“_King._ ... let _higher_ Italy
(Those _’bated_, that inherit but the fall
Of the last monarchy) see, that you come
Not to woo honour, but to wed it.”
It would be, I own, an audacious and unjustifiable change of the text; but
yet, as a mere conjecture, I venture to suggest “bastards,” for “’bated.”
As it stands, in spite of Warburton’s note, I can make little or nothing
of it. Why should the king except the then most illustrious states, which,
as being republics, were the more truly inheritors of the Roman
grandeur?—With my conjecture, the sense would be;—“let higher, or the more
northern part of Italy—(unless ‘higher’ be a corruption for ‘hir’d,’—the
metre seeming to demand a monosyllable) (those bastards that inherit the
infamy only of their fathers) see,” &c. The following “woo” and “wed” are
so far confirmative as they indicate Shakespeare’s manner of connection by
unmarked influences of association from some preceding metaphor. This it
is which makes his style so peculiarly vital and organic. Likewise “those
girls of Italy” strengthen the guess. The absurdity of Warburton’s gloss,
which represents the king calling Italy superior, and then excepting the
only part the lords were going to visit, must strike every one.
_Ib._ sc. 3.—
“_Laf._ They say, miracles are past; and we have our philosophical
persons to make modern and familiar, things supernatural
and _causeless_.”
Shakespeare, inspired, as it might seem, with all knowledge, here uses the
word “causeless” in its strict philosophical sense;—cause being truly
predicable only of _phenomena_, that is, things natural, and not of
_noumena_, or things supernatural.