\ ^vS ft h OA SHAKESPEARE'S SCHOLAR. SHAKESPEARE'S SCHOLAR: BEING 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. * Kai ravra i.ev vvv irept TOVTGUV fipTja'Ow. * * * &\\oiffi "yekp irepl vTfwv ei/jrjrat, fdtrofj.fi/ aura, ra Se &\\oi ov KO,T6\ galleries, boxes, all are full, To hear Malvolio that cross garter'd gull. Brief, there is nothing in his wit-fraught book Whose sound we would not hear, on whose worth look : PREFATORY LETTER. xvii Like old coin'd gold, whose lines, in every page, Shall pass true current to succeeding age." * It is folly to say that the writings of such a man need 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. * These lines are prefixed to the spurious edition of Shakespeare's Poems, published in 1640. As I know of no copy of that rare volume in this country, I am obliged to quote at second hand from the Variorum Shakespeare, vol. i. p. 487. xviii PREFATORY LETTER. 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, " Iras. Royal Egypt empress I Cleo. No more ; but e'en a woman, and commanded, By such poor passion as the maid that milks, And does the meanest chores." Mrs. Jameson adds in a note u Cleopatra replies " to the first word she hears on recovering her senses, u 'No more an empress, but e'en a woman. 7 ' 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! s : "Your wife, Octavia, with her modest eyes And still conclusion, shall acquire 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 full 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 different air, scan a narrow- er horizon. The man who stands upon the level of literal prose cannot see the vast, far-stretching, ten- PREFATORY LETTER. xix 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 out and condemn as obscure, non- sensical, contradictory. The critics would do well to remember what Shakespeare's contemporary, good Dean Donne, quaintly says in his Newesfrom the very Countrey, " That Sentences in Authors, like haires u in horse-tailes, concurre in one root of beauty and u 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. Shakespeare'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 us 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. xx PREFATORY LETTEB. 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 gf all his countrymen, in the vigor, grandeur, aud 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, u 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 PREFATORY LETTER. xxi our manuscript, 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 confusion 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 u in conjectu- u ral criticism, as in mechanics, the perfection of the " art consists in producing a given effect with the u 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 they preferred ; and that this disposition has not died out, is shown by a passage in the North British Review for February, PREFATORY 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 haunt, I have observed The air is delicate." In the folio, for ' most ' we have must, 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 much 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 most 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 North 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, PREFATORY LETTER. M Put out the light, and then put out the light ! " "If 'twere done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well, It were done quickly," GadshilTs " burgomasters and great oneyers," and Dogberry's 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 would be too harsh to call it prejudice) exists u with regard to many expressions in the common " English version of the Scriptures which might be " profitably amended, as they are either ungramma- "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 u 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 PREFATORY LETTER. we can obtain, he sometimes wrote in a manner which, judged by our standards of to-day, is un- grammatical, incorrect and obsolete, are we to be restrained from correcting his lapses, softening his asperities, 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, correct 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 heaven ! I'll make a ghost of him that lets me ! Is it only because we are accustomed to the exclama- tion in this form, that we should refrain from mo- dernizing one word in it, (now hardly used except in a sense directly opposed to that in which Hamlet uses it,) and reading, " By heaven ! I'll make a ghost of him that stays me ! " Tush ! we want the text that Shakespeare wrote, with all its odor of antiquity say rather, of peren- nial freshness, about it. We seek Shakespeare's words, not something better or more modern ; and not only taste but justice supports our claims. His editors and verbal critics, now that he is dead, have no more right to take away his words from him, be- PREFATOKY LETTER. xxv cause they are obsolete, than some dashing Paul's man of his day had the right to 4 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 them. 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- phael's visit to Eden would be treated after this fashion. " A while discourse they hold ; No feare lest dinner coole ; when thus began Our Authour." Book V. 395. 4 It should be remarked that in the words, 4 when 'thus began our author," 1 Milton does not refer to 4 himself; for although his editors and biographers, 4 in speaking of him, call him ' our author,' he could 4 hardly thus designate himself in his own verse. We 4 boldly stake our critical reputation upon the asser- xxvi PREFATORY LETTER. 4 tion, that by " our authour ' Milton means Adam, 4 whom he thus calls the author of the human race ; 4 and should any envious editor or critic object that ' this would make Adam responsible for a more vo- 4 luminous and miscellaneous issue than was ever due 4 to any other author, we pass by the narrow-minded Suggestion in silent contempt. We confess that 4 we pride onrselves not a little, though modestly, 4 upon this construction of the passage ; which, 4 strange to say, has been passed over without a 4 note by Hume, Addison, Tickell, Newton, Richard- 4 son, Todd, Brydges, and in fact all the editors and 4 critics of the poet.' You will not find this note in any edition of Milton with which I am acquaint- 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 insufferably 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 PREFATORY LETTER. xxvii 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. If, 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. xxviii PREFATORY LETTER. In the course of the volume there are many cor- rections brought forward from the labors of all the commentators, from Howe 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 comprehensible, are not to be found in any of the current editions of Shakespeare's works. Some of these will doubtless be opposed upon the plea of conservatism. Many will exclaim, l 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 minds by his words, is, in these cases, as in many others, excited by needless 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 PREFATORY LETTER. xxix and Cleopatra, Act II. Sc. 2, Antony, speaking of his frampold wife, says : "So much uncurbable her garboils, Ceesar, Made out of her impatience," age, should be obliterated. Page 836, "p. 336," on the right-hand side, near the bottom, should be obliterated. Page 355, at the top of the page,./&r should be inserted between the first and second linos. Page 857, "11," at the end of the last line, should be obliterated. Page 881, meaning should be inserted between the last two lines. Page 408, "8217, v at the beginning of the seventh line, should be obliterated. Page 406, for should be inserted between the first and second lines. Page 472, " BOSWELL," after the tenth line, should be obliterated. HISTORICAL SKETCH OP THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE. *#* 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 THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE every touch that woo'd ite stay Hath brush'd its brightest hues away. BYROX. The Giaour. ACOMPKEHENSIVE glance at the history of the text of Shakespeare will be a fitting introduction to the following pages ; especially for those who are not familiar with that history or with Shakesperian literature, and who doubtless form the greater number o'f those whom I salute as ' gentle readers/ The few whose enthu- siasm or steady devotion has enabled them to wade through the heaps of rubbish which have accumulated around the works of Shakespeare, during the last century and a half, will excuse a concession to the happy ignorance of 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 or even his consent. Eighteen of them, to wit : Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, Midsummer Night's 'Dream, Love's Labours Lost, Merchant of Venice, 4 HISTORICAL SKETCH. Richard 77, Henry IV. Part I. and Part II, Henry V., Henry VI. Part II. and Part III., Richard III., Troilus and Cressida, Titus Andronicus, Pericles, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, 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 indifference 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 Kowe. 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 Shakesperian 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- face 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 Author himselfe had liv'd to haue set forth, and ouerseen his owne writings: But since it hath bin ordain'd 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 publish'd them, as where (before) you were abused with diuerse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by thefraudes and stealthes of injurious 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 papers.' 1 ' 1 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 twenty 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 belonging 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 the 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 Keligion ; 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, THIRD, AND FOURTH FOLIOS. V Shakespeare were held at a period so nearly contemporane- ous with him, that in spite of the numerous quarto copies of 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 errors 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 seems 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 HISTORICAL SKETCH. tury there was no verbal criticism 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, " Revised and Corrected, with an account of his Life and Writings, by N. [icholas] Rowe," 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 English Stage : Together with the Sense of Antiquity upon this Subject. By Jer- emy Collier, M. A. 8vo. London, 1698." f " The Antient & Modern Stages survey'd. Or, Mr. Collier's view of the Immorality & Profaneness of the English Stage set in a True Light, j s m i S p r i n ted for 'Ape,' ' Esel,' in old language, is 'Ass.'" Vol.!., p. 67. If that were all the commentator needed, why did he not read, " Ape I Becket I Crocodile ? " The metre, and the signification, would have been quite as well preserved, and the new arrangement would not have been a whit more impertinent. I will add only the fol- lowing from Macbeth, by turning a few leaves. Lady Mac- beth says : " ' Come thick night And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell 1 That my keen knife see not the wound it makes; Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry, ' Hold, hold ! ' " I correct the whole as follows : "Come thick night And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell ! That Heaven see not the wound my keen knife makes Deep through thy dark, nor blench at it to cry, 1 Hold, hold ! ' "Vol. I. 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 proof- readers, he justly thought that a practical knowledge of his art would be of service in the conjectural correction of COMMENTATORS : JACKSON. 25 the sadly misprinted folio. His knowledge of the com- posing case, and of the various accidents to which i mat- ter' as standing type is called is subjected, from the time it is set up until 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 first 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 " ne sutor" he ven- tured into the field of general comment and criticism, he made 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 sapience that makes him the veiy Bunsby of commenta- tors. Ecce signum. First, in Much Ado About Nothing, Act III. Sc. 1 : " ' Ursula. 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 very 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, forbearing argument, and valour, Goes foremost in report through Italy.' " Thus the recommendation is strong ; for though Benedick is the most valorous man throughout Italy, yet, he ever forbears argument, 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 : " ' Longaville. A high hope for a low having: God grant us patience.' u 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- mado to the awkward appearance of a ship, with an elevated figure of Hope, lying in a low haven. Longaville also plays on the word hope^ which is used as a verb by Biron, but, by him- self, 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 Like It, Act III. Sc. 2, of goad, for "good," and the justification of it ? " Rosalind. Good my complexion ! dost thou think, though I am ca- parison'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 ; which playful maliciousness being perceived by Rosalind, she tells her, the only means to eifect her purpose is to name her admirer : which will have such influence as to stimulate her blood, and cause a sensation in her heart, that must mantle her face with blushes ; therefore, she says : ' Goad my complexion ! ' COMMENTATORS : JACKSON. 27 " Sound but the name ! you stimulate my blood, and rouse it from my heart to strike upon my face ; for, though 1 am capari- sorfd 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. 7-2. As a specimen of critical fatuity, the following, upon a passage in All's Well 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 blazing 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 nay opinion, from the word on being badly formed, the compositor mistook it for ore. I read : 'an we might have a good woman, but on every blazing star, or at an earthquake, (fee.' " P. 84. But Jackson could be a rival to himself, as this last se- lection from his pages, bristling with absurdities, will amply prove. It is on a speech in Troilus and Cressida, Act I. Sc. 1: " ' 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 the patience of Hector is compared to the vulture, which never moves from the object of its insatiate 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 Blackwoods Magazine, 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 Becket, 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 perhaps 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- mitive standard ; and a little more than ten years ago, two editors stepped forward 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 first folio the exclusive authority for the text, which, strange to say, was then first done since Howe'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 perhaps never equalled, by any of that gentleman's fellow-editors. There exist no critical essays more imbued with the pure spirit of Shake- speare than the Supplementary Notices which Mr. Knight appended to each play in his beautiful Pictorial Edition. But both editors committed errors themselves, and al- lowed those of others to remain uncorrected. Mr. Collier admitted readings from the quartos, and the commenta- tors, which, are indefensible ; and Mr. Knight's almost su- perstitious 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 & Fletcher, 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 other labors, points out Mr. Dyce as the editor from whom 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- planck, of New York. Mr. Verplanck's labors were more eclectic than speculative. Forming his text rather upon the labors 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- ferable 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. Demens ! qui nitnbos et non Imitabile fulmen, ./Ere et cornipedum pulsu Mmularat equoruin. VIRGIL. jEneid, Lib. vi. 590. IN the month of January, 1852, the attention of the lite- rary world was excited by the announcement that a copy of the second folio impression of the plays of Shake- speare, filled with marginal corrections in manuscript, which appeared to be nearly as old as the volume, had fallen into the hands of Mr. J. P. Collier. When it was known that Mr. Collier declared that a great number of these manu- script corrections were of inestimable value, and that there was 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 their successors, the interest in the matter became very great : and, amid some utterance of doubt and wonder, much 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, even upon the works of Shakespeare, has generally not much interest for the mass of readers ; and most especially would this seem to be true of the American people ; but the republication in this country of Mr. Collier's " Notes 3 34 MR. 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 nave 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 folio, 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 united 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 DEFERENCE. 35 If it have authority, we must submit implicitly to all its dicta ; 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. Kodd, 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 until 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 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. emendations are made. Let us examine this claim. Sup- pose this case. In the first act of Macbeth occurs 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- s- 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 assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch, With his surcease, success ; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We'd jump the life to come But, in these cases, 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 : First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed ; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek ; hath been So clear in his great 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 now ? what news ? " 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 done? 'Ticere well it were done quickly. But then when 'tis done! = I.f the assassinator Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With its success, surcease : that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here : But here upon this bank, and schooled of time, We'd jump the life to come. But, in these cases We still have judgment here : that we but teach Blood} 7 inductions, which being taught return To plague the inventor. * * * * [Read the intervening lines without alteration.] And new-born pity, naked like a babe Or Heaven's chcrubin hoist, Upon the coursers of the sightless air, Shall blow the horrid deed, with 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 falls 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 shput 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 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. them even traditional authority, depends entirely upon their appositeness. Their authority is to be derived solely from 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 familiar with the text of the poet and the literature of his time. This is the only safe rule to adopt with regard to any arbitrary emendations of Shakespeare's text ; a rule which Ma] one thus laid down in one of his controversies with Steevens, upon a passage in the Two Gentlemen of Verona. " By arbitrary emendations, I mean conjectures made at the will and pleasure of the conjecturer, and without any authority. Such are Howe'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, I should have admitted these two, and rejected all the rest." Boswell's 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 the making of the corrections : that the maker of them con- CHARACTER OF ITS CHANGES. 39 formed to the taste and usages of a period at least half a century subsequent to the date of the production of the Plays : that, according to Mr. Collier's own showing, he continually made corrections merely because he did not understand 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 conjectural, 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? Rosalind. 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 Rosalind should say, " Marry, that should you, if I were your mistress, or I should thank my honesty rather than my wit : " a change which makes absurd nonsense of the passage ; for, in the case supposed by Rosalind, she would have no honesty to thank. In the first scene of All's Well that Ends Well, poor Helena, giving language to her hope that the distance be- tween her and Count Bertram might prove no obstacle to her happiness, says, 40 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO or 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, arc sometimes able to overcome the greatest differences in for- tune. But Mr. Collier's folio reads, "The mightiest space in nature, fortune brings To join like likes," could usurp the functions of the Moon, and "de;il in her command without her" legitimate authority. OMISSION. ACT III. SCENE 3. " Gonz. Each putter out of five for one will bring us," 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. 1844) "Tis true. I would not, though 't is my familiar sin With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest, 10 146 NOTES AND COMMENTS. Tongue far from heart, play with all virgins so : I hold you as a thing ensky'd, and sainted By your renouncement, an immortal spirit, And to be talk'd with in sincerity, As with a saint." Act I. Sc. 5. 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 its words. As Malone remarks, in a comment directed to entirely another point in the passage, Lucio says to Isabella, ei I consider you, in consequence of your having renounced the ivorldj 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 be evident upon a perusal of the passage so punctuated : "to jest Tongue far from heart, 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," se eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn : But my kisses bring again, bring again, Seals of love, but seal'd in vain, seal'd in vain. Mari. Break off thy song, and haste thee quick away MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 161 This exquisite song reappears in Beaumont and Fletch- er's Bloody Brother; where, however, it is accompanied by another stanza of almost 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 ur 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 Eev. 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- ing, " 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 was the authorship of Shakespeare * * * but his claim may perhaps be admitted until better evidence is adduced to disprove it." In spite of all this learned uncertainty and disagree- ment, the problem appears to me to be of easy solution by internal evidence. The song has such a peculiar and subdu- ing beauty, that an examination of its structure can hardly 11 162 NOTES AND COMMENTS. fail to afford a greater and more aesthetic 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 about which they were disputing, and a song, too, which was 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 constructed 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 but seal'd in vain, seal'd in vain." How touching, how full of pathos, the repetition ! 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 last two lines of the second in a similar man- ner ; as every musician, or song writer, or singer knows. But the second stanza in the Bloody Brother is not so con- structed. Here it is : " Hide, oh hide those hills of snow, Which thy frozen bosom bears,* On whose 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, that in the first edited edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's Works (8 vols., 8vo., 1711), this line is printed. MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 163 But first set my poor heart free, Bound in those icy chains by thee." Now we cannot say or sing : 44 But first set my poor heart free, poor heart free, Bound 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- vision of " icy," and the repetition of " -y chains by thee '' which the music would then require. Indeed there is no possible 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, 44 That thy frozen Blossome bears ; " and yet there are several variations in other lines which show that the song published in the text of the edition of 1711 was not taken from this ; and, consequently, that one error is not a mere perpetuation of the other. It also occurs in the folio of 1679; where, by the way, the last line ia printed, "Bound in those Ivy chains by thee." In a copy of this folio once in my possession, this line was corrected in a handwriting contemporaneous with the volume, "Bound in those Ivory chains by thee," a reading which has as much of authority to support it as anyone of these in Mr. Collier's second folio of Shakespeare. The frequently repeated error, blossom for "bosom," does not occur in the original quarto, as I find by examination of a copy of that edition in Mr. Burton's rich collection of early dramatic literature. It seems strange that such a mistake should have crept into the folio edition of the play from a copy of the song set to music. 164 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 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 conclu- sive ; and the point is one upon which there is no appeal from their decision. Shakespeare evidently wrote the first stanza, 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 fail 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. Keflection upon the following italicised phrases must pro- duce the same conviction in every mind. " Take, oh take those lips away, That so sweetly \vereforfworn; And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn: But my kisses bring again, bring again, Seals of love, but 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 Duke says of Mariana, who " hath still in her the continuance of her first affection." 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- MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 165 ly lose, even if she be deserted by him who awakened it. Man, even supposing that he has this feeling under any circumstances, never has it for a woman who has been false to him. The beautiful likening of the eyes to " the break of day," is better suited to the light which beams from a countenance 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 morn ;" 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 from particulars. The person into whose mouth the lines are put, first en- treats the person to whom they are addressed, to take away those lips that were forsworn. 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. The 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 regards it being determined entirely lay 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 lingers in " those eyes, 166 NOTES AND COMMENTS. the break of day," of a sad, yet sweet and tender memory 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 into 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." She 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 off 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 Ayres and Dia- logues for One, Two, or Three Voyces ; to the Theorbo-Lute or Basse- Viol, folio, London, 1659, p. 1, is this very song set to music by Dr. Wilson. It is called Love's Ingrati- 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. Wilson 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 MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 167 Brother, produced about 1625, was sung, he might weU have been the composer, as he doubtless was. He of course would 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 so 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 this song, in which he says : " The first stanza of this poem, it is true, appears in Measure for Measure ; but as it is there supposed to be sung by a boy, in reference to the misfortune of a deserted female, the second stanza could 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 first stanza is actually addressed by a woman to a man, and could 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 song, which frequently occurs in old plays], and gratify his readers, from some now forgotten author," evidently showing that he still supposed the song to be the homogeneous produc- tion of one hand. He rightly concludes that because the second stanza is obviously addressed to a woman, it could not have been written for this Scene in Measure for Measure; and not noticing, what we have seen is undeni- able, that the first stanza is addressed to a man, he confirms 168 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 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 incongruity of the two stanzas, failed 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. Rim- bault, LL. D., F. S. A., entitled Who was "Jack Wilson:' the singer of Shakespeare's stage ? Mr. Rimbault 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 tho 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. Rimbault 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 still'd 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 become MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 169 acquainted with this secret, and, being acquainted with it, how he had preserved his esteem and confidence in Angelo." Ititrod. 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- erature of Europe , it is, perhaps, unreasonable to expect him 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- cause 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, since 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 Angelo, 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 same 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 the monastery to assume the Friar's habit ; and in that Scene Claudfo is arrested. Angelo receives his vicarious 170 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 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 unimportant unities about which Shakespeare did not burden himself. He did not think it necessary to provide for the doubts of those who could suppose that Angela 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 is but a kind of Induction which furnishes the conditions of the action. SCENE 3. " Duke. How now ? What noise ? That spirit's possessed with haste That wounds the 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 resisting postern with these knocks." This should doubtless be received into the text. In- deed the only wonder is, that it should so long have escaped the very obvious correction. Mr. Knight's suggestion that the word in the original " is one of Shakespeare's Latinisms by which he means, never at rest, from sisto, to stand still," does not agree with the context ; for the repeated "knock- ing tvithin," 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 thft time. MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 171 ACT V. SCENE 1. " Isab. And I did yield to him ; But the next morn betimes, His purpose surfeiting, he sends a warrant For my poor brother's head. Duke. This is most likely ! hab. 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 food 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." This 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 says, " that it were as like as it is true." Mr. Knight says that " like " is used here in the sense of i 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, " that it were as probable as it is true ! " 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. e., the guilt of Angelo and the death of her brother, have occurred, she wishes her story to obtain full credence. Is it not plain that "likely" and "like" are here used by Shakespeare in the sense of ' credible ? ' ' Credible ' and ' probable/ although they are not interchangeable words, and, in truth, express essentially different relations of 172 NOTES AND COMMENTS. thought to fact, ' credible ' being ' that which may be be- lieved/ and ' probable/ i 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. i Likely' means ' probable/ i. e.j that is probable, which is likely to happen; and so may it not mean 'credible/ i. e., that which is likely to be believed ? The lexicographers give no example of the use of ' likely' for i 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 l likely to be believed ; ' and that when the Duke says, ironically, " This is most likely [to be believed]/' Isabella replies, in earnest, " that it were as like [to be believed] as it is true ? " " Duke (as Friar). I protest that I love the Duke as I love myself. Aug. Hark! how 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! " 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 OF ERRORS. ACT III. SCENE 1. " Dro. E. If th on hadst been Dromio to-day in my place, Thou wouldst have changed thy face for a name or thy name for an In this reply of Dromio of Ephesus to his brother, who, shut 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 goldeu hairs, And as a bed I'll 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 I'll take them, and there lie." ? [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. " Aug. Come, come, you know, I gave it you even now; Either send the chain, or send me by some token." It is very plain that there is a transposition in the sec- ond line, and that we should read, "Either send the chain, or send by me some token." Malone objects to this obvious and very necessary change, that " it was not Angelo's meaning * # * that Antipholus of Ephesu* should send a jewel or other token by him, but that Antipholus 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-days, thus : " My master has sent me to you for his cloth, 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- pholus had said to him : " Good signor, take the stranger to my house ; And with you take 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. COMEDY OF ERRORS. 1*75 SCENE 3. " Drom. S. Master, if you do, expect spoon meat, or bespeak a long spoon. A.nt. S. Why, Dromio ? Drom. S. Marry, he must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil." The original folio gives this reading, except that e you ' is omitted by an obvious typographical error. Another error in Dromio's first speech is equally obvious. In allu- sion 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 with along spoon. The separative "or" entirely destroys the sense, not to say the humor of Dromio's reply. Why should Antiplwlus be warned either to expect spoon meat or to bespeak a long spoon. He was warned to do both ; and, according to the proverb, certainly to do the last, if he eat with the devil. Read : " Master, if you do, expect spoon meat, and bespeak a long spoon. " ACT V. SCENE 1. " Abbess. Twenty-five years have I but gone in travail Of you, my sons, until this present hour, My heavy burden not delivered. The duke, my husband, and my children both, And you the calendars of their nativity, Go to a gossip's feast, and go with me : After so long grief, such nativity ! " Thus the passage stands in the Variorum edition. The original text is : 176 NOTES AND COMMENTS. "Thirtie three yeares bane T but gone in trauaile Of you rny sonnes, and till this present houre My heauie burthen are delivered." Mr. Dyce and Mr. Singer read, Mr. Collier, " and till this present hour My heavy burden ne'er delivered.' "and till this present hour My heavy burden undelivered." Theobald and Mr. Knight, "nor, till this present hour My heavy burden* are delivered." Blackwood's Magazine, Aug. 1853, " and till this present hour My heavy burden has delivered." It seems plain to me that ^Emilia refers to place no less than to time. After her long travail, it was there, as well as then, that she was delivered. Should we not read ? Twenty-five years have I but gone in travail Of you my sous; and till this present hour My heavy burthen here delivered. That is, of course, ' I have hut gone in travail till this present hour delivered rue here of my heavy burthen/ It should be noticed that l here ' is much more like the f are/ of the original than either c ne'er/ ' un, } or ' has ' are ; and that by this reading, the substitution of nor for " and " is COMEDY OF ERRORS. 177 not required. Thus, by the least possible change from the original text, we obtain the most exact and descriptive expression of ^Emilia'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 twenty-five. 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 : " Go to a gossip's feast, arid joy with me, After so long grief, such festivity." " 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 ; "tmdjoy" 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- fore entitled to the preference. 12 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. ACT I. SCENE 1. " Leon. How many gentlemen have you lost in this action ? Mesa. But few of any sort, and none of name." Upon this passage Mr. Dyce remarks : "According to Monk Mason, 'of any sort" 1 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. 1 So, too, in Midsummer -Nights Dream, act iii. sc. 2 ; " none of noble sort Would so offend a virgin ; " and in Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, Works, i. 24, ed. Gifford; " A gentleman of your sort, parts," &c. : and in A Warning for Faire Women, 1599 ; " The Queene our mistris Allowes this bounty to all commers, much more To gentlemen of your sort" A Few Notes; &c., p. 38. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 1*79 I cannot see the force of Mr. Dyce's reasons. The Mes- senger means, according to my understanding of his words, ' But few gentlemen of any description, and none of dis- tinction/ jfsr/ +* t+tid t^JMSfot** Jt K^V , A^**^ 30 * Mr. Dyce'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 such in the army of any description." "none of noble kind Would so offend a virgin." " A gentleman of your position, parts," ~ strate, when he speaks enjoying the play of the Clowns, ia the Midsummer Night's Dream, " can find sport in their intents Extremely stretch'd, 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 NOTES AND COMMENTS. " When great things laboring, perish in their birth." It is agreed on all hands that " that," of the original, is a misprint for them; and it seems equally plain to me that no other change is necessary than to drop the final s from each line : Thus : "That sport best pleases that doth least know how: Where zeal strives to content, and the content Dies in the zeal of them which it present. That is, that sport is keenest which is made by the zealous efforts of ignorant people to produce a pleasing effect, which they destroy by overdoing the matter in their very zeal. "Armado. For mine own part, I breathe free breath: I have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion," 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 so 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. Juliet 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 coming of Night would as a matter of course put him to sleep. But reason teaches and testimony establishes 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 u untalked of and unseen." When we rememher the vital importance of the secrecy of Juliet's nuptials, and the desire which must have been almost uppermost in her heart, that Romeo 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. " JRom. I pray thy poverty, and not thy will." Thus the first folio and the quarto of 1609 ; but " pray" is evidently a misprint for pay, which appears in the earli- est quarto, 1597 ; for, as Mr. Dyce has pointed out, the last words of Borneo's immediately preceding speech to the Apothecary were, " take this " money, of course. SCENE 3. " Par. I do defy thy conjurations." " Both Mr. Knight and Mr. Collier having rejected the read- ing ' conjugations ' for the misprint c 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 fact that in the oarly quarto impressions the word is spelled "runwawayes." 388 NOTES AND COMMENTS. Collier having observed that * the sense of conjurations is not clear,' I adduced a passage from an early drama, where ' conju- ration' 1 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 modern novel : * the argument, or rather the conjurations, of which I have made use,' &c. Mrs. Sheridan's Sidney Bidulph, vol. v. p. 74." Dyce's Few Notes, &c., p. 115. This argument and citing of instances from ancient authors seems odd enough to Americans. It is almost as common in America, and has always been, to say c I conjure you' to do thus or so, as C I entreat you ; ' especially when the person addressed is earnestly entreated to do something for his own 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 me to fury : 0, be gone ! By heaven, I love thee hetter 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 be the least question that Paris replies : "I do defy thy conjurations." "Jul. O happy dagger 1 This is thy sheath ; [stabs herself,"] there rust, and let me die." " There rust " is an obvious misprint for " there rest " which appears in the first quarto, 1597. TIMON OF 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 offer the following correction of a very natural typographi- cal error. " Never miud, "Was truly so unwise, to be so kind, Mr. Collier's folio offers surely, which is right as to sense, but not like enough in the trace of the letters.* * Truly 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 Vindication &c., that he has a corrected folio in which truly also appears. 390 NOTES AND COMMENTS. " Flav. I have retir'd me to a wasteful cock, And set mine eyes at flow." Sir Thomas Hanmer interpreted "wasteful cock" 'a cockloft or garret!' and Bishop Warburton agreed with him. Pope had the effrontery to change "wasteful cock" to lonely room. These be thy editors, Shakespeare ! Mr. Knight thinks it should be "from a wasteful cock," &c. Why this trouble ? Honest Flavins says, " when our vaults have wept With drunken spilth of wine, * * * ##*##**# I have retired me to a wasteful 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's 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 1 Has friendship such a faint and milky heart, It turns in less than two nights ? O ye gods I feel my master's passion ! This slave Unto his honour, has my lord's meat in him : Why should it thrive, and turn to nutriment, When he is turned to poison ? " There is no semblance of a reason for calling Lucullns TIMON 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." Lucullus was the very reverse of punctilious as to honor : to suppose that " this slave unto his honour," means ' this slave to Timon,' is puerile in the extreme, unsufferable : whereas the short time which has passed since Lucullus 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. " Luc. What a wicked beast was I, to disfurnish 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 obscurity 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. " Tim. Let me look back upon thee. O, thou wall That girdles in those wolves, dive in the earth, And fence not Athens." 392 NOTES AND COMMENTS. Thus the original is carefully pointed ; but subsequent editions, except Mr. Knight's, have removed the period in the first Hue, placed an exclamation mark in the second, and begun there a new sentence, reading thus : " Let roe look back upon thee, O thou wall That girdles in those wolves ! Dive in the earth And fence not Athens." What a wrong to Shakespeare and his readers ! Timon, 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, " 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- turn to look upon a wall instead of upon 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 from 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 ; TIMON OF ATHENS. 393 So his familiars from his buried fortunes Slink all away. " Flav. Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt Since riches point to misery and contempt ? 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 so, in the last line but one. Kead, " Who would be so mock'd with glory, and so live But in a dream of friendship ? " The so, in both cases, meaning ' thus/ of course. Timon having been mocked with glory, and the friendship 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 drudges ; and Mr. 394 NOTES AND COMMENTS. Collier's folio changes it to dugs I and is sustained by * editor ! It is strange that the simple and obvious correc- tion of a typographical error which would obviate all diffi- 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 1st Bandit about Timon: "the meere want of Gold, and the falling from of his Friendes drove him into this Melancholly." The margins of Mr. Collier's folio judiciously supply, Mm, and read " the falling from him of his friends." " Tim. Do villainy, do, since you protest to do't, Like workmen." " Protest " of the original has been dropped for profess. As Mr. Knight says, "either word maybe 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 c protest/ ACT V. SCENE 5. "Alcib. 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 your public laws At heaviest answer." JULIUS CJESAR. ACT I. SCENE 2. " Co*. When could they say, till now, that talk'd of Rome, That her wide walks encompass'd but one man." If correction be necessary in these lines, the suggestion of walls for " walks " made by Theobald, and adopted also in Mr. Collier's folio, must be accepted. ACT II. SCENE 1. " JBru. 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 C^SAR. 397 " For if thou hath thy native semblance on," &c. 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. f Hath ' is very frequently used by Shakespeare and his con- temporaries for c 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 Emendations. ACT III. SCENE 1. In the original, the following passage is evidently not properly distributed among the characters : " Gin. Caska, you are the first that rears your hand. Cces. Are we all ready ? What is now amisse That Ccesar and his Senate must redresse ? " " Are we all ready ? " plainly does not belong to Ccesar, 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 Ritson, and recently by Mr. Collier, on the credit which he gives to his folio. " Cox. I must prevent thee, Cimber. These couchings and these lowly courtesies," 26 402 NOTES AND COMMENTS. Were the grac'd person of our Banquo present ; Who may I rather challenge for unkindness, Than pity for mischance ! Rosse. His absence, sir, Lays blame upon his promise. Please it your highness To grace us with your royal company? Macb. The table's full. Len. Here's a place reserv'd, sir. Macb. Where ? Len. Here, my good lord. What is't that moves your highness I Macb. Which of you have done this ? Lords. What, my good lord ? Macb. 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. Ghost rises. And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss ; 'Would he were here ! to all, and him, we thirst, And all to all. Lords. Our duties, and the pledge. Macb. Avaunt ! and quit my sight ? Let the earth hide thee ! " Some have gravely argued 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 Macbeth' s allusion to Banquo. The Ghost of Banquo rises at first when Macbeth wishes for Banquo : with what propriety then, when Macbeth again wishes for Banquet, 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 which Macbeth' 8 guests cannot see ? MACBETH. 403 The Ghost exists only in his distempered brain ; its visibility is but a manager's concession to the popular love of the horrible. SCENE 6. "Len. Who cannot want the thought how monstrous 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 Lenox's 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 walked too late; Whom you may say, if 't please you, Fleance killed ; For Fleance fled. Men must not walk 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 who 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 Macbeth. 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, Fleance killed ; For Fleance fled. Men must not walk too late Who cannot want the thought, how monstrous It was for Malcolm and for Donaldbain To kill their gracious father." That is, c Men, who will think that the alleged murder of Duncan by his sons is a crime too monstrous for belief, must be careful not to walk too late.' ACT IV. SCENE 1. " Macb. Rebellious dead, rise never, till the Wood Of Birnam rise,"