The old eds., by a mistake of the scribe or printer, read "haue:" see this line twice above in the present page, and pp. 370, 371. Added in the second folio. (“"Unnecessarily," says Boswell.-"The editor of that copy not understanding the metrical system followed by the author," says Mr. Halliwell.) P. 376. (42) "Serv. Where is my lady? Here: what would my lord?” This reply of Portia (which led Mr. Collier to suppose that she must be speaking to a person of rank) is nothing more than a sportive rejoinder to the abrupt exclamation of the Servant (called "Messenger" in the old eds.). For various similar passages I refer the reader to my Remarks on Mr. Collier's and Mr. Knight's eds. of Shakespeare, p. 55, and my Few Notes, &c. p. 64. So the second folio.-The earlier eds. have "thou." The old eds. have " &c. vol. i. p. 295). P. 382. (47) 'Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love. Promise me life," amity and life."-Corrected by Walker (Crit. Exam. "vice" So the second folio.-The earlier eds. have "voice." P. 383. (48) "Thus ornament is but the guilèd shore To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf The seeming truth which cunning times put on "Here," says Steevens, "guiled shore' means 'treacherous shore.' Shakespeare, in this instance as in many others, confounds the participles. 'Guiled' stands for 'guiling'.”—Walker (Crit. Exam. &c. vol. i. p. 291) "suspects 'guiled,'" though he compares and "To me came Tarquin armed; so beguil'd "Rais'd for their double-guil'd deserts, Before integrity and parts." Shakespeare's Lucrece. Butler's Satire on the Weakness and Misery of Man. -Since the first edition of the present work appeared, I met with the following passage in Jasper Heywood's translation of Seneca's Hercules Furens (Chorus at the end of Act i.), "He leaning ouer hollow rocke doth lye, And either his begiled hookes doth bayte," &c.; which passage I thought would illustrate and support the expression “guiled shore," till, on turning to the Latin original, I found that I was altogether mistaken :-the words of Seneca are, "Aut deceptos instruit hamos," and doubtless mean, as Farnaby explains them, "Esca reparat hamos, priori a piscibus erepta.”—In the second folio “guiled shore” is altered to “guilded (i. e. gilded) shore;" which Rowe and some others adopted. Mr. W. N. Lettsom, too (note on Walker's Crit. Exam. &c. ubi supra), "has little doubt that the poet was thinking of Raleigh's Discovery of Guiana,' and wrote ' guilded'."—Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector makes the following change in the punctuation; "Thus ornament is but the guilèd shore To a most dangerous sea, the beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian: beauty, in a word, The seeming truth which cunning times put on a change which is also found in an edition of Shakespeare published by Scott P. 383. (49) "thou stale and common drudge" 66 an Indian Farmer's emendation.—The old eds. have “thou pale and," &c. (The words "stale" and "pale” are frequently confounded by early transcribers and printers.) P. 383. (50) "Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence;" Warburton reads " Thy plainness moves me," &c. P. 383. (51) "For fear I surfeit! Bass. What find I here?" Mr. W. N. Lettsom would read For fear I surfeit on't!"-Capell printed "Ha! what find I here?" i. e. and leave itself unprovided with a companion or fellow. That such is the meaning of "unfurnish'd" in the present passage Hanmer saw long ago; and Mason supports it by quoting from Fletcher's Lovers' Progress, "You are a noble gentleman. Will't please you bring a friend? we are two of us, And pity either, sir, should be unfurnish'd.” Act ii. sc. 1. -Walker, however, would read, as some others have done, " And leave itself unfinish'd." Crit. Exam. &c. vol. iii. p. 55. So Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector.-The old eds. have "is." P. 386. (56) "What, and my old Venetian friend Solanio?” Here, and throughout the scene, the old eds. have "Salerio;" for which Rowe substituted " Salanio;" and the latter name kept its place in the text till Steevens restored "Salerio;" which was once more displaced for "Solanio" by Mr. Knight; with whom I agree in regarding "Salerio” as a decided error,— and in thinking it altogether unlikely that Shakespeare would, without necessity and in violation of dramatic propriety, introduce a new character, "Salerio," in addition to Solanio and Salarino. (Be it observed that in the old copies there is much confusion with respect to these names; we find Salanio, Solanio, Salino, Salarino, Slarino.) "In the first scene of this act,”—I quote the words of Mr. Knight,-" the servant of Antonio thus addresses Solanio and Salarino: 'Gentlemen, my master Antonio is at his house, and desires to speak with you both.' To the unfortunate Antonio, then, these friends repair. What can be more natural than that, after the conference, the one should be dispatched to Bassanio, and the other remain with him whose creditors grow cruel'? We accordingly find, in the third scene of this act, that one of them accompanies Antonio when he is in custody of the gaoler." The name of the friend who remains at Venice is rightly given in Roberts's quarto (see note 61)" Salarino," -a name which, it is hardly necessary to add, will not suit the metre in the present scene. The old eds. have "And I must freely haue."-Some of the earlier editors rightly omit "freely" (which, as Mr. W. N. Lettsom observes to me, seems to have crept in here from the fifth line below). Has been altered to "is." But I prefer the old reading. P. 388. (59) "The best-condition'd and unwearied spirit" "Unwearied," says Mr. Hunter, "should evidently be unwearied'st,' which Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector gives. But "this usage, whereby the latter of two superlatives copulated with and is changed into a positive, is frequent in Shakespeare and his contemporaries." See Walker's Crit. Exam. &c. vol. i. p. 221. Walker (Crit. Exam. &c. vol. ii. p. 224) suspects that “this” should be “his.” So Roberts's quarto (and rightly, see note 56).-Heyes's quarto has "Salerio;" the folio "Solanio." This word is supposed to be derived from the Italian tranare,-the passageboat on the Brenta, at about five miles from Venice, being drawn out of the river, and lifted over a dam or sluice by a crane.-But Rowe substituted "traject" (from the Italian tragetto, a ferry), which is perhaps the right reading. P. 394. (66) "And if on earth he do not merit it, In reason he should never come to heaven." So Pope; and so Walker, except that he reads ""Tis reason," &c. Crit. Exam. &c. vol. iii. p. 110. (He evidently did not know that Pope had anticipated him in reading " merit it.")-Roberts's quarto has "And if on earth he doe not meane it, then Heyes's quarto has "And if on earth he doe not meane it, it In reason," &c.; and so the folio, except that it has "Is reason," &c. i. e. release, remit the forfeiture. See Walker's Crit. Exam. &c. vol. iii. p. 55. P. 396. (68) "And others, when the bag-pipe sings i' the nose, The old eds. have Master of passion, sways it to the mood "And others, when the bagpipe sings ith nose, Cannot containe their vrine for affection. Masters [Heyes's 4to Maisters] of passion swayes it to the moode I give here the reading and punctuation recommended by Thirlby, who (not The old eds. have "a woollen bag-pipe:"-and, says Mr. Knight, "Douce very properly desires to adhere to the old reading, having the testimony of Dr. Leyden in his edition of The Complaynt of Scotland,' who informs us that the Lowland bag-pipe commonly had the bag or sack covered with woollen cloth of a green colour; a practice which, he adds, prevailed in the northern counties of England." But, in the first place, what writer ever used such an expression as a woollen bag-pipe in the sense of a bag-pipe covered with woollen cloth? (Might he not, with almost equal propriety, talk of a woollen lute or a woollen fiddle?) And, in the second place, can any thing be more evident than that Shylock does not intend the most distant allusion to the material which either composed or covered the bag-pipe? Steevens remarks; "As the aversion was not caused by the outward appearance of the bag-pipe, but merely by the sound arising from its inflation, I have placed the conjectural reading [of Sir John Hawkins], ' swollen,' in the text." So also Mason; "There can be little doubt but 'swollen bag-pipe' is the true reading. I consider it as one of those amendments which carry conviction the moment they are suggested: and it is to be observed, that it is not by the sight of the bag-pipe that the persons alluded to are affected, but by the sound, which can only be produced when the bag is swollen."-I adopt the Ms. Corrector's emendation, which has exactly the same meaning as Hawkins's; and, as Mr. Collier notices, the word occurs in our author's Rape of Lucrece, "Here one, being throng'd, bears back, all boll'n and red." (I have repeatedly met with old handwriting in which the initial b bore such resemblance to w, that a compositor might easily have mistaken it for the latter.)-1863. Dr. Ingleby declares that "it surpasses his ability to understand" how, in the face of Mason's remark above quoted, I can adopt the Ms. Corrector's “bollen,” — Dr. Ingleby himself preferring “wauling,” or rather "waulin'"!! See A Complete View of the Shakspere Controversy, &c. p. 228.-Mr. Staunton (Addenda and Corrigenda to his Shakespeare) defends the old reading, "a woollen bag-pipe," by citing from Massinger's Maid of Honour, act iv. sc. 4, "Walks she on woollen feet?”— not considering that "woollen bag-pipe” (if right) means a bagpipe actually covered with woollen cloth, while “woollen feet" is a purely metaphorical expres sion. |
