AAR. Clubs, clubs!1 these lovers will not keep the peace. DEM. Why, boy, although our mother, unadvis'd, Gave you a dancing-rapier by your side,* Are you so desperate grown, to threat your friends? Go to; have your lath glued within your sheath, Till you know better how to handle it. CHI. Mean while, sir, with the little skill I have, Full well shalt thou perceive how much I dare. DEM. Ay, boy, grow ye so brave? [They draw. Why, how now, lords? So near the emperor's palace dare you draw, And maintain such a quarrel openly? AAR. Full well I wot the ground of all this grudge; The cause were known to them it most concerns: For shame, put up. DEM. Not I till I have sheath'd3 ; Clubs, clubs! So, in King Henry VIII: "—and hit that woman, who cried out, clubs!" This was the usual outcry for assistance, when any riot in the street happened. STEEVENS. See Vol. VIII. p. 166, n. 3; and Vol. XIII. p. 35, n. 6. REED. * a dancing-rapier by your side,] So, in Greene's Quip for an Upstart Courtier: " one of them carrying his cuttingsword of choller, the other his dancing-rapier of delight." Again, in All's well that ends well: 66 — no sword worn, STEEVENS. See Vol. VIII. p. 257, n. 2. MALONE. Not 1; till I have sheath'd &c.] This speech, which has been all along given to Demetrius, as the next to Chiron, were My rapier in his bosom, and, withal, Thrust these reproachful speeches down his throat, That he hath breath'd in my dishonour here. CHI. For that I am prepar'd and full resolv'd,Foul-spoken coward! that thunder'st with thy tongue,5 And with thy weapon nothing dar'st perform. Now by the gods, that warlike Goths adore, Why, lords, and think you not how dangerous What, is Lavinia then become so loose, Or Bassianus so degenerate, That for her love such quarrels may be broach'd, Without controlment, justice, or revenge? Young lords, beware!-an should the empress know This discord's ground, the musick would not please. CHI. I care not, I, knew she and all the world: I love Lavinia more than all the world. DEM. Youngling, learn thou to make some meaner choice: Lavinia is thine elder brother's hope. AAR. Why, are ye mad? or know ye not, in Rome How furious and impatient they be, And cannot brook competitors in love? both given to the wrong speaker; for it was Demetrius that had thrown out the reproachful speeches on the other. WARBURTON. these reproachful-] Edition 1600:-those reproach ful. TODD. 5 t thunder'st with thy tongue,] This phrase appears to have been adopted from Virgil, Æneid XI. 383: "Proinde tona eloquio solitum tibi; "" STEEVENS. I tell you, lords, you do but plot your deaths CHI. Aaron, a thousand deaths 6 Would I propose, to achieve her whom I love. AAR. To achieve her!-How? DEM. Why mak'st thou it so strange? She is a woman, therefore may be woo'd; a thousand deaths Would I propose,] Whether Chiron means he would contrive a thousand deaths for others, or imagine as many cruel ones for himself, I am unable to determine. STEEVENS. Aaron's words, to which these are an answer, seem to lead to the latter' interpretation. MALone. * She is a woman, therefore may be woo'd; She is a woman, therefore may be won;] These two lines occur, with very little variation, in the First Part of King Henry VI: "She's beautiful, and therefore to be woo'd; "She is a woman, therefore to be won." This coincidence may lead one to suspect that the author of the present play was also author of the original Henry VI. I do not, indeed, conceive either to be the production of Shakspeare; for, though his hand is sufficiently visible in some parts of the other play, particularly in the second scene of the fourth Act, there does not appear a single line in this, which can have any pretensions to that honour: and therefore the testimony of Meres and the publication of the players must necessarily yield to the force of intrinsick and circumstantial evidence. It is much to be regretted that the dramatick works of our earliest tragick writers, as Greene and Peele, for instance, and "sporting Kyd," and "Marlowe's mighty line," are not collected and published together, if it were only to enable the readers of Shakspeare to discriminate between his style and that of which he found the stage, and has left some of his dramas, in possession; and of which I consider this play, and at least four fifths of the First Part of King Henry VI. (including the whole of the first Act) the performances, no doubt, of one or other of the writers already named, as a genuine and not unfavourable specimer. Indeed, I should take Kyd to have been the author of Titus She is Lavinia, therefore must be lov'd. [Aside. DEM. Then why should he despair, that knows to court it With words, fair looks, and liberality? Andronicus, because he seems to delight in murders and scraps of Latin; though I must confess that, in the first of those good qualities, Marlowe's Jew of Malta may fairly dispute precedence with the Spanish Tragedy. Some few of the obsolete dramas I allude to, are, it is true, to be found in the collections of Dodsley and Hawkins: though I could wish that each of those gentlemen had confined his researches to the further side of the year 1600. Future editors will, doubtless, agree in ejecting a performance by which their author's name is dishonoured, and his works are disgraced. RITSON. more water glideth by the mill &c.] A Scots proverb: "Mickle water goes by the miller when he sleeps.' "Non omnem molitor quæ fluit unda videt.” STEEVENS. -to steal a shive,] A shive is a slice. So, in the tale of Argentile and Curan, in Warner's Albion's England, 1602: "A sheeve of bread as browne as nut." Demetrius is again indebted to a Scots proverb: 1 "It is safe taking a shive of a cut loaf." STEEVENS. have yet worn-] Worn is here used as a dissyllable, The modern editors, however, after the second folio, read-have yet worn. MALONE. Let him who can read worn as a dissyllable, read it so. As I am not of that description, I must continue to follow the second folio. STEEVENS. -struck a doe,] Mr. Holt is willing to infer from this AAR. Why then, it seems; some certain snatch 'Would you had hit it too; Then should not we be tir'd with this ado. Why, hark ye, hark ye,-And are you such fools, CHI. you then I'faith, not me. passage that Titus Andronicus was not only the work of Shakspeare, but one of his earliest performances, because the stratagems of his former profession seem to have been yet fresh in his mind. I had made the same observation in King Henry VI. before I had seen his; but when we consider how many phrases are borrowed from the sports of the field, which were more followed in our author's time than any other amusement, I do not think there is much in either his remark or my own.-Let me add, that we have here Demetrius, the son of a queen, demanding of his brother prince if he has not often been reduced to practise the common artifices of a deer-stealer:—an absurdity right worthy the rest of the piece. STEEVENS. Demetrius surely here addresses Aaron, not his brother. 37 MALONE. 3' Would you had hit it too;] The same pleasant allusion occurreth also in Love's Labour's Lost, Vol. VII. p. 83. Amner. To square for this?] To square is to quarrel. So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream: they never meet, "But they do square." Again, in Drant's translation of Horace's Art of Poetry, 1567: "Let them not sing twixt act and act, "What squareth from the rest." But to square, which in both these instances signifies to differ, is now used only in the very opposite sense, and means to agree. STEEVENS. |