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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\<if}ovTO rovrfuv 
 ." HERODOTUS, Erato, 55. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 846 & 848 BROADWAY. 
 
 M.DCCC.LIV. 
 

 ENTERED, accbidhg'to Act oV f,ongro3, ii, tlw year 1854, by 
 
 , t ^IC9Ap,D JGEANT WHITE, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of .tL&Wfl&ic <fcojirt i attht ^Tnited^^tea fov the Southern District of 
 
 New York! 
 
u/V 
 
 OPTIMA UXOKDM FEMINARUMQUE DILECTISSIM^. 
 
 216538 
 
PEEFATORT LETTER 
 
 TO GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, ESQ. 
 
 MY DEAR CURTIS : 
 
 You will remember that the publisher 
 of Shakespeare's Sonnets addresses them to a mys- 
 terious Mr. W. H., as their " ONLIE BEGETTER: " so I 
 address this Preface to you, because it is to a sug- 
 gestion of yours that it owes its existence. Let me 
 remind you that in talking with you upon the sub- 
 ject of this book and its character, I told you why 
 I had been so superfluous as to write it, and how it 
 was written ; upon which you kindly, but I thought 
 with some reason, remarked, that the motives and 
 the circumstances which produced it would add 
 materially to whatever intrinsic value it might pos- 
 sess, and that a statement of these would be the 
 best evidence of the warrant of its author to speak 
 upon its theme. Your opinion, upon reflection, 
 seemed well founded; and therefore, although if 
 a book need an excuse it is past the help of one. 
 
viii PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 I will undertake to tell why this was written. If 
 the story of the volume should prove uninteresting, 
 that will be the fault of the relator ; if the contrary, 
 then you can say, with Baron Pompolino, 
 
 "And as I'm the parent vine, 
 All the glory shall be mine." 
 
 
 
 The book is called, what its author claims to 
 have been for many years and yet to be, Shake- 
 speare's Scholar, a title which the proudest may be 
 proud to bear, and which the humblest may yet with 
 humility assume. It attempts not to decide what 
 Shakespeare might have written or what he could 
 have written, or to seek the interpretation of his 
 thoughts from those who proclaim themselves his 
 prophets, but to learn from him what he did write, 
 and to study to understand that in the submissive 
 yet still inquiring spirit with which a neophyte listens 
 to the teachings of a revered and no less beloved 
 master. It is in this spirit that I have studied 
 Shakespeare since the time whereof my memory 
 runneth not to the contrary ; and it is because so 
 few of his editors, commentators, and verbal crit- 
 ics, seem to have thus studied him, and because 
 during all my study I have kept free from the con- 
 tamination and perversion of their instruction, and 
 have learned only of him, that for the sake of the 
 thousands who love, feel, and understand him as I 
 do, or who would do so, were it not for those who 
 have made themselves middlemen between him and 
 them, doling out his golden thoughts and stopping 
 
PREFATORY LETTER. ix 
 
 the best part of them on the way, it is for the sake 
 of those readers and on their part, as one of them, 
 that I have written this book ; and I wrote it thus. 
 
 Though never one of those who devote their 
 social hours to trumpeting their admiration of him 
 who wrote for all time, yet having been, as you have 
 already seen, his devoted student at so early an age as 
 to be unable to remember when I first began to muse 
 and ponder with wondering delight upon his pages, 
 it was inevitable that love should grow with know- 
 ledge, admiration with the capacity to apprehend, 
 and reverence with the gradually acquired ability 
 to compare his mind with those of the others who 
 are called great in literature. But what I first es- 
 teemed a misfortune I now regard as one of the hap- 
 piest circumstances of my intellectual life : my Fa- 
 ther's bookshelves were guiltless of an annotated 
 copy, and I read Shakespeare pure and simple, 
 that is, in a state as nearly approaching purity as the 
 mere text of Mr. Singer's edition gave it to me. A 
 copy of the small Chiswick edition in one volume, 
 bought with the savings of my own slender stock of 
 pocket money, kept in my own room, carried with 
 me to the country during my school vacations, read 
 by surreptitious candlelight when I was supposed 
 to be asleep, was, through boyhood to youth, 
 through youth to manhood, my companion and my 
 constant joy. You will pardon the egotism, for you 
 will see, if you do not already, that it is necessary. 
 
 Thrown as I continually was among those who 
 were men of scholarship, even if not professional or 
 
x PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 literary men, you will wonder, .perhaps, how I 
 avoided reading or talking Shakesperian criticism. 
 It was thus. I had heard much said of the wonder- 
 ful learning and ability which had been brought to 
 the illustration of Shakespeare ; and discovering that 
 such eminent names as those of Pope and Johnson 
 were enrolled in the list of his editors and commen- 
 tators, I looked forward to the perusal of these 
 writings with delightful anticipations. At last, in my 
 Freshman year, I picked up a volume of an anno- 
 tated edition in the room of a classmate : the edi- 
 tion, I think, was one called Reed and Johnson's by 
 its American publishers. I opened it eagerly and 
 looked for the comments. The surprise and disap- 
 pointment with which I read them, I will not under- 
 take to tell you. I found them to consist, not of 
 expansions OP illustrations of Shakespeare's thought 
 or analysis of his characters, but of attempts to illu- 
 minate passages which had always been to me as 
 clear as noonday, or cold and pragmatic approval 
 or censure of works which I thought should be 
 spoken of only with enthusiastic admiration, tem- 
 pered with reverence. Nearly all the comments, 
 whether right or wrong, irritated me equally ; for 
 nearly all of them seemed to me to be superfluous 
 and therefore insulting. But I reflected that I was 
 but a College boy, and that these were the great 
 Dr. Johnson, the learned Bishop Warburton, or the 
 great poet Pope, or the u very ingenious" contem- 
 poraries and friends of those eminent men ; and feel- 
 ing that respectful consideration for 'their eminence 
 
PREFATORY LETTER. xi 
 
 became me, I read on for half an hour in various 
 parts of the volume, until I came to Johnson's closing 
 remarks upon Cymbeline, in which he speaks of " the 
 folly of the fiction, the absurdity of the conduct," 
 &c., and finishes by pointing out the "unresisting 
 imbecility " of the work. This was too much for 
 me : shocked, wounded, repelled, with a sense of 
 personal wrong I flung the book aside, and men- 
 tally registered a solemn vow never to read again 
 a criticism or comment of any kind upon Shake- 
 speare's works. My thoughts were akin to those 
 of the author of the Pursuits of Literature, whose 
 remarkable satire I met with, years afterward. 
 
 "Must I for SHAKESPEARE no compassion feel, 
 Almost eat up by COMMENTATING zeal? 
 On Avon's banks I heard ACTION mourn, 
 By fell 38Ia*k 3tttttr JHojJS in pieces torn; 
 Dogs that from Gothic kennels eager start 
 All well broke-in by Coney-catching Art, 
 
 Hot was the chace ; I left it out of breath ; 
 I wish'd not to be in at SHAKESPEARE'S death." 
 
 I reasoned thus : If this be what such men as 
 Pope, and Warburton, and Johnson say about Shake- 
 speare, and with not only the assent but the appro- 
 bation of the world, their Shakespeare and the 
 world's Shakespeare is not mine ; and mine is too 
 dear to me to be given up at the bidding of any 
 poet, or bishop, or lexicographer of them all. Ex- 
 cept the examination of some MS. notes, original and 
 selected, kindly lent to me by Mr. Hackett, I kept 
 my vow until about five years ago. Then I bought a 
 
 
xii PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 copy of Mr. Knight's Pictorial Edition, and having 
 studied Shakespeare himself alone for so many years, 
 I thought that I might with indifference read a com- 
 mentator again. From Mr. Knight's labors I derived 
 great satisfaction : his were altogether different com- 
 ments from those which still fretted in my memory. 
 I found that his Shakespeare and mine were the 
 same ; and I read with a new pleasure his remarks upon 
 the different Plays : a pleasure which I need hardly 
 say was repeated and heightened by subsequent ac- 
 quaintance with the criticisms of Coleridge, Wilson, 
 Schlegel, and Hazlitt. But I learned from him a 
 fact of which my determination had kept me igno- 
 rant, or rather, made me forgetful, that the text 
 of Shakespeare before the date of his edition was 
 filled with the alterations and interpolations of those 
 very editors whose labors had impressed me so un- 
 pleasantly ; and finding that in some of the few pas- 
 sages which had been obscure to me, the obscurity 
 was of their creating, not of Shakespeare's or even 
 his printers', I instantly began the critical study 
 of the text. From that time to this, excepting 
 my indispensable daily duties, I have done little 
 else than labor in this field. Mr. Halliwell's ex- 
 cellent catalogue of Shakesperian literature pointed 
 out the work before me, and all the necessary books 
 which I was not able to procure immediately were 
 attainable to me in the yet unopened Astor Library, 
 through the kindness of Dr. Cogswell, or in the 
 noble dramatic collection of Mr. Burton. Both of 
 these libraries contain fine copies of the original 
 
PREFATORY LETTER. xiii 
 
 folio edition of Shakespeare's plays ; and Mr. Burton's 
 is not wanting in a copy of any edition of even the 
 least critical value, from the date of the original to 
 the present day, while it abounds in the rarest and 
 most valuable editions of our earlier as well as later 
 dramatists, poets, and prose writers whose works can 
 in any way throw light upon the text of Shake- 
 speare and the history of our drama or our language. 
 With the early dramatists, and the poets from Rob- 
 ert of Gloucester and Piers Ploughman, I had already 
 a familiar acquaintance, and I was thus enabled to 
 give my attention to literature purely Shakesperian. 
 What knowledge my five years of hard labor has 
 Driven me of the mass of mingled learning and igno- 
 rance, sense and folly, with which Shakespeare has 
 as nearly as possible been overwhelmed, the follow- 
 ing pages will partly show : and but partly ; for 
 the mere reference to it all would make a volume in 
 itself; and a very unnecessary and wearisome vol- 
 ume it would be. But it is not because I have gone 
 through such preparation that I have written this 
 book ; but because before I undertook the task I had 
 studied Shakespeare himself with constant devotion 
 during the whole of my thinking life, and had not 
 discovered the need of any comments or explanations 
 at all, except in a few passages, nearly every one of 
 which my more recent studies have shown me were 
 obscured by the labors of those editors who lived 
 before the expiration of the first quarter of this cen- 
 tury, or by the carelessness of the printers of the 
 first edition, or their inability to decipher the manu- 
 
xiv PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 script which was furnished to them. During my 
 study of the text in the original folio and in Stee- 
 vens' reprint of the quartos, it was my habit, in all 
 passages in which they differed from the editions 
 in common use, to enter their readings upon the 
 margins of my copy of Shakespeare ; and as I read 
 the commentators and editors I did the same 
 with their noteworthy conjectural emendations, 
 adding my own solution of the difficulty in many 
 cases in which it seemed to me that there was either 
 no difficulty at all, or that the simplest means of 
 solving it had been neglected. It was impossible 
 that such a course of study should be pursued by 
 one who was in the almost daily habit of committing 
 his thoughts upon other subjects to paper, without 
 the accompaniment of written notes. These gradu- 
 ally accumulated upon me, sometimes in the shape 
 of mere memorandums, sometimes extending them- 
 selves almost into short essays ; and they, with the 
 exception of the pages devoted to the consideration 
 of Mr. Collier's folio, form the bulk of the ensuing 
 volume. They were written with no intent that 
 they should see the light in this form, if at all ; for 
 the most devoted student of Shakespeare will shrink 
 from adding the weight of his thoughts to the bur- 
 den under which the text of the great dramatist has 
 so long groaned. But as, after the appearance of 
 the two papers in Putnam's Magazine upon Mr. Col- 
 lier's folio, it was suggested to me by some whose 
 judgments I respected, that a book written in the 
 same spirit upon the text of Shakespeare, would be 
 
PREFATORY LETTER. xv 
 
 welcomed by all those who were giving attention to 
 a subject which had derived renewed interest from 
 recent events, and would help to beget an univer- 
 sal habit of more direct communion with him, to a 
 disregard of the notes of editors and commentators ; 
 and as the effect of what I had written, if it were to 
 have effect at all, would be to lead to the reception 
 of the simple and obvious meaning of his lines, I 
 determined to prepare for publication selections 
 from and expansions of the notes of my studies. 
 This I have done ; and in this volume you see the 
 result The book was not deliberately made ; but, 
 like Topsy, it u growed." Unlike that young lady, 
 however, it was not " raised on a spec;" for you 
 need not be told that, were five editions to be 
 sold, it would not pay me day laborer's wages for 
 the mere time I have devoted to the preparation 
 of it. 
 
 But though the result of accumulation rather 
 than of projection, the book is not without unity of 
 purpose ; that purpose being to show that the obvi- 
 ous signification of Shakespeare's poetry is not only 
 the true sense but the best, and that therefore no 
 thinking man, of ordinary information and intelli- 
 gence, needs the aid of editors and commentators to 
 help him to the full understanding and enjoyment 
 of nearly every passage which came from Shake- 
 speare's pen. People are apt to forget that Shake- 
 spear e wrote his plays to please the promiscuous 
 public of London, at a time when the general diffu- 
 sion of knowledge was infinitely less than it is now. 
 
xvi PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 He wrote to make money by interesting such a public, 
 and of course to be understood by it ; and he was un- 
 derstood. The general public of his day, those who, 
 in the words of his fellow actors, judged their " six- 
 pen'orth" and their u shilling's worth" as well as 
 those who judged their u five shillings' worth at a 
 time, or higher," crowded the theatre to hear his 
 plays, while Jonson's more learned and labored, 
 though not more finished, dramas were played to 
 empty benches. Leonard Digges, a contempora- 
 ry of both the poets, has left us some verses, which 
 you have doubtless seen before, and which have 
 value as a testimony to Shakespeare's power of 
 pleasing the people of his time. 
 
 " So have I seen, when Cansar would appear, 
 
 And on the stage at half-sword parley were 
 Brutus and Cassius, how the audience 
 
 Were ravished ! with what wonder they went thence ! 
 
 When, some new day, they would not brook a line 
 
 Of tedious, though well labor'd Catiline ; 
 
 Sejanus, too, was irksome, they prized more 
 
 "Honest" lago, or the jealous Moor. 
 
 And though the Fox and subtil Alchymist, 
 
 Long intermitted could not quite be mist, 
 
 Though these have sham'd all th' ancients, and might raise 
 
 Their author's merit with a crown of bays, 
 
 Yet these sometimes, even at a friend's desire 
 
 Acted, have scarce defray'd the sea coal fire, 
 
 And door-keepers ; when, let but Falstaff come, 
 
 Hal, Poins, the rest, you scarce shall have a room, 
 
 All is so pester'd ; let but Beatrice 
 
 And Benedick be seen, lo ! in a trice 
 
 The cock : pit> 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," <fec. 
 
 But in all the editions in ordinary use by the pre- 
 sent and last generations, the first line is printed, 
 
 "So much \mcuraUe her garboils, &c. 
 
 It so appears in Chalmers' Edition, in Singer's, in 
 Moxon's, &c., &c., &c. Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight 
 have restored the reading of the original, which in- 
 deed was not disturbed until the present century. 
 Why it was disturbed is a mystery. " Garboils " 
 means c braw lings,' 'uproars,' 'tantrums,' and is 
 translated, 'barbuglio,' 'ripetto? in the Italian Diction- 
 ary of Shakespeare's contemporary, Florio. What 
 most people would call the old text probably came 
 into being through the agency of some over wise 
 compositor, who, able to understand only the last 
 syllable of this word, supposed Fulvia to need a 
 plaster upon her person rather than a restraint upon 
 her passions ; and so changed " uncurbable " into 
 uncurable in some prominent edition, which was 
 followed blindly for a quarter of a century. 
 
 Our conservatism too often consists in mere te- 
 nacity of that to which we have been accustomed. 
 It is one thing to shrink from touching Shakespeare's 
 text, but quite another to hesitate to remove the 
 
xxx PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 words of Pope or Warburton, or others of inferior 
 name, in order to restore those which appear in 
 the authentic copy, or to substitute others more in 
 accordance with the tone of Shakespeare's thought, 
 the phraseology of his time, and the trace of the 
 letters in the corrupted text. The conservatism 
 which loves and venerates that which is right the 
 more because it is old, appeals to the strongest and 
 purest feelings of the human heart ; it is not only 
 virtue in the good, but wisdom in the wise. But that 
 sort of conservatism which clings to a hoary evil 
 merely because it has grown old in wrong, is equally 
 vicious and foolish; for it not only perpetuates wrong, 
 but provokes and almost justifies that innovation, 
 which will root out all that is old, the good with 
 the evil. Let us shun such conservatism in editing 
 the works of Shakespeare, if we would not see his 
 thoughts diluted to the taste of the feeblest palates, 
 and his phraseology tortured out of its antique, 
 but never antiquated, grace and grandeur by the re- 
 forming hands whose ruthless strength such a course 
 would provoke to action. Such are the feelings 
 with which I have come to the critical study of 
 Shakespeare's text, and which have influenced the 
 character of the succeeding pages ; and hence it is 
 that in many passages, which seem to me beyond 
 all question corrupt, although they have been print- 
 ed and read without a question for generations, I 
 have not hesitated to point out the error and the 
 remedy which occurred to me, while at the same 
 
PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 time I merely suggest my corrections for the con- 
 sideration of my fellow-students. 
 
 The quotations are given at greater length than 
 is usual in works of verbal criticism, because this 
 volume is not especially addressed to critics, who are 
 supposed to know the context of all passages the 
 reading of which is in dispute ; and as to others, in 
 the words of Mrs. Jameson in the Preface to her 
 delightful Characteristics of Women, which I read 
 for the first time just before writing this letter " it 
 " the memory fail at the moment to recall the lines 
 u or the sentiment to which the attention is direct- 
 " ly required, few like to interrupt the course of 
 " thought, or undertake a journey from the sofa or 
 u the garden seat to the library, to hunt out the vo- 
 " lume, the play, the passage for themselves." 
 
 The antiquarian style of editing has been op- 
 posed and ridiculed by many. I cannot give it my 
 highest respect, especially when it tempts a man of 
 Mr. Dyce's taste into such needless displays of read- 
 ing of worthless books as abound in his otherwise 
 admirable recent publication, in which instance 
 upon instance from old volumes in all modern lan- 
 guages is heaped upon Shakespeare's text without 
 illustrating it. But this is only the abuse of that 
 which has its use. Mr. Dyce's own reading, as well 
 as that of his predecessors, has thrown light on many 
 passages in the works of Shakespeare and our elder 
 dramatists ; and in the recent discussions upon the 
 authority of the emendations in Mr. Collier's folio, a 
 
xxxii PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 knowledge of the inferior literature of Shakespeare's 
 day can be, and has been, used with great effect 
 upon the pretensions of that volume. I will here, 
 by way of illustration, and because, having mislaid 
 my memorandum, it escaped me in the preparation 
 of my own argument against Mr. Collier's folio and 
 of this volume, mention a forgotten passage which 
 is. of much value in Shakesperian literature. You 
 will remember that in the Merry Wives of Windsor, 
 Act I. Sc. 3, Falstaff says of Mrs. Ford, " I spy en- 
 " tertainment in her : she discourses, she carves, 
 u she gives the leer of invitation." The corrector of 
 Mr. Collier's folio, being unable, like most people 
 nowadays, to apprehend the force of the phrase 
 "she carves," changed it to "she craves /" and so 
 did Zachary Jackson thirty -five years ago. But Mr. 
 Hunter and Mr. Dyce have quoted from authors of 
 Shakespeare's day, several instances of the use of the 
 word, in the sense of l propitiating/ They do not, 
 however, arrive at the exact meaning ; and Mr. Dyce 
 remarks: "whatever was its exact nature it would 
 u appear * * * to have been a sort of salutation which 
 "was practised more especially at table." But the re- 
 appearance of my forgotten memorandum enables 
 me to show exactly what this sort of carving was, and 
 how it was performed. In the satirical description of 
 A very Woman, which occurs among the Characters 
 appended to Sir Thomas Overbury's Wife and it is 
 one of the most graphic, quaint and pungent among 
 them the description of the married part of her 
 life begins thus : " Her lightnesse gets her to swim at 
 
PREFATORY LETTER. xxxiii 
 
 u top of the table, where her wrie little finger be- 
 u wraies carving ; her neighbors at the latter end 
 " know they are welcome, and for that purpose she 
 "quencheth her thirst." Sig. E. 3, Ed. 1632. Carv- 
 ing, then, was a sign of intelligence, made with the 
 little finger as the glass was raised to the mouth. 
 It is remarkable, by the way, that ladies do this 
 now-a-days infinitely more than gentlemen. Is it 
 possible that the trick has survived, while its mean- 
 ing is lost ? But the value of this passage to the 
 Shakesperian scholar, is, that it shows the ignorance 
 of the corrector of Mr. Collier's folio with regard to 
 a word and a custom in vogue at the date of the 
 edition on which he made his changes ; and therefore 
 furnishes another incontestable proof of the much 
 later date of his labors, and of his unfitness for them. 
 A few of the following pages are devoted to an 
 examination of the grounds upon which authority can 
 be claimed for Mr. Collier's notorious and curious 
 volume. I need not point out to you that this is 
 not, and does not attempt to be, a detailed approval 
 or disapproval of such of the changes in the text 
 of that volume as have been made public by Mr. 
 Collier, but is purely an argument which aims to 
 show, that those emendations were made in such a 
 way and at such a time that, as to their authority, 
 they are utterly without any claim upon our defer- 
 ence. I have been both publicly and privately cen- 
 sured by Shakesperian enthusiasts for too great con- 
 sideration towards Mr. Collier, even when most 
 severe upon the changes which he advocates. But 
 
xxxiv PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 although I am willing to confess, that I have always 
 supposed that gentleman's qualifications as an editor 
 of Shakespeare to consist rather in great learning 
 in the antiquities of English Poetry and the Drama 
 than in sympathetic appreciation of his author, and 
 that his Notes and Emendations confirmed and deep- 
 ened that opinion, I certainly need not excuse my- 
 self for consideration or even deference (little enough 
 through excess of zeal I fear), shown to one who had 
 previously rendered such good service to Shake- 
 speare and the Drama, and who. had taken a respect- 
 able position in critical literature before I was 
 born.* 
 
 Not only the text and the commentators, but 
 some of the characters of Shakespeare are consider- 
 ed in these pages. Acquit me however, in advance, 
 of a presumptuous desire to thrust myself between 
 Shakespeare and the spontaneous admiration of such 
 of his readers as happen to be mine. It is only in 
 the hope of correcting the false teachings of the stage 
 and the commentators that I have ventured upon 
 an analysis of Shakespeare's marvellous creations. 
 The conventional personages of the former and the 
 stereotyped traditions of the latter have almost ex- 
 tinguished, for the mass of the public, many of 
 Shakespeare's most truthful and finished characters. 
 Jacques, Isabella, and Richard III. are prominent ex- 
 amples ; but there are others almost equally striking. 
 I have merely endeavored to show these characters 
 
 * The Poetical Decameron. By J. P. Collier. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1820 
 
PREFATORY LETTER. xxxv 
 
 as Shakespeare drew them, in opposition to the dis- 
 torted images of them which hold possession of the 
 public eye, seen through the perverting medium of 
 the playwrights and the commentators. And here 
 justice requires that the Shakesperian representations 
 which Mr. Burton has given at his theatre during 
 the last two years should not only be exempted from 
 such censure, but receive, if my poor pen may be 
 deemed worthy to bestow it, the warm approba- 
 tion of all lovers of Shakespeare for their unexampled 
 faithfulness to the letter and the spirit of the great 
 dramatist. 
 
 But enough of this, and too much ; and yet I have 
 said nothing which it did not seem as if I must say, 
 if I broke silence at all. That that which I have 
 just written and that which lies beyond this thresh- 
 old is not needless, let this dictum of Hallam's, 
 written only fifteen years ago, bear witness : u We 
 " learn Shakespeare, in fact, as we learn a language, 
 " or as we read a difficult passage in Greek, with 
 " the eye glancing on the commentary ; and it is 
 u only after much study, that we come to forget a 
 "part, it can be but apart, of the perplexities he 
 " has caused us." Introd. to the Lit. of Europe. Part 
 III. Chap. vi. 52. Now, with all due deference to 
 such eminent opinion, I never had need to go to that 
 school ; and when I did go, it was in the teaching 
 of the expounders, and not in the words of the great 
 master that I found the perplexities. Do you ask, 
 have I the conceit to suppose that I am alone in 
 this ? Far from it. You are with me : and it is 
 
xxxvi PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 because I feel, because I know, that there are thou- 
 sands and hundreds of thousands like us, and be- 
 cause we have yet had no representative voice in 
 the critical Senate, that I, failing abler hands, have 
 written this book. And the fact that you thus un- 
 derstand and thus feel Shakespeare, while you have 
 not to your many accomplishments added the spe- 
 ciality of Shakesperian scholarship, is an additional 
 reason why I should take such an occasion as this 
 to assure you that, 
 
 I am, my dear Howadji, 
 
 Ever faithfully, 
 
 Your Friend and Servant, 
 RICHARD GRANT WHITE. 
 
 173 East 13th street, 
 NEW-YORK, April 23, 1854. 
 
xxxviii NOTE. 
 
 speare's text be protected and restored by any hands ; but 
 I have scrupulously respected the rights of others ; and, in 
 the recent words of a far more learned Shakesperian scholar 
 than I shall ever be, Mr. Collier, " if, in any instance, I 
 have not stated that a proposed emendation has been pre- 
 viously suggested, it has arisen from my ignorance of the 
 fact or from pure inadvertence." 
 
 And I should here say, that in reading Mrs. Jameson's 
 Characteristics of Women I at last found one who at least 
 suspects what it seemed to me no one could be blind to, 
 that Beatrice loves Benedick when Much Ado about 
 Nothing opens. This reminded me that somewhere in the 
 following volume there is an expression of my surprise that 
 this keystone and clue of the comedy had not been discov- 
 ered by any of those who had made it the subject of ana- 
 lytical comment. 
 
 Not a little of the more recent desultory and occasional 
 Shakesperian discussion appears to have been carried on in 
 the London serial publication called Notes and Queries, 
 which, judging by the few numbers I have seen, seems to 
 be well described in the North British Review for February, 
 1854, as " a melange of the public knowledge and ignorance, 
 sense and folly, on all sides of all questions." I have in 
 vain tried to procure this : half a dozen old odd numbers, 
 picked up here and there, and a set for 1853, lacking No- 
 vember and December, received while this volume was pass- 
 ing through the press, are all that I have been able to ob- 
 tain. This statement may possibly be necessary to excuse 
 my neglect to give due credit to some contributor to that 
 literary alms-basket. 
 
 I cannot allow this sheet to go to press without a record 
 of my acknowledgments to two gentlemen who have mate- 
 rially aided me in the studies of which this volume is the 
 result. First, to William E. Burton, Esq., known to the 
 
NOTE. xxxix 
 
 public as a man of letters, an actor of genius, a successful 
 and liberal manager, and a devoted Shakesperian student, 
 I am indebted for his kindness in opening to me without 
 reserve the rich treasures of his Shakesperian and Dramatic 
 library, and, indeed, for the transfer to my own shelves, in 
 a spirit that " made the things more rich," of needful vol- 
 umes which I might have sought for long in vain. To his 
 knowledge and experience I also owe some valuable sug- 
 gestions. From Joseph Cogswell, LL. D. Superintendent 
 of the Astor Library, I have continually received all the 
 assistance which it was in his power to give, and far more 
 than I had any right or reason to expect. Even while the 
 noble collection of books which he had projected, and to the 
 gathering together of which he has devoted himself with 
 such singleness of purpose, directed by various learning, 
 was inchoate, almost chaotic, I found him ever ready, at no 
 little sacrifice of personal convenience, to place whatever 
 was within his reach also within mine, whether it was a 
 book or the fruits of his own extended study. 
 
 To the Hon. George Lunt, of Boston, I am indebted 
 for several favors and kind suggestions, and to President 
 Anderson, D. D., LL. D., of Geneva College, for a useful 
 hint. I have to thank William C. Conant, Esq., of this 
 city, for the benefit of his assistance on more than cne occa- 
 sion ; and when I add that the name of my correspondent in 
 Portland, Me., is George W. Eveleth, I believe that I have 
 absolved myself of all the pleasant duties of this kind which 
 friendship and courtesy have imposed upon me. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGK. 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE, . 8 
 QUARTOS First Folio Second, Third, and Fourth Folios, . 4 
 EDITORS Rowe Pope Theobald Hanmer "Wai-burton John- 
 son Capell, 8 
 
 EARLY CRITICISM Mutilation of the Text, .... 15 
 
 EDITORS Steevens Malone Chalmers Harness Singer, . 18 
 COMMENTATORS Heath Ty rwhitt Ritson Mason Douce 
 
 Seymour Becket Jackson, 20 
 
 MODERN EDITORS Mr. Knight Mr. Collier Mr. Verplanck, 29 
 
 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632, 33 
 
 ITS CLAIMS TO DEFERENCE, . . . . . . . 35 
 
 CHARACTER OF ITS CHANGES Turns Poetry to Prose "Whose 
 Mother was her Painting" Dramatic Inconsistency Dis- 
 regard of the Context Date of its Emendations Its Evi- 
 dent Doubts and Conjectures Its Important Changes not 
 New Number and Character of its Changes The Work of 
 Various Hands Similar Folios existing: This not Fabri- 
 cated, 39 
 
 RECAPITULATION, . . . *72 
 
 CONDEMNED BY SHAKESPERIAN SCHOLARS *75 
 
 SUBSTITUTED RHYMES AND ADDED LINES, *76 
 
 AUTHORITY AND CONJECTURE, 80 
 
 NOTES AND COMMENTS, 85 
 
 TEMPEST, 90 
 
xlii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGK. 
 
 Two GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, 98 
 
 MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, 103 
 
 MEASURE FOR MEASURE Nature of its Plot Its Characters An- 
 
 gelo Its Poetry, Ill 
 
 Period of the Action, between 1476 and 1490, . . .126 
 
 Shakespeare's Women Character of Isabella, . . 133 
 " Take, oh take those Lips away " Its authorship, . .160 
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, 178 
 
 ^^ LOVE'S LABORS LOST, 186 
 
 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM, 196 
 
 Character of Bottom 210 
 
 MERCHANT OF VENICE, - 222 
 
 As You LIKE IT, 233 
 
 "My Child's Father," 236 
 
 Character of Jaques, . 242 
 
 ^ " Rosalind, 249 
 
 TAMING OF THE SHREW, 263 
 
 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, ....... 26^. 
 
 TWELFTH NIGHT, . 275 
 
 Character of Viola, . 278 
 
 THE WINTER'S TALE, 289 
 
 KING JOHN, 298 
 
 KING RICHARD IL^ 807 
 
 KING HENRY IV. Part I\ 811 
 
 " '\Part^n/ 318 
 
 -KING HENRY V. 325 
 
 KING HENRY VI. Part 1 332 
 
 Part II 334 
 
 Part III. 337 
 
 KING RICHARD IIL 339 
 
 KING HENRY VIIL 345 
 
 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, 349 
 
 CORIOLANUS, 358 
 
 TITUS ANDRONICUS 368 
 
 ROMEO AND JULIET, 370 
 
 TIMON OF ATHENS, 389 
 
 JULIUS CJESAR, 396 
 
 '^* .MACBETH, 390 
 
CONTENTS. xliii 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 HAMLET, 407 
 
 KING LEAR, 423 
 
 OTHELLO, . 428 
 
 Othello not a Negro Character of Desdemona, . . 431 
 
 ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, 448 
 
 CYMBELINE, 462 
 
 Character of Imogen, 453 
 
 PERICLES, 471 
 
 SONNETS, 473 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S NAME, 478 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTICE OF MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 
 
 1632, 483 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 The author has not been able to examine the sheets of this volume, for 
 the purpose of preparing a list of errata, from which, however, he trusts 
 that it will be found tolerably free ; but, in glancing over its pages, he 
 has noticed the following, which are the results of oversight in finishing 
 the stereotype plates : 
 
 
 
 Page 94, line IT for " wis," road wisf^ 
 Page 120, line 16 for " d," read do. 
 
 Page 231, M In," which stands alone about the middle of the [>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, 
 <fcc. 8vo. London, 1699." 
 
 Neither of these books is enumerated in Mr. Halliwell's very serviceable 
 Catalogue of Shakesperiana ; though they certainly present claims to such 
 notice equal, at least, to those of other volumes the titles of which Mr. 
 Halliwell has recorded. 
 
EDITORS : ROWE, POPE, THEOBALD, HANMER. 9 
 
 ity of a clever and well educated man was necessary to 
 their production ; and it also shows that Mr. Collier has 
 issued his book of Notes and Emendations without that 
 careful investigation which the subject demanded, and 
 which the public had a right to expect at his hands. 
 
 Rowe was succeeded, as an editor of Shakespeare, by 
 Pope, who published a superb edition, in six volumes, 
 quarto, in 1725. Pope, like most of those authors of emi- 
 nence in other departments of literature, who have under- 
 taken to regulate the text of Shakespeare, made a very poor 
 editor. He used the quartos somewhat to the advantage, 
 but more to the detriment of his author ; foisting into the 
 text that which Shakespeare himself had rejected. He 
 gave us a few good, and several very pretty and plausible 
 conjectural emendations of typographical errors ; but he 
 added to these so many which were only exponents of his 
 own conceit and want of kindred appreciation of Shake- 
 speare's genius, that his text, as a whole, is one of the poor- 
 est which remain to us. 
 
 Theobald, "poor, piddling Tibbald," the first hero of 
 his Dunciad, came after Pope, and is one of the very best 
 editors who have fallen to the lot of Shakespeare. He was 
 the first who did any great service by conjectural emenda- 
 tion, and the judicious use of the quartos. He issued first, 
 " Shakespeare Restored ; or a Specimen of the Many Er- 
 rors, as well committed as unamended, in Pope's edition 
 of this Poet," quarto, 1726, a publication which Pope 
 never forgave, and in 1733 his edition of Shakespeare was 
 published, in seven volumes, 8vo. It was by far the best 
 text of Shakespeare which had appeared, and a great num- 
 ber of its conjectural emendations of typographical errors 
 remain undisturbed to this day. 
 
 To Theobald, succeeded Sir Thomas Hanmer, Baronet 
 (as Inspector Bucket would say), who published an edition, 
 
10 HISTORICAL SKETCH, 
 
 splendid for the day, in six volumes, quarto, at Oxford, in 
 1744. Hanmer was an accomplished gentleman, and a 
 man of taste. He did something to better, and somewhat 
 more to injure the text as Theobald had left it. His labors 
 were received with favor ; but he was indebted for his suc- 
 cess rather to fashion than to any remarkable merit, and 
 his edition is rarely consulted ; the few received, or favora- 
 bly regarded emendations which he proposed being perpe- 
 tuated in the text or in the notes of other editors. It 
 should be noticed here, that many of Hanmer' s question- 
 able readings, and some which are regarded as inadmissible, 
 are found among those the credit of which Mr. Collier 
 claims for his manuscript corrector. 
 
 Hanmer's edition was followed, in 1747, by Bishop War- 
 burton's. This prelate, not then mitred, was undeniably 
 learned and able ; but he was as undeniably assuming and 
 arrogant in his personal demeanor, and he treated Shake- 
 speare's works as he probably would have treated the player 
 himself, had he been his contemporary. He set himself 
 not so much to correcting the text, as to amending the 
 writings of Shakespeare. His tone is that of haughty flip- 
 pancy. Does he find a passage in which the thought, or 
 the expression of William Shakespeare is at variance with 
 the judgment of William Warburton ? he immediately 
 alters it to suit the taste of that distinguished scholar and 
 divine, saying : " Without a doubt, Shakespeare wrote, or 
 meant, thus." For instance, of the fine line in Hamlet, 
 
 "Or to take arms against a sea of troubles," 
 
 he says : 
 
 " Without question Shakspeare wrote, 
 
 ' against assail of troubles/ 
 i. e. assault." 
 
 Again, in the following passage, from As You Like It, 
 
EDITORS : WARBURTON. 11 
 
 where, in the second Scene of the first Act, Celia, dissuading 
 Orlando from the encounter with the Duke's wrestler, says 
 to him : 
 
 ''If you saw yourself with your eyes, and knew yourself with your 
 judgment, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a more equal 
 enterprise." 
 
 Warhurton says : 
 
 " ' If you saw yourself with YOUR eyes, and knew yourself 
 with YOUR judgment.' Absurd! The sense requires that we 
 should read our eyes, our judgment." 
 
 It seems not to have occurred to the editor that the 
 sense might be, 
 
 "If you saw yourself with your eyes, and knew yourself with your 
 judgment : " 
 
 and as this solution did not occur to him, he, of course, 
 cuts the knot, and mutilates the text. So, again, in the 
 same play, the impatient Rosalind says : 
 
 " One inch of delay is a South Sea of discovery: " 
 
 a phrase vivid with meaning ; but Warburton says of it : 
 " This is stark nonsense ! we must read, off discovery. " 
 
 Rosalind talks of Orlando's kissing 
 
 "His kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of holy bread." 
 
 This does not suit Warburton, who remarks : 
 
 " We should read beard, [instead of bread ;] that is, as the 
 kiss of an holy saint, or hermit, called the kiss of charity. This 
 makes one comparison just and decent ; the other, impious and 
 absurd." 
 
 One more example from the same play. The Duke asks- 
 Orlando if he believes that Rosalind can do what she pro- 
 mised, and the latter replies : 
 
12 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 " I sometimes do believe, and sometimes do not, 
 As those that fear they hope, and know they fear." 
 
 Of the last line of which, Warburton says : 
 " This strange nonsense should he read thus : 
 
 " 'As those thaty<?ar their hap, and know their fear.'" 
 
 This was reckless editing ; and it soon brought forward 
 defenders of the integrity of Shakespeare's text. But, like 
 all his predecessors, and nearly all of his successors, Bishop 
 Warhurton left, in his heaps of editorial chaff, some grains 
 of sense, which have been carefully winnowed out and gar- 
 nered up in that storehouse of Shakesperian lore, the Vario- 
 rum edition, which will hereafter claim our attention. 
 
 In 1745 had appeared a duodecimo volume, entitled 
 " Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, 
 with remarks on Sir T. H.'s [Sir Thomas Hanmer's] edition 
 of Shakespear ; to which is affixed, proposals for a new edi- 
 tion of Shakespear, with a specimen." It was written, as 
 its author might have said, with combined perspicuity of 
 thought, and ponderosity of language. It was by Samuel 
 Johnson, then rapidly rising to the highest position in the 
 world of letters ; and, in 1765, an edition of Shakespeare, 
 " with the corrections and illustrations of various commenta- 
 tors : to which are added notes, by Samuel Johnson/' was 
 published, in eight volumes, 8vo. It is giving the Doctor 
 but little praise to say that he was a better editor than his 
 Keverend predecessor. The majority of his emendations of 
 the text were, nevertheless, singularly unhappy ; and his 
 notes, though often learned and sometimes sensible, were 
 generally wanting in just that sort of learning and sense 
 most needful for his task. Strange as it may seem, 
 no one who himself appreciates Shakespeare, can read 
 Johnson's comments and verbal criticisms upon his plays 
 without the conviction that to the ' great moralist/ the 
 

 EDITORS : JOHNSON. 13 
 
 grandest inspirations and most exquisitely wrought fancies 
 of the great dramatist were as a sealed book. Many an 
 humble individual whom the learned bear growled at 
 we do not hesitate to include even "Bozzy" himself ap- 
 preciated Shakespeare better than the literary dictator did. 
 The Doctor did not hesitate to say, that one passage in 
 that clever fop Congreve's Mourning Bride was finer than 
 any thing in all Shakespeare's works. And who can forget, 
 or forgive, the manner in which he abuses Sweet Will, 
 when he does not understand him ; or, worse yet, the insuf- 
 ferable arrogance with which he patronizes him, and pats 
 him on the head, when he does ? Who ever read, with- 
 out an ebullition of wrath, this curt, savage, and peda- 
 goguish dismissal of Cymbeline : 
 
 " This play has many just sentiments, some natural dia- 
 logues, and some pleasing scenes ; but they are obtained at the 
 expense of much incongruity. To remark the folly of the fic- 
 tion, the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names 
 and manners of different times, and the impossibility of the 
 events in any system of life, were to waste criticism upon unre- 
 sisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too 
 gross for aggravation." 
 
 Poor great moralist ! obtuse wise man ! ignorant 
 Doctor of Laws ! For thee Imogen, that purest, that 
 most enchanting, most noble creation, that loveliest, 
 most lovable, most loving, and so most womanly of 
 women, that peerless lady among Shakespeare's peerless 
 ladies, was spoken into being in vain ! In vain, for thee 
 the glowing thoughts, the gorgeous imagery, the dainty 
 utterance ! In vain for thee the wondrous self-develop- 
 ment of character by dialogue and dramatic action ! In 
 vain for thee 
 
 " the lark at heaven's gate sings, 
 
 And Phoebus 'gins arise, 
 His steeds to water at those springs 
 
 On chalic'd flowers that lies." 
 
14 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 for thy rectilinear vision is fixed upon " the confusion of 
 names and manners of different times, and the impossi- 
 bility of the events in any system of life," and, besides, 
 " springs that lies," is ungrammatical ! All the fine 
 writing in the Doctor's high sounding preface will not 
 atone for his treatment of Shakespeare in the body of the 
 work. It is worth while to read here his note on the pas- 
 sage, 
 
 " One inch of delay is a South Sea of discovery. 
 Prithee tell me, <fec.," 
 
 Warburton's treatment of which has just been noticed. 
 He says : 
 
 " This sentence is rightly noted by the commentator as non- 
 sense, but not so happily restored to sense. I read thus : c One 
 inch of delay is a South Sea. Discover, I prithee, tell me, &c.' " 
 
 In the same play Johnson gravely proposes to read 
 Silvius' entreaty to Phebe, 
 
 " Will you sterner be 
 Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops?" 
 
 "Will you sterner be 
 Than he that dyea his lips by bloody drops ? " 
 
 It seems difficult to believe that the author of the 
 Rambler and the Idler should have given us such emenda- 
 tions by the score ; but these are favorable specimens of a 
 large proportion of his notes ; and in those very publications, 
 criticisms occur not less deplorable to the appreciative 
 reader of the bard of all time. 
 
 Edward Capell was one of the most learned and labo- 
 rious of the editors of Shakespeare. He published in 1759 
 a quarto volume entitled, " Notes and various Headings of 
 Shakespeare ; " in 1768 he issued an edition of Shakespeare 
 in ten volumes octavo ; and in 1779 his " Notes and Va- 
 rious Headings," with many additions and the " School of 
 
EDITORS : CAPELL. 15 
 
 Shakespeare," were republished in three formidable quarto 
 volumes. The critical student of Shakespeare must have 
 these books, and, alas ! must read them. Capell's words 
 are not without knowledge ; but they often do as much to 
 darken counsel as has been accomplished by the most igno- 
 rant of his co-laborers. Infinite pains and trouble and the 
 closest thinking are sometimes required, to divine what he 
 would be at. The obscurest passage in the author whom 
 he strives to elucidate is luminous as the sun, compared 
 with the convoluted murkiness of his page ; and when by 
 chance he quotes a passage for comment, as its clear signi- 
 ficance flashes upon the mind, we involuntarily think of 
 the people who sat in darkness and saw a great light. 
 And yet Capell did something for the text. He too, like 
 most of his predecessors and successors, made some con- 
 jectural emendations which at once commended themselves 
 to the general sense of the readers of Shakespeare, and 
 which have been preserved, while the mass of his labors 
 are thrust aside, for rare consultation, upon the shelves 
 of the critical or the curious. His collocation of the vari- 
 ous readings of the old editions is invaluable for reference. 
 At about this period Shakesperian criticism became 
 rampant. The publication of Warburton's edition in 1747 
 had provoked controversy and given new stimulus to inves- 
 tigation. From that day commentary trod upon the heels of 
 commentary, and panting pamphleteers toiled on after 
 each other in the never-ending struggle to reach the true 
 text of Shakespeare ; a goal which seemed to recede faster 
 than their advance. The commentators were nearly all 
 learned men ; and many were men of remarkable ability. 
 But their labors were almost altogether in vain. When 
 they strove most, displayed the most learning, exercised 
 the most ingenuity, they were most at fault : when they 
 were successful, it was generally by chance, and upon some 
 
16 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 point which they regarded as of little consequence. To 
 estimate their services to the text, compared with the 
 harm they did it, as " two grains of wheat hid in two 
 bushels of chaff," is to pass a lenient judgment upon their 
 labors. There were reasons for all this. Critical Dogber- 
 rys that they were, they went not the way to examine. 
 Their learning, the school in which they had been edu- 
 cated, the taste of the day formed as it was by the 
 remnants of the French taste of Dryden's dynasty, and 
 the chilling influence of the cold and polished correctness 
 of the school of Addison and Pope, overlaid by the lexico- 
 graphical style of Johnson, joined to their own conceit 
 and the want of a just appreciation of the genius of 
 Shakespeare, led them entirely astray. They did not re- 
 cognize him as their master, at whose feet they were to sit 
 and learn. They did not go to their task in an humble, 
 docile spirit. Milton had written, 
 
 " Sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child 
 Warbles his native wood notes wild ; " 
 
 a petty puling dribble of belittling, patronizing praise, 
 for which he should never have been forgiven, had he not 
 atoned for it by that grand line in the Epitaph, one of 
 the grandest and most imaginative he ever wrote, in 
 which he calls Shakespeare, 
 
 " Dear son of memory, great heir of fame." 
 
 But the first encomium, which might not inaptly be passed 
 upon a missy contributor to a Ladies' Magazine, chimed 
 with the taste of the middle of the last century ; and 
 Shakespeare was regarded as an untutored genius, sadly in 
 need of pruning and training ; a charming, but unsophis- 
 ticated songster, whose " native wood notes wild," if their 
 exuberance could be tamed down to the barrel-organ 
 standard of the poet fanciers of the day, would be meet 
 
MUTILATION OF THE TEXT. 17 
 
 entertainment for persons of quality, if they were not too 
 exacting as to the unities. In editing his works for the 
 closet, the constant effort was, not to imbibe his spirit and 
 touch his work with reverential hand, but to make him 
 conform as much as possible to the standard which the 
 critics had set up. No one of them seemed to suspect that 
 Shakespeare could have been a law unto himself. In adapt- 
 ing his plays to the stage, a yet more outrageous desecration 
 of his genius was the fashion for nearly a hundred years. 
 The soul of Procrustes seemed to have migrated into 
 every play-wright and stage-manager in England, from the 
 day of the Kestoration ; and Shakespeare's plays, when they 
 were presented at all, were so curtailed, distorted, mosaicked, 
 patched, vamped and garbled, that the original work was 
 lost almost beyond recognition. The second Scene of the 
 iirst Act of Dry den's version of the Tempest, actually 
 begins : 
 
 "Prospero. Miranda, where is your sister? 
 Miranda. I left her looking from the pointed rock," <fcc. ; 
 
 and in Nahum Tate's adaptation of King Lear, the tra- 
 gedy ends in farce, and Lear dances at the wedding of 
 Cordelia with Edmund. The stage library groans under 
 heaps of these abominations ; and to this day we have not 
 escaped their baleful influence. Although we owe much 
 to Mr. Macready and Mr. Charles Kean in this regard, 
 hardly a play of Shakespeare's is now put upon the stage 
 with the dramatic sequence and the development of char- 
 acter preserved exactly as he left them to us. No one can 
 complain of the omission of a few gross expressions, admis- 
 sible when Shakespeare wrote, but offensive now : the griev- 
 ance is, that it seems to be forgotten that Shakespeare was 
 an actor and a manager ; that he wrote his plays to please 
 the people and make money ; and that, his audiences being 
 
 constituted of all sorts and conditions of men, lie succeeded. 
 
 2 
 
18 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 He knew what was a good acting play as well as what was 
 good poetry ; and he knew better than any of his dramatic 
 tinkers, not only what incidents, what action, and what dia- 
 logue and soliloquy, but what succession of events was ne- 
 cessary to the proper delineation of his characters. When 
 shall we have Shakespeare edited and put upon the stage 
 with a full recognition of his surpassing genius as a dram- 
 atist ? 
 
 This digression is but seeming ; for it is essential to 
 the purpose of these pages, to show how Shakespeare suf- 
 fered for nearly a century and a half, more wrong from the 
 incapacity, vitiated taste, and conceit of e ingenious ' com- 
 mentators and adapters, than he had previously endured 
 from the unexampled carelessness of the printers griev- 
 ously as they had abused him. But perhaps we should ra- 
 ther pity than contemn those misguided people ; for they 
 erred in ignorance. Had there not gone with their igno- 
 rance so overweening a conceit, we might get through their 
 fine-spun absurdities and pompous platitudes with an un- 
 ruffled temper. But as it is^ they try us sorely. 
 
 The appearance of George Steevens and Edmund Ma- 
 lone in the field of Shakesperian literature, produced greater 
 and more permanent changes in the text than had been 
 achieved by any of their predecessors, save Theobald. They 
 were not co-workers, but opponents. Steevens reprinted 
 the quartos, and published notes and comments upon the 
 text, which, in 1773, were embodied in an edition in ten 
 octavo volumes. Steevens is one of the most acute and ac- 
 complished of Shakespeare's commentators ; but rarely have 
 abilities and acquirements been put to more unfruitful use. 
 To show his ability to suggest c ingenious ' readings, lie 
 wantonly rejected the obvious significance of the text, and 
 perverted the author's meaning, or destroyed the integrity 
 of his work. He was witty, and not only launched his 
 
EDITORS : STEEVENS, MALONE. 19 
 
 shafts at his fellow-commentators, but turned them against 
 his author, and, most intolerable of all, attempted to sub- 
 stitute his own smartness for Shakespeare's humor. He had 
 an accurate mechanically accurate ear, and ruthlessly 
 mutilated, or patched up Shakespeare's lines to a uniform 
 standard of ten syllables. 
 
 But, in Malone, he found an adversary entirely too 
 powerful for him. Malone published in 1780, two volumes, 
 containing notes and comments upon the text as it was 
 left by Johnson and Steevens, and other miscellaneous 
 Shakesperian matter ; and in 1790 appeared his edition of 
 Shakespeare, " collated verbatim with the most authentic 
 copies, and revised; with the corrections and illustrations of 
 various commentators; to which are added, an essay on the 
 chronological order of his plays; an essay relative to Shake- 
 speare and Jonson ; a dissertation on the three parts of King 
 Henry VI. ; an historical account of the English stage ; and 
 notes." This title gives a just idea of the wide field of Shake- 
 sperian inquiry, covered by the labors of Malone. Though not 
 highly accomplished, he was a scholar, a man of good judg- 
 ment, and, for his da} 7 , of good poetical taste. He was pa- 
 tient, indefatigably laborious, and modest that is, as modest 
 as it was possible for a Shakesperian critic and editor of the 
 last century to be. Above all, he was honestly devoted to his 
 task ; he sought the glory of his author, not his own except 
 in so far as the latter was involved in the former. We of 
 to-day can see that he committed many and great blunders ; 
 but he saved the text of Shakespeare from wide and ruthless 
 outrage, and by painful and well-directed investigation into 
 the literature and manners contemporary with his author, 
 cast new light upon his pages. To Edmund Malone the read- 
 ers of Shakespeare during the last decade of the last century, 
 and the first quarter of this, were indebted for the preser- 
 vation of his works in a condition nearly approaching their 
 
20 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 original integrity. Malone's edition of Shakespeare, with 
 Prolegomena, supplementary matter, and the principal notes 
 of all the editors and commentators, published by Boswell 
 the son of Johnson's biographer in twenty-one octavo 
 volumes, in 1821, and known as the Variorum edition, is 
 a monument to the industry and judgment of Malone : 
 whose labors appear to the greatest advantage when 
 placed beside those of his predecessors and opponents. It is, 
 besides, a rich storehouse of Shakesperian literature; though, 
 like most storehouses, with its treasures it preserves heaps 
 of dross and rubbish. 
 
 To add to the editions previously mentioned, that 
 of Alexander Chalmers, published in 1823, the text of 
 which does not materially differ from that of Malone ; 
 that of the Kev. William Harness, published in 1825, 
 which contained a few valuable corrections of the text ; and 
 that of Samuel Weller Singer, published at Chiswick, in 
 1826, the text of which was formed with great care, though 
 not unexceptionable judgment, and with too little reverence 
 for the authority of the first folio, and which contained 
 some very plausible conjectural emendations, is to bring 
 the history of the text, as far as editions of note are con- 
 cerned, down to those which are strictly of the present 
 day. 
 
 Among the commentators on Shakespeare, who did not 
 become his editors, the most noteworthy for the purposes 
 of the present sketch are Benjamin Heath, who published 
 in 1765, " A Revisal of Shakespear's text ; wherein the 
 alterations introduced into it, by the more modem editors 
 and critics, are particularly considered;" Thomas Tyrwhitt, 
 the learned editor of Chaucer, whose " Observations and con- 
 jectures on some passages of Shakespeare " were published 
 in 1766 : Joseph Ritson, the eccentric literary antiquary, 
 whose book of verbal criticisms on the text appeared in 
 
COMMENTATORS : DOUCE, HEATH, ETC. 21 
 
 1783; John Monck Mason, who published comments on 
 Steevens' edition in 1785 ; E. H. Seymour, whose two 
 volumes of u Remarks, critical, conjectural, and explana- 
 tory [including also the notes of Lord Chedworth], upon the 
 plays of Shakspeare," appeared in 1805 ; Francis Douce, 
 who issued his " Illustrations of Shakspeare and of Ancient 
 Manners, &c." in 1809 ; Andrew Becket, who published 
 two volumes, entitled " Shakspeare's himself again, or the 
 language of the poet asserted ; and Zachary Jackson, 
 whose " Shakspeare's Genius Justified ; being restorations 
 and illustrations of seven hundred passages in Shakspeare," 
 was given to the world in 1819.* 
 
 Eminent among these for various learning, just dis- 
 crimination, and a becoming deference to the author whose 
 works he came to illustrate, is Mr. Douce. He is among 
 the commentators what Malone is among the editors; save 
 that his volumes exhibit a wider range of knowledge, and 
 a more delicate and sympathetic apprehension of the pe- 
 culiar beauties of Shakespeare than Malone possessed. The 
 critical student of Shakespeare can place upon his shelves 
 no book of comments more valuable than the two volumes 
 of Francis Douce. He is, in fact, the only one of those 
 who may be called the old commentators, whose works will 
 bear reprinting. The original edition of his " Illustrations " 
 having become very scarce, a reprint was issued in one vo- 
 lume, in 1839. 
 
 Heath, Tyrwhitt, Ritson, and Mason, all produced an 
 appreciable and beneficial effect upon the text, an effect 
 which is permanent and undeniable. As was the case 
 
 * This must not be considered as on intended catalogue of the commen- 
 tators of past generations. Those only have been singled from the throng 
 whose merits or demerits make them fit illustrations for the present his- 
 torical sketch. Some of the ablest Shakesperian scholars of the present day 
 will also be hereafter passed over with but an incidental mention, for simi- 
 lar reasons 
 
22 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 with the labors of the large majority of the commentators 
 and editors, the mass of their suggestions have been re- 
 jected by the good sense of their successors ; but they all 
 treated their subject like scholars and men of sense, and 
 each made a few conjectural emendations, which will al- 
 ways remain in the text. It is not because of an under- 
 valuation of their abilities that we turn from them to Sey- 
 mour, Becket, and Jackson. 
 
 Seymour was a pedagogue, not a critic. His book 
 contains more systematic, narrow-minded carping at and 
 quibbling with Shakespeare, and less sympathetic compre- 
 hension of his thought than can be found in all his other 
 commentators, Becket and Jackson, perhaps, except ed 
 The knowledge that a verb should agree with its nomina- 
 tive case, and that ten syllables make a heroic line, forms 
 the staple of the qualifications which he brought to his 
 task. Speaking of the labors of his predecessors, not 
 very scrupulous or conservative, as the reader has already 
 seen, he says, complainingly : 
 
 " They have all been satisfied with delivering the text of 
 each drama as they found it } with preference occasionally to the 
 readings of different impressions ; and if the choice they made 
 be deemed judicious, so much of their undertaking has been per- 
 formed : but with regard to those anomalies in which the meas- 
 ure, construction, and sense have been vitiated, they appear to 
 have been strangely negligent ; and sometimes strangely mista- 
 ken ; the want of meaning can never be excused ; the disregard 
 of syntax is no less reprehensible, and every poetic car must be 
 offended by metrical dissonance. 1 ' 1 Vol. I., p. 2. 
 
 He practised what he preached. Thus, in the follow- 
 ing lines from Hamlet 
 
 "Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, 
 To give these mourning duties to your father ; 
 But you must know, your father lost a father ; 
 That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound," <fec. 
 
COMMENTATORS : SEYMOUR, BECKET. 23 
 
 he rejected, as interpolations, those words which are printed 
 in Italic letters, and gave the passage thus : 
 
 " Tis sweet and commendable in you, Hamlet, 
 To give these mourning duties to your father , 
 But you must know, your father lost a father ; 
 That father his, and the survivor bound," <tc. 
 
 He removes the 'from' in all cases in which it is used with 
 ' whence/ or f thence/ because it is tautological ; thus en- 
 deavoring to conform the language of Shakespeare's day to 
 that of his own ; and he seeks, by mutilation, addition, 
 and transposition, to make an unbroken series of perfect 
 lines of ten syllables, from the beginning to the end of 
 every play ; and in all these points his labors are rivalled 
 by, and in some cases are identical with, the labors of Mr. 
 Collier's folio corrector. 
 
 It is difficult to speak with patience or decorum of Mr. 
 Becket. His work is stupidity run mad ; and a just idea 
 of it can only be obtained from extracts. Opening the 
 first volume at random, we find the following : 
 
 * 
 
 " 'Hamlet. Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give 
 it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse moat excellent music.' 
 
 " ' Ventages and thumb,' I would read thus : ' Govern these 
 ventages and the umbo with your fingers,' &c. Umbo, (Lat.,) 
 a knob ; a button. The piece of brass at the end of a flute 
 might very well be called a button. 1 ' 1 Yol. I., pp. 54, 55. 
 
 Again, from the same play, Hamlet, in the grave with 
 Laertes, is taunting him : 
 
 "' Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself? 
 Woo't drink up Esil ? eat a crocodile ? ' <fec. 
 
 " This proposition of Hamlet is too extravagant, too ridicu- 
 lous to remain in the text. By such a reading the Danish Prince 
 
24 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 appears to be a very Dragon of Wantley for voraciousness." 
 [Becket is serious.] * * " I regulate the passage thus : 
 
 ' Woo't weep, woo't drink, woo't eat? woo't fast? woo't fight? 
 Woo't tear thyself ? Ape, Esel, Crocodile ? ' 
 
 t * << < Up> 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," <fcc. ; 
 
 thus making Helena say exactly the reverse of what 
 Shakespeare made her say, and of what she should say. 
 As the alteration is also entirely at variance with the rest 
 of the speech, this blunder must also be regarded as one 
 of those which show misunderstanding or disregard of the 
 context. 
 
 In the chorus of the third Act of Henry V., are the 
 following lines : 
 
 "Behold the threaden sails, 
 Borne with th' invisible and creeping wind, 
 Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea;" 
 
 the second of which, the corrector would make, 
 
 "Blown with tli' invisible and creeping wind," 
 
 thus substituting a prosaic statement of a material fact 
 for a poetical and picturesque description of it. 
 
 In the first scene of Act IV. of the same play, Henry 
 speaks of 
 
 "The wretched slave, 
 Who, with a body fill'd and vacant mind, 
 Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread." 
 
 This ruthless man would take the very life of the last line, 
 by reading it, 
 
 " Gets him to bed cramm'd with distasteful bread." 
 
TURNS POETRY TO PROSE. 41 
 
 Unhappy corrector ! Because you cannot see that in those 
 felicitous words, " distressful bread," are pictured the hard 
 lot of the poor slave, whose homely food, whose very sus- 
 tenance, is bought by suffering, because you cannot see 
 this, would you in revenge take that sweet " distressful " 
 morsel out of our mouths ? and will John Payne Collier. 
 Esq., F. S. A., abet you in your vile design ? 
 
 In Troilus and Cressida, Act IV., Sc. 4, Troilus says, 
 
 " And sometimes we are devils to ourselves, 
 When we will tempt the frailty of our powers, 
 .Presuming on their changeful potency." 
 
 The last line means, obviously, presuming on their po- 
 tency or stability, which proves to be changeful : but the 
 corrector would make it needlessly and prosaically, 
 
 " Presuming on their chainfvl potency." 
 
 Romeo says to Juliet in that matchless scene of part- 
 ing which is to be followed by no greeting, 
 
 "I'll say yon gray is not the morning's eye, 
 Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow." 
 
 The literal gentleman dissents. He cannot see the beauty 
 of a reflex from the pale brow of Diana ; but must drag 
 the poetry down so far as to allude to the shape of the 
 crescent moon, and read bow for " brow/' Why was he 
 not thorough and consistent enough to make a correspond- 
 ing change in the first line, take out the poetical thought 
 of " the morning's eye/' and read, 
 
 " I'll say yon gray is not the morning sky, 
 'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's bow" ? 
 
 Mr. Collier calls it "a very acceptable alteration,"" 
 when, in Lady Macbeth' 's invocation : 
 
42 MR. -COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 "Come thick night, 
 
 And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, 
 That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, 
 Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, 
 To cry, ' Hold ! hold ! ' " 
 
 this MS. corrector would read, 
 
 "Nor heaven peep through the blanknesx of the dark." 
 
 To say nothing of the difficulty of peeping through blank- 
 ness, what obtuseness must that be which, after night has 
 been invoked to assume a " pall" of the " dunnest smoke 
 of hell," cannot see the eminent fitness of the phrase, " the 
 blanket of the dark " ? It is to be expected that such a 
 person would, in the previous scene, change the poetical 
 word, 
 
 " The swiftest wing of recompense is slow," 
 
 for the prosaic 
 
 " The swiftest wind of recompense is slow ; " 
 
 and in the first scene of Act II. of Julius Cccsar, substitute 
 for, 
 
 " the honey-heavy dew of slumber," 
 " the heavy honey-dew of slumber : " 
 
 because, forsooth, there is " a well-known glutinous depo- 
 sit " upon the leaves of trees, " which may be called honey- 
 dew." 
 
 We might disregard, if not pardon, this anonymous 
 and irresponsible corrector for the following attempt at 
 mutilation ; but what must be thought of Mr. Collier, 
 who says that " the emendation proposed should probably 
 be the text." In Hamlet's second soliloquy, he says, 
 
 " For it cannot be 
 
 But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall 
 To make oppression bitter." 
 
TURNS POETRY TO PROSE. 43 
 
 For the last line, it is proposed to read, 
 
 " To make transgression bitter.' 
 
 But wonder at the hopeless obtuseness which could propose 
 such a change, is lost in amazement at the reason which 
 Mr. Collier gives for receiving it ; which is, that " it was 
 not oppression, but crime that was to be punished by " 
 Hamlet. When such a veteran critic as Mr. Collier can- 
 not see that Hamlet thought himself " a peasant slave," 
 " a dull and muddy mettFd rascal," " a coward," and " pi- 
 geon-livered," because he lacked the gall which would make 
 oppression bitter to himself when Mr. Collier does not 
 see this, what can we hope from the learning and devotion 
 of any Shakesperian critic ? 
 
 In Cymbeline, Mr. Collier's corrector proposes a change 
 of ludicrous tameness. Imogen, impatient to meet Pos- 
 thumus, exclaims, " for a horse with wings ! " and, when 
 Pisanio tells her that twenty miles a day is as much as 
 she can accomplish, says, 
 
 " I have heard of riding wagers, 
 "Where horses have been nimbler than the sands 
 That run i' the clock's behalf." 
 
 The MS. corrector makes Imogen speak of horses 
 
 " nimbler than the sands 
 That run i' the clock's, by half." ! 
 
 Mr. Collier remarks that Imogen adds, " ( But this is fool- 
 ery/ in reference, perhaps, to her own simile." Such might 
 well have been the case were her simile that which Mr. 
 Collier's folio would put into her mouth ; but, as Shake- 
 speare wrote the passage, she calls it "foolery" to stand 
 talking of the speed of horses, when they should be using 
 them. She says, 
 
44 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 "But this is foolery, 
 Go bid my woman feign a sickness ; say 
 She'll home to her father: and provide me, presently, 
 A riding suit," <fcc. 
 
 The most remarkable change made in Mr. Collier's 
 folio, occurs in this play, in the fourth scene of Act III. 
 Imogen, wounded to the quick at her husband's suspicion 
 of her chastity, supposes that he has been seduced away 
 from her by some Italian courtesan, and exclaims, 
 
 " Some jay of Italy, 
 Whose mother was her painting, hath betray'd him." 
 
 The figure in the second line is so very bold, violent per- 
 haps, that it is not apprehended at once by all readers ; 
 and this seems to have been the case with Mr. Collier's 
 corrector, who changes the passage to, 
 
 "Some jay of Italy 
 Who smothers her with painting," <fec. 
 
 The similarity of sound between the two phrases, and the 
 simple statement of fact contained in the latter, have 
 caused this emendation to be received with great favor by 
 some readers of Shakespeare, and to be regarded by them 
 as a strong evidence of the value of the volume in which 
 it occurs. But it should be remarked that a change of the 
 passage is not absolutely necessary, that the proposed 
 change, like all those in this folio, is from poetry to prose; 
 and that the ground on which the emendation is thought 
 desirable is not tenable, as far as the text of Shakespeare 
 is concerned. For, the passage has an unmistakable mean- 
 ing as it stands ; and who has a right to substitute, for 
 what it is, his idea of what it should be ? the change puts 
 a bald statement of a physical fact in the place of a sug- 
 gestive, though very strong, figure of speech : and the 
 opinion of Mr. Collier that " Imogen would not study me- 
 
"WHOSE MOTHER WAS HER PAINTING." 45 
 
 taphors at such a moment," is not sustained by the con- 
 text, and his assertion that "it is an axiom that genuine 
 passion avoids figures of speech " is at variance with Shakes- 
 peare's portraitures of passion ; which, whether truthful or 
 not, are all with which we have at present to deal. 
 
 Imogen, in this very speech, uses another very strong 
 metaphor, one which has been thought to require learned 
 notes to explain it. She says, 
 
 "Some jay of Italy, 
 
 Whose mother was her painting, hath betray'd him ; 
 Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion ; 
 And, for I am richer than to hang by the walls, 
 I miixt be ripp'd : to pieces with me 1 " 
 
 And this same Imogen when she wakes and finds at her 
 side (as she supposes) her idolized lord beheaded by Pisanio, 
 cries out, 
 
 " Damn'd Pisanio 
 
 Hath with his forged letters, damn'd Pisanio, 
 From this most bravest vessel of the world 
 Striick the main top I " 
 
 As to similes in Shakespeare's pictures of passion, hear 
 the passion of others than Imogen : hear Othello: 
 
 " Othello. O, blood, lago, blood ! 
 
 lago. Patience, I say ; your mind, perhaps, may change. 
 
 Othello. Never, lago. Like to the Pontick sea, 
 Whose icy current and compulsive course 
 Ne'er knows retiring ebb, but keeps due on 
 To the Propontick and the Hellespont ; 
 Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, 
 Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love, 
 Till that a capable and wide revenge 
 Swallow them up." 
 
 Hear Romeo, when he has just killed Paris, and finds Ju- 
 liet dead in the tomb : 
 
46 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 "Ah! dear Juliet, 
 
 Why art thou yet so fair ? I will believe 
 That unsubstantial death is amorous; 
 And that the lean, abhorred monster keeps 
 Thee in the dark here, to be his paramour." 
 
 Hear the towering passion of Coriolanus, when, a few mo- 
 ments before he is slain by the infuriated rabble, some one 
 calls him a " boy of tears : " 
 
 "Boy! False hound! 
 
 If you have writ your annals true, 'tis there, 
 That like an eagle in a dovecote I 
 Flutter'd your Voices in Corioli." 
 
 Hear Constance, wailing for her lost Arthur : 
 
 " Grief fills the room up of my absent child, 
 Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me ; 
 Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
 Remembers me of all his gracious parts, 
 Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form," <fec 
 
 Hear Claudio, with mingled grief and indignation, upbraid- 
 ing Hero : 
 
 "Thou pure impiety and impious purity! 
 For thee I'll lock up all the gates of love ; 
 And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang, 
 To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm," <fcc. 
 
 Hear Hotspur, maddened by King Henry : 
 
 "By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap, 
 To pluck bright honour from the pale fac'd moon ; 
 Or dive into the bottom of the deep, 
 Where fathom line could never touch the ground, 
 And pluck up drowned honour by the locks," <fcc. 
 
 Well may Worcester say of him, 
 
 " He apprehends a world of figures here, 
 But not the form of what he should attend." 
 
"WHOSE MOTHER WAS HER PAINTING." 47 
 
 Could words be made more figurative than they are in 
 all of these expressions of excited feeling, which are not a 
 tithe of those which Shakespeare's dramas would afford, 
 of a like kind ? Claudia's " on my eyelids shall conjec- 
 ture hang," is one of the strongest, as well as one of the 
 most beautiful figures in the whole range of poetry. It has 
 a bolder beauty than those two lovely lines of which it re- 
 minds us, in Spenser's description of Una : 
 
 " Upon her eyelids many graces sat, 
 Under the shadow of her even brows." 
 
 It is not true, I venture to assert, that passion avoids 
 figures of speech. Its utterance is always direct and forci- 
 ble ; but sometimes the most direct and forcible medium 
 of expression is to be found in a metaphor. So, at least, 
 thought Shakespeare ; which is all that, in this case, needs 
 to be established. 
 
 With regard to the confusion of sounds which is sup- 
 posed to account for the alleged error in the original line, 
 Mr. Collier himself admits it "to be possible that the old 
 corrector, not understanding the expression, ' Whose mo- 
 ther was her painting/ might mistake it for ' Who smothers 
 her with painting !' fi This possibility is made certainty 
 by a passage in Hamlet, which the able opponent of the 
 new reading, Mr. Halliwell, who has made it the subject 
 of a special pamphlet, has not noticed. In the second 
 scene of Act I., Hamlet's mother asks him why a father's 
 death seems so particular to him. He replies, 
 
 "Seems, madam I Nay, it is : I know not seem 
 Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, 
 Nor customary suits of solemn black," &c. 
 
 Now, it is remarkable that in the fifth quarto im- 
 pression of this play, published in 1611, these lines are 
 printed thus : 
 
48 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 " Seemes, maddara, nay it is, I know not seemes, 
 Tis not alone my incky cloake could smother" <fec. 
 
 Here is proof positive that "good mother" not only 
 could be, but was, misunderstood, could smother ; a mis- 
 take, in its principal feature, identical with that made by 
 the corrector of Mr. Collier's folio, and which suggests 
 another mode of accounting for the manuscript correction. 
 It is evident that whoever made the emendations in that 
 volume, studied the quartos thoroughly ; indeed, Mr. Col- 
 lier frequently claims that such was the case. Now, it is 
 not at all improbable that the corrector, finding this mistake 
 of could smother, in the quarto, for " good mother" in the 
 folio, took from it the hint for the change of " whose mo- 
 ther," into who smothers ; and thus was enabled to make 
 a sense for a passage which had before been to him mean- 
 ingless. It is somewhat strange that this correlative 
 error, almost conclusive in itself, has not occurred to either 
 of Mr. Collier's learned opponents.* Under all these cir- 
 cumstances, it is impossible to receive the new reading, 
 plausible as it seems at first. 
 
 These are but a very few indeed of the instances in 
 which the corrector of the folio of 1632 has shown his ina- 
 bility to apprehend the poetical thoughts of the author 
 whose works he undertook to amend. Passages which 
 prove his incapacity in other respects, and which establish 
 the late date of his labors, and the remaining points which 
 go to show the entire inadmissibility of the claims which 
 Mr. Collier sets up for him, might be quoted to an extent 
 which would fill the remainder of this volume ; but a con- 
 
 * As I know of no original impression of either of the quarto copies of 
 this play in America, I am obliged to content myself with Steevens's reprint, 
 which is from the edition of 1611. I therefore cannot say whether this 
 strange and important error appeared in the editions of 1604, 1605, and 
 1609. 
 
SUBSTITUTES DULNESS FOR WIT. 49 
 
 sideration for the patience of my readers must limit my 
 selections. One or two instances which clearly establish a 
 point are as conclusive upon the authority of his corrections 
 as a hundred. 
 
 He cannot appreciate Shakespeare's humor. For in- 
 stance, after the lamentation of Bottom (as Pyramus) over 
 the death of Thisbe, Theseus says, 
 
 " This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make 
 a man look sad ; " 
 
 the humor of which consists in coupling the ridiculous fus- 
 tian of the clown's assumed passion, with an event which 
 would, in itself, make a man look sad. The corrector ex- 
 tinguishes the fun at once, by reading, 
 
 " This passion on the death of a dear friend," &c. 
 
 And, incomprehensible as it is, Mr. Collier sustains him by 
 saying, that the observation of Theseus "has particular 
 reference to the f passion ' of Pyramus on the fate of 
 Thisbe ! " 
 
 In Much Ado About Nothing r , Beatrice, being sent to 
 call Benedick, he asks her if she takes pleasure in the 
 office. She replies, 
 
 " Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point, and choke a 
 daw withal." 
 
 This, our precise and literal corrector ruins, by inserting 
 ' not/ and reading : 
 
 " Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point andwol choke 
 a daw withal." 
 
 In Antony and Cleopatra, Act I., Sc. 3, Charmian ad- 
 vising Cleopatra how to keep the love of Antony, says ; 
 
 "In each thing give him way, cross him in nothing." 
 
 To which Cleopatra replies : 
 
 "Thou te!u-he?t like a fool : the way to lose him." 
 4 
 
50 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 Meaning, of course, " You are a fool, girl ; that is the way 
 to lose him ; " but this the corrector changes to, 
 
 "Thou teachest, like a fool, the way to lose him;" 
 
 a reading which makes, in substance, the same assertion as 
 the original, but which destroys all the delicate and charac- 
 teristic humor of the gay queen's reply. 
 
 So when, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, Act IV., Sc. 
 5, poor Simple, mistaking * conceal ' for ' reveal/ says, in 
 reply to Falstaff, " I may not conceal them, Sir," and the 
 Host, after his waggish fashion, bewilders yet more the serv- 
 ing man's feeble brain, by turning his own blunder upon him, 
 and saying, " Conceal [i. e. reveal] them, or thou diest," Mr. 
 Collier's folio expurgates all the fun from the passage by 
 retaining an obvious typographical error of the original, and 
 making Falstaff and the Host use " conceal " in its legitimate 
 and sober sense. 
 
 The corrector's obtuseness as to dramatic propriety is 
 equally obvious with his incapacity to appreciate poetry 
 and humor. In Act IV., Sc. 4, of the Merry Wives of 
 Windsor, Sir Hugh Evans, talking of Falstaff, with Page 
 and Ford and their wives, remarks of the plot to entice the 
 knight to another meeting, 
 
 "You say he has been thrown into the rivers, and has been grievously 
 peaten, as an old 'oraan : methinks there should be terrors in him that he 
 should not come : " <fec. 
 
 The old corrector makes the parson say, " You see he 
 has been thrown," &c., and Mr. Collier sustains the change, . 
 by the remark that " the other persons in the scene had 
 said nothing of the kind." But the corrector and his backer 
 were obviously blind to the fact that the scene opens with the 
 
 * This has also been pointed out by Mr. Singer in his " Text of Shake- 
 speare Vindicated," &c. 
 
DRAMATIC INCONSISTENCY. 51 
 
 entry of the whole party in the midst of a conversation 
 upon the subject of Ford's jealousy and Falstaff's mis- 
 haps ; as is plain from the speeches of Evans and Page, 
 when the scene opens. 
 
 "Evans. Tis one of the pest discretions of a 'oman as I ever did look 
 upon. 
 
 'Page. And did he send you both these letters at an instant?" 
 
 But no " 'oman " or " letters " have been mentioned on 
 the stage. Yet evidently Mrs. Ford is the " 'oman," and 
 the letters are those of Falstaff to Mrs. Ford and Mrs. 
 Page, which had been the subjects of a conversation begun 
 before the entrance of the party. Shakespeare was not 
 such a bungler at his art as to make his characters always 
 stalk upon the stage, and formally commence their confe- 
 rence. Sir Hugh's " You say " refers to something said 
 before the scene opened. As an examination of the first 
 part of the scene would have prevented this error, it has a 
 place also among those blunders which result from a neg- 
 lect of the context. The corrected text of this folio and 
 the stage directions furnish many instances of similar care- 
 lessness and incapacity; but as my present object is not 
 to attack the emendations in detail, but to establish the 
 corrector's want of authority, and also of ability, by show- 
 ing that in certain instances his work is essentially incon- 
 sistent with Shakespeare's obvious intention, and as this one 
 case fully proves the point for which it is quoted, I pass 
 on to the next. 
 
 The entire absence of a higher authority for the correc- 
 tions, as well as the narrowness of view of the corrector, 
 or, rather, of one of the correctors, for there were evidently 
 more than one, is shown by his continual neglect of the 
 context; his insight appearing to have been limited to the 
 sentence, or the very line which he corrected. Thus, in 
 the Tempest, Act. I. Sc. 2, Prospe.ro speaks of, 
 
52 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 "one 
 
 Who having, unto truth, by telling of it, 
 Made such a sinner of his memory 
 To credit his own lie." 
 
 The construction of which plainly is, 'one who having 
 made such a sinner of his memory unto truth, to credit his 
 own h'e by telling of it/ But Mr. Collier's corrector saw 
 only the apparent contradiction in the second line, and, 
 seeking to remedy that, changed " unto truth " to c to un- 
 truth ; ' reading, 
 
 " Who having to untruth, by telling of it," Ac. 
 
 not seeing the absurdity of asserting that a man made a 
 sinner of his memory to untruth, by telling a lie. 
 
 In Lovc-s Labour's Lost, Act V. Sc. 2, the Princess, 
 learning from Boyet that visitors are approaching to lay 
 open siege to their hearts, exclaims, 
 
 "Saint Dennis to Saint Cupid! What are they 
 That charge their breath against us ? Say, scout, say." 
 
 Mr. Collier assures us " that i to charge their breath ' is 
 nonsense/' and the MS. corrector of his folio changes the 
 phrase to " that charge the breach against us/' And this, 
 in the face of the very announcement to which the Prin- 
 cess replies, and in which Boyet says, that 
 
 " Love doth approach disguis'd 
 Armed in argument* : you'll be surpris'd. 
 Muster your wits," <fec. 
 
 What would have been the confusion of the old corrector, 
 
 if the text had been " What are they that tilt their tongues 
 
 against us?" instead of "charge their breath," which it 
 
 might well have been. In that* case he certainly would 
 
 have changed it to " what are they that tilt with tongs 
 
 .against us? " which is a fair type of the literal sort of 
 
 i emendation with which Mr. Collier's folio furnishes us. 
 
DISREGARD OF THE CONTEXT. 53 
 
 Mr. Collier says that " there is undeniable error in the 
 subsequent lines at the end ofScrope's speech in Henry IV. y 
 Part 2, Act IV. Sc. 1. 
 
 "So that this land, like an offensive wife 
 That hath enrag'd him on to offer strokes, 
 As he is striking, holds his infant up, 
 And hangs resolv'd correction in the arm 
 That was uprear'd to execution." 
 
 " To whom," asks Mr. Collier, " does ' him ' refer ? Indis- 
 putably to the husband," and he sustains his folio in read- 
 ing the second line, 
 
 " That hath enrag'd her man to offer strokes." 
 
 But " him " refers to King Henry; as is evident from the 
 context, in which Scrope distinctly points out the king's 
 perplexity, which his simile of the " offensive wife " but il- 
 lustrates : 
 
 41 For full well he knows, 
 He cannot so preci?ely weed this land, 
 As his misdoubts present occasion : 
 His foes are so enrooted with his friends, 
 That, plucking to unfix an enemy, 
 He doth unfasten so, and shake a friend, 
 So that this land, like an offensive wife, 
 That hath enrag'd him on to offer strokes, 
 As he is striking, holds his infant up," Ac. 
 
 In Act III. Scene 5, of Borneo and Juliet, Juliet hav- 
 ing been informed by Lady Capulet of the projected mar- 
 riage with Paris, refuses the match indignantly. The con- 
 clusion of her speech, and her mother's reply, are as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 " I will not marry yet ; and when I do, I swear 
 It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, 
 Rather than Paris : These are news indeed ! 
 
 Lady C. Here comes your father ; tell him so yourself," <fec. 
 
54 MR. COLLIEK'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 This passage, Mr. Collier's folio changes, by giving Juliet's 
 last- exclamation to her mother, and omitting " I swear ! " 
 Thus : 
 
 " I will not marry yet; and when I do, 
 It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, 
 Rather than Paris. 
 
 Lady C. These are news indeed 1 
 
 Here comes your father ; tell him so yourself, Ac." 
 
 The new arrangement is called "judicious" by Mr. 
 Collier, who also justifies the omission of " I swear ! " on 
 the ground that the oath is "hardly consistent with the de- 
 licacy of her [Juliet's] character, and certainly destructive 
 to the measure." But both the MS. corrector and Mr. 
 Collier forget that Lady Capulet leads to the announce- 
 ment of the projected marriage by promising Juliet plea- 
 sant news, about which the poor ignorant girl at once ex- 
 presses curiosity. She has just affected such a hatred of 
 Romeo as to profess to be willing to mix a poison for him, 
 if some man could be found to give it to him : her mother 
 replies : 
 
 " Find thou the means, and I'll find such a man. 
 But now Til tell thee joyful tiding*, girl. 
 
 Jul. All joy comes well in such a needy time ; 
 What are they, I beseech your ladyship ? " 
 
 Lady Capulet, in reply, tells her of the negotiated mar- 
 riage ; at which she at once expresses her disgust and sur- 
 prise, and exclaims, as well she may, " These are news in- 
 deed ! " She has learned her mother's "joyful tidings," as 
 we say, l with a vengeance/ The exclamation palpably 
 belongs to her ; and there is not the slightest pretext for 
 giving it to her mother. As to " I swear " being incon- 
 sistent with the delicacy of Juliet's character, Mr. Collier 
 seems to have forgotten, that like most young ladies of her 
 
DISREGARD OF CONTEXT. 55 
 
 country and her time, she had a pretty free tongue of her 
 own : that she calls her nurse " a devil," and Borneo, in her 
 contending emotions on the death of Tybalt, " a damned 
 saint/' and her nurse again, an " ancient damnation," sim- 
 ply because that easy-going old person advises her to mar- 
 ry the County Paris. Compared with these expressions, 
 Juliet's " I swear," which was but a solemn asseveration, 
 natural under the circumstances, is venial; especially when 
 we consider how freely ladies talked in Shakespeare's day. 
 Here, then, in a single passage we find displayed a neglect 
 of the context, a want of appreciation of character as Shake- 
 speare has portrayed it, and an ignorance or disregard of 
 the manners of his time. 
 
 Much delight has been expressed by some persons, in- 
 telligent people, too, at the substitution of boast for "beast" 
 in a speech of Lady Macbeth' s. She says, as Macbeth ex- 
 presses a fear to murder Duncan, 
 
 " What beast was't, then, 
 That made you break this enterprise to me ? " 
 
 The MS. corrector makes this, 
 
 " What boast was't, then, 
 That made you break this enterprise to me ? " 
 
 altogether forgetting that Macbeth had but just said, 
 
 " I dare do all that may become a man. 
 Who dares do more, is none," 
 
 and that Lady Macbeth, at once catching at his phrase, 
 instantly replies, " what beast was't, then," [since it was 
 unworthy of a man] " that made you break this enter- 
 prise to me ? " and, besides, Macbeth had made no boast. 
 Several other glaring instances, establishing the fact that 
 the corrections were made in entire ignorance or disregard 
 
56 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 of the context, are indicated on my memoranda ; but these 
 are sufficient ; and we must pass on to consider a specimen 
 or two of the many changes which show that a long time 
 had elapsed between the writing of the plays, and the MS. 
 alteration of the text. The first I shall notice is a MS. 
 stage direction in Act. IV. Sc. 3, where Biron has read his 
 sonnet, and, seeing the king approaching with a paper, 
 wishes to hide himself. Mr. Collier says : 
 
 "When at this juncture, Biron conceals himself, the 
 printed stage direction is only He stands aside, but that is 
 obliterated, and He gets him in a tree, is put in its place in 
 manuscript. When, too, Biron interposes some remarks to him- 
 self, it is added that he is in tke tree" &c. 
 
 It is strange that the historian of the English Stage did 
 not see that these stage directions for there are several 
 such' ::: " are fatal to the pretence of his folio to "authority/' 
 Why was the printed direction- only "He stands aside," in 
 the second folio as well as in the first ? Because, when 
 the play was written and printed, painted scenery, and 
 above all, ' practicable ' trees did not exist upon our stage. 
 When they represented the field of Agincourt, as in the 
 Chorus to the fourth Act of Henry V., Shakespeare himself 
 tells us they did, 
 
 " With three or four most vile and ragged foils 
 Right ill dispos'd in brawl ridiculous," 
 
 it was useless to direct a man to mount a tree. Scenery 
 of that sort was not introduced until after the Restoration ; 
 and the direction " in the tree" appended to Biron' s re- 
 mark to himself, shows that it was actually in use on the 
 stage when these MS. alterations were made.f 
 
 * For instance, in Much Ado About Nothing, Act II. Scene 3, where the 
 stage direction in Mr. Collier's folio for Benedick, is, " Retires behind the 
 trees." 
 
 f I cannot if I would, reproduce all my authorities for minor and well 
 
DATE OF ITS EMENDATIONS. 57 
 
 In the second scene of the Induction to the Taming of 
 the Shrew, Sly, insisting upon his tinkership, says, 
 
 " Ask Marian Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot, if she know me not : 
 and if she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score 
 me up for the lyingest knave in Christendom." 
 
 This passage has presented a difficulty to all the Eng- 
 lish editors of Shakespeare, which could never have occurred 
 even to an American boy. The trouble is in the expres- 
 sion " sheer ale." Hear Mr. Collier : 
 
 " Malone did not know what to make of ' sheer ale,' but sup- 
 posed that it meant shearing or reaping ale, for so reaping is 
 called in Warwickshire. What does it mean ? It is spelt 
 sheere in the old copies, and that word begins one line, Warwick 
 having undoubtedly dropt out at the end of the preceding line. 
 The corrector of the folio 1632, inserted the missing word in 
 manuscript, and made the last part of the sentence run 
 
 ' If she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for Warwickshire ale, 
 score me up for the lyingest knave in Christendom.' 
 
 u Wincot, where Marian Hacket lived, is some miles from 
 Stratford-upon- Avon. It was formerly not at all unusual to spell 
 : shire ' sheere ; and Sly's ' sheer ale ' thus turns out to have been 
 Warwickshire ale, which Shakespeare celebrated, and of which 
 he had doubtless often partaken at Mrs. Hacket's." 
 
 To this, add Mr. Singer's perplexity. He says : 
 
 " * Sheer ale ' is altered to ' Warwickshire ale,' an unwarrant- 
 able license, and a very improbable name to have been given to 
 Sly's liquor. Sheer ale was most likely, ale which the Tinker 
 had drunk at his own charge on Sheer Tuesday, a day of great 
 comfort to the poor from the doles or distribution of clothes, 
 
 established points. The reader who desires to examine the facts and do- 
 cuments which establish the time of the introduction of scenery upon the 
 English Stage, will find them fully set forth in Malone's History of the 
 English Stage, in the Variorum Shakespeare, Vol. iii., p. 79 to p. 109. 
 
58 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 meat, and drink, made to them by the rich on that day. But 
 should this conjecture be unfounded, we may perhaps satisfy 
 ourselves that Sheer ale was the name of a pure and potent 
 liquor, as we have stark beer for stout and strong beer, in Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher.' 
 
 This, and many similar difficulties of the commentators, 
 some of which are noticed in this volume, are only amusing 
 to Americans, for whom the perplexities do not exist, 
 because of the survival of good old English expressions 
 and customs with us, which seem to have died out in 
 the mother country. Sty's "sheer ale," is simply c ale, 
 alone: He, toper that he is, is on goodvvife Hacket's 
 score fourteen pence for nothing else but ale. In the north- 
 ern part of the United States this use of the word has been 
 common, from time immemorial. We say sheer ale, or 
 sheer brandy, or sheer nonsense, or sheer any thing. We 
 would say that in Falstqff's famous tavern bill, his bread 
 was but a halfpenny, while there were five shillings and 
 eightpence for sheer sack. We use it in this way, and 
 have so used it beyond the memory of the oldest living 
 men ; just as we say sheer impudence, or sheer stupidity 
 a use of the word which can hardly have disappeared in 
 England. The term implies exdusiveness, with, generally, 
 a taint of reproach and ridicule. Thus, we would say that 
 one man committed an act out of sheer selfishness, but that 
 another's motive was pure benevolence. 
 
 Thus much for the benefit of English readers ; but the 
 pertinence of these remarks just here, is that the inability 
 of the MS. corrector to understand " sheer ale," shows 
 that he must have read Shakespeare and made the correc- 
 tions long after the printing of the second folio 1632. For 
 our English ancestors, who made the original settlements 
 in the northern part of the United States, and who brought 
 this use of the word with them, came over between 1620 arid 
 
DATE OF ITS EMENDATIONS. 59 
 
 1640 ; and the inability of a man who would elaborately 
 correct Shakespeare's text, to understand Sty's " sheer ale," 
 seems certainly to prove that his labors bear a date much 
 posterior to the latter year. It should be remembered, 
 too, that the folio of 1632, itself, presents variations 
 from the folio of 1623, made to adapt the text to a 
 change of phrase which had taken place during the first 
 thirty years of the seventeenth century, and that this use 
 of " sheer " had, therefore, at the date of the second folio, 
 not passed away in England. Mr. Collier hardly imagined 
 that the survival in America of an old English idiom would 
 utterly extinguish his complacently uttered conclusion, that 
 " this emendation, like many others, must have been obtain- 
 ed from some better manuscript than that in the hands 
 of the old printer," and bring down the date of* the cor- 
 rections in his folio twenty-five years at least ; that is, to 
 the time of the Bestoration.* 
 
 In Henry VIII., the King, addressing Woolsey, says, 
 
 " You have scarce time 
 To steal from spiritual leisure a brief span, 
 To keep your earthly audit." 
 
 The second line of this is altered by the corrector to, 
 
 * "When these remarks were written, I had read only the com- 
 ments of Malone, and Messrs. Collier and Singer upon the passage; and 
 having never met with ' sheer ' in a modern English work, and not hav- 
 ing had the advantage of a residence in England, I naturally, and I sub- 
 mit, very justly, concluded that when such accomplished English scholars 
 as those whom I have named were completely befogged as to the very ob- 
 vious meaning of the word in question, it was sufficiently proved that the 
 word was not in. use in England. But as these sheets are going through the 
 press, I have received a set of Notes and Queries for the present year ; and 1 
 find, from a very able communication, signed Cecil Harbottle (No. 184, 
 p. 451), that 'sheer nonsense,' 'sheer buffoonery,' and 'sheer malice,' <fec., 
 are phrases of common use in England, as, indeed, I supposed they must 
 be; and Mr. C. H., in words almost identical with mine, says that "Sly 
 means to say that he was fourteen pence on the score for ale alone." This 
 makes it so much the worse for the MS. corrector and the commentators. 
 
60 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 " To steal from spiritual labour a brief span," 
 
 because, as Mr. Collier says, "if Woolsey enjoyed so much 
 1 spiritual leisure/ it would seem as if he might have time 
 also for his earthly audit." But the change cannot be re- 
 ceived, as it proceeded from ignorance of an old use of the 
 word " leisure." It was used to signify, not only relaxation 
 from labor, but time devoted to any occupation : as is evi- 
 dent from the following passage, which I accidentally met 
 with since the publication of Mr. Collier's book, in reading 
 Sir Thomas Chaloner's translation of Erasmus' Praise of 
 Folly, published in 1549. Folly speaks of the difference 
 between those authors who are studious and careful, and 
 those who devote their pens to her. 
 
 " Besides the hurte thei susteyn in theyr bodies, decay of 
 beau tie, marry ng of their eyesight, or also blindnesse, together 
 with pouertie, enuie, forbearing of pleasures, untimely age, 
 hasted death, and such like disadvantages, which natheless these 
 wise men sticke not at, so they maye have theyr writinges allow- 
 ed at one or two of these blereied bokewormes handes. But my 
 Scribes on the other side, have not a little more commoditie and 
 pleasure of their folie. Whereas, taking no greate leysure in 
 penning? of theyr mattier, naie, rather whatsoever toy lighteth 
 in theyr head, or falleth in their thought, be it but theyr dreame, 
 they do put the same straight in writing," &c. The Praise of 
 Folie. 4 to., 1549. Sig. L ii. 
 
 Here " leisure " is evidently used, but a generation be- 
 fore Shakespeare, to mean the time devoted to labor. It 
 is the same use of the word which is made in a passage 
 in Chaucer's Tale of MeliboeuSj quoted by Kichardson in 
 his Dictionary. 
 
 " Wherefore we axen leiser and space to have deliberation in 
 this case to deem." 
 
 Here the opportunity, or leisure, asked, is not for relaxa- 
 
 
DATE OF ITS EMENDATIONS. 61 
 
 tion, but for the labor of deeming, i. e., judging a case. It 
 is plain that we must retain the original text. " Spiritual 
 leisure " is the time devoted to spiritual affairs. 
 
 The alterations which show that, before they were 
 made, tastes and usages had undergone a great change, to 
 which the corrector wished arbitrarily to conform the text 
 of his author, are plentifully scattered through Mr. Collier's 
 volume. Here are a few of them. First, upon a passage in 
 the second scene of the Merchant of Venice. 
 
 " In order not to offend James I., the word l Scottish ' of 
 the quartos, published more than two years before lie came to the 
 throne, was altered in the folio, 1623, to other, in Nerissa's 
 question, ' what think you of the Scottish lord, his neighbour ? ' 
 In the folio, 1632, the word other is struck through with a pen, 
 and Irish placed in the margin, as if it had not been considered 
 objectionable, in the time of the corrector, so to stigmatize 
 Irish lords." 
 
 But Irishmen were not so stigmatized in England un- 
 til ten years after the publication of the second folio, that 
 is, nineteen years after the publication of the original text. 
 The rebellion in Ireland broke out in 1641. 
 
 Again, remarking on a change in the last scene in 
 Hamlet, Mr. Collier says, 
 
 " The lines put into the mouth of Horatio are these, as they 
 stand in every edition, Hamlet having just expired : 
 
 'Now cracks a noble heart Good night, sweet prince, 
 And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.' 
 
 " However, it seems to have been thought about the time the 
 abbreviations were made, that the tragedy ought to end with a 
 rhyming couplet, and we may infer that the alteration we meet 
 with in the folio, 1632, was made for the purpose : 
 
 ' Now cracks a noble heart Good night, be blest, 
 And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.' " 
 
62 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 Rhyming couplets at the close of a play are common 
 enough in the works of Shakespeare's contemporaries and 
 immediate predecessors ; but the idea that a play " ought 
 to end with a rhyming couplet " came in with the French 
 taste of the Restoration. Dryden's plays in verse invari- 
 ably end thus ; and I cannot remember a poetical drama 
 produced by one of his contemporaries which does not 
 bring up with a similar jingle ; which too, is tacked to 
 nearly all, if not all the prose comedies of that day. 
 
 A MS. stage direction in the first scene of Much Ado 
 About Nothing, gives Mr. Collier occasion to remark : 
 
 " Another change in the same stage direction merits notice : 
 it is that the word * Messenger ' is converted into Gentleman, 
 and the manner in which he joins in the conversation shows, that 
 he must have been a person superior in rank to what we now un- 
 derstand by a messenger. Consistently with this notion, all the 
 prefixes to what he says are altered from Mrs. to Gent. In other 
 dramas Shakespeare gives important parts to persons whom he 
 only calls Messengers ; and it requires no proof that in the reign 
 of Elizabeth the Messengers who conveyed news to the Court 
 from abroad were frequently officers whose services were in 
 part rewarded by this distinction. It was in this capacity that 
 Raleigh seems first to have attracted the favour of the Queen." 
 
 This custom was not changed in England until long 
 after the time of the Great Rebellion, as all familiar with 
 the literature and manners of the time, must remember : 
 another incontestable proof of the late date of the MS. 
 corrector's work. To many such, might be added changes 
 of phrase, and other like variations to suit a change of 
 taste ; but these are enough to establish the point. 
 
 There are several instances in which Mr. Collier himself 
 confesses that the MS. corrector made his changes simply be- 
 cause HE did not understand the text. As, for instance, in 
 the passage in Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III. Sc. 2, 
 
ITS EVIDENT DOUBTS AND CONJECTURES. 63 
 
 " Two lovely berries moulded on one stem : 
 So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart ; 
 Two of the first, like coats in heraldry," <fec., 
 
 he wantonly changes the first line to, 
 
 " Two loving berries moulded on one stem :" 
 
 and, as Mr. Collier says, 
 
 " The heraldic couplet which follows, is struck out by the 
 same hand, probably because, like most other readers, he did not 
 understand it" 
 
 Upon a passage in the Comedy of Errors, Act II. Sc. 
 1, Mr. Collier says, 
 
 " It is worth while to mention that the line, 
 1 1 see the jewel best enamelled,' 
 
 and the two next lines (the folio, 1 632, omits two others in the 
 folio, 1623), are struck out, perhaps, as unintelligible to the man- 
 uscript corrector, he having no means of setting the passage 
 right" 
 
 Three lines at one fell swoop ! Insatiate, would not 
 one suffice ! And this, too, merely because they were un- 
 intelligible to him ; and after the second folio had already 
 cut out two lines more from the original ! These are but 
 specimens. And this is emending Shakespeare's text by " a 
 higher authority " than that used by his first editors ! 
 
 That the corrections were founded entirely upon ca- 
 price or conjecture, is again evident from passages like the 
 following, upon a line in King Richard II., Act IV. Sc. 1, 
 which are common in Mr. Collier's book : 
 
 " The folio, 1632, misprints the following line 
 
 ' Give sorrow leave a while to tutor me,' 
 by absurdly putting return for ( tutor.' This blunder is set 
 
64 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO or 1632. 
 
 right by the old corrector ; but it seems as if he had previously 
 substituted some other word, and had erased it. Such may have 
 been the case in, several other places where he himself blun- 
 dered." 
 
 Again, upon a passage in King Richard II., Act V. 
 Sc. 5, Mr. Collier remarks, 
 
 " On the next page, he struck out the whole of the passage 
 in which the King resembles himself to a clock, which none of 
 the commentators have been able to understand : the erasure be- 
 gins at 'For now hath time,' and ends at 'Jack o' the clock.' 
 It is to be regretted that the old corrector could throw no light 
 upon this obscure question : it deserves remark, however, that he 
 struck out the word ' watches,' as if it were certainly wrong ; but, 
 as if he did not know what ought to be substituted for it, he has 
 written no corresponding word in the margin." 
 
 Some of the corrections which, from their plausibility 
 and apparently easy solution of a great difficulty, have been 
 urged as evidence that the MS. corrector worked, not upon 
 conjecture, but authority, were, unfortunately for this con- 
 clusion, made during the last hundred years, by some of 
 the various commentators. Two striking instances will suf- 
 fice as examples. 
 
 In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I. Sc. 3, Fal- 
 stqff says of Mrs. Ford, 
 
 "She carves, she gives the leer of invitation." 
 
 This the MS. corrector changes to 
 
 " She craves, she gives the leer," &c., 
 
 and the simplicity of this correction of a passage which has 
 given learned commentators much trouble, is hailed with 
 a shout of exultation. The new reading cannot be admit- 
 ted ; but it is not my purpose to explain here why it can- 
 not, but merely to show that it required no " authority " 
 
ITS IMPORTANT CHANGES ARE NOT NEW. 65 
 
 to make it, whether it be good or bad. It is one of the con- 
 jectures of so foolish a fellow we have seen how foolish 
 as Zachary Jackson ! who thus presented it more than thirty 
 years ago. 
 
 " ' Falstaff. I spy entertainment in her ; she discourses, she carves, she 
 gives the leer of invitation.' 
 
 " No doubt Mrs. Ford was an excellent carver, perhaps equal 
 to any in Windsor; and entertained her friends with choice 
 viands : but the entertainment to which Falstaff alludes being 
 that of love, her adroitness in the art of carving is not absolutely 
 necessary. 
 
 " Falstaff has spied a certain craving in the eye of this mer- 
 ry ivife ; and as she has given him the leer of invitation, he, in 
 his lascivious humour, says, 
 
 ' She craves, she gives the leer of invitation.' " 
 
 The next instance brings in a more important dispu- 
 tant for the honors of emendation. In the Taming of the 
 Shrew, Act I. Sc. 2, Tranio, who has arrived at Padua, 
 with his master, who is to attend the University there a 
 says in the original, 
 
 "Let's be no stoicks, nor no stocks I pray, 
 Or so devote to Aristotle's checks 
 As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured." 
 
 Mr. Collier says, " our quotation is the same in all im- 
 pressions, ancient and modern/' and adds : 
 
 " What are ' Aristotle's checks ? ' Undoubtedly a misprint 
 for Aristotle's ethics, formely spelt ethicks, and hence the absurd 
 blunder. 
 
 ' Or so devote to Aristotle's ethicks ' 
 
 is the line as it stands authoritatively corrected in the margin 
 of the folio of 1632." 
 
 This plausible and ingenious correction, which I yet think 
 uncalled for and inadmissible, has been pointed out by others- 
 
 5 
 
66 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 than Mr. Collier, as conclusive evidence that the corrector 
 must have had " authority." But it was made by no less 
 a personage than Blackstone, a hundred years ago ; and ap- 
 pears in the text of the Chiswick edition. Mr. Collier was 
 careless. 
 
 It may not be impertinent to notice here, that several 
 of the most plausible new emendations in Mr. Collier's fo- 
 lio, were suggested three years and more ago, by the pre- 
 sent writer, who could not by any possibility have seen the 
 MS. corrections. I will only instance " Rebellions head " 
 for " Rebellious head/' in Act IV. Sc. 1, of Macbeth; " no 
 more flights " for " no more sights," in the same scene of 
 the same play ; and " Ne'er knows retiring ebb " for " Ne'er 
 keeps retiring ebb," in Othello, Act III. Sc. 3. These 
 stand with several others, upon a copy of Shakespeare which 
 I have collated with the text of the original folio, Steevens' 
 reprint of the twenty quartos, and the comments of nearly 
 all the commentators, the noteworthy readings and my 
 own conjectures being recorded in the margin. They, 
 with the host of similar instances which appear in Mr. Col- 
 lier's volume, prove conclusively, that no " authority " was 
 necessary for the suggestion of such alterations in the text. 
 
 Though I have exhibited the various incapacity of 
 Mr. Collier's MS. corrector, the late date of his labors, 
 and his self-demonstrated want of any acknowledged au- 
 thority upon which to base his corrections, only by the 
 quotation of a comparatively few passages from Mr. Col- 
 lier's book, I am yet able to speak of it as a whole, and in 
 detail, from actual examination and re-examination, colla- 
 tion and re-collation, of every change which it proposes in 
 the received text of Shakespeare. Mr. Collier alludes to 
 the number of those changes as " considerably more than 
 one thousand." I can tell him exactly how many there 
 are. Setting aside trivial stage directions, there are thir- 
 
NUMBER AND CHARACTER OF ITS CHANGES. 67 
 
 teen hundred and three modifications of the text of the 
 second folk), proposed in Mr. Collier's " Notes and Emen- 
 dations," based on the MS. correction in his copy of the 
 folio of 1632. 
 
 Of these thirteen hundred and three, I have found that 
 at least two hundred and forty-nine are old ; that is, are 
 either restorations of the text of the original folio, adop- 
 tions of readings from the old quartos, or identical with 
 the conjectural emendations of editors and commentators 
 during the last hundred and fifty years. I say ' at least ' 
 that number, because, although my collation has been as 
 thorough as circumstances would admit, it is more than 
 probable that many cases of coincident reading have es- 
 caped me. 
 
 Of these two hundred and forty-nine old readings, 
 twenty-nine have long ago been rejected by common con- 
 sent, as unworthy of the least attention ; forty-seven are 
 rejected from the text, but have a certain plausibility ; and 
 one hundred and seventy-three are found in the received 
 text. 
 
 The proposed modifications in the received text, which 
 are peculiar to Mr. Collier's folio, are one thousand and 
 fifty-four in number ; of which, judging upon the princi- 
 ples which my readers can see, from the previous portion 
 of this review, have governed me, eight hundred and 
 eighteen, or over eight tenths an overwhelming majority 
 are to be utterly rejected, as unworthy of the least atten- 
 tion, and the fruits only of blind ignorance, patient dulness, 
 and wanton presumption. 
 
 Of the remaining two hundred and thirty-six, now pro- 
 posed for the first time, at least one hundred and nineteen 
 are inadmissible, though not unworthy of notice ; leaving 
 only one hundred and seventeen, which seem to be plausible 
 corrections, if, indeed, the passages to which they apply need 
 
68 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 correction. I again say, i seem to be/ for this number must 
 inevitably be much reduced upon the discussion of the 
 merits of the readings among the best Shakesperian critics. 
 We have, then, in Mr. Collier's book : 
 
 Old readings, unworthy attention, 29 
 
 " " inadmissible, but plausible, . . . * 47 
 
 " " already received, 173 
 
 249 
 
 N"ew readings, unworthy attention, 818 
 
 " " inadmissible, but not unworthy of attention, 119 
 
 plausible, 117 
 
 1054 
 
 1303 
 
 Inadmissible old readings, 29 -(- 47 . . . .76 
 new " 818 -f- 119 937 
 
 Total of palpably inadmissible reading*, .... 1013 
 
 We reach, then, this conclusion, that Mr. Collier has 
 put forth under the sanction of his name, a volume, as the 
 " Plays of William Shakespeare," which contains at least 
 one thousand and thirteen inadmissible alterations from the. 
 original text ! ! ! Is it not dealing gently with the editor, 
 to speak of such a proceeding, only as insufferable and in- 
 excusable presumption ? presumption which is not in the 
 least atoned for, not even palliated, by the fact that the 
 same volume contains a few corrections which present claims, 
 yet to be discussed, to a place in the received text. 
 
 If it be asked why these few are to be (possibly) re- 
 ceived, while more than one thousand and thirteen are to 
 be positively rejected, and how those few which may be ad- 
 missible, were made by the man who made the one thou- 
 sand and thirteen which are inadmissible, I reply, that 
 such of the few as are to be received, will be received en- 
 tirely upon their own merits, as arbitrary conjectural emen- 
 
THE WORK OF VARIOUS HANDS. 69 
 
 dations of passages which are evidently misprinted in the 
 original, and also that they were made by the happy conjec- 
 tures of several correctors. For we have seen that at least 
 two hundred and forty-nine of the MS. corrector's changes 
 are not derived from any source peculiarly his own, and 
 that a large number of these have been made by Shake- 
 speare's various editors and commentators, some of them 
 even more wrongheaded than the folio guesser himself; 
 which incontestably proves that no authority was necessary 
 to the making of these corrections, and, as a corollary to 
 that conclusion, not to the making of the others. 
 
 That the emendations were the work of more than one 
 hand, will, I think, be plain to any one accustomed to read 
 old manuscript, or any manuscript in fact, upon an exam- 
 ination of the very fac-simile page, which Mr. Collier, 
 with the openness which has marked his conduct of the 
 whole of this matter, published with his " Notes and Emen- 
 dations." Upon a comparison of the manuscript line, 
 
 "So, rushing in the bowels of the French," 
 
 about one-third down the page, with " briefly," " e," and 
 " now," about two-thirds down, arid " same " at the top of 
 the page, it will be seen that the former is of an older date 
 than the four latter, which are not only more modern, but 
 bear the marks of a bolder, heavier hand. In the former, 
 the formation of the letters is plainly upon a different, and 
 as plainly, more ancient model, than that traceable in the 
 latter; and the one has a painstaking, though uncertain 
 air, while the other shows a rapid and bold, though clear 
 and decided hand. The oldest of these hands is not more 
 antique in appearance than much manuscript which I have 
 seen, dated during the third and last quarters of the seven- 
 teenth century : and the most modern seeins not too old to 
 have been written in the second quarter of the eighteenth. 
 
70 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 The conclusion that the MS. corrections are the work 
 of more than one hand, is strongly fortified by the fact, 
 which has an important bearing on the whole question, that 
 during the latter half of the seventeenth century and the 
 first years of the eighteenth, the manuscript correction of 
 folios seems not to have been uncommon. This was natu- 
 ral enough ; for readers of Shakespeare could not but see 
 the numberless typographical errors which deformed the 
 early editions ; and some would naturally be tempted to cor- 
 rect them, and to make the text conform to the representa- 
 tions upon the stage of their own day, by cutting it down, 
 adding stage directions, &c. Accordingly we find it re- 
 corded in Wilson's Shaksperiana, published in 1827, that at 
 the sale of the library of a Mr. Dent, who was a devoted col- 
 lector of books upon our early literature, and which took 
 place in the early part of this century, a corrected folio of 
 this kind was sold for a large price. It is thus described : 
 
 "THIRD EDITION, folio, 1663. 
 
 " Mr. Dent's copy sold for 651. 2s. It contained many manuscript emen- 
 dations, chiefly in an ancient hand, coeval with the date of the edition. 
 The annotations in question were, in many respects, curious and important, 
 consisting of stage directions, alterations in the punctuation, <fec." WIL- 
 SON'S Shakesperiana, p. 63. 
 
 The description of this folio, which, in its MS. " stage 
 directions, alterations in the punctuation, &c.," so much 
 resembles Mr. Collier's, might have applied to that iden- 
 tical volume, except that Mr. Dent's copy was not the 
 second but the third folio. But it should be remarked 
 that the emendations in this had certainly been made by 
 men of different generations, for they were not altogether, 
 but " chiefly, in an ancient hand." Where is Mr. Dent's 
 copy ? * It may contain a few valuable hints ; and it 
 
 * Mr. Dent's folio is in the possession of Mr. Halliwell, as I have learned 
 by a note from that gentleman, received while this volume is going through 
 
SIMILAR FOLIOS : THIS NOT FABRICATED. 71 
 
 certainly has equal claims to attention with Mr. Collier's. 
 Mr. Singer, the editor of the Chiswick edition, has also one 
 of these corrected folios, and knows of others. As the sec- 
 ond, third and fourth folios, and even the first, became so 
 worthless for ordinary use after the labors of Eowe and 
 Theobald, it is a wonder that so many which contained MS. 
 corrections, survived to the beginning of this century, when 
 the rage for Shaksperiana came in to preserve them. 
 
 I must be permitted to expresss my regret at the in- 
 cessant insinuations made by Mr. Singer in his " Text of 
 Shakespeare Vindicated," &c., that Mr. Collier's folio is a 
 fabrication in which the possessor is implicated. Mr. Col- 
 lier's previous service in the cause of Shakesperian litera- 
 ture should have protected him against so needless, and 
 therefore unjustifiable, an accusation. Without a doubt 
 Mr. Collier believes in the antiquity as well as the value of 
 the emendations in his folio ; and that some of them are 
 about a hundred and seventy-five years old, there can be no 
 question. The many coincidences with the conjectures of 
 editors of the seventeenth century, are, doubtless, the re- 
 sult of the fortunes of the volume, which threw it into the 
 hands of two or three emenders of that period, as we have 
 seen was the case with Mr. Dent's. 
 
 My course in treating this important question, the 
 most important which has arisen in the histoiy of Shake- 
 sperian literature, has been, not to examine the propos- 
 ed emendations in detail, but to classify the changes in 
 Mr. Collier's folio, and draw conclusions from the number 
 and diverse character of those classes. The former course, 
 the easier, would merely have made public the coincidence 
 
 the press, and written in answer to the above query, which was put in the 
 paper on the Text of Shakespeare in Putnam's Magazine for October, 1853. 
 Mr. Halliwell is collating Mr. Dent's copy and some others, containing 
 similar annotations, for his superb folio edition ; but, he says that he finds 
 them to be of little critical value. 
 
72 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 or difference of opinion between individuals : the latter, 
 starting from recorded facts, and attaining its end by de- 
 ductions inevitable from those facts, decides the question 
 with the powers of both authority and reason. 
 
 Let us now briefly recapitulate the conclusions to which 
 we (reader and author) have, I trust, arrived. 
 
 We have seen that the text of Shakespeare suffered 
 sorely at the outset from its first printers, and that their 
 errors have been the occasion of its undergoing quite as 
 much from the presumption and incapacity of his editors and 
 critics ; and that, to use the phrase of his player friends, 
 a from the most able to him that could but spell," all his 
 editors, critics and commentators, with two or three excep- 
 tions, have wantonly, impertinently, and ignorantly mutilat- 
 ed his works. We have seen that great abilities have not 
 preserved his editors and critics from the worst and most 
 ridiculous errors ; for the narrow pedagogism of Seymour, 
 the blatant stupidity of Becket, and the complacent feeble- 
 mindedness of Jackson, did not seek to commit more in- 
 sufferable outrages upon the text, than were for a time ac- 
 tually effected by the conceited wantonness of Pope,* the 
 
 * The justice of applying this epithet to Pope, as an editor, will not be 
 denied by any one familiar with Shakesperian literature. The following 
 jewel of annotation from the Variorum edition, and another from Pope's 
 own edition, will amuse the general reader, and satisfy him as to the char- 
 acter of Pope's editorial labors. The first is upon that passage in the mas- 
 querade scene of Romeo and Juliet in which old Capulet welcomes his guests, 
 and says, 
 
 " Gentlemen, welcome ! ladies that have their toes 
 Unplagued with corns will have a bout with you." 
 
 " Their TOES ] Thus all the ancient copies. The modern editors, 
 following Mr. Pope, read, with more delicacy their feet. An editor, by 
 stich capricious alterations, deprives the reader of the means of judging of 
 the manners of different ages : for the word employed in the text undoubt- 
 edly did not appear indelicate to the audience of Shakespeare's time, though 
 perhaps it would not be endured at this day." 
 
 This strange mixture of common sense and preposterous, indelicate 
 
 
RECAPITULATION. 73 
 
 arrogance of Warburton, the solemn inflexibility of John- 
 son, and the smartness and mechanical ear of Steevens. 
 
 With regard to Mr. Collier's corrected folio, it has 
 plainly appeared, from its own pages, and from the records 
 of Shakesperian literature 
 
 That it possesses in itself no authority : 
 
 That, consequently, its proposed emendations must de- 
 pend for acceptance entirely upon their intrinsic worth : 
 
 That the corrector did not feel the Poetry of Shake- 
 speare : 
 
 That he did not take his Wit : 
 
 That he violated the Dramatic Propriety which Shake- 
 speare observed : 
 
 That his corrections were made in disregard of the con- 
 text : 
 
 That they were not made until after the Restoration, 
 when Shakespeare's contemporaries had passed away, and 
 emendation must have been conjectural : 
 
 That the corrector disregarded the tastes and customs 
 of Shakespeare's day, and sought to make Shakespeare's 
 text conform to the taste and customs of his own day : 
 
 That he made changes in the text merely because he 
 did not understand it : 
 
 That he blundered in making his corrections, and was 
 
 squeamishness, is from the pen of Malonc. Steevens follows him ; and 
 gravely quotes from Comus to show that the harmless word which means 
 the fingers of the feet "was endured, at least, in the time of Milton." 
 
 In the same play, Act III. Sc. 4, Pope has this note. "Some few un- 
 necessary verses are omitted in this scene, according to the oldest editions." 
 For "this scene," we may read 'the whole play;' for Mr. Pope (he was 
 then only Mr. Pope) took the liberty of rejecting just what he pleased of 
 the additions which Shakespeare made to his first draught of this charming 
 tragedy. Ample justification for the application of far more sweeping 
 terms of condemnation to the editorial labors of Pope, Johnson and their 
 compeers, will be found profusely scattered through the remainder of this 
 volume. 
 
74 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 obliged to erase them, and substitute others ; which could 
 not have been the case if he had had " authority : " 
 
 That the corrections which would seem most conclusively 
 to show that he had authority, have been effected by the 
 mere conjectures of others, and some ,of them by persons of 
 very slender abilities : 
 
 That of one thousand one hundred and three proposed 
 changes in the text of the folio of 1632, at least one thou- 
 sand and thirteen are entirely inadmissible into the original 
 text ; and that of the remainder, one hundred and seventy- 
 three are already a part of the received text, leaving one 
 hundred and seventeen, a little more than one-tivelfth of 
 the entire number, from which future editors may carefully 
 select emendations : 
 
 That it is highly probable, to say the least, that cor- 
 rectors of two or three generations labored upon this vol- 
 ume : 
 
 That there are other existing folios, similar in every re- 
 spect to this, and entitled to no less deference, that is, to 
 none : 
 
 And, finally, that this folio is filled with errors of all 
 the various kinds committed by editors and commentators, 
 of every grade of capacity and incapacity, during the last 
 hundred and fifty years ; and that it contains a large num- 
 ber of the specific mutilations perpetrated by them, and 
 adds to those more than have heretofore been attempted by 
 all the mutilators of the text combined. 
 
 The conclusions forced upon us by this stubborn array, 
 attach, not only to individual changes in Mr. Collier's folio, 
 but to the whole of the manuscript corrections, as far as their 
 pretence to authority, or to any other consideration than 
 that due to their intrinsic excellence is concerned ; and 
 those conclusions are, that the volume which contains them 
 is utterly worthless as an authority, and that at least eleven 
 
CONDEMNED BY SHAKESPERIAN SCHOLARS. 75 
 
 twelfths of them are not entitled to the slightest considera- 
 tion, even as conjectures. 
 
 After being compelled to such conclusions, it is difficult 
 to understand how Mr. Collier could have been blind to the 
 incontestable facts which establish them. The MS. cor- 
 rections of this folio, warmly welcomed every where at first, 
 are now, with a few exceptions, condemned by Knight, Halli- 
 well, and Singer, the principal editors of Shakespeare, and by 
 the Rev. Alexander Dyce, the distinguished dramatic scholar 
 and critic, who has not yet edited Shakespeare, and has 
 therefore no pet text to defend. Dr. Delius, too, the emi- 
 nent German critic, and to attain eminence as a critic of 
 Shakespeare in Germany, implies, perhaps, a profounder 
 scholarship and keener insight than to reach the same posi- 
 tion in England, Dr. Delius admits but seventeen emenda- 
 tions out of the whole thirteen hundred and three. Such a 
 change in all quarters, from welcoming expectation to a 
 scornful rejection of almost the entire labors of the corrector, 
 and which, it must be remembered, has been worked by the 
 emendations themselves, shows how utterly they are at vari- 
 ance with the spirit which Shakesperian scholars have im- 
 bibed from the works of their great master ; and how in- 
 consistent they are with the language, customs, and tone 
 of thought of Shakespeare's day, with which the students 
 of his works must needs make themselves familiar. In en- 
 deavoring to account for the singular fatuity which led Mr. 
 Collier to embody them ruthlessly in a text which he calls 
 " The Plays of Shakespeare," it is both just and charitable 
 to conclude that, intoxicated with the delight which he 
 would naturally feel at making a discovery which seemed 
 at first to promise so much for the cause to which he has 
 devoted not a little of his life, he looked only at its bright- 
 est points, and saw those double ; and that we may safely 
 expect to be able ere long, to appeal from Collier drunk 
 
76 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 with anticipated good fortune, to Collier sobered with re- 
 flection upon almost unmitigated disappointment. 
 
 It is worth while to devote a portion of this review to 
 the consideration of a few readings of Mr. Collier's folio 
 which form a class by themselves. These are the entire 
 lines which, in five or six places, are inserted to supply 
 a lacking rhyme or complete a deficient sense. These can- 
 not in any instance be received, no matter how great the 
 deficiency which they attempt to make up, or how remark- 
 able their intrinsic merits ; and for this very conclusive 
 and obvious reason. They are not emendations of typo- 
 graphical errors, not the correction of that which is ill done, 
 but the doing of that which was left undone. If there 
 were evidence that they came from Shakespeare himself, 
 they would be necessarily received, no matter how poor 
 they were ; that evidence not existing, they must be re- 
 rejected, no matter how good or apt they are. They could 
 be received only upon unquestionable authority ; for they 
 have no other basis on which to stand, not even the sup- 
 port of an erroneous text. They are ' made out of whole 
 cloth/ As far as their authority is concerned, we know that 
 they could not possibly have been supplied until sixteen 
 years after Shakespeare's death ; for the edition on the mar- 
 gins of a copy of which they are written was not published 
 until 1632, and he died in 1616 ; and, besides, we have 
 plainly seen that some of the corrections could not pos- 
 sibly have been made before 1662, when Davenant intro- 
 duced the first scenery ever exhibited upon a public stage 
 in England. Now, the interpolation of an entire line by 
 one man in 1662, is as little justifiable as the interpolation 
 of an entire scene by another man in 1762 or 1853. There 
 is the same lack of authority for each. The addition is 
 worth just as much in one case as in the other. 
 
 It must also be noted that, as these lines, if received at 
 
ITS SUBSTITUTED RHYMES AND ADDED LINES. 77 
 
 all, must be received upon authority , if we admit one, we 
 must admit all. To do otherwise would be to sit in judg- 
 ment upon Shakespeare's right to write his own plays as he 
 pleased. We must therefore receive into the text the fol- 
 lowing line which is printed in italic letter, if we receive 
 any which are similarly inserted in Mr. Collier's folio : 
 
 " Q. Margaret, Give up your staff, Sir, and the King his realm. 
 Gloster. My staff? here, noble Henry, is my staff: 
 To think I fain would keep it makes me laugh." 
 
 What must be the capacity of a man to understand, 
 much more, to emend Shakespeare's text, who could per- 
 petrate such a ridiculous abomination as this, merely for 
 the purpose of supplying a rhyme? for it must be remark- 
 ed that the sense is perfect and clear without it. Who will 
 not be grateful that there is no authority which compels us 
 to receive such a platitude as Shakespeare's? and if not 
 this, then no other line ; for all not furnished us " by 
 authentic copies, printed or manuscript," must be regarded 
 as interpolation. If a line be wanting in the text, the hia- 
 tus must remain until it is filled up by these " authentic 
 copies." 
 
 These remarks apply, with equal force, to the arbitrary 
 changes of a word or more at the end of a line, for the pur- 
 poses of rhyme. As for instance : 
 
 " Bid him farewell ; commit him to the grave ; 
 Do him that kindness, and take leave of him." 
 
 For this the MS. corrector audaciously substitutes, 
 
 "Bid him farewell ; commit him to the grave ; 
 Do him that kindness all that he can have." 
 
 That is, he takes out five words from the original text, and 
 substitutes for them five others, changing the construction 
 of the sentence to admit them, in order that two lines may 
 
78 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 rhyme ! To consider gravely such mangling of the text, is to 
 waste words and patience. And, as before, what applies to 
 one instance, applies to all others of the same nature. We 
 cannot permit any man to mutilate Shakespeare's text, even 
 to better it, in the estimation of himself or a thousand like 
 him. 
 
 With two exceptions, then, all these lines and rhyming 
 terminations of lines must be regarded as unwarrantable 
 interpolations. These two exceptions occur in All's Well 
 that Ends Well, Act I. Sc. 3, and in King Henry J 7 ., Act. 
 III. Sc. 2. In the first instance the Cloivn sings a frag- 
 ment of an old ballad which is thus mutilated in the orig- 
 inal text : the extract will give the reader an idea of the 
 careless and make-shift manner in which the first folio was 
 printed : 
 
 " Was this faire face the cause, quoth she, 
 Why the Grecians sacked Troy 
 Fond done, done, fond was this king Priam's joy 
 With that she sighed as she stood, bis 
 
 And gave this sentence then, among nine bad if one be good, among 
 nine bad if one be good, there's yet one good in ten." 
 
 This Mr. Collier's folio corrects, by making a transposition 
 in the first line and an addition to the second, so that the 
 first stanza, when properly divided into lines, reads as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 "Was this fair faee,quoth she, the cause 
 Why the Grecians sacked Troy? 
 Fond done, done fond, good sooth it was. 
 Was this King Priam's joy." 
 
 This emendation is to be received solely because of the fact 
 that the text is evidently but a quotation of a popular jing- 
 ling song which had survived to the time of the MS. cor- 
 rector. The corrector's authority for it was the same as 
 
RESTORATION OF POPULAR RHYMES. 79 
 
 Shakespeare's, that is, its existence in the mouths of the 
 people. Thus, if the following version of some well-known 
 historical lines were found in Shakespeare, it would evidently 
 need emendation : 
 
 "Old King Cole 
 Was a merry old soul ; 
 Arid a merry old soul he was. 
 He call'd for his pipe, 
 And he called for his fiddlers three." 
 
 In such a case there could not be the slightest hesitation 
 in printing the third line, 
 
 " And a merry old soul was he" 
 
 or in inserting, 
 
 "And he call'd for his bowl," 
 
 as the fifth line ; because the rhyme is one of indefinable 
 origin and antiquity, which has not yet died out of the pop- 
 ular ear ; and our authority for it would be the same that 
 Shakespeare's would, in that case, have been. The other 
 instance is in the restoration of " To all and some " and 
 "feel the same " to an old song which Pistol spouts, in 
 King Henry V. These are to be received for the reasons 
 which we have just alleged. Nevertheless, in both instan- 
 ces, the restored line and words should be printed within 
 brackets, to show that they are restorations : so zealously 
 should the text of Shakespeare be guarded even in its least 
 important parts. 
 
 The publication of Mr. Collier's " Notes and Emenda- 
 tions," and especially of his recently issued "Plays of 
 Shakespeare," so called, gave rise to serious apprehension 
 for the present integrity, at least, of the text of those works 
 which are the pride of our race, and our tongue. But the 
 common sense of the world bids fair to disappoint such 
 
80 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 fears. The very few admissible readings in these volumes 
 will be received, and the mass of them will be, are, already 
 rejected. In Shakespeare's own words, " out of this nettle, 
 danger, we pluck this flower, safety/' If, out of the whole 
 thirteen hundred proposed changes, but thirteen prove to 
 be admissible corrections of passages in the original text, 
 which need correction, the discovery and the discussion con- 
 sequent upon it will not have been in vain. To restore a 
 single passage in Shakespeare's text rewards much critical 
 toil. He who discovers the needful word for the misprint 
 " runawayes eyes," in the second scene of the third act of 
 Borneo and Juliet, will secure the honorable mention of his 
 name as long as the English language is read and spoken. 
 
 The most important lesson to be derived from our pre- 
 vious glance at the history of Shakespeare's text and the ex- 
 amination of Mr. Collier's folio which we have just finished, 
 is not confined to the merits of the latter. Does it not 
 teach us, conclusively, that the only source of any author- 
 ity for the text of Shakespeare is in the original folio, 
 which was published in 1623 by his friends, fellow-actors, 
 and business partners : that when that text is utterly in- 
 comprehensible from the typographical errors which deform 
 it, and then only, we should seek emendations : that those 
 emendations should be first looked for in the quartos, 
 because they were contemporaneous with Shakespeare, al- 
 though surreptitiously published, or, at least entirely neg- 
 lected by him : that only such corrupted passages as the 
 quartos do not make clear are proper subjects for the exer- 
 cise of conjecture ; and that such of these as conjecture 
 does not amend, in a manner at once consistent with the 
 context, with common sense, and with the language and 
 customs of Shakespeare's day, should be allowed to stand un- 
 touched ; because the experience of a century and a half 
 has taught us that when the original text seems incompre- 
 
AUTHORITY AND CONJECTURE. 81 
 
 hensible, the difficulty may possibly be with ourselves ; 
 but, chiefly, because it is better to have in the works of 
 Shakespeare an obscure text which may be Shakespeare's, 
 than one which is clear, but with the light of another mind 
 than his ? 
 
 6 
 
NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 Pedant. What mening hath your worshyp ? 
 /Syr John. What I saie : 
 
 Nor lesee, nor more. 
 
 TheWyse Maria Folie Old MS. 
 
 il And if by chaunce thou light of some speache that seemeth dark, consider of it with 
 judgment, before thou condemne the worke : for in many places he is driven both to praise 
 and blame with one breath, which in readinge wil seeme hard, and in action appeare plaine.' 
 Promos & Gcwaa-ndra. [The Printer to the Header. 
 
 what Shakespeare might, could, would, or should 
 have written, but what, according to the best evidence, 
 he did write, is the only admissible or defensible object of the 
 labors of his editors and verbal critics. Obviously true as 
 this is, its binding force has been regarded by but a very 
 few of the many who have undertaken the supervision or cor- 
 rection of Shakespeare's text. They have not simply sought 
 the word, the expression, or the line which the authentic 
 copy gives in this or that passage; but each has undertaken 
 to decide what it should be, by exercising his own taste 
 in choosing from the text of the various ancient copies which 
 accident or fraud gave to the world, or by substituting that 
 which, in his judgment, the poet should have written. 
 
 With the labors of such critics I have no sympathy ; for 
 such labors I can imagine no excuse. To me they are folly, 
 presumption, desecration, literary crimes which should 
 be remorselessly denounced, let them be perpetrated by 
 whom they may. During the patient study of years, I have 
 day by day become more and more convinced that the au- 
 thentic text of Shakespeare cannot be held in too great 
 
86 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 veneration or modified with too great caution. A passage 
 there may seem obscure through a thousand painful peru- 
 sals, and yet upon the next, a meaning may flash upon us 
 so apposite, so brilliant, as to mingle with the pleasure of 
 discovery some shame at the perversity which delayed the 
 enjoyment, and the presumption which proposed a feeble 
 substitute in place of it. 
 
 u Let no man," said Schlegel, "lay hand on Shake- 
 speare's works to change any thing essential in them ; he will 
 be sure to punish himself." Yes, let no man do it, whatever 
 his learning or his ability. How different the opinion of the 
 literary celebrities of the past age was from that of Schlegel, 
 the following pages will bear evidence; and that the expo- 
 sures which they make are not superfluous, may be justly 
 concluded from the fact that the London Quarterly Review 
 but recently expressed the opinion that Dr. Johnson's notes 
 commanded the deference of his readers, and that a com- 
 petent editor would be contented with reproducing them in 
 their integrity ! Such an assertion, by a sane man, can only 
 be accounted for on the supposition that he had either not 
 read Shakespeare, or had not seen Johnson's notes. The 
 ' great moralist,' however, is among the best of a class under 
 the infliction of whose treatment Shakespeare's text is still 
 suffering, and on account of the perverse and unsympathiz- 
 ing nature of whose criticisms even his wondrous creations 
 are still misapprehended or partially comprehended by a 
 great number of his readers. What a fine thing would it 
 be for Shakespeare and the public if, with the exception of 
 such copies as are necessary for public libraries and the 
 critical students of the text, all the editions issued during 
 the two hundred years subsequent to the publication of the 
 first folio, could be piled in one great heap and set on fire ! 
 Kound such a pyre the true lovers of Shakespeare might 
 dance and sing with joy. 
 
DEFENCE OF SHAKESPEARE. 87 
 
 In the subsequent Notes and Comments, most of which 
 were written merely as a part of the author's Shakesperian 
 studies, and with no thought of publication, or in the course 
 of daily criticism in the various departments of Art, it will be 
 observed that his constant aim has been to preserve at first 
 for himself and now for his readers the simple and obvious 
 signification of the authentic text. Keckless and remorse- 
 less have been the inroads upon that text, under the sanction 
 of great names; and so disastrous are the consequences 
 of these ravages, that it cannot be too often asserted that 
 the only guaranty for the integrity of those works which 
 are the glory of our race and of the world, consists in the 
 preservation of the words of the only authentic edition, 
 when those words are understood by minds of ordinary in- 
 telligence, or supported by comparison with the language 
 and manners of the author's day, or those of the immediately 
 antecedent age. And not only so, the learned and ingen- 
 ious distortions and perversions of the signification of those 
 words, which have been handed down for the last two or 
 three generations, must be set at naught and utterly con- 
 temned, in fact, forgotten, before the bright, broad, genial, 
 all-penetrating light of Shakespeare's thought can reach the 
 general mind in undimmed purity and splendor. Upon 
 the Dramatist of all time even more than upon the father 
 of the Epic, has the ambitious desire of his commentators 
 to see more than he saw, and understand more than he 
 meant, inflicted that wrong which Rabelais thus satirizes 
 with pitiless and truthful pen in the Prologue to his " Pleas- 
 ant and Joyous History." 
 
 " Croyez vous en vostre foy, qu'oncques Homere escripuant 
 1'Ilyade, & Odyssee pensast es allegories lesquelles de luy ont 
 belute Plutarche, Heraclides Ponticque, Eustatie, & Phornute : 
 & ce que d'iceulx Politian a desrobe ? Si le croyez. vous n'a- 
 prochez ne de pieds, ny de mains a mon opinion, qui decrete icelles 
 
88 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 aussi pen auoir este songees d'Homere, que d' Guide en ses Me- 
 tamorphoses les sacrements de 1'Euangile, lesquelz vng frero Lubin. 
 vray croquelardon, s'est efforce de monstrer, si d'aduenture il ren- 
 controit gens aussi fols que luy, & (corame diet le prouerbe) cou- 
 uercle digne du chaudron." 
 
 Well may it be said, that if we listen to the learned folly of 
 these notemongers we will approach Shakespeare's meaning 
 " ni de pieds, ni de mains." They, like the Homerian com- 
 mentators, put that into his mouth which was as far from 
 his intent as " les Sacrements de I'Evangile" from the 
 Metamorphoses of Ovid. 
 
 With regard to conjectural or arbitrary emendations, 
 there is safety only in adhering to the decision of the 
 generally judicious Malone, that all are arbitrary which 
 are "made at the will and pleasure of the conjecturer, 
 and without any authority," and that all readings " not 
 authorized by authentic copies, printed or manuscript, 
 stand on the same footing, and are to be judged of by their 
 reasonableness or probability." The soundness of this posi- 
 tion is self-evident ; but the previous pages have estab- 
 lished it by an examination of the history of Shakespeare's 
 text from its first publication to the present day. 
 
 As to the MS. corrections in Mr. Collier's copy of the 
 second folio, an overwhelming weight of internal evidence 
 has compelled the conclusion that they have no pretension 
 to greater deference than that which is due to mere conjec- 
 ture, and were made not earlier than about 1670, at which 
 time speculative emendation could have no advantages which 
 it does not possess at the present day, except in the pos- 
 sible survival of a few modes of expression which have since 
 become obsolete ; and even this the MS. corrections, by the 
 numerous evidences which they furnish, that the maker or 
 makers of them did not understand phrases and words which 
 are perfectly understood by English scholars of the present 
 
MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 89 
 
 day, prove to have been no advantage at all. But although 
 these MS. corrections have no semblance of authority, 
 and at least one thousand and thirteen, out of the one 
 thousand three hundred and three, are unworthy of a 
 moment's further consideration, because in the words of 
 Mr. Dyce they are " ignorant, tasteless and wanton ; " * 
 and although, as a highly accomplished and judicious 
 critic has beautifully and justly remarked, "they almost 
 invariably take the fire out of the poetry, the fine tis- 
 sue out of the thought, the ancient aroma and flavor out 
 of the language ; " f still, as I have before observed, the 
 discovery of this corrected folio will prove to be of some ser- 
 vice to the text of Shakespeare. Nevertheless, even its most 
 plausible corrections are to receive only the consideration 
 due to them as arbitrary and conjectural, and must be 
 "judged of by their reasonableness and probability." With 
 the thousand and thirteen, new and old, before mentioned, 
 we have of course nothing further to do. Of the remaining 
 two hundred and ninety, one hundred and seventy-three 
 have been a part of the received text for more than a quarter 
 of a century ; and these obviously present no claims for pre- 
 sent examination. But in the one hundred and seventeen 
 still undisposed of, there are a very few which assert at once 
 an unquestionable claim to be received into the text, and 
 some which are at least worthy of careful consideration before 
 they are rejected. In the course of the following pages I 
 shall examine the inherent merits of the more important 
 of the latter number the one hundred and seventeen. 
 
 * A Few Notes, <fee. Preface. 
 
 f Christian Examiner, Nov. 1853, p. 456. 
 
TEMPEST. 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Ant. Where is the master, Boson." 
 
 ALTHOUGH the authentic folio makes Antonio very plainly 
 say " Boson/' and the King of Naples, just as plainly, 
 " Boatswain" in the original, " Boteswaine " for which 
 " Boson " could not have been a misprint, all the modern 
 editors, with the exception of Mr. Knight, have altered this 
 characteristic contraction to Boatswain. Antonio is a man 
 of coarse and flippant manners; and he was made by Shake- 
 speare to adopt the cant of the forecastle as an indication 
 of his character. This design is frustrated by the use of 
 the correct form of the word. The editors might as well 
 have mended the English of Dogberry or Sir Hugh Evans. 
 Mr. Dyce, in support of the reading Boatswain, says 
 that the word was printed " Boson" merely in consequence 
 of "the unsettled state of our early orthography," and 
 quotes passages from Taylor in which it is spelled in three 
 ways, and once, c Boson/ But this, in my opinion, cannot 
 be permitted to set aside the peculiar fitness of the word in 
 the original to the character of Antonio. If it stood the 
 other way, if in the first folio Alonzo said c boson/ and 
 Antonio c boatswain/ Mr. Dyce's argument would justify 
 a change in the first instance ; because then there would 
 
TEMPEST. 91 
 
 be an obvious incongruity which now does not exist. Be- 
 sides, it should be remembered that Taylor, who furnishes 
 Mr. Dyce with the spelling, l Boson/ had been a sailor, and 
 says, as Mr. Dyce himself quotes, 
 
 " Seven times at sea I served Elizabeth." 
 " [A confused noise within.] Mercy on us ! we split," <fec. 
 
 These exclamations are evidently a part of the confused 
 noise within, as Johnson suggested. They are entirely 
 foreign to the character of Gonzalo, who, besides, had nei- 
 ther wife, children, nor brother that we hear of. But as 
 the words were not sufficiently separated from his speech in 
 the original folio, they have been hitherto attributed to him, 
 except by Johnson and Mr. Knight. Mr. Collier actually 
 breaks up this " confused noise" into heroic lines ! 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 "Prosp. "Who having unto truth, by telling of it, 
 Made such a sinner of his memory 
 To credit his own lie." 
 
 The construction of this sentence is a little involved, 
 and so the MS. corrector of Collier's folio of 1632 changes 
 the words " unto truth " in the first line, to to untruth. 
 But this will never do. How can a man make a sinner of 
 his memory to untruth by telling a lie ? The correction 
 achieves nothing but nonsense. The plain construction of 
 the passage, as the original gives it, is, ' Who, having 
 made such a sinner of his memory unto truth, to credit his 
 own lie by telling of it ; ' which gives us a portrait of a 
 kind of liar that is not uncommon. 
 
 "Prosp. Go make thyself like a nymph o' the sea." 
 
 Thus, again, the original folio, which Mr. Collier's folio, 
 
92 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 with superfluous barbarity changes to, " Go make thyself 
 a like nymph o' the sea." 
 
 Ariel's Song. 
 
 "Hark, hark! 
 
 Bow wowgh [Burthen dispersedly 
 
 The watch dogs bark. 
 
 Bow wowgh. 
 Hark, hark ! I hear 
 The strain of strutting chanticlere, 
 
 Cry cock-a-didle-dowe." 
 
 The last line is thus plainly printed in the original 
 folio ; but it has been arbitrarily changed into cocJc-a- 
 doodle-doo by all modern editors. The last could scarcely 
 have been mistaken for the first ; and the first rhymes with 
 the " bow-wow " of the burden. This is a small matter ; but 
 I notice it because various liberties have been taken, from 
 time to time, with the text of this fanciful song. It should 
 be given just as it stands in the original, by varying from 
 which nothing has been gained ; but the contrary. 
 
 " Ferd. My prime request, 
 
 Which I do last pronounce, is, you wonder ! 
 If you be maid, or no ? 
 
 Mira. No wonder, Sir ; 
 
 But, certainly, a maid." 
 
 It would seem impossible to misunderstand this pas- 
 sage, or perhaps it is better to say, to understand it in more 
 than one sense. Ferdinand, struck with Mirandcfs won- 
 drous beauty, asks her, as the question in which he is most 
 interested, and just as he would have asked her in any 
 other place if. he had no other means of obtaining the mo- 
 mentous information, ' tell me, you wonderful creature, 
 are you maid or wife ? ' and she replies, with proper mo- 
 desty, that, though she has no claims to be considered 
 
TEMPEST. 93 
 
 " a wonder/' she is certainly " amaid." But instead of this 
 simple and obvious signification, we have divers far-fetched 
 constructions of the passage thrust upon us by various 
 commentators ; some supposing that Ferdinand means to 
 ask Miranda if she were made or no (such a reading has 
 even been introduced into the text), and that Miranda re- 
 plies that she is " not a celestial being, but a maiden." 
 But if she were a celestial being on earth, she certainly 
 would be " a wonder ;" and her answer is : 
 
 " No wonder, Sir ; 
 But, certainly, a maid." 
 
 Why should we seek out " fond and winnowed opinions," 
 when there is a plain and palpable signification before us ? 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Gonz. How lush and lusty the grass looks I how green I " 
 
 Much doubt exists about the meaning of the word 
 " lush." Knight quotes Henry, as giving it the significa- 
 tion of 'rank/ and Malone, as suggesting that of ( juicy; 7 
 and adds that " we have still the low word, lushy, as applied 
 to a drunkard." May not " lush " be a corruption of lus- 
 cious ? In Phillips' New World of Words ' luscious ' is 
 spelled lush-ious. 
 
 "Gonz. I' the commonwealth, I would by contraries 
 Execute all things. For no kind of traffic 
 "Would I admit ; no name of magistrate. 
 Letters should not be known ; riches, poverty, 
 And use of service none ; " <fec. 
 
 This speech of Gonzalo's is but a poetical paraphrase 
 of a passage in Montaigne. It has been supposed by many 
 that this fixes the date of the writing of the Tempest after 
 1603, when Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essays was 
 
94 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 first published. But this is to assume that Shakespeare 
 did not read French : not the only unwarranted assump- 
 tion of his editors. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Ferd. But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours ; 
 Moet busy-less when I do it." 
 
 The original folio has " most busy lest" which is evi- 
 dently a misprint. The best conjectural reading is the 
 above, which was suggested by Theobald. Among the 
 hypothetical emendations of the passage, the most awkward 
 seems to be that of the MS. corrector of Mr. Collier's folio, 
 who makes it "most busy, blest, when I do it," un- 
 less indeed we except Mr. Singer's " most busiest" than 
 which nothing could be more graceless and inappropriate. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Ferd. Let me live here ever : 
 
 So rare a wonder'd father, and a wis t 
 Makes this place paradise." 
 
 Thus the original. But Malone, and others after him, and 
 Mr. Collier's MS. corrector before him or after him, who 
 can tell, and what does it matter ! read, 
 
 "So rare a wonder'd father, and a wife, 
 Make this place paradise ; " 
 
 which is to degrade the poetical feeling of the passage. I 
 speak under favor of my fairer readers, and as one knowing 
 all the various good implied in the word which I would ex- 
 clude from the text. But Shakespeare'sjpoefo'caZ purpose was 
 a higher one than that which this change in the authentic 
 text would assign to him. Besides, the mere fact that the 
 original gives " wise " and " makes/' which afford at least 
 
TEMPEST. 95 
 
 an excellent sense, is an all-sufficient reason for the reten- 
 tion of those words, even against two better. 
 
 " Prosp. And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
 The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 
 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
 Leave not a rack behind : " 
 
 Upon this passage Mr. Dyce remarks, 
 
 " So this famous passage stands in all editions old and new. 
 But I believe that Malone's objection to the reading ' a rack] is 
 unanswerable. ' No instance,' he observes, ' has yet been pro- 
 duced where rack is used to signify a single small fleeting cloud; 1 
 in other words, though our early writers very frequently make 
 mention of ' the rack,' they never say ' a rack.' Malone adds, 
 * I incline to think that rack is a mis-spelling for wrack, i. e., 
 wreck ; ' and I now am thoroughly convinced that such is the 
 case. In authors of the age of Elizabeth and James I have re- 
 peatedly met with rack put for wrack ; and in all the early edi- 
 tions of Milton's Paradise Lost which I possess, viz., the first, 
 1667, the second, 1674, the third, 1678, the fourth, 1688, and 
 the eighth, 1707, I find, 
 
 "Now dreadful deeds 
 Might have ensued, nor only Paradise 
 In this commotion, but the starry cope 
 Of Heaven perhaps, or all the elements 
 At least had gone to rack [i. e., wrack= wreck]," Ac. 
 
 B. iv. 990. 
 
 " A world devote to universal rack [i. e., wrack = wreck]." 
 
 B. xi. 821." 
 A Few Notes, Ac. p. 13. 
 
 The wonder is, that another opinion should have been 
 entertained by any reader. The dissolution of towers, pal- 
 aces, temples and the great globe itself, might be said with 
 
96 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 propriety not to leave ' a wreck ' behind ; but it would be 
 very strange indeed, if it should leave a small fleeting cloud 
 behind ; neither does that object furnish a simile at all ap- 
 propriate to what would remain after such an all-devouring 
 catastrophe. It is indeed surprising that any one who had 
 ever heard the old phrase ' gone to rack and ruin/ should 
 have had a doubt about the word in question. 
 
 " Steph. Now is the jerkin, under the line ; now jerkin you are like to 
 lose your hair, and prove a bald jerkin." 
 
 Stephana's pun is supposed to allude to the hair lines on 
 which it is said clothes were hung in the time of Shake- 
 speare; but may not the loss of hair consequent upon being 
 " under the line/' be an allusion to the baldness which so 
 frequently attacks northerners when under the heat of the 
 equatorial line ? 
 
 [I find in the Variorum Ed. a note from Edwards' MSS. 
 which coincides with this, my early conjecture.] 
 
 ACT V. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Prosp. His mother was a witch, and one so strong 
 That could control the moon ; make flows and ebbs, 
 And deal in her command, without her power." 
 
 Mr. Collier's MS. corrector changed " without her 
 power," to " with all her power," an alteration which appears 
 more than plausible, until we recollect that ' power ' is used 
 for ' legitimate authority ' to this day. Thus, we say that 
 an officer ( exceeded his powers/ Mr. Charles Knight * is 
 
 * I credit Mr. Knight with the defence of this reading, only on the au- 
 thority of BlackwoocCs Magazine, Aug, 1853, p, 186. I have not seen Mr. 
 
TEMPEST. 97 
 
 unquestionably right in his defence of the old reading, which 
 cannot be disturbed. Sycorax was a witch, " so strong," 
 thai- slu> 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," <fcc. 
 
 This line, which refers to the habit of adventurers by 
 sea in Shakespeare's day, to put out a sum of money on 
 condition of receiving five for one, if they chanced to return 
 alive, is evidently corrupt, as was long ago discovered. The 
 voyagers did not put out " five for one," but one for five. 
 So the Hue has been changed to, 
 
 " Each putter out of one for Jive," &c. 
 
 and to, 
 
 " Each putter out on five for one," <fec. 
 
 the former being the most common reading. But surely 
 this is to avoid the most natural correction of the typo- 
 graphical error, and the most appropriate phrase for the 
 expression of the idea. We do not put out money on five 
 per cent., we put it out at five per cent. ; and these adven- 
 turers, instead of putting it out at five for a hundred, put 
 it out at five for one. Kead, 
 
 " Each putter out at five for one will bring u?,"<fcc. 
 
 Knight's book, or, indeed, the labors of any other of Mr. Collier's oppo- 
 nents, except Mr. Singer, Mr. Dyce, Mr. Halliwell, and the writer in Black- 
 wood. 
 
 7 
 
TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Speed. Ay, sir ; I, a lost mutton, gave your letter to her, a laced 
 mutton ; and she, a laced mutton, gave me, a lost mutton, nothing for my 
 labour." 
 
 " In the present passage, is ' laced mutton/ " asks Mr. 
 Dyce, " to be regarded as synonymous with courtesan? 1 
 doubt it. When Speed applies that term to Julia, he 
 probably uses it in the much less offensive sense of a richly 
 attired piece of ivoman' s flesh " Mr. Dyce has well express- 
 ed a signification, which, until I read the comments of the 
 Variorum men, I took for granted, as that obviously re- 
 quired by the context, and as a point upon which no ques- 
 tion could arise. Would Speed tell Proteus plainly that 
 his mistress was a courtesan ? And had he done so, would 
 he have escaped with a sound skin ? 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Speed. When you look'd sadly, it was for want of money. And now 
 you are metamorphos' d with a mistress, that when I look on you, I can 
 hardly think you my master." 
 
 The MS. correction in Mr. Collier's folio, " And now you 
 are so Metamorphos'd with a Mistris that when/' &c., 
 seems very plausible; but still, with the sentence punctuat- 
 
Two GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. 99 
 
 ed as it is above, I am not sure that the so is necessary. 
 Speed's meaning is, ' you are metamorphosed with a mis- 
 tress, so that when I look on you, I can hardly think you 
 my master 7 ; and the particle is dropped by a not uncom- 
 mon, and, it appears to me, rather elegant elision. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 3. 
 
 " Launce. This hat is Nan, our maid; I am the dog: no, the dog is 
 himself and I am the dog, oh! the dog is me, and I am myself." 
 
 Will it be believed by those who have not seen it for 
 themselves, the exquisite confusion of poor Launce' s feeble 
 ideas is not appreciated by Dr. Johnson and Sir Thomas 
 Hanmer ! How delightful is the complacence with which, 
 after doubting whether he is the dog or the dog is himself 
 and he is the dog, he triumphantly extricates himself from 
 his dilemma, by exclaiming : " Oh ! the dog is me, and / 
 am myself." And yet Dr. Johnson is not certain " how 
 much reason the author intended to bestow on Launce's 
 soliloquy," and Sir Thomas Hanmer actually printed the 
 passage, " I am the dog : no, the dog is himself and I 
 am me; the dog is the dog, and I am myself." This it 
 was to edit Shakespeare in the 'Augustan age ' of English 
 literature ! Augustan in what ? Its looseness, its servility, 
 its maliciousness, its marrowless thought, its inability to 
 make its philosophy more than an iteration of trite orthodoxy 
 or triter scepticism, or its poetry more than an oily flow of 
 pretty epigrams ? 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 " Vol. I, my good Lord, I know the gentleman 
 To be of worth, and worthy estimation ; 
 And not without desert so well reputed." 
 
 The MS. correction, by Mr. Collier's folio, in the second 
 line, 
 
100 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " To be of wealth and worthy estimation," 
 
 seems required by the context, and to be justified by a pro- 
 bable misprint, until we remember that " worthy estima- 
 tion" may mean, i the esteem of worthy people/ Valentine 
 evidently means to say that the father of Proteus is not only 
 " of worth " but " of worthy estimation; " and the substitu- 
 tion of wealth for " worth " impoverishes both the declara- 
 tion and the subject of it. " I," in the first line, is the old 
 mode of spelling i Aye/ and furnishes a guide as to the 
 varying pronunciation of that word. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Proteus. Even in the milk-white bosom of thy love." 
 
 The commentators remark upon this passage, " that the 
 lady of the 16th century had a pocket in the front of her 
 stays;" and they suppose this fashion again referred to when 
 Valentine says, 
 
 " My herald thoughts in thy pure bosom rest them ; " 
 
 and also in Hamlet's fancy, 
 
 " These to her excellent white bosom." 
 
 What need, what need of all this mantua-making lore ! 
 Where have Eve's daughters put their lover's letters and their 
 own nameless little knick-knacks ever since their mother's 
 apron of fig leaves was first accommodated with a boddice ? 
 Do lovers send their thoughts to the " pure " pockets, the 
 " excellent white " stays of their mistresses ? What ab- 
 surd misconstruction of beautiful and appropriate thoughts, 
 for the purpose of displaying a little knowledge of anti- 
 quated man-millinery ! 
 
 The Earl of Surrey, who wrote his poetry to a " lady of 
 
Two GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. 101 
 
 the sixteenth century " (1557), in one of his sonnets thus 
 predicts its happy fate : 
 
 " When she hath read and seen the grief wherein I serve, 
 Between her brests she shall thee put, there shall she thee reserve." 
 
 Stays and pockets, forsooth ! 
 
 [This was written before I saw the Variorum edition; 
 and there I find that Malone has quoted this very passage 
 from Surrey; and yet a gentleman of Mr. Charles Knight's 
 taste and sympathetic appreciation of Shakespeare, editing 
 his works in the middle of the nineteenth century, can per- 
 petuate the Mantalini-ism of the tie-wig editors !] 
 
 " Launce. He lives not now, that knows me to be in love; yet I am in 
 love; but a team of horse shall not pluck that from me; nor who it is I 
 love ; and yet 'tis a woman." 
 
 Upon this characteristic exhibition of simplicity, Dr. 
 Johnson remarks that Launce is thinking, " I see how Va- 
 lentine is suffering for telling his love secrets, therefore I 
 will keep mine close/' But Steevens comes to the rescue, 
 and adds, " Perhaps Launce was not intended to show so 
 much sense; but here indulges himself in talking contra- 
 dictory nonsense." Perhaps, indeed ! 
 
 I notice such platitudes as these, that it may be seen 
 and known of all those who cannot or will not wade through 
 the rubbish of the commentators, what thick-headedness 
 seems to have taken possession of men of the last century, 
 when they came to the reading of Shakespeare, although they 
 were, in other respects, able and learned ; and also that we 
 may all be warned of the utter folly of relying upon the 
 mere authority of any name for the justification of a change 
 in the text as the original folio gives it to us. If that can 
 be understood by men of ordinary common sense, it must 
 be changed at no man's bidding, even for the better. 
 
102 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " Speed. Item, ' She is not to be fasting, in respect of her breath.' " 
 
 Kowe added kissed; and read, 
 
 " She is not to be kissed fasting, in respect of her breath," 
 
 which has been palmed upon us as Shakespeare's text for 
 a hundred and fifty years. Mr. Collier suggests that the 
 addition was perhaps unnecessary. There's no ' perhaps ' in 
 the case : it was certainly unnecessary, and therefore un- 
 justifiable and presumptuous. Launce's " cate-log" of the 
 " conditions " of his sweetheart, says that she must not be 
 made to fast, for fear of certain unpleasant physiological 
 consequences. The text has a plain meaning, and by 
 what right does any man make an arbitrary addition to it? 
 
 ACT Y. SCENE 4. 
 
 " Fa/. These are my mates that make their wills their law, 
 Have some unhappy passenger in ohase," 
 
 Mr. Collier's margins propose, with reason, to read 
 
 " These my rude mates," <fec. 
 
 As the sentence stands in the original, " have " is with- 
 out an antecedent. 
 
MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 Slender accuses Pistol of having picked his pockejb of 
 " two Edward shovel-boards/' that cost him two shillings. 
 Shovel-board is a game which is noticed by Strutt, but 
 with regard to which the editors and commentators known 
 to me furnish no information. Mr. Collier, in his edition of 
 Shakespeare not his recent one-volume abomination 
 says that it is " not yet discontinued, as it is not unfre- 
 quently played by the lower orders in the coal trade/' The 
 game survived in the vicinity of New- York, till within fif- 
 teen or twenty years past, among a similar class of persons. 
 It is now, I believe, no longer known; and I think that 
 the last shovel-board on this side of the water disappeared 
 with the destruction of the place in which I first saw the 
 game the Eagle Tavern, under Brooklyn Heights, near 
 where the South Ferry landing now is. I little thought, 
 when, at about ten years of age, I strolled away from home 
 one afternoon, with a playmate, now distinguished as an 
 inventor and in the higher mechanics, as he was then for his 
 quickness at computation, and his unerring hand and eye, 
 and yielding to our curiosity, we approached this forbidden 
 place (for it was deservedly in bad repute), and, leaning 
 through a window, saw coarse and brawny men playing 
 at this strange game, that I was acquiring material for a 
 
104 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 note on the works of him, whose name, even then, I had 
 learned to speak with boyish reverence. 
 
 I saw the game played several times afterward, and once 
 was tempted, with the same companion, to try it myself. 
 It was played with some variation from the rules and even 
 the materials for the game as described by Strutt. The 
 board, which stood about three feet from the floor, was 
 about twenty feet long, and two and a half wide. It was 
 surrounded by a trough, to prevent the weights from falling 
 to the ground. The top was very smooth, and covered with 
 fine white sand. The weights were of brass, and of various 
 sizes, weighing from half a pound to a pound and a half 
 much heavier, it will be observed, than Slender' s broad 
 shillings. The object of the game was to drive these 
 weights beyond a certain mark toward the further end of 
 the board, without sending them over the edge into the 
 trough. He who shoved his weight nearest the end, with- 
 out its falling over, was the victor. To place a weight half 
 way over the edge was the highest success, except to knock 
 away and replace an opponent's weight in that position, 
 which a first-rate player would frequently do. Not to put 
 the weight beyond the line alluded to, was to be i distanced/ 
 The game required great accuracy of eye and steadiness of 
 hand, much more than ten-pins, which has entirely re- 
 placed it. 
 
 " Slen. I keep but three men and a boy yet, till my mother be dead." 
 
 Upon this, Warburton remarks : 
 
 " As great a fool as the poet has made Slender, it appears, by 
 his boasting of his wealth, his breeding, and his courage, that he 
 knew how to win a woman. This is a fine instance of Shake- 
 speare's knowledge of human nature/' 
 
 One would like to be a woman for a few minutes to 
 
MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 105 
 
 have the privilege of calling Warburton a brute, and feel 
 amply justified in so doing, by this coarse libel on the sex. 
 But the gross misrepresentation of Shakespeare involved in 
 it, justifies an indignant protest on the part of every one of 
 his readers, of either sex. Where, through the whole wide 
 range of his drama, does he show a woman, worthy of the 
 name, won by a boast of wealth, breeding, and courage ? No- 
 where. Slender gets on finely by his boasting, does he not ! 
 And Fenton, because he is poor and is not a braggart, is 
 utterly eclipsed by his wealthy, vaunting rival ! Out on 
 such villainous perversion of the poet's meaning such 
 low views of human nature ! Shakespeare had no such 
 grovelling ideas of womanhood. The knowledge of human 
 nature which we recognize in the works of him who seems to 
 have penetrated by an instinct, and at a glance, the heart 
 of ;iil humanity, is but an exponent of our own intellectual 
 and moral standard. He holds the mirror up, not only to 
 Nature, but to our natures ; and Warbur ton's praise of his 
 own degraded interpretation of this passage, as a " fine in- 
 stance of Shakespeare's knowledge of human nature," 
 speaks equally for inferiority of his moral tone, and the 
 dulness of his intellectual perception. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 "Fed. I am glad I am so acquit of his tinder box: his thefts were too* 
 open : his filching was like an unskilful singer : he kept not time." 
 Nym. The good humour is to steal at a minute's rest." 
 
 Thus the original : but " a minute's rest " is evidently a- 
 misprint for " a minim's rest," as Langton suggested long 
 ago, and as the corrector of Mr. Collier's folio conjectured. 
 The likening of Bardolpli's practice of his vocation to that 
 of "an unskilful singer," who "kept not time," is suffi- 
 
106 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 cient evidence of this. The typographical error is one 
 which might very easily occur. 
 
 "Fal. She discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitation." 
 
 I have noticed elsewhere the reading craves instead 
 of " carves," proposed by Jackson and Mr. Collier's folio. 
 Mr. Hunter and Mr. Dyce show, conclusively, by numer- 
 ous quotations from contemporary literature, that ' carves ' 
 was used in Shakespeare's day, in an amorous, or, at least, 
 propitiatory sense. There is no need, and, therefore, no 
 justification for the change. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Host. My hand, bully : thou shalt have egresse and regresse : said I 
 well ? and thy name shall be Broome. It is a merry knight. Will you go 
 An-heires ? " 
 
 Thus the original folio; but this name Broome, kills 
 Falstaff's pun about brooks overflowing with liquor; and, 
 as in the surreptitious quarto of 1602 the name is printed 
 Brook, that alias has been adopted in all modern editions. 
 But it is to be remarked that in the authentic copy of the 
 play, frequently as the name occurs, it is invariably given, 
 "Broome" Now it is almost impossible that Brook could 
 have been so often, and without exception, misprinted 
 Broome; but it is quite probable that Bourne, which 
 means the same as Brook (for instance 
 
 " We twa hae paidl't i' the bourn,") 
 
 should have been mistaken in manuscript for Broome. 
 Mr. Collier's folio makes the change to Bourne; and though 
 the world will give up Master Brook unwillingly, there 
 seems to be no reasonable doubt, that he should yield place 
 to Master Bourne. 
 
MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 107 
 
 Of all the many proposed emendations of the last two 
 incomprehensible words in the original of this passage, 
 Hanmer's mynheer, so ably sustained by Mr. Dyce, is the 
 only one which appears to me at all satisfactory. There 
 can be little doubt that " An heires " is a misprint for min- 
 heires, a word well suited to the mouth of mine Host. 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 " Ford. O ! understand my drift. She dwells so securely on the ex- 
 cellency of her honour, that the folly of my soul dares not present itself; 
 she is too bright to be looked against." 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio in reading " the folly of my suit" in- 
 stead of " the folly of my soul/' seems to correct a not im- 
 probable misprint. But what need of any change whatever ? 
 Surely a hopeless passion for the chaste wife of another, 
 may well be called the folly of a man's soul. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 5. 
 
 " Fal By the Lord, a buck basket," <fec. 
 
 Thus, the surreptitious quartos of 1602 and 1619; the 
 authentic folio and the quarto of 1630 giving, " Yes, a buck 
 basket." The change was consequent upon a statute 
 made after the accession of James I., which interdicted 
 oaths &c. on the stage. In this way many passages were 
 modified, and some entirely omitted in the first folio : as, 
 for instance, Falstaff's remark in the fifth Scene of the fourth 
 Act of this play : 
 
 " Well, if my wind were but long enough to say my prayers, I- would 
 repent ;" 
 
 which, in the folio, stands tamely, on account of the law in 
 question, 
 
108 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 "Well, if my wind were but long enough, I would repent." 
 
 and again, in Much Ado About Nothing, Act IV. Sc. 2, 
 Dogberry's reply, 
 
 "Write down that they hope they serve God; and write God first; 
 for God forbid but God should go before such villains," 
 
 is altogether omitted. Now, as we want exactly what 
 Shakespeare wrote, and have not the fear of the sta- 
 tute of James I. before our eyes, we must disregard these 
 changes and suppressions in all cases ; and not regard them 
 in some cases and disregard them in others, as many editors 
 have done, and even Mr. Knight among them. On points 
 like these, and these only, the quartos are of higher author! ty 
 than the folio, because of the effect of the law in question. 
 
 "Pistol. Convey, the wise it call. Steal? foh! a/co for the phi-use." 
 
 Nothing could be plainer, it would seem, than this 
 speech, which is remarkable among the bombastic explo- 
 sions of ' mine ancient ' for its direct simplicity. He says, 
 " a fig for the phrase ! " and, after his fashion of always 
 using a mouth-filling, high-sounding word, when his me- 
 mory can command, or his tongue coin one, he uses the 
 Italian, J?co/ instead of the English, ( fig/ ' A fig/ or c a 
 fig's end/ is perhaps the commonest phrase of thoughtless, 
 careless contempt used in our language. It occurs five 
 times in Shakespeare's works. Pistol uses it twice, and 
 each time airs his Italian. But as a certain disease was 
 known to the Romans as/tc^s, and as a gesture indicative 
 of loathing and dread, used on the continent of Europe, 
 and which is of ancient and unknown origin, was called 
 ''making the fig/ even Mr. Douce could not resist the 
 temptation to confuse so plain a passage by learned dis- 
 quisition ; and consequently he perpetrates nine octavo 
 pages of grave and erudite comment upon poor Pistol's 
 
MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 109 
 
 "Jico." How it would have gratified the ancient had he 
 known that his speech would attain to such consequence 
 and dignity ! Mr. Douce thus concludes his remarks : 
 
 "On the whole, there is no other way of extricating ourselves 
 from the difficulties and ambiguities that attend the present sub- 
 ject, than by supposing some little confusion of ideas in our 
 poet's mind, a weakness not more uncommon with him than with 
 many o/ his commentators. Or, his phraseology might have 
 been inaccurate ; and it is to be feared that too much time and 
 conjecture have been frequently expended on passages originally 
 faulty, and which it might have been sufficient to have stated as 
 such, to the exclusion of further comment or useless explanation." 
 Illustrations of Shakespeare, Vol. I. p. 500. 
 
 The admission of " a confusion of ideas" on the part of 
 the poet's commentators, is both appropriate and naive, 
 considering the occasion of making it. But what shall be 
 thought of the commentator who allows his learning to in- 
 volve him in " difficulties and ambiguities" which have no 
 actual existence, and then attempts to extricate himself by 
 attributing confusion of thought and inaccurate phrase- 
 ology to Shakespeare ! 
 
 In Henry IV., Part II., Act V. Sc. 3, Pistol says : 
 
 " When Pistol lies, do this ; and fig me, like 
 The bragging Spaniard." 
 
 Here, indeed, there is allusion to ' making the fig/ " Do 
 this," manifestly refers to an action with which the speaker 
 accompanied his words ; " fig " becomes an active verb ; and 
 the comparison to " the bragging Spaniard " comes in to 
 confirm the reference. But this use of the word is no more 
 like that in " a^co for the phrase " in this play, or " a jco 
 for thy friendship," in Henry V., than it is like that in 
 lago's " Virtue ? a fig," in the third Scene of the first Act 
 of Othello, or his " blessed fig's end," in the first Scene of 
 
110 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 the second Act. Truly, much learning hath made these 
 commentators mad. 
 
 ACT V. SCE-NE 5. 
 
 " Fal. Ignorance itself is & plummet over me." 
 
 Trouble about this. Johnson proposes plume, and 
 Farmer, planet, instead of " plummet/' The matter seems 
 very plain. Falstaff is made to appear such an ass, he is 
 so overwhelmed by the reproofs and jeers heaped upon him, 
 and particularly by Sir Hugh Evans, whom Ford has 
 quizzed but a moment before for his inability to speak cor- 
 rectly, that he says : "I am your theme ; you have the 
 start of me ; I am dejected ; I am not able to answer the 
 Welch flannel. Ignorance itself is a plummet over me :" 
 that is, ' even this blundering Welchinan attempts to 
 decide upon my rectitude/ He has but just said, in re- 
 ply to a gibe from the parson, " Seese and putter ! have I 
 lived to stand the taunt of one that makes fritters of Eng- 
 lish ? " 
 
 
MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 
 
 MR. HUNTER* thus opens his comments upon Measure for 
 Measure. 
 
 " Few of Shakespeare's plays give so little pleasure as this. 
 The fault is, in a great measure, in the plot, which is improbable 
 and disgusting. But the play wants character. The principal 
 persons are unindividualized men and women, and it may be 
 .doubted whether they always exhibit the feeling which really 
 belongs to the strange situations in which they are placed." 
 
 In this opinion he is sustained by Coleridge, and by 
 Mr. Knight. It is prudent, as well as pleasant, to agree 
 with such critics ; but sometimes both policy and prefe- 
 rence must needs be set aside ; and I cannot err in suppos- 
 ing that there are many who, though lacking with me the 
 sanction of such opinion, find, with me, in their enjoyment 
 of the transcendent poetry, the subtle and far-reaching 
 thought, and the nicely discriminated characters of this 
 play, an ample compensation for the consciousness that 
 they have opposed their judgments, even to that of Cole- 
 ridge. 
 
 As to the plot, it should be remarked, that though 
 the incidents upon which it turns are such as cannot in 
 these days be made the topics of conversation in gen- 
 
 * New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare. 
 By Joseph Hunter. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1845. 
 
112 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 eral society, or the subjects of dramatic representation 
 before a polite audience, there is nothing in them to make 
 the play repulsive in the closet. Interdicted, as the story 
 must now be considered in the social circle, there is nothing 
 in it to contaminate the individual. Its themes are ex- 
 cluded from the drawing-room, as we avoid there a dis- 
 cussion of the internal economy of the Lying-in Hospital, 
 or anatomical disquisitions upon the viscera ; though moral 
 taint would not sooner follow upon the just consideration 
 of the one than from the professional examination of the 
 others. 
 
 It was not so in the days of Elizabeth and James. 
 Then, ladies of irreproachable character listened to that, in 
 the company of men, and from men, which would offend 
 the ears of a high-bred courtesan of these days. But it 
 may be justly questioned whether women are chaster, men 
 more continent, or society in general has a higher rnoraJ 
 tone now, than when Measure for Measure was performed 
 before the most unexceptionable audience which the court 
 and city of London could furnish. The elegant dissolute- 
 ness of the court of Charles II., and the gross debauchery 
 of the days of the first Georges and their predecessor, do 
 not contrast more strongly with the tone of our society than 
 with that of the public for which Shakespeare wrote ; 
 though many are thoughtlessly apt to attribute somewhat 
 of the social looseness of the former period to that which 
 preceded it by half a century. With regard to the latter, 
 that of Anne and the first two Georges, which copious con- 
 temporary records show to have been marked by an open 
 disregard of almost every restraint upon the relations of 
 the sexes, accompanied by a coarseness of tone truly dis- 
 gusting, it should be here remembered, that it was for tl it- 
 public of those times that Pope changed "toes" to feet, in 
 the fifth Scene of the first Act of Borneo and Juliet, for 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : NATURE OF ITS PLOT. 113 
 
 the sake of " delicacy ; " and that both the dramatist and 
 his poet editor found an apologist in Malone, on the score 
 that " the word employed in the text undoubtedly did not 
 appear indelicate in Shakespeare's time, though perhaps it 
 would not be endured at this day." It may be that now 
 we have the genuine moral purity of 1600, with none of 
 the hypocritical squeamishness of 1750 ; but if Measure 
 for Measure be voted intrinsically repulsive on account of 
 its plot, it is to be feared that we have more of the latter 
 and less of the former than we would like to own. 
 
 The passion upon which the action of the play hinges 
 is one which nature has made common to mankind, which 
 influences largely the destiny of every one of us, and which 
 tinges more or less deeply the pages of every tale that has 
 lived in the memory of the world. As Shakespeare has re- 
 presented it in this drama, it is unrestrained, indeed, but it 
 is also unperverted : it tempts to hideous crime, but in itself 
 it is not monstrous. There lurks more moral poison in the 
 damnable metaphysics of one adulterous French romance, 
 or one incestuous German melodrama, than in whole libra- 
 lies of such plays as this. In the character of the act upon 
 which it turns, and 'in the decorum of its language, 
 Hamlet has no advantage over it. The crime of Hamlet's 
 mother and uncle, and the terms in which the son rebukes 
 his parent for her past guilt and warns her against future 
 error,* to say nothing of the songs of poor, half-crazed 
 Ophelia, are much more exceptionable upon the score of 
 delicacy, than any word uttered or deed hinted by the prin- 
 cipal characters in Measure for Measure. But in neither 
 play is there contamination ; and in the latter, the princi- 
 pal personage, she for whom the play was written, and around 
 whom the others group themselves, is an embodiment of the 
 
 * Act III. Sc. 4. 
 
114 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 iciest, the most repelling continence. Nothing^Sj^d-sive is 
 brought before the reader's eye. The relations of Claudio 
 and Juliet, while they awaken our pity for their sufferings, 
 warn us against their error. And poor deserted and repu- 
 diated Mariana, counting through five years the lonely 
 days and nights in that moated grange ! do not her wrongs 
 and her true-hearted devotion plead "trumpet-tongued" 
 against the guilt of her betrothed husband ? As to his 
 dramatic relations with Isabella, what influence do they 
 exert, save upon the side of virtue ? Which comes most 
 bravely out from those interviews, the designing villain, or 
 the intended victim ? What he says to her, is said by 
 scores of scoundrels such as he in scores of other plays, in- 
 cluding some of Shakespeare's ; but what she says to Mm, 
 and to her brother, about his base designs, finds no such 
 utterance from other lips. I do not envy those who find 
 this plot disgusting. They seem to me to be " more nice 
 than wise." 
 
 The principal characters, instead of being " unindi- 
 vidualized men and women," are distinctly drawn embodi- 
 ments of types, clearly if not strongly marked. There are 
 rulers, upright in intention, and not wanting in wisdom, 
 but who lack administrative force, and who, half conscious 
 of their failing, seek on some pretence to effect that by the 
 hands of others which their own weak wills have failed to 
 consummate. They are thoughtful when they should be 
 active ; and are employed in analyzing the causes or tracing 
 the consequences of crime, when their energies should be 
 bent on its prevention or its punishment. Such a ruler is 
 the Duke. His inertness has allowed " strict statutes and 
 most biting laws," which he confesses are "needful bits 
 and curbs to headstrong steeds," to sleep for fourteen 
 years ; and his assumption of the monk's cowl is not his 
 first masquerade ; for Lucio, who knows nothing of his 
 
MEA. FOR ME A. : ITS CHARACTERS : ANGELO. 115 
 
 present disguise, calls him (Act IV. Sc. 3), " the old fan- 
 tastical duke of dark corners." Shakespeare seems to 
 have had an ever present consciousness of the essential 
 opposition between the faculties which lead men to reflect 
 and those which impel them to act. This consciousness 
 often appears in his writings ; but is never so clearly 
 uttered as in these lines in the soliloquy of Hamlet, in the 
 fourth Scene of the fourth Act of the tragedy. 
 
 "Now, whether it be 
 Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple 
 Of thinking too precisely on th' event, 
 A thought, which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom 
 And ever three parts coward, I do not know 
 "Why yet I live to say, 'This thing's to do.' " 
 
 And yet this soliloquy and the scene in which it occurs 
 are cut out of the play as it is acted; because, forsooth, it 
 retards the action. When will people learn that Hamlet 
 is not a drama of action ! 
 
 In Angelo, Shakespeare has drawn a faithful portrait of 
 the man whose pride is in his eminent respectability the 
 man who finds it easy to lead a reputable life, and whose 
 whole life is in his good repute. He is a selfish precisian. 
 He is content to be pure when he has no great temptation 
 to be otherwise; but he would seem pure at every hazard. 
 There are men of no remarkable abilities or acquirements 
 who attain position and influence and the deference due to 
 wisdom, solely by the discreetness of their lives, the grave 
 courtliness of their bearing, their composed and collected 
 manner, and the polished preciseness of their speech, which 
 approaches pomposity, but still stops short of it. Such a 
 man Shakespeare has shown us in Angela, and in him alone. 
 Polonius Shakespeare's acute and high-bred courtier, not 
 the jack-a-dandy of the stage, is an approximation to this 
 type ; but he has too much affectation of subtle thought in 
 
116 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 his conversation. The man whom Angelo represents is al- 
 ways spoken of as ' eminent for his clear common sense and 
 practical views of life/ and would never talk as Polonius 
 does about Hamlet and Ophelia to the King and Queen in 
 the second Scene of the second Act of the tragedy. 
 
 That Angelo is punctilious, his first speech in the play, 
 as he enters in obedience to the request of the Duke, plainly 
 shows. He says, 
 
 " Always obedient to your grace's will, 
 I come to know your pleasure." 
 
 It needs the manner of a Chesterfield to give those lines 
 their proper utterance, to make them deferential without 
 servility, and formal without affectation. The Duke's reply 
 shows how eminently respectable his deputy was considered 
 by all Vienna ; how he was looked to by the public, as a 
 man whose character and conduct fitted him for dignified 
 position, and how reputable were all his antecedents. 
 
 " Angelo, 
 
 There is a kind of character in thy life, 
 That, to th' observer, doth thy history 
 Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings 
 Are not thine own so proper, as to waste 
 Thyself upon thy virtues, them on thee," &G. 
 
 Claudio says of him, in the third Scene of this Act, that 
 he 
 
 " for a name 
 
 Now puts the drowsy and neglected act 
 Freshly on me : 'tis surely for a name :" 
 
 The Duke tells Friar Thomas that his deputy " stands at 
 a guard with envy; " and he himself, in the solitude of his 
 own chamber, confesses to himself that he takes pride in his 
 own gravity; yet even in that secret place he shrinks from 
 the confession, and says, " let no man hear me." 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : ITS CHARACTERS : ANGELO. 117 
 
 But Angela is not all hypocrite at first. His gravity, his 
 preciseness, and his respectability, are not mere shams. He 
 is naturally sober, formal, and austere; and having never en- 
 countered exactly the sort of temptation which alone could 
 betray him into impropriety, he has been exceedingly proper 
 all his life. His selfish and hard-hearted repudiation^ 
 poor Mariana, which afterwards appears, would not im- 
 peach his respectability then more than it would now. 
 Generosity is one thing ; respectability quite another. They 
 are not twins, nor is the latter born of the former. Observe 
 that Angela is naturally too grave to find any amusement 
 in the conversation between the Clown, Froth, and Elbow, 
 in the first Scene of the second Act. Elbow brings in, as he 
 says, " two notorious benefactors." The humor of the blun- 
 der does not exist for Angelo, who, not to be turned from his 
 literal preciseness, solemnly asks, 
 
 " Benefactors ! Well, what benefactors are they ? Are they not male- 
 factors?" 
 
 He puts but a curt question or two, and, leaving the affair 
 in the hands of Escalus, soon goes out, hoping that his 
 colleague " will find cause to whip them all." There is no 
 affectation about this : he really finds no pleasure in study- 
 ing the characteristics of such scum ; and thinks whipping 
 the best use to which they can be put. 
 
 Here it may be pertinent to say, that I cannot agree 
 with those who find in Elbow only a feeble imitation of Dog- 
 berry. He has nothing in common with the guardian of 
 Messina, except his ignorance. The pompous self-suffi- 
 ciency, the ineffable conceit, the affectation of manner 
 which imposes upon Dogberry's subordinates, and actually 
 gives him a moral power over them, are entirely wanting in 
 Elbow. Although, like Dogberry, he was " the poor Duke's 
 officer/' he would never have the calm self-confidence to 
 
118 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 say, as Dogberry does, with half deprecating, half patro- 
 nizing air, to a nobleman who told him that he was tedi- 
 ous, " Truly for my own part, if I were as tedious as a 
 king, I could find it in my heart to bestow it all of your 
 worship." Elbow lacks the force and self-possession of 
 Dogberry. Feeble-minded, modest, and well meaning, as 
 well as ignorant, he is rather the type of " Goodman Ver- 
 ges " in his youth. 
 
 But, to return a moment to Angela. The naturally 
 formal and unbending character of his mind is shown in 
 the manner of his answer, when the Provost (Act II. Sc. 
 2), seeking assurance for the act, asks if it be really his 
 will that Claudio shall die on the morrow. He does not 
 reply simply 'yes;' but, 
 
 "Did I not tell thee yea? Hadst thou not order? 
 Why dost thou ask again ? " 
 
 He cannot conceive of a scruple or doubt entertained by a 
 subordinate, after he has received orders from his superior. 
 Immediately afterward, giving directions about poor Juliet, 
 then hourly looking for the birth of her child, he uses no 
 term of pity, does not even call her by her name, but 
 designates her by an epithet which is at once opprobrious, 
 technical, and suited to lips " of wisest censure ; " and coldly 
 adds, with a scrupulous regard for propriety, and an equally 
 scrupulous disregard of the appeals of sympathy for such 
 an improper person, no matter what her extremity, 
 
 "Let her have needful, but not lavish means." 
 
 This is before he has seen Isabella, and ere the cold sur- 
 face of his soul has been ruffled by passion; for we learn 
 afterward, from his own lips, that he has never yet been 
 moved by woman's beauty : 
 
 " this virtuous maid 
 Subdues me quite. Ever till now 
 When men were fond, I smiled, and wondered how." 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : ITS POETRY. 119 
 
 And he has prided himself, too, on this insensibility to 
 female charms; for when Isabella first comes before him, 
 and the Provost is about to retire, Angela calls to him 
 " Stay awhile/' There is no need that his subordinate 
 should remain ; but Angela wishes to show how unmoved 
 he will be by the tears and the charms of this beautiful 
 young woman. What Isabella says of him in the last 
 scene, is more than half true 1 : 
 
 "I partly think 
 
 A due sincerity govern'd his deeds 
 Till he did look on me," 
 
 for when he leaves her, after their first interview, and she 
 says, 
 
 " Heaven keep your honour safe," 
 
 he replies, 
 
 'Amen, 
 
 "Amen, 
 
 For I am that way going to temptation 
 Where prayers cross." 
 
 What blindness and prejudice must it be which calls so 
 truthful and carefully drawn a character " unindividualiz- 
 ed." Had Shakespeare not left us Angela, one strongly 
 marked type would have been wanting in his pano- 
 rama of mankind. The same may be said of one other 
 character in the comedy ; but that one will be considered 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The poetry of this play should ever protect it against 
 such judgments as that passed by Mr. Hunter. In no one 
 of Shakespeare's works, not even in Hamlet itself, does that 
 marvellous interfusion of imagination and philosophy, of 
 brilliant fancy and sober thought, taking form in words 
 used with a daring mastery which at once astonishes, de- 
 lights, and satisfies, which is the grand and peculiar char- 
 
120 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 acteristic of Shakespeare's graver moods, and which we call, 
 for want of any other term, Shakesperian, more command 
 our wondering admiration. There is more of it in the great 
 tragedies, for in those there was more occasion for it ; but 
 even there it exists only in greater quantity, not in higher 
 perfection, and in no one of the other comedies is it found 
 scattered with so profuse a hand. It seems ruthless to 
 pluck such jewels from their setting ; but to avert the pre- 
 judice which threatens to cast into the shadow of neglect 
 one of the grandest works of the greatest Poet, a prejudice 
 largely due to the litteratrices of the last century, and worthy 
 of the women and the period when Dorimants and Mirabels 
 made love to Aramintas and FlippantaSj it may be par- 
 donable. Are these passages among those which give 
 "little pleasure?" 
 
 " Duke. Heaven doth with us, as we with torches d 
 Not light them for themselves ; for if our virtues 
 Did not go forth* of us, 'twere all alike 
 As if we had therm not. Spirits are not finely touch' d, 
 But to fine issues : nor nature never lends 
 The smallest scruple of her excellence, 
 But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines 
 Herself the glory of a creditor, 
 Both thanks and use." 
 
 Act I. Sc. 1. 
 
 " Claud. As surfeit is the father of much fast, 
 So every scope by the immoderate use 
 Turns to restraint : Our natures do pursue 
 (Like rats that ravin down their proper bane) 
 A thirsty evil ; and when we drink, we die." 
 
 Act I. Sc. 3. 
 
 " Isab. Could great men thunder 
 As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet ; 
 For every pelting, petty officer, 
 
 Would use his heaven for thunder : nothing but thunder. - 
 Merciful heaven ! 
 
 Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt, 
 Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : ITS POETRY. 121 
 
 Than the soft myrtle : But man, proud man ! 
 
 Brest in a little brief authority : 
 
 Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd, 
 
 His glassy essence, like an angry ape, 
 
 Plays such fantastick tricks before high heaven, 
 
 As make the angels weep ; who, with our spleens, 
 
 Would all themselves laugh mortal." 
 
 Act II. Se. 2. 
 
 Or is it in these words, addressed by the Duke to Olaudio 
 upon his approaching death, words fraught with such a 
 wealth of wisdom for the living or the dying, that the 
 critics seek in vain for pleasure ? 
 
 " Duke. Be absolute for death : either death or life 
 Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life, 
 If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing 
 That none but fools would keep : a breath thou art,, 
 Servile to all the skiey influences, 
 That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st, 
 Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool: 
 For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun, 
 And yet runn'st toward him still : Thou art not noble ; 
 For all the accommodations that thou bear'st, 
 Are nurs'd by baseness : Thou art by no means valiant ; 
 For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork 
 Of a poor worm : Thy best of rest is sleep, 
 And that thou oft provok'st ; yet grossly fear'et 
 Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself; 
 For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains 
 That issue out of dust : Happy thou art not ; 
 For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get ; 
 And what thou hast, forget'st : Thou art not certain ; 
 For thy complexion shifts to strange affects, 
 After the moon : If thou art rich, thou art poor ; 
 For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, 
 Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, 
 And death unloads thee : Friend hast thou none : 
 For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, 
 The mere effusion of thy proper loins, 
 Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, 
 For ending thee no sooner : Thou hast nor youth, nor age ; 
 But, as it were, au after-dinner's Bleep, 
 
122 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 Dreaming on both : for all thy blessed youth 
 Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms 
 Of palsied eld ; and when thou art old, and rich, 
 Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, 
 To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this 
 That bears the name of life ? Yet in this life 
 * Lie hid more thousand deaths ; yet death we fear, 
 That makes these odds all even." 
 
 Act III. Sc. 1. 
 
 These passages, which are but specimens of numbers 
 like them, some of less bulk, but all of nearly equal beauty, 
 scattered up and down the play, and so interwoven with the 
 structure of the scene that to take them out would be to 
 rend them, show what golden thoughts the poet built into 
 this drama. But besides and beyond these, there is one 
 passage which rivals, if it do not surpass, in sublimity and 
 power any other which came from Shakespeare's pen. It is 
 this. 
 
 " Claud. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; 
 To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot : 
 This sensible warm motion to become 
 A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 
 To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
 In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; 
 To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, 
 And blown with restless violence round about 
 The pendent world ; or to be, worse than worst, 
 Of those that lawless and uncertain thoughts 
 Imagine, howling ! " 
 
 Act III Sc. 1. 
 
 Where else is there language so laden with meaning, 
 so suggestive of thought ? Who else would have dared the 
 expression " to lie in cold obstruction? " for who else would 
 have seen that those two words "cold obstruction" tell 
 the whole tale of utter dissolution, which the next two lines 
 illustrate and vary with words and thoughts but little less 
 condensed and pregnant. What a wonderful, strange fit- 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : ITS POETRY. 123 
 
 ness there is in the use of that word " thrilling ! " But I 
 shrink alike from picking this marvellous conception to 
 pieces and from thrusting myself between my readers and 
 their spontaneous admiration of Shakespeare. Yet it should 
 be said about the last two lines of this passage, if it never 
 have been said, and I believe it never has, that they 
 possess an awful beauty which it is hardly in the power of 
 language to describe. The idea seems to be but vaguely 
 hinted ; and yet an undefined, peculiar dread goes with the 
 words, that would vanish, or dwindle into certain fear, if we 
 were told exactly what they mean. We feel that they have 
 conveyed that to us which they themselves tell us is too 
 horrible for utterance. What can be those monstrous 
 thoughts which ever seem to be about to take on hideous 
 shape, and ever again vanish into formlessness, leaving the 
 tortured spirit howling with rage and horror at it knows not 
 what, save that it is the dim phantasmagoria of the hell it 
 ever bears within itself ? What are those thoughts ? We 
 must first be damned eternally ere we can know. And yet 
 Shakespeare in half a dozen words has made us feel what 
 they must be. 
 
 I do not hesitate to say that there are not other ten | 
 such lines as these in the whole range of poetry, except ! 
 in Elipliaz ' relation of his vision, in the book of Job. 
 
 u In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep 
 falleth on men, 
 
 " Fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones 
 to shake. 
 
 " Then a spirit passed before my face ; the hair of my flesh 
 stood up : 
 
 " It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an 
 image before mine eyes : silence : and I heard a voice, 
 
 " Shall mortal man be more just than God ? shall a man be 
 more pure than his Maker ? " Chap. IV. 
 
124 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 Measure for Measure, though it delights not Mr. Hun- 
 ter, or Mr. Knight, or yet Coleridge, can only lose by com- 
 parison with the greatest poem ever written; and Shake- 
 speare can well afford to find an intellectual rival in a dra- 
 matic poet whose work had reached immortal age while yet 
 the Pyramids were young. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Duke. Of government the properties to unfold, 
 Would seem in me to affect speech and discourse; 
 Since I am put to know, that your own science 
 Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice 
 My strength can give you : Then no more remains 
 But that to j*our sufficiency, as your worth is able, 
 And let them work." 
 
 The last two lines are universally allowed to be incom- 
 prehensible as they stand in the original ; and none of 'the 
 many attempts to alter or explain them have seemed to sat- 
 isfy even those of whose ingenuity they were the fruit. In 
 such extremity, it would be arrogant to claim to have done 
 that which so many able critics and editors have failed to 
 do ; but I make the passage plain for my own reading by 
 a change in only one point and one letter; thereby correct- 
 ing two trifling errors, which seem to me to be such as 
 might easily have been made. I put a colon after ' remains/ 
 change B for P, as Howe did, and read, 
 
 " your own science 
 Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice 
 My strength can give you : then no more remains : 
 Put that to your sufficiency, as your worth is able, 
 And let them work." 
 
 i{ Sufficiency " is obviously the plenary power delegated to 
 Escalus and Angela; and, if a paraphrase of this reading 
 be needed, it is this : Your own knowledge of the proper- 
 
MEASURE FOB MEASURE. 125 
 
 ties of government exceeds the extent of any information 
 which I can give you : then no more remains to be consid- 
 ered : put that [i. e., your knowledge of government] to the 
 ample powers delegated to you, as your individual worth of 
 character is all sufficient, and let them work. 
 
 But there is yet another method of making the pas- 
 sage plain and the line musical, which does the least pos- 
 sible violence to the original text, and which I do not re- 
 member to have seen suggested. The mistake of ' able ' 
 for ' added ' is one which might easily be made by a care- 
 less compositor in setting indistinct manuscript ; and i able ' 
 once in the compositor's mind, ' as/ the word which de- 
 stroys the rhythm of the line, would naturally suggest itself, 
 and be inserted in the text to make an approximation to 
 sense. It is not improbable, at least, that the passage was 
 written, 
 
 " Then no more remains, 
 
 But that to your sufficiency your worth is added, 
 And let them work.' 
 
 In this reading " sufficiency " refers, of course, to the capa- 
 city of Escalus, which is spoken of by the Duke in the im- 
 mediately preceding sentence ; and the emphatic word is 
 " but/' and not " that/' which, a pronoun in the previous 
 reading, becomes, in this, a conjunctive particle. This accep- 
 tation of " sufficiency," which is contended for by many com- 
 mentators, whatever may be the reading, is made the more 
 apposite, and this reading the more probable and plausible, 
 by the phraseology of the Duke, who, after saying to Escalus, 
 'your knowledge of government exceeds my own/ adds, 
 c then [i. e., therefore] no more remains, but that to your 
 sufficiency [i. e., your intellectual capacity and knowledge 
 of the science of government to which I have just alluded] 
 your worth [i. e., your moral fitness] is added, and let them 
 work/ 
 
126 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 Apropos to the subject, tell it in Gath and publish it 
 in Ascalon, that Malone, even Edmund Malone, in com- 
 menting upon this passage, has the following note : 
 
 " ' And let them work,' a figurative expression, * let them 
 ferment 199 !! I 
 
 This is the cap-sheaf of annotation in the post-' Augustan 
 age' of English literature. Words fail us, and we are 
 driven to the use of mere dumb signs of astonishment, in- 
 credulity and ridicule. 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 " Lucio. If the duke, with the other dukes, come not to composition 
 with the King of Hungary, why then all the dukes fall upon the King. 
 
 " 1 Gentleman. Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of Hun- 
 gary's." 
 
 The period of the action of this play has been regarded, 
 as far as my knowledge of editions and commentaries goes, 
 as altogether indeterminable. The editors seem to have 
 abandoned the attempt to ascertain it in hopeless de- 
 spair. The learned Mr. Collier says nothing about it, and 
 Mr. Knight, in his note upon the costume of the play, in 
 his Pictorial Edition, remarks : 
 
 " With the exception, perhaps, of the Winter's Tale, no play 
 of Shakspere's is so utterly destitute of any ' loop or hinge to 
 hang an ' appropriate costume upon as Measure for Measure. The 
 scene is laid in Vienna, of which city there never was a duke ; 
 and in the whole of the list of persons represented there is not 
 one German name. Vincentio, Angelo, Escalus, Claudio, Lucio, 
 Isabella, Juliet, Francisca, Mariana, all smack of Italy; .and it 
 has therefore been questioned by some whether or not we should 
 read " Sienna " for " Vienna." There does not appear, however, 
 to be any authority for supposing the scene of action to have been 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : PERIOD OF THE ACTION. 127 
 
 altered either theatrically or typographically, and, consequently, 
 we must leave the artist to the indulgence of his own fancy, with 
 the suggestion merely that the Viennese costume of the time of 
 Shakspere must be sought for amongst the national monuments 
 of the reign of the Emperor Rudolph II., A. D. 1576 1612." 
 Pictorial Shakspere, Vol. II. p. 273. 
 
 If we did not know whence Shakespeare took the plot 
 of Measure for Measure, if the passage just quoted from 
 the second scene of the play did not occur in it, and if there 
 were no historical records of Hungary and the German 
 Empire, I could understand this perplexity; but as the 
 case stands, it seems that the question may be settled by 
 investigation. 
 
 The plot of the play is taken from the Promos and 
 Cassandra of George Whetstone, a tale published in his 
 Heptameron of Civil Discourses, in 1582, and republished 
 by Mr. Collier in his Shakespeare's Library. The argu- 
 ment or plot of this story, as given by Whetstone himself, 
 which is printed in almost every critical edition of Shake- 
 speare's Works, begins, " In the Cyttie of Julio (sometimes 
 under the dominion of Corvinus King of Hungary and 
 Bohemia) there was a law," &c. The tale itself commences 
 thus : 
 
 " At what time Corvinus, the scourge of the Turkes, rayned 
 as Kinge of Bohemia, for to well governe the free cities of his 
 realme, he sent divers worthy majestrates," &c. 
 
 Shakespeare, with his usual tact in adapting his plays 
 to the understanding of his audience, changed the unknown 
 city, Julio, for Vienna, a place, the name and importance 
 of which was almost or quite as well known to Englishmen 
 of that day as of this ; with the place, he also changed, of 
 course, the prince whose delegated authority was abused. 
 But he scrupulously retained the costume and all the traits, 
 
]28 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 incidents, and allusions which mark the period of the story 
 on which he built his comedy; and added, besides, as we shall 
 see, certain two or three allusions not found in Whetstone's 
 story, as if for the very purpose of giving a local habitation 
 and a time, as well as an air of reality to his creation. The 
 Duke of Vienna in Shakespeare's comedy, is, of course, the 
 Duke of Austria, of which province that city has been for 
 hundreds of years the capital. Lucio opens the second 
 scene of the play by saying, " If the Duke with the other 
 Dukes come not to composition with the King of Hungary, 
 why, then all the Dukes fall upon the King." The period 
 of the action must then be, according to the internal evi- 
 dence of the play, a time when the Duke of Austria was 
 not King of Hungary (which he sometimes was by choice of 
 the nation, the crown of Hungary being elective), and when 
 Hungary was at war with Austria : * according to the re- 
 quirements of the story which furnished the plot, the action 
 must take place at a time when there was a Corvinus, King 
 of Hungary and also of Bohemia, and who was also a scourge 
 of the Turks. 
 
 Now, we find that in the year 1464, the Hungarians 
 refused to choose a king from the house of Austria, and 
 raised to the throne Mathias Corvinus, son of Huniades, 
 regent in the previous reign, as appears in the following 
 passage under that year in Heiss' History of the Empire. 
 
 " Les Hongrois \ 7 oyant 1'embarras o\\ etoit 1'Empereur, au 
 
 * Perhaps some of my readers would be glad to be reminded that the 
 German Empire was not hereditary but elective ; the Emperor being chosen 
 by the Electoral College constituted by the rulers of those states which 
 formed the Empire. Almost every Electorate has, at some time more or 
 less remote, furnished an occupant for the Imperial throne. Thus it hap- 
 pened that the King of Hungary was sometimes Emperor of Germany ami 
 Duke of Austria as well as King of Hungary ; and sometimes he was the 
 King of Poland, sometimes the King of Bohemia. In the present instance, 
 however, as we shall see, he was a Hungarian. 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : PERIOD OF THE ACTION. 129 
 
 lieu de chercher un Roi dans la Maison d'Autriche, elurent en 
 la place du defunt Prince Ladislas, Mathias Corvin, fils du brave 
 Huniades. Us ne le couronnerent pas alors, parce que 1'Empe- 
 reur retenoit toujours la couronne, dont ils avoient accoutume de 
 couronner leurs Rois." 
 
 Histoire de V Empire, Liv. III. 
 
 But this date is incorrect according to the contempo- 
 rary writer Antonius Bonfinus, who says that Mathias 
 Corvinus was crowned in 1464, having been elected in 1458. 
 He reigned until his death, which took place in 1490. Dur- 
 ing this time he was almost continually at war with the 
 Duke of Austria, Frederick III., and with the Turks. His 
 expeditions were generally successful against both. He 
 usually " conquered a peace " by a very bloody victory ; so 
 that the Gentleman who replies to Lucio might well say, 
 " Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of Hungary's/' 
 In 1476 he subdued the greater part of Austria ; and in 
 1485 he marched to Vienna and took it. In 1478 he laid 
 waste the country of the Turks for thirty miles, and took 
 thirty thousand prisoners. In 1480 he is recorded to have 
 slain thirty thousand Turks in battle, to which he added 
 a trifle of three thousand more in 1482. But, more than 
 this, in 1472 he invaded Poland, and conquered the Bohe- 
 mians who came to the aid of his enemies ; and in 1473, 
 the provinces of Moravia and Silesia were ceded to him with 
 the title of King of Bohemia for life ; the provinces to re- 
 turn to Bohemia after his death, on the payment of 600,000 
 crown s 3 but the remainder of Bohemia to fall to him if he 
 survived Ladislaus, then rightful king of that country. 
 
 Paulus Jovius, who in this case had no temptation to. 
 flatter or malign with his " pens of iron or gold," thus- 
 speaks of the prowess and success of Corvinus, in a passage 
 which still further establishes the points already made : 
 
 " Sed post editum infclicem partum, Regina contention! finenL 
 
 9 
 
130 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 fecit honestis conditionibus, legitimeque demum antique Regum 
 diademate apud Albam coronatus est ; sic ut regnavit supra annos 
 triginta sex, occupatus semper novo bello, quum perpetuis,&in- 
 victis armis undique sibi amplissimam laudem & gloriam parari- 
 dam existimaret. Non sustinuere ardentis Ducis vim Poloni. 
 qui arma Hungaris inferre ausi fuerant. Hsec eadem Germano- 
 rum robora perfregit, quum Austriae Viennam Frederico Csesari 
 adimeret. Valachorum exercitum ancipiti proelio profligavit, quo 
 ipse sagitta vulneratus, sed plan6 victor discessit. Binis quoque 
 prseliis Turcarura ab Illyrici limite irrumpentium audaciam ita 
 contudit atque repressit, ut Mahometes eorum irnperator, omnium 
 prope gentium victor, successorque ejus filius Bajazetes, aequissi- 
 mis legibus pacem petierint. Gessit adversus Slesisitas ad Yra- 
 tislaviam urbem acre bellum, tanta utique felicitate, ut in toto 
 Hungarici regni limite devictarum ab se gentium summac gloriae, 
 trophaea spectarentur." 
 
 Elogia Virorum Ittustrium, Lib. III. 
 
 Here, then, we have all our conditions fulfilled. A 
 Corvinus, King of Hungary and Bohemia, at war with the 
 Duke of Austria, and a scourge of the Turks. The period 
 of the play is evidently between 1473, when he received 
 the title of King of Bohemia, or rather, 1476, when he over- 
 ran the greater part of Austria, and 1490, when he died. 
 The time of the action of few of Shakespeare's non-histori- 
 cal plays can he so definitely determined. But, as he 
 marched on Vienna in 1485, we are able to determine 
 almost the very year required ; and thus the period of this 
 play, instead of being altogether indeterminable, is fixed 
 with more accuracy than that of any other which has not a 
 strictly historical subject. 
 
 Frederick III. was Emperor of Germany as well as Duke 
 of Austria ; but that it was the custom of the Emperors 
 to combine, as Lucio says, " with the other Dukes," and 
 for " all the Dukes to fall upon the King " of Hungary, is 
 evident from the following passage from Heiss, who records 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : PERIOD OF THE ACTION. 131 
 
 in it exactly such a proceeding on the part of one of the 
 earlier Emperors, Henry I., who was Duke of Saxony : 
 
 " Au commencement de son regne, il ne pensa qu'a reconci- 
 lier en Allemagne les Princes, Comtcs et Seigneurs, les uns avec 
 les autres, pour etablir par tout une parfaite union, comme etant 
 1'unique fondement de la prosperite, et de la gloire des Allemans. 
 II y reussit si bien, et gagna de telle sorte leur amitie, que par 
 leur assistance, tous concoururent a luifaire remporter une sig- 
 nalee victoire sur les Hongrois, qui, selon leur coutume, etoient 
 venus faire une irruption en Allemagne avec une puissante armee." 
 
 Histoire de P Empire, Liv. II. 
 
 It is also noteworthy that the wretch Barnardine is 
 spoken of as " a Bohemian born, but here [in Vienna] nurs- 
 ed up and bred ; " * and that the Duke tells Friar Thomas, 
 that Angela supposes him " travelled to Poland/' f a jour- 
 ney, not uncommon with the Dukes of Austria, who con- 
 tinually had need of the aid of the Poles against the Hun- 
 garians. Thus carefully and minutely has Shakespeare 
 
 * Act IV. Sc. 2. f Act I. Sc. 4. 
 
 My authorities for these historical facts are the following : 
 
 Antonii Bonfinii rerum Hungaricum Decades quartuor et dimidia. 
 
 Fol. Basle: 1543. 
 Pauli Jovii Novocomensis Elogia Virorum bellica virtute illustrium. 
 
 Fol. Basil. : 1575. 
 Isaacson's Saturnii Ephemerides, sive Tabula Historica Chronolo- 
 
 gica: Fol. London: 1633. 
 Histoire de 1'Empire, &c., par le Sieur Heiss. 5 vols., 8vo. Paris : 
 
 1711. 
 
 The same information may doubtless be obtained in other historical 
 works more in the ordinary course of reading ; but I was unable to find in 
 any others in my own possession or easily accessible to me, the events 
 of the reigns of the earlier Kings of Hungary and Emperors of Austria, 
 recorded with sufficient particularity for the purposes of this investigation. 
 The works of Pray and Bell were not within my reach, and Coxe's History 
 of the House of Austria is not an exception to the foregoing remark; 
 although its accounts of the expeditions of Corvinus against Frederic and 
 the Turks are, of course, perfectly consistent with the authorities to which 
 I have referred. Isaacson's book, my copy of which, however, is the only 
 
132 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 indicated the place and the period of this drama. And 
 yet we are told that "it has been questioned by some 
 whether or not we should read Sienna for Vienna ! " Truly, 
 it seems as if editors, critics, and commentators had read 
 this play with eyes half open, as well as with heads and 
 hearts top full of prejudice. 
 
 It may interest some of the readers of this volume to 
 know that this Corvinus, King of Hungary, whose peace 
 was so dreaded by the citizens of Vienna, and who was such 
 a scourge to the Turks, was a distinguished patron of liter- 
 ature and the arts. After taking Vienna in 1485, he re- 
 tired to Buda, and there founded a noble library, consisting 
 chiefly of manuscripts of the Greek and Latin poets and 
 historians, and containing about thirty thousand volumes, 
 which were superbly bound in brocade protected with bosses 
 and clasps of gold or silver. The books were disposed in 
 vaulted galleries in which were fountains of marble and sil- 
 ver. The Turks revenged themselves upon him, after his 
 death, by utterly frustrating his care for the literary wants 
 of posterity. When Solyman the Magnificent took Buda by 
 storm in 1526, the library of Corvinus formed no inconsider- 
 able part of the plunder of the city : the Turkish soldiers tore 
 the covers from the volumes which they adorned and pro- 
 tected, for the sake of the gold and silver and precious stones 
 with which they were enriched. This library and its sad 
 fate are described with some particularity by Mr. Dibdin, 
 in his Bibliographical Decameron. The letters of Corvi- 
 nus were thought worthy of publication, and were issued 
 at Cassovia in Hungary, in 2 vols. 8vo., in 1744. 
 
 one which I ever saw, I commend to the notice of the student, as at once 
 the most particular and most clearly arranged chronological work in a 
 tabular form which has fallen under my observation. There are discre- 
 pancies of a year or two between these authors themselves, and also be- 
 tween them and some more modern authorities, as to dates ; but they do 
 not affect the merits of this question in the least. 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : SHAKESPEARE'S WOMEN. 133 
 
 SCENE 5. 
 
 "hab. And have you nuns no farther privileges? 
 
 Fran. Are not these large enough ? 
 
 hab. Yes, truly : I speak not as desiring more ; 
 But rather wishing a more strict restraint 
 Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare." 
 
 Shakespeare's women have been so much praised, and 
 it is so safe and so easy to praise them, that it may be con- 
 fidently assumed that they who have studied those wonder- 
 ful creations most lovingly and closely, are they who are 
 generally repeUed by the promiscuous praise bestowed upon 
 them ; for it is but too often the vague and unmeaning 
 panegyric of the thoughtless and undiscriminating, who 
 seek to acquire a reputation for taste by compliance with 
 custom. Those who truly know Shakespeare's women, 
 who regard them with instinctive devotion and intelligent 
 admiration, turn away with disappointment or distaste 
 from this adulation, to the loving contemplation of its ob- 
 ject ; and shut their ears to the always inadequate and 
 often belittling praise of the women, to bend their mind's 
 eye upon the women themselves, who never disappoint, and 
 never leave the cravings of man's heart unsatisfied, when he 
 who called them into being meant that they should fill it. 
 It is, indeed, one of the marvels of Shakespeare's genius, 
 that, living in the age in which he lived, born and bred as 
 he was, having such examples before him as the women of 
 the dramas written by his contemporaries and immediate 
 predecessors, and writing for a stage upon which women 
 never appeared, he created the most real- seeming, the most 
 captivating and truly feminine women in the whole range 
 of imaginative composition. Princesses or peasant girls, 
 Duchesses or dairy maids, wise or foolish, chaste or wanton, 
 they are always womanly ; or, in those few cases in which 
 the poet did not intend that they should fill the high 
 
134 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 requirements of that term, in some one of its beautiful 
 phases, their failings and their faults are womanish, at least. 
 
 ( The sex ' is fully represented in Shakespeare's pages. 
 He has shown us woman in all her aspects : the true- 
 hearted and the fickle, the pure and the impure, the lovely 
 and the loathly, all figure on his canvas ; hut however repul- 
 sive, as however enchanting they may he, their very faults 
 as well as their virtues are feminine. No mannish, even 
 no sexless woman affronts us in his view of womankind. 
 The sweet and shrinking Perdita is not more purely fem- 
 inine than her heroic mother Hermione, who, in her noble 
 traits and large outlines, leaves in our memories a figure 
 sad but grand, and like the statue that she feigned to be. 
 And Cleopatra, wily, almost wise ; abandoned to her 
 passions ; reviling the memory of one paramour, the more 
 to glorify her love for his successor ; and deserting even 
 him in his danger, to return again to him in his extremity, 
 yet charms us ; for, erring as she is, she errs like a 
 woman ; and the same inexplicable spell of mental sex 
 which chains our regards to her, in spite of all her falsehood 
 and her crimes, wins us to look with gracious eyes upon 
 her kind-hearted, brainless, tittering handmaid Charmian. 
 
 Among the charms with which Shakespeare has endowed 
 his women of the higher tpyes, a subduing tenderness of 
 heart and an innate purity of soul are eminent. The lovely, 
 lovable, and loving creatures seem to be devoted and self- 
 sacrificing from an impulse of their natures, to stifle which 
 would be to end their hopes of happiness. They are chaste, 
 not because they are passionless, or because they have delib- 
 erately weighed the propriety of two courses of conduct and 
 decided for the better ; but because, being passionful, they 
 are also single-eyed and true-hearted, and revolt instinc- 
 tively from the thought of wanton desecration of their spot- 
 less natures. Such are Miranda, Julia, Portia, Rosalind, 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : CHARACTER OF ISABELLA. 135 
 
 Viola, Perdita, Juliet, Desdemona, and, above all, Imogen; 
 but such is not Isabella; and it is in her that this play 
 furnishes us its second strongly marked type of character, 
 which, without her, would have been unrepresented on 
 Shakespeare's stage. 
 
 The poet has given us one marvellously faithful, and 
 yet ideal portrait of the woman sometimes, and, heaven 
 be thanked, but rarely, seen, who is compounded solely of 
 intellect and a sense of propriety. This woman makes piety 
 her employment, and chastity her profession. She is de- 
 liberately sanctified, and energetically virtuous. She is not 
 content with yielding to the influences and practising the 
 precepts of religion, she must openly mortify herself before 
 it. She is not satisfied with living chastely in thought and 
 deed, as maid or matron, she must continually fortify her- 
 self in a purity which, having reasoned herself into, she 
 fears that she might be reasoned out of, and lay deliberate 
 plans to preserve a continence which, in .most cases, she 
 need apprehend no temptation to relax. She is strong- 
 minded, and often enough strong-bodied ; and would have 
 stood till doomsday beside the ruined tower, and listened 
 amid the lingering light to the lay which won Coleridge's 
 Genevieve, and have gone away unthrilled by impulses 
 of soul and sense, and undisturbed by pity. She is a 
 pietist in her religion, a pedant in her talk, a prude in her 
 notions, and a prig in her conduct. This is the sort of 
 woman which alone could furnish a proper companion por- 
 trait to Angela; and Shakespeare has given her to us in 
 Isabella, one of the most truthful and carefully finished 
 of his female characters ; and yet to the thoughtful obser- . 
 vation of a manly man, one of the most repulsive. 
 
 The Supplementary Essay to this play in Mr. Knight's 
 Edition of the Works of Shakespeare states that Mrs. Lennox 
 calls Isabella " a vixen," and " a prude," but that Mrs. 
 
136 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 Jameson defends and eulogizes the character. I have yet 
 to read thoroughly the writings of any of Shakespeare's 
 female commentators ; but what little I know of Mrs. 
 Lennox's work leads me to dread rather than seek her as 
 an ally ; while I fear that Mrs. Jameson might lead me to 
 admire, unconvinced, and approve against my better judg- 
 ment. Therefore I have postponed reading the views of 
 either of these ladies upon the character of Isabella until 
 after I have recorded my own. 
 
 Our first view of Isabella shows her to us on a volun- 
 teer foray against impropriety. A novice, about to enter 
 a convent, she has just heard the rules of the order 
 from one of her future sisters. One would think that the 
 rules of any convent would have seemed strict enough to a 
 young woman in the flush of youth ; and that in this one, 
 where, as we learn in this Scene, a nun could not speak to 
 a man " but in the presence of the prioress/' or if she 
 spoke, must be concealed, Isabella could be proper to her 
 heart's content. But no ; she only hears the laws which 
 are to shut her out from intercourse with men and with the 
 world, to express her wish for "a more strict restraint upon 
 the sisterhood." Her porcupine purity is neither the negative 
 virtue resulting from ignorance and sometimes miscalled 
 innocence, nor the instinct of a chaste consciousness, nor the 
 unconscious fruit of religious influence. She has solemnly 
 made up her mind to be chaste : she has determined to be 
 tres forte sur la sagesse: that is to be her speciality : she 
 has announced it ; and the whole town knows it. It 
 is amusing to see the evidence of this in the answer of 
 the Provost to Angela, when the latter first hears of her, 
 on the second occasion on which she is spoken of in the 
 play. Angela, hearing her announced as " the sister of the 
 man condemned/' asks if Claudio has a sister. The Pro- 
 vost replies, " Ay, my good lord ;" and adds, not that she 
 
MEA. FOK MEA. : CHARACTER OF ISABELLA. 137 
 
 is beautiful, not that she is gentle or stately, not that she 
 is beloved, not that she is benevolent, not even that she is 
 virtuous ; but that she is " very virtuous/' 
 
 " Angela. Hath he a sister? 
 
 Provost. Ay, my good lord ; a very virtuous maid." 
 
 Act. II. Sc. 2. 
 
 And to put beyond all question the deliberate thorough- 
 ness with which Isabella has given her mind to this mat- 
 ter, after her first formal introduction of her business, she 
 herself tells us the position which she has taken upon the 
 subject. 
 
 " Isab. There is a vice, that most I do abhor, 
 And most desire should meet the blow of justice; 
 For which I would not plead, but that I must ; 
 For which I must not plead, but that I am 
 At war, 'twixt will, and will not." 
 
 Act. II. Sc. 2. 
 
 It is a vice that she most abhors, that she most desires 
 should meet the blow of justice. She has thought over the 
 category of vices, and has determined that this is to be 
 her particular horror. Would Viola have done that ? 
 would Portia ? would Imogen ? Pure hearted, gentle 
 creatures, no. They would have revolted from the un- 
 maidenly syllogisms which must have preceded such a con- 
 clusion, as they would have shrunk from infamy ; and yet 
 they were no prudes ; and when there was necessity, called 
 things by their right names. 
 
 We seek in vain for any evidence that Isabella's for- 
 midable chastity and ascetic religion were the fruits of, or 
 even accompanied by, any grace of soul or tenderness of 
 heart. She has a dreadfully rectangular nature, is an ac- 
 complished and not very scrupulous dialectitian, and thinks 
 it proper to be benevolent only when she has the law on 
 
138 
 
 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 her side. She is utterly without impulse, that charming 
 trait of woman, which if it expose her to some perils, pro- 
 tects her from more and greater, and which prompts and 
 gives efficiency as well as beauty alike to all her gentle 
 deeds of homely kindness and her nobler acts of self-devo- 
 tion. Isabella, on the contrary, does every thing " by the 
 card." She goes to Angela to intercede for her brother, 
 she could not have done less, and begins by making the 
 immodest and utterly needless, and therefore unkind and 
 injurious confession, that her brother has been guilty of the 
 vice which she most desires should meet the blow of justice. 
 She briefly and coldly states her case ; and after receiving only 
 a quasi denial of her proposition, she instantly retires ; not 
 neglecting the opportunity, however, to eulogize the law 
 which on the morrow will leave her brotherless. 
 
 " hob. I have a brother is condemn'd to die : 
 I do beseech you, let it be his fault, 
 And not iny brother. 
 
 Prov. Heaven give thee moving graces ! 
 
 Ang. Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it ! 
 Why, every fault's condemn'd, ere it be done : 
 Mine were the very cipher of a function, 
 To fine the faults, whose fine stands in record, 
 And let go by the actor. 
 
 Isab. just, but severe law! 
 
 I had a brother then. Heaven keep your honour! [Retiring.* 
 
 Act II. Sc. 2. 
 
 A sister might have neglected to volunteer a panegyric of 
 that particular statute at that particular time, and yet 
 have been none the less pure-minded. No wonder that 
 Lucio tells her, 
 
 " if you should need a pin, 
 You could not with more tame a tongue desire it." 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : CHARACTER OF ISABELLA. 139 
 
 But it is very questionable whether Isabella was womanish 
 enough to need a pin ; she probably used buttons, or 
 would have done so had she lived now-a-days. It may be 
 uncharitable, perhaps, to accuse her of having an eye to the 
 reversion of the points with which Claudia tied his doublet 
 and hose ; but her indifference to his death looks very 
 like it. 
 
 But, urged on by Lucia, she remains, and commences 
 to plead with Angelo ? to touch his heart by womanly 
 graces ? to turn against his manhood all the nameless, irre- 
 sistible power of female prayers and tears ? No : she stops 
 to reason with him, to have a little bout at dialectics, the 
 subject being the pardon of her brother. She tells the 
 deputy that he 
 
 " might pardon him, 
 And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy." 
 
 And when he says, that, what he will not, that he cannot 
 do, she replies, 
 
 'But you might do't and do the world no wrong, 
 If so your heart were touch'd with that remorse 
 As mine is to him." 
 
 Could she be more deliberate, if she were proving that the 
 angles of a right-angled triangle are equal to two right 
 angles ? And thus she goes on, disputing with Angelo as 
 to how he would feel if he were Claudia, and what she 
 would do if she were Angela; giving him her ideas about 
 authority, justice, and the unjust influence which social 
 position exerts upon our judgment of man's conduct : she 
 almost gets into a discussion of "fate, free-will, foreknow- 
 ledge absolute." She does it well, exceedingly well ; and 
 with a self-possession, clearness of perception, and command 
 
140 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 of language, which under the circumstances are equally aston- 
 ishing, unfeminine, and unlovely. But not a prayer, not an 
 entreaty, not an utterance of woeful apprehension, until she 
 hears that Olaudio is to be beheaded on the next day ; and 
 then she utters an ejaculation, not of grief, but of apprehension 
 for the safety of his soul : very proper, and highly becoming 
 in one about to become a professed religieuse; but had her 
 woman's and her sister's feelings such as she had been 
 uppermost, she would have appeared the better, and have 
 been none the worse. But as to her sorrow, it is remark- 
 able that she does not shed a tear, or once use those woman's 
 weapons, until she hears from the Duke of the death of 
 Olaudio; and then she weeps, rather, it would seem, from 
 spite than grief. The Duke (Act IV. Sc. 3) tells her that 
 Claudia's " head is off and sent to Angela." Is she crushed 
 by the unexpected blow ? Does she grieve ? Is her spirit 
 subdued by her bereavement, and the fate of her brother ? 
 No : her first thought is of a vixen's vengeance upon the 
 adversary who has overreached her. She exclaims, 
 
 " O, I will to him and pluck out his eyes I " 
 
 After this, as we learn from the remarks of the Duke anM 
 LuciOj she weeps. But it is note-worthy that her tears are 
 not spoken of in very complimentary terms even by the 
 Duke. He does not call them ' holy drops/ or any thing 
 of the kind, but " fretting waters ; " and the only consola- 
 tions which he deems at all likely to be efficacious with this 
 very holy and "very virtuous" maid, are promises of revenge, 
 and gratified ambition. 
 
 " If you can, pace your wisdom 
 In that good path that I would wish it go ; 
 And you shall have your bosom on this wretch, 
 Grace of the duke, revenges to your heart, 
 And general honor" 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : CHARACTER OF ISABELLA. 141 
 
 A second interview with Angela (Act II. Sc. 4) is al- 
 most a repetition of the first. He tells her that her brother 
 cannot live ; and her brief, calm, acquiescent reply is, 
 
 "Even so, Heaven keep your honor." 
 
 [Retiring. 
 
 Angela, to obtain the opportunity for his base proposal, 
 is obliged to provoke her into an attempt to change his 
 determination ; and then she goes at it like the senior 
 wrangler of some future female college. To quote the 
 characteristic parts of this Scene would be to give the 
 whole of it. There are one or two very decided expressions 
 of feeling, in reply to the attack made upon that particular 
 virtue which she has made her hobby ; but not one tender 
 word to show that she is moved to sorrow or compassion 
 for her brother, or that she has a woman's heart beneath 
 her marble bosom. Her exceeding adroitness in special 
 pleading becomes positively amusing when she turns the 
 tables upon Angelo, who asks her, 
 
 " Might there not be a charity in sin, 
 To save this brother's life?" 
 
 Not disconcerted for an instant, she replies, 
 
 " Please you to do't, 
 I'll take it as a peril to my soul, 
 It is no sin at all, but charity." 
 
 women, who long to let the light of your intellect shine 
 before men, see how repulsive this creature is to men, in spite 
 of her beauty and her intellect, as she stands victoriously 
 quibbling with a judge, while she cannot plead for or excuse 
 her erring brother ! How men would love and reverence 
 her if, though utterly unable to reply to Angelo, she had 
 
 9 
 
142 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 besieged him with the pathetic eloquence of woman's ten- 
 derness and woman's grief ! But as it is, she is merely a 
 clever talker and " very virtuous ;" and clever talkers, men 
 can find by hundreds among themselves ; while that virtue 
 upon which Isabella so prided herself, they are accustomed 
 to regard as a quiet and conservative, and not a militant 
 and progressive quality, and one which exists in absolute 
 perfection when in the positive degree. They do not believe 
 in the crescendo virtuous, quite -virtuous, very virtuous, 
 more than in the diminuendo virtuous, pretty virtuous, 
 almost virtuous. 
 
 To return to our Scene. It is more chilling than a 
 North West Passage to hear this beautiful woman, whose 
 brother's life hangs on her tongue, admitting with arid 
 curtness the positions which her adversary takes as the 
 basis of his argument. 
 
 " Ang. But mark me ; 
 
 To be received plain, I'll speak more gross ; 
 Your brother is to die. 
 
 hab. So. 
 
 Ang. And his offence is so, as it appears 
 Accountant to the law upon that pain. 
 
 Isab. True. 
 
 Ang. Admit no other way to save his life," <fec. 
 
 Our sympathy is with her cause, but not with her ; and 
 when, thinking that she has Angela on the hip, she who 
 could not entreat, assumes the bully, and thus threatens 
 him : 
 
 "Isab. Ha! little honor to be much believed, 
 And most pernicious purpose ! seeming, seeming ! 
 I will proclaim thee, Angelo ; look for't ; 
 Sign me a present pardon for my brother, 
 Or, with an outstretch'd throat, I'll tell the world 
 Aloud, what man thou art" 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : CHARACTER OF ISABELLA. 143 
 
 then, with all our pity for Claudia and our detestation of 
 Angela , we cannot but feel a sort of satisfaction that the 
 latter is not so entirely in the clutches of this beautiful she 
 Khadamanthus, and that the pardon of Claudio is not ob- 
 tained exactly in that way. Claudio himself appreciates 
 exactly the strong points of his sister's character ; for, in 
 the first sentence of the play which apprises us of her ex- 
 istence, he tells 
 
 "She hath prosperous art 
 When she will play with reason and discourse, 
 And well she can persuade." 
 
 Act I. Sc. 2. 
 
 And it is quite remarkable that the " prone and speechless 
 dialect, such as moves men," of which he speaks, is not in 
 her, but, be it noticed, " in her youth." Angela, too, bears 
 evidence to the fact that she is a very intellectual woman, 
 in fact quite c an intelligence/ She does not touch him 
 by her devotion, or her winning ways 3 or the pathos of her 
 appeals for her brother's life ; but admiring at once her 
 person and a sharp specimen of the argumentem ad homi- 
 nem with which she favors him, and quibbling after the 
 fashion of Shakespeare's day, he says, aside, 
 
 "She speaks, and 'tis 
 Such sense, that my sense breeds with it" 
 
 Act II. Sc. 2. 
 
 Isabella's frigidity with Angela is unredeemed by any 
 tenderness to her brother. It does not melt even in the 
 furnace of his affliction. Her first announcement of his 
 fate is cold and merciless enough. 
 
 " Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven, 
 Intends you for his swift ambassador, 
 Where you shall be an everlasting leiger : 
 
144 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 Therefore your best appointment make with speed; 
 To-morrow you set on." 
 
 Act III. Sc. 1. 
 
 But when, rafter some discussion, in which she utters sev- 
 eral fine things about what Claudio ought to do, and what 
 she would do under other circumstances, she again directs 
 him to prepare for execution, with an impassibility abso- 
 lutely frightful, this sheriff in petticoats says to her brother, 
 
 . " Be ready, Claudio, for your death to-morrow." 
 
 Sheriff ! There wasn't a headsman in Austria who could 
 have done it with a more professional and businesslike air. 
 Claudio, stunned by this cold-blooded barbarity, and 
 left without consolation in his extremity, becomes coward- 
 ly, and shrinks from death even at the expense of his sis- 
 ter's chastity. That she remains firm, would be to her 
 honor, were not the spirit in which she does it so pitiless, 
 so utterly uncompassionate, the feeling which she expresses 
 so inhuman, not to say so unwomanly, and the language 
 which she uses so obdurate and so savage. Hear the gentle 
 votaress of Saint Clare, the " very virtuous maid ! " 
 
 "Isab. O, you beast! 
 
 0, faithless coward ! O, dishonest wretch 1 
 Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice ? 
 
 * * * Take my defiance : 
 Die ; perish ! might but my bending down 
 Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed : 
 I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death, 
 No word to save thee." 
 
 Is this the spirit of Christ's religion ? is it this to be " a 
 very virtuous maid ? " Do genuine propriety of life, and 
 innate purity of soul necessitate such treatment of a brother, 
 weak, erring, cowardly, and selfishly sinful though he be ? 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : CHARACTER OF ISABELLA. 145 
 
 What a terrible and yet what a truthful satire is written 
 in this character of Isabella I 
 
 But she caps the climax of her indifference and her 
 deference to routine duty when the Duke, entering at this 
 moment, in his holy character and habit, asks her, as she is 
 about retiring precipitately, to wait, promising that it 
 shall be for her benefit. Does she catch at a chance of 
 comfort for poor Claudio ? Hear her prompt reply : 
 
 "I have no superfluous leisure: my stay must be stolen out of other 
 affairs; but I will attend you a while." 
 
 She has no leisure. She is a woman of business ; and her 
 stay must be stolen out of other affairs. She has wasted as 
 much time upon her brother as she has to spare neverthe- 
 less, she has done or offered to do nothing to prepare him 
 for his death, and now she is impatient to be off to her 
 duties at the convent, and leave him to his fate. Unless 
 her apologist, Mrs. Jameson, is even a better special pleader 
 than she is herself, her case seems hopeless ; for she is here 
 judged out of her own mouth, and those of her brother and 
 her admirer. 
 
 Lucio is incidentally made a quasi eulogist of Isabella, 
 by the erroneous punctuation of some editions, and by Mr. 
 Knight specifically, who says of her that, a in the eyes 
 of the habitual profligate with whom she comes in con- 
 tact, she is, 
 
 'a thing ensky'd and sainted.'" 
 
 But Lucio does not say so. He does say, according to> 
 the original, which Mr. Collier has thus almost exactly fol- 
 lowed in his excellent edition of the genuine works of Shakes<- 
 peare (8 vols. 8vo. 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," <fec. 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : CHARACTER OF ISABELLA. 147 
 
 This will never do. But the last and the insuperable ob- 
 jection to this reading of the passage is, that, on Lucio's 
 own evidence, he could not hold her " ensky'd and sainted " 
 except as a nun ; for he knew nothing else of her, and had 
 not even seen her before the occasion on which he makes 
 this remark within two minutes of the commencement of 
 their interview. As he enters the convent, she presents 
 herself to him, and he asks her, if she can procure him an 
 interview with herself : 
 
 Lucio. " Hail, virgin, if you be, as those cheek-roses 
 
 Proclaim you are no less ! Can you so stead me 
 
 As bring me to the sight of Isabella, 
 
 A novice of this place, and the fair sister 
 
 To her unhappy brother Claudio? 
 
 Isab. Why her unhappy brother? let me ask; 
 
 The rather, for I now must make you know 
 
 I am that Isabella, and his sister." 
 
 Act I. 8c. 6. 
 
 When he discovers who she is, he regards her merely as 
 Claudia's sister, and one devoted to a religious life : any- 
 other of the sisterhood or novices would have been equally 
 ensky'd and sainted, in his eyes. Isabella too adds her own 
 testimony, needless though it is, in confirmation of this in- 
 terpretation of the passage. In reply to this very speech, 
 in which Lucio calls her a saint, she says, 
 
 "You. do blaspheme the good in mocking me." 
 
 showing plainly that she accepted, nay, commanded, his re- 
 verence as but a formal and becoming tribute to the holy 
 calling which she was just about to take upon herself. 
 
 As if to show by contrast the unloveliness of Isabella's 
 character, Shakespeare has given us in Mariana one of the 
 most lovable and womanly of his feminine creations. We 
 see little of her : indeed, she does not appear until the 
 
148 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 fourth Act ; in the first scene of which she says very little, 
 in the last scene but eight words, and in the fifth Act not 
 a great deal. But the few touches of the master's hand 
 make a charming picture. Every word she utters shows 
 that she is exactly Isabella's opposite. Turn to the fifth 
 Act, and hear her plead, plead for the man whom she has 
 loved through lonely years of wrong, the man whose life is 
 justly forfeit for taking, as she thinks, the life of another, 
 in a course of crime which involved a sin against her love. 
 Timid and shrinking before, she does not now wait to be 
 encouraged in her suit. She is instant and importunate. 
 She does not reason or quibble with the Duke ; she begs, 
 she implores, she kneels. She even drags down that beau- 
 tiful graven image, Isabella, upon her knees, by her impet- 
 uous prayers : 
 
 'O my good lord! Sweet Isabel take my part: 
 Lend me your knees ; and all my life to come 
 I'll lend you all my life to do your service." 
 
 Again : 
 
 " Isabel, 
 
 Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me ; 
 Hold up your hands, say nothing, I'll speak alL 
 They say, best men are moulded out of faults ; 
 And for the most, become much more the better 
 For being a little bad : so may my husband. 
 O, Isabel ! will you not lend a knee ! " 
 
 No dialectics, no right-angled triangles here. This is a wo- 
 man, pleading like a woman. And does not her very prayer 
 for Angelo make his crime seem more detestable as well as 
 her more lovable ? How the fulness of her heart wells up 
 from her lips ! These few words of self-devotion and of 
 impulse throw a halo around her, whose tender glow makes 
 the glittering light of Isabella's intellect seem as false and 
 as chilly as that reflected from an icicle. 
 
MEA. FOR MEA. : CHARACTER OF ISABELLA. 149 
 
 There is opportunity enough for Mariana to inveigh 
 against unchastity ; but she says not one word. And yet 
 who doubts her ? What man would not as soon trust the 
 honor of his name with her as with Isabella, aye, sooner ! 
 Contrast Isabella's virtue with that of Shakespeare's noblest 
 woman, Imogen. Compare the cold, reasoning continence 
 of the one, with the immaculate and instinctive purity of the 
 other's passionful nature. Isabella, as if dreading a riot in 
 her blood, seeks the protection of laws and sentinels and 
 bolts and bars, and before she has tried them, begs to have 
 them doubled ; when, in truth, the suit of the young god of 
 Day himself would fail to stir the gelid lymph that loiters 
 through her veins. Imogen, who could give her love unask- 
 ed to one below her station, yet lose no dignity as princess, 
 or as woman, whose nature was as fond as Desdemona's and 
 as passionful as Juliet's, finds in her own inherent but un- 
 obtruded modesty a watchful sentinel and a triple wall of 
 defence against a libertine's attack. 
 
 Such is Shakespeare's marvellously truthful portraiture^ 
 of a type which, sad to say, does exist among womankind. 
 Women whose existence is bound up in a love of pro- 
 priety, a pride of intellect, and an ostentatious submission to 
 the dictates of an austere religion. Perhaps they should 
 be pitied rather than condemned ; but it would tax any . 
 power, short of omnipotence, to make them loved. Cole- 
 ridge says, in a brief paragraph of his Table Talk, devoted 
 to this play : " Isabella herself contrives to be unamiable." 
 The remark is severe ; for it needlessly attributes a bad 
 motive. Isabella needed no contrivance to such a end : her 
 unamiability, like the reading and writing spoken of by Dog- 
 berry, " comes by nature." 
 
 Isabella is a woman with too much brain or too little 
 heart. A woman cannot have too fine an intellect, or one 
 too large, if. only, her affections be finer and larger ; but 
 
150 
 
 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 the moment that she shows an excess of the first, she be- 
 comes unfeminine, repulsive, monstrous. Shakespeare has 
 given us an ideal of every type of man and womankind ; 
 and he could not pass by this. Its unloveliness was not to 
 deter him from the task ; though the effect of that is some- 
 what modified by the personal beauty of his subject ; which, 
 too, was necessary to the dramatic movement of the play. 
 But he does not always set up his greatest creations as mod- 
 els for our imitation. He drew an lago and an Angela 
 among men ; among women, why should he withhold his 
 hand from a Lady Macbeth and an Isabella ? 
 
 Coleridge, in the little paragraph just mentioned, com- 
 plains that, " our feelings of justice are grossly wounded at 
 A ngelo's escape." No, no ! indeed, no ! It is for Mariana's 
 sake that Angela is pardoned. What is the injustice of his 
 pardon to the justice of giving her her husband? Her suffer- 
 ing, her long and lonely sorrows, are the condition of the 
 happy termination of the play ; and shall she not have her 
 reward ? Yes, truly. Tears like hers would wash away the 
 blood on the stern statute books of Draco. 
 
 Hallam finds fault with the Duke's hinted intention of 
 marrying Isabella; and calls it " one of Shakespeare's 
 hasty half thoughts." One of Shakespeare's hasty hah 
 thoughts ! Pray, how many such has he left us ? With all 
 deference to the Historian of the Literature of Europe, this 
 was exactly the best disposition which could have been made 
 of Isabella. The Duke, a well-meaning, undecided, feeble- 
 minded, contemplative man, needed somebody to act for him 
 and govern him ; she, after having listened solemnly to his ar- 
 guments, probably found him guilty not of love, that would 
 have been unpardonable but of preference for a female, 
 under extenuating circumstances, and married him. He 
 needed a ' gray mare ;' and Shakespeare, with his unerring 
 perception of the eternal fitness of things, gave him Isabella. 
 
MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 151 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 2. 
 
 "Isab. If he had been as you, and you as he, 
 You would have slipped like him ; but he, like you, 
 Would not have been so stern." 
 
 The last comma should not exist in the last clause of this 
 sentence. As it stands above, and is always printed, it 
 means that Claudio would be like Angelo, and yet not so 
 stern ; for " like you" is made parenthetical. But " like" 
 is evidently used here with the force of ( as ; ; and Isabella 
 means to say that, if their situations had been changed, 
 Claudio would not have been so stem as Angelo. Read, 
 
 "but he, like you 
 Would not have been so stern." 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " Duke. 'Tis meet so, daughter ; but least you do repent, 
 As that the sin hath brought you to this shame ; 
 Which sorrow is always toward ourselves, not heaven, 
 Showing we would not spare heaven, as we love it, 
 But as we stand in fear." 
 
 Mr. Collier's MS. corrector makes the fourth line, 
 
 "Showing we would not serve heaven," <fec. 
 
 This appears to be required by the context, and to be 
 a permissible correction of a probable misprint. Still, 
 " spare" is defended in Blackwood's Magazine, on the 
 ground that to spare heaven is to refrain from sin, while to 
 serve heaven is to do good actively. The plea for the old 
 reading has the merit of some subtle ingenuity, but hardly 
 more. 
 
152 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 "Juliet. Must die to morrow! O, injurious lore, 
 That respites me a life, whose very comfort 
 Is still a dying misery." 
 
 An obvious and easy misprint in the original makes utter 
 nonsense of this passage. How does Juliet's injurious love 
 for Claudia respite her a life ? It was the law which took 
 his life and respited hers, although, as she confesses, the 
 offence " was mutually committed," and, as the Duke 
 decides, with her assent, although her sin was, therefore, 
 " of heavier kind than his." It was this law that she calls 
 "injurious/' Read, 
 
 "Must die to-morrow! injurious law, 
 That respites me a life," <fec. 
 
 This correction was made by Sir Thomas Hanmer ; 
 and yet, strange to say, " love " has been retained by all 
 more modern editors ; although it does not afford even the 
 least gleam of sense. Johnson, and some with him, have 
 supposed that Juliet attributes to her love the preservation 
 of her life, because " her execution was respited on account 
 of her pregnancy, the effects of her love." But she was not 
 under sentence of death. The law did not touch her life. 
 As the story on which the play is founded tells us, the law 
 in question decreed that the man who broke it "should 
 lose his head, and the woman offender should ever after be 
 infamously noted, by the wearing of some disguised appar- 
 rell : " perhaps something like the Scarlet Letter which 
 Hawthorne's pen has made to glow upon the bosom of that 
 figure whose haughty loveliness lives for ever in our memories. 
 The love of Juliet could have no influence in securing her 
 exemption from death ; and there was no need that it 
 should. The law secured her that ; and because the same 
 law took Claudio from her she calls it an "injurious law." 
 
MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 153 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 " Angela. heaven hath my empty words 
 
 Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue, 
 Anchors on Isabel: heaven in my mouth 
 As if I did but chew his name," <fec. 
 
 For " heaven " in this speech we should evidently read 
 God. That the text was thus, as Shakespeare wrote it, is 
 plainly shown by the last line, 
 
 'As if I did but chew his name,' 
 
 that is, God's name. The change was made by the pub- 
 lishers of the first folio, in conformity with the statute of 
 James I. before alluded to ; but they neglected to make a 
 corresponding change in the pronoun. 
 
 "Aug. Admit no other way to save his life, 
 (As I subscribe not that, nor any other, 
 But in the loss of question) that you, his sister, 
 Finding yourself desir'd of such a person, 
 Whose credit with the judge, or own great place, 
 Could fetch your brother from the manacles 
 Of the all-binding law ; and that there were 
 No earthly mean to save him, but that either 
 You must lay down the treasures of your body 
 To this suppos'd, or else to let him suffer, 
 What would you do ? " 
 
 The clause in parentheses in this long sentence is exceedingly 
 difficult ; in fact, absolutely incomprehensible. What does 
 Angelo mean by saying that he could not subscribe to any 
 way to save Claudio's life " but in the loss of question " ? In 
 this construction it seems to me that these words are mean- 
 ingless, and the whole sentence devoid of sense. Besides, as 
 the speech at present stands, Angelo does not even say what 
 he means, irrespective of this phrase, which is, evidently, 
 
154 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 this : ' Admit no other way to save your brother's life, but 
 that you, being desired by such and such a person, yield to 
 him, what would you do? I do not say that this or any 
 other way will save his life, but put the case hypotheti- 
 cally ; ' the caveat being put in parentheses, in the first 
 part of the speech. But as the text now stands, omitting 
 the words within the parentheses, Angela says, " Admit no 
 other way to save his life ( ) that you his sister, finding 
 yourself desir'd," etc. : the ' but/ the word of exception, 
 the very key of the sentence, is wanting ; for it is shut 
 out of the construction by the interposition of the paren- 
 theses. This difficulty is added to the obscurity of the 
 parenthetic part. The trouble arises from the connection 
 of " but in the loss of question " with " As I subscribe, 
 &c." Shift the parenthesis, and correct one very easy 
 misprint, and the sentence is plain. Thus : 
 
 " Admit no other way to save his life 
 (As I subscribe not that nor any other) 
 But, in the case of question, that you his sister, 
 Finding yourself desir'd of such a person, 
 ****** 
 
 What would you do ? " 
 
 Mr. Singer (as I find by a paragraph in Blackwood's Mag- 
 azine Aug. 1853, p. 190, which sustains him) supposes that 
 he gets rid of the difficulty by considering " the loss of 
 question " to mean, ' the looseness of conversation/ But 
 even if this very violent distortion of the phrase be admitted, 
 the great difficulty, the separation of "but" from "that" 
 in the third line, is not obviated ; and if regard be had to 
 this main consideration, Mr. Singer's suggestion falls to the 
 ground. For if we substitute the one phrase for the other, 
 we find that we cannot say, 
 
 " Admit no other way to pave his life, 
 (As I subscribe not that nor any other) 
 
MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 155 
 
 But, in the looseness of conversation, that you, his sister, 
 Finding yourself desir'd, <fec." 
 
 The fact is, that nearly the whole of this speech is one huge 
 parenthesis encircling other gradually diminishing paren- 
 theses. This appears, briefly, thus. The essentials, the 
 parts not parenthetical, are only the first and last lines, - 
 it being remembered that Angela has previously made 
 known his purpose. 
 
 "Admit no other way to save his life 
 ***** 
 
 What would you do? " 
 
 To make his meaning unmistakable, however, he states 
 plainly, but parenthetically, the way to save his life ; and 
 the sentence becomes, 
 
 " Admit no other way to save his life, 
 
 ***** 
 
 But * that you, his sister, 
 
 Finding yourself desir'd of such a person, <fec. 
 
 ***** 
 
 What would you do ? " 
 
 But it becomes him to be wary with a woman like Isabella, 
 and to let her know, as they are arguing the matter, that 
 he puts this case but for the sake of question, i. e. argu- 
 ment ; and so the third line becomes, 
 
 " But (in the case of question) that you his sister," <fcc. 
 
 Yet again, it suits his purpose to say to her that he not 
 only puts such a case merely for the sake of argument, but 
 that he wishes to state explicitly that, even if it should 
 actually occur, he cannot subscribe to its success, or to that 
 of any other supposable case ; and so the second line makes 
 
156 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 its appearance, and the speech becomes, according to mod- 
 ern punctuation, 
 
 " Admit no other way to save his life, 
 (As I subscribe not that, nor any other) 
 But, in the case of question, that you, his sister 
 Finding yourself desir'd, <fec. 
 
 # * # * * * 
 
 What would you do ? " 
 
 That Angela and Isabella are arguing the case, is evi- 
 dent, from his taking his positions in the two immediately 
 preceding speeches, and her brief admissions of their cor- 
 rectness. " So," sne says, and " True." 
 
 These remarks, it should be remembered, are not by 
 way of argument ; but for the purpose of analyzing a very 
 interesting passage. The changes a mere correction of 
 the punctuation in the most carelessly pointed book ever 
 printed, and the rectification of a palpable error of the 
 press, surely sustain themselves without argument. 
 
 " Isab. Else let my brother die, 
 If not a feodary, but only he, 
 Owe, and succeed by weakness." 
 
 This passage is generally confessed to be the most ob- 
 scure of the very obscure passages which are found in the 
 original text and nearly all of the reprints of this noble play. 
 The commentators and editors, from Warburton to Knight, 
 confess its great difficulty ; and when I have claimed a 
 comparative freedom from obscurity for Shakespeare's style, 
 this passage, oftener than any other, has been pointed out to 
 me as a stumbling block by those unread in the earlier 
 English literature. There was a time when it was not quite 
 clear to me ; but upon reading it in the original, it became 
 as comprehensible as any passage in Shakespeare's works, 
 
MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 157 
 
 although it contains three words not used in their common, 
 modern acceptation. 
 
 The speech being obscure to the editors, they sought to 
 elucidate it by the change of a word ; they substituted by 
 for " thy " of the original, where the lines stand thus : 
 
 "Else let my brother die 
 If not a fedarie but only he 
 Owe, and succeed thy weakness." 
 
 Angela has just said to Isabella "We are all frail;" 
 and this reply of hers to his general assertion, draws from 
 him the prompt rejoinder, 
 
 "Nay, women are frail too." 
 
 He does not simply say, " women are frail," but "Nay, women 
 are frail too;" which plainly shows that Isabella's answer had 
 confined this frailty to men ; and in the original, she does, 
 by implication, limit it to Claudio, Angelo and their fellows. 
 Speaking to the latter of his frailty, she says, " thy weak- 
 ness ; " and the change to " by weakness," has only made 
 confusion worse confounded in the heads of those who were 
 confused before. 
 
 The word which is looked upon as the cause of the dif- 
 ficulty is " fedary." But this, as Dr. Richardson's Diction- 
 ary assures us, and as a line in Cymbeline plainly shows, 
 means simply f an associate/ ( a fellow ' in crime, or in 
 frailty, or in any thing else, 
 
 " Pisanio. O danm'd paper ! 
 
 Black as the ink that's on thee. Senseless bauble, 
 Art thou afeodary for this act, and look'st 
 So virgin like without ? " 
 
 Cymbeline, Act III. Sc. 2. 
 
158 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 Again in the Winter's Tale : 
 
 " She is a traitor, and Camillo is 
 A.federary with her." 
 
 Winter's Tale, Act II. Sc. 1. 
 
 "Owe," as every reader of Shakespeare knows, signifies 
 'have/ ' possess.' As for instance, in this very play : 
 
 " Lucio. When maidens sue 
 
 Men give like gods ; but when they weep and kneel, 
 All their petitions are as freely theirs 
 As they themselves would owe them." 
 
 This use of the word occurs again and again throughout 
 Shakespeare's works. 
 
 But the principal difficulty with those who fail to un- 
 derstand the passage, I have found to be the result of a 
 very easy misapprehension of the sense in which a word in 
 every-day use, ' succeed/ is used here. On account of the 
 substitution of by for " thy/' it has been very naturally, in 
 fact unavoidably supposed, that " succeed " means ' have 
 success.' This makes the line in effect, ' owe, and have 
 success by weakness : ' a very foggy statement, which is not 
 much cleared by inserting the original word, which makes it 
 " owe and have success thy weakness." All this difficulty is 
 removed by observing that " succeed " is here used in its more 
 primitive sense, 'to follow.' " Succeed thy weakness" is, in 
 other words, ' follow thee in thy weakness/ ' take after thy 
 weakness.' Another of Shakespeare's plays furnishes us 
 with a use of this word exactly in point. 
 
 " Countess. Be thou blest, Bertram ; and succeed thy father 
 In manners, as in shape." 
 
 Airs Well, <fcc., Act I. Sc. 1. 
 
MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 159 
 
 There is therefore not the least obscurity or difficulty in the 
 original text, which, paraphrased in prose, is simply this : 
 
 Aug. We are all frail. 
 
 Isab. Yes ; otherwise let my brother die, if no com- 
 panion in frailty, but he alone, be possessed of and take after 
 thy weakness. 
 
 The propriety of Angela's instant reply, including women 
 in the charge of frailty is then obvious. Eetain the words of 
 the original, omit one of the two commas usually inserted, 
 and read thus, the emphatic word in the last two lines 
 being "he:" 
 
 "Aug. We are all frail, 
 
 Isab. Else let my brother die, 
 
 If not a feodary, but only he, 
 Owe and succeed thy weakness." 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Isab. the poor beetle, that we tread upon 
 In corporal suffrance finds a pang as great 
 As when a giant dies." 
 
 The almost universal perversion of these lines to a plea 
 for long life to beetles, justifies a repetition of the explana- 
 tion of the passage previously made by others. Isabella is 
 not reading Claudio a lecture upon cruelty to animals. She 
 wishes to impress upon him that the pang of death is chiefly 
 in the dread of death ; and that the giant feels no more of 
 that in dissolution, than the beetle, which a thoughtless 
 heel crushes out of existence. This would seem sufficiently 
 obvious to make mistake impossible ; for she says : 
 
 " The sense of death is most in apprehension ; " 
 And the poor beetle," <fec. 
 
160 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 "Duke. Her corabinate husband, this well seeming Angelo." 
 
 Here, " combinate " stands for ' elect/ The idiom is 
 old, and has affinity with the Italian use of the same word, 
 as Mr. W. S. Rose has shown. He says : " at this hour 
 there is nothing more common in an Italian'sjnouth than 
 ( se si puo combinarla ' (if we can bring it to bear) when 
 speaking with reference to any future arrangement/' 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 * Lucio. What, is there none of Pygmalion's images, newly-made wo- 
 man, to be had now for putting the hand in the pocket and extracting it 
 clutched ? " 
 
 Mr. Douce says, " It is probable, after all, that Lucio 
 simply means to ask the clown if he has no newly-coined 
 money 7 wherewith to bribe the officers of justice ; alluding 
 to the portrait of the queen." It is strange that the remote 
 and recondite explanation should be continually sought, in- 
 stead of the present and the obvious. Lucio, speaking to 
 a bawd, merely asks him if there be no young women [Pyg- 
 malion's images] to be had for money ; or, as he phrases it. 
 "for putting the hand in the pocket, and extracting it 
 clutched/' 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Mariana discovered sitting ; a Boy singing. 
 
 Take, oh take those lips away, 
 
 That so sweetly were forsworn ; 
 And th >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," <fec. 
 
 " The Queen e, our mistris, 
 
 Allowes this bounty to all commers, much more 
 To gentlemen of your condition" 
 
 If ' sort ' mean ' rank/ par excellence, i. e. noble rank, 
 to say 'noble sort ' would be to be guilty of the worst sort 
 of tautology. ' Sort ' would, in that case, need, in fact, ad- 
 mit, no such adjective before it ; and the lines from A 
 Midsummer-Night's Dream furnish proof positive that 'sort/ 
 when thus used, means merely ' kind/ The word is applied 
 to persons, in this sense, and with various adjectives before 
 it, throughout Shakespeare's works ; as, " spirits of vile 
 sort," "the vulgar sort of market-men;" and even, "the 
 poor men of your sort," and " the younger sort," as well as 
 " gentlemen of good sort " and " prisoners of good sort ; " 
 and we have also "a sort of men," and " all sorts of men." 
 There is only one passage in all Shakespeare's works which 
 would seem to sustain Mr. Dyce, and which, strange to say, 
 so accomplished a Shakesperian scholar as he has failed to 
 quote. In Measure for Measure ' sort ' is used, without 
 
180 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 an adjective, evidently to mean, high rank or station. The 
 Duke is about to return to Vienna, and Angela says to 
 Escalus : 
 
 ""Well, I beseech you, let it be proclaim'd : 
 Betimes i' the morn, I'll call you at your house. 
 Give notice to such men of sort and suit, 
 As are to meet him." 
 
 But here it is used as we sometimes use 'character ; ' saying, 
 ' a man of character/ i. e. a man of excellent character. Such 
 cannot be the use of ' sort ' in the instances previously quot- 
 ed by Mr. Dyce ; for unless circumstances evidently point to 
 such a signification, and a word is used absolutely and with- 
 out an adjective, it cannot be thus arbitrarily raised from 
 its inferior and general sense to one higher and particular. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 3. 
 
 " Claud. Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her 
 heart, tears her hair, prays, curses, "O sweet Benedick ! God give me 
 patience! " 
 
 Here " curses " is, almost without a doubt, an error of 
 the press for cries, to which it is changed by the corrector 
 of Mr. Collier's folio. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 1. 
 
 Hero being asked when she is to be married, replies, 
 " Why, evrie day, to-morrow." The answer is incompre- 
 hensible, on account of a misprint which is thus corrected 
 in Mr. Collier's folio, " Why, in a day, to-morrow." There 
 can be no doubt that this restores the author's words. 
 
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 181 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 " D. Pedro. he hath twice or thrice cut Cupid's bowstring, and the 
 little hangman dare not shoot at him." 
 
 Mr. Dyce conjectures that " hangman " here is equiva- 
 lent to ' rascal/ ' rogue/ and quotes passages from writers 
 contemporaneous with Shakespeare, in which ' hangman ' 
 is used as a general term of reproach. There can be no 
 doubt of the correctness of Mr. Dyce's supposition, which 
 seems, in fact, almost too obvious to need support or bear 
 statement. Shakespeare unquestionably used the word in 
 the same sense in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, as one of 
 the correctors of Mr. Collier's folio happily conjectured. 
 
 " Launce. Ay, sir ; the other squirrel was stolen from me by a hang- 
 man boy in the market place." 
 
 Act IV. 8c. 4. 
 
 Instead of " the hangman's boys." 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Leon. Thought I thy spirits stronger than thy shames, 
 Myself would, on the rearward of reproaches, 
 Strike at thy life." 
 
 " Kearward " is misprinted reward in the first folio ; but 
 the error of the press is corrected in the second. Mr. Col- 
 lier's MS. corrector, however, changes "rearward" for the 
 tame word hazard; and Mr. Collier calls it "the true 
 reading." 
 
 In Shakespeare's plays c rearward/ it is true, does not 
 elsewhere occur with this signification, a fact which, how- 
 
182 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 ever, is of little consequence ; but had Mr. Collier or his 
 MS. protege ever read, marked, or understood those lines 
 of noble sorrow in the 90th Sonnet ? 
 
 " Then hate me when thou wilt ; if ever, now ; 
 Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, 
 Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow ; 
 And do not drop in for an after-loss. 
 Ah! do not, when my heart hath scaped this sorrow, 
 Come in the rearward of a conquered woe : 
 Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, 
 To linger out a purposed overthrow." 
 
 " Leon. O she is fallen 
 
 Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea 
 Hath drops too few to wash her clean again, 
 And salt too little, which may season give 
 To her foul tainted flesh." 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio changes the hemistich to, 
 
 "To her owZ-tainted flesh." 
 
 It were well for Mr. Collier's reputation had he merely 
 set this forth as a happy conjecture, or even as the true 
 reading. But he must give for it this extraordinary, this 
 preposterous reason " Hero's flesh was tainted to the soul 
 by the accusation brought against her." What a focus of 
 blunders there is in that unfortunate sentence ! It is hardly 
 necessary to point out, that Leonato supposed his daughter's 
 soul, and, figuratively, her flesh, to be tainted by her moral 
 crime. Indeed, it is noteworthy that one consequence of 
 the publication of Mr. Collier's Notes and Emendations 
 is the self-exposure of the astounding fact, that this veteran 
 in the field of Shakesperian literature has not a nice and 
 true appreciation of Shakespeare. His learning no one can 
 
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 183 
 
 question ; but his reputation as one who has fathomed the 
 deeps of Shakespeare, who has " plucked out the heart of 
 his mystery," is gone for ever. In blackletter and anti- 
 quarian lore, he can hardly have a rival ; but there are few 
 real lovers of Shakespeare who do not hold a closer com- 
 mune with the spirit of their master. Among his editors, 
 may be named Charles Knight, who, with vastly fewer ad- 
 vantages in the field of Shakesperian literature, must now 
 be placed far before his rival editor as a true Shakesperian 
 scholar. Charles Knight would never have said, when Ham- 
 let chides himself because he "lacks gall to make oppres- 
 sion bitter/' that " it was not oppression but crime which 
 was to be punished (!) by him." Charles Knight would 
 never have supposed that Hero's flesh was tainted to the 
 soul, sooner than he would have made a score of other blun- 
 ders in the appreciation of Shakespeare's poetry and humor 
 which appear in Mr. Collier's recent publication. 
 
 But with regard to this passage, it should be noticed 
 that a change is not imperatively necessary. The adjectives 
 are not really synonymous ; and a comma between them 
 is all that is required to give a clear and appropriate sense. 
 Kead, 
 
 " which may season give 
 To her foul, tainted flesh." 
 
 Taint does not always reach foulness in degree, but it does 
 imply previous purity ; whereas many things are foul from 
 the beginning and in their very essence. Leonato says that 
 Hero's nature, once pure, had been tainted to the utmost 
 degree of impurity. 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 " Const. Come let them be opinioned. 
 Sex. Let them be in the hands of Coxcombe. 
 
184 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 Kem. God's my life, where's the Sexton I let him write down the 
 Prince's officer Coxcombe" <fec. 
 
 This apparently hopeless confusion in the original text, is 
 thus happily corrected in Mr. Collier's folio. 
 
 " Const. Come, let them be opinion'd. 
 Sex. Let them be bound. 
 Borach. Hands off t Coxcombe 1 
 Dogb. God's my life," Ac. 
 
 "Kem." is the abbreviation of Kempe. William 
 Kempe was the first Dogberry; and the original folio, 
 having been in part printed from a copy marked for the 
 stage, gives in this instance and in some others, the name 
 of the actor instead of that of the character. 
 
 " Dogb. Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my 
 years? O that he were here to write me down an ass; but, masters, 
 remember, that I am an ass ; though it be not written down, yet forget 
 not that I am an ass: No, thou villain, thou art full of piety, as shall be 
 proved upon thee by good witness. I am a wise fellow; and, which is 
 more, an officer ; and, which is more, a householder ; and, which is more, 
 as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina ; and one that knows the law, 
 go to : and a rich fellow enough, go to ; and a fellow that hath had losses; 
 und one that hath two gowns, and every thing handsome about him : 
 Bring him away. 0, that I had been writ down an ass." 
 
 Could there be a stronger proof of incapacity to appre- 
 ciate that peculiar and inimitable humor which Shakespeare 
 has exhibited in Dogberry and a few such characters, than 
 an attempt to make the consequential Constable speak 
 " by the card " in this blundering out-burst of pompous 
 indignation ? And yet the corrector of Mr. Collier's folio 
 would have him say " a fellow that hath had leases" in- 
 stead of " a fellow that hath had losses " ! Mr. Singer's 
 
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 185 
 
 severe remarks upon this evidence of incapacity are entirely 
 justifiable. 
 
 But this wretched and presumptuous change has yet 
 found defenders, (what folly is so foolish as to be without 
 them !) on the ground that, as Dogberry is boasting, it is 
 inconsistent for him to mention his misfortunes. Let Sir 
 Walter Scott answer such a purblind argument as this. He 
 was guiltless of deliberate comment upon Shakespeare ; but 
 he opens the introduction to Quentin Durward thus : 
 
 " When honest Dogberry sums up and recites all the claims 
 which he had to respectability, and which, as he opined, ought to 
 have exempted him from the injurious appellation conferred on 
 him by Master Gentleman Conrade, it is remarkable that he lays 
 not more emphasis even upon his double gown (a matter of some 
 importance in a certain ci-devant capital which I wot of), or 
 upon his being 'a pretty piece of flesh as any in Messina,' or 
 even upon the conclusive argument of his being * a rich fellow 
 enough,' than upon his being one that hath had losses. 
 
 " Indeed, I have always observed your children of prosperity, 
 whether by way of hiding their full glow of splendor from those 
 whom fortune has treated more harshly, or whether that to have 
 risen in spite of calamity is as honorable to their fortune as it is 
 to a fortress to have undergone a siege, however this be, I have 
 observed that such persons never fail to entertain you with an 
 account of the damage they sustain by the hardness of the times. 
 " I therefore put in my proud claim to share in the- 
 distresses which only affect the wealthy ; and write myself down., 
 with Dogberry, <a rich fellow enough,' but still 'one who hath 
 had losses.' " 
 
 Walter Scott and human nature at the back of the au- 
 thentic folio, against an anonymous and, as his labors show,, 
 a blundering tamperer with the text of Shakespeare ! 
 
LOVE'S LABORS LOST. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 JBiron. [Reads.] Item, "That no woman shall come within a mile of 
 my court." Hath this been proclaim'd ? 
 
 Long. Four days ago. 
 
 Biron. Let's see the penalty. [Reads.] " On pain of losing her 
 tongue." Who devis'd this penalty ? 
 
 Long. Marry, that did I. 
 
 Biron. Sweet lord, and why ? 
 
 Long. To fright them hence with that dread penalty. 
 
 Biron. A dangerous law against gentility." 
 
 Thus the original. At first " gentility " seems in this 
 place an unintelligible word, which Mr. Collier's MS. cor- 
 rector very plausibly changes to, 
 
 " A dangerous law against garrulity." 
 
 But it should be remarked that Biron is not one of 
 those who approve of these regulations ; and that he does 
 not yet consider himself strictly bound by them. Thus, in 
 his first speech in this scene, he says : 
 
 " I can but say their protestation over ; 
 So much, dear liege, I have already sworn, 
 That is, to live and study here three years. 
 But there are other strict observances ; 
 As, not to see a woman in that term, 
 Which, I hope well, is not enrolled there : " &c. 
 
LOVE'S LABORS LOST. 187 
 
 and again, 
 
 " I only swore to study with your grace." 
 
 He finds fault with this law which has the lingual penalty ; 
 and it should be noticed that it is the law, and not the 
 penalty, which he says is dangerous against gentility. He 
 evidently means that the exclusion of ladies, involving, as 
 it does, the loss of their refining and subduing influence 
 upon the manners, is " a dangerous law against gentility.'' 
 There is no justification for a change in the original text. 
 A thorough examination of the context will often, as it has 
 done in this case, show the propriety of a phrase in that 
 text, which to one who looks at the phrase alone will 
 seem obscure. 
 
 " King. A letter from the magnificent Armado. 
 
 Biron. How low soever the matter, I hope for high words. 
 
 Long. A high hope for a low having ; God grant us patience ! 
 
 Biron. To hear ? or forbear hearing ? 
 
 Long. To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately ; or to forbear 
 both." 
 
 For " a low heaven " in the original, Theobald judi- 
 ciously proposed "a low having;" but the succeeding 
 speech of Biron obviously needs correction. Biron know- 
 ing Armado 's affectation of magnificence, says that how 
 low soever the matter of his letter may be, they may 
 hope for high words. Longaville then asks, " a high hope 
 for a low having ? " and at the prospect exclaims " God 
 grant us patience ! " Biron then asks Longaville } [pa- 
 tience for what], "to hear or to forbear laughing" [at what 
 you do hear ?] ( Hearing ' is an evident and an easy mis- 
 print for c laughing/ as Steevens well suggested. Longa- 
 
188 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 ville's reply " To hear meekly and to laugh moderately, 
 or to forbear both" compels the change. Head, 
 
 " Long. A high hope for a low having ? God grant us patience ! 
 Biron. To hear? or forbear laughing? 
 Long. To hear meekly," Ac. 
 
 In the same Scene the " Sirra, come on," which the 
 original gives to Biron, probably belongs to the Constable, 
 to whom Mr. Collier's folio assigns it. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Rosaline. No point ; with iny knife." 
 
 Steevens and Malone, and recently Mr. Dyce, have 
 pointed out that we have here the double negative of the 
 French language, with a quibble involved. It should be 
 printed, 
 
 "No, point ; with my knife." 
 
 " Boyet. His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see, 
 Did stumble with haste in his eyesight to be. 
 All senses to that sense did make their repair, 
 To feel only looking on fairest of fair," 
 
 " On the first line of this passage the following notes are found 
 in the Variorum Shakespeare: 
 
 1 That is his tongue being impatiently desirous to see as 
 well as speak.' JOHNSON. 
 
 ' Although the expression in the text is extremely odd, I take 
 the sense of it to be, that his tongue envied the quickness of 
 his eyes, and strove to be as rapid in its utterance, as they in 
 
LOVE'S LABORS LOST. 189 
 
 their perception. Edinburgh Magazine, Nov., 1786,' STEE- 
 VENS. 
 
 " Now, it would be difficult to say which of these notes is least 
 to the purpose. The context distinctly shows that the meaning 
 is His tongue, not able to endure the having merely the power 
 of speaking without that of seeing. 
 
 " Again, on the fourth line we find, ibid : 
 
 " Perhaps we may better read : ' To feed only by looking.' " 
 JOHNSON. 
 
 " There is no necessity for any alteration. The meaning is 
 That they might have no feeling but that of looking, &c." 
 
 Dyce*s Few Notes, &c., p. 52. 
 
 Unquestionably Mr. Dyce is right ; but I cannot conceal 
 my surprise that a moment's doubt upon so simple a pas- 
 sage could possibly occur to any one out of a mad-house. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Biron. Dread prince of plackets." 
 
 "Concerning c placket J see Steevens's Amnerian note on 
 King Lear, act iii. sc. 4 ; and Diet, of Arch, and Prov. Words, 
 by Mr. Halliwell ; who observes : ' Nares, Dyce, and other 
 writers, tell us a placket generally signifies a petticoat, but their 
 quotations do not bear out this opinion.' I still think that in the 
 quotations referred to, as well as in the present passage, * plack- 
 et ' is equivalent to petticoat. A writer of the age of Charles 
 the Second uses ' plackets ' in the sense of aprons (perhaps of 
 petticoats) ; ' The word Love is a fig-leaf to cover the naked 
 sense, a fashion brought up by Eve, the mother of jilts ; she 
 cuckolded her husband with the Serpent, then pretended to mod- 
 esty, and fell a making plackets presently.' Crowne's Sir 
 Courtly Nice, act ii. p. 13, ed. 1685." 
 
 Dyce's Few Notes, &c., p. 53. 
 
 Mr. Steevens, Mr. Nares, and Mr. Dyce, might have 
 
190 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 been saved their labors, and Mr. Halliwell his doubts, by 
 inquiring of the Benedicks among their fellow Shakesperi- 
 ans on this side the water concerning this word. Ladies in 
 the northern part of the United States call that aperture in 
 their petticoats (upper and under) which extends from the 
 back of the waist about one quarter down the skirt, the 
 ' placket-hole ; ' and so did their grandmothers, great-grand- 
 mothers, and great-great-grandmothers. Mr. Douce, to 
 whose learning and judgment the students of Shakespeare 
 are so much indebted says, " a placket is a petticoat." Had 
 he been writing for Americans he need not have said it. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 3. 
 In the defective line of Dumain's sonnet, 
 
 " Thou for whom Jove would swear," 
 
 Pope read " even Jove ;" Mr. Collier's margins give "great 
 Jove/' with more fitness and probability, if, indeed, a sylla- 
 ble must be added. 
 
 "J)um. This will I send; and something else more plain 
 That shall express my true love's fasting pain." 
 
 " My true love's fasting pain " sounds like a misprint 
 of "my true love's lasting pain," to which it is changed by 
 one of the few happy conjectures in Mr. Collier's folio. 
 
 " Biron. I am betray'd by keeping company 
 With men like men, of strange inconstancy." 
 
LOVE'S LABORS LOST. 191 
 
 Warburton changed the " men like men " of the orig- 
 inal to "vane like men ;" and Steevens substitutes "moon 
 like men," which until recently has held undisputed posses- 
 sion of the text. Mr. Knight very properly retains the 
 original ; and says that it means, " I keep company with 
 men alike in inconstancy men like men men having the 
 general inconstancy of humanity ; " but he does not point 
 out the confirmatory fact, that, in a subsequent speech, 
 Biron repeats, in another form, this very idea, that his 
 companions fell through human frailty. He says : 
 
 " Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O let us embrace ! 
 
 As true we are as flesh and blood can be : 
 The sea will ebb and flow, and heaven will show his face ; 
 Young blood doth not obey an old decree." 
 
 " Biron. Now, for not looking on a woman's face, 
 You have in that forsworn the use of eyes, 
 And study, too, the causer of your vow ; 
 For where is any author in the world, 
 Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye ? 
 Learning is but an adjunct to ourself, 
 And where we are, our learning likewise is : 
 Then, when ourselves we see in ladies' eyes, 
 Do we not likewise see our learning there ? " 
 
 The context shows undeniably that, 
 
 " Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye," 
 
 is a misprint. Mr. Collier's folio substitutes learning for 
 " beauty," a change which is for the better. But a corre- 
 spondent in Maine, of whom I know only that he is an intel- 
 ligent and careful student of Shakespeare, suggests study 
 instead of learning, " because the former seems to be a more 
 plausible correction of a probable misprint than the latter ; 
 
192 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 and because study is a more appropriate word to follow 
 c study ' in the second line above the one in which the dis- 
 puted word occurs." His suggestion is possibly as accept- 
 able as that of Mr. Collier's folio. Either word will fulfil 
 all the conditions of the case ; and we may read : 
 
 "Now, for not looking on a woman's face, 
 You have in that forsworn the use of eyes ; 
 And study too, the causer of your vow ; 
 For where is any author in the world, 
 Teaches such study as a woman's eye ? " 
 
 In other words, c as study is your object, where is there 
 any author teaches such study [i. e. any thing that is stud- 
 ied] as a woman's eye ? ' 
 
 ACT V. SCENE 2. 
 
 Rosaline, speaking of the capricious power she would 
 exercise over Biron, says, 
 
 " So pertaunt like I would oresway his state 
 That he should be my fool and I his fate." 
 
 This Mr. Collier's folio changes to, 
 
 "So potently I would oresway his state," Ac. 
 
 which is the best emendation of the passage yet offered, and 
 one so obvious that it seems strange that it has not come 
 to light before. 
 
 "Boyet. Their purpose is to parle, to court, and dance: 
 And every one his love feat will advance 
 Unto his several mistress," 
 
LOVE'S LABORS LOST. 193 
 
 The old fashioned long s is responsible for an error in 
 the line, 
 
 " And every one his love feat will advance," 
 
 which should surely be, as Mr. Collier's MS. corrector 
 conjectures, 
 
 "And every one his love suit will advance 
 Unto his several mistress." 
 
 " Prin. That sport best pleases that doth least know how. 
 Where Zeale striues to content, and the contents 
 Dies in the Zeale of that which it presents." 
 
 A great deal of labor and ingenuity has been expended 
 upon this passage, which appears thus in the original folio, 
 and is evidently corrupted ; but the correction has always 
 seemed to me simple and obvious. Years ago, before I had 
 seen a Variorum Shakespeare, or read a commentator, I 
 made the following correction upon the margin of my copy ; 
 a correction, however, which my subsequent reading has not 
 discovered to me elsewhere. But first let us define clearly 
 the meaning of the Princess. She evidently wishes to en- 
 joy the absurd figure which Armado, Holofernes and the* 
 rest will cut as the Worthies. She, in the words of Philo>~ 
 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," <fec. 
 
 Some idea of the incapacity of the Shakespearian com- 
 mentators of the eighteenth century for their task, may be 
 obtained from the fact that Armado' s affected and quaint, 
 but graphic and humorous figure, " I have seen the day of 
 wrong through the little hole of discretion," seems to them 
 incomprehensible, or at least to require explanation. Bish- 
 op Warburton, more suo, does not mince matters, but blurts 
 out, " This has no meaning ;" and then the others labor 
 away at elucidation. As it is with little things so it is 
 with great. Shakespeare's sublime, far-reaching thoughts, 
 as well as his delicate strokes of characteristic humor, are 
 passed, unnoticed or misunderstood, by these men, while 
 they solemnly give him credit for "very judicious remarks," 
 on "very apt and learned comparisons/' in those portions of 
 his plays less informed with his grand and peculiar genius. 
 
LOVE'S LABORS LOST. 195 
 
 They see only the worth of that which is but the setting of 
 the jewels of his thought. When shall his text be entirely 
 freed from the baneful influence which they have exerted 
 upon it ? 
 
 " Prin. I understand you not, my griefs are double." 
 
 There is a plausibility in the change of " double " into dull, 
 which is made in Mr. Collier's folio. But hear Mr. Singer's 
 remark upon it ! 
 
 " Specious, but incorrect ; the error lies in the small word 
 are, which is a misprint for see. Read, 
 
 " 'I understand you not, my griefs tee double.'" 
 
 Mr. Singer ! Mr. Singer ! A lady, and a princess too ! Do 
 you mean to insinuate that she had sought to drown her 
 sorrows in the flowing bowl, that you make her thus see 
 double ? 
 
 CORRECTION. 
 
 Further reflection has convinced me, that in the line, 
 
 "Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye," 
 
 Act I. Sc. 1. 
 
 the substitution of learning for " beauty " by Mr. Collier's 
 folio undoubtedly restores the original word, and that study 
 has no claim to the place. Although * study ' was used for 
 ' learning ' in Shakespeare's day, still the phrase, " teaches 
 such study" is awkward ; and there is far more similarity 
 between the letters in ' learnmg ' and ' beauty ,' than be- 
 tween those in the latter word and those in ' study.' 
 
A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM. 
 
 The high place which the poetry of this play holds even 
 among the poetry of Shakespeare, is admitted by all who 
 are capable of appreciating it. There is perhaps not an- 
 other production of the human mind which so has the power 
 to make us forget the realities of life, and live for a time in 
 the realms of fancy. Dr. Johnson, it is true, could exam- 
 ine and 'graciously approve Master William Shakespeare's 
 ' composition' in this pedagoguish style : 
 
 " Wild and fantastical as this play is, all the parts in their 
 various modes are well written, and give the kind of pleasure 
 which the author designed. Fairies, in his time, were much in 
 fashion : common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's 
 poem had made them great." 
 
 But Johnson lived, as Mr. Knight well remarks, and as the 
 reader of this volume will be convinced before he finishes 
 it, u in a prosaic age, and fostered in this particular the 
 real ignorance by which he was surrounded. * * It 
 is perfectly useless to dissect such criticism : let it be a 
 beacon to warn us, and not a 'load-star' to guide us." 
 
 But universally as the poetic charm of this play has 
 bound us of the present century, who have returned to the 
 appreciation of Shakespeare which existed in his own day, 
 it has been regarded by some very able critics as unfit for 
 
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 197 
 
 representation. Some have even gone so far as to say that 
 it shows a failure of the author's constructive ability. The 
 following remarks by Hazlitt are part of a criticism which 
 has been often quoted : 
 
 " The Midsummer Night's Dream, when acted, is converted 
 from a delightful fiction into a dull pantomime. All that is finest 
 in the play is lost in the representation. The spectacle was 
 grand ; but the spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled. Poet- 
 ry and the stage do not agree well together. The attempt to 
 reconcile them in this instance fails not only of effect, but of de- 
 corum. The ideal can have no place upon the stage, which is a 
 picture without perspective : every thing there is in the fore- 
 ground. That which was merely an airy shape, a dream, a pass- 
 ing thought, immediately becomes an unmanageable reality." 
 
 This is well said ; but I venture to doubt the truth of 
 the dogma, that " poetry and the stage do not agree well 
 together ; " and to object, that although it is self-evident 
 that " the ideal can have no place upon the stage," it will not 
 do to apply that truth as a test to the fitness of a dramatic 
 composition for the theatre. All characters in the higher 
 drama are ideal ; and the more truthful they are, the more 
 nearly do they approach the true ideal, the conditions of 
 which are the absence of all that is peculiar to the individ- 
 ual, with the presence of all that is characteristic of the 
 species. Exclude any play from the stage, because the 
 ideal is not there attainable, and you strike the whole of 
 Shakespeare's dramatic works from the list of acting plays. 
 Lear, Othello, Hamlet and Macbeth would go with the Tem- 
 pest and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Ariel and the 
 Fairies, in the last two, are not more impossible than the 
 ghosts and the witches in Hamlet and Macbeth, or more ideal 
 than the characters of Lear and Othello. 
 
 It is impossible to admit the inconsistency of poetry and 
 
198 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 the stage, without admitting at the same time that all the 
 greatest dramas which the world has seen, all those which 
 have thrilled the souls and quickened the pulses of men for 
 centuries, as well in the theatre as in the closet, are unfit 
 for the stage ; an absurdity which Mr. Hazlitt could not 
 have intended to assert. But if he meant, as it would 
 seem he must have meant, that the recitation of long pas- 
 sages of merely descriptive or didactic poetry clogs dramatic 
 progress, he has asserted an undeniable truth, and one which 
 has a bearing upon the fitness of this play for representa- 
 tion. There are many passages in it which, enchant ingly 
 beautiful as they are when read, might, if recited without 
 curtailment upon the stage, be listened to impatiently 
 by a modern audience. But it should be remembered 
 that Shakespeare wrote to please a public which rather craved 
 than eschewed such passages. Men whose fathers, or who 
 themselves in their early days, had listened by the hour to 
 the didactic doggerel of Moralities and Mysteries, and even 
 that of the comedies and tragedies written by Shakespeare's 
 predecessors, would find the longest and least impassioned 
 speech which he has put into the mouth of any character, 
 lively and inspiriting. Accustomed, too, as the audiences 
 of that time had been, to the utter absence of scenery and 
 stage effect, a change of scene having been indicated to them 
 simply by rubbing the name of one place off a board and 
 writing that of another on it, and also even to seeing men 
 play women's parts, they would not find fault with the im- 
 possibilities of this drama. Bearing this in mind, we can 
 imagine A Midsummer Night's Dream played with no less 
 effect now than in Shakespeare's day. * We should not 
 forget that when it was brought out, Oberon and Titania 
 
 * It has been. The general public will not soon forget the charm, or 
 the critical, the true Shakesperian flavor of the performance of A Midsum- 
 mer Night's Dream under the direction of Mr. Burton at his own theatre. 
 
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 199 
 
 as well as Hermia and Helena were played by men ; and 
 that no one of our many contrivances for stage effect were 
 known to the managers who first produced it. We have only 
 now to realize the poet's conception to the extent of our 
 ability, as they did to the extent of theirs, and let our im- 
 agination supply the rest, to find that this play possesses the 
 power to awake an absorbing interest, though not a pro- 
 found emotion, in the minds of men in any age of the world. 
 It is undeniable, however, that A Midsummer Night's 
 Dream is peculiarly exacting in its requisitions for proper 
 representation. It unites, nay more, it blends, with an 
 all-controlling hand, the mythology and the manners of clas- 
 sic Greece, with the superstitions and the habits which sprung 
 from the romantic and the grotesque spirit of the Middle 
 Ages. In it, we have demi-gods and Amazons, with fairies 
 and elves ; the two incongruous elements being bound to- 
 gether by two links, one of human love, the other of human 
 folly. But it is remarkable that, though they are connect- 
 ed, they are not brought together. The kinsman of Her- 
 cules and the Queen of the Amazons are brought into contact 
 or relation with the lovers and the clowns ; and the fairies 
 are even more intimately connected with their fortunes ; 
 but the latter and the former never come together, have 
 no influence upon each other. Theseus and Oberon, Hip- 
 polyta and Titania, Puck and Philostrate never meet ; and 
 though working to a common end, have no common pur- 
 pose. The merely human elements of the play, also, which 
 are essentially incongruous, do not come into contact except 
 nominally, in the last Scene : the Athenian lovers and the 
 amateur Athenian players, who are in fact but representa- 
 tions of the amateur players of the early half of the sixteenth 
 century, are kept as much apart as if they were in different 
 plays. How wonderful is the genius which has bound all 
 these antagonistic powers together without destroying their 
 
200 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 individual strength, which has blent all these opposite traits 
 without depriving them of their individual character ! 
 
 But besides, and beyond this, although the construction 
 of the comedy is no less fraught with the proofs of genius 
 than its poetry, it is yet evident that the dramatic progress 
 and interest of A Midsummer Night's Dream, if it have 
 any, are totally unlike those of any other dramatic compo- 
 sition which holds possession of the stage. We feel from 
 the beginning, that the fate or even the fancied happiness 
 of not one of the characters is at stake. Theseus and his 
 buskined mistress are well content when the play opens ; 
 and we know that the confusion which Puck makes with 
 his love-in-idleness is to be mere perplexity, not intended 
 by the dramatist to cause us even an instant's concern, and 
 to be unravelled again by a momentary exercise of the same 
 capricious power which caused it. The Athenian lovers 
 are mere puppets for Puck to play with ; and we feel no 
 more troubled when Lysander is faithless to Hermia and 
 loves Helena, than when Titania deserts Oberon for Bottom. 
 The comedy is entirely one of incident. With the emotions 
 of the characters we do not concern ourselves ; they have 
 nothing to do with the progress and determination of the 
 action, and, in fact, are very rarely obtruded upon us by 
 the author. 
 
 To this want of ordinary dramatic interest is added the 
 difficulty of accepting ordinary mortals as the representa- 
 tives of the principal characters of the play. We have an 
 ideal demi-god, an ideal Amazon, an ideal Oberon, Titania 
 and Puck in our minds ; and where indeed is Cobweb to 
 come from, he whom good-natured Nick Bottom fears to 
 see " overflowed with the honey-bag " of an humble-bee ? 
 What mortal voices can sing, " You spotted snakes, with 
 double tongue ? " These are all practical impossibilities ; 
 but they were even less possible in Shakespeare's day 
 
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 201 
 
 than in ours ; and A Midsummer Night's Dream was then, 
 as it is now, a successful acting play. For Shakespeare has 
 so wrought this wonderful production, that as it passes be- 
 fore our eyes, our imagination outstrips in creative power 
 the demands of our reason and our taste. True, there can 
 he no Theseus, no Hippolyta, no Fairy King and Queen, 
 no Puck put upon the stage, until the earth produces demi- 
 gods and monsters ; but neither can the human representa- 
 tive of any character in a production of high Art be found ; 
 and as we look upon the slayer of the Minotaur, and his 
 helmeted, shield-bearing mistress, upon Oberon, Titania 
 and Eobin Goodfellow, we are content to think with The- 
 seus : " The best in this kind are but shadows ; and the 
 worst are no worse, if imagination mend them/' 
 
 There has ever been among modern managers a propen- 
 sity to make this comedy merely a brilliant spectacle. 
 They have seemed to doubt its intrinsic power to interest, 
 and have put it on the stage only on account of the occasion 
 they found in it to display the labors of the scene painter, 
 the costumer, and the machinist ; to which they have 
 added a crowd of pretty people who have no business in it. 
 
 I remember one of these performances. The scenery 
 was very beautiful, some of it quite grand. Puck and Tita- 
 nia's attendant Fairy made their first appearance on the 
 shore of a fairy lake which stretched far into the distance. 
 Puck was on the back of a peacock, which, when he dis- 
 mounted, instantly changed into a large tropical flower and 
 disappeared. Titania came on, drawn by swans and sur- 
 rounded by a troop of fairies. Oberon, crowned and gorge- 
 ously dressed in a gold tunic with a scarlet robe, met her, 
 and when she retired after their little l tiff,' called up, by a 
 motion of his wand, a gorgeous aquatic equipage, consisting 
 of a huge shell drawn by dolphins. After singing a part 
 of his speech, " I know a bank whereon the wild thyme 
 
202 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 grows/' as a duet with a fairy, he took his seat, and instead 
 of sailing off, waved his wand, and a panorama of Fairy- 
 land passed before him. This was a very splendid and 
 elaborate affair, and must have occupied ten minutes in 
 passing. The scenery in the second Act was hardly less 
 striking and beautiful ; and in this act a corps de ballet 
 was introduced, and a French dancer danced a pas seul, 
 and with them, a shawl dance while Titania slept. 
 
 In the last Act, after the interlude had been played 
 and the newly married pairs had left the scene, there was 
 a " magnificent change to Fairy-land," and fairies were seen 
 issuing from the cups of gigantic flowers. 
 
 Among the characters, Puck was, perhaps, the favorite 
 with the audience. This was not surprising ; for the part 
 was given to one of the most charming little children who 
 ever exchanged the caresses of the nursery for the plaudits 
 of a theatre. She had a winning manner, was very pretti- 
 ly dressed, and knew her part thoroughly, delivered it very 
 sweetly, and made a quaint and dainty little fay indeed. She, 
 and the dresses, and the dances, and the beautiful scenery 
 united to form a very beautiful spectacle, which afforded a 
 delightful evening's amusement to those who are fond of 
 such entertainment ; but neither she, nor the fine dresses, 
 nor the dances, nor the beautiful scenery, had any thing to 
 do with Shakespeare. The piece thus played is a grand 
 fairy spectacle : it is not Shakespeare's enchanting Comedy, 
 A Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 
 Such a Puck, pleasing as he may be in himself, is no 
 more like Shakespeare's Puck than he is like Jupiter To- 
 nans. Here we had a pretty little creature, whose trim 
 body was gayly dressed, and whose dainty limbs were snugly 
 encased in stockinet and terminated as to the lower extre- 
 mities in gaiter boots of a cerulean tint. He delivered his 
 speeches in a sweet childish treble, and was altogether the 
 
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 203 
 
 tenderest and most exquisitely constituted creature in the 
 fairy band. Is this Shakespeare's " lob of spirits," who de- 
 lighted in his proper name " Hobgoblin" who labored " in 
 the quern " [a corn-mill worked by hand], and whose " shape 
 and making " were so unlike those of his fellow fays that a 
 stranger fairy knew him by those alone ? A glance at the 
 print of Puck which accompanies the old ballad of the Mad 
 Pranks of Robin Goodfellow, printed in 1588, when Shake- 
 speare was twenty-two years old, would have shown whoever 
 put this Puck upon the stage, that his pretty manikin was 
 about as unlike the Puck of Shakespeare's day as it was 
 possible to make him. There he is a mixture of fay, dwarf 
 Hercules, and Satyr ; and bears a brush broom in one hand 
 and a candle in the other. But what need of ballads and 
 prints to guide us ? Who that has read the play (and who 
 has not), cannot call the urchin before his mind's eye as 
 instantly as Oberon commanded his real presence ! a rough, 
 knurly-limbed, fawn-faced, shock-pated little fellow, a 
 very Shetlander among the gossamer- winged, dainty-limbed 
 shapes around him ; and strong enough to knock all their 
 heads together for his elvish sport. We cannot have exactly 
 such a Puck ; but we can be content with one " who comes 
 to disfigure or to present " such a Puck. 
 
 Fairy lakes and panoramas of Fairy-land are just as 
 much out of place as a dandy Puck. There is not the slight- 
 est warrant in the text for either. The scene of the fairy 
 business is "A Wood near Athens; " and the only changes 
 are from one part to "Another part of the Wood. " Pas 
 seuls, shawl dances, and the people who dance them, are no 
 less foreign to the design of Shakespeare ; and equally so is 
 the turning of a part 'of Oberon 's soliloquy into a duet, to 
 be sung with a blue fairy who conies in for the purpose wav- 
 ing her wand, and goes out continuing the process. And, by 
 the way, why are all stage fairies similarly armed and equally 
 
204 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 constant in the use of the weapon ? Pray what is the pur- 
 pose of all this violent stirring up of the atmosphere ? It 
 is difficult to discover, except that it perpetuates a time- 
 honored stage conventionality. 
 
 The text gives no hint of any of these things. That 
 tells of fairy gambols and pranks which form a part of the 
 movement of the play. Shakespeare brings on the stage 
 just such fairies as Mary Arden had told him of when he 
 stood at her knee, like any other mortal child ; she, mother 
 though she was, not dreaming the while, as her sweet Will 
 looked up in her face, that she had borne and was nurtur- 
 ing one who was to be the delight of all nations, the great- 
 est pride of the greatest race among the peoples of the earth, 
 the noblest intellect the world's history should tell of. It 
 is the fairies of his nursery hours which Shakespeare has 
 idealized in A Midsummer Night's Dream : such fairies as 
 half Stratford believed were dancing in Sir Thomas Lucy's 
 park every moonlight night ; and these flit about the wood 
 near Athens, make lovers' quarrels and make them up again 
 in m^re mischief, and dance and sing for themselves, and 
 not to display their skill to others. There is nothing there 
 of fairy lakes and panoramas, and people tying themselves 
 and each other up in rose-colored shawls while they stand 
 with infinite pain upon the extremity of one toe, and unty- 
 ing themselves by standing on the other. True, there have 
 been fairy ballets composed in which there are pas of all 
 kinds ; but in those, motion, the dance, is the medium of 
 expression. It is not so in A Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 Nothing is there set down to be performed which has not 
 to do with the progress of the piece ; and to arrest that for 
 the movement of a panorama or the evolutions of a ballet, 
 is to stifle Shakespeare with a paint-brush, and to trample 
 poetry under foot with entrechats and bore it through and 
 through with pirouettes. 
 
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 205 
 
 Shakespeare has preserved a unity in this fanciful com- 
 position, which the spectacle-making managers only mar by 
 changing the last scene to Fairy-land. It is to be present 
 at the wedding of Theseus and Hyppolita that Oberon and 
 Titania have left Fairy-land and come to Athens, as we learn 
 from their mutual reproaches at their first meeting ; and 
 the events which form the movement of the three progres- 
 sive acts of the play, the second, third and fourth, are but 
 the fruit of accident and mischief. The fifth Act, like the 
 finale of a finely-wrought musical composition, placidly re- 
 sumes the theme which was announced at its commence- 
 ment, and simply blends with it the counter-theme with 
 which it has been intricately worked up during the body of 
 the piece. The poet ends the fairy freaks which have ha- 
 rassed the human mortals through this dream, by turning 
 the tormentors into benefactors, and bringing them into the 
 house to bless the place and the children born of the mar- 
 riages celebrated on that night. After the grotesque fun 
 and broad humor of the interlude, the dream resumes its 
 fanciful and graceful form, and fades upon the mind, a 
 troop of shadowy figures, singing benisons. 
 
 The music which Mendelssohn has written for this ex- 
 quisite work of genius, is in its intrinsic beauty and its skilful 
 adaptation as near the perfection and power of genius ? 
 as the production of mere talent, taste, and acquired resource 
 can ever be. Some years ago, when such a suspicion had 
 never, to my knowledge, been uttered, I ventured the asser- 
 tion that Mendelssohn was entirely wanting in original, 
 creative genius, and extended the same judgment to Spohr. 
 I am no longer left alone in this opinion. To neither of 
 these composers are we indebted for any new form of mu- 
 sical thought. Their works display learning, labor, taste, 
 skill, and, in the case of Mendelssohn particularly, an 
 unusual command of all the resources of the art ; but we 
 
206 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 look in vain through their compositions for the fruits of that 
 gift which we call inspiration ; we hear no strain which, 
 had they not been born, might not have been conceived by 
 other minds. The music of neither is characteristic in its 
 elements, though both have peculiarities by which we recog- 
 nize their compositions : but these are peculiarities of treat- 
 ment, handling, not of original conception. 
 
 The overture, the march and the dances, written by 
 Mendelssohn for this play, are the finest productions of 
 his pen. It is paying them the highest possible compli- 
 ment to say that they are thoroughly informed with the 
 spirit of Shakespeare's poetry. The same may be said of 
 all the music which the German composer has written to 
 A Midsummer Night's Dream. But as to a part of it, 
 there is a great aesthetic error, which however has not to 
 do with its intrinsic merits, and for which the fashion of the 
 stage and not the composer is accountable. In many pas- 
 sages the thoughts of the musical composer and the poet 
 are heard together. This is false Art. The mingling of 
 two forms of expression is inadmissible, because it must be 
 fatal to the full and just effect which properly belongs to 
 either. Let Music or Poetry take possession of our souls ; 
 but do not call upon our emotions to serve the bidding of 
 two masters. The painter might far more consistently at- 
 tempt to unite the sculptor's art with his, by bringing his 
 figures into relief, or the sculptor seek to heighten the relief 
 of his work by deepening the shadows with paint. If verse 
 be the poet's medium of expression, let Poetry alone ex- 
 press his thought ; if musical sounds, let Music alone do 
 his bidding. We may alternate our enjoyment of the two 
 arts, as in the case of illustrated poems, or music inter- 
 spersed with verse but if both claim our attention at the 
 same time, we are under the dominion of neither, and all 
 unity of effect is destroyed. 
 
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 207 
 
 Dramatic poetry can receive no more aid from Music, 
 than dramatic music can receive from Poetry. All that the 
 musician can do for the dramatist is to embellish his work : 
 all that the poet can accomplish for the musician is to fur- 
 nish him with dramatic situations, and suggestive thoughts, 
 of which his music is to be the sole exponent, to the entire 
 disregard of all except the mere dramatic conception of the 
 poet ; whose words, as words, are in this case to be consid- 
 ered the mere vehicles of musical sounds. Any mingling 
 of the offices of Poet (using the word in its limited sense) 
 and Musician, effects only the confounding, confusing, and 
 consequent destruction of both. 
 
 In truth, Music and Poetry more than any two other 
 Arts must be enjoyed apart ; because they both appeal to 
 the mind through the same sense, the ear, which, other- 
 wise, is called upon to receive at the same time two impres- 
 sions, one transmitting thought, the other awakening emo- 
 tion. The consequence of the attempt to do this, is distrac- 
 tion both of mind and sense, as all who have been subjected 
 to it must have noticed. In a play, where words are the 
 vehicles of thought and expression, music may properly 
 precede or follow the Acts, or be interspersed through the 
 poetry, but cannot properly accompany it : in an opera, 
 where music is the medium of expression, we want words 
 only for the situation or emotion which they furnish, as 
 a subject to the composer, and for the purposes of articula- 
 tion. He who needs, or can suffer the music of Mendelssohn 
 while he is listening to the verse of Shakespeare, or who 
 longs to hear the verse of Komani while he is enjoying the 
 music of Bellini, might with greater propriety ask that St. 
 Luke's narrative should be plainly written across the face of 
 Raphael's Transfiguration, so that he might enjoy the story 
 and the picture together, or complain that Virgil did 
 not write his description of Venus appearing to ffineas 
 
208 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 with such an arrangement of his lines that they would pre- 
 sent the form of the beauty they described. No, neither 
 Music, Painting, Sculpture, nor Poetry will accept divided 
 homage. Art, like Falstqff's sack, must be "simple, of 
 itself . " a draught not of mingled pleasures ; but pure, 
 unmixed even with kindred delights. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Thes. Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires ; 
 Know of your youth, examine well your blood, 
 Whether, if you yield not to your father's choice, 
 You can endure the livery of a nun, 
 For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd, 
 To live a barren sister all your life, 
 Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon. 
 Thrice blessed they, that master so their blood, 
 To undergo such maiden pilgrimage ; 
 But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd, 
 Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn, 
 Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness." 
 
 " But earthlier happy is the rose distilled." Pope and 
 Johnson proposed to read " earlier happy," and Steevens 
 " earthly happy." Capell reads " earthly happier," and 
 Mr. Knight without his usual deference to the original text, 
 and regard for the most obvious meaning, adopts the latter 
 reading, on the ground that " earthlier happie," the read- 
 ing of the first folio and the quartos, might have been mis- 
 printed for " earthlie happier." So it might ; but what 
 need of supposing a misprint ? ' Earthly ' is a good ad- 
 jective, and l earthlier ' is its proper comparative. Thesew 
 has just described a religious state which makes those who 
 adopt it " thrice blessed." He then speaks of another 
 state, which confers another kind of happiness. Each en- 
 sures happiness, but happiness of a different nature. When 
 
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 209 
 
 he discriminates between the two, he speaks, not of their 
 degrees of happiness, but of their kind. The latter is a 
 happiness earthlier, that is, more consistent with the nat- 
 ural instincts of the human heart, than the former. i Earth- 
 ly happier/ makes the distinction, or at least the comparison, 
 one of degree. It perverts the sense, or substitutes a new 
 one, and one not so natural and Shakesperian ; and gives 
 us, besides, an awkward new phrase for a graceful old one. 
 Why make it ? 
 
 [Since the foregoing remarks were written, Mr. Collier's 
 folio has appeared with the reading i earthly, happier ' in 
 this passage. It is almost needless to notice it ; for a lib- 
 erty with the text which is refused to the reasons of such 
 men as Capell and Mr. Knight, can surely derive no author- 
 ity from the ipse dixit of a man of whom we know nothing. 
 
 " Helena. And for this intelligence, 
 
 If I have thanks, it is a dear expense." 
 
 Mr. Collier thinks that his folio singularly improves this 
 passsage by reading, 
 
 " And for this intelligence, 
 If I have thanks, it is dear recompense." 
 
 Whether or not the change is an improvement, is a matter 
 of taste ; but whether a change is needed, is not a matter 
 of opinion. The words of the original text are susceptible 
 of more than one interpretation ; but surely the most ob- 
 vious one is the best. Steevens thus states it : " ( it is a 
 dear expense' :] i. e. it will cost him much (be a severe con- 
 straint on his feelings) to make even so slight a return for 
 my communication." 
 
 14 
 
210 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 " Bottom. First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on ; then 
 read the names of the actors, and so grow to a point." 
 
 One only of the characters among the human mortals 
 in this play is very strongly marked. Who but Bottom, 
 the life and soul of the interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe ! 
 Many have been inclined to look upon Bottom only as a 
 stolid lout ; and he has even been presented as such with 
 success upon the stage. The conception is directly at va- 
 riance with Shakespeare's delineation of the character. 
 
 Watch Bottom, and see that from the time he enters 
 until he disappears, he not only claims to be, but is, the 
 man of men, tho Agamemnon of the " rude mechanicals " 
 of Athens. No sooner is the subject of the play opened, 
 than he instantly assumes the direction of it, which is ac- 
 quiesced in by his fellows, as a matter of course. He tells 
 Peter Quince what to do, and Peter does it. He has the 
 best part assigned to him ; but the bottomless stomach of 
 his vanity claims every character. He wants the lion's part 
 literally as well as metaphorically. But there is some rea- 
 son for all this besides his vanity : he is the best among 
 them, and they know it. He has impressed them with his 
 superiority, and has a moral as well as a mental influence 
 upon them. Peter Quince, who is, after a clownish fashion, 
 a shrewd, politic fellow, sees the necessity for conciliating 
 him, and flatters him into self-complacent satisfaction, by 
 telling him that "Pyramus is a sweet-faced man ; a pro- 
 per man as one shall see in a summer's day, a most lovely, 
 gentlemanlike man ; therefore, you must needs play Pyra- 
 mus." The green-room and the world before the curtain 
 see many a like manoeuvre now-a-days. 
 
 Bottom criticises boldly at the rehearsal ; and his cri- 
 
CHARACTER OF BOTTOM. 211 
 
 ticisms are received with deference. When Snug, the Join- 
 er, is at his wit's end about bringing in a wall, he appeals 
 instantly to Bottom, who, with sublime readiness of resource, 
 instantly affords the needful counsel. In this very Scene, 
 after his " translation," he says to Titania : "to say the 
 truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a- 
 days. The more the pity that some honest neighbors will 
 not make them friends." It is no idiotic lout who utters 
 this, and who makes those humorous replies to Moth, Mus- 
 tard-seed, Pease-blossom and Cobweb, and who, on coming to 
 himself, shrinks from saying to himself what he thought he 
 was, and what he thought he had upon his head. And when 
 Peter Quince is forced to the sad conclusion that "out of 
 doubt he is transported," see the consternation of the whole 
 company ! " The play goes not forward/' says Flute the 
 Bellows Mender. "It is not possible ; " replies Quince, 
 " you have not a man in all Athens able to discharge Py- 
 ramus but he ; " and Flute soon after bewails the sixpence 
 a day (quite a salary in Shakespeare's time,) which " Bully 
 Bottom " has lost by his asinine transformation. Finally, 
 when Bottom comes in upon them, no more of a donkey than 
 he had ever been, hear Peter Quince's delighted exclamation : 
 "Bottom f most courageous day ! most happy hour ! " 
 The shrewd fellow has a double interest in the restoration 
 of his leading actor ; for good Peter, beyond a question, is 
 the author of that play of Pyramus and Thisbe ; it peeps 
 out on all occasions. 
 
 No, Bottom is no stupid lout. He is a compound of 
 profound ignorance and omnivorous conceit ; but these are 
 tempered by good nature, decision of character, and some 
 mother wit. That which gives him his individuality, does 
 not depend upon his want of education, his position, or his 
 calling. All the schools of Athens could not have reasoned 
 it out of him ; and all the gold of Croesus would have made 
 
212 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 him but a gilded Bottom after all. The race of Bottoms 
 did not become extinct with Nick ; nor have we reason to 
 believe he was Nicholas the First. His descendants have 
 not unfrequently appeared among the gifted intellects of 
 the world. When Goldsmith, jealous of the attention which 
 a dancing monkey attracted in a coffee-house, said, " I can 
 do that as well," and was about to attempt it, he was but 
 playing Bottom. As Mr. Burton renders the character, its 
 traits are brought out with a delicate and masterly hand : 
 its humor is exquisite. But it is not well for any of us to 
 laugh too much at it : it is not prudent ; for somebody may 
 be by who knows us better than we know ourselves. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Fairy. The cowslips tall her pensioners be; 
 In their gold coats, spots you see," <fec. 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio alters " tall " to all and " coats " to 
 cups ; and Mr. Dyce says, that though the first of these 
 alterations is more than questionable (and he performs well 
 the needless task of sh owing that it is utterly inadmissible) 
 the second may be right. If Mr. Dyce means to say that 
 Shakespeare, with propriety, might have written cups for 
 " coats/' few will be inclined to disagree with him. But 
 when we have the best evidence that Shakespeare wrote 
 " coats," and none at all that he wrote cups ; and when the 
 first word is not only comprehensible but pertinent, why 
 say that it " may be right " to change it to any thing ? 
 It is to be regretted when a man of Mr. Dyce's position 
 gives even a quasi sanction to an unnecessary change in the 
 original text of Shakespeare. 
 
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 213 
 
 " Puck. Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, 
 And tailor cries, and falls into a cough ; 
 And then the whole quire hold their hips and loffe, 
 A waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear 
 A merrier hour was never wasted there." 
 
 I never could understand why the " wisest aunt " in this 
 most rollicking and exuberantly humorous description should 
 cry " tailor " when she misses her seat ; and have found no 
 commentary to enlighten me. Does the word refer to her 
 position when she falls, being like that of a tailor ? It can 
 hardly be that the allusion is to the first syllable of the 
 word. 
 
 [I find in the Variorum Edition, a note by Johnson, in 
 which he refers this expression to the position of the person 
 falling. But even the support of an identical prior conjec- 
 ture does not confirm me in attributing this sense to the 
 word. There was evidently a great joke hid in it ; and 
 what joke would there be, even for such a circle, in one of them 
 falling into the position of a tailor ? Neither Hanmer nor 
 Warburton know of such a customary jest under such cir- 
 cumstances ; for they read, " and rails or cries." 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 With what propriety is there a new scene made at the 
 entrance of Oberon and Titania, who merely come upon Puck 
 and the fairy as they are talking ? In the original, the first 
 Scene closes at the subsequent separation of Puck and Obe- 
 ron. There is neither authority nor reason for the change. 
 
214 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " Titan. And on old Hyem's chin and icy crown, 
 An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds 
 Is, as in mockery set." 
 
 Evidently we should read, " Hyem's thin and icy crown," 
 as Tyrwhitt and Mr. Dyce have suggested. What was a 
 chaplet doing on old Hyem's chin ? How did it get there ; 
 and when it got there, how did it stay there ? 
 
 " Oberon. Thou remember'st 
 
 Since once I sat upon a promontory, 
 And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back 
 Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath 
 That the rude sea grew civil at her song, 
 And certain stars shot madly from their spheres 
 To hear the sea maid's music." 
 
 How strangely felicitous the choice of epithet by Shake- 
 speare ! and yet there is conveyed, I know not how, an im- 
 pression that the epithets are not chosen, but rise sponta- 
 neously with the thought. He says the maid uttered " dul- 
 cet and harmonious breath." Not c notes/ as any other poet 
 would have said, but "breath ; " as if the marvellous crea- 
 ture exhaled music ; as if from her lovely parted lips noth- 
 ing could come which did not take from them a form of 
 beauty. Let any one put ' notes ' or l tones ' in the place 
 of " breath/' in this line, and see how the bloom on its rich 
 beauty vanishes. The passage is beautiful, charmingly beau- 
 tiful, whichever word is there ; but take away the word which 
 Shakespeare wrote, and that which is exquisite, ethereal, 
 and really transcendent in its beauty is gone, utterly and 
 hopelessly. 
 
 How much, too, is there in the alliteration of the line, 
 
 " In maiden meditation fancy-free." 
 
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 215 
 
 The alliteration, it may be said, adds nothing to the thought. 
 True ; but it does add to its charm. Without it, the line 
 would not be that which always flashes on the memory 
 when we think of a maiden who has lived till now with the 
 depths of her heart untroubled. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Her. Hate me ? wherefore ? O me, what newes my Love ! " 
 
 Thus the original, which Mr. Collier's margins have, plau- 
 sibly enough, changed to " what means my love ? " But it 
 is by no means certain that any variation from the original 
 is needed. This is Hernia's first interview with her former 
 lover since Puck's application of the flower to his eyes ; and 
 she may well express surprise at the novelty of his declara- 
 tion that he hates her. 
 
 " Hel. So with two seeming bodies but one heart ; 
 Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, 
 Due but to one and crowned with one crest." 
 
 Tliis heraldic allusion has puzzled many. Monck Ma- 
 son's solution, which is approved by Knight, is this, 
 
 " Every branch of a family is called a house ; and none but 
 the first of the first house can bear the arms of the family without 
 some distinction ; two of the first, therefore, means two coats of 
 the first house, which are properly due but to one." 
 
 This might be all very well as far as it goes, but it 
 leaves the line " Due but to one and crowned with one crest " 
 unaccounted for. The simile is evidently intended to 
 
216 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 strengthen the idea of the perfect union of the two girls, 
 which, according to Mason's explanation, it fails to do. The 
 trouble seems to arise from making the word " first " an 
 heraldic term. c First/ ( second/ &c., are used in heraldry 
 either as denoting a house, or as indicating a tint already 
 mentioned in blazoning a shield ; but here i first ' is used in 
 its ordinary sense, and refers to the former line, as Douce 
 has pointed out. Helena says that she and Hermia had 
 two bodies but one heart ; and " two of the first/' that is, 
 two bodies, " due but to one/' that is, one soul, like coats 
 in heraldry, when the bearings of two families are united to 
 make the arms of the one which springs from them, in 
 which case they are crowned with one crest. 
 
 " Oberon. Turns into yellow gold his salt, green streams," 
 
 This is always printed " salt-green streams " making a 
 compound adjective of salt-green. What sort of green is 
 a salt-green ? Is salt green at all ? Head, " salt, green 
 streams." 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Oberon. Her dotage now I do begin to pity ; 
 For, meeting her of late, behind the wood, 
 Seeking sweet savours for this hateful fool," <tc. 
 
 Mr. Dyce would read, with one of the quartos, 
 
 "Seeking sweet favours for this hateful fool." 
 
 because " Titania was seeking flowers for Bottom to wear 
 as favours." But surely Mr. Dyce must have forgotten that 
 
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 217 
 
 " savours/' the word in the authentic folio, is supported by the 
 fact that Bottom in this Scene expresses a wish for the 
 " sweet savour " of a honey bag, and that Titania begs 
 him to sit that she may " stick musk roses " in his head, 
 and in a previous Scene thus commands her attendants : 
 
 "Feed him with apricocks, and dewberries, 
 With purple grapes, green figs and mulberries; 
 The honey bags steal from the humble bees," <fec. 
 
 The Queen of the Fairies was evidently seeking " sweet 
 savours," and not "sweet favours" for her hirsute love. 
 
 ACT V. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Thes. Lovers, and madmen, have such seething brains, 
 Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend 
 More than cool reason ever comprehends. 
 The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, 
 Are of imagination all compact : 
 One sees more devils than vast hell can hold: 
 That is the madman : the lover, all as frantic, 
 Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt : 
 The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 
 Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven ; 
 And, as imagination bodies forth 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation, and a name. 
 Such tricks hath strong imagination, 
 That, if it would but apprehend some joy, 
 It comprehends some bringer of that joy ; 
 Or in the night, imagining some fear, 
 How easy, is a bush suppos'd a bear ? " 
 
 How strange that this sublimely beautiful passage shouiu 
 have such a " lame and impotent conclusion." To think 
 of coming down from, 
 
218 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " the poet's pen 
 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name, 
 
 to such obvious and smile provoking common-place as, 
 
 " Or, in the night, imagining some fear, 
 How easy is a bush suppos'd a bear." 
 
 I do not believe that the last two lines of the speech are 
 genuine. Imagination " imagining some fear/' cannot be 
 Shakespeare's. The two preceding lines are doubtless his, 
 and close the speech appropriately, with a clear and 
 conclusive distinction between the apprehension and com- 
 prehension of excited imagination, the very subject of the 
 remarks of Theseus. Where, indeed, in the whole range of 
 metaphysical writing is the difference between the two acts 
 so clearly stated and so forcibly illustrated ! And would 
 Shakespeare, after reaching the climax of his thought, fall 
 into this needless common-place ? Besides, what mean- 
 ing has " or " where it now stands ? " Apprehend some 
 joy " and " comprehend some bringer of that joy," ring 
 true ; but " imagining some fear" and " bushes and bears " 
 are poor counterfeit. I wonder that this has not been 
 noticed. The two lines are, in my judgment, an interpola- 
 tion by some player. That the original folio was partly 
 printed from a copy which, whether Shakespeare's original 
 manuscript or not, had been marked for stage use, is evident 
 from the fact, that in some places the name of the performer 
 appears in it, instead of that of the character ; and it needs no 
 proof that stage *mariagers, and even actors, take and always 
 have taken, the liberty of adding to, as well as subtracting 
 from, the dramatist's work. On the title-pages of some of 
 the plays in Bell's British Theatre, which are advertised as 
 " regulated from the Prompt Book," is this notice : 
 
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 219 
 
 " The Lines distinguished by inverted commas are omitted in 
 the Representation ; and those printed in Italics are the additions 
 of the Theatre." 
 
 The quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays were evidently 
 printed from actors' parts ; and, as we learn from the Sta- 
 tioner's address in the first folio of Beaumont and Fletcher's 
 Works, "when private friends desired a copy [of their 
 parts] they [the actors] transcribed what they acted" The 
 many erasures in Mr. Collier's folio, and the alterations for 
 the sake of rhyme, especially at the close of Scenes and 
 Acts, put it beyond doubt that its mutilations, changes, and 
 interpolations, are partly due to the license of the actors on 
 a degenerating stage. 
 
 "Lysander. The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung 
 By an Athenian eunuch to the harp." 
 
 27ieseus. We '11 none of that : that have I told my love, 
 In glory of my kinsman Hercules. 
 
 Lys. " The riot of the tipsy Bachanals, 
 Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage." 
 
 Thes. That is an old device; and it was play'd 
 When I from Thebes came last a conqueror. 
 
 Lys, "The thrice three Muses mourning for the death 
 Of learning, late deceas'd in beggary." 
 
 Thes. That is some satire, keen and critical, 
 Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony. 
 
 Lys. "A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus, 
 And his love Thisbe : very tragical mirth." 
 
 Thes. Merry and tragical ! Tedious and brief ! 
 That is, hot ice, and wondrous strange snow. 
 How shall we find the concord of this discord ? " 
 
 Thus the original folio divides this passage, making 
 Lysander read the schedule and Theseus comment. On the 
 quasi authority of the quartos, the whole is given to The- 
 
220 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 seus, by which nothing is gained in propriety or effect. It 
 is surely more probable that Duke Theseus would have a 
 schedule read to him, than that he would read it aloud him- 
 self ; and this is the arrangement of the authentic copy. 
 
 In the last reply of Theseus, the epithet " strange," ap- 
 plied to snow, is not only entirely inappropriate, but utterly 
 meaningless ; it is doubtless a printer's error for seething. 
 Mr. Collier's folio reads "hot ice and wondrous seething 
 snow." 
 
 My unknown correspondent in the lumber State does 
 not agree with this opinion, and holds to " strange" " Of 
 course," he remarks, " the idea is, that the snow, to com- 
 pare with the mirthful and tragical, and tedious and brief 
 scene, and with the hot ice, must be a singular kind of snow 
 snow resembling almost any thing else than snow per- 
 haps black instead of white, or seething instead of frozen 
 such would be strange snow, indeed." I respect this cling- 
 ing to the original text ; but still I fail to see any consistent 
 meaning in "strange." It is not in any way opposed to 
 " snow ; " and reason demands that it should be. Mirth and 
 tragedy, tediousness and brevity, heat and ice, cannot find 
 a counter-part in strangeness and snow. " Seething snow" 
 seems plainly to me the author's phrase ; and the more, 
 that it perfects an otherwise imperfect line. 
 
 "Pyr. Sweet moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams; 
 I thank thee, moon, for shining now so bright, 
 For, by thy gracious, golden, glittering beams," <fec. 
 
 Thus the original, with an evident misprint in the se- 
 cond " beams," which was corrected in the second folio to 
 streams. Mr. Knight suggests that we should read, 
 
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 221 
 
 "For by thy gracious, golden, glittering gleams." 
 
 Surely, who that remembers the following lines in the 
 Prologue of the interlude, can doubt for a moment that 
 gleams is the word ? 
 
 " Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade, 
 He bravely broach'd his boiling bloody breast; " 
 
 If we change the original at all, a good emendation in 
 the second folio must yield to a better from Mr. Knight ; 
 for the second folio, with or without MS. emendations, has 
 no authority. 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 " Obe. With this field-dew consecrate, 
 Every fairy take his gait ; 
 And each several chamber bless, 
 Through this palace with sweet peace ; 
 Ever shall in safety rest, 
 And the owner of it blest." 
 
 " Ever shall in safety rest," is neither sense nor English, 
 ancient or modern. There is no nominative, expressed or 
 understood. Pope read, 
 
 "E'er shall it in safety rest;" 
 
 but Warburton and Mr. Collier's folio in reading, 
 
 " Ever shall it safely rest," 
 
 deviate less, in fact, as little as possible, from the original, 
 and obtain the same sense and a smoother line. 
 
MERCHANT OF VENICE. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Ant. I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano ; 
 A stage, where every man must play a part, 
 And mine a sad one." 
 
 I do not know that it has been before remarked, that to 
 the dignity of Antonio's character there is added a tinge 
 of moody, tender melancholy, which yet stops short of mor- 
 bidness or affectation, and which adds much to the interest 
 awakened in us by his generous friendship and the trying 
 circumstances in which his noble kindness places him. This 
 sadness, as well as the gentleness and open sincerity of his 
 character, appears in the letter in which he announces his 
 misfortune to Bassanio, one of the finest instances of the 
 pathos of simplicity that exists in literature. 
 
 " Sweet Bassanio, my ships have all miscarried, my creditors 
 grow cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to the Jew is forfeit; 
 and since in paying it is impossible I should live, all debts are 
 cleared between you and I, if I might but see you at my death. 
 Notwithstanding, use your pleasure : if your love do not persuade 
 you to come, let not my letter." 
 
 No commentator has shown such an utter want of sympa- 
 thy with the finest thoughts and the finest characters in 
 
MERCHANT OF VENICE. 223 
 
 Shakespeare's works, as that one who has, naturally therefore, 
 assumed the most patronizing tone in speaking of them, 
 Warhurton. It would have been strange indeed, had he 
 appreciated so noble, and yet so delicately drawn a char- 
 acter as Antonio; and we are not surprised to hear him 
 call this prince of commerce u a plain, reserved, parsi- 
 monious merchant." Warburton says this in a note which 
 he writes, to prove that when Shylock calls Antonio " a 
 bankrupt, a prodigal who dare scarce show his head on the 
 Rialto," he should call him, " a bankrupt for a prodigal" 
 i. e. for Bassanio. Since the critic could not feel the 
 noble generosity of Antonio's nature, it is gratifying to see 
 so pitiable a blunder in criticism made the occasion of 
 showing his want of sympathy. 
 
 " Grat. There are a sort of men whose visages 
 Do cream and mantle like a standing pond ; 
 And do a wilful stillness entertain, 
 With purpose to be dressed in an opinion 
 Of wisdom, gravity," <fec. 
 
 Without good assurance of the fact, it would hardly be 
 believed that a man of common sense would think it neces- 
 sary deliberately to perpetrate a note on this passage for 
 the purpose of defining " a wilful stillness " as ( an obsti- 
 nate silence/ Yet it is unfortunately true that Malone did 
 so ; as any one may see in the Variorum Shakespeare. And 
 in the third scene of this Act, when Bassanio, to prevent 
 Antonio from sealing the bond asked for by the Jew, says, 
 
 " You shall not seal to such a bond for me ; 
 I'll rather dwell in my necessity," 
 
 Dr. Johnson remarks, with timid solemnity, that "todweU, 
 
224 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 in this place seems to mean the same as to continue." On 
 reading such a note as this, we use Hamlet's phrase, 
 
 "Seems, Madam ? nay it is; I know not seems." 
 
 Why did not the Doctor deliberately assure us that " my 
 necessity " means i my need ? ' It would not have been one 
 whit more superfluous. But in King Lear, Johnson out- 
 does himself. In that passage of bitter ironical reproach 
 in the fourth Scene of the second Act, when Lear, .sup- 
 posing himself to address Goneril, says, 
 
 "Dear daughter, I confess that I am old ; 
 Age is unnecessary : On my knees I beg 
 That you'll vouch safe me raiment, bed, and food," 
 
 how cutting is the irony, how grand and crushing the re- 
 buke of her ingratitude conveyed - in the seemingly humble 
 admission that "age is unnecessary/' that the old are 
 needless and a burden ! Will it be believed, Dr. Johnson, 
 the great Dr. Johnson, makes this note upon the passage ! 
 
 " Age is unnecessary :] i. e. Old age has few wants." 
 
 But Thomas Tyrwhitt almost rivals ' the great moralist/ 
 He remarks, 
 
 " Unnecessary, in Lear's speech, I believe means in want 
 of necessaries, unable to procure them.' 1 ' 1 
 
 The obvious and pregnant significance of the passage seems 
 in danger of being extinguished for readers so near c the Au- 
 gustan age of English literature/ when Steevens steps in 
 and nearly saves it, by venturing to suggest that " ' Age is 
 unnecessary/ may mean, old people are useless" 
 
 Now, there must be a reason for the utterance of such 
 
MERCHANT OF VENICE. 225 
 
 platitudes as these, and a thousand others which deform the 
 page of the Variorum Shakespeare, by men of learning and 
 ability. It is in vain to urge that on account of the labors 
 of these very men we now understand the phraseology of 
 Shakespeare's works ; for among my own acquaintance I 
 know a score of men of all grades of intelligence and educa- 
 tion, who have never seen a comment or a criticism on Shake- 
 speare, never looked at a glossary, who read him and have 
 read him for years with delight and understanding, and who 
 would scout such editing as this, as sheer impertinence ; and 
 so, in truth, it is. I find the reason for these labored expla- 
 nations of lucid passages, and the equally labored confusion 
 of others equally clear, in the fact, that the second-hand clas- 
 sic taste, the artificial and meagre phraseology, and the com- 
 paratively precise, straitened, tame and barren style of 
 tiiuuglit in the List century, was so unkindred with the 
 genius of Shakespeare and his age, the golden age of English 
 letters that passages which flashed their meaning upon the 
 minds of his contemporary readers, and which are as instantly 
 apprehended by the minds of this century, more kindred 
 with him than the last were " caviare " to Popes, War- 
 burtons, Hanmers, Johnsons, Malones, and Steevenses and 
 their contemporaries. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " Shy. The skilful shepherd peel'd me certain wands." 
 "Shy. And spat upon my Jewish gaberdine." 
 
 C. Knight gives pill'd for "peel'd" andspetffor "spat," 
 saying that these were the received orthographies of Shake- 
 speare's time. So, also, Mr. Dyce * censures Mr. Collier and 
 
 * Remarks on Mr. J. P. Collier's and Mr. C. Knight's Editions of Shake- 
 speare, p. 53. 
 
 15 
 
226 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 Mr. Knight for giving ' misconstrued' instead of "mis- 
 conster'd" in Act II. Sc. 2 of this play, and for moderniz- 
 ing the same word in other passages, giving as a reason 
 that " these forms were common in our early writers." True ; 
 but why retain the spelling of these words when that of all 
 others is changed ? Why change the others ? Why should 
 we lose the physiognomy of Shakespeare's words ? Who 
 would read a modernized Spenser ? The orthography which 
 we have now in Shakespeare is neither his nor ours ; but 
 that of a time with which we have little sympathy and he 
 had less. Until we have Shakespeare as nearly as possible in 
 the exact words and letters which he left us, or would have 
 left us had he edited his own works, we shall not enjoy, or 
 appreciate him exactly as we otherwise should. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 2. 
 
 "Laun. O heavens! thia is ray true begotten father, who, being more 
 than sand-blind, high-gravel blind, knows me not : I will try confusions 
 with him." 
 
 Thus the original folio and one of the early quartos ; 
 and yet all modern editions, every edition, indeed, issued 
 in the last century and a half, except Theobald's and Ca- 
 pelFs, read, " I will try conclusions with him." The only 
 support which this reading has, is that it appears in one of 
 the early quartos ; which amounts to little in any case, and 
 against the authentic copy, and the obvious sense of the 
 passage, is worthless. How natural that Launcelot should 
 try "confusions" with his " true begotten father!" He 
 certainly meant conclusions ; and so there is reason to be- 
 lieve that Bottom, when he said he would " aggravate " his 
 voice, meant that he would modulate it ; and that Dogberry, 
 when he told Leonato that the watch had "comprehended 
 
MERCHANT OF VENICE. 227 
 
 two aspicious persons " meant not exactly what he said. 
 How closely Shakespeare's editors must be watched, lest 
 they steal away from us a part of the delight he has be- 
 queathed to us. 
 
 " Gobbo. Your worship's friend and Launcelot. 
 
 Laun. But I pray you ergo, old man, ergo, I beseech you, talk you of 
 young master Launcelot" 
 
 Mr. Knight supposes old Gobbo 's reply to have reference 
 to himself, like Costard's answer, " your servant and Cos- 
 tard" in Love's Labors Lost. Surely not. Launcelot 
 whimsically takes his father to task for disrespect to him- 
 self Launcelot; and says, in reply to old Gobbo' s state- 
 ment of their condition, " Well, let his father be what he 
 will, we talk of young master Launcelot." The father re- 
 plies, deprecatingly, but still unable to dub his son a gentle- 
 man, " your worship's friend and Launcelot" i. e. ' Aye, 
 we speak of Launcelot, your worship's friend/ To this, Laun- 
 celot, who evidently, like the Gravedigger in Hamlet, under- 
 stands, after a fashion, the Latin word he uses, rejoins, " But 
 I pray you ergo, I beseech you, ergo, talk you of young 
 master Launcelot," i. e. ' And therefore, because I am your 
 worship and he is my friend, you should speak of him &s Master 
 Launcelot.' Mr. Knight is evidently right in retaining the 
 full point of the old copies, in place of the mark of interro- 
 gation substituted by the modern editors. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Bass. Look on beauty, 
 
 And you shall see 'tis purchas'd by the weight ; 
 Which therein works a miracle in nature, 
 
328 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 Making them lightest that wear most of it: 
 So are those crisped snaky golden locks, 
 Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, 
 Upon supposed fairness, often known 
 To be the dowry of a second head, 
 The scull that bred them, in the sepulchre. 
 Thus ornament is but the guiled shore 
 To a most dangerous sea ; the beauteous scarf 
 Veiling an Indian beauty ; in a word, 
 The seeming truth which cunning times put on 
 To entrap the wisest" 
 
 The last sentence in this passage has made trouble 
 enough ; needlessly in my poor judgment. It seems to 
 have been universally supposed by the editors, that to make 
 ornament " the beauteous scarf veiling an Indian beauty" 
 is inconsistent with the likening it to " the guiled shore to 
 a most dangerous sea ; " indeed Mr. Collier remarks, in his 
 late Notes and Emendations, that " c beauty ' was obviously 
 the very converse of what the poet intended." For this 
 reason Hanmer read, 
 
 " the beauteous scarf 
 Veiling an Indian dowdy ; " 
 
 and Mr. Singer has recently proposed, 
 
 " the beauteous scarf 
 Veiling an Indian gipsy ; " 
 
 . 
 
 and Mr. Collier's folio corrector, with other conjecturers, 
 
 " the beauteous scarf 
 Veiling an Indian : beauty in a word, 
 The seeming truth that cunning times put on," <kc. 
 
 It is evidently taken for granted by the editors, that 
 the "beauteous scarf" must veil something which otherwise 
 
MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 229 
 
 would be unattractive. Far from it : it must be " danger- 
 ous." The fitness of the word " Indian" is also lost sight of 
 in all these conjectures. Why should this poor dowdy or 
 gipsy, to whom a dangerous sea is likened, be an Indian ? 
 The original text says, plainly enough, just what Shakes- 
 peare meant. Did the editors never hear of the opinion, 
 universal in Shakespeare's day, and very general now, that 
 a certain plague, unnamable to ears polite, was not known 
 in the civilized world until it was brought to Spain in the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century by those who had made 
 easy conquests of the Indian beauties in newly discovered 
 America ? Well indeed might the " beauteous scarf veil- 
 ing an Indian beauty" be likened to " the guiled shore to 
 a most dangerous sea," and vice versa. 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio, in reading " gmling shore" for " guil- 
 ed shore," only rids the text of a Shakespearian peculiarity. 
 
 "Por. an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd : 
 Happy in this, she is not yet so old 
 But she may learn; happier than this, 
 She is not bred so dull but she can learn ; 
 Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit 
 Commits itself to yours to be directed." 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio reads, with obvious propriety, 
 
 " Happiest of all, in that her gentle spirit," <fcc. 
 
 Portia says first, that she is "happy in this," that 
 " she is yet not so old but she may learn," &c. ; which is 
 equivalent to ' happy in that she is not so old/ &c. " Hap- 
 piest of all, is that her gentle spirit," is not sense. The 
 correction of the typographical mistake of one letter restores 
 the sense, and preserves the form of expression in the con- 
 
230 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 text. There can hardly be a doubt that Shakespeare wrote, 
 in the second instance, " happier in this," instead of " hap- 
 pier than this ; " but as the text of the first folio gives a 
 good sense, it is unsafe to change it. 
 
 ACT V. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Lor. look how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold." 
 
 Mr. Collier abandons "pattens," the reading of the ori- 
 ginal and one of the quartos, although it is supported by that 
 of the other quarto "pattents," to follow the misprint, or the 
 prosaic alteration of the word in the second folio "pat- 
 terns." The line would become almost worthless without 
 " patines." 
 
 "Por. Peace! how the moon sleeps with Endymion, 
 And would not be awak'd ! [Music ceases." 
 
 Thus the original, which has been changed to " Peace, 
 koa! the moon sleeps," &c. But Mr. Collier's folio sug- 
 gests noiv for " how," which is much nearer the original in 
 the trace of the letters, and gives at least as good a sense, 
 and, in my judgment, a better. I would read : 
 
 "Peace! now the moon sleeps with Endymion, 
 And would not be awak'd !" 
 
 " Ner. And pardon me, my gentle Gratiano, 
 For that same scrubbed boy, the doctor's clerk, 
 In lieu of this, last night did lie with me." 
 
MERCHANT OF VENICE. 231 
 
 Strange that the misprint here should not have attract- 
 ed attention. te In lieu of this ?" In lieu of what ? The 
 ring ? Irrespective of the tameness and want of point in 
 such an assertion, it is not true, in the sense in which Nerissa 
 addresses it to Gratiano; for she had had the ring on her 
 finger ever since dinner time on the previous day ; and al- 
 though she had not been to bed during the " last night '' 
 which she speaks of, Gratiano did not know it. Read : 
 
 " the doctor's clerk, 
 In lieu of thee, last night did lie with me." 
 
 " Qrat Why this is like the mending of highways 
 In summer, where the ways are fair enough." 
 
 There can be hardly a doubt that Shakespeare wrote, 
 
 " In summer, when the ways are fair enough," 
 | 
 
 as one of the correctors of Mr. Collier's folio conjectured. 
 
 " Grat. Well, while I live, I'll fear no other thing 
 So sore as keeping safe Nerissa's ring." 
 
 A correspondent in Notes and Queries, No. 167, p. 45, 
 asks whether Gratiano does not make " a covert allusion 
 to the story first told by Poggio in his Facetiae, then by 
 Ariosto, then by Rabelais, then by La Fontaine, and finally 
 by Prior in his Hans Carvel." The query seems quite su- 
 perfluous. There is surely little covertness in the allusion ; 
 
232 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 and to understand it, a knowledge of Poggio's story is by 
 no means necessary. 
 
 One chief and peculiar charm in the Merchant of Ve- 
 nice, is the gentle, placid beauty of the last Act, in which 
 the excited passions of the fourth Act, where Comedy treads 
 so closely upon the heels of Tragedy, subside, and are lulled 
 into sweet repose by the soothing influences of those love 
 passages between the three pairs of lovers in Portia's gar- 
 den; that enchanted garden, canopied by a sky "inlaid 
 with patines of bright gold," and the air in which is filled 
 with the music of orbs, " still quiring to the youngeye'd 
 cherubins." But convenience, or a modest supposition 
 that Shakespeare did not understand stage effect as well as 
 we do now-a-days, has determined that this Act is a super- 
 fluity ; and it is now remorselessly amputated, the necessary 
 explanation between Portia and Nerissa and their hus- 
 bands being huddled up at the close of the fourth Act, and 
 the curtain dropping upon t]^ discomfited malice of Shy- 
 lock, instead of the tender joy which filled the hearts 
 of those who went to rest in Belmont ! For such a bar- 
 barous procrusteanism there is no imaginable excuse. The 
 fact that the last part of the Scene contains certain expres- 
 sions which are not fit for the ears of modern audiences, is 
 no justification for this mutilation of the dramatic design 
 of the author. Let the text be pruned of these excrescences ; 
 but let them not be made the excuse for lopping off one of 
 the finest members of the play, one of the most beautiful 
 productions of Shakespeare's genius. 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 For the delicacy of its wit, the pregnant quaintness of 
 its humor, the keenness of its satire, and, above all, the 
 profound and subtle knowledge of human nature shown in 
 the moulding of its characters, this sylvan comedy is re- 
 markable even among the plays of Shakespeare. To these 
 traits it adds a healthy, rural, inartificial air, which is 
 grateful to pure sympathies. Its events pass amid trees 
 and rocks and running brooks ; and its characters show the 
 influence of their surroundings. They do not talk like sen- 
 timental citizens on an excursion, determined to be becom- 
 ingly romantic ; but they drink in wholesome exhilaration 
 from the open air, and yet do not lack that sober thought- 
 fulness proper to those who dwell beneath " the shade of 
 melancholy boughs." We find in no other language so fresh 
 and true a picture of sylvan life. The English boasts one 
 glorious gallery of views equal to it : the forest scenes in 
 Ivanhoe. The very songs scattered through the play seem 
 to be the spontaneous utterance of frank yet thoughtful 
 natures, under the spell of forest influences. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Oliver. And what wilt thou do, beg, when that is spent?" 
 
 This is pointed thus in all the editions : 
 
234 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 "And what wilt thou do? beg, when that is spent." 
 
 a punctuation which does not bring out the sense of the 
 question. Oliver obviously does not need to ask Orlando 
 what he will do when he gets the thousand crowns, but 
 what he will do when they are spent. The question is 
 double ; and in their natural order the queries would stand 
 thus : 
 
 " And what wilt thou do when that is spent ? beg ? " 
 
 But the two are united by making the last parenthetical in 
 the first ; and there should therefore be no interrogation 
 point except at the close of the whole sentence. 
 
 On the very threshhold of the drama we have a remark- 
 able instance of the nice and intuitive discrimination of 
 Shakespeare in the delineation of a secondary character. 
 Oliver, the elder brother of Orlando, would be drawn by 
 any but a great master of the human heart, as an unmiti- 
 gated villain ; and so, indeed, he is invariably misrepre- 
 sented on the stage. Oliver, speaking of Orlando in the 
 first Scene, says : 
 
 "I hope I shall see an end of him ; for my soul, yet I know not why, 
 hates nothing more than he." 
 
 Here the speech closes, on the stage : but Shakespeare 
 makes Oliver go on, and say of his young brother : 
 
 "Yet he's gentle; never schooled, and yet learned; full of noble device; 
 of all sorts enchantingly beloved ; and, indeed so much in the heart of 
 the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I 
 
As You LIKE IT. 235 
 
 am altogether misprised. But it shall not be so, long; this wrestler shall 
 clear all : nothing remains, but that I kindle the boy thither, which now 
 I'll go about," 
 
 With what wonderful knowledge is here depicted the 
 effect of moral excellence upon a man envious in temper 
 and domineering in spirit, yet capable of appreciating that 
 which is good in others, and even of desiring it for himself ! 
 He is not a mere brutal, grasping elder brother : but being 
 somewhat morose and moody in his disposition, he first envied 
 and then disliked the youth who, although his inferior in 
 position, is so much in the heart of the world, and especial- 
 ly of his own people, that he himself is altogether misprised. 
 The very moody disposition which makes him less popular 
 than his younger brother, led him to nourish this envious 
 dislike, till it became at length the bitter hate which he 
 shows in the first Scene of the play. Had Oliver been 
 less appreciative of the good in others, and less capable of 
 it himself, he would not have turned so bitterly against 
 Orlando. It is quite true to nature that such a man 
 should be overcome entirely, and at once, by the subsequent 
 generosity of his brother, and instantly subdued by simple, 
 earnest Celia. But his sudden yielding to sweet and noble 
 influences is not consistent with the character of the coarse, 
 unmitigated villain whom we see upon the stage, and who 
 is the monstrous product, not of Shakespeare, but of those 
 who garble Shakespeare's text. 
 
 I notice this, because it is an example of the wrong 
 done to Shakespeare as a dramatist by the preparers of the 
 acting copies of his plays ; a wrong from which this com- 
 edy especially has suffered. Shakespeare was not only the 
 greatest of poets, but an actor, and the successful manager 
 of a theatre ; and it is more than probable that he knew, 
 not only what was necessary to the development of his con- 
 ceptions of character, but what was suited to the tastes 
 
236 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 of a promiscuous audience. This appears to have been 
 forgotten for about two centuries past. 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 " Le Beau. Fair princess, you have lost much good sport. 
 Celia. Sport? Of what colour ?" 
 
 It seemed to me at first quite probable, as Mr. Collier's 
 folio suggests, that Le Beau told the princesses, in his af- 
 fected way, that they had "lost much good spo't" (sport), 
 and that this prompted Cecilia to ask, "Spot? of what 
 color ? " But upon reflection, the emendation appears to 
 be one of those made points, called in theatrical cant, 
 1 gags/ upon which actors venture successfully sometimes, 
 but so rarely, that it is to be desired that they should al- 
 ways fail. We would gladly forego the few happy hits, if 
 the sacrifice could secure us from the multitudinous misses. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " Gel But is all this for thy father? 
 Ros. No, some of it is for my child's father." 
 
 This, the reading of the original, has been changed by 
 Rowe and Mr. Knight to " for my father's child." The 
 meaning of the original is obviously, as Theobald says, " for 
 him whom I hope to marry, and who will be the father of 
 my children/' Of this, Coleridge says, " Who can doubt 
 that it is a mistake for f my father's child,' meaning her- 
 self ? According to Theobald's note, a most indelicate 
 anticipation is put into the mouth of Rosalind without 
 
As You LIKE IT. 237 
 
 reason." This opinion Mr. Knight indorses, with the ad- 
 dition that the thought is " most forced and unnatural." 
 
 It certainly is pleasant to agree with Coleridge and Mr. 
 Knight, and it may be presuming to differ from them ; 
 but I cannot sympathize with the tone of their criticism on 
 this passage, or agree with their conclusions in regard to it. 
 Rosalind, as the whole context shows, is evidently thinking 
 of Orlando, whom she already loves fixedly. Eosalind is 
 no prude in spirit, none of Shakespeare's fine women are, 
 and she speaks with the freedom with which women spoke 
 in the days of Elizabeth. When this Scene opens, she 
 has evidently been long brooding over her love and her 
 thoughts have travelled far into the future. She has fancied 
 herself Orlando's loving wife and the mother of his children ; 
 what man, what truly pure woman, with a woman's in- 
 stincts and affections undistorted and unperverted, will 
 not honor her and love her for it ! Eosalind was no 
 missy girl, ignorant of the relations of her sex to the 
 other, or affecting an ignorance to hide prurient knowledge. 
 She was an honest-hearted, sensible woman, with all the 
 instincts and impulses of her sex active within her ; and she, 
 speaking in the tone of those trained in Shakespeare's time, 
 is not ashamed to say to her cousin, who seems but her 
 otber self, that to be the mother of Orlando's child is the 
 longed-for sum of her earthly happiness. 
 
 But let us see if Rosalind, in subsequent unquestioned 
 passages of the play, do not indulge in thoughts far 
 more indelicate, and speeches more gross, than this utterance 
 of a woman's longing which so shocks Coleridge and Mr. 
 Knight. A moment afterward, when Celia tells her to 
 " hem away " the burrs in her heart, she replies : 
 
 "I would try : if I could cry hem, and have him." 
 
 In Act IV. Sc. 1. Orlando asks. 
 
238 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " Who could be out, [of matter for conversation] being before his be- 
 loved mistress ? " 
 
 Rosalind replies, with a gross perversion of his phrase, 
 
 "Marry, that should you, if I were your mistress; or I should think 
 my honesty ranker than my wit" 
 
 In Act V. Sc. 2, speaking to Orlando of Oliver and 
 Cetia, she says : 
 
 " in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage, which they 
 will clirnb incontinent, or else be incontinent before marriage." 
 
 Is the woman who speaks thus, the more or the less in- 
 delicate when she owns her hope that she shall be made a 
 wife and a mother by the man she loves. But more : her 
 cousin Celia, who is much the more retiring of the two, 
 when asked by Rosalind, in Act III. Sc. 2, to take the cork 
 out of her mouth that Rosalind may drink her tidings, 
 makes an answer for which I prefer referring the reader to 
 the text. 
 
 In reading the Winter's Tale shortly after As You Like 
 It, I noticed that Perdita, one of Shakespeare's purest and 
 most lovely creations, she, too, who makes the request- 
 unusual with the women of Shakespeare's day that Auto- 
 lycus may be forewarned to use " no scurrilous words in his 
 tunes," expresses the same thought which Coleridge calls 
 " a most indelicate anticipation." In Act IV. Sc. 3, when 
 Polixenes urges her to cultivate " gillivors " in her garden, 
 her lover being by, she thus expresses her dislike of their 
 artificial formation : 
 
 " I'll not put 
 
 The dibble in the earth to set one slip of them ; 
 No more than, were I painted, I should wish 
 
As You LIKE IT. 239 
 
 This youth to say 'twere well; and only therefore 
 Desire to breed by me." 
 
 Again, in the same Scene, we find her expressing an 
 idea even more foreign to our notions of delicacy, because 
 not embodying the idea of maternity ; though, strangely 
 enough, this last deficiency may possibly be thought a gain 
 by some. She speaks of strewing her lover with flowers. 
 He asks, "What ! like a corse ? " She answers : 
 
 "No, like a bank, for love to lie and play on ; 
 Xot like a corpse: or if, not to be buried, 
 But quick, [that is, living] and in mine arms" 
 
 These instances occurred to me immediately after meet- 
 ing with the passage on which Theobald, Coleridge and Mr. 
 Knight have commented. Were Shakespeare to be searched, 
 such speeches might be found by dozens in the mouths of 
 his female characters, for instance, the reply of Beatrice 
 to Don Pedro about her putting down Benedick. [Much 
 Ado, &c., Act II. Sc. 2.] The custom of his day permitted 
 them, even in the ordinary intercourse of society ; and they 
 were expected on the stage, where, it should be remembered, 
 they were actually uttered, not by women, but by men. 
 
 I must own that I cannot see any thing intrinsically 
 immodest in Rosalind's speech as the original gives it to us ; 
 and that I find it decidedly in keeping with Shakespeare's 
 mode of treating the female character. Neither do I find 
 any thing intrinsically indelicate in Perdita's speeches. 
 They are not forced, but are, as is also Rosalind's, the ex- 
 pression of feelings natural to the female mind, when under 
 the influence of a love which is any thing more than sickly 
 sentimentality ; and the feelings being such, the expression 
 of them cannot be justly considered indelicate, consider- 
 ing the manners of the time when Shakespeare wrote. 
 
240 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 The jests of Rosalind and Celia, however, are decidedly 
 and intrinsically indelicate, and would be so in any age, 
 because they are jests : the idea is brought in for the mere 
 sake of a joke upon a forbidden subject. To allude to the 
 relations of the sexes and their consequences, needlessly, 
 and in a manner which calls attention to their forbidden 
 nature, must ever be immodest ; to do so necessarily, hon- 
 estly and simply, can never be justly so considered. 
 
 I have noticed this passage at some length, because the 
 comments which change the text of the original, and call 
 forth my remarks, encourage the spurious modesty too prev- 
 alent already, as it seems to me. Better even the blunt, 
 coarse honesty and obtruded knowledge of the relations of 
 sex which prevailed in Elizabeth's day, than -the affected 
 and spurious delicacy of 1850, which awakens more atten- 
 tion, provokes more thought, and shows more consciousness. 
 But best a simple and direct utterance of that which is 
 needful, and an ample knowledge of that which is inevitable 
 in such matters, guided by a modesty springing from 
 within, rather than a propriety imposed from without. 
 Nevertheless, such modesty will always forbid its possessor 
 to trespass needlessly beyond the bounds of the convention- 
 al propriety of the day. The idea of trespass is incon- 
 sistent with modesty. 
 
 But, whatever may be the abstract merits of the ques- 
 tion, in regulating Shakespeare's text we must be guided, 
 not by what we think, or by the public sentiment of our 
 day, but by what he thought, if we can discover it ; and it 
 so happens that he has left us his own explicit testimony 
 that he did not think it immodest or indelicate for a maiden 
 to wish to be called mother by the children of the man she 
 loves, even when he does not love her. In his Sonnets, 
 addressed to that mysterious youth whom he urges to mar- 
 ry, not only does he say, 
 
As You LIKE IT. 241 
 
 "For where is she so fair, whose unear'd womb 
 Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry ? " 
 
 Sonnet III. 
 
 but in a subsequent address, he thus breaks forth : 
 
 " Now stand you on the top of happy hours ; 
 And many maiden gardens, yet unset, 
 With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers, 
 Much liker than your painted counterfeit." 
 
 Note first that glorious first line. It is almost equal to 
 
 "jocund day 
 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain top." 
 
 And yet Steevens could sneer at Shakespeare's sonnets ! 
 But, to return to the subject, see that Shakespeare not 
 only makes blooming maidens wish to bear living flowers 
 to his friend, but that he sets aside all cavil at the character 
 of their desire by explicitly saying, that, in his estimation, 
 they did this with " virtuous wish." The names of Kowe, 
 Coleridge, and Mr. Knight, are entitled to respect ; but 
 when Shakespeare's own testimony is against them, they 
 must go to the wall ; and Mr. Collier's anonymous folio 
 corrector, who thought with them, must of course go with 
 them. 
 
 It certainly merits remark, that if the alleged error 
 were the result of a printer's transposition of the words 
 c father's ' and < child,' as the advocates of the new reading 
 claim, the line would have appeared, 
 
 " No, some of it is for my child fatherea," 
 
 instead of, 
 
 "No, some of it is for my childes father;" 
 
 which is the reading of the first folio. 
 
 16 
 
242 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 3. 
 
 "1 Lord. Indeed, my lord, 
 
 The melancholy Jaques grieves at that ; 
 And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp 
 Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you. 
 To-day, my lord of Amiens, and myself, 
 Did steal behind him, as he lay along 
 Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out 
 Upon the brook that brawls along this wood : 
 To the which place a poor sequester'd stag, 
 That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt, 
 Did come to languish ; and, indeed, my lord, 
 The wretched animal beav'd forth such groans, 
 That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat 
 Almost to bursting ; and the big round tears 
 Cours'd one another down his innocent nose 
 In piteous chase ; and thus the hairy fool, 
 Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, 
 Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook, 
 Augmenting it with tears. 
 
 Duke 8. But what said Jaques ? 
 
 Did he not moralize this spectacle ? 
 
 1 Lord. O, yes, into a thousand similes. 
 First, for his weeping in the needless stream ; 
 Poor deer, quoth he, thou mak'st a testament 
 A.S wordlings do, giving thy sum of more 
 To that which had too much : Then being alone, 
 Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends ; 
 'Tis right, quoth he ; this misery doth part 
 The flux of company : Anon, a careless herd, 
 Full of the pasture, jumps along by him, 
 And never stays to greet him ; Ay, quoth Jaques, 
 Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens ; 
 'Tisjust the fashion : Wherefore do you look 
 Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there ? 
 Thus most invectively he pierceth through 
 
 The body of country, city, court, 
 
 Yea, and of this our life ; swearing, that we 
 Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what's worse, 
 To fright the animals, and to kill them up, 
 In their assign'd and native dwelling-place. i 
 
CHARACTER OF JAQUES. 243 
 
 Duke 8. And did you leave him in this contemplation ? 
 
 2 Lord. We did, my lord, weeping and commenting 
 Upon the sobbing deer. 
 
 Duke 8. Show me the place. 
 
 I love to cope him in these sullen fits, 
 For then he's full of matter." 
 
 No character in Shakespeare's dramas has suffered more 
 from the patchworking playmongers than that of Jaques in 
 this play. In his case the change resulted from a desire to 
 make the character more interesting to the female part of 
 an audience, and therefore more acceptable to a first come- 
 dian. The Jaques of the stage is a melancholy, tender- 
 hearted young man, with sad eyes and a sweet voice, talk- 
 ing morality in most musical modulation. Shakespeare's 
 Jaques is a morose, cynical, querulous old fellow, who has 
 been a bad young one. He does not have sad moments, but 
 " sullen fits," as the Duke says. His melancholy is morbid ; 
 and is but the fruit of that utter loss of mental tone which 
 results from years of riot and debauchery. He has not a 
 tender spot in his heart. There is not a gentle act attribu- 
 ted to him, or a generous sentiment, or a kind word put into 
 his mouth by Shakespeare. He does not even pity the 
 wounded deer which he sees by the brookside : for the touch- 
 ing description of the anguish of the " poor sequestered stag," 
 which Jaques gives upon the stage, is, in the play, spoken by 
 the 1st Lord. Shakespeare's Jaques finds in the sufferings 
 of the animal only an occasion to sneer at his fellow-men. 
 He seeks food for discontent in every thing ; and the Duke, 
 when told that " he was merry, hearing of a song," says : 
 
 " If he compact of jars, grow musical, 
 "We shortly shall have discord in the spheres." 
 Act IT. Sc. 7. 
 
 With regard to the age of Jaques, Shakespeare's text 
 
244 NOTES AND COMMENTS, 
 
 is no less unmistakable. The tone of his conversation and 
 conduct is entirely that of a man of long experience of the 
 world. The Duke, censuring him for his delight in satire, 
 makes the following remarkable speech, which bears directly 
 upon his age and his character, and which is curtailed upon 
 the stage. He tells him that he would do 
 
 "Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin. 
 For thou thyself hast been a libertine, 
 As sensual as the brutish sting itself; 
 And all th' embossed sores, and headed evils 
 That thou with license of free foot hast caught, 
 Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world." 
 
 Act II. Sc. 7. 
 
 Jaques, in addition to his life of libertinism, has been a 
 great traveller, which in Shakespeare's day took many years 
 of a man's life. He is, besides, too old to think of coping 
 with a young man like Orlando; for when the latter threat- 
 ens death to any one who eats until his " affairs are an- 
 swered," Jaques, who is no coward, replies : 
 
 " An you will not be answered with reason, 
 I must die." 
 
 Act II. Sc. 7. 
 
 But honest Audrey, speaks decisively upon this point. 
 Shakespeare's Jaques interrupts her and Touchstone as they 
 are to be married in the forest by Sir Oliver Martext, and 
 speaks very slightingly of that divine's clerical qualifications, 
 which the stage Jaques neglects to do. Audrey, referring 
 to this, says : 
 
 " Faith, the Priest was good enough, for all the old gentleman's saying.'' 
 
 Act V. Sc. 1. 
 
 It is evident that Jaques should be played as a cynical, 
 
As You LIKE IT. 245 
 
 gray-headed, broken-down debauchee ; and that even the 
 exhibition of kindness which conformity to stage custom 
 requires, on the entrance of old Adam, is entirely incon- 
 sistent with Shakespeare's conception of the character. 
 
 Shakespeare has brought this old, high-bred, worn-out 
 voluptuary into fine relief by juxtaposition with one who 
 has nothing in common with him but age ; and in that 
 Jaques has the advantage. The serving man Adam, hum- 
 bly born and coarsely nurtured, is no insignificant personage 
 in the drama ; and we find in the healthy tone of his mind, 
 and in his generous heart, which under reverses and wrongs, 
 still preserves its charitable trust in his fellows, as well as 
 in his kindly, though frosty, age ; a delightful and instruc- 
 tive contrast to the character of Jaques, which could hardly 
 have been accidental. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 "Adam. At seventeen years many their fortunes seek; 
 But at fourscore, it is too late a week." 
 
 I have never heard this passage on or off the stage that 
 it was not read without a pause after c fourscore ' and with 
 the pause of a comma after ' late/ thus : 
 
 But at fourscore it is too late, a week ; 
 
 as if A dam said, that at fourscore it was a week too late to 
 seek one's fortune ; than which nothing could be flatter, 
 tamer. ' Week ' is used here for a period of time, and the 
 old man says that at fourscore it is too late a time to seek 
 one's fortune. 
 
246 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 " JZos. Oh Jupiter ! how weary are my spirits 1 " 
 
 Mr. Knight would read with the first folio, " how mer- 
 ry are my spirits." Whiter suggests that Rosalind's mer- 
 riment was assumed ; and Malone that she invokes Jupiter 
 because he was always in good spirits. It seems plain that 
 c merry ' is a misprint for " weary." Rosalind, worn out by 
 her desponding journey, exclaims " how weary are my spi- 
 rits ! " and the Clown replies, " I care not for my spirits, if 
 my legs are not weary," that is : " I would not care how 
 weary my spirits might be, if my legs were not so." If 
 Rosalind were to say that her spirits were merry, Touch- 
 stone's reply would have no point. Besides, it is not like 
 Shakespeare to open a scene in which the condition of the 
 parties is so obvious as it is in this, with an ironical remark. 
 
 SCENE 7. 
 
 " Jaques. All the world's a stage, 
 
 And all the men and women merely players: 
 They have their exits and their entrances ; 
 And one man in his time plays many parts" <fec. 
 
 Steevens quotes from a fragment of Petronius, " totus 
 mundus exerceat histrioniam" and Malone from Damon 
 and Pythias, 1582, 
 
 " rythagoras said that this world was like a stage 
 Whereon many play their parts," 
 
 also another similar passage from Orpheus and Euridice, 
 
As You LIKE IT. 247 
 
 1579. But the following passage from Erasmus" Praise of 
 Folie, Englished by Sir Thomas Chaloner, occurred to me as 
 much more to the purpose, and likelier to have been the 
 source whence Shakespeare had the hint. It is, besides, 
 a very curious and interesting picture of the drama as it 
 existed in the generation preceding the great dramatist. 
 
 " If one at a solemne stage plaie, woulde take upon him to 
 plucke of the players garmentes, whiles they were sayinge theyr 
 partes, and so deciphre unto the lokers on the true and natiue 
 faces of eche of the plaiers, shoulde he not (trowe ye) marre all 
 the mattier ? and well deserue for a madman to be peltid out of 
 the place with stones ? ye shoulde see yet straightwaies a new 
 transmutacion in thinges : that who before played the woman, 
 shoulde than appeare to be a man : who seemed youthe, shoulde 
 show his hore heares : who counterfayted the kynge shoulde 
 turne to a rascall : and who played god almighty, shoulde become 
 a cobler as he was before. Yet take awaye this errour, and as 
 soon take awaye all togethers, in as much as the feignyng and 
 conterfaytyng is it that so delighteth the beholders. So lykewyse 
 all this life of mortall man, what is it else but a certain kynde 
 of stage plaie ? whereas men come foorthe, disguised one in one 
 arraie, an other in an other, eche playinge his parte, till at last 
 the maker of the plaie, or bokebearer causeth them to auoyde the 
 skaffolde, and yet sometyme maketh one man come in two or three 
 times, with sundry partes and apparayle, as who before represent- 
 ed a kynge, beinge clothed all in purpre, hauinge no more but 
 shifted hym selfe a little, shoulde shew hym selfe agayne lyke a 
 woobegon myser." 
 
 The Praise of Folic. Ed. 1549, Sig. E. iii. 
 
 Here we not only have the life of man a play, and men 
 and women players, but each one playing many parts ; which, 
 it seems, was required by the exigences of the rude stage 
 which had amused the youth of Shakespeare. 
 
248 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 "Heigh, ho! sing heigh, ho ! unto the green holly." 
 
 The memory of the manner in which I have heard this 
 sung and said by intelligent people, suggests to me that it 
 is perhaps worth noticing that this "heigh ho!" is 'hey 
 ho ! ' and not the heigh ho ! (pronounced ' high, ho ! ') of a 
 sigh. It should be pronounced l hay-ho ! ' 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Cel Atalanta's better part" 
 
 There has been much learned and ingenious conjecture as 
 to what was "Atalanta's better part." As is common with 
 the editors, the obvious meaning of the phrase has been passed 
 by. Whiter is lauded by Mr. Knight for suggesting that, 
 because of Atalanta's successful contests in running with 
 her lovers, it is an allusion to maiden modesty, such as would 
 characterize a woman who was " zealous to preserve her 
 virgin purity even by the death of her lovers," and which 
 is spoken of as her "better part." In the first place, this 
 is superfluous, as " Lucretia's modesty " is enumerated in 
 the next line ; and it is, in the second place, inconsistent 
 with the story of Atalanta, who, when won by Hippomenea 
 by means of the golden apples, impatient to yield what Mr. 
 Whiter represents her as so zealous to preserve, desecrated 
 with her lover the temple of Cybele, who turned the offend- 
 ers to lions. Atalanta was a finely-formed woman, and a 
 remarkably swift and graceful runner. Her " better part " 
 was evidently her leg. Orlando enumerates in his verses 
 personal as well as mental charms ; and it is a matter of 
 wonder that the obvious allusion could have escaped any 
 reader. 
 
CHARACTER OF KOSALIND. 
 
 249 
 
 "Ros. Good my complexion ! dost thou think though I am caparison'd 
 like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition ? " 
 
 Rosalind is, perhaps, the most generally preferred of 
 those of Shakespeare's heroines who are put upon the stage. 
 She has vivacity and wit enough to captivate those who 
 Ike a woman of spirit ; and yet with this there is interwo- 
 vm so much womanly tenderness and delicacy, and even 
 w\en wearing doublet and hose, she is, in her gayest moods, 
 so \ruly, sometimes so touchingly, feminine, that she wins 
 mob admirers than she dazzles. It is a very difficult under- 
 taki\g, the acting of this part of Rosalind; and I have seen 
 artist of far more than ordinary talent, and of the best 
 histritaic education, utterly fail in giving a consistent and 
 faithfii representation of the character. In the first Scene 
 they ar\ sprightly and well conducted, which is all that they 
 have neti to be ; though even here, they are apt to lack a 
 little digaity. But, according to their interpretation, when 
 Orlando approaches Rosalind, she fairly flings herself at his 
 head, andWakes love to him in the most formidable and 
 alarming Banner. So does not Shakespeare's Rosalind. 
 True, she lores at once, and with her whole heart ; but she 
 does not advertise the state of her affections to Orlando 
 and all her u\cle's court, upon the spot. She hardly knows 
 it herself, unt\ she is about to part with him ; and then, 
 as she tells hin that he has "wrestled well and overthrown 
 more than his Inemies," it is with a trembling modesty, all 
 the more shrining because of its frankness. 
 
 In the Forest \f Arden, Rosalind is, at first, in her element. 
 She plays the " saicy lackey" with unction ; and, contrary to 
 her own plea, seels to have, in very deed, " a doublet and 
 hose in her disposiion." But when Orlando appears, love 
 makes all the femAine traits of Shakespeare's Rosalind dis- 
 play themselves beWth the veil of her assumed character. 
 This her representaWes seem not to know. No sad earnest- 
 
250 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 ness appears under their gayety as they ask Orlando if he 
 is " so much in love as his rhymes speak." Again, Eosa- 
 lindj archly, but ever timidly, questioning, asks Orlando, 
 
 " What would you say to me now, an I were your very, very Rosalind ? " 
 
 and yet again, when the sham marriage has taken place, 
 
 " Now how long would you have her after you have possessed her ? " 
 
 How can they fail to ask those questions with trembling 
 apprehension, but half concealed under a veil of saucy bad- 
 inage ! and yet they do. Poor Rosalind ! When Orlan- 
 do, not knowing to whom he speaks, replies that he would 
 have her "for ever and a day," the shadow of a fearful sor- 
 row falls upon her light heart, as she answers : 
 
 " Say a day without the ever. No, no, Orlando : men are April when 
 they woo, December when they wed : maids are May when they are maids 
 but the sky changes when they are wives." 
 
 'But she fears he has betrayed herself, and with a gush 
 of assumed gayety, she breaks out : 
 
 " I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock pigeon over his 
 hen ; more clamorous than a parrot against rain," <fec. 
 
 But how rarely do we see this light and shade ! The eye 
 of the stage Rosalind never quails, is never dimmed ; neither 
 does her voice know that tender pathos which is the utter- 
 ance of a woman's heart who has laid the priceless treasure 
 of an unasked love at the feet of one whom she feels may 
 spurn it. 
 
 But to these remarks, what devotee of Shakesperian 
 representations in recent times will not make one bright 
 exception, Mrs. Charles Kean. The womanly charm, 
 
CHARACTER OF ROSALIND. 251 
 
 which she possesses in greater perfection than any other 
 actress of her day, and which pervades more or less every 
 one of her performances, appears in her every look and 
 tone and movement while she plays Rosalind. There is, 
 perhaps, in the whole range of the drama, but one other 
 character which requires for its truthful conception and 
 embodiment a more perfect development of the highest his- 
 trionic genius than this. I am convinced that long after 
 an artist has attained the mastery of such strongly pro- 
 nounced characters as Beatrice, Juliet, Lady Macbeth, 
 and Julia in the Hunchback, she must labor still to 
 reach the deep and quiet power and the subtle delicacy 
 requisite to embody the earnest and impulsive, though mer- 
 ry Rosalind, and still more for that required by the pure, 
 gentle, long-suffering, self-sacrificing Viola. 
 
 Mrs. Kean leaves nothing to be desired in her represen- 
 tation of either of these characters. As Rosalind, the 
 expression of her face alone, when, after she has looked a 
 while at Orlando, she asks, " Is yonder the man ? " shows 
 that her heart is stricken, and that indeed the young 
 wrestler has already " overthrown more than his enemies," 
 and from this time till she steps forward to deliver so be- 
 witchingly that characteristic epilogue, with what delicate 
 perception and flexible skill does she present the ever 
 changing but ever loving Rosalind I Who can forget the 
 deep, almost sad earnestness, with which in the midst of 
 her raillery she asks Orlando, " But are you so much in 
 love as your rhymes speak ? " How daintily does she 
 speak to Silvius and Phoebe that speech so full of mingled 
 wit, mischief and wisdom ! And what a key to the char- 
 acter is her reproachful delivery of " Say a day without the 
 ever," with the instantaneous change to the merry threat, 
 " I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock pigeon 
 over his hen." 
 
252 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 But her Viola is the crowning excellence of all her 
 performances. The first two Acts of Twelfth Night are 
 those in which she produces the greatest impression ; and in 
 these the Scene with Olivia and that with the Duke, in 
 which Viola tells the story of her love ; live longest in the 
 memory. 
 
 " Ros. By no means, sir: Time travels in divers paces with divers 
 persons : I'll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who 
 Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal. 
 
 Orl. I pr'y thee, who doth he trot withal ? 
 
 Ros. Marry, he trots hard with a young maid, between the contract 
 of her marriage, and the day it is solemnized : if the interim be but a se'n- 
 night, time's pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven years. 
 
 Orl. Who ambles Time withal ? 
 
 Ros. With a priest that lacks Latin, and a rich man that hath not the 
 gout; for the one sleeps easily, because he cannot study 4 and the other 
 lives merrily, because he feels no pain : the one lacking the burden of lean 
 and wasteful learning ; the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious 
 penury : These Time ambles withal." 
 
 Upon this passage Mr. Hunter remarks : 
 
 " This portion of this very sprightly dialogue appears to have 
 undergone dislocation at a very early period, for the old copies 
 and the new are alike. To trot hard, at least in the present use 
 of the phrase, is a rapid motion, only just below the gallop. How, 
 then, can it be said that Time c trots hard ' when a se'n-night 
 seems as long as seven years ? A slow motion is intended, such 
 as is meant by the word ambling. 
 
 "Again, Time passes swiftly with the easy priest and the 
 luxurious rich man who is free from gout : He ' trots hard ' with 
 them." 
 
 New Illustrations of Shakespeare, Vol. I. p. 349. 
 
 He would therefore read : 
 
As You LIKE IT. 253 
 
 " Orl I pr'ythee, who ambles Time withal? 
 
 Ros. Marry, he ambles with a young maid, <fcc. Time's pace is so 
 ambling, &c. 
 
 Orl. Who doth he trot withal? 
 
 Ros. "With a priest that lacks Latin, <fcc. These Time trots withal." 
 
 It is strange that so intelligent a reader of Shakespeare 
 as Mr. Hunter should make such a mistake in so simple a 
 passage. His experience in equitation must have been very 
 limited and very fortunate, or he would know that of all 
 the means of making a short journey seem long, a hard- 
 trotting horse is the surest. Rosalind is certainly within 
 bounds in giving it a fifty-multiplying power over time. 
 An ambling nag, on the contrary, affords so easy and luxu- 
 rious a mode of travelling, that the rider arrives all too soon 
 at his journey's end. That Rosalind's comparison refers to 
 the comparative comfort and discomfort, and not to the 
 speed of the different gaits which she enumerates, is evident 
 enough from these very replies about the trot and the am- 
 ble ; but that about the gallop puts it beyond a question. 
 
 * Orl. Who doth he gallop withal? 
 
 Ros. With a thief to the gallows ; for though he go as softly as foot 
 can fall he thinks himself too soon there." 
 
 " Ros. A lean cheek, which you have not ; a blue eye and sunken, 
 which you have not ; an unquestionable spirit, which you have not ; a 
 beard neglected, which you have not." 
 
 A curious misapprehension of Rosalind's third mark of 
 a man in love is not uncommon, on the stage almost uni- 
 versal. She is there made to utter " unquestionable spirit," 
 as if she meant by it that a lover must needs be of undeni- 
 able boldness ; and upon her saying to Orlando that he 
 has it not, the representative of that character is wont to 
 
254 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 swagger a little. Now Orlando, long before that period of 
 the action, has certainly shown that he does not lack cour- 
 age ; and an accusation of cowardice would be the last 
 which Rosalind would be likely to bring against him, even 
 in jest. She means that a lover is moody, and not willing 
 to be questioned ; that is, that he is " un-questionable." 
 
 Shakespeare uses 'questionable' in but one other in- 
 stance : in Hamlet, Act 1, Sc. 4, where Hamlet says to the 
 Ghost, 
 
 "Thou com'st in such a questionable shape." 
 
 Here the word is used in exactly the same sense ; that is, 
 thou com'st in a shape so proper to be questioned ; and 
 yet this line is often quoted as if " questionable " meant 
 < suspicious/ Obviously it does not ; for Hamlet says, 
 
 " Be thy intents wicked or charitable, 
 Thou com'st in such a questionable shape, 
 That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet, 
 King, Father, Royal Dane : answer me 
 Let me not burst in ignorance," <fec. 
 
 And thus he goes on, hurrying earnest questions upon each 
 other to his father's spirit, which, to give him information, 
 had thus presented itself " in such a question-able shape." 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " Jaques. A material fool ! " 
 
 "A fool/' says Johnson, " with matter in him." And 
 strange to say, there is no dissent from this most forced and 
 lexicographical elucidation. Here again, the obvious mean- 
 ing is neglected. Jaques exclaims to himself, after Touch- 
 
As You LIKE IT. 255 
 
 stone's speech : " A most material fool ; " that, is a com- 
 plete fool, a thorough fool, a perfect fool ; a fool who is es- 
 sentially, materially a fool. 
 
 44 Aud, I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am foul." 
 
 As Mr. Knight says, " foul is here used in the sense of 
 homely opposed to fair." Thus in the first scene of Mac- 
 beth the witches, wishing to express the confusion created 
 by their devilish art, say, 
 
 " Fair is foul and foul is fair." 
 
 SCENE 5. 
 
 11 Silv. will you sterner be 
 
 Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops? " 
 
 Long ago it seemed plain to me that this passage was 
 misprinted, and that we should read, 
 
 " will you sterner be 
 Than he that lives and dies by bloody drops?" 
 
 The executioner ' lives and dies' by his trade, just as any 
 other man does by his, who e sticks to his business/ Mr. 
 Singer proposed the same obvious change in his recent 
 Text of Shakespeare Vindicated, &c. On referring to the 
 Variorum Edition, however, I find that Mr. Toilet made 
 the same suggestion two generations ago. Why so easy and 
 natural a mode of rectifying a great error has not been 
 adopted, I am at loss to conjecture. 
 
256 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Jag. * * * but it is a melancholy of mine owne, compounded of 
 many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundrie con- 
 templation of my trauels, in which by often rumination, wraps me in a 
 most humorous sadnesse." 
 
 Thus the original, which is evidently corrupt. The usual 
 reading, the resultant of the lahors of Malone and Stee- 
 vens, is : 
 
 "but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, 
 extracted from many objects ; and indeed the sundry contemplation of my 
 travels, in which my often rumination wraps me, is a most humorous sad- 
 
 This makes the passage comprehensible, but with the 
 supposition of two errors (by for "my" and in for "is"), 
 and a sense not exactly suited to the design of the speech, 
 which is to tell the origin ofJaques' melancholy. Accord- 
 ing to this reading, he says that his melancholy is one of 
 his own, compounded of many simples and extracted from 
 many objects ; and then adds that the contemplation of 
 his travels is a most humorous sadness. But the point of 
 the whole speech is, that the satirical J agues finds in the 
 contemplation of his travels his cause for melancholy. He 
 means to sneer, more, suo, at the whole world ; and this he 
 is made to do by the text of the original, changed only by 
 the substitution of my for 'by' an admitted typographical 
 error and of a semicolon for a comma, after " travels." 
 
 "but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, ex- 
 tracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my 
 
As You LIKE IT. 257 
 
 travels ; in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sad- 
 
 ness. 
 
 Jaques thus says, that his melancholy is compounded of 
 many simples, extracted from many objects, and is indeed 
 the fruit of the sundry contemplation of his travels ; his 
 often rumination upon which wraps him in a most humor- 
 ous sadness. This is the reading of the second folio ; 
 and Mr. Knight's differs from it only by lack of the semicolon 
 after " travels ; " by which I think that he loses the force of 
 Jaques' declaration that his melancholy is indeed the result 
 of the mere contemplation of his travels. 
 
 " Jaq. Yes, I have gained my experience. 
 
 [Enter Orlando. 
 
 j?os. And your experience makes you sad : I had rather have a fool 
 to make me merry than experience to make me sad; and to travel for it 
 too. 
 
 Orl. Good day and happiness, dear Rosalind. 
 
 Jaq. Nay then God be wi' you, an you talk in blank verse. 
 
 [Exit. 
 
 Ros. Farewell, monsieur traveller: Look you lisp and wear strange 
 suits ; disable all the benefits of your own country ; be out of love with 
 your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you 
 are, or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola. Why, how now, 
 Orlando ! " <fec. 
 
 So learned and discriminating a writer on Shakespeare 
 and the early dramatists as Mr. Dyce, asks (Remarks on 
 Collier's and Knight's Shakespeares, p. 63) : "does Rosa- 
 lind say all this to Jaques after he has left the stage ? ' : 
 and concludes that " nothing can be more evident than 
 that here the ( exit ' of Jaques ought to follow ' gondola ! ' ' 
 With ah 1 deference, no. Were it so, a charming and 
 characteristic incident would be lost entirely. Rosalind is 
 
 17 
 
258 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 a little vexed with Orlando for not keeping tryst. She 
 sees him when lie first comes in, but purposely does not 
 look at him, any woman will tell Mr. Dyce why. He 
 speaks, but she still, with her little heart thumping at her 
 breast all the while, refuses to notice her lover, and pretends 
 to be absorbed in Jaques ; and as he retires, driven off by 
 the coming scene of sentiment, the approach of which he 
 detects, she still turns from the poor delinquent, and con- 
 tinues to talk to Jaques till a curve in the path takes him 
 out of sight ; then turning, she seems to see Orlando for 
 the first time } and breaks upon him with, " Why, how now ? " 
 &c. It is incomprehensible to me that such an incident, 
 one so essential to the effect of the scene, should be so mis- 
 taken. Well might the old printer of Promos & Cassan- 
 dra say that there are some speeches " which in reading 
 wil seeme hard, and in action appeare plaine. " And as to 
 miscomprehension of Shakespeare's design, what can be 
 expected when the most eminent commentators do not 
 see that Beatrice loves Benedick when Much Ado about 
 Nothing opens ! 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " Oliver. Under an old oak whose boughs were moss'd with age." 
 
 Though this is the reading of the folio, I cannot admit 
 that Shakespeare would introduce an entirely superfluous 
 monosyllable into a line in a very carefully wrought and 
 rhythmical passage, with no other possible effect than that 
 of marring the description and making the verse halt. It 
 seems to me impossible that Shakespeare could have written, 
 
 " Under an old oak, whose boughs were moss'd with age, 
 And high top bald with dry antiquity." 
 
As You LIKE IT. 259 
 
 This is not the tautology of his time. The adjective must, 
 I think, have been added in this way. The compositor set 
 up " oak " twice, such accidents are of frequent occur- 
 rence, or the author repeated it in his MS., and the re- 
 petition being noticed, the first " oak " was very naturally 
 changed to old. Is it not plain that the line should be 
 read, 
 
 " Under an oak, whose boughs were moss'd with age? " 
 
 No one can be more unwilling than I to deviate from the 
 original text. Yet there are some cases in which it is ab- 
 solutely necessary to do so. In the second Scene of the first 
 Act of this play, for instance, the folio reads : 
 
 " But yet indeed the taller is his daughter ; " 
 
 yet we are obliged to read, 
 
 " But yet indeed the smaller is his daughter." 
 
 A correction not more imperative than the present in my 
 estimation. 
 
 ACT V. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Silv. All adoration, duty, and obseruance ; 
 All humblenesse, all patience, and impatience ; 
 All purity, all trial, all obseruance." 
 
 Thus the original folio ; but the first or the second "ob- 
 should evidently be obedience. Malone made 
 the necessary change in the third line. It is mere matter 
 of opinion, but I prefer the substitution of the needful word 
 in the first line, which is made in Mr. Collier's folio. Obe- 
 
260 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 dience seems more properly classed with adoration and duty 
 than with purity and trial. 
 
 An intelligent correspondent in Maine, whose name is 
 unknown to me, and whose suggestions I shall have other 
 occasions to notice, thus takes exception to the above de- 
 cision : 
 
 
 " The only object of a change from the original is, of course, 
 to save the repetition of the word observance. Then, the ques- 
 tion to be decided is, whether or not it is probable that Shake- 
 speare would have considered such repetition an unpleasant one. 
 I am of the opinion, judging according to my own taste, that he 
 would not have so considered indeed, I think it quite probable 
 that he intended the repetition for a sort of refrain : it follows 
 that I would render the passage as it is rendered in the original. 
 With reference to a supposition of a misprint, it appears to me 
 that the evidence favoring such supposition rests mainly with 
 Malone. The compositor would have been more likely to get 
 the correct word in the first instance, and the wrong one in the 
 second instance by a resetting of the other, than he would have 
 been to get the first word wrong, and the second one right by 
 resetting the first." 
 
 In most cases mere repetition is, undoubtedly, not a 
 sufficient reason for making a change in the text of the au- 
 thentic folio. But in this instance there is more than 
 such a repetition as may or may not be offensive to criti- 
 cal taste. Silvius is making an enumeration of the out- 
 ward signs which are the sure exponents of true love ; and 
 in such a schedule, a repetition of the same thought in the 
 same word in the same sentence is absurd. It must also 
 be remarked, that obedience to the wishes of the beloved is 
 one of the first fruits and surest indices of love, one which in 
 such an enumeration could not be passed over ; and yet 
 according to the text of the folio it is not mentioned, while 
 
As You LIKE IT. 261 
 
 ' observance ' is specified twice in three lines. Such a re- 
 petition is not in Shakespeare's manner ; for though he had 
 peculiarities, senseless iteration was not one of them. As 
 to the typographical error, it is most probable that the 
 compositor not being able to decipher the first word, " obe- 
 dience/' and, looking through the passage for a cue, was 
 able to make out the second, " observance ; " and the re- 
 semblance of this to the former, in manuscript,would lead 
 him to suppose that the words were identical. A little more 
 experience in reading his proofs and a knowledge of the ac- 
 cidents of the composing case, would enable my correspon- 
 dent to see that this is the more natural way of accounting 
 for the error. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " 1. Page. Shall we clap into't roundly, without hawking or spitting ; 
 which are the only prologues to a bad voice? " 
 
 " Hawking and spitting " often are only the prologues 
 to the display of a bad voice ; but are they "the only " 
 premonitions of that calamity ? My musical experience 
 teaches me otherwise. Unless the text of the original gives 
 an old form of speech which is equivalent to ' only the/ 
 of which, however, I remember no instance, should we not 
 read, 
 
 4 'which are only the prologues to a bad voice ? " 
 
 " Touch. Truly, young gentlemen, though there was no great matter 
 in the ditty, yet the note was very untuneable, 
 
 1. Page. You are deceived, sir: we kept time; we lost not our time." 
 
262 
 
 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 Shakespeare was a good musician ; and the answer of the 
 Page makes it plain, beyond dispute, that, as Theobald and 
 Mason have suggested, Touchstone says, " yet the note was 
 very untimeable," otherwise the Page's answer is no reply at 
 all. In the manuscript of any period it is very difficult to 
 tell ' time ' from ' tune/ except by the dot of the f, so fre- 
 quently omitted ; and as most people think that to be in 
 tune or out of tune is the principal success or the principal 
 failure of a musical performance, it is by no means strange 
 that the word written in the old hand, with the i undotted, 
 
 thus, ^ihm/eo&Ee, should be taken for %aorvcaCe. 
 
 I can speak from experience, that in ninety-nine cases 
 in a hundred, when ' time ' is written it will be set up 
 ' tune/ One curious instance occurs in King John, Act 
 III. Scene 3. 
 
 " K. John. I had a thing to say, 
 
 But I will fit it with some better time." 
 
 The last line is printed in the original, 
 
 . 
 
 "But I will fit it with some better tune." 
 
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. 
 
 INDUCTION. 
 "Sly. I'll pheese you, in faith." 
 
 Comment is made on this word "pheese." Johnson 
 says it means, c to separate a twist into single threads ; ' 
 and bases his opinion on the definition of Sir T. Smith De 
 Sermone Anglico. " To feize means infila deducere." Gif- 
 ford says it means " to beat, chastise or humble ; " and Mr. 
 Charles Knight says that in this sense Shakespeare uses 
 it in the line, 
 
 "An he be proud with me I'll pheese his pride." 
 
 Troilus & Cressida. 
 
 All wrong, as any ' Yankee ' could tell the learned 
 gentlemen. The word has survived here with many others 
 which have died out in England, and are thence called 
 Americanisms. ' To pheese/ is ( to irritate/ ' to worry/ 
 Nothing is more common than for a New England house- 
 wife to come in, irritated by some domestic conflict, and 
 plumping down in her rocking chair and beginning to fan 
 herself with her apron, to break out, " Plague on that hus- 
 sy ! she's put me all in a pheese." Sly has just had a war 
 
264 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 of words with Mistress Hacket, and he enters, threatening to 
 worry her to her heart's content. The toping tinker has no 
 thought of chastising the good ale-wife. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Tran. Only, good master, while we do admire 
 This virtue and this moral discipline, 
 Let's be no stoics, nor no stocks, I pray ; 
 Or so devote to Aristotle's checks, 
 As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured. 
 Balk logic with acquaintance that you have, 
 And practise rhetoric in your common talk." 
 
 This passage has, strangely enough, been thought ob- 
 scure by some critics. Blackstone, Mr. Collier's folio cor- 
 rector Mr. Singer, and strangest of all, Mr. Dyce, read 
 " Aristotle's ethicks" for "Aristotle's checks/' " What are 
 ' Aristotle's checks ? ' " asks Mr. Collier. Plainly, they are 
 Aristotle's ethical principles, which check the propensities 
 that Master Tranio's more favored author, Ovid, stimulate. 
 Lucentio has but just said ; 
 
 " for the time I study, 
 Virtue and that part of philosophy, 
 Will I apply, that treats of happiness 
 By virtue specially to be achiev'd." 
 
 To which Tranio immediately replies : 
 
 " Mi perdonate, gentle master mine, 
 I am in all affected as yourself. 
 Glad that you thus continue your resolve, 
 To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy. 
 Only, good master, while we do admire 
 Tfds virtue, and this moral discipline, 
 Let's be no stoics, nor no stocks, I pray ; 
 Or so devote to Aristotle's checks 
 As Ovid be an outcast quite abjur'd : " 
 
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. 265 
 
 Surely a clearer passage was never written, or an apter word 
 ever chosen. Blackstone's conjecture is both ingenious 
 and plausible. Ingenuity and plausibility are very well ; 
 but it is not well to " let them appear when there is no 
 need of such vanity." 
 
 " Balk logic " of the original has been presumptuously 
 changed to " Talk logic " in most editions ; in spite of the 
 fact that ' to balk ' means ' to puzzle/ c to deal in cross 
 purposes ; ' and in spite of this instance of its use by Spen- 
 ser, which is quoted by Boswell in the Variorum Edition : 
 
 "But to occasion him to further talke, 
 To feed her humor with his pleasing style, 
 Her list in stryfull termes with him to balke." 
 
 Faerie Queene, B. IIL Can. 2, Stan. xii. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Siond. I spied 
 
 An ancient angel coming down the hill." 
 
 The word " angel " has always presented a difficulty. 
 The most plausible conjectural change which has been 
 made, is that of Sir Thomas Hanmer, who would read engle, 
 ( a gull/ from the French engluer, ' to catch with bird 
 lime/ The worst change is that in Mr. Collier's folio, 
 ambler, than which nothing can be more tame and puerile. 
 Gifford supports engle in a note on Ben Jonson's Poetaster, 
 in which he quotes, in addition to Jonson's own use of the 
 word, the parallel passages from Gascoigne's Supposes, 
 which was the source of a part of Shakespeare's plot. In 
 this the messenger judged from the habit and the looks of 
 the old man, that he was " a good soul," " none of the 
 wisest," "a man of small sapientia" " a cod's head." But 
 hear Mr. Dyce : 
 
266 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " I never felt quite satisfied with the emendation ' enghlc ' 
 (ingeniously as it is supported by Clifford, note on B. Jonson's 
 Works, ii. 430) ; nor does that of the Manuscript-corrector ap- 
 pear to me so certain as it does to Mr. Collier. 
 
 After all, is ' angel 7 the right reading (though not in the 
 sense of messenger, which is quite unsuited to the passage), 
 ' an ancient angel ' being equivalent to an ancient worthy, or 
 simply to an old fellow ? I must not be understood as answer- 
 ing this query in the affirmative when I cite from Cotgrave's Diet. 
 1 Angelot a la grosse escaille. An old Angell ; and by metaphor, 
 a fellow of th' old, sound, honest, and worthie stamp.'" 
 
 A Few Notes, &c. p. 71. 
 
 Plausible and well supported as engle is, this forbids us 
 to make the change ; for here is a perfectly apt and con- 
 gruous signification for the original word, furnished by a 
 contemporary English lexicographer.* 
 
 ' SCENE 4. 
 
 " Tran. I thank you, sir : "Where then do you know best 
 Webeaffied?"<fec. 
 
 The suggestion in Mr. Collier's folio that we should read, 
 
 " Where then do you hold best 
 We be affied ? " 
 
 seems to he an ingenious and judicious correction of a pro- 
 bable error of the press. 
 
 * Mr. Dyce, writing only for critics, thinks it needless to give any 
 information about Cotgrave's Dictionary. It is a very carefully compiled 
 and copious French and English Lexicon, published in London in 1611. 
 The author, Randle Cotgrave, appears from passages in his dedication of 
 the work to " Sir WILLIAM CECIL Knight, Lord Burghley and sonne, and 
 heire apparent vnto the Earle of Exeter," to have been a tutor in the fami- 
 ly of that Nobleman. 
 
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 " King. I'll see Ihee to stand up." 
 
 This line, about which some have found sufficient ob- 
 scurity to alter " see " to fee, and which even Mr. Knight 
 interprets, " I'll notice you when you stand up," seems to 
 me very easy of comprehension, and to mean ' I would have 
 thee to stand up/ 
 
 " Hel. My maiden's name 
 
 Seared otherwise ; no worse of worst extended, 
 "With vilest torture let my life be ended." 
 
 What is the meaning of the last line and the previous 
 half-line ? .With every help I can make out' nothing which 
 approaches intelligibility, unless we read with Boswell, 
 
 "nor worse of worst extended." 
 
 Even this is obscure, and can hardly be received as Shake- 
 speare's. But it should be remarked that this blindest of 
 passages, the one which, perhaps, is most hopelessly cor- 
 
268 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 rupted by typographical errors, is passed by, untouched, in 
 Mr. Collier's folio ; the correctors of which, while, in hun- 
 dreds of instances, they have degraded that which was lofty 
 and obscured that which was clear, have left the most cor- 
 rupted lines in the confusion due to the carelessness of the 
 early printers. In such passages, the " authoritative copy ' 
 seems to have strangely failed them. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Clown. * * * I know a man that had this trick of melancholy 
 hold a goodly manor for a song." 
 
 Thus the original. The third folio, " sold a goodly 
 manor," &c., Mr. Knight retains " hold/' because the sell- 
 ing of a manor "is no illustration of the Clown's argument, 
 that singing is a symptom of melancholy." Certainly 
 not ; but it is an evidence of the seller's fond love of music, 
 and of his indifference to the affairs of the world. Besides, 
 the singing of which the Clown speaks is not skilful, such 
 as would lead a monarch to bestow lands on the tenure of 
 a song from the singer, or even to accept his services in a 
 proper fulfilment of a previous grant. The craving of 
 moody, melancholy men for music, is very great. In As 
 You Like It, Act II. Sc. 5, Amiens has just sung, and 
 Jaques, " the melancholy Jaques," prays : 
 
 " More, I prithee, more. 
 
 Am. It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jaques. 
 Jaq, I thank it. I can suck melancholy, out of a song as a weasel 
 sucks eggs : more, I prithee, more." 
 
 Afterwards he importunes, " Come, more ! " " Will you 
 sing ? " " Come, sing I " And so Mariana, in Measure for 
 
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 269 
 
 Measure, when the Duke finds her with a boy singing to 
 her : 
 
 " I cry you mercy, sir ; and well could wish 
 You had not found me here so musical : 
 Let me excuse me, and believe me so, 
 My mirth it much displeas'd, but pleas' d my woe" 
 
 "Hel. O you leaden messengers 
 
 That ride upon the violent speed e of fire, 
 Fly with false ayme, move the still-peering aire 
 That sings with piercing." 
 
 Various are the efforts to correct this passage, which 
 stands thus palpably corrupt in the original. All seem to 
 me, and in truth to the conjecturers themselves, to be unsat- 
 isfactory. The difficulty is in " still-peering," which would 
 be the easiest possible misprint for " still 'pearing" May 
 we not read, with the probability of correctness, 
 
 " Fly with false aim ; move the still 'pearing air 
 That sings with piercing ! " 
 
 As to the use of c 'pear ' for c appear/ in Hamlet, Act 
 IV. Sc. 5, the following reading of the quarto of 1611, 
 
 "It shall as level to your judgment 'pear, 
 As day does to your eye," 
 
 has been generally received ; and, whatever may be its in- 
 trinsic value, shows that the contraction was in use in 
 Shakespeare's day, and is admitted in our own. Indeed, 
 the contraction is common in the writings of Shakespeare's 
 contemporaries. " Move the still appearing air," is cer- 
 
270 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 tainly consistent with the conditions of nature ; my only 
 doubt is, whether it be not too literally so. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Dia. "Tis not the many oaths that make the truth ; 
 But the plain single vow, that is vow'd true. 
 What is not holy, that we swear not by, 
 But take the highest to witness : Then, pray you, tell me, 
 If I should swear by Jove's great attributes, 
 I lov'd you dearly, would you believe my oaths, 
 When I did love you ill ? This has no holding, 
 To swear by him whom I protest to love, 
 That I will work against him : Therefore your oaths 
 Are words, and poor conditions ; but unseal'd ; 
 At least in my opinion. 
 
 Ber. Change it, change it ; 
 
 Be not so holy-cruel : love is holy ; " <fec. 
 
 The last sentence in Diana's speech, as thus printed in 
 the received text, is confessed on all hands to be incompre- 
 hensible. Johnson and Malone proposed to read, 
 
 "To swear to him whom I protest to love 
 That I will work against him." 
 
 But surely nothing is gained by making Diana protest 
 love, and swear to the man whom she protests to love, that 
 she will work against him. This is sheer absurdity ; not the 
 inconsistency implied by Diana. Mr. Collier's corrector 
 strikes out the passage in despair. Where was his author- 
 itative copy ? Mr. Singer proposes, 
 
 "To swear by him when I protest to Love," <fcc. 
 
 This is identical in one point with my own conjecture, and 
 
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 271 
 
 does something towards the correction of the errors in the 
 passage. But the chief difficulty, the determination of 
 the antecedent of the last "him," still exists ; for to sup- 
 pose "him" to refer to Jove, and that to "work against 
 him " means merely to break the oath taken in his name, 
 is to force a very lame and impotent construction. 
 
 " Jove " makes the trouble. He stands in the place 
 of Love. Editors, and printers too, perhaps, have been 
 confirmed in the error, by supposing " the highest " to refer 
 necessarily to the chief of the gods ; whereas it is a general 
 term. Diana says, 
 
 "What ia not holy that we swear not by 
 But take the highest [i. e. the most sacred] to witness," 
 
 and Bertram in his reply, says " love is holy," showing 
 plainly that the oath was in Love's name. A reference to 
 the first folio confirms my conjecture that "Jove" is an 
 error of the printer for Love. The passage in the original 
 is printed thus ; 
 
 " Then pray you tell me 
 If I should sweare by loue's great attributes 
 I lou'd you deerely, would you beleeue my oathes 
 When I did loue you ill ? This ha's no holding, 
 To sweare by him whom I protest to loue 
 That I will worke against him." 
 
 It will be seen that the setting up of 'I' for ( 1 9 ' an error 
 which occurs continually at this day, and the mistake of 
 'whom' for 'when,' an error almost equally common, have 
 caused the trouble. Diana may well say, and evidently 
 means to say, that there is no holding [consistency] in 
 swearing by Love, when she protests to Love that she will 
 work against him. Should we not then read, 
 
272 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " If I should swear by Loves great attributes, 
 I lov'd you dearly, would you believe my oaths 
 When I did love you ill ? This has no holding, 
 To swear by him, when I protest to Love 
 That I will work against him." 
 
 " Dia. I see that men make ropes in such a scarre 
 That we'll forsake ourselves." 
 
 None of the emendations of this passage are satisfactory. 
 Howe's hopes is better, perhaps, than "ropes:" but still 
 c to make hopes/ is a wretched phrase. The change by the 
 same editor, and in Mr. Collier's folio, of "a scarre" into 
 affairs, or by Malone into a scene, or, as Mr. Singer pro- 
 poses, a scare, is even less acceptable. The lines seem to 
 be hopelessly corrupted. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " 2d Lord. How is this justified ? 
 
 1st Lord. The stronger part of it by her own letters, which make her 
 story true, even to the point of her death ; her death itself, which could 
 not be her office to say, is come, was faithfully confirmed by the rector of 
 the place." 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio proposes " stranger part " for "strong- 
 er part," which is evidently right. It also has " and faith- 
 fully confirmed, ' for "was faithfully confirmed ;" an un- 
 necessary emendation, which results from a perversion of 
 meaning, itself consequent upon improper punctuation. 
 The speaker does not mean to say that her death "is 
 come," but that her letters toljl her story up to the time of 
 her death, and that as she could not, of course, announce 
 that event herself, it was done by another, " the rector of 
 the place." Eemove the comma after " say," and read : 
 
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 273 
 
 "her death itself, which could not be her office to say is come, was faith- 
 fully confirmed by the rector of the place." 
 
 ACT Y. SCENE 1. 
 
 We owe to Mr. Collier's folio two acceptable emenda- 
 tioDs in this play. For the stage direction, "Enter a gentle 
 Astringer" in this Scene, it has "Enter a gentleman, a 
 stranger." The context shows that he was a stranger to 
 Helena, although she knew him by reputation. When he 
 afterward appears at the court of the French king, where he 
 is known, he is announced " Enter a gentleman." 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 "King She hath that ring of yours. 
 
 Ber. I think she has : certain it is, I liked her, 
 And boarded her i' the wanton way of youth. 
 She knew her distance, and did angle for me, 
 Madding my eagerness with her restraint, 
 As all impediments in fancy's course 
 Are motives of more fancy ; and, in fine, 
 Her insuit coming with her modern grace, 
 Subdued me to her rate: she got the ring; 
 And I had that, which any inferior might 
 At market-price have bought." 
 
 "Insuit coming" is utterly incomprehensible, and 
 has baffled the ingenuity of all the editors and commenta- 
 tors. Mr. Collier's folio substitutes infinite cunning, which 
 is the reading, beyond a doubt. The words are so like in 
 manuscript that they might easily be mistaken for each 
 other ; and the context not only admits, but requires them. 
 This is a fine example of proper conjectural emendation, 
 
 18 
 
274 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 and is one of the most successful efforts in Mr. Collier's folio. 
 But it should be remarked that no better copy or " author- 
 itative" manuscript was needed for it, it having been dis- 
 covered by Mr. Thomas Walker, the author of The Original, 
 a series of essays published twenty years before the discov- 
 ery of Mr. Collier's folio. It should be constantly kept 
 in mind, in considering the worth of that volume, that all 
 its most remarkable and acceptable emendations have been 
 discovered by the conjectural ingenuity of thoughtful read- 
 ers of Shakespeare ; which shows that their existence in the 
 folio is no proof that its correctors had better sources of in- 
 formation than we have. The entirely original emendations 
 are, with very rare exceptions, the thousand which are 
 worse than worthless. 
 
TWELFTH NIGHT. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Duke. That straine agen ; it had a dying fall : 
 0, it came ore my eare like the sweet sound 
 That breathes vpon a banke of Violets 
 Stealing, and giuing Odour." 
 
 Thus this beautiful passage stands in the original. 
 Kowe changed " sound " to wind, and Pope substituted for 
 it, South, in which he is followed by the editor of every 
 edition since his day, except Mr. Knight. But what right 
 had Pope to change " sound " to South, more than Kowe 
 had to change it to wind? Would either have been 
 wilh'ng to own that he could not understand, 
 
 " 0, it came o'er my 'ear like the tweet sound 
 That breathes upon a bank of violets." ? 
 
 Upon what ground did they then presume to change 
 it ? Because wind or South were better words, in their 
 estimation, than " sound ? " Mr. Knight says the question 
 between these words in effect is, "which is the better 
 word ?" There is no such question up for discussion. If, 
 in place of " sound," there were some word without mean- 
 ing, or even with a meaning incongruous with the tone of 
 
276 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 the passage, and both wind and South were proposed as 
 substitutes, then there would be a question, between wind 
 and South, as to which is the better word. But " sound " 
 is in the original text. It is, to say the least, a compre- 
 hensible and appropriate word ; and until Rowe, Pope, 
 and their successors, have taken out letters patent to improve 
 the text of Shakespeare, would it not be better for them to 
 confine themselves to editing it ? The carelessness of the 
 printers of the authentic folio, or their inability to decipher 
 the manuscript furnished to them by Shakespeare's friends 
 and partners, affords a field for conjecture wide enough for the 
 reasonable ambition of any editor, without his attempting 
 to improve those passages which are comprehensible. I 
 wonder that Pope did not perfect his change, and read, 
 
 " 0, it came o'er my ear like the sweet South. 
 That breeze upon a bank of violets 
 Stealing, and giving odour." 
 
 He certainly had as much right to change " breathes " to 
 breeze, and to call the south wind 'that breeze/ as to 
 change " sound " to South. 
 
 But did Pope, or the editors who have followed him, 
 ever lie musing on the sward at the edge of a wood, and 
 hear the low sweet hum of the summer air, as it kissed the 
 coyly-shrinking wild flowers upon the banks, and passed on, 
 loaded with fragrance from the sweet salute ? If they ever 
 did, how could they make this change of " sound" to South ? 
 and if they never did, they are unable to appreciate the 
 passage, much less to improve it. As Mr. Knight has well 
 remarked, Shakespeare never makes the South an odor- 
 bringing wind. He speaks only of " the foggy South," " the 
 contagion of the South," " the spungy South," " the dew- 
 dropping South : " expressions, these, not at all descriptive 
 
TWELFTH NIGHT. 277 
 
 of the wind which the love-sick Duke thought of when he 
 said, 
 
 " the sweet sound 
 
 That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
 Stealing, and giving odor." 
 
 " Duke. when mine eyes did see Olivia first 
 (Methought she purg'd the air of pestilence) 
 That instant was I turned into a hart ; 
 And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, 
 E'er since pursue me. " 
 
 What need of this parenthesis, which is not in the ori- 
 ginal ? Yet it is inserted by some of the editors, among them 
 Mr. Knight, who remarks that " the line is certainly pa- 
 renthetical." Not at all. Orsino says that when he first 
 saw Olivia, he thought she made the air around her pure ; 
 and then goes on to say, that, on the instant, his desires 
 pursued him as Actseon's dogs their master. Head : 
 
 " ! when mine eyes did see Olivia first, 
 Methought she purged the air of pestilence : 
 That instant was I turned into a hart; 
 And my desires," <fec. 
 
 " Duke. O, she, that hath a heart of that fine frame, 
 To pay this debt of love but to a brother. 
 How will she love, when the rich golden shaft 
 Hath kill'd the flocks of all affections else 
 That live in her ! when, liver, brain, and heart, 
 Those sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill'd 
 (Her sweet perfections) with one self king ! " 
 
 Much jarring comment on this passage, both as to 
 " sweet perfections " and " self king," which in the second 
 
278 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 folio is made " self-same king." This emendation supplies 
 a syllable much needed both for sense and metre. Mr. 
 Knight's interpretation of the passage seems to me to be 
 obviously the true one. He says : " The phrase ought 
 probably to be ' her sweet perfection.' The rilling of the 
 i sovereign thrones ' is the perfection of Olivia's merits/' 
 Capell gave, in his edition : 
 
 " when liver, brain and heart, 
 Those sovereign thrones, are all supplied and filled 
 (Her sweet perfection) with one self-same king." 
 
 This is evidently the true reading. Mr. Knight quotes 
 from Froissart to show that it was anciently believed, that 
 a well-assorted marriage was necessary to the " perfection " 
 of a woman. Is not the quotation a little superfluous ? 
 Has that belief yet entirely died out ? And does not the 
 whole of the Duke's speech point to the full development 
 of Olivia's nature, by her love of him who is to fill her heart? 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 " Vio. O that I served that lady, 
 And might not be deliver'd to the world 
 Till I had made mine own occasion mellow 
 What my state is." 
 
 Hear the great commentators of the last century upon 
 this passage, and upon the character of Viola ! 
 
 11 And might not be delivered to the world.] I wish I might 
 not be made public to the world, with regard to the state of my 
 birth and fortune, till I have gained a ripe opportunity for my 
 design. 
 
CHARACTER OF VIOLA. 279 
 
 " Viola seems to have formed a very deep design with very little 
 premeditation : she is thrown by shipwreck on an unknown coast, 
 hears that the prince is a bachelor, and resolves to supplant the 
 lady whom he courts." JOHNSON. 
 
 " In the novel on which Shakespeare founded this play, the 
 Duke Apollonius being driven by a tempest on the isle of Cyprus, 
 Silla, the daughter of the governor, falls in love with him, and 
 on his departure goes in pursuit of him. All this Shakespeare 
 knew, and probably intended in some future scene to tell, but 
 afterwards forgot it. If this were not the case, the impropriety 
 censured by Dr. Johnson must be accounted for from the poet's 
 having here, as in other places, sometimes adhered to the fable he 
 had in view, and sometimes departed from it. Viola, in a sub- 
 sequent scene, plainly alludes to her having been secretly in love 
 with the Duke : 
 
 ' My father had a daughter lov'd a man, 
 As it might be perhaps, were I a woman, 
 I should, your lordship. 
 
 Duke. And what's her history ? 
 
 Vio. A blank, my lord, she never told her love ! ' " <fec. 
 
 MALONE. 
 
 " It would have been inconsistent with Viola's delicacy to 
 have made an open confession of her love for the Duke to the 
 Captain." 
 
 BOSWELL. 
 Variorum Shakespeare, vol. XI, p. 347. 
 
 And upon Viola's remark "I'll serve this duke" in 
 her next speech, Johnson adds : 
 
 ' Viola is an excellent schemer, never at a loss ; if she cannot 
 serve the lady, she will serve the Duke." 
 
 Ibid. p. 348. 
 
 And this is the appreciation which Shakespeare's labors 
 met at the hands of such men as Johnson and Malone ! 
 
280 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 The ' great moralist ' could be so bisson blind as to 
 call the most unsophisticated and self-sacrificing character 
 in the whole range of fiction " an excellent schemer/' and 
 attribute to her the formation of a deep design to supplant 
 a lady in the affections of her lovei ! How this could hap- 
 pen, is incomprehensible ; for an appreciation of Viola's 
 gentle and unselfish character is not necessary to prevent 
 such a misapprehension ; it needs but to read the text with 
 a reasonable degree of attention, to see that such a suppo- 
 sition has not the least foothold on probability. Malone's 
 supposition, that Shakespeare forgot to tell us that Viola 
 had started in pursuit of the Duke, and his opinion, that 
 Viola " plainly alludes to her having been secretly in love 
 with the Duke" as well as Boswell's defence of Viola, on 
 the ground that her delicacy would forbid her to tell the 
 Captain of her love for the Duke, are all equally prepos- 
 terous, and show that all three of the critics were equally 
 ignorant of the subject on which they spoke, and equally 
 unable to sympathize with the character which they grossly 
 asperse, or traduce no less by a pitiful defence. 
 
 Viola is shipwrecked, and cast upon a coast unknown 
 to her ; and when she finds out where she is, she asks, 
 
 " And^phat should I do in Illyria? " 
 
 She had heard her father name Orsino, but had never 
 seen him. In her abandoned and dejected state, she longs 
 to get into the service of a lady who 
 
 "hath abjur'd the company 
 And sight of men," 
 
 and not to be " delivered to the world " till her opportuni- 
 ties and her talents had enabled her to better her then forlorn 
 
CHARACTER OF VIOLA. 281 
 
 condition. She is told that she cannot get an audience of this 
 lady ; and then, perforce, is obliged to seek the protection 
 of the Duke, which she does, not as a beautiful girl in dis- 
 tress, but in the very disguise most calculated to prevent 
 him from taking any personal interest in her. But the 
 danger proves to be reversed. She loves him deeply, hope- 
 lessly ; and yet at his bidding she goes to his fi sovereign 
 cruelty," effects the entrance denied to all others, and pleads 
 his cause with such a fervor, that it would seem she was suing 
 for her own happiness, rather than asking for that, which, in 
 her own words, would make her life "a blank." In her dis- 
 guise she captivates the very woman whose love she has 
 sought tor another ; and so far is she from rejoicing at this 
 check upon the Duke's designs, or finding a malicious and al- 
 most pardonable pleasure in the fatal and ludicrous passion 
 of her rival, that she exclaims, repenting of her disguise, 
 and pitying her master : 
 
 " T am the man ; If it be so, (as 'tis,) 
 Poor lady, she were better love a dream. 
 Disguise, I see, thou art a wickedness, 
 Wherein the pregnant enemy does much. 
 How easy is it for the proper false 
 In women's waxen hearts to set their forms ! 
 Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we ; 
 For, such as we ore made of, such we be. 
 How will this fadge ? My master loves her dearly : 
 And I, poor monster, fond as much on him ; 
 And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me; 
 What will become of this ! As I am man, 
 My state is desperate for my master's love : 
 As I am woman, now alas the day ! 
 What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe I 
 O time, thou mus^t untangle this, not I ; 
 It is too hard a knot for me to untie." 
 
 And this is the woman whom Samuel Johnson, LL. D. 
 could call a schemer, and accuse of a deep, selfish design ; 
 
282 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 and whom Malone and Boswell could suppose in love with 
 the Duke, forgetting, the while, that at the time when they 
 defend her from the indelicacy of confessing her love for 
 him to another, she had never seen him. Malone's suppo- 
 sition, that Viola's beautiful allusion to herself in the story 
 which she tells the Duke of her pretended sister, is an allu- 
 sion to her " having been secretly in love with him," that 
 is, of course, in love with him before the play opens, is 
 too absurd to merit notice. Indeed, indeed, the best part 
 of Shakespeare was written in an unknown tongue to these 
 learned gentlemen. If there ever were an ingenuous, un- 
 sophisticated, unselfish character portrayed, it is this very 
 Viola, Dr. Johnson's " excellent schemer," who, wretched 
 and in want, forms that u very deep design " of supplanting 
 a high-born beauty of whom she has never heard, in the 
 affections of a man of princely rank, whom she has never 
 seen. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " Sir Tob. An thou let part so, Sir Andrew, would thou might'st never 
 draw sword again." 
 
 It seems not improbable that her dropped out between 
 " let " and " part " as Mr. Collier's folio suggests. An in- 
 telligent friend, however, who has read Shakespeare much, 
 and the comments on him, not at all, on seeing this admis- 
 sion, remarked : " ' An thou let part so/ is better as it is. 
 Shakespeare dropped her himself. Let stupidity pick her 
 up/' I am more than half inclined to think with him. 
 
 " Sir And. Ay, 'tis strong, and does indifferent well in a flame coloured 
 stock." 
 
TWELFTH NIGHT. 283 
 
 The old copies read " dam'd coloured stock." " Flame 
 coloured " is Pope's suggestion. Mr. Collier's folio proposes 
 " dun colored ; " upon which Mr. Dyce remarks : " That 
 Sir Andrew, a gallant of the first water, should ever dream 
 of casing his leg in a ' dun coloured stock,' is not to be sup- 
 posed for a moment." (A Feiv Notes, &c., p. 75.) I do 
 not mean to say that dam'd should be changed to dun; 
 but if Mr. Dyce will but look through old illuminations, 
 tapestries, and the like, he will find that dun colored hose 
 were as much affected by gallants of the first water three 
 and four hundred years ago, as dun colored trowsers and 
 waistcoats are by gallants of the first water in our own day. 
 
 SCENE 5. 
 
 " Clo. good Madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool. 
 
 OIL Can you do it ? 
 
 Clo. Dexteriously, good Madonna," 
 
 Thus the Clown's reply stands in the first folio ; and 
 yet the editors have changed it to, " Dexterously, good 
 Madonna." How natural that the Clown should say, " Dex- 
 teriously, good Madonna." Why did not the editors, when 
 he replies to Sir Andrew Ague-cheek " I did impeticos 
 thy gratillity," make him say, f I did put in my petticoat 
 thy gratuity ? " Notwithstanding the recent labors of Mr. 
 Collier and Mr. Knight, and the too often unquestioning 
 deference of the latter gentleman to the first folio, that text 
 still needs careful collation with the received version, that 
 we may not be the losers by the presuming and ruthless ex- 
 cisions and changes of the editors of the last century. 
 
284 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " Oli. But we will draw the Curtain and shew you the picture. Look 
 you, sir ; such a one I was this present." 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio corrector would feebly amend this 
 passage by the violent change, " such a one I am at this 
 present." Mr. Singer makes a simpler and a better change, 
 i. e. ( such a one I was as this presents/ But this is only a 
 modification for the worse of Zachary Jackson's " such a 
 one as I was this presents," which was made long ago, 
 and which is the correct reading, beyond a question. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Seb. A l;uly, sir, though it was said ?1ie much resembled me, was yet 
 of many accounted beautiful: but though I could not, with such estimable 
 wonder, overfar believe that, yet thus far will I boldly publish her." 
 
 The words in italic letter are utterly incomprehensible ; 
 but the sentence is easily understood without them. They 
 are evidently interjectional. All the attempts at emenda- 
 tion, involve a change in the body of the sentence. In all 
 such cases it is better to let the text stand, pass over the 
 interjected phrase, and be satisfied with the body of the 
 sentence, than to disturb that which is clear, and to obtain 
 by it only a diffusion of turbidness through the whole 
 passage, or a substitution of something which is utterly 
 unlike the original. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 "^Sir Toby. Out o' tune? sir, ye lie." 
 
 Theobald's correction to " out o' time ? " is manifestly 
 demanded. Malvolio had said nothing about tune ; but 
 
TWELFTH NIGHT. 285 
 
 he had asked, " Is there no respect of place, persons, nor 
 time in you." Sir Toby, in his drunken confusion of ideas, 
 replies, " We did keep time, sir, in our catches." After 
 further remonstrance on the part of the Steward, and a 
 futile attempt on the part of the topers to continue the 
 vocal amusement which he had interrupted, the intoxicated 
 knight reverts, in the true revolving style of drunken 
 thought, to the remark to which he first replied ; and again, 
 with comical earnestness, defends the party against the 
 supposed or assumed attack upon their musical accuracy. 
 The text, as it has hitherto been printed, destroys one fine 
 exhibition of the poet's knowledge of the workings of the 
 mind under all circumstances. Besides all this, the substi- 
 tution of ' tune ' for ' time ' is the most natural and fre- 
 quent error of the compositor when setting up musical ' mat- 
 ter/ as I know by experience, and as I have pointed out in 
 a comment on Touchstone's remark to the singing Page, in 
 As You Like It, Act V., Scene 3. 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 "Duke. Give me some music: now, good morrow, friends: 
 Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song, 
 That old and antique song we heard last night ; 
 Methought it did relieve my passion much, 
 More than light airs and recollected terms, 
 Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times : " 
 
 '' Terms " does not, I think, mean musical phrases ; nor 
 is it a misprint for tunes, both of which explanations have 
 been suggested by the editors. The Duke speaks of a song, 
 a an antique song." A song consists of both music and 
 words ; and this song, which was " old and plain," by rea- 
 son of the simple sweetness of its air and the homely direct- 
 
286 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 ness of its words, suited the mood of the lover, more than 
 the "light airs" [i. e. gay, trivial music] to which the 
 " recollected terms " [i. e. carefully sought out expressions] 
 in the songs of those " most brisk and giddy-paced times," 
 were set. " Recollected terms " might well be applied to 
 the words of a song written under the influence of Euphues 
 his England. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Vio. Save thee friend, and thy music ! Dost thou live by thy tabor ? 
 Clo. No, sir ; I live by the church. 
 Vio. Art thou a churchman ? 
 
 Clo. No such matter, sir: I do live by the church, for I do live by my 
 house, and my house does stand by the church." 
 
 Upon this passage Mr. Collier remarks : " The clown's re- 
 ply, ' No, sir, I live by the church/ is not intelligible, if we 
 do not suppose him to have wilfully misunderstood Viola to 
 ask whether he lived near the sign of the tabor, which 
 might be either a music shop or a tavern." This certainly 
 exhibits such a want of capacity to apprehend the humor 
 of equivoque, as fully to justify Mr. Singer's conclusion that 
 " we can now fully comprehend the sympathetic support 
 Mr. Collier gives to the [MS.] corrector's attempts to get 
 rid of similar passages of playful banter, which he had not 
 the capacity to understand." 
 
 ACT V. SCENE 1. 
 
 " OIL Open it and read it. 
 
 Clo. Look then to be well edified, when the fool delivers the madman. 
 By the Lord, madam,' 
 
 OH. How now, art thou mad ? 
 
 Clo. No, madam, I do but read madness," <fec. 
 
TWELFTH NIGHT. 287 
 
 Had any body, before I read an annotated edition of 
 Shakespeare, told me that a note could be perpetrated 
 upon this passage, I should have believed it with difficulty. 
 How is it possible to avoid seeing that the Clown, beginning 
 to read Malvolio's letter, which commences, " By the Lord, 
 madam, you wrong me, and the world shall know it," as he 
 utters the first words, is instantly reproved by Olivia for his 
 supposed profanity in her presence ! What is his reply ? 
 " I do but read madness." And yet Steevens says : 
 
 " I am by no means certain that I understand this passage, 
 which, indeed, the author of The Revisal [Heath] pronounces to 
 have no meaning. I suppose the clown begins reading the letter 
 in some fantastical manner, on which Olivia asks him, if he is 
 mad. No, madam (says he), I do but barely deliver the sense 
 of this madman's epistle : if you would have it read as it ought 
 to be (that is), with such a frantic accent and gesture as a mad- 
 man would read it, you must allow vox, i. e. you must furnish 
 the reader with a voice, or, in other words, read it yourself. But 
 Mr. Malone's explanation I think is preferable to mine." 
 
 Here is Mr. Malone's explanation, to which his rival so 
 modestly defers : 
 
 " The clown, we may presume, had begun to read the letter 
 in a very loud tone, and probably with extravagant gesticulation. 
 Being reprimanded by his mistress, he justifies himself by saying, 
 ' if you would have it read in character, as such a mad epistle 
 ought to be read, you must permit me to assume a frantic 
 tone.'" 
 
 To these, appearing strangely enough in such company, 
 on such a subject, we must add Mr. Knight, who says : 
 "When the Clown begins to read he raves and gesticulates ; 
 upon which Olivia says ' art thou mad ? ' " After this, 
 
288 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 whom can we trust, and what passage, how plain soever, is 
 safe from perversion ! 
 
 " Oli. Out of question, 'tis Maria's hand, 
 And now I do bethink me, it was she 
 First told me thou wast mad; then cam'st in smiling, 
 And in such forms which here were presupposed 
 Upon thee in the letter." 
 
 What does " then cam'st in smiling" mean ? Out of 
 question we should read " thou cam'st in smiling." [I find 
 that Zachary Jackson has made this suggestion. As he 
 well points out, the ou in manuscript might he easily mis- 
 taken for en. Indeed, in reading the best manuscript of 
 Shakespeare's day, the closest examination can with diffi- 
 culty distinguish one from the other. Then, the bow of e, 
 usually very small, was turned to the left- instead of the 
 right. 
 
THE WINTER'S TALE. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 2. 
 
 "Her. I love thee not a jar o' the clock behind 
 What lady, she her lord. 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio has, " What lady should her lord," 
 which is plausible and has found defenders. But I confess 
 that the old reading is far more pleasing to me. I have 
 always read it as ' I love thee not a jar o' the clock hehind 
 what [ever] lady she [may be who loves] her lord/ The 
 elision is great ; but it seems to me to make the sentence 
 neither obscure nor inelegant. I find, by experiment, that 
 the sympathetic and intelligent readers of Shakespeare of 
 my acquaintance, learned and unlearned, are with me ; 
 though all could not supply the elided words. But he who 
 would rightly read Shakespeare, or any poet of high grade, 
 must, in Shakespeare's words, be able to " apprehend more 
 than cool reason comprehends." 
 
 I cannot pass by the tame and ridiculous literalism 
 of adding to Hermione's observation, in this Scene, 
 
 "You look 
 
 As if you held a brow of much distraction," 
 19 
 
 ; 
 
290 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 the stage direction, " Holding his forehead" which appears 
 in Mr. Collier's folio, than which nothing could be more 
 absurd and prosaic. This alone would be all-sufficient to 
 show that that volume had passed through annotating 
 hands utterly incompetent to express even an ordinary ap- 
 preciation of Shakespeare's phraseology, to say nothing of 
 his poetry. 
 
 " Pol. Feare ore-shades me : 
 
 Good Expedition be my friend, and comfort 
 The gracious Queene, part of his Theame ; but nothing 
 Of his ill-ta'en suspicion." 
 
 This is one of the three or four passages in Shakespeare's 
 works which seem to me to be almost, if not quite, hope- 
 lessly obscured by the carelessness of the first printers, or 
 their inability to read the manuscript which was furnished 
 them. It appears as above in the original folio ; the whole 
 speech being singularly well punctuated. All sorts of 
 changes have been proposed for it, and all sorts of senses 
 tortured from it. But the best that has been done is the 
 allowing it to remain untouched, and the extracting a sense 
 which Mr. Collier thus expresses : 
 
 " The absence of Polixenes, the object of the jealousy of Le- 
 ontes, was to comfort the Queen, who was part of the theme on 
 which the King dwelt (Polixenes being the other part), but who 
 being innocent, may be said to be ' nothing ' of the * ill-ta'en 
 suspicion' against her." 
 
 Yet, let me ask any intelligent but unpretending reader 
 of Shakespeare, is that the way in which Shakespeare 
 wrote, in which he thought ? Could any construction be 
 
THE WINTER'S TALE. 291 
 
 more barbarous, any expression cruder or more confused ? 
 To call the Queen part of the theme of Leontes but no part 
 of his suspicion ! His theme was his jealousy ; and his sus- 
 picion was, that she was false ! It is natural that Polixe- 
 nes should express a hope that his flight might comfort the 
 Queen ; but what can be flatter or tamer than that he 
 should then go on to say that she was part of the King's 
 theme but no part of his suspicion, even if it were true. 
 But in every sense in which she could be said to be a part 
 of the suspicion of Leontes, she was a part of it. Her 
 actual innocence could not make her seem to Polixenes any 
 the less a part of the suspicion of Leontes if we must use 
 such an uncouth phrase. Innocent or guilty, her husband's 
 suspicion of her was an existing fact. The lines had better 
 be stricken from the volume than so interpreted. 
 
 In this perplexity I bring forward for consideration an 
 emendation which has been suggested to me, premising 
 that the difficulty can exist only in the words " and com- 
 fort" and "part of his Theame," as the other parts of the 
 passage are not only clear in themselves, but entirely con- 
 sistent with each other and the situation of the speaker ; 
 and also adding that the punctuation of the passage in the 
 original is so careful and judicious, that it was evidently 
 printed with unusual attention, and that the error must 
 therefore have arisen from obscurity in the manuscript. It 
 must also be remembered that the most obvious consequence 
 of the suspicions of Leontes was the loss to Hermione of 
 her position as his wife ; and that the precipitate flight of 
 PolixeneS) though necessary to his safety, might possibly, 
 and not unnaturally, increase those suspicions. Polixenes, 
 therefore, according to the reading which I suggest for con- 
 sideration, expresses his hope that expedition may be his 
 friend, and also preserve or perpetuate for the Queen her 
 share in her husband's confidence and throne, but no part 
 
292 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 of the suspicion with which he unjustly visited her. The 
 correction of two very possible typographical errors gives us, 
 
 " Good Expedition be my friend, and conserve 
 The gracious Queen part of his Throne ; but nothing 
 Of his ill-ta'en suspicion." 
 
 Shakespeare uses the verb ' conserve ' in exactly this 
 sense in Measure for Measure, Act III. Sc. 1. 
 
 " Isab. Yes, thou must die : 
 
 Thou art too noble to conserve a life 
 In base appliances." 
 
 He uses the word as a verb in no other instance. Indeed 
 it was generally used in his day, as we find it defined in 
 Phillips' New World of Words, in the sense, " to defend 
 or maintain, to preserve or keep." As to the irregularity 
 of the line produced by this word, it is to be remarked that 
 the Scene is one of the least musically written that we have 
 from Shakespeare's pen. 
 
 I bring forward this reading at the suggestion of a very 
 devoted and no less conservative student of Shakespeare's 
 text, who says that the more he considers it the more it 
 satisfies him, and that he has such confidence in it as to 
 believe, that if the play existed in an early quarto form 
 in which this reading appeared, it would have been adopted 
 without a dissenting voice, to the entire disregard of that 
 in the folio. 
 
 I am inclined to think that the best course is to aban- 
 don all attempt to amend the lines ; but nothing can make 
 me believe that Shakespeare produced such a chaotic little 
 puddle of words and thoughts as results from the most fa- 
 vorable construction of the existing text. 
 
THE WINTER'S TALE. 293- 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Antig. You are abused, and by some putter on 
 That will be damn'd for it ; would I knew the villain, 
 I would land-damn him." 
 
 Jackson's conjecture that " land-damn " means ' con- 
 demn to the punishment of being built up in the earth/ is,, 
 to say the least, not without reason. See Tit. Andr. Act 
 V. Sc. 3. 
 
 41 Set him breast-deep in the earth and famish him," <fcc. 
 
 This was justly considered the most fearful of all dooms ; 
 and was one likely to be common under the rule of so un- 
 scrupulous a despot as Leontes. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 3. 
 
 ** Antig. anon 
 
 Did this break from her : 4 Good Antigonus, 
 4 Since fate, against thy better disposition, 
 4 Hath made thy person for the thrower-out 
 4 Of my poor babe, according to thine oath, 
 4 Places remote enough are in Bohemia : 
 4 There weep, and leave it crying.'" 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio changes " There weep," to " There 
 wend; " which has a plausible seeming, until we remember 
 that when Antigonus had this vision of Hermione, he was 
 on board a ship just off the coast of Bohemia Shake- 
 speare's Bohemia ; and that to direct him to wend to Bo- 
 hemia would be very singular under the circumstances. 
 When he abandons the child he says : 
 
294 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 "Poor wretch 
 
 That, for my mother's fault, art thus expos' d 
 To loss, and what may follow! Weep I cannot, 
 But my heart bleeds ; and most accurs'd am I 
 To be by oath enjoin'd to this." 
 
 His reference to his inability to weep, confirms the conclu- 
 sion that the vision enjoined tears upon him as a becoming 
 accompaniment to his sad duty. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Enter Autolycus, singing : 
 When daffodils begin to peer, 
 
 With heigh ! the doxy over the dale, 
 Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year : 
 
 For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale." 
 
 This last line is understood by some as meaning, that 
 the Spring holds a partial reign within the Winter's pale, 
 i. e. boundary. This is the sense conveyed, doubtless ; 
 but is not the obvious and simpler method of construing 
 the thought, i. e. that the red blood reigns in the Win- 
 ter's pale blood, the better ? 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 "Per. your high self, 
 
 The gracious mark o' the land, you have obscur'd 
 With a swain's wearing, and me, poor lowly maid, 
 Most goddess like prank'd up. But that our feasts 
 In every mess have folly, and the feeders 
 Digest if, with a custom, I should blush 
 To see you so attired : sworn, I think, 
 To shew myself a glass." 
 
 It would seem difficult, if not impossible to raise a ques- 
 
THE WINTER'S TALE. 295 
 
 tion upon the meaning of this passage ; but the commen- 
 tators have managed to do so with regard to the word 
 " sworn/' in the last line but one. Perdita says, and, to 
 my apprehension, as plainly and pertinently as possible, 
 that Prince Florizel in obscuring himself " with a swain's 
 wearing/' would seem, if it were not that the feast justi- 
 fied the costume, to have sworn to shew her, a swain's 
 daughter, a reflex of her own condition, as if in a mirror, 
 and, consequently, the difference between her actual posi- 
 tion and his. Mr. Collier's MS. corrector changes " sworn " 
 to so worn, forgetting that " you" (i. e. Florizel) would 
 then be the antecedent of worn. Hanmer and Singer read, 
 most tamely, swoon. But no change is needed ; and there- 
 fore none is sufferable. 
 
 " Cam. He tells her something 
 
 That makes her blood look on't. Good sooth she is 
 The queen of curds and cream." 
 
 This is the text of the original ; and it would seem 
 that nothing could be plainer to one able to understand 
 the phraseology of Shakespeare at all. Camillo says that 
 Florizel tells Perdita something that calls her blood to look 
 on it : a vivid and beautiful figure to express the sudden 
 mounting of the blood into a maiden's cheek at the words 
 of her lover. If a change were needed, Theobald's " look 
 out " would be unexceptionable. The change in Mr. Col- 
 lier's folio, 
 
 " He tells her something 
 That wakes her blood. Look on't ! " 
 
 is insufferable. 
 
296 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " Serv. He hath songs, for man, or woman, of all sizes ; no milliner 
 can so fit his costumers with gloves ; he has the prettiest love-song for 
 maids; so without bawdry, which is strange; with delicate burdens of 
 dildos and fadings; jump her and thump her ; and where some stretch- 
 mouth'd rascal would, as it were, mean mischief, and break a foul gap into 
 the matter, he makes the maid to answer, Whoop, do me no harm, good 
 man; puts him off, slights him, with. Whoop, do me no harm, good man." 
 
 " Fadings " is thought to mean a kind of dance ; but 
 taking the subsequent context as an indication of the Ser- 
 vant's idea of delicate burdens, and songs without bawdry, 
 we may fairly conclude that " dildos and fadings " have a 
 signification better known perhaps to city debauchees than 
 simple rustics. 
 
 For " break a foul gap into the matter " we may safely 
 read, with Mr. Collier's folio, "break a foul jape into the 
 matter." ' Jape ' is an old word for ' jest/ 
 
 " Pol. You offer him if this be so, a wrong 
 Something unfilial : Reason, my son, 
 Should choose himself a wife ; but as good reason 
 The father (all whose joy is nothing else 
 But fair posterity) should hold some counsel 
 In such a business." 
 
 This punctuation, which is universally followed, seems to 
 me to be wrong. It makes Polixenes say, " My son, Keason 
 should choose himself a wife." Whereas he means to say, 
 it is reasonable that my son should ; choose himself a wife 
 but it is quite as reasonable that the father should have some- 
 thing to say in the affair/ Keason was continually used by 
 the old writers for ' There is reason/ It seems almost 
 needless to point this out ; for the following part of the 
 sentence "but as good reason the father should have some 
 
THE WINTER'S TALE. 297 
 
 counsel/' &c. makes it plain. The passage should be 
 pointed thus : 
 
 " You offer him, if this be so, a wrong 
 Something unfiiial. Reason my son 
 Should choose himself a wife ; but as good reason 
 The father (all whose joy is nothing else 
 But fair posterity) should hold some counsel 
 In such a business." 
 
KING JOHN. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 " K. John. For ere thou canst report I will be there, 
 The thunder of my cannon shall be heard." 
 
 The anachronism in this and many other passages of 
 Shakespeare has furnished ground of cavil to cavillers. But 
 it, and others like it, are justifiable, as Mr. Knight says, on 
 the principle of using terms and making reference to things 
 familiar to the audience. Shakespeare never, I think, in- 
 troduces anachronism in the actions of his personages. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Const. Stay for an answer to your embassy, 
 Lest unadvis'd you stain your swords with blood : 
 My lord Chatillon may from England bring 
 That right in peace, which here we urge in war ; 
 And then we shall repent each drop of blood, 
 That hot rash haste so indirectly shed." 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio changes the last line to. 
 
 "That rash, hot haste so indiscreetly shed." 
 
 There can be no doubt of the propriety of the correction. 
 
KING JOHN. 299 
 
 The Constable begs them to "stay for an answer," "lest 
 unadvised" they stain their swords with blood; and in 
 addition to this, the use of 'so' indicates that indiscreetly 
 and not " indirectly " was the word. 
 
 " That rash, hot haste so indirectly shed," 
 
 is not sense. The typographical error might easily have 
 been made. 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 " Bast. And this same bias, this commodity, 
 This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word, 
 Clapp'd on the outward eye of fickle France, 
 Hath drawn him from his own determined aid." 
 
 The last line is changed in Mr. Collier's folio to, 
 
 " Hath drawn him from his own determined aim." 
 
 a correction proposed by Monck Mason, and "the necessity 
 for which," Mr. Collier says, " is not very evident." If a 
 tithe of the changes in that volume were as imperatively 
 demanded as this is, Mr. Collier's discovery would have done 
 ten times the service that it has done. How could " com- 
 modity " draw France from "his own determined aid?" 
 What was "his own determined aid ? " The aid which 
 lie had determined to give to Arthur ? That is not the 
 way in which Shakespeare uses the English language. But, 
 besides this, the previous line demands the change. Com- 
 modity, 
 
 " Clapp'd on the outward eye of fickle France," 
 
300 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 drew him from his aim. The outward eye is that which is 
 used in taking aim ; and without that word this part of the 
 sentence has no meaning. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Const O Lewis, stand fast ! the devil tempts thee here, 
 In likeness of a new untrimmed bride." 
 
 We have here as fine a specimen of Warburton's pe- 
 culiar fitness to comprehend and improve the text of Shake- 
 speare as can be found throughout the Variorum. He re- 
 marks upon " untrimmed bride," " ' untrimmed ' signifies 
 unsteady. The term is taken from navigation." Well done, 
 Warburton ! you deserved a mitre for that : the Abbot 
 of Un-reason's. Think of the coxswain of a wedding that 
 is, the groomsman, calling out, ' trim the bride, my lads ! 
 keep her steady ! ' This note was too much for even John- 
 son's solemnity ; and with ponderous pleasantry, he remarks : 
 " A commentator should be grave, and therefore I can read 
 these notes with a proper severity of attention ; but the 
 idea of trimming a lady to keep her steady, would be too 
 risible for any power of face." 
 
 " K. John. But as we under heaven are supreme head, 
 So, under him, that great supremacy, 
 Where we do reign, we will alone uphold," <fec. 
 
 Evidently " heaven " in the first line should be God } 
 as is shown by the pronoun in the second. The correction 
 is made in Mr. Collier's folio. The original word was evi- 
 dently changed to " heaven," on account of the statute of 
 
KING JOHN. 301 
 
 James I. before alluded to, while the corresponding change 
 in the pronoun was neglected, as it was in a similar case, which 
 I have pointed out in Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 4. 
 Mr. Collier's folio gives heaven for "him" in the second 
 line ; but needlessly and, indeed, injuriously, as it destroys 
 the parallel between the king's tenure of power and his ex- 
 ercise of it. This is another marked evidence of the con- 
 jectural nature of the corrections in that folio. The cor- 
 rector having made the necessary change of " heaven " to 
 God, either from the sight of an actor's copy of his part, 
 from memory, or from conjecture, went on to improve the 
 text by guess-work, and struck from it the very word which 
 gave force to the passage. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " K. John. If the midnight bell 
 
 Did with his iron tongue and brazen mouth 
 Sound on into the drowsy race of night : " <fec. 
 
 As the last line has been frittered away by the editors 
 into, 
 
 "Sound one unto the drowsy race of night," 
 
 it seems plausible to read with Mr. Collier's folio, " ear of 
 night," for "race of night." But all the changes are alike 
 uncalled for. Let any one who has listened to a church 
 clock striking twelve at midnight, and seeming as if it 
 would never complete its solemn task, say whether, 
 
 " Sound on into the drowsy race of night," 
 
 does not bring up the memory of his sensations more vi- 
 vidly than, 
 
302 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 "Sound one into the drowsy ear of night," 
 
 or, 
 
 " Sound one unto the drowsy race of night." 
 
 The line as it stands in the original is one of the most 
 suggestive in all Shakespeare's works. 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 " K. Phil. So, by a roaring tempest on the flood, 
 A whole armado of convicted sail 
 Is scatter'd," <fcc. 
 
 For the obviously mistaken " convicted," Mr. Dyce 
 proposed converted. He came within one letter of that 
 which is doubtless the right word, converted, which is 
 found on the margins of Mr. Collier's folio. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Arthur. There is no malice in this burning coal." 
 
 This should evidently be 
 
 " There is no malice burning in this coaL" 
 
 Arthur has just spoken of the fire as having gone out, 
 as being " dead with grief ; " the transposition gives us 
 the words and the thoughts of the author, and in such a 
 form as is consistent with what has gone before. 
 
 [I find that Dr. Grey made this suggestion, which 
 Monck Mason called hypercriticism, because Hubert says, he 
 " can revive " the coal, and which Boswell well defended, on 
 
KING JOHN. 303 
 
 the ground that, whatever really was the case, Arthur 
 evidently believed that the coal was not burning when he 
 spoke. 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 " Pern. If, what in rest you have, in right you hold, 
 Why then your fears (which, as they say, attend 
 The steps of wrong,) should move you to mew up 
 Your tender kinsman, and to choke his days 
 "With barbarous ignorance, and deny his youth 
 The rich advantage of good exercise? 
 
 A moment's consideration of the construction of this 
 passage makes it plain that it is corrupt. As it stands, 
 though it is pointed as a question, it is an assertion ; and an 
 assertion, too, which involves a contradiction. The obvious 
 transposition in Mr. Collier's folio obviates all difficulty. 
 
 " Why should your fears (which, as they say, attend 
 The steps of wrong) then move you to mew up, 
 Your tender kinsman ? " <fcc. 
 
 " K. John. How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds, 
 Makes deeds ill done ! Had'st thou not been by, 
 A fellow by the hand of nature mark'd, 
 Quoted, and sign'd to do a deed of shame, 
 This murder had not come into my mind : " 
 
 Can any one read the whole of this passage, and ques- 
 tion for an instant the propriety of Mr. Knight's change ? 
 
 "How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds 
 Makes ill deeds done ! " 
 
304 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " Sal. The King hath dispossess'd himself of us : 
 "We will not line his thin bestained cloak." 
 
 " Thin bestained cloak," is most probably a misprint 
 for " Sin bestained cloak," as the corrector in Mr. Collier's 
 folio conjectures. 
 
 " Pern. All murders past do stand excus'd in this : 
 And this, so sole, and so unmatchable, 
 Shall give a holiness, a purity, 
 To the yet unbegotten sin of times, 
 And prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest, 
 Exampled by this heinous spectacle." 
 
 It is very plain to me that "the yet unbegotten sin of 
 times " is a misprint for " the yet unbegotten sins of time" 
 as Pope suggested. Pembroke says that, all murders past 
 stand excused in this ; and this shall excuse all other crimes 
 to be committed. " Sin," it is true, might be used collec- 
 tively ; but then at least we should read " sin of time." 
 In lifting the c matter/ the s was evidently transferred from 
 one word to the other. Read : 
 
 " Shall give a holiness, a purity 
 To the yet unbegotten sins of time." 
 
 ACT V. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Bast. inglorious league! 
 
 Shall we, upon the footing of our land, 
 Send fair play orders, and make compromise ? " 
 
KING JOHN. 305 
 
 The correction, " Send fair play offers" made in Mr. 
 Collier's folio, seems to be a necessary correction of a prob- 
 able misprint. 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 " Sal. My arm shall give thee help to bear thee hence, 
 For I do see the cruel pangs of death 
 Right in thine eye." 
 
 Some commentators, being nnable to understand " right 
 in thine eye/' proposed to read fright, and others "fight in 
 thine eye." But, as Steevens says, " right " signifies here 
 6 immediate/ He adds, three quarters of a century ago, 
 " It is now obsolete." But it has survived in America, and 
 is in constant and common use in the phrase Eight away/ 
 for ' on the instant/ ' immediately/ which our somewhat 
 overweening cousins sneer at, as an Americanism. The 
 language of the best educated Americans of the Northern 
 States is more nearly that of Shakespeare's day than that 
 of the best born and bred English gentlemen who visit 
 them ; although the advantage on the score of utterance is 
 generally on the side of the Englishman. 
 
 It is somewhat from the subject of this volume, but I 
 will notice here one gross and radical error of language into 
 which all Englishmen of the present day fall, without ex- 
 ception. Oxford-men and Cambridge-men speak it ; and 
 all English authors, Mr. Macaulay and Mr. Landor not ex- 
 cepted, write it. They say that one thing is different to 
 another. Now, this is not an idiom, or a colloquialism : 
 it is radically, absurdly wrong. They might as well say 
 that two things converge from each other. Difference im- 
 plies a figurative divergence, a motion from, not to. One 
 thing is different from another. Spenser, Shakespeare, 
 
 20 
 
306 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 Bacon, Milton, and the translators of the Bible, wrote ( dif- 
 ferent from;' and in America this is the only expression 
 of the idea ever heard among those who have even the least 
 pretensions to education. 
 
KING RICHARD II. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Gaunt. More are men's ends mark'd, than their lives before . 
 The setting sun, and music at the close, 
 As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last, 
 Writ in remembrance more than things long past." 
 
 This is, to say the least, very confused. How inept the 
 assertion, that " the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last ! " 
 and what a slender and even doubtful connection the last 
 line has with the preceding part of the passage ! What is 
 writ in remembrance ? As the sentence now stands, " writ " 
 has no nominative. Monck Mason's punctuation makes 
 the passage perfectly clear. 
 
 "More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before. 
 The setting sun, and music at the close 
 
 (As the last taste of sweets is sweetest) last, 
 
 "Writ in remembrance moro than things long past." 
 
 That is, the setting sun and music at the close are last- 
 ing, are writ in remembrance, just as the last taste of sweets 
 is sweetest. 
 
308 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " York. The king is come : deal mildly with his youth ; 
 For young hot colts, being rag'd do rage the more." 
 
 Kitson substituted rein'd for " rag'd," and Mr. Collier's 
 folio has urg'd. Mr. Singer gives preference to the former 
 word, which is certainly much the better suited to the 
 sense of the context. But why change the original ? Is 
 it not perfectly comprehensible and quite in Shakespeare's 
 manner ? York begs Gaunt to " deal mildly " with the 
 young king, not to irritate or enrage him ; because 
 
 " Young hot colts being rag'd, do rage the more." 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Scroop. and boys, with women's voices, 
 
 Strive to speak big, and clap their female joints 
 In stiff, unwieldy arms," <fec. 
 
 As a specimen of the fitness of the editors and critics 
 of the last century for their task, I cannot forbear quoting 
 the following comments upon this passage : 
 
 " and clap their female joints ] Mr. Pope more elegantly 
 reads ' and clasp ; ' which has been adopted by subsequent 
 editors. But the emendation does not seem absolutely necessary." 
 
 MALONE. 
 
 " Clip would be still nearer than clasp." 
 
 RITSON. 
 " Lee, in his Mithridates, has imitated this passage, Act IV. : 
 
 " The very boys, like Cupids dress'd in arms, 
 Clap their young harness'd thighs, and trust to battle." 
 
 STEEVENS. 
 
KING KICHARD II. 309 
 
 Here we have four learned men, one of them a distin- 
 guished poet, unable to apprehend the graphic colloquialism 
 of Scroop's relation, that boys were clapping their girlish 
 limbs into armor, to fight against the king. Steevens' 
 grave statement that Lee imitated this passage, in saying 
 that boys clapped their thighs, has more food for laughter in 
 it than most of his jokes have. 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 " Queen. And I could sing, would weeping do me good, 
 And never borrow any tear of thee." 
 
 Pope changed " sing," which is the reading of all the 
 old copies, into weep, and he has been followed by all his 
 successors, except Mr. Knight. Why ? The Queen's at- 
 tendant offers to sing, and, the Queen replying that she 
 would rather that she should weep, answers, 
 
 " I could weep, madam, would it do you good." 
 
 The Queen rejoins, that, ' if weeping were of any service 
 she had wept enough to be able to sing herself/ Thus 
 plainly says the text ; and what reason is there for chan- 
 ging it ? 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Car. forbid it God, 
 
 That, in a Christian climate," <fcc. 
 
 Thus the authentic folio ; but all the editors give " 0, 
 for/end it." Why ? Because, Mr. Knight says, "we cling 
 to the less common word." Of course we do. Is there 
 
310 
 
 NOTES AND COMMENTS 
 
 not Mr. Justice Shallow's authority for it ? " Good phra- 
 ses are surely, and ever were, very commendable." But 
 Shakespeare had no respect for less common words, as such ; 
 and so he makes the Bishop say "forbid," even in the solemn 
 opening of this speech. There is not a single instance in 
 his authentic works, in which he uses ' forfend/ Unlike 
 his editors, he clings to the more common word. 
 
KING HENRY IV. PART I. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 " K. Hen. No more the thirsty entrance of this soil 
 Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood." 
 
 " The thirsty entrance of this soil," has given much 
 trouble to the editors and critics, who perpetrate three pages 
 of comment and conjecture upon it, in the Variorum Edi- 
 tion. Monck Mason's ingenious substitution of Erinnys 
 for " entrance/ 7 is set aside by Boswell, Knight, and Collier. 
 Steevens, Mason and Knight quote Virgil, Lucan, and Ovid 
 in favor of the correction. The following lines, from an 
 English contemporary and townsman of Shakespeare, seem 
 to me to be much more to the purpose : 
 
 "Spightfull ERINNIS frights Me with her Lookes, 
 My man-hood dares not with foule ATE mell, 
 I quake to looke on HECAT'S charming Bookes," <fec. 
 
 Drayton's Sonnets, No. 39. Ed. 1619. 
 
 These sonnets were first published in 1594, under the 
 title Idea's Mirrour, Amours in Quatorzains : The first 
 part of Henry IV. was written in 1596 or 1597. This, to 
 show that Shakespeare was not obliged to go to Lucan, 
 Virgil, or Ovid for the name or the functions of Erinnys. 
 
312 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 But there is not the slightest justification for a change in 
 the original text. Steevens perceived the obvious meaning, 
 but true to the spirit of his day, shirked it. He says : 
 " Shakespeare may mean the thirsty entrance of the soil for 
 the porous surface of the earth, through which all moisture 
 enters, and is thirstily drunk or soaked up." Nothing could 
 be plainer or more pertinent. 
 
 "K. Hen. Ten thousand bold Scots, two and twenty knighte 
 Balk'd in their own blood, did Sir Walter see 
 On Holinedon's plains." 
 
 How can there be the least hesitation in changing 
 the obvious misprint " balk'd " for bath'd, which is at once 
 the word for which it would be most easily mistaken, and 
 that which would most naturally occur in the passage ? 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " Northum. "Why, what a wasp-stung and impatient fool 
 Art thou, to break into this woman's mood," <fec. 
 
 This, the reading of the first quarto, seems to me un- 
 questionably the true one. The later editions give wasp- 
 tongue instead of " wasp-stung ; " a phrase, which in this 
 place, seems to me to be utterly without meaning, but 
 which is construed by Malone to mean " having a tongue 
 as peevish and mischievous as a wasp." But this makes 
 the Earl call his son "a wasp-tongue and an impatient fool," 
 which is not a Shakesperian or an admissible mode of join- 
 ing epithets. The advocates of wasp-tongue evidently 
 suppose it ; as well as " impatient," to be an adjective belong- 
 
KING HENRY IV. PART I. 313 
 
 ing to " fool ; " but in that case it would have been c wasp- 
 tonguco?/ It is needless to point out the particular parts 
 of Hotspur's conduct in this scene which justify his father 
 in likening him to on 3 stung by a wasp. The confusion of 
 these epithets is the easiest imaginable. It is difficult to 
 discriminate in speech between c wasp-stung ' and ' wasp- 
 tongue/ and not difficult to mistake them for each other 
 in manuscript. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Gads. I am joined with no foot land-rakers, <fec., but with nobility and 
 tranquillity <fcc., burgomasters and great-oneyers." 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio changes " tranquillity " to sanguinity, 
 which is beneath notice, and " great-oneyers " to great ones 
 yes, which is quite as bad, but which attracts some atten- 
 tion because the word has given work to the editors and 
 commentators. The obvious signification of the original word 
 seems to me to be ' great ones ' for which " great oneyers " 
 is a vulgarism. It is common enough to hear ' ers ' ap- 
 pended to words by those who are altogether without in- 
 telligence and education ; and it is quite natural that Gads- 
 hill should affect their phrase under the circumstances. 
 This view was ably advocated in Blackwood's Magazine 
 (Sept. 1853). But why should so obvious a construction 
 need advocacy ? Answer, Commentators of the Augustan 
 age. 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 " P. Hen. and when you breathe in your watering they cry 
 
 hem ! and bid you play it off." 
 
 By a perhaps laudable, but certainly much overstrained 
 effort for delicacy, " breathe in your watering," is interpret- 
 
314 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 ed to mean to ' take breath in your drinking/ But in Shake- 
 speare's day, as well as in Henry IV/s, not much water was 
 drunk, especially in taverns ; and why should the drawers 
 cry " hem !" in such a case, and commend the drinker to 
 " play it off? " " Watering," evidently does not refer to 
 the absorption of fluid, or " breathe " to the inspiration of 
 air. The obvious signification of the passage is the just 
 one, and that which is most in keeping with the characters 
 alluded to, particularly at the time of Shakespeare. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Mort. I understand thy looks : that pretty "Welsh 
 Which thou pours't down from these swelling heavens." 
 
 The substitution of wetting for " swelling " in Mr. Col- 
 lier's folio, is pretty and plausible ; but I am far from being 
 confident as to the necessity for a change. 
 
 " Glend. She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down." 
 
 This line was altered by Steevens to, 
 
 "She bids you 
 Upon the wanton rushes lay you down." 
 
 The alteration has been generally followed ; and upon 
 the lines in this condition, Coleridge remarks, that " the 
 imperfect line c She bids you/ is one of those fine hair 
 strokes of exquisite judgment peculiar to Shakespeare ; 
 thus detaching the lady's speech, and giving it the indivi- 
 
KING HENRY IV. PART I. 315 
 
 duality and entireness of a little poem, while he draws at- 
 tention to it." Perhaps such an arrangement would have 
 been a stroke of exquisite judgment, had Shakespeare made 
 it ; though that is not so obvious to me, even after Coleridge's 
 setting forth ; but Shakespeare did not make it. The ar- 
 rangement is a mere mechanical consequence of Steevens' 
 finger-counting propensity. It is amusing to see the great 
 critic deceived, with his dwarf predecessors and successors, 
 into giving Shakespeare credit for that which was not in 
 his thought. We may all take warning from it. 
 Malone says that "the old copies" give the line, 
 
 "She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down," 
 
 and Mr. Knight, that " all the old copies give this as one 
 line." They are both wrong. It is one line in all the 
 quartos ; but it appears in the first folio, and also in the 
 second, thus : 
 
 " Glend. She bids you, 
 On the wanton Rushes lay you downe." 
 
 This seems at first to favor Coleridge's fancy ; but it does 
 not, in reality. For there is conclusive evidence that the 
 text of the folio was printed from that of one of the later 
 quartos. The break in the line was merely for typographi- 
 cal convenience. Steevens' printing of the passage, 
 
 "She bids you 
 Upon the wanton rushes," <fcc., 
 
 was not justified by the folio, and, upon his own confession, 
 was an arbitrary arrangement. 
 
316 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 "Fal. but the sack that thou hast drunk me would have bought me 
 lights as good cheap at the dearest chandler's in Europe." 
 
 The commentators give various instances of the use of 
 the phrase " good cheap " for ' a low price ; ' but none of 
 them seem to me to be so pertinent as the following, from 
 the old Morality Hycke-Scorner : 
 
 "Fre-wyll. Even now and ye go thyder, ye shal fynde a grete hepe, 
 And you speke in my name, ye shal have good chepe." 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Hot. to set so rich a main , 
 
 On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour? 
 It were not good : for therein should we read 
 The very bottom and the soul of hope : 
 The very list, the very utmost bound 
 Of all our fortunes." 
 
 There has been much perplexity caused by the word 
 " read " in this passage. Some say " read " means { to see/ 
 others that it is used in its old signification ' to discover or 
 unravel/ as, c A rede my riddle/ But is it well to speak 
 of either seeing or discovering by a desperate battle " the 
 bottom and the soul of hope, the list and utmost bound of 
 fortune ? " In case of such a battle, the bottom and the soul 
 of hope, the list and utmost bound of 'fortune, are not seen, 
 not discovered, not read; but they are reached. "Keade," 
 as the word stands in the folio, is an evident and a very 
 easy misprint for reach. In much manuscript ch resembles 
 even d; and in more than half of that which goes to the 
 
KING HENRY IV. PART I. 317 
 
 press, even nowadays, it could be determined only by the 
 context whether the author meant ch or de. Kead there- 
 fore : 
 
 " for therein should we reach 
 The very bottom and the soul of hope ; 
 The very list, the very utmost bound 
 Of all our fortunes." 
 
 " Hot. Come let us make a muster speedily." 
 
 The folio and two of the early quartos read " take a 
 muster," and though the misprint would seem obvious, 
 both Mr. Knight and Mr. Collier retain it. They probably 
 forgot the following lines, in the Induction of Part II. 
 
 " And who but Rumour, who but only I, 
 Make fearful musters, and prepar'd defence f " 
 
KING HENRY IV. PART II. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Fal. Let him be damned like the glutton ! may his tongue be hotter ! 
 A whoreson Achitophel ! a rascally y ea-forsooth knave ; to bear a gentle- 
 man in hand, and then stand upon security! " 
 
 Falstaff let not my readers fear yet another essay 
 on the theme, Falstaff is regarded by many as a char- 
 acter, the traits of which are too delicate to admit of its 
 perfectly successful embodiment on the stage ; but Mr. 
 Hackett's performance in Henry IV. is the best answer to 
 such objectors. Well may he say : " That the character 
 was designed for stage effect, is evident from his many prac- 
 tically dramatic situations, and the idea that it is beyond 
 the reach of histrionic art to represent him properly, can 
 only originate in a hypercritical and fantastic imagina- 
 tion." * Few of those who see Mr. Hackett play Fal- 
 staff, indeed, very few, can discreetly venture to criticise 
 his embodiment of the part, so patiently, so profoundly 
 and so reverently has he studied this master-creation of 
 Shakespeare. There is hardly a gesture, or an expression of 
 countenance, hardly an inflection of voice, even in the most 
 subordinate parts of the play, which is not the fruit 
 of careful investigation of the character and the scene, or 
 
 * Falstaff: a Shakesperian Tract, London, 8vo. 1840. 
 
KING HENRY IV. PART II. 319 
 
 which, if intuitive, has not borne the scrutiny of such 
 investigation. And yet how gracefully and perfectly knit 
 together is the whole ! How spontaneously the wit seems 
 to spring when occasion calls it forth ! With what freedom 
 and consciousness of power are the broad dashes of humor 
 made ! How bold the lies ! How ready every reply ! How 
 sudden and how genuine the anger ! How sneaking the 
 cowardice ! How palpable, yet how well graduated the 
 grossness ! How fascinating, and yet how detestable the 
 whole character ! 
 
 I will not thrust my own ideas upon such a character 
 before my readers ; but they cannot be indifferent to the 
 written thoughts of one who, in his embodiment of it, has 
 attained a distinction so honorable to the art of his coun- 
 try. From some MS. Shakesperian Notes kindly lent to 
 me, between six and seven years ago, when I, as little as 
 he, had any thought that I should make such a use of them, 
 I copied this brief but suggestive record of Mr. Hackett's 
 view of the character. 
 
 " Shakespeare has invested that philosophic compound 
 of vice and sensuality with no amiable or tolerable quality 
 to gloss or cover his moral deformity, except a surpassingly 
 brilliant and charming wit, and a spontaneous and irresist- 
 ible flow of humor. But Falstaff is premeditative in some 
 of his wit as for instance when he endeavors to escape de- 
 tection in the lies he has told the Prince and Poins about 
 their attack after the robbery seriously irascible, touchy, 
 fretful, sometimes grave ; on some occasions his mirth breaks 
 out, and is marked with strong contrast to his usual deport- 
 ment. He is of cynical temperament, feels the infirmity of 
 age weighing upon him, has a mental as well as bodily 
 obesity." 
 
 On one point I differ with Mr. Hackett ; although it is 
 one which has been frequently mooted with regard to his 
 
320 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 Falstaff, and which he must consequently have considered 
 carefully, and on which he yet retains his first conception. 
 Falstaff, according to my reading of the part, should be a 
 gentleman ; Mr. Hackett does not think so, and relies on the 
 fat knight's meanness, falsehood, knavery, grossness, and 
 cowardice, to sustain his rendering. Granted, ah 1 this. Fal- 
 staff does do, is continually doing, many things of which 
 no gentleman should be guilty. Still he was by birth and 
 breeding a gentleman, and we cannot imagine him at any 
 time to have altogether lost the consciousness or laid aside 
 the outward manifestations that he was such. I refer, not 
 to gentlemanly impulses, for he had none of these, but to 
 that consciousness which arises from position, and from inter- 
 course with those who have it, and which always has its effect 
 upon the individual who possesses it, as well as upon those 
 with whom he is brought in contact. There are men now 
 among us, even in these days, who have all of Falstaff's vices, 
 without his wit ; and who, though therefore excluded from 
 society, are yet, on account of their position and breeding, 
 recognized as gentlemen by their associates, and with whom 
 one could not be in company five minutes without discover- 
 ing their right to be so recognized. Mr. Hackett must 
 himself have met such men; and I wonder that he has not 
 seen that Falstaff was one of their kidney. 
 
 Falstaff shows his own consciousness of his position in 
 the few lines which are quoted at the head of this section ; 
 for, in the spirit of the 15th century and of Shakespeare's 
 day, he thinks it presumption in a tradesman " to bear a 
 gentleman in hand, and then stand upon security." His 
 pretensions are not based upon the merely adventitious 
 honor of knighthood, but evidently upon birth, position, and 
 breeding. Therefore, though sensual to grossness, and selfish 
 to meanness, he should not only be courteous to the Prince 
 in sjjite of the Prince's familiarity with him, and show 
 
KING HENRY IV. PART II. 321 
 
 something of the condescension which is implied in affa- 
 bility, when he himself is familiar with his inferiors, but 
 should exhibit a certain courtliness of manner, which, in 
 spite of all his vile qualities, would leave that impress of 
 gentility upon those around him, which he evidently does 
 make, and which is shown in his influence over his hum- 
 bler companions, especially the females among them. 
 
 "Fal. A man can no more separate age and covetousness, than he 
 can part young limbs and lechery : but the gout galls the one, and the pox 
 pinches the other ; and so both the degrees prevent my curses. " 
 
 " Degrees," in Falstqff's speech is quite surely a mis- 
 print for diseases, which is substituted for it in Mr. Collier's 
 folio. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 The Hostess, in the original, says, "A 100 marke is 
 a long one for a poore lone woman to beare." She doubtless 
 should say, " a long score," as Mr. Collier's MS. corrector 
 conjectures. In the first part of her complaint she says, 
 
 " I warrant he is an infinite thing upon my score." 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 3. 
 
 " Fed. and now ia this Vice's dagger become a squire." 
 
 Long and tedious are the disputes about the etymology 
 of this word " Vice." But there can hardly by a question 
 that it is simply i vice/ i. e. vitimn, in the ordinary sense of 
 
 21 
 
322 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 the term, applied to a malevolent, or at least a mischievous 
 character on the old stage. The character bore a dagger, 
 as Harlequin bears and has ever borne a sword of lath. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 1. 
 
 " West. If that rebellion 
 
 Came like itself, in base and abject routs, 
 Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rage, 
 And countenanc'd by boys and beggary." 
 
 " Kage " has here no meaning, and is shown by the 
 context to be a misprint for rags, to which it is changed in 
 Mr. Collier's folio. 
 
 " West. You, lord archbishop, 
 
 Whose see is by a civil peace maintain'd : 
 Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch'd; 
 Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor'd ; 
 Whose white investments figure innocence, 
 The dove and very blessed spirit of peace, 
 Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself, 
 Out of the speech of peace, that bears such grace, 
 Into the harsh and boist'rous tongue of war ? 
 Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood, 
 Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine 
 To a loud trumpet, and a point of war ? " 
 
 This is the reading of all the recent editions. But can 
 any one read the whole speech, remember that the Arch- 
 bishop had personally taken up arms, and doubt for a mo- 
 ment that " graves " is a misprint for greaves, as Steevens 
 pointed out, and that we should read, 
 
 " Turning your books to greaves, your ink to blood ? " 
 
KING HENRY IV. PART II. 323 
 
 The change in Mr. Collier's folio of " a point of war " to 
 " report of war " is insufferable. " A point of war " is as 
 intelligible as a point of etiquette or a point of law. Sir 
 Walter Scott makes a trumpeter, in Old Mortality, I 
 believe, blow " a point of war." 
 
 " Archb. He cannot so precisely weed this land 
 As his misdoubts present occasion. 
 His foes are so enrooted with his friends, 
 That plucking to unfix an enemy, 
 He doth unfasten so and shake a friend, 
 So that this land, like an offensive wife," <fec. 
 
 It is with great reluctance that I even suggest any 
 change in the text of the original folio, when it is at all 
 comprehensible ; but I believe that " He doth unfasten so," 
 is a misprint for " He doth unfasten too." The phrase, as 
 it stands, may be construed so as to make the two lines 
 mean, " That plucking to unfix an enemy, he doth thus 
 unfasten and shake a friend." But this is not consistent 
 with the intent of the passage, in which the Archbishop 
 says, that Henry's foes are " enrooted with his friends ; " 
 so, that, like the sower in the parable of the tares and the 
 wheat, to which the allusion is plain, he cannot pluck up 
 one without rooting out the other at the same time. The 
 tares and the wheat in the one case, the enemy and the 
 friend in the other, would be displaced together. I believe 
 that Shakespeare wrote, that he could not have avoided 
 writing : 
 
 " His foes are so enrooted with his friends, 
 That plucking to unfix an enemy, 
 He doth unfasten Zoo, and shake a friend." 
 
 I do not believe that Shakespeare would have strung 
 
324 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 these sos thus needlessly after each other ; and I know from 
 some years experience of the chances of the composing-room, 
 that where there are three sos in six lines, the first two 
 being in the middle of the lines, that too, coming directly 
 under these first, would very probably be set up so, and so 
 make the fourth. 
 
KING HENRY V. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 " West. They know your grace hath cause and means and might : 
 So hath your highness ; never king of England 
 Had nobler riches." 
 
 There are disputes about this passage, and corrections 
 proposed ; and Coleridge's way of making the passage clear 
 by emphasis, " So hath your highness/' is announced as a 
 discovery ! How is it possible that any other reading 
 could have been thought of ! It is that which was always 
 from my boyhood spontaneous with me in reading the 
 phrase itself ; but in connection with the last part of the 
 passage " never king of England," &c., it seems impossi- 
 ble to think of any other. [On examination of the Vario- 
 rum Edition, I find that Coleridge was not the first to re- 
 cord this very obvious interpretation, though he ventures 
 it as a suggestion, saying, "Perhaps these lines ought to 
 be recited dramatically thus," and though Mr. Collier and 
 Mr. Knight in their recent editions attribute the discovery 
 to him. But Malone had written thus before Coleridge 
 was well out of the nursery : 
 
 " So hath your highness; " i. e. your highness hath indeed 
 what they think and know you have. 
 
 Variorum Edition, vol. xvii. p. 274. 
 
326 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " Exeter. For government, though high, and low, and lower, 
 Put into parts, doth keep in one consent 
 Congruing in a full and natural close, 
 Like music." 
 
 In Blackivood's Magazine (Sept. 1853) it is speciously 
 proposed to read through for " though." " Surely," says 
 the writer, " i though ' ought to be through. ' For govern- 
 ment, put into parts, like a piece of music, doth keep in 
 one consent or harmony, through high, and low, and lower/ 
 &c." Surely not. Such a change would take away the 
 very point of the speech. The Bishop says that govern- 
 ment doth keep in one consent, is harmonious, though con- 
 structed of various parts, high, low, and lower ; just as a 
 piece of music, though written in many parts, is harmoni- 
 ous, because all those parts move together and have proper 
 relations to each other. He refers to the differing functions 
 of the " armed hand " and the " advised head," which are 
 to be discharged in concert. 
 
 " While that the armed hand doth fight abroad, 
 The advised head defends itself at home ; 
 For government, though high, and low, and lower, 
 Put into parts, doth keep in one consent : 
 Congruing in a full and natural close, 
 Like music." 
 
 The insertion of one letter would spoil all this, 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Pist. O braggard vile, and damned furious wight ! 
 The grave doth gape, and doting death is near ; 
 Therefore exhale ! " 
 
 Malone says, "'Exhale/ I believe, here signifies to 
 
KING HENRY V. 327 
 
 draw, or in Pistol's language, hale or lug out; " and Stee- 
 vens responds " ' Therefore exhale ' means only ' therefore 
 breathe your last or die ;' " and no one says them nay. ' Ex- 
 hale' means 'begone/ ' clear out/ ( vanish/ Pistol at- 
 tempts to bully Nym, and tells him that " the grave doth 
 gape" for him, and therefore he must 'make himself 
 scarce/ ' exhale/ or, as a Yankee Pistol would have it, 
 ( evaporate/ 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 " K. Hen. Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels, 
 That knew'st the very bottom of my soul, 
 That almost might'st have coined me into gold, 
 Wouldst thou have practised on me for thy use ? " 
 
 I think that the interrogation point at the end of this 
 passage is wrongly placed there. There should be a period. 
 The King would hardly call Scroop's killing him, ' prac- 
 tising on him for his use.' Henry is enumerating all the 
 close relations which had existed between him and his 
 treacherous friend, and tells him that he bore the key of 
 his counsels, knew the bottom of his soul, and might have 
 coined him into gold, if he would have practised on him 
 for his use, that is, used his influence unduly for his own 
 advantage ; and the King then goes on to ask, this being 
 the case, 
 
 "Might it be possible that foreign hire 
 Could out of thee extract one spark of evil 
 That might annoy my finger? " 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 Quick. Nay, sure, he's not in hell ; he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever 
 
328 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 man went to Arthur's bosom. 'A made a finer end, and went away, an it 
 had been any christom child ; 'a parted even just between twelve and 
 one, e'en at turning o' the tide ; for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, 
 and play with flowers, aad smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was 
 but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green 
 fields. 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio for "'a babbled of green fields," gives 
 on a table of green frieze. This is the unkindest cut of all. 
 Unkind ? it is cruel. If Mr. Collier even made the an- 
 nouncement of the change without a pang, his heart must 
 be harder than the nether millstone. 
 
 In the original the passage is misprinted " a table of 
 green fields." This, by a most felicitous conjecture of 
 Theobald's, was changed to " 'a babbled of green fields," 
 which reading is not only excellent in itself, but conforms 
 to the style of the context immediately following : 
 
 " Nym. They say, he cried out of sack. 
 Quick. Ay, that 'a did. 
 Sard. And of women. 
 Quick. Nay, that 'a did not. 
 
 Boy. Yes, that 'a did ; and said, they were devils incarnate. 
 Quick. 'A could never abide carnation : 'twas a color he never liked. 
 Boy. 'A said once, the devil would have him about women. 
 Quick. 'A did in some sort, indeed, handle women : but then he was 
 rheumatick ; and talked of the whore of Babylon. 
 
 But the emendation in Mr. Collier's folio, atrocious as 
 it is, has found indorsers, one of whom thus speaks, though 
 reluctant and ashamed, in Blackwood's Magazine (Sept. 
 1853) : 
 
 " Our reasons are -first, the calenture, which causes people 
 to rave about green fields, is a distemper peculiar to sailors in 
 hot climates ; secondly, Falstaff's mind seems to have been run- 
 ning more on sack than on green fields, as Dame Quickly admits 
 
KING HENRY V. 329 
 
 farther on in the dialogue ; thirdly, however pleasing the suppo- 
 sition about his babbling of green fields may be, it is still more 
 natural that Dame Quickly, whose attention was fixed on the 
 sharpness of his nose set off against a countenance already dark- 
 ening with the discoloration of death, should have likened it to 
 the sharpness of a pen relieved against a table, or background, 
 of green frieze." 
 
 The first reason refers to Theobald's justification of his 
 emendation, on the ground that when people are delirious 
 with a calenture an intense fever, " their heads run on 
 green fields." But what need of all this talk about calen- 
 ture, sack, and discolored faces ? Falstaff had been a boy, 
 like any other man, a merry boy surely, and an innocent 
 one perhaps ; and now, as the end of his ill-spent life rapidly 
 approaches, amid his confused ravings about the dreadful 
 future and the ill-spent -past, come up visions of the green 
 and sunlit meadows over which he chased his childhood's 
 happy hours. There is not in so few words a passage of 
 such tearful pathos in the language, as this, which shows a 
 reflected gleam of pure and childish joy, piercing the gloom 
 of the mortal hour of such a man as Falstaff. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Pist. The /co for thee." 
 
 This can hardly be ordinary use of the word fig, as in 
 6 1 don't care a fig ! ' Douce to the contrary notwithstand- 
 ing. Pistol would then have said " a fico for thee." He 
 evidently means " the fig of Spain," of which he speaks 
 before Act III., Scene 6. 
 
330 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " K. Hen. Mark, then, abounding valour in our English ; 
 That, being dead, like to the bullet's grazing, 
 Break out into a second course of mischief, 
 Killing in relapse of mortality." 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio reads " rebounding valour/' and Mr. 
 Collier defends it, failing, it would seem, to see the pun 
 which Shakespeare puts into Henry's mouth, and which 
 the emendation destroys. Strangely enough this word is a 
 stumbling block to the Variorum men, who read a bound- 
 ing and abundant. 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 "Fr. Sol. E*t il impossible d' eschapper la force de ton bras? 
 Pist. Brass, cur ? " 
 
 Two pages of blunders inconceivable are perpetrated 
 upon Pistol's reply by the commentators in the Variorum 
 Edition. Sir William Eawlinson leads off after this fash- 
 ion : 
 
 " * Brass, cur ! ' Either Shakespeare had very little know- 
 ledge in the French language, or his over-fondness for punning 
 led him, in this place, contrary to his own judgment, into an 
 error. Almost every one knows that the French word bras is 
 pronounced brau ; and what resemblance of sound does this bear 
 to brass, that Pistol should reply, ' Brass, cur?' The joke 
 would appear to a reader, but could scarce be discovered in the 
 performance of the play." 
 
 Samuel Johnson, LL. D., follows thus : 
 
KING HENKY V. 331 
 
 " If the pronunciation of the French language be not changed 
 since Shakespeare's time, which is not unlikely, it may be sus- 
 pected that some other man wrote the French scenes. 
 
 Samuel Farmer, D.D., who decided on the no-learning 
 of Shakespeare, sustains his brother Doctor, the lexi- 
 cographer and great moralist. Malone says that " the 
 word bras was, without doubt, pronounced, in the last age, 
 and by the English who understood French, as at present, 
 braw;" and as to that language, he thinks Shakespeare's 
 "knowledge of it was very slight." Douce has sense 
 enough to see the triviality of the controversy, but passes 
 the same judgment. And all this, because these very 
 learned men did not know the first elements of French 
 pronunciation, and Shakespeare did. The "English who 
 understood French " in Malone's day, may have pronounced 
 bras like braw; and from the remarks which Frenchmen 
 make upon the pronunciation of their language by the 
 English, this was very probably the case ; but Frenchmen, 
 and all Americans who have any pretence to French schol- 
 arship, pronounce bras as brah, which is surely similar 
 enough in sound to " brass " for a stage pun upon the 
 words. 
 
KING HENRY VI. PART I. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Bur. Warlike and martial Talbot, Burgundy 
 Enshrines thee in his heart." 
 
 For the tautological " Warlike and Martiall Talbot " 
 of the original, Mr. Collier's folio plausibly suggests, "War- 
 like and matchless Talbot." 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 5. 
 
 " Young Tal. You fled for vantage, every one will swear ; 
 But if I bow, they'll say it was for fear." 
 
 For "bow" Mr. Singer proposes flew, instigated there- 
 to by a MS. correction on the margin of a copy of the sec- 
 ond folio in his possession. But did Mr. Singer ever see 
 'flew' used as the praeterite of 'fly/ meaning c to run 
 away ?' If I do not err, ' flew ' is exclusively confined to the 
 action of wings, except when it is used figuratively, to pic- 
 ture rapidity and eagerness of motion, as, ' he flew to her 
 relief/ ' the soldiers flew to arms/ But when we wish to 
 say, in English, that a man ran away, we say that he c fled/ 
 
KING HENRY VI. PART I. 333 
 
 As for instance, " Sisera lighted down off his chariot, and 
 fled away on his feet ; " * it would hardly do to say that 
 Sisera "flew away on his feet." There is not an instance 
 in all the Bible or in Shakespeare of such a use of the 
 word, often as there is occasion for it, if it were English ; 
 and indeed both Bible and Shakespeare do not together 
 furnish a dozen instances of the use of the word in any sense. 
 
 ACT V. SCENE 4. 
 
 " York. Speak, Winchester; for boiling choler chokes 
 The hollow passage of my poison' d voice." 
 
 Can there be any doubt that " poison'd," is a misprint for 
 prison' 'd, as Pope suggested ? I think that it should have 
 been received into the text ; and cannot imagine a reason 
 for its rejection. 
 
 * Judges, iv. 15. 
 
 
KING HENRY VI. PART II. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Glos. And hath his highness in his infancy 
 Crowned in Paris in despite of foes ? " 
 
 Steevens obviated the difficulty in these lines, by reading, 
 
 "And hath his highness in his infancy 
 Been crown'd in Paris," <fcc., 
 
 which is the generally received text. Mr. Collier laudably 
 endeavors to avoid so great a change as the insertion of a 
 word and the elision of a syllable, by reading, 
 
 " And was his highness in his infancy 
 Crowned," <fec. 
 
 But this change, though better, is almost equally great. It 
 seems plain to me that for ' hath ' we should read had. 
 King Henry, when he ascended the throne, was not only a 
 minor, but a child of tender years, under the guardianship 
 of Gloster and Beaufort, who, from motives of policy, had 
 him crowned in France as king of France. Gloster, enu- 
 merating all that he and his uncle have done to preserve 
 the kingdom of France to the English crown, asks, 
 
KING HENRY VI. PART II 335 
 
 "Or hath [have] mine uncle Beaufort and myself 
 With all the learned council of the realm 
 Studied so long, sat in the council house 
 Early and late, debating to and fro 
 How France and Frenchmen might be kept in awe, 
 And had his highness, in his infancy, 
 Crowned in Paris, in despite of foes ? 
 And shall these labours and these honours die ? " <fec. 
 
 That is, l have we studied, and sat in council, and had his 
 highness crowned in Paris, only to lose our labor ? ' 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 Enter Peter, and others, with Petitions. 
 
 1 Pet. My masters, let's stand close ; my lord protector will come this 
 way by and by, and then we may deliver our supplications in the quill. 
 
 Thus this passage stands in all editions ; but " in the 
 quill " is obscure. Mr. Singer and Mr. Dyce suggest " in 
 the quoil" i. e., ' in the coil, or confusion/ which is quite 
 possibly the needful word. " In the sequel," proposed in 
 Mr. Collier's folio, only shows the poverty of the resources, 
 external and internal, of the proposer. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Cap. Cut both the villains' throats ; for die you shall 
 The lives of those which we have lost in fight 
 Be counterpoised with such a petty sum." 
 
 This passage, evidently corrupt, was amended by read- 
 ing the last line, 
 
 " Cannot be counterpoised with such a petty sum ; " 
 
336 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 but Mr. Collier's folio, in reading, 
 
 " Can lives of those which we have lost in fight 
 Be counterpoised with such a petty sum ? " 
 
 does less violence to the text, and avoids the addition of a 
 redundant foot to the line. 
 
 SCENE 8. 
 
 " Cliff. What say ye countrymen, will ye relent 
 And yield to mercy, whilst 'tis offered you, 
 Or let a rabble lead you to your deaths ? " 
 
 For "rabble" Mr. Collier's folio substitutes rebel, 
 meaning Cade. The change is plausible, and is defended 
 by Mr. Collier on the ground that " the speaker was ad- 
 dressing the rabble, and would hardly ask whether they 
 would allow themselves to lead themselves to their own 
 deaths." But how many of the crowd would suppose that 
 they were meant by the " rabble ? " Perhaps Shakespeare 
 meant that Clifford should display a more thorough know- 
 ledge of human nature than his MS. corrector and his ad- 
 vocate have shown. 
 
 CORRECTION. 
 
 " In the quill " (Act I. Sc. 3) was never obscure to 
 me, until I read the commentators on Shakespeare. They 
 made the confusion for me, as they have for many others. 
 I always understood the phrase as meaning, ' in writing ; ; 
 and such, I am convinced, is its plain signification. The 
 original text should not be disturbed. 
 
KING HENRY VI. PART III. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 5. 
 
 " Father. And BO obsequious will thy Father be, 
 Men for the losse of thee, hauing no more, 
 As Priam was for all his Valiant Sonnes." 
 
 The obvious error in the second line was of course seen 
 long ago ; and all our editions have, on the suggestion of 
 Eowe, 
 
 " Sad for the loss of thee, having no more," <fec. 
 
 This emendation seems to have been made on the principle 
 that the word substituted should be as unlike that in the 
 original as the sense will allow. Mr. Dyce makes the ob- 
 viously well-founded suggestion that " men " was a mis- 
 print for e'en. Head 
 
 "E'en for the loss of thee," <fec. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 1. 
 
 "K. Hen. Let me embrace the sower Aduersaries; 
 For Wise men say, it is the wisest course." 
 22 
 
338 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 This passage, which stands thus corruptly in the folio, 
 and does not occur in the quarto copies of The Contention 
 of the Two famous Houses of Lancaster and Yorke, is 
 usually printed, 
 
 " Let me embrace these sour adversities," Ac. 
 
 Mr. Dyce, however, proposes, 
 
 "Let me embrace thee sour adversitie," Ac., 
 
 which obtains a finer reading at the expense of less varia- 
 tion from the original text. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 8. 
 
 "K. Hen. My mildness hath allayed their swelling griefs, 
 My mercy dried their water- flowing tears." 
 
 "Water-flowing" tears seems somewhat tautological, 
 and to be so natural a misprint for the appropriate phrase, 
 "footer-flowing tears," suggested by Mr. Collier's folio, 
 that I was at first inclined to accept the amendment. 
 But I was soon ashamed of my vacillation ; for reflection 
 is hardly necessary to make it evident that " water-flow- 
 ing tears " are tears that flow like water. 
 
KING RICHARD III. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Glos. Now is the winter of our discontent 
 Made glorious summer by this sun of York," <fec. 
 
 What reader of Shakespeare, on being present for the 
 first time at the performance of Richard III., is not shocked 
 and bewildered by the long first Scene of that droll piece of 
 mosaic work which the managers facetiously announce as 
 William Shakespeare's Tragedy. I shall never forget my 
 youthful surprise, which gave place to wrath, merging 
 gradually to sullenness, and finally veering round to laugh- 
 ter. I did not know that the Richard III. of the stage 
 was a hodge-podge manufactured by Gibber, partly from 
 Shakespeare's Richard III., partly from Henry V., partly 
 from Henry VI., and partly from emanations of the Gib- 
 berian mind. A perusal of Hazlitt's criticism afterwards 
 enlightened me as to the structure of the acting play, if 
 that can be called structure which has neither plan nor 
 coherence before Shakespeare's works had become to me 
 an object of critical study. 
 
 The editor of the Modern Standard Drama, remarks, 
 in demurring to Hazlitt's strictures : " We suspect that old 
 Gibber was, after all, a better judge than his more philo- 
 sophical critic, of the ingredients that go to make up a 
 
340 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 good acting play." But the question put at issue is, not 
 whether Gibber knew better than Hazlitt how to make a 
 good acting play, but whether Gibber knew better than 
 Shakespeare how to bring on and develope Shakespeare's 
 characters. With all deference to Grarrick and the " pop- 
 ular audiences " whom the alterations were made to please, 
 to Gibber who made them, and to Mr. Sargent who endorses 
 them, I think that Shakespeare knew best. Stage effect 
 is another matter ; something which did not exist in 
 Shakespeare's time any more than instrumentation in Han- 
 del's ; and Garrick or Mr. Keinble might properly change 
 it in any manner according with good taste, as Mozart put 
 the wind score to the Messiah. But the latter would have 
 had as much right to cut out half a dozen bars from each 
 piece in the Messiah, and to supply their places with some- 
 thing from Judas Maccabeus, or Acis & Galatea, or with 
 music of his own, as Gibber to make up Richard III. of 
 Henry VI., Henry V., and his own " worse than needless 
 additions," as Hazlitt calls them. 
 
 The prosing Henry delays the action of the play, and 
 is a most useless excrescence upon it, a huge and cum- 
 brous dramatic wart upon the fair proportions of the piece. 
 Shakespeare was adequate to the task he undertook ; and 
 did just what he meant to do when he introduced Gloster's 
 soliloquy so abruptly. The excuse for having a Scene be- 
 fore it, that " it would be spoiled in the representation, in 
 the noise and confusion which must usually attend the first 
 rising of the curtain," is most lame. Such commotion in- 
 stantly subsides at the sound of the actor's voice ; and 
 what greater commotion could there be than the applause 
 which greets the actor who plays Richard, as he steps upon 
 the stage. The worst interpolation of Gibber is the speech 
 put in the mouth of Richard after he falls : " Perdition 
 seize thine arm," &c. It is the worst, because it is entire- 
 
KING EICHARD III. 341 
 
 ly inconsistent with Gloster's character. He is an unmiti- 
 gated villain, having nothing noble about him, and nothing 
 admirable but his knowledge of human nature and his in- 
 flexible will. His ambition is not the fruit of a soaring 
 spirit, but of the hate he bears mankind ; for, be it observed, 
 Richard loves no man. He seeks the crown not because it 
 will make him great, but because it will make others 
 grovel. He is completely selfish, looking upon those around 
 him merely as tools which he can or cannot use, and 
 utterly remorseless, caring not if he destroy them in using 
 them. He is not a sturdy, open usurper, with whom we 
 might have some sympathy while condemning him ; but a 
 mean, sneaking hypocrite, an intriguer, a stabber, and a 
 poisoner, who indeed has courage enough to fight when 
 necessary, and skill and prudence enough to fight well ; 
 but though born in chivalric days, he fights with no chival- 
 ric feeling. He has no honesty himself, and recognizes 
 none in others. To reach his throne, he commits six mur- 
 ders with as little compunction as he would tread on as 
 many spiders ; and when there, is too mean to pay to him 
 who helped him there, the petty price of his treachery. 
 Such is the man whom Gibber, not Shakespeare, would 
 cause to say, when dying, to his victor : 
 
 " But oh ! the vast renown thou hast acquir'd 
 In conquering Richard, does afflict him more 
 Than even his body's parting with his soul." 
 
 Shakespeare's Richard would have yielded renown an 
 hundredfold greater than his own, yes, and have done any 
 mean thing, with knowledge that it would be published to 
 the world, if by doing so he could have retained his crown 
 and his life. 
 
 Many passages necessary to the perfect understanding of 
 the character, such as Gloster's defence of himself to the 
 
342 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 Queen and her friends, his speech to the lords which results 
 in the death of Hastings, his conversation with the Lieu- 
 tenant of the Tower when asking admission to Clarence, 
 and others, together with some of the finest poetical pas- 
 sages of the play, suchasC^arercce's dream, the description 
 of the murder of the Princes, and the Queen's address to the 
 Tower, are cut out, as not being fitted for " an acting 
 play," forsooth. Cannot this be remedied ? I do not 
 agree with Hazlitt in his opinion that these passages may 
 judiciously be omitted. The only reason which he assigns, 
 that he should " be loth to trust them in the mouth of 
 almost any actor," would be equally well urged against the 
 finest passage in this or any other play. It may be a good 
 reason for excluding Shakespeare's works entirely from the 
 stage ; but it cannot justify their mutilation. 
 
 I. SCENE 3. 
 
 " Q. Mary. Thou elvish-raark'd, abortive, rooting hog, 
 Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity 
 The slave of nature and the son of Hell." 
 
 Could epithets be better applied than those in the last 
 of these three lines ? And yet all manner of -contrivance 
 is used to avoid calling Gloster " the slave of nature : "- 
 as for instance, " the shame of nature," " the scorn of na- 
 ture," and " the stain of nature." But " the slave of na- 
 ture " here does not mean, as the correctors evidently sup- 
 pose it does, one who serves nature, one who is a bond- 
 man to nature; but one who is the lowest, the most servile, 
 in the whole realm of nature. When one Irishman calls 
 another the thief o' the wor-r-ld' he does not mean to accuse 
 the other of purloining this planet, but of being eminently 
 
KING KICHARD III. 343 
 
 the thief of the world. So Queen Margaret calls Gloster 
 eminently the slave of nature. 
 
 In a subsequent speech of the Queen's in this Scene, 
 the change in Mr. Collier's folio of "bottled spider" to 
 " bottle spider/' seems a judicious correction of a probable 
 typographical error. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 3. 
 
 "Rat. Make haste, the hour of death is expiate." 
 
 Steevens proposed expirate for " expiate ; " and it seems 
 to me imperatively necessary to receive it into the text. 
 There is no meaning to be extracted from the line in its 
 present condition. Shakespeare is made to use { expiate ' 
 in one other instance, which is quoted by Malone in defence 
 of the continuance of the word in this passage. 
 
 " Then look I death my days should expiate." 
 
 Sonnet XXII. 
 
 But I believe that the same typographical error took 
 place in the last, as in the first, on account of Shake- 
 speare's use of this peculiar and quaint termination, of 
 which he was fond : he uses ' festinate,' c combinate/ and 
 ' conspirate.' It is remarkable that " expiate " has no pos- 
 sible meaning in either of these passages : and that expi- 
 rate fully completes the sense of both. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 4. 
 
 "K. Rich. Well! as you guess?" 
 
 If there be two words for the use of which, more than 
 
344 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 any others, our English cousins twit us, they are c well/ 
 as an interrogative exclamation, and l guess/ Milton uses 
 both, as Shakespeare also frequently does, and exactly in 
 the way in which they are used in America ; and here we 
 have them both in half a line. Like most of those words 
 and phrases which it pleases John Bull to call American- 
 isms, they are English of the purest and best, which have 
 lived here while they have died out in the mother country. 
 
KING HENRY VIII. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Buck. I am the shadow of poor Buckingham ; 
 Whose figure even this instant cloud puts on 
 By darkening my clear sun." 
 
 This passage appears thus in all editions, although it is 
 palpably nonsense, and that it is so has been confessed by 
 all, and although the obvious typographical error has been 
 pointed out by Johnson, Blackstone, and Monck Mason. 
 Bead, 
 
 " I am the shadow of poor Buckingham, 
 Whose figure even this instant cloud puts out, 
 By darkening my clear sun." 
 
 That is, 'even the form of whose shadow is obliterated by a 
 cloud passing over the sun of my prosperity/ 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 3. 
 
 11 Anne. much better 
 
 She had ne'er known pomp, though it be temporal 
 Yet if that quarrel fortune, do divorce 
 It from the bearer/' <fec. 
 
346 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 The change of " quarrel" to cruel in Mr. Collier's folio 
 seems plainly to be required, and to be for the better. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 2. 
 
 "Surrey. Now all my joy 
 
 Grace the conjunction." 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio reads, with reason, in my judgment, 
 
 "Now may all joy 
 Grace the conjunction I " 
 
 My correspondent in Maine clings to the old reading, 
 for these reasons : 
 
 " It is to be noticed that the exclamation of Surrey was called 
 forth, not so especially by the marriage itself as by the circum- 
 stances attending it. He saw, in that marriage, which was 
 opposed by Cardinal Wolsey, a means by which the Cardinal 
 would lose his * witchcraft over the King? and by which, in 
 consequence of the King's withdrawal from under that witch- 
 craft, he himself might be revenged upon the Cardinal ; hence 
 his joyful expression, ' Now all my joy grace the conjunction,' 
 which was the expression written by Shakespeare, I have no 
 doubt.' 
 
 This is ingenious, and has some plausibility ; but is rather 
 too subtle and recondite a meaning for the passage, which 
 is plainly, I think, but a mere expression of good wishes. 
 Mr. Singer and Blackwood's Magazine both approve of this 
 emendation in the famous folio. 
 
KING HENRY VIII. 347 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 2. 
 
 "Pat. How pale she looks, 
 
 And of an earthly cold 1 Mark her eyes 1 " 
 
 The second line has hitherto been amended to read thus : 
 
 " And of an earthly cold ! Mark you her eyes ! " 
 
 But Mr. Collier's folio, in reading, 
 
 " And of an earthly coldness : Mark her eyes ! " 
 
 deviates less both from the letter and the meaning of the 
 original. 
 
 ACT. V. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Chan. But we all are men, 
 
 In our natures frail ; and capable 
 Of our flesh ; few are angels." 
 
 Many and diverse have been the projects for the correc- 
 tion of this passage. But what objection is there to read- 
 ing thus ? 
 
 " But we all are men ; 
 In our natures frail and culpable. 
 Of our flesh, few are angels." 
 
 That is, ' according to the flesh, few of us are angels : ' ' frail 
 and culpable, in our natures ' needs no explanation. 
 
348 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 "A". Hen. But know, I come not 
 
 To hear such flattery now, nnd in my presence ; 
 They are too thin and base to hide offences." 
 
 Baseness has no share with thinness in hiding offences. 
 Mr. Dyce is plainly right in suggesting, 
 
 " They are too thin and bare to hide offences." 
 
 " K. Hen. [to Cranmer.'] Good man sit down. Now let me see 
 
 the proudest, 
 
 He that dares most, but wng his finger at thee : 
 By all that's holy, he had better starve, 
 Than once but think his place becomes thee not" 
 
 Why " his place ? " The King puts Cranmer in the 
 highest seat at the council table, which was Cranmer's 
 own, and from which the others hoped to oust him. The 
 error has been pointed out by Kowe and Mr. Dyce. Head, 
 
 "he had better starve 
 Than once but think this place becomes thee not." 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 The Porter's man says, in the original, 
 
 " Let me ne'er hope to see a Chine againe, 
 And that I would not for a cow, God save her 1 " 
 
 For this Mr. Collier's MS. corrector proposes the follow- 
 ing very ingenious and altogether unexceptionable correc- 
 tion, which must, without a doubt, be received into the 
 text: 
 
 " Let me ne'er hope to see a queen again, 
 And that I would not for a crown, God save her! " 
 
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Tro. O that her hand, 
 
 In whose comparison all whites are ink, 
 Writing their own reproach ; to whose soft seizure 
 The cygnet's down is harsh, and spirit of sense 
 Hard as the palm of ploughman." 
 
 All the commentators have difficulty in explaining the last 
 member of this sentence ; and I do not wonder at it. John- 
 son's rendering of " spirit of sense " into ' exquisite sensi- 
 bility of touch/ does not help the matter much. What do 
 we gain by reading, " to whose soft seizure the cygnet's 
 down is harsh, and exquisite sensibility of touch hard as the 
 palm of ploughman ? " We understand ' exquisite sensi- 
 bility of touch 7 ; but the sentence as a whole is at least as 
 obscure as it was before. There has evidently been a com- 
 positor's transposition ; and we should read, 
 
 " to whose soft seizure 
 
 And spirit of sense the cygnet's down is harsh, 
 Hard as the palm of ploughman/' 
 
 This arrangement, with the explanation afforded by another 
 passage in Act III. Scene 3, of this very play, makes the 
 meaning of the present passage clear. 
 
350 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " nor doth the eye itself, 
 (That most pure spirit of sense) behold itself," 
 
 Act. III. Sc. 3. 
 
 In other words, Troilus says of Cressida's hand, that ( to 
 its soft clasp and exquisite sensibility, the cygnet's down is 
 as harsh and hard as the hand of a ploughman/ 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 " Ores. Achievement is command: ungain'd beseech. " 
 
 Incomprehensible is the tampering of the editors with 
 this very plain, thought not very accurately constructed 
 line in the original. Mr. Collier's MS. folio makes it, 
 
 " Achieved men still command; ungain'd, beseech," 
 
 Mr. Collier himself would read, 
 
 " A chievd men us command; ungain'd, beseech,'' 
 
 and Mr. Harness and Mr. Singer are with him. 
 
 But consider the context, and it is obvious that not only 
 is no change needed, but that these proposed changes make 
 Gressida say what she did not mean to say : 
 
 "more in Troilus a thousand fold I see, 
 Than in the glass of Pandar's praise may be ; 
 Yet I hold off. Women are angels, wooing ; 
 Tilings won are done ; joy's soul lies in the doing : 
 That she belov'd knows nought, that knows not this, 
 Men prize the thing ungain'd more than it is : 
 That she was never yet, that ever knew 
 Love got so sweet, as when desire did sue. 
 Therefore this maxim out of love I teach, 
 Achievement is command; ungain'd, beseech." 
 
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 351 
 
 Who can read this and hesitate a moment as to the signi- 
 fication, which Steevens thus correctly, but, mejwitice, most 
 superfluously, explained ? " Men after possession become 
 our commanders ; before it, they are our suppliants." 
 
 Upon this line Mr. Singer remarks, " The line being 
 in italics, with inverted commas in the old copies, is evi- 
 dently a quotation." Not " evidently ; " and not at all. 
 Mr. Dyce has conclusively shown, in his remarks upon a 
 note of Mr. Knight's upon Polonius' advice to Laertes 
 (Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 3), that maxims, apophthegms, &c., 
 i. e. the gnomic portions of dramas and poems, used to be 
 printed in inverted commas. Mr. Dyce quotes instances 
 from several plays and poems contemporaneous with Shake- 
 speare, and to these numberless others might be added. I 
 will point out but one, which is in Shakespeare's own works ; 
 and which is of such a nature, and occurs in such a situa- 
 tion, that it incontestably is the production of Shakespeare, 
 and was written for the passage in which it appears. In 
 Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 4, within two lines of 
 the conclusion of her soliloquy after her ineffectual attempt 
 to turn Angela from his purpose against her brother's life 
 and her honor, Isabella exclaims : 
 
 "Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die : 
 More than our brother is our chastity;" 
 
 the last line of which being a moral sentiment, the passage 
 appears thus in the original : 
 
 Then Isabel Hue chaste, and brother, die 
 "More then our Brother, is our chastitie." 
 
 Italic letters and quotation marks were used convertibly 
 and sometimes together for this purpose ; and the practice 
 obtained even at a late day. To a misunderstanding of it, 
 
352 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 is doubtless due the opinion that Sterne's beautiful thought, 
 " God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," is a quota- 
 tion. That apophthegm is printed in the first and few sub- 
 sequent editions of Sterne's Sentimental Journey, in italic 
 letters ; but only to mark it, according to custom, as an 
 apophthegm. Cressida's " Achievement is command," &c., 
 is printed in italic letters and quotation marks, because, as 
 she herself says, it is a " maxim." 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 "Nee. Even so 
 
 Doth valour's show, and valour's worth divide, 
 In storms of fortune : For in her ray and brightness, 
 The herd hath more annoyance by the brize, 
 Than by the Tiger : but when the splitting wind 
 Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks, 
 And flies fled under shade. Why, then, the thing of courage, 
 As rous'd with rage, with rage doth sympathize, 
 And, with an accent tun'd in self-same key, 
 Returns to chiding fortune." 
 
 The original gives the hemistich " Retires to chiding 
 fortune," an obvious misprint. Pope suggested returns, 
 which is the generally received reading. Hanmer's propo- 
 sal, replies, which is also that of Mr. Collier's folio, seems 
 much more consonant with the spirit of the passage. But 
 Mr. Dyce, in his recently published Few Notes &c., p. 107, 
 asks : "did not Shakespeare write ' Retorts to chiding for- 
 tune ? ' ' Unquestionably, in my judgment. The conjec- 
 ture seems to me to be one of the best among the many 
 good, which have received the sanction of the taste, learn- 
 ing and discrimination of that gentleman. " Eeturns " is 
 tame and meagre as applied to " to the thing of courage, 
 roused with rage ; " especially after the vigorous preceding 
 lines. About four years ago it occurred to me that retorts 
 
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 353 
 
 was the only word in the language, which would at once 
 worthily fill the place and correct with probability the ty- 
 pographical error ; and it has been upon the margin of ray 
 Shakespeare since that time. Having Mr. Dyce's support 
 I do not hesitate to say that it should be received into the 
 text. 
 
 I cannot allow another change proposed by Mr. Singer 
 in this Scene to pass unchallenged, in spite of its specious- 
 ness and seeming unimportance. Ulysses says, 
 
 "And therefore is the glorious planet Sol 
 In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd 
 Amidst the other," <fec. 
 
 Mr. Singer would read, " Amidst the ether," and says, 
 
 " ' Amidst the other ,' is surely not what the poet wrote. The 
 classical reader will be reminded of a passage in the Somnium 
 Scipionis : ' Medium fere regionem SOL obtinet, dux et princeps, 
 et moderator luminum reliquiorum, mens mundi, et temperator,' 
 &e. ; and of the lines of Lucretius on Epicurus, which have been 
 applied to Shakespeare : 
 
 ' Qui genus humaniim superavit et omneis 
 Restinxit, stcllas cxortus uti aetherius SOL.' " 
 
 Text of Shakespeare Vindicated, p. 192. 
 
 But, in spite of Mr. Singer and his quotations, the con- 
 text shows that " amidst the other " is exactly what the 
 poet did write. Ulysses is enforcing his opinion that Troy 
 
 "had been down 
 
 And the great Hector's sword hath lack'd a master 
 But for these instances. 
 
 The speciality of rule hath been neglected," <fec. 
 23 
 
354 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 He goes on to show the necessity of subordination : 
 
 " The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, 
 Observe degree, priority, and place 
 Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, 
 Office, and custom, in all line of order : 
 And therefore is the glorious planet Sol 
 In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd 
 Amidst the other;" 
 
 the other planets, of course ; for, he continues, 
 
 " whose med'cinable eye 
 Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil 
 And posts like the commandment of a king, 
 Sans check, to good and bad." 
 
 It is not Sol's place in the ether, but his supremacy " amidst 
 the other" heavenly bodies, which Ulysses wishes to im- 
 press upon his hearers. The tenor of his entire speech 
 shows this, beyond a question. Mr. Singer's quotations, 
 too, are singularly unfortunate ; for the first shows Sol as 
 " dux et princeps" and the second asserts that " genus hu- 
 manum superavit." This may seem like wasting much 
 labor on a trifle ; but I am anxious to show that nothing 
 is to be gained by changing the original text when it is 
 comprehensible. 
 
 The same remark will apply to Mr. Singer's proposal 
 to read pace for " place " in the following lines from Nes- 
 tor's approving comment on the third speech of Ulysses in 
 this Scene : 
 
 " Ajax is grown self willed, and bears his head 
 In such a rein, in full as proud a place 
 As broad Achilles : " 
 
 and again to his proposing, 
 
 
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 355 
 
 " Severals and generals are of grace extract" 
 
 for: 
 
 ''Severals and generals of grace exact," 
 
 in that very speech. In both of these changes the only 
 effect is to impoverish the expression, and make it tame 
 and common. But, besides and beyond this, the text, 
 as it stands in the original, affords a reasonable, consist- 
 ent, and pertinent meaning ; and it therefore must not 
 be disturbed even in favor of something better, granting 
 that there is any one who can better it. Otherwise we may 
 all of us go to work at improving Shakespeare's poetry 
 wherever we think it well to do so : and a very pretty 
 piece of business we should make of it. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Tro. What will it be, 
 
 When that the watery palate tastes indeed 
 Love's thrice reputed nectar ? death I fear me ; 
 Swooning destruction ; or some joy too fine, 
 Too subtle-potent, tun'd too sharp in sweetness, 
 For the capacity of my ruder powers." 
 
 The reading of the quarto of 1609, which was trans- 
 ferred to Mr. Collier's folio, 
 
 " Love's thrice Tepured nectar," 
 
 is doubtless the poet's word. "Thrice reputed nectar," 
 has but a shadow of a very poor sense. It was the trebly 
 
356 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 purified, the very nectareous essence of love, which was to 
 be " too fine, too subtle potent " for the senses of Troilus. 
 
 " Pan. Go to, a bargain made : seal it, seal it : I'll be the witness. 
 Here I hold your hand ; here, my cousin's. If ever you prove false one to 
 another, since I have taken such pains to bring you together, let all pitiful 
 goers-between be called to the world's end after my name, call them all 
 Pandars ; let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressidas, and 
 all brokers-between Pandars ! say, amen." 
 
 If Troilus and Cressida proved false " one to another 
 we can see why " all false women " should be called 
 sidas; but why should " all constant men" be called 
 luses ? Pandarus knew nothing of what was to be the 
 issue of the love affair ; he but supposed a case of mutual 
 falsehood. Evidently, " constant " should be inconstant. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 3. 
 
 " Ach. For speculation turns not to itself 
 Till it hath travail'd, and is married there 
 Where it may see itself." 
 
 " Married " is palpably a misprint for mirrored : a dis- 
 covery which we owe to Mr. Collier's folio. The author of 
 the articles on that volume in Blackwood's Magazine, thinks 
 that c mirror' was not used as a verb in Shakespeare's 
 time, and finds that c to mirror ' does not occur even in 
 Johnson's Dictionary. But this is no ground for deciding 
 that such a bold writer as Shakespeare did not use it ; 
 while it is the best reason for believing that a compositor 
 who had never seen the word ' mirrored ' should suppose it 
 to be 'married.' 
 
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 357 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 4. 
 
 " Tro. The Grecian youths are full of qualitie, 
 Their loving well compos'd with gifts of nature 
 Flowing and swelling ore with Arts and exercise." 
 
 Thus corruptly this passage stands in the original folio. 
 It is usually printed thus : 
 
 " The Grecian youths are full of quality. 
 They're loving, well composed, with gifts of nature flowing, 
 And swelling o'er with arts and exercise." 
 
 But I suggest the following reading, as having the merits 
 of a greater conformity to Shakespeare's style and a less 
 deviation from the original text. 
 
 "The Grecian youths are full of quality. 
 They're loving, well compos'd with gifts of nature, 
 Flowing and swelling o'er with arts and exercise.'^. 
 
CORIOLANUS. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Men. I shall tell you 
 
 A pretty tale ; it may be you have heard it ; 
 But, since it serves my purpose, I "will venture 
 To scale it a little more." 
 
 Some of the editors interpret " scale," ' to disperse ; ' 
 but granting the word that meaning, what sense does it af- 
 ford in the place it holds ? Menenius tells the people that 
 it may be that they have heard his story ; but, since it 
 serves his purpose, he will venture to use it, old as it is. 
 Can there be the least doubt that Theobald was right in 
 changing one letter, and reading, 
 
 "I will venture 
 To stale it a little more." 
 
 SCENE 6. 
 
 " Com. The Roman gods, 
 
 Lead their successes as we wish our own ; 
 That both our powers, with smiling fronts encountering, 
 May give you thankful sacrifice 1 " 
 
CORIOLANUS. 359 
 
 This invocative prayer to the gods is nonsense as it now 
 stands ; hut the very obvious correction proposed by War- 
 burton and supported by Mr. Dyce, removes all difficulty. 
 Read, 
 
 " Ye Roman gods, 
 Lead their successes," <fec. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Men. I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a 
 cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tyber in't ; said to be some- 
 thing imperfect in favouring the first complaint." 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio suggests, with reason, that we should 
 read " without a drop of allaying Tiber," and, " the thirst 
 complaint." Common sense will not set the latter word 
 aside because Mr. Singer has discovered that " ( thirst ' was 
 sometimes provincially pronounced and spelt first suuifurst." 
 Shakespeare does not make Menenius talk like a West of 
 England ploughboy. In the same Scene, the suggestion of 
 empiric physic, for " empirickqutique " of the original, in 
 the speech of Menenius, is one which will be gladly received 
 from the folio. " Teach" of the old copy is also, without 
 a doubt, misprinted for touch, in the following passage : 
 
 " Sic. This, as you say, suggested 
 At some time when his soaring insolence 
 Shall touch the people," <fec. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 In the generally received text, Coriolanus, as he stands 
 in the Forum to ask the voices of the citizens for the con- 
 sulship, disgusted with the task, exclaims : 
 
360 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 "Why in this wolfish togue should I stand here? " <tc. 
 
 " Togue " is " tongue " in the original ; but that is evi- 
 dently a misprint. " Wolfish " has given much trouble to 
 the commentators. Mr. Collier's folio suggests woolless as a 
 substitute ; and the conjecture has some plausibility, because 
 in the previous Scene Coriolanus is spoken of as refusing 
 to put on " the napless vesture of humility." To this read- 
 ing however, which is received on the ground that Corio- 
 lanus was like a wolf in sheep's clothing, and not like a 
 sheep in wolfs clothing, the Hon. George Lunt thus ob- 
 jects i 
 
 " It is true, that the wolf covered himself with a sheep -skin ; 
 and if this covering had really converted him into a sheep, Mr. 
 Collier might have the benefit of his interpretation. But although 
 I shall not argue with Mr. Collier that sheep skin is not natural- 
 ly sheep* s clothing, yet I do hold that, as when a man wears a 
 borrowed garment, it is taken to be and is called his garment, so, 
 though the sheep skin was naturally sheep's clothing, yet, by the 
 appropriation, it was pro hoc vice, more appropriate^ wolfs cloth- 
 ing, and, therefore, a 
 
 ' woolvish toge,' 
 
 and, therefore, Shakespeare so wrote it." 
 
 But where is the propriety, especially the poetic pro- 
 priety, of calling the sheep skin " wolfs clothing," merely 
 because the wolf wore it ? The moment it became wolfs 
 clothing, that moment it ceased to be a disguise, and lost 
 all significance ; and, besides, ' wolfish ' means not ' belong- 
 ing to a wolf/ but ' like a wolf/ But here is an objection 
 by the same gentleman, not so easily answered. 
 
 " When it is considered that the gowns of the Romans were, 
 
CORIOLANUS. 361 
 
 in fact, fabricated of wool, to say that a wollen gown is wool- 
 Iess } because it is insidiously alleged to have been napless, or for 
 any other reason why involves a gratuitous absurdity, of which 
 I, for one, do not believe Shakespeare to have been capable." 
 
 Unquestionably, Shakespeare would never have called a 
 woollen toga " woolless ; " and the new reading cannot be 
 accepted. 
 
 But since neither "wolfish" nor woolless give a 
 consistent meaning, let us look at the original line, the con- 
 text, and the other passages of the play, which have a bear- 
 ing upon this one. The word in the corrupted text seems 
 to have misled all the commentators upon the passage. 
 They evidently regard Coriolanus when standing for the 
 consulship, as feeling, what our border-men call, ( wolfish 
 about the head and shoulders/ But the text affords no 
 support for this opinion. Coriolanus feels contempt for the 
 people : he derides the custom, and thinks that it belittles 
 him to conform to it. What Brutus says of him shows no 
 ireful feeling on his part, but merely that he thought the 
 ceremony very small business. 
 
 "I heard him swear, 
 
 Were he to stand for consul, never would he 
 Appear i' the market-place, or on him put 
 The napless vesture of humility ; 
 Nor, showing (as the manner is) his wounds 
 To the people, beg their stinking breaths." 
 
 Act II. Sc. 1. 
 
 Coriolanus himself says, on a previous occasion, 
 
 "I'd rather have one scratch my head in the sun, 
 When the alarum were struck, than idly sit 
 To hear my nothings monster'd." 
 
 Act II. Sc. 2. 
 
 It makes him shame-faced to go through this foolery. 
 
362 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 When told that he must, according to precedent, speak to 
 the people, he replies, 
 
 " I do beseech you, 
 
 Let me o'erleap that custom ; for I cannot 
 Put on the gown, stand naked, and entreat them, 
 For my wounds' sake, to give their suffrage: " <fcc. 
 
 Ibid, 
 
 Again : 
 
 " Cor. It is a part 
 
 That I shall blush in acting, and might well 
 Be taken from the people. 
 
 Bru. Mark you that ? 
 
 Cor. To brag unto them, Thus I did, and thus ; 
 Show them the unaching scars which I should hide, 
 As if I had receiv'd them for the hire 
 Of their breath only." 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 There is nothing either of a wolf in sheep's clothing or a sheep 
 in wolfs clothing in all this. He regards the custom as 
 contemptible, foolish. The same feeling appears when he 
 stands in the Forum ; and there he says to a citizen, with 
 a sneer, " I have here the customary gown." So again, 
 when he has received the " most sweet voices " of the peo- 
 ple and is told by the Tribunes and Menenius to go to the 
 Senate-house to be invested, he asks : 
 
 " May I change these garments ? 
 Sic. You may, sir. 
 
 Cor. That I'll strait do, and, knowing myself again, repair to the Senate- 
 house." 
 
 He looks upon the ceremony as a preposterous piece of fol- 
 ly, and thinks that the vesture of humility makes a patri- 
 cian appear ridiculous. "Wolfish" we have seen, too, is 
 
COKIOLANUS. 363 
 
 inadmissible on other grounds ; woolless is equally so, be- 
 cause the toga which Coriolanus wore was made of wool. 
 Is it not plain then, that, merely continuing his ridicule, 
 he said, 
 
 "Why in tins foolish togue should I stand here? " 
 
 Yes, unquestionably, for in this very speech, after only five 
 lines which impeach the binding force of custom, he says, 
 
 Rather than fool it so 
 Let the high office and the honor go." 
 
 The word in the original is " wooluish ; " and that it 
 is a typographical error for foolish, is confirmed by the fact 
 that, in not one of the fifty instances in which Shakespeare 
 uses 'wolf/ 'wolvish/ or ' wolves/ does he spell those words, 
 or are they spelled, with two o's. { Wolfish ' and ' wool- 
 less/ being both entirely inadmissible, can there be any 
 question that we should read ? 
 
 " Why in this foolish togue should I stand here 
 To beg of Hob and Dick that do appear, 
 Their needless vouches ? * * * 
 * * * Rather than fool it so 
 Let the high office and the honor go." 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 1. 
 
 In the speech by Coriolanus , beginning, "0 good, but 
 most unwise Patricians," there are five attempts at emen- 
 dation in Mr. Collier's folio. With one exception, all are 
 unnecessary, and therefore inadmissible. That which may 
 be accepted is, "revoke your dangerous lenity/' for "awake 
 
364 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 your dangerous lenity." In the same Scene, " How shall 
 this bosom multiplied digest," &c., is changed to " How 
 shall this bisson multitude" &c. ; an emendation justified 
 by the context and the language of Shakespeare's day. 
 "Bisson " is ' blind ;' and the word has not entirely passed 
 out of use in this country. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 3. 
 
 " Vol. You had more beard when I last saw you, but your favor is well 
 appeared by your tongue." 
 
 Eead with Steevens, 
 
 "your favor is well approved by your tongue." 
 
 SCENE 5. 
 
 "Auf. and pouring war 
 
 Into the bowels of ungrateful Rome, 
 Like a bold flood oe'r beat." 
 
 Correct a typographical error which Jackson pointed out, 
 and read, 
 
 " and pouring war 
 Into the bowels of ungrateful Rome, 
 Like a bold flood, o'er bear*t" 
 
 SCENE 6. 
 
 "Bru. RaisM only that the weaker sort may wish 
 Good Marcius home again." 
 
CORIOLANUS. 365 
 
 The Tribune Brutus would not speak of Coriolanus as 
 " good Marcius ; " but he would very naturally call him, 
 in derision, " god Marcius," which is the reading of Mr. 
 Collier's folio. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 7. 
 
 " Auf. So our virtues 
 
 Lie in the interpretation of the time ; 
 And power, unto itself most commendable, 
 Hath not a tomb so evident as a chair 
 To extol what it hath done." 
 
 This, the generally received reading, and that of the folio, 
 is utterly incomprehensible ; but the errors which make it 
 so are those of a compositor who sets his ' matter ' by ear, 
 as many of them do. ' Chair ' and f cheer ' were formerly 
 pronounced alike ; and I have even heard some old people 
 call a chair, a cheer. To this fact we owe the misprint of 
 Macbeth' s speech in the third Scene of the fifth Act of the 
 tragedy : 
 
 " This push 
 "Will chair [cheere in the original] me ever, or disseat me now." 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio very properly changes "chair" to 
 cheer, in the passage which we are now considering. But 
 Mr. Singer then asks the very pertinent and unanswerable 
 question, " what meaning can be attached to ( a tomb so 
 evident as a cheer'?" and himself proposes 'a tomb so 
 evident as a hair,' which he must pardon me for thinking 
 deplorably tame and prosaic, even if it have any meaning 
 at all. It is plain to me that Aufidius, after saying that 
 "our virtues lie in the interpretation of the time," (that is, 
 in the time's appreciation of us, not in our appreciation 
 
366 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 of the time, as the writer mBlackivood, Sept. 1853, seems 
 to think,) adds, that the most elaborate eulogy upon a great 
 man's tomb is a testimony to his power, not so eloquent as 
 a cheer to him in his lifetime. Few who write for the 
 press can be fortunate enough not to know many compos- 
 itors who would find no difficulty in setting up ( evident ' 
 for ' eloquent/ Long since, it seemed plain to me that we 
 should read, 
 
 " So our virtues 
 
 Lie in th' interpretation of the time, 
 And power, unto itself most commendable 
 Hath not a tomb so eloquent as a cheer 
 To extol what it hath done." 
 
 ACT V. SCENE 2. 
 
 " 1 Guard. Then you should hate Rome as he does. Can you, when 
 you have pushed out of your gates the very defender of them, and, in a 
 violent popular ignorance, given your enemy your shield, think to front 
 his revenges with the easy groans of your old women, the virginal palms 
 of your daughters, or with the palsied intercession of such a decayed dotant 
 as you seem to be ? " 
 
 Can any thing be more deplorable than Mr. Singer's pro- 
 posal to read " virginal qualms " for " virginal palms " in 
 this passage ? But Warburton had been at the trouble to 
 suggest " Virginal pasmes ! " Mr. Singer adds however 
 that " Virginal palms " may mean the palms or hands of 
 the maidens joined in supplication/' Indeed, Mr. Singer ! 
 may it ? Is it possible ? Can such an obvious and sim- 
 ple construction of a plain but beautiful passage be dreamt 
 of in your philosophy ? I must ask pardon for noticing 
 such attempts upon Shakespeare's text, and for noticing 
 them as I do ; for, in truth, I should as soon expect an intel- 
 ligent reader, not to say a competent editor of Shakespeare, 
 
CORIOLANUS. 367 
 
 "to expostulate, 
 
 ******* 
 
 "Why day is day, night, night, and time is time," 
 
 as thus to raise a question on what it would seem impossible 
 to misunderstand. 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 Auf. served his designments 
 
 In mine own person ; holp to reap the fame 
 Which he did end all his." 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio suggests ear (plough) for "end/' 
 This Mr. Singer finds to be "a good emendation of a prob- 
 able misprint/' but adds, with reason, that if " ear be ac- 
 cepted, ' reap ' and ' ear ' must change places thus, 
 
 ' holp to ear the fame 
 Which he did reap all his.' " 
 
 "or," as Mr. Singer well continues, " Aufidius is made to 
 say that he had a share in the harvest, while Coriolanus 
 had all the labor of ploughing," which is just what he does 
 not mean to say. The Blackwood critic thinks with Mr. 
 Singer. But there is not the least necessity for this vio- 
 lence to the original text. Aufidius helped to reap the 
 fame which Coriolanus made, in the end, all his. 
 
TITUS ANDRONICUS. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Mar. My lord, to step out of these dreary dumps 
 How comes it," <fec. 
 
 The first folio has "sudden dumps" whichr'is evidently 
 an error for " sullen dumps," as Mr. Dyce suggests. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 3. 
 
 " Tarn. and the hounds 
 
 Should drive upon thy new transformed limbs." 
 
 It is more than probable that " drive " is a misprint 
 for dine, as Mr. Collier's folio suggests. 
 
 " Lav. When did the tiger's young ones teach the dam ? 
 O, do not learn her wrath : she taught it thee : 
 The milk, thou suck'dst from her, did turn to marble ; 
 Even at thy teat thou hadst thy tyranny. 
 Yet every mother breeds not sons alike ; 
 Do thou entreat her show a woman pity. 
 
 [To Chiron. 
 
 "Chi. "What! would'st thou have me prove myself a bastard ? 
 
TITUS ANDKONICUS. 369 
 
 Lavinia says nothing about Chiron's father ; but his 
 reply would justify the belief that Tamora had played 
 false with a true Milesian. How was he to prove himself 
 " a bastard/' by being unlike Ms mother ? Can any one 
 believe that Shakespeare could have been guilty of such a 
 bull as this ? However, there are but few passages in this 
 horrid play which were touched by his pen. 
 
 24 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET. 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Romeo. She hath Dian'g wit, 
 
 And in strong proof of chastity well arm'd, 
 From love's weak childish bow she lives uncharm'd." 
 
 The last word is evidently corrupted. Kowe changed 
 it to unharmed, which is the received text, and which _ 
 the sense of the passage ; but Mr. Collier's folio provides 
 for us another word, "e^charmed," which is much nearer 
 the original text, and much better in every way. It will 
 hereafter take a place in the text without a question. 
 
 SCENE 5. 
 
 I have never seen a Juliet upon the stage who appeared 
 to appreciate the archness of the dialogue with Romeo in 
 this Scene. They go through it solemnly, or, at best, with 
 staid propriety. They reply literally to all Borneo's 
 speeches about saints and palmers. But it should be 
 noticed that though this is the first interview of the lovers, 
 we do not hear them speak until the close of their dia- 
 logue, in which they have arrived at a pretty thorough un- 
 derstanding of their mutual feeling. Juliet makes a feint 
 
KOMEO AND JULIET. 371 
 
 of parrying Borneo's advances ; but does it archly, and 
 knows that he is to have the kiss he sues for. He asks, 
 
 "Have not sa : nts lips, and holy palmers, too?" 
 
 The stage Juliet answers with literal solemnity. But it 
 was not a conventicle at old Capulet's. Juliet was not 
 holding forth. How demure is her real answer : 
 
 "xYy pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer." 
 
 And when Romeo fairly gets her into the corner, towards 
 which she has been contriving to be driven, and he says, 
 
 " Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purg'd," 
 
 and does put them to that purgation, how slyly the pretty 
 puss gives him the opportunity to repeat the penance, by 
 replying, 
 
 " Then have my lips the sin that they have took." 
 
 ACT IL SCENE 1. 
 
 " Merc. Young Abraham Cupid, he that shot so trim," 
 
 Upton gave us the Adam, which takes the place of 
 "Abraham" in all the current editions, except Mr. 
 Knight's. But, as Mr. Dyce says, there is not the slight- 
 est authority for the change. The last named gentleman 
 conjectures that " Abraham " in this line is a corruption 
 of Auburn, as it unquestionably is in the following passages, 
 which he quotes : 
 
372 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " When is the eldest sonue of Bryam, 
 That abraham coloured Troian ? dead " 
 
 Soliman & Perseda, 1599, Sig. H3. 
 
 " A goodlie, long thicke, Abram coloured beard." 
 
 Middleton's Blurt, Master Constable, 1602, Sig. D. 
 
 and in Coriolanus } Act II. Scene 3, 
 
 "not that our heads are some browne, some blacke, som Abram," 
 
 as we read in the first three folios. 
 
 The suggestion is more than plausible ; and we at least 
 owe to Mr. Dyce the efficient protection which it must 
 give to the original text. Cupid is always represented by 
 the old painters as auburn-haired. 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 "Rom. "When he bestrides the lazie puffing Cloudes 
 And sailes vpon the bosome of the ayre." 
 
 This is the text as it stands in the original. " Lazie 
 puffing " is evidently a misprint. It was changed to " lazy 
 pacing " by Pope, which has been the received reading since 
 his time. But, however much we may have become at- 
 tached to it, it must be abandoned for " lazy passing" 
 which is supplied by the margins of Mr. Collier's folio ; and 
 which (passing having been written with two long s's), is 
 evidently the word which the compositor mistook. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Jul. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, 
 That runaway's eyes may wink, and Komeo 
 Leap to these arms, untalked of and unseen." 
 
KOMEO AND JULIET. 373 
 
 Of the incomprehensible " runaways " in the second 
 line, many explanations and many emendations have been 
 offered. Warburton thought that the runaway was the 
 sun : Steevens thought that Juliet meant to call the night 
 a runaway : Douce insists that she applies that term to 
 herself, as a runaway from her duty to her parents. But 
 no explanation will obviate the difficulty. The word in the 
 original is " runaway es" and involves, unquestionably, an 
 error of the press, and a gross one. The conjectural emenda- 
 tions have been both diverse and numerous. Monck Mason 
 proposed Renomy's, that is Rename' 's; Zachary Jackson, un- 
 awares, which was adopted by Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight, 
 in spite of the feeble sense it gives. All the conjectures 
 have been unsatisfactory, rather on account of the sense 
 which they give, than the improbability of the mistake 
 which they involve. The most plausible suggestion yet 
 made, seems to me to be, " rude day's," by Mr. Dyce, in 
 his Remarks on Mr. Collier's and Mr. C. Knight's Editions 
 of Shakespeare. It is only plausible however, and evidently 
 has not the conjecturer's own approbation. * 
 
 The error will probably remain for ever unconnected, 
 unless a word which I venture to suggest seems to others 
 as unexceptionable as it does to me. Juliet desires that 
 somebody's eyes may wink, so that Romeo may leap to her 
 arms " untalked of, " as well as " unseen." She wishes to 
 
 * In his last publication, A few Notes on Shakespeare, he offers " roving 
 eyes." But it is surely much better to read 
 
 Spread thy close curtain, love-performing hight, 
 That rude day's eyes may wink, 
 than, 
 
 That roving eyes may -wink. 
 
 Neither of these, however, is more satisfactory to me than it appears to 
 be to Mr. Dyce himself. 
 
374 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 avoid the scandal, the bruit, which would ensue upon the 
 discovery of her new-made husband's secret visit. 
 
 I think, therefore, and also because the misprint is by 
 no means improbable (as I know from experience) that 
 Shakespeare wrote " rumoures eyes," and that we should 
 read, 
 
 " Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, 
 That Rumour's eyes may wink, and Romeo 
 Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen." 
 
 This occurred to me in consequence of an endeavor to 
 conjecture what would satisfy the exigencies of the last as 
 well as of the second line of these three ; and perhaps I 
 yield quite as much to the immediate impression which the 
 word made upon me, and which all other conjectures, whe- 
 ther of others or myself, had failed in the least to do, as to 
 the reasons which have confirmed my first opinion. 
 
 The absence of a long letter in rumoures, to corres- 
 pond with the y in " runa waves," does not trouble me. I 
 have repeatedly found in my proofs words containing long 
 letters when the word which I wrote contained none, and 
 versa; and yet my manuscript is welcomed by the compos- 
 itor on account of its legibility. It should be noticed, too, 
 that neither Jackson's unawares (accepted by Mr. Collier 
 and Mr. Knight), nor Mr. Collier's folio corrector's enemies 
 contains a long letter. Those who understand the economy 
 of the composing case will see that a long letter, is not ne- 
 cessary in the word to be substituted here, because most of 
 the errors in type setting are on account of previous mis- 
 takes in the distribution of the type : the letters having 
 been placed in the wrong boxes. Kumor ' was spelt ru- 
 moure, in Shakespeare's day, and the possessive case, ru- 
 moures, of course. 
 
 As to Rumor's eyes, they are as necessary to her office 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET. 375 
 
 as are her ears or her tongues. Virgil's Fama is but Ru- 
 mor, and of her he says, 
 
 " Cui quot sunt corpore plurase 
 Tot vigiles oculi subter, mirabile dictu, 
 Tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit aures.' 
 
 jEneid, Lib. IV. 181. 
 
 And in Shakespeare's day Rumor was represented with 
 eyes as well as tongues ; as we know by the following de- 
 scription of that character as she was represented in a 
 Masque by Decker, and which was evidently founded on 
 Virgil's impersonation : 
 
 " Directly under her in a cart by herselfe, Fame stood up- 
 right : a woman in a watch et roabe, thickly set with open eyes 
 and tongues, a payre of large golden winges at her backe, a trum- 
 pet in her hand, a mantle of sundry cullours traversing her body : 
 all these ensigns displaying but the propertie of her swiftnesse 
 and aptnesse to disperse Rumoure." 
 
 The whole magnificent Entertainment given 
 to King James and the queen his Wife, 
 fa, 15th March, 1603. By Thomas Decker, 
 4*0. 1604. 
 
 Shakespeare, however, needed no precedent or hint to give 
 eyes to Rumor, whom he himself had brought personally 
 before his audience, in the Induction to the Second Part of 
 Henry IV. where she is "painted full of tongues." These 
 quotations merely show that the idea was sufficiently fami- 
 liar to his auditors, unlearned and learned, for him to use* 
 it in this manner. 
 
 But these considerations are not urged to gain accept- 
 ance for the reading which I propose ; their office is but 
 to meet possible objections to it. If it do not commend it- 
 self at once to the intelligent readers of Shakespeare, with 
 
376 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 a favor which increases upon reflection, no argument can, 
 or should, fasten it upon the text. 
 
 [The foregoing suggestions and remarks (except the al- 
 lusion to enemies) had been a part of my Shakesperian notes 
 for some time, seen and approved of by a few fellow-students 
 of the great Poet, but uncertain in what shape they would see 
 the light, when renewed attention was directed to the con- 
 dition of his text by the publication of the MS. changes in 
 Mr. Collier's folio of 1632. That volume furnishes " enemies' 
 eyes," a reading which is perhaps the worst which has been 
 offered, and which I did not feel called upon even to condemn 
 in the two papers upon the text of Shakespeare which I pre- 
 pared for Putnam's Magazine, in the summer of 1853. A 
 casual remark, however, in one of them, brought me from all 
 quarters of the country correspondence containing conjec- 
 tural emendations of this passage. 
 
 One, from St. Louis, suggested " noonday's eyes," which 
 is not without some plausibility ; and it resembles some- 
 what one of the readings proposed by the Rev. Mr. 
 Dyce. But even if there were no objection, as to time, 
 against the word i noonday,' there is a literalness and par- 
 ticularity about it which are poetically out of place in the 
 passage for which it is proposed. Juliet is using large and 
 general terms : she calls the West " Phoebus' mansion," 
 and her thoughts spring directly from day to "cloudy night." 
 She is affected only by the ideas of light and obscurity ; 
 she does not consider hours or parts of the day or night. 
 To her there is but one grand division of time ; and to 
 make her specify noontime, in attributing eyes to day, is 
 to introduce a particularity into her speech incongruous with 
 her tone of thought. But supposing such particularity not 
 objectionable on the higher grounds of criticism, the time 
 specified in the term is inconsistent with the requirements 
 of the Scene ; and therefore Shakespeare would have been 
 
KOMEO AND JULIET. 377 
 
 particular, only to be particularly wrong. This is evident 
 from the fact, which a short examination will bring to light, 
 that Juliet was not married until after noonday ; and that 
 some hours elapsed between her marriage and the time of 
 this soliloquy. 
 
 Juliet in the fifth Scene of the second Act, in her im- 
 patience to hear from her lover, says, 
 
 "The clock struck nine, when I did send the nurse; 
 In half an hour she promised to return. 
 Perchance she cannot meet him," &c. 
 
 so that it was well on towards ten o'clock before she re- 
 ceived Romeo's message. But what was that message ? 
 We find it in the fourth Scene of this same Act : 
 
 "Bid her devise some means to come to shrift 
 This afternoon : 
 
 And there she shall, at Friar Laurence* cell, 
 Be shriv'd and married." 
 
 It was then some time past noonday before Juliet 
 went to the Friar's cell. But she herself gives the coup dc 
 grace to this supposition ; for in the very scene of her soli- 
 loquy, having been betrayed into upbraiding Borneo, by 
 hearing from the Nurse that he has killed Tybalt, she re- 
 morsefully exclaims, 
 
 " Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name 
 When I, thy three hours' wife, have mangled it ? " 
 
 It is plain that her soliloquy is spoken toward evening. 
 
 But what need of this comparison of hours and minutes? 
 Is not the soliloquy itself steeped in the passion-breathing 
 languor of a summer's afternoon just melting into twilight ? 
 Is it not plain that Juliet has been watching the sun sink 
 
378 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 slowly down to the horizon., and gazing pensively into the 
 golden air, until her own imaginings have taken on its glow- 
 ing hue, and that then she breaks out into her longing 
 prayer for night and Romeo ? Facts and figures tell us 
 that her soliloquy is spoken just before sunset ; but what 
 reader of the whole soliloquy will not set aside the evidence 
 of facts and figures as superfluous almost impertinent ? 
 
 It is not because the conjectures of my other correspond- 
 ents are less plausible than the foregoing that I do not 
 notice them here ; but because that one suggested reflections 
 upon Juliet's position and feelings, which the others do not. 
 The remaining suggestions, however, as well as all others, ex- 
 cept Rumor's, fail to meet the demands of the context, " un- 
 talked of and unseen/' One of my fellow-students, however, 
 Mr. Hoppin, of Providence, R. I., proposed the same word 
 which had occurred to me, sustained it also by the well known 
 passage in Virgil, and expressed his surprise that he had not 
 been able to discover that it had been made before. But both 
 he and I had been forestalled in making the correction, as 
 I found by the letter of a correspondent in South Carolina, 
 in which a letter from Mr. Singer, which I had never seen 
 or heard of, was quoted from Notes and Queries. The 
 suggestion in the following extract from Mr. Singer's letter 
 is interesting, and demands attention : 
 
 " In the course of his note he [Monck Mason] mentions that 
 Heath, the author of the Revisal, reads ' Rumour's eyes may 
 wink ; ' which agrees in sense with the rest of the passage, hut 
 differs widely from 'runaway's' in the trace of the letters. 
 
 " I was not conscious of having seen this suggestion of Heath's, 
 when, in consequence of a question put to me by a gentleman of 
 distinguished taste and learning, I turned my thoughts to the 
 passage, and at length came to the conclusion that the word must 
 have been rumourers, and that from its unfrequent occurrence 
 v the only other example of it at present known to me being one 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET. 379 
 
 afforded by the poet), the printer mistook it for runawaycs ; 
 which, when written indistinctly, it may have strongly resembled. 
 I therefore think that we may read with some confidence : 
 
 ' Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, 
 That rumourers* eyes may wink, and Romeo 
 Leap to these arms, untaWd of and unseen.' 
 
 It fulfils the requirements of both metre and sense, and ^he 
 words untaltfd of and unseen make it nearly indisputable. I 
 had at first thought it might be ' rumourous eyes ; ' but the per- 
 sonification would then be wanting. Shakspeare has personified 
 Rumour in the Introduction to the Second Part of King Henry 
 IV.; and in Coriolanus, Act IY. Sc. 6, we have, 
 
 ' Go see this rumourer whipp'd.' " 
 
 Until after reading this letter I was not only, like Mr. 
 Singer, unconscious of having seen Mr. Heath's suggestion, 
 but had never read his notes upon this play. On referring 
 to the volume, however (A Eevisal of Shakespeare's Text, 
 &c., 8vo. London, 1765), I find, p. 511, that Mr. Heath 
 merely says 
 
 " I think it is not improbable that the Poet wrote, 
 
 That Rumour's eyes may teink ; - 
 which agrees perfectly well with what follows." 
 
 He gives no reason for his supposition, and offers no sup- 
 port for it. Here, then, we have three coincident conjec- 
 tures from three persons, each ignorant of the other's sugges- 
 tion ; which, if the word which they propose to substitute 
 be acceptable in itself, adds greatly to the probability that 
 it restores the true reading. Mr. Singer's independent 
 
380 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 conjecture that rumourer's is the word, also affords colla- 
 teral support to the former, the idea being the same in 
 both. But it should be remarked that the line does not 
 need a word of three syllables : 
 
 That Ru | mour's eyes | may wink, | and Ro | me-o. 
 
 The typographical error which gave us runaways, and whicli 
 Mr. Singer would correct, by substituting rumourers, almost 
 certainly loaded the line with a redundant syllable. Notice 
 also, that the addition of an r diminishes the chances for 
 an error by the compositor. It would be far more likely 
 that "rurnoures" should be mistaken for "runaways" 
 than that " rumourers " should cause the same error. Yet 
 another objection against " rumourers " is, that its particu- 
 larity is inconsistent with the poetical character of the pus- 
 sage, in which, as I before remarked, Juliet uses only large 
 and general terms. She would hardly descend from the 
 generic personification of Humor to the particularity of a 
 rumorer, or, what is worse, several rumorers ; though, of 
 course, Rumor is but the embodiment of an abstraction 
 of rumorers. 
 
 Mr. Collier claims, with reason, that the occurrence of 
 the same conjectural emendation to two readers of Shake- 
 speare, without consultation, is cumulative evidence in its 
 favor ; and here, in effect, is such a coincident conjecture on 
 the part of four. But, whatever may be the decision be- 
 tween Mr. Singer on the one hand, and Mr. Heath, Mr. 
 Hoppin and myself on the other, I think it is quite evident 
 that the word demanded by the context is either Humour's 
 or rumourers; and I am quite willing to forego my claim 
 for the discovery in favor of Mr. Benjamin Heath, to whom 
 the credit of first i guessing ' at the idea belongs ; and I 
 have no doubt that my Providence correspondent is like- 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET. 381 
 
 minded with me. Let those dispute or sneer about pri- 
 ority of conjecture whose minds and natures fit them to 
 snarl over trifles, the scraps and crumbs of literary repu- 
 tation : the object of all who have the true enthusiasm of 
 Shakesperian students, is not personal credit, but the integ- 
 rity of Shakespeare's text. 
 
 I had altogether passed by the theory advocated by the 
 Rev. Mr. Halpin in the Shakespeare Society's Papers, Vol. II, 
 that " runaways " is the word which Shakespeare wrote, 
 as carrying its refutation on its face ; but, as it has recently 
 found some favor with a few whose judgments are entitled 
 to respect, it is but proper that its claims to consideration 
 should be examined. Mr. Halpin's argument occupies nine- 
 teen octavo pages ; but his positions and conclusions are 
 briefly these. 
 
 The character of the soliloquy is purely hymeneal ; and 
 hymeneal poetry has a diction, an imagery, and a structure 
 peculiar to itself, to which the soliloquy conforms, and which 
 is especially observable, as regards structure, in the repeti- 
 tion of Juliet's prayer for the coming of Night : Cupid was 
 a very important personage in hymeneal poetry and in hy- 
 meneal masks : hymeneal masks were common in Shake- 
 speare's day : Cupid is called a runaway by Moschus, and, 
 which is of more importance, by Ben Jonson, in his Hue 
 and Cry after Cupid : the andirons in Imogen's bed-cham- 
 ber, when she was a clandestinely married bride (Cymbeline, 
 Act II. Sc. 4), were " two winking Cupids : " Night and 
 Cupid are the only assistants at the spousal, as related in 
 the old poem of Romeus and Juliet, upon which Shake- 
 speare founded his tragedy ; therefore Shakespeare wrote, 
 
 " That runaway's eyes may wink," &c. 
 
 "That Cupid's eyes may wink." 
 
382 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 This argument is very learned and very ingenious ; but 
 far more learning and ingenuity have been displayed in the 
 support of theories, which, though more plausible, were 
 equally unsound. To examine it properly we should have 
 the entire soliloquy before us, and as it appears in the ori- 
 ginal folio : 
 
 " Gallop apace, you fiery footed steedes, 
 Towards Phoebus lodging, such a Wagoner 
 As Phaeton -would whip you to the west, 
 And bring in Cloudie night immediately, 
 Spred thy close Curtain Loue-performing night, 
 That run-awayes eyes may wincke, and Romeo 
 Leape to these armes, vntalkt of and vnseene, 
 Louers can see to doe their Amorous rights 
 And by their owne Beauties : or if Loue be blind, 
 It best agrees with night : come ciuill night, 
 Thou sober suted Matron all in blacke, 
 And learne me how to loose a winning match, 
 Plaid for a paire of stainlesse Maidenhoods 
 Hood my vnman'd blood bayting in my Cheekes, 
 With thy Blacke mantle, till strange Loue grow bold, 
 Thinke true Loue acted simple modestie : 
 Come night, come Romeo, come thou day in night, 
 For thou will lie vpon the wings of night 
 Whiter then new Snow upon a Rauens backe : 
 Come gentle night, come louing blackebrow'd night. 
 Giue me my Romeo, and when I shall die, 
 Take him and cut him out in little starres, 
 And he will make the Face of Heauen so fine, 
 That all the world will be in Loue with night, 
 And pay no worship to the Garish Sun. 
 I haue bought the mansion of a Loue, 
 But not possest it, and though I am sold, 
 Not yet enjoy 'd, so tedious is this day, 
 As is the night before some Festiuall, 
 To an impatient child that hath new robes 
 And may not weare them." <fec. 
 
 Is there any thing here more than an expression of the 
 feelings of a newly married girl "many fathom deep in 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET. 383 
 
 love ? " Is there not an utter absence of all formality and 
 restraint in the construction of the soliloquy ? and is not 
 the same freedom shown in the diction ? It would be dif- 
 ficult to point out in poetry a passage which has less the 
 uir of being constructed with regard to a formula. Indeed, 
 the poet seems to have been under no restraint but that of 
 versification ; and not to have felt that. Juliet expresses 
 her longing for the coming of night several times ; but 
 that is evidently only because she wants night to come. 
 The approach of the time which will bring Romeo to her 
 absorbs her whole mind. There is no " intercalary prin- 
 ciple," or any other principle evident in the soliloquy. Even 
 Mr. Halpin can only find that " four several invocations to 
 Night, more or less varied, occur at intervals more or less 
 regular/' But the variation is decidedly more, and the re- 
 gularity decidedly less. With the same license, almost 
 any soliloquy might be said to be constructed on an inter- 
 calary principle. This assumption of the hymeneal char- 
 acter of the soliloquy, which is the very key-stone of Mr. 
 Halpin's argument, is plainly but assumption ; and, of 
 course, the importance of Cupid in the hymeneal masks, 
 and the frequency of those masks in Shakespeare's day, are 
 of no farther consequence. 
 
 As to Cupid being called a runaway by Moschus, 
 what did Shakespeare know about that ? It is not neces- 
 sary to be of the Farmer school as to the no learning of 
 Shakespeare, to decide at once that the supposition that 
 tie had read the ode of Moschus in the original, is entirely 
 unwarranted ; and in his day there was no translation of 
 it. But even if he had found Cupid called a runaway by 
 some Greek and Latin authors, would he upon that warrant 
 tiave called him ' runaway/ absolutely and without miti- 
 gation, not even calling him ' a runaway/ and having made 
 no previous allusion to him ? and this, too, to a mixed au- 
 
384 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 dience, not one in fifty of whom had the tongues ? Such 
 was not his way of writing for the audiences of the Black- 
 friars and the Globe. 
 
 The fact that Ben Jonson in his Hue and Cry after 
 Cupid, calls Cupid " Venus' Runaway," is nothing to the 
 purpose ; because, when the Mask opens, Cupid has run 
 away from Venus, and it would be almost impossible to 
 avoid speaking of him as Venus' runaway. He is never 
 spoken of simply as a runaway ; much less is he called ab- 
 solutely l runaway/ even by Jonson. He is " Venus' run- 
 away," just as Pompey, who runs away from Mr. Randolph 
 of South Carolina, is Mr. Randolph's runaway. But even 
 were this not so, the occurrence of the epithet in Jon son's 
 Mask does not help Mr. Halpin, because that was not writ- 
 ten until 1608; whereas, Romeo and Juliet was written 
 as early as 1596, and this soliloquy was printed in the 
 quarto of 1599. * Mr. Halpin's eagerness in the defence 
 of his theory probably blinded him to these conclusive facts. 
 
 That the andirons in Imogen's bed-chamber could have 
 any acknowledged hymeneal significance, the very fact of her 
 marriage, and the great dread which she had of exposure, 
 forbids us to believe. If winking Cupids had a hymeneal 
 symbolism so universally recognized, that it was only ne- 
 cessary for Shakespeare to write " that runaway's eyes may 
 wink," in order to .have a promiscuous audience know that 
 Juliet was thinking of a winking Cupid as a part of a hy- 
 meneal pageant, Imogen would surely have kept them out 
 of her chamber at all hazards. 
 
 Mr. Halpin's remark, that in the poem of Romeus and 
 
 * Ben Jonson did not call his Mask The Hue and Cry after Cupid : 
 that title was given to it by Gifford so lately as 1816. In the folio of 1616 
 it is called: The Description of the Masqve with the Nuptiall Songs at 
 the Lord Vicount Haddington's marriage at Court. On the Shroue-tues- 
 day night, 1608. 
 
KOMEO AND JULIET. 385 
 
 Juliet (i Night and Cupid are the only assistants at the 
 spousal/' does not represent the passage in its true light. 
 It is merely narrative ; the allusions to Night and Cupid 
 are incidental and obvious, and are made, not at the time 
 when hymeneal allusions were appropriate, but when Romeo 
 and Juliet part at the Friar's cell. 
 
 " These said, they kisse, and then part to theyr father's house, 
 The joyfull bryde vnto her home, to his eke goth the spouse ; 
 Contented both, and yet both uncontented still, 
 Till Night and Venus child geve leave the wedding to fulfill." 
 
 How the perception of a clever and a learned man may 
 be perverted, is shown by the reference which Mr. Halpin 
 makes to Juliet's supposition, 
 
 " Or if love be blind," <fec. 
 
 which he thinks, " implies that she had already considered 
 ^ Love ' in the correlative condition, and regarded him as able 
 to see." But Juliet does not make reference here to the 
 god of Love, but to a pair of lovers. Thus she says, 
 
 "Lovers can see to do their amorous rites 
 By their own beauties ; or if love be blind," <fcc. 
 
 The fact that { love ' is spelled with a capital letter in no 
 way confirms Mr. Halpin's supposition ; because the word 
 is so spelled in every instance in which it occurs in the 
 soliloquy, as may be seen by reference to the passage as it is 
 quoted above from the original folio. Thus "Love-per- 
 forming," " strange Love grown bold," " true Love acted," 
 " in Love with night," " the mansion of a Love " Evident- 
 ly no one of these e Loves ' has any more reference to Cupid 
 than the other ; and this is still further shown, as far as the 
 old typography can show it, by the fact that in the older 
 
386 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 quarto the word is not spelled in this soliloquy with a cap- 
 ital letter in a single instance. 
 
 To leave no part of Mr. Halpin's argument unanswered, 
 his supposition that the numberless works of ancient art 
 in which Cupid is represented as captured, imprisoned, caged, 
 fettered and with his wings bound, are to be referred to 
 " his notorious propensity to running away from his mo- 
 ther," is innocent indeed. He should have consulted female 
 Counsel before venturing on such a plea. Women in clas- 
 sic days were> at heart, much like women of now-a-days ; 
 and, then, as now, they would see Love bound, not for his 
 mother's sake, but their own. 
 
 There is, it seems to me, not the least shadow of a rea- 
 son for believing that Shakespeare would without having 
 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," <fcc. 
 
 Mr. Collier's folio suggests, with more than plausibility, 
 
398 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 crouchings for " couchings." But it is by no means certain 
 that Shakespeare has not used the words convertibly in 
 several instances. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Ant. A barren-spirited fellow ; one that feeds 
 On objects, arts, and imitations, 
 Which out of use, and stal'd by other men, 
 Begin his fashion." 
 
 How did Lepidus feed or exist " on objects, arts/' &c. ? 
 Out of question there is an error of the press ; and we should 
 read, 
 
 " one that feeds 
 On abject arts and imitations." 
 
MACBETH. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 7. 
 
 " Mac. If the assassination 
 
 Could trammel up the consequence, and catch 
 With his surcease, success." 
 
 I find that this passage is considered obscure : all sorts 
 of alterations are proposed in it by editors and commenta- 
 tors of every grade and period. It has always seemed to 
 me, and yet seems to be perfectly clear. By "if the assas- 
 sination could trammel up the consequence," Macbeth evi- 
 dently means, c *f the killing of Duncan could also set 
 aside the consequences of such an act/ " His " refers to 
 Duncan, not to the assassination, as some, Johnson among 
 them, appear to think, and " surcease " means ' ending/ 
 1 decease/ c death ; ' and the sentence may, if it must, be 
 paraphrased, c If, in the act of killing Duncan, I could 
 protect myself against the consequences of such an act, and 
 obtain by his death, success/ See Rape of Lucrece, near 
 the end. 
 
 " If they surcease to be that should survive." 
 
 The commentators complain that this whole soliloquy is 
 
400 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 turgid and involved. Such would have a thunder-cloud as 
 pellucid as a dew-drop. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Mac. Is tins a dagger which I see before me ? " 
 
 This dagger was made visible to the eyes of the audience 
 in Germany, when Macbeth was first performed there ; and, 
 considered in the light of poetic truth, may as well be seen 
 as the Ghost of Banquo. The Ghost should appear in the 
 face of the actor, as the dagger does. But, perhaps even 
 nowadays it is necessary for a mixed audience that Banquo 
 should appear, as he was made to do by Shakespeare for the 
 audiences of his day. The difference between the ghosts in 
 Macbeth and that in Hamlet is very remarkable. The for- 
 mer, no less than this dagger, are the pure creations of a 
 guilty mind, and are visible only to the guilty person ; the 
 latter, on the contrary, being an actual visitant from the 
 other world, is visible to the soldiers and to Hamlet's friend 
 as well as to himself. 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 "Macb. "Will all great Neptune's Ocean wash this blood 
 Clean from my hand ? No : this my hand will rather 
 The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 
 Making the green one red." 
 
 Those who have pondered with wondering admiration 
 upon this grand passage, will be amused . and vexed at a 
 supposed typographical error, when they find the hemistich 
 printed thus : 
 
 "Making the greon one, red." 
 
MACBETH. 401 
 
 But it is not an error of the press. There are those, (Mr. 
 Dyce among them, it would appear,) who, depending upon 
 the careless punctuation of the first folio, read this fine line 
 thus inanely ; though what or who is the " green one " to 
 be made red, they do not inform us. Was the power of 
 mere punctuation to turn the sublime into the ridiculous 
 ever before so strikingly exemplified ! 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " Len. The night has been unruly ; Where we lay, 
 Our chimneys were blown down : and as they say, 
 Lamentings heard i' the air ; strange screams of death ; 
 And prophesying, with accents terrible, 
 Of dire combustion, and confus'd events, 
 Xew hatch'd to the woful time. The obscure bird 
 Clamour'd the livelong night : some say, the earth 
 "Was feverous and did shake." 
 
 This passage has occasioned not a little conflicting com- 
 ment. Mr. Knight has changed the punctuation, so as to 
 make the obscure bird prophesy ; and Steevens would have 
 the " prophesying" and not the "confused events" "new 
 hatch'd to the useful time." But all this is needless ; and 
 arises from a misunderstanding of the word " prophesying." 
 As used here, and in some portions of the Bible and books 
 contemporary with its translation, it does not mean i fore- 
 telling/ but ' uttering strange or important things,' or t an- 
 nouncing solemnly ' that which has already taken place. 
 (See Proverbs xxxi. 1, Luke i. 67.) 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 4. 
 
 \The Ghost of Banquo rises, and sits in Macbetlts place.~\ 
 
 "Mad. Here had we now our country's honour roofd> 
 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," <fcc. 
 
 Thus the original. " ^Rebellious dead rise never," &c., 
 was changed by Theobald to " [Rebellious head" &c. But 
 the context seems to require " Rebellion's head," a correc- 
 tion which was made by the present writer some years ago, 
 and which has recently been found in Mr. Collier's folio. 
 I have before noticed a similar coincidence with regard to 
 the following passage in the same Scene. Macbeth learns 
 that Macduff has fled to England, and, in the course of a 
 declaration of prompt, and energetic policy, says, 
 
 " No boasting like a fool ; 
 This deed I'll do before this purpose cool : 
 But no more sights." 
 
MACBETH. 405 
 
 For " sights," we should unquestionably read, flights. The 
 old-fashioned long s caused the mistake. I may be excused 
 for remarking here, that these emendations and most of 
 those now for the first time made public, were shown to 
 a few friends and fellow students of Shakespeare, two or 
 three years before the discovery of Mr. Collier's folio. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 In the original, Macduff tells Malcolm, 
 
 " You may 
 
 Convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty, 
 And yet seem cold." 
 
 " Convey " is evidently an easy misprint for enjoy, which 
 is substituted for it in Mr. Collier's folio. But this is one 
 of those emendations which crave mature consideration as 
 to their idiomatic propriety before they are received into the 
 text. 
 
 ACT V. SCENE 2. 
 Cathness obviously does not mean to say that Macbeth 
 
 " Cannot buckle his distemper'd cause 
 Within the belt of rule," 
 
 but his " distempered course" which reading is found in 
 Mr. Collier's folio. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 The substitution in Mr. Collier's folio of 
 
406 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " Cleanse the stufft bosom of that perilous grief, 
 "Cleanse the stufft bosom of that perilous stuffe," 
 
 seemed to me at first an acceptable correction of a very 
 probable typographical error ;^but subsequent reflection has 
 convinced me that the phrase in the original is quite in 
 Shakespeare's manner. 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 "Male. For where there is advantage to be given 
 Both more and less have given him the revolt." 
 
 What advantage was to be "given " by revolt ? It 
 seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that this word is 
 a misprint ; especially as it occurs in the next line. Mr. 
 Collier's folio has gotten. But gotten would hardly be read 
 " given/' while gained might be, easily. Should we not 
 read ? 
 
 "For where there is advantage to be gained 
 Both more and less have given him the revolt." 
 
 The Variorum has comment upon comment on the pas- 
 sage ; but this very obvious correction does not appear to 
 have occurred to any editor. 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 2. 
 
 Enter Horatio, Bernardo, and Marcellus. 
 
 "Hor. Hail to your lordship ! 
 
 Ham. I am glad to see you well ; 
 
 Horatio, or I do forget myself. 
 
 Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever. 
 
 Ham. Sir, my good friend ; I'll change that name with you. 
 And what make you from "Wittenberg, Horatio ? 
 Marcellus ? 
 
 Mar. My good lord, 
 
 Ham. I am very glad to see you ; good even, sir. 
 But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg? " 
 
 It seems incomprehensible to me that there could be the 
 least difficulty in understanding this passage ; as in fact it 
 seems with regard to nine tenths of the passages upon which 
 explanatory notes have been written. Hamlet's "Good 
 even " makes trouble. Marcellus has said in the first Scene, 
 " I this morning know where we shall find him ; " and there- 
 fore some of the commentators say that Hamlet could not 
 bid his visitors "good even." Of these, some therefore have 
 deliberately changed "even" to "morning;" another, 
 Jackson, attempts to get out of the difficulty by his know- 
 ledge of the composing case, and says that the line should 
 be, 
 
408 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " I am very glad to see you good : even, sir." 
 
 That is, that Hamlet means that he is even with Marcellus, 
 who has just called him " good I" Mr. Knight very justly 
 suggests that " even " was at that time used at any time 
 after mid-day. 
 
 Bichard Jhones, who published Promos and Cassandra, 
 is the best commentator on the passage. I have quoted 
 this sentence from his advertisement once before ; but it is 
 worth quoting here again : " and if by chaunce thou 
 light of some speache that seemeth dark, consider of it 
 with judgment, before thou condemne the worke : for in 
 many places he is driven both to praise and blame with 
 one breath, which in readinge wil seeme hard, and in action 
 appeare plaine." 
 
 No other clue is needed. How can any one with 
 the scene in his "mind's eye" avoid intuitively under- 
 standing it thus ? Hamlet has three visitors, who find him 
 alone : being a well bred gentleman he speaks to all of 
 them ; and being a prince, he addresses each one in a man- 
 ner suited to his degree. In his old friend and schoofellow 
 he expresses interest, and asks, 
 
 "And what make you from Wittenberg? " 
 
 But breaking off, to bestow civility upon his other guests, 
 he, says, interrogatively, to one (whom he thinks he recog- 
 nizes, and who, by the present, the preceding and the sub- 
 sequent Scenes, is shown to be the more important of the 
 two), 
 
 "Marcellus?" 
 
 On finding by the reply of Marcellus that he is right, he 
 bestows a brief welcome, 
 
HAMLET. 409 
 
 "I'm very glad to see you; " <fec. 
 
 and then turning to the third and least important person, 
 whom he does not recognize, he merely says, " Good even, 
 sir." Having thus satisfied the demands of courtesy, he 
 returns immediately to that which interests him, and says 
 to Horatio, 
 
 "But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg? " 
 
 The passage is natural, simple, and colloquial in the 
 highest degree ; its sense palpable, it would seem, to the 
 dullest perception. But on what sentence of Shakespeare 
 may we not look for a critical and explanatory, if not a con- 
 fusing note, when Mr. Knight thinks it not impertinent 
 to explain Hamlet's " Thrift, thrift Horatio," by saying 
 " Thrift, thrift. It was a frugal arrangement, a thrifty 
 proceeding, there was no waste." Quousque tandem ab- 
 utere patientia nostra! 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " Pol. for they are brokers 
 
 Not of the eye which their investments show, 
 But mere implorators of unholy suits, 
 Breathing like sanctified and pious bonds, 
 The better to beguile." 
 
 What meaning can possibly be tortured from " breath- 
 ing like . . . bonds ? " Is there the least doubt that 
 Theobald discovered the typographical error, and corrected 
 it properly, in reading, 
 
 " Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds 
 The better to beguile?" 
 
410 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 In the same sentence these " implorators of unholy 
 suits " are called " brokers," the old term for ' bawd/ 
 
 SCENE 9. 
 
 " Ghost. And for the day confin'd to fast in fires." 
 
 Heath's conjecture that " fast in fires " is a misprint 
 for " lasting fires " seems to me to be a judicious correction 
 of a very probable error. It has been passed by, almost 
 unnoticed ; but as it occurs in Mr. Collier's folio, renewed 
 attention has been recently directed to it. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 2. 
 
 Ham and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition, that 
 
 this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory ; this most 
 excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, 
 this majestical roof fretted with golden fires, why it appeareth nothing to 
 me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. "What a piece of 
 work is a man ! How noble in reason ! How infinite in faculties ! in form 
 and moving how express and admirable ! in action, how like an angel I in 
 apprehension how like a god ! the beauty of the world ! the paragon of 
 animals ! " 
 
 This magnificent passage does not appear in the trage- 
 dy as it was published in 1603. It was added by Shake- 
 speare when he enlarged Hamlet " to almost as much again 
 as it was." In the tragedy, as it was first produced and as 
 it was printed in 1603, this passage appears thus, in limp- 
 ing verse, it will be noticed : 
 
 "Yes faith, this great world you see contents me not, 
 No nor the spangled heauens, nor earth, nor sea, 
 No nor Man that is so glorious a creature, 
 Contents not me, no nor woman too, although you laugh.'' 
 
HAMLET. 411 
 
 It is at least a strange coincidence, that in a thin quarto 
 which bears the title : " Beware of Pickpurses, or a Caueat 
 for sick folkes to take heede for vnlearned Phisitions, and 
 vnskillful Chyrurgians, By F. H. Doctor in Phisick. Im- 
 printed at London 16*05," is a sentence sufficiently like 
 Hamlet's speech in sentiment and phraseology to make it 
 more than probable, that Shakespeare had seen it before 
 he enlarged the Tragedy. One very remarkable and singu- 
 lar expression in the latter, " this goodly frame the earth/' 
 appears almost exactly in the former : 
 
 " Thus doth this base and lewd Couzener mocke God, and 
 despise Man, for whose cause the Eternall created the goodly and 
 beautifull Frame of the World : and in whose Bodie whatso- 
 ever is more largely in that Spatious, and Gorgious Pallace, and 
 Theater delineated, is more briefly comprised, and, as it were, 
 Epitomised, and represented [in] a short Summe or Viewe. 
 Against this Noble Creature, the small Counterfeit of the great 
 GOD, he doth oft times rage more sauagely than any wilde Beare 
 or Tygar," &c. p. 16. 
 
 The book, my copy of which is the only one I ever saw 
 or heard of, is composed of two parts ; the first being 
 written in Latin " by a learned German," Martin Obern- 
 dorifer. This is called Dissertatio de vero etfalso Medico, 
 or, as F. H. translates it, " The Anatomyes of the True 
 Physition and the counterfeit Mountebanke." The second 
 part, which is the original production of the translator of 
 the first part, is " A discouery of certaine Stratagems, 
 whereby our Engh'sh Emperikes haue bene obserued strongly 
 to oppugne and oft times to expugne their poore Patients 
 Purses." The passage quoted is from the Dissertation of 
 Oberndorffer, who was a medical author of some repute in 
 Germany at the beginning of the seventeenth century. His 
 Dissertatio de vero et /also Medico was published at Lau- 
 
412 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 ingen in 1600 ; and Watts' Bibliotheca Britannica records 
 the date of the publication of Dr. F. H/s translation, as 
 1602, one year before the date of the earliest edition of 
 Hamlet. But, as my learned friend, Dr. Cogswell, suggests 
 to me, Watts had probably never seen the volume in ques- 
 tion, and the edition of 1605 is the first : it bears no allu- 
 sion to any other. But, however this may be, it would be 
 interesting to compare the original German work (no copy 
 of which exists in this country) with F. H/s translation, to 
 discover whether the latter found that very remarkable 
 expression in his author, or furnished it himself to him, or 
 adopted it from a new play, which he had just heard, i. e. 
 Hamlet. Throughout the two passages, however, there is a 
 remarkable sympathy of thought and similarity of expression 
 as to the grandeur of the World and the dignity of Man. 
 
 11 Ham. for it cannot be 
 
 But I am pigeon liver'd, and lack gall 
 To make oppression bitter." 
 
 The absurdity of the change of "oppression " to trans- 
 gression in Mr. Collier's folio, and of Mr. Collier's argument 
 in support of it, have been shown in the second part of this 
 volume. As Mr. Dyce is reported to be engaged on a new 
 edition of Shakespeare, it is comforting to know that he 
 thinks the change "nothing less than villainous" A Few 
 Notes, &c., p. 140. But what shall be said of Mr. Singer, 
 who also announces a new edition, and who would read, 
 
 "To make aggression bitter. " 
 
 Felony, this ;* and certainly without benefit of clergy ; for 
 
HAMLET. 413 
 
 it would seem impossible that any clerk could commit such 
 an offence. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Ham. Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
 And by opposing end them." 
 
 Pope and others would read " siege of troubles," alleging 
 that arms may be taken against a siege, but not against a 
 sea, and that the similarity in the sound of the two words 
 might easily have caused a substitution of one for the other. 
 So it might : much more easily than Shakespeare could have 
 written 
 
 "Or to take arms against a siege of troubles, 
 And by opposing end them" 
 
 For, by line and plummet criticism, if it be a siege against 
 which arms are to be taken, it is a siege which is ended ; 
 for the siege then becomes the object against which the action 
 is to be directed, and the last line must be : 
 
 " And by opposing end it" 
 
 But it is the troubles against which arms , are to be taken, 
 and by opposing we end them. " Sea " is but a pictu- 
 resque, descriptive word in the sentence. Another writer 
 would have said ' a throng of troubles ' or something of that 
 kind ; but Shakespeare said "sea," and by one word brings 
 to our mind the imminent, ever succeeding woes which, 
 innumerable, like the "multitudinous seas," sometimes 
 overwhelm the soul. " Sea " makes the passage not only 
 highly poetical and Shakesperian, but correct ; siege makes 
 
414 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 it not only cautiously exact in following out a figure, and 
 therefore un-Shakesperian, but incorrect to any mind which 
 judges by other than a merely literal standard. A 
 fortiori these remarks apply to the suggestions to read 
 assay or assail of troubles. It is mysterious to me 
 that a doubt should ever have suggested itself, even to a 
 child of moderate intelligence, about the passage as it 
 stands in the original. Even in my boyish readings of 
 Shakespeare this line was as comprehensible and as grand 
 to me as it is now. I should have been inclined to doubt 
 the sincerity or the sanity of any one who professed to 
 find the passage obscure or faulty. But then I had not 
 read Shakespeare's commentators. 
 
 " Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with your 
 honesty ? " 
 
 This, the reading of the folio of 1623, is rejected, and 
 the reading of the quartos, "with honesty," is taken. Even 
 Mr. Knight departs from his rule, and rejects his favorite 
 and justly his favorite authority, even although he admits 
 that the alteration from the quarto is " clearly by design. " 
 He does so, because " it appears to lessen the idea we have 
 formed of Ophelia to imagine that she would put her beau- 
 ty so directly in c commerce ' with Hamlet's honesty." I 
 am past being surprised at a miscomprehension of one of 
 Shakespeare's characters, particularly of the character of 
 one of his women ; yet I cannot but wonder where Mr. 
 Knight finds any thing in the delineation of Ophelia's char- 
 acter to cause him to lessen his ideas of her at finding her 
 thus plain spoken. What does he think of the songs which 
 she sings when derangement removes the restraint of pro- 
 
HAMLET. 415 
 
 priety from her mind ? On what do they show her thoughts 
 to have been, in a great measure, fixed ? for it is to he 
 borne in mind that she is not distracted or wild, but simply 
 unsettled. What does he think of her gross perversion of 
 Hamlet's request in Act III. Scene 2, just before the Dumb 
 Show begins ? With regard to the passage under consid- 
 eration, if a woman so far trust a man, and so far unbend 
 herself as to speak of such matters at all, it seems difficult 
 to find the peculiar and added impropriety of this expres- 
 sion, " your honesty," to a lover in Hamlet's situation and 
 in Shakespeare's time. 
 
 However, Mr. Knight's course is but a remnant of the 
 practice of the eighteenth century, which was, to think that 
 the ideas which the commentator or the actor had formed 
 of a character, were more just than those of Shakespeare 
 himself, and to take the development of character out of 
 the hands of the poet into those of his restorers and im- 
 provers, for the stage or the closet. As for instance, the 
 acting Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III., &c. &c. 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 " Ham. Tis now the very witching time of night ; 
 When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out 
 Contagion to this world : Now could I drink hot blood, 
 And do such bitter business as the day 
 "Would quake to look on." 
 
 Mr. Dyce, turning from the original folio to the quartos, 
 advises, that in Hamlet's exclamation, as it stands in the 
 original, 
 
 "Now could I drink hot blood, 
 And do such bitter business as the day 
 Would quake to look on," 
 
416 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 we should transpose three words and change one letter, to 
 read, 
 
 " And do such business as the better day," <fec. 
 
 He says, that in the reading of the quartos, 
 
 " And do such business as the bitter day," 
 
 "bitter" was a misprint for better; and the editor or 
 printer of the folio, " not perceiving that it was a misprint, 
 made his stupid transposition." And he quotes, to sustain 
 "better day," Milton's, 
 
 "Hail holy light, offspring of Heaven," <fec. 
 
 The suggestion is plausible, and the quotation not amiss 
 but ! Mr. Dyce, if you love us humble lovers of Shake 
 speare, if you venerate his mighty genius, if you would pi 
 serve your well-earned reputation, let not your acutene* 
 and your learning lead you astray ; and spare us, spare 
 that " bitter business " which " the day " any day, woi 
 or better, lit by the sweet light of heaven " would qi 
 to look on ! " Spare us, good Mr. Dyce ! our keen relisl 
 of this most Shakesperian morsel, or we shall lose not onlj 
 that ; but some one, sheltering himself under your eminent 
 name, and emulating your ingenuity, will be proposing 
 read a certain line in A Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 
 "In maiden fancy, hesitation free." 
 
 This undeniably gives a sense, and requires but the trans- 
 position of two words and the change of two letters in the 
 original. But still, as there is the best reason the testi- 
 mony of the folio for believing that Shakespeare wrote, 
 
HAMLET. 417 
 
 " In maiden meditation, fancy free," 
 
 and as, from use, we have become somewhat partial to the 
 line in that form, w j would not willingly see the ' inge- 
 nious' alteration made. 
 
 With no other feelings would we all regard the change 
 of Hamlet's "bitter business" which "the day would 
 quake to look on " into a "business" which "the better 
 day would quake to look on." Better strike the lines from 
 the soliloquy, than thus emasculate them. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 This Scene, in which Hamlet finds the King on his 
 kiiL'es alone, immediately after the Play, and yet does not 
 avenge his Father's death, is altogether omitted in the stage 
 copy. What an outrageous liberty ! how injurious to the 
 intent of the author ! Hamlet is a man of contemplation, 
 who is ever diverted from his purposed deeds by speculation 
 upon their probable consequences or their past causes, unless 
 he acts too quickly and under too much excitement for any 
 reflection to present itself, as in the last Scene of this Act 
 and of the last Act. In the present instance he finds the 
 King alone, and in a situation that seems to tempt revenge. 
 He instantly determines on the deed, half draws his sword, 
 steps forward but the idea suggests itself " and so he goes 
 to heaven ;" and in a moment the avenger of blood is con- 
 verted into the moral philosopher ; he discovers that such a 
 death would be no expiation, and gladly seizes this excuse- 
 for procrastinating the execution of his task. 
 
 By the omission of this Scene, Hamlet's character is not 
 developed according to the author's intent ; which is an 
 offence unpardonable. There are certain Scenes and ar- 
 
 27 
 
418 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 rangements of Scenes which have naught to do with the pro- 
 gress of the play or the development of character, and which 
 the improvement in stage business since Shakespeare's time 
 renders superfluous, perhaps ; and these may be omitted, 
 though they should be eliminated with great caution and 
 reverence ; but to touch a line which portrays character, 
 because it is thought superfluous or inconsistent by com- 
 mentators or stage managers, is much as if a man who liked 
 aquiline features should knock off the nose of the Apollo 
 Belvidere, and say i it's a small matter, only a nose ; the 
 face is a face without it ; and besides, I would have made it 
 Roman if I had made the statue/ Wise above what is 
 written ! will they never learn that they did not make the 
 Apollo, or Hamlet, or Romeo, or Lear ! 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 4. 
 
 "Ham. 1 will be with you straight. Go a little before. 
 
 [Exeunt Ros. and Guil. 
 How all occasions do inform against me, 
 And spur my dull revenge ! * * 
 ******* 
 
 * * * Xow, whether it be 
 Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple 
 Of thinking too precisely on the event, 
 A thought, which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom, 
 And, ever, three parts coward, I do not know 
 "Why yet I live to say, This thing's to do : 
 Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means, 
 To do't." 
 
 This Scene is omitted in the folio of 1623, and also in 
 the acting copy ; but if the object of the play be the repre- 
 sentation of Hamlet and its action certainly has little 
 other point how serious an omission is this. Hamlet was 
 one who speculated without reasoning, whose high- wrought 
 
HAMLET. 419 
 
 reveries hardly ever assumed the firmness and consistency 
 of thought, who was unyielding without firmness, determined 
 without purpose, who contrived without plan and felt with- 
 out acting. Hamlet himself, in the closing soliloquy of 
 this Scene, to introduce which was evidently Shakespeare's 
 only object in writing it, gives us the key to his indecision 
 in that self-anatomization which is the habit of such na- 
 tures. They know the action of their own minds, and bur- 
 rowing in the blind heaps of speculation which press upon 
 them, they unearth only their own hidden motives. They 
 have an intellectual perception of the excellence of action ; 
 but, fascinated by musings which hardly attain the dignity 
 of contemplation, their noble purposes never take form ; 
 and, led on through a dreamy labyrinth of speculation, they 
 die before they reach the busy day of the actual world. 
 Sadly enough, too, they are all the while conscious that 
 their years glide away from them and leave naught behind ; 
 and when their last day comes, they 
 
 " close their dying eyes 
 In grief that they have lived in vain." 
 
 " Eheu ! fugaces Postume, Postume, 
 anni." 
 
 SCENE 5. 
 
 " King. That I am guiltless of your Father's death 
 And am most sensibly in grief for it, 
 It shall as level to your judgment pierce 
 As day does to your eye." 
 
 Johnson says that, 
 
 "It shall as level to your judgment pierce," 
 
420 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 which is the reading of the original, is " less intelligible " 
 than, 
 
 "It shall as level to your judgment ' 
 
 which is the reading of the quarto of 1611, and which ap- 
 pears in all the modern editions except Mr. Knight's. If 
 Johnson had not said so, it would be difficult to believe 
 that he could say so. What can be more intelligible than 
 that a conviction should pierce to the judgment, as level 
 \i. e. as directly, as c point blank'] as light does to the eye. 
 This is clear sense and forcible comparison. But use 'pear 
 [appear], and nonsense and confusion ensue. The lines as 
 they stand in the authentic text assert, ' it [the convic- 
 tion] shall pierce as level to your judgment, as day dues 
 [pierce] to your eye : ' but use c 'pear/ or { appear,' and 
 the assertion would be that ( it shall appear as level to 
 your judgment as day does [appear] to your eye.' But 
 how does, or how can, day appear level to the eye ? The 
 absurdity is palpable. In the copies in general use, John- 
 son is followed and "pear* is given. The original text 
 should be restored without question. 
 
 " King. Laertes, I must common with your grief, 
 Or you deny me right." 
 
 'This is the text of the original folio, and als5 of the 
 earliest complete quarto, 1604, yet on the authority of the 
 quarto of 1611, "common" has been changed to commune, 
 in all editions except Mr. Knight's. There is a note by 
 Steevens in the Variorum about e commune ' being ancient- 
 ly pronounced ' common,' and Mr. Knight has one to the 
 
HAMLET. 421 
 
 same effect ; but how inferior is this " winnowed opinion " 
 to that of Boswell, who, taking the word " common " in its 
 obvious sense, remarks, " surely the word common in the 
 folio means i I must be allowed to participate in your grief, 
 to feel in common with you/ ' ; In the homeliness of the 
 word lies the strength of the passage. 
 
 ACT Y. SCENE 2. 
 
 "Ham. He did comply with his dug, before he sucked it Thus has he 
 (and many more of the same breed, that, I know, the drossy age dotes on) 
 only got the tune of the time, and outward habit of encounter; a kind of 
 yesty collection, which carries them through and through the most fond 
 and winnowed opinions ; and do but blow them to their trial, the bubbles 
 are out." 
 
 Caldecott explains the last part of this passage thus, 
 " which carries them (i. e. enables them to pass current) 
 through and through the most fond and winnowed opinions 
 (i. e.j all judgments ; not the simplest only, but the most 
 sifted and the wisest)/' Mr. Dyce says this is " the com- 
 mon interpretation of the passage," and justly adds, " to 
 suppose that ' the most fond and winnowed opinions ' could 
 mean ' all judgments, not the simplest only, but the most 
 sifted and the wisest/ is little short of insanity/' 
 
 It is to be hoped that Mr. Dyce erred in supposing this 
 to be the common interpretation of the passage. The 
 meaning seems clear, and to be one of those very obvious 
 significations which it is a marvel that any commentator or 
 any educated reader could fail to apprehend. Mr. Dyce's own 
 reading, adopted from Warburton, seems as far from the 
 truth as Caldecott's explanation. Mr. Dyce would read, 
 " the most fand (fanned) and winnowed opinions ; " and he 
 
422 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 quotes good authority for the use of both c fanned ' and 
 ' winnowed ' in the same sentence. 
 
 But all this is from the purpose. Om'c is a type of 
 the Euphuist or affected courtier of Shakespeare's time, 
 who was a hair-splitter in thought, and absurdly dainty and 
 extravagant hi expression. Therefore Shakespeare makes 
 Hamlet describe Osric as one who ("with many more of the 
 same breed") has " only got the tune of the time," which was 
 " a kind of yesty collection which carries them [the Euphu- 
 ists] through and through the most fond and winnowed opin- 
 ions : " that is, they go through and through [they stop at no 
 absurdity in] the most fond [affected or foolish] and win- 
 nowed [elaborately sought out] opinions. It is difficult to 
 imagine how " opinions " could be supposed by Caldecott 
 to mean ' judgment/ or " carries" to signify ' enables them 
 to pass current/ "Fond" is continually used as 'affected' 
 or ' foolish ' by the earlier English writers. 
 
 It is purposely that I do not notice in detail the cor- 
 ruptions of the text of this play in all the editions. To 
 point them all out would be to write a volume. The ordi- 
 nary copies, printed from the Variorum text, are a vile 
 compound of the texts of the quartos of 1604 and 1611 and 
 the folio of 1623. On the other hand, Mr. Knight's laud- 
 able reverence for the latter text has caused him to disre- 
 gard the corruptions which evidently deform it. We need 
 a text formed upon that of 1623 as supreme authority ; 
 but carefully corrected by the quartos. 
 
KING LEAR. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Reg. I profess 
 
 Myself an enemy to all other joys 
 That the most precious square of sense .possesses." 
 
 " The most precious square of sense " is a phrase not 
 readily apprehended nowadays. Mr. Collier's folio reads, 
 " precious sphere of sense," by which, however, nothing is 
 gained ; for the ' square of sense ' is quite as comprehen- 
 sible as the ( sphere of sense/ Mr. Singer goes in this in- 
 stance even beyond the folio, and would read " the spacious 
 sphere of sense." This is certainly more comprehensible 
 than the line as it was left by Mr. Collier's MS. corrector ; 
 and the typographical error which it involves is quite pos- 
 sible. But although there is at least no necessity for chang- 
 ing " square " to sphere, the change of "precious" to spa- 
 cious is more plausible. If the text be altered at all, we 
 should read, 
 
 " That the most spacious square of sense possesses." 
 
 The original text, however, is comprehensible, and has the 
 
424 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 smack of Shakespeare's style about it ; and consequently 
 must not be disturbed. 
 
 " Cord. make knowne 
 
 It is no vicious blot, murther, or foulenesse, 
 No unchaste action, or dishonor'd step 
 That hath deprived me of your grace and favour." 
 
 Thus this passage appears in the original. " Murder " 
 is evidently forced into the second line. It has no proper 
 place in the category of blemishes enumerated by Cordelia. 
 The word, as the reader will observe, was formerly written 
 " murder," and so appears in the text, where it is an easy 
 and undeniable mistake for nor other ', which is substituted 
 for it by Mr. Collier's folio, in which the line stands con- 
 sistently : 
 
 " It is no vicious blot, nor other foulness." 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Edm. But that I told him the revenging Gods 
 'Gainst Parricides did all the thunder bend" 
 
 Thus the original folio. The quartos read "all their 
 thunders," in which they are followed by all the modern 
 editions except Mr. Knight's. It is, of course, quite pos- 
 sible that the words in the folio are misprints ; but then 
 they were fortunate mishaps indeed. There is a grandeur 
 in the thought of the gods bending all the thunder against 
 parricides, which dwindles away in the particularity of 
 " their thunders." 
 
KING LEAK. 425 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 " FooL Let go thy hold, when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it 
 
 break thy neck with following it ; but the great one that goes up the hill, 
 
 let him draw thee after. When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give 
 
 me mine again : I would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it. 
 
 That, sir. which serves and seeks for gain, 
 
 And follows but for form, 
 Will pack, when it begins to rain, 
 
 And leave thee in the storm. 
 But I will tarry, the fool will stay, 
 
 And let the wise man fly: 
 The knave turns fool, that runs away; 
 The fool no knave, perdy." 
 
 Johnson proposed that the last two lines of the Fool's 
 rhymes should be read, 
 
 "The/ooZ turns knave that runs away, 
 The knave no fool, perdy." 
 
 Johnson was slow, and not sure, in his apprehension of 
 imaginative poetry ; but upon a question which appealed 
 to cool common sense, his decisions are always half right, 
 at least. The whole context, not only of the rhymes, but 
 the previous remarks of the Fool, make some such change 
 inevitable ; and yet none has ever been adopted, except by 
 Capell, who printed the lines thus : 
 
 " The/ooZ turns knave that runs away, 
 The fool no knave, perdy." 
 
 This perhaps is all that is necessary. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 6. 
 
 " Glo. If Edgar live, bless him ! 
 
 Now fellow, fare thee well. [He leaps and falls along.'] 
 
 Edg. Gone, sir? farewell." 
 
426 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 In the original folio there is no stage direction here, 
 though one appears in the quarto of 1608. Is it not evi- 
 dently misplaced there, and in all the modern editions ? It is 
 absurd for Edgar to bid farewell to Gloster, after the latter 
 has taken his leap from the supposed cliff. Edgar had 
 just before pretended to retire at Gloster's request ; and 
 when the latter bids him farewell, he, keeping up the de- 
 ception, replies, ' have you gone, sir ? then farewell ; 
 and then Gloster leaps. Kead thus : 
 
 " Glo. If Edgar live, bless him I - 
 
 Now fellow, fare thee well. 
 
 Edg. Gone, sir? farewell 
 
 [Gloster leaps and falls along."] 
 And yet I know not," <fec, 
 
 "Edg. Ten masts at each make not the altitude 
 Which thou hast perpendicularly fell" 
 
 Evidently we should read, as has been conjectured : 
 
 "Ten masts at reach make not the altitude," <fec. 
 
 ACT. V. SCENE 3. 
 
 " Lear. Lend me a looking-glass ; 
 
 If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, 
 Why, then she lives." 
 
 These lines contain no difficulty for any one to whom 
 Shakespeare could be made comprehensible ; yet Mr. Col- 
 lier's corrector, for " stone," proposed shine, which is sim- 
 ply harmless impertinence. But Mr. Singer, in rejecting 
 
 
KING LEAR. 427 
 
 this proposition, adds, as if possessed by the spirit of an 
 attorney, that " the word was, most probably, same" and 
 that we should read, 
 
 "Lend me a looking-glass ; 
 If that her breath will mist or stain the same," <fec. 
 
 And thus we should have Lear, in the climax of his agony, 
 talking like " the young man of the name of Guppy ! " 
 How shall we be protected against such wanton outrages ? 
 The most distinguished Shakesperian scholars spring for- 
 ward, with laudable alacrity, to shield us from anonymous and 
 irresponsible injury ; sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes ? 
 
 " Lear. And my poor fool is hang'd ! " 
 
 Incredible as it must appear to any one who has fa- 
 thomed the depths of feeling in this tragedy, there are 
 learned men, who really believe that Lear in these words 
 refers not to Cordelia, but to his court Fool. Unmindful 
 that Edmund has just said that he had ordered Cordelia 
 to be hanged, unmindful that the dead Cordelia is in Lear's 
 arms, and that he continues, 
 
 " N"o, no, no life ; 
 
 Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life 
 And thou no breath at all ? " 
 
 and, above all, insensible to the unutterable tenderness and 
 pathos, which is contained in that expression " poor fool," 
 as applied by Lear to Cordelia ! 
 
OTHELLO. 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 "lago. Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave." 
 
 The expression with which I have heard this line read 
 by intelligent people on and off the stage, justifies me in 
 pointing out, what would otherwise seem too obvious to 
 admit such superfluity/ that " knave " is used here and in 
 other passages of the play a not opprobriously, but in its more 
 primitive sense of ' servant/ Thus lago again says, 
 " whip me such honest knaves," and Roderigo, " a knave 
 of common hire, a gondolier." So Antony speaks to his 
 boy Eros as " My good knave Eros. (Ant. and Oleop. Act 
 IV. Sc. 2.) 
 
 " Rod. In an extravagant and wheeling stranger." 
 
 If any change were needed in this line, " ivheedling 
 stranger, which appears in Mr. Collier's folio, would be un- 
 exceptionable. But what can express Roderigo's idea of 
 a vagabond adventurer better than the original text ? 
 
OTHELLO. 429 
 
 SCENE 2. 
 
 "Brab. Abus'd her delicate youth with drugs, or minerals 
 That waken motion." 
 
 The original has " weaken motion," which some would 
 retain. But compare this with the following passages from 
 the next Scene of this very tragedy : 
 
 " Brab. Of spirit so still .and quiet that her motion 
 Blushed at herself ; " 
 
 "Ingo. But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal 
 stings, our unbitted lusts," &c. 
 
 These instances of the use of the word by Shakespeare him- 
 self in the same play, and the supposed influence of love 
 philtres in his clay, make it plain that " motion- " means 
 ' amorous desire/ and that " weaken " of the folio which 
 has been retained by Mr. Knight has been properly chang- 
 ed to waken. The convincing comparison has been made, as 
 indeed it could not have failed to be, by the earlier editors 
 and commentators. But it was objected by Henley to their 
 arguments, and with some appearance of reason, that in the 
 instances quoted, " the word derives its peculiar meaning 
 either from some epithet or restrictive mode of expression 
 with which it stands connected." This demurrer is easily 
 set aside by the fact, that in Shakespeare's day the word 
 was used in that sense absolutely; as for instance in the 
 following passage from Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra, 
 the tale from which Shakespeare derived the plot of Mea- 
 sure for Measure, and which was published in 1582, Cas- 
 sandra, the Isabella of the comedy, has agreed to comply 
 with the conditions of Promos, the Angelo of the tale. 
 
 " To greeve you with the hearing of Cassandra's secreate 
 
430 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 plaints were an injurie, vertuous ladies, for they concluded with 
 their good fortune, and everlasting fame ; but for that her offence 
 grew neyther of frayltie, free wyl, or any motion of a woman, 
 but by the meere inforcement of a man, because she would not 
 staine the modest weedes of her kynde, shee attired her selfe in 
 the habit of a page, and with the bashfull grace [of] a pure virgin, 
 she presented wicked Promos Andrugioes precious ransome." 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " Oth. yet she wish'd 
 
 That heaven had made her such a man." 
 
 There are many who, influenced by the unfounded no- 
 tion that because Desdemona was chaste and modest she 
 was also passionless, shame-faced and constrained, con- 
 sider this passage to mean that Desdemona wished that 
 heaven had made her of as bold and adventurous a spirit as 
 Othello's story showed him to be. Not so, evidently. She 
 wishes that heaven had made such a man for her. Is this 
 immodest ? If it be, it is much less so than her direct re- 
 quest to OthellOj which he thus repeats in the next few lines : 
 
 "She thanked me; 
 
 And bade me if I had a friend that loved her, 
 I should but teach him how to tell my story 
 A.nd that would woo her." 
 
 Could any thing be plainer, except a direct avowal of love 
 in explicit terms ? Brcibantio's understanding of Desde- 
 mona' 's wish is evident enough. He exclaims, 
 
 " I pray you hear her speak ; 
 If she confess that she was half the wooer," &c. 
 
 Is it not plain that long before Othello found the " pliant 
 
OTHELLO NOT A NEGRO. 431 
 
 hour " Desdemona was sick at heart with love for him ? 
 " Subdued " ere that, to " the very quality of her lord/' 
 she was ready to do any thing, short of positive wrong 
 perhaps even that to obtain his love ; as after her mar- 
 riage she was ready to suffer any thing to retain it. 
 
 <; Des. That I did love the Moor to live with him, 
 My downright violence and storm, of fortunes 
 May trumpet to the world." 
 
 Some, the acute and learned Mr. Dyce among them, 
 would read with the quarto of 1622, " scorn of fortunes/' 
 This is comparatively commonplace, un-Shakesperian, and 
 inconsistent with the " downright violence/' which pre- 
 cedes it. The authentic text should not be disturbed. Des- 
 demona means that she went, as we say, ' right in the 
 teeth' of fortune. 
 
 There can be but few of my readers who have not seen 
 Hildebrandt's picture of Othello and Desdemona, which 
 seems to me one of the most fascinating of modern pictures, 
 and without exception the most painful. To see such a 
 love as Hildebrandt has painted in Desdemona' s eyes, given 
 by such a woman to a great grinning negro with rings in 
 his ears, is surely enough to convert any one to Calhounism. 
 True, some women might be supposed to find consolation 
 in the fact that the rings are rubies, but not such a woman 
 as this Desdemona. Had the painter in his mind the fa- 
 mous comparison, " like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear ? " 
 It would seem so. But this reminds me that Shakespeare 
 
432 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 nowhere calls Othello an Ethiopian, and also does not apply 
 the term to Aaron in the horrible Titus Andronicus; but 
 he continually speaks of both as Moors ; and as he has 
 used the first word elsewhere, and certainly had use for it 
 as a reproach in the mouth of lago, it seems that he must 
 have been fully aware of the distinction in grade between 
 the two races, although his notion of their distinctive traits 
 was perhaps neither very true nor very clear. Indeed, I 
 could never see the least reason for supposing that Shake- 
 speare intended Othello to be represented as a negro. With 
 the negroes, the Venetians had nothing to do, that we know 
 of, and could not have, in the natural course of things ; 
 whereas, with their over-the-way neighbors, the Moors, they 
 were continually brought in contact. These were a warlike, 
 civilized and enterprising race, which could furnish an Othello: 
 whereas the contrary has always been the condition of the 
 negroes. I am aware that John Quincy Adams endeavored 
 to prove that Othello was a negro, and that Ketzsch has made 
 him so in his Outlines ; but to me the Ex-President seems 
 to reason with less than his usual acumen, and the great 
 draughtsman, no less than Hildebrandt, to fail in embody- 
 ing Shakespeare's noble captain. 
 
 The reasons for supposing Othello to be a negro, are few 
 and are easily set aside, which is not the case with those which 
 show him to be a Moor. The most conclusive of the for- 
 mer is Roderigo's calling Othello in the first Scene, " thick 
 lips ; " but this is the result of Shakespeare's want of exact 
 information. He had doubtless never seen either a Moor 
 or a negro, and might very naturally confuse their physio- 
 logical traits ; but a man of his knowledge and penetration 
 could not fail to know the difference between the position 
 and the character of the nation which built the Alhambra, 
 and that which furnished their stock in trade to the Eng- 
 lishmen, who, when he wrote Othello, were supplying the 
 
OTHELLO NOT A' NEGRO. 433 
 
 plantations in the West Indies with slaves, and soon after 
 his death introduced negro slavery into Virginia. In addi- 
 tion to this epithet, " thick lips," there are several allu- 
 sions to Othello, as having the visage of the devil, as 
 black, and as being, therefore, the very reverse of attractive 
 to a woman like Desdemona. But this proves nothing ; 
 for Shakespeare has applied these identical epithets to so 
 eminent and undeniable a Moor as the Prince of Morocco. 
 In the Merchant of Venice,, Act I. Sc. 2, Portia says, upon 
 the announcement of the royal Moor, " if he have the 
 condition of a saint and the complexion of a devil I har* 
 rather he would shrive me than wive me." He himseli 
 prays her, " Mislike me not for my complexion ; " and she, 
 when he has selected the wrong casket, says, " May all of 
 his complexion choose me so ; " and yet he was not jetty 
 
 k, like a negro, but tawny ; for the stage direction, in 
 Act II. Sc. 1, in the quartos, is Enter Morochus, a tawny 
 Moor, all in white. Plainly, then, the devilish visage, at- 
 tributed to Othello, and the assumed repulsiveness of his 
 color, makes him out, in Shakespeare's estimation, only a 
 Moor, and not even a very black Moor, at that. 
 
 But there is direct evidence that he was a Mauritariian, 
 and one of lofty lineage. lago, in his ribald shouting un- 
 der Brabantio's window in the first Scene of the play, calls 
 Othello "a Barbary horse ; " and the Moor himself, when 
 defending his conduct in regard to Desdemona (Act I. Sc. 
 2.) says : 
 
 " Tis yet to know, 
 
 Which, when I know that boasting is an honour, 
 I shall promulgate, I fetch my life and being . 
 From men of royal siege." 
 
 And in Act IV. Sc. 2, the following passage plainly points 
 out Mauritania as the native place of Othello, whither he 
 
 28 
 
434 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 was about to retire after a soldier's life, to spend with Des- 
 demonaj in repose, the mellow autumn of his days. 
 
 " lago. Sir, there is especial commission come from Venice, to depute 
 Cassio in Othello's place. 
 
 Rod. Is that true ? why, then Othello and Desdemona return again 
 to Venice. 
 
 lago. 0, no ; he goes into Mauritania, and takes away with him the 
 fair Desdemona, unless his abode be lingered here by some accident; 
 wherein none can be so determinate, as the removing of Cassio." 
 
 But, to return to the picture of the great Dusseldorf 
 artist, which has vitality and force enough to be made the 
 text for an essay upon the play, Hildebrandt ; s Othello has, 
 in addition to the Congo features, the negro gaudiness of 
 dress and extravagance of action. He is repulsive, and we 
 wish to see a solid wall built up between him and the love- 
 ly lady who looks upon him with such overflowing but per- 
 verted love. This Desdemona is thought by many, if not 
 by the majority, to be too womanly, too earnest, too passion- 
 ful, too splendid. Desdemona is a character which can 
 hardly be embodied by a painter with the certainty of winning 
 very general approval. Such is the interest she inspires, that 
 almost every imaginative mind has formed to itself its own 
 ideal of her, any deviation from which by an artist will be 
 deemed a blemish. But I must dissent from the opinion 
 entertained by many on this point, and defend the painter's 
 conception. I think that her character is misconceived by 
 the objectors. Because her father speaks of her " delicate 
 youth ; " calls her a " maiden never bold ; of spirit still 
 and quiet," and says that she was "so opposite to marriage 
 that she shunned the wealthy, curled dearlings of our na- 
 tion," some seem to think her a good little girl, who spoke 
 when spoken to, said ' sir/ washed the cups and saucers after 
 breakfast, and had serious thoughts of entering a convent. 
 
CHARACTER OF DESDEMONA. 435 
 
 They seem to forget that she is spoken of as of " high and 
 plenteous wit and invention," that on the very night of 
 her marriage, she speaks before the Senate boldly, though 
 modestly, to her father of the change in her relation, that 
 she says to the Duke, who asks her if she will go with 
 Othello, 
 
 "That I did love the Moor to live with him, 
 My downright violence and storm of fortunes 
 May trumpet to the world." 
 
 They forget that Cassio says she has " an inviting eye," 
 though "right modest/' and that she herself told Othello 
 not yet her declared lover that " she wished that heaven 
 had made her such a man," and bade him if he had a friend 
 who loved her, to " teach him how to tell his story, and 
 that would woo her." Is this indicative of a timorous girl ? 
 Is there not here calm self-reliance, deep emotion, and 
 an earnest nature ? And are these at all inconsistent with 
 youth, modesty, a quiet spirit and indifference to all suitors 
 save, one ? It seems to me that the careful observer would 
 look for these in the gentlest, most reserved of those who 
 have attained to the full development of a complete fem- 
 inine organization. Why, the very fact that Desdemona 
 gave her love, unasked, to a mature man, a famous captain, 
 one " rude in speech, and little blessed with the soft phrase 
 of peace," shows why she shunned "the wealthy, curled 
 clearlings." 
 
 Shakespeare's Desdemona is a girl of vivid imagination, 
 quiet self-reliance, much tenderness, and unbounded devo- 
 tion, who had attained to early womanhood without the 
 influence of a mother's counsel for we hear nowhere of 
 her mother. Being such a one, she becomes, as such women 
 ever do, " subdued to the very quality of her lord." She 
 shows herself, in her conduct to him, almost the very oppo- 
 
436 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 site of what she was to all others, and gives up for him her 
 station, her father's love, her happiness, and finally her 
 very life itself, almost without a question or a murmur. 
 
 But Hildebrandt's Desdemona is found too magnificent, 
 too stately, for her whom the " house affairs " would draw 
 from the company of her father and Othello. Surely this 
 objection is founded on a misconception. Desdemona's 
 house affairs were not affairs of pots and pans. In those 
 times, all ladies under queenly rank overlooked their house- 
 holds ; and Desdemona was the mistress of her father's 
 house ; for, as we have seen, her mother was dead, and 
 in superintending the establishment of a man of his 
 degree, she would find quite enough to occupy her, without 
 being called upon to soil the tips of her fingers, or hold up 
 the train of her robe. Desdemona, too magnificent ! She 
 who was the daughter of a Venetian magnifico, a Senator ! 
 who had the wife of a man of lago's rank for her \vaiting 
 woman ! a noble lady of that queenly city, of which Byron 
 says, * 
 
 " Her daughters had their dowers 
 From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East 
 Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers, 
 In purple was she robed, and of her feast 
 Monarchs partook and deemed their dignity increased ! " 
 
 Childe Harold, Canto IV. 2. 
 
 How could a painter make such a woman other than 
 magnificent ? There is no fault in Hildebrandt's concep- 
 tion, except that great, grinning blackamoor. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 1. 
 
 " 2 Gent. The chidden Billow seems to pelt the Clowdj 
 The wind-shak'd-Surge, with high and monstrous Maine 
 Seemes to cast -water on the burning Beare." 
 
OTHELLO. 437 
 
 Thus the authentic folio. The quarto of 1622 reads 
 " chiding billow/' which has been almost universally fol- 
 lowed by the editors, who also read "monstrous main." 
 But does it need argument to show the higher poetry of 
 "the chidden billow/' and its apposition with "the wind- 
 shaked surge?" And what is a "high and monstrous 
 main ? " Is it not plain that Shakespeare's idea was iden- 
 tically the same with Byron's ? 
 
 "For I was, as it were, a child of thee, 
 And trusted to thy billows far and near, 
 And laid my hand upon thy mane as I do here." 
 
 Childe Harold, Canto IV. 184. 
 
 This expression of Byron's is no unconscious plagiarism ; for 
 at the time when it was written there was no edition of 
 Shakespeare in which the word was not printed main. 
 
 " Gas. The gntter'd rocks, and congregated sands, 
 Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel." 
 
 That " ensteep'd " is a misprint, there cannot be a 
 doubt : Mr. Knight's explanation that the rocks were 
 "steeped in the water" like tea, is perhaps his most un- 
 fortunate effort at sustaining the manifest mistakes of the 
 first folio. The quarto of 1622 reads enscerp'd, "of which/' 
 says Mr. Steevens, "every reader may make what he 
 pleases." Surely it requires no very great ingenuity to 
 discover that " enscerp'd " was a misprint for enscarp'd. 
 The scarp of a fortification is the shelving slope on that 
 side next the ditch. It was used in that sense in Shake- 
 speare's day ; and he could not have chosen a better word 
 to picture to us the position and appearance of " the gut- 
 
438 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 ter'd rocks and congregated sands " that " clog the guilt- 
 less keel." 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 "lago. Our general cast us thus early for the love of his Desdemona." 
 
 Ac. 
 
 Read the dialogue which follows this, and mark the 
 open and respectful admiration of Cassio for Desdemona. 
 The gross remarks of lago fail to draw any thing from him 
 which either Othello or Desdemona would be unwilling to 
 hear. An exquisite touch of Shakespeare's genius, thus to 
 show lago's brutality, Cassio's gentlemanly propriety of 
 thought and speech, and by the effect of her conduct on 
 Cassio Desdemona' s modesty, with all her warmth of dis- 
 position. Cassio, too (Act III. Sc. 1), says, 
 
 "My suit to her 
 
 Is that she will to virtuous Desdemona 
 Procure me some access." 
 
 He, however, neglects to call her " very virtuous/'' Was 
 that because she was less pure than Isabella ? 
 
 Enter Othello and Attendants. 
 
 " Oth. What is the matter here ? 
 
 Mon. I bleed still, I am hurt to the death ; he dies. 
 
 Oth. Hold, for your lives. 
 
 lago. Hold, hold, lieutenant, sir, Montano, gentlemen, 
 [ave you forgot 'all sense of place and duty ? 
 [old, hold ! the general speaks to you ; hold, for shame ! 
 
 Oth. Why, how now, ho ! from whence ariseth this ? 
 re we turn'd Turks ? " 
 
OTHELLO. 439 
 
 This natural and dignified entrance of Othello is not 
 seen on the stage. There, his first speech and those follow- 
 ing by Montana and lago are cut out, in order that the 
 Moor may rush in with a stride and a glare, and bellow 
 forth " Hold for your lives ! Why, how now, ho ! " And 
 this is called ' making a point !' 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 1. 
 
 " Clown. Why, masters, have your instruments been in Naples, that 
 they speak i' the nose thus ? " 
 
 Is not this knowledge of a minute provincial peculiarity 
 an evidence that Shakespeare knew more of Italy than by 
 books or hearsay ? Apropos, it is strange that Mr. Collier's 
 folio corrector did not change " speak " to squeak. 
 
 SCENE 3. 
 
 " lago. I do beseech you, 
 
 Though I, perchance, am vicious in my guess, 
 As, I confess, it it my nature's plague 
 To spy into abuses : and, oft, my jealousy 
 Shapes faults that are not, I entreat you, then, 
 From one that so imperfectly conjects, 
 You'd take no notice ; nor build yourself a trouble 
 Out of his scattering and unsure observance : " 
 
 Thus this passage stands befogged, and with a text 
 patched up from quarto and folio, in all editions, except 
 Mr. Knight's. He retains the text of the folio, which is : 
 
 " I do beseech you, 
 Though I, perchance, am vicious in my guess 
 
440 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 (As I confess it is my nature's plague 
 To spy into abuses, and of my jealousy 
 Shapes faults that are not) that your wisdom 
 From one that so imperfectly conceits 
 Would take no notice," <fcc. 
 
 This is perfectly clear and connected, with the exception of 
 one typographical error " Shapes " for shape. lago says 
 that it was his nature's plague, to spy into abuses, and of 
 his jealousy to shape faults that are not. There is no more 
 common error in actors and compositors than to make a 
 verb agree with the noun next preceding it, regardless of 
 its antecedent nominative. Kead : 
 
 " (As I confess it is my nature's plague 
 To spy into abuses, and x>f my jealousy 
 Shape faults that are not)." 
 
 " Emilia. My wayward husband hath a hundred times 
 Wodd me to steal it." 
 
 Again, 
 
 "Emil. What handkerchief? 
 Why, that the Moor first gave to Desdemona ; 
 That which so often you did bid me steal." 
 
 This shows either that quite a long time passes between 
 the first and third Acts, because Emilia did not attend 
 on Desdemona until after the first Act, or else that the 
 poet was forgetful, or rather irrespective, of time when a 
 train of circumstances was to be strongly marked. 
 
OTHELLO. 441 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Oth. A fixed figure for the time of scorne. 
 To point his slo'.v unmoving finger at." 
 
 Few passages have provoked more comment than this, 
 which appears thus in the quarto. In the folio it stands : 
 
 "The fixed Figure for the time of Scorne 
 To point his slow, and mouing finger at." 
 
 Whatever difficulty the passage may present in other 
 respects, I have not yet lost my astonishment on my first 
 perusal of the notes upon it, at finding that there was any one 
 who could hesitate a moment as to the meaning of the word 
 'unmoving/' Some have chosen the reading of the folio 
 " and moving/' on the ground that if the finger of scorn 
 be " slow," it must move, and that therefore " unmoving " 
 is an incongruous epithet ! But surely the finger of scorn 
 is " unmoving," because it does not move/rom its object, 
 but points at him fixedly and relentlessly. To say that a 
 thing is " slow" and then toacfc?that it moves, is certainly 
 worthy only of an idiot. 
 
 Kowe read "the hand of scorn ; " but in the first place 
 this is needless, and in the next it deteriorates the passage 
 to make the hand of scorn point his finger. If any change 
 from the reading of the quarto be needed, that proposed by 
 Mr. Hunter, is most simple, most natural, and most con- 
 sistent with the sense of the passage. He supposes that 
 " the particles 'for' and c of have changed places, and 
 would read, 
 
 "The fixed figure o/the time for Scorn," &c. 
 
 But though this is the best change yet proposed, it has, on 
 
442 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 account of the use of the text of the folio evidently the 
 most corrupted the fault of making Othello suppose him- 
 self the only figure to be scorned. This is not probable ; 
 but it is very natural that he should speak of himself as a 
 fixed figure to be pointed at by scorn. Mr. Hunter's change 
 made in the text of the quarto gives us the passage in a 
 form in which it at least is probable that it came from 
 Shakespeare's pen : 
 
 "but, alas! to make me 
 A fixed figure of the time, for Scorn 
 To point his slow, unmoving finger at." 
 
 " Oth. Like to the Pontick sea, 
 
 Whose icy current and compulsive course 
 Ne'er keeps retiring ebb, but keeps due on," <fcc. 
 
 Pope changed " keeps/' which is evidently not the au- 
 thor's word, to feels, which, as Mr. Knight says, " does 
 not seem to be the right word." Would not, 
 
 Ne'er knows retiring ebb, but keeps due on," 
 
 give the author's meaning better ? and with ' keeps ' in the 
 last part of the line would not the mistake of ' knows ' for 
 the same word be natural with a compositor of that day ? 
 Steevens would, with Pope, omit this noble passage as 
 " an unnatural excursion," adding to Pope's want of taste, 
 a sneer at Shakespeare for an immediate use of recently 
 acquired knowledge. Steevens observes that Shakespeare 
 found the fact here alluded to, in Holland's translation of 
 Pliny's Natural History, published 1601, and that he " made 
 a display " of it " as soon as opportunity offered." How nar- 
 
OTHELLO. 443 
 
 row minded ! to say nothing of its ill nature. What mat- 
 ter when Shakespeare learned the fact ? If he read it in 
 Pliny on one day and wrote this passage the next, so much 
 the greater poet he, who could so soon convert a dry fact 
 by its mere passage through his mind, into the highest 
 poetry. It is not the possession of knowledge, but the use 
 of it, which marks the master mind. 
 
 [The above reading was suggested by me to a few fellow 
 students of Shakespeare in the winter of 1851. It has 
 since been brought to light on the margins of Mr. Collier's 
 folio.] 
 
 ACT V. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Oth. one whose hand, 
 
 Like the base Jiidean, threw a pearl away, 
 Richer than all his tribe." 
 
 The folio has " Iwdean," the quarto " Lid tan ; " and as 
 the typographical error, in whichsoever copy it may be, is 
 very slight, and might easily occur in a well printed book 
 nowadays, there is a very fair question as to which read- 
 ing should be adopted. There appears to me not a doubt 
 that the folio is right, and that Othello is made by Shake- 
 speare to allude to the murder of Mariamne by Herod, the 
 story of which was well known to the public of that 
 day, and was made the subject of a tragedy by Lady 
 Elizabeth Carew, which was published in 1613. The 
 question is discussed at much length in the Variorum Edi- 
 tion. The preponderance, both of arguments and dispu- 
 tants, is largely in favor of " Judean." But this subject 
 has been so ably handled by the Hon. George Lunt, that 
 I cannot do better than give my readers the benefit of his 
 argument, which merits preservation in a less ephemeral 
 form than that in which it was first given to the public. 
 
444 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " Of all the old commentators there actually appears to be 
 nobody left, but Mr. Boswell, to favor the Indian claim ! To such 
 authority his adherents are heartily welcome. But to show the 
 value of his criticism, he says that the word tribe (which, as Ma- 
 lone truly remarks, is in favor of the reading, in the text, as ap- 
 plicable more especially to the Jewish nation) is ' constantly 
 used, at this day, in speaking of the Indians ! ' Unluckily, how- 
 ever, it was so used, in his day, as applicable particularly to the 
 North American Indians, who never had any pearls to throw 
 away, and of whom Shakespeare and his contemporaries could 
 have known little or nothing. And we are not aware that the 
 word ' tribe ' had been then, or is now, familiarly applied to the 
 people of the East Indies, to whom the allusion must, of course, 
 have been made, if at all. 
 
 <; But apart from this weight of testimony from the older com- 
 mentators, we are of those who think there is quite enough in tl 
 expression itself to make it perfectly clear how Shakespeare wrot 
 it. The expression is one of generalization, demanding, as must 
 be the case in all good poetry, the ready sympathy and under- 
 standing of the reader. Whether he understand the particuh 
 allusion or not, at least, it should be of that character that In 
 might, or ought to have known it ; and not drawn from a source 
 so remote as to be out of his reach, or so insignificant as to 
 beneath his notice. On this ground, we are willing to set up an^ 
 possible Judean against any Indian that can be imagined. 
 
 " But to pursue the question of internal evidence somewhat 
 further, we are of the opinion that there is much in the pas* 
 itself to aid us in forming a right conclusion. In the first ph 
 the word tribe, as we remarked above, is one peculiarly appi 
 priate to the Jewish people, so constantly used, in his time, as ii 
 ours, and so familiarly applied by Shakespeare ; as, for instance, 
 in the mouth of Shylock : 
 
 'Cursed be my tribe, 
 If I forgive him.' 
 
 ' Jubal, a wealthy Hebrew of my tribe.' 
 Tor sufferance is the badge of all our tribe,' &c. 
 
OTHELLO. 445 
 
 " The epithet ' base ' affords us also a very fair opportunity 
 of speculation on this subject. This term, in the times of Shake- 
 speare and those long antecedent and subsequent, would be held 
 peculiarly descriptive of the Jewish people. The word, in the 
 common understanding, would unquestionably fit any Jew and 
 all Jews. So far from there being any propriety, there would 
 have been a manifest impropriety in using the epithet, as denot- 
 ing the characteristics, so far as understood, of East Indians in 
 general. Then, as to any special story of an individual Indian 
 throwing ' a pearl away,' and of such a feat being popularly 
 known, or known at all, where is it? 
 
 " We believe, therefore, that we must come back to the general 
 faith on this point, that the allusion is to the tragic story of He- 
 rod and Mariamne. Mr. Steevens objects to this theory, on the 
 ground that it would not constitute a good poetical figure, and 
 would be, in fact, unworthy of Shakespeare, to make Othello com- 
 pare his own desperate act with another act resembling it in es- 
 sential particulars. That as, for instance, it would be no figure 
 to say ' crystal resembles crystal ' so, for Othello to liken this 
 his murder of Desdemona to the murder of Mariamne by Herod, 
 would be equally no figure, since it would be comparing transac- 
 tions in themselves essentially identical. The mistake of Stee- 
 vens will be apparent, by considering that Shakespeare makes no 
 comparison in any such sense. He introduces a niedius termi- 
 nus. He makes Othello say, that he, in the one case, as Herod 
 in the other, not killed his wife, Jbut, threw a pearl away. 
 And this metaphorical comparison of the two acts, by likening 
 them to a third, which is itself figurative, vindicates, as it consti- 
 tutes, the propriety of the similitude. As, in the example above 
 cited, the figure would be complete to say, 
 
 Like mine, beneath the sun's diffusive rays, 
 Your crystal half reflects the diamond's blaze. 
 
 " In order, therefore, to give some plausible account of the al- 
 lusion, Steevens relates, and, as some uncharitably assert, invents 
 a story of a Jew, who, not able being to obtain the price he 
 claimed for a certain precious pearl, hurled it into the sea. But 
 
446 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 a difficulty would here arise as to the propriety of applying the 
 epithet ' base ' to the supposed Jew, on account of this transac- 
 tion. The pearl was apparently his own, to dispose of as he saw 
 fit ; and, viewing it in one light, the act would seem rather to 
 raise him above the merely mercenary spirit popularly attributed 
 to his race. This conduct might be extravagant and desperate ; 
 but no more base than the act of Cleopatra, in swallowing the 
 pearl dissolved at her table ; or than the destruction of her books, 
 by the Sibyl, in the presence of Tarquinius Priscus ; and we never 
 heard the epithet used in connection with her very extraordinary 
 conduct. 
 
 " But we would modestly suggest what may, perhaps, tend to 
 throw light upon this point, and which seems hitherto to have 
 escaped notice, that the word ' Judean ' in. reality means some- 
 thing more than Jew. A Judean is, in fact, an inhabitant of 
 Judea ; and thus, in correspondence with Shakespeare's common 
 mode of expression, the word might naturally, and with more 
 force would refer to Herod, King of Judea, as the Judean, par 
 excellence, as representing the State." 
 
 Thus far Mr. Lunt ; and in addition to his remarks I 
 will only point out, what appears to have escaped the ob- 
 servation of all who have written upon this passage, that 
 the very phraseology implies, absolutely requires, an allu- 
 sion to a particular story. The words are all particular and 
 definite. Mr. Boswell quotes a passage from Habington, 
 in which " the unskilfull Indian," " 'mong the waves scat- 
 ters " bright gems ; and another from Howard, in which 
 "Indians" "cast away" a pearl; and these passages the 
 Rev. Mr. Dyce (Remarks, &c. p. 244) thinks " prove decid- 
 edly that Othello alludes to no particular story, but to " the 
 Indian, as generally described." To Mr. Boswell's quota- 
 tions, he adds the following, from Drayton's Legend of Ma- 
 tilda : 
 
 "The wretched Indian spumes the golden Ore." 
 
OTHELLO. 447 
 
 But in this, as in the others, not only is the Indian " gen- 
 erally described/' but the act. No specific deed is referred 
 to ; there is a mere allusion to a characteristic of the In- 
 dian. Not so in Othello's speech. In that, a particular per- 
 son and a particular act must be alluded to, because Othello 
 likens himself not to the Indian who throws a pearl away, 
 but to " the base Jiidean " who " threw a pearl away richer 
 than all his tribe." The reference is to some particular story, 
 specific and unmistakable ; and as the American Indians, 
 who alone had tribes, had no pearls, and as the story of the 
 base Judean, Herod, who says of Mariamne, in the old play, 
 
 "I had but one inestimable jewel 
 Yet I in suddaine choler cast it downe 
 And dasht it all to pieces," 
 
 as this story had marked affinities with Othello's position, 
 and was well known to Shakespeare's public, can there be 
 a shadow of a doubt that it was the story referred to, and 
 that we should not disturb the reading of the authentic 
 folio ? 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 5. 
 
 "Alex. So he nodded, 
 
 And soberly did mount an Arine-gaunt Steede, 
 Who neigh'd so hye, that what I would haue spoken 
 "Was beastly dtimbe by him." 
 
 Thus the text of the original folio, with an evident error 
 in "armegaunt." This has been changed to termagaunt, 
 the most common reading arm-girt, arrogant, and 
 war-gaunt. Of all these, arm-girt, proposed by Hanmer, 
 seems to me the most suitable word, by far. But is it not 
 possible that the compositor made a transposition of the 
 first two letters, and adding the very easy mistake of g 
 for g, printed "armegaunt" for rampaunt? This sorts 
 well with what Alexis says of the high neighing of the 
 horse. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 2. 
 
 " Eno. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, 
 So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes, 
 And made their bends adornings: at the helm 
 A teeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle 
 Swells with the touches of those flower-soft hands, 
 That rarely frame the office." 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 449 
 
 There is undeniable obscurity in, 
 
 " tended her i' the eyes, 
 And made their bends adornings ; " 
 
 and no attempt to dissipate it has been successful, to my 
 apprehension. To interpret "tended her i' the eyes" 
 c waited upon her in her sight,' is to attribute a deplorably 
 feeble use of language to Shakespeare in one of his finest 
 descriptive passages ; and to suppose, with Johnson and 
 Steevens, that it means c discovered her will by her eyes/ 
 is not much better. Monck Mason would read, 
 
 "So many mermaids, tended her i' the guise" 
 
 of mermaids, of course ; and would construe "their bends " 
 to mean the curves of their tails, which they managed so 
 gracefully as to make them ornamental ! Mr. Mason was 
 not jesting ; and neither am I, in dissenting from this cau- 
 dal commentary, which, however, I commend to the notice 
 of Mr. Barnum's puff inditer, on occasion of the next arrival 
 from the Fejee Islands. 
 
 Warburton would read, 
 
 "And make their bends adorings." 
 
 But were Cleopatra's attendants under any necessity to 
 bend at all, except in obeisance to her, that they should 
 " make their bends adorings ? " 
 
 These two lines are doubtless corrupted, and hopelessly. 
 
 As to the remainder of the passage, Mr. Collier asks, 
 :c Why or how, was the silken tackle to ( swell with the 
 touches of flower-soft hands ? ' " and adds that " we ought 
 undoubtedly, with the old corrector [of his folio of 1632], 
 to amend the text to, 
 
 29 
 
450 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " ' Smell with the touches of those flower-soft hands.'." 
 
 Such a typographical error would be easily made, if it be 
 necessary to suppose any error at all. But, if Mr. Collier 
 must be literal, does he not know that cordage will swell 
 with handling ? And besides, though it may be a very 
 pretty compliment to suppose that the tackle would " smell" 
 (sweetly, of course) with the touches of the hands of Cleo- 
 patra's ladies, the word will thrust upon me the profoundly 
 true observation, Mulier rect$ olet ubi nihil olet, which I 
 shall never forget having found in Burton's Anatomy of 
 Melancholy, under the head of Artificial Allurements of 
 Love; but what author furnished it, I cannot say ; which, 
 by the way, is the confession that many a better scholar 
 must make with regard to the larger number of the quota- 
 tions in that wise, quaint, most learned, and fantastic book. 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 6. 
 
 " Eno. O Antony, 
 
 Thou mine of bounty, how woulds't thou have paid 
 My better service, when my turpitude 
 Thou dost so crown with gold ! This blows my heart" 
 
 No notice is taken by the editors of Jackson's emenda- 
 tion, " This lows my heart ; " but can there be a question 
 as to its necessity ? 
 
 SCENE 8. 
 
 " Ant. We have beat him to his camp : Run one before 
 And let the queen know of our guests." 
 
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 451 
 
 Antony brought no guests. Mr. Collier's folio is plainly 
 correct in reading, 
 
 " And let the queen know of our gests" [i. e. exploits]. 
 
 ACT V. SCENE 3. 
 
 " Dol Would I might never 
 
 Oretake pursu'de successe, but I do feele 
 By the rebound of yours, a greefe that suites 
 My very heart at roote." 
 
 Thus the original text, in which " suites " is an evident 
 and a very easy misprint for smites, which was suggested by 
 Mr. Barren Field, and to which it is changed in Mr. Collier's 
 folio. It had been altered to shoots, which appears in most 
 editions ; but this violent change from the original text 
 must yield to a word which is not only far better, but which 
 requires the alteration of but a single letter in the text of 
 the authentic folio. 
 
CYMBELINE. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 2. 
 
 This Scene introduces us to the finest female creation 
 of Shakespeare's genius, that paragon of perfect womanhood 
 Imogen. Having observed, even among those of finer per- 
 ceptions, a seeming incomplete appreciation of this noblest 
 and loveliest character in the world of fiction, I intended 
 to attempt an expression of my own ; but having read 
 Mrs. Jameson's Characteristics of Women since the first 
 half of this volume was stereotyped, I gladly acknowledge 
 that that accomplished lady has left no one an excuse for 
 not confessing Imogen the ideal woman, and me no op- 
 portunity to become her champion. There is hardly a trait 
 of the character, however delicate, which Mrs. Jameson has 
 not appreciated, and placed in such a light, that those who 
 need such guidance will be led to see and feel all the beau- 
 ty of the picture, and those who do not, will yet follow 
 with sympathetic pleasure the analysis which her congenial 
 hand has effected with such mingled reverence, grace, and 
 skill. Upon two or three minor points, however, I will here 
 express a difference of opinion with Mrs. Jameson, and will 
 allow as many short paragraphs upon different passages re- 
 
CHARACTER OF IMOGEN. 453 
 
 ferring to Imogen, written years ago, to remain uncancelled 
 in my notes. 
 
 Mrs. Jameson thus expresses, in a single paragraph, with 
 equal exactness and delicacy, her view of the outline of the 
 character of Imogen. 
 
 11 To conceive her aright, we must take some peculiarities 
 from many characters, and so mingle them, that, like the combi 
 nation of hues in a sunbeam, the effect shall he as one to the eye. 
 We must imagine something of the romantic enthusiasm of JK 
 liet, of the truth and constancy of Helen, of the dignity and pu 
 rity of Isabel, of the tender sweetness of Viola, of the self posses 
 sion and intellect of Portia, combined together so equally and 
 harmoniously, that we scarcely say that one predominates over 
 the other. But Imogen is less imaginative than Juliet, less spir- 
 ited and intellectual than Portia, less serious than Helen and 
 Isabel : her dignity is not so imposing as that of Hermione, it 
 stands more on the defensive : her submission, though entire, is 
 not so passive as that of Desdemona, and thus while she re- 
 sembles each individual, she stands wholly distinct from all." 
 
 This passage, whether intentionally or not on the part 
 of the author, is slightly apologetic in its tone regarding 
 Imogen, in so far as it sets forth other characters as excel- 
 ling her in some one point, although inferior to her in many 
 others. But in this, her fair apologizing eulogist has, un- 
 consciously, perhaps, only the more clearly established the 
 great merit of Imogen's character, its perfect self poise 
 and symmetry. It is only the extravagant romance of Juliet, 
 the excess of her enthusiasm, which are wanting in Imogen- 
 it is but the somewhat unfeminine preponderance of intel- 
 lect in Portia, the austerity of Isabella's seriousness, and 
 the tameness of Desdemona' s submission which she lacks ; 
 for neither all the " truth and constancy of Helen " nor all 
 " the tender sweetness of Viola " are denied to her by Mrs. 
 Jameson, or could be. Her dignity is not so imposing as 
 
454 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 that of Hermione, for the very good reason, that while Imo- 
 gen is a bride in the first flush of perfected womanhood, Her- 
 mione is, when The Winter's Tale opens, the mother of a boy 
 some ten years old at least. One is but a princess, while the 
 other is not only a matron and a mother, but a Queen. As to 
 such dignity and purity as that of Isabella, I am willing to be- 
 lieve that no one who has thoroughly studied that character 
 will think the lack of any of its traits a loss to Imogen. Mrs. 
 Jameson's only error of moment is in supposing that Imogen 
 had something of the " dignity and purity of Isabel/' She 
 needed them not : she could not have them : the two charac- 
 ters have not a single point of contact. The married Imogen's 
 instinctive chastity is as spotless as Isabella's premeditated 
 vestalism, and is without the mental taint of deliberation. 
 One, like the white robes seen by Christiana on the De- 
 lectable Mountains, is protected from impurity by an in- 
 herent virtue ; the other, like a virgin fortress, is secured 
 against assault by its forbidding frown and its terrible pow- 
 ers of resistance. And I may here appropriately point out, 
 that as Mrs. Jameson's descriptive analysis of the character 
 of Imogen is at once the most just, discriminating, and elo- 
 quent of all her efforts, so her attempt to persuade us into 
 respect and regard for Isabella is as feeble and uninterest- 
 ing as the product of her pen could be. She is evidently do- 
 ing taskwork. Betrayed for once into a misapprehension 
 of Shakespeare's design, she felt obliged to make out Isa- 
 bella a model of intelligence, dignity and purity. But even 
 admitting the truth of that which she has undertaken to 
 demonstrate, it must be confessed that the work is some- 
 what lamely done, and to her eternal honor among men, 
 and true women too, it is so. She who had such a sympa- 
 thetic appreciation of Cordelia, Rosalind, Miranda, Por- 
 tia, Viola, and above all of Imogen, could not without 
 constraint attempt the eulogy of Isabella. No ; Imogen 
 
CHARACTER OF IMOGEN. 455 
 
 lacks nothing of perfect womanhood, in intellect, in grace, in 
 tenderness, in passion, in dignity, or in devotion ; but while 
 other women, from a deficiency in some of these traits, or 
 an excess in one, are distinguished by that which prepon- 
 derates, she is " enthroned and sphered " by the possession 
 and perfect balance of them all ; and yet she least of all of 
 Shakespeare's women, if any can be least, is a made-up 
 character. She manifests all her traits with a charm pecu- 
 liar to herself. Mrs. Jameson places her among the Char- 
 acters of the Affections. This is right ; but only right, 
 because in perfect womanhood the affections sway the in- 
 tellect. 
 
 Upon one other point Mrs. Jameson is somewhat at fault ; 
 but for that her sex alone is accountable. She very justly 
 remarks that Imogen is " a beauty ; " and the fact is that 
 upon not another of his women has Shakespeare bestowed 
 such wealth of loveliness as upon this one. He brings her 
 charms before us in every way ; by the effect which they 
 produce upon those around her, by the consciousness which 
 we continually have of surpassing beauty in her presence, 
 and by such particularity of description as he vouchsafes to 
 no other of his heroines. But Mrs. Jameson speaks of her 
 " delicacy and even fragility of person." No man would 
 have formed such a conception of this embodiment of ideal 
 womanhood. Mrs. Jameson had a Viola in her mind's eye. 
 Imogen had not the heroic stature and the grand outlines 
 of Hermione ; but men see her standing shoulder high by 
 the noble figure of Leonatus, in that bewildering plenitude 
 of loveliness which firm health alone can give. 
 
 SCENE 5. 
 
 "loch. Ay, and the approbation of those that weep this lamentable 
 divorce under her colors, are wonderfully to extend him ; be it but to for- 
 
456 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 tify her judgment, which, else, an easy battery might lay flat, for taking 
 a beggar without more quality." 
 
 " Without more quality" than what ? This is not the 
 text of the original, which gives "without lesse quality." 
 The change was made by Kowe, who has been followed in 
 nearly all the editions since his day. The original involves a 
 grammatical contradiction which, although it occurs else- 
 where in Shakespeare's works, should not be needlessly as- 
 sumed to be the correct text. lachimo means, and should 
 grammatically say, " for taking a beggar with less quality." 
 But is it not probable that Shakespeare wrote " without this 
 quality ? " i. e., 'the partisans of Imogen wonderfully ex- 
 tend [magnify] the good qualities of Posthumus, if it be 
 but to sustain her judgment, which else might be easily 
 impeached for taking a beggar who had not this quality 
 which they attribute to him, and which in a measure com- 
 pensates for his want of rank and position/ 
 
 " Post. I will wage against your gold, gold to it: my ring I hold as 
 dear as my finger: 'tis part of it. 
 
 loch. You are a friend, and therein the wiser," <fcc. 
 
 " You are a friend " has no meaning consistent with 
 the context ; and yet it has been retained in all the cur- 
 rent editions, in spite of a palpable typographical error dis- 
 covered by Warburton, and pointed out and corrected by 
 Theobald on his suggestion : 
 
 " You are afraid, and therein the wiser." 
 
 Dr. Johnson tried to make his readers believe that lachimo 
 told Postftumus, " You are a friend to the lady," meaning 
 ' her lover ; ; but Posthumus has but just said, " I profess 
 
CYMBELINE. 457 
 
 myself her adorer, not her friend ; " and besides, lachimo 
 would have said " You are her friend." The rest of lach- 
 imo's speech, however, entirely sustains Warburton's cor- 
 rection. 
 
 ' You are afraid, and therein the wiser. If you buy ladies' flesh at a 
 million the dram, you cannot preserve it from tainting : but I see that you 
 have some religion in you, that you fear." 
 
 SCENE 7. 
 
 " lack. Should he make me 
 
 Live, like Diana's priest, between cold sheets ? " 
 
 Should not we read, 
 
 'Should he make you?" 
 
 What power had Posthumus over the conduct of lach- 
 imo ? And besides, the latter is drawing a contrast between 
 the conduct of Imogen and her husband, with the hope 
 to induce the former to be unchaste. What had lachimo' s 
 continence to do with his argument ? Nothing. He ur- 
 ges the alleged conduct of Posthumus as an excuse for the 
 crime to which he would tempt Imogen. And again, 
 Diana's priests were always women. 
 
 "loch. I dedicate myself to your sweet pleasure : 
 More noble than that runagate to your bed ; 
 And will continue fast to your affection, 
 Still close as sure. 
 
 Lno. What ho, Pisanio ! 
 
 lack. Let me my service tender on your lips. 
 
 Imo. Away ! I do condemn mine ears that have 
 So long attended thee." 
 
458 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 The exquisite purity, the firm, undallying chastity of 
 Imogen are indicated with unsurpassable tact and skill in 
 this Scene, and by her first exclamation. She is slow to 
 understand lachimo; but the moment he makes his pro- 
 position plainly, without an instant's delay, before a word 
 of anger or surprise passes her lips, she calls for the faithful 
 servant of her lord, to remove him who has insulted her and 
 his friend's honor. Then her indignation bursts from her ; 
 but again and again she interrupts its flow with " What 
 ho, Pisanio ! " She holds no question with him who made 
 such a proposition to her : she enters into no dispute of 
 why or wherefore, draws no contrast herself between her 
 truth and her husband's falsehood : she seeks nothing but 
 the instantaneous removal of a man who has dared to at- 
 tempt her chastity. Not only does she refuse all consider- 
 ation of the right or wrong of his proposition, all going into 
 the metaphysics of the question, but the mere proposal 
 changes, on the moment, all previous relations between her 
 and the proposer, although they were established by her 
 husband himself. It is not until her pure soul, as quick 
 to believe the good as it was slow to imagine ill, is quieted 
 by the entire withdrawal of lachimo's advances, and the 
 assignment of a comprehensible, though not excusable rea- 
 son for them, that she ceases to call for him who is in some 
 sort the representative of her husband. Chateau qui parle 
 etfemme qui ecoute va se rendre. 
 
 An exquisite touch of the master's hand occurs in a 
 single pronoun in the succeeding speech of Imogen. Born 
 a princess, she has given herself to Posthumus, a nameless 
 man, as freely as if she were a peasant's daughter ; and she 
 is remarkable, with all her dignity, for her unassuming de- 
 portment ; but the insult of lachimo stings her into pride, 
 and for the first and only time, she takes her state, and 
 speaks of herself in the plural number. She says, " to ex- 
 
CYMBELINE. 459 
 
 pound his mind," not to me, but " to us." Mrs.sJameson's 
 delicate perception, doubtless saw this, as well as the con- 
 strained brevity of Imogen's replies even after she has ad- 
 mitted the excuses of lachimo. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 3. 
 
 "Imo. Profane fellow ! 
 
 Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more, 
 But what thou art, besides, thou wert too base 
 To be his groom : thou wert dignified enough, 
 Even to the point of envy, if 'twere made 
 Comparative for your virtues, to be styl'd 
 The under-hangman of his kingdom ; and hated 
 For being preferr'd so well." 
 
 Imogen's exalted respect and admiration for PostJiumus 
 appear in this dialogue, quite as much as her contempt 
 of Cloten, perhaps rather more. See also in the first part 
 of this interview, her tenderness of the feelings of even such 
 a selfish brute as this lover : 
 
 " But that you say I yield, being silent, 
 I would not speak. I pray you spare me ; i'faith, 
 I shall unfold equal discourtesy 
 To your best kindness : one of your great knowing 
 Should learn, being taught, forbearance.'' 
 
 . 
 
 It is only after the pertinacity of Cloten has s^own itself 
 deaf to courteous phrase, and has ventured upon low abuse 
 of her heart's lord, that she opens upon her long loathed 
 suitor the floodgates of her pent up scorn and indignation. 
 
460 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 1. 
 
 Clo. and as I said, there is no more such Caesars : other of them 
 may have crooked noses ; but to owe such straight arms, none." 
 
 Cloten is not a fool, but a shrewd, selfish lout. His 
 ridiculous mental point is his conceit of himself personally 
 and of his station ; otherwise he has a good deal of what 
 is called mother wit, which shows itself at various times 
 during the play in such whimsical and pregnant remarks as 
 this. 
 
 " Cym. Cesar's Ambition, 
 
 "Which swell'd so much, that it did almost stretch 
 The sides o' this World, against all colour heere, 
 Did put the yoak vpon's ; which to shake off 
 Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon 
 Our selues to be, we do. Say then to Ccesar," <fcc. 
 
 Thus this passage stands in the original. The evident 
 corrruption is thus corrected in all modern copies : 
 
 " which to shake off 
 
 Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon 
 Ourselves to be. We do say then to Caesar," <fec. 
 
 But Mr. Collier's folio gives the passage thus : 
 
 " Cym. which to shake off 
 
 Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon 
 Ourselves to be. 
 
 Clo. We do. 
 
 Cym. Say then to Ccesar," <fec. 
 
CYMBELINE. 46 1 
 
 There cannot be a doubt that this is the proper distribu- 
 tion of the text. It should be borne in mind that Cloten 
 accompanies the remarks of Cymbeline with a sententious 
 running commentary throughout the Scene. 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 " Imo. I false? Thy conscience witness: lachimo, 
 Thou didst accuse him of incontinency ; 
 Thou then look'dst like a villain ; now, methinks, 
 Thy favour's good enough. Some jay of Italy, 
 Whose mother was her painting, hath betrayed him: 
 Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion; 
 And, for I am richer than to hang by the walls, 
 I must be ripped; to pieces with me! " 
 
 The famous correction " Who smothers her with paint- 
 ing," for " Whose mother was her painting," was considered 
 in detail in the examination of Mr. Collier's folio. It is 
 the most striking and plausible of all the inadmissible 
 changes proposed by Mr. Collier upon the basis of the correc- 
 tions in that volume. To what has already been said, I will 
 add a remark which will apply not only to this proposed read- 
 ing, but to all arbitrary emendations, that is, to use Ma- 
 lone's words again, to " all emendations not authorized by 
 authentic copies printed or manuscript," which is, that 
 even granting, for the sake of argument, that the proposed 
 reading is better than that which is in the original folio, it 
 cannot be received. It is the function of no man to rewrite 
 Shakespeare, even to improve him. Our object is to arrive 
 at what he wrote, not what, in our opinion, he should have 
 written. 
 
 As to what he did write, we must take the best evidence, 
 which is the authorized folio, when the text of that is not 
 
462 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 made incomprehensible or inconsistent by the accidents of 
 the printing-office. It will not do to say that if a suggest- 
 ed change be for the better, it must be accepted, because 
 Shakespeare was sure to choose the most beautiful and 
 forcible expression ; for this, it will be seen, puts it in the 
 power of every critic, every reader in fact, to decide what 
 is the most beautiful and forcible. 
 
 My unwillingness, therefore, to accept the new reading, 
 is entirely irrespective of the comparative merits of the new 
 and the old. The original, that text which was published by 
 Shakespeare's friends, fellow-actors, and business partners, 
 gives us a reading which is comprehensible, and which is not 
 in its character at variance with the phraseology or tone of 
 thought of Shakespeare's acknowledged works, or with the 
 language and customs of his time ; and we are bound to 
 receive it j for we are seeking for Shakespeare's text, not 
 for something better. Were " Who smothers her with 
 painting," the text of the first folio, and had Theobald, Ma- 
 lone, and Coleridge, with Mr. Collier, Mr. Halliwell, and 
 Mr. Dyce at their backs, advocated " Whose mother was 
 her painting," the very reading which I now claim should 
 not be changed, I should battle just as stoutly for that 
 which I now oppose ; and so would all true, docile, and 
 humble lovers and students of Shakespeare. 
 
 Mr. Kichardson, in his Essays on some of Shakespeare's 
 Dramatic Characters, gives an explanation of this passage 
 which probably but few of my readers have seen, and which 
 appears to me to be entirely satisfactory. 
 
 " The jay of Italy is not only very unworthy in herself, but 
 is so by transmitted, hereditary, and therefore by inherent wicked- 
 ness. She derived it from her parents : matri turpi filia tur- 
 pior : her mother was such as she is ; her picture, her portrait ; 
 for the word painting in old English, was used for portrait. 
 Shakespeare himself so uses it. 
 
CYMBELINE. 463 
 
 Laertes, was your father dear to you ? 
 Or, are you like the painting of a sorrow, 
 A face without a heart? 
 
 <: Perhaps, too, the poet uses that sort of figure which, ac- 
 cording to rhetoricians, presents, as expressing some strong emo- 
 tion, the consequent in place of the antecedent ; or the effect for 
 the cause. So that instead of saying the jay of Italy was the 
 picture of her mother, Imogen says, more indignantly and more 
 resentfully, that her mother was such another, was her very pic- 
 ture. So that she was inherently and hereditarily worthless, 
 and capable of the arts of seduction." 
 
 Considering the use of the word "jay" and the fable 
 of the jay in borrowed plumage, the reading "Whose 
 feather was her painting," &c., which Capell obtained by 
 modifying Hanmer's " Whose feathers ivere her painting," 
 which the Oxford editor derived from a hint dropped by 
 Theobald, is far preferable to " Who smothers her with 
 painting." 
 
 In the same Scene, it is doubtless proper instead of 
 
 "you should tread a course 
 Pretty, yet full of view," 
 
 to read with Mr. Collier's folio, 
 
 " you should tread a course 
 Privy, yet full of view." 
 
 In the same speech, 
 
 "Now if you could wear a mind 
 Dark as your fortune is," <fec. 
 
 should be, 
 
464 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " Now if you could wear a mien 
 Dark as your fortune is, and but disguise," <fec. 
 
 This suggestion is Mr. Singer's. 
 
 SCENE 6. 
 
 " Imo. I see a man's life is a tedious one ; 
 I have tyr'd myselfe, and for two nights together 
 Have made the ground my bed. I should be sicke 
 But that my resolution helpes me." 
 
 Can any manifestation of obtuseness exceed that of the 
 corrector of Mr. Collier's folio, who, though Imogen says 
 that she finds that a man's life is a tedious one/' that for 
 two nights she has slept upon the ground, and that she 
 should be sick if it were not for her fortitude, supposes that 
 " I have tir'd myself," should be Ci 'I have 'tir'd [i. e. attired] 
 myself," l like a boy ' being, perforce, understood. And 
 yet Mr. Collier sustains the change ! 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 2. 
 
 "Arv. Brother stay here. 
 
 [To Imogen. 
 Are we not brothers ? 
 
 Imo. So man and man should be ; 
 
 But clay and clay differs in dignity, 
 Whose dust is both alike." 
 
 This passage, accidentally seen during the search for 
 another, brings to my mind an attack upon Shakespeare 
 which I once saw dragged into a criticism upon the per- 
 formance of A Midsummer Night's Dream; in which 
 
GYMBELINB. 465 
 
 the critic, mounting the tribune of Socialism, impeached 
 the loyalty of Shakespeare to the true attributes of human- 
 ity, by accusing him of want of sympathy with the laboring 
 classes. The same charge had been brought elsewhere and 
 before. That it is altogether unfounded, no careful and 
 thoughtful reader of Shakespeare need be told ; and the 
 passage above quoted, in which a princess, addressing, as 
 she supposes, two peasants, utters at once the most genial 
 truth of genuine democracy, and the most cutting satire 
 upon factitious aristocracy, is but one of many in which 
 Shakespeare has shown his love and respect for Man irre- 
 spective of adventitious circumstances. But he was a Poet, 
 an Artist, and, what is more, a Dramatic Artist ; and 
 when he portrays men of a class, he makes them the type 
 of a class as they existed, not as in future ages they might, 
 could, would or should exist. 
 
 " Gul. But his neat cookery ! He cut our roots in characters, 
 And sauced our broths as Juno had been sick, 
 And he her dieter." 
 
 Another trait of Imogen's perfect and entire womanli- 
 ness, la the midst of her own woe, she yet has quietly 
 assumed the family cares of the cave, and looks with taste- 
 ful concern after the little enjoyments of those around her. 
 She is not content with neat and appetizing cookery, but 
 cuts the roots "in characters." And at this, female f intel- 
 ligences' sneer. Women who sneer at such traits will, 
 among the very men whom they hope to please, the intel- 
 lectual, get only their sneering for their pains. 
 
 30 
 
466 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 " GuL Fear no more the heat o' the sun, 
 
 Nor the furious winter's rages ; 
 Thou thy worldly task hast done, 
 
 Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages : 
 Golden lads and girls all must, 
 As chimney-sweepers come to dust 
 
 Arv. Fear no more the frown o' the great, 
 
 Thou art past the tyrant's stroke ; 
 Care no more to clothe, and eat ; 
 
 To thee the reed is as the oak : 
 The sceptre, learning, physick, must 
 All follow this, and come to dust. 
 
 Gui. Fear no more the lightning-flash, 
 Arv. Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone; 
 Gui. Fear not slander, censure rash ; 
 Arv. Thou hast finish'd joy and moan : 
 Both. All lovers young, all lovers must 
 Consign to thee, and come to dust. 
 
 Gui. No exerciser harm thee ! 
 Arv, Nor no witchcraft charm thee 1 
 Gui. Ghost unlaid forbear thee ! 
 Arv. Nothing ill come near thee ! 
 Both. Quiet consummation have ; 
 And renowned be thy grave I " 
 
 Can any one familiar with the cast of Shakespeare's 
 thought, the turn of his expres sion, and the rhythm of his 
 verse, believe that this song is his ? It could not he at once 
 tamer, more pretentious, and more unsuited to the characters 
 than it is. What did Guiderius and Arviragus, bred 
 from infancy in the forest, know about " chimney sweep- 
 ers ? " How foreign to their characters to philosophize on 
 "the sceptre, learning, physick!" Will any body believe 
 that Shakespeare, after he was out of Stratford grammar 
 school, or before, wrote such a couplet as, 
 
 " All lovers young, all lovers must 
 Consign to thee, and come to dust." ? 
 
CYMBELINE. 46*7 
 
 Has he throughout his works given us reason to suspect 
 him, on any evidence short of his own hand and seal, of 
 making these two lads, burying their adopted stripling 
 brother by the mouth of their cave in the primeval forest, 
 close their dirge with such a wish as, 
 
 " Quiet consummation have, 
 And renowned be thy grave ! " 
 
 That Mr. Knight should speak of these stiff, formal, arti- 
 ficial rhymes, worthy only of a verse-crazed cit affecting the 
 pastorals, as " free, natural lyrics," is incomprehensible. 
 The lines are the production of some clumsy prentice of 
 the Muse. Collins' s well known ode for this Scene, " To 
 fair Fidele's grassy tomb," is a pretty thing in itself, but 
 is quite as unsuited to the situation, and smacks of 1750, 
 not of 1600. Think of Guiderius and Arviragus singing,, 
 
 "But shepherd lads assemble here, 
 And melting virgins own their love I " 
 
 No man could have written those lines who had not seen 
 his mother's portrait painted by Kneller in a three-story 
 head-dress and a hoop, and with a crook in her hand. 
 
 ACT V. SCENE 1. 
 
 "Post. Butalacke! 
 
 You snatch some hence for little faults ; that's love 
 To have them fall no more : you some permit 
 To second illes with illes, each elder worse 
 And make them dread it, to the dooers thrift." 
 
 Thus the original text, in the last line but one of 
 which, " elder " is evidently a misprint for ill the, as Zach- 
 
468 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 ary Jackson suggested. This idiomatic use of the compar- 
 ative, as in ' each worse than the other/ c each uglier than 
 the other/ &c., is not uncommon, and is very expressive. 
 Kead, 
 
 "you some permit 
 To second ills with ills, each ill the worse," <fcc. 
 
 The original text has been justified, and interpreted to 
 mean that " each crime is worse than its predecessor ; " 
 but this cannot be. If "the elder" be "the worse/' then 
 each crime is not worse than its predecessor. With regard 
 to the last line, I admit that it is among the few, the signi- 
 
 ' O / O 
 
 fication of which is not obvious to me. I cannot divine what 
 " dread it " refers to, or what it is which is to be to " the 
 doer's thrift/' The line is evidently corrupt, and no attempt 
 to amend it has been successful. 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 " Post. Must I repent, 
 
 I cannot do it better then in Gyues, 
 Desir'd more then constrain'd, to satisfie 
 If of my Freedome 'tis the maine part, take 
 No stricter render of me, then my All." 
 
 This passage, which appears thus incomprehensibly cor- 
 rupted in the original, has defied all attempts to reduce it 
 to sense ; and the recent editors, after all the labors of their 
 , predecessors, have been obliged to content themselves by 
 printing it just as it is given in the folio, with the exception 
 of a semicolon after " constrained." Does any one believe 
 that if the corrections in Mr. Collier's folio had been made 
 from a copy of better authority than that from which the 
 
CYMBELINE. 469 
 
 first folio was printed, such a passage as this would have 
 been left in this chaotic state ? It is impossible that it 
 should have been so. 
 
 " Post, And so, great powers, 
 
 If you will take this audit, take this life, 
 And cancel these cold bonds." 
 
 Upon this passage Samuel Johnson, LL. D., lexicogra- 
 pher and ' great moralist/ remarks " This equivocal use 
 of bonds is another instance of our authour's infelicity in pa- 
 thetick speeches." I have heard that there are bigoted ad- 
 mirers of Dr. Johnson, though having never met one, I am 
 loth to believe in the existence of such a phenomenon ; but 
 from the resentment which such may feel at the manner in 
 which I have spoken of their ponderous idol, I shelter myself 
 behind the bulwark of wrath which such a note as this will 
 excite in the bosom of every man who has Anglo-Saxon 
 blood in his veins, and can read and understand the Eng- 
 lish language. Shakespeare's "infelicity in pathetic 
 speeches " is good, excellent good. 
 
 Of the rhyming dialogue in the Apparition in this Scene, 
 I had merely written on my notes, before having read any 
 comments upon the play l this, beyond a doubt, is not Shake- 
 speare's/ I found, however, that it had been so judged by 
 almost all the critical students of his works. This was in- 
 evitable. The passage is evidently the production of some 
 one about the theatre who had been in the habit of writing 
 
470 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 such doggerel for the comedies in fashion just before Shake- 
 speare took possession of the stage ; and Shakespeare prob- 
 ably consented to its introduction for peace sake, to please 
 the author or a brother manager, knowing, too, that there 
 were those in his audience to whom it would be acceptable. 
 It is ineffably flat, and altogether superfluous ; but it must 
 not be removed from the place in which it appears in the 
 authentic copy. 
 
 SCENE 5. 
 
 "JacA. Your daughter's chastity There it begins. 
 He spake of her, as Dian had hot dreams, 
 And she alone were cold. * * 
 
 * * * * Well may yon, sir, 
 Remember me at court, where I was taught 
 Of your chaste daughter, the wide difference 
 'Twixt amorous and villainous." 
 
 See in this passage that Imogen's purity was not the 
 mere accompaniment of a passionless nature, that con- 
 temptible nothing which some would elevate into a virtue. 
 What is virtue worth which is not virtue of its own will, 
 which is the mere index of a want of capacity to be other- 
 wise ? Imogen was chaste because she knew every thrill 
 of passion. Had she been passionless, she would have been 
 only an imperfect woman, and continent only, not chaste ; 
 and continence is not a virtue : else our mothers were all 
 vile. 
 
PERICLES. 
 
 ACT I. SCENE 1. 
 
 ** Aub. At whose conception (till Lucina reign'd) 
 Kature this dowry gave to glad her presence, 
 The senate house of planets all did sit," <fec. 
 
 Commentators and editors find difficulty in this word 
 (i conception." Mason thinks it means e birth ; ' Steevens 
 would change it to concession, and Malone would introduce a 
 long parenthesis. But is not the signification of the passage, 
 taken together, very clear ? and does it not evidently mean, 
 that during the pregnancy of Thaisa's mother, i. e. from 
 conception till Lucina reigned, the senate house of planets 
 all did sit ? 
 
 SCENE 4. 
 
 " Cle. This Tharsus o'er which I have government, 
 (A city on whom plenty held full hand), 
 For riches strew'd herself even in the streets." 
 
 There have been some efforts to clear the obscurity of 
 the last line, but no one has noticed Jackson's reasonable 
 correction of a very easy typographical error, in reading, 
 
472 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 " For riches strew'd her pelf even in the streets." 
 
 Jackson once in a while ventures a successful conjecture ; 
 and contemptible as nearly every page of his book is, it 
 should not be entirely disregarded by any editor, as we have 
 seen by more important instances than the present. 
 
 ACT III. SCENE 3. 
 
 " Per. Unscissor'd shall this hair of mine remain, 
 Though I show will in't." 
 
 Plainly, Mr. Dyce is right in reading, 
 
 " Though I show ill in't." 
 
 ACT IV. SCENE 6. 
 
 " Lys. If she'd do the deeds of darkness, thou would'st say." 
 
 Mr. Dyce suggests " the deed of darkness," which is 
 unquestionably the correct reading. 
 
 CORRECTION. 
 
 When writing the remarks on page 468 upon the hope- 
 lessly corrupted passage in Act Y. Sc. 4, of Cymbeline, I 
 had entirely forgotten that the last four leaves of that play 
 are wanting in Mr. Collier's folio. We of course cannot 
 know whether the passage was corrected or not. But other 
 similar passages are left unchanged in quite sufficient num- 
 bers to preserve the validity of this strong argument against 
 the authority of the volume. 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 THE question, who was the person to whom Shakespeare 
 addressed his Sonnets, has long been considered one of the 
 most obscure and interesting in the history of literature. 
 But it seems to me, that a single attentive perusal of them 
 should set all doubt at rest. Nearly all of them were evi- 
 dently written for some other person or persons, according 
 to the fashion of that day for lovers and others to seek 
 assistance from those gifted by the Muse. Among other 
 evidences of the existence of this custom, is the following 
 amusing one in Dray ton's Sonnets. 
 
 " A "Witlesse Gallant a young Wench that woo'd 
 (Yet his dull Spirit her not one iot could moue) 
 Intreated me, as e'r I wish'd his good, 
 To write him but one Sonnet to his Loue: 
 
 ****** 
 
 But with my Verses he his Mistres wonne, 
 
 Who doted on the Dolt beyond all measure. 
 
 But see, for you to Heaven for Phraze I runne," <fec. 
 
 P. 260, ed. 1619. 
 
 In this way, perhaps, Shakespeare made the money by which 
 he first got a footing in the theatre. The person, for whom 
 most of these poems were written, may have been Mr. W. H., 
 to whom the publisher wishes happiness and immortality, 
 as their " only begetter/' This supposition with regard to 
 their origin, seems to me so natural, and so consistent with 
 
474 SONNETS. 
 
 Meres' phrase, "his sugared sonnets among his private 
 friends," that I wonder not to have met it in my Shake- 
 sperian reading. A few of these Sonnets may have ex- 
 pressed his own feelings, and may have been addressed to 
 his wife, whom I am persuaded he loved, and often saw. 
 The allusions to the old age of the writer, or supposed 
 writer, in some of the Sonnets, the 62d and 63d, for instance, 
 show plainly that Shakespeare could not have written them 
 in his own person at any time of his life, at least before 
 1609, when they were first published, and certainly not be- 
 fore 1598, when it is quite evident that they were well 
 known among his private friends ; for then he was but 
 thirty- two years old. In some, the 7 1st and 72d, for 
 instance, the self-degradation is sufficient to prove that 
 Shakespeare spoke not for himself. Nos. 80, 83, 86 and 
 121, were evidently written to be presented to some lady, 
 who had verses addressed to her by at least one other per- 
 son than the supposed writer of these ; for the praises of 
 another poet are explicitly mentioned in them. No. 78 was 
 addressed to one who was the theme of many pens, for it 
 contains these lines : 
 
 " So oft I have invok'd thee for my muse, 
 And found such fair assistance in my verse, 
 As every alien pen hath got my use, 
 And under thee their poetry disperse. 
 ****** 
 In other's works thou dost but mend the style, 
 And arts with thy sweet graces graced be." 
 
 The reiteration of the immortality secured for the subject 
 of the Sonnets, supposing them to have been addressed to 
 one person or written by Shakespeare in his own name, 
 would be entirely inconsistent with such a character as 
 his must needs have been. He might possibly have utter- 
 ed such a sentiment once, but never could have put it into 
 
SONNETS. 475 
 
 verse written in his own person again and again and again. 
 But if we suppose the Sonnets to have been addressed to 
 different persons, on the part of different persons, the dif- 
 ficulty does not exist : as it was the fashion of the day to 
 claim immortality for the subject of laudatory poetry. I 
 cannot but think that No. Ill was written as an expression 
 of his own feeling. 
 
 The supposition that Shakespeare's Sonnets were writ- 
 ten in his own person, involves also the ridiculously ab- 
 surd and inconsistent supposition, that the man who could 
 be indifferent to the fate of A Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 As You Like It, Lear, Othello, and Hamlet, saw the promise 
 of immortal fame in the Sonnets ; and that he who, when 
 he became rich, did not think it worth his while to obtain 
 from his fellow proprietors the right of issuing correct edi- 
 tions of plays already published surreptitiously, regarded 
 these Sonnets as a sure passport to undying fame both for 
 the subject and the writer. It is also important to notice, 
 that inferior as the Sonnets are to the Plays, they are as 
 much superior to Venus and Adonis and the Rape of Lu- 
 crece; and yet Shakespeare did not publish either of the 
 former, eager as the public of that day was for any produc- 
 tion of his pen, while he did publish the latter. Now why 
 did he thus carefully put his most unworthy performances 
 before the public, and allow his Dramas, and his Sonnets, 
 only inferior to his Dramas, to " lie in cold obstruction and 
 to rot," until they were brought out entirely without his 
 agency or aid ? We know the cause as far as his Plays 
 were concerned : they were not his : they belonged to the 
 stock of the theatre. An actor of no eminence, he rapidly 
 rose to be one of the two largest proprietors in the theatre ; 
 his contribution to the stock being those matchless plays, 
 which, according to the testimony of his contemporaries, con- 
 tinually filled " cockpit, galleries, boxes," so that " you would 
 
476 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 scarce find room " with the same public which was indiffer- 
 ent to the works of other dramatists. He had sold these 
 plays, and had no power over them ; and so also he had sold 
 the Sonnets ; else he certainly would have published what 
 the public would so eagerly have bought. For Shakespeare, 
 be it remarked, was a prudent, thrifty man. He went to Lon- 
 don penniless, and without profession or friends, except in the 
 theatre ; and yet he retired at forty-five with a real and per- 
 sonal estate, the yearly income of which was equal to $8000. 
 As the author of thirty-seven such plays as he produced be- 
 tween 1588 and 1612, as one of the principal managers and 
 shareholders of the theatre, and as an actor besides, he had 
 little time or occasion to write one hundred and fifty-four 
 Sonnets ; and we have the testimony of Meres that these 
 Sonnets were well known among his private friends in 
 1598, when their author was but thirty-four years old, 
 although some of them allude to the age and decay of their 
 supposed writer. Could it be more clearly established, 
 except by direct testimony, that Shakespeare did not 
 write these Sonnets in his own person ; but that, as the 
 custom was, he furnished them to those who, though 
 no poets, were good paymasters, and thus obtained a part 
 of the money which made him, when only twenty-six years 
 old, an important shareholder in the theatre, as appears by 
 the well known remonstrance from the Company dated Nov. 
 1589, and now in the possession of Lord Ellesmere ? 
 
 Again, it is possible to think of Shakespeare in early 
 youth writing such a sonnet as No. 151 for another, but 
 impossible to admit that he would, in his own person, ad- 
 dress to any woman such gross double entendres as are con- 
 tained in its last seven lines. 
 
 [Since writing the above I have read Mr. Charles Army- 
 tage Brown's very interesting book upon Shakespeare's 
 Sonnets, in which he sets forth the extraordinary theory 
 
SONNETS. 477 
 
 that they were written as six entire poems in the sonnet 
 stanza, five of them to William Herbert, afterwards Earl 
 of Pembroke, and the sixth to Shakespeare's own mistress. 
 Mr. Brown certainly shows the true appreciation of Shake- 
 speare in his book, and very great ingenuity in the support 
 of his favorite theory ; but in my judgment he leaves the 
 latter but just where it was when he first stated it. Mr. 
 Brown alludes to "an ingenious supposition " of the Rev. 
 Mr. Dyce's with regard to the Sonnets. I am familiar with all 
 of that gentleman's critical writings upon Shakespeare, but 
 have not met with this supposition. Mr. Collier, as I find, 
 had forestalled me in my deduction that Shakespeare wrote 
 the Sonnets for other persons ; but he briefly states it, 
 merely to abandon it without assigning any reason for or 
 against it. I may be pardoned for thinking that the argu- 
 ments which I have brought forward make the probability 
 of the hypothesis which they sustain amount almost to 
 moral certainty. 
 
 An observation on one of these Sonnets may interest 
 some of my readers. The 127th is addressed to a brunette, 
 called a ( black beauty ' in Shakespeare's day, and 
 commences thus : 
 
 "In the old age black was not coxinted fair, 
 Or if it were, it bare not beauty's name." 
 
 This is an allusion to the remarkable fact, that during 
 the chivalric ages brunettes were not acknowledged as beau-- 
 ties any where in Christendom. In all the old contes, fa- 
 bliaux, and romances, the heroines are blondes. Such a 
 thing as a brunette beauty is unknown in chivalric poetry : 
 more than that, the possession of dark eyes and hair, 
 and the complexion which accompanies them, is referred 
 to by the troubadours as a misfortune. But the brunettes 
 have changed the fashion since that day. 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S NAME. 
 
 OF late years the attempt has been renewed, chiefly 
 through the agency of Mr. Charles Knight, to change the 
 orthography of Shakespeare's name to Shakspere, on the 
 ground that it is but proper to spell a man's name as he 
 himself spells it ; Sir Francis Madden having shown, be- 
 yond a question, that in four of the six genuine signatures 
 of Shakespeare which have come down to us, the name is 
 written by the poet himself, SJiakspere. The remaining 
 two, though most illegibly written, plainly contain ten 
 or eleven letters. More than this, it is very evident that 
 the name was originally, and, indeed, as late as the earlier 
 years of William Shakespeare himself, pronounced Shak- 
 sper. The manner in which it is spelled in the old records 
 in which it is found, varies almost to the extreme capacity 
 of letters to change places and produce a sound approxi- 
 mating to that of the name as we pronounce it. It appears 
 as Chacksper Shaxpur Shaxper Schaksper Schake- 
 sper Schakespeyr Shagspere Saxpere Shaxpere 
 Shaxpeare Shaxsper Shaxspere Shaxespere Shak- 
 spere Shakspear Shakspeere Shackspeare Shacke- 
 speare Shackespere Shakspeyr Shaksper Shakespere 
 Shakyspere Shakespire Shakespeire Shakespear 
 Sluikaspeare ; and there are even other varieties of its or- 
 thography. 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S NAME. 479 
 
 It is remarkable that the older the record, the more the 
 spelling conforms to the pronunciation, Shak-sper or Shax- 
 pur. But it is equally remarkable that on the title-pages 
 of all the editions of Shakespeare's plays published during 
 his life, almost without exception, as well as upon that of 
 the original folio, his name is spelled Shakespeare. More 
 than this : in the first folio edition of Ben Jonson's works, 
 published in 1616, and carefully edited by Jonson himself, 
 Shakespeare's name occurs twice in the lists of principal 
 actors, and is in both instances spelled with the e in the 
 first syllable and the a in the second ; and not only so, but 
 in the second list, that appended to Sejanus, the syllables 
 are separated with a hyphen, and the second begins with a 
 capital letter, thus SHAKE-SPEARE. Robert Green's un- 
 conscious testimony is also conclusive. The often quoted 
 passage in his Groatsworth of Wit, published in 1592, in 
 which he sneeringly says that the great dramatist " is, in 
 his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in the country," 
 shows plainly that the first syllable of the name was pro- 
 nounced with the long, pure sound of a. 
 
 This, when taken in connection with the evidence of the 
 title-pages of the quartos and the original folio, and also 
 of the list of actors given in the latter, shows, beyond a 
 question, that the name was pronounced and written Shake- 
 speare in Shakespeare's day, and by those who were in 
 habits of constant intercourse with him who made it illus- 
 trious. For it is impossible to pronounce Shake-speare, 
 Shak-sper. It is also important to notice that in all the 
 lists of actors given in Jonson's folio of 1616, nine in num- 
 ber, the several names, which are frequently repeated, are 
 always spelled in the same way, a rare, in fact, an unparal- 
 leled coincidence in any book of the time. This shows how 
 carefully Jonson corrected his proof; and also that the spell- 
 ing, Shakespeare, was not the result of capricious orthography. 
 
480 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
 
 But, it may be asked, did not Shakespeare know how 
 to write his own name ? and must we not conform to his 
 mode of spelling it ? To the latter query the answer is no ; 
 not of necessity. For, as Mr. Hunter asks, shall Lady Jane 
 Grey become Lady Jane Graye ? shall the Dudleys become 
 Dudcfeleys, or the Cromwells, Cmmwells, &c. &c. &c., be- 
 cause it is certain that they spelled their names thus ? 
 This is a decisive question. As to Shakespeare's know- 
 ledge of the mode of writing his own name, it must be re- 
 membered that, in his lifetime, there arose a necessity for 
 a change in the spelling. When Kobert Cook, Clarencieux 
 King at Arms, because John Shaksper had become a man 
 of substance and consideration, and had married into the 
 gentle blood of the Ardens, gave him armorial bearings, 
 the herald saw and seized the opportunity which the name 
 afforded for punning blazonry ; and giving the worthy high 
 bailiff the right to bear a spear or on a bend sable, he 
 changed him and his descendants from Shakspers to Shake- 
 speares from that time forward. But old customs change 
 with difficulty, and endured longer then than now ; and 
 thus it was that something of the old style of spelling the 
 name clung to the Shakespeares in Stratford ; and even 
 that William Shakespeare himself, when he went to London, 
 did not entirely lay aside the habit of his early youth ; 
 though all those to whom his name then was new wrote it, 
 as they and he pronounced it, Shakespeare. These rea- 
 sons, and the explicit testimony of Jonson, the printers of 
 the quartos, and the editors of the original folio, and the 
 indirect but no less decisive evidence of Green, are all-suf- 
 ficient for the retention of the spelling of the poet's day 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTICE OF 
 
 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTICE OP 
 
 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 SINCE the pages devoted to the examination of Mr. Col- 
 lier's Folio, in the first part of this volume, were in type, ar- 
 ticles directed against the argument which they contain 
 have appeared in various quarters of more or less respecta- 
 bility ; and I have received Mr. Collier's second edition of his 
 Notes and Emendations, which contains, in addition to a 
 few emendations not in the first edition, a recital of the 
 history of the volume as far as he has been able to trace it, 
 and some notice of the manner in which his remarkable 
 publication has been received by Shakesperian scholars. He 
 has also privately printed fac-similes of passages in several 
 of the plays as they appear in his famous folio. But the 
 ablest advocate for the authority of the emendations in that 
 volume fails to make out a case which will bear examina- 
 tion ; and the additional fac-similes only deepen the im- 
 pression which was made by that which accompanied the 
 first edition of Mr. Collier's book. 
 
 The first attempt to sustain Mr. Collier's position has 
 been the following up of a hint which he gave in his first 
 publication upon this subject, remarking upon the emenda- 
 tion " ~bollen bagpipe " for " woollen bagpipe " (Merchant 
 of Venice, Act IY. Sc. 1,) that " we shall never again see 
 
484 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 ' woollen bagpipe ' in any edition of the text of Shakespeare, 
 unless it be reproduced by some one who, having no right 
 to use the emendation of our folio, 1632, adheres of neces- 
 sity to the antiquated blunder, and attempts to justify it." 
 This impeachment by anticipation of the veracity of any 
 one who should profess to find the correction needless or 
 unacceptable, Mr. Collier has wisely eliminated from his 
 second edition. But although he had abandoned such an 
 uncourteous and unfair mode of controversy, the advocates 
 of the reprint of his edition on this side of the water have 
 not profited by his example ; and it has been in more than 
 one instance charged, that those who have opposed the 
 adoption of the majority of the changes in h^ folio nobody 
 has opposed them all have done so, because they are ed- 
 itors of Shakespeare, and if these changes be received, 
 " their editions will become valueless." The folly and au- 
 dacity of this attack upon the motives rather than the ar- 
 guments of the Shakesperian editors passes understanding. 
 What is the truth ? Only one of the opponents of Mr. 
 Collier is in a position to have this impeachment of motives 
 applied to him Mr. Knight. Mr. Singer's edition of 
 1826 has for many years been out of print ; and he, as 
 well as Mr. Halliwell and Mr. Dyce, were, at the time of 
 the publication of Mr. Collier's Notes and Emendations, 
 and still are, editors of editions to be published, and there- 
 fore in a position to derive all possible benefit from Mr. 
 Collier's discovery. The pretence, that " Mr. Collier pos- 
 sesses the copyright in England of his newly discovered 
 emendations," is preposterous. There has not an edition 
 of Shakespeare appeared in England for the last century 
 and a half, the editor of which has not availed himself at 
 pleasure of all the original labors of his predecessors, giving 
 credit for them ; and the excellent little Lansdowne edition 
 recently published, is, by the publisher's advertisement, 
 
MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 485 
 
 "based on that of Mr. Collier," Mr. Knight's editorial 
 labors and Mr. Dyce's comments being also used. The 
 objection is equally futile in itself, and degrading to the 
 cause in which it is made. It impotently attacks motives, 
 for the sake of disparaging arguments, and seems to justi- 
 fy the suspicion, that it is made rather to bolster up an 
 edition, than to arrive at the truth in one of the gravest 
 and most interesting literary questions ever broached. 
 Especially does this appear, when the attempt is made to 
 throw discredit upon arguments against Mr. Collier's folio 
 which have appeared in this country, by the same impeach- 
 ment of motives. For, even supposing what is impossible, 
 that Mr. Collier has the copyright of the Perkins Emenda- 
 tions in England ; does that copyright extend to America ? 
 How foolish and how pitiful this objection is ! And even 
 were all of the changes which Mr. Collier has introduced 
 into that abomination which he calls " The Plays of Shake- 
 speare," in spite of his own confession that many of them 
 are indefensible, and that the corrector sometimes seems 
 " to have been directed by his own, often erroneous, sense 
 of fitness and expediency," were all these changes as plau- 
 sible as the large majority of them are tasteless and wanton, 
 the pre-existing field for editorial labor would not be materi- 
 ally diminished ; because it is remarkable, that the accepta- 
 ble emendations peculiar to this folio are all comparatively 
 insignificant, and, and that it leaves all the more important 
 of the obscure passages either untouched, or changed in such 
 a way as to transfer the obscurity from one line to another, 
 or to diffuse it through many. Let us hear no more of this 
 ungenerous and unfounded objection. The case is simply 
 this : Mr. Collier himself admits that there are many read- 
 ings in his recent edition which are entirely indefensible : 
 no one denies, that there are some which unquestionably 
 restore the genuine text : finally and conclusively, there is 
 
486 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 no let or hindrance to the adoption of them all by any edi- 
 tor in America, with the added advantage, if he possess it, 
 of being able to correct the more important passages which 
 the corrector or correctors of the Perkins folio left in utter 
 confusion. It is in no captious mood that this important 
 subject has been generally treated. All lovers of Shake- 
 speare, hailed Mr. Collier's announcement with delight a 
 delight which was changed to chagrin, when they found out 
 what it was that he had so announced. Mr, Collier is not 
 censured by any one, as he seems to think he is, on account 
 of his " accidental discovery of the corrected folio, 1632," * 
 but because he indorses changes in it which conflict with 
 Shakespeare's own design and language, to say nothing of 
 common sense ; and above all, because he boldly incorpora- 
 ted these into the text of a popular edition in one volume, 
 when he himself acknowledges that a part of them, at least, 
 have no business there. 
 
 A specious but unfair comparison of the condition of 
 the text of the New Testament with that of Shakespeare, 
 has been made in order to show how much the latter is in 
 need of emendation. In the first place, there are at least 
 five times as many words in the latter as in the former ; 
 next, the former is received as the word of God ; and the 
 most obscure part of it, the Apocalypse, closes with a curse 
 upon the man who adds to or takes from that book, which 
 must have stayed the hand of many an ambitious manu- 
 script corrector ; and last, the number of passages in 
 Shakespeare about which there is any reasonable dispute, 
 is, as my readers are by this time convinced, I trust, com- 
 paratively small. Commentators have, it is true, proposed 
 changes innumerable : and there is neither human law nor 
 divine curse to prevent them from saying that light is 
 
 * Notes and Emendations, Second Edition, p. ix. 
 
MB. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 487 
 
 darkness ; but because they do so, we are not obliged to 
 admit a doubt upon the subject. So any man, if he choose, 
 may declare that Shakespeare made Prospero say that his 
 brother was a sinner " to untruth," by telling a lie, and 
 Hamlet, that he lacked " gall to make transgression bit- 
 ter ; " but we are not therefore constrained to take such 
 nonsense into serious consideration. 
 
 The ablest defence of Mr. Collier's folio, a defence 
 which put the most specious arguments in the most plaus- 
 ible and telling way, appeared in the North American He- 
 view for April, 1854. The veteran Shakesperian scholar 
 himself did not make a case nearly so imposing in favor of 
 his corrector. In that paper it is concluded, from the as- 
 certained history of the volume (now called in England 
 the Perkins folio), the appearance of the chirography, the 
 nature of the erased passages, and the [assumed] fact that 
 the emendations were made by a player, the London the- 
 atres being closed from 1642 to 1658, that these emenda- 
 tions were completed before 1664. 
 
 But the ascertained history of the volume is merely 
 that, in Mr. Collier's own words, " it is probable " that it 
 came from Upton Court, the seat of a wealthy Roman 
 Catholic family named Perkins, towards the close of the 
 last century ; that the volume has " Thomas Perkins, his 
 Booke," written upon its cover (which cover, be it remarked, 
 is not that in which it was first bound in 1632) ; and that 
 there was an actor of some distinction, named Richard 
 Perkins, in the reign of Charles I.* This only proves, as 
 
 * The eagerness with which Mr. Collier clutches at even the shadow 
 of a straw to buoy up the authority of his folio is amusingly, though some- 
 what painfully, apparent when he says : " The name of the great actor of 
 "the reign of Charles I. was Richard; and a Richard Perkins, called 
 "Esquire in Ashmole's Collections, at a date not stated married Lady Mer- 
 lin, a benefactress of the parish. Why should we deem it impossible that 
 "Richard Perkins, having attained eminence on the stage, subsequently 
 
488 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 any one can see, merely that it is possible, but not even 
 that it is probable, that there is some connection between 
 the actor and the Thomas Perkins, who was possibly of 
 Upton Court, whence "it is probable" that the volume 
 came about 1780 or 1790. Thus far, then, the volume is 
 as much without a " story " as Canning's Knife Grinder. 
 
 The appearance of the chirography, must be set down 
 at once as of little worth in determining the date of the 
 emendations, for all valuable purposes. The form of the 
 long 8, the turn of the bow of the e to the left, and the 
 prolongation of the second stroke of the h below the line, 
 cannot be relied on as determining the date within fifty 
 years. I possess a copy of the first edition of Paradise 
 Lost, with the fourth title page, 1669, in which there is a 
 manuscript annotation which bears all these marks. I also 
 once owned an old and very dilapidated copy of the first 
 folio of Ben Jonson's Plays, which had evidently belonged 
 to a farmer, or the steward of some great household, on all 
 the blank spaces of which were memorandums of the pur- 
 chase or sale of beeves and muttons, and tuns of ale, &c., 
 none of which were dated earlier than 1662 ; and in all 
 of them the e, s, and h were formed in this peculiar way. 
 More : I have also a fac-simile of a MS. by Thomas Dek- 
 ker, signed by him, and dated Sept. 12, 1616, in which the 
 h is never brought below the line, and the long s is made in 
 the modern form. The handwriting of the emendations in 
 
 ' married a lady of title and property ? " It is sad to knock away this 
 prop of a shadowy possibility ; but it seems strange that the historian of 
 the English stage should not have known, or if he had forgotten, should 
 have neglected the few minutes' study necessary to assure himself, that 
 after the closing of the London theatres in 1642, this Richard Perkins 
 and one Sumner, both actors at the Cockpit in Drury Lane, kept house 
 together in Clerkenwell, and died in poverty, and were buried there 
 " some years before the Restoration." This is stated in the Ilistoria His- 
 trionica, published in 1699, and is referred to in Some Account of the Eng- 
 lish Stage, vol i. p. 24. 
 
ME. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 489 
 
 this Perkins folio, if upon a volume without date, would 
 therefore fix its date with certainty only at some time be- 
 tween 1600 and 1675, and in this case is worth nothing 
 against internal evidance, which fixes the date of some of 
 them after 1662.* 
 
 As to the nature of the erased passages, the Reviewer's 
 statement assumes so much, that I must quote it in full. 
 "All passages of an indecent, or needlessly licentious char- 
 acter, are carefully struck out, evincing, says Mr. Collier, 
 ( the advance of a better or purer taste, about the time 
 
 * The unanswerable argument against the date of the MS. corrector's 
 stage direction in Love's Labor's Lost, (where he writes that Biron " gets 
 him in a tree* and speaks " in the tree,") that there was no practicable 
 scenery in English theatres until after 1662, the Reviewer attempts to set 
 aside in this most astounding style: "Why not argue also," he says, "that the 
 whole first Scene of the Tempest is spurious, because it is supposed to take 
 place on board a ship? or that many scenes in As You Like It ought to be 
 rejected, because they take place amid a whole forest of trees ? It is evident 
 that Biron is directed to speak 'in a tree,' just as Juliet makes love 'in a 
 balcony.' " But the Reviewer does not see the difference between the 
 Scene (i. e., the place of action), and scenery. It is one thing to suppose an 
 action to take place on board a ship, and another to direct one of the actors 
 to run up the shrouds of a ship. Any dramatist may make a forest the 
 locality of his play, but to make one of his actors climb a tree, he must 
 have the tree for him to climb. Should a copy of the Tempest appear, 
 with MS. directions for a sailor to run up the shrouds, it would prove pos- 
 itively that those directions were written after 1662. But the Reviewer 
 constructed this argument with a want of knowledge singular in the author 
 of such an able paper; for in the original edition of the Tempest (the first 
 folio), there is not the slightest indication, by way of stage direction, that the 
 first scene passes on shipboard; in the first edition of As You Like It (first 
 folio), there is no mention of a forest or a single sapling in the stage direc- 
 tions ; and in neither the first folio nor the early quartos of Romeo and 
 Juliet, is there the slightest hint that Juliet makes love in a balcony. All 
 these stage directions are deductions from the text, added in modern days. 
 Did the Reviewer never read, in Sir Philip Sydney's Defence of Poes^'ihe 
 well-known passage alluding to the appointments of the stage for which 
 Shakespeare wrote: "What childe is there, that, coming to a play, and 
 seeing Thebes written in great letters upon an old door, doth believe that 
 it is Thebes?" 
 
490 MB. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 i 
 
 when the emendator went over the volume.'" [N. A. Re- 
 view, p. 397.] But Mr. Collier does not say so. He says : 
 " Some expressions and lines of an irreligious or indelicate 
 character are also struck out, evincing, perhaps, the advance 
 of a better or purer taste," &c. [N. & E. Sec. ed. p. xviii.] 
 This is very far short of the Reviewer's statement ; and 
 well may Mr. Collier shelter his supposition behind a con- 
 tingency ; for his own Notes and Emendations shows that 
 the corrector left untouched very many more profane and 
 indecorous expressions than he struck out ; and also that 
 he did strike out perfectly unexceptionable passages, too 
 brief to add appreciably to the length of the performance ; 
 plainly proving that he was governed only by his own 
 caprice in this regard. The Reviewer most strangely con- 
 cludes, that these erasures of a few indelicate passages, 
 forbid the belief that these marginalia were written 
 after the Restoration, and show that they were made 
 rather " in Charles the First's time, when * * * the dif- 
 fusion of Puritanism compelled the editors of the first folio 
 to strike out the profane ejaculations of Falstaff, and some 
 minor indecencies which had been tolerated in the publica- 
 tion of the earlier quartos." But surely, the Reviewer for- 
 got that the omissions in the first folio were only made 
 in compliance with an express statute which was passed in 
 the first of James L, 1604 ! eight years before Shake- 
 speare ceased to write ! twelve years before he died ! 
 nineteen years before the publication of the first folio, 
 and twenty-eight years before the publication of the volume 
 upon which these emendations are made ! The " diffusion 
 of Puritanism " enforced no other erasures upon the editors 
 of the folios of either 1623 or 1632 ; neither did it forbid 
 the publication of indelicate passages by Davenant, in 
 twelve plays issued between 1634 and 1660, nor the issue 
 of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher in folio 1637, 
 
MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 491 
 
 containing or rather consisting entirely of plays so indeli- 
 cate in their very structure as well as language, that 
 Shakespeare's compared to them seem " whiter than new 
 snow on a raven's baok/' The Reviewer has undertaken 
 to prove too much, and has thus succeeded in proving 
 nothing at all. 
 
 The assumed fact, that the emendations were made by 
 a player, does not help to give them any authority, or even 
 any consequence, except as auxiliaries to the text of the 
 original folio : that is, to make them valuable as early 
 reminiscences or conjectures, aided, perhaps, by copies of 
 actors' parts, and to be received when the text of the orig- 
 inal is incomprehensible or inconsistent, and when they, by 
 probable corrections, make it clear and congruous. And 
 here, for the sake of the argument, let us grant that these 
 changes were made by Richard Perkins, an actor in the 
 time of Charles I., between the years 1642 and 1658, and 
 that he had copies of actors' parts and prompt books of 
 his time to assist him. What " authority " do his labors 
 derive from those facts, which can give them a feather's 
 weight against the text of Shakespeare's fellow actors and 
 business partners, who had "scarce received from him a 
 blot in his papers," when that text is comprehensible ? 
 It contains many defects, the results of carelessness ; and 
 those, Mr. Richard Perkins, or Mr. John Jenkins, may cor- 
 rect if he can ; and the probabilities are perhaps in favor 
 of the former, because he came nearer to Shakespeare. But 
 when, in a passage noj obscure, we have to decide between 
 Richard or Thomas Perkins, his Booke, and John Heminge 
 and Henrie Condell, their Booke, is there a question which 
 must go to the wall ? The judgment, the memory, the 
 very copied part of an actor, even as to a play in which he 
 performed, is not to be trusted thirty years after its pro- 
 duction, against such testimony as we have in favor of the 
 
492 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 copy from which the first folio was printed. It would not 
 be trusted even in this century ; much less two hundred 
 years ago, when ; as we know, the lines of the dramatist 
 were wantonly and mercilessly mutilated, both by managers 
 and actors. 
 
 The following passage in the Stationer's Address to the 
 Reader in the first folio of Beaumont & Fletcher's Plays, 
 published in 1647, which I have never seen noticed, has an 
 important bearing upon Mr. Collier's folio, and adds greatly 
 to the evidence in favor of the absolute authority of the 
 original folio of Shakespeare's works, and against that of 
 the early quarto editions. 
 
 " One thing I must answer before it bee objected; 'tis this : 
 When these Comedies and Tragedies were presented on the Stage 
 the Actours omitted some Scenes and Passages (with fheAuthour's, 
 consent) as occasion led them ; and when private friends desired 
 a copy, they then (and justly too) transcribed what they Acted. 
 But now you have both All that was Acted, and all that was not ; 
 even the perfect full originalls, without the least mutilation." 
 
 It has been reasonably conjectured by his editors and 
 commentators, that the early quarto editions of Shake- 
 speare's plays were surreptitiously printed from the actors' 
 parts, which were obtained separately, and written out in 
 proper order to form the entire play. Here, however, we 
 have positive and direct contemporary evidence that it was 
 the habit of the actors in Shakespeare's time, and in the 
 succeeding generation, to give copies -of the acting copy to 
 their private friends, and that in so doing they "transcribed 
 ivhat they acted," omitting such scenes and passages as 
 were omitted in the representation. Thus we have the 
 surreptitious appearance of the quartos and their disagree- 
 ment with the text of the authentic folio of 1623 (published 
 by Shakespeare's friends, fellow-actors, and business part- 
 
MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 493 
 
 ners, from his own manuscripts, with " hardly a blot " in 
 them), and also a great number of the changes in Mr. Col- 
 lier's folio, clearly accounted for. 
 
 The process, as this important passage shows, was this. 
 The author furnished the original MS. This was copied 
 and cut down for stage use ; from this copy the actors' 
 parts were taken ; and "when their private friends desired 
 a copy, they then transcribed what they acted," and thus 
 their friends had for their own use and that of such print- 
 ers as would pay for it, the copy of a copy of part of a mu- 
 tilated copy. 
 
 Such " authorities " quite probably directed in part the 
 labors of one corrector who worked on Mr. Collier's folio. 
 Living in the succeeding generation (for it should be re- 
 membered that Shakespeare had been dead sixteen, and had 
 ceased writing nearly thirty years before this famous folio was 
 printed), he obtained copies of copies of the mutilated stage 
 copy of the day, and made his text conform to it in part at 
 least. This accounts for the changes for the sake of rhyme 
 (made to suit the caprice of the actors or the corrector), 
 the striking out of portions of the text, and the cutting off 
 of all that part of the final scene of Hamlet, which occurs 
 after the action is finished, and thereby spoils what in his- 
 trionic phrase is called ' the tag ; of the piece. It is quite 
 natural that such a copy should contain many acceptable 
 corrections of the typographical errors in the original ; and 
 this does contain about two hundred such, at least one 
 hundred and seventy-three of which, had been made by 
 modern editors previous to Mr. Collier's discovery of the 
 volume. It is also quite natural that a volume so corrected 
 should contain the thousand needless and insufferable mu- 
 tilations which, embodied in the text which Mr. Collier, in 
 spite of his admission that he cannot approve of all the 
 changes, has presumed to publish as " The Plays of Shake- 
 
494 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 speare," make that edition incomparably the worst of the 
 many bad editions which have been published. 
 
 It is important, too, as affecting the value of emenda- 
 tions derived from actors' parts, to notice that Shakespeare's 
 plays were acted by other companies than that which owned 
 the right in them, and possessed the old stage copies. For, 
 by an entry in the Office-book of Sir Henry Herbert, who 
 was Master of the Revels in the reigns of James I. and 
 Charles I., and which will be found in Mr. Collier's Annals 
 of the Stage, vol. II. p. 7, we know that he was paid 5 by 
 Heminge, on the llth of April, 1627, "to forbid the play- 
 ing of Shakespeare's plays to the Red Bull Company." 
 Now this Red Bull Company, or any other which would 
 pirate Shakespeare's plays, would not scruple to mutilate 
 his works, after the fashion of literary pirates, and adapt 
 them to the capacities of their histrionic force and the 
 taste of their audiences, just as, we know, the corrector of 
 this Perkins folio did. The parts of such mutilated plays 
 would be copied out for the actors ; and what would such 
 actors' parts or prompt books be worth against the author- 
 ity of the first folio ? Indeed, it is more than probable 
 that this Perkins folio was submitted to the treatment 
 which it has experienced, for the double purpose of a new 
 edition for readers and to supply the wants of the compa- 
 nies which were sure to be formed after Davenant's re-es- 
 tablishment of theatrical entertainments, the rights of 
 Shakespeare's company having determined during the Pro- 
 tectorate. 
 
 But the Reviewer seeks to elevate the authority of 
 these emendations, by dragging down that of the first folio. 
 He says, that " all the twenty plays which were first print- 
 ed in the folio, had existed in manuscript, without being 
 seen by their author, for at least eleven years ; " that the 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona had "existed only in written 
 
MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 495 
 
 copies for thirty-two years ; that " the Globe Theatre was 
 burnt down in 1613, and it is more than probable that all 
 of Shakespeare's original manuscripts, which had survived 
 to that period, were then destroyed," [this, in spite of He- 
 minge and Condell's direct testimony, that they had his 
 papers,] and that " the written copies were multiplied by 
 careless transcribers." Let us again, for the sake of the 
 argument, grant all this ; how does it build up the au- 
 thority of the Perkins folio ? The Keviewer goes on very 
 reasonably to say, " alterations and omissions were made 
 from time to time, to adapt the performance to the varying 
 exigencies of the theatre, or the altered taste of the times." 
 This is very likely to be true ; but if it invalidate the au- 
 thority of the manuscript copy from which the first folio 
 was printed, with what doubled and trebled force does it 
 crush the pretensions of those used by a player when the 
 theatres were closed, in 1642, and which had been subject 
 to nineteen years more of alteration and omission, to suit the 
 exigencies of the theatre, and the taste of the times I 
 
 Again, the Reviewer, attempting to grapple with the 
 overpowering argument, against both the authority and 
 the intelligence of the MS. corrector, that so many of his 
 readings are inadmissible, and could not possibly have 
 formed a part of the text, thinks that he has conquered it 
 by fastening the same defect upon the first folio. He says : 
 "we admit it [the inadmissibility of the readings], but we 
 must remind the objectors, that precisely the same thing is 
 true of the first folio." To a superficial glance, this has a 
 formidable look ; but, in truth, it is too weak to stand 
 alone. For we know that the first folio was authorized ; 
 and its errors are corruptions, the results of accident and 
 carelessness, of which they are themselves the best evi- 
 dence ; while the absurd, inconsistent, prosaic and ridicu- 
 lous readings of the MS. corrector are deliberately formed, 
 
496 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 the fruits of painful effort to correct those accidental er- 
 rors in some cases, and to better the text in others. The 
 errors of the first folio are casualties ; the stupidities of 
 the Perkins folio are perpetrated with malice aforethought. 
 The former prove only the absence of care ; the latter exist 
 only in consequence of care, and therefore prove the absence 
 of authority. 
 
 The number of cases in which I am assumed to have 
 admitted the success of the MS. corrector, is brought up as 
 evidence in favor of his " authority." There are 173 of 
 his acceptable corrections which have been made by others, 
 and 117 which are peculiar to him, and which, in my own 
 words, " seem to be admissible corrections of passages which 
 need correction," making 290 in all, including, how- 
 ever, the numerous restorations from the first folio, and the 
 early quartos. What one editor, critic, or commentator, 
 exclaims the Reviewer, can claim the original suggestion 
 of an equal number of conjectural emendations, which are 
 admitted to be sound or plausible ? I answer, without hes- 
 itation, Nicholas Rowe ; and he only forestalled the others 
 in making them, because he was the first. The most of these 
 corrections are of typographical errors, such as no intelli- 
 gent proof reader would fail to detect and rectify. Rowe 
 and Theobald made nearly all of them ; and Rowe would 
 have almost certainly made them all, had he worked with 
 half the plodding care of the corrector of the Perkins folio. 
 As it was, he made many which his predecessor should have 
 made. Turn to the Notes and Emendations, and notice 
 the first of the coincidences, in the Tempest, Act I. Sc. 2 : 
 
 "A brave vessel, 
 "Who had, no doubt, some noble creature [creatures'] in her." 
 
 Next, in the same Scene, 
 
MB. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 497 
 
 " Where they prepar'd 
 A rotten carcass of a butt [boat], not rigg'd, 
 Nor tackle, sail, nor mast ; the very rats 
 Instinctively had [/iaw] quit it." 
 
 What boy in his 'teens, having these passages given him 
 to copy, would not make such corrections instinctively ? 
 These are fair specimens of a majority of his [assumed] two 
 hundred and ninety admissible emendations ; so does the 
 first folio swarm with typographical errors. But there are 
 other corrections which seem to show that he sometimes 
 conjectured successfully, or remembered correctly, or had 
 a book or MS. which helped him to the right word. It 
 seems more than probable that he was indebted to all these 
 means. Certainly he was indebted both to conjecture and 
 the early quartos, his adoption of readings which appear in 
 the latter being nothing in his favor, as they existed in his 
 time in far greater numbers than when the editors of the 
 last century used them, just as he did. 
 
 Assuming that the MS. corrector was a player " who 
 had lived in an age [the first half of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury] when conjectural emendation of an English aut hoi- 
 was an art as yet unheard of, and when the writings of our 
 great dramatist were so little known or prized, that four 
 rude and uncritical editions of them sufficed for a century," 
 and concluding that it is impossible " that the whole eight 
 [of the entire lines which he interpolates] should have been 
 invented, or made up by mere conjecture, by a poor player 
 in the earlier part of the seventeenth century," the Be- 
 viewer considers it established, that the corrector could 
 not have conjectured, but must have had authority. But 
 even granting that these emendations were made " between 
 1642 and 1664," it is a well-known fact, that at least a 
 dozen corrected folios of the second, third, and fourth 
 editions exist at present, one of them, Mr. Dent's, being 
 
498 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 not only, like the others, corrected " in an ancient hand," 
 but its numerous emendations being " curious and impor- 
 tant, consisting of stage directions, alterations in the punc- 
 tuation," &c. Did conjectural emendation spring up at 
 once, armed at all points, immediately upon the publication 
 of the third folio ? But whether it did or not, the man 
 who made some of the corrections in the Perkins folio did 
 conjecture, and has left irrefragable evidence that he did. 
 In the private fac similes before mentioned, a passage near 
 the end of the last Scene of Hamlet, and another in Othello, 
 Act IV. Sc. 1, show this undeniably. In the first, two lines 
 are printed thus : 
 
 " Good night, sweet Prience, 
 And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." 
 
 The corrector at first rectified the misprint by obliterating 
 the e in " Prience ; " but, afterwards, concluding to make 
 the line rhyme with the next, he marked out " sweet Prience " 
 and substituted be blest ; the couplet being then followed 
 by an impudent, gag-like 
 
 and the rest of the Scene being stricken out. In the pas- 
 sage in Othello, when the Moor, just before he falls in a 
 trance, says " Nature herself would not invest herselfe in 
 such a shadowing passion, without some Instruction," the 
 corrector first changes "shadowing" to shuddering, and 
 strikes out the comma after " passion ; " but, concluding 
 to do without the sentence, draws his pen remorselessly 
 through it. And in The Merchant of Venice, Act V. Sc. 1, 
 the folio of 1632 has, 
 
 "Therefore the poet did feign 
 That Orpheus drew tears, stones, floods," <fcc. 
 
MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 499 
 
 Here " tears " is a misprint for trees, which appears in 
 the first folio, and in the two early quartos ; but the MS. 
 corrector, deceived by the likeness of tears to beasts, substi- 
 tuted the latter word at first ; after referring to the other 
 editions, however, he restores the right word, trees. If this 
 be not conjecture, Nahum Tate wrote King Lear. Conjec- 
 ture helped or hindered this corrector as it did those of the 
 dozen or more copies of the other " rude and uncritical 
 editions" which "sufficed for a century." But neither 
 the number four of these editions, nor their careless 
 printing, shows that Shakespeare's works were "little 
 known or prized ; " for half that number of editions sufficed 
 for every other dramatist of that century ; and all, except 
 those of careful Ben Jonson, were vilely printed. 
 
 The private plates of fac similes of Mr. Collier's folio 
 contain brief extracts from seventeen plays : Tempest, Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona, As You Like It, Taming of the Shrew, 
 Twelfth Night, Winter's Tale, Henry V., Richard III., 
 Troilus and Cressida, Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus, Ti- 
 mon of Athens, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Anthony and 
 Cleopatra, and Cymbeline. A close examination of these 
 fac similes only furnishes cumulative evidence in favor of 
 the conclusions to which we have already arrived. 
 
 There is one of them the very look of which would 
 seem fatal to the least pretence in favor of the authority 
 of the volume. Types can but poorly convey the effect 
 of the changes upon the eye ; but they may help the 
 imagination to picture the appearance of the page. The 
 passage is the following, from Titus Andronicus, Act II. 
 Sc. 2. 
 
 " Tit. The hunt is up, the morne is bright and gray, 
 The fields are fragrant, and the "Woods are greene : 
 Vncouple heere, and let us make a bay, 
 And vrake the Emperour and his lovely Bride, 
 
500 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632 
 
 And rouze the Prince ; and ring a hunter's peals, 
 That all the Court may eccho with the noise. 
 Sonnes, let it be your charge, as it is ours, 
 To attend the Emperour's person carefully : 
 I have bene troubled in my sleepe this night. 
 But dawning day new comfort has inspir'd." 
 
 These lines are thus changed in Mr. Collier's folio ; the 
 original words being erased, and the substitutes, here in 
 italics, written in the margin : 
 
 " Tit. The hunt is up, the morne is bright and gay, 
 The fields are fragrant, and the "Woods are wide. 
 Vncouple heere, and let us make a bay, 
 And wake the Emperour and his lovely Bride, 
 And rouze the Prince, and sing a hunter's round, 
 That all the Court may eccho with the sound. 
 Sonnes, let it be your charge, and so will I, 
 To attend the Emperour's person carefully : 
 I have bene troubled in my sleepe this night, 
 But dawning day brought comfort and delight." 
 
 Can any man in his senses believe that " greene " could 
 be misprinted for wide, " peals " for round, " noise " for 
 sound, " as it is ours " for and so will I, " new " for brought, 
 and "hath inspir'd" for and delight; and that all these errors, 
 with two others, could occur in ten lines ? The supposition is 
 too absurd for a moment's consideration. The words do 
 not bear the slightest possible likeness to each other ; and 
 besides, we must remember that if Mr. Collier's folio be 
 worth any thing as an authority, the compositor made these 
 mistakes, which are impossible under any circumstances, 
 even when he had rhymes to guide him. And yet we are 
 asked to believe that all this did happen. 
 
 But if the folio have any authority, we must believe in 
 all these impossible errors of the press, and believe that 
 Shakespeare did not write the last part of the last Scene 
 to be played. For authority implies a right to submission, 
 
MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 501 
 
 irrespective of any exercise of reason or preference on 
 the part of the person submitting. To contend for the 
 authority of a part only, greater or less, of the emendations 
 in this or any other folio, is to contend for a patent, palpa- 
 ble absurdity. It is as if a legatee were to claim that such 
 parts of the will of the testator as accorded with his, the 
 legatee's, views, had authority, but that those which he did 
 not like had no authority. If we defer to a single change 
 in Mr. Collier's folio because of its authority, we must defer 
 to all ; for we have the same testimony, or rather want of 
 testimony, to the authenticity of all the changes that we 
 have to that of any one of them. Therefore, as the few 
 and rapidly diminishing believers in Mr. Collier's folio, 
 can bring themselves to contend for only a majority of its 
 changes of the authentic text, and as Mr. Collier himself 
 says, in the Preface to his late edition of the Plays of 
 Shakespeare, that "it is not to be understood that he 
 approves of all the changes in the text," it is plain that 
 even the discoverer and the advocates of this volume 
 exercise their individual judgment in accepting or rejecting 
 the changes of the text in it ; and, by their own confession, 
 do not defer to its authority. Thus they yield the only 
 essential point. There can be no objection to any man, or 
 any number of men, amusing themselves by making need- 
 less and absurd changes in the text of any author, so long 
 as they do not contend for the authenticity of those changes, 
 and insist upon their usurpation of the authority of the 
 original text. As Mr. Collier and his dwindling band of 
 submissive followers acknowledge that they do not contend 
 for all the changes, the only important point in dispute is 
 gained ; and they themselves, by their exercise of judgment 
 as to which they shall approve and which they shall 
 condemn, have applied Malone's unexceptionable rule to 
 them as " arbitrary emendations, .... made at the 
 
502 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 will and pleasure of the conjecturer, .... not au- 
 thorized by authentic copies printed or manuscript, . . . 
 and to be judged of by their reasonableness or probability" 
 The verdict of Shakesperian scholars upon their " reasona- 
 bleness or probability " has been unanimous, that an over- 
 whelming majority are unreasonable and improbable ; and 
 the good sense and instinctive perception of the intelligent 
 readers of Shakespeare is fast leading them to the same 
 conclusion. 
 
 Faith in the first folio, and a distrust of the MS. cor- 
 rector, do not rest upon a petitio principii as the Reviewer 
 would have it. We have the direct and explicit testimony 
 of Shakespeare's friends, fellow actors and principal part- 
 ners in the theatre, that the first folio was printed from 
 the text of Shakespeare, and, errors excepted, does contain 
 that text ; it is undeniably manifest that the corrector did 
 indulge in " mere guess-work ; " and therefore, as against 
 the authorized edition, we must consider all his labors as 
 merely conjectural, and only to be received when they con- 
 sistently correct the palpable accidental errors of that edi- 
 tion. But were this not so, nine tenths of those peculiar 
 to him would be rejected upon their own merits. They 
 seem to be modelled upon the conjectural effort of the man 
 who, not being able to understand the strong figure, " strain 
 at a gnat and swallow a camel," amended his New Testa- 
 ment to read, " strain at a gate and swallow a saw-mill" 
 
 But after all, it is not improbable that Richard Perkins 
 did make some of these corrections. It was admitted, for the 
 argument's sake, that he did make them ; but now having 
 seen that his making them gives them no semblance of au- 
 thority, it is safe to say that it is even more than probable 
 that he had a hand in them. It seems that this Richard 
 Perkins was not only an actor but " also in some measure a 
 poet, as he wrote a copy of verses prefixed to Heywood's 
 
MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 503 
 
 Apology for Actors!' The murder's out ! He was "some- 
 thing of a poet ! " This accounts for his turning speech 
 after speech of hlank verse into rhyme ; for his making 
 Hamlet bring up with a rhyme, after first correcting the 
 line which he thus altered ; for his submitting other 
 plays to similar treatment ; and for the insertion of several 
 entire lines, which, although two or three of them are not 
 unlike what Shakespeare might have written in those par- 
 ticular passages, are not at all beyond the reach of any man 
 who is " something of a poet " and has read the context. 
 
 It seems as if Master Perkins had been about to bring 
 out an edition of Shakespeare's works as he thought they 
 should have been written and should be acted. He mod- 
 ernized the language, struck out whatever he thought un- 
 interesting, added rhymes where he thought they were 
 needed, added stage directions to conform to the custom 
 of the day, which was to be very particular in that respect, 
 attended minutely to the punctuation, corrected even the 
 turned letters as Mr. Collier assures us (not at all necessary 
 for a stage copy), changed the old prefix of Beggar in the 
 Induction to the Taming of the Shrew, to Sly (equally un- 
 necessary for the stage), underscored the old rhymes and 
 quotations (also entirely needless in a stage copy), and 
 thought that he would have a very fine edition ; and, in 
 truth, it would have been quite as good, and of the same 
 kind, as Pope's and Warburton's. But the publishers of 
 the next edition, in 1664, did not believe in c Shakespeare 
 according to Perkins/ and they reprinted the old folios, 
 adding even all the plays that had borne Shakespeare's 
 name in his Lifetime. 
 
 Now, Perkins may have acted in Shakespeare's plays 
 while the dramatist was living ; he was doubtless " some- 
 thing of a poet," and may have had some actors' parts 
 which were "copies of copies of a part of a mutilated 
 
504 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. 
 
 copy ; " but in spite of all this, when there is any question 
 between what Heminge and Gondell and our own souls telj 
 us is Master Shakespeare's, and that which probability and 
 our own souls tell us is Master Perkins's, shall we not de- 
 cide in favor of Master SHAKESPEARE ? For though the one 
 was something of a poet, we believe that the other was a 
 great deal more of a poet. And all the people say Amen ! 
 
 THE END. 
 

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