"to the sharp'st _kind_ of justice,"
transformed to "sharp'st _knife_ of justice:" but I cannot assent to this
change. The obvious meaning of the poet is, that the contempt of the world,
"_shutting all doors_" against the accused, is a sharper _kind_ of justice
than any which the law could inflict: but, to be given up to "the sharp'st
_knife_ of justice" could only mean, being consigned to the public
executioner,--which was just what Katherine was deprecating.
In p. 325. the lines relating to Wolsey's foundations at Ipswich and Oxford
are printed thus in the folio--
"one of which fell with him,
Unwilling to outlive the good that did it:"
that is, unwilling to outlive the virtues which prompted it,--a passage
teeming with poetical feeling: but the commentator has ruthlessly altered
it to--
"Unwilling to outlive the _good man_ did it;"
which, I submit, not only destroys all the poetry, but is decidedly _not
English!_
The next passage I would notice is from _Much Ado about Nothing_, p. 76.
How, I would ask, can the phrase--
"And sorrow wag,"
be a misprint for "call sorrow joy?" No compositor, or scribe either, could
possibly be misled by any sound from the "reader" into such a mistake as
that! The words "and sorrow wag," I admit, are not sense; but the
substitution of "call sorrow joy" strikes me as bald and common-place in
the extreme, and there is no pretence for its having any authority. If,
then, we are to have a mere fanciful emendation, why not "bid sorrow wag?"
This would be doing far less violence to the printed text, for it would
only require the alteration of two letters in the word "and;" while it
would preserve the Shakspearian character of the passage. "Wag" is a
favourite expression in {451} the comedies of the Bard, and occurs
repeatedly in his works. The passage would then run thus--
"If such a one will smile and stroke his beard,
_Bid sorrow wag_--cry hem! when he should groan."