One day shall crown the alliance on't, so please

you,

Here at my house, and at my proper cost.

DUKE. Madam, I am most apt to embrace your offer.

Your master quits you; [To VIOLA.] and, for your service done him,

So much against the mettle of your sex,
So far beneath your soft and tender breeding,
And since you call'd me master for so long,
Here is my hand; you shall from this time be
Your master's mistress.

MAL. Lady, you have. Pray you, peruse that

letter:

4 One day shall crown the alliance ON'T, so please you,] The word on't, in this place, is mere nonsense. I doubt not the poet

wrote:

-an't, so please you." This is well conjectured; but on't may character of sister and wife. JOHNSON.

HEATH.

relate to the double

5 So much against the METTLE of your sex,] So much against the weak frame and constitution of woman. Mettle is used by our author in many other places for spirit; and as spirit may be either high or low, mettle seems here to signify natural timidity, or deficiency of spirit. Shakspeare has taken the same licence in All's Well That Ends Well:

""Tis only title thou disdain'st in her—.” i. e. the want of title. Again, in King Richard III. : The forfeit, sovereign, of my servant's life—." that is, the remission of the forfeit. MALONE.

You must not now deny it is your hand,
Write from it, if you can, in hand, or phrase;
Or say, 'tis not your seal, nor your invention:
You can say none of this: Well, grant it then,
And tell me, in the modesty of honour,
Why you have given me such clear lights of favour;
Bade me come smiling, and cross-garter'd to you,
To put on yellow stockings, and to frown
Upon sir Toby, and the lighter people :
And, acting this in an obedient hope,
Why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd,
Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,
And made the most notorious geck, and gull,
That e'er invention play'd on? tell me why.

OLI. Alas, Malvolio, this is not my writing,
Though, I confess, much like the character:
But, out of question, 'tis Maria's hand.
And now I do bethink me, it was she

First told me, thou wast mad; then cam'st in smiling,

6-lighter-] People of less dignity or importance.

7-geck,] A fool. JOHNSON.

So, in the vision at the conclusion of Cymbeline :

"And to become the geck and scorn

"Of th' other's villainy."

JOHNSON.

Again, in Ane Verie Excellent and Delectabill Treatise intitulit Philotus, &c. 1603:

Again :

"Thocht he be auld, my joy, quhat reck,

"When he is gane give him ane geck,

"And take another be the neck."

"The carle that hecht sa weill to treat you,
"I think sall get ane geck." STEEVENS.

8 then cam'st in smiling,] i. e. then, that thou cam'st in smiling. MALONE.

I believe the lady means only what she has clearly expressed: "then thou camest in smiling; not that she had been informed of this circumstance by Maria. Maria's account, in short, was justified by the subsequent appearance of Malvolio.

STEEVENS.

And in such forms which here were presuppos'd Upon thee in the letter. Pr'ythee, be content: This practice hath most shrewdly pass'd upon thee; But, when we know the grounds and authors of it, Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge

Of thine own cause.

FAB.

Good madam, hear me speak;
And let no quarrel, nor no brawl to come,
Taint the condition of this present hour,

Which I have wonder'd at. In hope it shall not,
Most freely I confess, myself, and Toby,
Set this device against Malvolio here,
Upon some stubborn and uncourteous parts
We had conceiv'd against him': Maria writ
The letter, at sir Toby's great importance 2;
In recompense whereof, he hath married her.
How with a sportful malice it was follow'd,
May rather pluck on laughter than revenge;
If that the injuries be justly weigh'd,

That have on both sides past.

OLI. Alas, poor fool! how have they baffled thee * !

CLO. Why, some are born great, come achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrown upon

9- here were PRESUPPOS'D-] Presuppos'd, for imposed. WARBURTON.

Presuppos'd rather seems to mean previously pointed out for thy imitation; or such as it was supposed thou would'st assume after thou hadst read the letter. The supposition was previous to the act. STEEVENS.

'Upon some stubborn and uncourteous parts

We had conceiv'd AGAINST HIM :] Surely we should rather read-" conceiv'd in him." TYRWHITT.

2-at Sir Toby's great IMPORTANCE;] Importance is importunacy, importunement. STEEvens.

4

3 Alas, poor fool!] See notes on King Lear, Act V. Sc. III.

REED.

how have they BAFFLED thee?] See Mr. Tollet's note on in the first scene of the first Act of King Richard II.: "I am disgrac'd, impeach'd, and baffled here." STEEVENS.

a passage

them. I was one, sir, in this interlude; one sir Topas, sir; but that's all one:-By the Lord, fool, I am not mad ;-But do you remember? Madam3, why laugh you at such a barren rascal? an you smile not, he's gagg'd: And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

MAL. I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you.

[Exit. OLI. He hath been most notoriously abus'd. DUKE. Pursue him, and entreat him to a 6 peace :

He hath not told us of the captain yet;
When that is known and golden time convents',
A solemn combination shall be made

Of our dear souls-Mean time, sweet sister,
We will not part from hence.-Cesario, come;
For so you shall be, while you are a man;
But, when in other habits you are seen,

Orsino's mistress, and his fancy's queen. [Exeunt.

SONG.

CLO. When that I was and a little tiny boy",
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

A foolish thing was but a toy,

For the rain it raineth every day.

"But do

5 But do you remember? Madam,] In the old copy: you remember, madam? Why," &c. I have followed the regulation recommended by Mr. Tyrwhitt. MALONE.

As the Clown is speaking to Malvolio, and not to Olivia, I think this passage should be regulated thus-" but do you remember? -Madam, why laugh you," &c. TYRWHITT.

6 and ENTREAT HIM TO A PEACE:] Thus in Fletcher's Two Noble Kinsmen :

"And fluently persuade her to a peace." STEEVENS

7 convents,] Perhaps we should read-consents. To convent, however, is to assemble; and therefore, the count may mean, when the happy hour calls us again together. STEEVENS.

66

- convents," i. e. shall serve, agree, be convenient. DOUCE. 8 When that I was and a little tiny boy, &c.] Here again we

But when I came to man's estate,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, 'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate, For the rain it raineth every day.

have an old song, scarcely worth correction. Gainst knaves and thieves must evidently be, against knave and thief. When I was a boy, my folly and mischievous actions were little regarded; but when I came to manhood, men shut their gates against me, as a knave and a thief.

Sir Thomas Hanmer rightly reduces the subsequent words, beds and heads, to the singular number; and a little alteration is still wanting at the beginning of some of the stanzas.

Mr. Steevens observes in a note at the end of Much Ado About Nothing, that the play had formerly passed under the name of Benedict and Beatrix. It seems to have been the court-fashion to alter the titles. A very ingenious lady, with whom I have the honour to be acquainted, Mrs. Askew of Queen's-Square, has a fine copy of the second folio edition of Shakspeare, which formerly belonged to King Charles I. and was a present from him to Sir Thomas Herbert. Sir Thomas has altered five titles in the list of the plays, to "Benedick and Beatrice,-Pyramus and Thisby,— Rosalinde,-Mr. Paroles,-and Malvolio."

It is lamentable to see how far party and prejudice will carry the wisest men, even against their own practice and opinions. Milton, in his Eixovoxλaons, censures King Charles for reading one whom (says he) we well knew was the closet companion of his solitudes, William Shakspeare." FARMER.

66

I have followed the regulations proposed by Sir T. Hanmer and Dr. Farmer; and consequently, instead of knaves, thieves, beds, and heads, have printed knave, thief, &c.

Dr. Farmer might have observed, that the alterations of the titles are in his Majesty's own hand-writing, materially differing from Sir Thomas Herbert's, of which the same volume affords more than one specimen. I learn from another manuscript note in it, that John Lowine acted King Henry VIII. and John Taylor the part of Hamlet. The book is now in my possession.

To the concluding remark of Dr. Farmer, may be added the following passage from An Appeal to all Rational Men concerning King Charles's Trial, by John Cooke, 1649: "Had he but studied scripture half so much as Ben Jonson or Shakspeare, he might have learnt that when Amaziah was settled in the kingdom, he suddenly did justice upon those servants which killed his father Joash," &c. With this quotation I was furnished by Mr. Malone.