Of disobedience, or unduteous guile;

22

Since therein she doth evitate and shun

A thousand irreligious cursed hours,

Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.

Ford. Stand not amaz'd: here is no remedy. In love, the heavens themselves do guide the state: Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.

Fal. I am glad, though you have ta'en a special stand to strike at me, that your arrow hath glanc’d. Page. Well, what remedy? Fenton, heaven give

thee joy!

What cannot be eschew'd, must be embrac'd.

Fal. When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are

chas'd.23

Mrs. Page. Well, I will muse no further:

ter Fenton,

Heaven give you many, many merry days!
Good husband, let us every one go home,
And laugh this sport o'er by a country fire;
Sir John and all.

Ford.

Let it be so:— Sir John,

mas

To master Brook you yet shall hold your word; For he to-night shall lie with mistress Ford. [Exeunt.

22 Avoid.

23 Here, too, we commonly have a line added from the quartos. "Eva. I will dance and eat plums at your wedding."

It is questionable whether these passages, evidently either not written by the Poet, or else thrown out in the revisal, ought to have a place even in the notes.

H.

THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE

BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

[BEFFORED TO IN THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, ACT u. Sc. 1.]

COME live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That vallies, groves, and hills and field,
Or woods and steepy mountains yield.

Where we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle,
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle:

A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold:

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight, each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

THE NYMPH'S REPLY.

BY SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee, and be thy love.

But time drives flocks from field to fold
When rivers rage, and rocks grow cold,
Then Philomel becometh dumb,
And age complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy-buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee, and be thy love.

But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee, and be thy love.

INTRODUCTION

ΤΟ

TWELFTH NIGHT, OR WHAT YOU WILL.

TWELFTH NIGHT, OR WHAT YOU WILL, originally appeared in the folio of 1623, being the thirteenth in the list of Comedies. We keep to the order of the Chiswick edition, not so much because of any reason for it, as because we can discover no good reason for departing from it. The arrangement of the first edition seems preferable, simply as being the first; but the change, though made capriciously, may as well stand, till something better than caprice plead for restoration.

In default of positive information, Twelfth Night was for a long time set down as among the last-written of our author's plays. This opinion was based upon such slight indications gathered from the work itself, as could have no weight but in the absence of other proofs. For example, the word undertaker occurs in the play; therefore Tyrwhitt dated the writing of it in 1614, because the term was that year applied to certain men who undertook to carry matters in Parliament according to the King's liking; their arts and methods probably being much the same as are used by the lobby members of American legislatures: from which Mr. Verplanck very naturally infers that some of the Anglo-Saxon blood still runs in the veins of our republic. Chalmers, however, supposing that reference was had to the undertakers for colonizing Ulster in 1613, assigned the play to that year; and was confirmed therein by the Poet's use of the term Sophy, because the same year Sir Anthony Shirley published his Travels, wherein something was said about the Sophy of Persia. Perhaps it did not occur to either of these men that Shakespeare might have taken up the former word from its general use and meaning, not from any special ap. plications of it; these being apt to infer that it was already understood. Malone at first fixed upon 1614, but afterwards changed it to 1607, because the play contains the expression, "westwardhoe!" and Dekker's comedy entitled Westward-Hoe came out