[An' your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit,
One o' these maids girdles for your waist should be fit]
[W: my waste ... your wit ... my waste] This conjecture is ingenious
enough, but not well considered. It is plain that the ladies girdles
would not fit the princess. For when she has referred the
clown to _the thickest and the tallest_, he turns immediately to
her with the blunt apology, _truth is truth_; and again tells her,
_you are the thickest here_. If any alteration is to be made, I
should propose,
_An' your waist, mistress, were as slender as_ your _wit_.
This would point the reply; but perhaps he mentions the slenderness
of his own wit to excuse his bluntness.
IV.i.59 (387,3) [Break the neck of the wax] Still alluding to the
capon.
IV.i.65 (388,5) [_king_ Cophetua] This story is again alluded to in
Henry IV.
_Let king Cophetua know the truth thereof._
But of this king and beggar, the story, then doubtless well
known, is, I am afraid, lost. Zenelophon has not appearance of
a female name, but since I know not the true none, it is idle to
guess.
IV.i.99 (389,7) [ere while] Just now; a little while ago. So
Raleigh,
_Here lies Hobbinol our shepherd_, while e'er.
IV.i.108 (390,9) [Come, lords, away] Perhaps the Princess said rather,
--_Come_, ladies, _away_.
The rest of the scene deserves no care.
IV.ii (392,2) [_Enter Dull, Holofernes, and Sir Nathaniel_] I am not
of the learned commentator's [Wurburton] opinion, that the satire
of Shakespeare is so seldom personal. It is of the nature of
personal invectives to be soon unintelligible; and the authour
that gratifies private malice, _aniuam in vulnere ponit_, destroys
the future efficacy of his own writings, and sacrifices the esteem
of succeeding times to the laughter of a day. It is no
wonder, therefore, that the sarcasms, which, perhaps, in the
authour's time, _set the_ playhouse _in a roar_, are now lost among
general reflections. Yet whether the character of Holofernes
was pointed at any particular man, I am, notwithstanding the
plausibility of Dr. Warburton's conjecture, inclined to doubt.
Every man adheres as long as he can to his own pre-conceptions.
Before I read this note I considered the character of Holofernes
as borrowed from the Rhombus of sir Philip Sidney, who, in a kind
of pastoral entertainment, exhibited to queen Elizabeth, has
introduced a school-master so called, speaking _a leash of languages
at once_, and puzzling himself and his auditors with a jargon like
that of Holofernes in the present play. Sidney himself might
bring the character from Italy; for, as Peacham observes, the
school-master has long been one of the ridiculous personages in
the farces of that country.