One of the most desperately unintelligible passages in Shakspeare occurs in
this play, in the scene between the King and the Cardinal, when the latter
professes his devoted attachment to his service. It stands thus in the
first folio:
_Car._ "I do professe
That for your Highnesse good, I euer labour'd
More then mine owne: that am, haue, and will be
(Though all the world should cracke their duty to you,
And throw it from their Soule, though perils did
Abound, as thicke as thought could make 'em, and
Appeare in formes more horrid) yet my Duty,
As doth a Rocke against the chiding Flood,
Should the approach of this wilde Riuer breake,
And stand vnshaken yours."
Upon this Mason observes:
"I can find no meaning in these words (that am, have, and will be), or
see how they are connected with the rest of the sentence; and should
therefore strike them out."
Malone says:
"I suppose the meaning is, '_that_ or _such a man_, I am, have _been_,
and will _ever_ be.' Our author has many hard and forced expressions in
his plays; but many of the hardnesses in the piece before us appear to
me of a different colour from those of Shakspeare. Perhaps however, a
line following has been lost; for in the old copy there is no stop at
the end of this line; and, indeed, I have some doubt whether a comma
ought not to be placed at it, rather than a fullpoint."
Mr. Knight, however, places a fullpoint at _will be_, and says:
"There is certainly some corruption in this passage; for no ellipsis
can have taken this very obscure form. Z. Jackson suggests 'that _aim
has_ and will be.' This is very harsh. We might read 'That _aim_ I have
and will,' _will_ being a noun."
Mr. Collier has the following note:
"In this place we can do no more than reprint exactly the old text,
with the old punctuation; as if Wolsey, following 'that am, have, and
will be' by a long parenthesis, had forgotten how he commenced his
sentence. Something may have been lost, which would have completed the
meaning and the instances have not been infrequent where lines,
necessary to the sense, have been recovered from the quarto
impressions. Here we have no quarto impressions to resort to, and the
later folios afford us no assistance, as they reprint the passage as it
stands in the folio 1628, excepting that the two latest end the
parenthesis at 'break.'"
I cannot think that the poet would have put a short speech into Wolsey's
mouth, making him forget how he commenced it! Nor do I believe that
anything has been lost, except the slender letter _I_ preceding _am_. The
printer or transcriber made the easy mistake of taking the word _true_ for
_haue_, which as written of old would readily occur, and having thus
confused the passage, had recourse to the unconscionable long mark of a
parenthesis. The passage undoubtedly should stand thus:
_Car._ "I do profess
That for your highness' good I ever labour'd
More than mine own; that _I_ am _true_, and will be
Though all the world should _lack_ their duty to you,
And throw it from their soul: though perils did
Abound, as thick as thought could make them, and
Appear in forms more horrid; yet my duty
(As doth a rock against the chiding flood,)
Should the approach of this wild river break,
And stand unshaken yours."
Here all is congruous and clear. This slight correction of a palpable
printer's error redeems a fine passage hitherto entirely unintelligible. I
do not insist upon the correction in the fourth line of _lack_ for _crack_,
yet what can be meant by _cracking a duty_? The duke, in the _Two Gentlemen
of Verona_, speaks of his daughter as "_lacking_ duty;" and seeing how very
negligently the whole passage has been given in the folio, I think there is
good ground for its reception. With regard to the correction in the second
line, I feel confident, and doubt not that it will have the approbation of
all who, like myself, feel assured that most of the difficulties in the
text of our great poet are attributable to careless printer or transcriber.
When I proposed (Vol. vi., p. 468.) to read "_rail_ at once," instead of
"_all_ at once," in _As You Like It_, Act III. Sc. 5., I thought the
conjecture my own, having then only access to the editions of Mr. Collier
and Mr. Knight; I consequently said, "It is somewhat singular that the
passage should hitherto have passed unquestioned." My surprise was
therefore great, on turning to the passage in the _Variorum Shakspeare_, to
find the following note by Warburton, which had escaped my notice:
"If the speaker intended to accuse the person spoken to only for
_insulting_ and exulting, then, instead of '_all_ at once,' it ought to
have been _both_ at once. But, examining the crime of the person
accused, we shall discover that the line is to be read thus:
'That you insult, exult, and _rail_ at once,'
for these three things Phoebe was guilty of. But the Oxford editor
improves it, and, for _rail_ at once, reads _domineer_."
I have no recollection of having ever read the note before, and certainly
was not conscious of it. The coincidence, therefore, may be considered (as
Mr. Collier observed in respect to the reading of _palpable_ for _capable_)
as much in favour of this conjecture. {6}
That the most careful printers can _misread_, and consequently _misprint_,
copy, is evident from the following error in my last Note:--Vol. vi., p.
584., col. 1, for "in the edition which I gave of the _part_," read
"_poet_." This mistake, like most of those I have indicated in the first
folio Shakspeare, might easily occur if the word was indistinctly written.