"Mistress dispatch you with your _safest haste_,"
the last two words are made "fastest haste," which, to say the least, are
tautology, and are like talking, of the "highest height", or the the
"deepest depth!" Surely, the original form of words, "Dispatch you with
your _safest haste_;" that is, with as much haste as is consistent with
your personal safety--is much more dignified and polished address from the
duke to a _lady_, and at the same time more poetical!
In p. 129.,
"The constant _service_ of the antique world,"
is converted into
"The constant _favour_ of the antique world:"
in which line I cannot discover any sense. If I might hazard a guess, I
should suggest that the error is in the _second_ word, "service," and that
it ought to be "servants:"
"When _servants_ sweat for duty, not for meed."
In the _Taming of the Shrew_, p. 143., the substitution of "_Warwickshire_
ale" for "sheer ale" strikes me as very far-fetched, and wholly
unnecessary. There is no defect of sense in the term "_sheer_ ale." Sly
means to say, he was "fourteen pence on the score for ale alone:" just as
one speaks of "sheer nonsense," _i. e._ nothing but nonsense, "sheer
buffoonery," "sheer malice," &c. Why should Sly talk of being in debt for
_Warwickshire_ ale at Wincot? If he kind been drinking ale from
Staffordshire, or Derbyshire, or Kent, he might possibly have named the
county it came from; but to talk of _Warwickshire_ ale within a few miles
of Stratford-on-Avon seems absurd. It is as if a man came from Barclay and
Perkins's, and talked of having been drinking "_London_ porter."
In p. 144., I submit, with great deference, that turning "Aristotle's
checks" into "Aristotle's ethics" is the very reverse of an improvement.
What can be more intelligible than the line--
"And so devote to Aristotle's _checks_;"
that is, to the checks which Aristotle's rules impose upon profligacy? The
idea is more poetical, {452} and the line runs more smoothly; while the
altered line is prosaic in comparison, and the metre is not correct.
My dwindling space warns me that I must very soon pause; but these examples
can be extended _ad infinitum_, should another opportunity be afforded me.
The instances of alterations simply _unnecessary_ are too numerous to be
recorded here. I have already a list of forty odd, selected from only eight
plays.