Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against And pity like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, hors'd Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent; but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, And falls on the other-How now? what news?" Suppose Mr. Collier's corrected folio had given this passage as follows;-the variations from the present received reading being printed in italic letter: "If it were done ?-'Twere well it were done quickly. But then when 'tis done !=If the assassinator [Read the intervening lines without alteration.] And new-born pity, naked like a babe Or Heaven's cherubin hoist, Upon the coursers of the sightless air, Shall blow the horrid deed, with strident blast That everichene intiers shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intenant, but only Vaulting ambition, which falls on itself, If for such an emendation Mr. Collier had claimed "a higher authority" than that used by the editors of the first folio, what a shout of scorn and derision would have gone up from the whole world of letters! And yet this preposterous reading of the passage is seriously proposed, and sustained through four octavo pages, by a commentator, Becket, who also proposes some of the very corrections found in Mr. Collier's folio of 1632. Had this reading of the passage in Macbeth been found in that folio, the weight of no name, the plausibility of no reasoning could have persuaded two sane men that the MS. corrections were of the least authority. The admissibility, then, of those corrections, in the utter absence of any evidence which gives them even traditional authority, depends entirely upon their appositeness. Their authority is to be derived solely from their intrinsic worth. The passage corrected must, in the first place, unquestionably need correction as it stands in the original folio; and, in the next, the correction proposed must be such as to recommend itself implicitly to those who are most familiar with the text of the poet and the literature of his time. This is the only safe rule to adopt with regard to any arbitrary emendations of Shakespeare's text;-a rule which Malone thus laid down in one of his controversies with Steevens, upon a passage in the Two Gentlemen of Verona. "By arbitrary emendations, I mean conjectures made at the will and pleasure of the conjecturer, and without any authority. Such are Rowe's, Pope's, Theobald's, Hanmer's, &c., and my assertion is, that all emendations not authorised by authentic copies, printed or manuscript, stand on the same footing, and are to be judged of by their reasonableness or probability; and therefore, if Sir Thomas Hanmer or Dr. Warburton had proposed an hundred false conjectural emendations, and two evidently just, I should have admitted these two, and rejected all the rest."-Boswell's Malone, Vol. IV., p. 129. But this folio of Mr. Collier's is not only without the slightest supporting evidence to give it authority, ex cathedra, but contains within itself the most conclusive proof that it has not the shadow of a claim to any such authority. In examining it, we shall find that the corrector has showed a great, though by no means singular incapacity to appreciate the poetry, the wit, and the dramatic propriety of Shakespeare's writing: that some of the most important of his corrections were made with a disregard of the context, and are at variance with it: that a long time had passed between the publication of the volume and the making of the corrections: that the maker of them conformed to the taste and usages of a period at least half a century subsequent to the date of the production of the Plays: that, according to Mr. Collier's own showing, he continually made corrections merely because he did not understand the text as he found it: that the corrector himself blundered, and corrected his own corrections, which could not have been the case if they had been made from " a higher authority" and that some of those emendations, the peculiar character of which has been regarded by many as convincing proof that they could not have been conjectural, but must have been made in conformity with some authority, have, on the contrary, been suggested as the fruit of mere conjecture or deduction by other recent correctors, some of whom are among the most wrongheaded and ignorant of Shakespeare's many wrongheaded and igno rant commentators. And first, as to evident miscomprehension of Shakespeare's meaning. In As You Like It, Act III., Sc. 4, is this passage: 'Orlando. Who could be out being before his beloved mistress? Rosalind. Marry, that should you, if I were your mistress, or I should think my honesty ranker than my wit." It would seem impossible to misunderstand this; and yet the MS. corrector proposes that Rosalind should say, 'Marry, that should you, if I were your mistress, or I should thank my honesty rather than my wit:" -a change which makes absurd nonsense of the passage; for, in the case supposed by Rosalind, she would have no honesty to thank. In the first scene of All's Well that Ends Well, poor Helena, giving language to her hope that the distance between her and Count Bertram might prove no obstacle to her happiness, says, "The mightiest space in fortune, nature brings To join like likes, and kiss like native things." That is obviously and pertinently-that the gifts of nature, in which she supposed herself not wanting, are sometimes able to overcome the greatest differences in fortune. But Mr. Collier's folio reads, "The mightiest space in nature, fortune brings To join like likes," &c.; thus making Helena say exactly the reverse of what Shakespeare made her say, and of what she should say. As the alteration is also entirely at variance with the rest of the speech, this blunder must also be regarded as one of those which show misunderstanding or disregard of the context. In the chorus of the third Act of Henry V., are the following lines: "Behold the threaden sails, Borne with th' invisible and creeping wind, Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea;" the second of which, the corrector would make, "Blown with th' invisible and creeping wind," thus substituting a prosaic statement of a material fact for a poetical and picturesque description of it. In the first scene of Act IV. of the same play, Henry speaks of "The wretched slave, Who, with a body fill'd and vacant mind, Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread." This ruthless man would take the very life of the last line, by reading it, "Gets him to bed cramm'd with distasteful bread." Unhappy corrector! Because you cannot see that in those felicitous words, "distressful bread," are pictured the hard lot of the poor slave, whose homely food, whose very sustenance, is bought by suffering-because you cannot see this, would you in revenge take that sweet "distressful" morsel out of our mouths? and will John Payne Collier, Esq., F.S.A., abet you in your vile design? In Troilus and Cressida, Act IV., Sc. 4, Troilus says, "And sometimes we are devils to ourselves, When we will tempt the frailty of our powers, The last line means, obviously-presuming on their potency or stability, which proves to be changeful: but the corrector would make it, needlessly and prosaically, " Presuming on their chainful potency." Romeo says to Juliet in that matchless scene of parting which is to be followed by no greeting, "I'll say yon gray is not the morning's eye, 'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow." The literal gentleman dissents. He cannot see the beauty of a reflex from the pale brow of Diana; but must drag the poetry down so far as to allude to the shape of the crescent moon, and read bow for "brow." Why was he not thorough and consistent enough to make a corresponding change in the first line, take out the poetical thought of "the morning's eye," and read, "I'll say yon gray is not the morning sky, 'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's bow?" Mr. Collier calls it "a very acceptable alteration," when, in Lady Macbeth's invocation: "Come thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, this MS. corrector would read, 'Nor heaven peep through the blankness of the dark." To say nothing of the difficulty of peeping through blankness, what obtuseness must that be which, after night has been invoked to assume a "pall," of the "dunnest smoke of hell," cannot see the eminent fitness of the phrase, "the blanket of the dark ?" It is to be expected that such a person would, in the previous scene, change the poetical word, VOL. I. "The swiftest wing of recompense is slow," g for the prosaic "The swiftest wind of recompense is slow;" and in the first scene of Act II. of Julius Cæsar, substitute for, "the honey-heavy dew of slumber," because, forsooth, there is "a well-known glutinous deposit" upon the leaves of trees, "which may be called honey-dew." We might disregard, if not pardon, this anonymous and irresponsible corrector for the following attempt at mutilation; but what must be thought of Mr. Collier, who says that "the emendation proposed should probably be the text." In Hamlet's second soliloquy, he says, "For it cannot be But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall For the last line, it is proposed to read, "To make transgression bitter." But wonder at the hopeless obtuseness which could propose such a change, is lost in amazement at the reason which Mr. Collier gives for receiving it; which is, that "it was not oppression, but crime that was to be punished by" Hamlet. When such a veteran critic as Mr. Collier cannot see that Hamlet thought himself "a peasant slave," "a dull and muddy. mettl'd rascal," "a coward," and "pigeon-livered," because he lacked the gall which would make oppression bitter to himself-when Mr. Collier does not see this, what can we hope from the learning and devotion of any Shakespearian critic? In Cymbeline, Mr. Collier's corrector proposes a change of ludicrous tameness. Imogen, impatient to meet Posthumus, exclaims, "O for a horse with wings!" and, when Pisanio tells her that twenty miles a day is as much as she can accomplish, says, "I have heard of riding wagers, Where horses have been nimbler than the sands That run i' the clock's behalf." The MS. corrector makes Imogen speak of horses "nimbler than the sands That run i' the clock's, by half."! Mr. Collier remarks that Imogen adds, "But this is foolery,' in reference, perhaps, to her own simile." Such might well have been the case were her simile that which Mr. Collier's folio would put into her mouth; but, as Shakespeare wrote the passage, she calls it "foolery" to stand talking of the speed of horses, when they should be using them. She says, "But this is foolery, Go bid my woman feign a sickness; say She'll home to her father: and provide me, presently, A riding suit," &c. The most remarkable change made in Mr. Collier's folio, occurs in this play, in the fourth scene of Act III. Imogen, wounded to the quick at her husband's suspicion of her chastity, supposes that he has been seduced away from her by some Italian courtesan, and exclaims, "Some jay of Italy, Whose mother was her painting, hath betray'd him." The figure in the second line is so very bold-violent perhaps, that it is not apprehended at once by all readers; and this seems to have been the case with Mr. Collier's corrector, who changes the passage to, "Some jay of Italy Who smothers her with painting," &c. The similarity of sound between the two phrases, and the simple statement of fact contained in the latter, have caused this emendation to be received with great favour by some readers of Shakespeare, and to be regarded by them as a strong evidence of the value of the volume in which it occurs. But it should be remarked that a change of the passage is not absolutely necessary—that the proposed change, like all those in this folio, is from poetry to prose; and that the ground on which the emendation is thought desirable is not tenable, as far as the text of Shakespeare is concerned. For, the passage has an unmistakable meaning as it stands; and who has a right to substitute, for what it is, his idea of what it should be? -the change puts a bald statement of a physical fact in the place of a suggestive, though very strong, figure of speech :-and the opinion of Mr. Collier that "Imogen would not study metaphors at such a moment," is not sustained by the context, and his assertion that "it is an axiom that genuine passion avoids figures of speech" is at variance with Shakespeare's portraitures of passion; which, whether truthful or not, are all with which we have at present to deal. Imogen, in this very speech, uses another very strong metaphor, one which has been thought to require learned notes to explain it. She says, And this same Imogen, when she wakes and finds at her side (as she supposes) her idolized lord beheaded by Pisanio, cries out, As to similes in Shakespeare's pictures of passion, hear the passion of others than Imogen: hear Othello : Hear Romeo, when he has just killed Paris, and finds Juliet dead in the tomb: Hear the towering passion of Coriolanus, when, a few moments before he is slain by the infuriated rabble, some one calls him a "boy of tears:" |