[Some such edition as that alluded to by our correspondent has been
long desired and contemplated. A proposal in connexion with it has been
afloat for some time past, and we had hoped would have been publicly
made in our pages before now. There are difficulties in the way which
do not exist in the parallel instances from classical literature, and
which do not seem to have occurred to our correspondent; but the
project is in good hands, and we hope will soon be brought to
bear.--ED.]
_Emendations of Shakspeare._--I am sadly afraid, what with one annotator
and another, that we, in a very little time, shall have Shakspeare so
modernised and weeded of his peculiarities, that he will become a very
second-rate sort of a person indeed; for I now see with no little alarm,
that one of his most delightful quaintnesses is to give way to the march of
refinement, and be altogether ruined. Hazlitt, one the most original and
talented of critics, has somewhere said, that there was not in any passage
of Shakspeare any single word that could be changed to one more
appropriate, and as an instance he gives a passage from _Macbeth_, which
certainly is one of the most perfect and beautiful to be found in the whole
of his works:
"This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, buttress,
Nor coin of vantage, but this bird hath made
His pendent bed, and procreant cradle: where they
Most breed and haunt, I have observed, the air
Is delicate."
There are some who differ from Hazlitt in the present day, and assert that
there is an error in the press in Dogberry's reproof of Borachio for
calling him an "ass." The passage as it stands is as follows:
"I am a wise fellow; and which is more, an officer, and which is more,
a _householder_, and which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any
is in Messina, and one that knows the law, go to; and a rich fellow
enough, go to; and a fellow that hath had _losses_, and one that hath
two gowns, and everything handsome about him."
His having had losses evidently meaning, though he was then poor, that his
circumstances were at one time so prosperous, that he could afford to
_bear_ losses; and he, even then, had a superfluity of wardrobe in "two
gowns, and everything handsome about him." But this little word _losses_,
the perfect Shakspearian quaintness of which is universally acknowledged,
is to be changed into _leases_; if it should be _leases_, how is it that it
does not follow upon "householder," instead of being introduced so many
words after? as, if _leases_ were the proper word, it would assuredly have
suggested itself immediately as an additional item to his respectability as
a householder: for a moment only fancy similar corrections to be introduced
in others of Shakspeare's plays, and Falstaff be made to exclaim at the
robbery at Gad's Hill, "Down with them, they dislike us old men," instead
of "they hate us youth;" for Falstaff was no boy at the time, and this
might be advanced as an authority for the emendation. But seriously, if
this alteration is sent forth as a specimen of the improvements about to be
effected in Shakspeare, from an edition of his plays lately discovered, I
shall, for one, deeply regret that it was ever rescued front its oblivion;
for with my prejudices and prepossessions against interpolations, and in
favour of old readings, I shall find it no easy matter to reconcile my mind
to the new. Strip history of its romance, and you deprive it of its
principal charm; the scenery of a play-house imposes upon us an illusion,
and though we know it to be so, it is not essential that the impression
should be removed. I remember once travelling at night in Norfolk, and a
part of my way was through a wood, at the end of which I came upon a lake
lit up by a magnificent moon. I subsequently went the same road by day: the
wood, I then found, was a mere belt of trees, and the lake had dwindled to
a duck-pond. I have ever since wished that the first impression had
remained unchanged; but this is a digression. There is no author so
universal as Shakspeare, and would that be the case if he was not
thoroughly understood? He is appreciated alike in the closet and on the
stage, quoted by saints and sages, in the pulpit and the senate, and your
nostrum-monger advertises his wares with a quotation from his pages; does
he then require interpreting who is his own interpreter? Johnson says of
him that--
"Panting Time toil'd after him in vain."
{76} And that he--
"Exhausted worlds and then imagined new."
There is no passion that he has not pourtrayed, and laid bare in its beauty
or deformity; no feeling or affection to which his genius has not given the
stamp of immortality: and does he want an interpreter? It is treading on
dangerous ground to attempt to improve him. Even MR. KNIGHT, enthusiast as
he is in his veneration for Shakspeare, and who, by his noble editions of
the poet's works, has won the admiration and secured the gratitude of every
lover of the poet, has gone too far in his emendations when he changes a
line in _Romeo and Juliet_ from
"Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell."
to
"Hence will I to my ghostly friar's close cell."
As in the latter case the line will not scan unless the word "friar" be
reduced to a monosyllable, which, on reflection, I think MR. KNIGHT will be
inclined to admit. But my paper is, I fear, extending to a limit beyond
which you have occasionally warned your correspondents not to go, and I
must therefore draw my remarks to a close, with a hope that not any offence
will be taken where none is intended by those to whom any of my
observations may apply.