Chapter LI: Act V: SCENE 2. Page 152

ROS. By my life, I do; which I tender dearly, though I say I am a
magician.

Of the two constructions of this speech, that by Mr. Steevens seems deserving of the preference; but the grounds on which it stands require examination. A statute against witchcraft was made in the first year of king James. Now if, as Dr. Warburton conceives, it is to this that Rosalind alludes, the play must have been written after 1603. Mr. Malone, whose opinion is supported by very solid reasons, thinks it was written in 1600; and therefore to reconcile the explanation given by Mr. Steevens, we must suppose that the foregoing allusion is to some prior statutes of Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth, which punished those who practised witchcraft with death.

SCENE 2. Page 154.

ROS. I will satisfy you if ever I _satisfy'd_ man.

The context seems to require that we should read _satisfy_; and it was the genius of Shakspeare's age to write so.

THE CLOWN.

Touchstone is the domestic fool of Frederick the duke's brother, and belongs to the class of witty or allowed fools. He is threatened with the whip, a mode of chastisement which was often inflicted on this motley personage. His dress should be a party-coloured garment. He should occasionally carry a bauble in his hand, and wear asses' ears to his hood, which is probably the head dress intended by Shakspeare, there being no allusion whatever to a cock's head or comb. The three-cornered hat which Touchstone is made to wear on the modern stage is an innovation, and totally unconnected with the genuine costume of the domestic fool.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] See Hume's hist. of the houses of Douglas and Angus, 1644, folio, p. 356. There are good reasons for supposing that the instrument in question was invented in Germany.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

In the _dramatis personæ_ of this play the "gentle astringer" is omitted, who, though he says but little, has a better claim to be inserted than Violenta, who says nothing. Mr. Steevens remarks that her name was borrowed from an old _metrical history_ entitled _Didaco and Violenta_; but Shakspeare more probably saw it in the running title of Painter's _Palace of pleasure_, whence he got his plot of this play, and where the above history occurs in _prose_. The title is borrowed from a proverbial saying much older than the time of Shakspeare. Knyghton has preserved some of the speeches of Jack Straw and his brother insurgents; and in that of Jack Carter we have this expression: _for if the ende be wele than is alle wele_. The orations of these heroes were made up of proverbial saws, a proof of the great influence they must have had with the common people. See the _Decem scriptores_ by Twysden, col. 2637.