• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 19575 0

n. The compositor read the first syllable court, and—his eye at the same time catching the word “courtier” lower down—he completed the word without reconsulting the copy. It is not unlikely that Shakespeare intended first to express, generally, the same thought, which a little afterwards he repeats with a particular application to the persons meant;—a common usage of the pronominal “our,” where the speaker does not really mean to include himself; and the word “you” is an additional confirmation of the “our,” being used in this place for “men” generally and indefinitely,—just as “you do not meet” is the same as “one does not meet.”

Act i. sc. 1 Imogen's speech:—

... “My dearest husband,

I something fear my father's wrath; but nothing

(Always reserved my holy duty) what

His rage can do on me;”

Place the emphasis on “me”; for “rage” is a mere repetition of “wrath.”

“Cym. O disloyal thing;

That should'st repair my youth; thou heapest

A year's age on me!”

How is it that the commentators take no notice of the un-Shakespearian defect in the metre of the second line, and what in Shakespeare is the same, in the harmony with the sense and feeling? Some word or words must have slipped out after “youth,”—possibly “and see”:—

“That should'st repair my youth!—and see, thou heap'st,” &c.

Ib. sc. 3. Pisanio's speech:—

... “For so long

As he could make me with this eye or ear

Distinguish him from others,” &c.

But “this eye,” in spite of the supposition of its being used ´µ¹ºÄ¹ºöÂ, is very awkward. I should think that either “or” or “the” was Shakespeare's word;—

“As he could make me or with eye or ear.”

Ib. sc. 6. Iachimo's speech:—

... “Hath nature given them eyes

To see this vaulted arch, and the rich crop

Of sea and land, which can distinguish 'twixt

The fiery orbs above, and the twinn'd stones

Upon the number'd beach.”

I would suggest “cope” for “crop.” As to “twinn'd stones”—may it not be a bold catachresis for muscles, cockles, and other empty shells with hinges, which are truly twinned? I would take Dr. Farmer's “umber'd,” which I had proposed before I ever heard of its having been already offered by him: but I do not adopt his interpretation of the word, which I think is not derived from umbra, a shade, but from umber, a dingy yellow-brown soil, which most commonly forms the mass of the sludge on the sea-shore, and on the banks of tide-rivers at low water. One other possible interpretation of this sentence has occurred to me, just barely worth mentioning;—that the “twinn'd stones” are the augrim stones upon the number'd beech,—that is, the astronomical tables of beech-wood.

Act v. sc. 5.—

“Sooth. When, as a lion's whelp,” &c.

It is not easy to conjecture why Shakespeare should have introduced this ludicrous scroll, which answers no one purpose, either propulsive, or explicatory, unless as a joke on etymology.

“Titus Andronicus.”

Act i. sc. 1. Theobald's note:—

“I never heard it so much as intimated, that he (Shakespeare) had turned his genius to stage-writing, before he associated with the players, and became one of their body.”

That Shakespeare never “turned his genius to stage-writing,” as Theobald most Theobaldice phrases it, before he became an actor, is an assertion of about as much authority as the precious story that he left Stratford for deer-stealing, and that he lived by holding gentlemen's horses at the doors of the theatre, and other trash of that arch-gossip, old Aubrey. The metre is an argument against Titus Andronicus being Shakespeare's, worth a score such chronological surmises. Yet I incline to think that both in this play and in Jeronymo, Shakespeare wrote some passages, and that they are the earliest of his compositions.

Act v. sc. 2. I think it not improbable that the lines from—

“I am not mad; I know thee well enough;

to

So thou destroy Rapine, and Murder there”—

were written by Shakespeare in his earliest period. But instead of the text—

“Revenge, which makes the foul offenders quake.

Tit. Art thou Revenge? and art thou sent to me?”—

the words in italics ought to