Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

Ib.,

I

condemn myself, to lack

The courage of a woman; less noble mind

Than she, which, by her death," &c.

Read "less noble-minded; "10 (minde-minded.) [See Art.lxii. -Ed.]

13. Arrange,

help, friends below!

Let's draw him hither.

Ant.

Peace: not Cæsar's valour

Hath o'erthrown Antony, but Antony's

Hath triumph'd on itself.

Cleo. So should it be that none but Antony
Should conquer Antony;"

(the last line and a half is thus arranged in some editions;) and, as I conjecture,—

"But woe 'tis so!

Antony.

I am dying, Egypt; only" &c.

The repetition of the word dying was, perhaps, taken from a later passage.

1b.,

"And there is nothing left remarkable

Beneath the visiting moon."

The word still retained its etymological force. Noticeable; worthy of mark. Massinger, New Way &c., iii. 1, Moxon, p. 300, col. 2,

10 So Rowe and all the earlier editors. Malone and Steevens have done their best to darken noon. Compare for the meaning of minded, Taming of the Shrew, ii. 1,—

"I am as peremptory as she proud-minded."

Ed.

[ocr errors]

v. 1,—

Qu.,

2.

Mammon, in Sir Giles Overreach, steps in
With heaps of ill-got gold, and so much land,
To make her more remarkable, as would tire
A falcon's wings in one day to fly over."

"We'll hear him what he says.-Whence are you?"
"Whence are you? What?"

I think Shakespeare wrote,

[merged small][ocr errors]

Proculeius,

What thou hast done thy master Cæsar knows,
And he hath sent me for thee: for the queen," &c..

a grief that shoots

My very heart at root."

This is neither old nor modern English. Note, too, "shoots at root." Folio, suites; hence one of the commentators (I know not who), recollecting the puns on suitor and shooter in the old dramatists, concluded it was a mistake of the printer's ear for shoots. (Apropos of which, by the way, in a letter of John Alleyn the player, a man ignorant of spelling, ap. Collier's Alleyn Papers, shaute is written for suite, courtship, offer of marriage.) Shakespeare wrote smites.11 Smite occurs in the very next column; so that the word seems to have been running in his head.

11 Mr. Dyce is the only recent editor who has stated that this correction occurs in Capell's edition and in the margin of Tyrwhitt's copy of the second folio. So, too, Mr. Barron Field and the Old Corrector read.-Ed.

Ib.,

"Or I shall show the cinders of my spirit 12

Through th' ashes of my chance."

Read change. The same error occurs in the folio, Othello, i. 1,

[ocr errors]

though that his joy be joy,

Yet throw such changes of vexation on 't,

That it may lose some colour."

Folio, chances.

Ib.,-" but this is most fallible, the worm's an odd worm." Does the falliable of the folio belong to the Clown or to the old printer? Merchant of Venice, ii. 2,—“— this is my true-begotten father, who-knows me not: I will try conclusions with him." Folio, confusions; and so (teste Var.) Heyes's quarto. I know not exactly whether this is a Launcelotism, or an erratum; I think, however, the latter.13

Ib., near the end of the play,—

"If they had swallow'd poison, 't would appear

By external swelling;" &c.

Extern? Othello, i. 1,

[ocr errors]

when my outward action doth demonstrate The native act [?] and figure of my heart

In compliment extern," &c.

12 Walker has written spirit for spirits, perhaps unintentionally. He has, however, shown in Art. xxxviii., that the folio is not to be depended upon in this case. The Old Corrector reads spirit for spirits; but for my chance he coincides with Hanmer in reading mischance.-Ed.

13 The editor of the second folio, who alters falliable to fallible, retains confusions, rightly, I think, in both instances.-Ed.

Dubartas, i. iii. p. 28, col. 1,

[ocr errors]

stately tombs, externly gilt and garnish'd, With dust and bones inwardly fill'd and furnish'd."

The word occurs in Macbeth and Hamlet.

CYMBELINE.

1 Maccabees, xv.,-"Lucius, Consul of the Romans," (apxaïkus, by the way; see Niebuhr, Eng. Trans., vol. i. p. 479, ed. 1828.) Hence, perhaps, Caius Lucius, the Roman ambassador and proconsul in Cymbeline. (Note, too, Lucius the noble sycophant in Timon.) Nicanor, the traitorous Roman in Coriolanus, is borrowed, I imagine, from the same book. (Note, by the way, the national dignity in Lucius, Cymbeline, iii. 1; and his truly Roman reply to the king, v. 5. Consider, sir, to my peculiar care.)

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

To'1 a poor, but worthy gentleman. She's wedded," &c. Unto and into have elsewhere, I think, taken the place of to.-What is referr'd here?

Ib., a little below. Rather, I think,—

But not a courtier,

Although they wear their faces to the bent

1 So Capell.-Is not referr'd an erratum for affied or assur'd? -Ed.

Of the king's looks, but hath a heart that is not
Glad at the thing they scowl at.2

The common reading is absolutely unmetrical; and the proposed one, though more incorrect in point of grammar than Shakespeare's wont, is not perhaps without parallel in him. See Var. note 8, p. 27 of this play. Or is the error in looks?

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

Tacent critici.

His father

This name is borrowed from the fabulous ante-Roman history of Britain, where it occurs variously spelt, as the name of three kings. Upton, as quoted in Todd's Spenser, on F. Q. B. ii. C. x. St. xliii.

"Her son Sifillus afterwards did rayne;"

says "In Mir. for Mag. [Mirror for Magistrates] 'tis written Cicilius. In Stow, Cicilius. In Holinshed, Sicilius." He proposes to read Sisilius in Spenser; contrary, Church says, to all the editions. The latter adds," Hardyng and Sammes call him Sicilius; Milton, Sisilius. This was the second of that name (see St. 34) and son of Guitheline, who was regent during his minority." (Have I copied wrong? his mother, Martia or Mercia, was regent during his minority.) "Borlase calls him Sisillus, which, I should suppose, was as Spenser wrote the name." The reference

2 Pope reads precisely as Walker. Hanmer inserts the additional but, and, besides, cures the grammar by omitting the second not.-Ed.

3 Walker copied Church correctly, but Church seems by mistake to have written Guitheline, the father, for Mertia, the mother of Sifillus.—Ed.

« ÎnapoiContinuă »