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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
A carat character is used to denote superscription.
The character(s) enclosed by curly brackets following
the carat character are superscript (example: x^{li}).
The following expressions represent vowels with a breve:
[)a] a with breve
[)e] e with breve
Gaelic characters are enclosed in curly brackets (example:
A ca{i}lín ó{z} an{st}ó{r}).
A list of changes made can be found at the end of the book.
THE SHAKESPEARE-EXPOSITOR:
AN AID TO THE PERFECT UNDERSTANDING OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS.
by
THOMAS KEIGHTLEY,
Editor of the 'Plays and Poems of Shakespeare.'
London:
J. Russell Smith, 36 Soho Square.
1867.
Printed by Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street.
PREFACE.
THE object of this volume is to form a manual for the use chiefly of
those who, not being possessed of a voluminous annotated edition, are
fain to content themselves with the simple text. But even those who
have a perfect Shakespeare library cannot well dispense with it; for my
original corrections, which are very numerous, are nowhere else to be
found.
It was originally intended to form the complement to my Edition of
the Plays, and as such I had announced its immediate appearance. Why
it did not appear has been explained in Notes and Queries (3 S. vii.
175), and the statement there made was incontrovertible; for it was
the simple truth. The delay, however, has been no injury, but rather
a benefit to it. Its relation to the Edition now is that, while it
is perfectly independent and suited to any edition, the Edition
without it is somewhat like what a Euclid would be without diagrams or
demonstrations, as the reader will meet with numerous alterations of
the text, and be quite ignorant of how or why they were made. Moreover
the errors and oversights which escaped me in it will be found here all
corrected.
To my own Edition I regard it, then, as indispensable; and if I were
to mention any other to which it is peculiarly adapted, I should say
that which is named the Globe; for it contains a copious and excellent
Glossary--that in mine, which is not by me, is scanty--which, with the
Notes and Index of this volume, will leave little unexplained.
It is certainly very disheartening to those who devote their time and
labour to the elucidation of our Classic authors to find how small the
number is of those readers who are at all anxious to understand them
perfectly. The great majority, in fact, are quite satisfied if they
can get at the general meaning of a difficult or obscure passage, and
so glide over it. Still I am not without hope that among the tens of
thousands who buy, and I presume read, these Plays, there may be found
a few, a very few, hundreds who may wish to understand what they read,
and will therefore possess themselves of this volume. Profit is not
dreamed of, but it is hoped that loss may not be incurred.
When I was preparing my Edition of Milton's Poems, I fell into the
habit of correcting the text of our old writers. Hence I have corrected
copies of Chaucer, Spenser, the dramatists and others, which mayhap may
prove useful to future editors. The corrections of Shakespeare proved
so numerous as to form the present volume; but the idea of editing his
works never entered my mind till it was proposed to me, when I fear my
vanity became interested. I had been confessedly the best editor of
Milton, I might perchance stand in the same relation to Shakespeare.
My wish had been to be to the Faerie Queen what I had been to Paradise
Lost; and I may yet, perhaps, communicate some remarks on it in the
pages of Notes and Queries.
It was on the first edition of Collier's Shakespeare that I made my
corrections, and of previous emendations, if not noticed there, I knew
nothing. I afterwards read the Variorum and later editions; hence I
shall often be found saying that I had been anticipated. This was
always a source of pleasure to me, as a proof of the correctness of my
emendation. Porson, we are told, actually shed tears of joy when on
meeting with a copy of Aristophanes with MS. notes by Bentley, he found
his corrections had so frequently been anticipated. His delight was
still greater when on the discovery of the Ravenna MS. he saw so many
of his readings confirmed.
I must confess that experience has given me a good deal of confidence
in my own critical powers, and I am apt to fancy that when I cannot
conquer a difficulty it is nearly insuperable. Hence I have been little
anxious about learning what has been written by late critics.
At the risk, or rather I should say with the certainty, of being
charged with egotism, I will here state the following fact; for why
should truth be concealed? As I was one day, many years ago, discussing
some points in my 'Tales and Popular Fictions' with the late Mr. Douce,
he suddenly exclaimed "Oh, that you had but _my_ knowledge! What
discoveries you _would_ make!" I believe he was right, and that, under
more favourable circumstances, I should have done much; but it was not
to be.
I have endeavoured to grapple with every difficulty, to leave, if
possible, no knot unloosed. Some of my corrections must (many, I think,
probably will) be admitted into the text. At the same time, I freely
confess that some of these emendations are merely desperate remedies
for desperate diseases; and it may be that future critics may have more
success than I have had. I have, I believe, advanced the criticism of
Shakespeare some stages; and if succeeding critics follow the path I
have traced, the Plays will perhaps be, ere long, brought as near their
original state as is possible.
I regard the Introduction to the Notes as the most valuable part of
this volume, as I have there endeavoured to reduce emendatory criticism
to rule and law. I would earnestly recommend the reader to make himself
master of it before using the Notes. It would also perhaps be well to
do the same with the Index. The chief object of the Life, I may add, is
to remove suspicion respecting the poet's private character.
The portions of the text given in the Notes are always that of the
original editions, unless when it is otherwise expressed. I have made
them as brief as possible, as this book will, of course, only be read
in conjunction with the Plays themselves. I have only occasionally
given the metrical arrangement; those who would enjoy the pleasure
of reading the Plays in perfect metric order must read them in my
Edition. Finally, in very obvious corrections I have not deemed it
necessary to state that I had been anticipated.
This is the last of my works; my literary life here terminates. I am
fast approaching the utmost limit set to human life by the Psalmist, my
powers are necessarily on the decline, and prudence counsels obedience
to the precept:
"Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne
Peccet ad extremum ridendus, et ilia ducat."
T. K.
_Belvedere, Kent_,
_December 20, 1866_.
I have also contributed to English literature:--
The Poems of John Milton with Notes. Two vols. 8vo, 21_s._
An Account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton, with an
Introduction to Paradise Lost. 8vo, 10_s._ 6_d._
CONTENTS.
Page
Life of Shakespeare 1
Editions, dates, and origins of Shakespeare's Plays 20
THE TEXT CORRECTED AND ELUCIDATED.
INTRODUCTION.
I. The Text, 45. II. The Verse, 76.
COMEDIES.
The Comedy of Errors, 89--The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 96--Love's
Labour's Lost, 101--All's Well that ends Well, 113--Midsummer
Night's Dream, 130--Taming of the Shrew, 138--Merchant of Venice,
148--As You Like it, 155--Much Ado about Nothing, 163--Merry
Wives of Windsor, 168--Twelfth Night, 174--Measure for Measure,
181--Winter's Tale, 197--The Tempest, 208.
HISTORIES.
King John, 220--King Richard II., 226--King Henry IV., Part I.,
233--King Henry IV., Part II., 240--King Henry V., 244--King
Henry VI., Part I., 251--King Henry VI., Part II., 255--King
Henry VI., Part III., 259--King Richard III., 261--King Henry
VIII., 266.
TRAGEDIES.
Romeo and Juliet, 274--Hamlet, 286--Othello, 298--Julius Cæsar,
307--Antony and Cleopatra, 310--King Lear, 322--Macbeth,
328--Troilus and Cressida, 338--Timon of Athens, 348--Coriolanus,
359--Cymbeline, 373.
ADDITIONAL NOTES, 384.
EXPLANATORY INDEX, 385.
ERRATA.
Page 122, "If thou engrossest," etc. This note should come after the
two next.
Page 302, line 2, _for_ pulling _read_ putting.
LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE.
A FAMILY of the name of Shakespeare--pronounced, it would seem,
Sh[)a]ksp[)e]r--was numerous in Warwickshire during the middle ages.
About the middle of the sixteenth century John, the son of Richard
Shakespeare, a farmer residing at Snitterfield in that county, was
settled at Stratford-on-Avon, and was--though it appears he could
neither read nor write--a leading member of the Corporation. Various
accounts are given of his trade and occupation. We have proof that in
1556 he was a glover; he was afterwards a farmer or yeoman; Aubrey says
he was a butcher; and according to Rowe, he was "a considerable dealer
in wool." He would seem in fact to have been one who was ready to turn
to any honest occupation by which money might be made.
In 1557 John Shakespeare married Mary, the youngest daughter of Robert
Arden of Wilmecote, a man of good landed property, and belonging to a
family of no mean note in the county of Warwick. By her he had either
eight or ten children, of whom we need only notice William, the third,
who was baptized April 26th, 1564; but the exact date of his birth is
unknown. As his father was a member of the Corporation, it is highly
probable that, as Rowe asserts, he was sent to the Free School of the
town. How long he continued at it, and what he learned there, are
matters on which we have no certain information. He had probably an
ordinary English education, and he certainly, as his writings show,
had learned some Latin; but he does not seem to have got beyond the
elementary books, and of Greek, if it was taught in the school, he
learned nothing whatever. We are told by one authority that he acted as
an assistant in the school; by another that his father took him away
early to assist in his own business of wool-stapling or, as the former,
namely Aubrey, says, of butchering, who adds that "when he killed a
calf he would do it in a high style, and make a speech,"--of course
a mere figment. Malone conjectures--and in my opinion not without a
show of probability--from the frequent occurrence of law-terms in his
dramas, and his correct appreciation of their meaning, that he may have
been for some time in the office of an attorney in Stratford. This,
however, is all uncertainty; but at all events, judging from the turn
of his mind, I should be inclined to say that, beside his accurate
observation of men and manners, he read all the books he could obtain
in his native town.
In the registry of the diocese of Worcester is preserved a document
bearing date November 28, 1582, securing the Bishop against injury
in the case of his licensing certain persons to be married with once
asking of the banns. These persons are William Shakespeare, then in his
nineteenth year, and Anne Hathaway, then apparently aged twenty-six
years; for she died in 1623 at the age of sixty-seven years: she was
therefore about eight years her husband's senior. When their marriage
was celebrated we are unable to learn; but the baptism of Susanna,
their first child, took place on the 26th of May, 1583, just six months
after the date of the document quoted above. The natural inference is
obvious. Shakespeare, like Burns, knew his wife before the law had made
her his; and, like him, he acted honourably towards her.
This, perhaps the only imprudent act of Shakespeare's life, has been
variously judged. Nothing, we know, is more common than for young men
to fall in love with women older than themselves; and among the class
of society to which both parties belonged, instances were, and are,
not uncommon of the rules of prudence being transgressed in moments of
weakness, while the moral principle remains untainted. We know that
Burns's "Bonnie Jean" proved a most exemplary wife; and one of the
most truly virtuous and unaffectedly modest women I ever knew was one
who had acted thus imprudently. The bride of the future poet was Anne,
daughter of Richard Hathaway, a husbandman, or substantial yeoman, of
Shottery, a hamlet about a mile from Stratford, an intimate friend, it
would appear, of John Shakespeare's; and hence we may presume that an
intimacy prevailed also between the two families, and the not unlikely
result was what has been stated.
We now have Shakespeare, at the commencement of his twentieth year,
a married man, and the father of a child. On the 2nd of February,
1584-85, before he had completed his twenty-first year, were baptized
Hamnet and Judith, twins. We hear of no more children of William and
Anne Shakespeare; and soon after--most probably in 1586--Shakespeare
left Stratford, and set out to seek his fortune in the metropolis.
According to Rowe, he fled to escape from the persecution of Sir
Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote-park, near Stratford, from whose park he
and some other young men had stolen deer--a not unusual, and not very
discreditable practice in those days. The knight, we are told, was
indignant and vindictive, and the transgressor took his revenge by
writing and affixing to the gate of Charlecote-park a satirical ballad,
of which the first stanza has been preserved, and which, if genuine, is
mere doggrel and utterly unworthy of Shakespeare. He may, however, have
so written it on purpose. This is said to have added oil to the fire
of the knight's rage, and to escape from it the author fled to London.
His biographers in general are of opinion that his resentment against
his persecutor did not die out, and that after his death and the lapse
of many years he ridiculed him in the character of Justice Shallow in
The Merry Wives of Windsor. But this was little in the character of
"gentle" Shakespeare; and the whole theory is refuted by the fact that
the allusion to "the dozen white _luces_" in the Justice's coat-armour,
on which it is founded, does not occur in the original form of that
play. It may have been made afterwards by way of joke, and without any
malignity.
There is certainly no inherent improbability in this narrative; and it
may have had its effect in determining Shakespeare to quit Stratford.
But that it should have been the sole cause of his doing so is what I
am disposed to question. We must recollect that Shakespeare was a man
endowed with genius of the very highest order, and that he must have
aspired to a wider field for its exercise than his native town could
afford, that he had a family, and that his circumstances were very
slender, while those of his father, as we have sufficient evidence,
had been greatly reduced. Nor does it appear that he--who, as has
been already observed, except in the case of his marriage, was always
prudent--set out for London without having a definite object in view.
Now various companies of players, as we learn, were in the habit of
visiting Stratford, like other country towns, and performing there
in the Guildhall. It can be hardly doubted that Shakespeare, in
whom dramatic genius was inborn, must have been excited by these
performances, however low the merit of the pieces--perhaps even have
felt that he was capable of producing something superior to them of the
same kind. He probably then made the acquaintance of the players, one
of whom, Burbage, was, it is supposed, a native of the town, and some
others, natives of the county, and proposed embracing their profession.
He was young, handsome, of animated and even brilliant conversation.
There can be little doubt, then, that he met with encouragement, and
was readily received among them. This was, it is most likely, in the
year 1586, when he was two-and-twenty. Rowe says "he was received into
the company at first in a very mean rank;" and in 1693 the parish-clerk
of Stratford, a man eighty years of age, told a person named Dowdall,
that he "was received into the playhouse as a serviture." Of course,
like almost every other actor, he began at the bottom, having as it
were to serve his apprenticeship. This, then, seems to be all true
enough; not so another tradition, related by Johnson as coming from
Pope and Rowe, namely, that his first occupation in London was holding
gentlemen's horses at the door of the playhouse, in which business he
succeeded so well that he hired boys to act under him. How little like
Shakespeare this is need hardly be said.
A question which cannot be answered very satisfactorily is, What did
Shakespeare at this time do with his wife and children? The probability
would seem to be, that he left them at Stratford, and, as is most
likely, at his father's, till he should see what success he was likely
to meet with in London.
It would seem that for the first few years he was merely an actor; and
if the Ellesmere Papers, published by Mr. Collier, be genuine, he had
in 1589 become a sharer in the Blackfriars Theatre. Before this date he
may have begun to try his hand at making additions and alterations in
the plays of others. Of these we seem to have examples in the Second
and Third Parts of King Henry VI.; and there is a manifest allusion
to this practice of his in the following passage of Green's Groat's
Worth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance, published after
his death in 1592. Green is addressing his fellow dramatists Marlow,
Peele, and others; and he says, "There is an upstart crow, beautified
with our feathers, that with his _Tygre's heart wrapt in a player's
hyde_, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the
best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own
conceit the only _Shake-scene_ in a country." Here the allusion to
Shakespeare's name is quite plain, and the line in italics is a parody
on one in one of the plays which he appears to have thus treated. As
this allusion seems to have caused just offence, Chettle, who had given
Green's work to the world, took occasion shortly after in a work of
his own, his Kind-hart's Dream, to make an apology, in which he says
of Shakespeare, "Myself have seen his demeanour, no less civil than he
excellent in the quality he professes. Besides, divers of worship have
reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his
facetious grace in writing that approves his art." We thus see that
Shakespeare was regarded as an excellent player (for _quality_ then
answered to _profession_ at the present time), as an elegant writer
(_facetious_ being employed in its classic sense), and as an upright
and honourable man, and further, perhaps, as moving in what we should
term good society.
Moreover this work of Chettle's, published at the end of 1592 or
beginning of 1593, furnishes what I regard as a proof that Shakespeare
had not at that time brought an original piece on the stage; for
speaking of Green he says, "He was of singular pleasance, the very
supporter, and--to no man's disgrace be this intended--_the only
comedian of a vulgar writer in this country_;" of which last words the
plain meaning is, that Green had as yet been the only tolerable writer
of English comedy. Now we have sufficient means for judging of Green's
comic powers; and surely no man in his senses would have ventured to
write these words, had he been ever so prejudiced, if Shakespeare had
already produced the Comedy of Errors or The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
We may therefore venture to assert that neither of these plays was
acted earlier than 1593.
We may here, by the way, notice some curious coincidences between
Shakespeare and the great comic poet of France, Molière. There is some
reason to suppose that both of them were originally connected with the
law; they both went on the stage at, we may say, the age of twenty, or
a little later. Shakespeare was in his thirtieth year when he produced
his first original play, Molière in his thirty-second when he wrote
L'Etourdi; but he had previously given some short pieces. Finally,
the former died at the close, the latter at the commencement of his
fifty-second year.
The allusion to the poet's literary character in Kindhart's Dream was
in all probability to his Venus and Adonis, which was published in
1593, but which may, as was the custom in those days, have previously
circulated in manuscript among his "private friends;" or it may have
been to his Sonnets, which, as we shall presently see, thus circulated
at this time. It is impossible to say when this poem was written; but
there certainly is no necessity for supposing, with Mr. Collier, that
it was composed at Stratford. Shakespeare's mind easily retained the
requisite rural imagery; and with his power of rapid composition and
command of language, a very few weeks would suffice at any time for
its production. This poem, which he terms his "unpolished lines," and
"the first heir of my invention," was dedicated to Henry Wriothesly,
Earl of Southampton. It met with general applause, and was followed,
in 1594, by Lucrece, also dedicated to the same accomplished nobleman.
The dedication, commencing with "The love I dedicate to your lordship
is without end," would seem to intimate some degree of friendship on
both sides; and as Shakespeare's private character, as we have seen,
appears to have been most respectable, and Southampton was a well-known
admirer of the drama, some kind of intimacy between him and the poet
is not by any means improbable. There is also nothing incredible in
what Rowe says had been "handed down by Sir William Davenant," of Lord
Southampton's having "at one time given him £1000 to enable him to
go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to." But the
amount must be much exaggerated; for none of Shakespeare's purchases
that we hear of ever came to so large a sum. Mr. Collier thinks,
with some probability, that, as it appears that the Globe Theatre on
the Bankside was built in 1594 by the company to which Shakespeare
belonged, Lord Southampton may have given him as much money as his
share of the cost came to, which could not well have been more than a
few hundred pounds.
It was probably also about this time that he wrote his very enigmatic
Sonnets, which Meres, in 1598, calls "his sugred sonnets among his
private friends," meaning perhaps which only circulated privately in
manuscript. I assign them this early date because their style and
language so strongly resemble those of his two poems and his early
plays, such as Love's Labour's Lost. They were not published till 1609,
and then not by the author himself. They seem to have been collected
from those who had the manuscripts by a Mr. W. H., whom therefore
the publisher in his dedication terms "the only begetter" of them,
"begetter" in the language of the time being getter, collector, &c. It
has been conjectured, with great probability, that many of them were
written in the person of Lord Southampton for the lady with whom he was
enamoured; and others may have been written for other persons, a usual
custom then of the poets of France and England. I feel almost convinced
that few or none of them were written in the poet's own person. Thus in
1598 he was only thirty-four years old, and yet some of them are in the
character of a man grey and advanced in years; even in 1609 he was only
forty-five.
Along with the Sonnets was published a poem named A Lover's Complaint,
of the genuineness of which I am rather dubious. There had already
appeared, in 1599, under the name of Shakespeare, a catchpenny
collection called The Passionate Pilgrim, in which are two of his
manuscript sonnets, and three of those published the preceding year in
Love's Labour's Lost, all of them with an altered text.
An account of the dates, &c., of Shakespeare's plays will follow this
Life. Here, therefore, it need only be remarked that they extended over
a space of less than twenty years (from 1592 to 1610?), during which
time he had an active share in the management of the two theatres,
and was also an actor for the whole or the greater part of it. He was,
as we may well suppose, with Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and others, a
member of the club instituted by Sir Walter Raleigh, and which met at
the Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street, in which street, it may be observed
by the way, Milton was born during this period. Fuller has left us
some account of the wit-combats that used to take place at the Mermaid
between our poet and Ben Jonson.
The relations between Shakespeare and his family during this time
are in a state of ambiguity, which no conjecture can fully clear up.
There is not the slightest ground for supposing that he ever was
on ill terms with his wife; and surely we have no right to suppose
that, like La Fontaine, he left her in the country while he himself
lived in the metropolis; for Shakespeare was a householder, while La
Fontaine lived usually in the _hôtels_ of his patrons. The more natural
supposition is that he would have removed his wife and children to
London as soon as he had got a firm footing there. Certainly no entry
of the birth of any child of his is to be found in the register of any
London parish; but may not some physical change, with which we are
unacquainted, have caused his wife to cease from childbearing after
the birth of the twins? There is also no entry of this kind in the
register of Stratford; and yet it can hardly be that he, any more than
La Fontaine, abstained from the bed of his wife in the annual visits
which, according to Aubrey's very probable account, he was in the habit
of making to his native town. But the burial of his son Hamnet took
place in Stratford on the 11th of August, 1596, whence it might appear
that the family was living there at that time. To this, however, it
may be replied that the family, though usually resident in London, may
have been down at Stratford when Hamnet took ill, or that he may have
taken ill in London and have been ordered by the physicians to try
the effect of his native air, or that, finally, he may have died in
London, and his body have been taken down to Stratford for interment
with his family, an act quite in character with Shakespeare. The mist,
therefore, remains so far undispelled. But we are also to remember
that Shakespeare, as above stated, was a householder in London, which
might seem to intimate that he had a family there. It is to me a matter
of extreme difficulty to believe that he who created so many of the
loveliest female characters that the world has ever witnessed, should
have led, as, we may say, he otherwise must have done, an irregular
life with regard to the sex; for the effect of such conduct is almost
always a degrading view of female nature; and how pure on this
subject his ideas must always have been is strongly indicated by the
circumstance that three of his most lovely female characters--Perdita,
Miranda, Imogen--occur in the very last plays he wrote. We may here
note the difference between him and La Fontaine. On the whole, then,
my opinion is that Shakespeare had his wife and children with him in
London, and that his life there was as regular and domestic as his
profession permitted.
It has been argued, from a passage in Twelfth Night, in which a man is
advised always to marry a woman younger than himself, that Shakespeare
had felt the evil consequences of the opposite course. But surely we
should not press thus closely language resulting from the situation of
a character in a drama. And if Shakespeare was so convinced of the ill
consequences of such a procedure, how came it that only a few months
before his death he gave an apparently cheerful consent to the marriage
of his daughter Judith with Thomas Quiney, who was four years her
junior? This objection, then, also may be dismissed, and we remain as
uncertain as ever.
We may also venture to deal in a similar way with a passage in the
Tempest (iv. 1.), condemnatory of the conduct which he and his wife
had pursued before their marriage. Further, as the only mention
of his wife in his will is an interlineation, bequeathing her his
"second best bed, with the furniture," a want of due regard for her
comfort and independence has been inferred. But this in reality is
rather indicative of affection; for, as Mr. Knight was the first to
observe, as his property was mostly freehold, the law provided for her
by assigning her what it terms dower. Lastly, the desire which Mrs.
Shakespeare is said to have expressed to be buried with her husband is
surely some proof of mutual affection.
It would also seem to be a matter of which there can be little doubt,
that Shakespeare must have been an indefatigable reader during the
first years of his residence in London. It is strange how none of the
commentators appear to have been aware of this fact; for it is the only
way of accounting for the remarkable copiousness of his vocabulary.
Max Müller, following Professor Marsh, in his Lectures on the Science
of Language, having observed, on the authority of a country clergyman,
that some of our peasantry have not more than 300 words in their
vocabulary, proceeds as follows:--
"A well-educated person in England, who has been at a public school and
at the university, who reads his Bible, his Shakespeare, the Times,
and all the books of Mudie's Library, seldom uses more than about 3000
or 4000 words in actual conversation. Accurate thinkers and close
reasoners, who avoid vague and general expressions, and wait till they
find the word that exactly fits their meaning, employ a larger stock;
and eloquent speakers may rise to a command of 10,000. Shakespeare, who
displayed a greater variety of expression than probably any writer in
any language, produced all his plays with about 15,000 words; Milton's
works are built up with about 8000; and the Old Testament says all that
it has to say with 5642 words."
Now how else but by reading could Shakespeare have got such a store of
words? It could not be by conversation, and he surely did not invent
more than a few of them. This also tends to prove that Venus and Adonis
was not written at Stratford; for his rural vocabulary could hardly
have sufficed for such a poem.
But further, I think I am justified in asserting that during the
earlier years of his dramatic career Shakespeare acquired a competent
knowledge of the French and Italian languages. As we shall see, some
of his plays were founded on Italian tales and plays of which no
translation has ever been discovered; and the natural inference then
is, that he had read them in the original. As to the French, he must
have been able to write as well as read it. As a proof, in his Henry V.
there are scenes of mingled French and English, which scenes are, like
all the prose scenes in our old dramatists, in what I have denominated
_metric prose_; and this could only be caused by the whole scene having
been the production of the one mind. The French, too, is incorrect,
as it is also in the really prose French scene between Katherine
and Alice. It seems therefore probable in the highest degree that
Shakespeare was able to write French. In like manner Ben Jonson has
shown in his Alchemist and elsewhere, that he was able to write Spanish
and other languages.
Another curious question is, Was Shakespeare ever out of England? This,
too, cannot be determined; but it is clear to me, from various passages
of his plays, that he must have been familiar with the sea-shore; and,
from his correct use of nautical terms, we might suspect that he had
been at sea on board a ship once, if not oftener. I cannot see any
equal proof of his having been familiar with mountain scenery; and
from the comparative vagueness of his language respecting mountains in
Cymbeline and elsewhere, I rather suspect that he had never gazed on a
mountain-range.
In 1597, the year after he had lost his only son, Shakespeare began to
carry into effect his long-cherished project of acquiring property in
his native county. For the seemingly trifling sum of £60 he purchased
from William Underhill one of the best houses in the town of Stratford,
named New Place, built by Sir Hugh Clopton in the reign of Henry VII.,
consisting of one messuage, two barns, and two gardens, with their
appurtenances. It was situated in Chapel-street Ward; and as, in a
note taken of corn and malt during a dearth in the beginning of the
following year, we find him set down as the holder of ten quarters,
it would appear that his family, if not he himself, must have been
residing at that time in this place.
For some years subsequent to this date we find a few notices of
purchases &c. in which Shakespeare was engaged, but nothing that throws
any light on his personal history. Neither can we ascertain at what
time it was that he disposed of his theatric property; for that he
did so is plain, as he says nothing of it in his will. It would seem,
however, to have been subsequent to 1610. It would also appear that
he lived in Stratford in very handsome style, probably exercising a
generous hospitality; for we learn from the diary of the Rev. J. Ward,
vicar of that town in 1662, that he had _heard_ that Shakespeare "spent
at the rate of £1000 a-year." This sum, however, though not by any
means so large, relative to the present value of money, as is usually
supposed, is utterly incredible; but still it proves the tradition of
his housekeeping having been liberal.
On the 5th of June, 1607, Shakespeare's eldest daughter, Susanna, was
married to Dr. John Hall, a physician of some eminence, settled in
Stratford. They had but one child, a daughter named Elizabeth, who was
married first to Thomas Nash, and secondly to John (afterwards Sir
John) Barnard, of Abington, in Northamptonshire. She died in 1649,
having had no children by either husband; and with her ended the lineal
descent from the great Shakespeare; for Judith, his other daughter,
who married a couple of months before his death, though she had three
sons, outlived them all, as none of them attained to the age of twenty
years. Poetic genius seems fated never to found a family; it is above
the vulgar distinctions of human life.
We know not the exact date of Shakespeare's final departure from London
and settlement at Stratford; but it probably was not much later than
the year 1610. His life after his retirement was not destined to be
very long. We may picture him to ourselves as passing his days in
tranquil enjoyment, interesting himself somewhat in the affairs of the
borough, conversing with his neighbours, telling anecdotes of his life
in London, reading his Bible and Chaucer, Spenser, and other poets,
and no doubt his North's Plutarch, giving occasional play to his wit,
in short, leading the life of a wise and sensible man, contented with
the condition he had made his mature choice of as most productive of
happiness.
It is probable that in his fifty-second year he felt a decline in his
constitution which reminded him of the uncertainty of life; for on
the 25th of January, 1615-16, he made his Will, which was executed
exactly two months later; and on the 23rd of the following April he
breathed his last. He was buried in the church of Stratford, where his
grave and monument may still be seen. The disease of which he died is
unknown. The vicar, Mr. Ward, already referred to, says, "Shakespeare,
Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and, it seems, drank too
hard; for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted." This no doubt
is not impossible, but it is not very probable. If we may judge from
passages in his plays, Shakespeare was an enemy to deep drinking; and
it is hardly likely that he should, so late in life too, have committed
such excess (worthy only of a Burns) as is here supposed, even in the
company of Ben Jonson, a visit from whom to Stratford, if he had made
it, would with its consequences in all probability have formed part of
his communications to Drummond two years later. We may then, I think,
safely venture to reject this account of Shakespeare's death, and
acknowledge that its cause is utterly unknown, and will probably always
remain unknown.
It would appear from Shakespeare's Will that he had at the time of his
death but very little money; for, excepting a few trifling legacies,
the only sum mentioned is £300 which he left to his younger daughter
Judith, making apparently a very unequal division of his property; for
to his elder daughter Susanna he left all his lands, tenements, etc.,
in Stratford and elsewhere, the value of which must have been very far
beyond that of the sum devised to Judith. In fact we might suppose that
the property enumerated in a general way in his Will had cost more, and
were of greater value than would seem to be indicated.
It might be supposed that the cause of this unequal division was
displeasure at Judith's marriage; but, beside that we have no proof of
any such feeling towards her, the real cause lies evidently far deeper.
It was his passionate desire to be the founder of a family in his
native county. This it was that animated all his theatric exertions,
and he regarded the wonderful creations of his genius merely as means
to this one great end. We might have presumed that the death of his
only son in 1596 would have given a check to this passion; but, on
the contrary, it was, as we have seen, in the very next year that he
commenced purchasing property in Warwickshire; and we also find that
in that year, or more certainly in 1599, a grant of arms was made to
John Shakespeare by the Heralds' College, in which he was authorized
to impale the bearings of the Ardens, his wife's family, with his own;
and the probability would seem to be, that previously the Shakespeare
family had had no coat of arms. By a statute, however, of the later
Plantagenets every freeholder was to have his proper _seal_ of arms;
and that of the Shakespeares may have been the eagle and spear, whence
the Heralds easily formed the coat of arms used by Shakespeare. In
obtaining this, John Shakespeare must have acted under the influence
and at the expense of his son William.
In his Will, Shakespeare leaves his lands, tenements, &c. to his
daughter Susanna, and after her death to her eldest son and his heirs
male, and, in default of heirs male of him, to her second son, and so
on to the seventh son, and, in default of such issue, to his _niece_
(_i.e._ granddaughter) Elizabeth Hall and her heirs male, and, in
default of them, to his daughter Judith and her heirs male, and, in
their default, to the right heirs of the testator.
Every precaution we see was here taken, but all in vain; for, as we
have hinted, it seems to be the order of Providence that literary
genius should not be the foundation of worldly rank and greatness. Most
persons will here call to mind the parallel case of Sir Walter Scott,
who, too, as fondly and as vainly yearned to be the founder of a part
of the rural aristocracy of his native land, and in whose eyes it was
greater to be Laird of Abbotsford than the author of Waverley. But
the advantage was on the side of the bard of Avon; for _he_ sought no
literary fame, content with a life of peace and competence, while the
Scottish baronet would fain have had literary fame as well as wealth
and title. How different were the latter days of the two men!
* * * * *
From what precedes--few, very few, as the circumstances are--some
faint idea may be formed of Shakespeare as a man. As a poet, his works
present him to us, in all his fulness, as the most wonderful dramatic
genius that ever the world has seen, ranging with equal ease from the
lowest to the highest point of the whole scale of the drama, from the
broad farce of the Comedy of Errors, through the enchanting light
and graceful comedy of As You Like It, and similar pieces, up to the
sublimest tragedy of Macbeth, Lear, Othello. Of him alone can this be
asserted. We have no reason to suppose that the great tragic poets
of Greece, any more than those of France, excelled also in comedy;
while the dramatists of Spain notoriously failed in tragedy, and their
comedy, gay, spritely and animated as it is, depends chiefly on plot
and intrigue, and is greatly deficient in variety of character.
Mr. Dyce has justly observed how absurd it is to say that Shakespeare
was, though the greatest, only one of a race of contemporary giants.
The poetic greatness of Jonson, Fletcher, and Massinger was doubtless
beyond that witnessed in most other ages of the world; but surely
they were but as the stars to the sun when compared with Shakespeare.
In like manner I apprehend few will agree with the following character
of Shakespeare as a poet, drawn by Gifford in his Introduction to the
Plays of Massinger.
"The claims of this great poet on the admiration of mankind are
innumerable, but rhythmical modulation is not one of them; nor do I
think it either wise or just to hold him forth as supereminent in every
quality which constitutes genius. Beaumont is as sublime, Fletcher
as pathetic, and Jonson as nervous. Nor let it be accounted poor or
niggard praise to allow him only an equality with these extraordinary
men in their peculiar excellencies, while he is admitted to possess
many others, to which they made no approaches. Indeed if I were asked
for the discriminating quality of Shakespeare's mind, that by which
he is raised above all competition, above all prospect of rivalry, I
should say it was WIT."
That Shakespeare possessed that _aroma_ of humour which we denominate
_wit_, beyond any of his contemporaries or successors, is a matter
about which, I think, there cannot be two opinions. I will not deny
that in nervousness Jonson may have equalled him, but I certainly know
not where to look for the sublime in Beaumont which rivalled that
of Macbeth and Lear; and unquestionably I should never even dream
of putting the morbid softness of Fletcher in comparison with the
genuine manly pathos of Shakespeare. There was however one thing in
which I must confess they all exceeded him--perspicuity; for though
in many, very many parts of his plays the language is most lucid
and unconstrained, there are others--in Troilus and Cressida for
instance--which task the intellect to understand them, and which never
could have been intelligible to an ordinary audience. But the fact
is, neither he nor any other of his brother dramatists ever seems to
have asked himself the simple question, Will the audience understand
this? I finally must assert, in opposition to Gifford, that, where
Shakespeare's verse is uninjured, we have abundant proof that no poet
ever excelled him in "rhythmical modulation," and that, when we would
produce the most melodious verse in our language, it is in his plays
that we shall find our best specimens. It seems to me quite idle to
say with Coleridge that Shakespeare's verse is peculiar in rhythm and
structure; for, from the nature of verse, it could not be so. It is
just as idle to say with Johnson that the blank verse of Thomson is
not that of Milton. The difference in such cases lies wholly in the
language; and that of Shakespeare _is_ peculiar. This is caused by
an excess of figurative expression, in which his metaphors are often
broken and confused and his similes imperfect, by inversions and
transpositions, and by the use of words in unusual and even incorrect
senses.
Shakespeare's power of observation must have been not merely extensive
but marvellous:--
"He walk'd in every path of human life,
Felt every passion, and to all mankind
Doth now, will ever, that experience yield
Which his own genius only could acquire."
Nothing, in fact, high or low, seems to have escaped him; he discerned
the nicest shades and varieties of looks, of manners, of language.
He had also, in a remarkable degree, that power--that clairvoyance,
as we may perhaps venture to term it--so requisite to the dramatist
and the novelist, of developing from the faintest sketch, the merest
outline, the entire of a character, with its appropriate sentiments,
action, and language. In the number and variety of characters no writer
ever equalled him, and all are fully and completely delineated, none
are, as in other dramatists, mere sketches. Some, such as his Clowns,
are peculiar to himself; we meet with no Clowns in the dramas of his
contemporaries and successors,--the Gracioso of the Spanish drama,
an independent creation, being the nearest approach to them. But of
all his creations what has always most astonished me are his women.
They are exclusively his own; Fletcher, Massinger, or any other, has
nothing like them. Perhaps the nearest approach is made in Spain also,
by Cervantes; in whom, however, as in the Spanish drama, they want
variety. They would seem to have been produced, if I may so express it,
by a projection of his own gentle and noble nature into female forms;
for he surely never met his Rosalinds, Mirandas, and Perditas in real
life, though he _may_ have had some faint sketches of some of them in
his own daughters. He seems to have shrunk almost instinctively from
portraying bad women. Goneril and Regan alone are unredeemed; for Lady
Macbeth is awful, not detestable, and even the Queen of Cymbeline is
but an Agrippina, for like her she is criminal but not selfish.
In fine, though I will not, with Mr. Buckle, term Shakespeare "the
greatest of the sons of men"--for I cannot give that preeminence to
imagination, observation, and language over the other mental powers,
so as to place him above Aristotle and Newton--I will say here of
him, as I have said in my 'Life of Milton' that "he was the mightiest
poetic mind that Nature has ever produced," and that, in his case,
statues and other memorials are utterly needless and superfluous. If
we are asked for his monument, we should simply point to his Plays and
say,--_Monumentum si quæris, inspice!_ and, in my opinion, he consults
best for the poet's fame who seeks to restore his works to their
pristine form.
The reader will see by this sketch how little is really known
concerning Shakespeare. I have endeavoured, as will be seen, to rectify
some points in his biography.
EDITIONS, DATES, AND ORIGINS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS.
IN 1598 appeared a work, named Palladis Tamia, written by Francis
Meres, in which among other passages respecting Shakespeare we meet
with the following:--
"As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy
among the Latines, so Shakespeare among the English is the most
excellent in both kinds for the stage. For comedy witness his Gentlemen
of Verona, his Errors, his Love Labour's Lost, his Love Labour's Won,
his Midsummer's Night Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy
his Richard II., Richard III., Henry IV., King John, Titus Andronicus,
and his Romeo and Juliet."
Critics have hence inferred that these were Shakespeare's only plays
written before 1598; but they have not observed that, moved probably
by a love of symmetry and uniformity, Meres has given just half a
dozen of each; and as in reality there were only five of our author's
original tragedies then in being, he adds a play to which he could at
most have only given a few touches, omitting the two Parts of Henry
VI., for which he had done a vast deal more. In like manner he seems
in his list of comedies to have omitted The Taming of the Shrew, which
must be regarded as the least original of the comedies, and which the
language and verse prove to belong to this period of his plays. It is
generally agreed that Shakespeare never himself gave a play to the
press; those, then, of which there are editions published during his
lifetime, must have been printed from copies surreptitiously obtained,
perhaps from the prompter. Hence their inaccuracies and imperfections.
There is a theory indeed that they may have been taken down in
short-hand during representation; but this theory seems only tenable in
a single instance, Henry V., and the practice must have found a strong
obstacle in the metre, to speak of no other difficulty. My opinion
is that when once a copy of a play had been obtained and printed, it
became the groundwork of all the subsequent editions which were printed
from it, sometimes with corrections, made by the printer himself or by
some man of letters employed by him for the purpose--except in such
cases as Romeo and Juliet, or The Merry Wives, where the author had
himself "corrected, augmented, and amended" his play. I may add that
our forefathers, like the Orientals, had not our ideas about adhering
strictly to the text of an author. If they thought they could improve
it, they never hesitated to do so. I will now briefly state what is of
most importance respecting the editions, the dates, and the origins of
these immortal dramas.
COMEDIES.
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ As it is mentioned by Meres it must be anterior to 1598. It was
probably Shakespeare's first original piece. From the plain allusion
(III. 2) to the civil war in France, it must have been written before
February 1594, in which year Henry IV. was crowned. I have shown above
that it could not have been acted earlier than 1593.
_Origin._ It is manifestly founded on the Menæchmi of Plautus; but
Shakespeare hardly went to the original. He may have merely got an
account of that piece from some learned friend; and there was a piece
named The Historie of Error, which was played at Hampton Court before
the Queen, on New Year's day 1576-77, which may have been formed on
the Menæchmi. The proper title of this play seems to have been simply
Errors, and The Comedy of Errors is like The Tragedy of Macbeth, &c.
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ Anterior to 1598 as it is in Meres's list. The critics have
not observed that the resemblance is so strong between Act III. Sc. 1
of this play, and Act I. Sc. 2 of Lyly's Midas, that the one must have
been taken from the other. In my opinion our poet was the borrower, as
his scene is so superior to Lyly's. Now Midas was printed in 1592; but
Shakespeare, it may be said, may have seen the play acted, or he may
have written that scene, and added it to his play after he had read
Lyly's; so the present comedy might have been written before 1592.
This, however, I have shown to be at the least very unlikely. Though in
my edition of the Plays I have given, as here, precedence to The Comedy
of Errors, I do not feel at all certain upon the point, and would by no
means assert that this is not rather "the first heir of his [dramatic]
invention."
_Origin._ The plot seems to have been, in the main, of our poet's
own invention; though what relates to Proteus and Julia may have
been suggested, mediately or immediately, by the story of Felix and
Felismena in the Diana of Montemayor. Indeed the points of resemblance
are such that I feel confident the poet must have been acquainted with
that part of the Diana; and yet it was not translated till 1598. Might
he not have learned it from some one who had read the work in Spanish?
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.
_Editions._ 4to, 1598; in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ We have no means of ascertaining the exact time of its
composition; but from internal evidence we must regard it as one of our
author's earliest pieces, yet, I think, later than those I have placed
before it.
_Origin._ It is apparently wholly our poet's own invention, as no
novel, play, or anything else at all resembling it has been discovered.
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ Meres, as we have seen, terms one of Shakespeare's comedies
"Love Labour's Won." Among our author's extant comedies there is none
with that title, and we have no reason whatever for supposing any
original play of his to be lost; while on the other hand the subject
of the present play accords most accurately with that title. It has
therefore been conjectured, with great probability, that this is one
of Shakespeare's early plays, which he altered and improved at a later
period, giving it at the same time a new title. We can certainly
discern in it the style and mode of composition of two different
periods--the riming scenes, for instance, belonging to the earlier
one. It is to be observed of these riming scenes, that they only occur
in the three preceding plays, and in Romeo and Juliet, in all which
plays soliloquies, letters, &c. are in stanzas--like the sonnets in
Spanish plays; and the very same is the case in the present play, and
in it alone of the later ones; whence we may fairly conclude that it
belonged to the early period. The second act seems to retain, both in
the serious and the comic scenes, much of the original play unaltered;
and every one must be struck with the resemblance of the style in it to
that of Love's Labour's Lost.
_Origin._ The tale of Giletta di Narbona in Boccaccio's Decameron,
which Shakespeare may have read in the original, or in the translation
in Painter's Palace of Pleasure. The comic scenes are, of course, our
author's own, as usual.
A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
_Editions._ 4to (by Fisher), 1600; 4to (by Roberts), 1600; in the
folio, 1623.
_Date._ Anterior to 1598, as it is mentioned by Meres. I _do_ think
that in Act II. Sc. 1 there is an allusion to the state of the weather
in the summer of 1594, and that Shakespeare may have been writing this
play at that very time. I therefore incline to give that year, or
1595, as the date of its composition.
_Origin._ Purely and absolutely the whole the poet's own invention. He
was well read in Chaucer, in Golding's Ovid, and in North's Plutarch,
where he got the names of his characters and some circumstances.
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ We have no means of ascertaining the exact date of this play;
but the style proves it to belong to Shakespeare's early period. The
reason of its omission by Meres has been already given.
_Origin._ It is a _rifacimento_ of an anonymous play, first printed
in 1594, though perhaps written and acted some time earlier, and
termed "The Taming of a Shrew," and it may be anterior to the
Midsummer-Night's Dream; the date 1594 would seem to have some
connexion with both plays. The incident of the Pedant personating
Vincentio was taken from The Supposes, a translation by Gascoigne of
Ariosto's I Suppositi.
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.
_Editions._ 4to (by Roberts), 1600; 4to (by Heyes), 1600; in the folio,
1623. The two 4tos are in effect the same; for Heyes's was printed
by J. R., _i.e._ James Roberts, who probably had contrived to get a
transcript from the copy in the theatre, and then may have made some
arrangement with Heyes for the publication.
_Date._ It is in Meres's list, and it was entered by Roberts in the
Stationers' Registers 22nd July 1598; so that it was probably first
acted in that or the preceding year. It is, I think, certainly later
than any of the preceding comedies.
_Origin._ The remote origin of the incidents both of the bond and
of the caskets is the Gesta Romanorum portions of which had been
translated and published by Robinson in 1577. The incident of the bond
is also in Il Pecorone of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, first printed in
1558, and which Shakespeare may have read. There was also a ballad
on the subject, in Percy's Reliques, with which he may have been
acquainted.
AS YOU LIKE IT.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ It is posterior to 1598, as Meres does not mention it, and
was entered in the Stationer's Registers, August 4, 1600, by the
booksellers Wise and Aspley; but for some reason, which we cannot now
discover, they did not print it.
_Origin._ It is founded on Lodge's novel of Rosalynde, of which the
chief origin was The Coke's Tale of Gamelyn, ascribed, but wrongly,
to Chaucer. The characters of Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey, and of
course all the comic scenes, are Shakespeare's own.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
_Editions._ 4to, 1600; in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ Not being mentioned by Meres, it is posterior to 1598; and as
it is said, in the title-page of the 4to, that "it hath been sundry
times publicly acted," it may have been written in 1598, and may be
older than As You Like It; but we have no means of deciding.
_Origin._ The story of Ariodante and Ginevra in the Orlando Furioso,
which Shakespeare may have read either in the original or in Sir
John Harington's translation, published in 1591. The story had also
been translated by Beverley and Turberville; and there was a play
on it, performed before the Queen on Shrove Tuesday 1582-83; so
that it was well known. Shakespeare's other authority was the novel
of Timbreo di Cardona, &c., in Bandello, in which occur the names
_Pietro di Aragona_, _Messina_, and Felicia _Lionata_, and with which
therefore Shakespeare must have been acquainted. As there was no known
translation of it, save a French one in Belleforest's _Histoires
Tragiques_, I am of opinion that Shakespeare had read the original
Italian. It need hardly be added that all the comic scenes and
characters are our author's own.
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.
_Editions._ 4to, 1602; 4to, 1619; in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ It was entered in the Stationers' Registers 18th January
1601-02, and was, consequently, written between 1597 (it is not in
Meres's list) and that date; but we have no means of ascertaining the
exact time. Mr. Dyce thinks it was written before 1600. It may be
observed that, though some of the characters are the same as those in
Henry IV. and Henry V., it is quite independent of these plays. I must
here remark that the play is so brief, and, as it were, elementary, in
the 4tos as compared with the folio, that it seems quite clear that the
poet revised and augmented it some time after its first appearance; and
this gives some probability to the tradition of its having been written
at the command of the Queen, and in a few days, possibly in 1598 or
1599. Further, as in the 4tos there is no allusion whatever to the Lucy
coat of arms, it is highly improbable that the poet showed in it any
ill feeling towards that family. Lastly, the occurrence in the 4tos of
numerous riming couplets which are not in the folio, completely upsets
Mr. Collier's theory of that edition having been made up from memory,
and from notes taken at the theatre. The expression "_king's_ English"
(I. 4) might seem to indicate that the enlargement of the play was not
made till after the accession of James. The change, however, of _queen_
to _king_ may have been made by the Editors; but surely Shakespeare
must have been aware that Falstaff lived in the time of the Henries.
_Origin._ Though some Italian and English tales are referred to as the
possible sources of the plot, we may, I think, regard it as, at least
in the greater part, Shakespeare's own invention. There is, however, a
strong resemblance in part of it to a German play by Duke Henry Julius
of Brunswick, who died in 1611. See on The Tempest.
TWELFTH NIGHT.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ We learn from the MS. diary of a barrister named Manningham,
that this play was performed in the Middle Temple, on the 2nd of
February 1601-02. It was therefore written between 1597 and that date;
but the exact time is quite uncertain.
_Origin._ The more remote origin of this play is apparently one of the
tales of Bandello, which Shakespeare may have read in the original,
or in a French or English version of it; for there were such. But the
Rev. Jos. Hunter directed attention to three Italian comedies, two
named "Inganni"--one of which is noticed by Manningham--and a third
named "Gl'Ingannati," or "Il Sacrificio;" and the resemblance between
this last and Twelfth Night is so strong that it is hardly possible
to suppose that Shakespeare was unacquainted with it. If so, as it
was never translated, as far as we know, he must have read it in the
original Italian, which was printed in 1537.
N.B. The reader will observe with respect to these last four comedies,
that all that we know with certainty respecting their date is that they
were written between 1597 and 1600 or 1602. The arranging of them is
little more than guess-work. I have placed first those that we _know_
to have been written before 1600.
MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ In the Accounts of the Revels at Court, we are informed
that this play was performed at Whitehall December 26, 1604. It was
therefore probably written in that or the preceding year.
_Origin._ "The right excellent and famous History of Promos and
Cassandra, a drama in Two Parts, by George Whetstone," published
in 1578. Whetstone's drama was taken from one of the tales in the
Hecatommithi of Cinthio, which Shakespeare may also have read. The
comic scenes are of course all his own.
THE WINTER'S TALE.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ It appears from the MS. diary of Dr. Forman, that he saw this
play performed at the Globe, May 15, 1611; it was also performed at
Whitehall on the 5th of November following. Its exact date cannot be
assigned; but the great probability is that it could not have been
written earlier than 1610. I am disposed to regard it as anterior to
The Tempest, which was probably the last play that ever Shakespeare
wrote. When we consider the probable date of this play, we see how
utterly untenable is the theory of some writers that it was an
indirect apology for Anne Boleyn, and a direct compliment to her royal
daughter. I may here observe that those ingenious persons who find
allusions (except in a very few plain instances) to public events and
public persons in Shakespeare's plays merely waste their own and their
readers' time. Thus Sir Philip Sidney died the very year the poet came
to London; and yet we are told that he is figured in Hamlet, a play not
written till many years afterwards!
_Origin._ With the exception of the comic scenes--which as usual are
wholly Shakespeare's own--it was founded on Green's popular novel of
Pandosto, The Triumph of Time.
THE TEMPEST.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ As it (II. 1) copies a passage from Florio's translation
of Montaigne's Essays, published in 1603, we may assume that it is
posterior to that year; and Malone has directed attention to the
shipwreck of Sir George Somers on the island of Bermuda in July 1609,
which may have suggested the scene of "The Tempest." We may therefore
venture to assume that it may have been written not long after the
account of that event reached England.
_Origin._ Collins, the poet, told Warton that he had seen a romance
called "Aurelio and Isabella," printed in Italian, Spanish, French, and
English in 1588, which was the original of the Tempest. But no such
romance has ever been discovered, and it may justly be questioned if
ever such a one existed. Still it is not improbable that Shakespeare
may have heard or read some story of people cast away on a desert
island. There is also a German play by Jacob Ayrer of Nuremberg, who
died early in the seventeenth century, named "Die schöne Sidea," which
in its plot and principal characters, bears so strong a resemblance to
The Tempest that it is very difficult to avoid supposing a connexion
between them; and it might thence appear that Collins was correct, for
Shakespeare could hardly have had any knowledge of a German drama. It
may, however, be said that he got his knowledge of the plot, &c., from
one of the English actors who, as it is now well known, used to go over
and perform in Germany.
HISTORIES.
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING JOHN.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ Anterior to 1598, as it is in Meres's list.
_Origin._ It was founded on a play called "The First and Second Part of
the Troublesome Reign of King John of England," published in 1591.
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING RICHARD II.
_Editions._ 4to, 1597; 4to, 1598; 4to, 1608; 4to, 1615; in the folio,
1623.
_Date._ The exact date cannot be ascertained; but from the style I
should be inclined to regard it as one of Shakespeare's earliest plays.
_Origin._ Hollinshed's Chronicle, and an older play on the same
subject.
THE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY IV.
_Editions._ 4to, 1598; 4to, 1599; 4to, 1604; 4to, 1608; 4to, 1613; in
the folio, 1623.
_Date._ All we can say is, that it was anterior to 1598, and was most
probably written in 1597.
_Origin._ Hollinshed's Chronicle, and an anonymous play called
"The Famous Victories of Henry V." The comic scenes are entirely
Shakespeare's own, both in this and the two succeeding plays.
THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY IV.
_Editions._ 4to, 1600; in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ Apparently in one of the years between 1597 and 1600. As has
been already observed, it could hardly have been in existence when
Meres wrote, or he would not have placed Titus Andronicus in his list.
It is an objection that before 1597 Shakespeare had changed the name
Oldcastle to Falstaff in the First Part, while in the 4to edition of
this play a speech (I. 2) has the prefix _Old._ instead of _Fal._
But surely that may have been a slip of the copyist's memory, in
consequence of _Oldcastle_ having been the original title.
_Origin._ The same as of the First Part.
THE LIFE OF KING HENRY V.
_Editions._ 4to, 1600; 4to, 1602; 4to, 1608; in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ As in the chorus to Act V. there is an evident allusion to the
expedition of the Earl of Essex to Ireland, whither he went in April
1599, and whence he returned in the following September, it would seem
to be clear that the play was acted in the interval between those two
months. The insertion of this passage seems to be inexplicable on any
other hypothesis. This also proves that the choruses formed a part of
the original play, though they are not to be found in the 4to editions,
which, it is well known, are scandalously imperfect.
_Origin._ The same as that of the two preceding plays.
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING RICHARD III.
_Editions._ 4to, 1597; 4to, 1598; 4to, 1602; 4to, 1605; in the folio,
1623.
_Date._ Anterior, of course, to 1597. I incline to regard it as
posterior to King John and to Richard II.; for it has no stanzas and
no riming passages. It is also very free from quibbles and plays upon
words, except in the unfortunate soliloquy of Richard in the last
act--a wonderful instance of want of taste, and even of judgment. The
same may be said of the scenes between Richard and Lady Anne and the
Queen.
_Origin._ Hollinshed, and probably More.
THE LIFE OF KING HENRY VIII.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ The following memorandum is in the Stationers' Registers:--"12
Feb. 1604[-5]. Nath. Butter. Yf he get good allowance for the Interlude
of K. Henry the 8th, before he begin to print it, &c." This has been
supposed to be the present play; but the style militates against this
supposition. I offer the following proof, which has never, that I am
aware of, been observed. In his early plays Shakespeare very rarely
puts the preposition or conjunction at the end of one line and the
noun or verb at the beginning of the next; in his succeeding ones he
does so more frequently, and in his latest he is rather profuse of the
practice. Now this construction is as frequent in Henry VIII. as in
Coriolanus, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and his other later ones,
whence it might seem that it should be referred to the same epoch. We
are told, indeed, that in 1613 the Globe Theatre was set on fire and
burned down by the discharge of chambers in a new play called "Henry
VIII.;" but it is hardly possible that it could be this play, as
Shakespeare had retired before that year.
_Origin._ Hollinshed's Chronicle.
TRAGEDIES.
ROMEO AND JULIET.
_Editions._ 4to, 1597; 4to, 1599; 4to, 1609; in the folio, 1623. There
is also an undated 4to issued by Smethwick, the publisher of that of
1609, in which many typographical errors are corrected.
_Date._ In Act I. Sc. 2, the Nurse says, "'Tis since the earthquake
now eleven years;" and, as Tyrwhitt justly observed, this could only
have been the earthquake which was felt in England on the 6th of April
1580. It was quite in Shakespeare's way to make the allusion; and this
would give 1591 as the year in which this play was first performed.
This, then, _may_ be the true date, though I greatly doubt of it; I
should rather say, entirely reject it; for it surely can hardly be
anterior to the first two comedies. The play, as appears from the 4to,
1597, was little more than a sketch of that which appeared, "corrected,
augmented, and amended," in 1599.
_Origin._ The remote original is the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe in
Ovid's Metamorphoses, from which an Italian writer named Luigi da Porto
made a tale, printed in 1535. A tale formed from this was given by
Bandello in 1554; and in 1562 a poem of Romeus and Juliet, by Arthur
Brookes, taken from Bandello's, or rather from the version of it in
Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques, was published in London; in 1567
the same tale, also from Bandello, appeared in Painter's Palace of
Pleasure. Shakespeare chiefly followed Brooke; but he had also read the
Palace of Pleasure, and probably Bandello's tale in the original.
HAMLET.
_Editions._ 4to, 1603; 4to, 1604; 4to, 1611; 4to undated (probably in
1607); in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ On the 26th of July 1602, an entry was made in the Stationers'
Registers of "A Booke, The Revenge of Hamlett, prince of Denmarke, as
yt was latelie acted, by the Lord Chambelayn his servantes." There
can be little doubt that this was the present play. The text of the
4to, 1603, is in such a mangled, wretched condition, that it has not
unreasonably been conjectured that it was formed from notes made during
the representation. As in this the Polonius and Reynaldo of the present
play are called Corambis and Montano, it is probable that the play
received much addition and alteration; for the 4to, 1604, gives it
"enlarged to almost as much again as it was, according to the true and
perfect coppie." This play being so popular, it is not unlikely that
the author may have frequently retouched it. It is very remarkable that
it is by many degrees the most faulty of his plays, abounding, we may
say, in incongruities, contradictions, and improbabilities.
_Origin._ Apparently a novel called The Hystorie of Hamblet, translated
from Belleforest. There seems also to have been an older play on the
subject.
OTHELLO.
_Editions._ 4to, 1622; in the folio, 1623. There is also a 4to, 1630;
but it is of little value, as it was evidently made not from a MS.,
but from the two preceding editions with some conjectural emendations.
To the 4to, 1622, is prefixed--as to Troilus and Cressida--an Epistle
"from the Stationer [Thos. Walkley] to the Reader."
_Date._ From the Accounts of the Revels, we learn that this play was
performed at Court, November 1st, 1604; and if the Egerton Papers,
published by Mr. Collier, can be relied on, it had been performed
before Queen Elizabeth. In them we meet as follows:--"6 August, 1602.
Rewards to the vaulters, players, and dancers--of this x^{li} to
Burbidge's players for Othello--lxiiii^{li} xviii^{s} x^{d}." "The
part of the memorandum which relates to Othello," says Mr. Collier,
"is interlined as if added afterwards." Mr. Halliwell asserts that
Othello must have been written even before 1600; for in a MS. of that
date, entitled The Newe Metamorphosis, &c., is a passage evidently, he
thinks, imitated from "who steals my purse steals trash" in Othello.
But, though Mr. Halliwell thinks otherwise, this passage may have been
a later insertion; or it may be a mere coincidence, a thing much more
common than is usually supposed. At all events Othello was written,
at latest, in 1604. I know not if it has been observed that Voltaire
evidently had Othello in his mind when writing his Zaïre.
_Origin._ The only known source of this play is a tale in the
Hecatommithi of Cinthio; and as no English translation of it is known
to have existed, the obvious and natural inference is that Shakespeare
had read it in the original. There was, however, it seems, a French
translation: Paris, 1584.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ The real date of this play is very uncertain, and I am very
dubious whether I am right or not in giving it this position. Mr.
Collier--with whom Mr. Dyce agrees--is positive that it appeared before
1603, for in that year Drayton published his Barons' Wars, in which is
a passage so like the character of Brutus given in this play (v. 5),
that one poet must have borrowed from the other; and it is inferred
of course that Drayton was the borrower. But this is not by any means
so certain, as the eagle did not always disdain to take a plume from
the smaller birds (see above, The Two Gentlemen of Verona). It is very
strange, however, that neither of these critics seems to have been
aware that the very same ideas, and even expressions, are to be found
in the character given of Crites in Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels
(ii. 1), which was performed in 1600, and which may therefore I think
justly be regarded as the real immediate original of the passages in
both poets; the germ, however, is to be found in Chaucer's Tale of
the Doctor of Physik. All, then, that we can venture to affirm is,
that Julius Cæsar is posterior to 1600. I incline to place it in
point of time before Shakespeare's other plays on Roman subjects. It
may be observed that his Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus are as
much Histories as those that are so entitled, the history being Roman
instead of English.
_Origin._ North's Plutarch, from the French of Amyot.
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
_Edition._ Only in the folio 1623.
_Date._ From the language of this play I feel inclined to place its
date near that of Julius Cæsar. It is true that "A Booke called Anthony
and Cleopatra," which may have been this play, was entered in the
Stationers' Registers, May 20th, 1608; but it seems never to have
appeared, and that entry is no proof that the play may not have been
acted some years before that date.
_Origin._ Life of Antonius in North's Plutarch.
KING LEAR.
_Edition._ 4to, 1608; 4to, 1608; 4to, 1608; in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ Certainly posterior to 1603, in which year appeared Harsnet's
Discovery of Popish Impostures, from which Shakespeare evidently took
the names of the fiends mentioned by Edgar. There is an entry of it in
the Stationers' Registers, November 26th, 1607, in which it is stated
that it had been played before the King on the night of St. Stephen's
Day in the preceding year. The latest date of its composition, then,
that we can suppose is 1606.
_Origin._ Hollinshed, Mirror of Magistrates, and an old play on the
same subject. The episode of Gloster and his sons was taken from
Sidney's Arcadia, ii. 10.
MACBETH.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ Dr. Forman states in his MS. Diary that he saw this play "at
the Globe, 1610, the 20th of April, Saturday;" but it does not follow
by any means that it was then a new play. I agree with Mr. Collier in
thinking that the mention of "twofold balls and treble sceptres" should
induce us to place it not very far from the accession of James I. (Oct.
24, 1604), and therefore in 1605 or 1606. Malone thought there was an
allusion (in II. 3) to the state of the corn-market in 1606, and to the
conduct of the Jesuit Garnet on his trial in that year; but this is
little more than fancy.
_Origin._ Hollinshed's Chronicle.
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
_Editions._ 4to, 1609; in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ It was entered in the Stationers' Registers, January 28,
1608-9. It had not been acted at that time; for the publishers state,
in an Address to the Reader, that it had never been "staled with the
stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar;" while in a
reissue of it in the same year the Address was suppressed, and it was
given "as it was acted by the King's Majesty's servants at the Globe."
It is therefore evident that it was first acted in 1609; but it might
have been written some years earlier. It is a very curious question,
and one to which I am unable to give a satisfactory answer, how it came
into the hands of the publisher. I entirely disagree with those critics
who think they discern in it the hand of another poet; for there is not
a play in the whole collection more thoroughly Shakespearian in every
scene. The conclusion certainly is huddled up in a way not elsewhere to
be met with in these plays; but that is no proof of this theory; for
if Shakespeare had taken up the work of another, the conclusion is the
very part he would have been most likely to develope. It is further
very remarkable, that though this play was not exposed to the wear and
tear of the property-room, it contains more imperfect lines than almost
any other. This I can only attribute to the haste and carelessness
of the transcriber, who, as working surreptitiously, was anxious to
hurry through his task in as short a time as possible. I will observe,
in fine, that, though it contains the death of Hector--which might
perhaps better have been omitted--it is in reality a tragi-comedy, as
much so as any of Beaumont and Fletcher's.
_Origin._ Chaucer's Troilus and Cresseida, Caxton's Recuyl of the
Historyes of Troye, and Lydgate's Historye, Sege, and Destruccyon of
Troye.
TIMON OF ATHENS.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ We have no means of ascertaining the exact date; but the
language and the use of rimes in the dialogue induce me to think that
it was near that of Troilus and Cressida.
_Origin._ The story of Timon in Painter's Palace of Pleasure, and life
of Antony in North's Plutarch.
CORIOLANUS.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ A little later, I think, than the two preceding plays; for
there is only one riming passage in it.
_Origin._ Life of Coriolanus in North's Plutarch.
CYMBELINE.
_Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623.
_Date._ From the style and the family resemblance--as appears to
me--between Imogen, Miranda, and Perdita, I should deem it to be
contemporaneous with the Tempest and the Winter's Tale. We may place
it, then, in or after 1610.
_Origin._ The tale of Bernabò da Genova in the Decamerone, which
Shakespeare had probably read in the original. There was an imitation
of it in a tract called Westward for Smelts, of which, however, no
edition earlier than 1620 is known. For the historical part, he, of
course, had resorted to Hollinshed.
* * * * *
In these plays we may, I think, distinguish four different phases of
composition, in each of which the thoughts and the language of the
poet present a peculiar appearance.
The _first_ phase extends we may say from 1593 to 1598, and contains
the plays in Meres's list--except 1 Henry IV., and The Merchant
of Venice, and The Taming of the Shrew. It is distinguished by a
continual play on words and by frequent rimes--both in couplets and
in stanzas--while the blank verse, which is as yet unformed, is
harmonious and almost always decasyllabic. Richard III. seems to form
the connecting link between this and the next phase; for it is free
from both rimes and play on words, while the blank verse has not yet
acquired its appropriate form.
The _second_ phase would seem to extend from 1598 to 1603. It contains
The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Much Ado about Nothing, The
Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, 1 and 2 Henry IV., Henry V.,
Hamlet, Othello, Julius Cæsar, Antony and Cleopatra. Here the dramatic
blank verse is perfect, trisyllabic feet being admitted, and the lines
running into each other, rimes only appearing in final couplets. There
rarely occurs a play on words, and the language is in general easy and
natural.
The _third_ phase may extend from 1603 to 1609. It contains Measure
for Measure, Lear, Macbeth, Troilus and Cressida, Timon of Athens,
and Coriolanus. In this the poet returned to the practice of giving
passages of several lines in rime, though not in stanzas, and his
language is obscured by periphrases, inversions, and ellipses to such
an extent that many places--the speeches of Ulysses, for instance, in
Troilus and Cressida--must have been perfectly unintelligible to an
ordinary audience. He had already, as in Antony and Cleopatra, begun to
place more frequently the preposition or conjunction at the end of one
line and the word connected with it at the beginning of the next, and
he continues to do so here, chiefly in Coriolanus, though hardly at all
in Troilus and Cressida, or in Timon of Athens.
The _fourth_ and last phase contains The Winter's Tale, The Tempest,
Henry VIII., Cymbeline. He here seems to have made a return to the
simpler language of the second phase. In Henry VIII. and The Tempest,
what has been said of prepositions and conjunctions goes on to a great
extent.
* * * * *
The plays above noticed--thirty-two in number--are the genuine
productions of the poet. Two of them, King John and The Taming of the
Shrew, were founded on plays that are still extant, and we may see that
he used them precisely as he did the tales and chronicles on which he
founded so many of his other plays, taking the story, the incidents,
the characters, and, when it suited his purpose, the language which
they contained.
But beside these, we find in the folio four other plays of a different
kind, of which the most that any critic ventures to assert is that
they were retouched, improved, and enlarged by Shakespeare. Of two of
these, namely The Second and Third Parts of Henry VI. this would seem
to be the truth; for we have the two plays in their original form,
and there can be little doubt that it was them chiefly that Green
had in view in the passage quoted above from his Groat's Worth of
Wit, &c.; and upon examination it appears that in the first of them
Shakespeare's additions and improvements amount to a fifth, in the
second to only an eighth part of the text. Of the other two, The First
Part of Henry VI. and Titus Andronicus, after a very careful study of
them, my decided opinion, and apparently that of Mr. Dyce also, is
that, with an exception presently to be noticed, neither the one nor
the other contains a single speech or even a single line from the pen
of Shakespeare. How they got into the folio is a question not easy to
answer. Heminge and Condell, no doubt, may not have been critics, and
so may have fancied that he had had to do with The First Part of Henry
VI. also; or they may have merely inserted it as being connected with
the other Parts. As to Titus Andronicus, I have already given a reason
for its appearance in Meres's list. He had probably heard that it was
by Shakespeare, and he made no exact inquiry, and so ascribed it to
him; and the editors of the folio may have taken it on his authority,
or have followed the same tradition. I do not believe that it was at
any time in Shakespeare's nature to write the horrors of one of these
plays, or to treat the noble Maid of Orleans as she is treated in the
other, or even to labour on and improve the pieces that contained
them. Besides, there are nowhere to be found plays more entirely of
one single cast than these are. There is also displayed in them an
acquaintance with Horace and others of the ancient Classics which
Shakespeare did not possess. They may have been written by either Kyd
or Marlow, each of whom had this acquaintance, and also a taste for
horrors, and abundant talent for their composition. At the same time I
think it possible that, as there is a Clown in Titus Andronicus--the
only instance I believe out of the plays of Shakespeare--the two short,
trifling, and needless scenes in which he appears may be from our
poet's pen, and that hence the play was hastily ascribed to him.
The following plays also were published during Shakespeare's life-time
with his name, in full or in initials, on the title-pages: Locrine,
1595; The Life of Sir John Oldcastle, 1600--known to be by Munday,
Drayton, Wilson, and Hathway; History of Thomas Lord Cromwell, 1602;
The London Prodigal, 1605; The Puritan, or The Widow of Watling Street,
1607; A Yorkshire Tragedy, 1608. These, with Pericles, Prince of
Tyre--also published under his name in 1609--were printed in the 3rd
folio, 1664, and reprinted in the 4th, 1685, and finally by Rowe in his
edition of Shakespeare's Plays. The Two Noble Kinsmen, by Fletcher and
Shakespeare, was published in 1634.
Of the first six of these plays the opinion of the critics is tolerably
unanimous that Shakespeare had nothing whatever to do with them. Yet,
as in Locrine (printed so early as 1595) it is said, "newly set forth,
overseen and corrected, by W. S." it is possible, though most unlikely,
that it may be one of the plays on which he operated in the early part
of his dramatic career; and the fame of his Poems lately printed, may
have induced the publisher to place his initials in the title-page. As
to Pericles, it was rejected, with Locrine, &c., by Pope, Theobald,
and all the editors down to Malone, who printed all these pieces in
1780 in the Supplement to the edition of Johnson and Steevens; he did
not, however, include any of them in his own edition of 1790. Steevens
admitted Pericles into his edition of 1793 on the authority of Farmer,
but marked with an asterisk, as being only in part Shakespeare's, to
which opinion Malone, who at first thought it wholly his, acceded. It
finally was included in Reed's and in the Boswell-Malone or Variorum
edition, which succeeding editors have followed. From _mine_ it has
been excluded, as I am most firmly of opinion that it does not contain
a single line of Shakespeare's, and that it is an insult to his memory
to give it a place among his genuine works. In fact the deliberate
rejection of it by Heminge and Condell from the folio ought to outweigh
all conjectural proofs in its favour. These, we must recollect, were
not ordinary players, they were Shakespeare's _fellows_ or partners in
the theatres; and it was therefore utterly impossible that any play
could be acted there without their knowing who was the author. They
must, then, have _known_ that Shakespeare had had nothing to do with
it; for their admission of 1 Hen. VI. and Titus Andronicus proves that
evidence even of the slenderest kind would have turned the beam with
them. His name at full length in the title-page proves nothing; for it
is also in that of Sir John Oldcastle, 1600, which is _known_ not to be
his.
As to the Two Noble Kinsmen, it was published in 1634 as "written by
the memorable worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William
Shakespeare"--putting the greater last--an evident bookseller's
artifice; for surely Shakespeare at the zenith of his fame, and toward
the close of his dramatic career, would not join with a young poet in
the composition of a play, a thing that he never seems to have done,
even when he was a young poet himself. Mr. Dyce, who had rejected,
afterwards adopted the theory of its being in a certain sense a joint
composition; and he makes some strange hypotheses upon the subject,
which to me seem utterly devoid of probability. Surely, for example,
it is not to be supposed that a man of Shakespeare's business-habits
would, when winding-up, as we may term it, leave behind him, in the
hands of the House, an unfinished drama, and that what he left should
have been the beginning and the end of a play! It is pretty generally
agreed that the entire play, except the first and fifth acts, is by
Fletcher. To me it seems certain that the first act, though the work
of a superior poet, is not Shakespeare's; and I feel quite confident
that the first, as well as the second, scene of the last act is by
Fletcher; while the concluding scenes are by some other poet, different
from, and, I think, superior to, the writer of the first act. My theory
is, that Fletcher either obtained the commencement of a play by some
one else, or began to write in conjunction with some one, and, the
play being unfinished at his death, it was concluded by another poet,
possibly Massinger, who alone seems capable of writing such a noble
termination of so fine a drama.
THE TEXT
CORRECTED AND ELUCIDATED.
INTRODUCTION.
I. THE TEXT. II. THE VERSE.
COMEDIES.
HISTORIES.
TRAGEDIES.
INTRODUCTION.
I. THE TEXT.
1.
IN reading and criticising the plays of Shakespeare, we must always
bear in mind that they were written for the stage, not for the
closet, to be acted, not to be read. Shakespeare, as it would appear,
was utterly regardless of literary fame; he had, as we have seen,
one sole object in view, to acquire as much money as would enable
him to quit the hurry and bustle of London, and settle down in his
native Stratford-on-Avon as a man of independent property, and be, if
possible, the founder of a family. Pouring forth, therefore, his tragic
and comic strains, with as little apparent effort as the songsters
of the grove warble their native notes, he set no value on them but
as they filled the Globe and the Blackfriars and thus tended to the
realization of the great object of all his ambition; and he never gave
a single one of them to the press, as was done by Jonson and others
who sought for literary fame by their dramas. Hence, though the verse
is always melodious, we must not look in them for the finish and
perfection which we find in those of a Racine or a Molière; we must,
on the contrary, be prepared to meet with all the marks of haste and
carelessness, with contradictions and even with absurdities. It would
really dismay one to think of their being submitted to the ordeal
through which the pieces of the great Corneille have been made to pass
by Voltaire. Corneille, by the way, like Shakespeare, valued his plays
by the money they produced.
Copies of about one-half of his plays were surreptitiously obtained
by the booksellers, who printed them with more or less of care; but
of this he took no heed: and when he finally retired to Stratford, he
left in the hands of his fellowplayers the manuscripts of his plays,
published and unpublished. There is not the slightest ground for
supposing that he ever had any intention of collecting and publishing
his dramatic writings--a thing of which there had as yet been no
instance. In 1616, the very year of Shakespeare's death, Ben Jonson,
who, widely different from the great dramatist, set a high value,
and a just one, on his plays as literary compositions, collected all
he had written up to that date and published them, with his other
poetical pieces, in a folio volume. It may have been this that induced
Heminge and Condell, two members of the company to which Shakespeare
had belonged, to make a collection of _his_ pieces also, and give them
to the world in a folio volume. For this purpose they used the 4to
impressions of such plays as had been printed, making some corrections
and alterations in them from the playhouse copies; and adding to these
the manuscript plays which were in the possession of the theatre, they
put the whole into the hands of the publishers, one of whom, Edward
Blount, who was a man of some literary pretensions, is supposed, not
without probability, to have undertaken the task of seeing the work
through the press. Such was the origin of the celebrated folio of
1623, of which it was, in my opinion most justly, said by the late
Mr. Hunter, that "perhaps in the whole annals of English typography
there is no record of any book of any extent and any reputation having
been dismissed from the press with less care and attention;" while Mr.
Knight (who ought to have known a good deal about such matters) boldly
declares that "perhaps, all things considered, there never was a book
so correctly printed!" Such as it is, however, it and the previous 4to
impressions are the _only_ authority we have for the text of these
marvellous creations of the human intellect.
2.
Few, I should hope, will refuse to assent to the two following
postulates.
I. No eminent writer--however he might obscure his meaning by
metaphor, ellipsis, or other figures of speech--has ever written pure
nonsense.
II. No true poet ever wrote limping, imperfect, or inharmonious verses.
We may add to these the plain facts, that printers are not, and never
were, infallible, and that those works of which the authors themselves
read the proof-sheets are in general more correct than those of which
those sheets were read by others.
3.
Now the plays of Shakespeare are, as is well known, full of passages
of which it is nearly impossible to make any good sense, and they
abound in imperfect and inharmonious verses. On the other hand, the
poems of Venus and Adonis, and of Lucrece, which he himself probably
saw through the press, are almost entirely free from error, and do not
contain a single unmelodious verse. The natural inference, then, is,
that the defects of the plays are all owing to the transcribers and
printers, and that the correction of them and the restoration of sense
and melody, when possible, is the legitimate office of sound emendatory
criticism. The truth of this has been felt from the very beginning; for
in the 2nd folio, published in 1632, only nine years after the first,
there are numerous corrections, which must have been made by the editor
solely on his own authority, for, many of them being very bad, he could
not have derived them from any manuscripts. And the same is the case
in the subsequent folios, of all of which there are many copies in
existence, like that which Mr. Collier met with to his misfortune, and
which has excited such a storm in a puddle,--of which, by the way, my
own opinion is that the corrections in it were made between 1744, the
date of Hanmer's, and 1765, that of Johnson's edition; whence I only
cite it for the corrections later than the former date. These contain
manuscript corrections, some, like that copy, anonymously, others by
Southern and other men of repute. In the beginning of the last century
Rowe gave the first example of an annotated edition of Shakespeare's
works, and from that time to the present edition has succeeded edition
bearing the names of critics of various degrees of ability and
eminence, but all agreeing in the necessity of revising the text and
rendering it as correct as may be possible.
Of the early editors, Rowe and Pope made little more than the most
obvious corrections, Warburton, always ingenious and almost always
wrong, made notwithstanding some that were very good, as also did
Hanmer. But they were all eclipsed by Theobald, one of the acutest
emendatory critics that this country has produced, whose merits, though
long clouded through the malignity of Pope, are now fully acknowledged.
Capell, the next in order of time, also rendered good service; but
Johnson, Steevens, and Malone have done much less than might have
been expected. Of these the last was a native of Ireland, the only
emendatory critic that country has produced; and, in my opinion, he is
not at all inferior to his English rival Steevens. That true critic
Tyrwhitt should also be noticed as an emendator of a high order. It
is surprising how little has really been done in the present century;
and I was perfectly astonished to find what a number of passages still
remained in a corrupt or imperfect state when I ventured on the task
of emendation. It would seem as if critical sagacity, low in rank as
it may be, is one of those talents most rarely bestowed; and besides,
print appears to exercise almost a magic power over most persons; they
seem to think that what is in print cannot be wrong: it is in fact only
very few minds that can fully emancipate themselves from its influence.
It must, however, be remembered that alteration and critical emendation
are widely different. The former is in the power of almost any one; the
latter, as I said, requires a peculiar faculty. It is a curious fact
that in nothing does critical sagacity show itself more than in, as I
may say, seeing what is before the eyes. For an instance see the first
note on Henry V. Another curious fact is this, that poets (Coleridge
for example) are rarely good emendators. It is, in fine, the merest
folly, and a proof of the grossest ignorance, to sneer at such labours
and represent them as needless, if not mischievous. Editors, however,
ought to be very cautious about introducing their conjectures into the
text, and should place them only in notes, unless when they are such
as must almost command assent, and the place corrected had previously
yielded no tolerable sense or metric melody. It is a good rule to let
well alone, as we say, and not to alter what gives tolerable good
sense. I have, I believe, transgressed this rule only in a couple of
places.
4.
The following instance is a convincing proof of the evil consequences
of the proof-sheets not having passed under the author's own eye.
Sismondi, the celebrated historian of France, wrote an historic tale
named Julia Severa, which was of course written in French, and it was
printed at one of the best offices in Paris; but the author himself did
not see the proofs, whence, though it makes only two rather slender
duodecimo volumes, there are actually whole pages of _errata_! I
know, by the way, no better mode of weaning oneself from what I shall
presently describe as _printer-worship_ than a habit of examining
the _errata_ in books printed in the two last centuries. Further, in
good printing-offices, at least in this country, it is the practice
that the proofs, after they come from the compositor, should be read
in the office and corrected before they are sent to the author or
editor; while, even at the present day, in the Royal printing-office
in Copenhagen there are no readers, and the sheets are sent out just
as they come from the compositor, and what that state is must be known
to any one conversant with printing-offices. Now it is very possible,
or rather highly probable, if not certain, that such was the case in
England also in former times; and supposing that it was the editors,
and not Blount, that read the proofs, as the wretched state of the
punctuation might seem to indicate, we need not feel any surprise at
the very unsatisfactory state of the text of the folio of 1623. In
opposition, however, to this opinion, the Cambridge editors think that
"there were no proof-sheets, in those days, sent either to author or
editor," and that "after a MS. had been sent to press it was seen only
by the printers, and one or more correctors of the press employed by
the publishers for that purpose." But on this hypothesis how are we
to account for the great correctness of our author's Poems, Spenser's
Shepherd's Calendar, the Works of Jonson, Drayton, and others? The
following words on the title-page of Marston's Fawne, 2nd edition,
offer decisive evidence that authors _did_ read the proof-sheets of
their works:--"Now corrected of many faults, which, by reason of the
author's absence, were let slip in the first edition."
5.
Notwithstanding all this, there are editors of Shakespeare who,
rejecting the evidence of sense, grammar, and logic, obstinately adhere
to the printed text, terming that alone _authority_, and even holding
the second and later folios to be such; and it is really pitiable to
see them superstitiously retaining for instance _'tis_ or _it's_ when
the metre requires _it is_, and syncopated forms as _lov'd_, _own'd_,
etc., when the verse has need of the complete word, and _vice versâ_.
These I denominate _Printer-worshipers_; for it is in reality to the
authority of the printer, not of the poet, that they bow. The most
extraordinary instance of this propensity in existence is the retention
of "strain _at_ a gnat" in our authorized version of the New Testament,
a most manifest printer's error; for no schoolboy could have made it
in translating, and in all the previous English versions the word is
_out_. Yet there it has stood uncorrected for two centuries and a half!
Hardly inferior as a piece of printer-worship is the following. A
stanza of a song in Fletcher's Spanish Curate (ii. 5) ends thus:
From that breath, whose native smell
Indian odours far excel,
thus expressing the very contrary of what was meant! Theobald, a true
critic, therefore most properly added _doth_--in the wrong place,
however, as it should begin the line; yet Mr. Dyce says, "the old text
is doubtless what the poet wrote"!!
To conclude, then, if the printed text cannot be made to yield sense
the fault _must_ lie, not with the poet, but with the transcriber or
the printer, and a correction, made in conformity with the language
and mode of thinking of the poet and his time, as it _may_ give what
he wrote, or may have written, should be admitted into the text. I
must here, _en passant_, impress it on the reader as a maxim, that no
word should be used in correction that is not to be found in the poet
himself, or in his contemporaries.
6.
A printer is a transcriber or copyist, with the only difference that he
uses type instead of a pen. He looks at the _copy_, as it is termed,
and takes up the whole or part of a sentence in his mind, and then goes
on composing or setting up the type. Meanwhile he is very possibly
engaged in conversation, or he is listening to that of others, or he
is thinking of something else. His mind being thus distracted, errors
will naturally arise in what he is composing. Besides, he has very
often to contend with the difficulties caused by illegible writing in
the manuscript. There is another source of error--and one in which
the printer is perfectly blameless--which I have never seen noticed.
It is this, that in speaking and reading we often slur over, elide
or suppress the final consonant if the following word begin with a
consonant; and this is not peculiar to the English, but is to be found
in the French, German, and other languages, being in fact a law of
nature, the result of our organization. The most usual case is when,
as in the following example, the first word ends and the next begins
with the same consonant. Thus in one of the Irish Melodies of Moore, a
poet more devoted to euphony than to sense, we have
Thou would_est_ still be adored as this momen_t_ thou art,
where it will be seen that the letters in italics are not, and cannot
be pronounced, without making a pause between the words. In another
song of the same poet we have
Mary, I believed thee true,
And I was blest in thus believing.
Here, if it were not for the second line, no one, on only hearing the
first, could tell whether the word was _believed_ or _believe_; for the
sound is exactly the same: see on Much Ado, iv. 1; M. N. D. ii. 1. We
surely then cannot blame the printer who makes a mistake in such cases,
but we should not hesitate to correct it. We should also remember that
this suppression or clipping is more frequent with the classes to which
the printer probably belonged than with the educated.
It is chiefly the dentals _t_ and _d_ that are thus suppressed before
words commencing with a mute consonant; and it is surprising what a
number of words there are in common use that have been thus curtailed.
Thus in _and_ the _d_ is rarely sounded, even before vowels; _of_ is
so generally pronounced _o'_ that it were needless printing it so, as
is usual in the dramatists, were it not that _o'_ represents _on_ as
well as _of_; we all say "_Who_ did you see?" though we should write it
"_Whom_ did you see?" Instances, in fine, are numberless; but we should
keep the principle constantly in mind. See the note on _sly-slow_,
Rich. II. i. 3; and on _by peeping_, Cymb. i. 7.
On the other hand, there is sometimes a transference of a consonant
from the end of one word to the beginning of the next, which injures
the sense,--_ex. gr._,
Thence forth descending to that perilous porch
Those dreadful flames she also found _delayed_.
F. Q. iii. 12. 42.
Here the poet probably wrote _allayed_, and the printer transferred to
it the _d_ of _found_. See on Temp. iv. 1.
While treating of elision, it may not be useless to remark that when
a word beginning with _h_ is monosyllabic, or is not accented on its
first syllable, the _h_ is not sounded. Any one who will observe will
find that _his_, for example, is usually pronounced _is_; so that there
is no occasion for the _'s_ of the dramatists. So we should write
and pronounce _a history_, but write _an historian_ and pronounce
_an 'istorian_; for _a historian_, as it is too often written and
pronounced, makes a most unpleasant _hiatus_. We may observe how
constantly the aspirate is suppressed in the poetry of Greece and Rome.
The errors of transcribers and printers are _Omission_, _Addition_,
_Transposition_, _Substitution_. Of these I will now give instances,
chiefly from my own experience. I must, however, previously notice the
rather curious fact, that these four sources of error, which I had
traced out in our printed works, are all, and no other, acted upon by
that, in my mind, most able of the German critics, J. Olshausen, in
that _chef d'oeuvre_ of criticism, his Comment on the Book of Psalms,
thus showing how universal they are.
7.
_Omission._--If any one will examine a proof-sheet as it comes from
the hands of a compositor, he will find abundant instances of this
source of error. One would think that such could hardly escape the
author's eye; and yet, in the edition of Ben Jonson's plays corrected
by himself, almost the only errors detected by the editors have been
those of omission; and a few more have, I think, escaped _them_. I may
add that the words supplied by them seem to me to be almost invariably
the very words which had been omitted. In Notes and Queries (3 S.
vii.) there is a list of the principal _errata_ in the reprint of the
First Folio, in 1808; and the far larger portion of them are omissions
which can easily be supplied. From my own experience in the case of
reprints, I can further assert that corrections of this kind are by
no means a matter of hap-hazard; for where I have supplied the words I
supposed lost or altered I have almost invariably found, on referring
to the original edition, that I had hit on the exact word. As an
instance, in a late reprint of Akenside's Poems, the following line
occurs in the Hymn to the Naiads:
Your _sultry_ springs, through every urn.
Here I at once corrected _salutary_, and on looking at the original
edition I found I was right. Yet, had this correction been made in
Shakespeare, we know how it would have been disputed. As to omissions
I can give the following instances. In a reprint (Lond. 1816) of
Fletcher's Purple Island, we find (xii. 74, 85) the following lines:
Thus with glad sorrow did she plain her.
In th' own fair silver shines and borrow'd gold.
Each line being short, I read in the first "_sweetly_ plain her," and
in the second _one_ and "_fairer_ borrow'd gold," and on looking at the
original 4to I found I had supplied the poet's very words. In Chaucer's
Romaunt of the Rose, the following line is in all the MSS. and editions,
She hadde a gay mirrour,
which is evidently a foot short. I read 'She had _in hand_,' and on
looking at the original I found _en sa main_.
It is not often that proofs have been read more carefully than were
those of my edition of Milton's Poems, both by myself and by others;
and yet, in the reprint of the text, in one place (Par. Lost, x. 422)
it will be found that the word _to_ is missing, thus destroying the
metre; and yet none of us perceived it.
A far stronger case is the following. Never apparently was a work
edited with greater care than Mr. Panizzi's edition of Bojardo and
Ariosto; and yet in the Orlando Innamorato, II. xxiv. 54, the
concluding couplet of the stanza is printed thus:
Persa ho mia gioia, e'l mio bel Paradiso,
Per lui che tardo giunse a darmi.
Here a reader, who has even but the slightest knowledge of Italian,
will see at once that the word _avviso_ has been omitted at the end
of the second line; and yet this escaped not merely the printer's
reader, who, even if ignorant of the language, might be supposed to
have missed the rime, but the lynx-eyed editor himself, not only in
the proof, but in the fair sheets which he was evidently in the habit
of examining most carefully. The more I think of this error the more I
feel astonished at its occurrence, a thing for which I cannot in any
manner account; the following, however, is nearly a parallel. In a most
carefully edited Greek Testament (Lond. 1837), in 1 Cor. xi. 23, three
important words are omitted! Need we, then, wonder at omissions in
Shakespeare?
The omission is generally, as in these cases, of single words, from
noun to interjection, all parts of speech included, and also of single
letters or syllables. It is rather curious, too, that when a word has
been repeated by the poet it is sometimes omitted by the printer. Thus
"What wheels? what racks? what fires?" W. T. iii. 2, is printed, "What
wheels? racks? fires?" There is another instance in the same play,
and many in the other plays. In Chaucer the instances are numerous.
Addresses, as _sir_, _my lord_, etc., are sometimes left out, as
also are _pray_, _now_, _only_, and others which are not absolutely
necessary for the sense--and even two or more words; in all which cases
the omission is indicated by the defect of metre. This the reader
will do well to keep constantly in mind. For an example see on Tam.
of Shrew, i. 1. It is surprising how often the negative particle is
wanting in these plays of Shakespeare's. I have discovered its absence
in between twenty and thirty places, not one-half of which had been
observed by preceding editors. But not merely single words have been
left out by printers; want of rime or want of connexion shows that
entire lines have been omitted. Mr. Collier observes that three lines
are wanting in various places of the Variorum Shakespeare; and such
being the case in the present century, we need not wonder at so many
having been passed over by the original printers. The reader will find
about two dozen such cases noticed in my Edition and in the following
pages, not one-half of which had been observed by preceding editors.
Shakespeare himself furnishes the following remarkable instance. In
Com. of Err. ii. 2, the three last folios omit the two lines beginning
with "Wear gold and no man," etc. Nares gives in his Glossary (_v._
Portingall) a curious instance of the omission of a line, which escaped
the author's own notice in the proof-sheet. So also in Massinger's
Unnatural Combat, lines are wanting in two places, though he himself
must have read the proofs. In 2 Hen. VI. iv. 1, there is a line wanting
in the folio, to recover which we are actually obliged to go to the
original play of The Contention, etc.
Parts of lines, generally the latter part, are also often wanting, but
not so often as it may seem; for short lines, and also over-long lines,
generally are caused by malarrangement of the text. The main cause,
however, of these losses is the ill-usage to which the manuscripts seem
to have been subjected in the part of the theatre in which they were
kept, and the careless treatment of them by those who had occasion to
use them. Hence in some places the writing may have been obliterated
by ink-blots, in others effaced by friction, or by damp or dust; while
sometimes a part of a leaf may have been torn away. We must remember
that a large number of Shakespeare's plays were lying thus exposed to
ill-usage, probably in the property-room of the Globe or Blackfriars,
for a space of from twenty to thirty years.
The parts most likely to have thus sustained injury must have been
those nearest the edges of the page; and hence the part effaced would
be the beginning of the line or the end of it; and as the lines run
evenly at the beginning, while they are of irregular length, the
effacement at the beginning would be in general of mere monosyllables,
as _I_, _in_, _with_, _and_, &c., while that at the end might be of
several words, at times even of half a line. In the beginning, too--as
will be seen in the notes on Merchant of Venice, iv. 1, As You Like It,
ii. 7, and elsewhere--more than one word has been sometimes effaced.
In the case of entire lines or large parts of lines, the cause may
have been their position at the top or bottom of the page, and their
consequent proximity to the edge.
It is rather strange that I should have been--as I believe I am--the
first to notice this very simple and natural mode of accounting for the
losses in the text. The number of these losses which I have, or seem
to have, detected in the beginnings is over seventy, those at the ends
more than double that number. As they are all supplied in my Edition,
and noted in the following pages, the reader will have ample occasion
for ascertaining whether my theory is correct or not. I will here,
however, give a couple of instances.
In faith, my lord, you are too wilful-blame.
1 Hen. IV. iii. 1.
Here the critics are perplexed with "wilful-blame," which is a
compound without example; but let us suppose that the poet wrote
"wilful-blameable," and that the final letters had been effaced, we get
a compound term of which examples are numerous. The other is,
And made him stoop to the water. 'Tis wonder_ful_.
Cymb. iv. 2.
In the following pages it will be seen that occasionally I attempt to
supply the losses of lines and parts of lines. It will not, I hope,
be supposed that I am so presumptuous as to expect my productions to
be admitted into the text. My object has merely been, by showing how
easily and naturally something could be supplied, to make the reader
see more clearly that something had been lost. In three places, however
(All's Well, i. 1, Tr. & Cr. ii. 1, Cor. ii. 3), I have ventured to
place them in the text of my Edition.
I must, in fine, request the reader most earnestly not to pooh-pooh
this principle of effacement, but to keep it steadily in mind in
reading the other dramatists, as well as Shakespeare; for he will find
it a most valuable aid. Among the instances of effacement at the end
is to be noted that of compound words of which the last part has been
lost. In five places I have thought myself justified in supplying the
missing word, namely, Winter's Tale, i. 2, Rich. III. v. 3, Ham. iii.
4, Tim. i. 2, ii. 2; for it is almost only at the end of a line that we
ever find reason to suspect this kind of effacement.
In editing the Plays, the additions made to the text should always be
marked, so as not to mislead the reader. In _my_ edition, and in this
volume, they are always printed in italics.
8.
_Addition._--Of this also we meet with instances; but, as might
naturally be expected, they are not so numerous as those of omission.
In the following pages I place between brackets such words as I regard
as additions made by the compositor or transcriber. As proofs of such
additions being made I give the following, from the reprint of the text
in my own edition of Milton's Poems.
But swollen with [the] wind and the rank mist they draw.
Lyc. 126.
Which after [this] held the sun and moon in fee.
Son. xii.
To stand approved in [the] sight of God though worlds.
P. L. vi. 36.
From Heaven-gate not [distant] far, founded in view.
Ib. vii. 618.
With Hallelujahs; thus was [the] Sabbath kept.
Ib. vii. 634.
Nor [is] this unvoyageable gulf obscure.
Ib. x. 366.
Against a foe to doom express assigned [to] us.
Ib. x. 926.
To which I add the following:--
And out of sight escaped at the least;
Yet not [of sight] escaped from the due reward
Of his bad deeds.
F. Q. iii. 5. 14.
So it is printed in the edition of 1750.
I may here add that printers have a wonderful propensity to add or
omit--the former much more frequently--the letter s at the end of
words. I remember having one time had to strike out in a single page
no less than five of these ss thus liberally bestowed upon me. So
also--but whether owing to the poet or the printer is dubious--we meet
in Shakespeare with _whom_ used as a nominative. See on Winter's Tale,
v. 3, _ad fin._ In making corrections relating to these finals, our
only guides therefore must be grammar, logic, and poetic melody.
9.
_Transposition._--Of all modes of restoring the melody, and at times
the sense, of verses this is perhaps the most legitimate and the most
certain. I have therefore had recourse to it without scruple; and it
will be seen that in my Edition and in this volume I have thus restored
the sense or the melody of about sixty lines, of which not quite a
fourth had attracted the attention of preceding editors. In my Life of
Milton (p. 286) will be found a very curious instance of transposition
and omission combined in the poet's own reprint of Comus, neither of
which he notices, though he made two corrections in one of the lines.
In Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose, the transpositions in the latter
part are so numerous that it was necessary to have recourse to the
original poem for the proper arrangement; and I suspect that this
source of error will be found in most languages. Mr. Brandreth, in
his very curious and interesting edition of the Ilias, has made many
transpositions, and they are well deserving of attention. His note on
Il. i. 18, is "Verborum transpositio tutissimum remedium est, cum
saltem, quoad grammaticam, ita dixisse potuerit poeta. Recitatores sæpe
verba retinent, dum ordinem obliviscuntur." This most exactly accords
with what we find in Shakespeare. I think also that many might be,
as some have been, made in the poetic and prophetic books of the Old
Testament--_ex. gr._,
"Ye mountains of Gilboa, no dew nor no rain be upon you, and fields
of offerings; for there" &c.--2 Sam. i. 21.
Now surely the royal poet must have written,
Ye mountains of Gilboa, and fields of offering!
No dew and no rain be upon you:
and it appears still more certain when we look at the original Hebrew.
A chief cause of errors of this kind seems to have been the addition,
by the author, of one or more lines to a place which he had previously
deemed complete, and this addition, having been made in the margin,
was taken in by the printer in the wrong place; as such I regard the
transposition in M. N. D. ii. 1. Another cause was the omission of
something by a transcriber, who, when he detected his error, wrote
what he had left out in the margin, and the next transcriber or the
printer carelessly inserted it in the wrong place. Of this we have very
striking instances in the Chorus to Hen. V. ii., 2 Hen. VI. iii. 1, and
Rom. & Jul. iii. 3. As in these cases, entire lines or even couplets
get out of place, sometimes parts of lines (King John, iii. 3, Rich.
II. v. 3), at other times single words. Thus adjectives change places
(Temp. i. 1. iv. 1), and substantives do the same (All's Well, ii. 3,
M. N. D. ii. 1, L. L. L. iv. 3). The following is a notable instance.
In Massinger's Maid of Honour (i. 1), a play of which the proofs were
probably read by the poet himself, we read, "A gentleman and yet no
lord," where the context shows that the very opposite is meant. Gifford
saw this, but he did not see the cause, namely, that _a_ and _no_ had
changed places in the printer's mind.
I have remarked several errors of this kind in Chaucer, in whom, in
fact, they are most numerous--_ex. gr._,
And eke in his hert had compassioun.
_And in his hert eke had compassioun._
And pitous and just and alway y-liche.
_And just and pitous and alway y-liche._
That it was a blissful noise to here.
_That it a blissful noise was to here._
In the Faerie Queene, we have
Was like enchantment, that through both his _eyes_
And both his _ears_, did steal his heart away.
vi. 2. 3.
Here, as the riming line ends in _appears_, we must transpose "eyes"
and "ears." Again, in all editions of Parnell's poems, from the first
(edited by Pope), we read in the Hermit,
Then with the sun a rising journey went,
where both the context and common sense show that "rising" properly
belongs to "sun." The original printer, however, joined it with
"journey," and he has been, of course, duteously followed by his
successors, while editors never seem to have discerned the incongruity.
In the edition of Akenside above mentioned, I met with
Of triangle or circle, cube or cone,
where it is quite plain that the two first substantives had changed
places in the printer's mind.
Surely Wordsworth did not write
I did not hunt after nor greatly prize.
Prelude, ed. 1858.
In a proof-sheet of my Edition, I found
And leave your brother speed to gos elsewhere.
3 Hen. VI. iv. 1.
In Troilus and Cressida, v. 2, there is a passage to which
transposition, and it alone, gives sense. It is difficult to see how
the printer could have made such a jumble; and yet it is manifest that
he must have done so. There is, however, as I have shown in my note
on the place, just such another in the play of The Two Noble Kinsmen,
which the editors have made no attempt at correcting. In the following
passage of Chaucer,
Tooke my horse and forthe I went,
Oute of my chaumbre; I never stent.
Book of the Duchesse.
I would read
Oute of my chaumbre forthe I went,
And tooke my hors; I never stent.
In the same poet's Romaunt of the Rose, we have the following passage,
unnoticed by any editor,
Thine armys shalt thou sprede abrode
As man in warre were forweriede,
where in the first line we should read "abrode sprede," and in the
second reject "were" as an addition of the copyist. An exactly similar
transposition occurs in a later part of that poem.
10.
_Substitution._--"He who has not repeatedly observed how a copyist,
from inattention, sets down a word which his mind has presented to
him instead of that which is before his eyes, must have seen little
of copies of print or manuscript." These are the words of a Spanish
writer, and they are of universal application. I remember myself once,
with Herodotus before my eyes, writing _Sestos_ for _Abydos_; and the
changes I have made in copying passages for this work have amazed me.
In Corneille's play of Rodogune (i. 1), we read _enlever_ where the
proper word is _élever_, and Voltaire justly suspected that it was an
error of the original printer. Further on the reader will meet with a
similar error in the original edition of Tasso's Gerusalemme.
The most ordinary case of substitution seems to be that of synonyms; at
least there is none to which I have been so subject myself. In giving
examples I will commence with Spenser.
A yearly solemn feast she wonts to _make_.
F. Q. ii. 2. 42.
Now, as the rimes are _hold_, _told_, the poet must have written, or
have intended to write, _hold_.
That doth against the dead his hand uprear.
Ib. ii. 8. 29.
Here the word must have been _upheave_, the rimes being _leave_,
_cleave_, _bereave_.
When walking through the garden them she _spied_.
Ib. iii. 6. 40.
As the rimes are _law_, _draw_, we must of course read _saw_.
Of finest gold. The fifth game was a great new standing _bowl_,
To set down both ways. These brought in, Achilles then stood up.
Chapman, Iliads, xxiii. 249.
The right word, it is quite plain, is _cup_.
Or painful to his slumbers; easy, _sweet_,
And as a purling stream, thou son of Night.
Fletch. Valentinian, v. 2.
Here, as it has been shown, the proper word is _light_; yet Mr. Dyce
has not ventured to receive it.
Mi si scoperse; onde mi nacque un _ghiaccio_
Nel core, ed evvi ancora,
E sarà sempre, fin ch'io le sia in braccio.
My late friend Rossetti, in copying out this passage of Petrarca in his
Amor Platonico, etc., wrote _gelo_ for _ghiaccio_, and never saw the
error, even in reading the proof; and so it is printed.
On the other hand, the adjacent or riming lines sometimes terminate in
the same word. There are many instances in Shakespeare, and I have met
with the following in Italian.
Ciascun de' cavalieri ebbe _e sergenti_
Ed al servizio suo donne _e sergenti_.
B. Tasso, Amadigi, xxii. 67.
where, as the rimes show, the first line should end with _una stanza_.
Bears in his boasted fan an Iris _bright_,
When her discoloured bow she spreads through heaven _bright_.
F. Q. iii. 11. 47.
We meet also with places where the sense or the metre, unaided by rime,
must be our guide in correcting--_ex. gr._,
The round earth, heaven's great queen and Pallas to whose bands.
Chapman, Iliads, i. 395.
Here the metre shows that the right word is _Minerva_, not _Pallas_.
There is one most remarkable case of substitution to which sufficient
attention has never been given by the critics. It may be termed
_reaction_ or _repetition_, and arises from the impression made by some
particular word on the mind of the transcriber or printer, or even of
the writer himself.
Thus in a proof-sheet of my Milton I found
A _furnace_ horrible on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed.
Par. Lost, i. 61.
while the word before the compositor's eyes was _dungeon_.
To me _most_ fatal, me most it concerns.
Par. Reg. iv. 205: Todd's 4th edit.
Here, again, the true reading is _so_; yet, as _most_ makes good
sense, if the error had been in the original edition it would in all
probability never have been detected. Opening by chance Bloomfield's
pretty poem of The Farmer's Boy (ed. 1857), I met with
Till when up-hill the destined _hill_ he gains.
Winter, 173.
We may find in Chaucer--
What ladies fairest ben or best _dauncing_,
Or which of hem can _daunce_ best or sing.
Knt's Tale.
Here for _dauncing_ we should probably read _loking_.
Of his _gladnesse_ he _gladed_ her anone.
Tr. and Cr. i.
The poet probably wrote _goodnesse_.
For though a man _forbide_ drunkenesse,
He not _forbides_ that every creature
Be drunkeles for alway, as I gesse.
Ib. ii.
We should read _commaundes_ in the second line.
Witness the daily libels _almost_ ballads
In every place, _almost_ in every province,
Are made upon your lust.
Thierry and Theodoret, i. 1.
We should for the first _almost_, which must be wrong, probably read
_and the_. Mr. Dyce seems never to have seen this; for he had no
conception of this source of error: yet I wonder common sense did not
suggest that something must be wrong.
The things that grievous were to do or bear
Them to renew, I wote, breeds no delight;
Best music breeds _delight_ in loathing ear.
F. Q. i. 8. 44.
For _delight_ in the last line we might read _dislike_, but I think
we should rather read _annoy_; for in these cases, as we may see, no
resemblance in form or sound is to be sought. I therefore in Othel.
iii. 3, reject the emendation of Pope and 4to 1630 of _feels_ for
_keeps_, because it was evidently suggested by the slight similarity of
form, and does not perfectly suit the context. The reader will find an
excellent instance in As You Like It, ii. 3.
My news shall be the _news_ to that great feast.
Ham. ii. 2.
So the folio reads; the 4to has more correctly _fruit_.
Surely Shakespeare never wrote
To seek thy _help_, by beneficial _help_.
Com. of Err. i. 1.
He that they cannot _help_ him,
They that they cannot _help_.
All's Well, i. 3.
As this error _never_ occurs in Jonson and Massinger, and only, I
believe, in the instance given above in Beaumont and Fletcher, and has
no æsthetic advantage or beauty to recommend it, it seems quite absurd
to suppose that Shakespeare, whose vocabulary was the largest of all,
and whose ear was so fine and correct, should have found pleasure in
it. Surely a just critic will sooner lay the blame on the printer and
the careless editors, very different in this respect from those of
Beaumont and Fletcher, who seem never to have hesitated to correct an
error when they discovered it.
The resemblance in form above alluded to is of great importance, under
the name of _ductus literarum_, in the eyes of Mr. Dyce, and it should
always be attended to; for it is usually caused by the attempt of the
printer to make out illegible writing. The following are striking
instances:--
In Peele's Edward I. these lines occur.
To calm, to qualify, and to compound,
_Thank England's_ strife of Scotland's climbing peers.
That the last line is nonsense was clear to every one; but no critic
ever could emend it. The true reading, however, is doubtless _The
enkindled_, which flashed suddenly on my mind one time when I was
considering the passage. It was probably the resemblance of sound
chiefly that misled the printer.
At the end of Marston's Insatiate Countess we meet the following
unmeaning line,
Like _Missermis_ cheating of the _brack_,
which Steevens corrected most happily thus--
Like _Mycerinus_ cheating of the _oracle_,
having discerned the allusion to Herod. ii. 133.
It is very curious that the word substituted is often the very
opposite of the right word. I myself once wrote--and so it is
printed--_diameter_ for _circumference_. In Mrs. C. Clarke's most
valuable Concordance we have "humorous _plebeian_" for "humorous
_patrician_." I have met with _next_ for _last_ and _none_ for _some_;
so in The Mer. of Ven., ii. 2, where the folio has "Is sum of
_no_thing," the 4tos read "Is sum of _some_thing." In Lear v. 3, the
folio reads
The gods are just, and of our pleasant _vices_
Make instruments to plague us;
while the 4tos have "pleasant _virtues_."
In All's Well, iii. 2, and Taming of the Shrew, iii. 1, we have _old_
for _new_. In a proof-sheet which I lately saw there was a quotation of
The paths of glory lead but to the grave;
and the printer had substituted _life_ for "grave," though, as the
entire stanza was given, he had the rime to guide him. Many instances
of this practice will be found in Love's Labour's Lost. In La
Giovanezza, a poem of the Italian poet Pindemonte, I have just met with
_brutte_ where the rime and the sense require _belle_.
It does not seem to have been observed that printers will actually
insert words, for the sake of sense or metre, when they have made a
mistake. In my Life of Milton, I had occasion to quote a passage from
his prose works containing "with a conscience that would _retch_;" and
of this the printer made "with a conscience that _he_ would _relish_;"
and so, I am sorry to say, it is printed. See on Mer. of Ven. iv. 1.
And stones did cast, yet he for nought would swerve.
F. Q. v. 12. 43.
As the rimes are _deserved_, _preserved_, _observed_, the poet must
have written _e'er swerved_ or _nothing swerved_.
In her right hand a fire-brand she _did toss_.
F. Q. iii. 12, 17.
The rimes are _embost_, _lost_, so that Spenser must have written
_tost_, making, as usual, a dissyllable of _fire_. That it was not the
poet himself that made the mistake is clear; for in
Till Arthur all that reckoning defrayed (ii. 10, 49)
the edition of 1750 has _did defray_.
A contrary error to this is where the printer has made one word of two,
caused either by sound or by illegible writing. For instances, see
on Com. of Err. iii. 1, Tw. Night, i. 1, Mer. Wives, v. 5, Ant. and
Cleop. iv. 9, Macb. iii. 4.
The fact of effacement in the manuscript, on which I have laid
such stress in the section on _Omission_, has also been a cause of
substitution; for, the original word having become nearly or totally
illegible, the transcriber or compositor, in order to make sense, used
to give some term of his own. Thus we have _yes_ for _I will_, Meas.
for Meas. iii. 1, _yea_ for _even so_, Rich. II. iii. 1, _ay_ for _I
will_, Ham. iv. 7, as is proved by the metre. These are all at the
beginning of the line, and hence their liability to effacement. See
also on All's Well, ii. 1, Twelfth Night, iv. 3, Rich. II. i. 3, and
elsewhere.
Finally, substitutions are often quite capricious, making no sense
whatever. For "he went circuit," where my manuscript was perfectly
legible, I once got "_the local_ circuit;" so also "_the merits_"
for "there an echo;" "_establishment_" for "established government."
In Alison's Life of Lord Castlereagh, one of the pall-bearers at
the funeral of the Duke of Wellington was Sir Peregrine _Pickle_
(Maitland); in all editions of Joseph Andrews we have in one place "Sir
_John_" for "Sir Thomas" Booby.
It is to be observed that _to unto_, _till until_, _on upon_, _though
although_, _e'er ever_, &c., were frequently confounded. It is
therefore the merest printer-worship to hesitate at altering them
when the metre requires it. A further observation is, that even down
into the eighteenth century, it was the custom to write _y_ for _th_
in monosyllables beginning with this last (þ, A. S.), as y^{e} the,
y^{n} then, y^{t} that, y^{u} thou; y^{r} your was another abridgment;
and hence confusion has often arisen. In these plays we have _that_
for _then_ in four places (see on Tr. and Cr. i. 2); and in Paradise
Regained (i. 137) we have _then_ for _thou_, and also, I think, in Tw.
Night, v. 1.
11.
Such, then, are the various sources of error in the original editions
of Shakespeare's plays, the correction of which and restoration of the
poet's real sense are, as I have said, the task of the genuine critic,
and one in which, except in a very few instances, success is not to be
by any means despaired of.
As a means of obtaining it, I would, as I have done, lay it down
as a rule that no word or phrase should be employed in restoration
which is not to be found in the poet's own works, or at least in
those of his contemporaries. It is obvious that by so doing we shall
greatly diminish the risk of failure. It is a curious fact, that not
unfrequently two or even three corrections are so equally good, that
it is exceedingly difficult to choose between them, and that the final
choice thus becomes a matter of mere chance. In such cases I think the
critic should select the one which is the most poetic and most worthy
of the poet. The coincidence of two or more independent critics in a
correction is, in general, a proof of its truth; yet even this is not
infallible. See on Merry Wives, ii. 3.
For correction, then, the first requisite is a thorough knowledge of
the poet's language, the acquisition of which is a work demanding
both time and close attention. Shakespeare's vocabulary, as we have
seen, is extremely copious, and from his not having had the advantage
of a regular education his plays present more anomalies, and offer
more difficulties to the modern reader than those of the contemporary
dramatists.
In his early pieces there is an incessant play on words; and in
his later the language is often very elliptical and the sentences
greatly involved. These difficulties are enhanced by the ignorance of
punctuation, or neglect of it, with which the editors are chargeable.
Thus it is only in very plain cases that they notice the break in sense
caused by the aposiopesis, the anacoluthon, or an interruption, of
which the reader will find so many examples in my Edition and in the
following pages, marked for the first time, and designated by the sign
(...). I would particularly direct his attention to Temp. iii. 1, 2
Hen. IV. iv. 1, Ham. i. 2, i. 4.
12.
In the dramas and other works of those days we may observe the
following peculiarities.
The infinitive mood is used with or without _to_ differently from the
present usage--prefixed where we omit, omitted where we prefix. It is
also employed, like the Hebrew infinitive absolute, where we use the
present participle active, sometimes with a preposition, _ex. gr._,
Copious in words, and one that much time spent
_To jest_.
Lydgate, Book of Troy.
Even in Cowley we meet with
The sun himself, although all eye he be,
Can find in love more pleasure than _to see_.
The Gazers.
Here it is plain we should use the participle _in seeing_.
In "He is grown too proud to be so valiant," Cor. i. l, "to be" seems
to be _i. q._ being; _too_ being apparently used in the sense of
_trop_, Fr., _i.e._ excessively.
The passive participle was continually used in the place of the present
or past participle active or of the future. Chapman, for instance, is
profuse in his use of it in his Homer. Of this, as of the former, we
have some remains among us still, but few indeed compared with what our
forefathers had. The perfect was also frequently used as a part. past,
and of this also we have still some remains.
In imitation of the Latin and French, the writers of the sixteenth
century--for we do not meet with it in Chaucer or Gower--used the verb
as a noun, as _dispose_ for _disposal_, _suspect_ for _suspicion_.
A further peculiarity was the use of what grammarians call collectives,
_i.e._, the singular noun used for the plural. We still retain this
in _sheep_, _swine_, _fowl_, and partially in _year_, _day_; but in
our older writers we meet with it in _horse_ (Much Ado, i. 1, Hen. V.
iv. 1, and in Chapman's Homer continually), _pearl_ (Macb. _ad fin._),
_tree_, _corpse_, _witness_, _business_, _subject_, _princess_ (Temp.
i. 2), and other words.
Writers of those days--and Shakespeare more than any--were fond of
using verbs in a causative sense, as _fall_ for cause to fall, let
fall, _fear_ for make fear. In these plays we meet, in a causative
sense, with _cease_, _linger_, _neglect_, _silence_, _faint_, _perish_,
&c. Thus _learn_ became _teach_, _take give_. It is only thus that
"_smiles_ his cheek in years" (L. L. L. v. 2) becomes sense.
13.
There was a peculiarity of the grammar of those days which is now
confined to the vulgar, namely, that of joining a plural nominative
with a singular verb, _ex. gr._,
That in this spleen ridiculous _appears_,
To check their folly, passions solemn _tears_.
L. L. L. v. 2.
The rimes here and in several other places prove that this is no
printer's error; and this construction is actually most frequent in
Peele, Marston, and Fletcher--all University men! Editors, Mr. Dyce for
example, are in the habit of taking the most unwarrantable liberty of
altering this construction, except where restrained by the rimes. This
practice is highly reprehensible and should be avoided; for we should
give the text as it came from the poet's pen.
The origin of this structure is very simple. In the Anglo-Saxon the
verbs made their plural in _th_, not in _n_, as afterwards became the
usage. This plural of the verb occurs continually in the Vision of
Piers Ploughman, and we find it not unfrequently even in the State
Papers of the early Tudor period, in its later form; for, as in the
singular, the _th_ was gradually changed to _s_.
In the more artistic compositions of Chaucer and Gower, however, it is
very rare. The following line in Chaucer,
As _flakès fallès_ in grete snowes,
House of Fame.
shows that even in his time the _th_ had been converted into _s_. The
present practice, then, we may see is merely a change of fashion, and
our ancestors' mode of forming the plural was perfectly correct and
grammatical, with one exception--of which we still meet instances--that
of using _is_ and _was_ as a plural. In my Edition of our poet's plays,
I have therefore very generally preserved this structure; for we may
alter orthography and punctuation, but not grammar.
On the other hand, I must maintain, in opposition to Mr. Dyce, that
the union of a single noun with a plural verb was _never_ a rule of
the language, but _always_ an error of the copyist, or a slip of the
writer. Of this I can give positive instances.
I one day met in my own History of England the following words, "The
_blood_ of Catesby and two others alone _were_ shed;" and on looking
at the first edition I found of course that my word had been _was_.
In Mr. Lloyd's Critical Remarks on Measure for Measure, in Singer's
Shakespeare, we may read "the five _acts_ of the first part of Promos
and Cassandra _concludes_ the iniquity of the deputy." Nor is this
confined to English; in the Gerusalemme Liberata, and unnoticed by any
editor, we find
Non si conviene a te, cui fatto _il corso_
Delle cose e de' tempi _han_ si prudente.--x. 41.
In all cases it will be found to be the consequence of a noun of a
different number having intervened between the nominative and the verb.
Mr. Dyce, however, tries to make a rule of it by saying that "our early
writers" did it when a genitive plural intervened; but that will not
apply to passages like these--
Whose _youth_, like wanton boys through bonfires,
_Have_ skipt thy flame.--Two Noble Kinsmen, v. 1.
_The sea_,
With his proud mountain-waters envying heaven,
When I say 'still!' _run_ into crystal mirrors.
Valentinian, iv. 1.
Of others' voices, that my adder's _sense_,
To critic and to flatterer stopped _are_.
Shakespeare, Son. cxii.
This last is the error of the poet, who probably had _ears_ in his
mind; yet _sense_ may be a collective: all the others are perhaps to be
ascribed to the original printers.
The intensive particle _be_ was prefixed to verbs much more frequently
than at present. There was also a frequent ellipsis of the first
personal pronoun before such verbs as _cry_, _beseech_, _beshrew_, &c.;
and finally the habit--still retained by the vulgar--of cutting away
the first syllable of a word prevailed to some extent.
14.
The pronunciation of Shakespeare's time of course differed in many
points from that of the present day. Thus _aspect_ and many other
words were accented, and properly, on the last syllable; we also
have _obdúrate_, _árchbishop_, _cónfessor_, &c. In words such as
_case_, _pace_, _lace_, the French sound of the _a_ seems to have
been partially retained--Chaucer writes these words _cas_, _caas_,
_paas_, _laas_--along with the ordinary English sound. Chaucer also
writes 'made' _maad_, Raleigh 'safe' _sauf_; and as the Master of the
Revels wrote Shakespeare's name _Shaxberd_, we may suppose that _shake_
and terms of a similar form were pronounced _shak_, &c. If we do not
pronounce _lac'd_ as _last_ in "lac'd mutton" (Two Gent. i. 2), we lose
the humour of the passage. When Spenser therefore makes _prepar'd_,
for example, rime with _hard_, he was probably doing nothing very
unusual; for these double sounds--as we may see by the example of _shew
show_, _shrew shrow_, _lese lose_--were by no means uncommon. I suspect
that _sea_ may have been one of these, and that besides riming with
_see_, as indeed Chaucer always writes it, it retained the sound of
the Anglo-Saxon [sæ]; for F. Beaumont in his Poems almost invariably
makes it rime with such words as _day_, _lay_, _ray_. Waller, followed
by Pope, Gay, and other poets, most improperly made _ea_ rime with
_ai_, _ay_, as _tea_ with _obey_, &c. As _haste_, _chaste_, _waist_,
&c, constantly rime with _fast_, _last_, &c, they were probably, I
think certainly, pronounced as they were written, like them; or they
may have had a double pronunciation like the words just quoted. As
the more usual orthography was _chaunge_, _raunge_, &c, these words
would seem to have been pronounced as in French, and as we still
pronounce _daunt_, _haunt_, _avaunt_. In words chiefly from the French,
terminating in _ci_, _si_, _ti_ followed by a vowel, as in _nation_,
_fashion_, _passion_, &c.--to which we may add _ocean_--the usual sound
was _s_, not _sh_ as at present. On the whole, the language seems to
have been more euphonious than that of the present day.
While on the subject of euphony, I must direct attention to one point.
Our ancestors probably pronounced _my_, _thy_ (mín, þín, A.-S.), _mee_,
_thee_, with a short sound also, when not emphatic, as in _by_, _to_,
&c. Owing to its falling out of familiar use, and its employment in
the Bible and Liturgy, _thy_ has long--except by the Quakers and the
peasantry--been pronounced so as to rime with _fly_, _try_; but _my_
retained its proper sound till within the last few years; Walker, for
instance, knew nothing of a change. But now our ears are constantly
dinned with an egotistic _my_ like _thy_. I mention this because this
new-fangled pronunciation is ruinous to both euphony and humour in our
elder writers.
I shall conclude with some remarks upon _its_, a word of which
Shakespeare may almost be regarded as the originator; though Spenser,
no doubt, had used it _once_ (F. Q. vi. 11. 34) before him. Singer
says it "occurs but twice or thrice" in Shakespeare; and Archbishop
Trench and others say "three or four times;" while the fact is that its
occurs _twelve_, and _it_, as a genitive, no less than _fifteen_ times.
We meet _its_ only nine times in the numerous plays of Beaumont and
Fletcher, and but half a dozen times in those of Jonson or Massinger.
The Chinese language makes the genitive by merely prefixing the
substantive; thus _houe jin_ (_houe_ kingdom) is "man of the kingdom."
The same is the structure of the Teutonic and Scandinavian languages,
ex. gr., _day light_, &c.; but while all the others make the two
substantives form one word, the English sometimes keeps them separate,
sometimes unites them by a hyphen, and at other times makes them into
one word. Hence we may observe, by the way, that it is needless, as
well as cacophonous, to add an '_s_ to a substantive ending in that
letter; even the simple turned comma is superfluous, the position alone
indicating its genitive sense.
It appears that not only nouns but pronouns were so employed. In the
first page of the Canterbury Tales we have--
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of _which_ vertue engendred is the flour.
Here _which_ is a genitive, for which we should now use _whose_ (the
genitive of _who_), a pronoun that our forefathers used of things as
well as persons.
In like manner, though _his_ was the usual genitive of _it_ as well as
of _he_, it was not uncommon to make the genitive by simply prefixing
_it_, as in
Lord, how it could so prettily have prated with _it_ tongue!
Romeus and Juliet, 1562.
and other passages. I do not think it ever occurs in Chaucer, Gower, or
Piers Ploughman.
I am therefore of opinion that Shakespeare may be regarded as the chief
agent in introducing _its_ into the language. It is to be noticed that
it never occurs in the Bible, only thrice, or rather only twice, in
Milton, and but once in Waller. Chatterton used it twice in the very
first page of his Poems of Rowley; yet the critics of the time did not
discern this plain proof of forgery!
On the disputed question of the use of _his_ for the genitive, I
will only observe that the fact is that the preceding noun is used
absolutely. Thus, as we have "The king, he is hunting the deer," so we
have "the king, his palace." The same structure precisely is to be met
with in Dutch and German--we meet with it, for instance, in Schiller's
Wallenstein; and Captain Burton informs us that in the Kariri language
of Eastern Africa, "The Kazi's brother," for example, is _Kazi-ih-zo_,
literally "The Kazi, his brother."
II. THE VERSE.
15.
Chaucer introduced into English poetry the iambic verse of five feet,
formed by the Provençals in imitation of the Classic Phaleucian and
Sapphic hendecasyllables, and adopted from them by the Italian poets.
These last, however, though they held the principle of admitting but
five _ictus_ in a line, did not limit themselves to eleven syllables,
as the following examples will show:--
Che passa i monti, e rompe i muri e l'armi.
Dante, Inf. xvii. 2.
L'oro, e le perle, e i fior vermigli, e i bianchi.
Petr. Son. xxxi.
Non danno i colpi, or finti, or pieni, or scarsi.
Tasso, Ger. Lib. xii. 55.
So the Greeks in their dramatic iambics admitted trisyllabic feet,
Æschylus admitting one foot, Sophocles two, Euripides three; while the
comic poets, both Greek and Latin, used these feet still more freely,
not, however, exceeding the limit of three.
Chaucer did not allow himself the same licence as his masters. He
sometimes admits one such foot, rarely two, and three, I believe, only
once. He also uses at times the Alexandrine or verse of six feet.
The first who used this verse for the drama in England was Bishop Bale,
who in 1538 published three Interludes, as he termed them, or dramatic
pieces on Scriptural subjects. Here are a few lines from the one named
God's Promises:--
In the begynnynge, before the heavens were create,
In me and of me was my sonne sempyternall,
With the Holy Ghost, in one degre or estate
Of the hygh godhed, to make the Father coequall,
And thys my Sonne was with me one God essencyall,
Without separacyon at any tyme from me,
True God he is of equall dignytè.
The feet, it will be seen, are here of two or three syllables
indifferently; and the same is the case in the couplets which occur
also in these plays.
About the same time Nicholas Udall wrote his comedy of Ralph Roister
Doister--not printed till 1566--in which we have the earliest specimen
of the verse afterwards chiefly used for comedy, namely, one of four
feet, the foot of two, three, and even four syllables. It commences
thus:--
As long lyveth the mery man (they say)
As doth the sory man, and longer by a day,
Yet the Grassehopper for all his Sommer pipyng
Sterveth in Winter wyth hungrie gripyng.
This measure may be seen in Damon and Pitheas, New Custom, Gammer
Gurton's Needle, and other plays, in which we shall find it admitting
lines of five and even six and seven feet,--_ex. gr._,
That state is most miserable. Thrise happy are we
Whom true love hath joined in perfect amity.
Which amity first sprung, without vaunting be it spoken that is true,
Of likeliness of manners, took root by company, and now is
conserved by virtue.--Damon and Pitheas.
Contemporary with Bale and Udall, the illustrious Earl of Surrey had
introduced into English a new species of verse--blank verse. This was a
five-foot iambic measure without rime, and admitting of verses of six
feet. His version of two books of the Æneis in this measure was printed
in 1557; and five years later, Jan. 18, 1561-2, a play written in it
and named Gordebuc, by Norton and Sackville, was performed before Queen
Elizabeth at Whitehall, and it was given to the press in 1566. But more
than twenty years elapsed before blank verse made its first appearance
on the public stage in the Tamburlain of Marlow. From its inherent
superiority, it at once became the established form for the drama,
still mingled, however, with riming couplets and stanzas.
16.
I have already expressed my opinion that the earliest among the extant
dramas of Shakespeare _may_ have been The Comedy of Errors. This is
in blank verse, in general strictly decasyllabic, mingled with the
riming measures above noticed. His next play would seem to have been
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, much of the same form, but differing from
it, and from its immediate successors, by admitting in its blank verse
trisyllabic feet, as in
A virtuous gentlewoman, mild and beautiful.--iv. 4.
It might seem as if the poet were hesitating about the adoption of a
freer kind of verse such as came afterwards into use. Love's Labour's
Lost, and the other plays in Meres' list--to which, as may be seen,
The Taming of the Shrew is to be added--are all of the same kind. As
he advanced in his career, he gradually discarded rime, and admitted
the trisyllabic foot more frequently. He also learned to run his verses
into each other, thus forming a system; the preposition, for instance,
ending one line, and the word it governed beginning the next line.
The blank verse of Surrey and of the authors of Gordebuc--admitting,
as we have seen, verses of six feet--may be regarded as strictly
decasyllabic. But when it became the standard verse of the theatres it
gradually relaxed from its strictness, and admitted trisyllabic feet
more and more as it advanced, so that in Fletcher we actually meet
with lines containing fifteen syllables, though of no more than five
feet. It is most strange that, with these facts staring them, as I
may say, in the face, editors, almost without exception, seem to have
been haunted by a spectre of five decasyllabic feet. "How often," says
Gifford, "will it be necessary to observe that our old dramatists never
counted their syllables on their fingers!" They also seem to be unaware
of the existence of Alexandrines, or verses of six feet. The play of
Othello, for instance, is as full of them as Dryden's riming couplet
verse; and yet Mr. Dyce--whom I generally notice as being usually
regarded as a leading critic--writes frequently as if such a line were
not admissible in dramatic verse.
Again, there are critics who regard a verse as good if it contains ten
syllables, no matter how made or how arranged.
Thus Malone gives as good verses,
What wheels, racks, fires, flaying, boiling.--W. T. iii. 2.
Curs'd be I that did so. All the chärms.--Temp. i. 2.
Poürs into captains' wounds? banishment.--Timon, iii. 5.
Mr. Collier regards as a good verse,
To yond generation you shall find.--M. for M. iv. 3.
"Doth comfort thee in _thy_ sleep. Live and flourish" is the usual
reading in Rich. III. v. 5; mine is at least more euphonious.
It has never to my knowledge been sufficiently noticed that Shakespeare
makes occasional use of the seven-foot verse of Golding's Ovid
and Phaer's Virgil, works in which it is evident he was extremely
well-read. Such are the following lines:--
For often have you writ to her, and she in modesty,
Or else for want of idle time, could not again reply;
Or fearing else some messenger, that might her mind discover,
Herself hath taught her love himself to write unto her
lover.--Two Gent. ii. 1.
A cherry-lip, a bonny eye, a passing-pleasing tongue.
Rich. III. i. 1.
My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove.--
Why then your visor should be thatch'd.--
Speak low, if you speak love.--Much Ado, ii. 1.
Convey the wise it call: steal! foh! a fico for the phrase!--
Well, sirs, I am almost out at heels.--
Why, then, let kibes ensue.--Mer. Wives, i. 3.
As many devils entertain, and To her, boy! say I.--Ib.
Thou art the Mars of malcontents. I follow thee, troop on.
Ib.
Die men like dogs; give crowns like pins; have we not Hiren
here?--2 Hen. IV. ii. 4.
Rouse up Revenge from ebon den, with fell Alecto's snake.
Ib. v. 5.
A damned death! Let gallows gape for dogs, let man go
free.--Hen. V. iii. 6.
These last six, we may see, all belong to Ancient Pistol. We possibly
might add:
He's ta'en, and, hark! they shout for joy.--
Come down, behold no more.--Jul. Cæs. v. 3.
17.
I will now make a few general observations on the dramatic verse of
Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In the first place, as observed
above, we may lay it down as a general rule that their verse--I may
perhaps include even that of Marston--is never rugged or inharmonious,
but that when it appears to be so it is owing to the copyist or the
printer, or to the fact of the manuscript having been damaged, and not
unfrequently to want of skill in the reader.
An apparent cause of imperfection in lines is the reader's ignorance
of the poet's mode of pronunciation. Thus it was then the custom--one
not quite lost yet--in prose as well as in verse, if two words came
together, one ending, the other beginning, with an accented syllable to
throw back the former accent: hence Shakespeare said, for example, "the
dívine Desdemona." If critics kept this fact in mind, they would not
reject Tieck's excellent emendation of "the précise Angelo" for "the
prenzic Angelo" in Measure for Measure, on account of the accent, when
in the very same play we have "a cómplete bosom," i. 4; "O just, but
sévere law!" ii. 2; "Will bélieve this," _ib._; "Our cómpell'd sins,"
_ib._ 4, &c.; we have actually "précise villains," ii. 1. How would
they read
Might córrupt minds procure knaves as corrupt (Hen. VIII. v. 1)?
In fine, it must be remembered that _ion_, _ien_, and other double
vowels were pronounced dissyllabically, as _oceän_, &c.
Again, neither editors nor readers are in general aware that poets
like Shakespeare, who were born in those parts of England where the
_r_ at the end of words or syllables has the light sound peculiar
to the English language, frequently pronounce as dissyllables those
monosyllables, such as _fire_, _hour_, _more_, _where_, &c., ending in
_r_ after a long vowel or diphthong, as in
I know a bank, where the wild thyme blows.--M. N. D. ii. 1.
Here "where" is to be pronounced nearly _wheaa_; for so the English
really do pronounce it, though they may fancy such not to be the case.
Malone, as being an Irishman, seems to have been the first to notice
it. Of these monosyllables there are upwards of thirty in Shakespeare,
and as many in Fletcher; while in the learned Jonson we only meet
with _fire_, _hour_, _our_, _your_, _wear_. In my Edition, and in
this work, I have marked them with a diæresis, as _whëre_, _heär_,
&c. It is rather remarkable that it is almost solely to his higher
characters, such as Hamlet and Coriolanus, that Shakespeare gives this
pronunciation. We also find this dissyllabic pronunciation in such
words as _born_, _morn_, _horn_, &c.
As in French poetry the _e muet_ in words forms a distinct syllable,
_ennemi_, for example, being read as a trisyllable; so we find _angry_,
_entrance_, _children_, _mistress_ (often written _misteris_),
_country_, _witness_, _juggler_, _wondrous_, &c., forming three,
_remembrance_ four syllables. _Captain_ was sometimes _capitain_, as
in French. Many of these cases, we may observe, are mere solutions of
contractions, _angry_, for example, being simply _angery_ contracted.
18.
In opposition to the commonly received theory, I will venture to lay
it down as a fixed principle that the dramatic poets rarely, if ever,
used short lines, except in speeches of a single line, or in the first
or the last line of a speech. This will be apparent to any one who
examines the pages of Jonson and Massinger, who printed their plays
themselves, or those plays of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and others which
are the most correctly printed. Wherever a line of less than five feet
occurs, it will be found to have been produced by omission of words
or by malarrangement of the text. In plays such as Timon, Troilus and
Cressida, or Fletcher's Sea Voyage, of which the original copy was
in bad condition, lines of this kind are of course most numerous. I
may here observe that in this last-named play, the metre of which Mr.
Dyce has pronounced to be "_incurably_ defective," I have, by simple
rearrangement of the text, rendered it as correct as in any other of
Fletcher's plays.
Even in this also Shakespeare took liberties in which his brethren
did not venture to indulge. _He_ began and ended not only speeches,
but paragraphs of speeches, with short lines. Nay, he even made the
concluding short line of one paragraph and the incipient short line of
the next form a single line, thus--
It hath the primal eldest curse upon it:
A brother's murder.--Pray can I not?--Ham. iii. 3.
Of greatest justice.--Write, write, Rinaldo.
All's Well, iii. 4.
Splitted the heart.--This is the sword.
Ant. and Cleop. v. 1.
In the case of final riming couplets the first line may be short, but
_never_ the second.
19.
Nothing is more common in the works of our old dramatists than
malarrangement of the text, some lines being too long, some too short;
but among them they are sure to contain the requisite number of feet.
Editors have often taken the most justifiable liberty of rearranging
the text; but on other occasions they have exclaimed against those who
have followed their example. In this case, however, the only limit to
the discretion of an editor is that of not putting--except in the cases
above mentioned--more or less than five or six feet in a line. I must
not omit to observe that editors have done injury to many passages, by
the decasyllabic superstition which I have already noticed.
I will give one instance of a place where a most slight rearrangement
gives perfect harmony to what has been a stumblingblock to editors:--
And sandy-bottom'd Severn have I sent him
Bootless home, and weather-beaten back.
1 Hen. IV. iii. 1.
The last line, it will be seen, is the merest prose, but transfer "him"
to it from the preceding line, and we at once get harmonious verse.
The following passages are thus arranged in the original editions:--
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, &c.
Mids. Night's Dream, v. 1.
It seldom visits Sorrow; when it doth, it is a comforter.
We two, my lord, will guard your person,
While you take your rest, and watch your safety.--
Thank you. Wondrous heavy.
Temp. ii. 1.
Those, then, who would refuse an editor the right of rearrangement are
bound, if they would be consistent, to retain such passages as these
unaltered. I may here make the boast that mine is the _only_ edition of
these plays in which the text is strictly metrical throughout.
20.
Beside all those forms of verse, the plays of our old dramatists
contain a large quantity of prose. But it is only prose to the eye;
for it is in reality as metrical as what is printed in separate metric
lines, consisting of lines of five or six feet, each of two or three
syllables, but printed continuously like prose. I therefore denominate
it "_Metric Prose_" as being metric in substance, prose in form, and
as, moreover, it is termed _prose_ both by Chaucer and Shakespeare,
probably from its less elevated character and from its being written
continuously and without rime or alliteration. I am disposed to regard
the former as being its inventor; and perhaps his reason for writing it
continuously may have been merely the wish to save paper. We know, from
M. de Maucroix's letter to Boileau, that the French poet Racan, whose
poems were of course in rime, also wrote them continuously, and, as it
would appear, for the same reason, though paper must have been less
valuable in his time. As, however, the Anglo-Saxon and early English
alliterative verse was written continuously, Chaucer may have been only
following an established mode. It may be remarked that the poetry of
the Hebrew Scriptures is also written and printed continuously.
Surely it is no egotism to state a plain truth! I therefore say that,
as far as I know, I am myself the very first who, for the last century
or more, has discerned the existence of this metric prose. My discovery
was very gradual. I first recognized it in the plays of Beaumont
and Fletcher, and, advancing step by step, I at length arrived at
the certainty that for three centuries and a half, from Chaucer and
Wickliffe to Dryden and Tillotson, almost every work claiming to be
regarded as a literary composition is in this form. Such are histories
from Sir T. More to Clarendon, translations, controversial and
philosophical works, as those of Hooker, Brown, Taylor, and Cudworth,
versions of the Scriptures from Wickliffe to the authorized one
inclusive, sermons, inclusive of those of Barrow, South, and Tillotson,
the Liturgy, except the Creeds, Te Deum, and Catechism, all prefaces,
dedications and letters of compliment, &c. The chief exceptions were
Hall and the other chroniclers, Purchas, Hakluyt, Fuller, Bunyan,
Ludlow, L'Estrange, and Mrs. Hutchinson. The Ecclesiastical Policy,
The Liberty of Prophesying, and The Areopagitica, for example, are
as decidedly metrical as The Paradise Lost, only admitting more
trisyllabic feet, and being printed continuously. Hence, too, in a
great measure, arises the charm which we find in the prose of our old
writers, and of which we have been ignorant of the secret source; as
when Cowper styles Sidney "warbler of poetic prose."
I do not, however, say that this prose was read as verse, with a slight
elevation of tone at the end of each metric line. It was, I think,
read as prose, as Cowper of course read the Arcadia; but the metre
diffused a secret charm through it, which could be felt even by those
who were ignorant of the cause. How easy, by the way, must this mode of
writing prose have made verse-making to the writers of those days! and
how rapidly that prose could be written is proved by the assertion of
Sir Kenelm Digby, who says that in the space of twenty-four hours he
sent out and bought the Religio Medici, read it through, and wrote his
Observations on it, which fill upwards of seventy printed pages, and
are metrical--a fact almost inconceivable.
The only writer of the last century who, as far as I am aware, used
this metric prose--for we seek it in vain in Addison, Pope, Johnson,
Gibbon, &c.--is the historian Robertson, of which fact Mr. Buckle
seems to have had a dim conception; for he speaks of his "_measured_
style." It is a question where Robertson got it; for he could hardly
have invented it, and I think it must have been in Knox, Spottiswoode,
and the Scottish writers of the two preceding centuries, who all
wrote like their English contemporaries. At the same period, however,
his countryman Macpherson invented a new kind of metric prose for
his 'Poems of Ossian.' Even the present century presents us with an
instance in Mr. Lecky's eloquent 'History of Rationalism,' which is as
metrical as the Areopagitica of Milton. Possibly my own remarks on the
subject in 'Notes and Queries' may have directed his attention to it.
Gascoigne's comedy of The Supposes, performed in 1566, a translation
from the Italian of Ariosto, appears to have been the first play
written in this metric prose; Lyly also, somewhat later, wrote in it
his courtly comedies; and it gradually, combined with blank verse, got
entire possession of the scene. The last, I believe, to use it was
Dryden. Ordinary prose--probably in imitation of the French and Italian
comic drama--seems to have been first used after the Restoration, in
the comedies of Killigrew, Shadwell, Wycherley, Etheridge, Sedley, and
other dramatists of that period.
It is rather remarkable that a union of verse and prose, similar
to this union of regular and irregular verse of our drama, occurs
also in that of India. Sir William Jones tells us, in his preface to
Sacontala, that the Hindoo plays "are all in verse where the dialogue
is elevated, and in prose where it is familiar." Coleridge, who had
not the slightest suspicion of the existence of metre in the dramatic
prose, makes the following just remarks in a note on Fletcher's Custom
of the Country:--"In all comic metres the gulping of short syllables
and the abbreviation of syllables ordinarily long, by the rapid
pronunciation of eagerness and vehemence, are not so much a licence as
a law--a faithful copy of nature." This I think completely justifies
the frequent use of the syncope and synæresis in metric prose.
The same critic again says of Milton's noble conclusion of his treatise
'Of Reformation in England,' "Written in the fervour of his youthful
imagination, in a high poetic strain that wanted metre only to become a
lyrical poem." He felt, but did not see, that the metre actually _was_
there.
The fact of this prose being metric causes us sometimes to doubt
whether a passage should be printed as verse or as prose; and sometimes
what is verse in one edition is prose in another. Thus Mercutio's
celebrated account of Queen Mab, in Romeo and Juliet, which is most
perfect decasyllabic verse, is properly printed as such in the 4to,
1597, while in all the subsequent early editions it is made prose;
and prose it would probably have been at this day had no copy of that
edition remained. On the other hand, most modern editors have most
improperly printed the Nurse's speeches in the preceding scene as
verse, while they are, and rightly, prose in all the original editions.
An editor is, I think, at perfect liberty to use his judgement in this
matter.
The following extracts, in which the termination of each line is
marked, will enable the reader to judge of the truth of my theory. I
must at the same time remind him that such contractions as _I'll_,
_I've_, are rare in these prose scenes, such being left to the
knowledge and skill of the actor or reader.
"As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion. | _He_ bequeathed
me by will but poor a thousand crowns; | and, as thou sayest,
charged my brother on his blessing | to breed me well; and there
begins my sadness. | My brother Jacques he keeps at school, and
report | speaks goldenly of his profit; for my part he keeps me |
rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, | stays me here
at home unkept; for call you that keeping | for a gentleman of my
birth, that differs not from the stalling | of an ox? His horses
are bred better; for besides that | they are fair with their
feeding, they are taught their manage, | and to that end riders
dearly hired; but I, his brother,| gain nothing under him but
growth, for the which | his animals on his dunghills are as much |
bound to him as I. Besides this nothing that he | so plentifully
gives me, the something that Nature gave me | his countenance seems
to take from me. He lets me feed | with his hinds, bars me the
place of a brother, and as much as | in him lies mines my gentility
with my education. | This it is, Adam, that grieves me; and the
spirit of my father, | which I think is within me, begins to mutiny
| against this servitude. I will no longer endure it, | though yet
I know no wise remedy how to avoid it."--As You Like It, i. 1.
"I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation | prevent your
discovery, and your secresy | to the king and queen moult no
feather. I have of late |--but wherefore I know not--lost all my
mirth, | foregone all custom of exercises, 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 fire, | 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! | in apprehension how like a god! | the
beauty of the world! the paragon | of animals! And yet to me what
is | this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; | no, nor
woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so."--Hamlet,
ii. 2.
"Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo.--Without his roe, | like a
dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified! | Now is
he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in; | Laura to his lady
was a kitchen-wench; | marry, she had a better love to be-rime
her; | Dido a dowdy; Cleopatra a gypsy; | Helen and Hero hildings
and harlots; Thisby | a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose.
| Signior Romeo, _bon jour_. There's a French salutation | to
your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit | fairly last
night."--Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4.
"Nay, sure, | he's not in hell. He's in Arthur's bosom, if ever |
man went to Arthur's bosom. 'A made a finer end, | and went away
as it had been any christom child. | 'A parted even just between
twelve and one, | even at the turning of the tide. For after I saw
him | fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile |
upon his finger's end, I knew there was but one way; | for his
nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green fields. | How
now, Sir John! quoth I. What, man! be of good cheer! | So 'a cried
out God, God, God! three or four times. | Now I, to comfort him,
bid him he should not think of God; | I hoped there was no need
to trouble himself | with any such thoughts yet. So 'a bade me
lay | more clothes on his feet. I put my hand into the bed, | and
felt them, and they were as cold as any stone. | Then I felt to
his knees, and so upward and upward, and all was | as cold as any
stone."--King Henry V. ii. 3.
COMEDIES.
COMEDY OF ERRORS.
ACT I.
SC. 1. "Yet that the world may witness that my end
Was wrought by Nature, not by vile offence."
It was surely wrought by _Fortune_ rather than by Nature, and so the
poet may have written it. Collier's folio makes the same correction.
* * * * *
"And by me, had not oür hope been bad."
The editor of 2nd folio read 'me _too_,' not being aware of the
dissyllabic form of 'our.'
* * * * *
"A _poor_ mean woman was delivered."
The editor of 2nd folio added _poor_, which was probably the poet's
word.
* * * * *
"Unwilling I agreed. Alas! too soon
We came aboard * * * * * *
A league from Epidamnum had we sail'd."
We might supply '_our ship. Somewhat more than._'
* * * * *
"Which being violently borne up_on_,
Our helpful ship was splitted in the midst."
It was the mast, not the ship; but the text is probably as the poet
wrote it.
"At length another ship had seiz'd on us."
We should surely read '_the_ other.'
* * * * *
"That by misfortune was my life prolong'd."
It might be better to read _Thus_ for 'That.'
"That his attendant--for his case was like."
For 'for,' the judicious correction of 2nd folio, the 1st has
_so_.--See on L. L. L. i. 1; 1 Hen. IV. i. 3.
* * * * *
"To seek thy help by beneficial help."
See Introd. p. 61. For the first 'help,' Pope read _life_; I read
_ransom_, a word already used by the Duke. If the error should be in
the second 'help,' we might, with Malone, read _means_; which, however,
is rather feeble.
* * * * *
"And live, if no thou then art doom'd to die."
For 'no' we should surely, with Rowe, read _not_.
* * * * *
SC. 2. "Who falling there to find his fellow forth."
Mr. Barron Field proposed _failing_, which may be right.
* * * * *
"Methinks your maw, like mine, should be your clock,
And strike you home without a messenger."
'Clock' is Pope's correction for _cook_ of the folio, which, however,
may be right after all; for the cook used to _strike_ on the dresser to
give notice that the dinner was ready.
ACT II.
SC. 1. "Will you come _home_? quoth I."
Hanmer properly added _home_, which was plainly omitted.
* * * * *
"I see the jewel best enamelled
Will lose his beauty, yet the gold bides still,
That others touch.--And often touching will
Where gold; and no man that hath a name
By falsehood and corruption doth it shame."
To give sense to this passage I read in the second line _bide_; in the
fourth, with Warburton, _wear_, with Heath _so a_ for 'no'; in which
two I had thus been anticipated. The punctuation given here is my own.
I am dubious of 'others' in the third line, for which we might read
_fingers_, or some other word.
* * * * *
SC. 2. "Your sauciness will jest upon."
For 'jest' Mr. Dyce reads _jet_, referring to Rich. III. ii. 4, Tit.
Andron. ii. 1; and "It is hard when Englishmen's patience must be thus
_jetted_ upon by strangers."--Play of Sir T. More, p. 2.
* * * * *
"And what he hath scanted them in hair he hath given them in wit."
For the first 'them' Theobald properly read _men_.
* * * * *
"The one to save the money that he spends in trying."
For 'trying' Pope read _tyring_ by simply transposing, Rowe _trimming_.
I rather prefer the former, as _tyring_ is attiring, and 'attire' is
head-dress; but whether used of a man or not I am not certain.--See my
note on Milton's On Time, _v._ 21.
* * * * *
"I live distain'd, thou undishonoured."
Quite the contrary; for she would rather "live an unstain'd life." R.
and J. iv. 1. Theobald read _unstain'd_, but I prefer _un_distain'd.
The printer was more likely to omit _un_ (see on Cymb. i. 7) than
to change it to _di_. There is also an agreeable effect on the ear
produced by the accents falling on _un_ in both words. In all these
plays lines frequently begin with an anapæst.
* * * * *
"I'll entertain the freed fallacy."
For 'freed,' which can hardly be right, Pope read _favour'd_, Capell,
much better, _offer'd_.
* * * * *
"We talk with goblins, owls, and sprites."
To complete the measure, the editor of 2nd folio inserted _elves_, and
before 'sprites'; from which Rowe made _elvish_ 'sprites.' For 'owls'
Theobald read _ouphes_; but that term occurs only in The Merry Wives. I
read--
"_For here_ we talk with goblins, elves, and sprites."
* * * * *
"I am transformed, master, am not I?"
Theobald also made this obvious and necessary transposition of 'I not.'
ACT III.
SC. 1. "By the wrongs _that_ I suffer, and the blows _that_ I bear."
* * * * *
"Ay, to a niggardly host, and _a_ more sparing guest."
* * * * *
"I thought to have ask'd you * * * *
* * * * * and you said, No."
Malone also saw that something was lost. We might read--
"I thought to have ask'd you, _had you brought a rope.--
I ask'd you to let us in_, and you said, No."
* * * * *
"Once this. Your long experience of her wisdom."
'Her' is Rowe's correction of _your_ of the folio.
* * * * *
"And in despite of mirth mean to be merry."
To be merry in spite of mirth is like laughing in spite of laughter,
dying in spite of death, living in spite of life--pure nonsense. With
great confidence I therefore made the correction _my wife_, and so
gave it in my Edition. Meeting, however, in the Cambridge Edition with
Theobald's correction _wrath_--for Editors had ignored it--I saw at
once that the poet must have written _my wrath_ (see Introd. p. 67),
which resembles 'mirth' both in form and sound, and I have therefore
adopted it without hesitation. Like a similar correction in Twelfth
Night, i. 1, I regard it as absolutely certain.
* * * * *
SC. 2. "Shall love in building grow so ruinous?"
So Theobald, in accordance with the rime, read for _ruinate_ of the
folio.
* * * * *
"Alas, poor women! make us but believe."
Here again we have Theobald's correction of 'but' for _not_.
* * * * *
"Spread o'er the silver-waves thy golden hears,
And as a bed I'll take them and there lie."
I have printed 'hears' for the 'hairs' of the folio, as it rimes
with 'tears,' and was the constant pronunciation of Chaucer, and
frequently of Spenser; and in his early plays Shakespeare indulged
in riming archaisms of this kind occasionally. We are to recollect
that this play was not printed till thirty years after it had been
written, and by that time _hair_ had been established as the sole
orthography. The matter is, however, put out of dispute by the Poems,
in which Shakespeare himself spells it _hear_ when riming with _tear_
and _ear_. 'Bed' is the correction of 2nd folio for _bud_. Mr. Dyce
proposed _bride_.
* * * * *
"Call thyself sister, sweet, for I am thee."
For 'am' Capell read, I think rightly, _aim_, and Singer quotes "I make
my changes aim one certain end."--Drayton Leg. of Rob. Duke of Normandy.
* * * * *
"Well, sir, but her name and three quarters."
The folio has _is_ for 'and'; the correction is Thirlby's.
ACT IV.
SC. 1. "Belike you thought our love would last too long
If it were chain'd together."
For 'it' I think we should read _we_.
* * * * *
SC. 2. "First she denied you had in him no right."
This structure seems strange, but it was in use:--
"You may deny that God was not the cause."
Rich. III. i. 3.
"Fortune forbid my outside have not charm'd her."
Twelfth Night, ii. 2.
* * * * *
"Here go. The desk! the purse! Sweet, now make haste."
For 'Sweet,' which is rather free in the mouth of Dromio, Collier's
folio reads _Swift_; we might also conjecture _Speed_. The truth,
however, seems to be that _mistress_ has been omitted after 'Sweet.'
* * * * *
"A devil in an everlasting garment hath him."
There is something evidently lost here, riming with 'steel.' It may
have been _by the heels_, or _laid by the heels_, alluding to 'Tartar
Limbo'; but _still_, or _at his will_, seems preferable.
* * * * *
"A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough."
For 'fairy' Theobald proposed _fury_, and we have "O, my good lord,
deliver me from these _furies_" (_i.e._ bailiffs).--Massinger,
Fatal Dowry, v. 1. "Fiends, _fairies_, hags that fight in beds of
steel."--Peel, Battle of Aleazar, where Mr. Dyce reads _furies_. In
Jonson's Poetaster (iii. 1) the Lictors are termed _furies_.
* * * * *
SC. 3. "Master, if you do, expect spoon-meat, or bespeak a long
spoon."
For 'or' we should read _and_, as usual. Mr. Dyce reads _so_.
* * * * *
SC. 4. "In verity you did; my bones bear witness
That since have felt the vigour of his rage."
The change of pronouns is so frequent that I think it would be simpler
to read _your_ for 'his' than as is usually done make 'my bones,' etc.
an _aside_.
ACT V.
SC. 1. "And much different from the man he was _before_."
* * * * *
"In company I often glanced _at_ it."
* * * * *
"But _only_ moody and dull melancholy."
See Introd. p. 55. In my Edit. _only_ is at the end.
* * * * *
"And at her heels a huge infectious troop."
We should probably read _his_ for 'her,' as kinsman is the antecedent.
* * * * *
"Hath scar'd thy husband from the use of _his_ wits."
As 'his' was probably written _'s_, it escaped the printer's eye.
* * * * *
"The place of death and sorry execution."
I would read _sore_ or _sour_ for 'sorry'; Collier's folio proposes
_solemn_. The 1st folio has _depth_ for 'death.' The correction was
made in the 3rd.
* * * * *
"To scorch your face and to disfigure you."
Mr. Dyce properly reads _scotch_; for, as he observes, the very same
misprint occurs in Macb. iii. 2, and Knt. of Burning Pestle, iii. 4.
* * * * *
"On the way we met * * * _as we were going along_"(?)
* * * * *
"These left me and my man, both bound together."
For 'These' we should perhaps read _They_.
* * * * *
"Besides her urging of her wreck at sea...."
* * * * *
"And thereupon these Errors are arose."
Editors ought to be ashamed of themselves for not seeing that 'arose'
is the same as 'arisen.' See Introd. p. 70.
* * * * *
"Thirty-three years have I but gone in travail,
Of you, my sons; and till the present hour
My heavy burthen are 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!"
I read this passage thus:
"Thirty-three years have I _been_ gone in travail
Of you, my sons, _until_ the present hour.
My heavy burthen _here_ delivered,
The Duke, my husband, and my children both,
And you, the calendars of their nativity,
_Come_ to a gossip's feast, and go with me.--
After so long grief such _felicity_!"
All the corrections here made are my own; and yet in all but one I
had been anticipated! in _been_ by 2nd folio; in _until_ by Boaden;
in _here_ by Grant White; in _felicity_ by Hanmer. In my Edition of
these plays I have printed "Go ... _come_ with me." The difference
is unimportant. In the first line Theobald, followed by succeeding
editors, read _twenty-five_; but such alterations are not to be allowed.
* * * * *
"Master, shall I fetch your stuff from ship-board _now_?"
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.
ACT I.
SC. 1. "I leave myself, my friends, and all for love."
The folio has 'I _love_.' Pope made the obvious correction.
* * * * *
"But what said she? _did she nod?_"
These last words are an addition by Theobald, and the context shows
they had been lost.
* * * * *
SC. 2. "Yet he of all the rest I think best loves ye."
'Lov'_d_ ye' would rime better with 'mov'd me.'
* * * * *
"That I might sing it, madam, to a tune."
As _time_ and 'tune' were synonymous, perhaps the poet used the former,
which would accord with 'rime.'
* * * * *
"Let's see your song. _Why_, how now, minion!"
* * * * *
"You do not _like it_!--No, madam, it is too sharp."
* * * * *
"I see you have a month's mind to them."
A syllable is wanting. Some read _moneth_, but that is not a
Shakespearian form. We might also read '_un_to' for 'to' but I prefer
'I see _that_ you'; as I have given it in my Edition.
* * * * *
SC. 3. "And be in _the_ eye of every exercise."
ACT II.
SC. 1. "And now you are _so_ metamorphosed with a mistress."
A just and necessary addition of Collier's folio.
* * * * *
"And you, being in love, cannot see to put on your hose."
For 'hose,' apparently suggested by what went before, I should incline
to read, with the Cambridge editors, _shoes_; or _clothes_ might be
better.
* * * * *
"Nay, take them _again_--Madam, they are for you."
* * * * *
SC. 3. "Oh, that she could speak now like a wood woman!"
For 'she' Blackstone proposed _shoe_; better _the shoe_, as I have
given it.
* * * * *
SC. 4. "_Come_, go with me. Once more, new servant, welcome."
* * * * *
"She is alone.--Then let her _be_ alone."
* * * * *
"So the remembrance of my former love
Is, by a newer object, quite forgotten."
It seems to me that the best way to give sense to this passage is to
take 'by' in the sense of beside, near. See Index _s. v._
* * * * *
"It is mine or Valentine's praise?"
So it stands in the original. It need hardly be observed that the
two first words must be transposed. It is also plain to me that a
substantive has been lost after 'mine,' and none seems so likely to be
the right word as _eye_, the conjecture of Warburton, and which seems
to be omitted in the same manner in the last line of Son. cxiii.
"As love is full of unbefitting strains
* * * * *
_Form'd by the eye_, and therefore like the eye."
L. L. L. v. 2.
"I know there is no beauty,
Till our eyes give it 'em, and make 'em handsome."
Fletch. Maid in Mill, i. 2.
See also his Love's Pilgrimage, ii. 3. Steevens and others read '_her_
mine,' taking the latter as _mien_, a term not Shakespearian. (See
on Mer. Wives, i. 3.) As there is still a syllable wanting, I would
read 'Valentinès,' a mode of forming the genitive not unusual in our
author's early plays.
* * * * *
SC. 5. "Launee, by mine honesty, welcome to Padua."
That 'Padua' was the poet's word is proved by the metre, and the
editors had no right to change it to _Milan_. 'By mine honesty' occurs
in exactly the same manner in the play of Damon and Pitheas, with which
Shakespeare was familiar.
* * * * *
"If thou wilt go with me to the ale-house, _so_; if not."
The 2nd folio added _so_, which is required both by sense and metre.
* * * * *
SC. 7. "And instances of infinite of love."
The 2nd folio reads '_as_ infinite,' which may be right, but 'infinite'
seems to be made a substantive here.
ACT III.
SC. 1. "There is a lady in Verona here."
Here again 'Verona,' the poet's word, has been altered by the editors.
Pope, who is usually followed, read '_sir_, in _Milan_,' and Mr. Dyce
adopts the unheard-of term _Milano_ of Collier's folio! We have no
right to make such changes.
* * * * *
"For 'get you gone,' she doth not mean 'away.'"
Perhaps the poet's word was _By_ not 'For'; or there may be an omission
of _by_ after 'For.'
* * * * *
"I fly not Death, to fly his deadly doom."
For 'his' Singer read _is_.
* * * * *
"As ending anthem of my endless dolour."
For 'anthem' Singer very plausibly read _amen_.
* * * * *
"_Item_, She is not to be _kissed_ fasting on account of her breath."
Rowe added _kissed_, which, though generally received, is not
absolutely necessary.
"Nor does your nostril
Take in the scent of strong perfumes, to stifle
The sourness of our breaths as we are fasting."
Massinger, Very Woman, i. 1.
* * * * *
"Now will he be swinged for reading _of_ my letter."
* * * * *
SC. 2. "But say this weed her love from Valentine."
The context seems to require _wind_ for 'weed,' and I have so given it.
* * * * *
"That may discover such integrity."
Though in my edition I have made here an aposiopesis, I think it more
probable that a line has been lost.
ACT IV.
SC. 1. "_O_ sir, we are undone; these are the villains."
So Capell read also.
* * * * *
"An heir, and near-allied unto the Duke."
The folio has "And heir and niece." Theobald made the corrections.
* * * * *
"Come, go with us; we'll bring thee to our crews."
As in v.1 we have
"Come, I must bring thee to our captain's cave,"
we should probably read here _cave_ or _caves_ for 'crews.'
* * * * *
SC. 3. "Vain Thurio whom my very soul abhorred."
'Abhorreth' is probably what the poet wrote.
* * * * *
"Madam, I pity much your grievances,
Which since I know they virtuously are placed."
This is mere nonsense; 'grievance' never had any meaning but that
which it has at present. A line has evidently been lost; something
like this:--"_And sympathize with your affections_." The corrector of
Collier's folio, who first saw the loss, added--"_And the most true
affections that you bear_," which seems wanting in ease and simplicity.
* * * * *
"When will you go?--This evening coming _on_."
* * * * *
SC. 4. "It seems you loved not her, not leave her token."
For the second 'not' we should read _to_. See on All's Well, v. 3. For
'leave,' see Index _s. v._
* * * * *
"Why dost thou cry Alas?--I cannot choose
But pity her.--Wherefore should'st thou pity her?"
This is the proper arrangement; that of the editions, my own included,
is wrong.
* * * * *
"Well, give _to_ her that ring, and therewithal."
* * * * *
"From whom?--From Sir Proteus, my master, madam."
So I should have given it in my Edition.
* * * * *
"Aye, but her forehead's low, and mine's as high."
The sense might seem to require 'mine _is_ high,' as Pope also saw; but
her meaning may be, so is mine also. A high forehead was, however, a
part of beauty. See Fletcher, Woman-hater, iii. 1.
"She hath a freckled face,
A _low forehead_, and a lumpish eye."
Marston, Ant. and Mel. I. iv.
ACT V.
SC. 2. "Which of you saw _sir_ Eglamour of late?"
* * * * *
SC. 4. "And I mine _too_.--A prize! a prize! a prize!"
* * * * *
"Come let us go. We will include all jars
With triumphs, mirth, and rare solemnity."
'Include' here evidently signifies _conclude_; and as there is no
instance of its use in that sense, it might be better to read the
latter word with Hanmer.
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.
ACT I.
SC. 1. "And then grace us in the disgrace of death."
The usual confusion of _then_ and _there_. We should read the
latter. The contrary occurs in: "In summer _where_ the ways are fair
enough."--M. of Ven. v. 1.
* * * * *
"Why should I joy in any abortive birth?"
A line is certainly lost. It may have been like this:--"_Among the
offspring of the teeming earth._"
* * * * *
"So you, to study now it is too late ...
That were to climb o'er the house to unlock the gate."
This, except the punctuation, is the reading of the folio; that of the
4to, 1598, is:
"So you, to study now it is too late,
Climb o'er the house to unlock the little gate."
To which editors have given the preference, not a little, I think,
moved by what seemed to them the metric regularity of the last line.
I prefer the reading of the folio, and explain it thus:--Berowne had
just been showing how he liked everything in its due time and season;
and youth being the proper time for instituting a course of study, it
was, he thought, as absurd for them who were full-grown men to set
about it, as it would be for a man who wanted to unlock the gate of his
court-yard to climb over the house to get to it. A couplet, however,
may have been lost; for 'So you,' &c., joins but awkwardly with what
precedes; but I believe the true solution of the difficulty is that
the poet wrote '_For_ you,' &c. We have instances of the confusion of
these words in Com. of Err. i. 1, 1 Hen. IV. i. 3, Macb. i. 2, Son.
xliv. 5. I have so given it in my Edition. There seems to be much more
humour in the reading of the folio, caused by the aposiopesis, than in
that of the 4to, where 'the _little_ gate' makes a difficulty; but the
meaning may be, they were giving themselves a deal of labour for a very
trifling result. I think the reading of the 4to may have arisen thus.
In the transcript from which it was printed "That were to" may have
been effaced or omitted, and then 'little' was added to complete the
metre.
* * * * *
"Yet confident I'll keep what I have sworn?"
As it rimes with 'more,' we must, with 2nd folio, read _swore_.
* * * * *
"A dangerous law against gentility."
The reading of Collier's folio, _garrulity_, would agree better with
the context; but it is not a Shakespearian term.
* * * * *
"A high hope for a low heaven."
Theobald's reading _having_ has been generally, and I think rightly,
adopted; but Mr. Dyce adheres to the text.
* * * * *
"To hear or forbear hearing."
Capell read _laughing_ for 'hearing,' which correction the next speech
shows to be right.
* * * * *
"And Don Armado, _he_ shall be your keeper."
* * * * *
SC. 2. "For I am sure I shall turn sonnet."
Hanmer, who is generally followed, read 'sonnet_eer_'; but it is
doubtful if that term was then in use. In Hall's Satires we meet with
_sonnetist_; he also has _sonnet-wright_; and in Marston's Fawne (iv.)
and in the play of Lingua (ii. 2), we have _sonnet-monger_, which I
have adopted, as we have 'fancy-monger' in As You Like It, iii. 2.
Dr. Verplank, an American critic, proposed 'turnsonnets,' which Mr.
Staunton has adopted.
ACT II.
SC. 1. "_Lord_ Longaville is one."
* * * * *
"Well-fitted in arts, glorious in arms."
I read 'In arts well-fitted'; so also Grant White. The 2nd folio has
'in _the_ arts.'
* * * * *
"To the wide fields _is_ too base to be mine."
The metre requires a syllable.
* * * * *
"'Tis deadly sin to keep that oath, my lord,
And sin to break it."
Perhaps something may have been lost. It might be '_'tis no_ sin.'
* * * * *
"My lips are no common, though several they be."
'Several' is the very opposite of 'common.' "Truth lies _open_ to all;
it is no man's _several_."--Jonson, Discoveries. We should therefore,
I think, for 'though' read _for_, which is proved by the following
speeches. The printer might have taken _for_ for _tho'_, or have
supposed that 'be' was the conjunctive mood.
* * * * *
"Who tendering their own worth, from where they were glass'd,
Did point out to buy them, along as you pass'd."
The 4to reads 'point you'; but neither reading makes sense. We might
read '_prompt_ you,' or '_tempt_ you.' I have adopted the former.
* * * * *
"Come to our pavilion; Boyet is dispos'd."
By 'dispos'd' here we are to understand--like _dispos_ Fr.--cheerful,
or rather gamesome; we have _undis_posed in Com. of Err. i. 2. It would
seem, however, to be simply inclined with an ellipsis of the object.
ACT III.
SC. 1. "And make them men of note?--Do you note men?--that most are
affected to these."
I agree with the proposed reading of _me_ for the second 'men.'
* * * * *
"No salve in the male, sir."
Tyrwhitt's most happy emendation 'in them all' gives in my opinion, the
true reading.
* * * * *
"And stayed the odds by adding four."
Collier's folio, which Singer follows, reads _making_, which may be
right, but is not necessary.
* * * * *
"Sirrah Costard, _marry_, I will enfranchise thee."
Costard's reply shows that _marry_, added by Collier's folio, had been
omitted.
* * * * *
"I give thee thy liberty, set thee _free_ from durance."
The same folio supplies _free_. Singer received both corrections.
* * * * *
"Than whom no mortal so magnificent."
'So' should be _more_, or rather _moe_; but it may be as the poet wrote
it.
* * * * *
"This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid."
The original editions have 'This _signior Junio's_ giant-dwarf,' which
possibly may be right, there being an allusion to some poem or tale now
lost. The text is the correction of Hanmer.
* * * * *
"What, _I_! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!"
* * * * *
"A whitely wanton with a velvet brow."
Rosaline was dark, so Collier's folio reads _witty_ for 'whitely,' and
the Cambridge editors _wightly_; yet the poet may have been merely
oblivious.
* * * * *
"Well, I will love, _will_ write, sigh, pray, sue, groan."
ACT IV.
SC. 1. "That more for praise than purpose meant to kill."
The meaning of 'purpose' is not very clear; perhaps it should be
_purchase_.
* * * * *
"He came, saw ... saw two."
Both 4to and folio read 'see.' Rowe made the obvious correction.
* * * * *
"A mark marvellous well shot; for they both did hit _it_."
It was the 4th folio that supplied _it_.
* * * * *
"An if my hand be out, then, belike, your hand is in.--
Then will she get the upshot by cleaving the pin."
'Pin' is the correction of the 2nd folio; both the 4to and 1st folio
have _is in_, as in preceding line, and possibly so the poet wrote it;
for it makes a kind of sense, and he may have had his reasons for using
it.
* * * * *
"Armado a' the tother side."
So I read, as the 4to has _ath toother side_, and the folio _ath to the
side_. The usual reading is "on the one side;" but we are not to look
for rigid consistency in Costard's language.
* * * * *
"To see him kiss his hand! and how sweetly 'a will swear."
A line riming with this seems to be lost.
* * * * *
SC. 2. "So were there a patch set on learning to see him at school."
Misled by Singer, I gave in my Edition, _set_, the reading of Collier's
folio, for 'see,' which may be right.
* * * * *
"And to humour the ignorant I _have_ call'd the deer," etc.
Rowe was right, I think, in supplying _I have_. Singer reads _I will
call_; Collier's folio _I call_; he Cambridge editors _call I_.
* * * * *
"Makes fifty sores, O sore L!"
The reading of the Cambridge editors is _one soul_.
* * * * *
_"Of piercing a hogshead!"_
The poet, I suspect, wrote _Oh_! not 'Of'; and so I have ventured to
give it.
* * * * *
"Celestial, as thou art, oh! pardon Love this wrong,
That _he_ sings heaven's praise with such an earthly tongue."
We might also read, with S. Walker, '_the_ heaven's; but I prefer what
is in the text. A syllable was undoubtedly omitted.
* * * * *
"Where if, before repast, it shall please you to gratify the table
with a grace."
For '_before_ repast' of the 4to, the folio has '_being_ repast' in a
parenthesis; and it may possibly be right, the school-master, in his
pedantic way, using 'repast' as a participle. The grace, then, would be
after dinner.
* * * * *
SC. 3. "The dew of night that on my cheeks down flows."
Both 4to and folio read 'The night of dew,' and so most editions; but
the context requires the transposition. The same is the case in the
last line but one of this sonnet, where 4to and folio read 'dost thou.'
* * * * *
"Thou makest the triumviry, the corner-cap of society,
The shape of Love's Tyburn, that hangs up simplicity."
This is no rime; the poet must have written _sobriety_ in the second
line.
* * * * *
"Disfigure not his shop."
As 'hose' has just occurred, Theobald read _slop_, which both Singer
and Dyce properly adopt. The usual reading is _shape_.
* * * * *
"Oh, most divine Kate!
Oh, most prophane coxcomb!"
Both rime and metre demand _pate_ in the second line (see Introd. p.
63). The whole dialogue, with this exception, is in rime.
* * * * *
"By earth, she is not. Corporal, there you lie."
Theobald, who is usually followed, reads "By earth she is but corporal;
there you lie." I think, however, the text is right. In iii. 1 Berowne,
styling Love a "great general," adds, "and I to be a _corporal_ of his
field!" so he may well apply that title to Dumain. See Index _s. v._
* * * * *
"That shall express my true love's fasting pain."
Capell read _lasting_.
* * * * *
"_Of_ faith enfringed, which such zeal did swear?"
* * * * *
"To see a king transformed to a gnat."
For 'gnat,' of which it is not very easy to see the meaning, Mr.
Staunton would read _quat_, the conjecture of Mr. Becket, and surely
not better. We also meet _sot_ and _knot_, equally bad. In Pericles
(ii. 3), however, princes wanting in liberality are compared to gnats.
* * * * *
"Not you by me, but I betray'd to you."
Capell transposed 'by' and 'to'; which seems to be right. Yet 'to' may
have been suggested for _by_, by the preceding line.
* * * * *
"With men like men of inconstancy."
As something is evidently wanted, the 2nd folio read 'of _strange_,'
and that is the usual reading; Theobald '_moon_-like men.' I have read,
as I find S. Walker had done,
"With men like _you_, men of inconstancy."
* * * * *
"Is ebony like her? O wood divine!
A wife of such wood were felicity."
The 'wood' of the first line is Rowe's certain correction of _word_.
* * * * *
"The hue of dungeons and the school of night."
It is most certain that 'school' cannot have been the poet's word.
The usual reading is that of Warburton, _scowl_; but that substantive
is not used by Shakespeare, and it gives but an indifferent sense.
Theobald read _stole_, which also is not Shakespearian; I myself
_cloak_, as the "cloak of night" occurs in R. and J. ii. 2, Rich. II.
iii. 2. But the Cambridge editors seem to have hit on the exact word,
_suit_ written, as pronounced, _shoot_. In the Puritan (ii. 1), we have
a play on _suitor_ and _archer_, _i.e._ shooter; we retain this sound
in _sure_ and _sugar_. In Hamlet we have "suits of solemn black" and
"suits of woe" (i. 2), and "suit of sables" (iii. 2) for mourning, and
in Rom. and Jul. iii. 2,
"Come civil Night,
Thou sober-_suited_ matron all in black!"
* * * * *
"Have at you then, Affection's men at arms."
Capell sagaciously saw that in this speech, from "For when would you"
to "From whence doth spring," and from "For where is any" to "And in
that vow," are passages which the poet had cancelled in the "corrected
and augmented" play. The same occurs in Rich. III. v. 3, and on a much
smaller scale, however, in Rom. and Jul. iii. 3, iv. 1.
* * * * *
"Why, universal plodding prisons up."
There can be no doubt of this, the reading of Theobald--prisons for
_poisons_.
* * * * *
"For where is any author in the world
Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye."
As beauty is not taught, we should perhaps read _wisdom_. Perhaps,
however, the error may be in 'Teaches.'
* * * * *
"And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony."
Though this passage be very obscure, I doubt if it be corrupt. By
'voice' may be meant the assenting voice, the voices all sounding in
unison, which induces repose over heaven. Compare the opening of Gray's
Progress of Poesy. The original editions commit the usual error of
putting 'make' for 'makes.'
* * * * *
"And plant in tyrants mild humility."
The reading of Griffith and Collier's folio _humanity_ is, I think,
right. I have adopted it in my Edition.
* * * * *
"_Allons, allons!_"
The correction of Theobald for 'Alone, alone!' of the originals. The
poet, however, does not use French words in this play, and I think
we should read _All on, all on!_ or rather _Along, along!_ (See on
Temp. v. 1.) "_Along_ my lords! Well, Cromwell is half dead."--Thomas
Cromwell, iv. 5.
* * * * *
"Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men."
As a word cannot love, Hanmer, for 'loves,' read _moves_, Heath _joys_,
Mason _leads_. I read 'Love's' for 'love's' and _god_ for 'word.'
ACT V.
SC. 1. "Witty without affection."
The 2nd folio reads, and, I think, most properly, 'affec_ta_tion.' It
is much more likely that a syllable should have been omitted by the
printer, than that Nathaniel, who in general speaks correctly, should
blunder. We have the very same error in v. 2, where the rime leaves no
doubt on the subject.
* * * * *
"_Laus Deo, bone intelligo--Bone! bone_ for _bene_;
Priscian a little scratch'd. 'Twill serve." [_Aside._
This is Theobald's correction of _bene intelligo_.'--_Boone, boon for
boon prescian_, &c.; which has been universally received. The Cambridge
editors, however, partly anticipated by Capell, read '_Bon, bon fort
bon._ Priscian! a little scratcht, twill serve.' Ingenious as this is,
I still adhere to Theobald; for, as I have just observed, French does
not occur in this play; and when those critics say that "Sir Nathaniel
is not represented as an ignoramus who would be likely to say _bone_
for _bene_," I may remind them that he adds, 'Videsne _quis_ venit,'
which is nearly as bad. The printer, in fact, had spoiled the humour by
his _bene_, and Theobald restored it, as I think, most happily.
* * * * *
"I do beseech thee, remember thy courtesy. I beseech thee, apparel
thy head."
Malone read 'remember _not_' (see Ham. v. 2, M. N. D. iv. 1).
Dyce quotes "Pray you remember your courtesy.... Nay, pray, be
covered."--Every Man in his Humour, i. 1. But the negative may been
omitted here also.
* * * * *
"Shall pass _for_ Pompey the Great, the page for Hercules."
These additions, I find, were made by Capell also.
* * * * *
SC. 2. _Allons!_ we will employ thee.
Here, again, the original reading is 'Alone!'
* * * * *
"Great reason; for past cure is still past care."
The old editions transpose 'cure' and 'care.' The correction was by
Thirlby. The old reading is retained, I know not how, in my Edition.
* * * * *
"And shape his service wholly to my device."
The rime proves 'device' to be wrong. See Introd. p. 63. The 2nd folio
read '_all_ to my _behests_.' I read, as S. Walker also had read, 'to
my _hests_.'
* * * * *
"So portent-like would I o'ersway his state."
'Portent' is a correction of _pertaunt_.
* * * * *
"As Gravity's revolt to wantonness."
So the 2nd folio for 'wanton _be_.'
* * * * *
"Oh! I am stabb'd with laughter."
Perhaps it should be _stuff'd_, not 'stabb'd.' We have, however,
"_stabs_ the centre."--W. T. i. 2.
* * * * *
"They do, they do, and are apparell'd thus."
A line has evidently been lost here.
* * * * *
"And every one his love-feat will advance."
For 'feat' Collier's folio, and S. Walker, followed by Singer and Dyce,
read _suit_, which I also have adopted.
* * * * *
"But while 'tis spoke each turn away her face."
Both 4to and folio read _his_ for 'her.'
* * * * *
"_Bero._ Beauties no richer than rich taffeta."
It should evidently be _Boyet_, as in my Edition.
* * * * *
"Yet still she is the moon and I the man."
The line riming with this is lost, as Malone also saw.
* * * * *
"_Oh!_ They were all in lamentable cases."
So also 2nd folio.
* * * * *
"Till this madman show'd thee? and what art thou now?"
The editors omit 'mad,' as it is what they deem a superfluous syllable.
We should perhaps omit 'thou' and retain 'mad.'
* * * * *
"This jest is dry to me. _Fair_, gentle, sweet."
_Fair_ is an addition of 2nd folio.
* * * * *
"Which of the visors was it that you wore?--
Where? When? What visor? Why demand you this?"
As the whole scene is in rime, there should be a couplet here. We might
then for 'this' read _more_.
* * * * *
"As precious eye-sight and did value me."
A line riming with this, before, or after, seems lost.
* * * * *
"Nay, my good lord, let me o'er-rule you now;
That sport best pleases, that does least know how,
Where zeal strives to content, and the contents
Dies in the zeal of that which it presents."
The whole difficulty of this place lies in the word 'dies,' which has
two senses, now distinguished by the orthography, namely, _die_ and
_dye_, but which in Shakespeare's time were spelt indifferently. In
this place editors have invariably taken it in the former sense; and as
they regard 'contents dies' as a false concord--which, by the way, it
is not--they print 'Die,' and then change 'that' to _them_, and alter
the punctuation. The result, however, is anything but satisfactory. I,
on the contrary--and I believe I have been the first to do so--take
'Dies' in its second sense of tinging, colouring, imbruing, making
'zeal' the subject and 'contents' the object, and regarding this last
as being by metonymy--a figure Shakespeare uses so frequently--the
persons contented, or to be contented, just as in Ant. and Cleop. i.
4. "The Discontents" are the discontented. All then becomes plain, and
the passage is parallel to one in the speech of Theseus in M. N. D. v.
1. As to using 'Dyes' of mind, we may justify it by the employment of
_tinge_ and _tincture_ in the same way in our ordinary language; and
the following passages are very apposite:--
"When my new mind had no infusion known,
Thou gav'st so deep a tincture of thine own,
That ever since I vainly try
To wash away the inherent dye."
Cowley, The Complaint, 122.
"For _dye_ a husband that has wit with an opinion that thou art
honest, and see who dares wash the colour out." (Killigrew, Parson's
Wedding, ii. 3.) "Ma ben di rado avviene che le parole affermative e
sicure d'una persona autorevole in qualsivoglia genere _non tingano dal
loro colore la mente di chi le ascolta_." (Manzoni, Prom. Sposi, ch.
xx.) The 'zeal' in the last line may have been produced in the usual
way by that in the preceding line, and the poet's word have been _hue_;
but a change is not absolutely necessary.
* * * * *
"Keep some state in thy exit, and _so_ vanish."
* * * * *
"Speak _on_, brave Hector; we are much delighted."
* * * * *
"A heavy heart bears not a humble tongue."
I conjectured _nimble_, in which I had been preceded, as usual, by
Theobald. "You have a _nimble_ wit." (As You Like It, iii. 2.) The
error, however, may be, and I think is, in 'not,' for which I read
_but_, as these words are so constantly confounded. Collier's folio
makes the same correction.
* * * * *
"And though the mourning brow of progeny."
For 'And' I incline to read _Then_. (See on M. N. D. ii. 1.)
* * * * *
"Full of straying shapes, of habits, and of forms."
Coleridge read 'stray,' which seems better.
* * * * *
"Suggested us to make _'em_. Therefore, ladies."
* * * * *
"But more devout than this in our respects
Have we not been."
This is the reading of Hanmer generally received. That of the folio
is 'than _these are_ our respects,' where, if we read 'than these our
respects are,' we get perhaps as good a sense. 'Devout' seems to mean
devoted, or serious, or in earnest; 'respects' _sc._ of you, behaviour
respecting you.
* * * * *
"And what to me, my love?... of people sick."
This passage should certainly be omitted as a repetition. See on iv. 3.
* * * * *
"Call them forth quickly; _and_ we will do so."
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
ACT I.
SC. 1. "_It_ would have made nature immortal."
* * * * *
"_Hel._ If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it
soon mortal.
_Laf._ How understand we that?"
In the folio the first of these speeches is given to the Countess;
but Tieck saw rightly that it could only belong to Helena. I have
transposed the next two speeches; for Lafeu must reply immediately;
metrically also his reply is the complement of the speech of Helena, in
which 'living' and 'grief' should perhaps change places.
* * * * *
"Advise him.--He cannot want the best _advice_."
* * * * *
"And these great tears grace his remembrance more
Than those I shed for him.... What was he like?"
For 'his' I read _this_, i.e. that of Bertram, whose departure has
caused her tears to flow. There is an evident aposiopesis of _graced
his_, arising from the perturbation of her mind, as is proved by the
falling of the metric _ictus_ on 'him,' and which also proves that
'his' could not have been the poet's word.
* * * * *
"Carries no favour in it but Bertram's _only_."
Bertram is _always_ a dissyllable. We might also read 'but _only_,' but
with less force.
* * * * *
"He that hangs himself is a virgin."
This is sheer nonsense; 'virgin,' suggested by the following
'virginity,' should be _self-murderer_, as I have given it in my
Edition, or rather perhaps the legal term _felo de se_; for what
Parolles means is that as suicides were 'buried in highways,' Virginity
being such should be treated in the same manner.
* * * * *
"Out with it; within ten years it will make itself two."
For 'two' Hanmer read _ten_, and Steevens for 'ten' _two_. The best
reading seems to be that of Singer's folio, _months_ for 'years,' which
I have given in my Edition.
* * * * *
"Not my virginity yet."
This is complementary to the preceding speech, of which it completes
the metre. The emphasis is to be on 'my,' as her meaning is that her
virginity is not yet old and withered. She stops there, and enters on a
new subject, and it is evident that at least the first line is lost. It
may have been like this, "_Monsieur Parolles, you are for the Court_,"
which I have ventured to insert in my Edition; it seems so essential to
the sense.
* * * * *
"A mother, and a mistress, and a friend."
None of the editors seem to have perceived that in this and the six
following lines Helena is enumerating the titles, mostly Euphuistic,
that lovers at that time used to give their mistresses (comp. L.L.L.
iii. 1 _ad fin._), "Christendoms," _i.e._ baptismal names, as she
styles them, to which Cupid stood gossip. As 'mother' could hardly
have been one of these, I feel almost certain that the original word
was _lover_, which being damaged and only _er_ remaining (see on ii.
1), the printer made 'mother' of it. There is, however, it seems a
term _mauther_ or _mother_ still in use in the Eastern counties, and
signifying young girl. In Fletcher's Maid in the Mill (iii. 2), the
miller says of his daughter,
"A pretty child she is, although I say it,
A handsome _mother_."
In the Alchemist (iv. 4) Kastrill says to his sister, "You talk like a
foolish _mauther_." Tusser has in his Husbandry,
"No sooner a sowing but out by and by,
With _mother_ or (and?) boy that alarum can cry;
And let them be armed with a sling or a bow."
And again,
"A sling for a _mother_, a bow for a boy."
But surely such a term could not be used of the ladies of the Court of
France. The context shows that it is not mother-in-law that is meant.
'Captain' in the next line may appear suspicious; but lovers were in
the habit of regarding their mistresses as commanders, whose orders
they were bound to obey. "She that I spake of our great captain's
_captain_," Othel. ii. 1. Steevens states that _guerrière_ is a
favourite term for a mistress in Ronsard.
* * * * *
"Use him as he uses thee; _and_ so farewell."
* * * * *
SC. 2. "In his youth
He had the wit, which I can well observe," etc.
I doubt if the editors have perfectly understood this passage. I
cannot, for example, see that they have been aware that the 'tongue'
and the 'hand' both belong to the metaphorical 'clock'--the former
being the bell which sounds, when the latter gives the signal by
arriving at the point of twelve, that is, when 'Exception,' _i.e._
contradiction, 'bids it speak.'
* * * * *
"In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man."
I would read _whose_ for 'their,' evidently suggested by 'them' in
the preceding line; and as the verb 'humble' rarely, if ever, occurs
without its object, we should perhaps read, as I have done, 'humbled
_him_.'
* * * * *
"Whose judgements are
Mere fathers of their garments."
I incline to suspect that 'fathers' should be _children_--not
an unusual error. (See Introd. p. 66.) "A parcel of conceited
feather-caps, _whose fathers were their garments_."--Old Play quoted by
Steevens. "Whose mother was her painting."--Cymb. iii. 4.
"Believe it, sir,
That clothes do much upon the wit, as weather
Does on the brain; and thence, sir, comes your proverb,
_The tailor makes the man_."
Jonson, Staple of News, i. 1.
See, however, the character of Piso in Marston's Scourge of Villainy,
Sat. xi.
* * * * *
SC. 3. "Fond done, done fond; _for only he_
Was this King of Priam's joy."
"And here fair Paris comes, the hopeful youth, of Troy,
Queen Hecub's darling son, _King Priam's only joy_."
Fletch. and Rowl. Maid in Mill, ii. 2.
* * * * *
"_I'_ faith I do; her father bequeathed her to me."
* * * * *
"Extend his might, _save_ only where qualities were level."
* * * * *
"_Diana no_ queen of virgins, that would suffer her poor knight _to
be_ surprised."
The words in _Italics_, absolutely necessary for the sense, were
supplied by Theobald.
* * * * *
"I care no more for than I do for heaven,
So I were not his sister. Can it _be_ no other?"
I can only make sense here by reading 'I'_d_ care _e'en_ more for
_it_.' The damp had probably effaced the _d_, _e'e_, _it_, or _t_,
and _be_. For a similar omission of _'d_, see on King John iv. 2. The
'no,' however, may have been a casual insertion of the printer's. In my
Edition of these plays, unaware of the rime, I placed _be_ at the end
of the line; but I corrected it.
* * * * *
"The mystery of your loneliness."
So Theobald properly corrected the _loveliness_ of the folio, the _n_,
as was so frequent, having been turned upside down.
* * * * *
"Confess it, th' one to th' other, and thine eyes."
The folio has _'ton tooth to th' other_. The 2nd folio made the
necessary correction by rejecting _tooth_--a mere reduplication of 'to
th'. Knight, it would appear, was the first to correct _'ton_.
* * * * *
"Yet in this captious and intenable sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still."
For 'captious' we should certainly read, with Farmer, _capacious_. It
was, in fact, only the omission of a letter. (See on M. for M. iv. 2.)
_T_ and _c_ were often used indifferently before _e_ and _i_. _Reck_
might be better than 'lack.'
* * * * *
"And manifest experience had collected."
With Collier's folio I read _manifold_; "an epithet," says Mr. Dyce,
"which, I apprehend, can hardly be applied to 'experience.'" Why not?
* * * * *
"He and his physicians
Are of a mind; he that they cannot help him,
They that they cannot help _him_."
One 'help' has evidently been suggested by the other; for the first I
would read _cure_. (See Introd. p. 65.)
* * * * *
"Embowell'd of their doctrine have left off
The danger to itself?--There's something in't
More than my father's skill."
The best correction of the passage is to supply _tells me_ after 'in
it.' This had evidently been effaced, as in Hen. VIII. i. 2.
"There's something tells me,--but it is not love,--
I would not lose you."--Mer. of Ven. iii. 2.
I arrange the passage thus:
"Embowell'd of their doct_e_rine, have left
The danger to itself.--There is something in it _tells me_."
In the first line I inserted in my Edition _all_; but it was needless;
for 'doctrine' was no doubt pronounced as a trisyllable. 'Off' was
evidently added by the printer to complete the metre. (See Introd. p.
67.) For 'in't' of the folio Hanmer read _hints_.
* * * * *
"And pray God's blessing into thy attempt."
_Unto_ or _upon_ would seem more correct; but no change is needed.