"Nay, then," quoth Adon, "you will fall again The kiss I gave you is bestowed in vain, For by this blacked-faced night, desire's foul nurse, Your treatise makes me like you worse and worse "If love have lent you twenty thousand tongues, "Lest the deceiving harmony should run No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan, "What have you urged that I cannot reprove? "Call it not love, for love to heaven is fled, Since sweating lust on earth usurped his name; Under whose simple semblance he hath fed Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame; Which the hot tyrant stains, and soon bereaves, "Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain, "More I could tell, but more I dare not say; 1 With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace Leaves Love upon her back deeply distressed. Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky, Which after him she darts, as one on shore Till the wild waves will have him seen no more, 1 Teen, grief. 2 Laund, lawn. Camden describes a lawn as a plain among trees, and the epithet dark confirms this explanation. We have such a scene in Henry VI. Part III. Act II.: "Under this thick-grown brake we'll shroud ourselves, Whereat amazed, as one that unaware And now she beats her heart, whereat it groans, Passion on passion deeply is redoubled: "Ah me!" she cries, and twenty times, "woe, woe!" And twenty echoes twenty times cry so. She, marking them, begins a wailing note, And sings extemp'rally a woful ditty ; How love makes young men thrall, and old men dote ; Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe, Her song was tedious, and outwore the night, 1 Answer. So the original. Mr. Dyce, who is a careful collator of copies, prints answers. No doubt, according to the rules of modern construction, answers is more correct, and Malone talks of Shakspeare having fallen into the error of " hasty writers, who are deceived by the noun immediately preceding the verb being in the plural number." We hold that to be a false refinement which destroys the landmarks of an age's phraseology. Ben Jonson in his "English Grammar," lays down as a rule that "nouns sig nifying a multitude, though they be of the singular number, require a verb plural." The rule would appear still more reasonable when the plural is more apparently expressed in the noun of mul titude, as in the form before us" the choir of echoes." It pleased themselves, others, they think, delight End without audience, and are never done. For who hath she to spend the night withal, Like shrill-tongued tapsters answering every call, She says, "'tis so:" they answer all," 'tis so; And would say after her if she said "no." Lo! here the gentle lark, weary of rest, And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast Who doth the world so gloriously behold, Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow: There lives a son, that sucked an earthly mother, This said, she hasteth to a myrtle grove, 1 Coasteth, advanceth. And as she runs, the bushes in the way Like a milch doc, whose swelling dugs do ache, By this she hears the hounds are at a bay, The fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder; For now she knows it is no gentle chase, They all strain court'sy who shall cope him first. This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear, Thus stands she in a trembiing ecstasy ; 1 Cold-pale. The hyphen denoting the compound adjective is marked in the original edition of 1593. 2 Sore-dismayed. This is the reading of the edition of 1596. The original has all dismayed. |