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i^His.ua
HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY
SHAKESPEARE'S SCHOLAR.
SHAKESPEARE'S
SCHOLAR^
HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES OF HIS TEXT, CHARACTERS^
AND COMMENTATORS^ WITH AN EXAMINATION OF
MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632.
BY
RICHARD GRANT WHITE/ A. M.
" Ka2 ravra fiiw rvy rcpi rovriww tlp^trBtt. * * * JiXXouri yiip w§p\ avrimv tXfrurM, idaofitv airrd. rii Zh iWoi ov Kar*kdfioyTO roinivv fu^fiifr rratiiaoiiau* — HxRODOTua» £rato, 55.
NEW YORK: APPLETON AND COMPANY,
846 A 84S BBOADWAT. iLDCoauv.
' 0
HARVATO rOLlEGE LIBRARY
f:.C"^t?': i::-A"YCF GtoKfjE f-;c;:A?o sunn
ExTKBKD, Moording to Act of Ck)Dgr«8s, Id tb« year 18M, by
BICHASD OEAST WHITE,
In th« Clerk*B Office of the District Court of the United States for the Soathcm District of
New York.
OPTBLE UXORUM FEMINARUMQXJE DILECTISSIM^
PREFATORY LETTER
TO GEOBOB WILLIAM CURTIS, ESQ.
My Dear Curtis :
You will remember that the publisher of Shakespeare's Sonnets addresses them to a mys- terious Mr. W. H., as their " onlie begetter : " so I address this Preface to you, because it is to a sug- gestion of yours that it owes its existence. Let me remind you that in talking with you upon the sub- ject of this book and its character, I told you why I had been so superfluous as to write it, and how it was written ; upon which you kindly, but I thought with some reason, remarked, that the motives and the circumstances which produced it would add materially to whatever intrinsic value it might pos- sess, and that a statement of these would be the best evidence of the warrant of its author to speak upon its theme. Your opinion, upon reflection, aeemed well founded; and therefore, although if a book need an excuse it is past the help of one,
viii Pbkfatoby Letter.
I will undertake to tell why this was written. If the story of the volume should prove uninteresting, that will be the fault of the relator ; if the contrary, then you can say, with Baron Pompolmo^
"And as Vm the parent yine, All the glory shall he mine."
The book is called, what its author claims to have been for many years and yet to be, Shake- speare^ a Scholar^ — a title which the proudest may be proud to bear, and which the humblest may yet with humility assume. It attempts not to decide what Shakespeare might have written or what he could have written, or to seek the interpretation of his thoughts from those who proclaim themselves his prophets, but to learn from him what he did write, and to study to understand that in the submissive yet still inquiring spirit with which a neophyte listens to the teachings of a revered and no less beloved master. It is in this spirit that I have studied Shakespeare since the time whereof my memory runneth not to the contrary ; and it is because so few of his editors, commentators, and verbal crit- ics, seem to have thus studied him, and because during all my study I have kept free from the con- tamination and perversion of their instruction, and have learned only of him, that for the sake of the thousands who love, feel, and understand him as I do, or who would do so, were it not for those who have made themselves middlemen between him and them, doling out his golden thoughts and stopping
Pbefatoby Lettbb. ix
the best part of them on the way, — ^it is for the sake of those readers and on their part, as one of them, that I haveiwmtten this book; and I wrote it thua
Though never one of those who devote their social hours to trumpeting their admiration of him who wrote for all time, yet having been, as you have already seen, his devoted student at so early an age as to be unable to remember when I first began to muse and ponder with wondering delight upon his pages, it was inevitable that love should grow with know- ledge, admiration with the capacity to apprehend, and reverence with the gradually acquired ability to CQmpare his mind with those of the others who are called great in literature. But what I first es- teemed a misfortune I now regard as one of the hap- piest circumstances of my intellectual life : — my Fa- ther's bookshelves were guiltless of an annotated copy, and I read Shakespeare pure and simple, — that is, in a state as nearly approaching purity as the mere text of Mr. Singer's edition gave it to me. A copy of the small Chiswick edition in one volume, bought with the savings of my own slender stock of pocket money, kept in my own room, carried with me to the country during my school vacations, read by surreptitious candlelight when I was supposed to be asleep, was, through boyhood to youth, through youth to manhood, my companion and my constant joy. You will pardon the egotism, for you will see, if you do not already, that it is necessary.
Thrown as I continually was among those who were men of scholarship, even if not professional or
X Pbefatobt LsTTxa.
literary men, you will wonder, perhaps, how I avoided reading or talking Shakesperian criticigm. It was thua I had heard mach said of fce wonder- ful learning and ability which had been brought to the illustration of Shakespeare ; and discovering that such eminent names as those of Pope and Johnson were enrolled in the list of his editors and commen- tators, I looked forward to the perusal of these writings with delightful anticipations. At last, in my Freshman year, T picked up a volume of an anno- tated edition in the room of a classmate : — ^the edi- tion, I think, was one called Reed and Johnson's by its American publishers. I opened it ei^erly and looked for the comments. The surprise and disap- pointment with which I read them, I will not under- take to tell you. I found them to consist, not of expansions or illustrations of Shakespeare's thought or analysis of his characters, but of attempts to iUu- minate passages which had always been to me as clear as noonday, or cold and pragmatic approval or censure of works which I thought should be spoken of only with enthusiastic admiration, tem- pered with reverence. Nearly all the comments, whether right or wrong, irritated me equally ; for nearly all of them seemed to me to be superfluous and therefore insulting. But I reflected that I was but a College boy, and that these were the great Dr. Johnson, the learned !Kshop Warburton, or the great poet Pope, or the " very ingenious " contem- poraries and friends of those eminent men ; and feel- ing that respectful consideration for their eminence
PaXTATOBY LSTTKR. Xi
became me» I read oa for half an hour in various parts of the Yolume, until I came to Johnson's closing renuu^ upon Gymbeline^ in which he speaks of ^' the fdly of the fiction^ the absurdity of the conduct," &a, and finishes by pointing out the ^^ unresisting imbecilily " of the work. This was too much for me: shocked, wounded, repelled, with a sense of personal wrong I flung the book aside, and men* tally registered a solemn vow never to read again a criticism or comment of any kind upon Shake- speare's works. My thoughts were akin to those of the author of the Pwrauits of Literature^ whose remarkable satire I met with, years afterward.
"Most I for Shakespkare no compassion feel, Almost eat up by commentating zeal? On Avon's banks I heard Action mourn, By fell Blxrk iltttei JBogS in pieces torn ; Dogs that from Gothic kennels eager start All well broke-in by Coiiey-catching Art^ • «**««*
Hot was the chace ; I left it out of breath ; I wish'd not to he in at Shakespeare's death."
I reasoned thus ; — If this be what such men as Pope, and Warburton, and Johnson say about Shake- speare, and with not only the assent but the appro- bation of the world, their Shakespeare and the world's Shakespeare is not mine ; and mine is too dear to me to be given up at the bidding of any poet, or bishop, or lexicographer of them all. Ex- cept the examination of some MS. notes, original and selected, kindly lent to me by Mr. Hackett, I kept my vow until about five years ago. Then I bought a
xii Pbefatory Letter.
copy of Mr. Knight's Pictorial Edition, and having studied Shakespeare himself alone for so many years, I thought that I might with indiflference read a com- mentator again. From Mr. Knight's labors I derived great satisfaction : his were altogether diflferent com- ments fi-om those which still fretted in my memory. I found that his Shakespeare and mine were the same ; and I read with a new pleasure his remarks upon the diflferent Plays : — a pleasure which I need hardly say was repeated ariS heightened by subsequent ac- quaintance with the criticisms of Coleridge, Wilson, Schlegel, and Hazlitt. But I learned from him a fact of which my determination had kept me igno- rant, or rather, made me forgetful, — that the text of Shakespeare before the date of his edition was filled with the alterations and interpolations of those very editors whose labors had impressed me so un- pleasantly ; and finding that in some of the few pas- sages which had been obscure to me, the obscurity was of their creating, not of Shakespeare's or even his printers', I instantly began the critical study of the text. From that time to this, excepting my indispensable daily duties, I have done little else than labor in this field. Mr. Halliwell's ex- cellent catalogue of Shakesperian literature pointed out the work before me, and all the necessary books which I was not able to procure immediately were attainable to me in the yet unopened Astor Library, through the kindness of Dr. Cogswell, or in the noble dramatic collection of Mr. Burton. Both of these libraries contain fine copies of the original
Pbefatobt Lstteb. xiii
folio editioa of Shakespeare's plays ; and Mr. Burton's is not wanting in a copy of any edition of even the least critical valae, from the date of the original to the present day, while it abonnds in the rarest and most valuable editions of our earlier as well as later dramatists, poets, and prose writers whose works can in any way throw light upon the text of Shake- speare and the history of our drama or our language. With the early dramatists, and the poets from Rob- ert of Gloucester and Piers Ploughman, I had already a familiar acquaintance, and I was thus enabled to give my attention to literature purely Shakesperian. What knowledge my five years of hard labor has triven me of the mass of mingled learning and igno- laiice, sense and folly, with which Shakespeare has as nearly as possible been overwhelmed, the follow- ing pages will partly show : — and but partly ; for the mere reference to it all would make a volume in itself; and a very unnecessary and wearisome vol- ume it would be. But it is not because I have gone through such preparation that I have written this book ; but because before I undertook the task I had studied Shakespeare himself with constant devotion during the whole of my thinking life, and had not discovered the need of any comments or explanations at all, except in a few passages, nearly every one of which my more recent studies have shown me were obscured by the labors of those editors who lived before the expiration of the first quarter of this cen- tury, or by the carelessness of the printers of the first edition, or their inability to decipher the manu-
xiv Prefatory Letter.
script which was furnished to them. During my study of the text in the original folio and in Stee- vens' reprint of the quartos, it was my habit, in all passages in which they differed from the editions in common use, to enter their readings upon the margins of my copy of Shakespeare ; and aa I read the commentators and editors I did the same with their noteworthy conjectural emendations, adding my own solution of the difficulty in many cases in which it seemed to me that there was either no difficulty at all, or that the simplest means of solving it had been neglected. It was impossible that such a course of study should be pursued by one who was in the almost daily habit of committing his thoughts upon other subjects to paper, without the accompaniment of written notes. These gradu- ally accumulated upon me, sometimes in the shape of mere memorandums, sometimes extending them- selves almost into short essays ; and they, with the exception of the pages devoted to the consideration of Mr. Collier's folio, form the bulk of the ensuing volume. They were written with no intent that they should see the light in this form, if at all ; for the most devoted student of Shakespeare will shrink from adding the weight of his thoughts to the bur- den under which the text of the great dramatist has so long groaned. But as, after the appearance of the two papers in Putnartis Magazine upon Mr. Col- lier's folio, it was suggested to me by some whose judgments I respected, that a book written in the same spirit upon the text of Shakespeare, would be
PbSFATOBT LbTTBB. X7
welcomed by all those who were giving attention to a subject which had derived renewed interest from recent events, and wonld help to beget an univer- se habit of more direct communion with him, to a disregard of the notes of editors and commentators ; and as the effect of what I had written, if it were to have effect at all, would be to lead to the reception of the simple and obvious meaning of his lines, I determined to prepare for publication selections from and expansions of the notes of my studies. This I have done ; and in this volume you see the result The book was not deliberately made ; but, like Top^y^ it "growed." Unlike that young lady, however, it was not " raised on a spec ; " for you need not be told that, were five editions to be sold, it would not pay me day laborer's wages for the mere time I have devoted to the preparation of it.
But though the result of accumulation rather than of projection, the book is not without unity of purpose ; that purpose being to show that the obvi- ous signification of Shakespeare's poetry is not only the true sense but the best, and that therefore no thinking man, of ordinary information and intelli- gence, needs the aid of editors and commentators to help him to the full understanding and enjoyment of nearly every passage which came from Shake- speare's pen. People are apt to forget that Shake- speare wrote his plays to please the promiscuous public of London, at a time when the general diffu- sion of knowledge was infinitely less than it is now.
xvi Pbefatobt Lbttbb.
He wrote to make money by interesting such a public, and of course to be understood by it ; and he was un- derstood. The general public of his day, those who, in the words of his fellow actors, judged their " six- pen'orth " and their " shilling's worth " as well as those who judged their "five shillings' worth at a time, or higher," crowded the theatre to hear his plays, while Jonson's more learned and labored, though not more finished, dramas were played to empty benches. Leonard Digges, a contempora- ry of both the poets, has left us some verses, which you have doubtless seen before, and which have value as a testimony to Shakespeare's power of pleasing the people of his time.
* So have I seen, when Cansar woald appear, And on the stage at half-flword parley were Bratos and Caaaios^ O how the audience Were rayishedl with what wonder they went thence I When, some new day, they would not brook a line Of tediooB, though well labor'd Catiline ; Sejanufl^ too, was irksome, they prized more ** Honest" lago^ or the Jealous Moor. And though the Fox and subtil Alchymist, Long intermitted could not quite be mist; Though these have sham*d all th' ancients^ and might raise Their author's merit with a crown of bays, Yet these sometimes, even at a friend's desire Acted, haye scarce defrayed the sea coal fire. And door-keepers : when, let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins; the rest,— you scarce shall haye a room, All is so pestered ; let but Beatrice And Benedick be seen, lo ! in a trice The cock-pit^ galleriea; bozes» all are full, To hear MalyoUo that cross gartered gulL Briet there is nothing in his wit-fraught book Whose sound we would not hear, on whose worth look:
Pkxfatobt Lsttia. xra
like old eom'd gold, whoce linei^ in evMy p«ge» Shall pass true ourrent to saceeeding age." *
It is follj to say that the writings of such a man Deed notes and comments to enable readers of ordi- nary intelligence to apprehend their full meaning. There is no pretence for the intrusion of such aids, except the fact that Shakespeare wrote two hundred and fifty years ago; and this seems to be but a pretence ; for who needs, for as much as a word in a play, even the glossary which is most superfluously appended to almost every edition of the Poet's works? I believe that for even the least learned of those who can appreciate Shakespeare at all, there is not necessity for more than a half a score of brief notes to each play ; and these, purely historical or antiquarian in their character.
I must not be understood as seeking to dero- gate from the value of critical writing upon the works of Shakespeare ; for in that department of literature there exist some of the most delightful essays in our language. My objections are to notes upon his pages, or elsewhere, the professed object of which is to enable the reader to understand the text and apprehend the poetical beauty of the thoughts. These are in almost every instance use- less and impertinent : the reader who cannot appre- ciate Shakespeare without them can do no better with them ; and to all others they are either a stumbling-block or foolishness.
* TlieM lines are prefixed to the sparlooa editl<m of Shakenpeire's Poems, published In IMOl As I kiKm of no copy of th«t rare yolame in this ooontry, I am obliged to quote at second hand from the Tarlorom Shakespeare, toL L p. 487.
sviii Pbefatobt Lsttsb.
Let me give two examples here. In quoting this passage from Antony and Cleopatra^ in which the Queen having fainted upon the body of Antony is aroused by the cries of her women,
** Iraa. Royal Egypt— empress 1
Cleo, No more ; but e*en a woman, and commanded. By snch poor passion as the maid that milks. And does the meanest chores."
Mrs. Jameson adds in a note — " Cleopatra replies " to the first word she hears on recovering her senses, " 'No more an empress^ but e'en a woman.'" Did Mrs. Jameson suppose that any one who could ap- preciate her charming book could fail to understand such a passage at the first glance ? In the same play Dr. Johnson has a note upon this speech of Cleopa- tra^ 8 :
"Tonr wife^ Octayia, with her modest eyes And still conclusion, shall acqnire no honour, Demuring upon me."
The lexicographer informs us that " still conclusion " is ' sedate determination.' What is this but to sub- stitute a water color sketch for an oil painting ?
There are certain passages in his plays, and to Shakespeare's glory and our delight they are many, to appreciate the foil force of which we must have gone sympathetically on with the poet, and have reached them in the same mood with him. Otherwise we breathe a diflFerent air, scan a narrow- er horizon. The man who stands upon the level of literal prose cannot see the vast, far-stretching, ten-
Pbbfatoby Lsttsr. xiz
der-hued beauties which his glance takes in who has been borne into mid air upon the wings of Poesy. Such passages as these, it has been, and even yet is, the fashion to pick ont and condemn as obscure, lion- sensicaL, contradictory. The critics would do well to remember what Shakespeare's contemporary, good Dean Donne, quaintly says in his Newts from the very Counbrey^ " That Sentences in Authors, like haires " in horse-tailes, concurre in one root of beauty and " strength ; but being pluckt out one by one, serve " only for sprindges and snares. " In these snares which the commentators make, they themselves are caught. 8hak€fSpeare's plays were written only to be acted, not to be read ; and one reason why his audiences found no obscurity in them was that they came to the understanding of a passage after hearing all that had preceded it. The poet had communicated to their minds a glow kindred to that which fired his imagination ; and thus, as he wrote, so were they able to " apprehend, more than cool reason ever comprehends." Those who cannot read his plays in the same spirit should never undertake to criti- cise them. As to the most eminent of his editors in the last century, the baleful influence of whose labors has not yet passed away, they themselves have left ua.the best reasons for concluding that often, and in the homelier and simpler as well as in the grander and more highly wrought manifestations of his genius, he appealed to sympathies which they did not possess and uttered thoughts which they could not apprehend, in a language which they did not understand
xt Pbkfatobt Lxttbb.
It is not improbable that the confession of Byron to Moore, when the latter applied to him to explain an incomprehensible passage, — ^that he knew what he meant when he wrote it, but could not tell then, gives us an insight into the origin of some of the very- few obscure passages in Shakespeare's plays, and that if asked to be his own commentator, he, like the poet nearest akin to him of all his countrymen, in the vigor, grandeur, and picturesqueness of his style, might not himself be able to recollect exactly the idea which in the heat of composition had flashed across his mind There is a pertinent meaning, too, in the story of the old Scotchwoman, who, when her pastor remarked that she had been very attentive to his morning sermon, and asked if she understood it all, dropped a courtesy and replied, " Wad I hae the presoomption, Sir?" There was not more dif- ference between her mind and that of the clergy- man, than between ours and Shakespeare's ; and is it not better when the obscurity of a passage is not obviously due to typograhical errors, to allow it to stand unchanged, and to admit that it is possible that he might have written that which we will not " hae the presoomption " to suppose that we can un- derstand?
And there is yet another reason, why these pas- sages should be allowed to remain undisturbed, which will commend itself to every man who has written for the press. It is not uncommon for a sen- tence to come to us in the first proof so utterly con- fused, that we ourselves, without the assistance of
Pbefatoby LsrrxB. xzi
our manTiscript, cannot correct what we wrote per- Haps a day, perhaps a few hours before. It would be strange, indeed, if this had not occurred more than once in the setting up of the first folio, — a volume of nearly one thousand pages, the proofs of very few of which were read at all. In such cases conjectural emendation is equally presumptuous and hopeless.
But in those passages, the clear, calm, well con- nected flow of which is obstructed only by a single obstinate word or phrase, and the confasion of which is therefore obviously due to accident, we must seek the integrity of the text by conjectural emendation. The proper manner of performing this task will be ackowledged by you, or any other who has filled an editor's chair, to be simply the seeking of the word which best fulfils the conditions of consonance with the context, conformity with the character of Shake- speare's style and the phraseology of his day, and similarity to the trace of the letters in the corrupt- ed passage. Theobald said well, that "in conjectu- ''ral criticism, as in mechanics, the perfection of the "art consists in producing a given effect with the " least possible force ; " and it is to his practice upon this sensible theory, that we owe his many happy restorations of the text of Shakespeare. From a con- trary course, resulted the travesties of Shakespeare's works which have been published under the sanc- tion of great names. It has been the practice of editors to give the reading which ihej preferred ; and that this disposition has not died out, is shown by a passage in the North British Review for February,
zzii Pbsfatoby Letter.
1854, in a paper upon Mr. Collier's recent edition of Shakespeare, — ^a passage which is but a fair speci- men of the critical school to which it belongs. The Reviewer is speaking of those lines in Macbeth^ Act I. Sc. 6, in which Banquo says of the martlet,
" Where they most breed and haunts I have observed The air is delicate/'
In the folio, for ' most ' we have mvst^ — a mere ty- pographical error, which any proof reader would correct and ask no questions. But, says the Re- viewer, " Mr. Collier in his new edition has ' Where " they rrmch breed,' whether upon the authority of ^^ his manuscript annotator does not appear. Much " we should think very likely to be the true word. ^^ Most was Rowe's conjectural emendation." It does not seem to have occurred to the writer that there was no question of whether he thought this or that " very likely to be the true word." If we even go so far as to suppose that much and moat are equally adapted to the context, the former requires the change of two letters in the original text, while the latter changes but one, and must therefore, as it gives an appropriate sense, be received without question.
Of a similar kind is the error into which the author of a skilfully prepared paper, in the Niyrth American Review for April, 1854, falls, — an error in which he but goes astray with some of those who have judged themselves not unfit to become Shake- speare's editors. He admits that it is better not to disturb certain passages, such as,
Pbxfatobt Lstteb. zxiii
"Pot out the lights and then—pot out the light I "
"If 'twere done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well, It were done qniekly,*
Gadahiirs ^^huTgomBsters and great oney era," and Dogberry^ 8 description of himself as "a rich fellow and one that hath had losses," on the ground that, " the expressions have become consecrated, as it " were, in the mind of every loving admirer of Shake- "speare, and he will resist to the death any change " in them." He goes on to say — " A similar feeling "(it wonld be too harah to call it prejudice) exists "with regard to many expressions in the common "English version of the Scriptures which might be "profitably amended, as they are either ungramraa- "tical, incorrect or obsolete." Is it not deplorable that intelligent men should advocate the retention of a phrase in Shakespeare's works, not on the grounds that we have the best authority to believe it his and that it conveys a sense consistent with the context, but because people have become used to it ! Our Bible is a translation ; and if any man be displeas- ed with the " ungrammatical, incorrect and obso- lete " expressions in it, and think that he can make a better, he may do it, and welcome : nay there is no canon, literary or ecclesiastical, to prevent the North American Reviewer himself from undertak- ing the task, which he would doubtless perform with ability and taste. But what has this to do with the condition of the text of Shakespeare, — an original work ? If according to the best evidence
XXiv PUFATOBT LbTTKB.
we can obtain, he sometimes wrote in a manner which, judged by our standards of to-day, is un- ;rraiumatical, incorrect and obsolete, are we to be r\H>trHined from correcting his lapses, softening his as^H'rities, and modernizing his style only because his words " have become consecrated ? " It is well that there is even this restraint upon amending hands, although it is but secondary and inferior. The higher and paramount objection to such emendation is that, a^rrect or incorrect, Shakespeare has the right to utter his own thoughts in his own words, and that we who read him have a right to his words as exactly as they can be ascertained for us. Hamlet says,
" Unhand me^ gentlemen,— By heayen ! Til make a ghoet of him that lets me I
la it only because we are accustomed to the exclama- tion in this form, that we should refrain from mo- lU^rnisfiing one word in it, (now hardly used except iu a sense directly opposed to that in which Hamlet UHos it,) and reading,
** By heaven 1 Fll make a ghost of him that ttaiyi me I "
Tunh I WO want the text that Shakespeare wrote, with all its odor of antiquity — say rather, of peren- nial tVoshness, — about it. We seek Shakespeare's wonlH, not something better or more modem ; and not only ttiste but justice supports our claims. His mlitoni and verbal critics, now that he is dead, have no nu^re right to take away his words from him, be-
PkBVATOBY LeTTXS. 2X7
cause they are obsolete, than some dashing Paulas man of his day had the right to ^ convey ' his hand- kerchief because it was of the last year's fashion. Such changes are felonies in the commonwealth of letters; and to defend or palliate them is next in guilt to committing thenu
In addition to the bold corruptions of his text by editors of past days, and which were in a great measure, though not thoroughly, purged by the la- bors of Mr. Knight and Mr. Collier, the readers of Shakespeare have been, and even in the editions of these gentlemen, are yet obliged to endure the pre- sence of notes upon his pages, the object of which would seem beyond the reach of conjecture ; for they accomplish nothing but the iteration or dilu- tion of an idea, which the original expresses in terms too unequivocal to admit of a moment's doubt in any sane mind. In this style of annotation a passage in the Paradise Lost which describes Ra- phaeFs visit to Eden would be treated after this fashion. —
" A while disconrse they hold ; No feare lest diimer coole ; when thna began Our Authoor."
Book r. 896.
* It should be remarked that in the words, ' when
* thus began our author ^^ Milton does not refer to ' himself; for although his editors and biographers, 'in speaking of him,.call him ' our author,' he could ' hardly thus designate himself in his own verse. We ' boldly stake our critical reputation upon the asser-
xzvi Pbefatoby Letter.
' tion, that by ' our authour ' Milton means Adam^ ^ whom he thus calls the author of the human race ; ' and should any envious editor or critic object that ' this would ma^e Adam responsible for a more vo- ^ luminous and miscellaneous issue than was ever due ' to any other author, we pass by the narrow-minded 'suggestion in silent contempt We confess that ' we pride ourselves not a little, though modestly, 'upon this construction of the passage; which, ' strange to say, has been passed over without a ' note by Hume, Addison, Tickell, Newton, Richard- ' son, Todd, Brydges, and in fact all the editors and ' critics of the poet' You will not find this note in any edition of Milton with which I am ^quaint- ed ; but in the Variorum Shakespeare you will meet with innumerable comments like it; and even in more recent editions there are too many which are near akin to it
But although I would defend the text of Shake- speare from mutilation, and although the words of the original folio seem to me to have been need- lessly and therefore insuflferably changed in many instances, I would not slight the labors of those who have heretofore endeavored to bring order out of the confusion which the printers of his plays so frequently made in them. On the contrary, I believe it to be true that we owe at least one happy and ne- cessary conjectural emendation of the text to every one of his verbal critics, except, perhaps, Becket and Seymour ; and I have not only endeavored to show that the text of the first folio is clear in many
Pbbfatoby Lbtteb. zxm
passages which have been thought obscure and which are therefore changed in the ordinary editions, but in many others (actually many, but comparatively few) the typographical corruption of which is un- deniable, I have myself proposed conjectural emen- dations of the text If I have been successful where others have failed, or have detected errors of the press which have escaped the eyes of my predecessors in this field of labor, it will be only a reasonable consequence of the experience of some years in the editorial room of a leading journal, where, of course, the examination and preparation of manuscript and the conjectural correction of ty- pographical errors is a matter of daily occurrence : — an advantage possessed, I believe, by no one of Shakespeare's editors or commentators, except in a measure by Zachary Jackson and Mr. Charles Knight ; the former of whom, a printer, seems to have had no qualification for his task, except the knowledge of his craft ; while the latter, a publisher, was so misled by his blind reverence for the first folio, as to devote his exertions chiefly to the defence of its manifest corruptions ; which is the more to be regret- ted because in the few cases in which he ventured on conjectural emendation he was eminently successful. I^ on the contrary, it should prove that the pas- sages in which I have proposed emendations need no change, or that the suggestions of others are more acceptable than mine, I should be the first to rejoice ; for my sole desire in this matter is the integrity of Shakespeare's text.
zxviii Pbefatoby Letteb.
In the course of the volume there are many cor- rections brought forward from the labors of aQ the commentators, from Rowe to the Poet's last learned and discriminating verbal critic, the Rev. Alexander Dyce. All these, except when I have expressly op- posed them, or characterized them as only plausible, have, in my opinion, an undeniable claim to a place in the text, as acceptable corrections of palpable ty- pographical errors ; and obviously needed as they, or at least the majority of them, are, they as well as the readings of the first folio which are shown to be clearly eomprehensible, are not to be found in any of the current editions of Shakespeare's worka Some of these will doubtless be opposed upon the plea of conservatism. Many will exclaim, ' Do not dis- turb the old readings : the old text is consecrated ! ' This feeling must win our respect in all cases, and command our sympathy and co-operation in those in which it really applies to Shakespeare's words, as they are given to us in the authentic edition. But such cases as the last are of extremely rare occur- rence ; and the veneration which Shakespeare's read- ers think is awakened in their miuds by his words, is, in these cases, as in many others, excited by neeflless or indefensible changes^ introduced into his text by Pope, or Warburton, or Johnson, or Capell, or Malone, or other less distinguished editors, or even by accident, and the venerability of which is perhaps a hundred, perhaps fifty years of age.
An example will make this clear. In Antony
Pbefatoby Lsitsb. sdx
and CUopatra^ Act 11. Sa 2, Antony^ speaking of his frampold wife, says :
''So mneh nnenrbable her garbofli^ CSmtTy Made out of her impataenee^" Ae.
Bat in all the editions in ordinary use by the pre- sent and last generations, the first line is printed,
"So mneh ^aawwahU her gwbofl^ Aa
It so appears in Chalmers' Edition, in Singer's, in Moxon's, &C., &a, &a Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight have restored the reading of the original, which in- deed was not disturbed until the present century. Why it was disturbed is a mystery. " Garboils " means ^brawlings,' ^uproars,' tantrums,' and is translated, ^barbicglio^^ 'rzjpe<fo,'intheItalianDiction- ary of Shakespeare's contemporary, Florio. What most people would call the old text probably came into being through the agency of some over wise compositor, who, able to understand only the last syllable of this word, supposed Fulvia to need a plaster upon her person rather than a restraint upon her passions ; and so changed " uncurbable " into uncurable in some prominent edition, which was followed blindly for a quarter of a century.
Our conservatism too often consists in mere te- nacity of that to which we have been accustomed. It is one thing to shrink from touching Shakespeare's text, but quite another to hesitate to remove the
Pbefatobt Lstteb.
words of Pope or Warburton, or others of inferior name, in order to restore those which appear in the authentic copy, or to substitute others more in accordance with the tone of Shakespeare's thought, the phraseology of his time, and the trace of the letters in the corrupted text The conservatism which loves and venerates that which is right the more because it is old, appeals to the strongest and purest feelings of the human heart ; it is not only virtue in the good, but wisdom in the wise. But that sort of conservatism which clings to a hoary evil merely because it has grown old in wrong, is equally vicious and foolish ; for it not only perpetuates wrong, but provokes and almost justifies that innovation, which will root out all that is old, — ^the good with the eviL Let us shun such conservatism in editing the works of Shakespeare, if we would not see his thoughts diluted to the taste of the feeblest palates, and his phraseology tortured out of its antique, but never antiquated, grace and grandeur by the re- forming hands whose ruthless strength such a course would provoke to action. Such are the feelings with which I have come to the critical study of Shakespeare's text, and which have influenced the character of the succeeding pages ; and hence it is that in many passages, which seem to me beyond all question corrupt, although they have been print- ed and read without a question for generations, I have not hesitated to point out the error and the remedy which occurred to me, while at the same
Pbbfatoby Lsttxr. zzzi
time I merely eoggest my corFections for the con- sideration of my fellow-students.
The quotations are given at greater length than is usual in works of verbal criticism, because this volume is not eapecially addressed to critics, who are supposed to know the context of all passages the reading of which i» in dispute ; and as to others, in the words of Mrs. Jameson — ^in the Preface to her delightful Gharaeterigitcs of WomeUy which I read for the first time just before writing this letter — " it ^^ the memory fail at the moment to recall the lines ^^ OF the sentiment to which the attention is direct- " ly required, few like to interrupt the course of " tiiought, or undertake a journey from the sofa or " the garden seat to the library, to hunt out the vo- " lume, the play, the passage for themselves."
The antiquarian style of editing has been op- posed and ridiculed by many. I cannot give it my highest respect, especially when it tempts a man of Mr. Dyce's taste into such needlAs displays of read- ing of worthless books as abound in his otherwise admirable recent publication, in which instance upon instance from old volumes in all modern lan- guages is heaped upon Shakespeare^s text without illustrating it But this is only the abuse of that which has its use. Mr. Dyce's own readings as well as that of his predecessors, has thrown light on many passages in the works of Shakespeare and our elder dramatists ; and in the recent discussions upon the authority of the emendations in Mr. Collier's folio, a
ZXZii PfiEFATOBT LeTTEB.
knowledge of the inferior literature of Shakespeare's day can be, and has been, used with great effect upon the pretensions of that volume. I will here, by way of illustration, and because, having mislaid my memorandum, it escaped me in the preparation of my own argument against Mr. Collier's folio and of this volume, mention a forgotten passage which is of much value in Shakesperian literature. You will remember that in the Merry Wives of Windsor^ Act I. Sc. 3, FaUtaff says of Mrs. Ford^ " I spy en- " tertainment in her : she discourses, she carves, " she gives the leer of invitation." The corrector of Mr. Collier's folio, being unable, like most people nowadays, to apprehend the force of the phrase "she carves," changed it to "she craves ^^^ and so did Zachary Jackson thirty-five years ago. But Mr. Hunter and Mr. Dyce have quoted from authors of Shakespeare's day, several instances of the use of the word, in the sense of ' propitiating/ They do not, however, arrive at the exact meaning ; and Mr. Dyce remarks : " whatever was its exact nature it would " appear * * * to have been a sort of salutation which "was practised more especially at table." But the re- appearance of my forgotten memorandum enables me to show exactly what this sort of carving was, and how it was performed. In the satirical description of A very Woman, which occurs among the Characbers appended to Sir Thomas Overbury's Wife — ^and it is one of the most graphic, quaint and pungent among them — ^the description of the married part of her life begins thus : " Her lightnesse gets her to swim at
Pbefatobt Letter. zzxiii
"top of the' table, where her wrie little finger be- "wndes carving^ her neighbors at the latter end "know they are welcome, and for that purpose she "qnencheth her thirst'' Sig. E. 3, Ed. 1632. Carv- ing, then, was a sign of intelligence, made with the little finger as the glass was raised to the mouth. It is remarkable, by the way, that ladies do this now-a-days infinitely more than gentlemen. Is it possible that the trick has survived, while its mean- ing is lost? But the value of this passage to the Shakesperian scholar is, that it shows the ignorance of the corrector of Mr. Collier's folio with regard to a word and a custom in vogue at the date of the edition on which he made his changes ; and therefore furnishes another incontestable proof of the much later date of his labors, and of his unfitness for them. A few of the following pages are devoted to an examination of the grounds upon which authority can be claimed for Mr. Collier's notorious and curious volume. I need not point out to you that this is not, and does not attempt to be, a detailed approval or disapproval of such of the changes in the text of that volume as have been made public by Mr. Collier, but is purely an argument which aims to show, that those emendations were made in such a way and at such a time that, as to their authority, they are utterly without any claim upon our defer- ence.' I have been both publicly and privately cen- sured by Shakesperian enthusiasts for too great con- sideration towards Mr. Collier, even when most severe upon the changes which he advocates. But
zxadT Pjietatoby Lettbb.
although I am willing to confess, that I have always supposed that gentleman's qualifications as an editor of Shakespeare to consist rather in great learning in the antiquities of English Poetry and the Drama than in sympathetic appreciation of his author, and that his Notes and Emendations confirmed and deep- ened that opinion, I certainly need not excuse my- self for consideration or even deference (little enough through excess of zeal I fear), shown to one who had previously rendered such good service to Shake- speare and the Drama, and who had taken a respect- able position in critical literature before I was bom.*
Not only the text and the commentators, but some of the characters of Shakespeare are consider- ed in these pages. Acquit me however, in advance, of a presumptuous desire to thrust myself between Shakespeare and the spontaneous admiration of such of his readers as happen to be mina It is only in the hope of correcting the false teachings of the stage and the commentators that I have ventured upon an analysis of Shakespeare's marvellous creations. The conventional personages of the former and the stereotyped traditions of the latter have almost ex- tinguished, for the mass of the public, many of Shakespeare's most truthful and finished characters Jacques^ Isabella^ and Richard III. are prominent ex- amples ; but there are others almost equally striking. I have merely endeavored to show these characters
* The Poetical Deoameron. By J. P. Collier. 2 vols. Syo. London, 1820
PBVATpBT . I4XTTSB. jxrr
«a Shakespeare drQW them, in opposition to the dis- torted images of .them which hol^ possession of the public ejOy seen through the perverting medium of the playwrights aad the commentatprs. And here justice ri^uires that the Shakesperiaa representations which Mr, Bu^tpu has given at his, theatre during thei last two j^tars should not only be e;xempted from suoh censure, but rpceive, — -if my popi^pen may be deemed worthy tp bestow it, — th? Wfum approba- tion of all lovers of Shakespeare for their une2uunpled faithfulness to the letter aiid the spirit of the great dramatist
But enough of this, and too much ; and yet I have said nothing which it did not seem as if I must say, if I broke silence at all. That that which I have just written and that which lies beyond this thresh- old is not needless, let this dictum of Hallam's, written only fifteen years ago, bear witness: " We " learn Shakespeare, in fact, as we learn a language, " or as we read a difficult passage in Greek, with "the eye glancing on the commentary; and it is "only after much study, that we come to forget a " part, it can be but a part, of the perplexities he " has caused us." Introd. to the Lit. of Europe. Part III. Chap. vL 52. Now, with all due deference to such eminent opinion, I never had need to go to that school ; and when I did go, it was in the teaching of the expounders, and not in the words of the great master that I found the perplexities. Do you ask, — ^have I the conceit to suppose that I am alone in this? Far from it. You are with me; and it is
xxxvi Pbefatoby Letteb,
because I feel, because I know, that there are thou- sands and hundreds of thousands like us, and be- cause we have yet had no representative voice in the critical Senate, that I, failing abler hands, have written this book. And the fact that you thus un- derstand and thus feel Shakespeare, while you have not to your many accomplishments added the spe- ciality of Shakesperian scholarship, is an additional reason why I should take such an occasion as this to assure you that,
I am, my dear Howadji,
Ever faithfhlly.
Your Friend and Servant,
RICHARD GRANT WHITE.
m East 18th itre^t^ Nxw-Tqik, April as, 1864
NOTE.
Many of the notes and comments in this volome were written three years ago, during the study of the commen- tatore, but before I possessed a copy of the Variorum Shake- speare, and also, of course, before the present revival of at- tention to Shakesperian literature. During my subsequent progress through the Variorum, and the works of the com- nientators of the present day, I found, as it was inevitable that I should, that my conjectures and conclusions had sometimes been anticipated, though not as often as I ex- pected. In some of these cases I cancelled the record of my own labors ; but in others, in which there was difference as ^11 as coincidence, or in which I had given reasons for my opinion which had not occurred to others, I allowed such notes to stand, giving due credit to my predecessor. The Notes and Conunents are strictly, though in part only, a record of JDy Shakesperian studies ; and I determined not to change their form. In all cases in which I have not stated at first that an opinion or a conjectural emendation is the sugges- tion of another, it is original with myself I care very little about this sort of credit, being quite content if Shake-
xxxviii Note.
speaie's text be protected and restored by any hands ; bat I have scmpuloosly respected the rights of others ; and^ in the recent words of a &r more learned Shakesperian scholar than I shall ever be, — ^Mr. Collier, ^^ if, in any instance, I have not stated that a proposed emendation has been pre- viously suggested, it has arisen from my ignorance of the fiM5t or from pure inadvertence."
And I should here say, that in reading Mrs. Jameson's Characteristics of Women I at last foimd one who at least suspects — what it seemed to me no one could be blind to, — ^that Beatrice loves Benedick when Much Ado abatU Nothing opens. This reminded me that somewhere in the following volume there is an expression of my surprise that this keystone and clue of the comedy had not been discov- ered by any of those who had made it. the subject of ana- lytical comment.
Not a little of the more recent desultory and occasional Shakesperian discussion appears to have been carried. on in the London serial publication called Notes and QuerieSj which, judging by the few numbers I have seen, seems to be well described in the North British Review for February, 1854, as " a mdange of the public knowledge and ignorance, sense and folly, on all sides of all questions.'" I have in vain tried to procure this : half a dozen old odd numbers, picked up here and there/ and a set for 1853, lacking No- vember and December, received while this volume was pass- ing through the press, are all that I have been able to ob- tain. This statement may possibly be necessary to excuse my neglect to give due credit to some contributor to that literary alms-basket.
I cannot allow this sheet to go to press without a record of my acknowledgments to two gentlemen who have mate- rially aided me in the studies of which this volume is the result. First, to William E. Burton, Esq., known to the
Note. tttit
public as a man of letters, an actor of genius, a successM and liberal manager, and a devoted Shakesperian student, I am indebted for his kindness in opening to me without reserve the rich treasures of his Shakesperian and Dramatic library, and, indeed, for the transfer to my own shelves, in a spirit that ^^ made the things more rich,'' of needful vol- umes which I might have sought for long in vain. To his knowledge and experience I also owe some valuable sug- gestions. From Joseph Cogswell, LL. D. Superintendent of the Astor Library, I have continuaUy received all the assistance which it was in his power to give, and &r more than I had any right or reason to expect. Even whUe the noble collection of books which he had projected, and to the gathering together of which he has devoted himself with such singleness of purpose, directed by various learning, was inchoate, almost chaotic, I found him ever ready, at no little sacrifice of personal convenience, to place whatever was within his reach also within mine, whether it was a book or the fruits of his own extended study.
To the Hon. George Lunt, of Boston, I am indebted for several favors and kind suggestions, and to President Anderson, D. D., LL. D., of Geneva College, for a useful hint. I have to thank William C. Conant, Esq., of this city, for the benefit of his assistance on more than one occa- sion ; and when I add that the name of my correspondent in Portland, Me., is Q-eoige W. Eveleth, I believe that I have absolved myself of all the pleasant duties of this kind which friendship and courtesy have imposed upon me.
I
CONTENTS.
TAttM.
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE; . 8
QDABToe— First Folio— Second, Third, and Fourth Folios, . 4 Edhoeb — Rowe — ^Pope — ^Theobald— Hanmer—Warburton— John- son— Capell, 8
Earlt CwnciSM— Mutilation of the Text> .... 16
Editobs — Steeyens — ^Malone — Chalmers — ^Harness — Singer, . 18 CoKMEfTATOBS — Heath — Tyrwhitt — ^Ritson — Mason — ^Douce —
Seymour — ^Becket— Jackson, 20
MoDXRN Editobs — ^Mr. Knight — ^Mr. Collier— Mr. Yerplanok, 29
HR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1682, 88
Itb Claims to Defebxnce, 85
Character of rre Changes — Turns Poetry to Prose^" Whose Mother was her Painting" — ^Dramatic Inconsistency — ^Dis- regard of the Context — ^Date of its Emendations — Its Evi- dent Doubts and Conjectures — ^Its Important Changes not Kew — ^Number and Character of its Changes — ^The Work of Various Hands — Similar Folios existing: This not Fabri- cated, 89
RiCAPrruLATioN, '72
CONDEICNED BT ShaKEBPEBIAN SoHOLABS 75
SuBBTrruTED Rhymes and Added Lines, '76
AuTHOBiTT and Conjectube, 80
K0TE8 AND COMMENTS, 85
Tempew, 90
zlii Contents.
PA
Two GniTLKmN or Ykbona, 98
MXSBT WlYXB OF WlMMOB, lOS
MsASUBx FOB MxAsuBB— Nature of its Plot — ^Its Clutimoten— An-
gelo— Its Poetry, Ill
Period of the Action, between 1476 and UIK)^ • . .126
Shake6peare*8 Women — Gharaeter of Isabella, . 188
** Take^ oh take those Lips away " — Its authorship, . 160
MUGB Ado ABOUT NOTHDVO, 178
Lotb'b Labobs Lost, . 186
A MiDSUMiiEB-iaoBi's Dbxam, 196
Character of Bottom, 210
Mbbobamt or Ybnioi^ 222
As Too Lm It, 288
"My ChUd*s Father,** 286
Character of Jaqnes^ • • • • • . . 242
" Rosalind, 249
Taming OF iflx Shbxw, 268
All's Wbll THAT EvDB Wbli^ ..•*••• 267
Twelfth NiQBT, 876
Character of yiola» 878
Thb Wnma's Tal^ 289
SjNoJoBir, 298
Knrd Rkjhabd II., 80T
Kino Hbnbt rV. Part L 811
Partn. 818
Eoro Hbnbt Y. 826
Emo HsNBr YI Part I. 88S
Partn. 884
Partm. 887
Ema RtOBABD HL 889
EiNQ Hbnbt YIIL 846
Tboilus and Cbbbsida, 849
CoBiOLANin, 858
Trrus Andboniodb, .868
ROMBO AND JUUKT, 870
TncoN OF Athbnb, 889
Julius CiiBAB, 886
Maobbtb, 899
CoNTXirTS. xliii
Hamlw, 407
EdtgIbai^ 428
OmiLLO^ 428
Othellonot aNe8:ro---Character ofI>«idemona, 481
Anomr akd CunPAnLA, 448
GmMLDn^ 452
Chftraeier of ImogeD, 468
fmcLO, 471
8oinnn» 478
SHAmpsABi^ft Nam^ 478
SUPFLEaCENTABY NOTICB OF MR CX)LLIER'S FOLIO OF
1682, . . 488
HISTORICAL SKETCH OP THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE.
*0* This sign, [, occurring at the commencement of a sentence, indicates that a considerable time had elapsed between the writing of that which follows it and that which goes before. In discussing conjectural emendations the word of the original is placed in '' double quotation marks/' a proposed emendation, in italic letters. Definitions, proverbs, and cant phrases, as well as quotations within quotations, appear in ' single quotation marks/
HISTORICAL SKETCH
OF THB
TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE
ervrytoach thtt woo*d Iti stay
HaUi broBb'd Its brightest baes tmttj,
BTioir. Tk« Otaour,
4 COMPREHENSIVE glance at the history of the -^ text of Shakespeare will be a fitting introduction to ^W following pages ; especially for those who are not ^miliar with that history or with Shakesperian literature, ^tl who doubtless forni the greater number of those ^hom I salute as ' gentle readers/ The few whose enthu- siasm or steady devotion has enabled them to wade thrtmgh the heaps of rubbish which have accumulated '^und the works of Shakespeare, during the last century ^ a half, will excuse a concession to the happy ignorance "^ their less learned, but perhaps not less devoted and ap- preciative fellow admirers.
The Plays of Shakespeare, unlike his Poems, were, with a few exceptions, given to the world without his concurrence Of even his consent. Eighteen of them, to wit : — Merry ^ic€8 of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, Midsummer Wight's Dreamy Love's Labours Lost, Merchant of Venice ,
4 Historical Sketch.
Richard TL, Henry IV. Part I. and Part II., Henry F., Henry VI, Part II. and Part III., Richard III, TroUus and CressidGy Tittis Andronicus, Pericles, King Lear, Romeo and Jviiet, and Hamlet, were printed in quarto form during his lifetime. The copies of most of these plays used by the printer were, almost without doubt, sur- reptitiously obtained, and they are of comparatively little authority in determining the text ; their office being merely auxiliary. It is worthy of notice here, that such was the value of Shakespeare's name, such his indiflference to his dramatic reputation outside the theatre, and such the impunity of the press in his time, that during his life six other plays were also published under his name, which there are no grounds for receiving as his, which were repu- diated by his first editors, — his fellow players and business partners in the theatre, — and which have been rejected by all his subsequent editors, except Nicholas Rowe.
In 1623, seven years after his death, the first collected edition of Shakespeare's Plays was published in folio, under the title, " Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. Published according to the True Originall Copies." This is known in Shakcsperian literature as the first folio ; and it is the only admitted authority for the text of his Dramatic Works. It contains all his plays except one : nineteen which had been surreptitiously or carelessly printed before its publication (one, — Othello, — having been published in quarto after his death), and seventeen which appeared in it for the first time. The play not included, is Pericles, Prince of Tyre ; and it is conjectured that the refusal of the holder of the copyright of that play to part with it, or to come into the enterprise of publishing the first folio, caused its omission. The Pre- fisice of the editors of this first folio, — ^who, it should be constantly remembered, were Shakespeare's friends, fellow-
First Folio. 5
actors, and joint theatrical proprietors, — ^shows beyond all cavil, it would seem, that the publication was made, as its title professes that it was, " according to the true original copies/' and that it has an unquestionable claim to implicit deference from the editors of subsequent editions, except in those instances in which illegible manuscript or careless proof-reading has palpably obscured or perverted the au- thor's meaning. John Heminge and Henry Condell say with regard to their labor of love : —
"It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthy to have bene wished, that the Anthor himselfe had liv'd to haue set forth, and onerseen his owne writings: But since it hath bin ordainM otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his friends the office of their care and paine, to have collected and publish'd them : and so to haue published them, as where (before) 7jou were abused with dui^se stolne and surreptitiaus copies j maimed and deformed by the fraudes and $teakhes of injuriovs impostors^ that expos'd them : even those are now offer'd to your view cur'd and perfect of their limbes ; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them. Who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together ; and what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his paper s.'^'^
Few readers of Shakespeare can have failed to peruse this Preface, which appears in nearly every edition of his works ; but the above extract 'from it deserves to be ever present in the minds of all who come to the critical consi- deration of his text. Indeed, such is the authority of this first folio, that had it been printed with ordinary care, there would have been no appeal from its text ; and edito- rial labors in the publication of Shakespeare's works, except from such as might think it necessary and proper to ob- trude explanatory notes and critical comments upon his
6 Historical Sketch.
readers, would have been not only without justification but without opportunity. But, unfortunately, this precious folio is one of the worst printed books that ever issued from the press. It is filled with the grossest possible errors in orthography, punctuation, and arrangement. It is not surprising that Mr. Collier estimates the corrections of " minor errors," — that is, of mere palpable misspelling and mispunctuation, in his amended folio, at ttoerUy thou- sand. The first folio must contain quite as many such blunders ; and the second is worse in this respect than the first. But beside minor errors, the correction of which is obvious, words are so transformed as to be past recognition, even with the aid of the context ; lines are transposed ; sentences are sometimes broken by a full point followed by a capital letter, and at other times have their members displaced and mingled in incomprehensible confusion ; verse is printed as prose, and prose as verse ; speeches beloDging to one character are given to another ; and, in brief, all the possible varieties of typographical derange- ment abound in that volume, in the careful printing of which of all others, save one, the world was most inte- rested. This it is which has made the labors of careful and learned editors necessary for tlie text of Shakespeare ; and which has furnished the excuse for the exhibition of more pedantry, foolishness, conceit, and presumption than have been exhibited upon any other subject, — always ex- cepting that of Religion ; but with this advantage as to time on the side of the Shakesperian commentators, — that their follies have been perpetrated within one hundred and fifty years, while the labors of commentators upon the Bible have extended through more than fifteen hundred.
The cost of the first folio was £1, equal to about five at the present day, that is, about twenty-five dollars ; and it is a pleasing proof of the esteem in which the works of
Second, Thibd, and Fourth Folios. 7
8hake8|)eaTe were held at a period so nearly contemporane- . 0U8 with him, that in spite of the numerous quarto copies rf many plays, the comparatively small class which furnished purchasers, or even readers, and the rapid increase of the Puritanic school, which taught abhorrence of all stage- plays as an essential of its practice, a second folio was pub- lished nine years afterwards, in 1632. It is upon a copy of this edition, known to Shakesperian students as the se- cond folio, that the manuscript emendations of the text which Mr. Collier advocates are made. This second folio is, in effect, but little more than a paginal reprint of the first. Comparatively few of the typographical enters of the first are corrected in the second, and not only are the remainder faithfully reproduced, but to them are added many others equally grave and confusing. In the very points, therefore, in which the text of the first folio is faulty, that of the second is much worse ; and it is important to remember this in the consideration of the subject before us.
It is not surprising, that during the Commonwealth Shakespeare's Plays were not reprinted ; but in 1664 a third folio was issued, containing, in addition to those which had appeared in the two previous folios, Pericles and the six spurious plays which had been published as Shake- speare's during his life. The fourth folio appeared in 1685. Its contents are the same as those of the third. Neither of the two later folios are of the slightest authority in de- termining the text of Shakespeare ; and the second is only of service in those instances in which it corrects typogra- phical errors in the first.
Up to this time Shakespeare had gained or suffered from no other editing but that of his brother players, which wems to have been limited to collecting his manuscripts, placing them in the printer's hands, and writing the Dedi- cation and Preface to the volume. In the seventeenth cen-
8 HiBTOBicAL Sketch.
tury there was no verbal criticiBm upon his text ; but his style and matter, and the construction of his plays, were made the subjects of incidental comment and discussion by Mr. Thomas Rymer, Mr. Jeremiah Collier,* Mr. John Dennis, and an anonymous opponent of the second-named gentleman.f
In the year 1709, Shakespeare's Plays, " Bevised and Corrected, with an account of his Life and Writings, by N. [icholas] Rowc," were published, in seven vols. 8vo. This edition contains all of the received plays, besides the six which are accounted apocryphal Shakespeare had now for the first time an editor, in the proper sense of the word. Rowe was a poet of merit, a man of excellent sense, a scholar, and, withal, a modest and somewhat painstaking editor ; and the fruit of his labors was a great improve- ment in the text of Shakespeare. A large number of the grosser blunders which deform the previous impressions disappeared under his pen ; and it is remarkable that some of the very emendations which appear upon the margin of Mr. Collier's copy of the folio of 1632, and the credit of which that gentleman claims for his manuscript corrector, are to be found in this, the first critically prepared edition of Shakespeare's works. The fact is significant, both as regards the manuscript corrector and his advocate ; for it shows that no " higher authority" than the conjectural abil-
* " A Short View of the Immorality & Profaneness of the EDgliah Stage : Together with the Sense of Antiquity upon this Subject By Jer- emy Collier, M, A. Svo. London, 1698."
f " The Anticnt <k Modem Stages surrey'd. Or, Mr. Collier*8 view of the Immorality & Profaneness of the English Stage set in a True Light» <fec. Svo. London, 1699."
Neither of these books is enumerated in Mr. Halliwell's very seryiceable Catalogue of Shakcsperiana ; though they certainly present claims to such notice equal, at least, to those of other Tolumes the titles of which Mr. HalliweU has recorded.
Editors : — Eowb, Pope, Theobald, Hakmer. 9
iij of a clever and well educated man was necessary to lieir production ; and it also shows that Mr. Collier has inned his book of Notes and Emendations without that carefiil investigation which .the subject demanded, and which the public had a right to expect at his hands.
Rowe was succeeded, as an editor of Shakespeare, by Pope, who published a superb edition, in six volumes, quarto, in 1*725. Pope, like most of those authors of emi- nence in other departments of literature, who have under- taken to regulate the text of Shakespeare, made a very poor editor. He used the quartos somewhat to the advantage, but more to the detriment of his author ; foisting into the text that which Shakespeare himself had rejected. He gave us a few good, and several very pretty and plausible conjectural emendations of typographical errors ; but he added to these so many which were only exponents of his own conceit and want of kindred appreciation of Shake- speare's genius, that his text, as a whole, is one of the poor- est which remain to us.
Theobald, "poor, piddling Tibbald,'' the first hero of his Dunciad, came after Pope, and is one of the very best editors who have fallen to the lot of Shakespeare. He was the first who did any great service by conjectural emenda- tion, and the judicious use of the quartos. He issued first, " Shakespeare Eestored ; or a Specimen of the Many Er- rors, as well committed as unamended, in Pope's edition of this Poet," quarto, 1726, — a publication which Pope never foi^ave, — and in 1733 his edition of Shakespeare was published, in seven volumes, 8vo. It was by far the best text of Shakespeare which had appeared, and a great num- ber of its conjectural emendations of typographical errors remain undisturbed to this day.
To Theobald, succeeded Sir Thomas Hanmer, Baronet (as Inspector Bucket would say), who published an edition,
10 HiSTOBiCAL Sketch.
splendid for the day, in six volumes, quarto, at Oxford, in 1744. Hanmer was an accomplished gentleman, and a man of taste. He did something to better, and somewhat more to injure the text as Theobald had left it. His labors were received with favor ; but he was indebted for his suc- cess rather to fashion than to any remarkable merit, and his edition is rarely consulted ; the few received, or favora- bly regarded emendations which he proposed being perpe- tuated in the text or in the notes of other editors. It should be noticed here, that many of Hanmer*s question- able readings, and some which are regarded as inadmissible, are found among those the credit of which Mr. Collier claims for his manuscript corrector.
Hanmer's edition was followed, in 1747, by Bishop War- burton's. This prelate, not then mitred, was undeniably learned and able ; but he was as undeniably assuming and arrogant in his personal demeanor, and he treated Shake- speare's works as he probably would have treated the player himself, had he been his contemporary. He set liimself not so much to correcting the text, as to amending the writings of Shakespeare. His tone is that of haughty flip- pancy. Does he find a passage in which the thought, or the expression of William Shakespeare is at variance >vith the judgment of William Warburton ? — ^he immediately alters it to suit the taste of that distinguished scholar and divine, saying : " Without a doubt, Shakespeare wrote, or meant, thus." For instance, of the fine line in Hamlet,
"Or to take arms against a uea of troublea^"
he says :
" Without question Shakspeare wrote,
— * against assail of troubles,' i. e. assault."
Again, in the following passage, from As You Like It,
Editors : — Warburton. 11
where, in the second Scene of the first Act, Cdia^ dissuading Orlando firom the encounter with the Duke's wrestler, says to him:
••If yon saw yourself with your eyes, and knew yourself with your judgment^ the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a more equal enterprise."
Warhurton says :
" * If you saw yourself with your eyes, and knew yourself with TOUR judgment.' Absurd! The sense requires that we should read our eyes, (hir judgment
It seems not to have oecurred to the editor that the sense might be,
"If you saw yourself with yoMt eyes, and knew yourself with your judgment : "
and a« this solution did not occur to him, he, of course, cuts the knot, and mutilates the text. So, again, in the same play, the impatient Rosalind says :
" One inch of delay is a South Sea of discovery: "
a phrase vivid with meaning ; but Warburton says of it : " This is stark nonsense ! we must read, off discovery."
Rosalind talks of Orlando's kissing —
"His kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of holy bread."
This does not suit Warburton, who remarks :
" We should read beard^ [instead of hread ;] that is, as the kiss of an holy saint, or hermit, called the kiss of charity. This makes one comparison just and decent ; the other, impious and absurd."
One more example from the same play. The Duke asks Orlando if he believes that Rosalind can do what she pro- mised, and the latter replies :
12 Historical Sketch.
" I sometimes do believe, and sometimes do not, As those that fear they hope, and know they fear.**
Of the last line of which, Warburton says : '' This strange nonsense should be read thus :
"*As those thai fear their hap, and know their fear.'"
This was reckless editing ; and it soon brought forward defenders of the integrity of Shakespeare's text. But, like all his predecessors, and nearly all of his successors. Bishop Warburton left, in his heaps of editorial chaff, some grains of sense, which have been carefully winnowed out and gar- nered up in that storehouse of Shakesperian lore, the Vario- rum edition, which \vill hereafter claim our attention.
In 1745 had appeared a duodecimo vohune, entitled " Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with remarks on Sir T. H/s [Sir Thomas Hanmer's] edition of Shakespear ; to which is affixed, proposals for a new edi- tion of Shakespear, with a specimen." It was written, as its author might have said, with combined perspicuity of thought, and ponderosity of language. It was by Samuel Johnson, then rai)idly rising to the highest position in the world of letters ; and, in 1765, an edition of Shakespeare, " with the corrections and illustrations of various commenta- tors : to which are added notes, by Samuel Johnson," was published, in eight volumes, 8vo. It is giving the Doctor but little praise to say that he was a better editor than his Reverend predecessor. The majority of his emendations of the text were, nevertheless, singularly unhappy ; and his notes, though often learned and sometimes sensible, were generally wanting in just that sort of learning and sense most needful for his task. Strange as it may seem, no one who himself appreciates Shakespeare, can read Johnson's comments and verbal criticisms upon his plays without the conviction that to the ^ great moralist,' the
Editobs : — Johnson. 13
grandest mspirations and most exquisitely wrought fancies of the great dramatist were as a sealed book. Many an Irnmble individual whom the learned bear growled at — we do not hesitate to include even " Bozzy" himself — ap- preciated Shakespeare better than the literary dictator did. The Doctor did not hesitate to say, that one passage in that clever fop Congreve's Mourning Bride was finer than any thing in all Shakespeare's works. And who can forget, or forgive, the manner in which he abuses Sweet WiD, when he does not understand him ; or, worse yet, the insuf- ferable arrogance with which he patronizes him, and pats him on the head, when he does ? Who ever read, with- out an ebullition of wrath, this curt, savage, and peda- goguish dismissal of Cymbeline :
"This play Las many just sentiments, some natural dia- logues, and some pleasing scenes ; but they are obtained at the expense of much incongruity. To remark the folly of the fic- tion, the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and manners of different times, and the impossibility of the events in any system of life, were to waste criticism upon unre- Bisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation."
Poor great moralist ! obtuse wise man ! ignorant Doctor of Laws ! For thee Imogen^ that purest, that most enchanting, most noble creation, — that loveliest, most lovable, most loving, and so most womanly of women, — that peerless lady among Shakespeare's peerless ladies, was spoken into being in vain ! In vain, for thee the glowing thoughts, the gorgeous imagery, the dainty utterance ! In vain for thee the wondrous self-develop- ment of character by dialogue and dramatic action 1 In vain for thee
— " the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And FhoBbus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those tprings
On chalic'd flowers that lies.'* —
14 HiSTOBicAL Sketch.
for thy rectilinear vision is fixed upon " the confusion of names and manners of different times, and the impossi- bility of the events in any system of life," and, besides, " springs that lies," is ungrammatical ! All the fine writing in the Doctor's high sounding preface will not atone for his treatment of Shakespeare in the body of the work It is worth while to read here his note on the pas- sage,
** One inch of delay is a South Sea of dlsooTerj. Prithee tdi me, Ac,**
Warburton's treatment of which has just been noticed. He says : —
" This sentence is rightly noted by the oommentator as non- sense, but not 80 happily restored to sense. I read thus : ' One inch of delay is a South Sea. Discover, I prithee, tell me, &c.' "
In the same play Johnson gravely proposes to read SUviv^ entreaty to Phehe^
" Will you sterner be Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops f*
"Will you sterner be Than he that dyet hit iipt by bloody drops f
It seems difficult to believe that the author of the Rarnbler and the Idler should have given us such emenda- tions by the score ; but these are favorable specimens of a large proportion of his notes ; and in those very publications, criticisms occur not less deplorable to the appreciative reader of the bard of all time.
Edward Capell was one of the most learned and labo- rious of the editors of Shakespeare. He published in 1759 a quarto volume entitled, " Notes and various Readings of Shakespeare ; " in 1768 he issued an edition of Shakespeare in ten volumes octavo ; and in 1779 his " Notes and Va- rious Readings," with many additions and the " School of
Editors : — Capell. 15
Sliakespeare/' were republished in three formidable quarto vohimes. The critical student of Shakespeare must have tkse books, and, alas ! must read them. Capell's words are not without knowledge ; but they often do as much to duken counsel as has been accomplished by the most igno- nat of his co-laborers. Infinite pains and trouble and the closest thinking are sometimes required, to divine what he voald be at. The obscurest passage in the author whom be strives to elucidate is luminous as the sun, compared with the convoluted murkiness of his page ; and when by chance he quotes a passage for comment, as its clear signi- (bnce flashes upon the mind, we involuntarily think of tbe people who sat in darkness and saw a great light. And yet Capell did something for the text. He too, like most of his predecessors and successors, made some con- jectural emendations which at once commended themselves to the general sense of the readers of Shakespeare, and which have been preserved, while the mass of his labors are thrast aside, for rare consultation, upon the shelves of the critical or the curious. His collocation of the vari- ous readings of the old editions is invaluable for reference. At about this period Shakesperian criticism became nmpant. The publication of Warburton's edition in 1747 had provoked controversy and given new stimulus to inves- t^tion. From that day commentary trod upon the heels of commentary, and panting pamphleteers toiled on after eich other in the never-ending struggle to reach the true text of Shakespeare ; a goal which seemed to recede faster than their advance. The commentators were nearly all letmed men ; and many were men of remarkable ability. Bat their labors were almost altogether in vain. When they strove most, displayed the most learning, exercised the most ingenuity, they were most at fault : when they were successful, it was generally by chance, and upon some
16 Historical Sketch.
point which they regarded as of little consequence. To estimate their services to the text^ compared with the harm they did it, as ^^ two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff/' is to pass a lenient judgment upon their labors. There were reasons for all this. Critical Dogber-* rys that they were, they went not the way to examine. Their learning, the school in which they had been edu- cated, the taste of the day — formed as it was by the remnants of the French taste of Dryden's dynasty, and the chilling influence of the cold and polished correctness of the school of Addison and Pope, overlaid by the lexico- graphical style of Johnson, — joined to their own conceit and the want of a just appreciation of the genius of Shakespeare, led them entirely astray. They did not re- cognize him as their master, at whose feet they were to sit and Icam. They did not go to their task in an humble, docile spirit. Milton had written,
'* Sweetest Shakespeare, FaDcj's child Warbles his native wood notes wild ; "
a petty puling dribble of belittling, patronizing praise, for which he should never have been forgiven, had he not atoned for it by that grand line in the Epitaph, — one of the grandest and most imaginative he ever wrote, — ^in which he calls Shakespeare,
" Dear son of memory, great heir of fame."
But the first encomium, which might not inaptly be passed upon a missy contributor to a Ladies' Magazine, chimed with the taste of the middle of the last century ; and Shakespeare was regarded as an untutored genius, sadly in need of pnming and training ; a charming, but unsophis- ticated songster, whose " native wood notes wild," if their exuberance could be tamed down to the barrel-organ standard of the poet fanciers of the day, would be meet
Mutilation of the Text. 17
ttitertainment for persons of quality, — if they were not too exacting as to the unities. In editing his works for the closet, the constant effort was, not to imhibe his spirit and touch his work with reverential hand, but to make him conform as much as possible to the standard which the critics had set up. No one of them seemed to suspect tliat Shakespeare could have been a law unto himself In adapt- ing his plays to the stage, a yet more outrageous desecration of his genius was the fashion for nearly a hundred years. The soul of Procrustes seemed to have migrated into eveiy play-wright and stage-manager in England, from the day of the Restoration; and Shakespeare's plays, when they werepresentedat all, were so curtailed, distorted, mosaicked, patched, vamped and garbled, that the original work was lost almost beyond recognition. The second Scene of the tirst Act of Df} den's version of the Tempest ^ actually begins:
**Pro9pero. Miranda, "where is your sister f Miranda, I left her looking from the pointed rock," <tc ;
and in Nahum Tate's adaptation of Kitig Lear, the tra- gedy ends in farce, and Lea?* dances at the wedding of C^ordeliu with Edmund, The stage library groans under heaps of these abominations ; and to this day we have not escaped their baleful influence. Although we owe much to Mr. Macready and Mr. Charles Kean in this regard, hardly a play of Shakespeare's is now put upon the stage ^'th the dramatic sequence and the develo]:)ment of char- acter preserved exactly as he left them to us. No one can complain of the omission of a few gross expressions, admis- sible when Sliakesi)eare wrote, but offensive now : the griev- ance is, that it seems to be forgotten that Shakespeare was an actor and a manager ; that he wrote his plays to please the people and make money ; and that, his audiences being
constituted of all sorts and conditions of men, he succeeded.
2
18 Historical Sketch.
He knew what was a good acting play as well as what was good poetry ; and he knew better than any of his dramatic tinkers, not only what incidents, what action, and what dia^ logue and soliloquy, but what succession of events was ne- cessary to the proper delineation of his characters. When shall we have Shakespeare edited and put upon the stage with a full recognition of his surpassing genius as a dram- atist ?
This digression is but seeming ; for it is essential to the purpose of these pages, to show how Shakespeare suf- fered for nearly a century and a half, more wrong from the incapacity, vitiated taste, and conceit of ^ ingenious ' com- mentators and adapters, than he had previously endured from the unexampled carelessness of the printers — griev- ously as they had abused him. But perhaps we should ra- ther pity than contemn those misguided people ; for they erred in ignorance. Had there not gone with their igno- rance so overweening a conceit, we might get through their fine-spun absurdities and pompous platitudes with an un- ruffled temper. But as it is, they try us sorely.
The appearance of George Steevens and £dmund Ma- lone in the field of Shakespcrian literature, produced greater and more permanent changes in the text than had been achieved by any of their predecessors, save Theobald. They were not co-workers, but opponents. Steevens reprintetl the quartos, and published notes and comments upon the text, which, in 1773, were embodied in an edition in ten octavo volumes. Steevens is one of the most acute and ac- complished of Shakespeare's commentators ; but rarely have abilities and acquirements been put to more unfruitful use. To show his ability to suggest * ingenious ' readings, he wantonly rejected the obvious significance of the text, and perverted the author's meaning, or destroyed the integrity of his work. He was witty, and not only launched his
Editors: — Stebvens, Malone. 19
shafts at his fellow-commentators, bat turned them against In author, and, most intolerable of all, attempted to sub- stitute his own smartness for Shakespeare's humor. He had ao accurate — mechanically accurate — ear, and ruthlessly mutilated, or patched up Shakespeare's lines to a uniform staodard of ten syllables.
But, in Malone, he found an adversary entirely too powerful for him. Malone published in 1780, two volumes, containing notes and comments upon the text as it was left by Johnson and Steevens, and other miscellaneous Shakesperian matter ; and in 1790 appeared his edition of Shakespeare, " collated verbatim with the most authentic cojries, and revised; with the corrections and illustrations of Tarions commentators; to which are added, an essay on the chioDological order of his plays; an essay relative to Shake- speare and Jonson ; a dissertation on the three parts of King Henry VI. ; an historical account of the English stage ; and notes.*' This title gives a just idea of the wide field of Shake- q«riau inquiry, covered by the labors of Malone. Though not highly accomplished, he was a scholar, a man of good judg- ment, and, for his day, of good poetical taste. He was pa- tient, mdefatigably laborious, and modest — that is, as modest a«it was possible for a Shakesperian critic and editor of the last century to be. Above all, he was honestly devoted to his ta«k ; he sought the glory of his author, not his own — except in so far as the latter was involved in the former. We of t'>day can see that he committed many and great blunders ; but he saved the text of Shakespeare from wide and ruthless "Utrage, and by painful and well-directed investigation into the literature and manners contemporary with his author, cart new light upon his pages. To Edmund Malone the read- ers of Shakespeare during the last decade of the last century, and the first quarter of this, were indebted for the preser- vation of his works in a condition nearly approaching their
20 Historical Sketch.
original integrity. Malone's edition of Shakespeare, with Prolegomena, bupplementary matter, and the principal notes of all the editors and commentators, published by Boswell — the son of Johnson's biographer — ^in twenty-one octavo volumes, in 1821, and known as the Variorum edition, is a monument to the industry and judgment of Malone ; whose labors appear to the greatest advantage when placed beside those of his predecessors and opponents. It is, besides, a rich storehouse of Shakesperian literature; though, like most storehouses, with its treasures it preserves heaps of dross and rubbish.
To add to the editions previously mentioned, that of Alexander Chalmers, published in 1823, the text of which does not materially differ from that of Malone; that of the Eev. William Haniess, published in 18259 which contained a few valuable corrections of the text; and that of Samuel Weller Singer, published at Chiswick, in 1826, the text of which was formed with great care, though not unexceptionable judgment, and with too little reverence for the authority of the first folio, and which contained some very plausible conjectural emendations, is to bring the history of the text, as far as editions of note are con- cerned, down to those which are strictly of the present day.
Among the commentators on Shakespeare, who did not become his editors, the most noteworthy for the purposes of the present sketch are — Benjamin Heath, who published in 1765, ^^ A Revisal of Shakespear's text ; wherein the alterations introduced into it, by the more modern editors and critics, are particularly considered;" Thomas Tyrwhitt, the learned editor of Chaucer, whose " Observations and con- jectures on some passages of Shakespeare " were published in 1766 ; Joseph Ritson, the eccentric literary antiquary, whose book of verbal criticisms on the text appeared in
Commentators : — Douce, Heath, Etc. 21
1783; John Monck Mason, who published comments on Steevens' edition in 1785 ; E. H. Seymour, whose two volumes of '* Remarks, critical, conjectural, and explana- tory [including also the notes of Lord Ched worth], upon the plays of Shakspeare," api)eared in 1805 ; Francis Douce, who issued his " Illustrations of Shakspeare and of Ancient Manners, &c/' in 1809 ; Andrew Becket, who published two volumes, entitled " Shakspeare's himself again, or the language of the poet asserted ; and Zachary Jackson, whose " Shakspeare's Genius Justified ; being restorations and illustrations of seven hundred passages in Shakspeare," was given to the world in 1819.*
Eminent among those for various learning, just dis- crimination, and a becoming deference to the author whose works he came to illustrate, is Mr. Douce. He is among the commentators what Malone is among the editors; save that his volumes exhibit a wider range* of knowledge, and a more delicate and sympathetic apprehension of the pe- culiar beauties of Shakespeare than Malone possessed. The critical student of Shakespeare can place upon his shelves no book of comments more valuable than the two volumes of Francis Douce. He is, in fact, the only one of those ^ho may be called the old commentators, whose works will bear reprinting. The original edition of his " Illustrations " having become very scarce, a reprint was issued in one vo- lume, in 1839.
Heath, Tyrwhitt, Ritson, and Mason, all produced an appreciable and beneficial eflfect upon the text, — an effect which is pennanent and undeniable. As was the case
• Tliis must not bf considered as an intended catiiloi^ue of tlie coniinon- •»tor8 of paj»t gonorations. Those only have been sini^led from the throng *h'.se mvriti* or flenierits make them tit illustrations for the present his- ^rical sketch. Some of the ablest Shakespenan scholars of the present day *ill also be hereafter passed over with but an incidental mention, for simi- W reasons
22 Historical Sketch.
with the labors of the large majority of the commentatorB and editors, the mass of their suggestions have been re- jected by the good sense of their successors ; but they all treated their subject like scholars and men of sense, and each made a few conjectural emendations, which will al- ways remain in the text. It is not because of an under- valuation of their abilities that we turn firom them to Sey- mour, Becket, and Jackson.
Seymour was a pedagogue, not a critic. His book contains more systematic, narrow-minded carping at and quibbling with Shakespeare, and less sympathetic compre- hension of his thought than can be found in all his other commentators, Becket and Jackson, perhaps, excepted The knowledge that a verb should agree with its nomina- tive case, and that ten syllables make a heroic line, forms the staple of the qualifications wliich he brought to his task. Speaking of* the labors of his predecessors, — not very scrupulous or conservative, as the reader has already seen, — he says, complainingly : —
" They have all been satisfied with delivering the text of each drama as they found it, with preference occasionally to the readings of diflferent impressions ; and if the choice they made be deemed judicious, so much of their undertaking has been per- formed : but with regard to those anomalies in which the meas- ure, construction, and sense have been vitiated, they appear to have been strangely negligent ; and sometimes strangely mista- ken ; the want of meanhig can never be excused ; the disregard of syntax is no kss rcprcfiensible^ and every poetic ear must be offended by metrical dissonance^ — Vol. I., p. 2.
He practised what he preached. Thus, in the follow- ing lines from Hamlet —
" Tis Bwcet and commendable in your nature, ilamlet. To give thode mourning duties to your father ; But yiui must, know, your father lost a father ; That father lost^ lost his, and tlie survivor lK>und," Ac
CoMMENTATOBS : — Seymour, Beckbt. 23
hfi rejected, as interpolations, those words which are printed in Italic letters, and gave the passage thus : —
**Tl8 sweet and commendable in you, Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father , But you must know, your father lost a father ; That father hisi and the survivor bound,** ^c.
He removes the * from ' in all cases in which it is used with * whence,' or * thence,' because it is tautological ; thus en- deavoring to conform the language of Shakespeare's day to that of his own ; and he seeks, by mutilation, addition, and transposition, to make an unbroken series of perfect lines of ten syllables, from the beginning to the end of every play ; and in all these points his labors are rivalled by, and in some cases are identical with, the labors of Mr. Collier's folio corrector.
It is diflBcult to speak with patience or decorum of Mr. Becket. His work is stupidity run mad ; and a just idea of it can only be obtained from extracts. Opening the first volume at random, we find the following: : —
■*;
'''Hamlet. — Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give 't breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most excellent music'
" * Ventages and thumb,' I would read thus : * Govern these ventages and the umbo with your fingers,' &c. JJmho^ (Lat.,) a knob ; a button. The piece of brass at the end of a flute Diight very well be called a button.^'' — Vol. I., pp. 54, 55.
Again, from the same play, — Hamlet^ in the grave with . l^QerteSj is taunting him : —
•'•Woo't weep? woo*t fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself? Woo't drink up Esil f eat a crocodile ? ' Ac.
" This proposition of Hamlet is too extravagant, too ridicu- looi to remain in the text. By such a reading the Danish Prince
24 Historical Sketch.
appears to be a very Dragon of Want ley for'ToracioaBness." [Bccket is serious.] • • «< j regulate the passage thus : —
*Woo't weep, woo't driDk, woo't eat! woo't fast! woo't fight! "Woo't tear thyself? — ^Ap«% Esel, Crocodile f *
• • " * Up' is misprinted for *Ape,' * Esel,' in old language, is* Ass.' "—Vol.!., p. 67.
If that were all the commentator needed, why did he not read,
" Ape 1 Becket I Crocodile ? "
The metre, — and the signification, wonld have been qnite as well preserved, and the new arrangement would not have been a whit more impertinent. I will add only the fol- lowing from Macbeth J by turning a few leaves. Lady Mac- beth says : —
" ' Come thick night And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell I That my keen knife sec not the wound it makes; Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark» To cry, 'Hold, hold I'
" I correct the whole as foIloTrs : —
# "Come thick night
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell I TlicU Heaven fee not the wound my keen, knife makes Deep through thy dark^ nor blench at it to cry, • Hold, hold ! ' "—Vol. !. p. 90. .
It was necessary that we should look at Mr. Becket's work : but have we not had enough of it ?
Zachary Jackson was a printer ; and as the greater portion of the corruptions of Shakespeare's works have crept into the text by the carelessness of compositors and pnxtf- readers, he justly thought that a practical knowledge of his art would be of service in the conjectural correction of
I
COMMENTATOBS I — JaCKSON. 25
tbc ndly misprinted folio. His knowledge of the com- podng case, and of the various accidents to which ^ mat- ter'—as standing typo is called — is subjected, from the time it is set up imtil it goes to press, did enable him to make a few happy guesses, or rather deductions, as to the errors which had been committed and neglected by the firet printers of Shakespeare. He had corrected a great deal of proof, and was thus able to conjecture, with occasional good fortune, what accident had produced the error in the book before him. But even in this he was by no means infallible ; and when, forgetting the " we mior^' he ven- tured into the field of general comment and criticism, he luade such absurd and atrocious changes in the text, that it is difficult to believe them the work of a mind above that of an idiot ; and yet he utters them with an owlish BapicDce that makes him the very Bunahy of commenta- tors. Ecce signum. First, in Much Ado About Nothing, Act III. Sc. 1:
" * Wrmla. Signior Benedick,
For shape, for bearing, argument, and valour Goes foremost in report through Italy.
" Thus the text makes Benedick support a greater weight than any porter in all Italy. For argument, I shall only say, It is the veri/ worst recommendation to a lady's love, as it is not only productive of serious quarrels abroad, but also the strong- est poison to domestic happiness.
" Our author wrote : —
* Signior Benedick, For shape, forhearing argument, and valour. Goes foremost in report through Italy.*
" Thus the recommendation is strong ; for though Benedick w the most valorous man throughout Italy, yet, he c\er forbears <^f§um€nt, in order to avoid dissension : such endowments, I
26 Historical Sketch.
think, could not fail of finding sufficient influence in the heart of Beatrice.'^— P. 35.
The next jewel of criticism and emendation is upon a passage in Love's Labors Lost, Act I. Sc. 1 :
" ' TMngavillf. A high hop« for a low having: God grant us patience.'
'* The old copies read, a low heaven : the transcriber mistook the word, and wrote heaven instead of haven.
'^ The allusion is to a ship^s head, decorated with the figure of Hope. Longaville compares the high flowing words of Ar- niado to the awkward appearance of a ship, with an elevated figure of Hope, lying in a lata haven. Longaville also plays on the word hope, which is used as a verb by Biron, but, by him- £elf, as a substantive ; and Hope being symbolical of Patience, he concludes his speech with, God grant us patience." — P. 51.
And we echo his supplication. Can any thing be more absurd, except the following reading in As You LiJce Ity Act III. Sc. 2, of goad, for "good," and the justification
^f it ?
" Romlind. Good my complexion I dost thou think, though I am ca- pnrison'd like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition?**
*' The circumstance of the chain has already whispered to the heart of Rosalind, that Celia means Orlando ; but, pretending ignorance, she displays all that agitation of mind, prompted by curiosity, which the natural feelings of a female, who knows her own charms, testifies, on hearing that she is the theme of admi- ration ; and, therefore, with most petitionary vehemence, she de- sires to know the name of her woodland admirer: but Celia still sports with her agitation, and wishes to make her blush; wliirh playful maliciousness being perceived by Rosalind, she trlls iier, the only means to effect her purpose is to name her udiuircr : which will have such influence as to stimulate her MiHu), and cause a sensation in her heart, that must mantle her iVo with blushes ; therefore, she says :
* Ooad my complexion ! *
Commentators : — Jackson. 27
'' Sound but the name ! jou stimulcUe my blood, and rouse it from mj heart to strike upon my face ; for, though I am capari- iorCd like a man, dost thou think / have a doublet and hose in my disposition that can veil my blushes, as they do my sex ?
" Thus, by the aid of the verb, the phrase gains correspond- ing uniformity ; but which, in its present state, as Mr. Theobald justly observes, cannot be reconciled to common sense.
"This word is doubly applicable; for, if struck with a goad on the face, the part must become inflamed and red." — P. 72.
As a specimen of critical fatuity, the following, upon a passage in AWa WeU That Ends Well, Act I. Sc. 3, might challenge a rival — outside of Shakesperian com- ment.
"• Clown, an we might have a good woman born, but every
bUang star.'
" How can a woman be born ? A female, when introduced into life, is an infant : — the reading is highly injudicious ; and the correction seems to have been made without reflecting on the incongruity which it produced. The old copy reads : — * but o'er every blazing star.' In my opinion, from the word on being hadly formed, the compositor mistook it for ore, I read :
*an we might* have a good woman, but on every blazing star, or
»t an earthqunke, <fcc' "—P. 84.
But Jackson could be a rival to himself, as this last se- lection from his pages, bristUng with absurdities, will amply prove. It is on a speech in Troilus and Cresstda, Act I.
Sc.l:
'• * Alexander. Hector, whose patience
Is, as a virtue, fix'd, to-day was mov'd.
" Patience being a virtue, the fix'd virtue has nothing to do with the passage. We should read :
' Hector, whose patience
Is, as a vulture fix*d, to-day was mov'd.*
28 Historical Sketch.
" Thus tho patience of Hector is oompared to the vulture, which neyer moves from the object of its bsatiate gluttony, until it has entirely devoured it. Prometheus, according to fabulous history, was chained to Mount Caucasus, with a vulture preying constantly on his liver." — P. 259.
Can presumption and stupidity farther go ? And yet this man made some of the very corrections in Mr. Col- lier's folio of 1632, for which that gentleman claims a higher authority than that of the first folio itself.
It is worthy of remark, considering the object of this sketch, that Blackwood's Magazine j some years ago, could speak favorably of a book which is filled with such rampant stupidity ; that Mr. Knight, on the authority of " a most accomplished friend," bears witness, Credat Judceus ! to " the common sense of the printer ;" and that the gene- rally judicious Mr. Hunter could say of Croft's "Annota- tions on plays of Shakespeare,"
^^ This pamphlet consists of twenty-four closely printed pages, and, I venture to say, contains more valuable remark than is to be found in the volumes of Zachary Jackson, and Andrew Beckot, or even those of John, Lord Chedworth, and Henry James Pye."
A very safe assertion : but what had poor John Croft done, that Mr. Hunter should be so bitterly ironical ? But l)crhap8 Mr. Hunter was in earnest ! It is possible ; be- cause, in Shakesperian criticism, all things are possible.
But though the text of Shakespeare suffered no perma- nent injury from such commentators as these, and though the Variorum and the Chiswick editions presented the works of the great dramatist more nearly as he produced them than they had ever before appeared in print, the increasing admiration of the world for those matchless writings, the influence of an humbler, more docile school
Editors: — Mr. Collier, Mr. Knight. 29
of criticism upon them, and the well-known fact that there Were still many departures in those editions from the ori- ginal folio, which, at least, might be needless, created a demand for a text conforming yet more strictly to the pri- paitive standard ; and a little more than ten years ago, two editors stepped fomvard to supply this want. These were Mr. Knight and Mr. Collier. They each did much to effect that nearer approximation of the text to the " True Originall " which was so much needed. Both admitted con- jectural emendations very sparingly, and only when they deemed them to be absolutely unavoidable ; and both made the fii-st folio the exclusive authority for the text, which, strange to say, was then first done since Kowe's time ; but Mr. Collier admitted the " stolen and surrepti- tious " quartos to a higher authority than that awarded to them by Mr. Knight, who deferred only to the original folio. Mr. Collier had the great advantage of a long devo- tion to the study of old English literature, especially to that of Shakespeare's age ; but Mr. Knight brought to his task an intelligent veneration for his author, and a sympa- thetic apprehension of his thoughts, which, I venture to say, has never been surpassed — perhaj)8 never equalled, by any of that gentleman's fellow-editors. There exist no critical essays more imbued with the pure si)irit of Shake- speare than the Supplementary Notices which Mr. Knight appended to each play in his beautiful Pictorial Edition.
But both editors committed errurs themselves, and al- lowed those of others to remain uncorrected. Mr. Collier admitted readings from the quartos, and the commenta- tiirs, which are indefensible ; and Mr. Knight's almost su- jK^rstitious veneration for the first folio, caused him to reproduce many passages from it, which are evidently cor- rupted by the gross typographical (carelessness which so de- forms that precious volume This was undeniably shown
30 Historical Sketch.
with excellent temper and spirit by the Rev. Alexander Dyce, the editor of Beaumont & Fletclier, Marlowe, Green, and Peele, &c., in his " Remarks on Mr. J. P. Collier's, and Mr. C. Knight's Editions of Shakspere," which appeared in 1844 ; and which, when considered in connection with his otlier labors, points out Mr. Dyce as the editor from wh(»m we may expect the purest text of Shakespeare which has yet been given to the world.
One other edition was produced, which should not be here passed by : that edited by the Hon. Gulian C. Ver- {)lanck, of New York. Mr. Verplanck's labors were more echvtic than 8{>eculative. Forming his text rather upon the lalK)rs of Mr. Collier, Mr. Knight, and Mr. Dyce, than upon original investigation and collation, and exercising a taste naturally fine, and disciplined by studies in a wide field of letters, he produced an edition of Shakespeare, which, with regard to text and comments, is, perhaps, pre- femble to any other which exists.
Such is the history, and such the present condition of the text of Shakespeare, which, upon the authority of Mr. Collier's newly discovered, old, anonymous, manuscript cor- rector, we are called upon to change in over one thousand important particulars.
MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632.
MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632.
DemensI qni nlmbos tC non Imitebtle fiilmen, Mn t't oornlpedam jralsa ftlmalarat eqaoram.
1^ the month of January, 1852, the attention of the lite- rary world was excited by the announcement that a ^pj of the second folio impression of the plays of Shake- speare, filled with marginal corrections in manuscript, which appeared to be neariy as old as the volume, had faUen into ^'•e hands of Mr. J. P. Collier. When it was known that Mr. Collier declared that a great number of these manu- ^ript corrections were of inestimable value, and that there ^8 reason to believe that they had been made by some person who had access to better authorities than those pos- sessed by the player-editors of the first folio, or by any of ^heir successors, the interest in the matter became very peat; and, amid some utterance of doubt and wonder, 'nuch satisfaction was universally expressed that so valua- ble a waif had fallen into the hands of one, the antece- dents in whose editorial career gave warrant that he would put it to such careful and judicious use. Verbal criticism, ^^en upon the works of Shakespeare, has generally not Diuch interest for the mass of readers ; and most especially ^ould this seem to be true of the American people ; but
^ republication in this country of Mr. Collier's " Notes
3
34 Mb. Collier's Folio of 1632.
and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays, from Early Manuscript Corrections, &c.," has been a successful undertaking ; and the subsequent issue, in numbers, of " The Plays of Shakespeare," with a text formed by the same editor, upon the same manuscript corrections, although not equally remunerative, has not failed to attract an un- due share of public attention.
But, although it is not surprising that, under the cir- cumstances, these publications should have been received with a certain favor among general readers, it is even less surprising that the thoughtful and devoted students of Shakespeare, those familiar with the language of his time, as well as his own peculiar inflections of thought and ex- pression, and who regard his works with a reverence equal to their admiration, — it is less surprising that these should have been much disappointed at the appearance of the first volume, and justly troubled and offended upon the issue of the second. Let me not be misunderstood. The dis- covery of this corrected folio will prove to be of material service to the text of Shakespeare. Some of its emenda- tions of that text, as it was given to the world by the printer of the first foho, are very plausible. But these are, few indeed in comparison with those which are an outrage upon the great dramatist and his devotees, the resultants of imited stolidity and presumption, and not to be received into the text on any pretence, or even worthy to be perpe- tuated in notes. It was bad enough for Mr. Collier to publish and support more than a thousand readings of this latter kind ; but for him to embody them boldly in the text, and publish a volume containing them, as " The Plays of Shakespeare," seems, indeed, as if he wished to furnish an example of the truth of the Shakesperian apo- thegm, that " bad begins, and worse remains behind."
Mr. Collier's folio either has authority or it has not.
Its Claims to Defebxkcs. 35
If it have authority, we must submit implicitly to all its dida ; if it have not, we must examine closely every cor- rection, and judge it by its reasonableness and probability. Let us make the changes, if there be undeniable authority for them : and if they are exactly such as the text unques- tionably demands, let us make them without authority.
The deference due to Mr. Collier's folio, is easily to be determined. Probably, most of my readers are already familiar with its recent history. At all events, it is only necessary to consider, at this time, the fact, that it was found four years ago, by Mr. Collier, in the shop of the late Mr. Bodd, Bookseller, of London. There are no means of discovering by whom the corrections were made ; and Mr. Collier has not been able to trace the possession of the volume beyond the latter part of the last century. The corrections appear in various colored inks, as Mr. Col- lier admits, and are, as we shall presently see, in the writing of various hands. There is, then, not even a traditional authority attaching to those corrections. They are made, not on a copy of the first folio, but on one of the second impression, which, as we have seen, corrects but few of the typographical errors of the first, and adds many to the remainder which it perpetuates. The corrections were cer- tainly made long after the original actors of the plays had passed away, and some, if not all of the changes quite as surely not imtil after the Restoration, when the theatres had been closed for years, and the traditions of the stage had perished. Of this last fact they themselves furnish indisputable proof. There is no testimony whatever, then, to show that they are of any more value than if they were made yesterday by Mr. Smith.
But Mr. Collier, failing any testimony as to the authority of his folio, bases its claim to deference on the character of its emendations, and the ancient handwriting in which those
36 Mb. Oollieb's Folio of 1632.
emendations are made. Let us examine this claim. Sap- pose this case. In the first act of Macbeih occors the following well-known passage, which, though pages of explanatory and emendatory comment have been written upon it, needs no exegesis, and has been made confusing only by the labors of the note-mongers. Its vivid but dis- jointed imagery, its profound but broken reflections, are apprehended at once by the sympathetic reader of Shake- speare ; — who, be it remembered, completely apprehends much in his author, of which he cannot give a detailed analysis :
" If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly : If the aaswaination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch. With his surcease, success ; that but this blow Might be the bendl and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,— We*d jump the life to come — ^But, in these case^ We still have judgment here ; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor. This even handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poison*d chalice To our own lips. He's here in double trust: Firsts as I am his kinsman and his subject,— Strong both against the deed ; then, as his hoet^ Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife mysel£ Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek ; hath been So clear in his g^at office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking off: And pity like a naked new-born babe. Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, hors'd Upon the sightless couriers of the air. Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent ; but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself. And falls on the other— How nowf what newaf "
Its Claims to Deference. 37
Suppose Mr. Collier's corrected folio had given this pas- sage as follows ; — ^the variations from the present received reading being printed in italic letter :
**If it were dwuf — *Tioere todl it were done quickly. But then when '<t« done I'^lf the assaMinator Could trammel up the oonsequeDce, and catch With t/« suceeUf eurceaee : that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here : Bat here — npon this bank, and tchooTd of time, We'd jump the life to come. — But, in these oases We still have judgment here : that we but teach Bloody inductiontf which being taught return To plague the inventor. • ♦ • ♦
[Bead the intervening lines without alteration.]
And neto-bom pity^ naked like a babe
Or HeaverCe cherubin hoist.
Upon the coitreers of the sightiess air.
Shall blow the horrid deed, mth strident blast
That everichene intiers shall drown the wind.
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intenant^ but only
Vaulting ambition, which fcUls on itself.
And overleaps the other."
If for such an emendation Mr. Collier had claimed " a higher authority " than that used by the editors of the first folio, what a shout of scorn and derision would have gone up from the whole world of letters ! And yet this prepos- terous reading of the passage is seriously proposed, and sustained through four octavo pages, by a commentator, Becket, who also proposes some of the very corrections found in Mr. Collier's folio of 1632. Had this reading of the passage in Macbeth been found in that folio, the weight of no name, the plausibility of no reasoning could have persuaded two sane men that the MS. corrections were of the least authority. The admissibility, then, of those cor- rections, in the utter absence of any evidence which gives
38 Mb. Collieb'8 Folio of 1632.
them even traditional authority, depends entirely npon their appoeiteness. Their authority is to be derived solely fix>m their intrinsic worth. The passage corrected must, in the first place, unquestionably need correction as it stands in the original folio ; and, in the next, the correction proposed must be such as to recommend itself implicitly to those who are most &miliar with the text of the poet and the literature of his time. This is the only safe rule to adopt with r^ard to any arbitrary emendations of Shakespeare's text ; — a rule which Malone thus laid down in one of his controversies with Steevens, upon a passage in the Tuh> Chntlemen of Verona.
" By arbitrary emendations, I mean oonjectares made at the will and pleasure of the conjecturer, and withoat any authority. Such are Rowe's, Pope*s, Theobald's, Hanmer's, &c., and my as- sertion is, that all emendations not authorized by authentic copies, printed or manuscript, stand on the same footing, and are to be judged of by their reasonableness or probability ; and therefore, if Sir Thomas Hanmer or Dr. Warburton, had pro- posed an hundred false conjectural emendations, and two evidently just, / shovld have admitted tlicse two^ and reeded all the rc5^''— Bosweirs Malone, Vol. IV., p. 129.
But this folio of Mr. Collier's is not only without the slightest supporting evidence to give it authority, ex cathe- dra, but contains within itself the most conclusive proof that it has not the shadow of a claim to any such autho- rity. In examining it, we shall find that the corrector has showed a great, though by no means singular incapacity to appreciate the poetry, the wit, and the dramatic propriety of Shakespeare's writing : that some of the most important of his corrections were made with a disregard of the con- text, and are at variance with it : that a long time had passed between the publication of the volume and i;he making of the corrections : that the maker of them con-
Character of its Changes. 39
fonned to the taste and usages of a period at least half a centuiy subsequent to the date of the production of the Plays : that, according to Mr. Collier's own showing, he continually made corrections merely beciiuse he did not onderstAud the text as he found it : that the corrector himself blundered, and corrected his own corrections, which could not have been the case if they had been made from "a higher authority:" and that some of those emenda- tions, the peculiar character of which has been regarded by many as convincing proof that they could not have been ooDJectural, but must have been made in conformity with some authority, have, on the contrary, been suggested as the fruit of mere conjecture or deduction by other recent correctors, some of whom are among the most wrong- headed and ignorant of Shakespeare's many wrongheaded and ignorant commentators.
And first, as to evident miscomprehension of Shakes- peare's meaning. In As You Like it, Act III., Sc. 4, is this passage :
" Orlando. Who could be out being before his beloved mistress? RoMolind. Marry, that should you, if I were your mistress, or I should think my honesty ranker than my wit**
It would seem impossible to misunderstand this ; and yet the MS. corrector proposes that Bosalind should say,
" Marry, that should you, if I were your mistress, or I should thank my honesty rcUher than my wit : "
—a change which makes absurd nonsense of the passage ; for, in the case supposed by Boaalind, she would have no honesty to thank.
In the first scene of AW 8 Well that Ends Well, poor Belena, giving language to her hope that the distance be- tween her and Count Bertram might prove no obstacle to her happiness, says.
40 Mb. Collier's Folio of 1632.
"The mightiest space in fortune, nature brings To join like likes, and kiss like native things."
That is, — obviously and pertinently, — ^that the gifts of nature, in which she supposed herself not wanting, are sometimes able to overcome the greatest differences in for- tune. But Mr. Collier's folio reads,
"The mightiest space in fuUure^ fariunt brings Tojoin like likes," Ac;
thus making Helena say exactly the reverse of what Shakespeare made her say, and of what she should say. As the alteration is also entirely at variance with the rest of the speech, this blunder must also be regarded as one of those which show misunderstanding or disregard of the context.
In the chorus of the third Act of Henry V., are the following lines : —
" Behold the threaden sails, Borne with th* invisible and creeping wind. Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea ; **
the second of which, the corrector would make,
''Blown with th* invisible and creeping wind,"
thus substituting a prosaic statement of a material fact for a poetical and picturesque description of it.
In the first scene of Act IV. of the same play, Henry speaks of
"The wretched slave, Who, with a body filFd and vacant mind. Gets him to rest^ cramm*d with distressful bread.**
This ruthless man would take the very life of the last line, by reading it,
" Gets him to bed cramm'd with dUtattrful bread.*'
Turns Poetry to Prose. 41
Unhappy corrector ! Because you cannot see that in those felicitous words, " distressful bread," are pictured the hard lot of the poor slave, whose homely food, whose very sus- tenance, is bought by suffering, — ^because you cannot see tlus, would you in revenge take that sweet " distressful " morsel out of our mouths ? and will John Payne Collier, Esq., F. 8. A., abet you in your vile design ?
In TroUita and Cresaida, Act IV., Sc. 4, TroHus says,
** And fometimes we are deyils to ouraelvefl, When we will tempt the frailty of our powers, PreBuming on their changeful potency.**
The last line means, obviously,— presuming on their po- tency or stability, which proves to be changeful : but the corrector would make it needlessly and prosaically,
" Presuming on their chainful jwtency."
Romeo says to JtUiet in that matchless scene of part- ing which is to be followed by no greeting,
"FU say yon gray is not the morning's eye, Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow.'*
The literal gentleman dissents. He cannot see the beauty of a reflex from the pale brow of Diana ; but must drag the poetry down so far as to allude to the shape of the crescent moon, and read bow for " brow." Why was he not thorough and consistent enough to make a correspond- ing change in the first line, take out the poetical thought of " the morning's eye," and read,
" ni say yon gray is not the morning skt/, Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's bovo^i
Mr. Collier calls it "a very acceptable alteration,'" ^hcD, in Lady MacbetKs invocation :
42 Mr. Collier's Fouo of 1632.
" Come thick night, And pall thee in the dunoeat smoke of hell, That roy keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark. To cry, 'Hold! hold I'"
this MS. corrector would read,
'* Nor heaven peep through the blantneut of the dark."
To Bay nothing of the difficulty of peeping through blank- nessy what obtuseness must that be which, after night has been invoked to assume a ^^ poll" of the ^^ dunnest smoke of hell/' cannot see the eminent fitness of the phrase, ^' the blanket of the dark " ? It is to be expected that such a person would, in the previous scene, change the poetical word,
*' The swiftest loing of reeompensti is slow,"
for the prosaic
"The swiftest wind of recompense is slow; "
and in the first scene of Act II. of Julius CccsaVy substitute for,
" the honey-heavy dew of slumber," " the heavy honey-dew of slumber : "
because, forsooth, there is " a well-known glutinous depo- sit " upon the leaves of trees, " which may be called honey- dew."
We might disregard, if not pardon, this anonymous and irresponsible corrector for the followiiig attempt at mutilation ; but what must be thought of Mr. Collier, who says that " the emendation proposed should probably be the text." In Hamlefs second soliloquy, he says,
" For it cannot be Bat I am pigcon-liver*d, and lack gall To make oppression bitter."
Turns Poetry to Prose. 43
For the last line^ it is proposed to read^
*' To make tranagre$tum bitter.'
But wonder at the hopeless obtuseness which could propose 8Qch a change, is lost in amazement at the reason which Mr. Collier gives for receiving it ; which is, that " it was not oppression, but crime that was to be punished by " Batnild. When such a veteran critic as Mr. Collier can- not see that HamUt thought himself '^ a peasant slave," "a dull and muddy mettl'd rascal," " a coward," and " pi- geon-livered," because he lacked the gall which would ma^e oppresBion bitter to himself — when Mr. Collier does not see this, what can we hope from the learning and devotion of any Shakesperian critic ?
In Cymbeline, Mr. Collier's corrector proposes a change of Indicrous lameness. Imogen^ impatient to meet Pos- tkumus, exclaims, " 0 for a horse with wings ! " and, when Pmnio tells her that twenty miles a day is as much as she can accomplish, says,
" I have heard of riding wagers, Where horses have been nimbler than the sands That run i' the cloek's behalf."
The MS. corrector makes Imogen speak of horses
" nimbler than the sands That run i* the clock's, by half.'* I
Mr. Collier remarks that Imogen adds, " ^ But this is fool- er,' in reference, perhaps, to her own simile." Such might veil have been the case were her simile that which Mr. Collier's folio would put into her mouth ; but, as Shake- speare wrote the passage, she calls it "foolery" to stand talking of the speed of horses, when they should be using tt^DL She says.
44 Mb. Collier's Folio or 1632.
" But this 18 foolery, — Oo bid my woman feign a sickness ; say Shell homo to her father: and provide me, presently, A riding soit^'* Ac
The most remarkable change made in Mr. Collier's folio, occmis in this play, in the fourth scene of Act III. Imogen^ wounded to the quick at her husband's suspicion of her chastity, supposes that he has been seduced away from her by some Italian courtesan, and exclaims,
" Some jay of Italy, Whose mother was her painting, hath betray*d hioL"
The figure in the second line is so very bold, — ^violent per- haps, that it is not apprehended at once by all readers ; and this seems to have been the case with Mr. Collier's corrector, who changes the passage to,
"Some jay of Italy Who tmothert her with painting,** dc
The similarity of sound between the two phrases, and the simple statement of fact contained in the latter, have caused this emendation to be received with great favor by some readers of Shakespeare, and to be regarded by them as a strong evidence of the value of the volume in which it occurs. But it should be remarked that a change of the passage is not absohUely necessary, — that the proposed change, like all those in this folio, is fix)m poetry to prose; — and that the ground on which the emendation is thought desirable is not tenable, as far as the text of Shakespeare is concerned. For, the passage has an unmistakable mean- ing as it stands ; and who has a right to substitute, for what it is, his idea of what it should be ? — the change puts a bald statement of a physical fact in the place of a sug- gestive, though very strong, figure of speech : — and the opinion of Mr. Collier that " Imogen would not study me-
^^ Whose Mother was heb PAiNTiNa/' 45
taphors at such a moment/' is not sustained by the con- text, and his assertion that '^it is an axiom that genuine passion avoids figures of speech '' is at variance with Shakes- peare's portraitures of passion ; which, whether truthful or not, are all with which we have at present to deal
Imogen^ in this very speech^ uses another very strong metaphor, one which has been thought to require learned Qotes to explain it. She says,
"Some jay of Italy, Whose mother was her painting, hath betray'd him ; Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion ; And, /or lam richer than to hang hy the woUm, I mutt be ripp*d: — ^to pieces with me! **
And this same Imogen when she wakes and finds at her side (as she supposes) her idolized lord beheaded by Pisanio,
cries out,
** Damn'd Pisanio Hath with his forged letters,— damn'd Pisanio, — From this moii bravest vessel of the world Struck the main top I "
As to similes in Shakespeare's pictures of passion, hear the passion of others than Imogen : hear Othello: —
" OtheUo, O, blood, lago, blood I ^
logo. Patience, I say ; your mind, perhaps, may change. Othello. Never, lago. Like to the Pontick sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er knows retiring ebb, but keeps due on To the Propontick and the Hellespont ; Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love. Till that a capable and wide revenge Swallow them up."
Hear Romeo j when he has just killed Paria, and finds Jit- lid dead in the tomb : —
46 Mr. Oolusb's Folio of 1632.
"Ah! dear Juliet* Why art thou yet to fair f I will believe That aosubstaatial death is amorous; And that the lean, abhorred monster keeps Thee in the dark here^ to be his paramour."
Hear the towering passion of CoriolantiSy when, a few mo- ments before he is slain by the infuriated rabble, some one calls him a " boy of tears : " —
"Boy! False hound! If you have writ your annals true^ 'tis there^ That like an eagle in a doyeeote I Fluttered your Voices in Corioli"
Hear Gonstancey wailing for her lost Arthur : —
" Grief fills the room up of my absent ehild, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me ; Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words. Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form," Ac
Hear OlaudiOy with mingled grief and indignation, upbraid- ing Hero : —
" Thou pure impiety and impious purity ! For thee 111 look up all the gates of love ; And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang. To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm," Ac.
Hear Hotspur y maddened by King Henry : —
" By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap^ To pluck bright honour from the pale fac'd moon ; Or dive into the bottom of the deep, Where fathom line could never touch the ground, And pluck up drowned honour by the locks»" Ac
Well may Worcester say of him,
" He apprehends a world offigwre% here. But not the form of what he should attend."
"Whose Mother was heb Painting." 47
Could words be made more figurative than they are in all of these expressions of excited feeling, which are not a tithe of those which Shakespeare's dramas would afford, of a like kind ? Clatidio'a " on my eyelids shall conjec- ture hang/' is one of the strongest, as well as one of the most beautiful figures in the whole range of poetry. It has a bolder beauty than those two lovely lines of which it re- minds us, in Spenser's description of Una :
** Upon her eyelids xnaDy graces sat» Under the shadow of her even browsw"
It is not true, I venture to assert, that passion avoids figures of speech. Its utterance is always direct and forci- ble ; but sometimes the most direct and forcible medium of expression is to be found in a metaphor. So, at least, thought Shakespeare ; which is all that, in this case, needs to be established.
With regard to the confiision of sounds which is sup- posed to account for the alleged error in the original line, Mr. Collier himself admits it " to be possible that the old corrector, not understanding the expression, ' Whose mo- ther was her painting,' might mistake it for ' Who smothers A^rvrith painting !'" This possibility is made certainty by a passage in Hamlet^ which the able opponent of the new reading, Mr. Halliwell, who has made it the subject of a special pamphlet, has not noticed. In the second scene of Act I., Hamlefs mother asks him why a father's death seems so particular to him. He replies,
" Seems, madam I Nay, it is : I know not seem Tie not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suite of solemn black," Ac.
Now, it is remarkable that in the fifth quarto im- pression of this play, published in 1611, these lines are printed thus :
48 Mb. Collier's Folio of 1632.
** Seemes, maddain, naj it if» I know not seemei^ Tis not alone my incky cloake oould tmoiker/* 4e.
Here is proof positive that "good mother" not <^^r^ coald be, but was, misunderstood, could smother ; a in»^ take, in its principal feature, identical with that made bj the corrector of Mr. Collier's folio, and which snggest.^ another mode of accounting for the manuscript correction ^^ It is evident that whoever made the emendations in thaP* -^ volume, studied the quartos thoroughly ; indeed, Mr. Col — ^ lier frequently claims that such was the case. Now, it ie^-^ not at all improbable that the corrector, finding this miatake^^ of could smother, in the quarto, for " good mother" in the^^^
folio, took from it the hint for the change of "whose mo-
ther," into who smothers ; and thus was enabled to makes^ a sense for a passage which had before been to him mean- ingless. It is somewhat strange that this correlativer error, almost conclusive in itself, has not occurred to either of Mr. Collier's learned opponents.* Under all these cir- cumstances, it is impossible to receive the new reading, plausible as it seems at first.
These are but a very few indeed of the instances in which the corrector of the folio of 1632 has shown his ina- bility to apprehend the poetical thoughts of the author whose works he undertook to amend. Passages which prove his incapacity in other respects, and which establish the late date of his labors, and the remaining points which go to show the entire inadmissibility of the claims which Mr. Collier sets up for him, might be quoted to an extent which would fill the remainder of this volume ; but a con-
* Ab I know of no original impression of either of the qnarto eopies of this play in Ameriea» I am obliged to content myself with Steevens's reprint^ which is from the edition of 1611. I therefore cannot say whether this strange and important error appeared in the editions of lft04, 1605, and
Substitutes Dulness for Wit. 49
sideration for the patience of my readers must limit my selections. One or two instances which clearly establish a point are as conclusive upon the authority of his corrections as a hundred.
He cannot appreciate Shakespeare's humor. For in- stance^ after the lamentation of Bottom (as Pyramus) over the death of Tkisbcy Theseus says,
** This pftssion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad ; **
the humor of which consists in coupling the ridiculous fus- tian of the clown's assumed passion, with an event which would, in itself, make a man look sad. The corrector ex- tinguishes the fun at once, by reading,
•* This passion on tlie death of a dear friend," &c
Ami, incomprehensible as it is, Mr. Collier sustains him by saying, that the obser\'ation of Theseus " has particular reference to the * passion ' of Pyramus on the fate of Thisbe ! "
In Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice, being sent to call Benedicky he asks her if she takes pleasure in the office. She replies,
"Yea, jnst so much as you raaj tnkc upon a knife^s point, and choke a <liw withaL"
This, our precise and literal corrector ruins, by inserting 'not,' and reading :
"Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife s point and not choke • daw withal"
In Antony and Cleopatra, Act I., Sc. 3, Char^nian ad- vising Cleopatra how to keep the love of Antony, says : —
"In each thing give him way, cross him in notliing.**
To which Cleopatra replies :
"Tliou tenchest like a fool : the way to lose him.** 4
50 Mb. Coluer'8 Folio of 1632.
Meaning, of course, " You are a fool, girl ; that is the way to lose him ; " but this the corrector changes to,
"Thou teachest, like a fool, the way to lose him;**
a reading which makes, in substance, the same assertion as the original, but which destroys all the delicate and charac- teristic humor of the gay queen's reply.
So when, in the Merry Wives of Windsor , Act IV., Sc. 5, poor Simple^ mistaking * conceal ' for * reveal,' says, in reply to Falstaffy " I may not conceal them, Sir," and the Host J after hie waggish fashion, bewilders yet more the serv- ing man's feeble brain, by turning his own blunder upon him, and saying, " Conceal [i. e. reveal] them, or thou diest," Mr. Collier's folio expurgates all the fun fipom the passage by retaining an obvious typographical error of the original, and making FalMaff and the Host use " conceal " in its legitimate and sober sense.*'^
The corrector's obtuseness as to dramatic propriety is equaUy obvious with his incapacity to appreciate poetry and humor. In Act IV., Sc. 4, of the Merry Wives ef Windsor, Sir Hugh Evans, talking of Falstaff, with Page and Ford and their wives, remarks of the plot to entice the knight to another meeting,
"You say he has been thrown into the rivers^ and has been grievously peaten, as an old 'oman : methinks there should be terrors in him that he should not come : " d:c.
The old corrector makes the parson say, " You sec he has been thrown," &c., and Mr. CoUier sustains the change, by the remark that " the other persons in the scene had said nothing of the kind." But the corrector and his backer were obviously blind to the fact that the scene opens with the
* Tliis has also been pointed out by Mr. Singer in his *' Text of Shake- speare Yindicated,** Ac
Dramatic Inconsistency. 51
entry of the whole party in the midst of a conversation upon the subject of FortTs jealousy and Falstaff's mis- haps ; as is plain from the speeches of Evans and Page^ when the scene opens.
"Etam. — lia one of the pest discretions of a 'omon as I ever did look opon.
*Pag€. — ^And did he send you both these letters at an instant?**
But no " 'oman " or " letters " have been mentioned on the stage. Yet evidently Mrs, Ford is the " 'oman," and the letters are those of FaMaff to Mrs, Ford and Mrs. PagCj which had been the subjects of a conversation begun before the entrance of the party. Shakespeare was not 8uch a bungler at his art as to make his characters always stalk upon the stage, and formally commence their confe- rence. Sir Hugh's " You say " refers to something said before the scene opened. As an examination of the first part of the scene would have prevented this error, it has a place also among those blunders which result from a neg- lect of the context. The corrected text of this folio and the stage directions furnish many instances of similar care- lessness and incapacity; but as my present object is not to attack the emendations in detail, but to establish the corrector's want of authority, and also of ability, by show- ing that in certain instances his work is essentially incon- sistent with Shakespeare's obvious intention, and as this one case fully proves the point for which it is quoted, I pass on to the next.
The entire absence of a higher authority for the correc- tions, as well as the narrowness of view of the corrector, — or, rather, of one of the correctors, for there were evidently more than one, — is shown by his continual neglect of the context ; his insight appearing to have been limited to the sentence, or the very line which he corrected. Thus, in the Temptsty Act. I. Sc. 2, Prospero speaks of.
52 Mr. Collier's Folio of 1632.
"one Who having, nnto trnth, by telling of it» Made such a sinner of his memory To credit his own lie.**
The construction of which plainly is, *one who having made such a sinner of his memory unto truth, to credit his own lie by telling of it.' But Mr. Collier's corrector saw only the apparent contradiction in the second line, and, seeking to remedy that, changed " unto truth " to ^ to im- truth ; ' reading,
" Who having to untruth, by telling of it,*' Ac
not seeing the absurdity of asserting that a man made a sinner of his memory to untruth j by telling a lie.
In Love's Labour's Lost, Act V. Sc. 2, the Princess, learning from Boyet that visitors are approaching to lay open siege to their hearts, exclaims,
" Saint Dennis to Saint Cupid ! What are they That charge their breath against us ? Say, scout, Bay.**
Mr. Collier assures us " that ' to charge their breath ' is nonsense," and the MS. corrector of his folio changes the phrase to ^^ that charge the breach against us." And this, in the face of the very announcement to which the Prin- cess replies, and in which Boyet says, that
*' Love doth approach diflguis'd Armed in arguments : you'll be surpria'd. Muster your wits,** <&c.
What would have been the confusion of the old corrector, if the text had been " What are they that tiU their tongues against us?" instead of "charge their breath," which it might well have been. In that case he certainly would have changed it to " what are they that tilt with tongs against us? " — which is a fair type of the literal sort of •emendation with which Mr. Collier's folio furnishes us.
DiBBEOARD OF THE CONTEXT. 53
Mr. Collier says that " there is undeniable error in the subsequent lines at the end otScrope's speech in Henry /F., Part 2, Act IV. Sc. 1.
'* So that this land, like an offensiye wife That hath enrag'd him on to offer strokes, As he is striking, holds his infant up, And hangs resoWd correction in the arm That was uprear^d to execution."
"To whom," asks Mr. Collier, "does ^him' refer? Indis- putably to the husband," and he sustains his folio in read- ing the second line,
*That hath enragM her man to offer strokes."
But "him " refers to King Henry; as is evident from the context, in which Scrape distinctly points out the king's perplexity, which his simile of the "offensive wife " but il- lustrates :
" For full well he knows, lie cannot so precisely weed this land. As hid misdoubts present occasion : His foes are so enrooted with his friends, That, plucking to unfix an enemy, He doth unfasten so, and shake a friend, So that this land, like an offenflive wife. That hath enrag'd him on to offer strokes. As he is striking, holds his infant up," <&c.
In Act III. Scene 5, of Borneo and Juliet, Juliet hav- ing been informed by Lady Capulet of the projected mar- riage with Paris, refuses the match indignantly. The con- clusion of her speech, and her mother's reply, ai-e as fol- kws :
" I will not marry yet ; and when I do, I swear It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate. Rather than Paris : — These are news indeed ! Lady G. Here comes your father ; tell him fto yourself^** Ac
'54 Mb. Collier's Folio of 1632.
This passage^ Mr. Collier's folio changes, by giving Juliefs last exclamation to her mother, and omitting ^' I swear 1 " Thus :
" I will not marry yet; and when I d<^ It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, Rather than Paris.
Lady 0, These are news indeed !
Here comes yoar father ; tell him so yourself Ac."
The new arrangement is called "judicious" by Mr. Collier, who also justifies the omission of " I swear 1 " on the ground that the oath is " hardly consLstent with the de- licacy of her [Jviiet's] character, and certainly destructive to the measure." But both the MS. corrector and Mr. Collier forget that Lady CaptUet leads to the announce- ment of the projected marriage by promising Jvliet fjlea- sant news, about which the poor ignorant girl at once ex- presses curiosity. She has just affected such a hatred of Romeo as to profess to be willing to mix a poison for him, if some man could be found to give it to him : her mother replies :
** Find thou the means, and Fll find snch a man. But now /// tell thee joyful tidin^M, girl.
Jid, All joy comes well in such a needy time; Wfiat are tliey^ I beseech your ladyship f*
Lady Capidct, in reply, tells her of the negotiated mar- riage ; at which she at once expresses her disgust and sur- prise, and exclaims, as well she may, " These are news in- deed ! " She has learned her mother's "joyful tidings," as we say, ' with a vengeance.' The exclamation palpably belongs to lier ; and there is not the slightest pretext for giving it to lier mother. As to " I swear " being incon- sistent with the delicacy of JtUiet's character, Mr. Collier seems to have forgotten, that like most young ladies of her
Disregard of Context. 55
country and her time, she had a pretty free tongue of her own : that she calls her nurse ^^ a devil/' and Borneo^ in her contending emotions on the death of Tybalt ^ "a damned saint," and her nurse again, an " ancient damnation," sim- ply because that easy-going old person advises her to mar- ry the County Paris, Compared with these expressions, Juliet's " I swear," which was but a solemn asseveration, natural under the circumstances, is venial; especially when we consider how freely ladies talked in Shakespeare's day. Here, then, in a singlie passage we find displayed a neglect of the context, a want of appreciation of character as Shake- speare has portrayed it, and an ignorance or disregard of the manners of his time.
Much delight has been expressed by some persons, in- telligent people, too, at the substitution oi boast for "beast" in a speech of Lady Macbeth's. She says, as Macbeth ex- presses a fear to murder Duncan,
" What beast was't, then, That made you break this enterprise to me ? "
The MS. corrector makes this,
" What boast was't, then, That made you break this enterprise to me ? **
altogether forgetting that Macbeth had but just said,
*' I dare do all that may become a man. W^ho dares do more, U none"
and that Lady Macbeth, at once catching at his phrase, instantly replies, " what beast was't, then," [since it was unworthy of a man] '' that made you break this enter- prise to me ? " — and, besides, Macbeth had made no boast. Several other glaring instances, establishing the fiict that the corrections were made in entire ignorance or disregard
56 Mb. Coluer's Folio of 1632.
of the context, are indicated on my memoranda ; but these are sufficient ; and we muBt })ass on to consider a s^xicimen or two of the many clianges which show that a long time had elapsed between the writing of the plays, and the MS. alteration of the text. The tii*st I shall notice is a MS. stage direction in Act. IV. Sc. 3, where Biron has read his sonnet, and, seeing the king api)roaching with a paper, wishes to hide liimself. Mr. Collier says : —
" When at this juncture, Biron conceals himself the printed stage direction is only lie stands asule, but that is obliterated, and JJc gets him in a tree, h put in its place in manuscript. When, too, Biron interposes some remarks to him- self, it is added that he is in the trec,^'* &o.
It is strange that the historian of the English Stage did not see that these stage directions — ^for there are several such* — arc fatal to the pretence of his folio to "authority." Why was the printed direction only "5e stands a»ide^" in the second folio as well as in the first ? Because, when the j)lay was written and printetl, painted scenery, and above all, * practicable ' trees did not exist upon our stuge. When they represented the field of Agincourt, as in the Chorus to the fourth Act oi Heiiry K, Shakespeare himself tells us they did,
" With three or four most vile and ragijcd foils Right ill dispos'd in brawl ridiculou*,"
it was useless to direct a man to mount a tree. Scenery of that sort was not introduced until after the Restoration ; and the direction " in the tree,'' appended to Birtyii^s re- mark to liimself, shows tliat it was actually in use on the stage when these MS. alterations wei*e made.f
* For instance, in Much Ado About Nothitiff, Act II. Scene 8, where the stage direction in Mr. Collier's folio for Benedick, is, ** Retirtt behind the trees."
f I cannot if I would, reproduce all my authorities for minor and weU
Date op its Emendations. 57
In the second scene of the Induction to the Taming of the ShreWj Sly, insisting upon his tinkership, says,
** Aflk Marian Hocket, the fat alewife of Wincot, if she know me not : and if she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me op for the lyingest knare in Christendom."
This passage has presented a difficulty to all the Eng- lish editors of Shakespeare, which could never have occurred even to an American boy. The trouble is in the expres- sion " sheer ale." Hear Mr. CoUier :
'^ Malonc did not know what to make of ' sheer ale,' but sup- poeed that it meant sJiearing or reaping ale, for so reaping is called in Warwickshire. What does it mean ? It is spelt ikeere in the old copies, and that word begins one line, Warwick having undoubtedly dropt out at the end of the preceding line. The corrector of the folio 1632, inserted the missing word in manuscript, and made the last part of the sentence run —
' If she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for Wancickshire ale, Korc me up for the lyingest knave in Christendom.'
" Wincot, where Marian Hacket lived, is some miles from Stratford-upon-Avon. It was formerly not at all unusual to spell •shire ' sJieere ; and Sly's * sheer ale ' thus turns out to have been ^Varicickshire ale, which Shakespeare celebrated, and of which he had doubtless often partaken at Mrs. Hacket's."
To this, add Mr. Singer's perplexity. He says :
" * SJieer ale ' is altered to ^ Warwickshire ale,' an unwarrant- able license, and a very improbable name to have been given to S[f% liquor. Sheer ale was most likely, ale which the Tinker hiA drunk at his own charge on Sheer Tuesday, a day of great eomfort to the poor from the doles or distribution of clothes,
ettabliahed pointa. The reader who desires to examine the facts and do- enmenta which establish the time of the introduction of scenery upon the English Stage, will find them fully set forth in MaIone*s Ilistory of the English Stage, — ^in the Variorum Shakespeare, Vol iii., p. 79 to p. 109.
58 Mb. Collieb's Fouo of 1632.
meat, and driuk, made to them by the rich on that day. Bat should this conjecture be unfounded, we may perhaps satisfy ourselves that Slieer ale was the name of a pure and potent liquor, as we have stark beer for stout and strong beer, in Beau- mont and Fletcher.'
This, and many similar difficulties of the commentators, some of which are noticed in this volume, are only amusing to Americans, for whom the per|)lexities do not exist, because of the survival of good old English expi^ssions and customs with us, which seem to have died out in the mother country. Slifs "sheer ale," is simply *ale, alone' He, toper that he is, is on goodwife Hackefa score fourteen pence for nothing else but ale. In the north- ern part of the United States this use of the word has been common, from time immemorial. We say sheer ale, or sheer brandy, or sheer nonsense, or sheer any thing. We would say that in Falstaff'a famous tavern bill, his bread was but a halfpenny, while there were five shillings and eightpence for sheer sack. We use it in this way, and have so used it beyond the memory of the oldest living men ; just as we say sheer impudence, or sheer stupidity — a use of the word which can hardly have disappeared in England. The term implies exdiisiveness, mth^ generally^ a taint of reproach and ridicule. Thus, we would say that one man committed an act out of sheer selfishness, but that another's motive was pure benevolence.
Thus much for the benefit of English readers ; but the [)ertinence of these remarks just here, is that the inability of the MS. corrector to understand "sheer ale," shows that he must have read Shakespeare and made the correc- tions long after the printing of the second folio — 1632. For our English ancestors, who made the original settlements in the northern part of the United States, and who brought this use of the word with them, came over between 1620 and
Date of its Emendations. 59
1640 ; and the iDability of a man who would elaborately correct Shakespeare's text, to understand iS'/y'* " sheer ale," seems certainly to prove that his labors bear a date much posterior to the latter year. It should be remembered, too, that the folio of 1632, itself, presents variations irom the folio of 1623, made to adapt the text to a change of phrase which had taken place during the first thirty years of the seventeenth century, and that this use of "sheer" had, therefore, at the date of the second folio, not passed away in England. Mr. Collier hardly imagined that the survival in America of an old English idiom would utterly extinguish his complacently uttered conclusion, that ^^ this emendation, like many others, must have been obtain- ed £rom some better manuscript than that in the hands of the old printer," and bring down the date of the cor- rections in his folio twenty-five years at least ; that is, to the time of the Restoration.*^
In Henry VIIL, the Kingy addressing Woohey, says,
** You have scarce time To Bteal from spiritual leisure a brief span. To keep your earthly audit'*
The second line of this is altered by the corrector to, —
* When these remarks were written, I had read only the com- ments of Malone, and Messrs. Collier and Singer upon the passage ; and hATiog never met with 'sheer' in a modem English work, and not hav- ing had the advantage of a residence in England, I naturally, and I sub- mit, very justly, concluded that when such accomplished English scholam aa thoee whom I have named were completely befogged as to the very ob- vioQs meaning of the word in question, it was sufficiently proved that the word was not in use in England. But as these sheets are going through the preM, I have received a set of Notes and Queries for the present year ; and 1 find, firom a very able communication, signed Cecil Uarbottle (No. 184, pL 451), that 'sheer nonsense,' 'sheer buffoonery,' and 'sheer malice,' <bc., are i^rases of common use in England, as, indeed, I supposed they must be; and Mr. G. H., in words almost identical with mine, says that "Sly I to say that he was fourteen pence on the score for ale alone." This
kei it so much the worse for the MS. corrector and the commentators.
60 Mb. Collieb's Folio of 1632.
" To steal from spiritual labour a brief span,**
because, as Mr. Collier says, "if Woolsey enjoyed so much * spiritual leisure,' it would seem as if he might have time aUo for his eartlily audit." But the change cannot be re- ceived, as it proceeded from ignorance of an old use of the word " leisure." It was used to signify, not only relaxation from labor, but time devoted to any occupation : as is evi- dent from the following passage, which I accidentally met with since the publication of Mr. Collier's book, in reading Sir Thomas Chaloner's translation of Erasmus' Praise </ Folhj, published in 1549. FoUy speaks of the difference between those authors who are studious and carefnl, and those who devote their pens to her.
*^ Besides the hurte thei sosteyn in theyr bodies, decay of beautic, marryng of their eyesight, or also blindnesse, together with poucrtie, enuic, forbearing of pleasures, untimely age, hasted death, and such like disadvantages, which natheless these wise men sticko not at, so they inayc have theyr writinges allow- ed at one or two of these blereicd bokewormes handes. But my Scribes on the other side, have not a little more commoditic and pleasure of their folic. Whereas, taking no greats leysure in pcnnin^c of theyr mattierj naie, rather whatsoever toy lighteth in theyr head, or falleth in their thought, be it but theyr dreame, they do put the same straight in writing," &c. — The Praise nf Folic. 4 to., 1549. Sig. L ii.
Hero " leisure " is evidently used, but a generation be- fc»re Shakespeare, to mean the time devoted to labor. It is the same use of the word which is made in a passage in Chaucer's Tcde of Meliboeus, quoted by Richardson in his Dictionary.
" Wherefore we axen /eiser and space to have deliberation in this case to deem."
Here the opportunity, or leisure, asked, is not for relaza*
Date of its Emendations. 61
tion, but for the labor of deemiag, t. e., judging a case. It is plain that we must retain the original text. " Spiritual leisure '* is the time devoted to spiritual affairs.
The alterations which show that, before they were made, tastes and usages had undergone a great change, to which the corrector wished arbitrarily to conform the text of his author, are plentifully scattered through Mr. Collier's Tolume. Here are a few of them. First, upon a passage in the second scene of the Merchant of Venice.
" In order not to offend James I., the word * Scottish ' of Uie qaarto?, published more than two years before he came to the throne, was altered m the folio, 1623, to other ^ in Nerissa^s question, * what think you of the Scottish lord, his neighbour ? ' In the folio, 1632, the word other is struck through with a pen, and Irish placed in the margin, as if it had not been considered objectionable, in the time of the corrector, so to stigmatize Irish lords."
But Irishmen were not so stigmatized in England un- til ten years after the publication of the second folio, that is, nineteen years after the publication of the original text. The rebellion in Ireland broke out in 1641.
Again, remarking on a change in the last scene in Hamlet, Mr. Collier says,
" The lines put into the mouth of Horatio are these, as they stand in every edition, Hamlet having just expired : —
•Now cracks a noble heart — Good niglit, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rost.'
" However, it seems to have been tliought about the time the abbreviations were made, that the tragedy ought to end with a rhyming couplet, and wc may infer that the alteration we meet with in the folio, 1632, was made for the purpose :—
' Xow cracks a noble heart — Good night, be blest, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest' "
62 Mb. Collieb's Folio of 1632.
Rhyming couplets at the close of a play are common enough in the works of Shakespeare's contemporaries and immediate predecessors; but the idea that a play '^ ought to end with a rhyming couplet " came in with the French taste of the Restoration. Dryden's plays in verse invari- ably end thus ; and I cannot remember a poetical drama ])roduced by one of his contemporaries which does not bring up with a similar jingle ; which too^ is tacked to nearly all, if not all the prose comedies of that day.
A MS. stage direction in the first scene of Much Ado About Nothing^ gives Mr. Collier occasion to remark :
^* Another change in the same stage direction merits notice : it is that the word * Messenger ' is converted into Gentleman^ and the manner in which ho joins in the conversation shows, that he must have been a person superior in rank to what we now un- derstand by a messenger. Consistently with this notion, all the prefixes to what he says are altered from Mes, to Crent, In other dramas Shakespeare gives important parts to persons whom he only calls Messengers ; and it requires no proof that in the reign of Elizabeth the Messengers who conveyed news to the Court from abroad were frequently officers whose services were in part rewarded by this distinction. It was in this capacity thai Raleigh seems first to have attractfed the favour of the Queen.^'
This custom was not changed in England until long after the time of the Great Rebellion, as all &miliar with the literature and manners of the time, must remember : — another incontestable proof of the late date of the MS. corrector's work. To many such, might be added changes of phrase, and other like variations to suit a change of taste ; but these are enough to establish the point.
There are several instances in which Mr. Collier himself confesses tliat the MS. corrector made his changes simply be- cause HE did not understand the text. As, for instance, in the passage in Midsummer NigMs Dream, Act III. Sc. 2,
Its Evidbnt Doubts and Conjectures. 63
" Two loTely berries moulded on one Btera : So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart ; Two of the first, like coats in heraldry," Ac.,
lie wantonly changes the first line to^
" Two loving berries moulded on one stem :"
and, as Mr. Collier says,
'' The heraldic couplet which follows, is struck out by the Bune hand, probably because, like most other readers, he did not understand it.^^
Upon a passage in the Comedy of Errors^ Act II. Sc. 1, Mr. Collier says,
" It is worth while to mention that the line,
• I see the jewel best enamelled,'
ud the two next lines (the folio, 1G32, omits two others in the folio, 1623), are struck out, perhaps, as unintelligible to the man- uscript corrector J he having no means of setting the passage right:'
Three lines at one fell swoop ! Insatiate, would not one suflSce ! And this, too, merely because they were un- intelligible to him ; and after the second folio had already cut out two lines more from the original ! These are but specimens. And this is emending Shakespeare's text by " a higher authority " than that used by his first editors !
That the corrections were founded entirely upon ca- price or conjecture, is again evident from passages like the following, upon a line in King Richard II,, Act IV. Sc. 1, which are common in Mr. Collier's book :
" The folio, 1632, misprints the following line —
* Give sorrow leave a while to tutor me,* —
^ absurdly putting return for ' tutor.' This blunder is set
64 Mb. Collier's Fouo of 1632.
right by the old corrector ; but it seomB as if ^ hiul ptevioudy substituted some other word^ and had erased it. Such may have been the case in several other places where /te himself Hun- deredy
Again, upon a passage in King Richard 11,^ Act V, Sc. 5, Mr. Collier remarks, —
" On the next page, he struck out the whole of the passage in which the King resembles himself to a clock, which none of the commentators have been able to understand : the erasure be- gins at ^ For now hath time,' and ends at * Jack o' the clocL' It is to bo regretted that the old corrector could throw no light upon this obscure question : it deserves remark, however, that he struck out the word * watches,' as if it were certainly wrong ; but^ as if he did fiot know what ought to be substitute for ity he has written no corresponding word in the margin."
Some of the corrections which, from their plausibility and apparently easy solution of a great difficulty, have been urged as evidence that the MS. corrector worked, not upon conjecture, but authority, were, unfortunately for this con- clusion, made during the last hundred years, by some of the various commentators. Two striking instances will suf- fice as examples.
In the Merry Wives of Windsor j Act I. Sc. 3, Fed" staff says of Mrs, Ford,
"She carves, 8he gives theleer of inyitatioD."
This the MS. corrector changes to
"Slie cra^s, she gives the leer," Ac,
and the simplicity of this correction of a passage which has given learned commentators much trouble, is^ailed with a shout of exultation. The new reading cannot be admit- ted ; but it is not my purpose to explain here why it can- not, but merely to show that it required no " authority "
Its Important Chanqes are not New. 65
to make it, whether it be good or bad. It is one of the con- jectures of so foolish a fellow — ^we have seen how foolish — as Zacharj Jackson I who thus presented it more than thirty years ago.
" * FaUtaff, I spy entertainment in her ; she discourses, she caryes, she giTes the leer of invitation.'
" No doubt Mrs. Ford was an excellent carver^ perhaps equal to any in Windsor; and entertained her friends with choice yiands : but the entertainment to which Falstaflf alludes being that of loye, her adroitness in the art of carving is not absolutely necessary.
^' Falstaff has spied a certain craving in the eye of this mer- ry wife ; and as she has given him the leer of invitation^ he, in his lascivious humour, says, —
'She craven, she gives the leer of invitation.' "
The next instance brings in a mure important dispu- tant for the honors of emendation. In the Taming of the Shrew, Act I. Sc. 2, IVanio^ who hay arrived at Padua, with his master, who is to attend the University there, says in the original,
"Let's be no stoicks, nor no stocks I pray, Or BO devote to Aristotle's checks As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured."
Mr. Collier says, " our quotation is the same in all im- pressions, ancient and modern,*' and adds : —
" What are * Aristotle's checks ? ' Undoubtedly a misprint for Aristotle's ethics^ formely spelt cthicksy and hence the absurd blimder.
*0r so devote to Aristotle's ethickx '
is the line as it stands authoritatively corrected in the margin ofthe folio of 1632."
This plausible and ingenious correction, which I yet think
uncalled for and inadmissible, has been pointed out by others
5
66 Mb. Collier's Folio of 1632.
than Mr. Collier^ as conclusive evidence that the corrector must have had '^ authority." But it was made by no leas a personage than Blackstone, a hundred years ago, and ap- pears in the text of the Ghiswick edition. Mr. Collier was careless.
It may not be impertinent to notice here, that several of the most plausible new emendations in Mr. Collier's fo- lio, were suggested three years and more ago, by the pre- sent writer, who could not by any possibility have seen the MS. corrections. I will ouly instance ^^ Hebellions head " for " Rebellious head," in Act IV. Sc. 1, of Macbeth; " no more flights " for " no more sights," in the same scene of the same play ; and " Ne'er knows retiring ebb " for " Ne'er keeps retiring ebb," in OthellOj Act III. 8c. 3. These stand with several others, upon a copy of Shakespeare which I have collated with the text of the original folio, Steevens' reprint of the twenty quartos, and the comments of nearly all the commentators, — the noteworthy readings and my own conjectures being recorded in the margin. They, with the host of similar instances which appear in Mr. Col- lier's volume, prove conclusively, that no " authority " was necessary for the suggestion of such alterations in the text.
Though I have exhibited the various incapacity of Mr. Collier's MS. corrector, the late date of his labors, and his self-demonstrated want of any acknowledged au- thority upon which to base his corrections, only by the quotatitm of a comparatively few passages from Mr. Col- lier's book, I am yet able to speak of it as a whole, and in detail, from actual examination and re-examination, colla- tion and re-collation, of every change which it proposes in the received text of Shakespeare. Mr. Collier alludes to the number of those changes as " considerably more than one thousand." I can tell him exactly how many there are. Setting aside trivial stage directions, there are ^tr-
NuHBEB xsD Character of its Changes. 67
teen hundred and three niodificutious of the text of the second folio, proposed in Mr. Collier's '* Notes and Emen- dations/' based on the MS. correction in his copy of the foUo of 1632.
Of these thirteen hundred and three, I have found that at Ic^ast two hundred and forty-nine are old ; that is, are either restorations of the text of the original folio, adop- tions of readings from the old quartos, or identical with the conjectural emendations of editors and commentators during the last hundred and fifty years. I say ' at least ' that number, because, although my collation has been as thorough as circumstances would admit, it is more than probable that many cases of coincident reading have es- caped me.
Of these two hundred and forty-nine old readings, twenty-nine have long ago been rejected by common con- sent, as unworthy of the least attention ; forty-seven are rejected from the text, but have a certain plausibility ; and one hundred and aeventy-three are foimd in the received text.
The proposed modifications in the received text, which are peculiar to Mr. Collier's folio, are one thousand and fifty-four in number ; of which, judging upon the princi- ples which my readers can see, from the previous portion of this review, have governed me, eight hundred and tighteeUj or over eight tenths — ^an overwhelming majority — are to be utterly rejected, as unworthy of the least atten- tion, and the fruits only of blind ignorance, patient dulness, and wanton presumption.
Of the remaining two hundred and thirty-six, now pro- posed for the first time, at least one hundred and nineteen are inadmissible, though not unworthy of notice ; leaving onlyowe Atmrfrerf and seventeen^ which seem to be plausible corrections, if, indeed, the passages to which they apply need
68 Mr. Collier's Folio of 1632.
correction. I again say, ' seem to be/ for this number must inevitably be much reduced upon the discussion of the merits of the readings among the best Shakesperian critic& We have, then, in Mr. Collier's book : —
Old readings, unworthy attention, 29
" " inadmissible, bat plausible, . * 47 " " already received, 178
249
New readings, unworthy attention, SIS
*' " inadmiBsible, but not unworthy of attention, 119 plausible. 117
lOM
1808
Inadmissible old readings, 29 -f- 47 . . . .76 new " 818 + 119 987
Total of palpably inadmissible readings . . 1018
We reach, then, this conclusion, that Mr. Collier has put forth under the sanction of his name, a volume, as the " Plays of William Shakespeare," which contains at least one thousand and thirteen inadmissible alterations from the original text ! ! ! Is it not dealing gently with the editor, to speak of such a proceeding, only as insufferable and in- excusable presumption ? — ^presumption which is not in, the least atoned for, not even palliated, by the fact that the same volume contains a few corrections which present claims, yet to be discussed, to a place in the received text.
If it be asked why these few are to be (possibly) re- ceived, while more than one thousand and thirteen are to be positively rejected, and how those few which may be ad- missible, were made by the man who made the one thou- sand and thirteen which are inadmissible, — ^I reply, that such of the few as are to be received, will be received en- tirely upon their own merits, as arbitrary conjectural emen-
The Work of Vabioub Hands. 69
dations of passages which are evidently misprinted in the original, and also that they were made by the happy conjec- tures of severed correctors. For we have seen that at least two hundred and forty-nine of the MS. corrector's changes are not derived from any source peculiarly his own, and that a lai^ number of these have been made by Shake- speare's various editors and commentators, — some of them even more wrongheaded than the folio guesser himself; which incontestably proves that no authority was necessary to the making of these corrections, and, as a corollary to that conclusion, not to the making of the others.
That the emendations were the work of more than one hand, will, I think, be plain to any one accustomed to read old manuscript, or any manuscript in fact, upon an exam- ination of the very fac-simile page, which Mr. Collier, with the openness which has marked his conduct of the whole of this matter, published with his " Notes and Emen- dations." Upon a comparison of the manuscript line,
**So, rushing in the bowels of the French,**
about one-third down the page, with " briefly," " e," and "now," about two-thirds down, and " same " at the top of tie page, it will be seen that the former is of an older date than the four latter, which are not only more modem, but bear the marks of a bolder, heavier hand. In the former, the formation of the letters is plainly upon a different, and as plainly, more ancient model, than that traceable in the latter ; and the one has a painstaking, though uncertain air, while the other show^ a rapid and bold, though clear and decided hand. The oldest of these hands is nat more antique in appearance than much manuscript which I have Been, dated during tlie thud and last quarters of the seven- teenth century : and the most modem seems not too old to have been written in the second quarter of the eighteenth.
70 Mr. Collier's Folio of 1632.
The conclusion that the MS. corrections are the work of more than one hand, is strongly fortified by the fact, which has an important bearing on the whole question, that during the latter half of the seventeenth century and the first years of the eighteenth, the manuscript correction of folios seems not to have been uncommon. This was natu- ral enough ; for readers of Shakespeare could not but see the numberless typographical errors which deformed the early editions ; and some would naturally be tempted to cor- rect them, and to make the text conform to the representa- tions upon the stage of their own day, by cutting it down, adding stage directions, &c. Accordingly we find it re- corded in Wilson's Shaksperianay published in 1827, that at the sale of the Hbrary of a Mr. Dent, who was a devoted col- lector of books upon our early literature, and which took place in the early part of this century, a corrected folio of this kind was sold for a large price. It is thus described :
"Third Edition, folio. 1663.
" Mr. Dent's cop^^ sold for 65/. 2t. It contained many manuscript emen- datioDB, chiefly in an ancient hand, coeval with the date of the edition. The annotations in question were, in many respects, curious and important, consisting of stage directions^ alterations in the punctuation, Ac" — Wil- son's Sftakegperiana^ p. 68.
The description of this folio, which, in its MS. " stcige directions, alterations in the punctuation, &c.," so much resembles Mr. Collier's, might have applied to that iden- tical volume, except that Mr. Dent's copy was not the second but the third folio. But it should be remarked that the emendations in this had. certainly been made by men of different generations, for they were not altogether, but " chiefly, in an ancient hand." Where is Mr. Dent's copy ? ^ It may contain a few valuable hints ; and it
♦ Mr. Dent's folio is in the possession of Mr. Halliwell, as I have learned by a note from that gentleman, received while this volume is going thitnigli
SiHiLAB Folios : This not Fabricated. 71
certainly has equal claims to attention with Mr. Collier's. Mr. Singer, the editor of the Chiswick edition, has also one of these corrected folios, and knows of others. As the sec- ond, third and fourth folios, and even the first, became so worthless for ordinary use after the labors of Eowe and Theobald, it is a wonder that so many which contained MS. corrections, survived to the beginning of this century, when the rage for Shaksperiana came in to preserve them.
I must be permitted to expresss my regret at the in- cessant insinuations made by Mr. Singer in his '^ Text of Shakespeare Vindicated," &c., that Mr. CoUier's folio is a &brication in which the possessor is implicated. Mr. Col- lier's previous service in the cause of Shakesperian litera- ture should have protected him against so needless, and therefore unjustifiable, an accusation. Without a doubt Mr. Collier believes in the antiquity as well as the value of the emendations in his folio ; and that some of them are about a hundred and seventy-five years old, there can be no question. The many coincidences with the conjectures of editors of the seventeenth century, are, doubtless, the re- sult of the fortunes of the volume, which threw it into the hands of two or three emenders of that period, as we have seen was the case with Mr. Dent's.
My course in treating this important question, — the most important which has arisen in the history of Shake- sperian literature, — ^has been, not to examine the propos- ed emendations in detail, but to classify the changes in Mr. Collier's folio, and draw conclusions from the nimiber and diverse character of those classes. The former course, — the easier, — would merely have made public the coincidence
the presfi, and written in answer to the above query, which was put iu the paper on the Text of Shakespeare in PtUnwrCt Magazine for Octobei*, 1853. Mr. Halliwell is collating Mr. Dent's copy and some others, coutainingr timilar annotations, for his superb folio edition ; but, he says that he finds them to be of little critical value.
72 Mr. Collier's Folio of 1632.
or difference of opinion between individuals : the latter, starting from recorded facts, and attaining its end by de- ductions inevitable from those facts, decides the question with the ix)wer8 of both authority and reason.
Let us now briefly recapitulate the conclusions to which we (reader and author) have, I trust, arrived.
We have seen that the text of Shakespeare suffered sorely at the outset from its first printers, and that their errors have been the occasion of its undeigoing quite as much from the presumption and incapacity of his editors and critics ; and that, to use the phrase of his player friends, " from the most able to him that could but spell," all his editors, critics and commentators, with two or three excep- tions, have wantonly, impertinently, and ignorantly mutilat- ed his works. We have seen that great abilities have not preserved his editors and critics from the worst and most ridiculous errors ; for the narrow pedagogism of Seymour, the blatant stuj)idity of Bccket, and the complacent feeble- mindedness of Jackson, did not seek to commit more in- sufferable outrages upon the text, than were for a time ac- tually effected by the conceited wantonness of Pope,* the
* The justice of applying this epithet to Pope, as an editor, will not be denied by any one familiar with Shakesperian literature. The following jewel of annotation from the Variorum edition, and another from Pope's own edition, will amuse the general reader, and satisfy him as to the char- acter of Popc*s editorial labors. The first is upon that passage in the mas- querade scene of Jiotneo an<l Juliet in which old Capulet welcomes his guests, and says,
" Qentlemen, welcome I ladles that have their toes Unplagaed with ooms will have a bout with yon.**
" — ^TheirTOES — ] Thus all the ancient copies. The modem editors, following Mr. Pope, read, with more delicacy — their feet. An editor, by such capricious alterations, deprives the reader of the means of judging of the manners of different ages : for the word employed in the text undoubt- edly did not appear indelicate to the audience of Shakespeare's time, tboogh perhaps it would not be endured at this day.**
This strange mixture of common sense and preposterous, indelieate
Recapitulation. 73
tnogance of Warburton, the solemn inflexibility of John- ton, and the sniatkness and mechanical ear of Steevens.
With regard to Mr. Collier's corrected folio, it has plainly appeared, from its own pages, and from the records ofShakesperian literature —
That it possesses in itself no authority :
That, consequently, its proposed emendations must de- pend for acceptance entirely upon their intrinsic worth :
That the corrector did not feel the Poetry of Shake- ipeare:
That he did not take his Wit :
That he violated the Dramatic Propriety which Shake- speare obsenred :
That his corrections were made in disregard of the con- text:
That they were not made until after the Kestoration, when Shakespeare's contemporaries had passed away, and emendation must have been conjectural :
That the corrector disregarded the tastes and customs "t Shakespeare's day, and sought to make Shakespeare's text conform to the taste and customs of his own day :
That he made changes in the text merely because he Jid not understand it :
That he blundered in making his corrections, and was
••IQeamiriiBCfli^ is from the pen of Malonc. Steevons follows him ; and riTrij quotes from Comut to show that the hiirinlesd word which meuiiH -V finder* of the feet "was endured, at least, in the time of Milton."
hi the same pl^y, Aet IIL Se. 4, Pope has this note. "Some few un- s«e«*sarT rerses are omitted in this seene, according to the oldest edition?." Fop »*Uui seene," we may read 'the whole play;' for Mr. Pope (he was tifn only Mr. Pope) took the liberty of rejecting juift what he pleased of d^ additions which Shakespeare made to his first draught of this chnrming ^i^zcdT. Ample justification for the application of far more sweeping <<nu of eosdemnation to the editorial labors of Pope, Johnson and their <<v&p««<>r% will be found profusely scattered through the remainder of this
74 Mr. Collier's Folio of 1632.
obliged to erase them, and substitute others ; which couU not have been the case if he had had ^^ authority : "
That tlie corrections which would seem most conclusively to show that he had authority, have been effected by the mere conjectures of others, and some of them by persons <£ very slender abilities :
That of one thousand one hundred and three proposed changes in the text of the folio of 1632, at least one thou- sand and thiHeen are erUirdy inadmissible into the original text ; and that of the remainder, one hundred and seventy- three are already a part of the received text, leaving one hundred and seventeen, a lUUe more than one-twelfth of the entire number, from which future editors may carefully select emendations :
That it is highly probable, to say the least, that cor- rectors of two or three generations labored upon this vol- ume :
That there are other existing folios, similar in every re- spect to this, and entitled to no less deference, — ^that is, to none :
And, finally, that this folio is filled with errors of all the various kinds committed by editors and commentators, of every grade of capacity and incapacity, during the last hundred and fifty years ; and that it contains a large num- ber of tlie specific mutilations perpetrated by them, and adds to those more than have heretofore been attempted by all the mutilators of the text combined.
The conclusions forced upon us by this stubborn array, attach, not only to individual changes in Mr. Collier's folio, but to the whole of the manuscript corrections, as &r as their pretence to authority, or to any other consideration than that due to their intrinsic excellence is concerned ; — and those conclusions are, that the volume which contains them is utterly worthless as an authority, and that at least eleven
CONDEMNKD BT ShAKESPEBIAN ScHOLABS. 75
twelfths of them are not entitled to the slightest considera- tion, even as conjectures.
After being compeUed to such conclusions, it is difficult to understand how Mr. Collier could have been blind to the incontestable facts which estabUsh them. The MS. cor- rections of this folio, warmly welcomed every where at first, are now, with a few exceptions, condemned by Knight, HoUi- well,and Singer, the principal editors of Shakespeare, and by the Bev. Alexander Dyce, the distinguished dramatic scholar and critic, who has not yet edited Shakespeare, and has therefore no pet text to defend. Dr. Deliiis, too, the emi- nent German critic, — and to attain eminence as a critic of Shakespeare in Germany, implies, perhaps, a profounder Bcholarship and keener insight than to reach the same posi- tion in England, — Dr. Delius admits but seventeen emenda- tions out of the whole thirteen hundred and three. Such a change in all quarters, from welcoming expectation to a soomfui rejection of almost the entire labors of the corrector, and which, it must be remembered, has been worked by the tmendatums themselveSy shows how utterly they are at vari- ance with the spirit which Shakesperian scholars have im- bibed from the works of their great master ; and how in- consiBtent they are with the language, customs, and tone of thought of Shakespeare's day, with which the students of his works must needs make themselves familiar. In en- deavoring to account for the singular fatuity which led Mr. Collier to embody them ruthlessly in a text which he calls "The Plays of Shakespeare," it is both just and charitable to conclude that, intoxicated with the delight which he would naturally feel at making a discovery which seemed at first to promise so much for the cause to which he has devoted not a little of his life, he looked only at its bright- est points, and saw those double ; and that we may safely expect to be able ere long, to appeal from Collier drunk
76 Mb. Colueb'b Folio of 1632.
with anticipated good fortune, to Collier sobered with re- flection upon almost unmitigated disappointment.
It is worth while to devote a portion of this review to the consideration of a few readings of Mr. Colliei^s folio which form a class by themselves. These are the entire lines which, in five or six places, are inserted to supply a lacking rhyme or complete a deficient sense. These can- not in any instance be received, no matter how great the deficiency which they attempt to make up, or how remaik- able their intrinsic merits ; — and for this very conclusive and obvious reason. — They are not emendations of typo- graphical errors, not the correction of that which is ill done, but the doing of that which was left undone. If theito were evidence that they came from Shakespeare himself^ they would be necessarily received, no matter how poor they were ; that evidence not existing, they must be re- rejected, no matter how good or apt they are. They could l)e received only upon unquestionable authority ; for they have no other basis on which to stand, not even the sup- port of an erroneous text. They are ^ made out of whole cloth.' As far as their authority is concerned, we know that they could not possibly have been supplied until sixteen years after Shakespeare's death ; for the edition on the mar- gins of a copy of which they are written was not published until 1632, and he died in 1616 ; and, besides, we have plainly seen that some of the corrections coiUd not pos- sibly have been made before 1662, when Davenant intro- duced the first scenery ever exhibited upon a public stage in England. Now, the interpolation of an entire line by one man in 1662, is as little justifiable as the interpolation of an entire scene by another man in 1762 or 1853. There is the same lack of authority for each. The addition is worth just as much in one case as in the other.
It must also be noted that, as these lines, if received at
Its Substituted Rhymes and Added Lines. 77
bH, must be received upon authority, if we admit one, we must admit alL To do otherwise would be to sit in judg- ment upon Shakespeare's right to write his own plays as he {leased. We must therefore receive into the text the fol- lowing line which is printed in italic letter, if we receive any which are similarly inserted in Mr. Comer's folio :
•• Q, Marfforet, — Give up your staflF, Sir, and the King his realm. OioMier. — My staff f — ^here, noble Henry, is my staff: To think I fain toould keep it makes me laugh."
What must be the capacity of a man to understand, much raore, to emend Shakespeare's text, who could i)er- pe(rate such a ridiculous abomination as this, merely for the purpose of supplying a rhyme? — for it must be remark- ed that the sense is perfect and clear without it. Wlio will not be grateful that there is no authority which compels us to receive such a platitude as ShakesiDcare's? — and if not this, then no other Une ; for all not furnished us " by authentic copies, printed or manuscript," must be regarded as interpolation. If a line be wanting in the text, the hia- tus must remain until it is filled up by these " authentic copies."
These remarks apply, with equal force, to the arbitrary diianges of a word or more at the end of a line, for the pur- poses of rhyme. As for instance :
"Bid him farewell ; commit him to the grave ; Do him that kindness, and take leave of liim."
For this the MS. corrector audaciously substitutes,
"Bid him farewell ; commit him to the grave ; Do him tliat kindness — all that he can have."^
That is, he takes out five words from the original text, and labstitutes for them five others, changing the construction of the sentence to admit them, in order that two lines may
78 Mb. Collier's Folio of 1632.
rhyme ! To consider gravely such mangling of the text, is to waste words and patience. And, as before, what applies to one instance, applies to all others of the same nature. We cannot permit any man to mutilate Shakespeare's text, even to better it, — ^in the estimation of himself or a thousand like him.
With two exceptions, then, all these lines and rhyming terminations of lines must be regarded as unwarrantable interpolations. These two exceptions occur in AW a Well that Ends Well, Act I. Sc. 3, and in King Henry F., Act III. Sc. 2. In the first instance the Cloum sings a fxag- ment of an old ballad which is thus mutilated in the orig- inal text : — the extract will give the reader an idea of the careless and make-shift manner in which the first folio printed:
" Was this faire face the cause, quoth she, Why the Grecians sacked Troy Fond done, done, fond was this king PrianCt joy With that she sighed as she stood, hi$ And gave this sentence then, among nine bad if one be good, nine bad if one be good, there's yet one good in ten."
This Mr. Collier's folio corrects, by making a transjxmtifm in the first line and an addition to the second, so that the first stanza, when properly divided into lines, reads as fid- lows :
*' Was this fair face,9uo^A nhe, the eaiue Why the Grecians sacked Treyf Fond done, done fond, good tooth it loot. Was this King Priam*s joy."
This emendation is to be received solely because of the fitct that the text is evidently but a quotation of a popular jing- ling song which had survived to the time of the MS. cor- rector. The corrector's authority for it was the same as
BXSTOBATION OF POPULAB BhYMES. 79
Shakespeare's, — that is, its existence in the motUhs of the people. Thus, if the following version of some well-faiown historical lines were found in Shakespeare, it would evidently need emendation :
''Old King Cole Was a merry old soul ; And a merry old soul he vai. He caird for his pipe, And he called for his fiddlers three.**
la sach a case there could not be the slightest hesitation in printing the third line,
"And a merry old soul was he,**
or in inserting,
"And he call'd for his bowl,"
as the fifth line ; because the rhyme is one of indefinable origin and antiquity, which has not yet died out of the pop- ular ear ; and our authority for it would be the same that Shakespeare's would, in that case, have been. The other instance is in the restoration of " To all and some " and "/erf the same " to an old song which Pistol spouts, in King Henry V. These are to be received for the reasons which we have just alleged. Nevertheless, in both instan- ces, the restored line and words should be printed within brackets, to show that they are restorations : so zealously should the text of Shakespeare be guarded even in its least important parts.
The publication of Mr. Collier's " Notes and Emenda- tions," and especially of his recently issued "Plays of Siakespeare," so called, gave rise to serious apprehension for the present integrity, at least, of the text of those works which are the pride of our race, and our tongue. But the common sense of the world bids fair to disappoint such
I
80 Mr. Collier's Folio of 1632.
fears. The very few admiBsible readings in these volumes will be received, and the mass of them will be, — are, already rejected. In Shakespeare's own words, " out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety." If, out of the whole thirteen hundred proposed changes, but thirteen prove to be admissible corrections of passages in the oiiginal text, which need correction, the discovery and the discussion con- sequent upon it will not have been in vain. To restore a, single passage in Shakespeare's text rewards much critical toil. He who discovers the needful word for the misprint " runawayes eyes," in the second scene of the third act of Roineo and JiUtet, will secure the honorable mention of his name as long as tlie English language is read and spoken.
The most imiM)rtant lesson to be derived from our pre- vious glance at the history of Shakespeare's text and the ex- amination of Mr. Collier's foUo which we have just finished, is not confined to the merits of the latter. Does it not teach us, conclusively, that the only source of any atUhor- iiy for the text of Shakes[)eare is in the original foUo, which was published in 1623 by his friends, fellow-actorB, and business partnera : that when that text is utterly in- conipreliensible from the typographical errors which deform it, and then only, we should seek emendations : that those emendations should be first looked for in the quartos, because they were contemporaneous with Shakesjieare, al- though surreptitiously imblished, or, at least entirely neg- lected by him : that only such corrupted passages as the quartos do not make clear are proper subjects for the exer- cise of conjecture ; and that such of these as conjecture does not amend, in a manner at once consistent with the context, with common sense, and with the language and customs of Shakespeare's day, should be allowed to stand un- touched ; because the experience of a century and a hall' lias taught us that when the original text seems incompre-
Attthobity and Conjeotube.
81
henable, the difficulty may possibly be with ourselves ; but, chiefly, because it is better to have iu the works of Shakespeare au obscure text which may he Shakespeare's, than one which is clear, but with the light of another mind than his ?
6
NOTES AND COMMENTS.
NOTES AND COMMENTS.
■pedant What menlng hath your yronhjp ? JSyr John. What I sale :
Nor lease, nor more.
The FyM Mafi'9 IW^-^IA MS.
''And if bj channee thoo light of aome speache that seemeth dark, consider of it with judgment, before thou condemne the worke : for in many places be is driven both to praise aid blame with one breatti, which in readloge wil soeme bard, and in action appeare plaine.* Promo9 S CasMftdra. [Tho Printer to the Reader.
VTOT what Shakespeare might, could, would, or should -Li have written, but what, according to the best e\ddence, he did write, is the only admissible or defensible object of the labors of his editors and verbal critics. Obviously true as this is, its binding force has been regarded by but a very few of the many who have undertaken the supervision or cor- rection of Shakespeare's text. They have not simply sought the word, the expression, or the line which the authentic copy gives in this or that passage; but each has undertaken to decide what it should be, by exercising his o^vn taste in choosing from the text of the various ancient copies which accident or fraud gave to the world, or by substituting that which, in his judgment, the poet should have written.
With the labors of such critics I have no sympathy ; for such labors I can imagine no excuse. To me they are folly, presumption, desecration, — ^Uterary crimes which should be remorselessly denounced, let them be peri)etrated by whom they may. During the patient study of years, I have day by day become more and more convinced that the au- thentic text of Shakespeare cannot be held in too great
86 Notes and Comments.
veneration or modified with too great caution* A passage there may seem obscure through a thousand painful peru- sals, and yet upon the next, a meaning may flash upon us so apposite, so brilliant, as to mingle with the pleasure of discovery some shame at the perversity which delayed the enjo}Tnent, and the presumption which proposed a feeble substitute in place of it.
*'Let no man," said Schlegel, "lay hand on Shake- speare's works to change any thing essential in them ; he will be sure to punish himself" Yes, let no man do it, whatever his learning or his ability. How different the opinion of the literary celebrities of the past age was from that of Schlegel, the following pages will bear evidence; and that the expo- sures which they make are not superfluous, may be justly concluded from the fact that the London Quarterly Review but recently expressed the opinion that Dr. Johnson's notes commanded the deference of his readers, and that a com- petent editor would be contented with reproducing them in their integrity ! Such an assertion, by a sane man, can only be accounted for on the supposition that he had either not read Shakespeare, or had not seen Johnson's notes. The ' great moralist,' however, is among the best of a class under the infliction of whose treatment Shakespeare's text is still suffering, and on account of the perverse and unsympathiz- ing nature of whose criticisms even his wondrous creations arc still misapprehended or partially comprehended by a great number of his readers. Wliat a fine thing would it be for Shakespeare and the public if, with the exception of such coi)ies as are necessary for public libraries and the critical students of the text, all the editions issued during the two hundred yeai-s subsequent to the publication of the first folio, ct)uld be piled in one great heap and set on fire ! Round such a jivre the true lovers of Shakespeare might dance and sing with joy.
Defence of Shakespeabe. 87
In the subsequent Notes and Comments^ most of which were written merely as a part of the author's Shakesperian studies, and with no thought of publication, or in the course of daily criticism in the various departments of Art, it will be observed that his constant aim has been to preserve — at first for himself and now for his readers — ^the simple and obvious signification of the authentic text. Beckless and remorse- less have been the inroads upon that text, under the sanction of great names; and so disastrous are the consequences of these ravages, that it cannot be too often asserted that the only guaranty for the integrity of those works which are the glory of our race and of the world, consists in the preservation of the words of the only authentic edition, when those words are understood by minds of ordinary in- telligence, or supported by comparison with the language and manners of the author's day, or those of the immediately antecedent age. And not only so, — ^the learned and ingen- ious distortions and perversions of the signification of those words, which have been handed down for the last two or three generations, must be set at naught and utterly con- temned,— ^in fact, forgotten, before the bright, broad, genial, all-penetrating hght of Shakespeare's thought can reach the general mind in undinmied purity and splendor. Upon the Dramatist of all time even more than upon the father of the Epic, has the ambitious desire of his commentators to see more than he saw, and understand more than he meant, inflicted that wrong which Kabelais thus satirizes with pitiless and truthful pen in the Prologue to his " Pleas- ant and Joyous History."
" Croyez vous en vostre foy, qu'oncques Homere escripuant lllyade, & Odyssee pensast 6s allegories lesquelles dc luy ont belni^ Platarche, Heraclides Ponticque, Eustatie, & Phornute : & ce que dUceulx Politian d desrpbe ? Si le croyez, vous n*a- proches ne de pieds, ny de mains d mon opinion, qui decrcte icellcs
88 Notes and Comments.
aussi pea auoir e8t6 Bong6e8 d^Homere, que d'Oaide en sea Me- tamorphoses les sacrements do PEuangile, lesqueU yng frere Lnbin. vray croquelardon, s^est cfforce de monstrer, si d'adaentare ii ren- controit gens aassi fols qae luy, &> (comme diet le proaerbe) ooa- ucrcle digiic da chaudron.''
Well may it be said, that if we listen to the learned folly of these notemongers we will approach Shakespeare's meaning " ni de pieds, ni de mains." They, like the Homerian com- mentators, put that into his mouth which was as far from his intent as "?€« Sacrements de VEvangiUj' from the Metamorphoses of Ovid.
With regard to conjectural or arbitrary emendations, there is safety only in adhering to the decision of the generally judicious Malone, that all are arbitrary which lire " made at the will and pleasure of the conjecturer, and without any authority," and that all readings " not authorized by authentic copies, printed or manuscript, stand on the same footing, and are to be judged of by their reasonableness or probability." The soundness of this posi- tion is self-evident ; but the previous pages have estab- lished it by an examination of the history of Shakespeare's text from its first publication to the present day.
As to the MS. corrections in Mr. Collier's copy of the second fijlio, an overwhelming weight of internal evidence has compelled the conclusion that they have no pretension to greater deference than that which is due to mere conjeo- ture, and were made not earlier than about 1670, at which time speculative emendation could have no advantages which it does not possess at the present day, except in the .pos- sible survival of a few modes of expression which have since become obsolete ; and even this the MS. corrections, by the numerous evidences which they furnish, that the maker or makers of them did not imderstand phrases and words which are perfectly understood by English scholars of the present
Mr. Collieb'8 Folio of 1632. 89
day, prove to have been no advantage at all. But although these MS. corrections have no semblance of authority, and at least one thousand and thirteen, out of the one thousand three hundred and three, are unworthy of a moment's further consideration, because in the words of Mr. Dyce they are " ignorant, tasteless and wanton ; " * and although, as a highly accomplished and judicious critic has beautifully and justly remarked, " they almost invariably take the fire out of the poetry, the fine tis- sae out of the thought, the ancient aroma and flavor out of the language ; " f still, as I have before observed, the ^scovery of this corrected folio will prove to be of some ser- vice to the text of Shakespeare. Nevertheless, even its most plaosible corrections are to receive only the consideration due to them as arbitrary and conjectural, and must be "judged of by their reasonableness and probability." With the thousand and thirteen, new and old, before mentioned, we have of course nothing further to do. Of the remaining two hundred and ninety, one hundred and seventy-three bave been a part of the received text for more than a quarter of a century ; and these obviously present no claims for pre- sent examination. But in the one hundred and seventeen Btill undisposed of, there are a very few which assert at once Ml unquestionable claim to be received into the text, and some which are at least worthy of careful consideration before they are rejected. In the course of the following pages I Aall examine the inherent merits of the more important rfthe latter number — ^the one hundred and seventeen.
• A Few Notes, Ac. — Preface.
f Christian Examiner, Nov. 1853, p. 456.
TEMPEST. Act I. Scene 1.
**AnL Where is the master, Boson."
Although the authentic folio makes Antonio very plainly say " Boson/' and the King of Naples, just as plainly, " Boatswain" — in the original, " Boteswaine " — ^for which '^ Boson " could not have been a misprint, all the modem editors, with the exception of Mr. Knight, have altered this characteristic contraction to Boaiswain. Antonio is a man of coarse and flippant manners; and he was made by Shake- speare to adopt the cant of the forecastle as an indication of his character. ' This design is frustrated by the use of the correct form of the word. The editors might as well have mended the English of Dogberry or Sir Hugh Evctns. Mr. Dyce, in support of the reading Boatswain^ says that the word was printed " Boson" merely in conseqaenoe of " the unsettled state of our early orthography/' and quotes passages fix)m Taylor in which it is spelled in three ways, and once, * Boson.' But this, in my opinion, cannot be permitted to set aside the peculiar fitness of the word in the original to the character of Antonio, If it stood the other way, — ^if in the first folio Alonzo said * boson/ and Antonio ^ boatswain,' Mr. Dyce's argument would justify a change in the first instance ; because then there would
Tempest. 91
be an obvious incongruity which now does not exist. Be- sideS; it should be remembered that Taylor, who furnishes Mr. Dyce with the spelling, 'Boson,' had been a sailor, and says, as Mr. Dyce himself quotes,
" Seven times at sea I served EHizabeth." " [A confused noise imMt'n.] Mercy on us 1 we split," <fec
These exclamations are evidently a part of the confused noise within, as Johnson suggested. They are entirely foreign to the character of GonzcdOy who, besides, had nei- ther wife, children, nor brother that we hear of. But as the words were not sufficiently separated fix>m his speech in the original folio, they have been hitherto attributed to him, except by Johnson and Mr. Knight. Mr. Collier actually breaks up this " confused noise" into heroic lines !
Scene 2.
"Prosp. Who having unto truth, by telling of it, Made such a sinner of his memory To credit his own lie."
The construction of this sentence is a little involved, and so the MS. corrector of Collier's folio of 1632 changes the words " unto truth " in the first line, to to untruth. But this will never do. How can a man make a sinner of Ms memory to witruth by telling a lie ? The correction achieves nothing but nonsense. The plain construction of the passage, as the original gives it, is, ^ Who, having Diade such a sinner of his memory imto truth, to credit his own lie by telling of it ; ' which gives us a portrait of a kind of liar that is not uncommon.
"PrtMp. Go make thyself like a nymph o' the sea."
Thus, again, the original folio, which Mr. Collier's folio,
92 Notes and Comments.
with superfluous barbarity changes to, " Qo make thyself a like nymph o' the sea."
ArieFs Scmg.
"Hark, hark I
^010 wowgh [Burthen dispenedly
The watch dogs bark.
Bow wowgh. Hark, hark ! I hear The strain of strutting obaniielere.
Cry cock-ft-didle-dowe."
The last line is thus plainly printed in the original folio ; but it has been arbitrarily changed into oock-^- doodic'doo by all modem editors. The last could scaroely have been mistaken for the first ; and the first rhymes with the " bow-wow " of the burden. This is a small matter ; but I notice it because various liberties have been taken, fix)m time to time, with the text of this fanciful song. It should be given just as it stands in the original, by varying firom which nothing has been gained ; but the contrary.
" Ferd, Mj prime request^
Which I do last pronounce, is, O you wonder I If you be maid, or not
i/iVo. No wonder. Sir ;
But, certainly, a maid."
It would seem impossible to misunderstand this pas- sage, or perhaps it is better to say, to understand it in more than one sense. Ferdinand, struck with Miranda's won- drous beauty, asks her, as the question in which he is most interested, and just as he would have asked her in any other place if he had no other means of obtaining the mo- mentous information, ^ tell me, you wonderful creature, are you maid or wife ?' and she replies, with proper mo- desty, that, though she has no claims to be considered
TxMPSST. 93
^' a wonder/' she is certainly ^^ a maid/' But instead of this simple and obvious signification^ we have diveis &r-fetched constructions of the passage thrust upon us by various commentators ; some supposing that Ferdinand means to ask Miranda if she were made or no (such a reading has even been introduced into the text), and that Miranda re- plies that she is " not a celestial being, but a maiden." But if she were a celestial being on earth, she certainly ▼ould be " a wonder f and her answer is : —
"No wonder. Sir; ^M^ certainly, a maid."
Why fhoold we seek out ^^ fond and winnowed opinions," wben there is a plain and palpable signification before us ?
Act II. Scene 1.
** Oxmz. How lush and lusty the grass looks I how green I "
Much doubt exists about the meaning of the word "Inah." Knight quotes Henry, as giving it the significa- tion of *rank,' and Malone, as suggesting that of 'juicy;' ^ adds that '^ we have still the low word, lushy, as applied to a dnmkard." May not " lush " be a corruption of lus- cious ? In Phillips' New World of Words ^ luscious ' is spelled lush-ious.
"Gonz. r the commonwealth, I would by contraries Execute all things. For no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate. Letters should not be known ; richesi poverty, And u»e of service none ; " <&c.
This speech of Gonzaio'a is but a poetical paraphrase ^A passage in Montaigne. It has been supposed by many *J^thb fixes the date of the writing of the Tempest a£teT 1603, when Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essays was
94 Notes and Cokiiekts.
first published. But this is to assome that Shakespeare did not read French : not the only unwarranted assump- tion of his editors.
AOT III. SOENS 1.
** Ferd. But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my lAbours ; Moet bnsj-less when I do it**
The original folio has ^^ most busy lest" which is evi- dently a misprint. The best conjectural reading is the above, which was suggested by Theobald. Among the hypothetical emendations of the passage, the most awkward seems to be that of the MS. corrector of Mr. Collier's foKo, who makes it "most busy, ble^, when I do it," — ^un- less indeed we except Mr. Singer's " most busiest/' than which nothing could be more graceless and inappropriate.
Act IV. Scene 1.
** Ferd, Let me live here ever :
So rare a wonder'd lather, and a wis Makes this place paradise."
Thus the original. But Malone, and others after him, and Mr. Collier's MS. corrector — ^before him or after him, who can tell, and what does it matter I — ^read, —
" So rare a wonder'd father, and a wife. Make this place paradise ; "
which is to degrade the poetical feeling of the passage. — I speak under favor of my fairer readers, and as one knowing all the various good implied in the word which I would ex- clude from the text. But Shakespeare's2>oe^tca2 jpurpose was a higher one than that which this change in the authentic text would assign to him. Besides, the mere &ct that the original gives ^^ wise " and ^^ makes," which afford at least
Tempest. 95
an excellent sense, is an all-snfficient reason for the reten- tion of those words,— even against two better.
" Pro9p. And, like the baseless fitbric of this yisioD, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Tea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; And, like this insubstantial pageant faded. Leave not a rack behind : "
TTpon this passage Mr. Dyce remarks, —
'' So this famous passage stands in all editions old and new. Bat I belieye that Malone's objection to the reading ' a rack^ is voanswerable. ' No instance,' he observes, ' has yet been pro- . dnced where rack is used to signify a single small fleeting cloud ;^ in other words, — though our early writers very frequently make mention of ' the rack,' they never say * a rack.' Malone adds, 4 incline to think that rack is a mis-spelling for wrack^ i. e., wreck ; ' and I now am thoroughly convinced that such is the case. Id authors of the age of Elizabeth and James I have re- peatedly met with rack put for wrack ; and in all the early edi- tions of Milton's Paradise Lost which I possess, — ^viz., the first, 1667, the second, 1674, the third, 1678, the fourth, 1688, and the eighth, 1707,-1 find,—
"Now dreadful deeds Might have ensued, nor only Paradise In this commotion, but the starry cope Of Heaven perhaps, or all the elements At least had gone to rack [i e., i9ratfA;= wreck]," <fec
B. iv. 990.
" A world devote to universal rack [i. e., torack = wreck].**
B. xi 821.*^ A Few NoteM, Ac. p. 18.
The wonder is, that another opinion should have been entertained by any reader. The dissolution of towers, pal- aces, temples and the great globe itself, might be said with
96 Notes and Coxmskts.
propriety Dot to leave ^a wreck ' behind ; bat it would be very strange indeed, if it should leave a small fleeting cloud behind ; neither does that object furnish a simile at all ap- propriate to what would remain after such an all-devouring catastrophe. It is indeed surprising that any one who had ever heard the old phrase ^ gone to rack and ruin/ should have had a doubt about the word in question.
" Steph, Now is the jerkin, under the line ; now jerkin you are like to lose your hair, and prove a bald jerkin."
Stephana* 8 pun is supposed to allude to the hair lines on which it is said clothes were hung in the time of Shake- speare; but may not the loss of hair consequent upon being " under the line/' be an allusion to the baldness which so frequently attacks northerners when under the heat of the equatorial line ?
[I find in the Variorum Ed. a note from Edwards' MSS. which coincides with this, my early conjecture.]
Act V. Scene 1.
" Prosp. Ilis mother was a witch, and one so strong That could control the moon ; make flows and ebbe. And deal in her command, without her power.**
Mr. Collier's MS. corrector changed "without her power/' to " tvith all her power/' an alteration which appears more than plausible, until we recollect that * power ' is used for * legitimate authority ' to this day. Thus, we say that an officer ^ exceeded his powers.' Mr. Charles Knight * is
* I credit Mr. Knight with the defence of this reading, only on the au- thority of Blackwood* 8 Ifagagine^'—A.xLg, 1868, p^ 186. I have not seen Ifr.
Tempest. 97
tmqnestionably right in his defence of the old reading, which cannot be disturbed. Sycorcujc was a witch, " so strong," that she could U8nr|) the functions of the Moon, and "deiil in her command without her " legitimate authority.
OMISSION. Act III. Scene 3.
" Qonz, Each putter out of five for one will bring us," <tc.
This line, which refers to the habit of adventurers by- sea in Shakespeare's day, to put out a sum of money on condition of receiving five for one, if they chanced to return alive, is evidently corrupt, as was long ago discovered. The voyagers did not put out " five for one," but one for five. So the line has been changed to,
" Each patter out of one iovfive^^ Ac
and to,
" Each putter out <m five for one," dlw.
the former being the most common reading. But surely this is to avoid the most natural correction of the typo- graphical error, and the most appropriate phrase for the expression of the idea. We do not put out money on five per cent., we put it out at five per cent. ; and these advcn- ^^18, instead of putting it out at five for a hundred, put H ont at five for one. Bead,
** Each putter out at five for one will bring u?,**<fcc.
^>ight*8 book, or, indeed, the label's of any other of Mr. Collier's oppo- ***»ti^ except Mr. Singer, Mr. Dyce, Mr. HalliweU, and the writer in Blacks
7
TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. Act I. Scene 1.
" Speed, Ay, sir ; I, a lost mutton, gave your letter to her, a Uced muttoD ; and she, a laced mutton, gave me, a lost mutton, nothing for my labour."
" In the present passage, is * laced mutton/ '' asks Mr. Dyce, " to be regarded as synonymous with courtesan? I doubt it. When Speed applies that term to Jviia^ he probably uses it in the much less offensive sense of a ruMy ail ired piece of woniarC 8 Jlesh" Mr. Dyce has well express- ed a signification, which, until I read the comments of the Varioinim men, I took for granted, as that obviously re- quired by the context, and as a point upon which no ques- tion could arise. Woidd Speed tell Proteus plainly that his mistress was a courtesan ? And had he done so, would he have escaped with a sound skin ?
Act II. Scene 1.
" Spetd. WTien you look'd sadly, it was for want of money. And now you are metamorphos* d with a mistress, that when I look on you, I can hardly think you my master. **
The MS. correction in Mr. Collier's folio, " And now you are so Metamorphos'd with a Mistris that when," &c., seems very plausible; but still, with the sentence punctuat-
Two Gbntlsmen of Yebona. 99
ed as it is above, I am not sure that the so is necessary. Speeds meaning is, ^ you are metamo/phosed with a mis- tress, so that when I look on you, I can hardly think you my master' ; and the particle is dropped by a not uncom- mon, and, it appears to me, rather elegant elision.
Act II. Scene 3.
**Lmmee, This hat is Nan, our maid ; I am the dog: — ^no, the dog is himself and I am the dog,^-ohl the dog is me, and I am myself."
Will it be believed by those who have not seen it for
themselves, — the exquisite confusion of poor Launce's feeble
ideas is not appreciated by Dr. Johnson and Sir Thomas
Hanmer ! How delightful is the complacence with which,
after doubting whether he is the dog or the dog is himself
and he is the dog, he triumphantly extricates himself from
his dilemma, by exclaiming : " Oh ! the dog is me^ and /
am myself." And yet Dr. Johnson is not certain " how
much reason the author intended to bestow on Launce's
soliloquy," and Sir Thomas Hanmer actually printed the
passage, " I am the dog : — no, the dog is himself and /
wn me; the dog is the dog, and I am myself" This it
was to edit Shakespeare in the 'Augustan age ' of English
literature ! Augustan in what ? Its looseness, its servility,
its maliciousness, its marrowless thought, its inability to
nuike its philosophy more than an iteration of trite orthodoxy
or triter scepticism, or its iK)etry more than an oily flow of
petty epigrams ?
Scene 4.
" Vol, I, my good Lord, I know the gentleman To be of worth, and worthy estimation ; And not without desert so well reputed."
The MS. correction, by Mr. Collier's folio, in the second line,
100 Notes and Comments.
** To be of wenlth and worthy ostiraation,"
seems required by the context, and to be jtlstified by a pro- bable misprint, until we remember that " worthy estima- tion " may mean, Hhe esteem of w^orthy people.' Valentine evidently means to say that the father of Protett* is not only " of worth " but " of worthy estimation; " and the substitu- tion of wealth for " worth " impoverishes both the declam- tion and the subject of it. "I," in the first line, is the old mode of spelling ' Aye/ and furnishes a guide as to the varj'ing pronunciation of that word.
Act III. Scene 1.
"Proiewt, Even in the milk-white bosom of thy love.*
The commentators remark upon this passage, " that the lady of the 16th century had a pocket in the front (^her stays;" and they suppose this fashion again referred to when Valentine says,
" My herald thoughts in thy pure boeom rest them ; "
and also in Hamlefs fancy,
" These to her excellent white bosom."
What need, what need of all this mantua-makiDg lore 1 Where have Eve's daughters put their lover's letters and their own nameless little knick-knacks ever since their mother's a]non of fig leaves was first accommodated with a boddice ? Do lovers send their thoughts to the " pure " pocketSj the " excellent white " stays of their mistresses ? What ab- surd misconstruction of beautiful and appropriate thoughts, for the purpose of displaying a Uttle knowledge of anti- quated man-millinery !
The Earl of Surrey, who wrote his poetry to a " lady of
Two Gentlemen of Verona. 101
the sixteenth century " (1557), in one of his sonnets thus predicts its happy fate : —
"When she hath read and seen the grief wherein I serve, Between her hreeis she shall thee put^ there shall she thee reserve."
Stays and pockets, forsooth !
[This was written before I saw the Variorum edition; and there 1 find that Malone has quoted this very passage finom Surrey; and yet a gentleman of Mr. Charles Knight's taste and sympathetic appreciation of Shakespeare, editing his works in the middle of the nineteenth century, can per- petuate the Mantalini-ism of the tie-wig editors !]
** Launee. He lives not now, that knows me to be in love; yet I am in love; bat a team of horse shall not pluck that from me; nor who it is 1 love ; and yet *tis a woman."
Upon this characteristic exhibition of simplicity, Dr. Johnson remarks that Launee is thinking, " I see how Va- lentine is suffering for telling his love secrets, therefore I will keep mine close." But Steevens comes to tlie rescue, and adds, " Perhaps Launee was not intended to show so much sense; but here indulges himself in talking contra- dictory nonsense." Perhaps^ indeed !
I notice such platitudes as these, that it may be seen and known of all those who cannot or will not wade through the rabbish of the commentators, what thick-headedness seems to have taken possession of men of the last century, when they came to the reading of Shakespeare, although they ^ere, in other respects, able and learned ; and also that we niay all be warned of the utter folly of relying upon the niere authority of any name for the justification of a change m the text as the original folio gives it to us. If that can he understood by men of ordinary common sense, it must he changed at no man's bidding, even for the better.
102 Notes and CoMMXNTa
" Spetd. Item, ' She is not to be futing, in respect of her breath.' "
Howe added hissed; and read,
" She is not to be hUsed fasting, in respect of her breath,"
which has been pahned upon us as Shakespeare's text for a hundred and fifty years. Mr. Collier suggests that the addition was perhaps unnecessary. There's no ^ perhaps ' in the case : it was certainly unnecessary, and therefore un- justifiable and presumptuous. Launoe's " cate-log" of the " conditions " of his sweetheart, says that she must not be made to fast, for fear of certain unpleasant physiological consequences. The text has a plain meaning, and by what right does any man make an arbitrary addition to it?
Act V. Scene 4.
** Vol, These are my mates that make their wills their law. Have some unhappy passenger in chase,"
Mr. Collier's margins propose, with reason, to read —
" These my rude mates," Ac
As the sentence stands in the original, " have " is with- out an antecedent.
MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.
Act I. Scene 1.
Slender accuses Pistol of having picked his pocket of " two Edward shovel-boards/' that cost him two shillings. Shovel-board is a game which is noticed by Strutt, but with regard to which the editors and commentators known to me furnish no information. Mr. Collier, in his edition of Shakespeare — not his recent one-volume abomination — says that it is " not yet discontinued, as it is not unfre- quently played by the lower orders in the coal trade/' The game survived in the vicinity of New-York, till within fif- teen or twenty years past, among a similar class of persons. It is now, I believe, no longer known; and I think that the last shovel-board on this side of the water disappeared with the destruction of the place in which I first saw the game — ^the Eagle Tavern, under Brooklyn Heights, near "^^here the South Ferry landing now is. I little thought, '^hen, at about ten years of age, I strolled away from home One afternoon, with a playmate, now distinguished as an inventor and in the higher mechanics, as he was then for his cjuickness at computation, and his imerring hand and eye, «nd yielding to our curiosity, we approached this forbidden X>lace (for it was deservedly in bad repute), and, leaning "through a window, saw coarse and brawny men playing St this strange game, that I was acquiring material for a
104 Notes and Comments.
note on the works of him, whose name, even then, I had learned to speak with boyish reverence.
I saw the game played several times afterward, and once was tempted, with the same companion, to try it myself. It was played with some variation fix)m the roles and even the materials for the game as described by Stnitt. The board, which stood about three feet from the floor, was about twenty feet long, and two and a half wide. It was surrounded by a trough, to prevent the weights fix)m falling to the ground. The top was very smooth, and covered with fine white sand. The weights were of brass, and of various sizes, weighing from half a pound to a pound and a half — much heavier, it will be observed, than Blender's broad shillings. The object of the game was to drive these weights beyond a certain mark toward the further end of the board, without sending them over the edge into the trough. He who shoved his weight nearest the end, with- out its falling over, was the victor. To place a weight half way over the edge was the highest success, except to knock away and replace an opponent's weight in that position, which a first-rate player would frequently do. Not to put the weight beyond the Une alluded to, was to be ' distanced.' The game required great accuracy of eye and steadiness of hand, — much more than ten-pins, which has entirely re- placed it.
" Slen. I keep but three men and a boy yet, till my mother be dead." Upon this, Warburton remarks :
'^ As great a fool as the poet has made Slender, it appears, by his boasting of his wealth, his breeding, and his courage, that ho knew how to win a woman. This is a fine instance of Shake- Kpeare's knowledge of human nature.''
One would like to be a woman for a few nunutes to
Mebry Wives of Windsor. 105
have the privilege of calling Warburton a brute, and feel amply justified in so doing, by this coarse libel on the sex. But the gross misrepresentation of Shakespeare involved in it, justifies an indignant protest on the part of every one of his readers, of either sex. Where, through the whole wide range of his drama, does he show a woman, worthy of the oame, won by a boast of wealth, breeding, and courage ? No- where. Slender gets on finely by his boasting, does he not ! And FentoUy because he is poor and is not a braggart, is utterly eclipsed by. his wealthy, vaunting rival ! Out on such villainous perversion of the poet's meaning — such low views of human nature ! Shakespeare had no such grovelling ideas of womanhood. The knowledge of human nature which we recognize in the works of him who seems to have penetrated by an instinct, and at a glance, the heart ut* Jiil humanity, is but an exponent of our own intellectual and moral standard. He holds the mirror up, not only to Nature, but to our natures ; and Warburton's praise of his own degraded interpretation of this passage, as a " fine in- stance of Shakespeare's knowledge of human nature," speaks equally for inferiority of his moral tone, and the dulness of his intellectual peiception.
Scene 3.
" Fal. I am glad I am so acquit of his tinder box : his thefts were to*» open: his filching was like an unskilful singer : he kept not time." Xym, The good humour is to steal at a minute's rest."
Thus the original : but " a minute's rest " is evidently a misprint for " a minim's rest," as Langton suggested long ago, and as the corrector of Mr. Collier's folio conjectured. The likening of Bardolph's practice of his vocation to that of "an unskilful singer," who ''kept not time,'' is suffi-
106 Notes and Comments.
cient evidence of this. The typographical error is one which might very easily occur.
"FaL She discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitatiQii.'*
I have noticed elsewhere the reading craves instead of " carves," proposed by Jackson and Mr. Collier's folio. Mr. Hunter and Mr. Dyce show, conclusively, by numer- ous quotations from contemporary literature, that * carves' was used in Shakespeare's day, in an amorous, or, at least, propitiatory sense. There is no need, and, therefore, no justification for the change.
Act II. Scene 1.
** Host My hand, bully : thou shalt have egresse and regresse : said I well f and thy name shall be Broome, It is a merry knight Will you go An-heires ? '*
Thus the original folio; but this name Broome y kilk Fahtaff'a pun about brooks o'erflowing with liquor; and, as in the surreptitious quarto of 1602 the name is printed Brook, that alicts has been adopted in all modern editions. But it is to be remarked that in the authentic copy of the ])lay, frequently as the name occurs, it is invariably given, ^^ Broome," Now it is almost impossible that Brook could have been so often, and without exception, misprinted Broome; but it is quite probable that BoumCy which means the same as Brook (for instance —
'• We twa hac paidl't i' the bourn,")
should have been mistaken in manuscript for Broome, Mr. Collier's folio makes the change to J?oi/rwe; and though the world will give up Master Brook unwillingly, there seems to be no reasonable doubt, that he should yield place to Master Bourne,
Mbrby Wives op Windsor. 107
Of all the many proposed emendations of the last two incomprehensible words in the original of this passage^ Hanmer's mynheer^ so ably sustained by Mr. Dyce, is the only one which appears to me at all satisfactory. There can be little doubt that " An heires " is a misprint for min- heires, a word well suited to the mouth of mine Host.
Scene 2.
"Fcrd. O! understand my drift She dwells so securely on the ex- eelleney of her honour, that the folly of my soul dares not present itself; ahe is too bright to be looked against"
Mr. Collier's folio in reading " the folly of my suity" in- stead of " the folly of my soul," seems to correct a not im- probable misprint. But what need of any change whatever ? Surely a hopeless passion for the chaste wife of another, may well be called the folly of a man's souL
Act III. Scene 5.
" Fal. By the Lord, a buck basket" Ac.
Thus, the surreptitious quartos of 1602 and 1619; the authentic folio and the quarto of 1630 giving, " Yes, a buck Iwsket." The change was consequent upon a statute made after the accession of James I., which interdicted oaths &c. on the stage. In this way many passages were modified, and some entirely omitted in the first folio : as, formstance, Falstqff'a remark in the fifth Scene of the fourth Act of this play : —
" Well, if my wind were but long enough to say my prayers, I would repent;"
^bich, in the folio, stands tamely, on account of the law in question,
108 Notes and Comments.
** Well, if my wind were but long enough, I would repent"
— and again, in Much Ado About Nothing, Act IV. Sc. 2, Dogberry's reply,
"Write down that they hope they gerve God; — and write God first; fi>r God forbid but God should go before such yillains,"
is altogether omitted. Now, as we want exactly what Shakespeare wrote, and have not the fear of the sta- tute of James I. before our eyes, we must disregard these changes and suppressions in all cases ; and not regard them in some cases and disregard them in others, as many editors have done, and even Mr. Knight among them. On \mni% like these, and these only, the quartos are of higher authority than the folio, because of the effect of the law in question.
**PiMiol. Convey, the wise it call. Steal? foh! a /co for the phrase."
Nothing could be plainer, it would seem, than this speech, which is remarkable among the bombastic explo- sions of * mine ancient ' for its direct simplicity. He says, " a fig for the phrase ! " and, after his fashion of always using a mouth-filling, high-sounding word, when his me- mory can command, or his tongue coin one, he uses the Italian, [fico/ instead of the English, ' fig/ *A fig,' or * a fig's end,' is perhaps the commonest phrase of thoughtless, careless contempt used in our language. It occurs five times in Shakespeare's works. Pistol uses it twice, and each time airs his Italian. But as a certain disease was known to the Romans &.sj!cus, and as a gesture indicative of loathing and dread, used on the continent of Europe, and which is of ancient and unknown origin, was called ' making the fig,' even Mr. Douce could not resist the temptation to confuse so plain a passage by learned dis- quisition ; and consequently he perpetrates nine octavo pages of grave and erudite comment upon poor PistoFs
Merry Wives of Windsor. 109
"/fco." How it would have gratified the ancient had he known that his speech would attain to such consequence and dignity ! Mr. Douce thus concludes his remarks : —
"On the whole, there is no other way of extricating ourselves from the difficulties and ambiguities that attend the present sub- ject, than by supposing some little confusion of ideas in our poet^s mind, a weakness not more uncommon with him than with many of his commentators. Or, his phraseology might have been inaccurate ; and it is to be feared that too much time and oonjectore have been frequently expended on passages originally &alty, and which it might have been sufficient to have stated as such, to the exclusion of further comment or useless explanation." Illustrations of Sliakespeare^ Vol. I. p. 500.
The admission of " a confusion of ideas " on the part of the poet's commentators, is both appropriate and naive, considering the occasion of making it. But what shall be thought of the commentator who allows his learning to in- volve him in " difficulties and ambiguities " which have no actual existence, and then attempts to extricate himself by attributing confusion of thought and inaccurate phrase- ology to Shakespeare 1
In Henry IV,, Part II., Act V. Sc. 3, Pistol says :—
" When Pistol lies, do this ; and fig me, like The bragging Spaniard."
Here, indeed, there is allusion to ' making the fig.' " Do this," manifestly refers to an action with which the speaker accompanied his words ; " fig " becomes an active verb ; and the comparison to " the bragging Spaniard " conies in to confirm the reference. But this use of the word is no more like that in " a/co for the phrase " in this play, or " a/co for thy friendship,'' in Henry F., than it is like that in %o'« " Virtue ? a fig," in the third Scene of the first Act ^ Othello, or his " blessed fig's end," in the first Scene of
110 Notes and Comments.
the second Act. Truly, much learning hath made these commentators mad.
Act V. Scene 5.
" FaJL Ignorance itself is a plumtnet over me.**
Trouble about this. Johnson proposes plume^ and Fanner, planet j instead of " plummet." The matter seems very plain. Falstaff is made to appear such an ass, he is so overwhelmed by the reproofs and jeers heaped upon him, — and particularly by Sir Hugh Evana^ whom Ford has quizzed but a moment before for his inability to speak cor- rectly,— that he says : " I am your theme ; you have the stait of me ; I am dejected ; I am not able to answer the Welch flannel. Ignorance itself is a plummet over me :" — that is, ' even this blundering Welchman attemj)t8 to decide upon my rectitude.' He has but just said, in re- ply to a gibe fix)m the parson, " Seese and putter ! have I lived to stand the taunt of one that makes fritters of Eng- U8h.J>"
MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
Mb. Hukteb^ thus opens his comments upon Measure for Measure,
*' Few of Shakespeare's plays give so little pleasure as this. The &alt is, in a great measure, in the plot, which is improbable and disgusting. But the play wants character. The principal persons are unindividualizcd men and women, and it may be doubted whether they always exhibit the fceliDg which really belongs to the strange situations in which they are placed.''
In this opinion he is sustained by Coleridge, and by Mr. Knight. It is prudent, as well as pleasant, to agree with such critics ; but sometimes both policy and prefe- rence must needs be set aside ; and I cannot err in suppos- ing that there are many who, though lacking with me the sanction of such opinion, find, with me, in their enjoyment of the transcendent poetry, the subtle and far-reaching thought, and the nicely discriminated characters of this play, an ample compensation for the consciousness that they have opposed their judgments, even to that of Cole- ridge.
As to the plot, it should be remarked, that though 4e incidents upon which it turns are such as cannot in these days be made the topics of conversation in gen-
* New lUuBtrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare. % W].li llnnter. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1845.
112 Notes and Comments.
eral society, or the subjects of dramatic representation before a polite audience, there is nothing in them to make the play repulsive in the closet. Interdicted, as the story must now be considered in the social circle, there is nothing in it to contaminate the individual. Its themes are ex- cluded from the drawing-room, as we avoid there a dis- cussion of the internal economy of the Lying-in Hospital, or anatomical disquisitions upon the viscera ; though moral taint would not sooner follow upon the just consideration of the one than from the professional examination of the others.
It was not so in the days of Elizabeth and James. Then, ladies of irreproachable character listened to that, in the company of men, and from men, which would offend the ears of a high-bred courtesan of these days. But it may be justly questioned whether women are chaster, men more continent, or society in general has a higher moral tone now, than when Measure for Measure was performed before the most unexceptionable audience which the court and city of London could furnish. The elegant dissolute- ness of the court of Charles IL, and the gross debauchery of the days of the first Georges and their predecessor, do not contrast more strongly with the tone of our society than with that of the public for which Shakespeare vnt)te ; though many are thoughtlessly apt to attribute somewhat of the social looseness of the former period to that which preceded it by half a century. With regard to the latter, — that of Anne and the first two Georges, which copious con- temporary records show to have been marked by an open disregard of almost every restraint upon the relations of the sexes, accompanied by a coarseness of tone truly dis- gusting, it should be here remembered, that it was for the public of those times that Pope changed "toes" io/eety in the fifth Scene of the first Act of Borneo and Juliety for
Mea. fob Mba. : Natxtrb of its Plot. 113
the mke of " delicacy ; " and that both the dramatist and his poet editor foimd an apologist in Malone, on the score that " the word employed in the text undoubtedly did not appear indelicate in Shakespeare's time, though perhaps it would not be endured at this day." It may be that now we have the genuine moral purity of 1600, with none of the hypocritical squeamishness of 1750 ; but if Measure for Measure be voted intrinsically repulsive on account of its plot, it is to be feared that we have more of the latter and less of the former than we would like to own.
The passion upon which the action of the play hinges is one which natiue has made common to mankind, which influences largely the destiny of every one of us, and which tinges more or less deeply the pages of every tale that has lived in the memory of the world. As Shakespeare has re- presented it in this drama, it is unrestrained, indeed, but it is also unperverted : it tempts to hideous crime, but in itself it is not monstrous. There lurks more moral poison in the damnable metaphysics of one adulterous French romance, or one incestuous German melodrama, than in whole libra- ries of such plays as this. In the character of the act upon which it turns, and in the decorum of its language^ Hamlet has no advantage over it. The crime of Hamlef^ mother and uncle, and the terms in which the son rebukes- his parent for her past guilt and warns her against future- error,* to say nothing of the songs of poor, half-crazed Ophdiay are much more exceptionable upon the score of delicacy, than any word uttered or deed hinted by the pnn- cipal characters in Measure for Measure, But in neither play is there contamination ; and in the latter, the princi- pal personage, she for whom the play was written, and around whom the others group themselves, is an embodiment of the
♦ Act IIL Sc. 4.
8
114 Notes and Commknts.
idest, the most repelling continence. Nothing repulsive is brought before the reader's eye. The relations of Olaudio and Jvliety while they awaken our pity for their sufferings, warn us against their error. And poor deserteil and repu- diated Mariana^ counting through five years the lonely days and nights in that moated grange ! do not her wrongs and her true-hearted devotion plead ^'tmmpet-tongued" against the guilt of her betrothed husband ? As to his dramatic relations with Isabettay what influence do they exert, save upon the side of virtue ? Which comes most bravely out from those interviews, the designing villain, or the intended victim ? What he says to A«r, is said by scores of scoundrels such as he in scores of other plays, in- cluding some of Shakespeare's ; but what she says to Atm, and to her brother, about his base designs, finds no such utterance fix)m other lips. I do not envy those who find this plot disgusting. They seem to me to be '^ more nice than wise."
The principal characters, instead of being ^' unindi- vidualized men and women," are distinctly drawn embodi- ments of types, clearly if not strongly marked. There are rulers, upright in intention, and not wanting in wisdom, but who lack administrative force, and who, half conscious of their failing, seek on some pretence to effect that by the hands of others which their own weak wills have failed to consummate. They are thoughtM when they should be active ; and are employed in analyzing the causes or tracing the consequences of crime, when their energies should be bent on its prevention or its punishment. 8uch a ruler is the Duke. His inertness has allowed " strict statutes and most biting laws," which he confesses are " needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds," to sleep for fourteen years ; and his assumption of the monk's cowl is not his first masquerade ; for Lucio^ who knows nothing of his
Hea. for Mba. : Its Chabactebs : Akgelo. 115
present disguise, calls him (Act IV. Sc. 3), " the old fan- tastical duke of dark comers." Shak6s^)eare seems to have had an ever present consciousness of the essential oppoeition between the faculties which lead men to reflect and those which impel them to act. This consciousness often i^pears in his writings ; hut is never so clearly uttered as in these lines in the soliloquy of Hamlet, in the fourth Scene of the fourth Act of the tragedy.
"Now, whether it he BevUal ohliyion, or some crayen scrople Of thinking too precisely on th* events — A thought^ whidi, qnartered, hath hut one part wisdom And ever three parts coward, — I do not know Why yet I live to say, *This thing's to do.* "
And yet this soliloquy and the sceue in which it occurs are cut out of the play as it is acted; because, forsooth, it retards the action. When will people learn that Hamlet is no^ a drama of action !
In AngelOj Shakespeare has drawn a faithful portmit of
the man whose pride is in his eminent respectability — the
man who finds it easy to lead a reputable life, and whose
whole life is in his good repute. He is a selfish precisian.
He is content to be pure when he has no great temptation
to be otherwise; but he would seem pure at every hazard.
There are men of no remarkable abilities or acquirements
who attain position and influence and the deference due to
wifldom, solely by the discreetness of their lives, the grave
ooQitliness of their bearing, their composed and collected
manner, and the polished preciseness of their speech, which
approaches pomposity, but still stops short of it. Such a
num Shakespeare has shown us in Angela, and in him alone.
fclcniua — Shakespeare's acute and high-bred courtier, not
ibe jack-a-dandy of the stage, — ^is an approximation to this
type ; but he has too much affectation of subtle thought in
116 Notes and CoKMENTa
his conversation. The man whom Angdo represents is al- ways spoken of as ^ eminent for his clear common sense and practical views of life/ and would never talk as Polonius does about Hamlet and Ophdia to the King and Queen in the second Scene of the second Act of the tragedy.
That Angdo is punctilious, his first speech in the play, as he enters in obedience to the request of the Dukey plainly shows. He says,
"Always obedient to your grace's will, I come to know your pleasure.**
It needs the manner of a Chesterfield to give those lines their proper utterance, — to make them deferential without servility, and formal without affectation. The Duke's reply shows how eminently respectable his deputy was considered by all Vienna ; how he was looked to by the public, as a man whose character and conduct fitted him for dignified position, and how reputable were all his antecedents.
"Angelo, There is a kind of character in thy life, That, to th' observer, doth thy history Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings Are not thine own so proper, as to waste Thyself upon thy virtues, them on thee," Ac
Claudia says of him, in the third Scene of this Act, that he
" for a name Now puts the drowsy and neglected act Freshly on me : — ^"tia surely for a name :**—
The Duke tells Friar Thomas that his deputy " stands at a guard with envy; " and he himself, in the solitude of his own chamber, confesses to himself that he takes pride in his own gravity; yet even in that secret place he shrinks fiom the confession, and says, "let no man hear me."
Mea. fob Mea. : Its Chabactebs : Anoelo. 117
But Angdo is not all hypocrite at first. His gravity, his preciseness, and his respectability, are not mere shams. He is naturally sober, formal, and austere; and having never en- countered exactly the sort of temptation which alone could betray him into impropriety, he has been exceedingly proper all his life. His selfish and hard-hearted repudiation of poor Mariana^ which afterwards appears, would not im- peach his respectability then more than it would now. Generosity is one thing ; respectability quite another. They are not twins, nor is the latter bom of the former. Observe that Angela is naturally too grave to find any amusement in the conversation between the Cloim, Froth, and Elbow, in the first Scene of the second Act. Elbow brings in, as he says, " two notorious benefactors." The humor of the blun- der does not exist for Angdo, who, not to be turned from his literal preciseness, solemnly asks,
"Benefactors! Well, what benefactors are they t Are they not male- (kctorsf
He puts but a curt question or two, and, leaving the afiair in the hands of Escalus, soon goes out, hoping that his colleague " will find cause to whip them all." There is no affectation about this : he really finds no pleasure in study- ing the characteristics of such scum ; and thinks whipping the best use to which they can be put.
Here it may be pertinent to say, that I cannot agree with those who find in Elboio only a feeble imitation of Dog- herry. He has nothing in common with the guardian of Messina, except his ignorance. The pompous self-suffi- ciency, the ineffable conceit, the affectation of manner which imposes upon Dogberry's subordinates, and actually gives him a moral power over them, are entirely wanting in Elbow. Although, like Dogberry, he was " the poor Duke's officer," he would never have the calm self-confidence to
118 NOTSB AND COMMKNTa.
say, as Dogberry does, with half depieoatingy half patio- nizing air, to a nobleman who told him that be WM tedi* ooB, '^ Truly for my own part, if I were aa tedioua aa a king, I could find it in my heart to bestow it all of your worahip." Elbow lacks the force and self-poflsesaion of Dogberry. Feeble-minded, modest, and well meaning, as well as ignorant, he is rather the type of ^^ Ooodman Ver- ges" in his youth.
But, to return a moment to Angelo, The naturally formal and unbending character of his mind is shown in the manner of his answer, when the ProvoH (Act II. 8c. 2), seeking assurance for the act, asks if it be really his will that Claudia shall die on the morrow. He does not reply simply * yes; ' but,
** Did I not tell thee yea f Hadst thou not order t Why dost tkou ask again f **
He cannot conceive of a scruple or doubt entertained by a subordinate, after he has received orders fit>m his superior. Immediately afterward, giving directions about poorJWte^, then hourly looking for the birth of her child, he uses no term of pity, does not even call her by her name, but designates her by an epithet which is at once opjprobrious, technical, and suited to lips ^' of wisest censure ; ** and coldly adds, with a scrupulous regard for propriety, and an equally scrupulous disregard of the appeals of sympathy for such an improper person, no matter what her extremity,
"Let her have needful, but not layish means.**
This is before he has seen Isabellay and ere the cold sur- face of his soul has been ruffled by passion; for we learn afterward, from his own lips, that he has never yet been moved by woman's beauty :
*' this virtuous maid Subdues me quite. Ever till now When men were fond, I smiled, and wondered how.**
MxA. roB MsA. : Its Pobtbt. 119
And he has prided himself, too, on this insensibility to female charms; for when Isabella first comes before him, and the Provoei is about to retire, Angdo calls to him— '' Stay awhile/' There is no need that his subordinate should remain ; bat Angela wishes to show how unmoved he will be by the tears and the charms of this beautiful young woman. What Isabella says of him in the last scene, is more than half true :
"I partly think A due sincerity govemM his de«ds TiU he did look on me,"
for when he leaves her, after their first interview, and she
"Heaven keep your honour safe,"
he replies.
"Amen, For I am that way going to temptation Where prayers cross."
What blindness and prejudice must it be which calls so 'mthful and carefully drawn a character " unindividualiz- ®cL" Had Shakespeare not left us AngelOj one strongly ttiarked type would have been wanting in his pano- ^^ma of mankind. The same may be said of one other ^liaracter in the comedy ; but that one will be considered elsewhere.
The poetry of this play should ever protect it against ^^ch judgments as that passed by Mr. Hunter. In no one ^f Shakespeare's works, not even in Hamlet itself, does that ^^larvellous interfusion of imagination and philosophy, of V^iilhant fancy and sober thought, taking form in words ^ised with a daring mastery which at once astonishes, de- lights, and satisfies, which is the grand and peculiar char-
^
120 Notes and Commknts.
acteristic of Shakespeare's graver moodSy and which we call, for want of any other term, Shakesperian, more command our wondering admiration. There is more of it in the great tragedies, for in those there was more occasion for it ; but even there it exists only in greater quantity, not in higher perfection, and in no one of the other comedies is it found scattered with so profuse a hand. It seems ruthless to pluck such jewels from their setting ; but to avert the pre- judice which threatens to cast into the shadow of neglect one of the grandest works of the greatest Poet, — a prejudice largely due to the litter atrices of the last century, and worthy of the women and the period when Dorimanta and Mirabels made love to Aramintas and FlippantaSy — ^it may be par- donable. Are these passages among those which give "little pleasure?"
" Duke, Heaven doth with us, as we with torches d Not light them for themselves ; for if our virtaes Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike As if we had them not Spirits are not finely toaoh'd. But to fine issues : nor nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence, But, like a thrifty goddess, she detfOrmines Herself the glory of a creditor, Both thanks and use."
Ad I Be. I.
*' Claud. As surfeit is the father of much faat^ So every scope by the immoderate use Turns to restraint : Our natures do pursue (Like rats that ravin down their proper bane) A thirsty evil ; and when we drink, we di^"
Act LScZ.
*' Itab. Could great men thunder As Jove himself does, Jove would ne*er be quiet ; For every pelting, petty officer,
Would use his heaven for thunder : nothing but thunder.- Merciful heaven I
Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurooa bolt^ Split'st the UQwodgeable and gnarled oak.
Mea. fob Mea. : Its Poetbt. 121
Hum the ■oft myrtle : — ^Bnt man, proud man !
Dreet in a little brief authority :
Moat ignorant of what he's moat asi ur*d,
Hia glaaay easenee, — like an angry ape,
Playa auch Cantaatiek tricks before high heayen,
At make the angela weep ; who, with our spleenB,
Would all themaelvea laugh mortal"
Act II.Bc2.
Or is it in these words, addressed by the Ihke to Olaudio upon his approaching death, words fraught with such a wealth of wisdom for the living or the djring, that the critics seek in vain for pleasure ?
**Duke, Be absolute for death : either death or lifr Shall thereby be the sweeter. Beason thus with life,- If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep : a breath thou art; Servile to all the skiey influenoes, That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st. Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool: For him thou labourist by thy flight to shun. And yet runu'st toward him still : Thou art not noble ; For all the accommodations that thou beai'^st^ Are nurs*d by baseness : Thou art by no means valiant ; For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm : Thy best of rest is sleep. And that thou oft provok'st ; yet grossly fear'st Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself; For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains That issue out of dust : Happy thou art not ; For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get ; And what thou hast^ forget'st : Thou art not certain ; For thy complexion shifts to strange aflfects. After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor; For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey. And death unloads thee : Friend hast thou none : For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire. The mere effusion of thy proper loins, Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum. For ending thee no sooner : Thou hast nor youth, nor age ; But^ as it were, an after-dinner's sleep.
122 NOTKR AND COMXSNTB.
Dreaming on both : for all thy blesaed youth Becomes as aged, and doth b^ the alms Of palsied eld ; and when thoa art old, and rich, Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, To make thy riches pleasant What's yet in this That bears the name of life t Tet in this life Lie hid more thousand deaths ; yet death we fear, That makes these odds all eyen."
A€tm,8e,l.
These passages, which are bat specimens of numben like them, some of less bulk, but all of nearly equal beauty, scattered up and down the play, and so interwoven with the structure of the scene that to take them out would be to rend them, show what golden thoughts the poet built into this drama. But besides and beyond these, there is one passage which rivals, if it do not surpass, in sublimity and power any other which came from Shakespeare's pen. It is this.
" ClatuL Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot : This sensible warm motion to beoome A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be impriBon*d in the yiewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world ; or to be, worse than worsts Of those that lawless and uncertain thoughts Imagine, howling ! **
Aei in. 8c 1.
Where else is there language so laden with meaning, — so suggestive of thought? Who else would have dared the expression ^^ to lie in cold obstruction? " for who else would have seen that those two words "cold obstruction'' tell the whole tale of utter dissolution, which the next two lines illustrate and vary with words and thoughts but little less condensed and pregnant. What a wonderfid, strange fit-
MxA. won MsA. : Its Pobtbt. 123
Hess there is in the use of that word ^' thrilling I " But I shrink alike fix)ni picking this marvellous conception to pieces and from thrusting myself between my readers and their spontaneous admiration of Shakes])eare. Yet it should be said about the last two lines of this passage, if it never have been said, — and I believe it never has, — that they possess an awM beauty which it is hardly in the power of language to describe. The idea seems to be but vaguely hinted ; and yet an undefined, peculiar dread goes with the words, that would vanish, or dwindle into certain fear, if we were told exactly what they mean. We feel that they have conveyed that to us which they themselves tell us is too honible for utterance. What can be those monstrous thoughts which ever seem to be about to take on hideous shape, and ever again vanish into formlessness, leaving the tortured spirit howling vidth rage and horror at it knows not what, save that it is the dim phantasmagoria of the hell it ever bears within itself ? What are those thoughts ? We must first be damned eternally ere we can know. And yet Shakespeare in half a dozen words has made us feel what they must be.
I do not hesitate to say that there are not other ten such lines as these in the whole range of poetry, except in Eliphaz ' relation of his vision, in the book of Job,
^ In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep fidleth on men,
'' Fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake.
" Then a spirit passed before my face ; the hair of my flesh stood up :
" It stood still, but t could not discern the form thereof: an image before mine eyes : silence : and I heard a voice, —
^ Shall mortal man be more just than God ? shall a man be more pure than his Maker ? '' Chap. IV.
124 Notes and CJommsnts.
Measure for Measure^ though it delights not Mr. Hun- ter, or Mr. Knight, or yet Coleridge, can only lose by com- parison with the greatest poem ever written; and Shake- speare can well afford to find an intellectual rival in a dm- inatic poet whose work had reached immortal age while yet the Pyramids were young.
Act I. Scene 1.
" Duke, Of goyernment the properties to unfold. Would seem in me to affect speech and ditoonrse ; Since I am put to know, that your own loience flxceeds, in that, the lists of all adriee My strength can give yon : Then no more remains But that to your sufficiency, as your worth is able, And let them work."
The last two lines are universally allowed to be incom- prehensible as they stand in the original ; and none of the many attempts to alter or explain them have seemed to sat- isfy even those of whose ingenuity they were the fruit. In such extremity, it would be arrogant to claim to have done that which so many able critics and editors have failed to do ; but I make the passage plain for my own reading by a change in only one point and one letter; thereby correct- ing two trifling errors, which seem to me to be such as might easily have been made. I put a colon after ' remains/ change B for P, as Bowe did, and read,
— " your own science Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice My strength can give you : then no more remains : Put that to your sufficiency, as your worth is able. And let them work."
*^ Sufficiency" is obviously the plenary power delegated to Eacalus and Angelo; and, if a paraphrase of this reading be needed, it is this : — Your own knowledge of the proper*
Measure fob Measure. 125
ties of government exceeds the extent of any information which I can give you : then no more remains to be consid- ered : put that [L e., your knowledge of government] to the ample powers delegated to you, as your individual worth of character is all sufficient, and let them work.
But there is yet another method of making the pas- sage plain and the line musical, which does the least pos- sible violence to the original text, and which I do not re- member to have seen suggested. The mistake of ^ able ' for ^ added ' is one which might easily be made by a care- less compositor in setting indistinct manuscript ; and ^able ' once in the compositor's mind, ' as,' the word which de- stroys the rhythm of the line, would naturally suggest itself, and be inserted in the text to make an approximation to sense. It is not improbable, at least, that the passage was written,
" Then no more remains, But that to your sufficiency your worth is addedy And let them work.*
In this reading " sufficiency " refers, of course, to the capa- city of EsccUuSy which is spoken of by the Duke in the im- mediately preceding sentence ; and the emphatic word is " but," and not " that," which, a pronoun in the prev ions reading, becomes, in this, a conjunctive particle. This accep- tation of " sufficiency," which is contended for by many com- mentators, whatever may be the reading, is made the more apposite, and this reading the more probable and plausible, by the phraseology of the DyJcCj who, after saying to Escahis, *your knowledge of government exceeds ray own,' adds, ' then [L e., therefore] no more remains, but that to your Bofficiency [i. e., your intellectual capacity and knowledge of the science of government to which I have just alluded] your worth [i. e., your moral fitness] is added, and let them woric'
126 Notes and CoMXENxa
Apropos to the subject, — tell it in Gktth and puUish it in Ascalon, that Malone, even Edmnnd Malone, in com- menting upon this passage, has the following note :
'* ' And let them work/ — a figarative expression, ' let ihem ferment'"!!!
This is the cap-sheaf of annotation in the post-^ Augostan age ' of English literature. Words fidl ns, and we are driven to the use of mere dumb signs of astomshment, in- credulity and ridicule.
Scene 2.
*' Lueio, If th6 duke, with th« other diik«i^ oome not to eompodtioB with the King of Haogary, why then all the dnkee fall upon the King^ " 1 OentUman. Heayen grant us ite peace, but not the King of Hvn-
The period of the action of this play has been r^aided, as far as my knowledge of editions and commentaries goes, as altogether indeterminable. The editors seem to have abandoned the attempt to ascertain it in hopeless de- spair. The learned Mr. Collier says nothing about it, and Mr. Knight, in his note upon the costume of the play, in his Pictorial Edition, remarks : —
" With the exception, perhaps, of the Winter's Tale, no play of Shaksperc^s is so utterly destitute of any * loop or hinge to hang an ' appropriate costume upon as Measure for Measure. The scene is laid in Vienna, of which city there neyer was a duke ; and in the whole of the list of persons represented there is not one German name. Vincentio, Angelo, Escalus, Glaudio, Lucio, Isabella, Juliet, Francisca, Mariana, all smack of Italy ; and it has therefore been questioned by some whether or not we should read " Sienna " for " Vienna." There does not appear, howerer, to be any authority for supposing the scene of action to have been
MsA. FOB Mea. : Pebiod of the Action. 127
altered either theatrically or typographically, and, consequently, we miist leave the artist to the indulgence of his own fancy, with the suggeation merely that the Viennese costume of the time of Shakspere most be sought for amongst the national monuments of the reign of the £mperor Rudolph II., a. d. 1576—1612.'' Fiaorial Shakspere^ Vol. II. p. 273.
If we did not know whence Shakespeare took the plot of Mecawrefor MeaswrCj if the passage just quoted from the seoHid scene of the play did not occur in it, and if thcrt; were no historical records of Hungary and the German Empire, I could understand this perplexity; but as the caee stands, it seems that the question may be settled by investigation.
The plot of the play is taken from the Promos and Oassandra of George Whetstone, a tale published in his Hqjtameron of Civil Discourses, in 1582, and republished by Mr. Collier in his Shakespeare's Library. The argu- ment or plot of this story, as given by Whetstone himself, which is printed in almost every critical edition of Shake- speare's Works, begins, " In the Cyttie of Julio (sometimes under the dominion of Corvinus King of Hungary and Bohemia) there was a law," &c. The tale itself commences thus:
'* At what time Corvinus, the scourge of the Turkes, rayned as Kinge of Bohemia, for to well governe the free cities of his realme, he sent divers worthy majestrates," &c.
Shakespeare, with his usual tact in adapting his plays to the understanding of his audience, changed the unknown city, Julio, for Vienna, a place, the name and importance of which was almost or quite as well known to Englishmen of that day as of this ; with the place, he also changed, of worse, the prince whose delegated authority was abused. Bat he scrupulously retained the costume and all the traits,
128 Notes and Comments.
incidents, and allusions which mark the period of the stoiy on which he built his comedy; and added, besides, as we shaD see, certain two or three allusions not found in Whetstone's story, as if for the very purpose of giving a local habitation and a time, as well as an air of reality to his creation. The Duke of Vienna in Shakespeare's comedy, is, of course, the Duke of Austria, of which province that city has been for hundreds of years the capital Lacio opens the second scene of the play by saying, ^^ If the Duke with the other Dukes come not to composition with the King of Hungary, why, then all the Dukes fall upon the King." The period of the action must then be, according to the internal evi- dence of the play, a time when the Duke of Austria was not King of Hungary (which he sometimes was by choioe of the nation, the crown of Hungary being elective), and when Hungary was at war with Austria : ^ according to the re- quirements of the story which furnished the plot, the action must take place at a time when there was a Corvinus, King of Himgary and also of Bohemia, and who was also a soooige of the Turks.
Now, we find that in the year 1464, the Hungarians refused to choose a king from the house of Austria, and raised to the throne Mathias Corvinus, son of Huniades, regent in the previous reign, as appears in the following passage under that year in Heiss' History of the Empire.
^' Les Hongrois voyant rembarras oi\ 6toit rEmpereor, ma
* Perhaps some of my readers would be glad to be reminded that the German Empire was not hereditary but elective ; the Emperor being chosan by the Electoral College constituted by the rulers of those states which formed the Empire. Almost every Electorate has, at some time more or less remote, furnished an occupant for the Imperial throne. Thua it hap- pened that the King of Hungary was sometimes Emperor of Germany and Duke of Austria as well as King of Ilungary ; and sometimes he waa th« King of Poland, so:netiin?s the King of Bohemia. In the present instanca, however, as wc shall see, he was a Hungarian.
MsA. FOB Mba. : Period of the Action. 129
lieu de ehercher un Roi dans la Maison d'Autriche, ^l(h>ent en k pUoe da d^funt Prince Ladislas, Mathias Corvin, fils du brave Huniadea lis ne le couronnerent pas alors, parce que I'Empe- rear reienoit toOjours la cooronne, dont ils avoient accoCltum^ de eoozonner leors Rois.'*
Histoire de P Empire, Liv. III.
Bat this date is incorrect according to the contempo- my writer Antonius Bonfinus, who says that Mathias (kanmxoBWBa crowtied in 1464, having been elected in 1458. He reigned until his death, which took place in 1490. Dur- ing this time he was almost continually at war with the Doke of Austria, Frederick III., and with the Turks. Hie expeditions were generally successfiil against both. He usually " conquered a peace " by a ver}^ bloody victory ; so that the Ginileman who replies to Lucio might well say, " Heaven gmnt us its peace, but not the King of Hungary's." In 1476 he subdued the greater part of Austria ; and in 1485 he marched to Vienna and took it. In 1478 he laid waste the country of the Turks for thirty miles, and took thirty thousand prisoners. In 1480 he is recorded to have dain thirty thousand Turks in battle, to which he added a trifle of three thousand more in 1482. But, more than this, in 1472 he invaded Poland, and conquered the Bohe- mians who came to the aid of his enemies ; and in 1473; the provinces of Moravia and Silesia were ceded to him with the title oi King of Bohemia for life ; the provinces to re- tum to Bohemia after his death, on the payment of 600,000 crowns, but the remainder of Bohemia to fall to him if he survived Ladislaus, then rightful king of that country.
Paulus Jovius, who in this case had no temptation to^ flatter or malign with his "pens of iron or gold," thus speaks of the prowess and success of Corvinus, in a passage ^ch still further establishes the points already made :
" Scd post editum irifuliceni partum, Kegina coiitcntioni finenL
130 Notes and Comments.
fecit honest is conditionibos, legitimeque demum antiqno Regnm diademate apud Albam coronatus est ; sio at regnavit supra aonos trigiDta sex, occupatus semper noyo bello, quam perpetaifl,d& in- yictis armis undiqne sibi amplisBimam laudem A gloriam paran- dam existimaret. Non sustinuere ardentis Dacis vim PolooL qui arma Hungaris inferre ausi fnerant Hcec eadem Germano- rum fobora perfrcgit, qunm Anstriffi Viennam Frederico Gaesari adimeret. Valachorum exercitum ancipiti proelio profligavit, quo ipse sagitta vulneratus, sed pland victor discessit. Binie qnoqne praeliis Turcarum ab lUjrici limits imimpentium andaciam ita contudit atque reprcssit, ut Mahometes eomm imperator, omnium prope gentium victor, successorque ejus filioa Bajaietes, nqaiHi- mis legibus pacem potierint. Gkssit adversos Slesiaitas ad Tib- tislaviam urbem acre bellum, tanta utique felicitate, ut in tolo Hungarici regni limits devictarum ab se gentium summae gloiUBi trophsea spectarentur."
Elogia Virorum Iliustrium, Lib. IIL
Here, then, we have all our conditioDS fnlfilled. A Corvinus, King of Hungary and Bohemia, at war with the Duke of Austria, and a scourge of the Turks. The period of the play is evidently between 1473, when he received the title of King of Bohemia, or rather, 1476, when he over- ran the greater jyart of Austria, and 1490, when he died. The time of the action of few of Shakespeare's non-histori- cal plays can be so definitely determined. But, as he marched on Vienna in 1485, we are able to determine almost the ver}' year required ; and thus the period of this play, instead of being altogether indeterminable, is fixed with more accuracy than that of any other which has not a strictly historical subject.
Frederick III. was Emperor of (Jermany as well as Duke of Austria ; but that it was the eustom of the Emperors to combine, as Lucio says, " with the other Dukes," and for " all the Dukes to fall upon the King " of Hungary, is evident from the following passage from Heiss, who records
Mea. fob Mea. : Pebiod of the Action. 131
m it exactly such a proceeding on the part of one of the ctilier EmperoiB, Henry I., who was Duke of Saxony :
** An commencement de son regne, il ne pensa qu'i reconci' Ser en Allemagne les PHnceSy Comics et Seigneurs, les uns avec k» auireSy ponr 6tablir par tout une parfaite union, comma 6taDt hmiqne fondement de la prosperity, et de la gloire des Allemans. D J r6auit 8i bien, et gagna de telle sorte leur amitie, que par lav aiiiitance, tons concaururent a luifaire remporter une sig- miie victaire sur les Hongrois, qui, selon leur coiitume, ^toient immM (aire nne irruption en Allemagne avec une puissante arm^e.''
Histoire de V Empire, Liv. II.
It is also noteworthy that the wretch Bamardine is fpdken of as '^ a Bohemian bom, but here [in Vienna] nurs- ed op and bred ; " * and that the Duke tells Friar ThomaSy that Angela supposes him ^' travell'd to Poland/' f a jour- aey, not uncommon with the Dukes of Austria, who con- tmnatty had need of the aid of the Poles against the Hun- . § Thus carefully and minutely has Shakespeare
• Act IV. Sc 2. t Act L Sc 4.
I lly anthoriticB for these historical facts are the following :
Antonii Bonfinii rerum Hungaricum Decades quartuor et dimidia.
FoLBaale: 1548. Paoli JoTii Xorocomensis Elogia Viromm bellica virtute illustrium.
Fol. Basil : 157fi. IsMMton's Satnrnii Ephemerides, sive Tabula Historica Chronolo- gies: FoL LondoD: 1683. Hiitoire de I'Empire, 4c, par le Sienr Heiss. 5 toIs., Byo. Paris : 1711. •
Hie Mune information may doubtless be obtained in other historical verka more in the ordinary oonrse of reading ; but I was unable to find in say others in my own possession or easily accessible to me, the events «f the reigns of the earlier Kings of Hungary and Emperors of Austria, iwordod with sufficient particularity for the purposes of this investigation. Ihe works of Pfay and BeU were not within my reach, and Coxe*s History if the Honso of Austria is not an exception to the foregoing remark ; •hhough its aeeounts of the expeditions of Corvinus against Frederic and the T^rfca are, of course, perfectly consistent yith the authorities to which I hftTs referred. Isaacson's book, my copy of which, however, is the only
132 Notes and CovvENTa
indicate the place and the period of this drama. 1 yet we are told that 'St has been questioned by sc whether or not we should read Sienna for Vienna ! " Tr it seems as if editors, critics, and commentators had i this play with eyes half open, as well as with heads \ hearts top full of prejudice.
It may interest some of the readers of this volume know that this Corvinus, King of Hungary, whose pc was so dreaded by the citizens of Vienna, and who was s a scourge to the Turks, was a distinguished patron of li aturc and the arts. After taking Vienna in 1485, he tired to Buda, and there founded a noble library, consisi chiefly of manuscripts of the Greek and Latin poets historians, and containing about thirty thousand volai which were superbly bound in brocade protected with bo and clasps of gold or silver. The books were dispoeei vaulted galleries in which were fountains of marble and ver. The Turks revenged themselves upon him, after death, by utterly frustrating his care for the literary wi of posterity. When Solyman the Magnificent took Bud storm in 1526, the library of Cor\inus formed no inconsi able part of the plunder of the city : the Turkish soldiers the covers from the volumes which they adorned and tectcd, for the sake of the gold and silver and precious Bt< with which they were enriched. This library and its fate are described with some particularity by Mr. Dib in his Bibliographical Decamei^on, The letters of Cc nus were thought worthy of publication, and were iai at Cassovia in Hungary, in 2 vols. 8vo., in 1744.
one which I ever saw, I commend to the notice of the etodent, at at the moet particular and modt clearly arranged chronological work tabular form which has fallen under mj observation. There are d pancies of a year or two between these authors themselrea, and ah tween them and some more modem authorities, as to dates ; but th< not affect the merits of this question in the least
Mea. fob Mea.: Shakespeabb's Women. 133 Scene 5.
**Jmib, And have you nans no farther priyilcgeB t Fran. Are not these Urge enoogh t Inab. Yea, truly : I speak not as desiring more ; Bat rather wishing a more strict restraint Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare.**
Shakespeare's women have been so much praised^ and it is so safe and so easy to praise them^ that it may be con- fidently assumed that they who have studied those wonder- ful creations most lovingly and closely, are they who are generally repelled by the promiscuous praise bestowed upon them ; for it is but too often the vague and unmeaning pan^yiic of the thoughtless and undiscriminating, who seek to acquire a reputation for taste by compliance with custom. Those who truly know Shakespeare's women, who regard them with instinctive devotion and intelligent admiration, turn away with disappointment or distaste from this adulation, to the loving contemplation of its ob- ject ; and shut their ears to the always inadequate and often belittling praise of the women, to bend their mind's eye upon the women themselves, who never disappoint, and never leave the cravings of man's heart unsatisfied, when he who called them into being meant that they should fill it. It is, indeed, one of the marv^els of Shakespeare's genius, that, living in the age in which he lived, born and bred as lie was, having such examples before him as the women of the dramas written by his contemporaries and immediate piedecesBors, and writing for a stage upon which women never appeared, he created the most real-seeming, the most captivating and truly feminine women in the whole range <)f imaginative composition. Princesses or peasant girls, Duchesses or dairy maids, wise or foolish, chaste or wanton, they are always womanly ; or, in those few cases in which the poet did not intend that they should fill the high
134 NOTKS AND COMMXHTS.
requirements of that term, in some one of its beantifbl phases, their failings and their faults are womanish, at least.
^ The sex ' is folly represented in Shakespeare's pages. He has shown us woman in aU her aspects: the true- hearted and the fickle, the pure and the impure, the lovely and the loathly, all figure on his canvas ; but however repul- sive, as however enchanting they may be, their very &ult8 as well as their virtues are feminine. No mannidi, even no sexless woman affronts us in his view of womankind. The sweet and shrinking Ferdita is not more purely fem- inine than her heroic mother Hermionej who, in her noUe traits and large outlines, leaves in our memories a figure sad but grand, and like the statue that she feigned to be. And Cleopatra, — wily, almost wise ; abandoned to her passions ; reviling the memory of one paramour, the more to glorify her love for his successor ; and deserting even him in his danger, to return again to him in his extremity, — ^yct charms us ; for, erring as she is, she errs like a woman ; and the same inexplicable spell of mental sex which chains our regards to her, in spite of aU her fiilsekood and her crimes, wins us to look with grdcious eyes upon her kind-hearted, brainless, tittering handmaid Chamwm.
Among the charms with which Shakespeare has endowed his women of the higher tpyes, a subduing tenderness of heart and an innate purity of soul are eminent. The lovely, lovable, and loving creatures seem to be devoted and setf- sacrificing from an impulse of their natures, to stifle which would be to end their hopes of happiness. They are chaste, not because they are passionless, or because they have delib- erately weighed the propriety of two courses of conduct and decided for the better ; but l^ecause, being passionfiil, they are also single-eyed and true-hearted, and revolt instinc- tively from the thought of wanton desecration of their spot* less natures. Such are Miranda, Julia, Portia^ Bogalind,
Mea. fob Msa. : Chabacteb of Isabella. 135
Viola, Perdita, Jtdiety Desdemonay and, above all, Imogen; bat sach is not Isabella; and it is in her that this play fiinuflhes us its second strongly marked type of character, which, without her, would have been unrepresented on Shakespeare's stage.
The poet has given us one marvellously faithful, and yet ideal portrait of the woman sometimes, and, heaven be thanked, but rarely, seen, who is compounded solely of intellect and a sense of propriety. This woman makes piety her employment, and chastity her profession. She is de- liberately sanctified, and energetically virtuous. She is not content with yielding to the influences and practising the pieceptB of religion, she must openly mortify herself before it She is not satisfied with living chastely in thought and deed, as maid or matron, she must continually fortify her- self in a purity which, having reasoned herself into, she fears that she might be reasoned out of, and lay deliberate {dans to preserve a continence which, in most cases, she need apprehend no temptation to relax. She is strong- minded, and often enough strong-bodied ; and would have stood till doomsday beside the ruined tower, and listened amid the lingering light to the lay which won Coleridge's Gtmemeve, and have gone away unthrilled by impulses of soul and sense, and undisturbed by pity. She is a pietist in her religion, a pedant in her talk, a prude in her notions, and a prig in her conduct. This is the sort of woman which alone could furnish a proper companion por- trait to Angelo; and Shakespeare has given her to us in iJKiieQd,— one of the most truthful and carefully finished of his female characters ; and yet to the thoughtful obser- vation of a manly man, one of the most repulsive.
The Supplementary Essay to this play in Mr. Knight's Edition of the Works of Shakespeare states that Mrs. Lennox caUa Isabella "a vixen," and ^'a prude," but that Mrs.
136 NoTBB AND Comments.
Jameson defends and eulogizes the character. I haye jet to read thoroughly the writings of any of ^akespeare's female commentators ; but what little I know of Mrs. Lennox's work leads me to dread rather than seek her as an ally ; while I fear that Mrs. Jameson might lead me to admire^ unconvinced, and approve against my better judg- nient. Therefore I have postponed reading the views of either of these ladies upon the character of Isabella until after I have recorded my own.
Our first view of Isabella shows her to us on a volun- teer foray against impropriety. A novice, about to enter a convent, she has just heard the rules of the order from one of her future sisters. One would think that the rules of any convent would have seemed strict enough to a young woman in the flush of youth ; and that in this one, where, as we learn in this Scene, a nun could not speak to a man " but in the presence of the prioress," or if she spoke, must be concealed, Isabella could be proper to her heart's content. But no ; she only hears the laws which are to shut her out from intercourse with men and with the world, to express her wish for " a more strict restraint upon the sisterhood." Her porcupine purity is neither the negative virtue resulting from ignorance and sometimes miscalled innocence, nor the instinct of a chaste consciousness, nor the unconscious fruit of religions influence. She has solenmly made up her mind to be chaste : she has determined to be tres forte sur la sa^esse: that is to bo her speciality : she has announced it ; and the whole town knows it. It is amusing to see the evidence of this in the answer of the Provost to Angelo, when the latter first hears of her, on the second occasion on which she is spoken of in the play. AngelOy hearing her announced as " the sister of the man condemned," asks if Claudio has a sister. The Pro^ vost replies, " Ay, my good lord ;" and adds, — not that she
HsA. FOB Mea. : Chabacter of Isabella. 137
18 beautiful, not that she is gentle or stately, not that she is beloved, not that she is benevolent, not even that she is firtuous ; but that she is " very virtuous."
**Angd(K Hath he a sister?
ProvoaL Ay, my good lord ; a verif virtuous maid."
Act IT. 8c 2.
And to put beyond all question the deliberate thorough- ness with which Isabella has given her mind to this mat- ter,— after her first formal introduction of her business, she herself teUs us the position which she has taken upon the subject.
"liob. There is a vice, that most I do abhor, And most desire should meet the blow of justice ; For which I would not plead, but that I must ; For which I must not plead, but that I am At war, 'twixt will, and will not.*'
Act. II. 8c. 2.
It is a vice that she most abhors, that she most desires should meet the blow of justice. She has thought over the category of vices, and has determined that this is to be her particular horror. Would Viola have done that ? ^ould Portia ? would Imogen ? Pure hearted, gentle creatures, — no. They would have revolted from tlie un- maidenly syllogisms which must have preceded such a con- clarion, as they would have shrunk from infamy ; and yet they were no prudes ; and when there was necessity, called things by their right names.
We seek in vain for any evidence that Isabella's for- midable chastity and ascetic religion were the fruits of, or ^ven accompanied by, any grace of soul or tenderness of heart. She has a dreadfully rectangular nature, is an ac- complished and not very scrupulous dialectitian, and thinks it proper to be benevolent only when she has the law on
138 NOTBS AND OOMMSNTB.
her side. She is utterly without impulse, — ^that cfaArming trait of woman, which if it expose her to some perils, pro- tects her from more and greater, and which prcnnpts and gives efficiency as well as beauty alike to all her gentle deeds of homely kindness and her nobler acts of self-deYO- tion. laabeUaj on the contrary, does eveiy thing " by the card." She goes to Angdo to intercede for her brother, — she could not have done less, — and b^ns by making the immodest and utterly needless, and therefore unkind and injurious confession, that her brother has been guilty of the vice which she most desires should meet the blow of justice. She briefly and coldly states her case ; and after receiving only a quasi denial of her proposition, she instantly retires ; not neglecting the opportunity, however, to eulogize the law which on the morrow will leave her brotherless.
'' I»ab. I htve a brother i« condemned to die : I do beseech yoa, let it be his faulty And not my brother.
Protf. Heayen ^ye thee moying graces !
Ang. Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it! Why, every fault's condemn'd, ere it be done : Mine were the very cipher of a function. To fine the faults, whose fine stands in record, And let go by the actor.
Isab. 0 just, but severe law I
I had a brother then. — Heaven keep your honour I IRMring.'
ActJZ8e.2,
A sister might have neglected to volunteer a panegyric of that particular statute at that particular time, and yet have been none the less pure-minded. No wonder that Lucio tells her,
** if you should need a pin, Yon oonld not with more tame a tongue desire it"
MsA. FOB Mba. : Character of Isabella. 139
Bat it is very questionable whether Isabella was womanish enough to need a pin ; she probably used buttons, — or would have done so had she lived now-a-days. It may be uncharitable, perhaps, to accuse her of having an eye to the reversicm of the points with which Claudio tied his doublet and hose ; but her indifference to his death looks very like it.
But, urged on by Zrtfcto, she remains, and commences — to plead with Angela f to touch his heart by womanly 'graces ? to turn against his manhood all the nameless, irre- sistible power of female prayers and tears ? No : she stops to reason with him, to have a little bout at dialectics, — the robject being the pardon of her brother. She tells the deputy that he
" might pardon him. And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy.**
And when he says, that, what he will not, that he cannot do, she replies,
'But you might do't and do the world no wrong. If 8o your heart were tonch'd with that remorse As mine is to him."
Could she be more deliberate, if she were proving that the ^leu of a right-angled triangle are equal to two right *iJgle8 ? And thus she goes on, disputing with Angdo as ^0 how he would feel if he were Claudio, and what she ^ould do if she were Angela; giving him her ideas about ^ttthority, justice, and the unjust influence which social position exerts upon our judgment of man's conduct : she ^OBt gets into a discussion of " fate, free-will, foreknow- 1^ absolute.'* She does it well, exceedingly well ; and ^th a self-possession, clearness of perception, and command
140 Notes and Covmentb.
of language, which under the circumstances are equally aston- ishing, unfeminine, and unlovely. But not a prayer, not an entreaty, not an utterance of woeful apprehension, until she hears that Claudio is to be beheaded on the next day ; and then she utters an ejaculation, not of grief, but of apprehension for the safety of his soul : — ^very proper, and highly becoming in one about to become a professed rdigieuae; but had her woman's and her sister's feelings — such as she had — ^been uppermost, she would have appeared the better, and have been none the worse. But as to her sorrow, it is remark- ' able that she does not shed a tear, or once use those woman's weapons, until she hears from the Dvke of the death of Claudio; and then she weeps, rather, it would seem, from spite than grief. The Dvke (Act IV. Sc. 3) tells her that Claudio* 8 " head is off and sent to Angdo!* Is she crushed by the unexpected blow ? Does she grieve ^ Is her spirit subdued by her bereavement, and the fate of her brother ? No : her first thought is of a vixen's vengeance upon the adversary who has overreached her. She exclaims,
" O, I will to him and fliick out his eyes I **
After this, as we learn from the remarks of the Duke and Lucio, she weeps. But it is note-worthy that her tears are not spoken of in very complimentary terms even by the Duke, He does not. call them 'holy drops,' or any thing of the kind, but " fretting waters ; " and the only consola- tions which he deems at all likely to be efficacious with this very holy and " very virtuous" maid, are promises of revenge, and gratified ambition.
" If you can, pace your wisdom In that good path that I would wish it go ; And you shall have your bosom on this wretch, Grace of the duke^ revenges to your hearty And general honor"
Mea. fob Mea. : — Chabacteb of Isabella. 141
A second interview with Angelo (Act II. Sc. 4) is al- most a repetition of the first. He tells her that her brother •cannot live ; and her brief, calm, acquiescent reply is,
•'Even 80, — Heaven keep your honor.**
[Retiri^ig.
AngdOj to obtain the opportunity for his base proposal, IB obliged to provoke her into an attempt to change his ietermination ; and then she goes at it like the senior wrangler of some future female college. To quote the characteristic parts of this Scene would be to give the whole of it. There are one or two very decided expressions of feeling, in reply to the attack made upon that particular virtue which she has made her hobby ; but not one tender word to show that she is moved to sorrow or compassion for her brother, or that she has a woman's heart beneath her marble bosom. Her exceeding adroitness in special pleading becomes positively amusing when she turns the tables upon Amjelo, who asks her,
*• Might there not be a charity in sin, To save this brother's life? "
Not disconcerted for an instant, she replies,
** Please you to do't, ril take it as a peril to my soul, It is no sin at all, but charity.*'
0 women, who long to let the light of your intellect shine Wore men, see how repulsive this creature is to men, in spite ^fher beauty and her intellect, as she stands victoriously quibbling with a judge, while she cannot plead for or excuse l^er erring brother 1 How men would love and reverence *^€f if, though utterly unable to reply to Angelo, she had
9
142 NOTKS AND OOMMSNT8.
besieged him with the pathetic eloquence of woman's ten- derness and woman's grief ! But as it is, she is merely a clever talker and ^^ very virtuous ;" and clever talkers, men can find by hundreds among themselves ; while that virtne upon which Isabella so prided herself, they are accustomed to regard as a quiet and conservative, and not a militant and progressive quality, and one which exists in abflolnte perfection when in the positive degree. They do not believe in the crescendo — ^virtuous, quite virtuous, very virtuous, more than in the diminuendo — ^virtuous, pretty virtuous, almost virtuous.
To return to our Scene. — ^It is more chilling than a North West Passage to hear this beautiful woman, whose brother's life hangs on her tongue, admitting with arid curtness the positions which her adversary takes as the basis of his argument.
" Ang. Bat mark me ;
To be received plain, Fll speak more gross; Your brother is to die.
Isab. So.
Ang. And his offence is so, as it appears Accountant to the law upon that pain.
hah. True.
Afig. Admit no other way to save his life," Ae.
Our sympathy is with her cause, but not with her ; and when, thinking that she has Angdo on the hip, she who could not entreat, assimies the bully, and thus threatens him :
''hah. Hat little honor to be much believed. And most pernicious purpose I — seeming, seeming 1— I will proclaim thee, Angelo ; look for*t ; Sign me a present pardon for my brother. Or, with an outstretched throaty 111 tell the world Aloud, what man thou art"
Mea. fob Mba.: — Chabacteb of Isabella. 143
then^ with all our pity for Olattdio and ojir detestation of AnffdOy we cannot but feel a sort of satisfaction that the latter is not so entirely in the clutches of this beautiful she Bhadanianthus, and that the pardon of Clattdio is not ob- tained exactly in that way. Clavdio himself appreciates exactly the strong points of his sister's character ; for, in the first sentence of the play which apprises us of her ex- istenoe^ he tells LuciOy
"She hath prosperous art When flhe will play with re€U<m and ditcourte^ And weU she can persuade."
Act L 8c. 2.
And it is quite remarkable that the " prone and speechless dialect, such as moves men," of which he speaks, is not in her, but, be it noticed, " in her youth" Angdo, too, bears evidence to the fact that she is a very intellectual woman, in fact quite * an intelligence/ She does not touch him by her devotion, or her winning ways, or the pathos of her appeals for her brother's life ; but admiring at once her person and a sharp specimen of the argumentem ad homi- nem with which she favors him, and quibbling after the iashion of Shakespeare's day, he says, aside,
"She speaks, andUis Such ffTMe, that my sense breeds with it"
Act II. 8c. 2.
Isabella* 8 frigidity with Angdo is unredeemed by any tenderness to her brother. It does not melt even in the famace of his affliction. Her first announcement of his &te is cold and merciless enough.
"Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven, Intends you for his swift ambassador, Where you shaU be an everlasting leiger :
144 Notes and Comments.
Therefore your best appointment make with speed; To-morrow you set on.**
Act niScl.
But when, — after eorae discussion, in which she utters sev- eral fine things about what Claudio ought to do, and what she would do under other circumstances, she again directs him to prepare for execution, — with an impassibility abso- lutely frightful, this sheriff in petticoats says to her brother,
"Be ready, Claudio, for your death to-morrow."
Sheriff ! There wasn't a headsman in Austria who could have done it with a more professional and businesslike air. ClaudiOy stunned by this cold-blooded barbarity, and left without consolation in his extremity, becomes coward- ly, and shrinks from death even at the expense of his sis- ter's chastity. That she remains firm, would be to her honor, were not the spirit in which she does it so pitiless, so utterly uncomi)a88ionate, the feeling which she expresses so inhuman, not to say so unwomanly, and the language which she uses so obdurate and so savage. Hear the gentle votaress of Saint Clare, tlie " very virtuous maid I " —
"/«tf6. O, you boast I
O, faithless coward ! O, dishonest wretch I Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice f
* • * Tuke my defiance : Die ; perish I might but my bending down Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed : I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death, No word to save thee.**
Is this the spirit of Christ's religion ? is it this to bo " a very ^'irtuou8 maid ?" Do genuine propriety of life, and innate purity of soul necessitate such treatment of a brother, weak, erring, cowardly, and selfishly sinful though he be ?
MsA. FOB MsA.: — Character of Isabella. 145
What a terrible and yet what a truthful satire is written
in this character of Isabella !
But she caps the climax of her indifference and her deference to routine duty when the Dukcy entering at this moment, in his holy character and habit, asks her, as she is about retiring precipitately, to wait, — promising that it shall be for her benefit. Does she catch at a chance of comfort for poor Clavdio ? Hear her prompt reply :
"I have no superflaous leisure: my stay must be stolen out of other aibirs ; but I will attend you a while/*
She has no leisure. She is a woman of business ; and her stay must be stolen out of other affairs. She has wasted as much time upon her brother as she has to spare — neverthe- less, she has done or offered to do nothing to prepare him tur his death, — and now she is impatient to be off to her duties at the convent, and leave him to his fate. Unless her apologist, Mrs. Jameson, is even a better special pleader than she is herself, her case seems hopeless ; for she is here judged out of her own mouth, and those of her brother and her admirer.
Lucio is incidentally made a quasi eulogist of Isabella ^ hy the erroneous punctuation of some editions, and by Mr. Knight specifically, who says of her that, "in the eyes of the habitual profligate with whom she comes in con- tact, she is,
*a thing ensky'd and sainted.'"
But Lucio does not say so. He does say, — according to the original, which Mr. Collier has thus almost exactly fol- lowed in his excellent edition of the genuine works of Shakes- peare (8 vols. 8vo. J844)—
"Tib true. I would not, though 't is my familiar Bin With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest^ 10
146 Notes and Cokmsmts.
Tongue far from heart, play with all Tirgini to: I hold you as a thing ensky^d, and sainted By 3'our renouncement, an immortal spirit^ And to be talked with in sincerity, As with a saint"
AetlSe.^
He holds her as ensky'd and sainted by her renouncement. There is no warrant even in the almost utterly worthless punctuation of the first folio for any other construction of the passage ; and even if there were, the points in such a carelessly printed volume are not to be set for one minute against the obvious or even the implied sense of ita words. As Malone remarks, in a comment directed to entirely another point in the passage, Luao says to Isabellay *'I consider you, in conseqtience of your having renounced the world, as an immortal spirit, as one to whom I ought to speak with as much sincerity as if I were addressing a saint/ This is an expression entirely in accordance with the ven- eration with which recluses were regarded in the Middle Ages, by even the worst of men ; while to make Lucio utter such a sentiment, simply from a knowledge of Isabella's character, is to entirely falsify his own, the- chief element of which is an utter want of reverence for any thing. Be- sides, the punctuation necessary to Mr. Knight's use of the line, not only breaks the natural sequence of the thought, but rudely disturbs the flow of the verse. It makes three successive lines close each with a completed sense and a fall- ing inflection ; than which nothing could be more stiff, dis- jointed, unmusical, un-Shakesperian ; as will bo evident upon a perusal of the passage so punctuated : —
" to jest Tongue far from henrt^ — play with all virgins so: I hold you as a thing ensky'd and sainted ; By your renouncement an immortal spirit; And to be talked with " &c
MsA. FOR Mea. :— Oharacter of Isabella. 147
This will neter do. But the last and the insuperable ob- jection to this reading of the passage is, tlint, on Lucio's own evidence, he could not hold her " ensky'd and sainted '* except as a nini ; fi)r he knew nothing else of her, and had not even seen her before the occasion on which he makes this remark within two minutes of the commencement of their interview. As he enters the convent, she presents herself to him^ and he asks her, if she can procure him an interview with herself :
Xiioo. " Hail, virgin, if you be,— -as those cheek-roses
Proclaim you are no less ! Can you so stead me
As bring me to the sight of Isabella,
A Doyiee of this place, and the fair sister
To her unhappy brother Claudiof
/m6. Why her unhappy brother f let rae ask ;
The rather, for I now must make you know
I am that Isabella, and his sidter."
Act L Sc. 5.
When he discovers who she is, he regards her merely as Claudia's sister, and one devoted to a religious life : any other of the sisterhood or novices would have been equally ensky'd and sainted, in his eyes. Isabella too adds her own testimony, needless though it is, in confirmation of this in- terpretation of the passage. In reply to this very speech, in which Ludo calls her a saint, she says,
•*Too do blaspheme the good in mocking rae,"
showing plmnly that she accepted, nay, commanded, his re- verence as but a formal and becoming tribute to the holy calling which she was just about to take upon herself.
As if to show by contrast the unloveliness of IsabeUa'a character, Shakespeare has given us in Mariana one of the most lovable and womanly of his feminine creations. We see little of her : indeed, she does not appear until the
148 Notes and Commsnt&
fourth Act ; in the first scene of which she says very little, in the last scene but eight words, and in the fifth Act not a great deal. But the few touches of the mastei^s hand make a charming picture. Every word she atters shows that she is exactly Isabella's opposite. Turn to the fifth Act, and hear her plead, — plead for the man whom she has loved through lonely years of wrong, the man whose life is justly forfeit for taking, as she thinks, the life of another, in a course of crime which involved a sin against her leva Timid and shrinking before, she does not now wait to be encouraged in her suit. She is instant and importunate. She does not reason or quibble with the Dttke ; she begs, she implores, she kneels. She even drags down that beau- tiful graven image, Isabella, upon her knees, by her impet- uous prayers :
*0 my good lord I — Sweet Isabel take my part: Lend me your knees ; and all my life to comt ril lend you all my life to do 3'oar servioe.*
Again :
"Isabel, Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me; Hold up your hands, say nothing, I'll speak alL They say, best men arc moulded out of faults; And for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad : so may my husband. O, Isabel I will you not lend a knee I "
No dialectics, no right-angled triangles here. This is a wo- man, pleading like a woman. And does not her very prayer for Augelo make his crime seem more detestable as well as her more lovable ? How the fulness of her heart wells up from her lips ! These few woids of self-devotion and of impulse throw a halo around her, whose tender glow makes the glittering light of Isabella's intellect seem as false and as chilly as that reflected from an icicle.
MsA. FOR Mba. : — Character of Isabella. 149
There is opportunity enough for Mariana to inveigh against uochastity ; but she says not one word. And yet who doubts her ? What man would not as soon trust the honor of his name with her as with IsaheUay — aye, sooner ! Contrast Isabella's virtue with that of Shakespeare's noblest woman, — Imogen. Compare the cold, reasoning continence of the (me, with the immaculate and instinctive purity of the lyther's passionful nature. Isabella^ as if dreading a riot in her Uood, seeks the protection of laws and sentinels and' bolts and bars, and before she has tried them, begs to have them doubled ; when, in truth, the suit of the young god of* Day himself would fail to stir the gelid lymph that loiters through her veins. Imogen, who could give her love unask-- ed to one below her station, yet lose no dignity as princess," or as woman, whose nature was as fond as Desdemona's and as passionful as Juliet's, finds in her own inherent but un-' obtruded modesty a watchful sentinel and a triple wall of defence against a libertine's attack.
Such is Shakespeare's marvellously truthful portraiture of a type which, sad to say, does exist among womankind. —Women whose existence is bound up in a love of pro- priety, a pride of intellect, and an ostentatious submission to the dictates of an austere religion. Perhaps they should be pitied rather than condemned ; but it would tax any power, short of omnipotence, to make them loved. Cole- ridge says, in a brief paragraph of his Table Talk, devoted to this play : " Isabella herself contrives to be unaraiable." The remark is severe ; for it needlessly attributes a bad njotive. Isabella needed no contrivance to such a end : her Qnamiability, like the reading and writing spoken of by Dog- i^, " comes by nature."
Isabella is a woman with too much brain or too little heart. A woman cannot have too fine an intellect, or one ^ large, if, only, her affections be finer and larger ; but
150 Notes and Comments.
the moment that she shows an excess of the first, she he- comes unfeminine^ repulsive, monstrous. Shakespeare has given us an ideal of every type of masi and womankind ; and he could not pass by this. Its unloveliness was not to deter him from the task ; though the effect of that is some- what modified by the personal beauty of his subject ; which, too, was necessary to the dramatic movement of the play. But he does not always set up his greatest creations as mod- els for our imitation. He drew an logo and an Angela among men ; among women, why should he withhold his hand from a Lady Macbeth and an Isabella f
Coleridge, in the little paragraph just mentioned, com- plains that, " our feelings of justice are grossly wounded at AfKjelo' 8 escsLpc,'' No, no ! indeed, no I It is for Mariana's buke that Angelo is pardoned. What is the injustice of liis pardon to tho'justice of giving her her husband."^ Her suffer- ing, her long and lonely sorrows, are the condition of the happy termination of the play ; and shall she not have her reward ? Yes, truly. Tears like hers would wash away the blood on the stem statute books of Draco.
Hallam finds fault with the Duke's hinted intention of marrying Isabella; and calls it '*one of Shakespeare's hasty half thoughts." One of Shakespeare's hasty half thoughts ! Pray, how many such has he left us ? With all deference to the Historian of the Literature of Europe, this was exactly the best disposition which could have been made of Isabella, The Dukey a well-meaning, undecided, feeble- minded, contemplative man, needed somebody to act for him and govern him ; she, after having listened solemnly to his ar- guments, probably found him guilty — not of love, that would have been unpardonable — but of preference for a female, under extenuating circumstances, and — ^married him. He needed a ^ gray mare ;' and Shakespeare, with his unerring perception of the eternal fitness of things, gave him IsabeUcL
Measure for Measure. 151
Act II. Scene 2.
*'Imb. If he had been as you, and you as he, Ton would have slipped like him ; but he, like you. Would not have been so stern."
Tbe last comma should not exist in the last clause of this sentence. As it stands above, and is always printed, it means that Clavdio would be like Angeloj and yet not so stem ; for " like you " is made parenthetical But " like " is evidently used here with the force of ^ as ' ; and Isabella means to say that, if their situations had been changed, Claudio would not have been so stern as Angdo, Bead, —
** but he, like you Would not have been so stero/'
Scene 3.
*' Dv^. Tis meet so, daughter ; but least you do repent^ As that the sin hath brought you to this shame ; Which sorrow is always toward ourselves, not heaven. Showing we would not spare lieaven, as we love it, Bat as we stand in fear."
Mr. Collier's MS. corrector makes the fourth line,
"Showing we would not serve heaven,** <tc.
This appears to be required by the context, and to be a permissible correction of a probable misprint. Still, ** spare" is defended in Blackwood! s Magazine^ on the graund that to spare heaven is to refrain from sin, while to serve heaven is to do good actively. The plea for the old reading has the merit of some subtle ingenuity, but hardly more.
Ifl2 Notes and Comments.
"Juliet Must die to morrow ! O, injurioos 1ot€^ That respites me a life, whose very comfort Is still a dying misery.**
An obvious and easy misprint in the original makes utter nonsense of this passage. How does JtUiefs injurious love for Claudio respite her a life ? It was the law which took his life and respited hers, although, as she confesses, the offence " was mutually committed," and, — as the Duke decides, with her assent, — although her sin was, therefore, ^' of heavier kind than his." It was this law that she calls "injurious." Read,
"Must die to-morrow! O injurioiis lam, That respites me a life,** A/n.
This correction was made by Sir Thomas Hanmer; and yet, strange to say, "love" has been retained by all more modern editors ; although it does not afford even the least gleam of sense. Johnson, and some with him, have supposed that Jvliet attributes to her love the preservation of her life, because " her execution was respited on account of her pregnancy, the effects of her love." But she was not under sentence of death. The law did not touch her life. As the story on which the play is founded tells us, the law in question decreed that the man who broke it " should lose his head, and the woman offender should ever after be infamously noted, by the wearing of some disguised appar- rell : " — perhaps something like the Scarlet Letter which Hawthorne's pen has made to glow upon the bosom of that figure whose haughty loveliness lives for ever in our memories. The love of Juliet could have no influence in securing her exemption from death ; and there was no need that it should. The law secured her that ; and because the same law took Claudio from her she calls it an " injurious law."
Mbasure fob Measure. 153 Scene 4.
•* Angdo, heaven hath my empty words
Whilst my invontioD, hearing not my tongae, Anchors on Isabel : heaven in my mouth As if I did but chew his name," <fcc
For " heaven " in this speech we should evidently read Odd, That the text was thus, as Shakespeare wrote it, is plainly shown by the last line,
'As if 1 did but chew Ati name,'
that is, God* 8 name. The change was made by the pub- liahere of the first folio, in conformity with the statute of James I. before alluded to ; but they neglected to make a wrresponding change in the pronoun.
•• Ang. Admit no other way to save his life, (As I subscribe not that, nor any other. Bat in the loss of question) that you, his sister, Finding yourself desir'd of such a person, Whos<» credit with the judge, or own great place. Could fetch your brother fn>m the manacles Of the all-binding law ; and that there were No earthly mean to save him, but that either You must lay down the treasures of your body To this suppos'd, or else to let him suffer, What would you dof "*
The clause in parentheses in this long sentence is exceedingly ^cult ; in fact, absolutely incomprehensible. What does ^^/^^ mean by saying that he could not subscribe to any ^ytoBave Claudio'a life " but in the loss of question"? In ^kis construction it seems to me that these words are mean- ^'^^ess, and the whole sentence devoid of sense. Besides, as *** speech at present stands, Angela does not even say what ^ means, irrespective of this phrase, which is, evidently,
154 Notes and Comments.
this : * Admit no other way to save your brother's life, but that yoUy being desired by such and such a person, yield to him, — ^what would you do? I do not say that this or any other way will save his life, but put the case hy])otheti- cally ;' — the caveat being put in parentheses, in the first part of the speech. But as the text now stands, omitting the words within the parentheses, Angclo says, " Admit no other way to save his life ( ) that you his sister, finding yourself desir'd," etc. : — the * but,' the word of exception, the very key of the sentence, is wanting ; for it is shut out of the construction by the interposition of the paren- theses. This diflSculty is added to the obscurity of the parenthetic part. The trouble arises from the connection of " but in the loss of question " with " As I subscribe, &c." Shift the parenthesis, and correct one very easy misprint, and the sentence is plain. — Thus :
" Admit DO other way to save his life (As I subscribe not that nor any other) But, in the caw of question, that you bis sister, Finding yourself desir'd of such a person,
«♦«♦«»
What "would you do? "
Mr. Singer (as I find by a paragraph in Blackwood's Mag^ azine Aug. 1853, p. 190, which sustains him) supposes that he gets rid of the difficulty by considering " the loss of question " to mean, ^ the looseness of conversation.' But even if this very violent distortion of the i)hrase be admitted, the great difficulty, the separation of "but" from "that" in the third line, is not obviated ; and if regard be had to this main consideration, Mr. Singer's suggestion falls to the ground. For if we substitute the one phrase for the other, we find that we cannot say,
"Admit no other way to eave his life, (As I lubsoribe not that nor any other)
MiASURi FOB Measure. 155
But» in the looaeneti of eonverttUiarif that you, his sister, Finding yourself desir'd, Ac"
The fact is, that nearly the whole of this speech b one huge parenthesis encircling other gradually diminishing paren- theses. This appears, briefly, thus. The essentials, the parts not parenthetical, are only the first and last lines, — it being remembered that Angela has previously made known his purpose.
** Admit no other way to save his life
• • • * •
What would you dot"
To make his meaning unmistakable, however, he states plainly, but parenthetically, the way to save his life ; and the sentence becomes,
''Admit no other way to save his life,
• » • » •
But * * that you, his sister,
Finding yourself desir*d of such a person, &c
• • • « ♦
What would you do f "
But it becomes him to be wary with a woman like IsaheUa^ ttid to let her know, as they are arguing the matter, that kfi puts this case but for the sake of question, i. c. argu- ment ; and so the third line becomes,
" But (in the case of question) that you his sister," Ac.
Yet again, it suits his purpose to say to her that he not ^^iilj puts such a case merely for the sake of argument, but that he wishes to state explicitly that, even if it should •ctually occur, he cannot subscribe to its success, or to that ^'any other supposable case ; and so the second line makes
156 Notes and Oomhent&
its appearance, and the speech becomes^ according to mod^ em punctuation,
** Admit no other way to save hia life, (As I subscribe not tbat, nor any other) But, — in the ease of question, — that you, his sister Finding yourself desir'd, <fec. • • '
« « • • • •
What would you do f "
That Angela and Isabella are aligning the case, is evi- dent, from his taking his positions in the two immediately preceding speeches, and her brief admissions of their cor- rectness. " So," she says, and " True."
These remarks, it should be remembered, are not by way of argument ; but for the purpose of analyzing a very interesting passage. The changes — a mere correction of the punctuation in the most carelessly pointed book ever printed, and the rectification of a palpable error of the press, — surely sustain themselves without argument.
" Isab. Else let my brother die. If not a feodary, but only he, Owe, and succeed by weakness."
This passage is generally confessed to be the most ob- scure of the very obscure passages which are found in the original text and nearly all of the reprints of this noble play. The commentators and editors, from Warburton to Knight, confess its great difficulty ; and when I have claimed a c6niparative freedom from obscurity for Shakespeare's style, this passage, oftener than any other, has been pointed out to me as a stumbling block by those unread in the earlier English literature. There was a time when it was not quite clear to me ; but upon reading it in the original, it became as comprehensible as any passage in Shakesjieare's works,
Measure for Measure. 157
although it contains three words not used in their common, modem acceptation.
The speech being obscure to the editors, they sought to elucidate it by the change of a word ; they substituted by tor " thy " of the original, where the lines stand thus :
"Else let my brother die If not a fedarie but only be Owe, and succeed thy weakness.*'
Angelo has just said to Isabella "We are all frail ;" and this reply of hers to his general assertion, draws from him the prompt rejoinder,
"Nay, women arc frail too."
Hedoes not simply say, " women are fmil," but ^^Nay, women are frail too; " which plainly shows that Isabella's answer had confined this frdilty to men ; and in the original, she does, ty implication, limit it to Claudio, Angelo and their follows. -Speaking to the latter of liis frailty, she says, " thy weak- ness ; " and the change to " 6y weakness," has only made confusion worse confounded in the heads of those who were confused before.
The word which is looked upon as the cause of the dif- ficulty is " fedary." But this, as Dr. Richardson's Diction- wy assures us, and as a line in Cymheline plainly shows, nieana simply ^ an associate,' ^ a fellow ' — in crime, or in fiailty, or in any thing else,
" Pisanio. O damn'd paper I
Black as the ink tlmtV on thee. Senseless bauble, Art thou afeodart/ for this act, and look'st So virgin like without I "
Cymbeline, ActllL So. 2.
158 Notes and CoMMitNT&
Again in the Winter^ 8 Tale :
** She IB a traitor, and Camino is X/ederary with her."
WtfUer'i TaU, Act IL Se. 1.
"Owe," as every reader of Shakespeare knows, signifies * have/ * possess.' As for instance, in this very play :
" Lucio, When maidens sae
Men give like gods; bnt when they weep and kneel. All their petitions are as freely theirs A« thev themselves would otee them."
This use of the word occurs again and again throughout Shakespeare's works.
But the principal difficulty with those who fail to un- derstand the passage, I have found to he the result of a very easy misapprehension of the sense in which a word in every-day use, — ' succeed,' is used here. On account of the suhstitution of bf/ tor " thy," it has been very naturally, in fact unavoidably supposed, that " succeed " means ' have success.' This makes the line in effect, — * owe, and have success by weakness : ' a very foggy statement, which is noi much cleared by inserting the original word, which makes it " owe and have success thij weakness." All this difficulty is removed by observing that " succeed " is here used in its man primitive sense, 'to follow.' " Succeed thy weakness" is, in other words, ' follow thee in thy weakness,' ' take after thy weakness.' Another of Shakespeare's plays furnishes us with a use of this word exactly in point.
•• Countess, Be thou blest, Bertram ; and sneeeed thy father In manners^ as in shape.'*
AlVs WeU, dec., Act L Sc 1.
MfiASFBE FOB MEASURE. 159
There is therefore not the least obscurity or difficulty in the origmal text, which, paraphrased in prose, is simply this :
Aug. We are all frail.
Isab. Yes ; otherwise let my brother die, if no com- pftnion in frailty, but he alone, be possessed of and take after thy weakness.
The propriety of Angdo'a instant reply, including women m the charge of frailty is then obvious. Retain the words of the origiual, omit one of the two commas usually inserted, and read thus, — ^the emphatic word in the last two lines being "he:"
*'Ang. We are all frail, Iwb. Else let my brother die,
If not a feodary, but only he, Owe and aucoeed thy -wcaknesa."
Act III. Scene 1.
•• hob. the poor beetle, that we tread upon In cor])oral suffrance findd a pang as great As when a giant dies."
The almost universal perversion of these lines to a plea for long life to beetles, justifies a repetition of the explana- tion of the passage previously made by others. Isabella is liot reading Claudio a lecture upon cruelty to animals. She ]^e8 to impress upon him that the pang of death is chiefly ^ the dread of death ; and tliat the giant feels no more of that m dissolution, than the beetle, which a thoughtless heel crushes out of existence. This would seem sufficiently obvious to make mistake impossible ; for she says :
" The sense of death is moat in apprehension ; " And the poor beetle," Ac
160 Notes and Comiiemts.
** Duke. Her combioate husband, this well seeming Angela**
Here, " conibinate " stands for ' elect/ The idiom is old, and has affinity with the Italian use of the same word, as Mr. W. S. Rose has shown. He says : " at this hour there is nothing more common in an Italian's mouth than * se si puo covibinarla ' (if we can bring it to bear) when speaking with reference to any future arrangement.''
Scene 2.
• Lucio. What, is there none of Pygmalion's images, newly-roade wo- man, to bo had now for putting the hand in the pocket and extracting it clutched f "
Mr. Douce says, " It is probable, after all, that Lucio simjjy means to ask the clown if he liaa no newly^coined money J wherewith to bribe the officers of justice ; alluding to the portrait of the queen." It is strange that the remote and recondite explanation should be continually sought, in- stead of the i)resent and the obvious. LuciOj speaking to a bawd, merely asks him if there be no young women [Pyg- malion's images] to be had for money ; or, as he phrases it, " for ))uttiug the hand in the pocket, and extracting it clutched."
Act IV. Scene 1.
" Mariana discovered tniting ; a Boy singing.
Take, oh take those lips away,
That 8o sweetly were forsworn ; And th so eyes the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the mom: But my kisses bring agiiin,
bring again. Seals of love, but soal'd in vain,
seaVd in vain. Mari. Break off thy song, and haste thee quick away ; " Ac
Measure fob Measure. 161
This exquisite song reappears in Beaumont and Fletch- er's Bloody Brother; where, however, it is accompanied by another stanza of aknost equal beauty, which begins, as all will remember,
** Hide, oh hide those hills of snow."
Both stanzas are generally printed and quoted, as Shakes- peare's ; but there has been for nearly a hundred years a grave discussion among the critics as to the authorship of the song ; and the point is not considered as decided yet. Some think that Shakespeare wrote both stanzas ; others that only the first is his ; and a few that he has no part in it. What is denied to him is given to Fletcher [or some forgotten ly- ric writer of Shakespeare's day]. Mr. Charles Knight, after stating the question as to who wrote the song, Shakespeare or Fletcher, and Malone's opinion that " all the songs in our author's plays appear to have been of his own composi- tion," with Weber's conjecture that Shakespeare wrote the first stanza and Fletcher the second, says : " There is no evidence, we apprehend, external or internal, by which the question can be settled." The Rev. Alexander Dyce con- cludes a note upon the song, in his careful and scholarlike edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (Vol. X., p. 459,) by say- Uig, " I am inclined to believe that it was from the pen of the great dramatist." Bishop Percy, on the contrary, sneers at Sewel and Gildon for attributing it to Shakespeare ; and Mr. Collier says : " It may be doubted whether either stanza ^asthe authorship of Shakespeare * * *> but his claim may P^haps be admitted until better evidence is adduced to %)rove it."
In spite of all this learned uncertainty and disagree- l^^ttt, the problem appears to me to be of easy solution by Eternal evidence. The song has such a peculiar and subdur ^ beauty, that an examination of its structure can hardly
11
162 Notes and Comiikntb.
fail to afford a greater and more lesthetic pleasure than the mere settlement of a point in criticism.
It would seem either that the learned and lynx-eyed critics already mentioned, forgot that it was a song aboat which they were disputing, and a song, too, which tvas sung upon the stage, or else that there was no singer or musician among them. These verses were written for music ; and the author of the stanza which appears in Measure for Measure so constnicted his lines that the last phrase of the last two strains of the air to which it was sung, might be repeated. They are thus printed in the original folio, and in all subsequent editions of the play :
"But my kisses bring again,
bring again, Seals of love bnt seal'd in viiin,
seard in vain."
How touching, how full of pathos, the repetition I How skilfully adapted for musical effect ! It gives a tender, yearning sadness to the strain, without which the expres- sion of deserted, heart-broken love would lack the last and most subtle expression of its pang. Now, if the writer of this stanza had written another, which Mariana is supposed to tell the boy not to sing, he must necessarily have con- structed the lust two lines of the second in a similar man- ner ; as every musician, or song writer, or singer knowB. Bat the second stanza in the Bloody Brother is not so con- structed. Here it is :
" Hide, oh hide those hiUs of snow, Which Ihy frozen bosom bears,* On ^^'hose tops the pinks that grow Are of those that April wears ;
* As an example of the incomprehensible way in which absurd and in- explicable typographical errors creep into the text> it may interest the read* er to know, thitt in the first edited edition of Beaumont and Fleteher'i Works (8 yoIb., Byo., 1711X this line is printed.
Measure for Measure. 163
Bttt fint set my poor heart free. Bound in those ioy ohains by thee.**
Now we cannot say or sing :
" Bttt first set my poor heart free,
poor heart free, Boand in those icy chains by thee,
chains by thee."
And even if we allow that musical license will admit the repetition of " my poor heart free," which the sense would require, we still find that the sense will not admit the di- visioD of " icy," and the repetition of " -y chains hy thee " which the music would then require. Indeed there is no poeaible mode of singing the first stanza of this song, as it appears in Measure for Measure, to an air adapted to the second stanza ; and, vice versa. Although, perhaps, only
" Which thy frozen blossom bears."
In the copy of the song set to Dr. Wilson's music, which will be referred to hereafter, and which was published more than half a century before, (1652); this same strange error also occurs; the line there being printed,
" Thai thy frozen Blosaome bears ; " ^ yet there are several variations in other lines which show that the *OQg published in the text of the edition of 1711 was not taken from this ; ^i ooDsequently, that one error is not a mere perpetuation of the other. ^^ tlio oeeara in the folio of 1679 ; where, by the way, the last line ia printed,
"Bound in those Ivy chains by thee."
lo a copy of this folio once in my possession, this line was corrected in a hsndwriting contemporaneous with the volume,
"Bound in those Ivory chains by thee,"
^ i^tding whieh has as much of authority to support it as anyone of these ^ Mr. Collier's second folio of Shakespeare. The frequently repeated error, ■"■*'««oiii for "boaom," does not occur in the original quarto, as I find by ^mioatioD of a copy of that edition in Mr. Burton's rich collection of early vtmatie literature. It seems strange that such a mistake should liare ^\^ into the folio edition of the play from a copy of the song set to mutia
164 Notes and Commkntb.
those who know something of the manner in which the mu- sic and words of songs are adapted to each other, can feel the full force of this argument, to them it must be conda- sive ; and the point is one upon which there is no appeal from their decision. Shakespeare evidently wrote the first staaza, and some one else, — ^probably Fletcher, the second. To this demonstration, not the less conclusive because it does not address itself to all the readers of Shakespeare, there is to be added a moral certainty which can hardly fisul of universal apprehension. Having been accustomed to see the two stanzas printed together, I had, in very early youth, thoughtlessly taken it for granted that both were addressed by a lover to his false mistress ; and that impression was of course deepened by all that I ever heard or read about it Such is the universal opinion as far as I know ; but while musing over it one day, the conviction flashed upon me that though the second verse was written to a woman, the first was as unquestionably addressed by a woman to a man. Reflection upon the following italicised phrases must pro- duce the same conviction in every mind.
" Take, oh take those lips away.
That BO sweetly were for twom ; And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the mom : Rut my kUses bring again,
bring again, Seah of love, bnt seal'd in vain,
seal'd in vain."
The tone of this entire stanza is that of a woman whose love has been betrayed, and who still loves, — as the lhik$ says of Mariana, who " hath still in her the continuance of her first afiection." There is, with all the accusation of deliberate falsehood, a manifest upward looking, which is a peculiarity of woman's love, and which she does not entire-
Mbasure for Measure. 165
ly lose, even if she be deserted by him who awakened it. ^Slan, even supposing that he has this feeling under any cnrcumstances, never has it for a woman who has been false ^o him. The beautiful likening of the eyes to " the break of day," is better suited to the light which beams from a <x)untenance of manly beauty than to the softer and more tender, though not less brilliant glance of a woman. A wo- man would be very likely to say* that her lover's eyes "mis- lead the mom ;" but the figure is rather grand for a lover's address to his mistress. But this, however, is mere opinion upon generalities : let us reason ftom particulars.
The person into whose mouth the lines are put, first en- treats the person to whom they are addressed, to take away those Ups that were forstvom. Plainly, those lips were masculine ; for women do not swear love, they confess it ; men swear their devotion. Besides, the lips are to be taken away : the kiss then was offered^ not simply yielded or re- turned. But again : the singer next says, bring again my kisses which were seals of love. Plainly, again, the kisses to be restored were feminine ; for it is woman who gives a kiss as a seal of love. Tlie process has formality and signi- fication to her ; while to man it is a dear delight, a ceremo- ny, or a recreation, as the case may be : the light in which he r^ards it being determined entirely by the sentiment which the woman has been able to inspire.
To this proof that the two stanzas were written by dif- ferent persons and with different motives, there is to be added a radical, though not very wide, difference in spirit between the stanzas. The first is animated purely by sentiment ; the second, delicately beautiful as it is, is the expression of a man carried captive solely through his sense of beauty. The reproaches in the first, tell of re- gret for the love uttered by those " lips that so sweetly were forsworn," of a spell that yet Ungers in " those eyes,
166 Notes and Comments.
the break of day/' of a sad, yet sweet and tender mCTioiy of those "seals of love" that were "sealed in vain :" the second sings of " hills of snow/' " pinks," and ahe art bound in the "icy chains" of a "frozen bosom." The first breathes woman's wasted love ; the second, man's disap- pointed passion. The first could not have been written by Fletcher; the second would not have been written by Shakespeare, as a companion to the first.
The fitness of the stanza which appears in Measure for Measure is one of its charms. It announces, like an over- ture, the pathetic theme of the sad Act m\o which it leads. It introduces us to the " dejected Mariana " of the " moat- ed grange/' and she herself tells us that it " pleased her woe." 8he would not ask for a song, the second stanza of which was that which appears in the Bloody Brother. Her command to the boy to break ofiT his song, is no evidence that Shakespeare had written more than one stanza. It is but a dramatic contrivance to produce the effect of an in- trusion upon her solitude.
[More than a year after having written out the foregoing deductions from the internal evidence of this song, I have just discovered (April 24th 1852) external evidence which confirms those conclusions. In Playford's Ayrea and Dia- loguesfor One, Two, or Three Voycea ; to the Theorbo-Luie or Basse- Viol, — folio, Loudon, 1659, p. 1, is this very song Ret to music by Dr. Wilson. It is called Love's Inffratu tude; and both stanzas are given. The last three syllables of the last two lines are not repeated in either stanza. The Musical Biographies inform us that Dr. Wilspn died in 1673, at the age of seventy-nine years. He was therefore but about nine years old when Measure for Measure was produced, — 1603 ; and of course could not have composed the music for this song as it was originally sung in that play ; but of the music to which the song in the Bloody
Measube fob Measure. 167
Sroihery — ^produced about 1625, was sung, he might weD have been the composer, as he doubtless was. He of course vroold have been obliged to write it according to the requi- sitions of the second stanza ; that is, without a repetition of the last phrase of the last two strains of the air ; and bo ^we find he did write it.
[It was not until after the above was written that I pos- sessed, or had access to, a copy of the Variorum Shakespeare of 1821, and in that there is a note by Mr. Boswell upon t;hi8 song, in which he says :
" The first stanza of this poem, it is true, appears in Measure "tbr Measure ; but as it is there supposed to be suug by a boy, in Teference to the misfortuue of a deserted female, the second stausa €Ould not have been written for that occasion, as being evidently addressed by a male lover to his mistress.'^
Variorum Shakespeare, Vol. XXI. p. 419.
This is on the right scent, but Mr. Boswell yet failed to see that it led to the all-important conclusion that the fiiBt stanza is actually mldresscd by a woman to a man, and conld not be addressed by a man to a woman. He, strange- ly enough, thinks, that if it must be ascribed to Shakespeare or Fletcher, " the latter has a better claim " ; but is in- clined to the supposition that this delicate little poem, " from its popularity at the time, was introduced by the printer to fill up the gap [made by a stage direction. Here a aong^ ^hich frequently occurs in old plays], and gratify his readers, from some now forgotten author," — evidently showing that te still supposed the song to l)e the homogeneous produc- tion of one hand. He rightly concludes that because the wcond stanza is obviously addressed to a woman, it could ^ have been written for tliis Scene in Measure for Stature; and not noticing, what we have seen is undeni- ^)that the first stanza is addressed to a man, he confirms
168 Notes and CoMifEKTa
himself in the old belief, that both were addressed to a woman, and determines that Shakespeare wrote neither. It seems strange that Mr. Boswell, having got the glimpse he evidently had of the incongmity of the two stanzas, fiEuled to discover the radical difference between their motives, and the impossibility of the supposition that they were written by the same poet.
With my Variorum^ or soon after it, I received a copy of a very interesting tract from the pen of Edward F. Bim- bault, LL. D., F. S. A., entitled Who was ''Jack WiUon;' the singer of Shakespeare's stage ? Mr, Bimbault puts forth, and ably sustains, the conjecture, that John Wilson, Doctor of Music in the University of Oxford, the composer of the music to which the song in the Bloody Brother was sung, was the very Jack Wilson who we know was the original singer of many of Shakespeare's songs ; and that he was the very " Boy " who sung this song as it appears in Measure for Measure, where the stage direction in the original is, as we have seen, — Mariana discovered sitting: a Boy singing. Dr. Kimbault also points out that the date of his birth renders it impossible that Dr. Wilson could have been the composer of the air to which this song was sung in Measure for Measure.
" Mariana. Here comes a man of comfort^ whose advice Hath often etiird my brawling discontent**
Mr. Hallam, in his criticism on this play, has the fol- lowing passage :
^^ There is great skill in the invention of Mariana, and with- out this the story could not have had any thing like a satisfactory termination : yet it is never explained how the Duke had becomo
Measure fob Measure. 169
^Oqnainied with this secret, and, being acquainted with it, how he luid preserved his esteem and confidence in Angelo."
IntTod. to Lit, of Europe^ Vol. III., p. 83.
When a critic's eye takes so wide a range as that taken by the accomplished author of the Introduction to the Lit- traiure of Europe^ it is, perhaps, unreasonable to expect Um to examine every particular spot in the vast field which he examines ; but may we not reasonably ask that he shall not find fault for the absence of any thing, merely be- Cttose he does not see it ? Mariana gives ample evidence, in these lines, of the manner in which the Duke became acquaint- ed with her story. It is the first we see of her : the Duke enters as a Friar ; and she speaks of him as a man of com- fort who has " often " stilled her discontent. The Duke^ smce he assumed his disguise, has evidently seen her fre- quently in the discharge of the duties of his pretended call- ing ; and thus has learned Angelo's secret and the woes of his victim. This also shows that a long time is supposed to elapse between the first Scene of the play and the begin- ning of the fourth Act. If we follow the events closely, however, we shall find that only two days elapse between the arrest of Claudio and the opening of this Act. But a month may have elapsed between the first Scene of the first Act and the arrest of Claudio. It is in the first Scene of the play that the Duke shows his confidence in Angdo, and retires, leaving the government in his hands ; and it is not until after his assumption of the Friar's habit, in the fourth, or more properly, the third Scene of the 8Mne Act, that he learns, from Mariana, his deputy's base treatment of her. It was necessary to throw a Scene be- tween the retirement of the Duke and his appearance in tl» monastery to assume the Friar's habit ; and in that Scene Claudio is arrested. Angdo receives his vicarious
170 Notes and Commbnts.
charge in one Scene, and Claudio appears on his way to prison, a condemned man, in the next. But this concerns one of those comparatively unimi)ortant unities about which Bhakespeare did not burden himself. He did not think it necessary to provide for the doubts of those who could suppose that Angdo would assume the reins of government, hunt up " all the enrolled penalties " which had for " nineteen zodiacs " " like unscoured armor, hung by the wall," hear of Claudia's offence, arrest, try, and sentence him, all in one day, or one week. The first Scene of this play ia but a kind of Induction which furnishes the conditions of the action.
Scene 3.
" Duke. How uow ? What noise f That spirit's possessed wiUi That wounds tbe unsisting postern with these knocks."
The second line contains a misprint, almost without doubt, which is plausibly corrected, in Mr. Collier's folio,
to,
" That wounds the reaisting postern with these knocksw"
This should doubtless be received into the text. In- deed the only wonder is, that it should so long have escaped the very obvious coiTection. Mr. Knight's suggestion that the word in the original '' is one of Shake8i>eare'8 Latinisma by which he means, never at rest, from sisto, to stand still," does not agree with the context ; for the repeated " itnodb- ing within/' shows that then the postern did stand still, much to the annoyance of the knocker ; and that, therefore, the idea of its frequent turning upon its hinges would be the last to enter the mind of the Duke at that time.
MXASUBB FOB MeASUBE. 171
Act V. Scene 1.
" AaL And I did yield to him ; But the next mom betimes, Hu purpose anrfeiting, he sends a warrant For my poor broth er^s head.
Duke, This is most likely I
/m6. O that it were as like as it is true I "
Isabella's answer is incomprehensible to me, as the
editors interpret it. Warburton's explanation of it is only
fixxl for laughter. He says : " Like is not here used for
probable, but for seemly. She catches at the Duke's word
and turns it into another sense." Malone gives it as his
opinion, that Isabella's meaning is, ^'0 that it had as much
of the likeness or appearance as it has of the reality of
truth." Tliis would do very well, if there were any
justification for it in Isabella's reply. But she makes no
comparison of seeming truth and real truth. She merely Siiys,
"0 that it were as like as it is true." Mr. Knight says that
"like" is used here in the sense of * probable.' How so ?
Isabella has just told the Duke, that Angela, in spite of his
promise, beheaded her brother ; and this, she believes. The
Duke says, in pretended derision, " This is most likely "
[probable]. Why Isabella should then reply, " 0 that it
were as probable as it is true I " seems inexplicable. Her
wishes are all against the probability of such a story ;
although, as she thinks that the most important events
which she mentions, i. 6., the guilt of Angela and the death
rfher brother, have occurred, she wishes her story to obtain
fall credence.
Is it not plain that " likely" and " like " are here used
hjf Shakespeare in the sense of * credible ? ' ' Credible ' and
probable,' although they are not interchangeable words,
^ in truth, express essentially dififerent relations of
172 Notes and Comments.
thought to fact, — ' credible ' being * that which may be be- lieved/ and * probable/ ^ that which may happen/— yet al- ways apply in the same degree to any statement. Credi- bility and probability are as distinct as belief and existence ; but whatever is probable is credible, and credibility is in exact proportion to probability. ' Likely' means * probable,' — I. e., that is probable, which is likdy to happen; and so may it not mean * credible,' — L e., that which is lUcely to be believed ? The lexicographers give no example of the use of * likely' for * credible ' — all their quotations exhibiting the word used in the sense of ^probable ;' and except in this passage I know of no instance of its use in the other sense. But is it not plain that here it means, not ^ likely to happen,' but ^ likely to be believed ;' and that when the IhJce says, ironically, " This is most likely [to be believed]/' Isabella replies, in earnest, ^^ 0 that it were as like [to be believed] as it is true ?"
" Duke (as Friar). I protest that I love the Duke as I Ioyc myself. Ang. Hark! bow the villain would close now, after his treasonable abuses ! "
Why " close"? The word is plainly, in my judgment, a misprint for ^ glose', meaning, to cover falsehood with a specious show ; and the line should be,
*• Hark ! how the villain would glose now, after his treasonable abuses I "
But as "close" may mean, 'finish his' speeches,' feeble and prosaic as the sense is, I feel that I have not the right, merely of my own motion, to change even the one letter which, in my opinion, would restore what Shake- speare wrote.
COMEDY OP ERRORS. Act III. Scene 1.
**J)ro, JB, If thou hadat been Dromio to-day in my place, Thou wonldst have changed thy face for a name or thy name for an ass."
In this reply of Dromio of Ephesus to his brother, who, flihnt up within doors, usurps, as he thinks, both his name and his office, the last word is evidently misprinted ; and we should read " thy name for a face," which is the change suggested in Mr. Collier's folio.
Scene 2.
**Ant. 8. Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs, And as a bed Til take thee, and there lie.^
Is it not plain that " thee " is a misprint for them, and that we should read,
** Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs, And as a bed FU take themy and there lie/' f
[In the Variorum Edition I find this conjecture cred- ited to a Mr. Edwards, whose comments I have not met with.
174 Notes and Comments.
Act IV. Scene 1.
**Anff. Come, come, you know, I gave it yon eyen now; Either send the chain, or send me by some token."
It is very plain that there is a transposition in the seo ond line, and that we should read,
"EUther send the chain, or send 6y me some token."
Malone objects to this obvious and very necessaiy change, that " it was not Angelo's meaning o o o ^jmj AfUipholvs of Ephe»ui bhould send a jewel or other token — hy him, but tliat Antijyholus should send him with a verbal token to his wife/' Malone supposes the phrase to be but a modification of that which is used by the vulgar now-a-day8| thus : — ^^ My master has sent me to you for his doth, and by the same token he dined abroad yesterday." But what difference does it make whether the token was visible and tangible, or verbal ? The goldsmith wanted some evidence which would justify the wife of Antipholus in paying the money ; and he asks for the chain, or a token from Anti' pholus that he had the chain. But a little before, Anti- pliolus had said to him :
** Good signer, take the stranger to my house ; And with you tiike the chain, and bid my wife Disburse the sum on the receipt thereof."
The merchant wanted the chain, or a voucher for it. The phrase could not have been used in the sense which Malone suggests ; because a declaration to one person, * by this to- ken [know that] / am sent,' has evidently a very different signification from a request to another to be sent '^ by some token ;" — ^if indeed the latter have any meaning at alL
CrOMEDY OF Errors. 175
Scene 3.
"Drom. 8. Master, if you do, expect spoon meat, or bespeak a long ipoon.
Ants. Why. Dromio?
Drcm. 8. Marry, he mast hare a long spoon that must eat with the deriL'
The original folio gives this reading, except that ^ you ' k omitted by an obvious typographical error. Another error in Dromio's first speech is equally obvious. In allu- don to the old proverb which he afterwards repeats, Dro^ mio tells his master, that if he dine with this she devil, he must expect spoon meat, and must provide himself w^ith along spoon. The separative "or" entirely destroys the ■ense, not to say the humor of Di^omio's reply. Why should Aniipholus be warned either to expect spoon meat or to besi)eak a long spoon. He was warned to do both ; and, according to the proverb, certainly to do the last, if he eat ?dth the devil Read :
"Master, if you do, expect spoon meat, and bespeak a long spoon. **
Act V. Scene 1.
**Ahh€u, Twenty-five years have I but gone in travail Of you, my sc-n^ unlil this present hour, My heavy burden not delivered. The duke, my husband, and ray children both. And you the calendars of their nativity, Gu to a gossip's feast, and go with me : After so long grief, such nativity I '*
Thus the passage stands in the Variorum edition. The <*igiiMa text is ;
176 Notes and Oommsnts.
"Thirtie three yearea haue I bat gone in trMUule Of you my sonneSi and till tbia present honre My heauie burthen are deUrered."
Mr. Dyce and Mr. Singer read,
** and till thia present hoar My heavy harden nt^er deHvered."
Mr. Collier,
"and till thia present hoar My heavy harden undelivered.**
Theobald and Mr. Knight,
" nor, till this present hoar My heavy burdens are delivered."
BlackwoocFs Magazine^ — Aug. 1853,
" and till this present hoar My heavy burden ha% delivered."
It seems plain to me that Emilia refers to place no than to time. After her long travail, it was there, as as then, that she was delivered. Should we not read ?
Twenty-five years have I but gone in travail Of you my sons ; and till this present hour My heavy burthen here delivered
That is, of course, — ' I have but gone in travail till present hour delivered me here of my heavy burthen.' should be noticed that ' here ' is much more like the * i of the original tlian either ' ne'er,' ' w/i,' or * ha« ' are ; that by this reading, the substitution of nor for " and
Comedy of Errors. 177
not required. Thus, by the least possible change from the odjgiDal text, we obtain the most exact and descriptive expreflsion of JEmilta's position.
It is possible that some of my readers may need to be reminded that '^ thirty-three " of the original text is shown by the internal evidence of the play, to be an error for tweniy^ve.
The last two lines of this speech evidently contain a ty- pographical error each, which Mr. Singer, in his Vindica- tion of the text, &c., corrects by reading :
" Oo to a gossip's feast, and/oy with me, After so long grie^ such. feMtivUy"
" Nativity" was probably repeated by the compositor, who had the word still in his mind after having set it up at the end of the line next but one before ; "and^'oy" might be easily misprinted '^ and go." I had written en-joy on the margin of my Shakespeare, for '^ and go ; " but Mr. Sing- er's conjecture is more like the original text, and is there- tote entitled to the preference.
12
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
Act I. Scene 1.
" Leon, How many gentlemen haye yon loet in this aetion f Me99, Bat few of any 8ort» and none of name.**
Upon this passage Mr. Dyce remarks :
*^ According to Monk Mason, 'of any sort^ means— of any kind whatsoever; an interpretation which, though manifestly wrong, has found approvers. The reply of the Messenger is equi- valent to — But few gentlemen of any rank, and none of celebrity. So presently he says to Beatrice, ' I know none of that name, lady ; there was none such in the army of any sort,* So, too, in Midsummer- Night^s Dream^ act iii. sc. 2 ;
" none of noble mart Would 80 offend a virgin ; **
and in Jonson's Every Man in his Hummtr^ — Works^ i. 24, ed. Gifford ; " A gentleman of your sort, parts," &c. : and in A Warning for Faire Women, 1599 ;
" The Queene oar mistiis Allowes this bounty to all commer^ mneh more To gentlemen of your §ort,**
A Few Notes, &o., p. 38.
f
Much Ado abotjt Nothing. 179
I cannot tee the force of Mr. Dyce's reasons. The Mes^ > meanSi according to iny onderstanding of his words, ' But few gentlemen of any description, and none of dis- tinction.'
Mr. Djrce's quotations do not aid him ; because either of the synonymous words 'description/ 'condition/ 'posi- tion/ ' kind/ fills the place of " sort " in all the passages cited by him. Thus :
** I know none of that name, lady ; there was none Buch in the anny
" none of nobU kind Would BO offend a yirgin."
*'A genUeman of your pontion, parta^" Ao.
" The Queene. onr miBtriB, AUowes this bounty to all commen, much more fo gentlemen of your eondUum"
U ' sort ' mean ' rank/ par exceUencCy i, e. noble rank,
to say 'noble sort ' would be to be guilty of the worst sort
^ tautology. ' Sort ' would, in that case, need, — ^in fact, ad-
^t, no such adjective before it ; and the lines from A
^idgummer^NigMsDream furnish proof positive that 'sort,'
'^hen thus used, means merely ' kind/ The word is applied
^ persons, in this sense, and with various adjectives before
it, throughout Shakespeare's works; as, — "spirits of vile
lori," "the vulgar sort of market-men;" and even, "the
poor men of your sort," and " the younger sort," as well as
^* gentlemen of good sort " and " prisoners of good sort ; "
ind we have also " a sort of men/' and " all sorts of men."
"^re is only one passage in all Shakespeare's works which
^oold seem to sustain Mr. Dyce, and which, strange to say,
^ aooomplished a Shakesperian scholar as he has failed to
toote. In Measure for Meaav/re ' sort ' is used, without
180 Notes and OoMMENra
an adjectiye, evidently to mean, high rank or station. The Duke is about to return to Vienna, and Angdo says to Escalua :
** Well, I beseech you, let it be proeUim'd : Betimes i* the morn, Fll cmll yoa at your honsei Oive notiee to sach men of tort and init^ As are to meet him.**
But here it is used as we sometimes use 'character ;' saying, ' a man of character/ i. e, a man of excellent character. Such cannot be the use of ' sort ' in the instances previously quot- ed by Mr. Dyce ; for unless circumstances evidently point to such a signification, and a word is used absolutely and with- out an adjective, it cannot be thus arbitrarily raised finom its inferior and general sense to one higher and particular.
Act II. ScBNE 3.
** Claud, Then down npon her knees she falls, weepe» sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, praya^ corses, — '* O sweet Benedick I GKkL g^ve me patieocel**
Here " curses " is, almost without a doubt, an error of the press for crtea, to which it is changed by the corrector of Mr. Collier's folio.
Act III. Scene 1.
Hero being asked when she is to be married, replies, " Why, evrie day, to-morrow." The answer is incompre- hensible, on account of a misprint which is thus corrected in Mr. Collier's folio, " Why, in a day, — ^to-morrow." There can be no doubt that this restores the author's words.
Much Ado about Nothing. 181
SOKKE 2.
"D. Pedro, — ^he hath twioe or thrioe cut Cupid's bowBtring, and the little hangman dare not shoot at him."
Mr. Dyce conjectures that ^^ hangman *' here is equiva- lent to ^ rascal/ ^ rogue/ and quotes passages from writers contemporaneous with Shakespeare, in which ^ hangman ' is used as a general term of reproach. There can be no doubt of the correctness of Mr. Dyce's supposition, which seems, in &ct, almost too obvious to need support or bear statement. Shakespeare unquestionably used the word in the same sense in the Two Oentlemen of Verona^ as one of the correctors of Mr. Collier's folio happily conjectured.
" Launee. Ay, sir ; the other squirrel was stolen from me by a hang- man boy in the market place."
Act IV. 8e. 4.
— ^Instead of " the hangman's boys."
Act IV. Scene 1.
" Lecn. Thought I thy spirits stronger than thy shames, Myself would, on the rearward of reproaches, Strike at thy life."
" Rearward " is misprinted reward in the first folio ; but the error of the press is corrected in the second. Mr. Col- lier's MS. corrector, however, changes " rearward " for the tame word hazard ; and Mr. Collier calls it " the true reading."
In Shakespeare's plays ' rearward,' it is true, does not elsewhere occur with this signification, — a fact which, how-
182 Notes and Comments.
ever, is of little consequence ; but had Mr. Collier or his MS. proiSg6 ever read, marked, or understood those lines of noble sorrow in the 90th Sonnet ? —
*' Then hate me when thoa wilt ; if erer, now ; Now, while the world is bent mj deedi to croiii Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow ; And do not drop in for an after-loai. Ah! donot^ when my heart hath soaped this sorrow. Come in the rearward of a oonqnered woe: Oiye not a windy night a rainy morrow, To linger oat a purposed oyerthrow.*
* Lson, O she is fallen
Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea Hath drops too few to wash her clean again, And salt too little, which may season giTC To her foul tainted flesh.**
Mr. Collier's folio changes the hemistich to,
"To her «ou/-tainted flesh.**
It were well for Mr. Collier's reputation had he merely set this forth as a happy conjecture, or even as the true reading. But he must give for it this extraordinary, this preposterous reason — " Hero's JUah was tainted to the soul by the accusation brought against her." What a focus of blunders there is in that unfortunate sentence ! It is hardly necessary to point out, that Leonato supposed his daughter's soul, and, figuratively, her flesh, to be tainted by her moral crime. Indeed, it is noteworthy that one consequence of the publication of Mr. Collier's Notes and Emendations is the self-exposure of the astounding fact, that this veteran in the field of Shakesperian literature has not a nice and true appreciation of Shakespeare. His learning no one can
Much Ado about Nothing. 183
question ; but his reputation as one who has fathomed the deeps of Shakespeare, who has ^^ plucked out the heart of his mystery/' is gone for ever. In blackletter and anti- quarian lore, he can hardly have a rival ; but there are few real lovers of Shakespeare who do not hold a closer com- mune with the spirit of their master. Among his editors, may be named Charles Knight, who, with vastly fewer ad- vantages in the field of Shakesperian literature, must now be placed far before his rival editor as a true Shakesperian scholar. Charles Knight would never have said, when Ham- let chides himself because he ^^ lacks gall to make oppres- sion bitter," that " it was not oppression but crime which was to be punished (I) by him." Charles Knight would never have supposed that Hero's flesh was tainted to the soul J sooner than he would have made a score of other blun- ders in the appreciation of Shakespeare's poetry and himior which appear in Mr. Collier's recent publication.
But with regard to this passage, it should be noticed that a change is not imperatively necessary. The adjectives are not really synonymous ; and a comma between them is all that is required to give a clear and appropriate sense. Read,—
" 'which may season give To her foul, tainted flesh."
Taint does not always reach foulness in degree, but it does imply previous purity ; whereas many things are foul from the beginning and in their very essence. Leonato says that Hero's nature, once pure, had been tainted to the utmost degree of impurity.
Scene 2.
" ConiL Come let them be opinioned. Sex, Let them be in the hands of Coxcombe,
184 Notes and Comments.
Kern, Ood's my life, where's the Sexton 1 let him write down the Prince's officer Coxccmbe^^ Ac.
This apparently hopeless confusion in the original text^ is thus happily corrected in Mr. Collier's folio.
" CofitL Gome, let them be opinion*d. Sex, Let them be hound. Baraeh. Hand» off^ Coxcombe 1 Dogh. God*8 my life," ^
^^Kem'* is the abbreviation of Kempe. William Kempe was the first Dogberry; and the original folio^ having been in part printed from a copy marked for the stage, gives in this instance and in some others, the name of the actor instead of that of the character.
" Dogb, Dost thou not suspect my placet Dost thoa not suspect my years?— O that he were here to write me down — an ass; — ^bnt^ masters, remember, that I am an ass ; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass : — No, thou villain, thou art full of piety, as shall be proved upon thee by good witness. I am a wise fellow; and, which it more, an officer; and, which is more, a householder; and, which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina ; and one that knows the law, go to : and a rich fellow enough, go to ; and a fellow that hath had losses; and one that hath two gowns, and every thing handsome about him : — Bring him away. 0, that I had been writ down — an ass.**
Could there be a stronger proof of incapacity to appre- ciate that peculiar and inimitable humor which Shakespeare has exhibited in Dogberry and a few such characters, than an attempt to make the consequential Constable speak " by the card " in this blundering out-burst of pompous indignation ? And yet the corrector of Mr. Collier's folio would have him say " a fellow that hath had leases," in- stead of '^ a fellow that hath had losses " ! Mr. Singer's
Much Ado about Nothing. 185
severe remarks upon this evidence of incapacity are entirely justifiable.
But this wretched and presumptuous change has yet found defenders, (what folly is so foolish as to be without them !) on the ground that, as Dogberry is boasting, it is inconsistent for him to mention his misfortunes. Let Sir Walter Scott answer such a purblind argument as this. He was guiltless of deliberate comment upon Shakespeare ; but he opens the introduction to Queniin Durward thus :
" When honest Dogberry sums up and recites all the claims which he had to respectability, and which, as he opined, ought to have exempted him from the injurious appellation conferred on him by Master Gentleman Conrade, it is remarkable that he lays not more emphasis even upon his double gown (a matter of some importance in a certain ci-devant capital which I wot of), or upon his being *a pretty piece of flesh as any in Messina/ or even upon the conclusive argument of his being * a ridi fellow enough,' than upon his being one that Jiath had losses,
" Indeed, I have always observed your children of prosperity, whether by way of hiding their full glow of splendor from those , whom fortune has treated more harshly, or whether that to have risen in spite of calamity is as honorable to their fortune as it ia to a fortress to have undergone a siege, — however this be, I have observed that such persons never fail to entertain you with an account of the damage they sustain by the hardness of the times. • • • * " I therefore put in my proud claim to share in the distresses which only affect the wealthy ; and write myself down^ with Dogberry, ^ a rich fellow enough,' but still ^ one who hath had losses.' "
Walter Scott and human nature at the back of the au« thentic folio, against an anonymous and, as his labors show^ a blundering tamperer with the text of Shakespeare !
LOVE'S LABORS LOST.
Act L Scene 1.
Biron. [Reads.] Item, "That no woman shall oome within a mile of my court " — ^EEath this been proclaim*dt
Long. Four days aga
Biron. Let's see the penalty. [Jteack.] "On pain of losing her tongue." — ^Who devis'd this penalty t
Long. Marry, that did L
Biron, Sweet lord, and why 9
Long. To fright them hence with that dread penalty.
Biron. A dangerous law against gentility."
Thus the original At first "gentility" seems in this place an unintelligible word, which Mr. Collier's MS. cor- rector very plausibly changes to,
" A dangerous law against garrulity.^
But it should be remarked that Biron is not one of those who approve of these regulations ; and that he does not yet consider himself strictly bound by them. Thus, in his first speech in this scene, he says :
" I can but say their protestation over ; So much, dear liege, I have already sworn, That is, to live and study here three years. But there are other strict observances ; hAt not to see a woman in that terrn^ Whie\ I hope tceUy it not enrolled there : ** Ac
Love's Labobs Lost. 187
and again,
" I only $toore to study with your grace.**
He finds fault with this law which has the lingual penalty ; and it should be noticed that it is the law, and not the penalty, which he says is dangerous against gentility. He evidently means that the exclusion of ladies, involving, as it does, the loss of their refining and subduing influence upon the manners, is " a dangerous law against genttliiy." There is no justification for a change in the original text. A thorough examination of the context will often, as it has done in this case, show the propriety of a phrase in that text, which to one who looks at the phrase alone will seem obscure.
" Kinff, A letter from the magnificent Armado.
Biron, How low soever the matter, I hope for high words.
Long. A high hope for a low having ; God grant us patience I
Biron. To hear f or forbear hearing f
Long, To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately ; or to forbear both."
For " a low heaven " in the original, Theobald judi- ciously proposed "a low having;" but the succeeding speech of Biron obviously needs correction. Biron know- ing Armado' B affectation of magnificence, says that how low soever the matter of his letter may be, they may hope for high words. LongavUle then asks, " a high hope for a low having ? " and at the prospect exclaims " God grant us patience ! " Biron then asks Longavilky — [pa- tience for what], "to hear or to forbear laughing" [at what you do hear ?] ^ Hearing' is an evident and an easy mis- print for * laughing,' as Steevens well suggested. Longor
188 Notes and Comments.
vQJUIb reply — " To hear meekly and to laugh moderately, or to forbear hoOi^* compels the change. Bead,
*' lAmg, A high hope for a low haying t Ood grant ns patienoe I Bircn, To hear 9 or forbear U^gKingt LoHff. To hear meekly," Ac
In the same Scene the '^ Sirra, come on/' which the original gives to Biron^ probably belongs to the Constable^ to whom Mr. Collier's folio assigns it.
Act II. Scene 1.
** RoiolvM, No point ; with my Imife."
Stecvens and Malone, and recently Mr. Dyce, have pointed out that we have here the doable n^ative of the French language, with a quibble involved. It should be printed,
■"Ne, jmint; with my knife."
" BoyeU His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see, Did stumble with haste in his eyesight to be. All senses to that sense did make their repair, To feel only looking on fairest of fair.*"
^' On the first line of this passage the following notes are foond in the Variorum Shakespeare: —
* That is — his tongue being impatiently desirous to see as well as speak.' Johnson.
^ Although the expression in the text is extremely odd, I take the sense of it to be, that — ^his tongue envied the quickness of his eyes, and strove to be as rapid in its utterance, as they in
Love's Labors Lost. 189
tbeir perception. Edinburgh Magazine^ Nov., 1786,' Stee-
VEN8.
" Now, it would be difficult to say which of these notes is least to the purpose. The context distinctly shows that the meanbg is — His tongu^, not able to endure the having merely the power of speaking without that of seemg.
'^ Again, on the fourth line we find, ibid : —
" Perhaps we may better read : * To feed only by looking.' " Johnson.
" There is no necessity for any alteration. The meaning is — That they might have no feeling but that of looking, &c.''
Dyce^$ Fsw NoteSy &c., p. 52.
Unquestionably Mr. Dyce is right ; but I cannot conceal my surprise that a moment's doubt upon so simple a pas- sage could possibly occur to any one out of a mad-house.
Act III. Scene 1.
" Birofu Dread prince of plackets.**
"Concerning ^ placket ^ see Steevens^s Amnerian note on King Lear^ act iii. sc. 4 ; and Did, of ArcJi. and Prov, Words, by Mr. Halliwell ; who observes : ^ Nares, Dyce, and other writers, tell us a placket generally signifies a petticoat, but their quotations do not bear out this opinion.^ I still think that in the quotations referred to, as well as in the present passage, ^ plack- et ' is equivalent to petticoat. A writer of the age of Charles the Second uses ^placketx^ in the sense of aprons (perhaps of petticoats) ; ' The word Love is a fig-leaf to cover the naked sense, a fashion brought up by Eve, the mother of jilts ; she cuckolded her husband with the Serpent, then pretended to mod- esty, and fell a making plackets presently.' Crowne's Sir Courtly Nice, act ii. p. 13, ed. 1685."
Dyce's Few Notes, &c., p. 53.
Mr. Steevens, Mr. Nares, and Mr. Dyce, might have
190 Nona and Cohhknts.
been saved their labors, and Mr. Halliwell his doubts, by inquiring of the Benedicks among their fellow Shakesperi- ans on this side the water concerning this wonL Ladies in the northern part of the United States call that aperture in their petticoats (upper and under) which extends from the back of the waist about one quarter down the skirt, the ^placket-hole ; ' and so did their grandmothers, great-grand- mothers, and great-great-grandmothers. Mr. Douoe, to whose learning and judgment the students of Shakespeare are so much indebted says, ^^ a placket is a petticoat." Had he been writing for Americans he need not have said it.
Act IV. SoBNB 3. In the defective line of Dumain^a sonnet,
" Thou for whom Jove would Bwear,**
Pope read " even Jove ;" Mr. Collier's margins give " great Jove," with more fitness and probability, if, indeed, a sylla- ble must be added.
"Dum. This wiU I send; aud somethiDg else more plain That shall express my true love's fasting pain.**
^^ My true love's fiststing pain " sounds like a misprint of "my true love's lasting pain," to which it is changed by one of the few happy conjectures in Mr. Collier's folio.
" Bircn, I am betray*d by keeping company With men like men, of strange inconstancy.'*
Love's Labors Lost. 191
Warburton changed the " men like men " of the orig- inal to ^'vane like men ;'' and Steevens substitutes ^^moon like men/' which until recently has held undisputed posses- sion of the text. Mr. Knight very properly retains the original ; and says that it means, ^' I keep company with men alike in inconstancy — men like men — men having the general inconstancy of humanity ;'' but he does not point out the confirmatory fact, that, in a subsequent speech, Biron repeats, in another form, this very idea, — that his companions fell through human frailty. He says :
"Sweet lord^ sweet lovers, O let us embrace 1
At true we are aejiesh and blood eon be : The sea will ebb and flow, and heayen will show his face ; Toung blood doth not obey an old decree."
" Biron. Now, for not looking on a woman's face, Tou haye in that forsworn the use of eyes, And study, too, the causer of your vow ; For where is any author in the world. Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye f Learning is but an adjunct to oursel^ And where we are, our learning likewise is : Then, when ourselves we see in ladies' eyes. Do we not likewise see our learning there f " •
The context shows undeniably that,
"Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye,"
is a misprint. Mr. Collier's folio substitutes learning for " beauty," a change which is for the better. But a corre- spondent in Maine, of whom I know only that he is an intel- ligent and careful student of Shakespeare, suggests study instead of learning, ^^ because the former seems to be a more plausible correction of a probable misprint than the latter ;
192 Notes and Commkntb.
and because study is a more appropriate word to follow ^ study ' in the second line above the one in which the dis- puted word occurs/' His suggestion is possibly as accept- able as that of Mr. Collier's folio. Either word will fulfil all the conditions of the case ; and we may read :
"Now, for not looking on a woman's fae«, Ton have in that forsworn the nse of eyes ; And study too, the eanser of yonr vow ; For where is any author in the world, Teaches such tAudy as a woman's eyet**
In other words, — *as study is your otgect, where is there any author teaches such study [i. e. any thing that is stud- ied] as a woman's eye ? '
Act V. Scene 2.
BoscUinCy speaking of the capricious povrer she would exercise over Biron^ says,
"So pertaunt like I would oresway his state That he should be my fool and I his fate."
This Mr. Collier's folio changes to,
"So potently I would oresway his state," Ac
which is the best emendation of the passage yet ofiered, and one so obvious that it seems strange that it has not come to light before.
**JBayeL Their purpose is to parle, to courts and dance: And every one his loye feat will adrance Unto hU several mistress."
Love's Labors Lost. 193
The old fashioned long s is responsible for an error in theline,
" And every one his love feat will Advance,**
which should surely be^ as Mr. Collier's MS. corrector conjectures,
"And every one hit love tuit will advance Unto his several mistress."
*' Prin, That sport best pleases that doth least know how. When* Zeale striaes to content, and the contents Dies in the Zeale of that which it presents*"
A great deal of labor and ingenuity has been expended upon this passage, vrhich appears thus in the original folio, and is evidently corrupted ; but the con-ection has always seemed to ine simple and obvious. Years ago, before I had seen a Variorum Shakespeare, or read a commentator, I made the following correction upon the margin of my copy ; a correction, however, which my subsequent reading has not discovered to me elsewhere. But first let us define clewdj^ the meaning of the Princess. She evidently wishes to en- joy the absurd figure which Armado^ Holofenies and the rest will cut as the Worthies. She, in the words of Phil(yr^ strate, when he speaks enjoying the play of the Clowns^ in. the Midsummer NigMs Dreamy
** can find sport in their intents Extremely stretched, and conn'd with cruel pain."
She takes a mischievous pleasure in bathos ;. and finds it mirth-moving, as she says in this very speech,.
13
194 NOTSS AND COHXSNTS.
** When greal things Uboring, p«riili in tKtir birth."
It is agreed on all hands that " that/' of the original, 18 a misprint for them; and it seems equally plain to me that no other change is necessary than to drop the final » from each line ; — ^Thos :
"That sport b«st pleases that doth least know how : Where seal strives to content^ and the oontent Dies in the seal of them which it present
That is, — ^that sport is keenest which is made by the sealous efforts of ignorant people to prodace a pleasing effect, which they destroy by overdoing the matter in their very zeaL
**Armado, For mine own part^ I hreathe free breath : I hare seen tfa« day of wrong through the little hole of discretion,'* Ac
Some idea of the incapacity of the Shakespearian com- mentators of the eighteenth century for their task, may be obtained from the fact that Armado*8 affected and quaint, but graphic and humorous figure, ^^ I have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion," seems to them incomprehensible, or at least to require explanatioa Bish- op Warburton, more stiOy does not mince matters, but blurts out, — " This has no meaning ;" and then the others labor away at elucidation. As it is with little things so it is with great. Shakespeare's sublime, far-reaching thoughts, as well as his delicate strokes of characteristic humor, are paised, unnoticed or misunderstood, by these men, while they solemnly give him credit for "very judicious remarks," or "very apt and learned comparisons," in those portions of lus plays less informed with his grand and peculiar geniua
Love's Labors Lost. 195
They see only the worth of that which is but the setting of the jewels of his thought. When shall his text be entirely freed from the baneful influence which they have exerted upon it ?
" Prin, I understand you not^ my gtidk are double."
There is a plausibility in the change of " double " into duU^ which is made in Mr. Collier's folio. But hear Mr. Singei^s remark upon it 1
" Specious, but incorrect ; the error lies in the small word are, which is a misprint for see. Read,
" ' I understand you not^ my griefs tee double."*
Mr. Singer ! Mr. Singer ! A lady, and a princess too ! Do you mean to insinuate that she had sought to drown her sorrows in the flowing bowl, that you make her thus «ee doublet
CORRECTION.
Further reflection has convinced me, that in the line,
"Teaches sueh beauty as a woman's eye,"
Act I. Sc 1.
the substitution of learning for " beauty " by Mr. Collier's foUo undoubtedly restores the original word, and that stady has no claim to the place. Although ^ study ' was used for 'learning' in Shakespeare's day, still the phrase, "teaches such study ^'* is awkward ; and there is far more similarity between the letters in * leammg ' and ' beauty^' than be- tween those in the latter word and those in ' stt<dy.'
A MIDSUMMER-NiaHT'S DREAM.
The high place which the poetry of this play holds even among the poetiy of Shakespeaie, is admitted by all who aie capable of appreciating it. There is perhaps not an- other production of the human mind which so has the power to make us forget the realities of life, and live for a time in the realms of fancy. Dr. Johnson, it is true, could exam- ine and graciously approve Master William Shakespeare's 'composition ' in this pedagoguish style :
" Wild and fantastical as this play is, all the parts in their various modes are well written, and give the kind of pleasore which the author designed. Fairies, in his time, were much in fashion : common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's poem had made them great.'*
But Johnson lived, as Mr. Knight well remarks, and as the reader of this volume will be convinced before he finishes it, "in a prosaic age, and fostered in this particular the real ignorance by which he was surrounded. * * * It is perfectly useless to dissect such criticism : let it be a beacon to warn us, and not a Moad-star' to guide us.''
But universally as the poetic charm of this play has bound us of the present century, who have returned to the appreciation of Shakespeare which existed in his own day, it has been regarded by some very able critics as unfit for
A MmsuMHER Night's Drbah. 197
representation. Some have even gone so far as to say that it shows a failure of the author's constructive ability. The following remarks by Hazlitt are part of a criticism which has been often quoted :
" The Midsummer Night's Dream, when acted, is converted from a delightful fiction into a dull pantomime. All that is finest in the play is lost in the representation. The spectacle was grand ; but the spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled. Poet- ry and the stage do not agree well together. The attempt to reconcile them in this instance fails not only of effect, but of de- corum. The ideal can have no place upon the stage, which is a picture without perspective: every thing there is in the fore- ground. That which was merely an airy shape, a dream, a pass- ing thought, immediately becomes an unmanageable reality.*'
This is well said ; but I venture to doubt the truth of the dogma, that " poetry and the stage do not agree well together ; " and to object, that although it is self-evident that " the ideal can have no place upon the stage/' it will not do to apply that truth as a test to the fitness of a dramatic composition for the theatre. All characters in the higher drama are ideal ; and the more truthful they are, the more nearly do they approach the true ideal, the conditions of which are the absence of all that is peculiar to the individ- ual, with the presence of all that is characteristic of the species. Exclude any play from the stage, because the ideal is not there attainable, and you strike the whole of Shakespeare's dramatic works from the list of acting plays, Lear, OthellOy Hamlet and Macbeth would go with the Tern- pest and A Midsummer NigMs Dream, Ariel and the Fairies, in the last two, are not more impossible than the ghosts and the witches in Hamlet and Macbethj or more ideal than the characters of Lear and Othello.
It is impossible to admit the inconsistency of poetry and
198 NOTXS AND COHinNTS.
the stage, without admitting at the same time that all the greatest dmmas which the world has seen, all those whioh have thrilled the souls and qoickened the pulses of men for centuries, as well in the theatre as in the closet, are unfit for the stage ; an absurdity which Mr. Hazlitt could not have intended to assert But if he meant, as it would seem he must have meant, that the recitation of long pas- sages of merely descriptive or didactic poetry clogs dramatic progress, he has asserted an undeniable truth, and one which has a bcAiing upon the fitness of this play for representa- tion. There are many passages in it which, enchantingly beautiful as they are when read, might, if recited without curtailment upon the stage, be listened to impatiently by a modem audience. But it should be remembered that Shakespeare wrote to please a public which rather craved than eschewed such passages. Men whose fothers, or who themselves in their early days, had listened by the hour to the didactic doggerel of Moralities and Mysteries, and even that of the comedies and tragedies written by Shakespeare's predecessors, would find the longest and least impassioned speech which he has put into the mouth of any character, . lively and inspiriting. Accustomed, too, as the audiences of that time had been, to the utter absence of scenery and stage effect, a change of scene having been indicated to them simply by rubbing the name of one place off a board and writing that of another on it, and also even to seeing men play women's parts, they would not find fault with the im- possibilities of this drama. Bearing this in mind, we can imagine A Midsummer Nighfa Dream played with no less effect now than in Shakespeare's day. ^ We should not forget that when it was brought out, Oberon and TUania
* It has been. The general public will not soon forget the oharip, or the critical, the trae Shakesperian flavor of the performiince of A Midmmf met Kigktt Dream under the direction of Mr. Burton at his own theatre.
A MipsuMMKB Night's Dbbam. 199
BB well 88 Hermia and Hdena were played by men ; and that no (me of our many contrivances for stage e£fect were known to the managers who first produced it. We have only now to realize the poet's conception to the extent of our ability, as they did to the extent of theirs, and let our im- agination supply the rest, to find that this play possesses the power to awake an absorbing interest, though not a pro- found emotion, in the minds of men in any age of the world. It is undeniable, however, that A Midsummer NigMa Dream is peculiarly exacting in its requisitions for proper representation. It unites, nay more, — ^it blends, with an aU-controlliog hand, the mythology and the manners of clas- sic Greece, with the superstitions and the habits which sprung from the romantic and the grotesque spirit of the Middle Ages. In it, we have demi-gods and Amazons, with fidries and elves ; the two incongruous elements being bound to- gether by two links, — one of human love, the other of human folly. But it is remarkable that, though they are connect- ed, they are not brought together. The kinsman of Her- cules and the Queen of the Amazons are brought into contact or relation with the lovers and the clowns ; and the fairies are even more intimately connected with their fortunes ; but the latter and the former never come together, — have no influence upon each other. Theseas and Oberouj Hip^ polyta and Titaniay PuckBjad PhUostrate never meet ; and though working to a common end, have no common pur- pose. The merely human elements of the play, also, which are essentially incongruous, do not come into contact except nominally, in the last Scene : the Athenian lovers and the amateur Athenian players, who are in fact but representa- tions of the amateiur players of the early half of the sixteenth century, are kept as much apart as if they were in different plays. How wonderful is the genius which has bound all these antagonistic powers together without destroying their
200
Notes a^d Commektb.
indrndual strength^ which has blent all these opposite traits without depriving them of their indii^dual character !
But beddeBj and beyond this, although the construction of the comedy is tio leaa frauglit with the proofs of genius than its poetry, it ie yet evident that the dramatie pn»gTefis and interest of A Midmtmnier Night's Dreamy if it hni-e any, are totally unlike those of any other dramatic com{)0- sition which holds poBseseioii of the stage. We feel from the beginning, that the fate or even the fancied hajipiness of not one of the characters is at stake. These^is and his buskiued mistrees are well content when the play opens ; - and we know that the confusion which Puck makes with his love-in-idleness is to be mere perplexity, not intended by the dramatist to cause us even an instant'B concern, and to be unravelled again by a momentary exercise of the same capricious power which caused it. The Athenian lovens are mere puppets for Puck to play with ; and wo feel no more troubled when L^sander ia faithless to Hermia and loves Hehna, than when Tittima deserts Obenm ft>? Bottom, The comedy is entirely one of incident. With the emotions of the chamcters we do not concern ourselves ; they have nothing to do with the progress and determination of the action J and, in faet^ are very rarely obtruded upon us by the author.
To this want of ordinary dramatic interest is added the difficulty of accepting ordinary mortals as the rei>resenta- tives of the principal characters of the play. We have an ideal demi-god, an ideal Amazon, an ideal Oyro^i^ TUania and Pu<:k in our minds ; and where indeed is Cobweb to come from, he whom guod-natured Nick Bottom fears to see '* overflowed with the houey-b^ " of an humble-bee ? What mortal voices can sing, ** You s|^H:itted snakes, with double tongue ? "* These are all practical impossibilities ; but they were even less possible in Shakespeare's day
A Midsummer Night's Dream. 201
tima in onrB ; and A Midsuminer NigMa Dream was then, as it is now, a successi'al acting play. For Shakespeare has so wrought this wonderful production, that as it passes be- fore our eyes, our imagination outstrips in creative power the demands of our reason and our taste. True, there can be no The9€U8^ no Hippolyta^ no Fairy King and Queen, no Pudc put upon the stage, until the earth produces demi- gods and monsters ; but neither can the human representii- tive of any character in a production of high Art be found ; and as we look upon the slayer of the Minotaur, and his helmeted, shield-bearing mistress, upon Oberon^ Titania and Bobin GoodfeUoWy we are content to think with The- $eus : — ^^ The best in this kind are but shadows ; and the worst are no worse, if imagination mend them."
There has ever been among modem managers a propen* sity to make this comedy merely a brilliant spectacle. They have seemed to doubt its intrinsic power to interest, and have put it on the stage only on account of the occasion they found in it to display the labors of the scene painter, the costumer, and* the machinist ; to which they have added a crowd of pretty people who have no business in it.
I remember one of these performances. The scenery was very beautiful, — some of it quite grand. Pv^h and 2%a- nia'a attendant Fairy made their first appearance on the shore of a fairy lake which stretched far into the distance. Pifcib was on the back of a peacock, which, when he dis- mounted, instantly changed into a large tropical flower and disappeared. TUania came on, drawn by swans and sur- rounded by a troop of fairies. Oberon, crowned and goi^ge- ously dressed in a gold tunic with a scarlet robe, met her, and when she retired after their little ' tiff,' called up, by a motion of his wand, a gorgeous aquatic equipage, consisting of a huge shell drawn by dolphins. Afler singing a part of his speech, " I know a bank whereon the wild thyme
202
NOTIS AFD CoiniENTS.
grows/' as a duet with a Mry^ lie tcx»k big Beat, and instead of sailing oif^ waved his wand, and a paoorama of Fairy- land luis&tni before him. This was a very splendid and elaborate affair, and muflt have cK^oupted ten miniitee la passing. The scenery in the second Act was hardly lees striking and lieantiful ; and in this act a corps cfe balM was in trod need J and a French dancer danced a pm «tW, and with thenij a shawl dance while Titania slept.
In the last Act, after the interlude had been played and the newly married pairs had left the scene, there was a "magnificent change to Fairy-land/' and iairies were seen issuing from the cups of gigantic flowers.
Among the characters^ Puck wasj perhaps, the favorite with the audience. This was not surprising ; for the part was given to one of the most charming little children who ever exchanged the caresses of the nursery for the plaudits^ of a theatre. She bad a winning manner, was very pretti- ly dressed, and knew her part thoroughly, delivered it very sweetly, and made a quaint and dainty little fay indeed. She, and the dresses, and the dances, and the beautiful scenery united to form a very beautiful spectacle, which afforded a delightful evening's amusement to those who are fond of such entertainment ; bnt neither she, nor the fine dresaes, nor the dances, nor the beautiful scenery, had any thing to do with Shake8|)eare, The piece thus played is a grand &iry spectacle : it is not Shakespeare's enchanting Comedy, A Midmmmer Ni^M's Iheam,
Such a Puck^ pleasing as he may be iu himself, is no more like Shakespeare's Puck than he is like Jupiter To- nans. Here we had a pretty little creature, whose trim^ body was gayly dressed, and whose dainty hmbs were snnglj;^ encased in stockinet and terminated as to the lower extre- mities in gaiter boots of a cerulean tint* He delivered his speeches in a sweet childish treble, and was altogether the
A MimtiTiaaBB Night's Dbxam. 203
tendtorait and most exquisitdiy confltiiated creBtnie in the fimy band. Is this Shakespeare's ^^ kh of spirits/' who de- Untied in his proper name ^^ HobgoUiny" who laboired ** in the qnem " [a corn-mill worked by hand], and whose '^ shape and making " were so unlike those of his fellow fays that a stranger Mry knew him by those alone ? A glance at the print of Pudb which accompanies the old ballad of the iifad Pranks of Bobin Goodfelhw, printed in 1588, when Shake- speare was twenty-*two years old, would have shown wlK)ever poti&M Pudk npoa tiie stage^ that his pretty manikin was about as unlike the Pudb of Shakespeare's day as it was possible to make him. There he is a mixture of fay, dwarf Hercules, and Satyr ; and bears a brush broom in one hand and a candle in the others But what need of ballads and prints to guide us ? Who that has read the play (and who has not), cannot call the urchin before his mind's eye as instantly as Oberon commanded his real presence ! — a rough, knurly-limbed, fawn-faced, shock-pated little fellow, — a very Shetlander among the gossamer-winged, dainty-limbed shapes around him ; and strong enough to knock all their heads together for his elvish sport. We cannot have exactly such a Puck ; but we can be content with one ^^ who ocnnes to disfigure or to present " such a Puck.
Fairy lakes and panoramas of Fairy-land are just as much out of place as a dandy Puck, Thero is not the slight- est warrant in the text for either. The scene of the fairy business is " A Wood near Athens; " and the only changes are from one part to ^^ Another part of the Wood. " Pas seuls, shawl dances, and the people who dance them, are no less foreign to the design of Shakeq)eare ; and equally so is the turning of a part of Oberon' s soliloquy into a duet, to be sung with a blue fairy who comes in for the purpose wav- vnig her wand, and goes out continuing the process. And, by the way, why are all stage fairies similarly anned and equally
204
NoTEB Am} Comments.
GODfitant in the use of the weapon ? Pray what is the pur- pose of all this violent Btirring up of the atmosphere ? It m difficult to dieeover, except that it perpetuates a time- honored stage conventionality.
The text gives no hint of any of these things, Tltat telb of faiiy gamhob and pranks which form a ]iart of the movement of the play. Bhakespeare brings on the stage juBt such fairies as Mary Arden had told him of when he stood at her knee^ like any otlier mortal child ; she, mother though she was, not dreaming the while, as her sweet Will looked np in her face^ that she had borne and was nurtur- ing one who was to be the de%ht of all nations, the great- est pride of the greatest race among the peoples of the earth, the noblest intellect the world's history should tell of. It IB the faixicfi of his nursery hours which Shakespeare has idealized in A Midmtmmer Nighfs Dream : such fairies aa half Stratfoi'd believed were dancdng in Sir Thomas Lucy's park every moonlight night ; and these flit about the wood near Athens, make lovers' quarrels and make them up again in mere mischief, and dance and sing for themselves, and not to display their skill to others. Tbere is nothing there of fair}* lakes and panoramas, and people tying themselves und each other up in rose-colored shawls while they stand with infinite pain upon the extremity of one toe, and unty- ing themselves by standing on the other. True, tbere have been fairy ballets composed in which there are pas of all kiuds ; but in thosej motion, the dancCj is the medium of expreseioQ^ It is not so in ^ Midsummer Nights Bream, Nothing is there set down to be peribmied which h*i8 not to do with the progress of the piece ; and to arrest that for the movement of a panorama or the evolutions of a baUet^ is to stifle Shakespeare with a paint-brush, and to trample jioetry under foot with entrechats and bore it through and through mih pirouettes.
A Midsummer Night's Dbeam. 205
Shakespeare has pieseired a unity in this fanciM com- position, which the spectacle-making managers only mar by changing the last scene to Fairy-land. It is to be present at the wedding of Thesetia and Hyppclita that Ob&ron and TUania have left Fairy-land and come to Athens, as we learn from their mutual reproaches at their first meeting ; and the events which form the movement of the three progres- sive acts of the play, the second, third and fourth, are but the fruit of accident and mischief. The fifth Act, like the Jhude of a finely-wrought musical composition, placidly re- sumes the theme which was announced at its commence- ment, and simply blends with it the counter-theme with which it has been intricately worked up during the body of the piece. The poet ends the fairy freaks which have ha- rassed the human mortals through this dream, by turning the tormentors into benefactors, and bringing them into the house to bless the place and the children bom of the mar- riages celebrated on that night. Aftier the grotesque fun and broad humor of the interlude, the dream resumes its fanciful and graceful form, and fades upon the mind, a troop of shadowy figures, singing benisons.
The music which Mendelssohn has written for this ex- quisite work of genius, is in its intrinsic beauty and its skilful adaptation as near the perfection and power of genius^ as the production of mere talent, taste, and acquired resource can ever be. Some years ago, when such a suspicion had never, to my knowledge, been uttered, I ventured the asser- tion that Mendelssohn was entirely wanting in original, creative genius, and extended the same judgment to Spohr. I am no longer left alone in this opinion. To neither of these composers are we indebted for any new form of mu- mcal thought. Their works display learning, labor, taste, skin, and, in the case of Mendelssohn particularly, an unusual command of all the resources of the art ; but we
206
Notes and Comments.
look in vain through their compositioas for the fruits of thst gift which we call inflpiration ; we hear no strain which, had tbef not been bomj might not have been conceived by other minda. The inusic of neither is characteristic in ita elements, though both have peculiarities by which we recog- nize their compositions : but these are peculiarities of treat- ment, handling^ — not of original conception.
The overturej the march and the dances^ written by Mendelssohn for thii play, are the finest productions of hie pen. It is paying them the highest possible compli- ment to say that they are thoroughly infornied with the lipirit of Shakespeare's poetr}'. The same may be said of all the muHic which the German composer has written to A Midmmmer Night's Dream, But aa to a part of it, there is a great aesthetic error, which however has not to do with its intrinsic merits^ and fV>r which the fashion of the stage and not the composer is accountable. — In many pas- sages the thoughts of the mufiical composer and the poet are heard together. This is false Art. The mingling of two forms of expression is inadmissihlej because it must be fatal to the full and just effect which proi>erly belongs to either. Let Muiiic or Poetry take possession of our souls j but do not call upon our emotions to serve the bidding of two masters. The jiainter might far more consistently at- tempt to unite the sculptor's art with his, by bringing his figures into relief^ or the sculptor seek to heighten the relief of his work by deepening the shadows with paint. If verse be the poet's medium of expression, let Poetry alone ex- pre^ his thought ; if musical sounds, let Music alone do liis bidding. We may alternate our enjoyment of the two arts, as in the case of illustrated poems, or music intar- spersed with verse — but if both claim our attention at the same time, we are under Ihe dominion (rf neither, and all unity of effect is destroyed.
A MiDBUMMER Night's Dbeam. 207
Diamatic poetry can receive no more aid from Music, than dramatic music can receive from Poetry. All that the musician can do for the dramatist is to embellish his work : all that the poet can accomplish for the musiciaix is to fur- nish him with dramatic situations, and si^gestive thoughts, of which his music is to be the sole exponent, to the entire disregard of all except the mere dramatic conception of the poet ; whose words, as words, are in this case to be consid- ered the mere vehicles of musical sotmds. Any mingling of the o£Sce8 of Poet (using the word in its limited sense) and Musician, effects only the confounding, confusing, and consequent destruction of both.
In truth. Music and Poetry more than any two other Arts must be enjoyed apart ; because they both appeal to the mind through the same sense, — ^the ear, which, other- wise, is called upon to receive at the same time two impres- sions, one transmitting thought, the other awakening emo- tion. The consequence of the attempt to do this, is distrac- tion both of mind and sense, as all who have been subjected to it must have noticed. In a play, where words are the vehicles of thought and expression, music may properly precede or follow the Acts, or be interspersed through the poetry, but cannot properly accompany it : in an opera, where music is the medium of expression, we want words only for the situation or emotion which they furnish, as a subject to the composer, and for the purposes of articula- tion. He who needs, or can suffer the music of Mendelssohn while he is listening to the verse of Shakespeare, or who longs to hear the verse of Bomani while he is enjoying the music of Bellini, might with greater propriety ask that St. Luke's narrative should be plainly written across the &ce of Baphael's TranafiguraJtion^ so that he might enjoy the story and the picture together, or complain that Virgil did not write his description of Venus appearing to udBneas
206 Notes and Comments.
with such an arrangement of his lines that they would pre- sent the form of the beauty they described. No, — ^neither Music, Painting, Sculpture, nor Poetry will accept divided homage. Art, like FoMqff*s sack, must be '^ simple, of itself." a draught not of mingled pleasures ; but pure, — unmixed even with kindred delights.
Act L Scene 1.
" Tku, Therefore, fiur HermiA, queetion your desiret; Enow of your youth, ezamiiie well your blood. Whether, if you yield not to your father^s ehoice^ Ton can endnre the livery of a nun. For aye to be In shady elobter mew'd, To lire a barren sister all your life, Chanting faint hymns to the oold froitless moon. Thrioe blessed Uiey, that master so their blood. To undergo sueh maiden pilgrimage ; But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd, Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn, Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness."
" But earthlier happy is the rose distilled." Pope and Johnson proposed to read " carUer happy," and Steevens "earthly happy." Capell reads "earthly happier," and Mr. Knight without his usual deference to the original text, and regard for the most obvious meaning, adopts the latter reading, on the ground that " earthlier happie," the read- ing of the first folio and the quartos, might have been mis- printed for " earthlie happier." So it might ; but what need of supposing a misprint ? ' Earthly ' is a good ad- jective, and ' earthlier' is its proper comparative. The»mB has just described a religious state which makes those who adopt it "thrice blessed." He then speaks of another state, which confers another kind of happiness. Each en- sures happiness, but happiness of a different nature. When
A Midsummer Night's Dream. 209
he discriimnates between the two^ he speaks, not of their d^p'ees of happiness, but of their kind. The latter is a happiness earthlier, that is, more consistent with the nat- ural instincts of the human heart, than the former. ^ Earth- ly happter,' makes the distinction, or at least the comparison, one of degree. It perverts the sense, or substitutes a new one, and one not so natural and Shakesperian ; and gives us, besides, an awkward new phrase for a graceful old one. Why make it ?
[Since the foregoing remarks were written, Mr. Collier's folio has appeared with the reading ' earthly, happer ' in this passage. It is almost needless to notice it ; for a lib- erty with the text which is refused to the reasons of such men as Capell and Mr. Knight, can surely derive no author- ity from the ijpse dixit of a man of whom we know nothing.
** Helena. And for this intelligence,
If I hare thanks, it is a dear expense.'*
Mr. Collier thinks that his folio singularly improves this passsage by reading,
" And for this intelligence^ If I have thanks, it is dear recompente."
Whether or not the change is an improvement, is a matter of taste ; but whether a change is needed, is not a matter of opinion. The words of the original text are susceptible of more than one interpretation ; but surely the most ob- vious one is the best. Steevcns thus states it: — "4t is a dear expense' :] i. e. it will cost him much (be a severe con- straint on his feelings) to make even so slight a return for my communication. "
14
210 Notes and Comments.
Scene 2.
** Bottom. First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on; then read the names of the actors, and so grow to a point'*
One only of the characters among the human mortals in this play is very strongly marked. Who but Bottom, the life and soul of the interlude of Pyramua and Thisbe ! Many have been inclined to look upon Bottom only as a stolid lout ; and he has even been presented as such with success upon the stage. The conception is directly at va- riance with Shakespeare's delineation of the character.
Watch Bottom^ and see that from the time he enters until he disappears, he not only claims to be, but is, the man of men, the Agamemnon of the ^^ rude mechanicals " of Athens. No sooner is the subject of the play opened, than he instantly assumes the direction of it, which is ac- quiesced in by his fellows, as a matter of course. He tells Peter Quince what to do, and Peter does it. He has the best part assigned to him ; but the bottomless stomach of his vanity claims every cliaracter. He wants the lion's part literally as well as metaphorically. But there is some rea- son for all this besides his vanity : he is the best among them, and they know it. • He has impressed them with his superiority, and has a moral as well as a mental influence upon them. Peter Quince^ who is, after a clownish fashion, a shrewd, politic fellow, sees the necessity for conciliating him, and flatters him into self-complacent satisfaction, by telling him that " Pyramvs is a sweet-faced man ; a pro- per man as one shall see in a summer's day, a most lovely, gentlemanlike man ; therefore, you must needs play Pyra- mu8!' The green-room and the world before the curtain see many a Uke manoeuvre now-a-days.
Bottom criticises boldly at the rehearsal ; and his cri-
Character of Bottom. 211
ticisms are received with deference. When Snug^ the Join- er, is at his wit's end about bringing in a wall, he appeals instantly to Bottom, who, with sublime readiness of resource^ instantly affords the needful counsel. In this very Scene^ after his " translation," he says to Titania : "to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a- days. The more the pity that some honest neighbors will not make them fiiends." It is no idiotic lout who utters this, and who makes those humorous replies to Moth, Mua^ tardrseed, Feaae-blossom and Cobweb, and who, on coming to himself, shrinks from saying to himself what he thought he was, and what he thought he had upon his head. And when Peter Quince is forced to the sad conclusion that "out of doubt he is transported," see the consternation of the whole company ! " The play goes not forward," says Flute the Bellows Mender. "It is not possible ; " replies Quince, " you have not a man in all Athens able to discharge Py- ramus but he ; " and Flute soon after bewails the sixpence a day (quite a salary in Shakespeare's time,) which " Bully Bottom " has lost by his asinine transformation. Finally, when Bottom comes in upon them, no more of a donkey than he had ever been, hear Peter Quince's delighted exclamation : ^^ Bottom ! — 0 most courageous day ! 0 most happy hour ! " The shrewd fellow has a double interest in the restoration of his leading actor ; for good Peter, beyond a question, is the author of that play of Pyramus and Thisbe ; — it peeps out on all occasions.
No, — Bottom is no stupid lout. He is a compound of profound ignorance and onmivorous conceit ; but these are tempered by good nature, decision of character, and some mother wit. That which gives him his individuality, does not depend upon his want of education, his position, or his calling. All the schools of Athens could not have reasoned it out of him ; and all the gold of Croesus would have made
212 Notes and Comments.
him but a gilded Bottom after all. The race of Bottoms did not become extinct with Nick ; nor have we reason to believe he was Nicholas the First. His descendants have not unfrequently appeared among the gifted intellects of the world. When Goldsmith, jealous of the attention which a dancing monkey attracted in a coffee-house, said, ^^ I can do that as well/' and was about to attempt it, he was but playing Bottom. As Mr. Burton renders the character, its traits are brought out with a delicate and masterly hand : its humor is exquisite. But it is not well for any of us to laugh too much at it : it is not prudent ; for somebody may be by who knows us better than we know ourselves.
Act IL Scene 1.
**Fmry. The cowslips tall her pennonen be; In their gold ooats, spots yoa see^** Ae.
Mr. Comer's foKo alters "tall" to aU and "coats" to cups ; and Mr. Dyce says, that though the first of these alterations is more than questionable (and he performs well the needless task of showing that it is utterly inadmissible) the second may be right. If Mr. Dyce means to say that Shakespeare, with propriety, might have written cups for " coats," few will be inclined to disagree with him. But when we have the best evidence that Shakespeare wrote " coats," and none at all that he wrote cups ; and when the first word is not only comprehensible but pertinent, why say that it " may be right " to change it to— any thing ? It is to be regretted when a man of Mr. Dyce's position gives even a qtmsi sanction to an unnecessary change in the original text of Shakespeare.
A MmBUMMER Niqht'b Dream. 218
*Puck, Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, And Uilor cries, and £sUs into a cough ; And then the whole quire hold their hips and loffe, A waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear A merrier hour was never wasted there."
I never could nnderstond why the '^ wisest aunt " in this most rollicking and exuberantly humorous description should cry ^^ tailor " when she misses her seat ; and have found no commentary to enlighten me. Does the word refer to her position when she falls, being like that of a tailor ? It can hardly be that the allusion is to the first syllable of the word.
[I find in the Variorum Edition, a note by Johnson, in which he refers this expression to the position of the person felling. But even the support of an identical prior conjec- ture does not confirm me in attributing this sense to the word. There was evidently a great joke hid in it ; and what joke would there be, even for such a circle, in one of them falling into the position of a tailor ? Neither Hanmer nor Warburton know of such a customary jest under such cir- cumstances ; for they read, — " and rails or cries."
Scene 2.
With what propriety is there a new scene made at the entrance of Oberon and Titania, who merely come upon Pudk and the fairy as they are talking ? In the original, the first Scene closes at the subsequent separation o( Puck and Obe^ ron. There is neither authority nor reason for the change.
214 Notes and Comments.
" Ti/cm. And on old Hyem's chin and icy oiown. An odoroiiB ohaplet of sweet sammer bnda U, as in mockery set*
Eyidently we should read, " Hyem's thin and icy crown," as Tjnrwhitt and Mr. Dyce have suggested. What was a chaplet doing on old Hyem's chin ? How did it get there ; and when it got there, how did it stay there ?
" Oheron, ^Thou remember'st
Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's baek Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath That the rude sea grew civil at her song, i And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea maid's music."
How strangely felicitous the choice of epithet by Shake- vpeare ! and yet there is conveyed, I know not how, an im- pression that the epithets are not chosen, but rise sponta- neously with the thought. He says the maid uttered " dul- cet and harmonious breath." Not * notes,' as any other poet would have said, but "breath ; " as if the marvellous crea- ture exhaled music ; as if from her lovely parted lips noth- ing could come which did not take from them a form of beauty. Let any one put ' notes ' or * tones ' in the place of " breath," in this line, and see how the bloom on its rich beauty vanishes. The passage is beautiful, charmingly beau- tiful, whichever word is there ; but take away the word which Shakespeare wrote, and that which is exquisite, ethereal, and really transcendent in its beauty is gone, utterly and hopelessly.
How much, too, is there in the alliteration of the line,
" In maiden meditation fancy-free.*'
A Midsummer Night's Dbeam. 215
The alliteration, it may be said, adds nothing to the thought. True ; but it does add to its charm. Without it, the line would not be that which always flashes on the memory when we think of a maiden who has lived till now with the depths of her heart untroubled.
Act III. Scene 1.
" Her, Hate me I wherefore? O me, what newes my Love I **
Thus the original, which Mr. Collier's margins have, plau- sibly enough, changed to " what means my love ?" But it IS by no means certain that any variation from the original is needed. This is Eermia's first interview with her former lover since Puck's application of the flower to his eyes ; and she may well express surprise at the novelty of his declara- tion that he hates her.
" Hel, So with two seeming bodies but one heart ; Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, Due but to one and crowned with one crest**
This heraldic allusion has puzzled many. Monck Ma- son's solution, which is approved by Knight, is this, —
" Every branch of a family is called a house ; and none but the first of the first house can bear the arms of the family without some distinction ; two of the first, therefore, means two coats of the first house, which are properly due but to one."
This might be all very well as far as it goes, but it leaves the Une " Due but to one and crovmed taith one crest " unaccounted for. The simile is evidently intended to
216 NOTKS AND COMIIEKTS.
strengthen the idea of the perfect union of the two giris, which, according to Mason's explanation, it fisnls to da The trouble seems to arise from making the word ^' first " an heraldic term. ^ First/ ^ second/ &c., are used in heraldry either as denoting a house, or as indicating a tint already mentioned in blazoning a shield ; but here ^ first ' is used in its ordinary sense, and refers to the former line, as Douce has pointed out. Helena says that she and Hermia had two bodies but one heart ; and " two of the first," — that is, two bodies, " due but to one," — ^that iA, one soul, Uke coats in heraldry, when the bearings of two &milies are united to make the arms of the one which springs from them, in which case they are crowned with one crest.
** Oheron* Tarns into yeUow gold his Mlt, green etreami^''
This is always printed ^^ salt-green streams " making a compound adjective of — salt-green. What sort of green is a salt-green ? Is salt green at all ? Bead, — " salt, green streams."
Act IV. Scene 1.
" Oherwu Her dotage now I do begin to pity ; For, meeting her of late, behind the wood, Seeking sweet sayonrs for this hateful fool," <fco.
Mr. Dyce would read, with one of the quartos,
"Seeking sweet /aoourc for this hatefiil fool**
because " TUaaiia was seeking flowers for Bottom to wear as favours." But surely Mr. Dyce must have forgotten that
A Midsummer Night's Dbeam. 217
"Bavonrs," the word in the authentic foKo, is supported by the fisu^t that Bottom in this Scene expresses a wish for the " sweet savour " of a honey bag, and that Titania begs him to sit that she may ^^ stick musk roses " in his head, and in a previous Scene thus cwmiands her attendants :
" Feed him with apricocka, and dewberries, With purple grapes, green figs and mulberries; The honey bags steal from the humble bees,** <ba
The Queen of the Fairies was evidently seeking " sweet savours," and not " sweet /avcmrs," for her hirsute love.
Act V. Scene 1.
" TTiet, Lovers, and madmen, have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet^ Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold: That is the madman : the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt : The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling. Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven ; And, as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation, and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination. That, if it would but apprehend pome joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy ; Or in the nighty imagining some fear. How easy, is a bush supposed a bear ? "
How strange that this sublimely beautiful passage shomu have such a '^ lame and impotent conclusion." To think of ooming down from,
218 Notes and Comments.
*«th6 poet*8 pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name,
to such obvious and smile Movoking common-place as,
'* Or, in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bnsh snppos'd a bear."
I do not believe that the last two lines of the speech are genuine. Imagination ^' imagining some fear/' cannot be Shakespeare's. The two preceding lines are doubtless his, and close the speech appropriately, with a clear and conclusive distinction between the apprehension and com- prehension of excited imagination, — ^the very subject of the remarks of Theseus, Where, indeed, in the whole range of metaphysical writing is the diflference between the two acts so clearly stated and so forcibly illustrated I And would Shakespeare, after reaching the climax of his thought, fall into this needless common-place ? Besides, what mean- ing has " or " where it now stands ? " Apprehend some joy " and " comprehend some bringer of that joy," ring true ; but " imagining some fear" and " bushes and bears " are poor counterfeit. I wonder that this has not been noticed. The two lines are, in my judgment, an interpola- tion by some player. That the original folio was partly printed from a. copy which, whether Shakespeare's original manuscript or not, had been marked for stage use, is evident from the fact, that in some places the name of the performer appears in it, instead of that of the character ; and it needs no proof that stage managers, and even actors, take and always have taken, the liberty of adding to, as well as subtracting from, the dramatist's work. On the title-pages of some of the plays in BelVs British Theatre, which are advertised as " regulated from the Prompt Book," is this notice :
k
A MiDSUMMEB Night's Dbeam. 219
^ The Lines distingaished by inverted commas are omitted in ^^ Bepresentation ; and those printed in Italics are the additions ••'ike Theatre."
The quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays were evidently {tinted from actors' parts ; and^ as we learn from the Sta- tkmer's address in the first folio of Beamnont and Fletcher s Woiks, "when private friends desired a copy [of their jMurts] they [the actors] transcribed whcU they acted" The many eragures in Mr. Collier's folio, and the alterations for the Bake of rhyme, especially at the close of Scenes and Acta, patit beyond doubt that its mutilations, changes, and isiierpokiiions, are partly due to the license of the actors on » dfigeneFating stage.
**Ly9tmder. The battle with the Gentaun, to be sang By an Athenian eunuch to the harp/'
J%e9eut, We 11 none of that : that have I told my love, la glory of my kinsman Hercoles.
Xy& ''The riot of the tipsy Bachanals^ Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage."
7%es. That is an old device; and it was play'd When I from Thebes came last a conqueror. •
ZjfM, "The thrice three Muses mourning for the death Of learning, late deceased in b^gary.**
TVa. That is some satire, keen and critical, Kot sorting with a nuptial ceremony.
Lf», "A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus, And his loye Thisbe; very tragical mirth."
J%€$. Merry and tragical 1 Tedious and brief I lliat is, hot ice, and wondrous strange snow. How shall we find the concord of this discord f "
Tims the original folio divides this passage, making *f*«»<fcr read the schedule and ThesetM comment. On the 9^ authority of the quartos, the whole is given to The-
I
220 NoTXS AND Comments.
eeuSj by which nothing is gained in propriety or effect. It is surely more probable that Duke Theseus would have a schedule read to him, than that he would read it aloud him- self; and this is the arrangement of the authentic copy.
In the last reply of Theseus^ the epithet " strange," ap- plied to snow, is not only entirely inappropriate, but utterly meaningless ; it is doubtless a printer's error for seething, Mr. Collier's folio reads ^'hot ice and wondrous seething snow."
My unknown correspondent in the lumber State does BOt agree with this opinion, and holds to " drange." " Of oourse,'' he remarks, '^ the idea is, that the snow, to com- pare with the mirthful and tragical^ and tedious and hrirf scene, and with the hot ice^ must be a singular kind of snow — snow resembling almost any thing else than snow — per- haps black instead of white, or seething instead of frozen — such would be strange snow, indeed." I respect this cling- ing to the original text ; but still I fail to see any consistent meaning in "strange." It is not in any way opposed to " snow ; " and reason demands that it should be. Mirth and tragedy, tediousness and brevity, heat and ice, cannot find a counter-part in strangeness and snow. ^^ Seething saow" seems plainly to me the author's phrase ; and the more, that it perfects an otherwise imperfect line.
" Pyr. Sweet moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams ; I thank thee, moon, for shining now so bright^ For, by thy gracious, golden, glittering beams^" Ste,
Thus the original, with an evident misprint in the se- cond " beams," which was corrected in the second folio to streams, Mr. Knight suggests that we should read,
A Midsummer Night's Dream. 221
"For by thy gracious, golden, glitteTiDg gleaiM.**
Barely, who that remembers the following lines in the Prologue of the interlude, can doubt for a moment that gleams is the word ?
" Whereit^ with blade, with bloody blamefal blade, He brarely broach'd his boiling bloody breast; "
If we change the original at all, a good emendation in the second folio must yield to a better from Mr. Knight ; for the second folio, with or without MS. emendations, has no authority.
Scene 2.
" Obe, With this field-dew consecrate, Every fairy take his gait ; And each several chamber bless, Through this palace with sweet peace ; Ever shall in safety rest, And the owner of it blest'*
" Ever shall in safety rest," is neither sense nor English, ancient or modern. There is no nominative, expressed or understood. Pope read,
**Ker shall it in safety rest;"
but Warburton and Mr. Collier's folio in reading,
" Ever shall it safely rest,"
deviate less, in fact, as little as possible, from the original, and obtain the same sense and a smoother line.
MERCHANT OF VENICE.
Act I. Scene 1.
" Ant. I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano ; A Btage, where every man must play a part^ And mine a sad one."
I do not know that it has been before remarked, that to the dignity of Antonio's character there is added a tinge of moody, tender melancholy, which yet stops short of mor- bidness or affectation, and which adds much to the interest awakened in us by his generous friendship and the trying circumstances in which his noble kindness places him. This sadness, as well as the gentleness and open sincerity of his character, appears in the letter in which he announces his misfortune to BassaniOy — one of the finest instances of the pathos of simplicity that exists in literature.
" Sweet Bassanio, my ships Lave all miscarried, my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to the Jew is forfeit; and since in paying it is impossible I should live, all debts are cleared between you and I, if I might but see you at my death. Notwithstanding, use your pleasure : if your love do not persuade you to come, let not my letter."
No commentator has shown such an utter want of sympa- thy with the finest thoughts and the finest characters in
Merchant of Venice. 223
Shakespeare's works, as that one who has, naturally therefore, assumed the most patronizing tone in speaking of them, — Warburton. It would have been strange indeed, had he appreciated so noble, and yet so deUcately drawn a char- acter as Antonio; and we are not surprised to hear him call this prince of commerce '^a plain, reserved, parsi- monious merchant." Warburton says this in a note which he writes, to prove that when Shylock calls Antonio " a bankrupt, a prodigal who dare scarce show his head on the Bialto," he should call him, " a bankrupt /or a prodigal'* — i, e. for Bassanio, Since the critic could not feel the noble generosity of Antonio's nature, it is gratifying to see so pitiable a blunder in criticism made the occasion of showing his want of sympathy.
" Orat. There are a sort of men whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pond ; And do a wilful stillness entertain, With purpose to be dressed in an opinion Of wisdom, gravity," Ac.
Without good assurance of the fact, it would hardly be believed that a man of common sense would think it neces- sary deliberately to perpetrate a note on this passage for the purpose of defining " a wWfiil stillness "as ^ an obsti- nate silence.' Yet it is unfortunately true that Malone did so ; as any one may see in the Variorum Shakespeare. And in the third scene of this Act, when Bassanio, to prevent Antonio from sealing the bond asked for by the Jew, says,
*' Tou shall not seal to such a bond for me ; I'll rather dwell in my necessity,"
Dr. Johnson remarks, with timid solemnity, that "todt£?eK,
224 Notes and Commsnts.
in this place seems to mean the same as to continne/' On reading such a note as this, we use Hamlet 8 phrase, —
"Seems, Madiun f nay it is; I know not seemB."
Why did not the Doctor deliberately assure us that " my necessity " means ^ my need ? ' It would not have been one whit more superfluous. But in King Lear, Johnson out- does himself. In that passage of bitter ironical reproach in the fourth Scene of the second Act, when Lear^ sup- posing himself to address Oonerilj says,
"Dear daughter, I confess that I am old ; Age is unnecessary : On my knees I beg That you'll vouch safe me raiment^ bed, and food,"
how cutting is the irony, how grand and crushing the re- buke of her ingratitude conveyed in the seemingly humble admission that "age is unnecessary,*' — that the old are needless and a burden I Will it be believed, Dr. Johnson, the great Dr. Johnson, makes this note upon the passage 1 —
" Age is unnecessary:] i. e. Old age has few wants."
But Thomas Tyrwhitt almost rivals * the great moralist.' — He remarks,
" Unnecessary, in Lear's speech, I believe means — in want of necessaries y unable to procure tkem?'*
The obvious and pregnant significance of the passage seems in danger of being extinguished for readers so near * the Au- gustan age of English literature,' when Steevens steps in and nearly saves it, by venturing to suggest that " ' Age is unnecessary,' may mean, old people are useless**
Now, there must be a reason for the utterance of such
Merchant of Vjbniok. 225
platitudes as these, and a thousand others which deform the page of the Variorum Shakespeare, by m^n of learning and ability. It is in vain to urge that on account of the labors of these very men we now understand the phraseology of Shakespeare's works ; for among my own acquaintance I know a score of men of all grades of intelligence and educa- tion, who have never seen a comment or a criticism on Shake- speare, never looked at a glossary, who read him and have read him for years with delight and understanding, and who would scout such editing as this, as sheer impertinence ; and 80, in truth, it is. I find the reason for these labored expla- nations of lucid passages, and the equally labored confusion of others equally clear, in the fact, that the second-hand clas- sic taste, the artificial and meagre phraseology, and the com- paratively precise, straitened, tame and ban'cn style of rn.iUi;lit ill the last century, was so unkindred with the genius of Shakespeare and his age, — the golden age of English letters — that passages which flaslied their meaning upon the minds of his contemporary readers, and which are as instantly apprehended by the minds of this century, — more kindred with him than the last — were " caviare " to Popes, War- burtons, Hanmers, Johnsons, Malones, and Steevenses and their contemporaries.
Scene 3.
*' Shy. The skilful shepherd peel'd me certain wands/* "Shy, And spat upon ray Jewish gaberdine."
C. Knight gives jpi/i'rf for "peel'd" andspe^for "spat,'' saying that these were the received orthographies of Shake- speare's time. So, also, Mr. Dyce *^ censures Mr. Collier and
* Remarks on Mr. J. P. Collier's and Mr. C. Knight's Editions of Shake- speare, p. 63.
15
226 Notes and CIommsnts.
Mr. Knight for giving ^ miscons^rtiec? ' instead of ^'mis- oons^'cf"' in Act II. Sc. 2 of this play, and for moderniz- ing the same word in other passages, — giving as a reason that 'Hhese forms were common in our early writers.'* True ; but why retain the spelling of these words when that of all others is changed ? Why change the others ? Why should we lose the physiognomy of Shakespeare's words ? Who would read a modernized Spenser ? The orthography which we have now in Shakespeare is neither his nor ours ; but that of a time with which we have little sjrmpathy and he had less. Until we have Shakespeare as nearly as possible in the exact words and letters which he left us, or would have left us had he edited his own works, we shall not enjoy, or appreciate him exactly as we otherwise should.
Act II. Scene 2.
**Laun. 0 heaveDsl this is my true begotten father, who, being more than sand-blind, high-gravel blind, knows me not : — I will try confusions with him."
Thus the original folio and one of the early quartos ; and yet all modem editions, — every edition, indeed, issued in the last century and a half, except Theobald's and Ca- pell's, read, " I will try conclusions with him." The only support which this reading has, is that it appears in one of the early quartos ; which amounts to little in any case, and against the authentic copy, and the obvious sense of the passage, is worthless. How natural that Launcelot should try "confusions" with his " true begotten father I" He certainly meant conclusions ; and so there is reason to be- lieve that Bottom, when he said he would " aggravate " his voice, meant that he would modulate it ; and that Dogberry , when he told Leonato that the watch had "comprehended
Mkrohakt of Venice. 227
two aspiciouB peraons '' meant — ^not exactly what he said. How closely Shakespeare's editors must be watched, lest they steal away from us a part of the delight he has be- queathed to 11&
" (7o66o.Toar worship's friend and Laoncelot
Laun. But I pray yon ergo^ old man, erga^ I beseech yoo, talk yon of yonng master Lanncelot**
Mr. Knight supposes old OohWa reply to have reference t6 himself, like Costard's answer, — ^^ your servant and Cos- tardj" in Love's Labors Lost, Surely not. Launodot whimsically takes his father to task for disrespect to him- self— Launcdot; and says, in reply to old Gobbo's state- ment of their condition, " Well, let his father be what he will, we talk of young master LauncehV The father re- plies, deprecatingly, but still unable to dub his son a gentle- man, " your worship's friend and Launcdot^'' i. e. — ^ Aye, we speak oi Launcdot^ your worship's friend.' To this, Lavn- cdotj who evidently, like the Oravedigger in Hamlet^ under- stands, after a fashion, the Latin word he uses, rejoins, " But I pray you ergOj I beseech you, ergo^ talk you of young master Launcdot" t. 6. — ^ And therefore, because I am your worship and he is my friend, you should speak of him as Master Launcdot* Mr. Knight is evidently right in retaining the full point of the old copies, in place of the mark of interro- gation substituted by the modem editors.
Act hi. Scene 2.
"Biua. Look on beauty,
And yon shall see 'tis purchased by the weight ; Wliich therein works a miracle in natnre,
228 Notes and Ooxxsim.
Making them lightest thtX wear most of it: So are those crisped snaky golden locks, Which make sach wanton gambols with the wind, • Upon supposed fairness^ often known To be the dowry of a second head,— Tlie scoll that bred them, in the sepulchre. Thus ornament is but the guiled shore To a most dangerous sea ; the beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian beauty ; in a word. The seeming truth which cunning times put on To entrap the wisest **
The last sentence in this passage has made trouble enough ; — ^needlessly in my poor juc^gment. It seems to have been universally supposed by the editors^ that to make ornament ^' the beauteous scarf veiling an Indian beaiUy," is inconsistent with the likening it to " the guiled shore to a most dangerous sea ; '* indeed Mr. Collier remarks, in his late Notes and Emendations, that '* ' beauty ' was obviously the very converse of what the poet intended." For this reason Hanmer read,
" the beauteous searf Veiling an Indian dowdy ; *'
and Mr. Singer has recently proposed,
" the beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian gipty ; "
and Mr. Collier's folio corrector, with other conjecturers,
** the beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian : beauty in a word, The seeming truth that cunning times put on," dec
It is evidently taken for granted by the editors, that the ^'beauteous scarf" must veil something which otherwise
Meabubb for Measubb. 229
would be unattractive. Far from it : it must be '^ danger- ous." The fitness of the word ^^ Indian" is also lost sight of in all these conjectures. Why should this poor dowdy or gipsy, to whom a dangerous sea is likened, be an Indian ? The original text says, plainly enough, just what Shakes- peare meant. Did the editors never hear of the opinion, universal in Shakespeare's day, and very general now, that a certain plague, unnamable to ears polite, was not known in the civilized world until it was brought to Spain in the beginning of the sixteenth century by those who had made easy conquests of the Indian beauties in newly discovered America ? Well indeed might the " beauteous scarf veil- ing an Indian beauty" be likened to " the guiled shore to a most dangerous sea," — and vice versa,
Mr. Collier's fob'o, in reading " gwling shore" for " guil- ed shore," only rids the text of a Shakespearian peculiarity.
"Par. — an unlessoii'd girl, unschoord, unpractis'd : Happj in this, she is not yet so old But she maj learn ; happier than this, She is not bred so dull but she can learn ; Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit Commits itself to yours to be directed.**
Mr. Collier's folio reads, with obvious propriety,
" Happiest of all, in that her gentle spirit^" Ac
Portia says first, that she is " happy in this," that " she is yet not so old but she may learn," &c. ; which is equivalent to—' happy in that she is not so old,' &c. " Hap- piest of all, is that her gentle spirit," is not sense. The correction of the typographical mistake of one letter restores the sense, and preserves the form of expression in the con-
230 NoTKS AND Comments.
text. There con hardly he a doubt that Shakespeare wrote, iQ the second instaDce, ^^ happier in this/' instead of ^' hap- pier than this ;" but as the text of the first folio gives a good sense, it is unsafe to change it.
Act V. ScBNK 1.
" Lor. — ^look how the floor of heAven Is thick inUid with patiDee of bright gold*
Mr. Collier abandons " pattens/' the reading of the ori- ginal and one of the quartos, althou^ it is supported by that of the other quarto—" pattents/' to follow the misprint, or the prosaic alteration of the word in the second folio — "pat- terns.'' The line would become aknost worthless without " patines."
"Par. Peace I how the moon ileepe with Endymion,
And would not be awak'df [Mutie i
Thus the original, which has been changed to " Peace, Jioa ! the moon sleeps," &c. But Mr. Collier's folio sug- gests now for " how," which is much nearer the original in the trace of the letters, and gives at least as good a sense, and, in my judgment, a better. I would read :
" Peace I now the moon sleeps with Endjmion, And would not be awak'd !*'
**Ner, And pardon me, my gentle Gratiano^ For that same scrubbed boy, the doctor^s derk,' In lien of this, last night did lie with me."
Mbbchant of Venice. 231
Strange that the misprint here should not have attract- ed attention. " In lieu of this ? " In lieu of what ? The ring ? Irrespective of the tameness and want of point in such an assertion, it is not true, in the sense in which Neriaaa addresses it to Gratiano; for she had had the ring on her finger ever since dinner time on the previous day ; and al- though she had not been to bed during the " last night " which she speaks of, Gratiano did not know it. Bead :
" the doctor's clerk. In lieu of thee, last night did lie with me."
In
" OroL Why this is like the mending of highways In summer, where the ways are fair enough."
There can be hardly a doubt that Shakespeare wrote,
•* In summer, when the ways are fair enough/*
as one of the correctors of Mr. Cgllier's folio conjectured.
** Grot. Well, while I live, Til fear no other thing So sore as keeping safe Nerissa*s ring."
A correspondent in Notes and Queries ^ No. 167, p. 45, asks whether Gratiano does not make " a covert allusion to the story first told by Poggio in his Facetioe, then by Ariosto, then by Rabelais, then by La Fontaine, and finally by Prior in his Hans Carvel." The query seems quite su- perfluous. There is surely little covertness in the allusion ;
232 Notes and Commskts.
and to understand it, a knowledge of Pc^gio's stoiy is by no means necessary.
One chief and peculiar charm in the Merchant of Ve- nice, is the gentle, placid beauty of the last Act, in which the excited passions of the fourth Act, where Comedy treads so closely upon the heels of Tragedy, subside, and are billed into sweet repose by the soothing influences of those love passages between the three pairs of lovers in Portia's gar- den;— that enchanted garden, canopied by a sky "inlaid with patincs of bright gold," and the air in which is filled with the music of orbs, " still quiring to the young-eye'd cherubins." But convenience, or a modest supposition that Shakespeare did not understand stage effect as well as we do now-a-days, has determined that this Act is a super- fluity ; audit is now remorselessly amputated, — the necessary explanation between Portia and Nerissa and their hus- bands being huddled up at the close of the fourth Act, and the cmtain dropping upon the discomfited malice of Shy^ lock, instead of the tender joy which filled the hearts of those who went to rest in Belmont I For such a bar- barous procrusteanism there is no imaginable excuse. The fact that the last part of the Scene contains certain expres- sions which are not fit for the ears of modem audiences, is no justification for this mutilation of the dramatic design of the author. Let the text be pruned of these excrescences ; but let them not be made the excuse for lopping off one of the finest members of the play, — one of the most beautiful productions of Shakespeare's genius.
AS YOU LIKE IT.
For the delicacy of its wit, the pregnant quaintness of its humor, the keenness of its satire, and, above all, the profound and subtle knowledge of human nature shown in the moulding of its characters, this sylvan comedy is re- markable even among the plays of Shakespeare. To these traits it adds a healthy, rural, inartificial air, which is grateful to pure sympathies. Its events pass amid trees and rocks and running brooks ; and its characters show the influence of their surroundings. They do not talk like sen- timental citizens on an excursion, determined to be becom- ingly romantic ; but they drink in wholesome exhilaration from the open air, and yet do not lack that sober thought- fulness proper to those who dwell beneath " the shade of melancholy boughs." We find in no other language so fresh and true a picture of sylvan life. The English boasts one glorious gallery of views equal to it : — the forest scenes in Ivanhoe, The very songs scattered through the play seem to be the spontaneous utterance of frank yet thoughtful natures, under the spell of forest influences.
Act I. Scene 1.
" Oliver. And what wilt thou do, beg, when that is spent! "
This is pointed thus in all the editions :
234 Notes and Comments.
" And what wilt thou do t beg, when that is spent**
a punctuation which does not bring out the sense of the question. Oliver obviously does not need to ask Orlando what he will do when he gets the thousand crowns^ but what he will do when they are spent. The question is double ; and in their natural order the queries would stand thus:
" And what wilt thoa do when that is spent! begt "
But the two are united by making the last parenthetical in the first ; and there should therefore be no interrogation point except at the close of the whole sentence.
On the very threshhold of the drama we have a remark- able instance of the nice and intuitive discrimination of Shakespeare in the delineation of a secondary character. Oliver, the elder brother of Orlando, would be drawn by any but a great master of the human heart, as an unmiti- gated villain ; and so, indeed, he is invariably misrepre- sented on the stage. Oliver, speaking of Orlando in the first Scene, says : —
*' I hope I shall see an end of him ; for my soul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than he.**
Here the speech closes, on the stage : but Shakespeare makes Oliver go on, and say of his young brother : —
** Yet he's gentle; never schooled, and yet learned ; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved ; and, indeed so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I
As You Like It. 235
am altogetlier misprised. But it shall not be so, long ; this wrestler shall dear all : nothing remains, bat that I kindle the boy thither, which now m go about**
With what wonderfal knowledge is here depicted the effect of moral excellence upon a man envious in temper and domineering in spirit, yet capable of appreciating that which is good in others, and even of desiring it for himself I He is not a mere brutal, grasping elder brother : but being somewhat morose and moody in his disposition, he first envied and then disliked the youth who, although his inferior in position, is so much in the heart of the world, and especial- ly of his own people, that he himself is altogether misprised. The very moody disposition which makes him less popular than his younger brother, led him to nourish this envious dislike, till it became at length the bitter hate which he shows in the first Scene of the play. Had Oliver been less appreciative of the good in others, and less capable of it himself, he would not have turned so bitterly against Orlando, It is quite true to nature that such a man should be overcome entirely, and at once, by the subsequent generosity of his brother, and instantly subdued by simple, earnest Celia, But his sudden yielding to sweet and noble influences is not consistent with the character of the coarse, unmitigated villain whom we see upon the stage, and who is the monstrous product, not of Shakespeare, but of those who garble Shakespeare's text.
I notice this, because it is an example of the wrong done to Shakespeare as a dramatist by the preparers of the acting copies of his plays ; a wrong from which this com- edy especially has suffered. Shakespeare was not only the greatest of poets, but an actor, and the successful manager of a theatre ; and it is more than probable that he knew, not only what was necessary to the development of his con- ceptionB of character, but what was suited to the tastes
236 Notes and Comments.
of a promiscuous audience. This appears to have been forgotten for about two centuries past.
Scene 2.
" Ia Beau, Fair prinoess, you haTe lost much good sport Celia. Sport f Of what colour f "
It seemed to me at first quite probable, as Mr. Collier's folio suggests, that Le Beau told the princesses, in his af- fected way, that they had "lost much good yyo't" (sport), and that this prompted Cecilia to ask, ^^Spotf of what color ? " But upon reflection, the emendation appears to be one of those made points, called in theatrical cant, * gags,' upon which actors venture successfully sometimes, but so rarely, that it is to be desired that they should al- ways faiL We would gladly forego the few happy hits, if the sacrifice could secure us from the multitudinous misses.
Scene 3.
'< CeL Bat is all this for thy father! Jio9, No, some of it is for my child's father.**
This, the reading of the original, has been changed by Rowe and Mr. Knight to " for my father's child." The meaning of the original is obviously, as Theobald says, " for him whom I hoi)e to marry, and who will be the father of my children." Of this, Coleridge says, " Who can doubt that it is a mistake for ' my father's child,' meaning her- self ? According to Theobald's note, a most indelicate anticipation is put into the mouth of Rosalind without
As You Like It. 237
reason/' This opinion Mr. Knight indorses, with the ad- dition that the thought is " most forced and unnatural."
It certainly is pleasant to agree with Coleridge and Mr. Knight; and it may he presuming to differ from them ; but I cannot sympathize with the tone of their criticism on this passage, or agree with their conclusions in regard to it. Bosalind, as the whole context shows, is evidently thinking of Orlando, whom she already loves fixedly. Romlind is no prude in spirit, — none of Shakespeare's fine women are, — and she speaks with the freedom with which women spoke in the days of Elizabeth. When this Scene opens, she has evidently been long brooding over her love and her thoughts have travelled far into the future. She has fancied herself Orlando's loving wife and the mother of his children ; — what man, what truly pure woman, with a woman's in- stincts and afiections undistorted and unperverted, will not honor her and love her for it ! Rosalind was no missy girl, ignorant of the relations of her sex to the other, or affecting an ignorance to hide prurient knowledge. She was an honest-hearted, sensible woman, with all the instincts and impulses of her sex active within her ; and she, speaking in the tone of those trained in Shakespeare's time, is not ashamed to say to her cousin, who seems but her other self, that to be the mother of Orlando's child is the longed-for sum of her earthly happiness.
But let us see if Rosalind, in subsequent unquestioned passages of the play, do not indulge in thoughts far more indelicate, and siKjeches more gross, than this utterance of a woman's longing which so shocks Coleridge and Mr. Knight. A moment afterward, when Celia tells her to " hem away " the burrs in her heart, she replies :
" I would try : if I could cry hem, and have him."
In Act IV. Sc. 1. Orlando asks.
238 NoTBS AND Comments.
"Who could be oat» [of matter for oonvenation] being before his be- loTed miBtress t "
Rosalind replies, with a gross perversion of his phrase,
" Marry, that shoald you, if I were your mistreas ; or I should think my honuty ranker than my wiL"
In Act V. Sc. 2, speaking to Orlando of Oliver and Cdia, she says : —
" in these degrees hare they made a pair of stairs to marriage, which they will climb incontinent, or else be ineontineni before marriage,**
Is the woman who speaks thus, the more or the less in- delicate when she owns her hope that she shall be made a wife and a mother by the man she loves. But more : — ^her cousin Cdiay who is much the more retiring of the two, when asked by Rosalind^ in Act III. 8c. 2, to take the cork out of her mouth that Rosalind may drink her tidings, makes an answer for which I prefer referring the reader to the text.
In reading the Winter's Tale shortly after As You Like It, I noticed that Perdita, one of Shakespeare's purest and most lovely creations, she, too, who makes the request — unusual with the women of Shakespeare's day — that Avto- lycos may be forewarned to use " no scurrilous words in his tunes," expresses the same thought which Coleridge caUs " a most indelicate anticipation." In Act IV. Sc. 3, when Folixenes urges her to cultivate " gillivors " in her garden, her lover being by, she thus expresses her dislike of their artificial formation ; —
"Til not put The dibble in the earth to set one slip of them ; No more than, were I painted, I should wish
As You LiKB It. 239
Thi» youth to say 'twere well ; and only therefore JDenre to breed by me."
Agaiiiy in the same Scene, we find her expressing an idea even more foreign to our notions of delicacy, because not embodying the idea of maternity ; though, strangely enough, this last deficiency may possibly be thought a gain by some. She speaks of strewing her lover with flowers. He asks, "What ! like a corse ? " She answers : —
"No, like a bank, for love to lie and play on; Not like a corpse: or if, — not to be buried, But quick, [that is, living] and in mine arms,"
These instances occurred to me immediately after meet- ing with the passage on which Theobald, Coleridge and Mr. Knight have commented. Were Shakespeare to be searched, such speeches might be found by dozens in the mouths of his female characters, — ^for instance, the reply of Beatrice to Don Pedro about her putting down Benedick, [Mtich Ado, &c.. Act II. Sc. 2.] The custom of his day permitted them, even in the ordinary intercourse of society ; and they were expected on the stage, where, it should be remembered, they were actually uttered, not by women, but by men.
I must own that I cannot see any thing intrinsically immodest in Boscdind's speech as the original gives it to us ; and that I find it decidedly in keeping with Shakespeare's mode of treating the female character. Neither do I find any thing intrinsically indelicate in Perdita's speeches. They are not forced, but are, as is also Bosalind'Sy the ex- pression of feelings natural to the female mind, when under the influence of a love which is any thing more than sickly sentimentality ; and the feelings being such, the expression of them cannot be justly considered indelicate, consider- ing the manners of the time when Shakespeare wrote.
240 Notes and Comments.
The jests of Rosalind and Celia^ however, are decidedly and intrinsically indelicate, and would be so in any age, — because they are jests : the idea is brought in for the mere sake of a joke upon a forbidden subject. To allude to the relations of the sexes and their consequences, needlessly, and in a manner which calls attention to their forbidden nature, must ever be immodest ; to do so necessarily, hon- estly and simply, can never be justly so considered.
I have noticed this passage at some length, because the comments which change the text of the original, and call forth my remarks, encourage the spurious modesty too prev- alent already, as it seems to me. Better even the blunt, coarse honesty and obtruded knowledge of the relations of sex which prevailed in Elizabeth's day, than the affected and spurious delicacy of 1850, which awakens more atten- tion, provokes more thought, and shows more consciousness. But best — a simple and direct utterance of that which is needful, and an ample knowledge of that which is inevitable in such matters, guided by a modesty springing from within, rather than a propriety imposed from without. Nevertheless, such modesty will always forbid its possessor to trespass needlessly beyond the bounds of the convention- al propriety of the day. The idea of trespass is incon- sistent with modesty.
But, whatever may be the abstract merits of the ques- tion, in regulating Shakespeare's text we must be guided, not by what we think, or by the public sentiment of our day, but by what he thought, if we can discover it ; and it 80 happens that he has left us his own explicit testimony that he did 7iot think it imracxlest or indelicate for a maiden to wish to be called mother by the children of the man she loves, even when he does not love her. In his Sonnets, addressed to that mysterious youth whom he urges to mar- ry, not only does he say.
As You LiKB It. 241
''For where is she so fair, whose imear'd womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry t **
S(mnet IIL
bat in a sabeequent address, he thus breaks forth :
" Now stand yon on the top of happy hours ; And many maiden gardens, yet unset, W%ih virtwju% vuk wmld bear you living fiowerB, Much liker than your painted connterfeit"
Note first that glorious first line. It is almost equal to
"jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain top.**
And yet Steevens could sneer at Shakespeare's sonnets ! But, to return to the subject, — see that Shakespeare not only makes blooming maidens wish to bear living flowers to his friend, but that he sets aside all cavil at the character of their desire by explicitly saying, that, in his estimation, they did this with " virtuoits wish." The names of Rowe, Coleridge, and Mr. Knight, are entitled to respect ; but when Shakespeare's own testimony is against them, they must go to the wall ; and Mr. Collier's anonymous folio corrector, who thought with them, must of course go with them.
It certainly merits remark, that if the alleged error were the result of a printer^s transposition of the words ^fisither's' and * child,' as the advocates of the new reading claim, the line would have appeared,
" No, some of it is for my child father^t^"
instead of,
"No^ some of it is for my ohildet father;"
which is the reading of the first folio.
16
242 NoTBS AND Comments.
Act II. Scene 3.
"1 Lord. Indeed, my lord.
The melancholy Jaqnes grieves at that; And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp Than doth your brother that hath banished yon. To-day, my lord of Amiens, and myself Did steal behind him, as he lay along Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this wood : To the which place a poor sequestered stag, That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a huri> Did come to languish ; and, indeed, my lord, The wretched animal heaT*d forth such groans. That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat Almost to bursting ; and the big round tears Cours'd one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase ; and thus the hairy fool. Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, Stood on the extreroest verge of the swift brook. Augmenting it with tears.
Duke 8. But what said Jaques f
Did he not moralize this spectacle t
1 Lord. 0, yes, into a thousand similes. First, for his weeping in the needless stream ; Poor deer^ quoth he, thou mak*tt a testament As wordlingt do, giving thy turn of more To thai which had too much : Then being alone. Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends ; *T\s rights quoth he ; this mitery doth part Thefiux of company : Anon, a careless herd. Full of the pasture, jumps along by him, And never stays to greet him ; Ay^ quoth Jaques, Saeep on, you fat and greasy citizens; * lis just the fashion : Wherefore do you look Upon thai poor and broken bankrupt there f Thus most invectively he piercoth through
The body of country, city, courts
Yea, and of this our life ; swearing, that we Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what's worse, To fright the animals, and to kill them up. In their assign'd and native dwelling-place.
Oharaoter of Jaques. 243
Jhike R And did yoa leave him in thb contemplation f 2 Lord. We did, my lord, weeping and commenting Upon the sobbing deer.
Duke 8. Show me the place.
I loTe to cope him in these sullen fits, For then he's full of matter."
No character in Shakespeare's dramas has suffered more from the patchworking playmongers than that of Jaques in this play. In his case the change resulted from a desire to make the character more interesting to the female part of an audience, and therefore more acceptable to a first come- dian. The Jaques of the stage is a melancholy, tender- hearted young man, with sad eyes and a sweet voice, talk- ing morality in most musical modulation. Shakespeare's Jaques is a morose, cynical, querulous old fellow, who has been a bad young one. He does not have sad moments, but " sullen fits," as the Buke says. His melancholy is morbid ; and is but the fruit of that utter loss of mental tone which results from years of riot and debauchery. He has not a tender spot in his heart. There is not a gentle act attribu- ted to him, or a generous sentiment, or a kind word put into his mouth by Shakespeare. He does not even pity the wounded deer which he sees by the brookside : for the tough- ing description of the anguish of the " poor sequestered stag," which Jaques gives upon the stage, is, in the play, spoken by the \st Lord, Shakespeare's Jaques finds in the sufferings of the animal only an occasion to sneer at his fellow-men. He seeks food for discontent in every thing ; and the Dvke^ when told that " he was merry, hearing of a song," says : —
" If he compact ofjar%^ grow musical, We shortly shall have discord in the spheres.*' Act II Sc, 1.
With regard to the age of Jaques^ Shakespeare's text
244 NOTBS AND CiOMMSNTfl,
is no less unmistakable. The tone of his oonv^mtion and conduct is entirely that of a man of long experience of the world. The Dvke^ censuring him for his delight in satire, makes the following remarkable speech, which bears directly upon his age and his character, and which is curtailed upon the stage. He tells him that he would do
**Mogt miflehievoctt foul lin, in chiding tin. For tlum thyself hAst been a libertine, Ab senBual as the brutish sting itself; And all th' embossed sores, and headed evils That thou with license of free foot hast eanght, Wooldst thou disgorge into the general world.**
Act IL Sen,
JagueSy in addition to his life of libertinism, has been a great traveller, which in Shakespeare's day took many years of a man's life. He is, besides, too old to think of coping with a young man like Orlando; for when the latter threat- ens death to any one who eats until his ^^ afifairs are an- swered," JaqueSj who is no coward, replies :
" An you will not be answered with reason, I must die."
Act IL Be. 7.
But honest Audreyj speaks decisively upon this point. Shakespeare's Jo^tte* interrupts her and Touchstone as they are to be married in the forest by Sir Oliver Martext, and speaks very slightingly of that divine's clerical qualifications, which the stage Jaqties neglects to do. Audref/y referring to this, says :
" Faith, the Priest was good enough, for all the old gentlemanCt saying/*
Act V. 8c. 1.
It is evident that Jaquea should be played as a cynical,
As Ton Like It. 245
gray-headed, broken-down debauchee ; and that even the exhibition of kindness which conformity to stage custom requires, on the entrance of old Adam, is entirely incon- sistent with Shakespeare's conception of the character.
Shakespeare has brought this old, high-bred, worn-out jroluptuary into fine reUef by juxtaposition with one who has nothing in common with him but age ; and in that Jaqaea has the advantage. The serving man Adarriy hum- bly bom and coarsely nurtured, is no insignificant personage in the drama ; and we find in the healthy tone of his mind, and in his generous heart, which under reverses and wrongs, still preserves its charitable trust in his fellows, as well as in his kindly, though frosty, age^ a delightful and instruc- tive contrast to the character of Jaques^ which could hardly have been accidental.
Scene 3.
" Adam, At seventeeD years many their fortunes seek ; But at fourscore, it is too late a week."
I have never heard this passage on or off the stage that it was not read without a pause after ' fourscore ' and with the pause of a comma after ' late,' — thus :
Bat at fourscore it is too late, a week ;
as ]SAdam said, that at fourscore it was a week too late to seek one's fortune ; than which nothing could be flatter, tamer. * Week ' is used here for a period of time, and the old man says that at fourscore it is too late a time to seek due's fortune.
246 Notes and Comments.
Scene 4.
" Bos, Oh Jupiter ! how ▼«ary are my spirits ! "
Mr. Knight would read with the first folio, "how mer-^ ry are my 8i)iritB." Whiter su^ests that BoscUifuTs mer- riment was assumed ; and Malone that she invokes Jupiter because he was always in good spirits. It seems plain that * merry ' is a misprint for " weary." Bosalind, worn out by her desponding journey, exclaims " how weary are my spi- rits ! " and the Clown replies, " I care not for my spirits, if my legs are not weary," that is : " I woxild not care how weary my spirits might be, if my legs were not so." K Boaalind were to say that her spirits were mern/y Touch-- stone's reply would have no point. Besides, it is not like Shakespeare to open a scene in which the condition of the parties is so obvious as it is in this, with an ironical remark.
Scene 7.
" JaqueM. All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players : They hare their exits and their entrances ; And one man in his time playt many parta^ Ac
Steevens quotes from a fragment of Petronius, " totus mundus exerceat histrioniam^'' and Malone from Damon and Pythias y 1582, —
*' Pythagoras said that this world was like a stage Whereon many play their parts,"
also another similar passage from Orpheus and Buridicej
As You Like It. 247
1579. But the following passage from Erasmus' Praise of Foticy Englished by Sir Thomas Ch^Uoner, occurred to me as much more to the purpose, and likelier to have been the source whence Shakespeare had the hint. It is, besides, a very curious and interesting picture of the drama as it existed in the generation 'preceding the great dramatbt.
'* If one at a solemne stage plaie, woulde take upon him to plucke of the players garmentes, whiles they were sayinge theyr partes, and so deciphre unto the lokers on the true and natiue ftLces of eche of the plaiers, shoulde he not (trowe ye) marre all the mattier ? and well deserue for a madman to be peltid out of the place with stones ? ye shoulde see yet straightwaies a new transmutacion in thinges: that who before played the woman, shoulde than appeare to be a man : who seemed youthe, shoulde show his here heares: who counterfayted the kynge shoulde tome to a rascall : and who played god almighty, shoulde become a cobler as he was before. Yet take awaye this err our, and as soon take awaye all togethers, in as much as the feignyng and conterfaytyng is it that so delighteth the beholders. So lykewyse all this life of mortall many what is it else but a certain kynde cf stage plaie f whereas men come foorthe^ disguised one in one arraicy an other in an other ^ eche playinge his partCj till at last the maker of the plaie, or bokebearer causeth them to auoyde the skaffolde, and yet sometyme maketh o?ie man come in two or three timeSy itnth sundry partes and apparayle, as who before represent- ed a kynge, beiDge clothed all in purpre, hauinge no more but shifted hym selfo a little, shoulde shew hym selfe agayne lyke a woobegon myser."
The Praise of Folic. Ed. 1549, Sig. E. iii.
Here we not only have the life of man a play, and men and women players, but each one playing many parts ; which, it seems, was required by the exigences of the rude stage which had amused the youth of Shakespeare.
246 Notes and CJommsnts.
BOKO, "Heigh, ho! sing heigh, hoi an to the green hoUy."
The memory of the mamier in which I have heard this smig and said hy intelligent people, suggests to me that it is perhaps worth noticing that this '^ heigh ho 1 " is ^ hky ho ! ' and not the heigh ho ! (pronounced * high, ho 1 ') of a sigh. It should be pronounced ^ hay-ho 1 '
Act III. Scene 2.
*'CeL AUlanta*8 better part**
There has been much learned and ingenious conjecture as to what was " Atalanta's better part/' As is common with the editors, the obvious meaning of the phrase has been passed by. Winter is lauded by Mr. Knight for suggesting that, because of Atalauta's successful contests in running with her lovers, it is an allusion to maiden modesty, such as would characterize a woman who was '^ zealous to preserve her virgin purity even by the death of her lovers," and which is spoken of as her ''better part." In the first place, this is superfluous, as " Lucretia's modesty " is enumerated in the next line ; and it is, iu the second place, inconsistent with the story of Atalanta, who, when won by Hippomenes by means of the golden apples, impatient to yield what Mr. Whiter represents her as so zealous to preserve, desecrated with her lover the temple of Cybele, who turned the offend- era to lions. Atalanta was a finely-formed woman, and a remarkably swift and graceful runner. Her " better part " was evidently her leg. Orlando enumerates in his verses personal as well as mental charms ; and it is a matter of wonder that the obvious allusion could have escaped any reader.
Chabacteb of Bosalikd. 249
*' Ro9. Good my complexion I dost thou think though I am cajMuriioii'd liks a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition f "
Rosalind is, perhaps, the most generally preferred of these of Shakespeare's heroines who are put upon the stage. She has vivacity and wit enough to captivate those who like a woman of spirit ; and yet with this there is interwo- ven so much womanly tenderness and delicacy, and even when wearing doublet and hose, she is, in her gayest moods, so tmly, sometimes so touchingly, feminine, that she wins more admirers than she dazzles. It is a very difficult under- taking, the acting of this part of Rosalind; and I have seen artists of far more than ordinary talent, and of the beat lustnonic education, utterly faU in giving a consistent and faithful representation of the character. In the first Scene they are sprightly and well conducted, which is all that they have need to be ; though even here, they are apt to lack a little dignity. But, according to their interpretation, when Orlando approaches Rosalind j she fairly flings herself at his head, and makes love to him in the most formidable and alarming manner. So does not Shakespeare's Rosalind, True, she loves at once, and with her whole heart ; but she does not advertise the state of her afiections to Orlando and all her uncle's court, upon the spot. She hardly knows it herself, until she is about to part with him ; and then, as she tells him that he has " wrestled well and overthrown more than his enemies," it is with a trembling modesty, all the more shrinking because of its frankness.
In the Forest of Arden, Rosalind is, at first, in her element. She plays the " saucy lackey" with unction ; and, contrary to her own plea, seems to have, in very deed, " a doublet and hose in her disposition." But when Orlando appears, love makes all the feminine traits of Shakespeare's Rosalind dis- play themselves beneath the veil of her assumed character. This her representatives seem not to know. No sad earnest-.
250 Notes and Cokkknts.
ness appears under their gayety as they ask Orlando if he is ^^ so much in love as his rhymes speak.'^ Again, Bomxr Und, — archly, but ever timidly, questioning, — asks Orlando,
'* What would yoa say to me now, an I were yoar very, rery Rosalind t **
and yet again, when the sham marriage has taken place, —
^Kow how long would you have her after you hare poseessod herf "
How can they fail to ask those questions with trembling apprehension, but half concealed under a veil of saucy bad- inage ! — and yet they do. Foot liosalind f When Orlan- dOf not knowing to whom he speaks, replies that he would have her "for ever and a day,'* the shadow of a fearful sor- row falls upon her light heart, as she answers : —
" Say a day without the ever. No, no, Orlando : men are April when they woo, December when they wed : maids are May when they aremaida but the sky changes when they are wires."
But she fears he has betrayed herself, and with a gush of assumed gayety, she breaks out :
*' I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock pigeon oyer his hen ; more clamorous than a parrot against rain,'* d;c
But how rarely do we see this light and shade ! The eye of the stage Rosalind never quails, is never dimmed ; neither does her voice know that tender pathos which is the utter- ance of a woman's heart who has laid the priceless treasure of an unasked love at the feet of one whom she feels may spurn it.
But to these remarks, what devotee of Shakesperian representations in recent times will not make one bright exception, — Mrs. Charles Kean. The womanly charm.
Chabacteb of Rosalind. 251
which she possesses in greater perfection than any other actress of her day, and which pervades more or less every one of her performances, appears in her every look and tone and movement while she plays Rosalind, There is, perhaps, in the whole range of the drama, but one other character which requires for its truthful conception and embodiment a more perfect development of the highest his- trionic genius than this. I am convinced that long after an artist has attained the mastery of such strongly pro- nounced characters as Beatrice, JtUiet, Lady Macbeth, and JtUia in the Sunchback, she must labor still to reach the deep and quiet power and the subtle delicacy requisite to embody the earnest and impulsive, though mer- ry BoscUind, and still more for that required by the pure, gentle, long-suflfering, self-sacrificing Viola.
Mrs. Kean leaves nothing to be desired in her represen- tation of either of these characters. As liosalind, the expression of her face alone, when, after she has looked a Fhile at Orlando, she asks, " Is yonder the man ? " shows that her heart is stricken, and that indeed the young wrestler has already " overthrown more than his enemies," and from this time till she steps forward to deliver so be- witchingly that characteristic epilogue, with what delicate perception and flexible skill does she present the ever changing but ever loving Rosalind ! Who can forget the deep, almost sad earnestness, with which in the midst of her raillery she asks Orlando, " But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak ? " How daintily does she speak to Silvius and Phoebe that speech so full of mingled wit, mischief and wisdom ! — And what a key to the char- acter is her reproachful delivery of " Say a day without the ever," with the instantaneous change to the merry threat, " I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock pigeon over his hen."
252 Notes and Comments.
But her Viola is the crowning excellence of all her performances. The first two Acts of Ikoe^ Night are those in which she produces the greatest impression ; and in these the Scene with Olivia and that with the Dvkey in which Viola tells the story of her love^ live longest in the memory.
**Ro9, By no meani^ sir: Time tray els in diren paces with diren persons : Fll tell yon who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.
OrL I pr'ythee, who doth he trot withal f
Ro9, Marry, he trots hard with a yonng maid, between the contraet of her marriage, and the day it is solemnized: if the interim be but a ee^ night, time's pace is so hard that it soems the length of seyen years.
Orl Who ambles Time withal f
Ro*. With a priest that lacks Latin, and a rich man that hath not the gont; for the one sleeps easily, becanse he cannot stndy; and the other liyes merrily, because he feels no pain : the one lacking the burden of leaa and wasteful learning ; the other knowing no burden of heayy tedious penury: These Time ambles withaL"
Upon this passage Mr. Hunter remarks :
^* This portion of this very sprightly dialogue appears to have undergone dislocation at a very early period, for the old copies and the new are alike. To trot hard^ at least in the present use of the phrase, is a rapid motion, only just below the gallop. How, then, can it be said that Time ' trots hard ' when a se'n-night seems as long as seven years ? A slow motion is intended, such as is meant by the word ambling,
" Again, Time passes swiftly with the easy priest and the luxurious rich man who is free from gout : He * trots hard ' with them.''
New Illustrations of Shakespeare, Vol. I. p. 349.
He would therefore read :
Ag Tou Like It. 253
" OrL I pr jthee, who ambles Time withal f
Bom, Marry, he ambles with a young maid, A^ Time's pace is so ambling, Ac
OH, Who doth he trot withal t
Roi. With a priest that lacks Latin, Ac These Time troU withal"
It is strange that so intelligent a reader of Shakespeare as Mr. Hunter should make such a mistake in so simple a passage. His experience in equitation must have been very limited and very fortunate, or he would know that of all the means of making a short journey seem long, a hard- trotting horse is the surest. Rosalind is certainly within bounds in giving it a fifty-multiplying power over time. An ambling nag, on the contrary, affords so easy and luxu- rious a mode of travelling, that the rider arrives all too soon at his journey's end. That Rosalind* s comparison refers to the comparative comfort and discomfort, and not to the speed of the different gaits which she enumerates, is evident enough from these very replies about the trot and the am- ble ; but that about the gallop puts it beyond a question.
■ Orl. Who doth he gallop withal f
Rot. With a thief to the gallows ; for though he go a* softly a$ foot can fall he thinks himself too soon there."
**Ros. A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye and sunken, which you have not; an unquestionable spirit, which you have not; a beard neglected, which you ha^e not"
A curious misapprehension of Rosalind's third mark of a man in love is not uncommon,— on the stage almost uni- versal. She is there made to utter " unquestionable spirit," as if she meant by it that a lover must needs be of undem-- able boldness ; and upon her saying to Orlando that he has it not, the representative of that character is wont to
254 Notes akd Oommxntb.
swagger a little. Now Orlando^ long before that period of the action, has certainly shown that he does not lack cour- age ; and an accusation of cowardice would be the hut which Rosalind would be likely to bring against him, even in jest. She means that a lover is moody, and not willing to be questioned ; that is, that he is " un-questionable."
Shakespeare uses ^questionable' in but one other in- stance : in Hamlet J Act 1, Sc. 4, where ^am2e# says to the Ohosty
"Thou com'st in such a qaeetioDable shape."
Here the word is used in exactly the same sense ; that — thou com'st in a shape so proper to be questioned ; andE»^ }'et this lino is often quoted as if ^^ questionable " meant^.«= ^suspicious.' Obviously it does not ; for Hamlet says,
" Be thy intents wicked or charitable. Thou com'tst in such a queatUmable shape. That I will speak to thee. Til call thee Hamlet^ King, Father, Rojal Dane : 0 amwer f Lot me not burst in ignorance," Ae,
And thus he goes on, hurrying earnest questions upon <
other to his father's spirit, which, to give him informatio ^
had thus presented itself " in such a question-able shap^^^" •
Scene 3.
" Jaquee. A material fool I **
"A fool," says Johnson, " with matter in him." I^J*^ strange to say, there is no dissent from this most forced ^^^ lexicographical elucidation. Here again, the obvious ma^^^*** ing is neglected. Jaques exclaims to himself, after 7bt#^*~
As You Like It. 255
^Ofie'« speech : — ^^ A most material fool ; '' that, is a com- plete fool, a thorough fool, a perfect fool ; a fool who is es- sentially, materially a fool.
" Aud. I am not a slat^ though I thank the gods I am foul"
As Mr. Knight says, ^^ foul is here used in the sense of homely — opposed to fair" Thus in the first scene of Mac- beth the witches, wishing to express the confusion created by their devilish art, say,
** Fair is foul and foul is fair.**
Scene 5.
" 8ilv, will you sterner be
Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops? ^
Long ago it seemed plain to me that this passage was misprinted, and that we should read,
" will you sterner be Than he tliat live» and die» by bloody drops f"
The executioner * lives and dies' by his trade, just as any other man does by his, who ^ sticks to his business.' Mr. Singer proposed the same obvious change in his recent Text </ Shakespeare Vindicated^ &c. On referring to the Variorum Edition, however, I find that Mr. Toilet made the same euggestion two generations ago. Why so easy and natural a mode of rectifying a great error has not been adopted, I am at loss to conjecture.
356 NOTXS AND OOMKBHTS.
Act IV. ScKNK 1.
**Jaq. * * » but it is a melancholy of mine owne, oompoiuded of many simplefl, extracted from many objects, and indeed the anndrie con> iemplation of my trauels, in which by often ramination, wraps me in a moat humorous sadneese."
Thus the original^ which is evidently corrapt. The usual reading, the resultant of the labors of Malone and Stee- yens, is :
"bnt it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simplei, extracted from many objects ; and indeed the sundry contemplation of my trayels, in which my often ramination wraps me, u a most humorous sad-
This makes the passage comprehensible, but with the supposition of two errors {by for "my" and tn for "is"), and a sense not exactly suited to the design of the speech, which is to tell the origin oiJaques' melancholy. Accord- ing to this reading, he says that his melaDcholy is one of his own, compounded of many simples and extracted from many objects ; and then adds that the contemplation of his travels is a most humorous sadness. But the point of the whole speech is, that the satirical Jaquea finds in the contemplation of his travels his cause for melancholy. He means to sneer, more suOy at the whole world ; and this he is made to do by the text of the original, changed only by the substitution of my for ^by' — an admitted typographical error — and of a semicolon for a comma, after "travels."
*'but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, ex- tracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my
As You LiKB It. 257
trarels ; in which my often rumination wraps me in a most hamoroos sad-
Jaque8 thus says, that his melaDcholy is compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and is indeed the fruit of the sundry contemplation of his travels ; his often rumination upon which wraps him in a most humor- ous sadness. This is the reading of the second folio ; and Mr. Knight's diflfers from it only by lack of the semicolon afler " travels ;" by which I think that he loses the force of Jaqut^ declaration that his melancholy is indeed the result of the mere contemplation of his travels.
*'Jaq, Yes, I have gained my experience.
[Enter Orlando.
Ro9s And yoar experience makes you sad : I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad ; and to travel for it too.
OrL Good day and happiness, dear Rosalind.
Jaq. Nay then God be wi' you, an you talk in blank verse.
[Exit
Ro%. Farewell, monsieur traveller: Look you lisp and wear strange suits ; disable all the benefits of your own country ; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are, or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola. — Why, how now, Orlando !"<fec.
So learned and discriminating a writer on Shakespeare and the early dramatists as Mr. Dyce, asks {Remarks on Collier^ 8 and KniglU's ShaJcespeareSj p. 63) : — "does Bosa- lind SBLj all this to Jaqicea after he has left the stage ? ' "^ and concludes that " nothing can be more evident than, that here the 'exit' otJaques ought to follow 'gondola t"'^ With all deference, — no. Were it so, a charming and characteristic incident would be lost entirely. Hosalind is
17
258 Notes and C!omkent8.
a little vexed with Orlando for not keeping tryst. She sees him when ke first cornea in^ but purposely does not look at him, — any woman will tell Mr. Dyce why. He speaks, but she still, with her Uttle heart thumping at her breast all the while, refuses to notice her lover, and pretends to be absorbed in Jaquea ; and as he retires, driven off by the coming scene of sentiment, the approach of which he detects, she still turns from the poor delinquent, and con- tinues to talk to Jaquea till a curve in the path takes him out of sight ; — ^then turning, she aeema to aee Orlando for the first timey and breaks upon him with, " Why, how now ? " &c. It is incomprehensible to me that such an incident, one so essential to the effect of the scene, should be so mis- taken. Well might the old printer of Promoa & Caaaaur dra say that there are some speeches " which in reading wil seeme hard, and in action appeare plaine.'' And as to miscomprehension of Shakespeare's design, — ^what can be expected when the most eminent commentators do not see that Beatrice loves Benedick when Much Ado about Nothing opens !
Scene 3.
" Oliver, Under an oUoak whose boughs were moss'd with age.**
Though this is the reading of the folio, I cannot admit that Shakespeare would introduce an entirely superfluous monosyllable into a line in a very carefully wrought and rhythmical passage, with no other possible effect than that of marring the description and making the verse halt. It seems to me impossible that Shakespeare could have written,
" Under an old oak, whose boughs were moss*d with age^ And high top bald with dry antiquity"
Ab You Like It. 259
This is not the tautology of his time. The adjective must, I think, have been added in this way. The compositor set up " oak *' twice, — such accidents are of frequent occur- rence,— or the author repeated it in his MS., and the re- petition being noticed, the first ^^ oak " was very naturally changed to eld. Is it not plain that the line should be read,
^ Under an oak, whoM boughs were moss'd with aget "
No one can be more unwilling than I to deviate from the original text. Tet there are some cases in which it is ab- solutely necessary to do so. In the second Scene of the first Act of this play, for instance, the folio reads :
" Bat yet indeed the taller is his daughter ; **
yet we are obliged to read,
** But yet indeed the smaller is his daughter."
A correction not more imperative than the present in my estimation.
Act V. Scene 2.
**8ilv. All adoration, duty, and obseruance; All humblenesse, all patience, and impatience ; AU purity, all trial, all obseruance."
Thus the original folio ; but the first or the second "ob- servance'' should evidently be obedience. Malone made the necessary change in the third line. It is mere matter of opinion, but I prefer the substitution of the needful word in the first line, which is made in Mr. Collier's folio. Obe-
260 Notes and Comments.
dience seems more properly classed with adoration and duty than with purity and trial.
An intelligent correspondent in Maine, whose name is unknown to me, and whose suggestions I shall have other occasions to notice, thus takes exception to the above de- cision:
" The only object of a change from the original is, of coarse, to save the repetition of the word observance. Then, the qaes- tion to be decided is, whether or not it is probable that Shake- speare would have considered such repetition an unpleasant one. I am of the opinion, judging according to my own taste, that he would not have so considered — indeed, I think it quite probable that he intended the repetition for a sort of refrain : it follows that I would render the passage as it is rendered in the original With reference to a supposition of a misprint, it appears to me that the evidence favoring such supposition rests mainly with Malone. The compositor would have been more likely to get the correct word in the first instance, and the wrong one in the second instance by a resetting of the other, than he would have been to get the first word wrong, and the second one right by resetting the first. '^
In most cases mere repetition is, undoubtedly, not a sufficient reason for making a change in the text of the au- thentic folio. But in this instance there is more than such a repetition as may or may not be oflFensive to criti- cal taste. SUvivs is making an enumeration of the out- ward signs which are the sure exponents of true love ; and in such a schedule, a repetition of the same thought in the same word in the same sentence is absurd. It must also be remarked, that obedience to the wishes of the beloved is one of the first fruits and surest indices of love,— one which in such an enumeration could not be passed over ; and yet according to the text of the folio it is not mentioned, while
As You Like It. 261
' observanoe ' is specified twice in three lines. Such a re- petition is not in Shakespeare's manner ; for though he had peculiarities^ senseless iteration was not one of them. As to the typographical error, it is most probable that the compositor not being able to decipher the first word, " obe- dience," and, looking through the passage for a cue, was able to make out the second, " observance ; " and the re- semblance of this to the former, in manuscript, would lead him to suppose that the words were identical. A little more experience in reading his proofs and a knowledge of the ac- cidents of the composing case, would enable my correspon- dent to see that this is the more natural way of accounting for the error.
Scene 3. ^
" 1. Pingt, Shall we clap into*t roundly, without hawking or spitting ; which are the only prologues to a bad voice t "
" Hawking and spitting " often are only the prologues to the display of a bad voice ; but are they "the (yidy " premonitions of that calamity ? My musical experience teaches me otherwise. Unless the text of the original gives an old form of speech which is equivalent to * only the,' — of which, however, I remember no instance, should we not read,
"which are ojdy ihe prologues to a bad yoicef "
*' TofucK Truly, young gentlemen, though there was do gpreat matter io the ditty, yet the note was very untuneable,
1. Poqe, Tou are deceived, sir : we kept time ; we lost not our time."
2fi2 NOTSB AND CoMinEKTS.
Shakespeare was a good musician; and the answer of the Page makes it plain, beyond dispute, that, as Theobald and Mason have suggested, Touchstone says, ^^ yet the note was very untimeahlej' otherwise the Page's answer is no reply at alL In the manuscript of any period it is very difficult to tell ' time ' fix)m ^ tune,' except by the dot of the t, so fie- quently omitted ; and as most people think that to be in tune or out of tune is the principal success or the principal fiolure of a musical performance, it is by no means strange that the word written in the old hand, with the i undotted, — ^thus, ^^liSiniimcaECft, should be taken for ^^\Sinh»gyuMt.
I can speak firom experience, that in ninety-nine cases in a hundred, when ^ time' is written it will be set up ' tune/ One curious instance occurs in King John, Act m. Scene 3.
* K, John. I had a thing to say, —
But I will fit it with some better time."
The last line is printed in the original,
"Bat I will fit it with some better hifM."
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.
INDUCTION.
** %. ril pheese you, in faith."
Comment is made on this word " pheese/' Johnson says it means, * to separate a twist into single threads ; ' and bases his opinion on the definition of Sir T. Smith De Sermone Anglico, " To feize means inJUa deducere," Gif- ford says it means " to beat, chastise or humble ; " and Mr. Charles Knight says that in this sense Shakespeare uses it in the line,
" An he be proud with me 111 pheese hia pride."
TroUtu A Creuida,
All wrong, as any * Yankee' could tell the learned gentlemen. The word has survived here with many others which have died out in England, and are thence called Americanisms. 'To pheese,' is 'to irritate,' 'to worry.' Nothing is more common than for a New England house- wife to come in, irritated by some domestic conflict, and plumping down in her rocking chair and beginning to fan herself with her apron, to break out, " Plague on that hus- sy I she's put me all in a pheese." Sly has just had a ¥rar
264 Notes and Comxxnts.
of words with Mistress Hacket^ and he enters, threatening to worry her to her heart's content. The toping tinker has no thought of chastising the good ale-wife.
^ Act I. ScBNB 1.
" Trak. Only, good master, while we do admire This yirtue and this moral discipline, Let* s be no stoics, nor no stocks^ I pray ; Or so devote to Aristotle's checks^ As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured. Balk logic with acquaintance that you have, And practise rhetoric in your common talk."
This passage has, strangely enough, been thought ob- scure by some critics. Blackstone, Mr. Collier's folio cor- rector Mr. Smger, and strangest of all, Mr. Dyce, read " Aristotle's ethicks" for "Aristotle's checks." " What are 'Aristotle's checks ? ' " asks Mr. Collier. Plainly, they are Aristotle's ethical principles, which check the propensities that Master Tranio's more fisivored author, Ovid, stimulate. Lucentio has but just said ;
" for the time I study, Virtue and thai part of phUoaophy^ Will I apply, that treats of happiness By virtue specially to be achiev'd."
To which Tranio immediately replies :
" Mi perdantUff gentle master mine, I am in all affected as yourself Glad that you thus continue your resolye, To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy. Only, good master, while we do admire J%iM virtue^ and this moral discipline. Let's be no stoics, nor no stocks, I pray ; Or so devote to Aristotle's checks As Oyid be an outcast quite abjured: ''
The Tamiko of the Shbew. 265
Saidy a clearer passage was never written, or an apter word ever chosen. Blackstone's conjecture is both ingenious and plausible. Ingenuity and plausibility are very well ; but it is not well to " let them appear when there is no need of such vanity."
" Balk logic " of the original has been presumptuously changed to " Talk logic " in most editions ; in spite of the &ct that ' to balk ' means ^ to puzzle/ ' to deal in cross purposes ; ' and in spite of this instance of its use by Spen- ser, which is quoted by Boswell in the Variorum Edition :
" Bat to occasion bim to further taike, To fe«d her humor with his pleasing style, Her list in Btryftdl tennea with him to balke"
Faerie Queene^ B. IIL Can. 2, Stan. zii.
Act IV. Scene 2.
"BioruL I spied
An ancient angel coming down the hilL"
The word " angel " has always presented a diflSculty. The most plausible conjectural change which has been made, is that of Sir Thomas Hanmer, who would read enghy 'a gull,' from the French engluer, ' to catch with bird lime.' The worst change is that in Mr. Collier's folio, — ambler, than which nothing can be more tame and puerile. Gifford supports engle in a note on Ben Jonson's Poetaster , in which he quotes, in addition to Jonson's own use of the word, the parallel passages from Gascoigne's Supposes, which was the source of a part of Shakespeare's plot. In this the messenger ywc^ec? from the habit and the looks of the old man, that he was " a good soul," " none of the wisest," "a man of small sapientia" "a cod's head." But hear Mr. Dyce :
266 Notes and Comments.
" I never felt quite satisfied with the emendation ' enghle ' (ingeniously as it is supported by Gifford, note on B. Jonson's Work$y ii. 430) ; nor does that of the Manuscript-corrector ap- pear to me so certain as it does to Mr. Collier.
After all) is ^ angel ' the right reading (though not in the sense of messenger , which is quite unsuited to the passage), — * an ancient angel ' being equivalent to an ancient tvorthy, or simply to an old fellow ? I must not be understood as answer- ing this query in the affirmative when I cite from Cotgrave's Diet. ^ Angelot it lagrosse escaUle, An old Angell; and by metaphor, a fellow of th' old, sound, honest, and worthie stamp.'"
A Few Notes, &c. p. 71.
Plausible and well supported as engle is, this forbids us to make the change ; for here is a perfectly apt and con- gruous signification for the original word, furnished by a contemporary English lexicographer.*
Scene 4
" TVan. I thank you, sir : Where then do you know best We be affied I " Ac.
The suggestion in Mr. Collier's folio that we should read,
" Whece then do yon hold best We be affied?"
seems to be an ingenious and judicious correction of a pro- bable error of the press.
• Mr. Dyce, writing only for critics, thinks it needless to give any information about Cotgrave's Dictionary. It is a very carefully compiled and copious French and English Lexicon, published in London in 1611. The author, Randle Cotgrave, appears from passages in his dedication of the work to " Sir William Cecil Knight, Lard Burghley and aanne, and heire apparent vnto the Earle of Exeter," to have been a tutor in the fiuni- ly of that Nobleman.
\
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
AOT IL SOKNB 1. " Kinff. ni see thee to stand up."
This line, about which some have found sufficient ob- scurity to alter " see " to /ec, and which even Mr. Knight interprets, — " I'll notice you when you stand up/' seems to me very easy of comprehension, and to mean ^ I would have thee to stand up.'
" HeL My maiden's name
Seared otherwise ; no worse of worst extended. With vilest torture let my life be ended.**
What is the meaning of the last line and the previous half-line ? With every help I can make out nothing which approaches intelligibility, imless we read with Boswell,
"nor worse of worst extended."
Even this is obscure, and can hardly be received as Shake- speare's. But it should be remarked that this blindest of passages, the one which, perhaps, is most hopelessly cor-
268 Notes and Comments.
rupted by typographical errors, is passed by, untouched, in Mr. Collier's folio ; the correctors of which, while, in hun- dreds of instances, they have degraded that which was lofty and obscured that which was clear, have left the most cor- rupted lines in the confusion due to the carelessness of the early printers. In such passages, the " authoritative copy " seems to have strangely failed them.
Act III. Scene 2.
" CUymu • • • I know a man that liad this triok of melaneholj hold a goodly manor for a song.**
Thus the original The third folio, — ^^ «<>2c{ a goodly manor," &c., Mr. Knight retains ^^ hold,'' because the sell- ing of a manor ^^is no illustration of the Clown's argument, tl^t singing is a symptom of melancholy." Certainly not ; but it is an evidence of the seller's fond love of music, and of his indifference to the affairs of the world. Besides, the singing of which the Clown speaks is not skilful, such as would lead a monarch to bestow lands on the tenure of a song from the singer, or even to accept his services in a proper fulfilment of a previous grant. The craving of moody, melancholy men for music, is very great. In As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 5, Amiens has just sung, and JaqueSy " the melancholy JaqueSj' prays :
" More, I prithee, more. Am, It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jaquea. Jaq* I thank it I can suck melancholy, out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs: more, I prithee, more."
Afterwards he importunes, "Come, morel" "Will you sing ? " " Come, sing 1 " And so Mariana, in Measwrefcr
All's Well that Ends Well. 269
MeaaurCy when the Ihike finds her with a boy singmg to her:
" I cry yon mercy, sir ; and well could wish Tou had not found me here so musical : Let me excuse me, and believe me bo, — My mirth it much displeaa'd, but ple<ut*d my woe."
"HeL O you leaden messengers
That ride upon the violent speede of fire, Fly with false ay me, move the still-peering aire That sings with piercing."
Various are the efforts to correct this passage, which stands thus palpably corrupt in the original. All seem to me, and in truth to the conjecturers themselves, to be unsat- is&ctory. The difficulty is in " still-peering," which would be the easiest possible misprint for " still 'pearing." May we not read, with the probabiUty of correctness,
" Fly with false aim ; move the still 'pearing air That sings with piercing! "
As to the use of ' 'pear ' for * appear,' — in Hamlety Act IV. Sc. 5, the following reading of the quarto of 1611,
"It shall as level to your judgment *pear, As day does to your eye,"
has been generally received ; and, whatever may be its in- trinsic value, shows that the contraction was in use in Shakespeare's day, and is admitted in our own. Indeed, the contraction is common^ in the writings of Shakespeare's oontemporaries. " Move the still appearing air," is cer-
270 Notes and Comments.
tainly consistent with the conditions of nature ; my cnJj doubt iS; whether it be not too literally so.
Act rV. Scene 2.
*' Di<k Tis not the many oaths that make the trath ; But the plain single yow, that is yoVd trne. What is not holy, that we swear not by, But take the highest to witness : Then, pray you, tell me^ If I should swear by Joye's great attributes, I loy*d you dearly, would you belieye my oaths, When I did loye you illt This has no holding. To swear by him whom I protest to loye. That I will work against him : Therefore your oaths Are words, and poor conditions ; but unseal'd ; At least in my opinion.
Ber. Change it» change it;
Be not so holy-cruel : loye is holy; " Ac
The last sentence in Diana's speech, as thus printed in the received text, is confessed on all hands to be incompre- hensible. Johnson and Malone proposed to read,
*' To swear to him whom I protest to loye That I will work against him."
But surely nothing is gained by making Diana protest love, and swear to the man whom she protests to love, that she will work against him. This is sheer absurdity ; not the inconsistency implied hy Diana, Mr. Collier's corrector strikes out the passage in despair. — Where was his author- itative copy ? Mr. Singer proposes,
"To swear by him tohen I protest to Loye," Ac.
This is identical in one point with my own conjecture, and
All's Well that Ends Well. 271
does something towards the correction of the errors in the passage. But the chief difficulty, — the determination of the antecedent of the last "him," still exists ; for to sup- pose " him " to refer to Jove, and that to " work against him" means merely to break the oath taken in his name, b to force a very lame and impotent construction.
" Jove " makes the trouble. He stands in the place of Love, Editors, and printers too, perhaps, have been confirmed in the error, by supposing " the highest " to refer necessarily to the chief of the gods ; whereas it is a general term. Diana says,
''What IB not holy that we swear uot by But take the highest [i. e. the most sacred] to witness,"
and Bertram in his reply, says " love is holy," showing plainly that the oath was in Love's name. A reference to the first folio confirms my conjecture that "Jove" is an error of the printer for Love. The passage in the original is printed thus ;
** Then pray you teU me If I should sweare by loue's g^eat attributes I lou'd jou deerely, would you beleeue my oathes When I did loue you ill ? This ha's no holding, To sweare by him whom I protest to loue That I will worke against him/'
It will be seen that the setting up of */' for H* an error which occurs continually at this day, and the mistake of ^whom' for ^when,' an error almost equally common, have caused the trouble. Diana may well say, and evidently means to say, that there is no holding [consistency] in swearing by Love, when she protests to Love that she will work against him. Should we not then read,
272 Notes and Gomhsnts.
" If I should Bwear bj Lo9^9 great attxibatea, I loy'd you dearly, would jou believe my oatha When I did love you ill t This has no holding, To swear by him, when I protest to Love Tliat I will work against him."
'*2>fck I see that men make ropes in such a scarre That we'll forsake ourselves.'*
None of the emendations of this passage are satisfactory. Rowe's hopes is better, perhaps, than "ropes:" but still *to make hopes,' is a wretched phrase. The change by the same editor, and in Mr. Collier's folio, of " a scarre" into affairs, or by Malone into a scene, or, as Mr. Singer pro- poses, a scare, is even less acceptable. The Unes seem to be hopelessly corrupted.
Scene 3.
" 2d Lord. How is this justified ?
\%iLord, The stronger part of it by her own letters, which make her story true, even to the point of her death ; her death itself, which could not be her office to say, is come, was faithfully confirmed by the rector of the place."
Mr. Collier's folio proposes "stranger part" for "strong- er part," which is evidently right. It also has " and faith- fully confirmed, ' for " was faithfully confirmed ; " an un- necessary emendation, which results from a perversion of meaning, itself consequent upon improper punctuation. The speaker does not mean to say that her death "is come," but that her letters told her story up to the time of her death, and that as she could not, of course, announce that event herself, it was done by another, — " the rector of the place." Kemove the comma after " say," and read :
All's Well that Ends Well. 273
"her death itaelt, — wliich could not be her office to say is come, was faith- fallj confirmed by the rector of the place."
Act V. Scene 1.
We owe to Mr. Collier's folio two acceptable emenda- tions in this play. For the stage direction, " Enter a gentle Astrinffer/' in this Scene, it has ^^ Enter a gentleman, a stranger." The context shows that he was a stranger to Helena, although she knew liim by reputation. When he afterward appears at the court of the French king, where ho is known, he is announced — " Enter a gentleman."
Scene 3.
"King She hath that ring of yours.
Ber. I think she has : certain it is, I liked her, And boarded her i* the wanton way of youth. She knew her distance, and did angle for me, Madding my eagerness with her restraint, As all impediments in fancy's course Are motives of more fancy ; and, in fine, Her insult coming with her modern grace. Subdued me to her rate: she got the ring; And I had that, which any inferior might At market-price have bought"
"1
'Insuit coming" is utterly incomprehensible, and has baffled the ingenuity of all the editors and commenta- tors. Mr. Collier's folio substitutes infinite cunning, which is the reading, beyond a doubt. The words are so like in manuscript that they might easily be mistaken for each other ; and the context not only admits, but requires them.
This is a fine example of proper conjectural emendation,
18
274 NOTSB AND COMMXNTS.
and is one of the moet suecessf ul efforts in Mr. Colliei^s folio. But it should be remarked that no better copy or ** anthor- itative'" manuscript was needed for it, it having been dis- covered by Mr. Thomas Walker, the author of The Original^ a series of essays published twenty years before the discov- ery of Mr. Collier's folio. It should be constantly kept in mind, in considering the worth of that volume, that all its most remarkable and acceptable emendations have been discovered by the conjectural ingenuity of thoughtful read- ers of Shakespeare ; which shows that their existence in the folio is no proof that its correctors had better sources of in- foimation than we have. The entirely original emendations are, with very rare exceptions, the thousand which are worse than worthless.
TWELFTH NIGHT.
Act L Scene 1.
"Duki. TliAi straine agen;^t liad a dying fall: O, it came ore my eare like the sweet louDd That breathes ypon a baoke of Violets Stealing, and giuing Odour."
Thus this beautiful passage stands in the original Bowe changed " sound " to vnndy and Pope substituted for it, Southj in which he is followed by the editor of every edition since his day, except Mr. Knight. But what right had Pope to change " sound "" to Southy more than Bowe had to change it to taind? Would either have been willing to own that he could not understand,
" O, it came o*er my ear like the sweet sound Tliat breathes upon a bank of yiolets." t
Upon what ground did they then presume to change it ? Because ivind or South were better words, in their estimation, than ^' soimd ? " Mr. Knight says the question between these words in effect is, ^^ which is the better word ?" There is no such question up for discussion. If, in place of " sound," there were some word without mean- ing, or even with a meaning incongruous with the tone of
276 Notes and Comments.
the passage, and both wind and South were proposed bb substitutes, then there would be a question, between wifui and South, as to which is the better word. But " sound " is in the original text. It is, to say the least, a compre- hensible and appropriate word ; and until Rowe, Pope, and their successors, have taken out letters patent to improve the text of Shakespeare, would it not be better for them to confine themselves to editing it ? The carelessness of the printers of the authentic foUo, or their inability to decipher the manuscript furnished to them by Shakespeare's friends and partners, affords a field for conjecture wide enough for the reasonable ambition of any editor, without his attempting to improve those passages which are comprehensible. I wonder that Pope did not perfect his change, and read,
'*0, it came o'er my ear like the sweet South, — That breege upon a bank of violets Stealing; and giving odour."
He certainly had as much right to change "breathes" to Jreeze, and to call the south wind ^ that breeze,' as to change " sound " to South,
But did Pope, or the editors who have followed him, ever lie musing on the sward at the edge of a wood, and hear the low sweet hum of the summer air, as it kissed the coyly-shrinking wild flowers upon the banks, and passed on, loaded with fragrance from the sweet salute ? If they ever did, how could they make this change of " soimd" to South ? and if they never did, they are unable to appreciate the passage, much less to improve it. As Mr. Knight has well remarked, Shakespeare never makes the South an odor- bringing wind. He speaks only of " the fogjsy South," " the contagion of the South," " the spungy South," " the dew- dropping South : " expressions, these, not at all descriptive
Twelfth Night. 277
cfibewiod which the love-sick Duke thought of when he
•id,
" the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of yiolets, Stealing, and giving odor."
" Duke, 0 when mine eyes did see Oliyia first (Methonght she purg*d the air of pestilence) That instant was I turned into a hart ; And my desires, like fell and cruel hoands, E'er since pursue me. — **
What need of this parenthesis, which is not in the ori- ginal ? Yet it is inserted by some of the editors, among them Mr. Knight, who remarks that ^^ the line is certainly pa- icntheticaL" Not at all. Oraino says that when he first ttw Olivia^ he thought she made the air around her pure ; uid then goes on to say, that, on the instant, his desires porsued him as Actseon's dogs their master. Read :
" O I when mine eyes did see Olivia first, Methought she parged the air of pestilence : That instant was I turned into a hart; And my desires,*' <&c
" Duke, 0, she, that hath a heart of that fine frame, To pay this debt of love but to a brother How will she love, when the rich golden shaft Hath kill'd the flocks of all affections else That live in her I when, liver, brain, and heart. Those sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fiird (Her sweet perfections) with one self king I "*
Much jarring comment on this passage, both as to *>weet perfections " and " self king," which in the second
278 Notes and C!oxic8nt8.
folio is made ^^ self-same king." This emendfttioiL sappliea a syllable much needed both for sense and metre. Mi; Knight's interpretation of the passage seems to me to be obviously the true one. He says : ^^ The phrase ooght probably to be ^ her sweet perfection.' The filling of the 'sovereign thrones' is the perfection of Olivk^s merita" Capell gavC; in his edition :
" when liyer, brain and heart; Those sovereign thrones, are all supplied and filled (Her sweet perfec^iofi) with one self-same king."
This is evidently the true reading. Mr. Knight quotes from Froissart to show that it was anciently believed, that a well-assorted marriage was necessary to the '^ perfectkn" of a woman. Is not the quotation a little superfluous ? Has that belief yet entirely died out ? And does not the whole of the Dvke's speech point to the full development of Olivia's nature, by her love of him who is to fill her heart?
Scene 2.
" Fto. 0 that I served that lady, And might not be delivered to the world Till I had made mine own occasion mellow What my sUte is."
Hear the great commentators of the last century upon this passage, and upon the character of Vida !
'^ And might not be delivered to the world.] I wish I might- not be made public to the world, with regard to the state of my** birth and fortune, till I have gained a ripe opportunity for mj^ design.
Chabacteb of Viola. 279
'' VioU seems to have formed a yery deep design with very little premeditation : she is thrown by shipwreck on an unknown coast, liears that the prince is a bachelor, and resolves to supplant the lady whom he courts.'' JoHf^soN.
'^ In the novel on which Shakespeare founded this play, the Duke Apollonius being driven by a tempest on the isle of Cyprus, Silla, the daughter of the governor, falls in love with him, and on his departure goes in pursuit of him. All this Shakespeare knew, and probably intended in some future scene to tell, but afterwards forgot it If this were not the case, the impropriety censured by Dr. Johnson must be accounted for from the poet's having here, as in other places, sometimes adhered to the fable he had in yiew, and sometimes departed f^om it Viola, in a sub- sequent scene, plainly alludes to her having been secretly in love with the Duke :
'My father had a daughter lov'd a man,
Ab it might be perhaps, were I a woman,
I should, your lordship.
Duke. And what's her history f
Fto. A blank, my lord, she never told her love I * " Ac
Malone.
" It would have been inconsistent with Viola's delicacy to have made an open confession of her love for the Duke to the Captain."
BOSWELL.
Variorum Shakespeare, vol. XI, p. 347.
And upon Viola's remark " I'll serve this duke " in her next speech, Johnson adds :
' Viola is an excellent schemer, never at a loss ; if she cannot serve the lady, she will serve the Duke."
llfid. p. 348.
And this is the appreciation which Shakespeare^s labors met at the hands of such men as Johnson and Malone 1
280 Notes and Commknts:
The ^ great moralist' could be so bisson bliDcl as to call the most unsophisticated and self-sacrificing character in the whole range of fiction " an excellent schemer/' and attribute to her the formation of a deep design to supplant a lady in the affections of her lovei 1 How this could hap- pen^ is incomprehensible ; for an appreciation of Viola's gentle and unselfish character is not necessary to prevent such a misapprehension ; it needs but to read the text with a reasonable degree of attention, to see that such a suppo- sition has not the least foothold on probability. Malone's supposition, that Shakespeare forgot to tell us that Vtokk had started in pursuit of the Dvke^ and his opinion, that Ftoto " plainly alludes to her having been secretly in love with the Duke" as well as Boswell's defence of Violc^ on the ground that her delicacy would forbid her to tell the Captain of her love for the Duke^ are all equally prepos- terous, and show that all three of the critics were equally ignorant of the subject on which they spoke, and equally unable to sympathize with the character which they grossly asperse, or traduce no less by a pitiful defence.
Viola is shipwrecked, and cast upon a coast unknown to her ; and when she finds out where she is, she asks,
"And what should I do in Illyria? "
She had heard her father narae Orsino, but had never seen him. In her abandoned and dejected state, she longs to get into the service of a lady who
"hath abjur*d the company And sight of men,"
and not to be " delivered to the world " till her opportuni- ties and her talents had enabled her to better her then forlOm
Chabaoter of Viola. 281
oooditkm. She k told that she cannot get an audience of this hij ; and then, perforce, is obliged to seek the protection tf die Duke, which she does, not as a beautiful girl in dis- tal^ but in the very disguise most calculated to prevent Urn fifom taking any personal interest in her. But the danger proves to be reversed. She loves him deeply, hope- kidy ; and yet at his bidding she goes to his *^ sovereign craelty," effects the entrance denied to all others, and pleads Ui cause with such a fervor, that it would seem she was suing far her own happiness, rather than asking for that, which, in Ikt own words, would make her life " a blank." In her dis- guae she captivates the very woman whose love she has niight for another ; and so far is she from rejoicing at this dttck upon the Duke's designs, or finding a malicious and al- nxxii pardonable pleasure in the fatal and ludicrous passion «»i" Iwr rival, that she exclaims, repenting of her disguise, ttd pitying her master :
" I am the man ; — If it be so, (as 'tis,) Poor lady, she were better love a dream. THsguise, I see, thou art a wickedness. Wherein the pregnant enemy does much. How easy is it for the proper falso In women's waxen hearts to set their forms I Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we ; For, such as we ore made of, such we be. How will this fadge ? My master lt»ves her dearly : And I, poor monster, fond as much on him : And she, mistaken, seems to dote on nic ; What will become of this ! As I am man. My state is desperate for my master's love : As I am woman, — now alas the day I What thriftless nighs shall poor Olivia breathe! 0 time, thoQ must untangle this, not I ; It is too hard a knot for me to untie."
^ this is the woman whom Samuel Johnson, LL. D. ^d call a schemer, and accuse of a deep, selfish design ;
282 Notes and Commkntb.
and whom Malone and Boswell could suppoee in love wtUi the Dukcy forgetting, the while, that at the time when thej defend her from the indelicacy of confessing her love finr him to another, she hcui never eeen him. Malone's 8oppo> sition, that Viola's beautiful allusion to herself in the stoij which she tells the Duke of her pretended sister, is an allur sion to her ^^ having been secretly in love with him,'' — ^that is, of course, in love with him befinre the play opens, — is too absurd to merit notice. Indeed, indeed, the best part of Shakespeare was written in an unknown tongue to these learned gentlemen. K there ever were an ingenuous, un- sophisticated, unselfish character portrayed, it is this very Violay — Dr. Johnson's " excellent schemer,'' who, vnretched and in want, forms that ^^ very deep design " of supplanting a high-bom beauty of whom she has never heard, in the affections of a man of princely rank, whom she has never seen.
Scene 3.
" Sir Tob. An thou let part bo, Sir Andrew, would thou might* st nerer draw Bword again."
ic
It seems not improbable that her dropped out between let " and " part " as Mr. Collier's folio suggests. An in- telligent friend, however, who has read Shakespeare much, and the comments on him, not at all, on seeing this admis- sion, remarked : — " ^ An thou let part so,' is better as it is. Shakespeare dropped her himself. — Let stupidity pick her up.'' I am more than half inclined to think with him.
" Sir And. Ay, 'tis strong, and does indifferent well in a flame coloured atock."
TwKLFTH Night. 283
Tlie old oopies read '^ dam*d coloured stock.'' '' Flame Mloured " is Pope's suggestion. Mr. Collier's folio proposes "dm colored ; " upon which Mr. Dyce remarks : — " That Br Andrew, a gallant of the first water, should ever dream : his leg in a ' dun coloured stock/ is not to be sup- for a moment." {A Few NoteSy &c., p. 75.) I do not mean to say that dam'd should be changed to dun; hoi if Mr. Dyce will but look through old illuminations,. tapestriesy and the like, he will find that dun colored hose I much affected by gallants of the first water three four hundred years ago, as dun colored trowsers and wakt€oat8 are by gallants of the first water in our own day.
Scene 5.
** Cfa good liadonoA, giye me leare to prore you a fool.
(HL Cftn you do it f da, Dezteriomlj, good Madonna.*
Thus the Clown* a reply stands in the first folio ; and yet the editors have changed it to, ^^ Dexteroiitfly, good Madonna." How natural that the Clown should say, ^^ Dex- tftioasly, good Madonna." Why did not the editors, when he lefdies to Sir Andrew Ague-cheek ^^ I did impeticos thy giatillity," make him say, ^ I did put in my petticoat iStsj gratuity ? " Notwithstanding the recent labors of Mr. CSdlier and Mr. Knight, and the too often unquestioning deference of the latter gentleman to the first folio, that text •tin needs careful collation with the received version, that we may not be the losers by the presuming and ruthless ex- i and changes of the editors of the last century.
284 Notes and Comments.
** OH. But we will draw the Curtain and shew you the piotura. Look yon, sir ; auch a one I was this present"
Mr. Collier's folio corrector would feebly amend this passage by the violent change, ^' such a one I am at this present." Mr. Singer makes a simpler and a better change^ t. e. ^ such a one I was as this present^.' But this is only a modification for the worse of Zachary Jackson's '^ such a one as I was this present^/' which was made long ago^ and which is the correct reading, beyond a question.
Act II. Scene 1.
**8eb. A lady, sir, though it was said »he much resembled me, was yet of many accounted beautiful: but though I could not, with tttck eMimmble vondett overfar beliere that^ yet thus far will I boldly publish her."
The words in italic letter are utterly incomprehensible ; but the sentence is easily understood without them. They are evidently inteijectional. All the attempts at emenda- tion, involve a change in the body of the sentence. In all such cases it is better to let the text stand, pass over the interjected phrase, and be satisfied with the body of the sentence, than to disturb that which is clear, and to obtain by it only a diffusion of turbidness through the whole passage, or a substitution of something which is utterly unlike the oridnal.
Scene 3.
'*Sir Toby. Out o' tunef sir, ye lie."
Theobald's correction to " out o' time ? " is manifestly demanded. Mdlvolio had said nothing about tune ; but
Twelfth Night. 286
he had asked, '^ Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you." Sir Toby, in his drunken confiision of ideas, replies, " We did keep timej sir, in our catches." After further remonstrance on the part of the Steward, and a futile attempt on the part of the topers to continue the vocal amusement which he had interrupted, the intoxicated knight reverts, in the true revolving style of dnmken thought, to the remark to which he first replied ; and again, with comical earnestness, defends the party against the supposed or assumed attack upon their musical accuracy. The text, as it has hitherto been printed, destroys one fine exhibition of the })oct's knowledge of the workings of the mind under all circumstances. Besides all this, the substi- tution of ' tune ' for ' time ' is the most natural and fre- quent error of the compositor when setting up musical ' mat- ter,' as I know by experience, and as I have pointed out in a comment on Touchstone's remark to the singing Page, in As You Like It, Act V., Scene 3.
Scene 4.
**Duke. Give me some music: — ^now, good morrow, friends: — Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song, That old and antique song we heard last night ; Methought it did relieve my passion much. More than light airs and recollected terms, Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times : — "
" Terms " does not, I think, mean musical phrases ; nor is it a misprint for tunes, both of which explanations have been suggested by the editors. The Duke speaks of a song, " an antique song." A song consists of both music and words ; and this song, which was " old and plain," by rea- son of the simple sweetness of its air and the homely direct-
886 NOTXB AND OOMMSKTS.
ness of its words, suited the mood of the lover, man ihan the ** light airs '" [t . e. gay, trivial music] to which the ^^ recollected terms " [t. e. carefully sought out expresnons] in the songs of those '^ most brisk and giddy-paced times^" were set. ^^Recollected terms" might well be applied to the words of a song written under the influence of Et^^pkiue^ his England.
Act UL Scene 1.
" Fto. Saye thee friend, and thy mnsio ! Dost thon liye by thy tabor t do. No, sir ; I live by the choreh. Via, Art thou a chnrohman t
do. No each matter, sir: I do liye by the ohnroh, for I do lire by my house, and my house does stand by the chureh."
Upon this passage Mr. Collier remarks : '^ The clown's re- ply, ' No, sir, I live by the church,' is not intelligible, if we do not suppose him to have wilfully misunderstood Viola to ask whether he lived near the sign of the tabor, which might be either a music shop or a tavern." This certainly exhibits such a want of capacity to apprehend the humor of equivoqv^Cj as fully to justify Mr. Singer's conclusion that " we can now fully comprehend the sympathetic support Mr. Collier gives to the [MS.] corrector's attempts to get rid of similar passages of playful banter, which he had not the capacity to understand."
Act V. Scene 1.
" OIL Open it and read it
Clo, Look then to be weU edified, when the fool deliyers the madman. * By the Lord, madam,* —
OIL How now, art thou mad f
CUk No, madam, I do but read madness,** Aq,
Twelfth Night. 287
Had BXkj body, before I read an annotated edition of Shakespeare, told me that a note could be perpetrated upon this passage, I should have believed it with difficulty. How is it possible to avoid seeing that the Clotvn, — ^beginning to read McUvolio'a letter, which commences, " By the Lord, madam, you wrong me, and the world shall know it," — as he utters the first words, is instantly reproved by Olivia for his supposed profanity in her presence 1 What is his reply ? — " I do but read madness." And yet Steevens says :
'' I am by no means certain that I nnderstand this passage, which, indeed, the author of The Revisal [Heath] pronounces to have no meaning. I suppose the clown begins reading the letter in some fantasdcal manner, on which Olivia asks him, if he is mad. No, madam (says he), I do but barely deliver the sense of this madman's epistle : if you would have it read as it ought to be (that is), unth such a frantic accent and gesture as a mad- man would read it, you must allow vox, i. e. you must furnish the reader with a voice, or, in other words, read it yourself But Mr. Malone's explanation I think is preferable to mine."
Here is Mr. Malone's explanation, to which his rival so modestly defers :
'^ The clown, we may presume, had begun to read the letter in a very loud tone, and probably with extravagant gesticulation. Being reprimanded by his mistress, he justifies himself by saying, ' if you would have it read in character, as such a mad epistle ought to be read, you must permit me to assume a frantic tone.' "
To these, appearing strangely enough in such company, on such a subject, we must add Mr. Knight, who says : "When the Clown begins to read he raves and gesticulates ; upon which Olivia says * art thou mad ? ' '' After this,
288 Notes and Comments.
whom can we trust, and what passage, how plain soever, is safe from perversion I
" OIL — Got of qneatioD, 'tis Maria's hand, And now I do bethink me^ it was she First told me thon wast mad ; then cam'st in smiling. And in such forms which here were presupposed Upon thee in the letter."
What does " then cam'st in smiling" mean ? Out of question we should read ^^ thou cam'st in smiling." [I find that Zachary Jackson has made this suggestion. As he well points out, the ou in manuscript might be easily mis- taken for en. Indeed, in reading the best manuscript of Shakespeare's day, the closest examination can with diffi- culty distinguish one fix>m the other. Then, the bow of e, usually very small, was turned to the left instead of the right.
THE WINTER'S TALE.
Act I. Scene 2.
**Ser, I love thee not ajar o* the clock behind What lady, she her lord.
Mr. Collier's folio has, " What lady should her lord/' which is plausible and has found defenders. But I confess that the old reading is far more pleasing to me. I have always read it as * I love thee not a jar o' the clock behind what [ever] lady she [may be who loves] her lord/ The elision is great ; but it seems to me to make the sentence neither obscure nor inelegant. I find, by experiment, that the sympathetic and intelligent readers of Shakespeare of my acquaintance, learned and unlearned, are with me ; though all could not supply the elided words. But he who would rightly read Shakespeare, or any poet of high grade, must, in Shakespeare's words, be able to " apprehend more than cool reason comprehends."
I cannot pass by the tame and ridiculous literalism of adding to Hermione's observation, in this Scene,
"You look As if you held a brow of much distraction/' 19
290 Notes and Comments.
the stage direction, ^^ Holding his forehead " whichBppean in Mr. Collier's folio, — ^than which nothing could be more absurd and prosaic. This alone would be all-sufficient to show that that volume had passed through annotating hands utterly incompetent to express even an ordinary ap- preciation of Shakespeare's phraseology, — ^to say nothing of his poetry.
" Pol, Feare ore-shades me :
Qood Expedition be my friend, and comfort The gracious Queene, part of his Theame ; bat nothing Of his ill-ta*en suspicion.**
This is one of the three or four passages in Shakespeare's works which seem to me to be almost, if not quite, hope- lessly obscured by the carelessness of the first printers, or their inability to read the manuscript which was furnished them. It appears as above in the original folio ; the whole speech being singularly well punctuated. All sorts of changes have been proposed for it, and all sorts of senses tortured from it. But the best that has been done is the allowing it to remain untouched, and the extracting a sense which Mr. Collier thus expresses :
" The absence of Polixenes, the object of the jealousy of Le- ontes, was to comfort the Qaeeo, who was part of the theme on which the King dwelt (Polixenes being the other part), but who being innocent, may be said to be ' nothing ' of the * ill-ta'en suspicion* against her."
Yet, let me ask any intelligent but unpretending reader of Shakespeare, is that the way in which Shakespeare wrote, — ^in which he thought ? Could any construction be
The Winter's Tale. 291
more bttrbarous, any expression cruder or more confused P To call the Queen part of the theme of Leontes but no part of his atuptcion ! His theme was his jealousy ; and his sus- picion was, that she was false ! It is natural that Polixe- nes should express a hope that his flight might comfort the Queen ; but what can be flatter or tamer than that he should then go on to say that she was part of the Eang's theme but no part of his suspicion, — even if it were true. But in every sense in which she could be said to be a part of the suspicion of Leontes, she was a part of it. Her actual innocence could not make her seem to Poliocenes any the less a part of the suspicion of Leontes — if we must use such an uncouth phrase. Innocent or guilty, her husband's suspicion of her was an existing fact. The lines had better be stricken fix)m the volume than so interpreted.
In this perplexity I bring forward for consideration an emendation which has been suggested to me, premising that the difficulty can exist only in the words " and com- fort" and "part of his Theame," as the other parts of the passage are not only clear in themselves, but entirely con- sistent with each other and the situation of the speaker ; and also adding that the punctuation of the passage in the original is so careful and judicious, that it was evidently printed with unusual attention, and that the error must therefore have arisen from obscurity in the manuscript. It must also be remembered that the most obvious consequence of the suspicions of Leontes was the loss to Hermione of her position as his wife ; and that the precipitate flight of Poltxenes, though necessary to his safety, might possibly, and not unnaturally, increase those suspicions. Polixenes, therefore, according to the reading which I suggest for con- sideration, expresses his hope that expedition may be his friend, and also preserve or perpetuate for the Queen her share in her husband's confidence and throne, but no part
292 NoTEb AND Comments.
of the suspicion with which he unjustly visited her. The correction of two very possible typographical errors gives us,
" Good Expedition be my friend, and eoruerve The gracious Qneen part of hia Throne; but nothing Of hiB ill-ta'en suspicion."
Shakespeare uses the verb ^ conserve ' in exactly this sense in Measure for Measure j Act III. Sc. 1.
" Uab. Yes, thou must die :
Thou art too noble to conserre a life In base appliances."
He uses the word as a verb in no other instance. Indeed it was generally used in his day^ as we find it defijied in Phillips' New World (^ Words, in the sense, " to defend or maintain, to preserve or keep." As to the irregularity of the line produced by this word, it is to be remarked that the Scene is one of the least musically written that we have from Shakespeare's pen.
I bring forward this reading at the suggestion of a very devoted and no less conservative student of Shakespeare's text, who says that the more he considers it the more it satisfies him, and that he has such confidence in it as to believe, that if the play existed in an early quarto form in which this reading appeared, it would have been adopted without a dissenting voice, to the entire disregard of that in the folio.
I am inclined to think that the best course is to aban- don all attempt to amend the lines ; but nothing can make me believe that Shakespeare produced such a chaotic little puddle of words and thoughts as results from the most fa- vorable construction of the existing text.
The Winter's Tale. 298
Act II. Scene 1.
" Antiff, You are abused, and by Bome putter on That will be damn'd for it ; would I knew the yillain, I would land-damn him.**
Jackson's conjecturo that " land-damn " means * con- demn to the punishment of being built up in the earth/ is^ to say the least, not without reason. See Tit, Andr. Act V. Sc. 3.
** Set him breast-deep in the earth and famish him," dec.
This was justly considered the most fearful of all dooms ; and was one likely to be conmion under the rule of so un- scrupulous a despot as Leontes.
Act III. Scene 3.
*'AtUig. anon ^
Did this break from her : — * Good Antigonus, ' Since fiite, against thy better disposition, ' Hath made thy person for the thrower-out 'Of my poor babe, according to thine oath, — 'Places remote enough are in Bohemia: 'There weep, and leave it crying.*"
Mr. Collier's folio changes " There weep," to " There tpend; " which has a plausible seeming, until we remember that when Antigonua had this vision of HermionCj he was on board a ship just off the coast of Bohemia — Shake- speare's Bohemia ; and that to direct him to tvend to Bo- hemia would be very singular under the circumstances. When he abandons the child he says :
294 Notes and Commsmts.
"Poor wretch That; for mj mother's &alt» art thus ezpoe'd To I086, and what may follow I — Weep Icannoit Bot my heart bleeds ; and most aecnrs'd am I To be by oath enjoin'd to this.'*
His reference to his inability to weep, confirms the conclu- sion that the vision enjoined tears upon him as a becoming accompaniment to his sad duty.
Act IV. Scene 2.
*' Enter AuUiyene, tinging : When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh I the doxy over the dale, — Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year :
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale."
This last line is understood by some as meaning, that the 'Spring holds a partial reign within the Winter's pale, i, c. boundary. This is the sense conveyed, doubtless ; but is not the obvious and simpler method of construing the thought, — ^L e. that the red blood reigns in the Win- ter's pale blood, — the better ?
Scene 3.
"Per. your high self,
The gracious mark o' the land, you have obscur'd With a swain's wearing, and me, poor lowly maid. Most goddess like prank'd up. But that our feasts In every mess have folly, and the feeders Digest it with a custom, I should blush To see you so attired: sworn, I think, To shew myself a glass."
It would seem difficult, if not impossible to raise a ques-
Thk Winter's Tale. 296
tbn npoa the meaning of this passage ; bat the commen- tators have managed to do so with regard to the word "sworn," in the last line but one. PerdUa says, and, to my apprehension, as plainly and pertinently as possible, that Prince Florizd in obscuring himself " with a swain's wearing," would seem, if it were not that the feast justi- fied the costume, to have sworn to shew her, a swain's daughter, a reflex of her own condition, as if in a mirror, and, consequently, the difference between her actual posi- tioa and his. Mr. Collier's MS. corrector changes " sworn " to 90 warn J forgetting that "you" (t. c. Florizd) would then be the antecedent of worn, Hanmer and Singer read, most tamely, swoon. But no change is needed ; and there- fore none is sufferable.
*' Ccan, He tells her somethiDg
That makes her blood look on't Good sooth she is The queen of curds and cream."
This is the text of the original ; and it would seem that nothing could be plainer to one able to understand the phraseology of Shakespeare at aU. CamiUo says that florizel tells Perdita something that calls her blood to look on it : — a vivid and beautiful figure to express the sudden mounting of the blood into a maiden's cheek at the words rf her lover. If a change were needed, Theobald's "look <wrf" would be unexceptionable. The change in Mr. Col- lier's folio,
" He tells her Bomethiug That waken her blood. Look on*t 1 "
liiBsiifferable.
296 Notes and Cokmsnts.
" 8erv. He bath songs, for man, or woman, of all aina ; no mUlintf can so fit his costumers with gloves ; he has the prettiest love-aong for maids; so without bawdrj, which is strange; with delicate burdens of dildoa and fadingt ; jump her and thump her ; and where some stretch- month'd rascal would, as it were, mean mischief and break a foul gap into the matter, he makes the roaid to answer, Whoop^ do me no Karm^ good man; puts him ofl^ slights him, with. Whoop, do menoharm^ good man.^
^^ Fadings '' is thought to mean a kind of dance ; but taking the subsequent context as an indication of the Ser- varU's idea of delicate burdens, and songs without bawdry, we may fairly conclude that ^^ dildos and &ding8 " have a signification better known perhaps to city debauchees than simple rustics.
For " break a foul gap into the matter " we may safely read, with Mr. Collier's folio, "break a foul jqpc into the matter." ' Jape ' is an old word for * jest/
'• Pol You offer him if this be so, a wrong Sometliing unfilial : Reason, my son, Should choose himself a wife ; but as good reason The father (all whose joy is nothing else But fair posterity) should hold some counsel In such a business."
This punctuation, which is universally followed, seems to me to be wrong. It makes Polixenes say, " My son, Reason should choose himself a wife." Whereas he means to say, ' it is reavsonable that my son should ; choose himself a wife but it is quite as reasonable that the father should have some- thing to say in the affair.' Reason was continually used by the old writers for ^ There is reason.' It seems almost needless to point this out ; for the following part of the sentence — "but as good reason the father should have some
The Winter's Tale.
297
counsel/' &c. — makes it plain, pointed thus :
The passage should be
" You offer him, if this be so, a wrong Something unfilial. Reason my son Should choose himself a wife ; but as good reason The father (all whoso joy is nothing else But fair posterity) should hold some counsel In such a business."
KING JOHN.
Act I. Scene 1.
" K, John. For ere thou eanst report I will be there, The thunder of my cannon shall be heard."
The anachronism in this and many other passages of Shakespeare has furnished groimd of cavil to cavillers. But it, and others like it^ are justifiable^ as Mr. Knight says, on the principle of using terms and making reference to things familiar to the audience. Shakespeare never, I think, in- troduces anachronism in the actions of his personages.
Act II. Scene 1.
*' Const Stay for an answer to your embassy, Lest unadvis'd you stain your swords with blood : My lord Chatillon may from England bring That right in peace, which here we urge in war ; And then we shall repent each drop of blood, That hot rash haste so indirectly shed."
Mr. Collier's folio changes the last line to,
" That rash, hot haste so inditcreetlj slied.*'
There can be no doubt of the propriety of the correction.
King John. 299
The Constable begs them to "stay for an answer/' "lest unadvised" they stain their swords with blood; and in addition to this, the use of ^so' indicates that indiscreetly and not "indirectly" was the word.
" That rash, hot haste «o indirectXy shfid,"
is not sense. The typographical error might easily have been made.
SOENE 2.
" Beat And this same bias, this commodity, This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word, Clapp'd on the outward eye of fickle France, Hath drawn him from his own determined aid.**
The last Hue is changed in Mr. Collier's folio to,
" Hath drawn him from his own determined aim."
a correction proposed by Monck Mason, and "the necessity for which," Mr. Collier says, " is not very evident." If a tithe of the changes in that volume were as imperatively demanded as this is, Mr. Collier's discovery would have done ten times the service that it has done. How could " com- modity " draw France from "his own determined aid?" What was "his oxon determined aid ? " The aid which he had determined to give to Arthur? That is not the way in which Shakespeare uses the English language. But, besides this, the previous line demands the change. Com- modity,
** CUpp'd on the outward eye of fickle France,"
300 Notes and Cohkekts.
drew him from his aim. The outward ey^ is that which is used in taking aim ; and without that word this part of the sentence has no meaning.
Act III. Scene 1.
** ComL O Lewifl^ stand fast I the devil tempts thee here^ .In likeness of a new untrimmed bride."
We have here as fine a specimen of Warburton's pe- cpiiBi fitness to comprehend and improve the text of Shake- speare as can bo found throughout the Variorum. He re- marks upon " untrimmed bride/' — " * untrimmed ' signifies unsteady. The term is taken fix)m navigation," Well done^ Warburton ! you deserved a mitre for that : — the Abbot of Un-reason's. Think of the coxswain of a wedding — ^that is, the groomsman, calling out, ' trim the bride, my lads ! keep her steady 1 ' This note was too much for even John- son's solemnity ; and with ponderous pleasantry, he remarks : " A commcDtator should be grave, and therefore I can read these notes with a proper severity of attention ; but the idea of trimming a lady to keep her steady, would be too risible for any power of face."
" K. John. But as we under heaven are supreme head, So, under him, that great supremacy, Where we do reign, we will alone uphold," Ac.
Evidently " heaven " in the first line should be Oodj us is shown by the pronoun in the second. The correction is made in Mr. Collier's folio. The original word was evi- dently changed to " heaven," on account of the statute of
King John. 301
James I. before alluded to, while the corresponding change in the pronoun was neglected, as it was in a similar case, which I have pointed out in Measure for Measure^ Act II. Sc. 4. Mr. Collier's folio gives heaven for "him" in the second line ; but needlessly and, indeed, injuriously, as it destroys the parallel between the king's tenure of power and his ex- ercise of it. This is another marked evidence of the con- jectural nature of the corrections in that folio. The cor- rector having made the necessary change of " heaven " to God, either from the sight of an actor's copy of his part, fix)m memory, or from conjecture, went on to improve the text by guess-work, and struck from it the very word which gave force to the passage.
Scene 3.
** K. John. If tho midnight bell
Did "with hia iron tongue and brazen mouth Sound on into the drowsy race of night : " <fec
As the last line has been frittered away by the editors into,
"Sound one unto the drowsy race of night,"
it seems plausible to read with Mr. Collier's folio, " ear of night," for " race of night." But all the changes are alike uncalled for. Let any one who has listened to a church clock striking twelve at midnight, and seeming as if it would never complete its solemn task, say whether,
" Sound on into the drowsy race of nighty"
does not bring up the memory of his sensations more vi- vidly than,
302 Notes and Comments.
"Sound one into the drowsy ear of nigbt^**
or,
*' Sound <me unio the drowsy race of night"
The line as it stands in the original is one of the most suggestive in all Shakespeare's works.
Scene 4
" K. Phil, So, by a roaring tempest on the flood, A whole armado of conyicted sail Is Bcattcr'd,** <&c.
For the obviously mistaken "convicted," Mr. Dyoe proposed convected. He came within one letter of that which is doubtless the right word, — converUedj which is found on the margins of Mr. Collier's folio.
Act IV. Scene 1.
"Arthur, There is no malice in this baming coaL"
This should evidently be
" There is no malice burning in this coaL"
Arthur has just spoken of the fire as having gone out, — as being " dead with grief ; " the transposition gives us the words and the thoughts of the author, and in such a form as is consistent with what has gone before.
[I find that Dr. Grey made this suggestion, which Monck Mason called hypercriticism, because Hubert says, he " can revive " the coal, and which Boswell well defended, on
King John. 303
the ground that, whatever really was the case, Arthur evidently believed that the coal was not burning when he spoke.
Scene 2.
" Pern, If, what in rest jou have, in right yon hold, Why then your fears (which, as they say, attend The steps of wrong,) should move you to mew up Tour tender kinsman, and to choke his days With barbarous ignorance, and deny his youth The rich advantage of good exercise ?
A moment's consideration of the construction of this passage makes it plain that it is corrupt. As it stands, though it is pointed as a question, it is an assertion ; and an assertion, too, which involves a contradiction. The obvious transposition in Mr. Collier's folio obviates all diflSculty.
*' Why ihoidd your fears (which, as they say, attend The steps of wrong) then move you to mew up, Your tender kinsman f ^ <&c.
" K, John, How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds, Makes deeds ill done I Had'st thou not been by, A fellow by the hand of nature mark'd, Quoted, and sign'd to do a deed of shame. This murder had not come into my mind : "
Can any oile read the whole of this passage, and ques- tion for an instant the propriety of Mr. Knight's change ?
*' How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Makes t//<200di done 1'*
304 Notes and Comments.
Scene 3.
" 8al. The King hath dispoesess'd himself of us : We will not line his thin bestained cloak."
^^ Thin bestained cloak/' is most probably a misprint for " Sin bestained cloak/' as the corrector in Mr. Collier's foL'o conjectures.
" Pern, All murders past do stand ezona'd in this : And this, so .sole, and so unmatchable^ Shall give a holiness, a purity, To the yet unbegotten sin of times. And prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest^ Exampled by this heinous spectacle."
It is very plain to me that "the yet unbegotten sin of times " is a misprint for " the yet imbegotten sins of time" as Pope suggested. Pembroke says that, — all murders past stand excused in this ; and this shall excuse all other crimes to be committed. " Sin/' it is true, might be used collec- tively ; but then at least we should read " sin of time" In lifting the ^matter,' the s was evidently transferred firom one word to the other. Read :
" Shall give a holiness, a purity To the yet unbegotten sins of time."
Act V. Scene 1.
" BaM. O inglorious league I
Shall we, upon the footing of our land, Send fair play orders, and make compromise f "
Ema John. 305
The correction, " Send fisiir play offer%i' made in Mr. Collier's folio^ seems to be a necessary correction of a prob- able misprint.
Scene 4.
"iSd/. My arm shall give thee help to bear thee hence, For I do see the cruel pangs of death Right in thine eye.**
Some commentators, being xmable to understand ^' right in thine eye," proposed to recui/WgrA^, and others ^^fighJt in thine eye." But, as Steevens says, " right " signifies here * immediate.' He euids, — three quarters of a century ago, — " It is now obsolete." But it has survived in America, and is in constant and common use in the phrase 'Right away,' for ' on the instant,' * immediately,' which our somewhat overweening cousins sneer at, as an Americanism. The language of the best educated Americans of the Northern States is more nearly that of Shakespeare's day than that of the best bom and bred English gentlemen who visit them ; although the advantage on the score of utterance is generally on the side of the Englishman.
It is somewhat from the subject of this volume, but I will notice here one gross and radical error of language into which all Englishmen of the present day fall, without ex- ception. Oxford-men and Cambridge-men speak it ; and all English authors, Mr. Macaulay and Mr. Landor not ex- cepted, write it. — They say that one thing is different to another. Now, this is not an idiom, or a colloquialism : it is radically, absurdly wrong. They might as well say that two things converge /rom each other. Difference im- plies a figurative divergence, — a motion /row, not to. One thing is different from another. Spenser, Shakespeare,
20
306 Notes and Comxekts.
Bacon^ Milton^ and the translators of the Bible, wrote ' dif- ferent/rom; ' and in America this is the only expression of the idea ever heard among those who have even the least pretensions to education.
KING RICHARD IL
Act IL Scene 1.
" Oaunt. More are men's ends mark'd, than their lives before . The setting son, and music at the close, As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last, Writ in remembrance more than things long past"
This ifl, to say the least, very confused. How inept the assertion, that " the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last 1 " and what a slender and even doubtful connection the last line has with the preceding part of the passage ! What is writ in remembrance ? As the sentence now stands, " writ " has no nominative. Monck Mason's punctuation makes the passage perfectly clear.
" More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before. The setting sun, and music at the close (As the last taste of sweets is sweetest) last^ Writ in remembrance more than things long past"
That is, — ^the setting suiv and music at the close are last- ing, are writ in remembrance, just as the last taste of sweets is sweetest.
308 Notes and Commsnts.
" York. The king is come : deal mildly with hie yonth ; For young hot colts, being ng'd do rage the more.**
Ritson substituted rein'd for " rag'd/' and Mr. Collier's folio has urg'd. Mr. Singer gives preference to the former word, which is certainly much the better suited to the sense of the context. But why change the original ? Is it not perfectly comprehensible and quite in Shakespeare's miinner? Tori begs OaurU to "deal mildly "with the young king, not to irritate or enrage him ; because
'Young hot oolts being rag'd, do rage the more.*
Act m. Scene 2.
" Scroop. —and boya^ with women's voices,
Strive to speak big, and clap their female Joints In stifi^ unwieldy arms^** Ao,
As a specimen of the fitness of the editors and critics of the last century for their task, I cannot forbear quoting the following comments upon this passage :
— " and clap their female joints — ] Mr. Pope more elegantly reads — ' and clasp — ; * which has been adopted by subsequent editors. But the emendation does not seem absolutely necessary."
Malone. " Clip would bo still nearer than clasp."
Ritson. " Lee, in his Mithridates, has imitated this passage, Act IV. :
" The very boys, like Cupids dressed in arms, Clap their young hamess'd thighs, and trust to battle."
Steevens.
EiNQ BiCHABD II. 309
Here we have four learned men, one of them a distin- guished poet, unable to apprehend the graphic colloquialism of Scroop's relation, that boys were clapping their girlish limbs into armor, to fight against the king. Steevens' grave statement that Lee imitated this passage, in saying that boys clapped their thighs, has more food for laughter in it than most of his jokes have.
Scene 4.
" Queen. And I could sing, would weeping do me good. And never borrow any tear of thee."
Pope changed " sing," which is the reading of all the old copies, into weepj and he has been followed by all his successors, except Mr. Knight. Why ? The QueerCs at- tendant offers to sing, and, the Queen replying that she would rather that she should weep, answers,
" I could weep, madam, would it do you good."
The Qtieen rejoins, that, * if weeping were of any service she had wept enough to be able to sing herself.' Thus plainly says the text ; and what reason is there for chan- ging it ?
Act IV. Scene 1.
" Car, 0 forbid it God,
That, in a ChriBtian climate," <&c.
Thus the authentic folio ; but all the editors give " 0, forfend it." Why ? Because, Mr. Knight says, "we cling to the less common word." Of course we do. Is there
310 Notes and Comments
not Mr. Justice ShaJloufs authority for it ? '^ Good phra- ses are surely, and ever were, very commendable/' But Shakespeare had no respect for less common words, as such ; and so he makes the Bishop say '^forbid,'' even in the solemn opening of this speech. There is not a single instance in his authentic works, in which he uses 'forfend.' Unlike his editors, he clings to the more common word.
KING HENRY IV. Part I.
Act I. Scene 1.
*' K, Hen. No more the thirsty entrance of this soil Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood."
" The thirsty entrance of this soil/' has given much trouble to the editors and critics, who perpetrate three pages of comment and conjecture upon it, in the Variorum Edi- tion. Monck Mason's ingenious substitution of Erinnys for " entrance/' is set aside by Boswell, Knight, and Collier. Steevens, Mason and Knight quote Virgil, Lucan, and Ovid in favor of the correction. The following lines, from an English contemporary and townsman of Shakespeare, seem to me to be much more to the purpose :
"Spightfull Erinxib frights Me with her Lookes, My man-hood dares not with foule Ate mell, I quake to looke on Heoat's charming Bookes," <&c
Drayton* 8 Sonnets, No. 39. Ed. 1619.
These sonnets were first published in 1594, under the title Idea's Mirrour^ Amours in QvMorzains : The first part of Henry IV, was written in 1596 or 1597. This, to show that Shakespeare was not obliged to go to Lucan, Virgil, or Ovid for the name or the functions of Erinnys.
312 Notes and Cokmekts.
But there is not the slightest justification for a change in the original text. Steevens perceived the obvious meaning, but true to the spirit of his day, shirked it. He says : — ^^ Shakespeare urigy mean the thirsty entrance of the soil &ft the porous mrface of the earth, through which all moisture enters, and is thirstily drunk or soaked up/' Nothing could be plainer or more pertinent.
" K. Hen. Ten thooaand bold Scots, two and twenty knights Balk'd in their own blood, did Sir Walter see On Holmedon'^ plains."
How can there be the least hesitation in changing the obvious misprint " balk'd " for baih'dy which is at once the word for which it would be most easily mistaken, and that which would most naturally occur in the passage ?
Scene 3.
'* Korthum. Why, what a wasp-stung and impatient fool Art thou, to break into this woman's mood," Ac.
This, the reading of the first quarto, seems to me un — questionably the true one. The later editions give tt^cwp— • tongice instead of " wasp-stung ; " a phrase, which in thi^ place, seems to me to be utterly without meaning, but9 which is construed by Malone to mean " having a tongue^ as peevish and mischievous as a wasp." But this make^ the Earl call his son "a wasp-tongue and an impatient fcx)l,'* which is not a Shakesperian or an admissible mode of join^ — ing epithets. The advocates of wasp-tongue evidently*" suppose it, as well as " impatient," to be an adjective belong —
King Henry IV. Part I. 313
kgio ^^fool ; " but in that case it would have been ^ wasp-
tengnedL' It is needless to point out the particular parts
^Hottpuf^s conduct in this scene which justify his father
in likaning him to one stung by a wasp. The confusion of
then epithets is the easiest imaginable. It is difficult to
disciiminate in speech between ^ wasp-stung ' and ^ wasp-
tongoe/ and not difficult to mistake them for each other
Ui manuscript
Act IL Scene 1.
" Oadt, I am joioed with no foot land-rakersi Ac, but with nobility and tr^nqnillitj Ac, burgomaaten and great-oneyera.**
Mr. Cromer's folio changes " tranquillity " to sanguinity, ^hich is beneath notice, and " great-oneyers " to great ones "^-fcs, which is quite as bad, but which attracts some atten- tioQ because the word has given work to the editors and O(»nmentators. The obvious signification of the original word seems to me to be * great ones' for which "great oneyers" is a Tulgarism. It is common enough to hear ^ ers ' ap- pended to words by those who are altogether without in- telligence and education ; and it is quite natural that Gads- hill shopld affect their phrase under the circumstances. This view was ably advocated in Blackwood's Magazine (Sept. 1853). But why should so obvious a construction lieed advocacy ? Answer, Commentators of the Augustan
Scene 4.
■p. Etm, and when you breathe in your watering they cry —
Wl and bid you pUy it ofL"
By a peihaps laudable, but certainly much overstrained «S>rt for delicacy, "breathe in your watering," is interpret-
314 Notes and Coxmbkts.
ed to mean to ^ take breath in yonr drinking/ But in Sha epeare's day, as well as in Henry IV/s, not mnch water drunk, especially in taverns ; and why should the dra^ cry ^^ hem !" in such a case, and commend the drinkei " play it oflf ? " " Watering,'' evidently does not refer the absorption of fluid, or " breathe " to the inspiration air. The obvious signification of the passage is the j one, and that which is most in keeping with the charae alluded to, particularly at the time of Shakespeare.
Act ni. ScBNB 1.
*'Mort I understand thy looks : that prettj Welsh Which thon ponrs't down from these swelling hearensw**
The substitution of welling for " swelling" in Mr. C lier's folio, is pretty and plausible ; but I am &r from be confident as to the necessity for a change.
" Olend, She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down."
This line was altered by Steevens to,
" She bids you Upon the wanton rushes lay you down."
The alteration has been generally followed ; and up the lines in this condition, Coleridge remarks, that " 1 imperfect line ' She bids you,' is one of those fine h strokes of exquisite judgment peculiar to Shakespeare ; thus detaching the lady's speech, and giving it the indi
King Hbnby IV. Part I. 315
duality and entireness of a little poem, while he draws at- tention to it/' Perhaps such an arrangement would have been a stroke of exquisite judgment, had Shakespeare made it ; though that is not so obvious to me, even after Coleridge's setting forth ; but Shakespeare did not make it. The ar- rangement is a mere mechanical consequence of Steevens' finger-counting propensity. It is amusing to see the great critic deceived, with his dwarf predecessors and successors, into giving Shakespeare credit for that which was not in his thought. We may all take warning from it. Malone says that "the old copies" give the line,
"She bids jou on the wanton rushes lay you down,"
and Mr. Knight, that " all the old copies give this as one line." They are both wrong. It is one line in all the quartos ; but it appears in the first folio, and also in the second, thus :
" Glend, She bids you, On the wanton Rushes lay you downe.**
This seems at first to favor Coleridge's fancy ; but it does not, in reality. For there is conclusive evidence that the text of the folio was printed from that of one of the later quartos. The break in the line was merely for typographi- cal convenience. Steevens' printing of the passage,
"She bids you Upon the wanton rushes," 610,^
was not justified by the folio, and, upon his own confession,, was an arbitrary arrangement.
316 Notes and Coumxrtb.
Scene 3.
"FaL — but the sack that thou hast drunk me would hare bought me lights aa good cheap at the dearest ohandler^a in Sarope."
The commentators give varioxis instances of the use of the phrase "good cheap '' for ' a low price ; ' but none of them seem to me to be so pertinent as the following, fiom the old Morality Hycke-Scomer :
"Fre-tpyll. Even now and ye go thyder, ye shal fynde a grete hepc^ And jou speke in my name, ye shal haye good chepe."
Act IV. Scene 1.
" Hot ^to set BO rich a main
On the nice hazard of one donbtfol honr f It were not good : for therein should we read The very bottom and the soul of hope: The very list, the very utmost bound Of all our fortunes,"
There has been much perplexity caused by the word " read " in this passage. Some say " read " means ^ to see/ others that it is used in its old signification ^ to discover or unravel/ as, ^ A rede my riddle/ But is it well to speak of either seeing or discovering by a desperate battle " the bottom and the soul of hope, the list and utmost bound of fortune ? '' In case of such a battle, the bottom and the soul of hope, the list and utmost bound of fortune, are not seen, not discovered, not read ; but they are reached, "Reade/' as the word stands in the folio, is an evident and a veiy easy misprint for reach. In much manuscript ch resembles even d; and in more than half of that which goes to the
Kino Henry IV. Pabt I. 317
press, even nowadays, it could be determined only by the context <Ryhether the author meant ch or de. Bead there- fore :
— ** for therein should we reach The yery bottom and the soul of hope; The yery list, the yery utmost bound Of all our fortunes."
*' Hot Ck>me let us make a master speedily."
The folio and two of the early quartos read ^^take a muster,'' and though the misprint would seem obvious, both Mr. Knight and Mr. Collier retain it. They probably forgot the following lines, in the Induction of Part II.
** And who but Rumour, who but only I, Make fearful muUer9t and prepared defence! "
KING HENRY IV. Part H
AoT I. Scene 2.
"Fal Let him be damned ]ike the glutton 1 may his tongae be hotter i — ^A whoreson Achitophel 1 a rascally yea-forsoothknaye; to bear a gentle- man in hand, and then stand upon security 1 — "
FcUstqff'— let not my readers fear yet another essay on the theme^ — Falstaf is regarded hy many as a char- acter, the traits of which are too delicate to admit of its perfectly successful embodiment on the stage ; bnt Mr. Hackett's performance in Henry IV. is the best answer to such objectors. Well may he say : " That the character was designed for stage effect, is evident from his many prac- tically dramatic situations, and the idea that it is beyond the reach of histrionic art to represent him properly, can only originate in a hypercritical and fantastic imagina- tion." * Few of those who see Mr. Hackett play Fal- staff, indeed, very few, can discreetly venture to criticise his embodiment of the part, so patiently, so profoundly and so reverently has he studied this master-creation of Shakespeare. There is hardly a gesture, or an expression of countenance, hardly an inflection of voice, even in the most subordinate parts of the play, which is not the fruit of careful investigation of the character and the scene, or
* Falstaff: a Shakesperian Tracts London, Syo. 1840.
Kino Henry IV. Pabt II. 319
which, if intuitive, has not bome the scrutiny of such investigation. And yet how gracefully and perfectly knit together is the whole ! How spontaneously the wit seems to spring when occasion calls it forth ! With what freedom and consciousness of power are the broad dashes of humor made ! How bold the lies ! How ready every reply ! How sudden and how genuine the anger ! How sneaking the cowardice ! How palpable, yet how well graduated the grossness ! How fascuiating, and yet how detestable the whole character !
I will not thrust my own ideas upon such a character before my readers ; but they cannot be indiflferent to the written thoughts of one who, in his embodiment of it, has attained a distinction so honorable to the art of his coun- try. From some MS. Shakesperian Notes kindly lent to me, between six and seven years ago, when I, as little as he, had any thought that I should make such a use of them, I copied this brief but suggestive record of Mr. Hackett's view of the character.
^^ Shakespeare has invested that philosophic compound of vice and sensuality with no amiable or tolerable quality to gloss or cover his moral deformity, except a surpassingly brilliant and charming wit, and a spontaneous and irresist- ible flow of humor. But Falstaff is premeditative in some of his wit — as for instance when he endeavors to escape de- tection in the lies he has told the Prince and Poins about their attack after the robbery — seriously irascible, touchy, fretful, sometimes grave ; on some occasions his mirth breaks otUy and is marked with strong contrast to his usual deport- ment. He is of cjoiical temperament, feels the infirmity of age weighing upon him, has a mental as well as bodily obesity."
On one point I differ with Mr. Hackett ; although it is one which has been frequently mooted with regard to his
320 Notes and Comments.
Falstaffy and which he must consequently have conflidered carefully, and on which he yet retains his first conception. Falstqffj according to my reading of the part, should be a gentleman ; Mr. Hackett does not think so, and relies on the &t knight's meanness, falsehood, knavery, grossness, and cowardice, to sustain his rendering. Granted, all this. Fed-- Biaff does do, is continually doing, many things of which no gentleman should be giulty. Still he was by birth and breeding a gentleman, and we cannot imagine him at any time to have altogether lost the consciousness or laid aside the outward manifestations that he was such. I refer, not to gentlemanly impulses, for he had none of these, but to that consciousness which arises from position, and from inter- course with those who have it, and which always has its effect upon the individual who possesses it, as well as upon those with whom he is brought in contact. There are men now among us, even in these days, who have all of Folate^' s vices, without his wit ; and who, though therefore excluded from society, are yet, on account of their position and breeding, recognized as gentlemen by their associates, and with whom one could not be in company five minutes without discover- ing their right to be so recognized. Mr. Hackett must himself have met such men; and I wonder that he has not seen that Falstaff was one of their kidney.
Falstaff shows his own consciousness of his position in the few lines which arc quoted at the head of this section ; for, in the spirit of the 15th century and of Shakespeare's day, he thinks it presumption in a tradesman " to bear a ):^entleman in hand, and then stand upon security." His pretensions are not based ui)on the merely adventitious honor of knighthood, but evidently upon birth, position, and breeding. Therefore, though sensual to grossness, and selfish to meanness, he should not only be courteous to the Prince in spite of the Prince's familiarity with him, and show
King Hbnry IV. Part IL 321
something of the condescension which is implied in a£fa- bility, when he himself is familiar with his inferiors, but should exhibit a certain courtliness of manner, which, in spite of all his vile qualities, would leave that impress of gentiUty upon those around him, which he evidently does make, and which is shown in his influence over his hum- bler companions, especially the females among them.
" Fal. — A man can no more separate age and coyetooBnesa, than he can part young limbs and leehery : but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the other ; and so both the degrees preyent my curses. — ^*
"Degrees," in FdUtaff's speech is quite surely a mis- print for diseases, which is substituted for it in Mr. Collier's folio.
Act II. Scene 1.
The Hostess, in the original, says, " A 100 marke is a long one for a poore lone woman to beare." She doubtless should say, " a long score" as Mr. Collier's MS. corrector conjectures. In the first part of her complaint she says,
" I warrant he is an infinite thing upon my score.'*
Act III. Scene 3.
" Fal, — and now is this Vice's dagger become a squire.**
Long and tedious are the disputes about the etymology of this word " Vice." But there can hardly by a question that it is simply 'vice,' i. e. vUium, in the ordinary sense of
21
322 Notes and Gokmentb.
the term, applied to a malevolent, or at least a mischievoiu character on the old stage. The character bore a dagger, as Harlequin bears and has ever borne a sword of lath.
Act IV. Scene 1.
" Wett If that rebellion
Game like itself^ in base and abject routs, Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rage, And countenanc'd by boys and beggary."
^^ Bage " has here no meaning, and is shown by the context to be a misprint for rags, to which it is changed in Mr. Collier's folio.
" West. You, lord archbishop, —
Whose see is by a civil peace maintain'd : Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touched; Whoso learning and good letters peace hath tutored ; Whose white investments figure innocence, The dove and very blessed spirit of peace, — Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself, Out of the speech of peace, that bears such grace. Into the harsh and boist'rous tongue of war f Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood. Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine To a loud trumpet, and a point of war! "
This is the reading of all the recent editions. But can any one read the whole speech, remember that the Arch- bishop had personally taken up arms, and doubt for a mo- ment that " graves " is a misprint for greaves^ as Steevens pointed out, and that we should read,
"Turning your books to greaveM, your ink to blood? "
King Henry IV. Pabt II. 323
The change in Mr. Collier's folio of " a point of war " to " report of war " is insuflferable. " A point of war " is as intelligible as a point of etiquette or a point of law. Sir Walter Scott makes a trumpeter, in Old Mortality^ I believe, blow " a point of war."
" Archh. He cannot 9o precisely weed this land As his misdoubts present occasion. His foes are «o enrooted with his friends. That plucking to unfix an enemy, He doth unfasten 90 and shake a friend, 80 that this land, like an offensive wife," (&c.
It is with great reluctance that I even suggest any change in the text of the original folio, when it is at all comprehensible ; but I believe that " He doth unfasten «o," is a misprint for " He doth unfasten too!' The phrase, as it stands, may be construed so as to make the two lines mean, " That plucking to unfix an enemy, he doth thus unfasten and shake a friend." But this is not consistent with the intent of the passage, in which the Archbishop says, that Henry's foes are " enrooted mith his friends ; " so, that, — ^Hke the sower in the parable of the tares and the wheat, to which the allusion is plain, — he cannot pluck up one without rooting out the other at the same time. The tares and the wheat in the one case, the enemy and the friend in the other, would be displaced together. I believe that Shakespeare wrote, — that he could not have avoided writing :
" His foes are so enrooted with his friends, That plucking to unfix an enemy. He doth unfasten too^ and shake a friend."
I do not believe that Shakespeare would have strung
324 Notes and Comments.
these 808 thus needlessly after each other ; and I know from some years experience of the chances of the composing-room, that where there are three 908 in six lines, the first two being in the middle of the lines, that too^ coming directly under these first, would yery probably be set up sOy and so make the fourth.
KING HENRY V.
Act I. Scene 1.
** West. Thej know your grace hath cause and means and might: So hath yoar highness ; never king of England Had nobler riches."
There are disputes about this passage, and corrections proposed ; and Coleridge's way of making the passage clear by emphasis, " So hath your highness," is announced as a discovery ! — How is it possible that any other reading could have been thought of ! It is that which was always fix)m my boyhood spontaneous with me in reading the phrase itself; but in connection with the last part of the passage — " never king of England," &c., — it seems impossi- ble to think of any other. [On examination of the Vario^ rum Edition, I find that Coleridge was not the first to re- cord this very obvious interpretation, though he ventures it as a suggestion, saying, ^^Perlmpa these lines ought to be recited dramatically thus," and though Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight in their recent editions attribute the discovery to him. But Malone had written thus before Coleridge was well out of the nursery :
" So }uUh your highness ; " i. c. your highness hath indeed what they think and know you have.
Varwrum Edition, vol. xvii. p. 274.
326 Notes and Comments.
" Exeter, For government, though high, and low. And low«r, Pnt into parts, doth keep in one content Congruing in a full and natural close, Like music"
In BlacktooocPa Magazine (Sept. 1853) it is speciouslj proposed to read through for " though." " Surely," says the writer, " ^ though ' ought to be through. ' For govern- ment, put into parts, like a piece of music, doth keep in one consent or harmony, through high, and low, and lower,' &c." Surely not. Such a change would take away the very point of the speech. The Bishop says that govern- ment doth keep in one consent, is harmonious, tliough con- structed of various parts, high, low, and lower ; just as a piece of music, though written in many parts, is harmoni- ous, because all those parts move together and have proper relations to each other. He refers to the differing functions of the "armed hand" and the "advised head," which are to be discharged in concert.
" While that the armed hand doth fight abroad. The advised head defends itself at home ; For government, though high, and low, and lower. Put into parts, doth keep in one consent: Congruing in a full and natural close. Like music."
The insertion of one letter would spoil all this
Act II. Scene 1.
" Fist. O braggard vile, and damned furious wight 1 The grave doth gape, and doting death is near ; Therefore exhale ! "
Malone says, "^Exliale,' I believe, here signifies to
King Henry V. 327
dro^y or in PistoVs language, hale or Irig out; " and Stee- vens responds " ^ Therefore exhale ' means only ^ therefore breathe your last or die ;' " and no one says them nay. 'Ex- hale' means 'begone/ 'clear out/ 'vanish.' Pistol at- tempts to bully Nynij and tells him that " the grave doth gape'' for him, and therefore he must 'make himself scarce/ ' exhale/ or, as a Yankee Pistol would have it, ' evaporate.'
Scene 2.
" jr. Hm, Thou that didst bear the key of all my couiiBels, That knew'st the very bottom of my soul. That almost might'st have coined me into gold, Wouldst thou have practised on me for thy use ? "
I think that the interrogation point at the end of this passage is wrongly placed there. There should be a period. The King would hardly call Scroop's killing him, ' prac- tising on him /or his use.' Henry is enumerating all the close relations which had existed between him and his treacherous friend, and tells him that he bore the key of his counsels, knew the bottom of his soul, and might have coined him into gold, if he would have practised on him for his use, — that is, used his influence unduly for his own advantage ; and the King then goes on to ask, this being the case,
"Might it be possible that foreign hire Could out of thee extract one spark of evil That might annoy my finger f "
Scene 3.
' Q:mek, Nay, sure, he's not in hell ; he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever
328 Notes and Comments.
man went to Arthur's bosom. 'A made a finer end, and went away, an it had been any christom child ; *a parted even jost between twelve and one, e'en at turning o' the tide ; for after I saw him fumble with the aheeti; and play with flowers, aad smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way ; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green fields.
Mr. Collier's folio for " 'a babbled of green fields/' gives on a table of green frkze. This is the unkindest cut of all. Unkind ? it is cruel. If Mr. Collier even made the an- nouncement of the change without a pang, his heart must be harder than the nether millstone.
In the original the passage is misprinted " a tcibU of green fields." This, by a most felicitous conjecture of Theobald's, was changed to " 'a babbled of green fields," which reading is not only excellent in itself, but oonfoims to the style of the context immediately following : —
" JVym. They say, he cried out of sack. Quick. Ay, that *a did. Bard. And of women. Quick. Nay, that *a did not.
Boy. Yes, that 'a did ; and said, they were devils incarnate. Quick. *A could never abide carnation : 'twas a color he never liked. Boy. 'A said once, the devil would have him abont women. Quick. 'A did in some sort^ indeed, handle women : but then he was rhcumatick ; and talked of the whore of Babylon.
But the emendation in Mr. Collier's folio, atrocious as it is, has found indorsers, one of whom thus speaks, though reluctant and ashamed, in Blackwood's Magazine (Sept 1853) :
"Our reasons are— ^/^rs^, the calenture, which causes people to rave about green fields, is a distemper peculiar to sailors in hot climates ; secondly^ FalstafiPs mind seems to have been run- ning more on sack than on green fields, as Dame Quickly admits
King Henry V. 329
Aniher on in the dialogue ; thirdly, however pleasing the suppo- sition about his babbling of green fields may be, it is still more natural that Dame Quickly, whose attention was fixed on the sharpness of his nose set off against a countenance already dark- ening with the discoloration of death, should have likened it to the sharpness of a pen relieved against a table, or background, of green frieze."
The first reason refers to Theobald's justification of his emendation, on the ground that when people are delirious with a calenture — an intense fever, " their heads run on green fields/' But what need of all this talk about calen- ture, sack, and discolored faces ? Falstaff had been a boy, like f ny other man, — a merry boy surely, and an innocent one perhaps ; and now, as the end of his ill-spent life rapidly approaches, amid his confused ravings about the dreadful future and the ill-spent past, come up visions of the green and sunlit meadows over which he chased his childhood's happy hours. There is not in so few words a passage of such tearful pathos in the language, as this, which shows a refiected gleam of pure and childish joy, piercing the gloom of the mortal hour of such a man as Falstaff.
Act IV. Scene 1.
"Pm/. The^o for thee."
This can hardly be ordinary use of the word fig, as in ' I don't care a fig I ' — Douce to the contrary notwithstand- ing. Pistol would then have said " a fico for thee." He evidently means " the fig of Spain," of which he speaks before — Act III., Scene 6.
330 NOTBS AND ComUBNTB.
Scene 3.
** K, HetL Mark, then, abounding yalonr in our Eogliflh ; That, being dead, like to the bullet's graiing, Break out into a second course of mischief Killing in relapse of mortality.**
Mr. Collier's folio reads " rebounding valour," and Mr. Collier defends it, failing, it would seem, to see the pun which Shakespeare puts into Heninfa mouth, and which the emendation destroys. Strangely enough this word is a stumbling block to the Variorum men, who read a bound- ing and ahundant.
Scene 4.
" Fr. SoL £tt U impottibie tT aehapper la force de Um hra» f PizL Brass, cur?*'
Two pages of blunders inconceivable are perpetrated upon Pistol* 8 reply by the commentators in the Varion^v^ Edition. Sir William Rawlinson leads off after this fash- ion : —
" * Brass, cur ! ' — Either Shakespeare had very httle bow ledge in the French language, or his over-fondness for punning led him, in this place, contrary to his own judgment, into ^ error. Almost* every one knows that the French word bras is pronounced brau ; and what resemblance of sound does this b€*r to brasSy that Pistol should reply, * Brass, cur ? ' The jol^« would appear to a reader, but could scarce be discovered in *^* performance of the play."
Samuel Johnson, LL. D., follows thus :
King Henry V. 331
"If the pronunciation of tbo French language be not changed since Shakespeare's time, which is not unlikely, it may be sus- pected that some other man wrote the French scenes.
Samuel Fanner, D.D., who decided on the no-learning of Shakespeare, sustains his brother Doctor, the lexi- cographer and great moralist. Malone says that "the word bras was, without doubt, pronoimced, in the last age, and by the English who understood French, as at present, braw;" and as to that language, he thinks Shakespeare's "knowledge of it was very slight.'' Douce has sense enough to see the triviality of the controversy, but passes the same judgment. And all this, because these very learned men did not know the first elements of French pronunciation, and Shakespeare did. The " English who understood French " in Malone's day, may have pronounced bras Uke brato; and from the remarks which Frenchmen make upon the pronunciation of their language by the English, this was very probably the case ; but Frenchmen, and all Americans who have any pretence to French schol- arship, pronounce bras as brah, which is surely similar enough in sound to " brass " for a stage pun upon the words.
KING HENRY VI. Part L
Act III. SoBNE 2.
"Bur, Warlike and martial Talbot^ Burgundy Enshrines thee in his heart"
For the tautological "Warlike and Martiall TaBiX " of the original, Mr. Collier's folio plausibly suggests, "War- like and matchless Talbot.''
Act IV. ScBNB 5.
" Young TaL Yon fled for vantage, every one will swear ; But if I bow, they'll say it was for fear."
For " bow " Mr. Singer proposes /ew?, instigated there- to by a MS. correction on the margin of a copy of the sec- ond folio in his possession. But did Mr. Singer ever see ^flew' used as the prsBterite of 'fly,' meaning 'to run away ?' If I do not err, ' flew ' is exclusively confined to the action of wings, except when it is used figuratively, to pic- ture rapidity and eagerness of motion, as, ' he flew to her relief,' ' the soldiers flew to arms.' But when we wish to say, in English, that a man ran away, we say that he ' fled.'
King Henry VI. Part I. 333
As for instance, " Sisera lighted down off his chariot, and fled away on his feet ; " * it would hardly do to say that Sisera ^^flew away on his feet." There is not an instance in all the Bible or in Shakespeare of such a use of the word, often as there is occasion for it, if it were English ; and indeed both Bible and Shakespeare do not together furnish a dozen instances of the use of the word in any sense.
Act V. Scene 4.
" York, Speak, Winchester; for boiling choler chokes The hollow passage of my poison*d voice."
Can there be any doubt that "poison'd," is a misprint for prison' dy as Pope suggested ? I think that it should have been received into the text ; and cannot imagine a reason for its rejection.
* Judges, iv. 15.
KING HENRY VI. Part IL
Act I. Scene 1.
" Gloa, And hath his highness in his infancy Crowned in Paris in despite of foes f **
Steeyens obviated the difficulty in these lines^ by readings
"And hath his highness in his infancy Been erowCd in Paris," Ac,
which is the generally received text. Mr. Collier laudably endeavors to avoid so great a change as the insertion of a word and the elision of a syllable, by reading,
" And VHU his highness in his infancy Crowned," Ac.
But this change, though better, is almost equally great. It seems plain to me that for ' hath ' we should read had. King Henrys when he ascended the throne, was not only a minor, but a child of tender years, under the guardianship of Oloster and Beaufort, who, from motives of policy, had him crowned in France as king of France. OlosteVy enu- merating all that he and his uncle have done to preserve the kingdom of France to the English crown, asks,
King Henry VI. Part II. 335
''Or hath [have] miDe uncle Beaufort and mjself With all the learned council of the realm Studied so long, 8€U in the council house Early and late, debating to and fro How France and Frenchmen might be kept in awe, Ajid had his highness^ in his infancy. Crowned in Paris, in despite of foes ? And shall these labours and these honours die ? " Ac
That is, ' have we Btudied, and sat in council, and had his highness crowned in Paris, only to lose our labor ? '
Scene 3.
Enter Peter, and others, with Petitions,
1 Pet, My masters, let's stand close ; my lord protector will come this way by and by, and then we may deliver our supplications in the quill.
Thus this passage stands in all editions ; but ^^ in the quill " is obscure. Mr. Singer and Mr. Dyce suggest " in the quoil/' t. c, ' in the coil, or confusion,' which is quite possibly the needful word. " In the sequel," proposed in Mr. Collier's folio, only shows the poverty of the resources, external and internal, of the proposer.
Act IV. Scene 1.
" Cap, Cat both the villains' throats ; — for die you shall The lives of those which we have lost in fight Be ooanterpoised with such a petty sum."
This passage, evidently corrupt, was amended by read- ing the last line,
" Cannot be counterpoised with such a petty sum; "
3S6 Notes and Gomm^.
but Mr. Collier's folio, in reading,
" Can lives of those which we hare lost in fight Be counterpoised with snch a petty sum f **
does less violence to the text, and avoids the addition of a redundant foot to the line.
SCENB 8.
" Cliff. What say ye countrymen, will ye relent And yield to mercy, whilst *tis offered you, Or let a rabble lead you to your deaths f "
For "rabble" Mr. Collier's folio substitutes reftrf, meaning Cade, The change is plausible, and is defended by Mr. Collier on the ground that " the speaker was ad- dressing the rabble, and would hardly ask whether they would allow themselves to lead themselves to their own deaths." But how many of the crowd would suppose that they were meant by the " rabble ? " Perhaps Shakespeare meant that Clifford should display a more thorough know- ledge of human nature than his MS. corrector and his ad- vocate have shown.
p. 336.
CORRECTION.
" In the quill " (Act I. Sc. 3) was never obscure to me, until I read the commentators on Shakespeare. They made the confusion for me, as they have for many others. I always understood the phrase as meaning, * in writing ; ' and such, I am convinced, is its plain signification. The original text should not be disturbed.
KING HENRY VI. Part III.
Act II. Scene 5.
"Father. And so obseqaious will thy Father be» Men for the loflse of thee, hauing no more, As Priam -was for all his Valiant Sonnes."
The obvious error in the second line was of course seen long ago ; and all our editions have, on the suggestion of Rowe,
**8ad for the loss of thee, having no more,** Ao.
This emendation seems to have been made on the principle that the word substituted should be as unlike that in the original as the sense will allow. Mr. Dyce makes the ob- viously well-founded suggestion that " men " was a mis- print for e'en. Read
"E'en for the loss of thee," Ac.
Act hi. Scene 1.
" K. Hen, Let me embrace the sower Aduersaries ; For Wise men say, it is the wisest coarse." 22
338 Notes and Comment&
This passage, which stands thus corruptly in the folio, and does not occur in the quarto copies of The Contention of the Two famous Howes of Lancaster and Torke, is usually printed,
** Let me embrace theie sour adoenitiu,** Ae.
Mr. Dyce, however, proposes,
"Let me embrace thee eonr adTerutie," Ae^
which obtains a finer reading at the expense of less varia- tion fix)m the original text.
Act rv. Scene 8.
" K. Hen. VLj mildness hath allayed their swelling griefi^ My mercy dried their wate^flowiDg tears."
"Water-flowing" tears seems somewhat tautological, and to be so natural a misprint for the appropriate phrase, " ftt^er-flowing tears," suggested by Mr. Collier's folio, that I was at first inclined to accept the amendment. But I was soon ashamed of my vacillation ; for reflection is hardly necessary to make it evident that " water-flow- ing tears " are tears that flow like water.
KING RICHARD III.
Act I. Scene 1.
" Glot. Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York,'' <tc
What reader of Shakespeare, on being present for the first time at the performance ot Bichard IIL, is not shocked and bewildered by the long first Scene of that droll piece of mosaic work which the managers facetiously annoimce as William Shakespeare's Tragedy. I shall never forget my youthfiil surprise, which gave place to wrath, merging gradually to sullenness, and finally veering round to laugh- ter. I did not know that the Richard III, of the stage was a hodge-podge manufactured by Cibber, partly from Shakespeare's Bichard III,, partly from Henry V,, partly from Henry VL, and partly from emanations of the Cib- berian mind. A perusal of Hazlitt's criticism afterwards enlightened me as to the structure of the acting play, — ^if that can be called structure which has neither plan nor coherence — ^before Shakespeare's works had become to me an object of critical study.
The editor of the Modern Standard Drama, remarks, in demurring to Hazlitt's strictures : ' " We suspect that old Cibber was, after aU, a better judge than his more philo- sophical critic, of the ingredients that go to make up a
340 Notes and Comments.
good acting play/' But the question put at issue is^ not whether Cibbcr knew better than Hazlitt how to make a good acting play, but whether Cibber knew better than Shakespeare how to bring on and develope Shakespeare's characters. With all deference to Garrick and the " pop- ular audiences " whom the alterations were made to please, to Cibber who made them, and to Mr. Sargent who endorses them, I think that Shakespeare knew best. Stage effect is another matter ; sotnething which did not exist in Shakespeare's time any more than instrumentation in Han- del's ; and Garrick or Mr. Eemble might properly change it in any manner according with good taste, as Mozart put the wind score to the Messiah. But the latter would have had as much right to cut out half a dozen bars fix)m each piece in the Messiah, and to supply their places with some- thing from Judas Maccabeus, or Ads & i^Kuea, or with music of his own, as Cibber to make up Richard HI. d Henry VI., Henry V,, and his own " worse than needless additions," as Hazlitt calls them.
The prosing Henry delays the action of the play, and is a most useless excrescence upon it, — ^a huge and cum- brous dramatic wart upon the fair proportions of the piece. Shakespeare was adequate to the task he undertook ; and did just what he meant to do when he introduced Gloster's soliloquy so abniptly. The excuse for having a Scene be- fore it, that " it would be spoiled in the representation, in the noise and confusion which must usually attend the first rising of the curtain," is most lame. Such commotion in- stantly subsides at the sound of the actor s voice ; and what greater commotion could there be than the applause which greets the actor who plays Rwhard, as he steps upon the stage. The worA interpolation of Cibber is the speech put in the mouth of Richard after he falls : " Perdition seize thine arm," &c. It is the worst, because it is entire-
King Richard III. 341
ly inconsbtent with Oloster'a character. He is an unmiti- gated villain, having nothing noble about him, and nothing admirable but his knowledge of human nature and his in- flexible will. His ambition is not the fruit of a soaring spirit, but of the hate he bears mankind ; for, be it observed, Richard loves no man. He seeks the crown not because it will make him great, but because it will make others groveL He is completely selfish, looking upon those around him merely as tools which he can or cannot use, and utterly remorseless, caring not if he destroy them in using them. He is not a sturdy, open usurper, with whom we might have some sympathy while condemning him ; but a mean, 8neaking*iwr«ocrite, an intriguer, a stabber, and a poisoner, who indeed has courage enough to fight when necessary, and skill and prudence enough to fight well ; but though born in chivalric days, he fights with no chival- ric feeling. He has no honesty himself, and recognizes none in others. To reach his throne, he commits six mur- ders with as little compunction as he would tread on as many spiders ; and when there, is too mean to pay to him who helped him there, the petty price of his treachery. Such is the man whom Gibber, not Shakespeare, would cause to say, when dying, to his victor :
" But oh ! the vast renown thou host acquired In conquering Richard, does afflict him more Than even his body's parting with his souL"
Shakespeare's Richard would have yielded renown an hundredfold greater than his own, yes, and have done any mean thing, with knowledge that it would be published to the world, if by doing so he could have retained his crown and his life.
Many passages necessary to.the perfect understanding of the character, — such as Oloster's defence of himself to the
342 Notes and Comments.
Queen and her friends, his speech to the lords which results in the death of HoMingSy his conversation with the Lien- tenant of the Tower when asking admission to Clarenct^ and others, together with some of the finest poetical pas- sages of the play,--6nch B.sClarence'8 dream, the description of the murder of the Princes, and the Queen's address to the Tower, — are cut out, as not being fitted for "an acting play," forsooth. Cannot this be remedied ? I do not agree with Hazlitt in his opinion that these passages may judiciously be omitted. The only reason which he assigns, that he should ^^ be loth to trust them in the mouth of almost any actor," would be equally well urged against the finest passage in this or any other play. It may be a good reason for excluding Shakespeare's works entirely from the stage ; but it cannot justify their mutilation.
Act I. Scene 3.
" Q. Mary. Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rootiiig hog. Thou that wast seaVd in thy nativity The slave of nature and the son of HelL"
Could epithets be better applied than those in the last of these three lines ? And yet all manner of -contrivance is used to avoid calling Gloster " the slave of nature : "- — as for instance, " the shame of nature," " the acorn of na- ture," and " the stain of nature." But " the slave of na- ture " here does not mean, as the correctors evidently sup- pose it does, — one who 8cr\'e8 nature, one who is a bond- man to nature; but one who is the lowest, the most servile, in the whole realm of nature. When one Irishman calk another ' the thief o' the wor-r-ld' he does not mean to accuse the other of purloining this planet, but of being eminently
KiKG BlOHABD ILL 343
tke thief of the world. So Queen Margaret calls Oloster eminently the slave of nature.
In a subsequent speech of the Queen's in this Scene, the change in Mr. Collier's folio of "bottled spider" to " bottle spider," seems a judicious correction of a probable typographical error.
Act III. ScBNE 3.
"Bat. Make haste, the hoar of death ia expiate."
Stecvens proposed expirate for " expiate ; " and it seems to me imperatively necessary to receive it into the text. There is no meaning to be extracted from the line in its present condition. Shakespeare is made to use ^ expiate ' in one other instance, which is quoted by Malone in defence of the continuance of the word in this passage.
"Then look I death my days should expiate."
SonmtXXIL
But I believe that the same typographical error took place in the last, as in the first, on account of Shake- speare's use of this peculiar and quaint termination, of which he was fond : — ^he uses ^ festinate,' ^ combinate,* and ' conspirate.' It is remarkable that " expiate " has no pos- sible meaning in either of these passages : and that eocpi- rate fully completes the sense of both.
Act IV. Scene 4.
**K.RieK Well! as you guess! "
If there be two words for the use of which, more than
344 Notes and Oommxstb.
any others, our EngliRh coucdns twit us, they are 'well,' as an interrogative ezdamationi and 'goesa.' MUton UBee both, as Shakespeare also frequently does, and exactly in the way in which they are nsed in America ; and here we have them both in half a line. Like most of those words and phrases which it pleases John Boll to call American- isms, they are English of the purest and best, which have lived here while they have died out in the mother country.
KING HENRY VIIL
Act I. Scene 1.
" Buck, I am the shadow of poor Backingbam ; Whose figure even this instant cloud puts on By darkening mj clear sun."
This passage appears thus in all editions, although it is FBlpably nonsense, and that it is so has been confessed by aD, and although the obvious typographical error has been pomted out by Johnson, Blackstone, and Monck Mason. 8ead,
"I am the shadow of poor Buckingham, Whose figure even this instant cloud puts oui; Bj darkening my clear sun."
^i^ is, ^even the form of whose shadow is obliterated by a ^*>d posBing over the sun of my prosperity/
Act II. Scene 3.
'*Anne, much better
She had ne*er known pomp, though it he temporal ; Tei if that quarrel fortune^ do diyoroe It from the bearer/' dc
346 Notes and Comickkts.
The change of " quarrer' to crud in Mr. OoUier^s foKo seems plainly to be required^ and to be for the better.
Act III. ScENB 2.
"Surrey. Now all my joy
Grace the conjunction.*'
Mr. Collier's folio reads, with reason, in my judgment,
" Now may all joy Grace the conjunction t "
My correspondent in Maine clings to the old reading, for these reasons :
" It is to be noticed that the exolamation of Surrey was called forth, not so especially by the marriage itself as by the circum- stances attending it. He saw, in that marriage, which was opposed by Cardinal Wolsey^ a moans by which the Cardinal would lose his ' witchcraft over the King^^ and by which, in consequence of the King^s withdrawal from under that witch- craft, he himself might be revenged upon the Cardinal; henoQ his joyful expression, — * Now all my joy grace the conjunction,' — which was the expression written by Shakespeare, I have no doubt.'
This is ingenious, and has some plausibility ; but is rather too subtle and recondite a meaning for the passage, which is plainly, I think, but a mere expression of good wishea Mr. Singer and Blackwood's Magazine both approve of thi emendation in the famous folio.
King Hknby VIH. 347
aot iv. soknk 2.
"Pat. How pale she looks,
And of an earthly cold I Mark her eyes I "
The second line has hitherto been amended to read thns :
" And of an earthly cold ! Mark you her eyes 1 **
But Mr. Collier's folio^ in reading,
"And of an earthly eoldneu: Mark her eyes! "
deviates less both from the letter and the meaning of the original.
Act. V. SoENB 2.
" Chan, But we all are men,
In oar natures frail ; and capable Of our flesh ; few are angeK"
Many and diverse have been the projects for the correc- tion of this passage. But what objection is there to read- ing thns ?
" But we all are men ; In our natures frail and culpable. Of our flesh, few are angels."
That is, 'according to the flesh, few of US are angels:' 'frail and culpable, in our natures' needs no explanation.
348 Notes and Comments.
**K, Hen, But know, I come not
To hear sach flattery now, and in my presence ; They are too thin and base to hide offences.**
Baseness has no share with thinness in hiding offences. Mr. Dyce is plainly right in suggesting^
"They are too thin and bare to hide offenoea."
" K. Hen. [to Cranmer,'] Good man ait down. Now let me ■•• the proudeet^ He that dares most^ bat wag his finger at thee : By all that*8 holy, he had better starve^ Than once but think his place becomes thee not**
Why " his place ? " The King puts Cranmer in the highest seat at the council table^ which was Cranmev's own, and from which the others hoped to oust him. The error has been pointed out by Bowe and Mr. Dyce. Bead,
" he had better starve Than once but think thii place beoomeathee not"
Scene 3. The Porter's man says, in the original,
" Let me ne*er hope to see a Chine againe, And that I would not for a cow, God save her ! **
For this Mr. Collier's MS. corrector proposes the foUow- ing very ingenious and altogether unexceptionable correc- tion, which must, without a doubt, be received into the text :
" Let me ne*er hope to see a queen again, And that I would not for a croiffn, God sare her ! **
TROILUS AND CRESSIDa.
Act I. Scene 1.
"2Vo. O that her hand,
In whose compariaon all whites are ink, Writing their own reproach ; to whose sofk seizure The cjgnet^s down is harsh, and spirit of sense Hard as the palm of ploughman."
All the commentators have diflGlcultym explaimng the last member of this sentence ; and I do not wonder at it. John- son's rendering of " spirit of sense " into ^ exquisite sensi- bility of touch/ does not help the matter much. What do we gain by reading, " to whose soft seizure the cygnet's down is harsh, and exquisite sensibility of touch hard as the palm of ploughman ? " We understand ^ exquisite sensi- bility of touch'; but the sentence as a whole is at least as obscure as it was before. There has evidently been a com- positor's transposition ; and we should read,
"to whose soft seizure And spirit of sense the cygnet's down iA harsh, Hard as the palm of ploughman^"
This arrangement, with the explanation afforded by another passage in Act III. Scene 3, of this very play, makes the meaning of the present passage clear.
NOT£fl AND COMMSNTS.
'\>JL' -loch the eye itself '.w ...•-«v ^ ui-e spirit of seose) behold itself^**
Act. Ill Se, 8.
. . .» ..'ia;>, Troilus says of Oressida'e hand, that * to i.-,; .lud exquisite sensibility, the cygnet's down is ., ...u. iiuixl as the hand of a ploughman.'
Scene 2.
V'iiivVi'Uient is command: ungain*d beseech. "
i^^aiprchensible is the tampering of the editors with - . I V [»laiu, thought not very accurately constructed ^ I :iie original. Mr. Collier's MS. folio makes it,
.! rniivd mm still command; ungain'd, beseech." 1 1. '..V»llier himself would read,
A'-hitt'd iHi'H ?(« command; ungain'd, beseech,^
.: Mr. llaruoss and Mr. Singer are with him. iui ^uiisidor the context, and it is obvious that- not only luiiii^c lu'odod, but tluit these proposed changes make '. ..- .vt siiy what she did not mean to say :
liU'iv in Troilus a thousand fold I see, ' ii.i.i ill iho j;lass of Pandiir's praise may be; ^ .L I lu»lj off. AVomon are angels, wooing ; I h.u^fl Won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing: I luti -.lu' lK'lv)v'd knows nought, that knows not this, — ^11 u [ni/.v Iho thing ungain'd more than it is: lii.i! -.Ik* \\u.i nover yet,, that ever knew ' ..-^ ^' ^nt -so MWi'ft, as when desire did sue. Ill ivloio tliit inuxim out of love I teach, — V. .'it \iikiiiii lA I'oinmand; ungain'd, beseech."
Troilus and Cressida. 351
Who can read this and hesitate a moment as to the signi- fication, which Steevens thus correctly, but, mejudice^ most superfluously, explained ? — " Men after possession become our commanders ; before it, they are our suppliants."
Upon this line Mr. Singer remarks, " The line being in italics, with inverted commas in the old copies, is evi- dently a quotation." Not " evidently ; " and not at all. Mr. Dyce has conclusively shown, in his remarks upon a note of Mr. Knight's upon Polonius' advice to Laertes (Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 3), that maxims, apophthegms, &c., t. e, the gnomic portions of dramas and poems, used to be printed in inverted commas. Mr. Dyce quotes instances from several plays and poems contemporaneous with Shake- speare, and to these numberless others might be added. I will point out but one, which is in Shakespeare's own works ; and which is of such a nature, and occurs in such a situa- tion, that it incontestably is the production of Shakespeare, and was written for the passage in which it appears. In Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 4, within two lines of the conclusion of her soliloquy after her ineffectual attempt to turn Angelo from his puqjose against her brother's life and her honor, Isabella exclaims :
"Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die : More than our brother is our chastity ;"
the last line of which being a moral sentiment, the passage appears thus in the original :
Then Itabel liue chaste, and brother, die "More then our Brother, is our chastitie."
ItaUc letters and quotation marks were used convertibly and sometimes together for this purpose ; and the practice obtained even at a late day. To a misunderstanding of it,
352 Notes and Commekts.
is doubtless due the opinion that Sterne's beautiM thonghty " God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb/' is a quota- tion. That apophthegm is printed in the first and few sub- sequent editions of Sterne's Sentimental Journey ^ in italic letters ; .but only to mark it^ according to custom, as an apophthegm. Creaaida's " Achievement is conmiand/' &c., is printed in italic letters and quotation marks, because, as she herself says, it is a ^^ maxim."
Scene 3.
**Nei, Even BO
Doth yaloar*8 show, and yalour^s worth divide^ In storms of fortune : For in her raj and brightnesi^ The herd hath more annoyance by the brice, Than by the Tiger : but when the splitting wind Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks, And flies fled under shade. Why, then, the thing of courage^ As rous'd with rage, with rage doth sympathize^ And, with an accent tun*d in self-same key, Returns to chiding fortune.'*
The original gives the hemistich " Retires to chiding fortune/' — an obvious misprint. Pope suggested retumSj which is the generally received reading. Hanmer's propo- sal, replies, which is also that of Mr. Collier's folio, seems much more consonant with the spirit of the passage. But Mr. Dyce, in his recently published Few Notes cfcc, p. 107, asks : ''did not Shakespeare write ' Retorts to chiding for- tune ? ' " Unquestionably, in my judgment. The conjec- ture seems to me to be one of the best among the many good, which have received the sanction of the taste, learn- ing and discrimination of that gentleman. " Returns " is tame and meagre as applied to " to the thing of courage, roused with rage ; " especially after the vigorous preceding lines. About four years ago it occurred to me that retorts
Troilub and Crebsida. 353
was the only word in the language, which would at once worthily fill the place and correct with probability the ty- pographical error ; and it has been upon the margin of my Slwkespeare since that time. Having Mr. Dyce's support I do not hesitate to say that it should be received into the text.
I cannot allow another change proposed by Mr. Singer in this Scene to pass unchallenged, in spite of its specious- ness and seeming unimportance. Ulysses says,
" And therefore is the glorious planet Sol In noble eminence enthron'd and ppher*d Amidst the other, ** (&c.
Mr. Singer would read, " Amidst the tther/' and says, —
" ' Amidst the other,^ is surely not what the poet wrote. The classical reader will be reminded of a passage in the Somniom Scipionis : — * Medium fere regionem Sol obtinet, dux et princeps, et moderator luminum reliquiorum, mens mundi, et temperator,' &c. ; and of the lines of Lucretius on Epicurus, which have been applied to Shakespeare : —
* Qui gervm humannm super avit et omneift Rettinxitf Stellas exortun uti aetherius bfoL.* "
Texi of Sfiakespearc Vindicatedy p, 192.
But, in spite of Mr. Singer and his quotations, t>ie con-^ text shows that " amidst the other " is exactly w'nat the poet did write. Ulysses is enforcing his opinion XhssA Troy
"had been down And the greot Hector's sxrord hath lnck*d a master But for these instances.
The speciality of tide hath been neglected," <&c. 23
354 Notes and Comments.
He goes on to show the necessity of subordination :
" The heayens themselvoa, the planets, and thia centre^ Observe degree, priority-, and place Insistare, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order : And therefore is the glorious planet Sol In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd Amidst the other; **
— ^the other planets, of course ; for, he continues,
*' whose med'cinable eye Corrects the ill aspects of planed eyil And posts like the commandment of a Artn^r, Sans check, to good and bad.**
It is not Sol's place in the ether, but his supremacy '^ amidst the other" heavenly bodies, which Ulysses wishes to im- press upon his hearers. The tenor of his entire speech shows this, beyond a question. Mr. Singer's quotations, too, are singularly unfortunate ; for the first shows Sol as " dux et princepSj* and the second asserts that " genus hu- manum superavit," This may seem like wasting much labor on a trifle ; but I am anxious to show that nothing is to be gained by changing the original text when it is comprehensible.
The same remark will apply to Mr. Singer's proposal to read pace for " place " in the following lines from Nes- tor's approving comment on the third speech of Ulysses in this Scene :
" Ajax is grown self willed, and bears his head In such a rein, in full as proud a place As broad Achilles: "
— ^and again to his proposing.
Troilus and Crbssida. 356
'* SeveraU and generals are of grace extract,'^ '"SeveraU and generals of grace exacts'*
in that very speech. In both of these changes the only effect is to impoverish the expression, and make it tame and common. But, besides and beyond this, the text, as it stands in the original, affords a reasonable, consist- ent, and pertinent meaning ; and it therefore must not be disturbed even in favor of something better, granting that there is any one who can better it. Otherwise we may all of us go to work at improving Shakespeare's poetry wherever we think it well to do so : — and a very pretty piece of business we should make of it.
Act III. Scene 2.
" Tro, What will it be,
When that the watery palate tastes indeed Love's thrice reputed nectar? death I fear me; Swooning destruction ; or some joy too fine, Too subtle-potent, tun*d too sharp in sweetness, For the capacity of my ruder powers."
The reading of the quarto of 1609, which was trans- ferred to Mr. Collier's folio,
" Loye's thrice reputed nectar,*'
is doubtless the poet's word. "Thrice reputed nectar," has but a shadow of a very poor sense. It was the trebly
356 Notes and Comments.
purified, the very nectareous essence of love, which was to be " too fine, too subtle potent " for the senses of TroUus,
** Pan. Oo to, a bargain made : aeal it^ seal it : Fll be the witness. — Here I hold your hand ; here^ mj coasin'sii If eyer you proye false one to another, since I have taken such pains to bring yon together, let aU pitilnl goers-between be called to the world's end after my name, caU them all — Pandars ; let all constant men be Troiloses, all false women Cressidas, and all brokers-betwoen Pandars ! say, amen.**
K TroUus and Oressida proved false " one to another " we can see why " all false women " should be called Orea- sidas; but why should " all constant men '' be called Troi- lusea ? Pandarvs knew nothing of what was to be the issue of the love a£Gur ; he but supposed a case of mutual falsehood. Evidently, ^^ constant " should be inconstant.
Act III. Scene 3.
" Ach. For speculation turns not to itself Till it hath travail'd, and is married there Where it may see itself."
" Married " is palpably a misprint for mirrored : a dis- covery whicli we owe to Mr. Collier's folio. The author of the articles on that volume in Blackwood's Magazine^ thinks that ' mirror ' was not used as a verb in Shakespeare's time, and finds that ' to mirror ' docs not occur even in Johnson's Dictionary. But this is no ground for deciding that such a bold writer as Shakespeare did not use it ; while it is the best reason for believing that a compositor who had never seen the word ' mirrored ' should suppose it to be ^ married.'
Troilus and Cressida. 357
AOT IV. SCBNB 4.
" TVo. The Grecian youths are fall of qaalitie, Their loving well composed with gifts of nature Flowing and swelling ore with Arts and exercise."
Thus corruptly this passage stands in the original folio. It is usually printed thus :
"The Grecian youths are faU of quality. They're loving, well composed, with gifts of nature ^ototn^, And swelling o'er with arts and exercise."
But I suggest the following reading, as having the merits of a greater conformity to Shakespeare's style and a less deviation from the original text.
"The Grecian youths are full of quality. They're loving, well compos'd with gifts of nature, Flowing and swelling o'er with arts and exercise."! 1
CORIOLANUS.
Act I. ScBNK 1.
*'Men. IshaUteUyoa
A pretty tale ; it may be yon have heai^ it; But, Bince it seryes my purpose^ I will Tentore To scale it a little more."
Some of the editors interpret " scale/' ' to dispenw but granting the word that meaning, what sense does it ford in the place it holds ? Menenit^ tells the people tl it may be that they have heard his story ; bitty since serves his purpose, he will venture to use it, old as it Can there be the least doubt that Theobald was right changing one letter, and reading,
" I will ventore To eiale it a little more."
Scene 6.
" Com, The Roman gods,
Lead their sncoesses a9 we wish our own ; That both our powers, with smiling fronts encountering, May give you thankful sacrifice ! "
OORIOLANUS. 359
This invocative prayer to the gods is nonsense as it now stands ; but the very obvious correction proposed by War- burton and supported by Mr. Dyce, removes all difficulty. Bead,
" Te Roman gods, Lead their Bnccesses," &c.
Act II. Scene 1.
** Mefi. I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loyea a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tyber in*t ; said to be some- thing imperfect in favouring the first complaint**
Mr. Collier's folio suggests, with reason, that we should read " mithout a drop of allaying Tiber," and, " the thirst complaint." Common sense will not set the latter word aside because Mr. Singer has discovered that " * thirst ' was sometimes provincially pronounced and spelt ^r«^ and/t*r«^." Shakespeare does not make Menenitis talk like a West of England ploughboy. In the same Scene, the suggestion of empiric physic, for " empirickqutique " of the original, in the speech of Menenius, is one which will be gladly received from the folio. " Teach " of the old copy is also, without a doubt, misprinted for tcyach, in the following passage :
" 8ic, This, as you say, suggested At some time when his soaring insolence ShaU touch the people,*' Ac.
Scene 3.
In the generally received text, CoriclanuSj as he stands in the Forum to ask the voices of the citizens for the con- sulship, disgusted with the task, exclaims :
360 Notes and Cokhektb.
"Why in this wolfish togue should I stand heref " Ac
" Togue " is " tongue " in the original ; but that is evi- dently a misprint. "Wolfish " has given much trouble to the commentators. Mr. Collier's folio suggests wooUess as a substitute ; and the conjecture has some plausibility, because in the previous Scene Coriolanps is spoken of as refusing to put on " the napless vesture of humiUty." To this read- ing however, which is received on the ground that Corio- lanus was like a wolf m shea's clothing^ and not like a sheep in wolfs clothing, the Hon. G-eorge Lunt thus ob- jects :
" It is true, that the wolf covered himself with a sheep -akiii ; and if this covering had really converted him into a sheep, Mr. Collier might have the benefit of his interpretation. But although I shall not argue with Mr. Collier that sheep skin is not natanl- ly sheep^s clothing^ yet I do hold that, as when a man wean a borrowed garment, it is taken to be and is called his garment, so, though the sheep skin was naturally sheep's clothing, yet, by the appropriation, it was pro hoc vice^ more appropriatelv toolf^s doth- ingj and, therefore, a
*woolviBh toge,*
and, therefore, Shakespeare so wrote it."
But where is the propriety, especially the poetic pro — priety, of calling the sheep skin " wolfs clothing," merely — because the wolf wore it ? The moment it became wolf $■• clothing, that moment it ceased to be a disguise, and losfc- all significance ; and, besides, ^ wolfish ' means not ' belong^ — - ing to a wolf,' but ^ like a wolf.' But here is an objection*- by the same gentleman, not so easily answered.
<< When it is considered that the gowns of the Romans were*
CORIOLANUS. 361
in fact, fabricated of wool, — to say that a wollen gown is wool' less, becanse it is insidiously alleged to have been napless, or for any other reason why — involves a gratuitous absurdity, of which I, for one, do not believe Shakespeare to have been capable."
Unquestionably, Shakespeare would never have called a woollen toga " wooUess ; " and the new reading cannot be accepted.
But since neither "wolfish" nor wooUess give a consistent meaning, let us look at the original line, the con- text, and the other passages of the play, which have a bear- ing upon this one. The word in the corrupted text seems to have misled all the commentators upon the passage. They evidently regard Coriolanus when standing for the consulship, as feeling, what our border-men call, * wolfish about the head and shoulders.' But the text affords no support for this opinion. Coriolanus feels contempt for the people : he derides the custom, and thinks that it belittles him to conform to it. What Brutus says of him shows no ireM feeling on his part, but merely that he thought the ceremony very small business.
" I heard him swear. Were he to stand for consul, never would he Appear i' the market-place, or on him put The napless vesture of humility ; Nor, showing (as the manner is) his wounds To the people, beg their stinking breaths."
Act 11, 8c. 1.
Coriolanus himself says, on a previous occasion,
*' I'd rather have one scratch my head in the*sun, Wlien the alarum were struck, than idly sit To hear my nothings monster'd." ^
Act n. Be. 2.
It makes him shame-faced to go through this foolery.
362 Notes and Oomments.
When told that he must, according to precedent, speak to the people, he replies,
" I do beBeech you. Let me o'orleAp that costom ; for I cannot Put on the gown, stand naked, and entreat them, For my wounds' sake, to giye their suffrage: " &c
Ibid.
Again :
" Cor, It IS a part
That lahall blush in acting^ and might well
Be taken from the people.
Bra. Mark you thatf
Cor. To brag unto them, — ^Thus I did, and thus ; —
Show them the unaching scars which I should hide,
As if I had received them for the hire
Of their breath only."
Ibid.
There is nothing either of a wolf in sheep's clothing or a sheep in wolfs clothing in all this. He regards the custom as contemptible, — foolish. The same feeling appears when he stands in the Forum ; and there he says to a citizen, with a sneer, " I have here the customary gown." So again, when he has received the " most sweet voices " of the peo- ple and is told by the Tribunes and Menenius to go to the Senate-house to be invested, he asks :
" May I change these garments f Sic. You may, sir.
Cor. That Til strait do, and, knowing myself again^ repair to the Senate- house."
He looks upon the ceremony as a preposterous piece of fol- ly, and thinks that the vesture of humility makes a patri- cian appear ridiculous. "Wolfish" we have seen, too, is
COBIOLAKUS. 363
inadmissible on other grounds ; wooUess is equally so, be- cause the toga which Coriolanus wore was made of wool. Is it not plain then, that, merely continuing his ridicule, he said,
"Why in ihiafooluh togue should I stand here? "
Yes, unquestionably, for in this very speech, after only five lines which impeach the binding force of custom, he says,
" Rather than fool it so Let the high office and the honor go."
The word in the original is " wooluish ; " and that it is a typographical error {or foolish, is confirmed by the fact that, in not one of the fifty instances in which Shakespeare uses * wolf,' ^ wolvish,' or ' wolves,' does he spell those words, or are they spelled, with two o'«. * Wolfish ' and ' wool- less,' being both entirely inadmissible, can there be any question that we should read ? —
" Why in this foolish togue should I stand here To beg of Hob and Dick that do appear, Their needless vouches f ♦ * * • ♦ • Rather than fool it so Let the high office and the honor go."
Act III. SoBNE 1.
In the speech by CoriolanuSj beginning, "0 good, but most unwise Patricians," there are five attempts at emen- dation in Mr. Collier's folio. With one exception, all are unnecessary, and therefore inadmissible. That which may be accepted is, "revofe your dangerous lenity," for "awake
364 Notes akd Comments.
your dangerous lenity/' In the same Scene, ^^ How shall this bosom multiplied. digest/' &c., is changed to ^^How shall this bisson multitude" &c. ; an emendation justified by the context and the language of Shakespeare's day. '^Bisson " is ^ blind ; ' and the word has not entirely passed out of use in this country.
Act IV. Scene 3.
" Vol, You had more beard when I last saw you, but your fayor ia well appeared hj your tongue.**
Bead with Steevens,
" your favor is well approved by your tongue.**
Scene 5.
"Auf, and pouring war
Into the bowels of ungrateful Rome, Like a bold flood oe'r beat**
Correct a typographical error which Jackson pointed out, and read,
" and pouring war Into the bowels of ungrateful Rome, Like a bold flood, o*er bear't."
Scene 6.
" J5nfc Rais*d only that the weaker sort may wish Good Marcius home again.**
CORIOLANUS. 365
The Tribune Brutus would not speak of Coriolanua as " good Marcius ; " but he would very naturally call him, in derision, ^^god Marcius," which is the reading of Mr. Collier's foUo.
Act IY. Scene 7.
•* Auf. So our virtues
Lie in the interpretation of the time; And power, unto itself most commendable, Hath not a tomb so evident as a chair To extol what it hath done."
This, the generally received reading, and that of the folio, is utteriy incomprehensible ; but the errors which make it so are those of a compositor who sets his ^ matter ' by ear, as many of them do. ^ Chair ' and * cheer ' were formerly pronounced aUke ; and I have even heard some old people call a chair, a cheer. To this fact we owe the misprint of Macbeth' 8 speech in the third Scene of the fifth Act of the tragedy :
"This push WiU chair [cheere in the original] me ever, or disseat me now."
Mr. Collier's folio very properly changes "chair" to cheer, in the passage which we arc now considering. But Mr. Singer then asks the very pertinent and unanswerable question, " what meaning can be attached to ^ a tomb so evident as a c/icer'.^" and himself proposes ^a tomb so evident as a hair,' which he must pardon me for thinking deplorably tame and prosaic, even if it have any meaning at all. It is plain to me that Aufidiua, after saying that "our virtues lie in the interpretation oftlie time," (that is, in the time's appreciation of us, not in our appreciation
366 Notes and C!o)imentgl
of the time, as the writer in Blackwood^ Sept. 1853, seems to think,) adds, that the most elaborate eulogy upon a great man's tomb is a testimony to his power, not so eloquent as a cheer to him in his lifetime. Few who write for the press can be fortunate enough not to know many compos- itors who would find no difficulty in setting up 'evident' for ^ eloquent.' Long since, it seemed plain to me that we should read,
**&o our yirtuet Lio in th* interpretation of the time^ And power, unto itself most commendable Ilath not a tomb so eloquent as a cheer To extol what it hatb done.**
Act V. SoBNK 2.
" 1 Guard. Then you should hate Rome as he does. Can you, whea you have pushed out of your gates the very defender of them, and, in s violent popular ignorance, giyen your enemy your shield, think to front his revenges with the cosy groans of your old women, the virginal palms of your (laughters, or with the palsied intercession of such a decayed dotant as you seem to be ? "
Can any thing be more deplorable than Mr. Singer's pro- posal to read "virginal qualms" for "virginal palms" in- this passage ? But Warburton had been at the trouble tt7 suggest "Virginal pasmesi" Mr. Singer adds however that " Virginal palms " may mean the palms or hands o£^ the maidens joined in supplication." Indeed, Mr. Singer ^ may it ? Is it possible ? Can such an obvious and sim — pie const met ion of a plain but beautiful passage be dreamtf^ of in your philosophy ? I must ask pardon for noticing such attempts upon Shakespeare's text, and for noticing them as I do ; for, in truth, I should as soon expect an intcl — ligent reader, not to say a competent editor of Shakespeare ^
CORIOLANUS. 367
" to expostulate, "Why day is day, nighty night, and time is time,"
as thus to raise a question on what it would seem impossible to misunderstand.
Scene 4.
Auf. served his designmento
In mine own person ; holp to reap the fame Which he did end all his."
Mr. Collier's folio suggests ear (plough) for "end.'' This Mr. Singer finds to be "a good emendation of a prob- able misprint," but adds, with reason, that if " ear bo ac- cepted, *reap' and *ear' must change places thus,
* help to ear the fame Which he did reaip all his.' "
"or," as Mr. Singer well continues, ^^Aujidius is made to say that he had a share in the harvest, while Coriolanua had all the labor of ploughing," which is just what he does not mean to say. The Blackwood critic thinks with Mr. Singer. But there is not the least necessity for this vio- lence to the original text. Aujidiua helped to reap the fame which Coriolanus made, in the end, all his.
TITUS ANDRONICUS.
Act I. Scene 2.
**Mar, My lord, — to step out of these dreaiy dumps — How comes it>** &c.
The first folio has " sudden damps " which is evidea* an error for " stdlen dumps," as Mr. Dyce suggests.
Act II. Scene 3.
" Tani. and the hounds
Should drive upon thy new transformed limbs."
It is more than probable that " drive " is a mispi for c?iwe, as Mr. Collier's folio suggests:
"Lav. When did the tiger's young ones teach the dam I O, do not learn her wrath : she taught it thee : The milk, thou suck'dst from her, did turn to marble ; Even at thy teat thou hadst thy tyranny. — Yet every mother breeds not sons alike ; Do thou entreat her show a woman pity.
[To Chiron.
** Chi What I would st thou have me proye myvelf • btft^
TiTCS A^iDBONicrs.
369
Lavinia says notliing aboat CAi'n>i»'« father; but his reply would justify the belief that Tamora had playod false with a true Milesian. How was he to prove himselt " a bastard," by being unlike his mother / Can any one believe that Shakespeare could have been guilty of such a bull as this ? However, there are but few passages in thiB horrid play which were touched by his pen.
24
ROMEO AND JULIET.
Act I. Scene 1.
" Romeo. She hath JDiatCg wit^
And in strong proof of chastity well arm'd. From love*8 weak childish bow she lives unchann'd."
The last word is evidently comipted. Rowe changed it to unharmed, which is the received text, and which gives the sense of the passage ; but Mr. Collier's folio provides for lis anotlier word, "e/icharmed,'' which is much nearer the original text, and much better in every way. It will hereafter take a place in the text without a question.
Scene 5.
I have never seen a Juliet upon the stage who appeared to appreciate the archness of the dialogue with Romeo in this Scene. They go througli it solemnly, or, at best, with staid propriety. They reply literally to all Borneo's speeches about Sixiuts and palmers. But it should be noticed that though this is the first interview of the lovers, we do not liear them speak until the close of their dia- logue, in which they have arrived at a pretty thorough un- derstanding of their mutual feeling. Juliet makes a feint
Romeo and Juliet. 371
of parrying Romeo' % advances; but does it archly, and knows that he is to have the kiss lie sues for. He asks,
" Have not saints lips, and holy palmers, too ? "
The stage Juliet answers with literal solemnity. But it was not a conventicle at old Capvlet*8. Juliet was not holding forth. How demure is her real answer :
"Ay pilgrim, lips that they must use — in prayer."
And when Romeo fairly gets her into the corner, towards which she has been contriving to be driven, and he says,
** Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purg'd,"
and does put them to that purgation, how slyly the pretty puss gives him the opportunity to repeat the penance, by replying,
" Then have my lips the sin that they have took."
Act II. Scene 1.
" Merc. Young Abraham Cupid, he that shot so trim."
Upton gave us the Adam, which takes the place of "Abraham" in all the current editions, except Mr. Knight's. But, as Mr. Dyce says, there is not the slight- est authority for the change. The last named gentleman conjectures that " Abraham " in this line is a corruption of Auburn, as it unquestionably is in the following passages, which he quotes :
372 Notes and Comments.
** When is the eldest sonue of Biyam, That abrahaoi coloured Troian f dead "
Soliman ds PersedOf 1599, Sig. H8.
" A goodlie, long thicke, Abram coloured beard."
Middleton's Blurt, Matter Conttable, 1602, Sig. D.
and in Coriolanus, Act II. Scene 3,
" not that our heads are some browne, some blacke, som Abram,"
as we read in the first three folios.
The suggestion is more than plausible ; and we at least owe to Mr. Dyce the efficient protection which it must give to the original text. Cupid is always represented by the old painters as aubum-haired.
Scene 2.
" JRom. When he bestiides the lazie pu£Guig Cloudes And soiles vpon the bosorae of the ayre."
This is the text as it stands in the original. " Lazie puffing " is evidently a misprint. It was changed to " lazy pacing " by Pope, which has been the received reading since his time. But, however much we may have become at- tached to it, it must be abandoned for " lazy passing j' which is supplied by the margins of Mr. Collier's folio ; and which {parsing having been written with two long «'s), is evidently the word which the compositor mistook.
Act III. Scene 2.
" Jtd. Spread tliy close curtain, love-performing night, That runaway's eyes may wink, and Romeo Leap to these arms, untalked of and unseen."
Romeo and Juliet. 373
Of the incomprehensible " runaways " in the second line, many explanations and many emendations have been oflFered. Warburton thought that the runaway was the sun : Steevens thought that Juliet meant to call the night a ranaway : Douce insists that she applies that term to herself, as a runaway from her duty to her parents. But no explanation will obviate the difficulty. The word in the original is " runawayes*' and involves, unquestionably, an error of the press, and a gross one. The conjectural emenda- tions have been both diverse and numerous. Monck Mason proposed Renomy'Sy that is Itenom&s; Zachary Jackson, un- ataares, which was adopted by Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight, in spite of the feeble sense it gives. All the conjectures have been unsatisfactory, rather on account of the sense which they give, than the improbability of the mistake which they involve. The most plausible suggestion yet made, seems to me to be, " mde day's" by Mr. Dyce, in his Remarks on Mr. Collier's and Mr. C. Knighfs Editions (f Shakespeare. It is only plausible however, and evidently has not the conjecturcr's own approbation. ^
The error will probably remain for ever uncorrected, unless a word which I venture to suggest seems to others as unexceptionable as it does to me. Juliet desires that somebody's eyes may wink, so that Romeo may leap to her arms " untaiked of, " as well as " unseen." She wishes to
• In his last publication, A few Notes on Shakespeare^ he offers " rovinj eyes." But it is surely much better to read —
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing bight, That rude day's eyes may wink, than,
Tliat roving eyes may wink.
Neither of these, however, is more satisfactory to me than it appears to be to Mr. Dyce himself.
374 Notes and Comments.
avoid the scandal, the bruit, which would ensue upon the discovery of her new-made husband's secret visit.
I think, therefore, and also because the misprint is by no means improbable (as I know from experience) that Shakespeare wrote " rumourea eyes," and that we should read,
"Spread thy close curtain, love-performing nighty That Rumour*8 eyes may -wink, and Romeo Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.**
This occurred to me in consequence of an endeavor to conjecture what would satisfy the exigencies of the last as well as of the second line of these three ; and perhaps I yield quite as much to the immediate impression which the word made upon me, and which all other conjectures, whe- ther of others or myself, had failed in the least to do, as to the reasons which have confirmed my first opinion.
The absence of a long letter in rumour es^ to corres- pond with the y in " runawayes," does not trouble me. I have rei)catedly found in my ])roofs words containing long letters when the word wliioli I wrote contained none, and vice versa; and yet my miinuscri])t is welcomed by the compos- itor on account of its legibility. It should be noticed, too, that neither Jackson's vnawarcs (accepted by Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight), nor Mr. Collier's folio corrector's enemies contains a long letter. Those who understand the economy of the composing case will sec that a long letter is not ne- cessar}- in the word to be substituted here, because most of the errors in type setting are on account of previous mis- takes in the distribution of the type : the letters having been placed in the wrong boxes. ^ Rumor ' was spelt ru- moure, in Shakespeare's day, and the possessive case, ru- moiireSy of course.
As to Rumor's eyes, they are as necessary to her office
Romeo and Juliet. 375
as are her ears or her tongues. Virgil's Fama is but Ru- mor, and of her he says,
" Cui quot sunt corpore plums Tot vigiles oculi Bubter, mirabile dictu, Tot linguffi, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit aures.*
^neid. Lib. IV. 18L
And in Shakespeare's day Rumor was represented with eyes as well as tongues ; as we know by the following de- scription of that character as she was represented in a Masque — by Decker, and which was evidently founded on Virgil's impersonation :
" Directly under her in a cart by herselfe, Fame stood up- right : a woman in a watchet roabe, thickly set with open eyes and tongues, a pajrre of large golden winges at her backe, a trum- pet in her hand, a mantle of sundry cullours traversing her body : all these ensigns displaying but the propertie of her swiftncsse and aptnesse to disperse RumoureJ^
The wliolc magnijicc7it Entertaimnent given to King James a?id the queen his Wife, 4-c., I5th March, 1603. Bj/ Tfio^nas Decker, Ato, 1604.
Shakespeare, however, needed no precedent or hint to give eyes to Rumor, whom he himself had brought personally before his audience, in the Induction to the Second Part of Henry IV. where she is " painted full of tongues." These quotations merely show that the idea was sufficiently fami- liar to his auditors, unlearned and learned, for him to use it in this manner.
But these considerations arc not urged to gain accept- ance for the reading which I propose ; their office is but to meet possible objections to it. If it do not commend it- self at once to the intelligent readers of Shakespeare, with
376 Notes and Comments.
a favor which increases upon reflection^ no aigament caii| or should, fasten it upon the text.
[The foregoing suggestions and remarks (except the al- lusion to enemies) had been a part of my Shakesperian notes for some time, seen and approved of by a few fellow-students of the great Poet, but uncertain in what shape they would see the light, when renewed attention was directed to the con- dition of his text by the publication of the MS. changes in Mr. Collier's folio of 1632. That volume furnishes " enemies' eyes," a reading which is perhaps the worst which has been offered, and which I did not feel called ujwn even io condenm in the two papers upon the text of Shakespeare which I pre- pared for Putnam's Magazine^ in the summer of 1853. A casual remark, however, in one of them, brought me from all quarters of the country correspondence containing conjec- tural emendations of this passage.
One, from St. Louis, suggested " noondmfs eyes,'' which is not without some plausibility ; and it resembles some- ' what one of the readings proposed by the Rev. Mr. Dyce. But even if there were no objection, as to time, against the word ^noonday,* there is a literalness and par- ticularity about it which are poetically out of place in the passage for which it is proposed. Juliet is using large and general terms : she calls the West " Phoebus' mansion," and her thoughts spring directly from day to "cloudy night." She is aflfected only by the ideas of light and obscurity ; she does not consider hours or parts of the day or night. To her there is but one grand di\ision of time ; and to make her specify noontime, in attributing eyes to day, is to introduce a particularity into her si)eech incongruous with her tone of thought. But supposing such particularity not objectionable on the higher grounds of criticism, the time specified in the term is inconsistent with the requirements of the Scene ; and therefore Shakespeare would have been
KoMEO AND Juliet. 377
particular, only to be particularly wrong. This is evident from the fact, which a short examination will bring to light, that Jvliet was not married until after noonday ; and that some hours elapsed between her marriage and the time of this soliloquy.
Jidiet in the fifth Scene of the second Act, in her im- patience to hear from her lover, says, —
"The clock struck nine, when I did send the nurse ; In half an hour she promised to return. Perchance she cannot meet him,'' tfrc.
SO that it was well on towards ten o'clock before she re- ceived Romeo's message. But what was that message ? We find it in the fourth Scene of this same Act :
'*£id her devise some means to come to shrift ThU afternoon :
And there she shall, at Friar Laurence* cell, Be shriv'd and manned."
It was then some time past noonday before Juliet went to the Friar's cell. But she herself gives the coup dc grace to this supposition ; for in the very scene of her soli- loquy, having been betrayed into upbraiding Borneo, by hearing from the Nurse that he has killed Tybalt, she re- morsefully exclaims, —
" Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth th}' name When I, thy three hours^ tf {/<?, have mangled it ? "
It is plain that her soliloquy is spoken toward evening.
But what need of this comparison of hours and minutes? Is not the soliloquy itself steeped in the passion-breathing languor of a summer's afternoon just melting into twilight ? Is it not plain that Juliet has been watching the sun sink
378 Notes and Comments.
slowly down to the horizon, and gazing pensively into- the golden air, until her own imaginings have taken on its glow- ing hue, and that then she breaks out into her longing prayer for night and Romeo ? Facts and figures tell us that her soliloquy is spoken just before sunset ; but what reader of the whole soliloquy will not set aside the evidence of facts and figures as superfluous — almost impertinent ?
It is not because the conjectures of my other correspond- ents are less plausible than the foregoing that I do not notice them here ; but because that one suggested reflections upon Juliet's position and feelings, which the others do not. The remaining suggestions, however, as well as all others, ex- cept Rumor' 8j fail to meet the demands of the context, " «n- talked of and unseen." One of my fellow-students, however, Mr. Hoppin, of Providence, K. I., proposed the same word which had occurred to me, sustained it also by the well known passage in Virgil, and expressed his surprise that he had not been able to discover that it had been made before. But both he and I had been forestalled in making the correction, as I found by the letter of a correspondent in South Carolina, in which a letter from Mr. Singer, which I had never seen or heard of, was quoted from Notes and Queries. The suggestion in the following extract from Mr. Singer's letter is interesting, and demands attention :
" In the course of his note ho [Monck Mason] mentions that Heath, the author of the Bcvisa/, reads ^ Rumoufs eyes may wink ; ' which agrees in sense with the rest of the passage, but differs widely from 'runaway's' in the trace of the letters.
" I was not conscious of having seen this suggestion of Heath's, when, in conseijuence of a question put to me by a gentleman of distinguished taste and learning, I turned my thoughts to the passage, and at length came to the conclusion that the word must have been oumourcrs^ and that from its unfrequeut occurrence ■ the only other example of it at present known to me being one
KoMEO AND Juliet. 379
afforded by the poet), the printer mistook it for runawayes ; which, when written indistinctly, it may have strongly resembled. I therefore think that we may read with some confidence :
'Spread thy close curtaio, love-performing night, That rwnourers* eyes may wink, and Romeo Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.*
It fulfils the requirements of both metre and sense, and the words untalk^d of and imseen make it nearly indisputable. I had at first thought it might be * rumourous eyes ; ' but the per- sonification would then be wanting. Shakspeare has personified Rumour in the Introduction to the Second Part of King Henry IV.; and in Coriolanus, Act IV. Sc. 6, we have,
* Go see this rnmourer whipp'd.' "
Until after reading this letter I was not only, like Mr. Singer, unconscious of having seen Mr. Heath's suggestion, but had never read his notes upon this play. On referring to the vohime, however (A lievisal of Shakespeare's Teoot, &c., 8vo. London, 1765), I find, p. 511, that Mr. Heath merely says —
" I think it is not improbable that the Poet wrote,
77i(U Rumour's eyes mat/ wink ;
which agrees perfectly well with what follows.*'
He gives no reason for his supposition, and offers no sup- port for it. Here, then, we have three coincident conjec- tures from three persons, each ignorant of the other's sugges- tion ; which, if the word which they propose to substitute be acceptable in itself, adds greatly to the probability that it restores the true reading. Mr. Singer's independent
380 Notes and Comments.
conjecture that rumourer's is the word, also affords colla- teral support to the former, the idea being the same in both. But it should be remarked that the line does not need a word of three syllables :
That Ru I mour'a eyes | may wink, | and Ro | me-o.
The typographical error which gave us runaways^ and which Mr. Singer would correct, by substituting rumourera^ almost certainly loaded the line with a redundant syllable. Notice also, that the addition of an r diminishes the chances for an error by the compositor. It would be far more likely that "rumoured" should be mistaken for "runawaye«" than that " rumourers " should cause the same error. Yet another objection against " rumoure?'s" is, that its particu- larity is inconsistent with the poetical character of the pas- sage, in which, as I before remarked, Jrdiet uses only large and general terms. She would hardly descend from the generic personification of Rumor to the particularity of a rumorer, or, what is worse, several mmorers ; though, of course, Rumor is but the embodiment of an abstraction of rumorers.
Mr. Collier claims, with reason, that the occurrence of the same conjectural emendation to two readers of Shake- speare, without consultation, is cumulative evidence in its favor ; and here, in effect, is such a coincident conjecture on the part of four. But, whatever may be the decision be- tween Mr. Singer on the one hand, and Mr. Heath, Mr. Hoppin and myself on the other, I think it is quite evident that the word demanded by the context is either Rumour's or rumonrers; and I am quite willing to forego my claim for the discovery in favor of Mr. Benjamin Heath, to whom the credit of first ' guessing ' at the idea belongs ; and I have no doubt that my Providence correspondent is like-
BoBfEO AND Juliet. 381
minded with me. Let those dispute or sneer about pri- ority of conjecture whose minds and natures fit them to snarl over trifles, — the scraps and crumbs of literary repu- tation : the object of all who have the true enthusiasm of Shakesperian students, is not personal credit, but the integ- rity of Shakespeare's text.
I had altogether passed by the theor}'' advocated by the Rev. Mr. Halpin in the Shakespeare Society's Papers, Vol. II, — that " runaways " is the word which Shakespeare wrote, — as carrying its refutation on its face ; but, as it has recently found some favor with a few whose judgments are entitled to respect, it is but proper that its claims to consideration should be examined. Mr. Halpin's argument occupies nine- teen octavo pages ; but his positions and conclusions are briefly these.
The character of the soliloquy is purely hymeneal ; and hymeneal poetry has a diction, an imager}^, and a structure peculiar to itself, to which the soliloquy conforms, and which is especially observable, as regards structure, in the repeti- tion of Juliefs prayer for the coming of Night : Cupid was a ver}' important j)ersonage in hymeneal poetry and in hy- meneal masks : hymeneal masks were common in Shake- speare's day : Cupid is called a runaway by Moschus, and, which is of more importance, by Ben Jonson, in his Hue and Cry after Cupid : the andirons in Imogen's bed-cham- ber, when she was a clandestinely married bride (Ci/mbeline, Act II. Sc. 4), were " two winking Cupids : " Night and Cupid are the only assistants at the spousal, as related in the old poem of lioineua and Juliet^ upon which Shake- speare founded his tragedy ; — therefore Shakespeare wrote,
" That runaway's eyes may wink," Ac "That Cupid's eyes may wink."
382 Notes and Comhents.
This argument is very learned and very ingenious ; but far more learning and ingenuity have been displayed in the support of theories, which, though more plausible, were equally unsound. To examine it properly we should have the entire soliloquy before us, and as it appears in the ori- ginal folio :
" Gallop apace, you fiery footed steedei^ Towards Phoehu9 lodging, such a Wagoner As Phaeton would whip you to the weat^ Aud bring in Cloudie night immediately, Sprcd thy close Curtain Loue-performiDg night» That run-awayes eyes may wincke, and Rcmeo Leape to these armes, vntalkt of and vnaeene, Louers can see to doe their Amorous rights And by their owne Beauties : or if Loue be blind. It best agrees with night : come ciuill night, Thou sober suted Matron all in blacke, And learn e me how to loose a winning match. Plaid for a pnire of stainlesse Maidenhoods Hood my vnman'd blood bayting in my Cheekes, With thy Blacke mantle, till strange Loue grow bold, Thinke true Loue acted simple modestie : Come night, come RonieOy come thou day in night, For thou will lie vpon the wings of night Whiter then new Snow upon a Rauens backe : Come gentle night, come louing blackebrow'd night Giue me my Pomeo, and when I shall die. Take him and cut him out in little starres. And he will make the Face of Heauen so fine, That all the world will be in Loue with night, And pay no worship to the Garish Sun. O I haiic bought the mansion of a Loue, But not possest it, and though I am sold, Not yet enjoy VI, so tedious is this day. As is the night before some Fcstiuall, To an impatient child that hath new robes And may not weare them." <tc.
Is there any thing here more than an expression of th^ feelings of a newly married girl "many fathom deep i"
KoMEO AND Juliet. 383
love ? " Is there not an utter absence of all formality and restraint in the construction of the soliloquy ? and is not the same freedom shown in the diction ? It would be dif- ficult to point out in poetry a passage which has less the air of being constructed with regard to a formula. Indeed, the poet seems to have been under no restraint but that of versification ; and not to have felt that. Juliet expresses her longing for the coming of night several times ; but that is evidently only because she wants night to come. The approach of the time which will bring Borneo to her absorbs her whole mind. There is no " intercalary prin- ciple," or any other principle evident in the soliloquy. Even Mr. Halpin can only find that " four several invocations to Night, more or less varied, occur at intervals more or less regular." But the variation is decidedly more, and the re- gularity decidedly less. With the same license, almost any soliloquy might be said to be constructed on an inter- calary principle. This assumption of the hymeneal char- acter of the soliloquy, which is the very key-stone of Mr. Halpin's argument, is plainly but assumption ; and, of course, the importance of Cupid in the hymeneal masks, and the frequency of those masks in Shakespeare's day, are of no farther consequence.
As to Cupid being called a runaway by Moschus, — what did Shakespeare know about that ? It is not neces- sary to be of the Farmer school as to the no learning of Shakespeare, to decide at once that the supposition that he had read the ode of Moschus in the original, is entirely unwarranted ; and in his day there was no translation of it. But even if he had found Cupid called a nmaway by some Greek and Latin authors, would he upon that warrant have called him * runaway,' absolutely and without miti- gation, not even calling him ' a runaway,' and having made no previous allusion to him ? and this, too, to a mixed au-
384 Notes and Comments.
dience, not one in fifty of whom had the tongues ? Such was not his way of writing for the audiences of the Black- friars and the Globe.
The fact that Ben Jonson in his Hue and Cry after Cupidy calls Cupid " Venus' Runaway," is nothing to the purpose ; because, when the Mask opens, Cupid has run away from Venus, and it would be almost impossible to avoid speaking of him as Venus' runaway. He is never spoken of simply as a runaway ; much less is he called ab- solutely ^ runaway,' even by Jonson. He is " Venus' run- away," just as Pompey, who nms away from Mr. Bandolph of South Carolina, is Mr. Randolph's runaway. But even were this not so, the occurrence of the epithet in Jonson's Mask does not help Mr. Halpin, because that was not writ- ten until 1608 ; whereas, Borneo and Juliet was written as early as 1596, and this soliloquy was printed in the quarto of 1599. ^ Mr. Halpin's eagerness in the defence of his tlicory probably blinded him to these conclusive facts.
That the andirons in Imogen's bed-chamber could have any acknowledged hymeneal significance, the very fact of her marriage, and the great dread which she had of exposure, forbids us to believe. If winking Cupids had a h}Tneneal symbolism so universally recognized, that it was only ne- cessary for Shakespeare to write " tliat runaway's eyes may wink," in order to have a promiscuous audience know that Jidiet was thinking of a winking Cupid as a part of a hy- meneal i)ageant, Imoycn would surely have kept them out of her chamber at all hazards.
Mr. Halpin's remark, that in the poem of liomeus and
* Bun Jonson did not call his Mask The Hue and Cry after Cupid: that title was given to it by (Jifford so lately as 1816. In the folio of 1616 it is called: — ^The Descrij)tion of tlie Masqve with the Nupti all Songs at the Lord Vicount Haddinij:ton'8 marringe at Court. On the Shroue-tues- day night, 1608.
BoMEO AND Juliet. 385
c/«c2^ ^' Night and Cupid are the only assistantB at the spousal/' does not represent the passage in its true light. It is merely narrative ; the allusions to Night and Cupid are incidental and obvious^ and are made, not at the time when hymeneal allusions were appropriate, but when Borneo and JtUiet part at the Friar's cell.
"These said, they kisse, and then part to theyr father's house, The joyfull bryde vnto her home, to his eke goth the spouse ; Contented both, and yet both uncontented still, Till Night and Venus child geve leave the wedding to fulfill."
How the perception of a clever and a learned man may be perverted, is shown by the reference which Mr. Halpin makes to JtUiet^s supposition,
"Oriflovebe6«n<i;"Ac
which he thinks, "implies that she had already considered ^Love ' in the correlative condition, and regarded him as able to see/' But JiUiet does not make reference here to the god of Love, but to a pair of lovers. Thus she says,
"Lovert can tee to do their amorous rites By their own beauties ; or if love be blindt" Ac
The fact that ^ love ' is spelled with a capital letter in no way confirms Mr. Halpin's supposition ; because the word is so spelled in evefy instance in which it occurs in the soliloquy, as may be seen by reference to the passage as it is quoted above from the original folio. Thus "Love-per- forming," " strange Love grown bold," " true Love acted," " in Love with night," " the mansion of a Love " Evident- ly no one of these ^ Loves ' has any more reference to Cupid than the other ; and this is still further shown, as far as the
old typography can show it, by the &ct that in the older
25
886 Notes and Commbnt&
quarto the word is not spelled in this soliloquy with a cap- ital letter in a single instance.
To leave no part of Mr. Halpin's argument unanswered, — ^his supposition that the numberless works of ancient art in which Cupid is represented as captured, imprisoned, caged, fettered and with his wings bound, are to be referred to ^^ his notorious propensity to rtmning aioay from his mo- ther/' is innocent indeed. He should have consulted female Counsel before venturing on such a plea. Women in clas- sic days were^ at heart, much like women of now-a-days ; and, then, as now, they would see Love bound, not for his mother's sake, but their own.
There is, it seems to me, not the least shadow of a rea- son for believing that Shakespeare would without having 80 much as made an allusion to Cupid, speak of him abso- lutely as ^ runaway,' even supposing that he had any reason to expect that his audience would understand the epithet. This, we have seen, was not the case ; and also, that he would not have understood it himself.
But besides all this, there is one other consideration which is in itself conclusive upon this point.
Let it be remarked, that the eyes in question were to close as the natural consequence of a previous act. J%J.xet says " spread thy close curtain love-performing Night," in order that — what ? That Love's eyes may wink ? The ab- surdity of the prayer is apparent. The argument for Cupid is worth absolutely nothing until it has been shown that the corning of Night would as a matter of course put him to slccj). But reason teaches and testimony estabUshes that night is exactly the time when that interesting young gentle- man is particulaly wide awake. However much Juliet might desire even Love's eyes to close on that occasion, it is ridicu- lous to make the advent of " love-performing Night " the cause of his going to sleep; whereas it is entirely consistent
Romeo and Juliet. 387
that she should wish Night to cause those prying or wan- dering eyes which are personified in Rumor's, to close, that Romeo may come to her '^ untalked of and unseen/'
When we remember the vital importance of the secrecy of Jidiefs nuptials, and the desire which must have been almost uppermost in her heart, that Borneo might be seen entering her chamber window by no one who would talk of or rumor it, and knowing, as we do, that Shakespeare and his audi- ences were in the habit of seeing such people typified in the person of Rumor, covered with open eyes, and painted full of tongues, can there be any doubt that "rumoures eyes" were the words written by the poet ? *
Act V. Scene 1.
"Rom. I pray thy poverty, and not thy wilL**
Thus the first folio and the quarto of 1609 ; but " pray" is evidently a misprint ioxpay^ which appears in the earli- est quarto, 1597 ; for, as Mr. Dyce has pomted out, the last words of Romeo's immediately preceding speech to the Apothecary were, " take this " — ^money, of course.
Soene 3.
" Par, I do defy thy conjurations,'*
" Both Mr. Knight and Mr. Collier having rejected the read- ing ' conjurations ' for the misprint * commiseration,* and Mr.
* The probability that the letter m held the place in manuscript which n takes in the printed word, is increased by the £iict that in the early quarto impressions the word is spelled ^'runnawayes."
388 Notes and Comments.
Collier having observed that ' the sense of conjurations is not dear,' I adduced a passage from an early drama, where ' conju- ration ' signifies earnest entreaty (see Remarks, &c. p. 176). It may not be useless to notice here, that the word occurs in the same sense in a once-admired modem novel : ^ the argument, or rather the conjurations, of which I have made use,' &o. Mrs. Sheridan's Sidney Bidulph, vol. v. p. 74."
Dyce^s Few Notes, &c., p. 115.
This argmnent and citing of instances from ancient authors seems odd enough to Americans. It is almost as conmion in America^ and has always been^ to say ^ I conjure you ' to do thus or so, as 'I entreat you ; ' especially when the person addressed is earnestly entreated to do something for his ovni welfare, which is the case in the present in- stance. Romeo says :
*' I beseech thee, youth. Heap not another sin upon my head. By urging irie to fury : — 0, be gone I By heaven, I love thee better than myself: For I come hither armed against myself: Stay not, begone ; — ^live, and hereafter say — A madman*s mercy bade thee run away."
There cannot he the least question that Paris replies :
" I do defy thy conjurations."
" Jvl. O happy dagger I
This is thy sheath ; [ataht hertelf^l there rust, and let me die."
" There rust " is an obvious misprint for " there rest * which appears in the first quarto, 1597.
TIMON OP ATHENS.
Act II. Scene 2.
"Flav. Takes no account
How things go from him, nor resumes no care Of what is to continue. Never mind Was, to be so unwise, to be so kind."
"Nor resumes no care," is quite surely a misprint for "no reserve, no care/' which is the reading found in Mr. Collier's folio. But there is another confessed obscurity in this passage, in the last line, to obviate which I confidently oflfer the following correction of a very natural typographi- cal error.
" Never mind, Was truly so unwise, to be so kind.
Mr. Collier's folio offers surdt/y which is right as to sense, but not like enough in the trace of the letters.*
* TVuly had been on the margin of my Shakespeare for a long time be- fore the discovery of Mr. Collier^s folio. I find in Mr; Singer's VindicaHon Ac, that he has a corrected folio in which trultf also appears.
390 Notes and Comments.
" Flav. I have retired me to a wasteAil coek, And set mine eyes at flow.**
Sir Thomas Hanmer interpreted ^^wasteM cock" *a cockloft or garret!* and Bishop Warbnrton agreed with hint Pope had the efi^ntery to change '^wasteful cock" to londy room. These be thy editors, 0 Shakespeare 1 Mr. Knight thinks it should be ^^from a wasteful cock," &c. Why this trouble ? Honest Flavins says,
** when our vaulU have wepi With drunken spilth of mne, • • •
• ***«•••
I have retired me to a wulefiU cock And set mine eyes at flow.**
How can this be tortured to mean any thing else than that, when the casks were running with wine, which was wasted on Timon'a parasites, Flavins sat down by them, and wept at the ruinous profuseness of his master^s hospi* tality. It seems impossible that this should not have been the first and only construction put upon the passage by any reader.
Act III. Scene 1.
"Flam, Thou disease of a friend, and not himself I Has friendship such a faint and milky hearty It turns in less than two nights f 0 ye gods I feel my master's passion I This slave Unto his hoQour, has my lord's meat in him : Why should it thrive, and turn to nutriment, When he is turned to poison f "
There is no semblance of a reason for calling LncuUus
TxMOK OF Athens. 391
" a slave unto his honour." Monck Mason is evidently right in reading,
"This slave Unto this hour has my lord's meat in him."
LucuUua was the very reverse of punctilious as to honor : to suppose that " this slave unto his honour," means ^ this slave to Timcm^ is puerile in the extreme, — ^unsuflFerable : whereas the short time which has passed since LucuUub was the guest of Timon is pointed out by a truly Shake- spearian turn of expression, according to Mason's correc- tion of the obvious typographical error.
Scene 2.
" Lut, What a wicked beast was I, to disfumish myself against such a good time, when I might have shown myself honourable ! how unluckily it happened, that I should purchase the day before for a little part^ and undo a great deal of honour ! "
Purchasing "for a little part" has no meaning. The obscmity of the sentence is owing to a transposition of the printing office ; which Jackson, himself a practical printer, thus easily corrects.
*' how unluckily it happened that I should purchase the day before ; and^ for a little part^ undo a great deal of honour."
Act IV. Scene 1.
" Tint. Let me look back upon thee. O, thou wall That girdles in those wolves, dive in the earth, And fence not Athens."
892 Notes and CoxKxznre.
Thus the original is carefully pointed ; bat sabflequent editions, except Mr. Knight's, have removed the period in the first Une,' placed an exclamation mark in the second, and began there a new sentence, reading thns :
" Let roe look back upon thee, 0 thou wall That girdles in those wolves I Dive in the earth And fence not Athens."
What a wrong to Shakespeare and his readers ! Ttmow, leaving Athens in disgust, turns to look back upon it, — ^the place of his triumphs and his humiliation. He pauses and ponders on his life and the experience he has had of his fellow men in Athens, and then breaks forth, ^^ 0 thou wall that girdles in those wolves, dive in the earth ! " The change from the original accomplishes nothing but the de- struction of the finer beauties of the passage, — ^making Ti- mon turn to look upon a wall instead of npon Athens.
Scene 2.
" 2 Serv. As we do turn our backs
From our companion, thrown into his grave ; So his familiars to his buried fortunes Slink all away.**
We do not turn our backs /rom our buried friends, we turn them to or on them : nor do flatterers slink away to buried fortunes, — ^they slink from them. By one of those almost unaccountable accidents which occur in the printing office, these words have changed places, as Monck Mason has pointed out. We should evidently read :
" As we do turn our backs To our companion, thrown into his grave ;
TiMOK OF AtHEKS. 3(93
So hif familiftnyWrni his buried fortunes Slink all away.
**Flav. Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt Since riches point to misery and contempt f Who would be so mock'd with glory, or to live But in a dream of friendship.**
In Mr. Collier's folio this passage is insufferably altered in three several places. It is evidently corrupt ; but the change of a letter only is necessary to make it plain. Ob- viously " to" is a misprint for «o, in the last line but one. Bead,
" Who would be so mock'd with glory, and m live But in a dream of friendship ? '*
The «o, in both cases* meaning ^ thus/ of course. Timon having been mocked with glory, and the jfriendship in which he had trusted proving but a dream, the Steward asks — who would be rich to be "so mocked,*' or " so live."
Scene 3.
" Tim, Thou art a slave, whom fortune's tender arm With favour never clasped, but bred a dog, — Had'st thou, like us, from our first swath, proceeded The sweet degrees that this brief world affords To such as may the passive drugs of it Freely command, thou would*st have plung'd thyself In general rio
Johnson would change " drugs'' to drvdgei ; and Mr.
394 Notes and ComfEirrs.
Collier^B folio changes it to dttgs ! and is sustained by • editor I It is strange that the simple and obvioos correc- tion of a typographical error which would obviate all diflS- culty has not been made. For " drugs " we should plainly read dregs. The haughty patrician has ever talked of the passive plebeians as ^ the dregs of the world/
The original gives this in the speech of the Ist Bandit about Timon: — "the meere want of Gold, and the falling from of his Friendes drove him into this MelanchoUy." The margins of Mr. Collier's folio judiciously supply, Am, and read " the falling from him of his friends."
" 71m. Do yillainy, do, since you protest to do*t» Like workmen."
" Protest " of the original has been dropped for profess. As Mr. Knight says, "either word may be used in the sense of ^ to declare openly.' " What doubt of it ? A captain's declaration after the wreck of his ship is called (in America at least) his ^protest.'
Act V. Scene 5.
" Alcih, not a man
Shall pass his quarter, or offend the stream Of regular justice in your city's bounds, But shall be remedied to your public laws, At heaviest answer."
TiMON OF Athens.
395
Evidently "remedied'* is misprinted for rendered, as Mr. Dyce suggests. Bead^
"But shall be rendered to jour public laws At heaviest answer."
JULIUS CiESAR.
Act I. SoENB 2.
" C<a. When could they say, till now, that talk'd of Rome, That her wide walka enoompaaa'd bat one man*
If correction be necessary in these lines, the suggestion of wcdU for '^ walks '' made by Theobald, and adopted also in Mr. Collier's folio, must be accepted.
Act II. Scene 1.
" Bra, O, then, by day
Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough To mask thy monstrous visage ? Seek none conspiracy ; Hide it in smiles, and affability : For if thou path thy native semblance on, Not Erebus itself were dim enough To hide thee from prevention."
Difficulty has been found by all editors and commenta- tors in " path." I thought it might be a misprint for put^ and afterwards found that Coleridge had proposed the same word with confidence. But none of the editors or commen- tators have noticed that the quarto of 1691 reads,
Julius Ojssab. 397
" For if thoa hath thy native semblance on,** Ac
I do not mean to say that hath is the word ; but neither do I believe that it is a mere misprint in the old quarto. * Hath ' is very frequently used by Shakespeare and his con- temporaries for ^ have ; ' and in his time, and long after, the bow of the letter h was short, while the second stroke was brought far below the line. Three examples occur on the fac-simile page of Mr. Collier's second folio, published with his Notes and JEmendations.
Act III. Scene 1.
In the original, the following passage is evidently not properly distributed among the characters : —
" Ciiu — Caika, you are the first that rears your hand. Ccu. — ^Are we all ready? What is now amisse That CcMar and his Senate must redressef "
"Are we all ready ?" plainly does not belong to Gcesavj and has been made a continuation of Cinna's speech to Casca, But it more probably belongs to Casca; who, as the leader of the onset, would naturally ask the question. This is the distribution recommended first by Bitson, and recently by Mr. Collier, on the credit which he gives to his folio.
'* OcH, I must prevent thee, Cimber.
These couchings and these lowly courtesies," &e.
Mr. Collier's folio suggests, with more than plausibility,
398 Notes and Comxsnts.
crouchings for " couchings." But it is by no means ce that Shakespeare has not used the words convertibly i several instances.
Act IV. ScENB 1.
**Ant. A barren-spirited fellow; one that feeds On objects, arts, and imitationi^ Which out of use, and staFd by other men, Begin his fashion."
How did Lepidus feed or exist " on obfeds, arts," &c. ? Out of question there is an error of the press ; and we shou read^
"one that feeds On abject arts and imitationfl.''
MACBETH.
Act I. Scene 7.
*' Mac If the aesassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease, success."
I find that this passage is considered obscure : all sorts of alterations are proposed in it by editors and commenta- tors of every grade and period. It has always seemed to me, and yet seems to be perfectly clear. By " if the assas- sination could trammel up the consequence," Macbeth evi- dently means, — * if the killing of Duncan could also set aside the consequences of such an act.' " His " refers to Duncan, not to the assassination, as some, Johnson among them, appear to think, and " surcease " means * ending/ ^ decease,' ^ death ; ' and the sentence may, if it must, be paraphrased, — * If, in the act of killing Duncan^ I could protect myself against the consequences of such an act, and obtain by his death, success.' See Rape of LucrecCy near the end.
" If they surcease to be that should surviye."
The commentators complain that this whole soliloquy is
400 Notes and Comments.
turgid and involved. Such would have a thunder-doad as pellucid as a dew-drop.
Act II. Scene 1.
** Mac, Is this a dagger which I see before me t "
This dagger was made visible to the eyes of the audience in Germany, when Macbeth was first performed there ; and, considered in the light of poetic truth, may as well be seen as the Ghost of Banquo. The Ghost should appear in the &ce of the actor, as the dagger does. But, perhaps even nowadays it is necessary for a mixed audience that Banquo should appear, as he was made to do by Shakespeare for the audiences of his day. The difibrence between the ghosts in Macbeth and that in Hamlet is very remarkable. The for- mer, no less than this dagger, are the pure creations of a guilty mind, and are visible only to the guilty person ; the latter, on the contrary, being an actual visitant from the other world, is visible to the soldiers and to Hamlefa firiend as well as to himself.
Scene 2.
**Macb. Will all great Neptune's Ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand f No : this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green — one red."
Those who have pondered with wondering admiration upon this grand passage, will be amused and vexed at a supposed typographical error, when they find the hemistich printed thus :
"Making the green one, red."
Macbeth. 401
But it is not an error of the press. There are those, (Mr. Dyce among them, it would appear,) who, depending upon the careless punctuation of the first folio, read this fine line thus inanely ; though what or who is the " green one " to l)e made red, they do not inform us. Was the power of mere punctuation to turn the sublime into the ridiculous ever before so strikingly exemplified !
Scene 3.
" Len. The night has been unruly ; Where we lay, Our chimneys were blown down : and as they say, Lamentings heard i' the air ; strange screams of death ; And prophesying, with accents terrible. Of dire combustion, and confus'd events, N<?w hatch'd to the woful time. The obscure bird Clamour'd the livelong night: some say, the earth Was feverous and did sliake.**
This passage has occasioned not a little conflicting com- ment. Mr. Knight has changed the punctuation, so as to make the obscure bird prophesy ; and Steevens would have the " prophesying" and not the "confused events" "new hatch'd to the useful time." But all this is needless ; and arises from a misunderstanding of the word " prophesying." As used here, and in some j)ortions of the Bible and books contemporary with its translation, it does not mean ' fore- telling,' but ^ uttering strange or important things,' or * an- nouncing solemnly ' that which has already taken place. (See Proverbs xxxi. 1, Luke i. 67.)
Act III. Scene 4.
[The QhoBt of Banquo riseSf and aits in Macbeth* $ place."]
"Maeb. Here had we now our country's honour roofd^ 26
402 Notes and CoMMEirrs.
Were the grac'd person of our Banqno preMiit; Who may I rather challenge for ankindoefli^ Than pity for mischance I
Base. His abeenoe, sir,
Lays blame upon his promise. Please it your highneM To grace us with your royal company?
Macb. The table's full
Len. Here's a place reserv'd, sir.
Macb, Where!
Leru Here, my good lord. What is't that moves your highness -^
Macb. Which of you have done this t
Lord*. What^ my good lord I
Ma4:b, Thou canst not say, I did it: never shake Thy gory locks at me."
Macb. — Give me some wine : fill full : I drink to the general joy of the whole table.
Ghott riaea. And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss ; 'Would he were here I to all, and him, we thirst; And all to all
Lords. Our duties, and the pledge.
Macb. Avaunt I and quit my sight ? Let the earth hide thee ! "
Some have gravely ai^ued that the first Ghost is that of Duncan, others that the second Ghost is his ; but in addi- tion to the consideration that the stage directions of the original were for the guidance of the prompter, and must necessarily have been explicit upon such a point as this, it is to be observed that the Ghost rises in each case upon Machetlis allusion to Banquo. The Ghost of Banqno rises at first when Macbeth wishes for Banqno: with what propriety then, when Macbeth again wishes for Banquo, could the Ghost of old king Duncan respond to the call ? But as I have before remarked, and as Kemble and Tieck held, there is no poetic or dramatic necessity for the actual appearance of any ghost ; as an examination of the text, above quoted, will show. With what consistency do the audience see that whidi MacbetVa guests cannot sec ?
Macbeth. 403
The Ghost exists only in his distempered brain ; its visibility is but a manager's concession Jto the popular love of the horrible.
Scene 6.
" Len. Who cannot want the thought how monBtrons It was for Malcolm and for Donaldbain 3217 To kill their gracious father?"
Thus this passage is invariably printed. " Who can- not " seems to me unquestionably wrong. " Who cannot want the thought " means, ^ Who is not able to be with- out the thought ; ' which is evidently the very reverse of Lenoafs opinion.
In this perplexity (which, however, I have not seen noticed, except by Jackson, who suggests one of his usual mere proof reading remedies, which is, as usual, altogether vain), I, of course, considered the whole context ; which is
" The gracious Duncan Was pitied of Macbeth : — marry, he was dead ; And the right valiant Banquo wcdked too late; Whom yon may say, if 't please you, Fleance killed ; For Fleance fled Men must not ibalk too late. Who cannot want the thought how monstrous It was for Malcolm and for Donaldbain To kill their gracious father?"
It is to Banquo that Lenox, in his ironical vein, applies the second time, as well as the first, the phrase "walked too late." Now, Macbeth seized the opportunity of Ban- quo' s late walking, to put him out of the way, chiefly be- cause Banquo more than suspected Vho was the real per- petrator of the crime, which Lenox, ironically conforming
404 Notes and Comments.
to general report, ascribes to Malcolm and Donaldbain, This suspicion was obviously the reason for the murder of Banquo by the order of McuAeth, May we not then remove the point after the last ^ late ' and read thus, making the passage declarative instead of interrogative ?
" the right valiant Banquo walked too late ; Whom you may say, if 't please you, Pleance killed ; For Fleance fled. Men must not walk too late Who cannot want the thought^ how monstrous It was for MeUcolm and for Donaldbain To kill their gracious father."
That is, — * Men, who will think that the alleged murder of Duncan by his sons is a crime too monstrous for belief, must bo careful not to walk too late.'
Act IV. Scene 1.
"Jfacb. Rebellious dead, rise never, till the Wood Of Birnam rise, " <fec.
Thus the original. " Rebellious dead rise never," &c., was changed by Theobald to " Rebellious head/' &c. But the context seems to require " liebeJMon's head," a correc- tion which was made by the present writer some years ago, and which has recently been found in Mr. Collier's foUo. I have before noticed a similar coincidence with regard to the following passage in the same Scene. Macbeth learns that Macduff has fled to England, and, in the course of a declaration of prompt, and energetic policy, says,
•' No boasting like a fool ; This deed Til do before this purpose cool : But no more sights.**
Macbeth. 405
For " sights," we should unquestionably tqsA flights. The old-fashioned long a caused the mistake. I may be excused for remarking here, that these emendations and most of those now for the first time made public, were shown to a few friends and fellow students of Shakespeare, two or three years before the discovery of Mr. Collier's folio.
Scene 3. In the original, Macduff teUs Malcolm^
" You may Convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty, And yet seem col A"
" Convey " is evidently an easy misprint for enjoy, which is substituted for it in Mr. Collier's folio. But this is one of those emendations which crave mature consideration as to their idiomatic propriety before they are received into the text.
Act V. Scene 2. CcUhn€88 obviously does not mean to say that Macbeth
" Cannot buckle his distempered cause Within the belt of rule."
but his " distempered course" which reading is found in Mr. Collier's folio.
Scene 3. The substitution in Mr. Collier's folio of
406 Notes and Comments.
" CleanM the stufft boeom of that perilous gruf^ "Cleanse the stufft boeom of that perilotu stuffe,**
seemed to me at first an acceptable correction of a very probable typographical error ; but subsequent reflection has convinced me that the phrase in the original is quite in Shakespeare's manner.
Scene 4.
'* MqXc, For "where there is advantage to be giren Both more and less have given him the revolt"
What advantage was to be "given " by revolt ? It seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that this word is a misprint ; especially as it occurs in the next line. Mr. Collier's folio has gotten. But gotten would hardly be read " given," while gained might be, — easily. Should we not read ?
" For where there is advantage to be gained Both more and loss have given him the revolt"
The Variorum has comment upon comment on the pas- sage ; but this very obvious con-ection does not appear to have occurred to any editor.
HAMLET.
Act I. Scene 2.
Enter Horatio^ Bernardo^ and Mareellui,
•* Har. Hail to your lordship !
Ham. I am glad to seo you well ;
Horatio, or I do forget mysclfl
ffor. The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
/{am. Sir, my good friend ; Fll change that name with you. And what make you from Wittenberg, Uoratio ? — MarcelluB f
Mar. My good lord, —
Ham. I am very glad to see you ; good even, mp. — But what, in faith, make you from "Wittenberg? **
It seems incomprehensible to me that there could be the least difficulty in understanding this passage ; as in fact it seems with regard to nine tenths of the passages upon which explanatory notes have been written. Hamlet's "Good even " makes trouble. Marcellua has said in the first Scene, " I this morning know where we shall find him ; " and there- fore some of the commentators say that Hamlet could not bid his visitors " good even." Of these, some therefore have deliberately changed "even" to "morning;" another, Jackson, attempts to get out of the difficulty by his know- ledge of the composing case, and says that the line should be,
408 Notes and Commsnts.
" I am very glad to see you good :— even, air."
That is, that Hamlet means that he is even with MarceUuSj who has just called him " good ! " Mr. Knight very justly suggests that " even " was at that time used at any time after mid-day.
Richard Jhones, who published Promos and Cassandra, is the best commentator on the passage. I have quoted this sentence from his advertisement once before ; but it is worth quoting here again : — " and if by chaunce thou light of some si)cache that scemeth dark, consider of it with judgment, before thou condemne the worke : for in many places he is driven both to praise and blame with one breath, which in readinge wil seeme hard, and in action appeare plaine."
No other clue is needed. How can any one with the scene in his "mind's eye" avoid intuitively under- standing it thus ? HamUi has three visitors, who find him alone : being a well bred gentleman he speaks to all of them ; and being a prince, he addresses each one in a man- ner suited to his degree. In his old friend and schoofellow he expresses interest, and asks,
"And what make you from Wittenberg? "
But breaking off, to bestow civility upon his other guests, he, says, interrogatively, to one (whom he thinks he recog- nizes, and who, by the present, the preceding and the sub- sequent Scenes, is shown to be the more important of the two),
"Marcellus?**
On finding by the reply oi Marcellus that he is right, he bestows a brief welcome.
Hamlet. 409
"Fm very glad to see you; " Ac.
and then turning to the third and least important person^ whom he does not recognize, he merely says, " Good even, sir." Having thus satisfied the demands of courtesy, he returns immediately to that which interests him, and says to Horatio J
"But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg f"
The passage is natural, simple, and colloquial in the highest degree ; its sense palpable, it would seem, to the dullest perception. But on what sentence of Shakespeare may we not look for a critical and explanatoiy, if not a con- fusing note, when Mr. Knight thinks it not impertinent to explain Hatrdtia " Thrift, thrift Horatio," by saying " Thrifty thrift It was a frugal arrangement, — a thrifty proceeding, — there was no waste." QuoiLague tandem ah- utere patientia nostra !
Scene 3.
" Pol. for they are brokers
Not of the eye which their investments show, But mere implorators of unholy suits, Breathing like sanctified and pious bonds» The better to beguile"
What meaning can possibly be tortured from ^\ breath- ing like . . . bonds ? " Is there the least doubt that Theobald discovered the typo^aphical error, and corrected it properly, in reading,
*' Breathing like sanctified and pious hawdt The bettor to beguile t "
410 Notes xsd Comments.
In the same sentence these ^^mplorators of unholy suits " are called " brokers," — ^the old term for * bawd/
SOENE 9. *' Ohott, And for the daj confin'd to fast in fires."
Heath's conjecture that ^^ fast in fires " is a misprint for " lasting fires " seems to me to be a judicious correction of a very probable error. It has been passed by, almost unnoticed ; but as it occurs in Mr. Collier's folio, renewed attention has been recently directed to it.
Act II. Scene 2.
Ham and indeed it goes so heayilj with my disposition, that
this goodlj frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory ; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging fimmment, this mnjesticnl roof fretted with golden fires, why it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man ! How noble in reason I IIow infinite in faculties I in form and moving how express and admirable! inaction, how like an angel I in appreheniiion how like a god ! the beauty of the world I the paragon of animald ! "
This magnificent passage does not appear in the trage- dy as it was published in 1603. It was added by Shake- speare when he enlarged Hamlet ^^ to almost as much again as it was.'' In the tragedy, as it was first produced and as it was printed in 1603, this passage appears thus, — in limp- ing verse, it will be noticed :
*• Yes faith, this great world you see contents rae not, No nor the spangled heauens, nor earth, nor sea. No nor Man that is so glorious a creature, Contents not me, no nor woman too, although you laugh,*'
Hamlet. 411
It is at least a strange coincidence^ that in a thin quarto which bears the title : " Beware of Pickpurses, or a Caueat for sick folkes to take heede for vnleamed Phisitions, and vnskillful Chyrurgians, By F. H. Doctor in Phisick. Im- printed at London 1605," is a sentence sufficiently like Hamlet's speech in sentiment and phraseology to make it more than probable, that Shakespeare had seen it before he enlarged the Tragedy. One very remarkable and singu- lar expression in the latter, " this goodly frame the earth," appears almost exactly in the former :
^^ Thus ddth this base and lewd Coazener mocke Ood, and despise Man, for whose cause the Eternall created the goodly and beautiful! Frame of the World : and in whose Bodie whatso- ever is more largely in that Spatious, and Gorgious Pallace, and Theater delineated, is more briefly comprised, and, as it were, Epitomised, and represented [in] a short Summe or Viewe. Against this Noble Creature, the small Counterfeit of the great GOD, he doth oft times rage more sauagely than any wildc Beare or Tygar," &c. p. 16.
The book, my copy of which is the only one I ever saw or heard of, is composed of two parts ; the first being written in Latin " by a learned German," Martin Obern- dorflfer. This is called Dissertatio de vero etfalso Medico^ or, as F. H. translates it, " The Anatomyes of the True Physition and the counterfeit Mountebanke." The second part, which is the original production of the translator of the first part, is "A discouery of certaine Stratagems, whereby our EngUsh Emperikes haue bene obserued strongly to oppugne and oft times to expugne their poore Patients Purses." The passage quoted is from the Dissertation of Obemdorfier, who was a medical author of some repute in Germany at the beginning of the seventeenth century. His Diasertaiio de vero et /also Medico was published at Lau-
412 Notes and Comments.
ingen in 1600 ; and Watts' Bibliotheca Britannica lecoidB the date of the publication of Dr. F. H/s translation^ as 1602, one year before the date of the earliest edition of Hamlet, But, as my learned friend, Dr. Cogswell, suggests to nie, Watts had probably never seen the volume in ques- tion, and the edition of 1605 is the first : it bears no allu- sion to any other. But, however this may be, it would be interesting to compare the original German work (no copy of which exists in this country) vrith F. H.'s translation, to discover whether the latter found that very remarkable expression in his author, or furnished it himself to him, or adopted it from a new play, which he had just heard, i. e. Hamlet, Throughout the two passages, however, there is a remarkable sympathy of thought and similarity of expression as to the grandeur of the World and the dignity of Man.
" Ham. for it cannot be
But I am pigeon liver*d, and lack gall To make oppression bitter.*'
The absurdity of the change of "oppression " to trans- gression in Mr. Collier's folio, and of Mr. Collier's argument in support of it, have been shown in the second part of this vohime. As Mr. Dyce is reported to be engaged on a new edition of Shakespeare, it is comforting to know that he thinks the change "nothing less than villainous" — A Few Notes, &c., p. 140. But what shall be said of Mr. Singer, who also announces a new edition, and who would i^ead,
" To make aggression bitter."
Felony, this ; and certainly without benefit of clergy ; for
Hamlet. 413
it would seem impossible that any clerk could commit such an offence.
Act III. Scene 1.
" Hcem. Or to take arms against a Bea of troubles, And bj opposing end them."
Pope and others would read " siege of troubles," alleging that arms may be taken against a siege, but not against a sea, and that the similarity in the sound of the two words might easily have caused a substitution of one for the other. So it might : much more easily than Shakespeare could have written
"Or to take arms against a siege of troubles, And by opposing end thein."
For, by line and plummet criticism, if it be a siege against which arms are to be taken, it is a siege which is ended ; for the siege then becomes the object against which the action is to be directed, and the last line must be :
" And by opposing end it."
But it is the troubles against which arms are to be taken, and by opposing we end them. " Sea " is but a pictu- resque, descriptive word in the sentence. Another writer would have said ' a throng of troubles ' or something of that kind ; but Shakespeare said "sea," and by one word brings to our mind the imminent, ever succeeding woes which, innumerable, like the "multitudinous seas," sometimes overwhelm the soul. " Sea " makes the passage not only highly poetical and Shakesperian, but correct ; siege makes
414 Notes and Comments.
it not only cautiously exact in following out a figure, and therefore un-Shakesperian, but incorrect to any mi^d which judges by other than a merely literal standard. — A fortiori these remarks apply to the suggestions to read assay or assail of troubles. It is mysterious to me that a doubt should ever have suggested itself, even to a child of moderate intelligence, about the passage as it stands in the original. Even in my boyish readings of Shakespeare this line was as comprehensible and as grand to me as it is now. I should have been inclined to doubt the sincerity or the sanity of any one who professed to find the passage obscure or faulty. But then I had not read Shakespeare's commentators.
" Opk, Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with your honesty?" *
This, the reading of the folio of 1623, is rejected, and the reading of the quartos, " with honesty," is taken. Even Mr. Knight departs from his rule, and rejects his favorite — and justly liis favorite authority, even although he admits that the alteration from the quarto is " clearly by design." He (jlocs so, because " it appears to lessen the idea we have formed of Ophelia to imagine that she would put her beau- ty so directly in ' commerce ' with Hamlet's honesty." I am past being surprised at a miscomprehension of one of Shakespeare's characters, particularly of the character of one of his women ; — yet I cannot btit wonder where Mr. Knight finds any thing in the delineation of Ophdia*s char- acter to cause him to lessen his ideas of her at finding her thus plain spoken. What does he think of the songs which she sings when derangement removes the restraint of pro-
Hamlet. 415
priety from her mind ? On what do they show her thoughts to have been, in a great measure, fixed ? — for it is to be borne in mind that she is not distracted or wild, but simply unsettled. What does he think of her gross perversion of Handet'a request in Act III. Scene 2, just before the Dumb Show begins ? With regard to the passage under consid- eration,— if a woman so far trust a man, and so far unbend herself as to speak of such matters ai ally it seems difficult to find the peculiar and added impropriety of this expres- sion, " youi^honesty," to a lover in Hamlet's situation and in Shakespeare's time.
However, Mr. Knight's course is but a remnant of the practice of the eighteenth century, which was, to think that the ideas which the commentator or the actor had formed of a character, were more just than those of Shakespeare himself, and to take the development of character out of the hands of the poet into those of his restorers and im- provers, for the stage or the closet. # As for instance, — the acting Lear, Romeo and Juliet , Richard IIL, &c. &c.
Scene 2.
" Ham, Tis now the very witching time of night ; When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world : Now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on."
Mr. Dyce, turning from the original folio to the quartos, advises, that in HarrdeVa exclamation, as it stands in the original,
" Now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on,"
416 Notes and Comments.
we should transpose three words and change one letter, to read,
" A.nd do such business as the better da.j" &c
He says, that in the reading of the quartos,
*' And do such business as the bitter day,**
"bitter" was a misprint for better; and the editor or printer of the folio, "not perceiving that it was a misprint, made his stupid transposition." And he quotes, to sustain "better day," Milton's,
" Hail holi/ ligJUy offspring of Heaven," Ac.
The suggestion is plausible, and the quotation not amiss ; but 0 ! Mr. Dyce, if you love us humble lovers of Shake* speare, if you venerate 'his mighty genius, if you would pre- serve your well-earned reputation, let not your acuteness and your learning lead you astray ; and spare us, sj^re us that " bitter business " which ^* the day " — any day, worse or better, lit by the sweet light of heaven — ''would quake to look on ! " Si)are us, good Mr. Dyce ! our keen relish of tliis most Shakesperian morsel, or we shall lose not only that ; but some one, sheltering himself under your eminent name, and emulating your ingenuity, will be proposing to read a certain line in A Miihummer Night's Dream^
"III mftidcn/awry, htsitation free."
This undeniably gives a sense, and requires but the trans- position of two words and the change of two letters in the original. But still, as there is the best reason — the testi- mony of the folio — for believing that Shakespeare wrote.
Hamlet. 417
*• In maiden meditation, fancy free,"
and as, from use, we have become somewhat partial to the line in that form, we would not willingly see the ' inge- nious' alteration made.
With no other feelings would we all regard the change of HainMa " bitter business " which " the day would quake to look on '' into a "business" which "the better day would quake to look on." Better strike the lines from the soliloquy, than thus emasculate them.
Scene 3.
This Scene, in which Hamlet finds the King on his knojcs alt)ne, immediately after the Play, and yet does not avenge his Father's death, is altogether omitted in the stage copy. 'V^^lijit an outrageous liberty ! how injurious to the intent of the author ! Hamlet is a man of contemplation, who is ever diverted from his purposed deeds by speculation upon their probable consequences or their past causes, unless he acts too quickly and under too much excitement for any reflection to present itself, — as in the last Scene of this Act and of the last Act. In the present instance he finds the King alone, and in a situation that seems to tempt revenge. He instantly determines on the deed, half draws his sword, steps forward — but the idea suggests itself " and so he goes to heaven ;" and in a moment the avenger of blood is con- verted into the moral philosopher ; he discovers that such a death would be no expiation, and gladly seizes this excuse for procrastinating the execution of his task.
By the omission of this Scene, Hamlet's character is not developed according to the author's intent ; which is an ofience unpardonable. There are certain Scenes and ar-
27
418 Notes and Comments.
rangements of Scenes which have naught to do with the pro- gress of the play or the development of character, and which the improvement in stage business since Shakespeare's time renders superfluous, perhaps ; and these may be omitted, though they should be eliminated with great caution and reverence ; but to touch a line which portrays character, because it is thought superfluous or inconsistent by com- mentators or stage managers, is much as if a man who liked aquiline features should knock off the nose of the Apollo Belvidere, and say ^ it's a small matter, only a nose ; the fiice is a face without it ; and besides, I would have made it Roman if I had made the statue/ Wise above what is written ! will they never learn that they did not make the Apollo, or Hamlet J or Borneo, or Lear !
Act IV. Scene 4.
" Ham, 1 will be with you straight Go a little before.
[Exeunt Roa. and Gail. IIow all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge I * *
* * • Now, whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on the event, A thought, which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom. And, ever, three parts coward, — I do not know Why yet I live to say. This thing's to do : Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means^ To do't."
This Scene is omitted in the folio of 1623, and also in the acting copy ; but if the object of the play be the repre- sentation of Hamlet — and its action certainly has little other point — ^how serious an omission is this. Hamlet was one who speculated without reasoning, whose high-wrought
Hamlet. 419
reveries hardly ever assumed the firmness and consistency of thought, who was unyielding without firmness, determined without purpose, who contrived without plan and felt with- out acting. Hairdet himself, in the closing soliloquy of this Scene, — to introduce which was evidently Shakespeare's only object in writing it, — gives us the key to his indecision in that self-anatomization which is the habit of such na- tures. They know the action of their own minds, and bur- rowing in the blind heaps of speculation which press upon them, they unearth only their own hidden motives. They have an intellectual perception of the excellence of action ; but, fascinated by musings which hardly attain the dignity of contemplation, their noble purposes never take form ; and, led on through a dreamy labyrinth of speculation, they die before they reach the busy day of the actual world. Sadly enough, too, they are all the while conscious that their years glide away from them and leave naught behind ; and when their last day comes, they
" dose their dying eyes In grief that they have lived in vain."
" Eheu ! fugacea Postame, Postume, Labuntur anni."
Scene 5.
" King. That I am gnilUess of your Father's death And am most sensibly in grief for it, It shaU as level to your judgment pierce As day does to your eye."
Johnson says that,
"It tball as level to your judgment pierce,*
420 Notes and Comments.
which is the reading of the original, is ^4ess intelligible'' than,
" It shall as level to your judgment ^pear^
which is the reading of the quarto of 1611, and which ap- pears in all the modern editions except Mr. Knight's. If Johnson had not said so, it would be difficult to believe that he could say so. What can be more intelligible than that a conviction should pierce to the judgment, as level [i. c. as directly, as ^ point blank'] as light does to the eye. This is clear sense and forcible comparison. But use 'pear [appear], and nonsense and confusion ensue. The lines as they stand in the authentic text assert, — * it [the convic- tion] shall pierce as level to your judgment, as day does [pierce] to your eye : ' but use ' 'pear,' or ' appear,' and the assertion would be that — ' it shall appear as level to your judgment as day does [appear] to your eye.' But how does, or how can, day appear level to the eye ? The absurdity is palpable. In the copies in general use, John- son is followed and ^'pear' is given. The original text should be restored without question.
" A771/7. Laertes, I must common with your grief, Or you deny nie right"
This is the text of the original folio, and also of the earliest complete quarto, 1604, yet on the authority of the quarto of 1611, "common" has been changed to commune^ in all editions except Mr. Knight's. There is a note by Stecvens in the Variorum about ^ commune ' being ancient- ly pronounced ' common^' and Mr. Knight has one to the
Hamlet. 421
same effect ; but how inferior is this " winnowed opinion " to that of Boswell, who, taking the word " common " in its obvious sense, remarks, " surely the word common in the folio means ' I must be allowed to participate in your grief, to feel in common with you/ " In the homeliness of the word lies the strength of the passage.
Act V. Scene 2.
"ffam. He did comply with his dug, before he sncked it Thus has he (and many more of the same breed, that, I know, the drossy age dotes on) only got the tune of the time, and outward habit of encounter; a kind of yesty collection, which carries them through and through the most fond and winnowed opinions ; and do but blow them to their trial, the bubbles are out"
Caldecott explains the last part of this passage thus, — " which carries them (i. e. enables them to pass current) through and through the most fond and winnowed opinions (f. e., all judgments ; not the simplest only, but the most sifted and the wisest)/' Mr. Dyce says this is " the com- mon interpretation of the passage," and justly adds, " to suppose that ' the most fond and winnowed opinions ' could mean ' all judgments, not the simplest only, but the most sifted and the wisest,' is little short of insanity/'
It is to be hoped that Mr. Dyce erred in supposing this to be the common interpretation of the passage. The meaning seems clear, and to be one of those very obvious significations which it is a marvel that any commentator or any educated reader could fail to apprehend. Mr. Dyce's own %|ading, adopted from Warburton, seems as far from the truth as Caldecott's explanation. Mr. Dyce would read, " the most fand (fanned) and winnowed opinions ; " and he
422 Notes and Comments.
quotes good authority for the use of both 'fanned' and ' winnowed ' in the same sentence.
But all this is from the purpose. Oaric is a type of the Euphuist or affected courtier of Shakespeare's time, who was a hair-splitter in thought, and absurdly dainty and extravagant in expression. Therefore Shakespeare makes Hamlet describe Osric as one who ("with many more of the same breed") has " only got the tune of the time," which was " a kind of yesty collection which carries them [the Euphu- ists] through and through the most fond and winnowed opin- ions : " that is, they go through and through [they stop at no absurdity in] the most fond [affected or foolish] and win- nowed [elaborately sought out] opinions. It is difficult to imagine how " opinions " could be supposed by Caldecott to mean 'judgment,' or " carries" to signify * enables them to pass current.' "Fond" is continually used as 'affected' or ' foolish ' by the earlier English writers.
It is piu|)08ely that I do not notice in detail the cor- ruptions of the text of this play in all the editions. To point them all out would be to write a volume. The ordi- nary copies, printed from the Variorum text, are a vile compound of the texts of the quartos of 1604 and 1611 and the folio of 1623. On the other hand, Mr. Knight's laud- able reverence for the latter text has caused him to disre- gard the corruptions which evidently deform it. We need a text formed upon that of 1623 as supreme authority; but carefully corrected by the quartos.
KING LEAR.
Act I. Scene 1.
•* Reff, I profess
Myself an enemy to all other joys That the most precioas square of sense possesses."
" The most precious square of sense " is a phrase not readily apprehended nowadays. Mr. Collier's folio reads, " precious sphere of sense/' by which, however, nothing is gained ; for the ^ square of sense ' is quite as comprehen- sible as the ' sphere of sense/ Mr. Singer goes in this in- stance even beyond the folio, and would read " the spacious sphere of sense." This is certainly more comprehensible than the line as it was left by Mr. Collier's MS. corrector ; and the typographical error which it involves is quite pos- sible. But although there is at least no necessity for chang- ing " square '* to sphere^ the change of "precious" to spor dotis is more plausible. If the text be altered at all, we should read,
" That the most spadouH square of sense posseraes."
The original text, however, is comprehensible, and has the
424 Notes and ComcENTS.
smack of Shakespeare's style about it ; and consequently must not be disturbed.
**Oor<i make knowne
It is 1)0 vicious blot, mnrther, or fonleneiseb No nncbaste action, or dishonor'd step That hath depriyed me of your grace and fayonr."
Thus this passage appears in the original " Murder" is evidently forced into the second line. It has no proper place in the category of blemishes enumerated by Cordelia, The word, as the reader will observe, was formerly written " murther,** and so appears in the text, where it is an easy and undeniable mistake for nor other ^ which is substituted for it by Mr. Collier's folio, in which the line stands con- sistently : —
"It is no yieious blot, nor other foulness^"
Act II. Scene 1.
" Edm, But that I told him the revenging Gods 'Gainst Parricides did all the thunder bend."
Thus the original folio. The quartos read " all their thuncfer^," in which they are followed by all the modem editions except Mr. Knight's. It is, of course, quite pos- sible that the words in the folio are misprints ; but then they were fortunate mishaps indeed. There is a grandeur in the thought of the gods bending all the thunder against parricides, which dwindles away in the particularity of ^^ their thunders."
Ejng Leab. 425
Scene 4/ ^
" Fool. Let go thy hold, when a great wheel nrns down a hill, leat it
break thy neck with following it ; but the great one that goes up the hill,
let him draw thee after. When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give
me mine again : I would ha:ire none but knaves follow it^ since a fool gives it
That, eir, which serves and seeks for gain.
And follows but for form. Will pack, when it begins to rain,
And leave thee in the storm. But I will tarry, the fool will stay,
And let the wise man fly : The knave turns fool, that runs away; The fool no knave, perdy."
Johnson proposed that the last two lines of the FooVs rhymes should be read,
**The/oo/ turns knave that runs away, The knave no fool^ perdy."
Johnson was slow^ and not sure, in his apprehension of imaginative poetry ; but upon a question which appealed to cool common sense, his decisions are always half right, at least. The whole context, not only of the rhymes, but the previous remarks of the Fooly make some such change inevitable ; and yet none has ever been adopted, except by Capell, who printed the lines thus :
" The /oo/ turns knave that runs away, The fool no knave, perdy."
This perhaps is all that is necessary.
Act IV. Scene 6.
" Olo, If Edgar Uve, 0 bless him I—
Now fellow, fare thee well. [He leaps and falls along."]
Edg, Gone, sir? fiurewelL"
426 Notes and Comments.
In the original folio there is no stage direction here, though one appears in ihe quarto of 1608. Is it not evi- dently misplaced there, and in all the modem editions ? It is absurd for Edgar to bid farewell to Glostery after the latter has taken his leap from the supposed cliff. Edgar had just before pretended to retire at Gloster^s request ; and when the latter bids him farewell, he, keeping up the de- ception, replies, — ' have you gone, sir ? then ferewell ; ' and then Gloster leaps. Bead thus :
" Glo, If Edgar live, 0 bleas him I—
Now feUow, fare thee well.
Edg. Gone, sir ? farewell
[Olotter leapt andfalU ahmg,"] And yet I know not," Ac,
" Edg, Ten masts at each make not the altitude Which thou hast perpendicularly fell**
E\ddently we should read, as has been conjectured :
" Ten masts at reach make not the altitude," <&c.
Act. V. Scene 3.
" Lear, Lend me a looking-glass ;
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, Why, then she lives."
These lines contain no diflSculty for any one to whom Shakespeare could be made comprehensible ; yet Mr. Col- Uer's corrector, for " stone," proposed shinCy — which is sim- ply harmless impertinence. But Mr. Singer, in rejecting
King Leak. 427
this proposition, adds, as if possessed by the spirit of an attorney, that " the word was, most probably, same" and that we should read,
"Lend me a looking-glass ; If that her breath will mist or stain the same,** <tc.
And thus we should have Lear, in the climax of his agony, talking like " the young man of the name of Guppy I " How shall we be protected against such wanton outrages ? The most distinguished Shakesperian scholars spring for- ward, with laudable alacrity, to shield us from anonymous and irresponsible injury ; — sed quis custodiet ipsos ciistodes ?
" Lear, And my poor fool is hang'd I "
Incredible as it must appear to any one who has fa- thomed the depths of feeling in this tragedy, there are learned men, who really believe that Lear in these words refers not to Cordelia^ but to his court Fool, Unmindful that Edmund has just said that he had ordered Cordelia to be hanged, unmindful that the dead Cordelia is in Lear's arms, and that he continues,
" No, no, no life ; Why should a dog, a hoi-se, a rat, have life And tkou no breath at aU f "
and, above all, insensible to the unutterable tenderness and pathos, which is contained in that expression " poor fool," as applied by Lear to Cordelia !
OTHELLO. Act I. SoKNB 1.
**Iago, Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave."
The expression with which I have heard this line read by intelligent people on and off the stage, justifies me in pointing out, what would otherwise seem too obvious to admit such superfluity, that " knave " is used here and in other passages of the play, not opprobriously, but in its more primitive sense of 'servant.' Thus lago again says, — " whip me such honest knaves," and Itoderigo, " a knave of common hire, a gondolier." So Antony speaks to his boy Eros as " My good knave Eros, {Ant and (Meop. Act IV. Sc. 2.)
"Rod. In an extravagant and wheeling stranger."
If any change were needed in this line, ^^wheed&ng stranger, which appears in Mr. Collier's folio, would be un- exceptionable. But what can express Roderigo's idea of a vagabond adventurer better than the original text ?
Othello. 429
Scene 2.
**Brah. Abu8*d her delicate youth with dnig8» or minerals That waken niotion/*
The original has " weaken motion/' which some would retain. But comi)are this with the following passages from the next Scene of this very tragedy :
"Brab. Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion Blushed at herseif ;"* "Ingo. But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts," &c
These instances of the use of the word by Shakespeare him- self in the same play, and the supposed influence of love philtres in his day, make it plain that " motion " means ' amorous desire/ and that " weaken " of the folio — ^which has been retained by Mr. Knight — has been properly chang- ed to waken. The convincing comparison has been made, as indeed it could not have failed to be, by the earlier editors and commentators. But it was objected by Henley to their arguments, and with some appearance of reason, that in the instances quoted, " the word derives its peculiar meaning either from some epithet or restrictive mode of expression with which it stands connected." This demurrer is easily set aside by the fact, that in Shakespeare's day the word was used in that sense absolutely; as for instance — in the following passage from Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra, the tale from which Shakesi)eare derived the plot of Mea- sure for Measure, and which was published in 1582, Cas- sandra, the Isabella of the comedy, has agreed to comply with the conditions of Promos, the Angelo of the tale.
'* To gi-eeve you with the hearing of Cassandra^s secreate
430 Notes and Comments.
plaints were an injurie, vertuous ladies, for they concluded with their good fortune, and everlasting fame ; but for that her offence grew neyther of frajltie, free wjl, or any motion of a %Doman^ but by the nieere inforccment of a man, because she would not stainc the modest wcedes of her kynde, shee attired her selfe in the habit of a page, and with the bashfull grace [of] a pure virgin, she presented wicked Promos Andrugioes precious ransome."
Scene 3.
" Oth. yet she wish'd
Thnt heaven had made her sxich a man."
There arc many who, influenced by the unfoonded no- tion that because Desdemona was chaste and modest she was also passionless, shame-faced and constrained, con- sider this passage to mean that Desdemona wished that heaven had made her of as bold and adventurous a spirit as Othello's story showed him to be. Not so, evidently. She wishes that heaven had made such a man for her. Is this immodest ? If it be, it is mucli less so than her direct re- quest to OthcllOy which he thus repeats in the next few lines :
"She thanked me; And bade me if I had a friend that loved her, I shonhl but touch him how to tell my story And that vfould woo her."
Could any thing be plainer, except a direct avowal of love ill explicit terms ? Brabantio's understanding of Deade- mona's wish is evident enough. He exclaims,
" I pray you hear her speak ; If she confess that she teas half tlie voooer^^ d:c.
Is it not plain that long before Othello found the " pliant
Othello not a Negro. 431
hour" Desdemona was sick at heart with love for him ? " Subdued " ere that, to " the very quality of her lord," she was ready to do any thing, short of positive wrong — perhaps even that — to obtain his love ; as after her mar- riage she was ready to suflFer any thing to retain it.
** Des. That I did love the Moor to live with him, My downright violence and ttorm of fortunes May trumpet to the world."
Some, the acute and learned Mr. Dycc among them, would read with the quarto of 1622, " scorn of fortunes." This is comparatively commonplace, un-Shakesperian, and inconsistent with the " downright violence," which pre- cedes it. The authentic text shoidd not be disturbed. Des- demona means that she went, as we say, * right in the teeth' of fortune.
There can be but few of my readers who have not seen Hildebrandt's picture of Othdlo and Desdemona, which seems to me one of the most fascinating of modern pictures, and without exception the most painful. To see such a love as Hildebrandt has painted in Desdemona' s eyes, given by such a woman to a great grinning negro with rings in his ears, is surely enough to convert any one to Calliounism. True, some women might be supposed to find consolation in the fact that the rings are rubies, but not such a woman as this Desdemona, Had the painter in his mind the fa- mous comparison, " likq a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear ? " It would seem so. But this reminds me that Shakespeare
432 Notes and Comments.
nowhere calls Othello an Ethiopian, and also does not apply the term to Aaron in the horrible TUua Andronictis ; bnt he continually speaks of both as Moors ; and as he has used the first word elsewhere, and certainly had use for it as a reproach in the mouth of lagOy it seems that he must have been fully aware of the distinction in grade between the two races, although his notion of their distinctive traits was perhaps neither very true nor very clear. Indeed, I could never see the least reason for supposing that Shake- speare intended Othello to be represented as a negro. With the negroes, the Venetians had nothing to do, that we know of, and could not have, in the natural course of things; whereas, with their over-the-way neighbors, the Moors, they were continually brought in contact. These were a warlike, civilized and enterprising race, which could furnish an Othello: whereas the contrary has always been the condition of the negroes. I am aware that John Quincy Adams endeavored to prove that Othello was a negro, and that Retzsch has made him so in his Outlines ; but to me the Ex-President seems to reason with less than his usual acumen, and the great draughtsman, no less than Hildebrandt, to fail in embody- ing Shakespeare's noble captain.
The reasons for supposing Othello to be a negro, are few and are easily set aside, w^hich is not the case with those which show him to be a Moor. The most conclusive of the for- mer is Iloderigo's calling Othello in the first Scene, " thick lips ; " but this is the result of Shakespeare's want of exact information. He had doubtless never seen either a Moor or a negro, and might very naturally confuse their physio- logical traits ; but a man of his knowledge and penetration could not fail to know the dilTerence between the position and the character of the nation which built the Alhambra, and that w hich funiislied their stock in trade to the Eng- lishmen, w lio, when he wrote Othello^ were supplying the
Othello not a Negro. 433
plantations in the West Indies with slaves, and floon after his death introduced negro slavery into Virginia. In addi- tion to this epithet, " thick lips/' there are several allu- sions to Othello, as having the visage of the devil, as black, and as being, therefore, the very reverse of attractive to a woman like Desdemona. But this proves nothing ; for Shakespeare has applied these identical cpith(»ts to so eminent and undeniable a Moor as the Prince of Morocco. In the Merchant of Venice, Act I. Sc. 2, PoHia says, upon the announcement of the royal Moor, — " if he have the condjtion of a saint and the complexion of a devil I ha(^ rather he would shrive me than wive me." He himseli prays her, " Mislike me not for my complexion ; " and she, when he has selected the wrong casket, says, " May all of his complexion choose me so ; " and yet he was not jetty li.K-k, like a negro, but tawny ; for the stage direction, in Act II. Sc. 1, in the quartos, is — Enter Morochus, a tawny Moor, all in lohite. Plainly, then, the devilish visage, at- tributed to Othello, and the assumed repulsiveness of his color, makes him out, in Shakespeare's estimation, only a Moor, and not even a very black Moor, at that.
But there is direct evidence that he was a Mauritanian, and one of lofty Uneage. lago, in his ribald shouting un- der Brahantio's window in the first Scene of the play, calls Othello " a Barbary horse ; " and the Moor himself, when defendii\g his conduct in regard to Desdemona (Act I. Sc. 2.) says :
" 'Tis yet to know, Which, when I know that boasting is an honour, I shall promulgate, I fetch my life and being From men of royal siege."
And in Act IV. Sc. 2, the following passage plainly points out Mauritania as the native place of Othello, whither he
28
434 Notes and CoMMSNra
was about to retire after a soldier's life, to spend with Des- demona, in repose, the mellow autumn of his days.
" logo. Sir, there is especial commission come from Venice, to depute Cassio in Othello's place.
Rod. Is that true f why, then Othello and Desdemona return again to Venice.
logo. O, no ; he goes into Mauritania, and takes away with him the fair Desdemona, unless his abode be lingered here by some accident; wherein none can be so determinate, as the removing of Cassio.**
But, to return to the picture of the great Dusseldorf artist, which has vitality and force enough to be made the text for an essay upon the play, — Hildebrandt's Othello has, in addition to the Congo features, the negro gaudiness of dress and extravagance of action. He is repulsive, and we wish to see a solid wall built up between him and the love- ly lady who looks upon him with such overflowing but per- verted love. This Desdemona is thought by many, if not by the majority, to be too womanly, too earnest, too passion- fiil, too 8i)lendid. Desdemona is a character which can hardly be embodied by a painter with the certainty of winning very general approval. Such is the interest she inspires, that almost every imaginative mind has formed to itself its own ideal of her, any deviation from which by an artist will be deemed a blemisli. But I must dissent from the opinion entertained by many on this point, and defend the painter's concei)tion. I tliink that her character is misconceived by the objectors. Because her father speaks of her " delicate youth ; '' calls her a " maiden never bold ; of spirit still and quiet," and says that she was "so opposite to marriage that she shunned the wealthy, curled dearlings of our na- tion/' some seem to think her a good little girl, who spoke when spoken to, said ' sir,' washed the cups and saucers after breakfast, and had serious thoughts of entering a convent.
Character of Desdemona. 435
They seem to forget that she is spoken of as of " high and plenteous wit and invention," — that on the veiy night of her marriage, she speaks before the Senate boldly, though modestly, to her father of the change in her relation, — that she says to the Duke^ who asks her if she will go with Othello,
"That I did love the Moor to live with him, My downright violence and storm of fortunes May trumpet to tlie world."
They forget that Cassio says she has " an inviting eye," though "right modest," and that she herself told O^A€??o — not yet her declared lover — that " she wished that heaven had made her such a man," and bade him if he had a friend who loved her, to " teach him how to tell his story, and that would woo her." Is this indicative of a timorous girl ? Is there not here calm self-reliance, deep emotion, and an earnest nature ? And are these at all inconsistent with youth, modesty, a quiet spirit and indiflFerence to all suitors save one ? It seems to me that the careful observer would look for these in the gentlest, most reserved of those who have attained to the full development of a complete fem- inine organization. Why, the very fact that Desdemona gave her love, unasked, to a mature man, a famous captain, one " rude in speech, and little blessed with the soft phrase of peace," shows why she shunned " the wealthy, curled dearUngs."
Shakespeare's Desdemona is a girl of vivid imagination, quiet self-reliance, muclf tenderness, and unbounded devo- tion, who had attained to early womanhood without the influence of a mother's coimsel — for we hear nowhere of her mother. Being such a one, she becomes, as such women ever do, " subdued to the very quality of her lord." She shows herself, in her conduct to him, almost the very oppo-
436 Notes and Comments.
site of what she was to all others, and gives up for him her station, her father's love, her happiness, and finally her very life itself, almost without a question or a murmur.
But Hildebrandt's Desdemona is found too magnificent, too stately, for her whom the " house affairs " would draw from the company of her father and Othello. Surely this objection is founded on a misconception. Desdefnona's house affairs were not affairs of pots and pans. In those times, all ladies under queenly rank overlooked their house- holds ; and Desdemona was the mistress of her father's house ; for, as we have seen, her mother was dead, and in superintending the establishment of a man of his degree, she would find quite enough to occupy her, without being called upon to soil the tips of her fingers, or hold up the train of her robe. Desde7no7ia, too magnificent ! She who was the daughter of a Venetian magnifico, a Senator ! who had the wife of a man of lago's rank for her waiting woman ! a noble lady of that queenly city, of which Byron says,
** Tier daujL^htors hiid Uicir dowers From spoils of rifttions, and the exlinuslloss East Poured in her lap all geras in sparkling bhowcrs, In i)urple was she rubed, and of her feast Monarehs partook and deemed their dignity increased 1 "
Child^ Harold, Canto IV. 2.
How could a painter make such a woman other than magnificent ? There is no fault in Hildebrandt's concep- tion, except that great, grinning blackamoor.
Act II. Scene 1.
" 2 Ocnt. The ehidden Billow seems to pelt the Clowds The wind-shak'd-Surge, with high and monstrous Maine Seemes to cast water on the burning 15eare."
Othello. 437
Thus the authentic folio. The quarto of 1622 reads " chidm<7 billow/' which has been almost universally fol- lowed by the editors, who also read "monstrous main." But does it need argument to show the liigher poetiy of " the chidden billow/' and its apposition with " the wind- shaked surge f " And what is a " high and monstrous main ? " Is it not plain that Shakespeare's idea was iden- tically the same with Byron's ?
"For I was, as it were, a chiltl of thee, And trusted to tliy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane — as I do here."
Childe Harold, Canto IV. 184.
This expression of Byron's is no unconscious plagiarism ; for at the time when it was written there was no edition of Shakespeare in which the word was not printed main.
" Can. The gutter'd rocks, and congregated sands, Traitore cnsteep'd to clog the guiltless keel"
That " ensteep'd " is a misprint, there cannot be a doubt : Mr. Knight's explanation that the rocks were " steeped in the water " — like tea, is j^erhaps his most un- fortunate effort at sustaining the manifest mistakes of the first folio. The quarto of 1622 reads enscerp'd, "of which," says Mr. Steevens, "every reader may make what he pleases." Surely it requires no very great ingenuity to discover that " enscerp'd " was a misprint for oisca^p^d. The scarp of a fortification is the shelving slope on that side next the ditch. It was used in that sense in Shake- speare's day ; and he could not have chosen a better word to picture to us the position and appearance of " the gut-
438 Notes and Comments.
ter'd rocks and congregated sands " that " clog the goilt- less keel."
Scene 3.
**Iago. Our general cast us thus early for the love of his Desdemona,**
<fcc
Read the dialogue which follows this, and mark the open and respectful admiration of Cassia for Desdemoiia, The gross remarks of lago fail to draw any thing from him which either Othello or Desdemona would be unwilling to hear. An exquisite touch of Shakespeare's genius, thus to show lago's brutality, Cassio's gentlemanly propriety of thought and speech, and — by the effect of her conduct on Cassio — Besdemona's modesty, with all her warmth of dis- position. Cassio, too (Act III. Sc. 1), says,
" My suit to her Is that she will to virtuous Dcsdcmona I'rocure me some access.'*
He, however, neglects to call her " very virtuous." Was that because she was less pure than Isabella ?
Enter Othello and Attendants.
" 0th. What is the matter here ?
JfoTu I bleed still, I am hurt to the death ; — he dies.
0th. Hold, for your lives.
Tdffo. Hold, hold, lieutenant, sir, Montano, — ^gentlemen, — lave you forgot all sense of place and duty? [old, hold ! the general spt^aks t-o you ; hold, for shame I
0th, Why, how now, ho ! from whence ariseth this ? re we turn'd Turks ? "
Othello. 439
This natural and dignified entrance of Othello is not seen on the stage. There, his first speech and those follow- ing by Montaiio and lago are cut out, in order that the Moor may rush in with a stride and a glare, and bellow forth " Hold for your lives ! Why, how now, ho ! " And this is called ^making a point ! '
Act III. Scene 1.
" Clown. Why, masters, have your iDstrnmenU been in Naples, that they speak i* the nose thus ? "
Is not this knowledge of a minute provincial peculiarity an evidence that Shakespeare knew more of Italy than by books or hearsay ? Ajyropos, it is strange that Mr. Collier's folio corrector did not change " speak " to squeak.
Scene 3.
" lago. I do beseech you, —
Though I, perchance, am vicious in my guess^ As, I confess, it it my nature's plague To spy into abuses: and, o/if, my jealousy Shapes faults that are not, — / entreat yoxi^ (hen. From one that so imperfectly conjects, You'd take no notice; nor build yourself a trouble Out of his scattering and unsure observance : "
Thus this passage stands befogged, and with a text patched up from quarto and foUo, in aU editions, except Mr. Knight's. He retains the text of the folio, which is :
" I do beseech you. Though I, perchance, am vicious in my guess
440 Notes and Comments.
(As I confess it is my nature's plague To spy into abuses, and of my jealousy Shapes faults that are not) that your wisdom From one that so imperfectly conceits Would take no notice," Ac.
This is perfectly clear and connected, with the exception of one typographical error — •" Shapes " for shape, logo says that it was his nature's plague, to spy into abuses, and of his jealousy to shape faults that are not. There is no more common error in actors and compositors than to make a verb agree with the noun next preceding it, regardless of its antecedent nominative. Read :
" (As I confess it is my nature*s plague To spy into abuses, and of my jealousy Shape faults that are not)."
''Emilia. My wayward husband hath a hundred tiinea
Woo'd mo to steal it."
Again,
''Emil. What handkerchief? Why, tliat the Moor first gave to Desdemona; That whicli so often you did bid me steal."
This shows either that quite a long time passes between the first and third Acts, — because Emilia did not attend on Desdemona until after the first Act, — or else that the poet was forgetful, or rather iiTespective, of time when a train of circumstances was to be strongly marked.
Othello. 441
Act IV. Scene 2.
" Oth. A fixed figure for the time of scorne. To point his slow unmoving finger at."
Few passages have provoked more comment than this, which appears thus in the quarto. In the folio it stands :
"Tlie fixed Figure for the time of Scorne To point his slow, and mouing finger ut."
Whatever difficulty the passage may present in other respects, I have not yet lost my astonisliment on my first jjerusal of the notes upon it, at finding that tlierc was any one who could hesitate a moment as to the meaning of the word "' unmoving." Some have chosen the reading of the folio — " and moving," on the ground that if the finger of scorn be "' slow/' it must move, and that therefore " unmoving " is an incongruous epithet ! But surely the finger of scorn is '' unmoving," because it does not move /rom its olyecty but points at him fixedly and relentlessly. To say that a thing is " slow" and then to acZcZ that it moves, is certainly worthy only of an idiot.
Eowe read " the Itand of scorn ; " but in the first place this is needless, and in the next it deteriorates the passage to make the hand of scorn j^oint hisfiKjcr, If any change from the reading of the quarto be needed, that proposed by Mr. Hunter, is most simple, most natural, and most con- sistent with the sense of the passage. He supposes that " the particles *for' and ^of have changed places, and would read,
"The fixed figure o/the time /or Scorn," <tc.
But though this is the best change yet proposed, it has, on
442 Notes and Comments.
account of the use of the text of the folio — evidently the most corrupted — the fault of making Othello suppose him- self the only figure to be scorned. This is not probable ; but it is very natural that he should speak of himself as a fixed figure to be pointed at by scorn. Mr. Hunter's change made in the text of the quarto gives us the passage in a form in which it at least is probable that it came fix)m Shakespeare's pen :
" but, alas ! to make me A fixed figure of the time, for Scorn To point his slow, unmoving finger at'*
'• Otk Like to the Pontick sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er keeps retiring ebb, but keeps due on," Ac.
Pope changed " keeps," which is evidently not the au- thor's word, to feels, which, as Mr. Knight says, " does not seem to be the right word." Would not,
Xo'er knows retiring ebb, but keeps due on,"
give the author's meaning better ? and with * keeps ' in the last part of the line would not the mistake of ' knows ' for the same word be natural with a compositor of that day ? Stecvens would, with Pope, omit this noble i)assage as "an unnatural excurBion," adding to Pope's want of taste, a sneer at Shakespeare for an immediate use of recently acquired knowledge. Stecvens observes that Shakespeare found the fact here alluded to, in Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History, pubUshed 1601, and that he " made a display " of it '^ as soon as opportimity offered." How nar-
Othello. 443
row minded ! — to say nothing of its ill nature. What mat- ter when Shakespeare learned the fact ? If he read it in Pliny on one day and wrote this passage the next, so much the greater poet he, who could so soon convert a dry fact by its mere i)assage through his mind, into the highest poetry. It is not the possession of knowledge, but the use of it, which marks the master mind.
[The above reading was suggested by me to a few fellow students of Shakespeare in the winter of 1851. It has since been brought to light on the margins of Mr. Collier's folio.]
Act V. Scene 2.
" Oth. one whose hand,
Like the ba?e Jiidean, threw a pearl away, Richer than all his tribe."
The folio has " Izidean," the quarto " Indian ; " and as the typographical eiTor, in whichsoever copy it may be, is very slight, and might easily occur in a well printed book nowadays, there is a very fair question as to which read- ing should be adopted. There appears to me not a doubt that the folio is right, and that Othello is made by Shake- speare to allude to the murder of Mariamne by Herod, the story of which was well known to the public of that day, and was made the subject of a tragedy by Lady Elizabeth Carew, which was published in 1613. The question is discussed at much length in the Variorum Edi- tion. The preponderance, both of arguments and dispu- tants, is largely in favor of " Judean." But this subject has been so ably handled by the Hon. George Lunt, that I cannot do better than give my readers the benefit of his argument, which merits preservation in a less ephemeral form than that in which it was first given to the public.
444 Notes akd Comments.
^^ Of all the old commentators there aotaally appears to be nobody left, but Mr. Boswcll, to favor the Indian claim ! Tosach authority his adherents arc heartily welcome. But to show the value of his criticism, he says that the word tribe (which, as Ma- lone truly remarks, is in favor of the reading, in the text, as ap- plicable more especially to the Jewish nation) is ' constantly used, at this day, in speaking of the Indians ! * Unluckily, how- ever, it was so used, in his day, as applicable particularly to the North American Indians, who never had any pearls to throw away, and of whom Shakespeare and his contemporaries could have known little or nothing. And we are not aware that the word * tribe ' had been then, or is now, familiarly applied to the people of the East Indies, to whom the allusion must, of course, have been made, if at all.
*• But apart from this weight of testimony from the older com- mentators, we are of those who think there is quite enough in the expression itself to make it perfectly clear how Shakespeare wrote it. The expression is one of generalization, demanding, as must be the case in all good poetry, the ready sympathy and under- standing of the reader. Whether he understand the particular allusion or not, at least, it should be of that character that he iniglit, or ought to have known it ; and not drawn from a i^ource <o remote as to be out of his reach, or so insignificant as to be ])eneiith his notice. On this ground, we are willing to set up any possible Judaui against any Indian that can be imagnied.
" But to pursue the question of internal evidence somewhat further, we are of the opinion that there is much in the passage itself to aid us in forming a right conclusion. In the first place. the word tribe^ as we remarked above, is one peculiarlv appro- priate to the Jewish people, so constantly used, in his time, as in ours, and so familiarly applied by Shakespeare; as, for instance, in the mouth of Shylock :
' Cursed 1)0 my tribe^ If I forij;ive liiin.*
'Jubul, a wealthy Hebrew of my tribe*
'For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe^* Ac
Othello. 445
" The epithet * base ' affords us also a very fair opportunity of speculation on this subject. This term, in the times of Shake- speare and those long antecedent and subsequent, would be held peculiarly descriptive of the Jewish people. The word, in the common understanding, would unquestionably fit any Jew and all Jews. So far from there being any propriety, there would have been a manifest impropriety in using the epithet, as denot- ing the characteristics, so far as understood, of East Indians in general. Then, as to any special story of an individual Indian throwing * a pearl away,* and of such a feat being popularly known, or known at all, — where is it ?
" We believe, therefore, that we must come back to the general faith on this point, that the allusion is to the tragic story of He- rod and Mariamne. Mr. Steevens objects to this theory, on the ground that it would not constitute a good poetical figure, and would be, in fact, unworthy of Shakespeare, to make Othello com- pare his own desperate act with another act resembling it in es- sential particulars. That as, for instance, it would be no figure to say ' crystal resembles crystal ' — so, for Othello to liken this his murder of Desdemona to the murder of Mariamne by Ilerod, would be equally no figure, since it would be comparing transac- tions in themselves essentially identical. The mistake of Stee- vens will be apparent, by considering that Shakespeare makes no comparison in any such sense. He introduces a mcdius termi- nus. He makes Othello say, that he, in the one case, as Herod in the other, not — killed his wife, — but, threw a pearl away. And this metaphorical comparison of the two acts, by likening them to a third, which is itself figurative, vindicates, as it consti- tutes, the propriety of the similitude. As, in the example above cited, the figure would be complete to say, —
Like mine, beneath the sun's diffusive rays, Your cr}'Btal half reflects the diamond's blaze.
" In order, therefore, to give some plausible account of the al- lusion, Steevens relates, and, as some uncharitably assert, invents a story of a Jew, who, not able being to obtain the price he claimed for a certain precious pearl, hurled it into the sea. But
446 Notes and Comments.
a difficulty would here arise as to the propriety of apply log the epithet * base ' to the supposed Jew, on account of this transac- tion. The pearl was apparently his 0¥ra, to dispose of as he saw fit ; and, viewing it in one light, the act would seem rather to raise him above the merely mercenary spirit popularly attributed to his race. This conduct might be extravagant and desperate; but no more base than the act of Cleopatra, in swallowing the pearl dissolved at her table ; or than the destruction of her books, by the Sibyl, in the presence of Tarquinius Priscus; and we never heard the epithet used in connection with her very extraordinary conduct.
" But we would modestly suggest what may, perhaps, tend to throw litrht upon this point, and which seems hitherto to have escaped notice, — that the word * Judcan ' in reality means some- thing more than Jew. A Judcan is, in fact, an inhabrUant of Jwica ; and thus, in correspondence with Shakespeare's common mode of expression, the word might naturally, and with more force would refer to Herod, King of Judea, as the Judean, par excellence, — as representing the State."
Thus far Mr. Liint ; and in addition to bis remarks I will only point out, what aj)pears to have escaped the ob- ser\'atiou of all who have written upon this passiige, that the very plnaseology implies, — absolutely requires, an allu- sion to a particular story. The words are all particular and definite. ]\Ir. Boswell quotes a passage from Habington, in which '" the unskilfuU Indian,'' ^^ 'mong the waves scat- ters" briulit gems; and another from Howard, in which ^^ Indians " ^'cast away" a pearl ; and these passages the Eev. Mr. Dyce (Ilemarl's. dice. p. 244) thinks ^^ prove tlecid- edly that OtJicUo alludes to no particular story, but to " the Indian, as -enerally described." To Mr. Boswell's quota- tions, he adds the following, from Drayton's Legend of Ma^ til da :
"The wretched Indian spurnes the golden Ore."
Othello. 447
But in this, as in the others, not only is the Indian " gen- erally described," but the act. No specific deed is referred to ; there is a mere allusion to a characteristic of the In- dian. Not so in Othello's speech. In that, a particular per- son and a particular act must be alluded to, because Othello likens himself not to the Indian who throws a pearl away, but to " tJie hose Jiidean " who " threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe." The reference is to some particular story, specific and unmistakable ; and as the American Indians, who alone had tribes, had no pearls, and as the story of the base Judean, Herod, who says of Mariamne, in the old play,
"I had but one inestimftble jew»<f/ — Yet I in suddaine choler cast it downe And dasht it all to pieces,"
— ^as this story had marked affinities with OtJiello's position, and was well known to Shakespeare's public, can there be a shadow of a doubt that it was the story referred to, and that we should not disturb the reading of the authentic foUo ?
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
Act I. Scene 5.
" A irx. So he nodded.
And soberly did mount an Arme-gaunt Steede, Who noijLrliM so hye, that what I would haue spoken Was boa-^tly dumbo by him."
Thus the text of the original folio, with an evident error in "amiogaunt/' This has been changed to ^erwagraMw/, — the most common reading — arm-girt, arrogant, and ivar-gaunt. Of all these, arm-girt, proposed by Hanmer, seems to me the most suitable word, by far. But is it not possible that tlie com])Ositor made a transposition of the first two letters, and adding the very easy mistake of </ for q^ ])riiited ^' armegaunt '' for rampaiint ? This sorts well with what Akxis says of the high neighing of the horse.
Act II. Scene 2.
'• Kno. llrr tr'Htlewoinon, like the Nereides, So many ni<i'ruai<l-«, tended her i' the eyes, An«l made tlicir bonds adornings: ut the helm A so'-ininu' int'iinaid i>t«'ers; the silken taekle S\v«'Ils witlj ih" touches of those flower-sofl hands, That varciv franio the office."
Antony and Cleopatra. 449
There is undeniable obscurity in,
" tended her t* tfu ei/eit, And made their benda adominga ; "
and no attempt to dissipate it has been successful, to my apprehension. To interpret '"*' tended her i' the eyes" ' waited upon her in her eight* is to attribute a deplorably feeble use of language to Shakespeare in one of his finest descriptive passages ; and to suppose, with Johnson and Steevens, that it means * discovered her will by her eyes,' is not much better. Monck Mason would read,
"So many mermaids, tended her i* the guise"
—of mermaids, of course ; and would construe "their bends ** to mean the curves of their tails, which they managed so gracefully as to make them ornamental ! Mr. Mason was not jesting ; and neither am I, in dissenting from this cau- dal commentary, which, however, I commend to the notice of Mr. Bamum's pufF inditer, on occasion of the next arrival from the Fejee Islands.
Warburton would read,
"And make their bends adoringsy
But were Chopaira's attendants imder any necessity to bend at all, except in obeisance to her, that they should " make their bends adorings ? "
These two lines are doubtless corrupted, and hopelessly.
As to the remainder of the passage, Mr. Collier asks, " Why or how, was the silken tackle to * swell with the touches of flower-soft hands ? ' " and adds that " we ought undoubtedly, with the old corrector [of his folio of 1632], to amend the text to,
29
450 Notes and Comments.
" * Smell witli the touches of those flower-soft hands.* "
Such a typographical error would be easily made, if it be necessary to suppose any error at all. But, if Mr. Collier must be literal, does he not know that cordage will swell with handling ? And besides, though it may be a very pretty compliment to suppose that the tackle would "smell" (sweetly, of course) with the touches of the hands of Cleo- patra's ladies, the word will thrust upon me the profoundly true observation, Mulier redd olet ubi nihil olet, which I shall never forget having found in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, under the head of Artificial Allurements of Love; but what author furnished it, I cannot say ; which, by the way, is the confession that many a better scholar must make with regard to the larger number of the quota- tions in that wise, quaint, most learned, and fantastic book.
Act IV. Scene 6.
" Eno. O Antony,
Thou mine of bounty, how woulds't thou have paid My better service, "when my tui*])itude Thou dost 80 crown with gold ! This blows my heart**
No notice is taken by the editors of Jackson's emenda- tion, " This hows my heart ; " but can there be a question as to its necessity ?
Scene 8.
*^Ant. We have boat him to his camp: Run one before And lot the queen know of our guests."
Antony and Cleopatra. 451
Antony brought no guests. Mr. Collier's folio is plainly correct in reading,
" And let the queen know of our gesU^ [t. e. exploits].
Act v. Scene 3.
** Dol, Would I might never
Oretakc purau'de successe, but I do feele By the rebound of yours, a greefe that suites My very heart at roote.**
Thus the original text, in which " suites " is an e\'ident and a very easy misprint for smites, which was suggested by Mr. Barron Field, and to which it is changed in Mr. Collier's folio. It had been altered to shoots, which ai)pear8 in most editions ; but this violent change from the original text must yield to a word which is not only far better, but which requires the alteration of but a single letter in the text of the authentic folio.
CYMBELINE.
ACT I. ScBNK 2.
This Scene introduces us to the finest female creation of Shakespeare's genius^ that paragon of perfect womanhood — Imogen, Having observed, even among those of finer per- cei)tion8, a seeming incomplete appreciation of this noblest and loveliest character in the world of fiction, I intended' to attempt an expression of my own ; but ha\ing read Mrs. Jameson's Characteristics of Women since the firet half of this volume was stereotyped, I gladly acknowledge that that accomplished lady has left no one an excuse for not confessing Imogen the ideal woman, and me no o}>- )K)rtunity to become her champion. There is hardly a trait of the character, however delicate, which Mrs. Jameson has not appreciated, and placed in such a light, that those who need such guidance will be led to see and feel all the beau- ty of the picture, and those who do not, will yet follow with sympathetic pleasure the analysis which her congenial hand has effected with such mingled reverence, grace, and skill. Upon two or three minor points, however, I will here express a difference of opinion with Mrs. Jameson, and will allow as many short paragraphs upon different passages re-
Character of Imogen. 453
ferring to Imogen^ written years ago, to remain uncancelled in my notes.
Mrs. Jameson thus expresses, in a single paragraph, vdtK equal exactness and delicacy, her view of the outline of the character of Imogen,
" To conceive her aright, we must take some peculiarities from many characters, and so mingle them, that, like the combi nation of hues in a sunbeam, the effect shall be as one to the eye We must imagine something of the romantic enthusiasm of Ji liet, of the truth and constancy of Helen, of the dignity and ptk rity of Isabel, of the tender sweetness of Viola, of the self posses sion and intellect of Portia,— combined together so equally and harmoniously, that we scarcely say that one predominates over the other. But Imogen is less imaginative than Juliet, less spir- ited and intellectual than Portia, less serious than Helen and Isabel : her dignity is not so imposing as that of Ilermione, it stands more on the defensive : her submission, though entire, is not so passive as that of Desdemona, — and thus while she re- sembles each individual, she stands wholly distinct from all."
This passage, whether intentionally or not on the part of the author, is slightly apologetic in its tone regarding Imogen, in so far as it sets forth other characters as excel- ling her in some one point, although inferior to her in many others. But in this, her fair apologizing eulogist has, un- consciously, perhaps, only the more clearly established the great merit of Imogen's character, — its perfect self poise and symmetry. It is only the extravagant romance of JtUiet, the excess of her enthusiasm, which are wanting in Imogen- it is but the somewhat unfeminine preponderance of intel- lect in Portia, the austerity of Isabella's serioi^^^ness, and the tameness of Desdemona' s submission which she lacks ; for neither all the " truth and constancy of Helen " nor all "the tender sweetness of Viola" are denied to her by Mrs. Jameson, or could be. Her dignity is not so imposing as
454 Notes and Comments.
that of Hermione, for the very good reason, that whfle Imo^ gen is a bride in the first flush of perfected womanhood, jffer- mione is, when The Winter's Tale opens, the mother of a boy some ten years old at least. One is but a princess, while the other 18 not only a matron and a mother, but a Queen. As to such dignity and purity as that of Isabella, I am willing to be- lieve that no one who has thoroughly studied that character will think the lack of any of its traits a loss to Imogen, Mrs. Jameson's only error of moment is in supposing that Imogen had something of the " dignity and purity of Isabel" She needed them not : she could not have them : the two charac- tei*s have not a single point of contact. The married Imogen's instinctive chastity is as spotless as Isabella's premeditated vestalism, and is without the mental taint of deliberation. One, like the vvliite robes seen by Christiana on the De- lectable Mountains, is protected from impurity by an in- herent viYtwe ; the other, like a virgin fortress, is secured against assault by its forbidding frown and its terrible pow- ers of resistance. And I may here appropriately point out, that as Mrs. Jameson's descriptive analysis of the character of Imogen is at once the most just, discriminating, and elo- quent of all her efforts, so her attempt to persuade us into respect and regard for Isabella is as feeble and uninterest- ing as the product of her pen could be. She is evidently do- ing taskwork. Betrayed for once into a misapprehension of Shakespeare's design, she felt obliged to make out Isa- hvlla a model of intelligence, dignity and purity. But even admitting the tnith of that which she has undertaken to demonstrate, it must be confessed that the work is some- what lamely done, and to her eternal honor among men, and tnie women too, it is so. Slie who had such a s\Tn}m- tlietic apj)reciation of Cordelia, Rosalind, Miranda, Par- tic, Viola, and above all of Imogen, coidd not without constraint attempt the eulogy of Isabella, No ; Imogen
Character of Imogen. 455
lacks nothing of perfect womanhood, in intellect, in grace, in tenderness, in passion, in dignity, or in devotion ; but while other women, from a deficiency in some of these traits, or an excess in one, are distinguished by that which prepon- derates, she is " enthroned and sphered '* by the possession and perfect balance of them all ; and yet she least of all of Shakespeare's women, if any can be least, is a made-up character. She manifests all her traits with a charm pecu- liar to herself. Mrs. Jameson places her among the Char- acters of the Afiections. This is right ; but only right, because in perfect womanhood the affections sway the in- tellect.
Upon one other point Mrs. Jameson is somewhat at fault ; but for that her sex alone is accountable. She very justly remarks that Imogen is " a beauty ; '' and the fact is that upon not another of his women has Shakespeare bestowed such wealth of loveliness as upon this one. He brings her charms before us in every way ; by the effect which they produce upon those around her, by the consciousness which we continually have of suq)assing beauty in her presence, and by such particularity of description as he vouchsafes to no other of his heroines. But Mrs. Jameson speaks of her " delicacy and even fragility of person." No man would have formed such a conception of this embodiment of ideal womanhood. Mrs. Jameson ha(J a Viola in her mind's eye. Imogen had not the heroic stature and the grand outlines oi Hermione; but men see her standing shoulder high by the noble figure of Leo7iatus, in that bewildering plenitude of loveliness which firm health alone can give.
Scene 5.
"lach. Ay, and the approbation of those that weep this lamentable divorce under her coloi-g, are wonderfully to extend him ; be it but to for-
456 Notes and Comments.
tify her jiuliffiitint, which, else, an easy battery might lay flat^ for taking a beggar without more quality."
" Without more quality'' than what ? This is not the text of the original, which gives "without lesse quality.'* The change was made by Rowe, who has been followed in nearly all the editions since his day. The original involves a grammatical contradiction which, although it occurs else- where in Shakespeare's works, should not be needlessly as- sumed to be the correct text. lachimo means, and should grammatically say, " for taking a be^ar with less quahty." But is it not probable that Shakespeare wrote " without this quality ? " t. c, — Hhe partisans of Imogen wonderfully ex- tend [magnify] the good qualities of PosthumuSj if it be but to sustain her judgment, which else might be easfly impeached for taking a beggar who had not this quality which they attribute to him, and which in a measure com- pensates for his want of rank and position.'
''Post. I will wage against your gold, gold to it: my ring I hold « dear as my tinirer: 'tis part of it.
lach. You ar»" a fii*»nd, and therein the wiaer," Ac.
" You iire a friend " has no meaning consistent with the context ; and yet it has been retained in all the cur- rent edit inns, in spite of a palpable typographical error dis- covered by Warburton, and pointed out and corrected by
Theobald on his suffgestion :
" You nr«' afraid^ and therein the wiser."
Ur. Johnson tried to make his readers believe that lachimo told Podhiuiins, " You are a friend to the Jady,*' meaning ^her lover ; ' but Posthumus has but just said, '' I profess
Cymbeline. 457
myself her adorer, not her friend ; " and besides, lachimo would have said " You are her friend." The rest of lack- imo'8 speech, however, entirely sustains Warburton's cor- rection.
" You ore afraid^ and therein the wiser. If you buy ladies* flesh at a million the dram, you cannot preserve it from tainting : but I see that you have some religion in you, that you fear,**
Scene 7.
" lacK Should he make me
Live, like Diana's priest, between cold sheets?**
Should not we read,
* Should he make youf"
What power had Postliumus over the conduct of lach- imo ? And besides, the latter is drawing a contrast between the conduct of Imogen and her husband, with the hope to induce the former to be unchaste. What had lachimo's continence to do with his argument ? Nothing. He ur- ges the alleged conduct of Postliumus as an excuse for the crime to which he would tempt Imogen, And again, — Diana's priests were always women.
**Iaeh, I dedicate myself to your sweet pleasure: More noble than that runagate to your bed ; And will continue fast to your affection, Still close as sure.
Imo, What ho, Pisanio !
lack. Let me ray service tender on your lips.
Imo, Away ! — I do condemn mine ears that have So long attended thee." —
458 Notes and Comments.
The exquisite purity, the firm, undaUjring .chastity of Imogen are indicated with unsurpassable tact and skill in this Scene, and by her first exclamation. She is slow to understand lachimo; but the moment he makes his pro- position plainly, — ^without an instant's delay, before a word of anger or surprise passes her lips, she calls for the faithful servant of her lord, to remove him who has insulted her and his friend's honor. Then her indignation bursts from her : but again and again she interrupts its flow with " What ho, Pisanio /" She holds no question with him who made such a proposition to her : she enters into no dispute of why or wherefore, draws no contrast herself between her tnith and her husband's falsehood : she seeks nothing but the instantaneous removal of a man who has dared to at- tempt her chastity. Not only does she refuse all consider- ation of the right or wrong of his proposition, all going into the metaphysics of the question, but the mere proposal changes, on the moment, all previous relations between her and the proposer, although they were established by her husband himself. It is not until her pure soul, as quick to believe the <^ xxl as it was slow to imagine ill, is quieted by the entire withdrawal of lachhno's advances, and the assignment of a comprehensible, though not excusable rw son for them, that she ceases to call for him who is in sonjc sort the rei)resentative of her husband. Chateau qui park etfcmme qui rcoute va se rendre.
An exquisite touch of the master's hand occurs in a single pronoun in the succeeding speech of Imogen. B«>m a princess, she has given herself to Posthmmis, a namelos? man, as freely as if she were a peasant's daughter ; and she is remarkable, with all her dignity, for her unassuming de- portment ; but the insult of lacliimo stings her into pride, and for the first and only time, she takes her state, and speaks of herself in the plural number. She sjxys, "to ex-
Ctmbeline. 459
pound his mind," not to me, but " to us." Mrs. Jameson's delicate perception, doubtless saw this, as well as the con- strained brevity of Imogen's replies even after she has ad- mitted the excuses of lachimo.
Act II. Scene 3.
'* Imo, Profane fellow I
Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more. But what thou art, besides, thou wert too base To be his groom : thou wert dignified enough. Ever to the point of envy, if 'twere made Comparatiye for your virtues, to be styl'd The under-hangman of his kingdom ; and hated For being preferr'd so well.**
Imogen's exalted respect and admiration for Posthumus appear in this dialogue, quite as much as her contempt of Cloten, — perhaps rather more. See also in the first part of this interview, her tenderness of the feelings of even such a selfish brute as this lover :
"But that you say I yield, being silent, I would not speak. I pray you spare me ; i'faith, I shall unfold equal discourtesy To your best kindness : one of your great knowing^ Should learn, being taught, forbearance.'*
It is only after the pertinacity of Oloten has shown itself deaf to courteous phrase, and has ventured upon low abuse of her heart's lord, that she opens upon her long loathed suitor the floodgates of her pent up scorn and indignation.
460 NOTBS AND ConfSNTS.
Act III. Scene 1.
" Clo, — and as I said, there is no more such Cnsars : other of them may have crooked noses ; but to owe such straight artna, none.**
Cloten is not a fool, but a shrewd, selfish lout. His ridiculous mental point is his conceit of himself personally and of his station ; otherwise he has a good deal of what is called mother wit, which shows itself at various times during the play in such whimsical and pregnant remarks as this.
** Ciftn. Ca9ai^9 Ambition,
Which sweird so much, that it did almost stretch The sides o* this World, against all colour heere, Bid put the yoak vpon^s ; which to shake off Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon Our Bclnes to be, we do. Say then to Caesar,** dc.
Thus this passage stands in the original. The evident corrruption is thus corrected in all modem copies :
" which to shake off Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon Ourselves to be. We do say then to CaBsar,** Ac.
But Mr. Collier's folio gives the passage thus :
'• Cym. which to shako off
Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon Ourselves to bo.
Clo. We do.
Cyni, Say then to CsBsar," Ac
Cymbelinb. 46 1
There cannot be a doubt that this is the proper distribu- tion of the text. It should be borne in mind that Cloten accompanies the remarks of Cymbeline with a sententious running commentary throughout the Scene.
Scene 4.
*' Ima. I false ff Thy conscieDije witnees : — ^lachimo, Thou didst accuse him of incontinency ; Thoa. then look'dst like a villain ; now, methinks, Thy fayonr^s good enough. — Some jay of Italy, Whose mother was her painting, hath betrayed him : Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion ; And, for I am richer than to hang by the walls, I must be ripped; — to pieces with me I "
The famous correction " Who smothers her with paint- ing/' for " Whose mother was her painting/' was considered in detail in the examination of Mr. Collier's folio. It is the most striking and plausible of all the inadmissible changes proposed by Mr. Collier upon the basis of the correc- tions in that volume. To what has already been said, I will add a remark which will apply not only to this proposed read- ing, but to all arbitrary emendations, — that is, to use Ma- lone's words again, to " all emendations not authorized by authentic copies printed or manuscript," which is, that even granting, for the sake of argument, that the proposed reading is better than that which is in the original folio, it cannot be received. It is the function of no man to reivrite ShakespearCy even to improve him. Our object is to arrive at what he wrote^ not what, in our opinion, he should have written.
As to what he did write, we must take the best evidence, which is the authorized folio, when the text of that is not
462 Notes AND CoiiifENT&
made incomprehensible or inconsistent by the accidents of the printing-office. It will not do to say that if a suggest- ed change be for the better, it must be accepted, because Shakespeare was sure to choose the most beautiful and forcible expression ; for this, it will be seen, puts it in the power of every critic, every reader in feet, to decide wliat is the most beautiful and forcible.
My unwillingness, therefore, to accept the new reading, is entirely irrespective of the comparative merits of the new and the old. The original, that textvhich was published by Shakespeare's friends, fellow-actors, and business partners, gives us a reading which is comprehensible, and which is not in its character at variance with the phraseology or tone of thought of Shakespeare's acknowledged works, or with the language and customs of his time ; and we are bound to receive it ; for we are seeking for Shakespeare's text, not for something better. Were " Who smothers her with painting," the text of the first folio, and had Theobald, Ma- lone, and Coleridge, with Mr. Collier, Mr. Halliwcll, and Mr. Dyce at their backs, advocated " Whose mother was her painting,'' the very reading which I now claim should not be changed, — I should battle just as stoutly for that which I now oppose ; and so would all true, docile, and humble lovers and students of Shakespeare.
Mr. Kichardson, in liis Essays on some of Shakespeare^ Dramatic Characters, gives an explanation of this passage which probably but few of my readers have seen, and which appears to nie to be entirely satisfactory.
'' The jay of Italy is not only very unworthy in herself, but is so by transmitted, hereditary, and therefore by inherent wicked- ness. She derived it from her parents : inatri turpi filia tur- pior : her mother was such as she is; her picture, her portrait; for the word painting in old English, was used for portrait. Shakespeare himself so uses it.
Cyhbeline. 463
Laertes, was your father dear to you ? Or, are you like the painting of a sorrow, A face without a heart?
*' Perhaps, too, the poet uses that sort of figure which, ac- cording to rhetoricians, presents, as expressing some strong emo- tion, the consequent in place of the antecedent ; or the effect for the cause. So that instead of saying the jay of Italy was the picture of her mother, Imogen says, more indignantly and more resentfully, that her mother was such another, was her very pic- ture. So that she was inherently and hereditarily worthless, and capable of the arts of seduction."
Considering the use of the word "jay" and the fable of the jay in borrowed plumage, the reading "Whose feuther was her painting," &c., which Capell obtained by modifying Hanmer's " V^hosQ feathers were her painting," which the Oxford editor derived from a hint dropped by Theobald, is far preferable to " Who smothers her with painting."
In the same Scene, it is doubtless proper instead of
" you should tread a course Pretty, yet full of view,"
to read with Mr. Collier's folio,
" you should tread a course Privy, yet full of view."
In the same speech,
" Now if you could wear a mind Dark as 3'our fortune is,*' <&c.
flhould be,
464 Notes akd Ck>iniSNTB.
" Now if y<m eonld w«ar a mUn Dark as your fortune 1% and but diagniae^" Ae,
This suggestion is Mr. Singer's.
SOENB 6.
**Imo. I sea aman*s life is a tedious one; I have tyr*d myselfe, and for two nights together Have made the ground my bed. I should be sieke But that my resolution helpes me."
Can any manifestation of obtuseness exceed that of the corrector of Mr. Collier's folio, who, though Imogen says that she finds that a man's life is a tedums one," that for two nights she has slept upon the ground, and that she should be sick if it were not for her fortitude, supposes that " I have tir'd myself," should be ''I have 'tir'd [1. e. attired] myself/' — ^ like a boy * being, perforce, understood. And yet Mr. Collier sustains the change 1
Act IV. Scene 2.
*'Arv. Brother stay here.
[To Imogen. Are wo not brothers ?
Imo. So man and man should be ;
But clay and clay differs in dignity, Whose dust is both alike."
This passage, accidentally seen during the search for another, brings to my mind an attack upon Shakespetu-e which I once saw dragged into a criticism upon the per- formance of A Midsummer Night's Dream; in which
Gtmbelinb. 465
the critic, mounting the tribune of Socialism, impeached the loyalty of Shakespeare to the trae attributes of human- ity, by accusing him of want of sympathy with the laboring classes. The same charge had been brought elsewhere and before. That it is altogether unfounded, no careful and thoughtful reader of Shakespeare need be told ; and the passage above quoted, in which a princess, addressing, as she supposes, two peasants, utters at once the most genial truth of genuine democracy, and the most cutting satire upon factitious aristocracy, is but one of many in which Shakespeare has shown his love and respect for Man irre- spective of adventitious circumstances. But he was a Poet, an Artist, and, what is more, a Dramatic Artist ; and when he portrays men of a class, he makes them the type of a class as they existed, not as in future ages they might, could, would or should exist.
** Gut. But his neat cookery I Ho cut our roots in characters, And sauced our broths as Juno had been sick, And he her dieter."
Another trait of Imogen's perfect and entire womanli- ness. In the midst of her own woe, she yet has quietly assumed the family cares of the cave, and looks with taste* fill concem'after the little enjoyments of those around her. She is not content with neat and appetizing cookery, but cuts the roots " in characters." — And at this, female ' intel- ligences' sneer. Women who sneer at such traits will,, among the very men whom they hope to please, — the intel- lectual, get only their sneering for their pains.
30
466 Nona axd OamaDrai,
aom^
•€ML FMNrBoiiiovttlMtol«rtiMM% Kor tlu fbrions wiiitti^ ngM;
Thoa fhy worldl j task luMt 9Mh% HooM art goni^ Md Win A j ^
G<dd«n Udt and girii all mi
Ai ohimney-tireepan eooM to i
An, Faar no more tha frovB «^
Tlioii art part tbe tymtni ttrakit ; Oare no mora to dothcb tnd aat;
To tbaa tha rood Sa aa tfaa oak : The soeptr% laanuag^ P^QTsia^ nmi All follow thi^ and ooma to dnai
Giii Fear no mora tha Ufl^ltniaf4•d^ Arv. Nor the all-dreaded tlrandiiratosa; Qui. Fear not alander, emiaora nuh; An. Thoa halt finiih'djof and moan: BUh, Allbrerayoai^aUloTeiamnat Gonngn to thee^ and ooma to dwt
^Mt. Ko eBoroiMr harm thee 1 Art, Nornowitohomftoharmtheel Chd, Ghoitnnlaid forbear thee t Arv, Nothing ill oome near theel BotK Quiet oonsummation hare ; And renowned be thjr graTel"
Can any one fiuniliar with the cast of Shakespeare's thought^ the turn of his expression, and the rhythm of his verse, believe that this song is his ? It could not be at cmoe tamer, more pretentious, and more unsoited to the characters than it is. What did Ouiderius and ArviraguSj bred &om infancy in the forest, know about ^' chimney s?reep- ers ? " How foreign to their characters to philosophize on "the sceptre, learning, phyaick!" Will any body believe that Shakespeare, after he was out of Stratford grammar school, or before, wrote such a couplet as,
" All loven young; all loTera moet Consign to thee^ and come to dnit't
Cymbelinb. 467
Has he throughout his works given us reason to suspect him, on any evidence short of his own hand and seal, of making these two lads, burying their adopted stripling brother by the mouth of their cave in the primeval forest, close their dirge with such a wish as,
"Quiet consummation have, And renoumed be thy grave ! "
That Mr. Knight should speak of these stiff, formal, arti- ficial rhymes, worthy only of a verse-crazed cit affecting the pastorals, as " free, natural lyrics," is incomprehensible. The lines are the production of some clumsy prentice of the Muse. Collins's well known ode for this Scene, " To fair Fidele's grassy tomb," is a pretty thing in itself, but is quite as unsuited to the situation, and smacks of 1750, not of 1600. Think of Guiderius and Arviragua singing,
"But shepherd lads assemble here, And melting virgins oton their love I "
No man could have written those lines who had not seen his mother's portrait painted by Kneller in a three-story head-dress and a hoop, and with a crook in her hand.
Act V. Scene 1.
''Post. Butalackel
You snatch some hence for little faults ; that*s love To have them fall no more : you some permit To second illes with illes, each elder worse And make them dread it, to the dooers thrift.^'
Thus the original text, in the last line but one of which, " elder " is evidently a misprint for ill the^ as Zach-
468 Notes and Comments.
ary Jackson suggested. This idiomatic use of the oompar- ative, as in ' each worse than the other,' ' each uglier than the other/ &c.^ is not uncommon, and is very expressive. Bead,
*'you some permit To second ills with ills, each ill the worse,'' dec.
The original text has been justified, and interpreted to mean that " each crime is worse than its predecessor ; " but this cannot be. If "the elder" be "the worse," then each crime is not worse than its predecessor. With regard to the last line, I admit that it is among the few, the signi- fication of which is not obvious to me. I cannot divine what " dread it " refers to, or what it is which is to be to " the doer's thrift." The line is evidently oorrapt, and no attempt to amend it has been successful.
Scene 4.
" Poft Must I repent^
I cannot do it better then in Gyues, Desir'd more then constrain'd, to satisfie If of my Freedome 'tis the maine part, take No stricter render of me, then my AH."
This passage, which appears thus incomprehensibly cor- rupted in the original, has defied all attempts to reduce it to sense ; and the recent editors, after all the labors of their predecessors, have been obliged to content themselves by printing it just as it is given in the folio, with the exception of a semicolon after " constrained." Does any one believe that if the corrections in Mr. Collier's folio had been made from a copy of better authority than that from which the
Cymbbline. 469
first folio was printed, such a passage as this would have been left in this chaotic state ? It is impossible that it should have been so.
** Pott And 80, great powers,
If you will take this audit, take this life, And cancel these cold bonds."
Upon this passage Samuel Johnson, LL. D., lexicogra- pher and ^ great moralist/ remarks — " This equivocal use of bonds is another instance of our authour's infelicity in pa- thetick speeches." I have heard that there are bigoted ad- mirers of Dr. Johnson, though having never met one, I am loth to believe in the existence of such a phenomenon ; hut from the resentment which such may feel at the manner in which I have spoken of their ponderous idol, I shelter myself behind the bulwark of wrath which such a note as this will excite in the bosom of every man who has Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins, and can read and understand the Eng- lish language. Shakespeare's "infelicity in pathetic speeches " is good, excellent good.
Of the rhyming dialogue in the Apparition in this Scene, I had merely written on my notes, before having read any comments upon the play — ' this, beyond a doubt, is not Shake- speare's.' I found, however, that it had been so judged by almost all the critical students of his works. This was in- evitable. The passage is evidently the production of some one about the theatre who had been in the habit of writing
476 Notes and Comments.
such doggerel for the comedies in fashion just before Shake- speare took possession of the stage ; and Shakespeare prob- ably consented to its introduction for peace sake, to please the author or a brother manager, — ^knowing, too, that there were those in his audience to whom it would be acceptable. It is ineflfably flat, and altogether superfluous ; but it must not be removed from the place in which it appears in the authentic copy.
Scene 5.
" lach. Your daughter 8 chastity — ^There it begins. He spake of her, as Dian had hot dreams, And she alone were cold. — ♦ •
• # ♦ ♦ ♦ Well may you, sir,
Remember me at court, where I was taught Of your chaste daughter, the wide difference Twixt amorous and villainous."
See in this passage that Imogen's purity was not the mere accompaniment of a passionless nature, that con- temptible nothing which some would elevate into a virtue. What is virtue worth which is not virtue of its own will, — which is the mere index of a want of capacity to be other- wise ? Imogen was chaste because she knew every thrill of passion. Had she been passionless, she would have been only an imperfect woman, and continent only, not chaste ; and continence is not a virtue : else our mothers were all vile.
PERICLES.
Act I. Scene 1.
•* Aub, At whose conception (till Lucina reign'd) Kature this dowry gave to glad her presence, • The senate house of planets nil did sit/' Ac
Commentators and editors find difficulty in this word *•' conception." Mason thinks it means ' bii-th ; ' Steevens would change it to conces&ion, and Malonc would introduce a long parenthesis. But is not the signification of the passage^ taken together, very clear ? and does it not evidently mean, that during the pregnancy of Thaisa's mother, — i. e, from conception till Lucina reigned, — the senate house of planets all did sit ?
Scene 4.
** Cle. This Tharsus o'er which I have govemment^ (A city on whom plenty held full hand), For riches strew'd herself even in the streets."
There have been some efforts to clear the obscurity of the last line, but no one has noticed Jackson's reasonable correction of a very easy typographical error, in reading,
472 Notes and Comments.
" For riches stww'd her pelf eyen in the itreets."
Jackson once in a while ventures a successftil conjecture ; and contemptible as nearly every page of his book is, it should not be entirely disregarded by any editor, as we have seen by more important instances than the present.
Act III. Scene 3.
" Per. Unscissor'd shall this hair of mine remain, ^ Though I show will in*t."
Plainly, Mr. Dyce is right in reading,
" Though I show t7/ in*t." BOSWELL.
Act IV. Scene 6.
" Zy«. If she'd do the deeds of darkness, thou wonld'st saj.**
Mr. Dyce suggests " the deed of darkness," which is unquestionably the correct reading.
CORRECTION,
When writing the remarks on page 468 upon the hope- lessly corrupted passage in Act V. Sc. 4, of Cyiribeline^ I had entirely forgotten that the last four leaves of that j)lay are wanting in Mr. Collier's folio. We of course cannot know whether the passage was corrected or not. But other similar passages are left unchanged in quite sufficient num- bers to preserve the validity of this strong argument against the authority of the volume.
SONNETS.
The question, who was the person to whom Shakespeare addressed his Sonnets, has long been considered one of the most obscure and interesting in the history of literature. But it seems to me, that a single attentive perusal of them should set all doubt at rest. Nearly all of them were evi- dently written for some other person or persons, according to the fashion of that day for lovers and others to seek assistance from those gifted by the Muse. Among other evidences of the existence of this custom, is the following amusing one in Drayton's Sonnets.
" A Witlefise Oallant a young Wench that woo'd (Yet his duU Spirit her not one iot could moue) Intreated mc, as e'r I wish'd his good, To write him but one Sonnet to his Loue:
But with my Verses he his Mistres wonne,
Who doted on the Dolt beyond all measure.
But see, for you to Heaven for Phraze I runne," dec.
P. 260, ed. 1619.
In this way, perhaps, Shakespeare made the money by which he first got a footing in the theatre. The person, for whom most of these poems were written, may have been Mr. W. H., to whom the publisher wishes happiness and immortality, as their "only begetter." This supposition with regard to their origin, seems to me so natural, and so consistent with
474 SONNETS.
Meres' phrase, "his sugared sonnets among his privaU friends^** that I wonder not to have met it in my Shake- sperian reading. A few of these Sonnets may have ex- pressed his own feelings, and may have been addressed to his wife, whom I am persuaded he loved, and often saw. The allusions to the old age of the writer, or supposed writer, in some of the Sonnets, the 62d and 63d, for instance, show plainly that Shakespeare could not have written them in his own person at any time of his life, at least before 1609, when they were first published, and certainly not be- fore 1598, when it is quite evident that they were well known among his private friends ; for then he was but thirty-two years old. In some, the 7lst and 72d, for instance, the self-degradation is suflScient to prove that Shakespeare spoke not for himself. Nos. 80, 83, 86 and 121, were evidently written to be pi*esented to some lady, who had verses addressed to her by at least one other per- son than the supposed writer of these ; for the praises of another poet are explicitly mentioned in them« No. 78 was addressed to one who was the theme of many pens, for it contains these lines :
" So oft I have invok'd thee for my muse, And found such fair assistance in my verse, As every alien pen hath got my use, And under thee their poetry disperse.
In other's works thou dost but mend the style. And arts with thy sweet graces graced be."
The reiteration of the immortality secured for the subject of the Sonnets, supposing them to have been addressed to one person or written by Shakespeare in his own name, would be entirely inconsistent with such a character as his must needs have been. He might possibly have utter- ed such a sentiment once, but never could have put it into
Sonnets. 475
^erse written in his own person again and again and again. But if we suppose the Sonnets to have been addressed to different persons, on the part of different persons, the dif- ficulty does not exist ; as it was the fashion of the day to claim immortality for the subject of laudatory poetry. I cannot but think that No. Ill was written as an expression of his own feeling.
The supposition that Shakespeare's Sonnets were writ- ten in his own person, involves also the ridiculously ab- surd and inconsistent supposition, that the man who could be indifferent to the fate of A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Lear, Othello, and Hamlet, saw the promise of immortal fame in the Sonnets ; and that he who, when he became rich, did not think it worth his while to obtain from his fellow proprietors the right of issuing correct edi- tions of plays already published surreptitiously, regarded these Sonnets as a sure passport to undying fame both for the subject and the writer. It is also important to notice, that inferior as the Sonnets are to the Plays, they are as much superior to Venus and Adonis and the Rape of Lu- crece; and yet Shakespeare did not publish either of the former, eager as the public of that day was for any produc- tion of his pen, while he did publish the latter. Now why did he thus carefully put his most unworthy performances before the public, and allow his Dramas, and his Sonnets, only inferior to his Dramas, to " lie in cold obstruction and to rot," until they were brought out entirely without his agency or aid ? We know the cause as far as his Plays were concerned : they were not his : they belonged to the stock of the theatre. An actor of no eminence, he rapidly rose to be one of the two largest proprietors in the theatre ; his contribution to the stock being those matchless plays, which, according to the testimony of his contemporaries, con- tinually filled "cockpit, galleries, boxes/' so that " you would
476 Notes and Comments.
scarce find room " with the same public which was indiffiar- ent to the works of other dramatists. He had sold these plays^ and had no power over them ; and so also he had sold the Sonnets ; else he certainly would have published what the public would so eagerly have bought. For Shakespeare^ be it remarked, was a prudent, thrifty man. He went to Lon- don penniless, and without profession or friends, except in the theatre ; and yet he retired at forty-five with a rejil and pei^ sonal estate, the yearly income of which was equal to $8000. As the author of thirty-seven such plays as he produced be- tween 1588 and 1612, as one of the principal managers and shareholders of the theatre, and as an actor besides, he had little time or occasion to write one hundred and fifty-four Sonnets ; and we have the testimony of Meres that these Sonnets were well known among his private friends in 1598, when their author was but thirty-four years old, although some of them allude to the age and decay of their 8upix)sed writer. Could it be more clearly established, except by direct testimony, that Shakespeare did not write these Sonnets in his own person ; but that, as the custom was, he furnished them to those who, though no poets, were good paymasters, and thus obtained a part of the money which made him, when only twenty-six years old, an important shareholder in the theatre, as appears by the well known remonstrance from the Company dated Nov. 1589, and now in the possession of Lord Ellesmere ?
Again, it is possible to think of Shakespeare in early youth writing such a sonnet as No. 151 for another, but impossible to admit that he would, in his own person, ad- dress to any woman such gross double entendres as are con- tained in its last seven lines.
[Since writing the above I have read Mr. Charles Army- tage Brown's very interesting book upon Shakespeare's Sonnets, in which he sets forth the extraordinary theory
Sonnets. 477
that they were written as six entire poems in the sonnet stanza, — ^five of them to William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, and the sixth to Shakespeare's own mistress. Mr. Brown certainly shows the true appreciation of Shake- speare in his book, and very great ingenuity in the support of his favorite theory ; but in my judgment he leaves the latter but just where it was when he first stated it. Mr. Brown alludes to " an ingenious supposition " of the Kev. Mr. Dyce's with regard to the Sonnets. I am familiar with all of that gentleman's critical writings upon Shakespeare, but have not met with this supposition. Mr. Collier, as I find, had forestalled me in my deduction that Shakespeare wrote the Sonnets for other persons ; but he briefly states it, merely to abandon it without assigning any reason for or against it. I may be pardoned for thinking that the argu- ments which I have brought forward make the probability of the hypothesis which they sustain amount almost to moral certainty.
An observation on one of these Sonnets may interest some of my readers. The 127th is addressed to a brunette, — called a 'black beauty' in Shakespeare's day, — and commences thus :
"In the old age black was not counted fair, N Or if it were, it bare not beauty's name."
This is an allusion to the remarkable fact, that during the chivalric ages brunettes were not acknowledged as beau- ties any where in Christendom. In all the old conteSyfa- bliaux, and romances, the heroines are blondes. Such a thing as a brunette beauty is unknown in chivalric poetry : more than that, — the possession of dark eyes and hair, and the complexion which accompanies them, is referred to by the troubadours as a misfortune. But the brunettes have changed the fashion since that day.
SHAKESPEARE'S NAME.
Of late years the attempt has been renewed, chiefly through the agency of Mr. Charles Knight, to change the orthography of Shakespeare's name to ShaksperCy on the ground that it is but proper to spell a man's name as he himself si)ells it ; Sir Francis Madden having shown, be- yond a question, that in four of the six genuine signatures of Shakespeare which have come down to us, the name is written by the poet himself, — Shakspere. The remaining two, though most illegibly written, plainly contain ten or eleven letters. More than this, it is very evident that the name was originally, and, indeed, as late as the earlier ycju-s of William Shakespeare himself, pronounced Shak- s[)or. The manner in which it is spelled in the old records in which it is found, varies almost to the extreme capacity of letters to change places and produce a sound approxi- mating to that of the name as we pronounce it. It appears as Chacksper — Shaxpur — Shaxper — Schaksper — Schake- sper — Schakespey r — Shagspere — Saxpere — Shaxpere — Shaxpearc — Shaxs])er — Shaxspere — Shaxespere — Shak- spere — Sliakspear — Shakspeere — Shackspeare — Shacke- spciire — Shackespere — Shakspeyr — Shaksper — Shakespere — Shakyspere — Sliakespire — Shakespeire — Shakespear — Shakaspeare ; and there are even other varieties of its or- thography.
Shakespeare's Name. 479
It is remarkable that the older the record, the more the spelling conforms to the pronunciation, Shak-sper or Shax- pur. But it is equally remarkable that on the title-pages of all the editions of Shakespeare's plays published during his life, almost without exception, as well as upon that of the original folio, his name is spelled Shakespeare. More than this : in the first folio edition of Ben Jonson's works, published in 1616, and carefully edited by Jonson himself, Shakespeare's name occurs twice in the lists of principal actors, and is in both instances spelled with the e in the first syllable and the a in the second ; and not only so, but in the second list, that appended to Sg'anus, the syllables are separated with a hyphen, and the second begins with a capital letter, thus — Shake-Speare. Kobert Green's un- conscious testimony is also conclusive. The often quoted passage in his Oroatsivorth of Wit, published in 1592, in which he sneeringly says that the great dramatist '^ is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in the country," shows plainly that the first syllable of the name was pro- nounced with the long, pure sound of a.
This, when taken in connection with the evidence of the title-pages of the quartos and the original folio, and also of the list of actors given in the latter, shows, beyond a question, that the name was pronounced and written Shake- speare in Shakespeare's day, and by those who were in habits of .constant intercourse w^ith him who made it illus- trioiis. For it is impossible to pronounce Sl^tke-speare, Shak-sper. It is also important to notice that in all the lists of actors given in Jonson's folio of 1616, nine in num- ber, the several names, which are frequently repeated, are always spelled in tJie same tvay, — a rare, in fact, an unparal- leled coincidence in any book of the time. This shows how carefully Jonson corrected -his proof; and also that the spell- ing, Shakespeare, was not the result of capricious orthography.
480 Notes and Comksnts.
But, it may be asked, did not Shakespeare know how to write his own name ? and must we not conform to his mode of spelling it ? To the latter query the answer is no ; not of necessity. For, as Mr. Hunter asks, shall Lady Jane Grey become Lady Jane Graye ? shall the Dudleys become Dudcfeleys, or the Cromwells, Crumwells, &c. &c. &c., be- cause it is certain that they spelled their names thus ? This is a decisive question. As to Shakespeare's know- ledge of the mode of writing his own name^ it must be re- membered that, in his lifetime, there arose a necessity for a change in the speUing. When Bobert Cook, Clarencieux King at Arms, because John Shaksper had become a man of substance and consideration, and had married into the gentle blood of the Ardens, gave him armorial bearings, the herald saw and seized the opportunity which the name afforded for punning blazonry ; and giving the worthy high bailiff the right to bear a spear or on a bend sabte, he changed him and his descendants from Shakspers to Shake- speares from that time forward. But old customs change with difficulty, and endured longer then than now ; and thus it was that something of the old style of spelling the name cluug to the Slmkespeares in Stratford ; and even that William Shakespeare himself, when he went to London, did not entirely lay aside the habit of his early youth ; though all those to whom his name then was new wrote it, as they and he })ronounced it, — Shakespeare. These rea- sons, and the explicit testimony of Jonson, the jmnters of the (piartos, and the editors of the original folio, and the indirect hut no less decisive evidence of Green, are all-suf- iicient for the retention of the spelling of the poet's day — Shakespeaue.
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTICE OF
MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632.
g
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTICE OF
MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632.
Since the pages devoted to the examination of Mr. Col- lier's Folio, in the first part of this volume, were in type, ar- ticles directed against the argument which they contain have appeared in various quarters of molfe or less respecta- bility ; and I have received Mr. Collier's second edition of his Notes and EmendaiionSy which contains, in addition to a few emendations not in the first edition, a recital of the history of the volume as far as he has been able to trace it, and some notice of the manner in which his remarkable publication has been received by Shakesperian scholars. He has also privately printed fac-similes of passages in several of the plays as they appear in his famous folio. But the ablest advocate for the authority of the emendations in that volume fails to make out a case which will bear examina- tion ; and the additional fac-similes only deepen the im- pression which was made by that which accompanied the first edition of Mr. Collier's book.
The first attempt to sustain Mr. Collier's position has been the following up of a hint which he gave in his first publication upon this subject, remarking upon the emenda- tion " boUen bagpipe " for " woollen bagpipe " {Merchant of Venice^ Act IV. Sc. 1,) that " we shall never again see
484 Mb. Collieb's Folio of 1632.
' woollen bagpipe ' in any edition of the text of Shakespeare, unless it be reproduced by some one who, having no right to use the emendation of our folio, 1632, adheres of neces- sity to the antiquated blunder, and attempts to justify it" This imi)eachment by anticipation of the veracity of any one who should profess to find the correction needless or unacceptable, Mr. Collier has wisely eliminated from his second edition. But although he had abandoned such an imcourteous and imfair mode of controversy, the advocates of the reprint of his edition on this side of the water have not profited by his example ; and it has been in more than one instance charged, that those who have opposed the adoption of the majority of the changes in his folio — nobody has opposed them ail — ^have done so, because they are ed- itors of Shakespeare, and if these changes be received, '^ their editions wiR become valueless." The folly and au- dacity of this attack upon the motives rather than the ar- guments of the Shakesperian editors passes nndeistanding. What is the truth ? Only one of the opponents of Mr. Collier is in a position to have this impeachment of motives applied to him — Mr. Knight. Mr. Singer's edition of 1826 has for mauy years been out of print ; and he, as well as Mr. Halliwell and Mr. Dyce, were, at the time of the publication of Mr. Collier's Notes and Emendations^ and still are, editors of editions to be published, and there- fore in a position to derive all possible benefit from Mr. Collier's discove^}^ The pretence, that " Mr. Collier pos- sesses the copyright in England of his newly discovered emendations," is preposterous. There has not an edition of Shakespeare appeared in England for the last century and a half, the editor of which has not availed himself at pleasure of all the original labors of his predecessors, giving credit for them ; and the excellent little Lansdowne edition recently published, is, by the publisher's advertisement.
Mb. Collier's Folio of 1632. 485
''based on that of Mr. CoUier,"— Mr. Knight's editorial labors and Mr. Dyce's comments being also used. The objection is equally futile in itself, and degrading to the cause in which it is made. It impotently attacks motives, for the sake of disparaging arguments, and seems to justi- fy the suspicion, that it is made rather to bolster up an edition, than to arrive at the truth in one of the gravest and most interesting literary questions ever broached. Especially does this appear, when the attempt is made to throw discredit upon arguments against Mr. Collier's folio which have appeared in this country, by the same impeach- ment of motives. For, even supposing what is impossible, that Mr. Collier has the copyright of the Perkins Emenda- tions in England ; does that copyright extend to America ? How foolish and how pitiful this objection is ! And even were all of the changes which Mr. Collier has introduced into that abomination which he calls ^^ The Plays of Shake- speare," in spite of his own confession that many of them are indefensible, and that the corrector sometimes seems '' to have been directed by his own, often erroneous^ sense of fitness and expediency," — ^wereall these changes as plau- f&ble as the large majority of them are tasteless and wanton, the pre-existing field for editorial labor would not be materi- ally diminished ; because it is remarkable, that the accepta- ble emendations peculiar to this folio are all comparatively insignificant^ and^ and that it leaves all the more important <^ the obscure passa^ges either untouched^ or changed in such a vKby as to tranter the obscurity from one line to another^ or to diffuse it through many. Let us hear no more of this ungenerous and unfounded objection. The case is simply this : — Mr. Collier himself admits that there are many read- ings in his rec^it edition which are entirely indefensible : no one denies, that there are some which unquestionably restore the genuine text : finally and conclusively, there is
486 Mb. Oolusb's Fouo or 1632.
no let or hindrance to the adoption of them all by any edi- tor in America, with the added advantage, if he possess it, of being able to correct the more important passages which the corrector or correctors of the Perkins fiolio left in ntter confusion. It is in no captions mood that this important subject has been generally treated. All lovers of Shake- speare, hailed Mr. Collier's announcement with delight — a delight which was changed to chagrin, when they fbimd out what it was that he had so announced. Mr« Collier is not censured by any one, as he seems to think he is, on aoooont of his " accidental disGOvery of the corrected folio, 1632," ^ but because he indorses changes in it which conflict with Shakespeare's own design and language, to say nothing of common sense ; and above all, because he boldly inooipora- ted these into the text of a popular edition in oae volume, when he himself acknowledges that a part of them, at least, have no business there.
A specious but unfair comparison of the condition of the text of the New Testament with that of Shakespeare, has been made in order to show how much the latter is in need of emendation. In the first place, there are at least five times as many words in the latter as in the former ; next, the former is received as the word of Gk)d ; and the most obscure part of it, the Apocalypse, closes with a curse upon the man who adds to or takes from that book, which must have stayed the hand of many an ambitious manu- script corrector ; and last, the number of passages in Shakespeare about which there is any reasonable dispute, is, as my readers are by this time convinced, I trust, com- paratively smaU. Commentators have, it is true, proposed changes innumerable : and there is neither human law nor divine curse to prevent them from saying that light is
* Notes and Emendations^ Second Edition, jk iz.
Mb. Oollisr's Folio of 1632. 487
darkness ; but because they do so, we are not obliged to admit a doubt upon the subject. So any man, if he choose, may declare that Shakespeare made Prospero say that his brother was a sinner ^^ to nntruth," by telling a licj and Handety that he lacked " gall to make transgression bit- ter ; " but we are not therefore constrained to take such nonsense into serious consideration.
The ablest defence of Mr. CoUier's folio, a defence which put the most specious arguments in the most plaus- ible and telling way, appeared in the North American He- view for April, 1854. The veteran Shakesperian scholar himself did not make a case nearly so imposing in favor of his corrector. In that paper it is concluded, from the as- certained history of the volume (now called in England the Perkins folio), the appearance of the chirography, the nature of the erased passages, and the [assumed] fact that the emendations were made by a player, the London the- atres being closed from 1642 to 1658, — ^that these emenda- tions were completed before 1664.
But the ascertained history of the volume is merely that, in Mr. Collier's own words, " it is probable " that it came from Upton Court, the seat of a wealthy Eoman Catholic family named Perkins, towards the close of the last century ; that the volume has ^^ Thomas Perkins, his Booke," written upon its cover (which cover, be it remarked, is not that in which it was first bound in 1632) ; and that there was an actor of some distinction, named Bichard Perkins, in the reign of Charles I.* This only proves, as
* The eagerneeB with which Mr. Collier clatohes at even the ahadow of A straw to buoy up the authority of his folio is amusingly, though some- what painfully, apparent when he says : "The name of the great actor of *' the reign of Charles L was Richard ; and a Richard Perkins, caUed ** Esquire in Ashmole's Collections, at a date not stated married Lady Mer- '^vin, a benefactress of the parish. Why should we deem it impouible that ''Richard Perkins, having attained eminence on the stagey subseqnenUy
488 Mb. Colusb's Folio of 1632.
any one can see^ merely that it is poflmble, but not even that it is probable, that there is some oonnection betweoi the actor and the Thomas Perkins, who was possibly of Upton Court, whence ^4t is probable'' that the volume came about 1780 or 1790. Thus &r, then, the volume is as much without a " story " as Canning's Knift Ortnder. The appearance of the chirography, must be set down at once as of little worth in determining the date of the emendations, for all valuable purposes. The form of the long «, the turn of the bow of the e to the left, and the prolongation of the second stroke of the h below the line, cannot be relied on as determining the date within fifty years. I possess a copy of the first edition of Paradise Losty with the fourth title page, 1669, in which there is a manuscript annotation which bears all these marks. I also once owned an old and very dilapidated copy of the first folio of Ben Jonson's Plays, which had evidently belonged to a farmer, or the steward of some great household, on all the blank spaces of which were memorandums of the pur- chase or sale of beeves and muttons, and tuns of ale, &c., none of which were dated earlier than 1662 ; and in all of them the c, s, and h were formed in this peculiar way. More : I have also a fac-simile of a MS. by Thomas Dek- ker, signed by him, and dated Sept. 12, 1616, in which the h is never brought below the line, and the long a is made in the modern form. The handwriting of the emendations in
' married a liidy of title and proptTty ? " It is sad to knock away this prop of a shadowy possibility ; but it seems strange that the historian of the Eni^lish stage t^hould not have known, or if he had forgotten, should have neglected the few minutes' study necessary to assure himself, that after tlie closing of the London theatres in 1642, this Richard Perkics and one Sumner, both actors at the Cockpit in Drury Lauc, kept house togethi'r in Clerkenwell, and died in poverty, and were buried there " some years before tlie Restoration." This is stated in the I/ittoria Hi*- trionica, p\iblii*hed in 1699, and is referred to in Some Account of the Eng- luh Stage, vol i. p. 24.
Mb. Collier's Fouo of 1632. 489
this Perkins folio, if upon a volome without date, would therefore fix its date with certainty only at some time be- tween 1600 and 1675, and in this case is worth nothing against internal evidence, which fixes the date of some of them after 1662.*
As to the nature of the erased passages, the Beviewer's statement assumes so much, that I must quote it in full. "-4fl passages of an indecent, or needlessly licentious char- acter, are carrfvUy struck out, evincing, says Mr. Collier, ^ the advance of a better or purer taste, about the time
* Hie ananswerable argument against the date of the MS. corrector's stage direction in Lov^i Lahor*i Lost^ (where he writes that Biron ** gett Am in a tree," and speaks " in the tree^**) that there was no practicable ■eenery in English theatres until after 1662, the Reviewer attempts to set aside in this most astounding style: " Why not argue also," he says, " that the whole first Scene of the Tempett is spurious, because it is supposed to take place on board a ship? or that many scenes in As You Like It ought to be rejected, because they take place amid a whole forest of trees ? It is evident that Biron is directed to speak ' in a tree,' just as Juliet makes love * in a balcony.' " But the Reviewer does not see the difference between the Scene (L «., the place of action), and tcenery. It is one thing to suppose an action to take place on board a ship, and another to direct one of the actors to rwn up the Bhrotuk of a ship. Any dramatist may make a forest the locality of his play, but to make one of his actors climb a tree, he must have the tree for him to climb. Should a copy of the Tempest appear, with MS. directions for a sailor to run up the shrouds, it would prove pos- itively that those directions were written after 1662. Bat the Reviewer constnicted this argument with a want of knowledge singular in the author of such an able paper; for in the original edition of the Tempest (the first folio), there is not the slightest indication^ by way of stage direction^ that the first scene poMes on shipboard; in the first edition of ^* You Like It (first folio), there is no mention of a forest or a single sapling in the stage direc- tions; and in neither the first folio nor the early quartos of Romeo and Juliett is there the slightest hint that Juliet makes love in a balcony, AU these stage directions are deductions from the text, added in modern days. Did the Reviewer never read, in Sir Philip Sydney's Defence of Poesy, the well-known passage alluding to the appointments of the stage for which Shakespeare wrote : " What childe is there, that, coming to a play, and seeing Thebes written in great letters upon an old door, doth believe that it is Thebes f"
490 Mb. Collibb's Fouo of 1632.
when the emendator weat over the volume.' " — [N. A. Btr vieWy p. 397.] But Mr. Collier does not say so. He says : ^^ Some expressions and lines of an irreligioas or indelicate character are also strack out, eyincing jperhapSy the advance of a better or purer taste," &c. [JV. <t JK Sec. ed. p. xviiL] This is very far short of the Beviewer's statement ; and well may Mr. Collier shelter his supposition behind a con- tingency ; for his own Notes and JEmendatuma shows that the corrector left untouched very many more profane and indecorous expressions than he struck out ; and also that he did strike out perfectly unexceptionable j^ssages, too brief to add appreciably to the length of the performance ; plainly proving that he was governed only by his own caprice in this regard. The Beviewer most strangely con- cludes, that these erasures of a few indelicate passages, forbid the belief that these marginalia were written after the Restoration, and show that they were made rather "in Charles the First's time, when * * * the dif- fusion of Puritanism compelled the editors of the first folio to strike out the profane ejaculations of Falstaff, and some minor indecencies which had been tolerated in the publica- tion of the earlier quartos." But surely, the Eeviewer for- got that the omissions in the first folio were only made in compliance with an express statute which was passed in the first of James I., 1604 ! — eight years before Shake- speare ceased to write ! — twelve years before he died ! — nineteen years before the publication of the first folio, and twenty-eight years before the publication of the volume upon which these emendations are made ! The " diffusion of Puritanism " enforced no other erasures upon the editors of the folios of either 1623 or 1632 ; neither did it forbid the publication of indeUcate passages by Davenant, in twelve plays issued between 1634 and 1660, nor the issue of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher in folio 1637,
Mr. Collier's Folio of 1632. 491
contaiiiing or rather consisting entirely of plays so indeli- cate in their very structure as well as language, that Shakespeare's compared to them seem ^^ whiter than new snow on a raven's back." The Reviewer has undertaken to prove too much, and has thus succeeded in proving nothing at all.
The assumed fact, that the emendations were made by a player, does not help to give them any authority, or even any consequence, except as auxiliaries to the text of the original folio : — that is, to make them valuable as early reminiscences or conjectures, aided, perhaps, by copies of actors' parts, and to be received when the text of the orig- inal is incomprehensible or inconsistent, and when they, by probable corrections, make it clear and congruous. And here, for the sake of the argument, let us grant that these changes were made by Bichard Perkins, an actor in the time of Charles I., between the years 1642 and 1658, and that he had copies of actors' parts and prompt books of his time to assist him. What " authority" do his labors derive from those facts, which can give them a feather's weight against the text of Shakespeare's fellow actors and business partners, who had ^^ scarce received from him a hlot in his papers " — ^when that text is comprehensible? It contains many defects, the results of carelessness ; and those, Mr. Bichard Perkins, or Mr. John Jenkins, may cor- rect if he can ; and the probabilities are perhaps in &vor of the former, because he came nearer to Shakespeare. But when, in a passage not obscure, we have to decide between Bichard or Thomas Perkins, his Booke, and John Heminge and Henrie Condell, their Booke, is there a question which must go to the wall ? The judgment, the memory, the very copied part of an actor, even as to a play in which he performed, is not to be trusted thirty years after its pro- duction, against such testimony as we have in &vor of the
.-<.j:. in the Stationers AiMivss -.. t *} 'A Beaumont & Fletclier's • ." ^'i. -h I have never seen noticed, ., : - Mr. C«)llier's folio, and adds {
:x r of the ahsohite authority ^ ^ .; -voare's works, and against tl
i*: answer bcforr* it bee objected ; 'ti:
> and 7V</irfv//V.s were presented on th(
. * vno Scrurs and Pas.sages (with tbe-4i//
• -. : *.c I them; and when j»rivate friends
r.;.l justly too) transeri])ed what they
.. • .."th All that was Artrd^ and all that w
..' 'ill originalls, without the least uiutilatic
».»'i !vasiniably conjectured hy Ins cditoi
^, 'luit the early quarto editic»ns of i
^ v;rv» surreptitiously printed from the
\-o obtained separately, and written <
•'.Tiu the entire play. Here, howe\
'..'A ilirect ('(»n(emiK)rary evidence that
••• .u'ti>rs in SliakespeaR^'s time, and i
•. •. •i:i«>n, to give ct»pies of the acting c
• ^ •! Is and that in so doini^ thev ^^Ircn.s
Mr. Collieb's Foxjo of 1632. 493
ners, from his own manuscripts, with ^^haidly a blot'' in them), and also a great number of the changes in Mr. C<d- lier's folio, clearly accounted for.
The process, as this important passage shows,' was this. The author furnished the original MS. This was copied and cut down for stage use ; from this copy the actors' parts were taken ; and ^^ when their private friends desired a copy, they then transcribed what they acted," and thus their friends had for their own use and that of such print- ers as would pay for it, the copy of a copy of part of a mw- tUated copy.
Such "authorities" quite probably directed in part the labors of one corrector who worked on Mr. Collier's folio. Living in the succeeding generation (for it should be re- membered that Shakespeare had been dead sixteen, and had ceased writing nearly thirty years before this famous folio was printed), he obtained copies of copies of the mutilated stage copy of the day, and made his text conform to it in part at least. This accounts for the changes for the sake of rhyme (made to suit the caprice of the actors or the corrector), the striking out of portions of the text, and the cutting off of all that part of the final scene of Hamlet j which occurs after the action is finished, and thereby spoils what in his- trionic phrase is called Hhe tag' of the piece. It is quite natural that such a copy should contain many acceptable corrections of the typographical errors in the original ; and this does contain about two hundred such, at least one hundred and seventy-three of which, had been made by modem editors previous to Mr. Collier's discovery of the volume. It is also quite natural that a volume so corrected should contain the thousand needless and insufferable mu- tilations which, embodied in the text which Mr. Collier, in spite of his admission that he cannot approve of all the changes, has presumed to publish as "The Plays of Shake-
494 Mb. Collier's Folio of 1632.
speare/' make that edition incomparably the worst of the many bad editions which have been published.
It is important, too, as affecting the value of emenda- tions derived from actors' parts, to notice that Shakespeare's plays were acted by other companies than that which owned the right in them, and possessed the old stage copies. For, by an entry in the Office-book of Sir Henry Herbert, who was Master of the Revels in the reigns of James I. and Charles I., and which will be found in Mr. Collier's Annals of the Stagey vol. II. p. 7, we know that he was paid £5 by Heminge, on the 11th of April, 1627, "to forbid the play- ing of Shakespeare's plays to the Bed Bull Company." Now this Bed Bull Company, or any other which would pirate Shakespeare's plays, would not scruple to mutilate his works, after the fashion of literary pirates, and adapt them to the capacities of their histrionic force and the taste of their audiences, just as, we know, the corrector of this Perkins folio did. The parts of such mutilated plays would be copied out for the actors ; and what would such actors' parts or prompt books be worth against the author- ity of the first folio ? Indeed, it is more than probable that this Perkins folio was submitted to the treatment which it has experienced, for the double purpose of a new edition for readers and to supply the wants of the compa- nies which were sure to be formed after Davenant's re-es- tablishment of theatrical entertainments, — the rights of Shakespeare's company having determined during the Pro- tectorate.
But the Eeviewer seeks to elevate the authority of these emendations, by dragging down that of the first folio. He says, that " all the twenty plays which were first print- ed in the folio, had existed in manuscript, without being seen by their author, for at least eleven years ; " that the Ttoo Gentlemen of Verona had "existed only in written
Mb. Collier's Folio of 1632. 495
copies for thirty-two years ; that " the Glohe Theatre was burnt down in 1613, and it is more than probable that all of Shakespeare's original manuscripts, which had survived to that period, were then destroyed," [this, in spite of He- minge and Condell's direct testimony, that they had his papers,] and that " the written copies were multiplied by careless transcribers." Let us again, for the sake of the argument, grant all this ; — ^how does it build up the au- thority of the Perkins folio ? The Reviewer goes on very reasonably to say, " alterations and omissions were made from time to time, to adapt the performance to the varying exigencies of the theaire^ or the altered taste of ths times" This is very likely to be true ; but if it invalidate the au- thority of the manuscript copy fix)m which the first folio was printed, with what doubled and trebled force does it crush the pretensions of those used by a player when the theatres were closed, in 1642, and which had been subject to nineteen years more of alteration and omission, to suit the exigencies of the theaire, and the taste of the times !
Again, the Reviewer, attempting to grapple with the overpowering argument, against both the authority and the intelligence of the MS. corrector, that so many of his readings are inadmissible, and could not possibly have formed a part of the text, thinks that he has conquered it by &stening the same defect upon the first folio. He says : "we admit it [the inadmissibility of the readings], but we must remind the objectors, that precisely the same thing is true of the first folio." To a superficial glance, this has a formidable look ; but, in truth, it is too weak to stand alone. For we know that the first folio was authorized ; and its erroi^s are corruptions, the results of accident and carelessness, of which they are themselves the best evi- dence ; while the absurd, inconsistent, prosaic and ridicu- lous readings of the MS. corrector are deliberately formed,
496 Mb. Collier's Folio of 1632.
— the/ruUa ofipainf^d ^ort to conect those accidental er- rors in some cases, and to better the text in others. The errors of the first folio are casualties ; the stupidities of the Perkins folio are perpetrated with malice aforethought. The former prove only the absence of care ; the latter exist only in consequence of care, and therefore prove the absence of authority.
The number of cases in which I am assumed to have admitted the success of the MS. corrector, is brought up as ' evidence in favor of his " authority." There are 173 of his acceptable corrections which have been made by others, and 117 which are peculiar to him, and which, in my own words, ^^ seem to be admissible corrections of passages which need correction," — making 290 in all, including, how- ever, the numerous restorations from the first folio, and the early quartos. What one editor, critic, or commentator, exclaims the Reviewer, can claim the original suggestion of an equal number of coryecturcU emendations, which are admitted to be sound or plausible ? I answer, without hes- itation, Nicholas Rowe ; and he only forestalled the others in making them, because he was the first. The most of these corrections are of typographical errors, such as no intelli- gent proof reader would fail to detect and rectify. Rowe and Theobald made nearly all of them ; and Rowe would have almost certainly made them all, had he worked with half the plodding care of the corrector of the Perkins folio. As it was, he made many which his predecessor should have made. Turn to the Notes and Emendations, and notice the first of the coincidences, in the Tempest j Act I. Sc. 2 :
"A brave veasel, Who had, no doubt, some noble creature [creaturet] in her."
Next, in the same Scene,
Mr. Collibr'b Folio of 1632. 497
" Where they prepared A rotten carcass of a bntt [60a/], not rigg'd, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast ; the Terj rats InstinctiTely had [have] quit it**
What boy in his 'teens, having these passages given him to copy, would not make sach corrections instinctively ? These are fair specimens of a majority of his [assumed] two hnndred and ninety admissible emendations ; so does the first folio swarm with typographical errors. But there are other corrections which seem to show that he sometimes conjectured successfully, or remembered correctly, or had a book or MS. which helped him to the right word. It seems more than probable that he was indebted to all these means. Certainly he was indebted both to conjecture and the early quartos, — ^his adoption of readings which appear in thii latter being nothing in his favor, as they existed in his time in far greater numbers than when the editors of the last century used them, just as he did.
Assuming that the MS. corrector was a player "who had lived in an age [the first half of the seventeenth cen- tury] when conjectural emendation of an English author was an art as yet unheard of, and when the writings of our great dramatist were so little known or prized, that four rude and uncritical editions of them sufficed for a century," and concluding that it is impossible "that the whole eight [of the entire lines which he interpolates] should have been invented, or made up by mere conjecture, by a poor player in the earlier part of the seventeenth century," the Re- viewer considers it established, that the corrector could not have conjectured, but must have had authority. But even granting that these emendations were made "between 1642 and 1664," it is a well-known fact, that at least a dozen corrected folios of the second, third, and fourth
editions exist at present, one of them, Mr. Dent's, being
32
498 Mb. Collier's Folio of 1632.
not only, like the others, corrected '^ m an ancient hand/' but its numerous emendations being ^^ curious and impor- tant, consisting of stage directions, alterations in the punc- tuation,''&c. Did conjectural emendation spring, up at once, armed at all points, immediately upon the publication of the third folio P But whether it did or not, the man who made some of the corrections in the Perkins folio did coxgecture, and has left irrefragable evidence that he did. In the private fac similes before mentioned, a passi^ near the end of the last Scene pf^om^e^, and another in Othelio, Act lY. So. 1, show this undeniably. In the first, two lines are printed thus :
" Good nighty sweet Prienoe^ And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest"
The corrector at first rectified the misprint by obliterating the 6 in " Prience ; " but, afterwards, concluding to make the line rhyme with the next, he marked out " sweet Prience " and substituted be blest ; the couplet being then followed by an impudent, gag-like
fP^xi*,
and the rest of the Scene being stricken out. In the pas- sage in Othello, when the Moor, just before he falls in a trance, says " Nature herself would not invest herselfe in such a shadowing passion, without some Instruction/' the corrector first changes " shadowing " to shuddering, and strikes out the comma after " passion ; " but, concluding to do without the sentence, draws his pen remorselessly through it. And in The Merchant of Venice, Act V. Sc. 1, the folio of 1632 has,
** Therefore the poet did feign That Orpheus drew tears, stones, floods,*' Ac
Mb. Colueb's Fouo of 1632. 499
Here " tears '' is a misprmt for trees, which appears in the first folio, and in the two early quartos ; but the MS. corrector, deceived by the likeness of tears to beastSy substi- tuted the latter word at first ; after referring to the other editions, however, he restores the right word, trees. If this be not conjecture, Kahum Tate wrote King Lear. Conjec- ture helped or hindered this corrector as it did those of the dozen or more copies of the other ^'rude and uncritical editions" which "suflBiced for a century/' But neither the number — ^four — of these editions, nor their careless printing, shows that Shakespeare's works were ^^ little known or prized ; " for half that number of editions sufficed for every other dramatist of that century ; and all, except those of careful Ben Jonson, were vilely printed.
The private plates of &c suniles of Mr. Collier's folio contain brief extracts from seventeen plays : Tempest, Two OerUlemen of Verona, As You Like It, Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, Winter's Tale, Henry V., Richard III., TroUus and Oressida, Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus, Ti- VMM of Athens, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othetto, Anthony and Olecpatra, and Cymbdine. A close examination of these fac similes only furnishes cumulative evidence in &vor of the conclusions to which we have already arrived.
There is one of them the very look of which would seem &tal to the least pretence in &vor of the authority of the volume. Types can but poorly convey the effect of the changes upon the eye ; but they may help the imagination to picture the appearance of the page. The passage is the following, &om Titus Andronicus, Act II. Sc.2.
" Tit— The huDt is up, the mome is bright sad grmy, The fields are fragrant, and the Woods are greene : Ynconple heere, and let ns make a baj, And wake the Emperonr and his lovelj Bride^
500 Mb. Collieb'8 Folio of 1632
And ronce the Prince ; and ring a hnnter*8 peak, That all the Coart may eccho with the noise. Sonnee^ let it be yonr charge, as it is ours, To attend the Emperour^s person carefally : I haTc bene troubled in my sleepe this night But dawning day new comfort has inspir'd."
These lines are thus changed in Mr. Collier's folio ; the original words being erased, and the substitutes, here in italics, written in the margin :
" Ht, — ^The hunt is up, the mome is bright and gay. The fields are fragrant^ and the Woods are wide, Yncouple heere, and let us make a bay, And wake the Emperour and his lovely Bride, And rouze the Piince, and sing a hunter's rounds That all the Court may eccho with the aound, Sonnes, let it be your charge, and to mill I, To attend the Emperour's person carefully : I have bene troubled in my sleepe this night, But dawning day brought comfort and delight.*
Can any man in his senses believe that '^greene'' could be misprinted for widcj " peals " for round, " noise " for soundy " as it is ours " for and so will I, " new " for hrotighty and "hath inspir'd" for and delight; and that all these errors, with two others, could occur in ten lines ? The supposition is too absurd for a moment's consideration. The words do not bear the slightest possible likeness to each other ; and besides, we must remember that if Mr. Collier's folio be worth any thing as an authority, the compositor made these mistakes, which are impossible under any circumstances, even when he had rhymes to guide him. And yet we are asked to believe that all this did happen.
But if the folio have any authority, we must believe in all these impossible errors of the press, and believe that Shakespeare did not write the last part of the last Scene to be played. For authority implies a right to submission,
Mb. Collier's Folio of 1632. 601
irrespective of any exercise of reason or preference on the part of the person submitting. To contend for the authority of a part only, greater or less, of the emendations in this or any other folio, is to contend for a patent, palpa- ble absurdity. It is as if a legatee were to claim that such parts of the will of the testator as accorded with his, the legatee^s, views, had authority, but that those which he did not like had no authority. If we defer to a single change in Mr. Collier's folio because of its authority^ we must defer to all ; for we have the same testimony, or rather want of testimony, to the authenticity of all the changes that we have to that of any one of them. Therefore, as the few and rapidly diminishing believers in Mr. Collier's folio, can bring themselves to contend for only a majority of its changes of the authentic text, and as Mr. Collier himself says, in the Preface to his late edition of the Plays of Shakespeare, that ^4t is not to be understood that he approves of all the changes in the text," it is plain that even the discoverer and the advocates of thb volume eocercise their indimdtud judgment in accepting or rejecting the changes of the text in it ; and, by their own confession, do not defer to its authority. Thus they yield the only essential point. There can be no objection to any man, or any number of men, amusing themselves by making need- less and absurd changes in the text of any author, so long as they do not contend for the authenticity of those changes, and insist upon their usurpation of the authority of the original text. As Mr. Collier and his dwindling band of submissive followers acknowledge that they do not contend for all the changes, the only important point in dispute is gained ; and they themselves, by their exercise of judgment as to which they shall approve and which they shall condemn, have applied Medone's unexceptionable rule to them as ^^ arbitrary emendations, .... made at the
502 Mb. Oollub's Fouo of 1632.
will and pleasoie of the oonjecturer, .... not an- thoiused hj a/uihetiiic copies printed or manuscript, . . . and to be judged of by their reasonableness or probability J* The verdict of Kiakesperian scholars upon their ^^ reasona- bleness or probability" has been unanimous, that an over- whelming majority are unreasonable and improbable ; and the good sense and instinctive perception of the intelligent readers of Shakespeare is fiust leading them to the same conclusion.
Faith in the first folio, and a distrust of the MS. cor- rector, do not rest upon a, petitio principii as the Reviewer would have it. We have the direct and explicit testimony of Shakespeare's friends, fellow actors and principal part- ners in the theatre, that the first folio was printed from the text of Shakespeare, and, errors excepted, does contain that text ; it is undeniably manifest that the corrector did indulge in ^^ mere guess-work ; " and therefore, as against the authorized edition, we must consider all his labors as merely conjectural, and only to be received when they con- sistently correct the palpable accidental errors of that edi- tion. But were this not so, nine tenths of those peculiar to him would be rejected upon their o^vn merits. They seem to be modelled upon the conjectural eflfort of the man who, not being able to understand the strong figure, " strain at a gnat and swallow a camel," amended his New Testa- ment to read, " strain at a gate and swallow a saw-mill"
But after all, it is not improbable that Richard Perkins did make some of these corrections. It was admitted, for the argument's sake, that he did make them ; but now having seen that his making them gives them no semblance of au- thority, it is safe to say that it is even more than probable that ho had a hand in them. It seems that this Eichard Perkins was not only an actor but "also in some measure a poet, as he wrote a copy of verses prefixed to Heywood's
Ms. Colijxb'8 Fquo of 1632. 503
Apology for Actors!' The miirdei's out ! He was ^ some- thing of a poet ! " This accoauts for bis turning speech after speech of blank Yorae into rhyme ; for his making Hamlet bring up with a rhyme, after first correcting the line which he thus altered; for his snbmitting other plays to similar treatment ; and for the insertion of several entire lines, which, although two ot three of them are not unlike what Shakespeare might have written in those par- ticular passages, are not at all beyond the reach of any man who is ^^ something of a poet " and has read the context.
It seems as if Master Perkins had been about to bring out an edition of Shakespeare's works as he thought they should have been written and should be acted. He mod- ernized the language, struck out whatever he thought un- interesting, added rhymes where he thought they were needed, added stage directions to conform to the custom of the day, which was to be very particular in that respect, attended minutely to the punctuation, corrected even the turned letters as Mr. Collier assures us (not at all necessary for a stage copy), changed the old prefix of Beggar in the Induction to the Taming of the Shrew y to Sly (equally un- necessary fqr the stage), underscored the old rhymes and quotations (also entirely needless in a stage copy), and thought that he would have a very fine edition ; and, in truth, it would have been quite as good, and of the same kind, as Pope's and Warburton's. But the publishers of the next edition, in 1664, did not believe in 'Shakespeare according to Perkins,' and they reprinted the old folios, adding even all the plays that had borne Shakespeare's name in his lifetime.
Now, Perkins may have acted in Shakespeare's plays while the dramatist was living ; he was doubtless '^ some- thing of a poet," and may have had some actors' parts which were "copies of copies of a part of a mutilated
504 Mb. C!ollisb'8 Folio 07 1632. '
copy ; '* but in spite of all this, when there is any question between what Heminge and Condell and our own bouIb tell us is Master Shakespeare's, and that which probability and our own souls tell us is Master Perkins's, sl^ we not de- cide in favor of Master Shakespe abe ? For though the one was something of a poet, we believe that the other was a great deal more of a poet. And all the people say Amen !
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