صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life againe, to heare thy Buskin tread
And shake a Stage: Or, when thy Sockes were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison

Of all that insolent Greece or haughtie Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britaine! thou hast one to showe,
To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warme
Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme !
Nature her-selfe was proud of his designes,
And joy'd to weare the dressing of his lines!
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other Wit.
The merry Greeke, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lye,

As they were not of Natures family.
Yet must I not give Nature all; thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part:
For though the Poets matter, Nature be,
His Art doth give the fashion. And, that he,
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses anvile: turne the same,
(And himselfe with it) that he thinkes to frame;
Or, for the lawrell, he may gain a scorne,—
For a good Poet's made, as well as borne.

And such wert thou. Looke how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race

Of Shakespeares minde and manners brightly shines

In his well-torned and true-filed lines:

In each of which, he seemes to shake a Lance,
As brandish't at the eyes of Ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appeare,

And make those flights upon the bankes of
Thames,

That so did take Eliza and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the Hemisphere
Advanc'd, and made a Constellation there!
Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide or cheere the drooping Stage;
Which, since thy flight frō hence, hath mourn'd
like night,

And despaires day, but for thy Volumes light.
BEN: JONSON.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Measure for Measure.
The Comedy of Errours.
Much adoo about Nothing.
Loves Labour lost.
Midsommer Nights Dreame.
The Merchant of Venice.
As You Like It.

The Taming of the Shrew.
All is Well, that Ends Well.
Twelfe-Night, or What You Will.
The Winters Tale.

HISTORIES.

The Life and Death of King John.

The Life and Death of Richard the Second. The First Part of King Henry the Fourth. The Second Part of K. Henry the Fourth. The Life of King Henry the Fift.

The First Part of King Henry the Sixt. The Second Part of King Hen. the Sixt. The Third Part of King Henry the Sixt. The Life and Death of Richard the Third. The Life of King Henry the Eight.

TRAGEDIES.

The Tragedy of Coriolanus.

Titus Andronicus.

Romeo and Juliet.

Timon of Athens.

The Life and Death of Julius Cæsar.
The Tragedy of Macbeth.

The Tragedy of Hamlet.
King Lear.

Othello, the Moore of Venice.
Anthony and Cleopater.
Cymbeline King of Britaine.

ADDITIONAL COMMENDATORY POEMS
PREFIXED TO THE FOLIO EDITION OF 1632.

Upon the Effigies of my worthy Friend,
the Author,

Master William Shakespeare,

and his Workes.

SPECTATOR, this Life's Shaddow is; To see
The truer image and a livelier he,

Turne Reader. But, observe his Comicke vaine,
Laugh, and proceed next to a Tragicke straine,
Then weep, So when thou find'st two contraries,
Two different passions from thy rapt soule rise,
Say, (who alone effect such wonders could)
Rare Shake-speare to the life thou dost behold.

An Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet,
W. Shakespeare.b

WHAT neede my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones
The labour of an Age in piled stones,
Or that his hallow'd Reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing Pyramid ?

C

Dear Sonne of Memory, great Heire of Fame,
What needst thou such dull witness of thy Name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyselfe a lasting Monument:
For whil'st, to th' shame of slow-endevouring Art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued Booke
Those Delphicke Lines with deep Impression tooke;
Then thou, our fancy of herself bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceiving;
And, so Sepulcher'd, in such pompe dost lie,
That Kings for such a Tombe would wish to die.

On Worthy Master Shakespeare and his Poems.

A MIND reflecting ages past, whose cleere
And equall surface can make things appeare
Distant a Thousand yeares, and represent

Troilus and Cressida although not found in this list, is yet inserted in the collection. From this circumstance, and because the play has only one leaf paged, the figures of which, 79 and 80, do not correspond, any more than the signatures, with the preceding and following pages, Farmer inferred that the insertion of Troilus and Cressida was an after-thought of Heming and Condell. Its omission from the Catalogue may be accounted for by the supposition that the folio was printed off

Them in their lively colours, just extent.
To out-run hasty Time, retrive the fates,
Rowle backe the heavens, blow ope the iron gates
Of Death and Lethe, where (confused) lye
Great heapes of ruinous mortalitie.

In that deepe duskie dungeon to discerne
A royal Ghost from Churles; By art to learne
The Physiognomie of shades, and give
Them suddaine birth, wondring how oft they live;
What story coldly tells, what Poets faine
At second hand, and picture without braine,
Senselesse and soullesse showes. To give a Stage
(Ample and true with life) voice, action, age,
As Plato's yeare and new Scene of the world
Them unto us, or us to them had hurld:
To raise our auncient Soveraignes from their herse,
Make Kings his subjects; by exchanging verse
Enlive their pale trunkes, that the present age
Joyes in their joy, and trembles at their rage:
Yet so to temper passion, that our eares
Take pleasure in their paine: And eyes in teares
Both weepe and smile: fearefull at plots so sad,
Then, laughing at our feare; abus'd, and glad
To be abus'd; affected with that truth
Which we perceive is false; pleas'd in that ruth
At which we start; and by elaborate play
Tortur'd and tickled; by a crablike way
Time past made pastime, and in ugly sort
Disgorging up his ravaine for our sport-

While the Plebeian Impe, from lofty throne,
Creates and rules a world, and workes upon
Mankind by secret engines; Now to move
A chilling pitty, then a rigorous love:
To strike up and stroake down, both joy and ire;
To steere th' affections; and by heavenly fire
Mould us anew. Stolne from ourselves-

This, and much more which cannot bee express'd But by himselfe, his tongue, and his own brest, Was Shakespeare's freehold; which his cunning braine

Improv'd by favour of the nine-fold traine,
The buskind Muse, the Commicke Queene, the
grand

And lowder tone of Clio; nimble hand,
And nimbler foote of the melodious paire,
The silver-voyced Lady; the most faire
Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts,
And she whose prayse the heavenly body chants.
These jointly woo'd him, envying one another,
(Obey'd by all as Spouse, but lov'd as brother),
And wrought a curious robe of sable grave,
Fresh greene, and pleasant yellow, red most brave,
And constant blew, rich purple, guiltlesse white,
The lowly Russet, and the Scarlet bright;
Branch'd and embroidred like the painted Spring,
Each leafe match'd with a flower, and each string
Of golden wire, each line of silke; there run
Italian workes whose thred the Sisters spun ;

[blocks in formation]

And there did sing, or seeme to sing, the choyce
Birdes of a forraine note and various voyce.
Here hangs a mossey rocke; there playes a faire
But chiding fountaine, purled: Not the ayre,
Nor cloudes nor thunder, but were living drawne,
Not out of common Tiffany or Lawne,
But fine materialls, which the Muses know,
And onely know the countries where they grow.
Now, when they could no longer him enjoy,
In mortall garments pent, "death may destroy,"
They say, "his body, but his verse shall live,
And more then nature takes, our hands shall give.

The author of this magnificent tribute to the genius of Shakespeare is unknown. By some writers it has been ascribed to Milton; by others to Jasper Mayne; Mr. Boaden conjectured it was from the pen of George Chapman; and the Rev. Joseph

[blocks in formation]

ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA.

VOL. I.

INTRODUCTION TO "THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA."

P. 1. "- a work very popular in Spain towards the end of the seventeenth century." Read: "sixteenth century."

P. 52.

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.

"Why should I joy in any abortive birth? At Christmas I no more desire a rose, Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows: But like of each thing that in season grows." "Shows" here is a manifest misprint. I would read :"—a snow on May's new-fangled wreath."

P. 53, note (a). Add, after " very small game" :-But Steevens was evidently unconscious of its being a proverbial expression. It occurs in Whetstone's "Promos and Cassandra," Part I. Act III. Sc. 6:

"A holie hood makes not a Frier devoute He will playe at small game, or he sitte out." Ibid. note (b). "Mr. Collier's old annotator proposes garrulity;"-Read: Mr. Collier's annotator proposes garrality, which he borrowed no doubt from Theobald, who in 1729, suggested it to Warburton. See Nichols's Illustrations, Vol. II. p. 317.

P. 64, note (b). Add:-Belly-doublet is in fact nonsense. The doublets were made some without stuffing-thin bellied-and some bombasted out:-"Certain I am, there never was any kind of apparel ever invented, that could more disproportion the body of man, than these doublets with great bellies hanging down, and stuffed," &c. &c.STUBBES.

Ibid. note (c). Add:-Mr. Collier's annotator reads, "By my pain of observation," a reading first suggested by Theobald in 1729. Nichols's Illustrations, Vol. II. p. 320. P. 67. "This senior-junior (4) giant-dwarf." Dele (4). P. 80. · prisons up,”-Read: with the old editions: poisons up, and, in corroboration, see Act V. Sc. 2:"If this, or more than this, I would deny,

[ocr errors]

To flatter up these powers of mine with rest, The sudden hand of death close up mine eye:" And, stronger still, the following from King John, Act IV. Sc. 3:

Ibid.

"Put but a little water in a spoon,
And it shall be, as all the ocean,
Enough to stifle such a villain up."

"Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony." A consonant idea occurs in Shirley's "Love Tricks," Act IV. Sc. 2:

"Those eyes that grace the day, now shine on him, He her Endymion, she his silver moon, The tongue that's able to rock Heaven asleep, And make the music of the spheres stand still." P. 83, note (c). and Mr. Dyce says nothing can be more evident than that Skakespeare so wrote," &c. Read: and Mr. Dyce says, "Nothing can be more evident than that Shakespeare wrote," &c.

P. 84, note (e). In this note, strike out the clause, "Hence the equivoque, which was sometimes in allusion to snuff for the nose, and sometimes to the snuff of a candle." P. 85. "And shape his service wholly to my behests; And make him proud to make me proud that jests!"

I would now read, hests, with Mr. Sidney Walker, instead of behests.

Ibid. "Arm'd in arguments ;-Read: "Armed in arguments; &c."

Ibid. note (e). It meant I now suspect, deeply in love, applied to a love-sick person. In this sense it occurs in the excellent old comedy of "Roister Doister," Act I. Sc. 2.

P. 91. "Above this world: adding thereto, morever." Read: moreover."

66

COMEDY OF ERRORS.

P. 120, note (a). See also note (b) Vol. III. p. 62. P. 121, note (f). But to carry out this metaphor, serious hours, should be several hours. The integrity of the allusion is destroyed by serious. I suspect, however, the corruption lies in the word common.

P. 124, note (b). So also in Ben Jonson, "Sejanus," Act V. Sc. 4:"Cut down,

Drusus, that upright elm; wither'd his vine."

P. 129. "Sing, syren," -Read: "Sing, siren."

P. 136. "With his mace." It ought to have been mentioned that the sergeants carried a staff or small mace in their hands. See "The Example," by Shirley, Act III. Sc. 1.

[blocks in formation]

"He that's a mizer all the yeere beside

Will revell now, and for no cost will spare,
A poxe hang sorrow, let the world go slide,
Let's eate and drinke, and cast away all care."

P. 228, note (a). Add:-By "Brach Merriman,-the poor cur is emboss'd," &c. is meant, Couple Merriman with a female hound,-the poor cur is, &c. So in the next line," and couple Clowder with the deep-mouth'd brach." P. 229, note (a). "Sinclo to this line. Sinclo," &c. Read: "Sinklo to this line. Sinklo," &c.

P. 233. 1-wis, it is not half way to her heart. Dele the hyphen.

P. 239. " My mind presumes, for his own good, and yours." Mr. Collier's annotator, adopting a suggestion of Theobald's, (see Nichols's Illustrations, Vol. II. p. 334,) reads, "for his own good, and ours.'

P. 246. "In cypress chests my arras, counterpoints," &c. -Read : arras counterpoints," &c.

[ocr errors]

P. 264. "What! up and down, carv'd like an apple tart?" Read: "What up and down, carv'd like an apple tart!"

P. 266, note (c). I am now partly of opinion that "expect" here means, attend, pay attention, and that the passage should be pointed thus,-"I cannot tell. Expect they are busied," &c. The word occurs with this sense apparently in Jonson's Masque of "Time Vindicated."

"Hark! it is Love begins to Time. Expect. [Music].” P. 272, note (a). Perhaps, after all, the old text is right, but the two words have been inadvertently made into one: "therefore, sir, as surance," i.e. as proof.

P. 273.

"We three are married, but you two are sped." Of sped, in this place, the commentators can make no sense. It perhaps means promised. See "A Proper Sonet, Intituled, Maid will you Marrie," in "the Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions," part ii. p. 48:-

"Why then you will not wed me?—
No sure, Sir, I have sped me."

The lover then goes on in answer to say,
"It is a woman's honestie

To keep her promise faithfully."

KING JOHN.

P. 293, note (a). I now think the original text is possibly correct, and that the thought running through the passage and which sufficiently explains it, is, that there is peculiar hardship in Arthur suffering, not only for the sins of the grandmother, (which might be regarded as the common lot-" the canon of the law,") but by the instrumentality of the person whose sins were thus punished; the grandmother being the agent inflicting retribution on her grandson for her own guilt.

"I have but this to say,

That he's not only plagued for her sin,

But God hath made her sin and her the plague
On this removed issue: plagued for her

And with [or by] her plague-her sin his injury
Her injury-the beadle to her sin.

All [is] punished in the person of this child,
And all for her; a plague upon her."

P. 302, note (a). I am not at present so satisfied of the propriety of Mr. Dyce's ingenious emendation uptrimmed as I was formerly. In old times it was a custom for the bride at her wedding to wear her hair unbraided, and hanging loose over her shoulders. May not Constance by "a new untrimmed bride," refer to this custom? Peacham in describing the marriage of the princess Elizabeth with the Palsgrave says that "the bride came into the chapell with a coronet of pearle on her head, and her haire dischevelled and hanging down over her shoulders." Compare, too, "Tancred and Gismunda," Act V. Sc. 1.:

"So let thy tresses flaring in the wind Untrimmed hang about thy bared neck." P. 303, note (b). Against the thing thou swear'st," query, "swearest by"?

[ocr errors]

P. 318, note (a). "Whose confidential parley." Rather whose secret dispatch. There is an instance of private used substantively in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humour," Act IV. Sc. 5. "I will tell you, sir, by the way of private, and under seal.”

P. 319. "Thou'rt damn'd as black-" It should have been remarked that Shakespeare had here probably in his mind the old religious plays of Coventry, some of which in his boyhood he might have seen, wherein the damned souls had their faces blackened.

In Sharp's Dissertation on these performances, the writer speaking of "White and Black Souls," observes:"Of these characters the number was uniformly three of each, but sometimes they are denominated 'savyd' and 'dampnyd Sowles,' instead of white and black." the same work we meet with,

"Itm payd to iij whyte sollys

"Itm payd to iij blake sollys

And in

[ocr errors]

vjd"

"Itm for makyng and mendynge of the blakke soules hose

"p'd for blakyng the sollys fassys."

Ibid. note (c). Add the following example from Florio's "Worlde of Wordes." "Ruffare, to rifle, to skamble."

P. 321, note (c). Johnson is right. Florio after explaining Foragio to mean fodder, &c., says it had anciently the sense of Fuora, which is out, abroad, forth, &c.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

P. 358. In some of the early copies of this edition, a part of Bottom's speech runs, "Ladies, fair ladies, I

would wish you, I would request you, I would entreat you not to fear,"&c. Read: "Ladies, or fair ladies, I would, wish you, or I would request you, or, I would entreat you, not to fear," &c.

P. 359. For "Erit," after "thou art translated: "— Read: Exeunt Snout and Quince.

P. 363, note (a). "The critical remedy applied, afforded." Dele applied.

Subsequent consideration induces me to believe that the emendation of Mr. Collier's annotator, mentioned in the above note, is uncalled for.

P. 365, note (b). "O me! what means my love?" I should now adhere to the old text,

66

"O, me! what news my love?"

Mr. Collier's attempt to substantiate his annotator's reading means by reference to a passage in Nash and Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage," where he proposes the puerile change of "newly clad" for "meanly clad," is a signal failure. The passage in the original stands thus :— "Achates, thou shalt be so meanly clad,

As sea-born nymphs shall swarm about thy ships, And wanton mermaids court thee with sweet songs." And meanly is an obvious misprint for "mienly," i.e. shapely.

P. 377. "For, by thy gracious, golden, glittering gleams.” For gleams, I would now read with the second folio, "streams.

MERCHANT OF VENICE.

P. 417, note (f). Add: which the said corrector borrowed from Theobald. (See Nichols's Illustrations, Vol. II.

p. 308.) P. 419, note (a). "For intermission," after all may mean, for fear of interruption. So in "King Lear," Act II. Sc. 4:

“Delivered letters spite of intermission.” P. 421. "How true a gentleman you send relief." See note (d), p. 342, Vol. I.

66

P. 425.

"A woollen bagpipe."

Mr. Collier's annotator reads, "bollen bagpipe," and Mr. Dyce adopts the change: for "What writer," he says, ever used such an expression as a woollen bagpipe! Might we not with almost equal propriety talk of a woollen lute, or a woollen fiddle?" But see Massinger's play of "The Maid of Honour," Act IV. Sc. 4:"Walks she on woollen feet?"

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

P. 534. "The likeness of a fat old man."' We should read as in the quarto, "the likeness of an old fat man." P. 540, note (e). Add: It meant to mix or mingle: thus, in Greene's "Quip for an Upstart Courtier:"-" You card your beer (if you see your guests beginning to get drunk), half small half strong." Again, in Hackluyt's Voyages, Vol. II. p. 489 :-"They drinke milke, or warme blood, and for the most part card them both together." P. 631, note (1). For "Asunctus," read "Asunetus.”

« السابقةمتابعة »