Page:Love's Labour's Lost (1925) Yale.djvu/122

110 is printed as in the Quarto. The Folio has the inferior version: 'That were to clymbe ore the house to vnlocke the gate.'

Yet confident I'll keep what I have sworn. The second Folio reads 'swore,' which most modern editors introduce for the sake of rime.

the dancing horse. A famous performing horse named Morocco, first definitely mentioned in 1591 but apparently known as early as 1589. He was particularly accomplished in arithmetic.

Of what complexion? The four 'complexions' of the body were variously ascribed to the four elements (earth, air, water, fire) and to the four 'humours' (phlegm, choler, blood, melancholy).

she had a green wit. Perhaps Moth implies a pun on the green withes with which Samson was bound (Judges 16. 7): 'And Samson said unto her, If they bind me with seven green withs that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and be as another man.'

a ballet of the King and the Beggar. The ballad of King Cophetua and the Beggar-maid is a favorite subject of allusion in Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Compare Armado's later mention of it in his letter (IV. i. 65 ff.). The extant version, printed in Percy's Reliques, appears to be post-Elizabethan.

the merry days of desolation. Perhaps Costard means 'dissipation.'

Lord Perigort. Of course, an invented name. Périgord, near Bordeaux, was an important district during the Hundred Years' War between France and England. Shakespeare would have found it mentioned repeatedly in Holinshed in connection with the French campaigns of Henry VI's reign. Falconbridge, in the next line, appears to have been a name the poet liked. It is not French, but is applied