Chapter XLIX: Act III: SCENE 2. Page 82

ROS. I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a
medlar: then it will be the _earliest_ fruit in the country, for
you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue
of the medlar.

On this Mr. Steevens observes that Shakspeare had little knowledge of gardening, the medlar being one of the latest fruits, and uneatable till the end of November. But is not the charge, at least in this instance, unfounded; and has not the learned commentator misunderstood the poet's meaning? It is well known that the medlar is only edible when _apparently_ rotten. This is what Shakspeare calls its _right virtue_. If a fruit be fit to be eaten when rotten and _before it be ripe_, it may in one sense be termed _the earliest_. The inaccuracy seems to be in making the medlar rotten before it is ripe, the rottenness being, as it is conceived, the ripeness.

SCENE 2. Page 93.

ORL. I pray you, mar no more of my verses with reading them
ill-favouredly.

This very much resembles the _sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuum_, in one of Martial's epigrams, lib. i. ep. 39, of which the following translation was made by Timothy Kendall, in his _Flowers of epigrammes_, 1577, 12mo:

"The booke which thou doest read, it is
Frende Fidentinus myne;
_But when thou ill doest read it, then
Beginns it to bee thyne_."

SCENE 4. Page 111.

CEL. He hath bought a pair of _cast_ lips of Diana: a nun of
winter's sisterhood kisses not more religiously; the very ice of
chastity is in them.

Theobald explains _cast_ lips "a pair _left off_ by Diana." It is not easy to conceive how the goddess could _leave off_ her lips; or how, being left off, Orlando could purchase them. Celia seems rather to allude to a statue _cast in plaister or metal_, the lips of which might well be said to possess _the ice_ of chastity.

As to the "nun of winter's sisterhood," Warburton might have contented himself with censuring the dullness of Theobald. His own _sisterhoods of the seasons_ are by much too refined and pedantic, and in every respect objectionable. Shakspeare poetically feigns a new order of nuns, most appropriate to his subject, and wholly devoid of obscurity.

SCENE 5. Page 115.

SIL. ... The common executioner
_Falls not the axe_ upon the humbled neck.

There is no doubt that the expression _to fall the axe_ may with propriety refer to the usual mode of decapitation; but if it could be shown that in the reign of Elizabeth this punishment was inflicted in England by an instrument resembling the French guillotine, which though merciful in the discharge of its office, has justly excited abhorrence from the number of innocent victims that have suffered by it, the expression would perhaps seem rather more appropriate. Among the cuts to the first edition of Holinshed's chronicle such a machine is twice introduced; and as it does not appear that in either instance there was any cause for the particular use of it, we may reasonably infer that it was at least sometimes adopted. Every one has heard of the _Halifax gibbet_, which was just such another instrument, and certainly introduced into that town, for reasons that do not appear, long before the time in which Holinshed was printed. It is said that the Earl of Morton, the Scotish regent, saw it at Halifax, and that he introduced it into Scotland, where it was used for a considerable time afterwards.[14] In that country it was called _the maiden_, and Morton himself actually suffered by it, when condemned as an accomplice in the murder of Lord Darnley. In the best edition of Holinshed, Thynne's continuation of Hector Boethius's history is printed, in which there is an account of the conference between the Earl and the Ministers of Edinburgh, under the title of _The examination and answers of the Earl of Morton before his death, but after his condemnation_. Thynne seems to say that the above account was delivered over to him, but he has omitted to state the particulars. In a manuscript of this conference, written at the time, and in the possession of the author of these observations, it is called _The some of all the conferrence that was betweene the Earle Morton and John Dury and Mr. Walker the same daye that he suffered which was the 2 June 1581_, and differs in several places from the other. In both, at the end, there is an account of the Earl's last moments, in which it is stated (the MS. being here quoted) that he "layde his head _under the axe_, his handes being unbounde, Mr. Walker cried in his eare, Lord Jesus receive thy spirite, he saide Jesus receive my sowle, which wordes he was speaking while _the axe fell on his necke_." This extract would alone be sufficient to decide on the mode in which Morton was beheaded; but in the MS. there is a neat drawing of the machine itself, resembling the cut in the earliest edition of Holinshed, except that in the latter the axe is suspended to the top of the frame by a string which the executioner cuts with a knife, whilst in the other, a peg, to which the string is attached, is drawn out of one of the sides.

It may be worth adding that in _King Henry VI. part 2_, Eleanor says to her husband the duke of Gloucester,

"But be thou mild, and blush not at my shame,
Nor stir at nothing, till the axe of death
_Hang over thee_----"

SCENE 5. Page 118.

ROS. ... What though you have _more_ beauty
(As by my faith, I see no more in you
Than without candle may go dark to bed)

The old copy reads _no beauty_. Mr. Malone substitutes _mo_, i. e. _more_, and supports his alteration by making Rosalind allow that Phœbe had _more_ beauty than her lover; but she soon afterwards asserts the contrary in the most positive terms. The omission of the disputed monosyllable, which in the old copy might have caught the compositor's eye in the ensuing line and occasioned the mistake, will certainly correct the present redundancy in the line, and perhaps restore the author's original language. _As_ in the next line appears to have the power of _though_; a word that could not be used on account of its introduction in the preceding line.