LOVE'S LABORS LOST.

ACT I. SCENE 1. .

Biron. [Reads.] Item, "That no woman shall come within a mile of my court."-Hath this been proclaim'd?

Long. Four days ago.

Biron. Let's see the penalty. [Reads.] "On pain of losing her tongue."-Who devis'd this penalty?

Long. Marry, that did I.

Biron.

Sweet lord, and why?

Long. To fright them hence with that dread penalty.

Biron. A dangerous law against gentility."

Thus the original. At first "gentility" seems in this place an unintelligible word, which Mr. Collier's MS. corrector very plausibly changes to,

"A dangerous law against garrulity."

But it should be remarked that Biron is not one of those who approve of these regulations; and that he does not yet consider himself strictly bound by them. Thus, in his first speech in this scene, he says:

"I can but say their protestation over;

So much, dear liege, I have already sworn,
That is, to live and study here three years.
But there are other strict observances;
As, not to see a woman in that term,
Which, I hope well, is not enrolled there :" &c.

and again,

"I only swore to study with your grace."

He finds fault with this law which has the lingual penalty; and it should be noticed that it is the law, and not the penalty, which he says is dangerous against gentility. He evidently means that the exclusion of ladies, involving, as it does, the loss of their refining and subduing influence upon the manners, is "a dangerous law against gentility." There is no justification for a change in the original text. A thorough examination of the context will often, as it has done in this case, show the propriety of a phrase in that text, which to one who looks at the phrase alone will seem obscure.

"King. A letter from the magnificent Armado.

Biron. How low soever the matter, I hope for high words.

Long. A high hope for a low having; God grant us patience!

Biron. To hear? or forbear hearing?

Long. To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately; or to forbear both."

For "a low heaven" in the original, Theobald judiciously proposed "a low having;" but the succeeding speech of Biron obviously needs correction. Biron knowing Armado's affectation of magnificence, says that how low soever the matter of his letter may be, they may hope for high words. Longaville then asks, "a high hope for a low having?" and at the prospect exclaims "God grant us patience!" Biron then asks Longaville,-[patience for what], "to hear or to forbear laughing" [at what you do hear?] Hearing' is an evident and an easy misprint for laughing,' as Steevens well suggested. Longa

ville's reply "To hear meekly and to laugh moderately, or to forbear both," compels the change.

Read,

'Long. A high hope for a low having? God grant us patience! Biron. To hear? or forbear laughing?

Long. To hear meekly," &c.

In the same Scene the "Sirra, come on," which the original gives to Biron, probably belongs to the Constable, to whom Mr. Collier's folio assigns it.

Steevens and Malone, and recently Mr. Dyce, have pointed out that we have here the double negative of the French language, with a quibble involved. It should be printed,

"No, point; with my knife."

Boyet. His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see,
Did stumble with haste in his eyesight to be.

All senses to that sense did make their repair,

To feel only looking on fairest of fair,"

"On the first line of this passage the following notes are found in the Variorum Shakespeare:

'That is his tongue being impatiently desirous to see as well as speak.' JOHNSON.

'Although the expression in the text is extremely odd, I take the sense of it to be, that his tongue envied the quickness of his eyes, and strove to be as rapid in its utterance, as they in

their perception. Edinburgh Magazine, Nov., 1786,' STEE

VENS.

"Now, it would be difficult to say which of these notes is least to the purpose. The context distinctly shows that the meaning is-His tongue, not able to endure the having merely the power of speaking without that of seeing.

'Again, on the fourth line we find, ibid :—

"Perhaps we may better read: 'To feed only by looking.' JOHNSON.

"There is no necessity for any alteration. The meaning isThat they might have no feeling but that of looking, &c."

Dyce's Few Notes, &c., p. 52.

Unquestionably Mr. Dyce is right; but I cannot conceal my surprise that a moment's doubt upon so simple a passage could possibly occur to any one out of a mad-house.

ACT III. SCENE 1.

"Biron. Dread prince of plackets."

"Concerning placket,' see Steevens's Amnerian note on King Lear, act iii. sc. 4; and Dict. of Arch. and Prov. Words, by Mr. Halliwell; who observes: Nares, Dyce, and other writers, tell us a placket generally signifies a petticoat, but their quotations do not bear out this opinion.' I still think that in the quotations referred to, as well as in the present passage, 'placket' is equivalent to petticoat. A writer of the age of Charles the Second uses plackets' in the sense of aprons (perhaps of petticoats); 'The word Love is a fig-leaf to cover the naked sense, a fashion brought up by Eve, the mother of jilts; she cuckolded her husband with the Serpent, then pretended to modesty, and fell a making plackets presently.' Crowne's Sir Courtly Nice, act ii. p. 13, ed. 1685."

Dyce's Few Notes, &c., p. 53.

Mr. Steevens, Mr. Nares, and Mr. Dyce, might have

been saved their labors, and Mr. Halliwell his doubts, by inquiring of the Benedicks among their fellow Shakesperians on this side the water concerning this word. Ladies in the northern part of the United States call that aperture in their petticoats (upper and under) which extends from the back of the waist about one quarter down the skirt, the 'placket-hole;' and so did their grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and great-great-grandmothers. Mr. Douce, to whose learning and judgment the students of Shakespeare are so much indebted says, "a placket is a petticoat." Had he been writing for Americans he need not have said it.

ACT IV. SCENE 3.

In the defective line of Dumain's sonnet,

"Thou for whom Jove would swear,"

Pope read "even Jove;" Mr. Collier's margins give "great Jove," with more fitness and probability, if, indeed, a syllable must be added.

"Dum. This will I send; and something else more plain That shall express my true love's fasting pain."

"My true love's fasting pain" sounds like a misprint of "my true love's lasting pain," to which it is changed by one of the few happy conjectures in Mr. Collier's folio.

"Biron. I am betray'd by keeping company With men like men, of strange inconstancy."