[I have no tongue but one. Gentle my lord,
Let me intreat you, speak the former language]
Isabella answers to his circumlocutory courtship, that she has
but _one tongue_, she does not understand this new phrase, and
desires him to talk his _former language_, that is, to talk as he
talked before.
II.iv.150 (60,3) [Seeming, seeming!] Hypocrisy, hypocrisy; counterfeit
virtue.
II.iv.156 (60,4) [My Touch against you] [The calling his denial of
her charge _his vouch_, has something fine. _Vouch_ is the testimony
one man bears for another. So that, by this, he insinuates
his authority was so great, that his _denial_ would have the same
credit that a _vouch_ or testimony has in ordinary cases. Warburton.]
I believe this beauty is merely imaginary, and that _vouch
against_ means no more than denial.
II.iv.165 (60,5) [die the death] This seems to be a solemn phrase
for death inflicted by law. So in _Midsummer Night's Dream_.
_Prepare_ to die the death.
II.iv.178 (61,6) [prompture] Suggestion, temptation, instigation.
III.i.5 (62,8) [Be absolute for death] Be determined to die, without
any hope of life. _Horace_,--
--_The hour, which exceeds expectation will be welcome._
III.i.7 (62,9) [I do lose a thing, That none but fools would keep]
[W: would reck] The meaning seems plainly this, that _none but
fools would_ wish _to keep life_; or, _none but fools would keep_ it,
if choice were allowed. A sense, which whether true or not, is
certainly innocent.
III.i.14 (63,3) [For all the accommodations, that thou bear'st Are
nurs'd by baseness] Dr. Warburton is undoubtedly mistaken in
supposing that by _baseness_ is meant _self-love_ here assigned as
the motive of all human actions. Shakespeare only meant to
observe, that a minute analysis of life at once destroys that
splendour which dazzles the imagination. Whatever grandeur can
display, or luxury enjoy, is procured by _baseness_, by offices of
which the mind shrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies
of the table may be traced back to the shambles and the
dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry,
and all the pomp of ornaments dug from among the damps and
darkness of the mine.
III.i.16 (64,4) [the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm] _Worm_ is
put for any creeping thing or _serpent_. Shakespeare supposes
falsely, but according to the vulgar notion, that a serpent
wounds with his tongue, and that his tongue is _forked_. He
confounds reality and fiction, a serpent's tongue is _soft_ but not
_forked_ nor hurtful. If it could hurt, it could not be soft. In
_Midsummer Night's Dream_ he has the same notion.
--_With_ doubler _tongue
Than thine, O serpent, never adder_ stung.