It is evident that Diana refers to Bertram's double vows, his marriage vow,
and the subsequent vow or _protest_ he had made not to keep it. "If I
should swear by Jove I loved you dearly, would you believe my oath when I
loved you ill? This has no consistency, to swear by _Jove_, when secretly I
protest to _Love_ that I will work against him (_i.e._ against the oath I
have taken to Jove)."
Bertram had _sworn by the Highest_ to love his wife; in his letter to his
mother he says:
"I have wedded her, not bedded her, and sworn to make the _not_
eternal:"
he secretly _protests to Love_ to work against his sacred oath; and in his
following speech he says:
"Be not so cruel-holy, Love is holy."
He had before said:
"----do not strive against my vows:
I was compell'd to her; but I love thee
By Love's own sweet constraint:"
clearly indicating that this must be the true sense of the passage. By
printing _when_ for _whom_, and _Love_ with a capital letter, to indicate
the personification, all is made clear. {178}
After further argument from Bertram, Diana answers:
"I see that men _make ropes in such a scarre_
That we'll forsake ourselves."
This Rowe altered to "make _hopes_ in such _affairs_," and Malone to "make
_hopes_ in such _a scene_." Others, and among them Mr. Knight and Mr.
Collier, retain the old reading, and vainly endeavour to give it a meaning,
understanding the word _scarre_ to signify a _rock_ or _cliff_, with which
it has nothing to do in this passage. There can be no doubt that "make
_ropes_" is a misprint for "make _hopes_," which is evidently required by
the context, "that we'll forsake ourselves." It then only remains to show
what is meant by _a scarre_, which signifies here _anything that causes
surprise or alarm_; what we should now write _a scare_. Shakspeare has used
the same orthography, _scarr'd_, i.e. _scared_, in _Coriolanus_ and in
_Winter's Tale_. There is also abundant evidence that this was its old
orthography, indicative of the broad sound the word then had, and which it
still retains in the north. Palsgrave has both the noun and the verb in
this form: "_Scarre_, to _scar_ crowes, espouventail." And again, "I
_scarre_ away or feare away, as a man doth crowes or such like; je
escarmouche." The French word might lead to the conclusion that _a scarre_
might be used for _a skirmish_. (See Cotgrave in v. Escarmouche.) I once
thought we should read "in such a _warre_," _i.e._ conflict.
In Minshen's _Guide to the Tongues_, we have:
"To SCARRE, videtur confictum ex _sono_ oves vel aliud quid abigentium
et terrorem illis incutientium. Gall. _Ahurir_ ratione eadem:" vi. _to
feare, to fright_.
Objections have been made to the expression "make hopes;" but the poet
himself in _King Henry VIII._ has "more than I dare _make faults_," and
repeats the phrase in one of his sonnets: surely there is nothing more
singular in it than in the common French idiom, "_faire des esperances_."