Enter BALTHAZar, with musick.*

D. PEDRO. Come, Balthazar, we'll hear that song again."

BALTH. O good my lord, tax not so bad a voice To slander musick any more than once.

D. PEDRO. It is the witness still of excellency, To put a strange face on his own perfection :I pray thee, sing, and let me woo no more.

BALTH. Because you talk of wooing, I will sing: Since many a wooer doth commence his suit

"Perceiv'd or shew'd.

"He kidde anon his bone was not broken."

Troilus and Cressida, Lib. I. 208.

"With that anon sterte out daungere,
"Out of the place where he was hidde;
"His malice in his cheere was kidde."

Romaunt of the Rose, 2130. GREY. It is not impossible but that Shakspeare chose on this occasion to employ an antiquated word; and yet if any future editor should choose to read-hid fox, he may observe that Hamlet has said " Hide fox and all after." STEEVENS.

Dr. Warburton reads as Mr. Steevens proposes. MALONE. A kid-fox seems to be no more than a young fox or cub. In As you like it, we have the expression of" two dog-apes.”

RITSON.

with musick.] I am not sure that this stage-direction (taken from the quarto, 1600,) is proper. Balthazar might have been designed at once for a vocal and an instrumental performer. Shakspeare's orchestra was hardly numerous; and the first folio, instead of Balthazar, only gives us Jacke Wilson, the name of the actor who represented him. STEEVENS.

* Come, Balthazar, we'll hear that song again.] Balthazar, the musician and servant to Don Pedro, was perhaps thus named from the celebrated Baltazarini, called De Beaujoyeux, an Italian performer on the violin, who was in the highest fame and favour at the court of Henry II. of France, 1577. BURNey.

VOL. VI.

To her he thinks not worthy; yet he wooes;
Yet will he swear, he loves.

D. PEDRO.

Nay, pray thee, come:

Or, if thou wilt hold longer argument,

Do it in notes.

BALTH.

Note this before my notes,

There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting. D. PEDRO. Why these are very crotchets that he speaks:

Note, notes, forsooth, and noting!"

6

[Musick. BENE. Now, Divine air! now is his soul ravished!-Is it not strange, that sheeps' guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?-Well, a horn for my money, when all's done.

BALTHAZAR sings.

I.

BALTH. Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,"
Men were deceivers ever;

One foot in sea, and one on shore ;
To one thing constant never :
Then sigh not so,

But let them go,
And be you blith and bonny;
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into, Hey nonny, nonny.

and noting!] The old copies-nothing. The correc

tion was made by Mr. Theobald. MALONE.

7 Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,]

"Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more."

Milton's Lycidas. STEEVENS.

II.

Sing no more ditties, sing no mo
Of dumps so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leavy.
Then sigh not so, &c.

D. PEDRO. By my troth, a good song.
BALTH. And an ill singer, my lord.

D. PEDRO. Ha? no; no, faith; thou singest well enough for a shift.

BENE. [Aside.] An he had been a dog, that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him: and, I pray God, his bad voice bode no mischief! I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it.

8

D. PEDRO. Yea, marry; [To CLAUDIO.]-Dost thou hear, Balthazar? I pray thee, get us some excellent musick; for to-morrow night we would have it at the lady Hero's chamber-window.

BALTH. The best I can, my lord.

D. PEDRO. Do so: farewell. [Exeunt BalthaZAR and musick.] Come hither, Leonato: What was it you told me of to-day? that your niece Beatrice was in love with signior Benedick?

I

pray God, his bad voice bode no mischief! I had as lief have heard the night-raven,] i. e. the owl; vuntinopağ. So, in King Henry VI. P. III. sc. vi:

"The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time."

Thus also, Milton, in L'Allegro : "And the night-raven sings."

DOUCE

STEEVENS.

CLAUD. O, ay:-Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits." [Aside to PEDRO.] I did never think that lady would have loved any man.

LEON. No, nor I neither; but most wonderful, that she should so dote on signior Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviours seemed ever to abhor.

BENE. Is't possible? Sits the wind in that corner?

[Aside. LEON. By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think of it; but that she loves him with an

9 Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits.] This is an allusion to the stalking-horse; a horse either real or factitious, by which the fowler anciently sheltered himself from the sight of the game.

So, in The Honest Lawyer, 1616:

"Lye there, thou happy warranted case

"Of any villain. Thou hast been my stalking-horse
"Now these ten months."

Again, in the 25th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion:

"One underneath his horse to get a shoot doth stalk.” Again, in his Muses' Elysium:

"Then underneath my horse, I stalk my game to strike." STEEVENS.

Again, in New Shreds of the Old Snare, by John Gee, quarto, 23: "Methinks I behold the cunning fowler, such as I have knowne in the fenne countries and els-where, that doe shoot at woodcockes, snipes, and wilde fowle, by sneaking behind a painted cloth which they carrey before them, having pictured in it the shape of a horse; which while the silly fowle gazeth on, it is knockt down with hale shot, and so put in the fowler's budget." REED.

A stalking-bull, with a cloth thrown over him, was sometimes used for deceiving the game; as may be seen from a very elegant cut in Loniceri Venatus et Aucupium. Francofurti, 1582, 4to. and from a print by F. Valeggio, with the motto

"Veste boves operit, dum sturnos fallit edaces."

DOUCE.

enraged affection,-it is past the infinite of thought.1

1

D. PEDRO. May be, she doth but counterfeit. CLAUD. 'Faith, like enough.

LEON. O God! counterfeit! There never was

but that she loves him with an enraged affection,-it is past the infinite of thought.] It is impossible to make sense and grammar of this speech. And the reason is, that the two beginnings of two different sentences are jumbled together and made one. For-but that she loves him with an enraged affec tion, is only part of a sentence, which should conclude thus,is most certain. But a new idea striking the speaker, he leaves his sentence unfinished, and turns to another, It is past the infinite of thought,-which is likewise left unfinished; for it should conclude thus-to say how great that affection is. Those broken disjointed sentences are usual in conversation. However, there is one word wrong, which yet perplexes the sense; and that is infinite. Human thought cannot surely be called infinite with any kind of figurative propriety. I suppose the true reading was definite. This makes the passage intelligible. It is past the definite of thought,-i. e. it cannot be defined or conceived how great that affection is. Shakspeare uses the word again in the same sense in Cymbeline:

"For ideots, in this case of favour, would
"Be wisely definite-."

i. e. could tell how to pronounce or determine in the case. WARBURTON.

Here are difficulties raised only to show how easily they can be removed. The plain sense is, I know not what to think otherwise, but that she loves him with an enraged affection: It (this affection) is past the infinite of thought. Here are no abrupt stops, or imperfect sentences. Infinite may well enough stand; it is used by more careful writers for indefinite: and the speaker only means, that thought, though in itself unbounded, cannot reach or estimate the degree of her passion. JOHNSON.

The meaning, I think, is,—but with what an enraged affection she loves him, it is beyond the power of thought to conceive.

Shakspeare has a similar expression in King John : "Beyond the infinite and boundless reach

“Of mercy—.”

STEEVENS.

MALONE.