FAMILIAR AND HOMELY EXPRESSIONS.

In many passages, Shakespeare uses words and phrases of the most simple description; so much so, that they have been denounced as too plain, too common, too undignified for the demands of poetic diction: but we think that in every case where objection has been thus taken, the word or phrase which our poet has employed, will be found, upon due examination and reflection, to have peculiar fitness; either by reason of its appropriate simplicity, its characteristic effect, or its dramatic purpose-all of which render it, in its way, poetical:—

Be of good cheer, youth: you a man? you lack a man's heart.-I do so, I confess it. Ah! sirrah, a body would think this was well counterfeited: I pray you, tell your brother how well I counterfeited. Heigh-ho!-As You L., iv. 3.

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry, "Hold, hold!"-Macb., i. 5.

Your commendations, madam, get from her tears.—

'Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in.—All's W., i. 1.

Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine

Hath wash'd thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!

How much salt water thrown away in waste,

To season love, that of it doth not taste !--R. & Jul., ii. 3.

But for our gentlemen,

The common file (a plague! tribunes for them!),

The mouse ne'er shunn'd the cat as they did budge
From rascals worse than they.-Coriol., i. 6.

He that's coming

Must be provided for: and you shall put

This night's great business into my despatch.-Macb., i. 5.
We will proceed no farther in this business.—Ibid., i. 7.
Masking the business from the common eye,

For sundry weighty reasons.-Ibid., iii. 1.

Here burns my candle out-ay, here it dies,

Which, whiles it lasted, gave king Henry light.—3 H. VI., ii. 6.
Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow.-Macb., v. 5.

For, by these blessed candles of the night.-Mer. of V., v. 1.
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops.-R. & Jul., iii. 5.
There's husbandry in heaven,

Their candles are all out.-Macb., ii. 1.

Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart*

gone round

Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground.—Hamlet, iii. 2.
Thou hast never in thy life

Show'd thy dear mother any courtesy ;

When she (poor hen), fond of no second brood,

Has cluck'd thee to the wars, and safely home,

Loaden with honour.-Coriol., v. 3.

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.-Macb., ii. 1.

What! will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?—Ibid., iv. 1.

I say, O Cæsar, Antony is dead.—

The breaking of so great a thing should make

* "Cart" was formerly sometimes used for 'car' or 'chariot.'

A greater crack: the round world

Should have shook lions into civil streets,
And citizens to their dens.-Ant. & C., v. I.

The fire, and cracks

Of sulphurous roaring, the most mighty Neptune

Seem to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble,
Yea, his dread trident shake.-Temp., i. 2.

If I say sooth, I must report they were

As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks.-Macb., i 2.

Confederates

(So dry he was for sway) with the King of Naples

To give him annual tribute, do him homage.-Temp., i. 2.
But I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dress'd
Fresh as a bridegroom.-1 H. IV., i. 3.
Visit by night your lady's chamber-window
With some sweet consort; to their instruments

Tune a deploring dump; the night's dead silence

Will well become such sweet complaining grievance.-Two G. of V., iii. 2.
Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell.-Macb., i. 5.

"Dunnest" has been stigmatised as a mean epithet; to our thinking it is full of poetic truth and impressiveness, conveying the effect of darkest and grimmest colour.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.-Ibid., v. 5.

Before he should thus stoop to the herd, but that
The violent fit o' the time craves it as physic

For the whole estate, I would put mine armour on,
Which I can scarcely bear.-Coriol., iii. 2.

But, for your husband,

He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows

The fits o' the season.-Macb., iv. 2.

Cold, cold, my girl!

Even like thy chastity.-Oth., v. 2.

Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life.-Hamlet, iii. 1.

Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?-Lear, iv. 6.

His incensement at this moment is so implacable, that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and sepulchre: hob, nob, is his word; give 't or take 't. Tw. N., iii. 4.

Losses, that have of late so huddled on his back.-Mer. of V., iv. I.

Huddling jest upon jest, with such impossible conveyance upon me.-M. Ado, ii. 1. The people muddied,

Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers,

For good Polonius' death; and we have done but greenly,
In hugger-mugger to inter him.-Hamlet, iv. 5.

That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murder.-Ibid., v. 1.

• Originally a grave term for a melancholy strain or ditty.

'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife
Shall play the umpire.-R. & Jul., iv. 1.
Come thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes.—Macb., i. 5.
By the clock, 'tis day,

And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.—Ibid., ii. 4.
He fishes, drinks, and wastes

The lamps of night in revel.-Ant. & C., i. 4.

Let the great gods,

That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,
Find out their enemies now.-Lear, iii. 2.

Something, sure, of state,—
Either from Venice, or some unhatch'd practice
Made demonstrable here in Cyprus to him,-
Hath puddled his clear spirit.-Oth., iii. 4.
O, from Italy!

Ram* thou thy fruitful tidings in mine ears,

That long time have been barren.-Ant. & C., ii. 4.
Since God so graciously hath brought to light
This dangerous treason, lurking in our way

To hinder our beginnings, we doubt not now

But every rub is smoothed on our way.-H. V., ii. 2.

To die, to sleep ;

To sleep! perchance to dream;-ay, there's the rub.-Hamlet, iii. 1.
Madam, we 'll play at bowls-

'Twill make me think the world is full of rubs,

And that my fortune runs against the bias.-R. II., iii. 4.

His captain's heart,

Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst

The buckles on his breast.-Ant. & C., i. I.

Will you shog off? I would have you solus.-H. V., ii. 1.

Shall we shog? the king will be gone from Southampton.—Ibid., ii. 3.
Slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio.-Mer of V., ii. 8.

You must therefore be content to slubber the gloss of your new fortunes with this more stubborn and boisterous expedition.-Oth., i. 3.

"Ram

Why, that's my bawcock. What, hast smutch'd thy nose?

They say, it is a copy out of mine.-W. T., i. 2.

His faults, in him, seem as the spots of heaven,

More fiery by night's blackness.-Ant. & C., i. 4.
For I can here disarm thee with this stick,
And make thy weapon drop.-Temp., i. 2.
Nature wants stuff

To vie strange forms with fancy; yet, to imagine
An Antony, were nature's piece 'gainst fancy,
Condemning shadows quite.-Ant. & C., v. 2
I do not think

So fair an outward, and such stuff within,
Endows a man but he.-Cym., i. 1.

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart.—Macb., v. 3.

was objected to by Ritson, in this passage, as a vulgar word"; and he proposed to substitute rain. But "ram is a strong and forcible word; just the word for Cleopatra to use; and therefore Shakespeare put it most characteristically into her mouth.

Steevens proposed to change "stuff'd" here to 'foul,' saying that the ear "must be shocked by the recurrence of so harsh a word." But we know that Shakespeare frequently gave repetitions of similar words in the same sentence [See REPEATED WORDS]; and as for its being a harsh word, see how Shakespeare uses "stuff" and "stuff'd" in the passages here collectively cited, where he evidently considers them expressive epithets, and nowise harsh or wanting in poetic dignity. See, too, how he uses "stuff'd" for physical oppression, where he makes Beatrice say:

I am stuff'd, cousin, I cannot smell.-M. Ado, iii. 4.

To our thinking, the very iteration of "stuff'd" and "stuff" in the present line, serves to give it the effect of stifling over-burdened sensation which it describes.

I have despatch'd in post

To sacred Delphos, to Apollo's temple,
Cleomenes and Dion, whom you know
Of stuff'd sufficiency.-W. T., ii. 1.

So noble a master fall'n! All gone! and not
One friend to take his fortune by the arm,

And go along with him.-Timon, iv. 2.

I will to Venice; Sunday comes apace:

We will have rings, and things, and fine array.-Tam. of S., ii. 1.

And now, my honey love,

Will we return unto thy father's house,

And revel it as bravely as the best,

With silken coats, and caps, and golden rings,

With ruffs, and cuffs, and farthingales, and things;

With scarfs, and fans, and double change of bravery,

With amber bracelets, beads, and all this knavery.—Ibid., iv. 3.

Johnson pronounces "things," in this last passage, to be "a poor word"; adding, "perhaps the author had not another that would rhyme." Without dwelling upon the absurdity of fancying Shakespeare at a loss for a rhyming word, we think that the one he uses in both the abovecited passages a thoroughly apt term. It is put into Petruchio's mouth as a sarcastic employment of the word much favoured by the female sex when talking rapturously of inexpressibly charming finery, which they are in the habit of summing up as "lovely things." In the same spirit of sarcasm, Petruchio immediately after uses the word "knavery," to imply the trumpery, frippery, and trickery of ornament.

Admir'd Miranda!

Indeed, the top of admiration; worth
What's dearest to the world!-Temp., iii. 1.
How would you be,

If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are?-M. for M., ii. 2.
This shower, blown up by tempest of the soul,
Startles mine eyes, and makes me more amaz'd

Than had I seen the vaulty top of heaven

Figur'd quite o'er with burning meteors.-John, v. 2.
What is this,

That rises like the issue of a king,

And wears upon his baby brow the round

And top of sovereignty ?-Macb., iv. 1.

א

All the stor'd vengeances of Heaven fall
On her ingrateful top! strike her young bones,
You taking airs, with lameness!-Lear, ii. 4.

Didst thou but know the inly touch of love,

Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow,

As seek to quench the fire of love with words.-Two G. of V., ii. 7.

This she delivered in the most bitter touch of sorrow

That e'er I heard virgin exclaim in.—All's W., i. 3.

But I perceive in you so excellent a touch of modesty, that you will not extort from me what I am willing to keep in.-Tw. N., ii. 1.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.—Tr. & Cr., iii. 3.

He loves us not;

He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren,

The most diminutive of birds, will fight,

Her young ones in the nest, against the owl.-Macb., iv. 2.

I am senseless of your wrath; a touch more rare

Subdues all pangs, all fears.-Cym., i. 2.

Thou 'lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never!

Pray you, undo this button :-thank you, sir.-Lear, v. 3.

Now, how dost thou look now? O, ill-starr'd wench!

Pale as thy smock! when we shall meet at compt,

This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven,
And fiends will snatch at it.-Oth., v. 2.

If you will have it in showing, you shall read it in-What do ye call there.All's W., ii. 3.

Good even, good Master What-do-ye-call 't: how do you, sir? met.-As You L., iii. 3.

Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun

You are very well

Peer'd forth the golden window of the east.-R. & Jul., i. 1.
Then, Jupiter, thou king of gods

Thy crystal window ope; look out.—Cym., v. 4.

In the following passages, Shakespeare uses "ne'er" and "never" in an idiom which, when he wrote, was thought merely a familiarism and no vulgarism, as it is at present:—

I'll be damned for never a king's son in Christendom.-1 H. IV., i. 2.

There is ne'er a king in Christendom could be better.-Ibid., ii. 1.

I think there's never a man in Christendom can.-R. III., iii. 4.
There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark.—Hamlet, i. 5.

HISTORIANS' PASSAGES ADOPTED.

Shakespeare, as the greatest of all dramatists, and especially as a writer of historical dramas, well knew the value of going directly to the historians' pages for details, and even of adopting from them actual portions best suited to his purpose. He was evidently a diligent reader of the old chronicles of his own country, and a careful studier of Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch; for he has not only given the vivid colouring of verisimilitude which deriving from authentic sources imparts to dramatic and poetic composition, but he has, in many instances, taken absolute passages from these prose narrations, and put them into his own glowing verse diction. Some among the most