[Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen]
[W: art not sheen] I am afraid that no reader is satisfied with
Dr. Warburton's emendation, however vigorously enforced; and it
is indeed enforced with more art than truth. _Sheen_, i.e. _smiling,
shining_. That _sheen_ signifies _shining_, is easily proved, but when
or where did it signify _smiling_? yet _smiling_ gives the sense
necessary in this place. Sir T. Banner's change is less uncouth,
but too remote from the present text. For my part, I question
whether the original line is not lost, and this substituted merely
to fill up the measures and the rhyme. Yet even out of this
line, by strong agitation may sense be elicited, and sense not
unsuitable to the occasion. _Thou winter wind_, says the Duke, _thy
rudeness gives the less pain_, as thou art not seen, _as thou art
an enemy that dost not brave us with thy presence, and whose unkindness
is therefore not aggravated by insult_.
II.vii.187 (275,6) [Tho' thou the waters warp] To _warp_ was probably,
in Shakespeare's time, a colloquial word, which conveyed no distant
allusion to any thing else, physical or medicinal. To warp
is to _turn_, and to _turn_ is to _change_; when milk is _changed_ by
curdling, we now say, it is _turned_; when water is _changed_ or
_turned_ by frost, Shakespeare says, it is _curdled_. To be _warp'd_
is only to be changed from its natural state. (1773)
III.i.3 (276,7) [an absent argument] An _argument_ is used for the
_contents_ of a book, thence Shakespeare considered it as meaning
the _subject_, and then used it for _subject_ in yet another sense.
III.i.18 (277,8) [Do this expediently] That is, _expeditiously_.
III.ii.2 (277,9) [thrice-crowned queen of night] Alluding to the triple
character of Proserpine, Cynthia, and Diana, given by some
mythologists to the same Goddess, and comprised in these memorial
lines:
_Terret, lustrat, agit, Proserpina, Luna, Diana,
Ima, superna, feras, sceptro, fuljore, sagittis._
III.ii.10 (277,1) [unexpressive] for _inexpressible_.
III.ii.31 (278,2) [complain of good breeding] I am in doubt whether
the custom of the language in Shakespeare's time did not authorise
this mode of speech, and make _complain of good breeding_ the same
with _complain_ of the want of _good_ breeding. In the last line of
the Merchant of Venice we find that to _fear the keeping_ is to _fear
the_ not _keeping_.
III.ii.39 (279,5) [Truly, then art damn'd, like an ill-roasted egg,
all on one side] Of this jest I do not fully comprehend the meaning.
III.ii.85 (281,1) [bawd to a bell-wether] _Wether_ and _ram_ had anciently
the same meaning.