When I entered on the game of criticism in "N. & Q.," I deemed that it was
to be played with good humour, in the spirit of courtesy and urbanity, and
that, consequently, though there might be much worthless criticism and
conjecture, the result would on the whole be profitable. Finding that such
is not to be the case, I retire from the field, and will trouble "N. & Q."
with no more of my lucubrations.
I have been led to this resolution by the language employed by MR.
ARROWSMITH in No. 189., where, with little modesty, and less courtesy, he
styles the commentators on Shakspeare--naming in particular, KNIGHT,
COLLIER, and DYCE, and including SINGER and all of the present
day--_criticasters_ who "stumble and bungle in sentences of that simplicity
and grammatical clearness as not to tax the powers of a third-form
schoolboy to explain." In order to bring _me_ "within his danger," he
actually transposes two lines of Shakspeare; and so, to the unwary, makes
me appear to be a very shallow person indeed.
"It was gravely," says Mr. A., "almost magisterially, proposed by one
of the disputants [MR. SINGER] to corrupt the concluding lines by
altering _their_ the pronoun into _there_ the adverb, because (shade of
Murray!) the commentator could not discover of what noun _their_ could
possibly be the pronoun, in these lines following:
'When great things labouring perish in their birth,
Their form confounded makes most form in mirth;'
and it was left to MR. KEIGHTLEY to bless the world with the
information that it was _things_."
In all the modern editions that I have been able to consult, these lines
are thus printed and punctuated:
"Their form confounded makes most form in mirth;
When great things labouring perish in the birth:"
and _their_ is referred to _contents_. I certainly seem to have been the
first to refer it to _things_.
Allow me, as it is my last, to give once more the whole passage as it is in
the folios, unaltered by MR. COLLIER's Magnus Apollo, and with my own
punctuation:
"That sport best pleases, that doth least know how,
Where zeal strives to content, and the contents
Dyes in the zeal of that which it presents.
Their form confounded makes most form in mirth,
When great things labouring perish in the birth."
_Love's Labour's Lost_, Act V. Sc. 2.
My interpretation, it will be seen, beside referring _their_ to _things_,
makes _dyes in_ signify _tinges_, _imbues with_; of which use of the
expression I now offer the following instances:
"And the grey ocean _into purple dye_."
_Faery Queene_, ii. 10. 48.
"Are deck'd with blossoms _dyed in white and red_."
_Ib._., ii. 12. 12.
"_Dyed in_ the dying _slaughter_ of their foes."
_King John_, Act II. Sc. 2.
"And it was _dyed in mummy_."
_Othello_, Act III. Sc. 4.
"O truant Muse! what shall be thy amends
For thy neglect of truth _in beauty dyed_?"
Sonn. 101.
For the use of this figure I may quote from the Shakspeare of France:
"Mais pour moi, qui, cache sous une autre aventure,
D'une ame plus commune ai pris quelque _teinture_."
_Heraclius_, Act III. Sc. 1.
"The house ought to _dye_ all the surrounding country with a strength
of colouring, and to an extent proportioned to its own
importance."--_Life of Wordsworth_, i. 355.
Another place on which I had offered a conjecture, and which MR. A. takes
under his patronage, is "Clamor your tongues" (_Winter's Tale_, Act IV. Sc.
4.) and in proof of _clamor_ being the right word, he quotes passages from
a book printed in 1542, in which are _chaumbreed_ and _chaumbre_, in the
sense of restraining. I see little resemblance here to _clamor_, and he
does not say that he would substitute _chaumbre_. He says, "Most
judiciously does Nares reject Gifford's corruption of this word into
_charm_ [it was Grey not Gifford]; nor will the suffrage of the 'clever'
old commentator," &c. It is very curious, only that we _criticasters_ are
so apt to overrun our game, that the only place where "charm your tongue"
really occurs, seems to have escaped MR. COLLIER. In _Othello_, Act V. Sc.
2., Iago says to his wife, "Go to, charm your tongue;" and she replies, "I
will not charm my tongue." My conjecture was that _clamor_ was _clam_, or,
as it was usually spelt, _clem_, to press or restrain; and to this I still
adhere.
"When my entrails
Were _clemmed_ with keeping a perpetual fast."
Massinger, _Rom. Actor._, Act II. Sc. 1.
"I cannot eat stones and turfs: say, what will he _clem_ me and my
followers?"--Jonson, _Poetaster_, Act I. Sc. 2.
"Hard is the choice when the valiant must eat their arms or _clem_."
Id., _Every Man Out of his Humour_ Act III. Sc. 6.
In these places of Jonson, _clem_ is usually rendered _starve_; but it
appears to me, from the kindred of the term, that it is used elliptically.
Perhaps, instead of "Till famine _cling_ thee" (_Macbeth_, Act V. Sc. 5.),
Shakspeare wrote "Till {616} famine _clem_ thee." While in the region of
conjecture, I will add that _coasting_, in _Troilus and Cressida_ (Act IV.
Sc. 5.), is, in my opinion, simply accosting, lopped in the usual way by
aphaeresis; and that "the still-peering air" in _All's Well that Ends Well_
(Act III. Sc. 2.), is, by the same figure, "the still-appearing air,"
_i. e._ the air that appears still and silent, but that yet "_sings_ with
piercing."
One conjecture more, and I have done. I do not like altering the text
without absolute necessity; but there was always a puzzle to me in this
passage:
"Where I find him, were it
At home, upon my brother's guard, even there,
Against the hospitable canon, would I
Wash my fierce hand in 's blood."
_Coriol._, Act I. Sc. 10.
Why should Aufidius speak thus of a brother who is not mentioned anywhere
else in the play or in Plutarch? It struck me one day that Shakspeare
_might_ have written, "Upon my household hearth;" and on looking into
North's _Plutarch_, I found that when Coriolanus went to the house of
Aufidius, "he got him up straight to _the chimney-hearth_, and sate him
downe." The poet who adhered so faithfully to his _Plutarch_ may have
wished to preserve this image, and, _chimney_ not being a very poetic word,
may have substituted _household_, or some equivalent term. Again I say this
is all but conjecture.