Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher Part 11

Act i. sc. 1. Philo's speech:-

... "His captain's heart Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst The buckles on his breast, _reneges_ all temper."

It should be "reneagues," or "reniegues," as "fatigues," &c.

_Ib._-

"Take but good note, and you shall see in him The triple pillar of the world transform'd Into a strumpet's _fool_."

Warburton's conjecture of "stool" is ingenious, and would be a probable reading, if the scene opening had discovered Antony with Cleopatra on his lap. But, represented as he is walking and jesting with her, "fool" must be the word. Warburton's objection is shallow, and implies that he confounded the dramatic with the epic style. The "pillar" of a state is so common a metaphor as to have lost the image in the thing meant to be imaged.

_Ib._ sc. 2.-

... "Much is breeding; Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life, And not a serpent's poison."

This is so far true to appearance, that a horse-hair, "laid," as Hollinshed says, "in a pail of water," will become the supporter of seemingly one worm, though probably of an immense number of small slimy water-lice. The hair will twirl round a finger, and sensibly compress it.

It is a common experiment with school boys in c.u.mberland and Westmoreland.

Act ii. sc. 2. Speech of En.o.barbus:-

"Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, So many _mermaids_, tended her i' th' eyes, And made their bends adornings. At the helm A seeming mermaid steers."

I have the greatest difficulty in believing that Shakespeare wrote the first "mermaids." He never, I think, would have so weakened by useless antic.i.p.ation the fine image immediately following. The epithet "seeming"

becomes so extremely improper after the whole number had been positively called "so many mermaids."

"Timon Of Athens."

Act i. sc. 1.-

"_Tim._ The man is honest.

_Old Ath._ _Therefore he will be_, Timon.

His honesty rewards him in itself."

Warburton's comment-"If the man be honest, for that reason he will be so in this, and not endeavour at the injustice of gaining my daughter without my consent"-is, like almost all his comments, ingenious in blunder; he can never see any other writer's thoughts for the mist-working swarm of his own. The meaning of the first line the poet himself explains, or rather unfolds, in the second. "The man is honest!"-"True;-and for that very cause, and with no additional or extrinsic motive, he will be so. No man can be justly called honest, who is not so for honesty's sake, itself including its own reward." Note, that "honesty" in Shakespeare's age retained much of its old dignity, and that contradistinction of the _honestum_ from the _utile_, in which its very essence and definition consist. If it be _honestum_, it cannot depend on the _utile_.

_Ib._ Speech of Apemantus, printed as prose in Theobald's edition:-

"So, so! aches contract, and starve your supple joints!"

I may remark here the fineness of Shakespeare's sense of musical period, which would almost by itself have suggested (if the hundred positive proofs had not been extant) that the word "aches" was then _ad libitum_, a dissyllable-_aitches_. For read it "aches," in this sentence, and I would challenge you to find any period in Shakespeare's writings with the same musical or, rather dissonant, notation. Try the one, and then the other, by your ear, reading the sentence aloud, first with the word as a dissyllable and then as a monosyllable, and you will feel what I mean.

_Ib._ sc. 2. Cupid's speech: Warburton's correction of-

"There taste, touch, all pleas'd from thy table rise"-

into

"Th' ear, taste, touch, smell," &c.

This is indeed an excellent emendation.

Act ii. sc. 1. Senator's speech:-

... "Nor then silenc'd with "Commend me to your master"-_and the cap_ _Plays in the right hand, thus_."

Either, methinks, "plays" should be "play'd," or "and" should be changed to "while." I can certainly understand it as a parenthesis, an interadditive of scorn; but it does not sound to my ear as in Shakespeare's manner.

_Ib._ sc. 2. Timon's speech (Theobald):-

"And that unaptness made _you_ minister, Thus to excuse yourself."

Read _your_;-at least I cannot otherwise understand the line. You made my chance indisposition and occasional inaptness your minister-that is, the ground on which you now excuse yourself. Or, perhaps, no correction is necessary, if we construe "made you" as "did you make;" "and that unaptness did you make help you thus to excuse yourself." But the former seems more in Shakespeare's manner, and is less liable to be misunderstood.

Act iii. sc. 3. Servant's speech:-

"How fairly this lord strives to appear foul!-takes virtuous copies to be wicked; _like those that under hot, ardent zeal would set whole realms on fire. Of such a nature is his politic love_."

This latter clause I grievously suspect to have been an addition of the players, which had hit, and, being constantly applauded, procured a settled occupation in the prompter's copy. Not that Shakespeare does not elsewhere sneer at the Puritans; but here it is introduced so _nolenter volenter_ (excuse the phrase) by the head and shoulders!-and is besides so much more likely to have been conceived in the age of Charles I.

Act iv. sc. 3. Timon's speech:-

"Raise me this beggar, and _deny't_ that lord."

Warburton reads "denude."

I cannot see the necessity of this alteration. The editors and commentators are, all of them, ready enough to cry out against Shakespeare's laxities and licenses of style, forgetting that he is not merely a poet, but a dramatic poet; that, when the head and the heart are swelling with fulness, a man does not ask himself whether he has grammatically arranged, but only whether (the context taken in) he has conveyed his meaning. "Deny" is here clearly equal to "withhold;" and the "it," quite in the genius of vehement conversation, which a syntaxist explains by ellipses and _subauditurs_ in a Greek or Latin cla.s.sic, yet triumphs over as ignorances in a contemporary, refers to accidental and artificial rank or elevation, implied in the verb "raise." Besides, does the word "denude" occur in any writer before, or of, Shakespeare's age?

"Romeo And Juliet."

I have previously had occasion to speak at large on the subject of the three unities of time, place, and action, as applied to the drama in the abstract, and to the particular stage for which Shakespeare wrote, as far as he can be said to have written for any stage but that of the universal mind. I hope I have in some measure succeeded in demonstrating that the former two, instead of being rules, were mere inconveniences attached to the local peculiarities of the Athenian drama; that the last alone deserved the name of a principle, and that in the preservation of this unity Shakespeare stood pre-eminent. Yet, instead of unity of action, I should greatly prefer the more appropriate, though scholastic and uncouth, words h.o.m.ogeneity, proportionateness, and totality of interest,-expressions, which involve the distinction, or rather the essential difference, betwixt the shaping skill of mechanical talent, and the creative, productive, life-power of inspired genius. In the former each part is separately conceived, and then by a succeeding act put together;-not as watches are made for wholesale-(for there each part supposes a pre-conception of the whole in some mind),-but more like pictures on a motley screen. Whence arises the harmony that strikes us in the wildest natural landscapes,-in the relative shapes of rocks, the harmony of colours in the heaths, ferns, and lichens, the leaves of the beech and the oak, the stems and rich brown branches of the birch and other mountain trees, varying from verging autumn to returning spring,-compared with the visual effect from the greater number of artificial plantations?-From this, that the natural landscape is effected, as it were, by a single energy modified _ab intra_ in each component part.

And as this is the particular excellence of the Shakespearian drama generally, so is it especially characteristic of the _Romeo and Juliet_.

The groundwork of the tale is altogether in family life, and the events of the play have their first origin in family feuds. Filmy as are the eyes of party-spirit, at once dim and truculent, still there is commonly some real or supposed object in view, or principle to be maintained; and though but the twisted wires on the plate of rosin in the preparation for electrical pictures, it is still a guide in some degree, an a.s.similation to an outline. But in family quarrels, which have proved scarcely less injurious to states, wilfulness, and precipitancy, and pa.s.sion from mere habit and custom can alone be expected. With his accustomed judgment, Shakespeare has begun by placing before us a lively picture of all the impulses of the play; and, as nature ever presents two sides, one for Herac.l.i.tus, and one for Democritus, he has, by way of prelude, shown the laughable absurdity of the evil by the contagion of it reaching the servants who have so little to do with it, but who are under the necessity of letting the superfluity of sensoreal power fly off through the escape-valve of wit-combats, and of quarrelling with weapons of sharper edge, all in humble imitation of their masters. Yet there is a sort of unhired fidelity, an _ourishness_ about all this that makes it rest pleasant on one's feelings. All the first scene, down to the conclusion of the Prince's speech, is a motley dance of all ranks and ages to one tune, as if the horn of Huon had been playing behind the scenes.

Benvolio's speech:-

"Madam, an hour before the wors.h.i.+pp'd sun Peer'd forth the golden window of the east"-