l. 2. _All thy suppos'd escapes._ He is addressing the lady. All her
supposed transgressions (e.g. of chastity) are laid to the poet's
charge. 'Escape' = 'An inconsiderate transgression; a peccadillo,
venial error. (In Shaks. with different notion: an outrageous
transgression.) Applied _esp._ to breaches of chastity.' O.E.D. It is
probably in Shakespeare's sense that Donne uses the word:
_Brabantio._ For your sake, jewel,
I am glad at soul I have no other child;
For thy escape would teach me tyranny,
To hang clogs on them.
Shakespeare, _Othello_, I. iii. 195-8.
ll. 7-8.
_Though he had wont to search with glazed eyes,
As though he came to kill a Cockatrice,_
i.e. 'with staring eyes'. I take 'glazed' to be the past participle of
the verb 'glaze', 'to stare':
I met a lion
Who glaz'd upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying me.
Shakespeare, _Jul. Caes._ I. iii. 20-2.
The past participle is thus used by Shakespeare in: 'With time's
deformed hand' (_Com. of Err._ V. i. 298), i.e. 'deforming hand';
'deserved children' (_Cor._ III. i. 292), i.e. 'deserving'. See Franz,
_Shakespeare-Grammatik_, § 661.
The Cockatrice or Basilisk killed by a glance of its eye:
Here with a cockatrice dead-killing eye
He rouseth up himself, and makes a pause.
Shakespeare, _Lucrece_, 540-1.
The eye of the man who comes to kill a cockatrice stares with terror
lest he be stricken himself.
If 'glazed' meant 'covered with a film', an adverbial complement would
be needed:
For sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears.
Shakespeare, _Rich. II_, II. ii. 16.
ll. 9, 15. _have ... take._ I have noted the subjunctive forms
found in certain MSS., because this is undoubtedly Donne's usual
construction. In a full analysis that I have made of Donne's syntax in
the poems I have found over ninety examples of the subjunctive against
seven of the indicative in concessive adverbial clauses. In these
ninety are many where the concession is an admitted fact, e.g.
Though her eyes be small, her mouth is great.
_Elegie II_, 3 ff.
Though poetry indeed be such a sin.
_Satire II_, 5.
Of the seven, two are these doubtful examples here noted; one, where
the subjunctive would be more appropriate, is due to the rhyme.
ll. 10-11. _Thy beauties beautie, and food of our love,
Hope of his goods._
Grosart is puzzled by this phrase and explains 'beauties beautie' as
'the beauty of thy various beauties' (face, arms, shape, &c.). I fear
that Donne means that the beauty which he most loves in his mistress
is her hope or prospect of obtaining her father's goods. The whole
poem is in a vein of extravagant and cynical wit. It must not be taken
too seriously.
l. 22. _palenesse, blushing, sighs, and sweats._ All the MSS. read
'blushings', which is very probably correct, but I have left the two
singulars to balance the two plurals. But the use of abstract nouns
as common is a feature of Donne's syntax: 'We would not dwell upon
increpations, and chidings, and bitternesses; we would pierce but so
deepe as might make you search your wounds, when you come home to your
Chamber, to bring you to a tendernesse there, not to a palenesse or
blushing here.' _Sermons_ 80. 61. 611.
l. 29. _ingled_: i.e. fondled, caressed. O.E.D.
ll. 33-4. _He that to barre the first gate, doth as wide
As the great Rhodian Colossus stride._
Porters seem to have been chosen for their size. Compare: 'Those
big fellows that stand like Gyants (at Lords Gates) having bellies
bumbasted with ale in Lambswool and with Sacks.' Dekker.
l. 37. _were hir'd to this._ All the MSS. read 'for this', but 'to'
is quite Elizabethan, and gives the meaning more exactly. He was not
taken on as a servant for this purpose, but was specially paid for
this piece of work:
This naughty man
Shall face to face be brought to Margaret,
Who I believe was pack'd in all this wrong,
Hir'd to it by your brother.
Shakespeare, _Much Ado_, V. i. 307.
l. 44. _the pale wretch shivered._ I have (with the support of the
best MSS.) changed the semicolon to a full stop here, not that as
the punctuation of the editions goes it is wrong, but because it is
ambiguous and has misled both Chambers and the Grolier Club editor.
By changing the semicolon to a comma they make ll. 43-4 an adverbial
clause of time which, with the conditional clause 'Had it beene some
bad smell', modifies 'he would have thought ... had wrought'. This
seems to me out of the question. The 'when' links the statement 'the
pale wretch shivered' to what precedes, not to what follows. As soon
as the perfume reached his nose he shivered, knowing what it meant. A
new thought begins with 'Had it been some bad smell'.
The use of the semicolon, as at one time equivalent to a little less
than a full stop, at another to a little more than a comma, leads
occasionally to these ambiguities. The few changes which I have
made in the punctuation of this poem have been made with a view to
obtaining a little more consistency and clearness without violating
the principles of seventeenth-century punctuation.
l. 49. _The precious Vnicornes._ See Browne, _Vulgar Errors_, iii. 23:
'Great account and much profit is made of _Unicornes horn_, at least
of that which beareth the name thereof,' &c. He speaks later of the
various objects 'extolled for precious Horns'; and Donne's epithet
doubtless has the same application, i.e. to the horns.