Chapter XXIX: Act II: SCENE 1. Page 429

BEAT. ... that I had my good wit out of _the hundred merry tales_.

From the unfortunate loss of these _Merry tales_, a doubt has arisen from whence they were translated, it being pretty clear that they were not originally written in English. Two authorities have been produced on this occasion, the _Cent nouvelles nouvelles_, and the _Decameron_ of Boccaccio.

Mr. Steevens is an advocate for the first of these, and refers to an edition of them mentioned by Ames. This, it is to be presumed, is the _Hundred merry tales_ noticed under the article for James Roberts. To this opinion an objection has been taken by Mr. Ritson, on the ground that _many_ of the tales in the _Cent nouvelles nouvelles_ are "very tragical, and none of them calculated to furnish a lady with good wit." Now it appears that out of these hundred stories _only five are tragical_, viz. novels 32, 47, 55, 56, and 98. In the old editions they are entitled _Comptes plaisans et recreatiz pour deviser en toutes compaignies_, and _Moult plaisans á raconter par maniere de joyeuseté_.

Mr. Reed has "but little doubt that Boccace's _Decameron_ was the book here alluded to." If this gentleman's quotation from Guazzo's _Civile conversation_, 1586, be meant to establish the existence of the above work in an English dress it certainly falls short of the purpose; because it is no more than a translation of an author, who is speaking of the _original Decameron_. But there is a more forcible objection to Mr. Reed's opinion, which is, that the first _complete_ English translation of Boccaccio's novels was not published till 1620, and after Shakspeare's death. The dedication states indeed, that _many_ of the tales had long since been published; but this may allude to those which had appeared in Painter's _Palace of pleasure_, or in some other similar work not now remaining. There are likewise two or three of Boccaccio's novels in Tarlton's _Newes out of purgatory_, which might be alluded to in the above dedication, if the work which now remains under the date of 1630 was really printed in 1589, as may be suspected from a license granted to Thomas Gubbin. There seems to have been some prior attempt to publish the _Decameron_ in English, but it was "recalled by my Lord of Canterbury's commands." See a note by Mr. Steevens prefixed to _The two gentlemen of Verona_. There is a remarkable fact however that deserves to be mentioned in this place, which is, that in the proem to Sacchetti's _Novelle_, written about the year 1360, it appears that Boccaccio's novels had been _then_ translated into English, not a single vestige of which translation is elsewhere to be traced.

A third work that may appear to possess some right to assert its claim on the present occasion is the _Cento novelle antiche_, which might have been translated before or in Shakspeare's time, as it has been already shown in a note on the story of _Twelfth night_ that he had probably seen the 13th novel in that collection. It may likewise be worth mentioning that Nashe in his _Pappe with an hatchet_, speaks of a book then coming out under the title of _A hundred merrie tales_, in which Martin Marprelate, _i. e._ John Penry, and his friends were to be satirized.

On the whole, the evidence seems to preponderate in favour of the _Cent nouvelles nouvelles_. As the _greatest portion_ of this work consists of _merry stories_, there is no impropriety in calling it _The hundred merry tales_; the term _hundred_ being part of the original title, and the epithet _merry_ in all probability an addition for the purpose of designating the _general quality_ of the stories. The _Decameron_ of Boccaccio, which contains more tragical subjects than the other, is called in the English translation _A hundred_ PLEASANT _novels_.

Whatever the _hundred merry tales_ really were, we find them in existence so late as 1659, and the entire loss of them to the present age might have been occasioned by the devastation in the great fire of London.

SCENE 1. Page 432.

BENE. Come, will you go with me?

CLAUD. Whither?

BENE. Even to _the next willow_, about your own business, Count. What
fashion will you wear the _garland_ of?

It was the custom for those who were _forsaken in love_ to wear willow garlands. This tree might have been chosen as the symbol of sadness from the verse in psalm 137, "We hanged our harps upon the willows, in the midst thereof;" or else from a coincidence between the _weeping_ willow and falling _tears_. Another reason has been assigned. The _Agnus castus_ or _vitex_, was supposed by the ancients to promote chastity, "and the willow being of a much like nature," says an old writer, "it is yet a custom that he which is deprived of his love must wear a willow garland." Swan's _Speculum mundi_, chap. 6. sect. 4. edit. 1635. Bona, the sister of the king of France, on receiving news of Edward the Fourth's marriage with Elizabeth Grey, exclaims, "In hope he'll prove a widower shortly, I'll wear a _willow garland_ for his sake." See _Henry the Sixth_, part iii. and Desdemona's willow song in _Othello_, Act IV. Two more ballads of a similar nature may be found in Playford's _Select ayres_, 1659, folio, pp. 19, 21.

SCENE 1. Page 438.

BEAT. Civil as an _orange_, and something of _that_ jealous
complexion.

This reading of the older copy has been judiciously preferred to _a_ jealous complexion. _Yellow_ is an epithet often applied to jealousy by the old writers. In _The merry wives of Windsor_, Nym says he will possess Ford with _yellowness_. Shakspeare more usually terms it _green-eyed_.

SCENE 3. Page 447.

BENE. ... now will he lie ten nights awake, _carving the fashion of
a new doublet_.

The print in Borde of the Englishman with a pair of shears, seems to have been borrowed from some Italian or other foreign picture in ridicule of our countrymen's folly. Coryat, in his _Crudities_, p. 260, has this remark; "we weare more phantasticall fashions than any nation under the sunne doth, the French onely excepted; which hath given occasion both to the Venetian and other Italians to brand the Englishman with a notable marke of levity, by painting him starke naked with a paire of shears in his hand, _making his fashion of attire_ according to the vaine invention of his braine-sicke head, not to comelinesse and decorum." Purchas, in his _Pilgrim_, 1619, 8vo, speaks of "a naked man with sheeres in one hand and cloth in the other," as a general emblem of fashion. Many other allusions to such a figure might be cited, but it was not peculiar to the English. In _La geographie Françoise_, by P. Du Val d'Abbeville, 1663, 12mo, the author, speaking of the _Frenchman's_ versatility in dress, adds, "dans la peinture des nations on met pres de luy _le cizeau_."

The inconstancy of our own countrymen in the article of dress is described in the following verses from John Halle's _Courte of vertue_, 1565, 12mo.

"As fast as God's word one synne doth blame
They devyse other as yll as the same,
And this varietie of Englyshe folke,
Dothe cause all wyse people us for to mocke.

For all discrete nations under the sonne,
Do use at thys day as they fyrst begonne:
And never doo change, but styll do frequent,
Theyr old guyse, what ever fond folkes do invent.

But we here in England lyke fooles and apes,
Do by our vayne fangles deserve mocks and japes,
For all kynde of countreys dooe us deryde,
In no constant custome sythe we abyde
For we never knowe howe in our aray,
We may in fyrme fashion stedfastly stay."

Randle Holme complained that in his time (1680) Englishmen were as changeable as the moon in their dress, "in which respect," says he, "we are termed the Frenchmen's apes, imitating them in all their fantastick devised fashions of garbs." _Acad. of armory_, book iii. ch. 5.

SCENE 3. Page 452.

CLAUD. _Stalk on, stalk on_, the fowl sits.

It has been already shown that the _stalking bull_ was equally common with the stalking _horse_. It was sometimes used for decoying partridges into a _tunnelling net_, or cage of net work, in the form of a tun, with doors. The process is described at large, with a print, in Willughby's _Ornithology_, 1678, folio, p. 34, where an account is also given of the _stalking-horse_, _ox_, _stag_, &c.

Howel in his _Vocabulary_, sect. xxxv. seems to have mistaken the _tun_ or net into which the birds were driven, for the stalking bull itself. Sometimes, as in hunting the wolf, an artificial bush and a wooden screen were used to stalk with. See Clamorgan, _Chasse du loup_, 1595, 4to, p. 29.

SCENE 3. Page 455.

LEON. She tore the letter into a thousand _halfpence_.

Mr. Theobald explains this "into a thousand pieces of the same bigness," as if Beatrice had torn the letter by rule and compass. Mr. Steevens more properly supposes halfpence to mean _small pieces_; but his note would have been less imperfect if he had added that the halfpence of Elizabeth were of _silver_, and about the size of a modern silver penny.