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CLO. Sayest thou?

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1 LORD. It is not fit, your lordship should undertake every companion that you give offence to. CLO. No, I know that: but it is fit, I should commit offence to my inferiors.

2 LORD. Ay, it is fit for your lordship only. CLO. Why, so I say.

1 LORD. Did you hear of a stranger, that's come to court to-night?

CLO. A stranger! and I not know on't!

2 LORD. He's a strange fellow himself, and knows it not. [Aside. 1 LORD. There's an Italian come; and, 'tis thought, one of Leonatus' friends.

CLO. Leonatus! a banished rascal; and he's another, whatsoever he be. Who told you of this stranger?

1 LORD. One of your lordship's pages.

CLO. Is it fit, I went to look upon him? Is there no derogation in't ?

1 LORD. You cannot derogate, my lord. CLO. Not easily, I think.

2 LORD. You are a fool granted; therefore your issues being foolish, do not derogate. [Aside. CLO. Come, I'll go see this Italian: What I have lost to-day at bowls, I'll win to-night of him. Come, go.

2 LORD. I'll attend your lordship.

[Exeunt CLOTEN and first Lord. That such a crafty devil as is his mother Should yield the world this ass! a woman, that

-with your comb on.] The allusion is to a fool's cap, which hath a comb like a cock's. JOHNSON.

The intention of the speaker is to call Cloten a coxcomb.

M. MASON.

5-every COMPANION] The use of companion was the same as of fellow now. It was a word of contempt. JOHNSON. It occurs with this meaning frequently in Shakspeare. MALONE.

Bears all down with her brain; and this her son
Cannot take two from twenty for his heart,
And leave eighteen. Alas, poor princess,
Thou divine Imogen, what thou endur'st!
Betwixt a father by thy step-dame govern'd;
A mother hourly coining plots; a wooer,
More hateful than the foul expulsion is

Of thy dear husband, than that horrid act

Of the divorce he'd make! The heavens hold firm
The walls of thy dear honour; keep unshak'd
That temple, thy fair mind; that thou may'st

stand,

To enjoy thy banish'd lord, and this great land!

SCENE II.

[Exit.

A Bed-chamber; in one Part of it a Trunk.

IMOGEN reading in her Bed; a Lady attending. IMO. Who's there? my woman Helen?

LADY.

IMO. What hour is it?

LADY.

Please you, madam.

Almost midnight, madam.

IMO. I have read three hours then: mine eyes

are weak:

Fold down the leaf where I have left: To bed:

Take not away the taper, leave it burning;
And if thou canst awake by four o' the clock,
I pr'ythee, call me. Sleep hath seiz'd me wholly.
[Exit Lady.
To your protection I commend me, gods!
From fairies, and the tempters of the night,
Guard me, beseech ye!

[Sleeps. LACHIMO, from the Trunk.

6 From fairies, and the tempters of the night,] Banquo, in Macbeth, has already deprecated the same nocturnal evils:

LACH. The crickets sing, and man's o'er-labour'd

sense

Repairs itself by rest: Our Tarquin' thus
Did softly press the rushes, ere he waken'd
The chastity he wounded.-Cytherea,

How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily 9!

"Restrain in me the cursed thoughts, that nature
"Gives way to in repose!" STEEVENS.

CUR Tarquin-] The speaker is an Italian. JOHNSON.
Tarquin thus

Did SOFTLY press the RUSHES,] This shows that Shakspeare's idea was, that the ravishing strides of Tarquin were softly ones, and may serve as a comment on that passage in Macbeth. See vol. xi. p. 98, n. 9. BLACKSTONE.

"-the rushes." It was the custom in the time of our author to strew chambers with rushes, as we now cover them with carpets the practice is mentioned in Caius de Ephemera Britannica. JOHNSON.

So, in Thomas Newton's Herball to the Bible, 8vo. 1587: "Sedge and rushes,-with the which many in this country do use in sommer time to strawe their parlors and churches, as well for coolenes as for pleasant smell."

Again, in Arden of Feversham, 1592:

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his blood remains.

Why strew rushes."

Again, in Bussy d'Ambois, 1607:

"Were not the king here, he should strew the chamber like a rush."

Shakspeare has the same circumstance in his Rape of Lucrece : - by the light he spies

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"Lucretia's glove wherein her needle sticks ;

"He takes it from the rushes where it lies," &c.

The ancient English stage also, as appears from more than one passage in Decker's Gul's Hornbook, 1609, was strewn with rushes; "Salute all your gentle acquaintance that are spred either on the rushes or on stooles about you, and drawe what troope you can from the stage after you." STEEVENS.

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How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily!

And WHITER THAN THE SHEETS!] So, in our author's Venus and Adonis :

"Who sees his true love in her naked bed,
"Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white."

And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch! But kiss; one kiss!-Rubies unparagon'd,

How dearly they do't!-'Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus': The flame o' the

taper

Bows toward her; and would under-peep her lids, To see the enclosed lights, now canopied 2

Under these windows: White and azure, lac'd With blue of heaven's own tinct'.-But my de

sign.

Again, in The Rape of Lucrece :

"Who o'er the white sheets peers her whiter chin."

Thus, also, Jaffier, in Venice Preserved:

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"White as her bosom." STEEVENS.

'Tis her breathing that

MALONE.

Perfumes the chamber thus:] The same hyperbole is found in The Metamorphosis of Pygmalion's Image, by J. Marston, 1598:

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no lips did seem so fair

"In his conceit; through which he thinks doth flie

"So sweet a breath that doth perfume the air." MALONE. NOW CANOPIED] Shakspeare has the same expression in Tarquin and Lucrece :

"Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheath'd their light,
"And canopied in darkness, sweetly lay,

"Till they might open to adorn the day." MALOne. 3 Under these wWINDOWS:] i. e. her eyelids.

and Juliet:

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Thy eyes' windows fall,

So, in Romeo

"Like death, when he shuts up the day of life."

Again, in his Venus and Adonis :

"The night of sorrow now is turn'd to day;
"Her two blue windows faintly she up-heaveth."

White AND azure, lac'd

MALONE.

WITH blue of heaven's own tinct.] We should read :

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White with azure lac'd,

"The blue of heaven's own tinct."

i. e. the white skin laced with blue veins. WARBURTON. So, in Macbeth :

"His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood."

To note the chamber, I will write all down :-
Such, and such, pictures :-There the window :—
Such

The adornment of her bed;-The arras, figures, Why, such, and such :-And the contents o' the story,

The passage before us, without Dr. Warburton's emendation, is, to me at least, unintelligible. STEEVENS.

So, in Romeo and Juliet :

"What envious streaks do lace the severing clouds."

These words, I apprehend, refer not to Imogen's eye-lids, (of which the poet would scarcely have given so particular a description,) but to the inclosed lights, i. e. her eyes: which though now shut, lachimo had seen before, and which are here said in poetical language to be blue, and that blue celestial.

Dr. Warburton is of opinion that the eye-lid was meant, and according to his notion, the poet intended to praise its white skin, and blue veins.

Drayton, who has often imitated Shakspeare, seems to have viewed this passage in the same light:

"And these sweet veins by nature rightly plac'd,

"Wherewith she seems the white skin to have lac'd,

"She soon doth alter." The Mooncalf, 1627. MALONE. We learn from a quotation in n. 3, that by blue windows were meant blue eye-lids; and indeed our author has dwelt on corresponding imagery in The Winter's Tale :

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violets, dim,

"But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes."

A particular description, therefore, of the same objects, might, in the present instance, have been designed.

Thus, in Chapman's translation of the twenty-third book of Homer's Odyssey, Minerva is the person described :

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the Dame

"That bears the blue sky intermix'd with flame
"In her fair eyes," &c. STEEVENS.

The arras, figures,

Why, such, and such :] We should print, says Mr. M. Mason, thus : - the arras-figures;" that is, the figures of the arras. But, I think, he is mistaken. It appears from what Iachimo afterwards, that he had noted, not only the figures of the arras, but the stuff of which the arras was composed:

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It was hang'd

"With tapestry of silk and silver; the story
"Proud Cleopatra," &c.

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