SCENE 4. "Fool. Let go thy hold, when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following it; but the great one that goes up the hill, let him draw thee after. When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again: I would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it. That, sir, which serves and seeks for gain, And follows but for form, Will pack, when it begins to rain, And leave thee in the storm. But I will tarry, the fool will stay, The knave turns fool, that runs away; The fool no knave, perdy." Johnson proposed that the last two lines of the Fool's rhymes should be read, "The fool turns knave that runs away, The knave no fool, perdy." Johnson was slow, and not sure, in his apprehension of imaginative poetry; but upon a question which appealed to cool common sense, his decisions are always half right, at least. The whole context, not only of the rhymes, but the previous remarks of the Fool, make some such change inevitable; and yet none has ever been adopted, except by Capell, who printed the lines thus : "The fool turns knave that runs away, In the original folio there is no stage direction here, though one appears in the quarto of 1608. Is it not evidently misplaced there, and in all the modern editions? It is absurd for Edgar to bid farewell to Gloster, after the latter has taken his leap from the supposed cliff. Edgar had just before pretended to retire at Gloster's request; and when the latter bids him farewell, he, keeping up the deception, replies, have you gone, sir? then farewell;' and then Gloster leaps. Read thus: "Edg. Ten masts at each make not the altitude Which thou hast perpendicularly fell." Evidently we should read, as has been conjectured: These lines contain no difficulty for any one to whom Shakespeare could be made comprehensible; yet Mr. Collier's corrector, for "stone," proposed shine,—which is simply harmless impertinence. But Mr. Singer, in rejecting this proposition, adds, as if possessed by the spirit of an attorney, that "the word was, most probably, same," and that we should read, "Lend me a looking-glass; If that her breath will mist or stain the same," &c. And thus we should have Lear, in the climax of his agony, talking like " 'the young man of the name of Guppy! How shall we be protected against such wanton outrages? The most distinguished Shakesperian scholars spring forward, with laudable alacrity, to shield us from anonymous and irresponsible injury ;—sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes ? "Lear. And my poor fool is hang'd!" Incredible as it must appear to any one who has fathomed the depths of feeling in this tragedy, there are learned men, who really believe that Lear in these words refers not to Cordelia, but to his court Fool. Unmindful that Edmund has just said that he had ordered Cordelia to be hanged, unmindful that the dead Cordelia is in Lear's arms, and that he continues, "No, no, no life; Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life And thou no breath at all?" and, above all, insensible to the unutterable tenderness and pathos, which is contained in that expression "poor fool, as applied by Lear to Cordelia! OTHELLO. ACT I. SCENE 1. "Iago. Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave." The expression with which I have heard this line read by intelligent people on and off the stage, justifies me in pointing out, what would otherwise seem too obvious to admit such superfluity, that "knave" is used here and in other passages of the play, not opprobriously, but in its more primitive sense of 'servant.' Thus Iago again says,— whip me such honest knaves," and Roderigo, "a knave of common hire, a gondolier." So Antony speaks to his boy Eros as "My good knave Eros. (Ant. and Cleop. Act IV. Sc. 2.) 66 "Rod. In an extravagant and wheeling stranger." If any change were needed in this line, "wheedling stranger, which appears in Mr. Collier's folio, would be unexceptionable. But what can express Roderigo's idea of a vagabond adventurer better than the original text? SCENE 2. "Brab. Abus'd her delicate youth with drugs, or minerals That waken motion." The original has "weaken motion," which some would retain. But compare this with the following passages from the next Scene of this very tragedy: 66 "Brab. Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion Blushed at herself;" Ingo. But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts," &c. These instances of the use of the word by Shakespeare himself in the same play, and the supposed influence of love philtres in his day, make it plain that "motion" means amorous desire,' and that "weaken" of the folio-which has been retained by Mr. Knight-has been properly changed to waken. The convincing comparison has been made, as indeed it could not have failed to be, by the earlier editors and commentators. But it was objected by Henley to their arguments, and with some appearance of reason, that in the instances quoted, "the word derives its peculiar meaning either from some epithet or restrictive mode of expression with which it stands connected." This demurrer is easily set aside by the fact, that in Shakespeare's day the word was used in that sense absolutely; as for instance-in the following passage from Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra, the tale from which Shakespeare derived the plot of Measure for Measure, and which was published in 1582, Cassandra, the Isabella of the comedy, has agreed to comply with the conditions of Promos, the Angelo of the tale. Το greeve you with the hearing of Cassandra's secreate |