Chapter XL: Act V: SCENE 1. Page 302

HOL. His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his _tongue
filed_.--

Mr Steevens has remarked that Chaucer, Skelton, and Spenser are frequent in their use of this phrase, but he has offered no explanation. It signifies _polished language_; thus Turbervile, in his translation of _Ovid's epistles_, makes Phyllis say to her lover--

"Thy many smooth and _filed_ wordes
Did purchase credites place."

SCENE 1. Page 306.

ARM. ... a sweet touch, a quick _venew_ of wit.

The _cut and thrust_ notes on this occasion exhibit a complete _match_ between the two great Shakspearean _maisters of defence_. "A venew," says Mr. Steevens, "is the technical term for a _bout_ (or _set-to_, as he had before called it in vol. iii. p. 317,) at the fencing school." On the other hand, Mr. Malone maintains that "a venue is _not_ a _bout_ at fencing, but a _hit_;" and his opponent retorts on the ground of _positiveness_ of denial. As the present writer has himself been an amateur and practitioner of the noble science of defence, he undertakes on this occasion the office of umpire between the sturdy combatants.

The quotations adduced on either side are not calculated to ascertain the clear and genuine sense of the word _venew_, and it is therefore necessary to seek for more decisive evidence respecting its meaning. Howel in his _Lexicon tetraglotton_, 1660, mentions "a veny in fencing; venue, _touche_, toca;" and afterwards more fully in his vocabulary, sect. xxxii. "A foin, _veny_, or stoccado; la botta; la _touche_, le _coup_." In Sir John Harrington's _Life of Dr. Still_, is the following expression, "he would not sticke to warne them in the arguments to take heede to their answers, like a perfect fencer that will tell afore-hand in which button he will give the _venew_." _Nugæ antiquæ_, vol. ii. p. 158, edit. 1804, by Park. In Ben Jonson's _Every man in his humour_, Act I. Scene 5, Bobadil, in answer to Master Matthew's request for _one venue_, says, "Venue! fie: most gross denomination as ever I heard; O, the _stoccata_, while you live, sir, note that." On this passage, Mr. Reed, in a note on the play of _The widow's tears_, Dodsley's _Old plays_, vol. vi. 152, observes that "the word appears to have been out of fashion with the fantastic gallants of the time very early." Its occurrence however so late as the time in which Howel's dictionary was published seems to render this ingenious remark very questionable, and suggests another explanation of Bobadil's wish to change the word, namely, his coxcombly preference of the terms of the Spanish and Italian schools of fencing to those used in the English, which, it is presumed, were more immediately borrowed from our Gallic neighbours. That the terms _stoccado_ and _imbrocato_ denoted a _hit_ or thrust, may be collected from many passages in Vincent Saviolo's _Use of the rapier and dagger_, 1595, 4to; and in Florio's Italian dictionary, 1598, folio, _stoccata_ is rendered, _a foyne, a thrust given in fence_; and _tocco, a venie at fence, a hit_. All the above circumstances considered, one should feel inclined to adjudge the palm of victory to Mr. Malone.

It is however remarkable enough that Mr. Steevens is accidentally right in defining a _venew_ a _bout_, without being aware of the signification of the latter word. Florio renders _botta_, a _blowe_, a _stroake_. In the best of all the ancient French treatises on the art of fencing, entitled _Traicté sur l'espée seule, mere de toutes armes_, &c., by Henry De Sainct Didier, Paris, 1573, 4to, it is said, "_bottes_ en Napollitain, vaut autant à dire, que _coups_ en François." He then mentions five sorts of _bottes_, viz. _maindrette_, _renverse_, _fendante_, _estoccade_, and _imbroucade_. Nevertheless the word _bout_ had been used in the sense of a _set-to_ in Shakspeare's time. In _The first part of King Henry the Sixth_, Act I. Scene 5, Talbot says to the Pucelle, "I'll have a _bout_ with thee." It retained, however, its original meaning long afterwards. Howel, and Sherwood likewise in his English dictionary at the end of Cotgrave have "a boute, coup," and so it is defined by Skinner: but the following passage from the account given by Sir Thomas Urquhart in his singular book entitled _A discovery of a most exquisite jewel found in the kennel of Worcester streets_, &c. 1652, 12mo, of the combat between the admirable Crichton and the celebrated Mantuan duellist, will put the matter beyond all doubt. "Then was it that to vindicate the reputation of the duke's family and to expiate the blood of the three vanquished gentlemen, he alonged a _stoccade de pied ferme_; then recoyling, he advanced another thrust, and lodged it home; after which retiring again, his right foot did beat the cadence of the blow that pierced the belly of this Italian, whose heart and throat being hit with the two former stroaks, these _three franch bouts_ given in upon the back of other ... by them he was to be made a sacrifice of atonement for the slaughter of the three aforesaid gentlemen who were wounded in the very same parts of their bodies by other such _three venees_ as these." The same mode of expression is also used by the same writer in a subsequent account of a duel between Francis Sinclair, a natural son of the Earl of Caithness, and a German, at Vienna; where it was agreed that he who should give the other the first _three bouts_, should have a pair of golden spurs, in the event of which combat Sinclair "gave in two _venees_ more than he was obliged to."

On the whole therefore it appears that _venew_ and _bout_ equally denote a _hit_ in fencing; that both Mr. Steevens and Mr. Malone are right in this respect; but that the former gentleman is inaccurate in supposing a _venew_ to mean a _set-to_, and the latter equally so in asserting that "a _venew_ is _not_ a _bout_."

SCENE 1. Page 311.

DULL. I will play on the tabor to the worthies, and let them dance
the _hay_.

This dance was borrowed by us from the French. It is classed among the _brawls_ in Thoinot Arbeau's _Orchesographie_, already mentioned in page 135.

SCENE 2. Page 312.

ROS. For he hath been five thousand years a boy.

KATH. Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too.

This description of Cupid is borrowed from some lines in Sidney's _Arcadia_, B. ii. See them already quoted on another occasion by Dr. Farmer in _Much ado about nothing_, Act III. Scene 2.

SCENE 2. Page 316.

ROS. That he should be my _fool_, and I his _fate_.

Dr. Warburton's conclusion that _fate_ here signifies _death_ is not satisfactory. Death would be an awkward character for Rosaline to assume, but that of _dame fortune_ infinitely more natural.

It must be owned that destiny and fortune are, strictly speaking, very different characters; yet they have sometimes been confounded. Even Pindar, as Pausanias observes, has made fortune one of the _Parcæ_. In _Julius Cæsar_, the expression, "he is but fortune's _knave_," seems to resemble the present, and to mean, "he is the servant of fortune and _bound to obey her_." Shakspeare is very fond of alluding to the _mockery_ of fortune. Thus we have

"O I am fortune's fool."

_Romeo and Juliet._

"Ye fools of fortune."

_Timon of Athens._

"I am the natural fool of fortune."

_King Lear._

In the last of which passages a pointed allusion is made to the _idiot fool_. Sir J. Suckling uses the same expression in his play of _The goblins_; and Hamlet speaks of "the fools of nature," precisely in the same sense.

SCENE 2. Page 327.

BOVET. Fleeter than arrows, _bullets_, wind, thought, swifter
things.

The word _bullets_ is doubtless an interpolation in the manuscript by some ignorant person who thought it more appropriate than _arrows_, on account of the substitution of fire-arms for archery. It might very properly be omitted in the text, without any diminution of editorial accuracy.

SCENE 2. Page 330.

BOVET. Fair ladies mask'd are roses in their bud;
Dismask'd their damask sweet commixture shown,
Are _angels vailing clouds_, or roses blown.

Of the several explanations here offered of _vailing_, Dr. Johnson's is the best. The poet compares a lady unmasking to an angel dispelling the clouds in his descent from heaven to earth. The term is from the old French _avaler_ to _put_ or _let down_; the true etymology of which appears in the phrase _à mont et à val_, from top to bottom, from _mountain_ to _valley_, which very often occurs in old romances. In that of the _Saint Graal_, MS. we have "et avalerent aval le vessel." In Spenser's _Shepherd's calendar_, under January, "By that the welked Phœbus gan _availe_."

SCENE 2. Page 339.

BIRON. _Three pil'd_ hyperboles.

So in Fennor's _Compter's commonwealth_, 1617, 4to, p. 14, we have "_three pil'd_, huge Basilisco oaths, that would have torne a roring-boyes eares in a thousand shatters."

SCENE 2. Page 345.

COST. You cannot _beg us_, sir.

It has been already stated that it was not the next relation only who begged the wardship of _idiots_ in order to obtain possession of their property, but any person who could make interest with the sovereign to whom the legal guardianship belongs. Frequent allusions to this practice occur in the old comedies. In illustration of it, Mr. Ritson has given a curious story, which, as it is mutilated in the authority which he has used, is here subjoined from a more original source, a collection of tales, &c., compiled about the time of Charles the First, preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, No. 6395. "The Lord North begg'd old Bladwell for a foole (though he could never prove him so), and having him in his custodie as a lunaticke, he carried him to a gentleman's house, one day, that was his neighbour. The L. North and the gentleman retir'd awhile to private discourse, and left Bladwell in the dining roome, which was hung with a faire hanging; Bladwell walking up and downe, and viewing the imagerie, spyed a foole at last in the hanging, and without delay drawes his knife, flyes at the foole, cutts him cleane out, and layes him on the floore; my L. and the gentl. coming in againe, and finding the tapestrie thus defac'd, he ask'd Bladwell what he meant by such a rude uncivill act; he answered Sʳ. be content, I have rather done you a courtesie than a wrong, for if ever my L. N. had seene the foole there, he would have begg'd him, and so you might have lost your whole suite." The same story, but without the parties' names, is related in Fuller's _Holy state_, p. 182. Powel, in his _Attourney's academy_, 1630, 4to, says, "I shall neede to give you this monitorie instruction touching an _ideot_; that you be assured that yourselfe is somewhat the wiser man before you goe about to _beg him_, or else never meddle with him at all, lest you chance to play at handy-dandy, which is the guardian or which is the foole? and the case alter, _è converso_, _ad conversum_." In _A treatise of taxes_, 1667, 4to, p. 43, there is the following passage: "Now because the world abounds with this kind of fools, (Lottery fools,) it is not fit that every man that will may cheat every man that would be cheated; but it is rather ordained that the sovereign should have the guardianship of these fools, _or that some favourite should beg the sovereign's right of taking advantage of such men's folly, even as in the case of lunatics and ideots_." To this practice too, Butler alludes, in _Hudibras_, part iii. canto I, l. 590.

"Beg one another idiot
To guardians, ere they are begot."

Mr. Justice Blackstone, in treating of idiots, has spoken of it; and adds in a note, that the king's power of delegating the custody of them to some subject who has interest enough on the occasion, has of late been very rarely exerted.

SCENE 2. Page 350.

BIRON. The Pedant, the Braggart, the Hedge-priest, the Fool And the
boy:--
Abate a throw at _novum_; and the whole world again,
Cannot prick out _five_ such, take each one in his vein.

The game of _novum_ or _novem_, here alluded to, requires further illustration to render the _whole_ of the above passage intelligible. It is therefore necessary to state that it was _properly_ called _novum quinque_, from the two principal throws of the dice, nine and five; and then Biron's meaning becomes perfectly clear, according to the reading of the old editions. The above game was called in French _quinquenove_, and is said to have been invented in Flanders.

SCENE 2. Page 351.

Pageant of the nine worthies.

The _genuine_ worthies were Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bulloigne, or sometimes in his room Guy of Warwick. Why Shakspeare, in the _five_ of them only whom he has introduced by name, has included Hercules and Pompey, remains to be accounted for. It was a great pity to omit, on this occasion, the very curious specimen of an ancient pageant given by Mr. Ritson, who, in stating that nothing of the kind had ever appeared in print, seems to have forgotten the pageants of Dekker, Middleton, and others, a list of which may be found in Baker's _Biographia dramatica_, vol. ii. 270.

SCENE 2. Page 353.

BIRON. Your nose _smells_ no, in this, most _tender smelling_
knight.

He is addressing, or rather ridiculing Alexander. Plutarch in his life of that hero relates, on the authority of Aristoxenus, that his skin "had a marvellous good savour, and that his breath was very sweet, in so much that _his body had so sweet a smell_ of itselfe that all the apparell he wore next unto his body, tooke thereof a passing delightfull savour, as if it had been perfumed." This Shakspeare had read in Sir Thomas North's translation.

SCENE 2. Page 353.

COST. Your lion, that holds his _poll-ax_ sitting, &c.

The clown's Cloacinian allusion to the arms of Alexander is a wilful _blunder_, for the purpose of introducing his subsequent joke about Ajax. These are the arms themselves copied from the _Roman des neuf preux_, Abbeville, 1487, folio, showing that the chair is not a chaise-perçée.

The modern _patent Bramahs_ were in Shakspeare's time called _Ajaxes_. Thus in _The hospitall of incurable fooles_, 1600, 4to, fo. 7: "Whoever saw so many odd mechanicks as are at this day, who not with a geometricall spirite like Archimedes, but even with arte surpassing the profoundest Cabalistes, who instead of a pigeon loft, place in the garrets of houses, _portable_ and commodious _Ajaxes_." The marginal explanation comes _closer_ to the point. Again, "the Romans might well be numbered amongst those three-elbowed fooles in adoring Stercutio for a God, shamefully constituting him a patron and protector of _Ajax_ and his commodities," fo. 6.

SCENE 2. Page 360.

COST. I will not fight with a _pole_, like a _northern man_.

On this passage Dr. Farmer says, "_Vir borealis_, a clown, See glossary to Urry's Chaucer." The Doctor's notes are generally clear and instructive, but in this instance he is obscure. It is presumed that he intends to refer the reader to the word _borel_ in Urry's glossary, where it is properly explained _a clown_. Whether _borel_ be derived from _borealis_ may be questioned; but Shakspeare in all probability was unacquainted with this word and its etymology. Does he not refer to the particular use of the quarter staff in the Northern counties?

SCENE 2. Page 367.

PRIN. As _bombast_, and as lining to the time.

_Bombast_ is from the Italian _bombagia_, which signifies all sorts of cotton wool. Hence the stuff called _bombasine_. The cotton put into ink was called _bombase_. "Need you any inke and _bombase_?" Hollyband's _Italian schole-maister_, 1579, 12mo, sign. E. 3.

THE CLOWN.

The clown in this play is a mere country fellow. The term _fool_ applied to him in Act V. Scene 2, means nothing more than a _silly fellow_. He has not sufficient simplicity for a natural fool, nor wit enough for an artificial one.

It will probably be discovered at some future time that this play was borrowed from a French novel. The _dramatis personæ_ in a great measure demonstrate this, as well as a palpable Gallicism in Act IV. Scene 1, viz. the terming a _letter_ a _capon_.

MERCHANT OF VENICE.