Page:Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and the Minor Poems (1927).djvu/159

Shakespeare’s Poems this passage with Chapman’s Ovid’s Banquet of Sense (1595).

May prosperity befall the wit, etc.

‘A mixture of two phrases, (1) to mend the hurt that his unkindness caused, and (2) to mend what was marred by his unkindness, i.e. to restore her consciousness or colour’ (Pooler).

Shakespeare uses the word both in the sense of ‘eye’ (Love’s Labour’s Lost, V. ii. 846), and of ‘eyelid’ (Antony and Cleopatra, V. ii. 319).

A livery (Fr. livrée) was the distinctive dress worn by the servants and dependants in the household of a nobleman.

‘The poet evidently alludes to a practice of his own age, when it was customary, in time of the plague, to strew the rooms of every house with rue and other strong-smelling herbs, to prevent infection’ (Malone). There was an outbreak of the plague in August, 1592, and the infection lasted until the spring of 1594. During most of that time the plays were under restraint and the theatres closed. This allusion has been used as a clue to the date of composition of Venus and Adonis.

It has been supposed that there is a reference to the sense of ‘counterfeit money.’ It is true that ‘slip’ sometimes means a ‘counterfeit coin,’ but the context shows that here ‘slip’ is taken in its ordinary sense of ‘error.’ Adonis is making a purchase, and a deed is, therefore, to be drawn; and for fear there should be some omission or error which might be invoked as a cause of non-execution, Adonis will set his seal (i.e. his lips) to the legal instrument (Venus’s lips) as a token of performance (cf. line 521).

The seal was impressed on wax affixed to the document.