Pursuant to my conviction that most of the obscure passages in our great
poet's dramas arise from typographical errors in the early editions, I
submit the following suggested correction of an error in a noble
passage, which has hitherto passed unnoticed, to the candid
consideration of those who can enter into the spirit of the poet, and
are not pertinaciously wedded to the lapses of a very careless printer;
to whom, in my opinion, the editors of the first folio confided its
correction. Otherwise, we must presume they were unaccustomed to such
labour, and in the hurry of active life did their best, however
imperfectly.
I must be indulged with rather a long extract, that the reader may be
enabled at once to judge whether the words I impugn are in harmony with
the tone and spirit of Hotspur's speech.
"_Enter a Messenger._
_Mess._ My lord, here are letters for you.
_Hot._ I cannot read them now.----
O gentlemen, the time of life is short;
To spend that shortness basely, were too long,
If life did ride upon a dial's point,
Still ending at the arrival of an hour.
An if we live, we live to tread on kings;
If die, brave death, when princes die with us!
Now for our consciences,--the arms are fair,
When the intent of bearing them is just.
_Enter another Messenger._
_Mess._ My lord, prepare; the king comes on apace.
_Hot._ I thank him, that he cuts me from my tale,
For I profess not talking: only this--
Let each man do his best: and here draw I
A sword, whose temper I intend to stain
With the best blood that I can draw withal
In the adventure of this perilous day.
Now,--Esperance!--Percy!--and set on.--
Sound all the lofty instruments of war,
And by that musick let us all embrace:
For, heaven to earth, some of us never shall
A second time do such a courtesy."
What are we to understand by the words "For heaven to earth," in the
last line but one? Can they be tortured, by any ingenuity, to signify,
as Warburton paraphrases them, "One might wager heaven to earth"? To say
nothing, of such extraordinary and unwonted ellipsis, would it not be a
strange wager, and stranger thought, to enter Hotspur's mind at such a
moment? I feel assured that Shakspeare wrote, and that we should read:
"Sound all the lofty instruments of war,
And by that musick let us all embrace:
For _here on_ earth, some of us never shall
A second time do such a courtesy."
If it should be thought that _here on_ could not well be mistaken, even
in MS., for _heaven to_, I reply that stranger misreadings of the
compositor could be easily adduced; and that even in the preceding page
we have one at any rate more wide of the mark, where _supposition_ is
printed in both the folios for _suspicion_.
How this extraordinary reading should have hitherto escaped suspicion, I
am at a loss to imagine, and feel assured that no one who is competent
to enter into the spirit of this exquisitely conceived passage, which
breathes the true expression of heroic pathos, will attempt a
vindication of the old reading.