that knewe that waters long restrained/Breake foorth with greater billowes than the brookes/That swetely float through meades with floures distained,/With cheerefull laies did raise his heavie lookes;/And bad him speake and tell what him agreev’d:/For griefes disclos’d (said she) are soone releev’d.’
335. Heart’s attorney. I.e. the tongue. In Richard III (IV. iv. 127) words are compared to ‘windy attorneys to their client woes.’
342. For all askance he holds her in his eye. He looks at her sideways, watching her movements all the time.
359, 360. These two lines are given as a proof that the poem was written not at Stratford, but when Shakespeare was already familiar with the life of the theatres. A dumb play, or dumb show, was a scene in a tragedy shown pantomimically and representing parts of the story which could not be included, or sometimes giving a summary of the action which was to follow. Chorus, a character in the old English drama, who presented or commented upon the tragedy.
367. Engine of her thoughts. This description of the tongue occurs also in Titus Andronicus, III. i. 82: ‘that delightful engine of her thoughts.’
370. My heart . . . wound. Were my heart as whole as thine and thy heart wounded like mine.
375. steel. With probably a pun on ‘steel’ (harden) and ‘steal’ (rob).
397. naked bed. This expression seems to have been common in the sixteenth century. Its meaning has not been satisfactorily explained. Here the phrase evidently means ‘lying naked in bed.’
412. My love to love is love but to disgrace it. The only love I bear to love is a strong inclination to disgrace it.
424. alarms. Or alarums, signals by which soldiers were warned to take arms.
433–450. Had I . . . feast. Wyndham compares
