Act iv. Sc. 3: She does not love me now, but painfully Like one that's forc'd to smile upon a grief. The commentators have overlaid this exquisite passage with notes, and created difficulties where none existed. Mr. Boswell says, the meaning is obviously this:-While she was smiling at grief, or in her grief, her placid resignation made her look like patience on a monument." A passage in the most pathetic poet of antiquity, which exhibits a similar description of a silent and hopeless passion, has been pointed out by Mr. Taylor Combe, of the British Museum : Ἐνταῦθα δὴ στένουσα κακπεπληγμένη Euripides Hippol. v. 38. Our shows are more than will; for still we prove Duke. SCENE V. Olivia's Garden. [Exeunt. Enter SIR TOBY BELCH, SIR ANDREW AGUECHEEK, and FABIAN. Sir To. Come thy ways, signior Fabian. Fab. Nay, I'll come; if I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be boiled to death with melancholy. Sir To. Wouldst thou not be glad to have the niggardly rascally sheep-biter come by some notable shame? Fab. I would exult, man: you know, he brought me out of favour with my lady, about a bear-baiting here. Sir To. To anger him, we'll have the bear again; and we will fool him black and blue:-Shall we not, Sir Andrew? Sir And. An we do not, it is pity of our lives. Enter MARIA. Sir To. Here comes the little villain:-How now, my nettle of India 1? Mar. Get ye all three into the box-tree: Malvolio's coming down this walk; he has been yonder i'the sun, practising behaviour to his own shadow, this half hour: observe him, for the love of mockery; for, I know, this letter will make a contemplative idiot of him. Close, in the name of jesting! [The 13 Denial. 1 The first folio reads 'mettle of India. By the nettle of India is meant a zoophite, called Urtica Marina, abounding in the lu |