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MIRA.

More to know

'Tis time

Did never meddle with my thoughts.3

PRO.
I should inform thee further. Lend thy hand,
And pluck my magick garment from me.-So;

[Lays down his mantle.

Lie there my art. 4- Wipe thou thine eyes; have

comfort.

The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch'd
The very virtue of compaffion 5 in thee,
I have with fuch provifion in mine art
So fafely order'd, that there is no foul-6

3 Did never meddle with my thoughts.] i. e. mix with them. To meddle is often used, with this sense, by Chaucer. Hence the fubftantive medley. The modern and familiar phrafe by which that of Miranda may be explained, is-never entered my thoughts -never came into my head. STEEVENS.

It should rather mean to interfere, to trouble, to busy itself, as ftill used in the North, e. g. Don't meddle with me; i. e. Let me alone; Don't moleft me. RITSON.

See Howell's Dict. 1660, in v. to meddle; "se mefler de."

MALONE.

4 Lie there my art.] Sir Will. Cecil, lord Burleigh, lord high treasurer, &c. in the reign of queen Elizabeth, when he put off his gown at night, used to fay, Lie there, lord treasurer. Fuller's Holy State, p. 257. STEEVENS.

5

virtue of compassion-] Virtue; the most efficacious part, the energetic quality; in a like sense we say, The virtue of a plant is in the extract. JOHNSON.

6

-that there is no foul-] Thus the old editions read; but this is apparently defective. Mr. Rowe, and after him Dr. Warburton, read that there is no foul loft, without any notice of the variation. Mr. Theobald substitutes no foil, and Mr. Pope follows him. To come so near the right, and yet to miss it, is unlucky: the author probably wrote no foil, no stain, no spot, for fo Ariel tells :

Not a hair perifh'd;

On their fustaining garments not a blemish,
But fresher than before.

3

And Gonzalo, The rarity of it is, that our garments being

No, not fo much perdition as an hair,
Betid to any creature in the veffel 7

Which thou heard'ft cry, which thou saw'st fink.

Sit down;

For thou must now know further.

MIRA.

You have often

Begun to tell me what I am; but ftopp'd
And left me to a bootless inquifition;

Concluding, Stay, not yet.

PRO.

The hour's now come;

The very minute bids thee ope thine ear;
Obey, and be attentive. Can'st thou remember
A time before we came unto this cell ?

I do not think thou can'st; for then thou wast not
Out three years old.s

MIRA.

Certainly, fir, I can.

PRO. By what? by any other house, or perfon?

drenched in the Sea, keep notwithstanding their freshness and gloffes. Of this emendation I find that the author of notes on The Tempest had a glimpse, but could not keep it. JOHNSON.

-no foul-] Such interruptions are not uncommon to Shakspeare. He fometimes begins a fentence, and, before he concludes it, entirely changes its construction, because another, more forcible, occurs. As this change frequently happens in conversation, it may be fuffered to pass uncenfured in the language of the stage. STEEVENS.

7

- not so much perdition as an hair,

Betid to any creature in the veffel-] Had Shakspeare in his mind St. Paul's hortatory speech to the ship's company, where he affures them that, though they were to fuffer shipwreck, " not an hair should fall from the head of any of them?" Acts, xxvii. 34. Ariel afterwards says, " Not a hair perish'd." HOLT WHITE.

8 Out three years old.] i. e. Quite three years old, three years old full-out, complete. So, in the 4th Act: "And be a boy right out." STEEVENS.

Of any thing the image tell me, that
Hath kept with thy remembrance.

MIRA.

'Tis far off;

And rather like a dream than an afsurance
That my remembrance warrants: Had I not
Four or five women once, that tended me?

PRO. Thou had'st, and more, Miranda: But how is it,

That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abyfm of time?9
If thou remember'st aught, ere thou cam'ft here,
How thou cam'fst here, thou may'ft.

MIRA.

But that I do not.

PRO. Twelve years fince, Miranda, twelve years

fince,

Thy father was the duke of Milan, and

A prince of power.

MIRA.

Sir, are not you my father ?

PRO. Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and She faid-thou wast my daughter; and thy father Was duke of Milan; and his only heir

9abyfm of time?] i. e. Abyss. This method of spelling the word is common to other ancient writers. They took it from. the French abysme, now written abime. So, in Heywood's Brazen Age, 1613:

/

" And chase him from the deep abysms below."

STEEVENS.

* Twelve years fince, Miranda, twelve years fince,] Years, in the first instance, is ufed as a dissyllable, in the second as a monofyllable. But this is not a licence peculiar to the profody of Shakspeare. In the second book of Sidney's Arcadia are the following lines, exhibiting the fame word with a fimilar prosodical variation:

" And shall she die? shall cruel fier fpill
"Those beames that set so many hearts on fire?"

A princess;-no worfe issued.

MIRA.

O, the heavens! What foul play had we, that we came from thence ? Or bleffed was't, we did?

PRO.

Both, both, my girl: By foul play, as thou fay'st, were we heav'd thence; But blessedly holp hither.

MIRA. O, my heart bleeds To think o' the teen 3 that I have turn'd you to, Which is from my remembrance! Please you,

further.

PRO. My brother, and thy uncle, call'd Antonio,

I pray thee, mark me, that a brother should
Be fo perfidious!-he whom, next thyself,
Of all the world I lov'd, and to him put
The manage of my ftate; as, at that time,
Through all the figniories it was the first,
And Profpero the prime duke; being so reputed
In dignity, and, for the liberal arts,
Without a parallel; thofe being all my study,
The government I cast upon my brother,
And to my ftate grew ftranger, being transported,
And rapt in fecret studies. Thy false uncle-
Doft thou attend me?

MIRA.

Sir, moft heedfully.

PRO. Being once perfected how to grant fuits,

2 A princess;-no worse issued.] The old copy reads "And princess." For the trivial change in the text I am answerable. Iffued is defcended. So, in Greene's Card of Fancy, 1608:

3

Juliet:

" For I am by birth a gentleman, and issued of fuch pa-
rents," &c. STEEVENS.

-teen-] is forrow, grief, trouble.
"to my teen be it spoken."

So, in Romeo and STEEVENS.

How to deny them; whom to advance, and whom 4 To trash for over-topping ;5 new created

4

- whom to advance, and whom-) The old copy has who in both places. Corrected by the editor of the second folio. MALONE.

To trash for over-topping;] To trash, as Dr. Warburton observes, is to cut away the fuperfluities. This word I have met with in books containing directions for gardeners, published in the time of queen Elizabeth.

The prefent explanation may be countenanced by the following paffage in Warner's Albion's England, 1602, B. X. ch. 57 :

1

"Who fuffreth none by might, by wealth or blood to
overtopp,
"Himself gives all preferment, and whom listeth him

doth lop."
Again, in our author's K. Richard II:

"Go thou, and, like an executioner,

"Cut off the heads of too-fait-growing sprays
"That look too lofty in our commonwealth."

Mr. Warton's note, however, on" trash for his quick hunting," in the second act of Othello, leaves my interpretation of this paffage somewhat difputable.

Mr. M. Mafon observes, that to trash for overtopping, "may mean to lop them, because they did overtop, or in order to prevent them from overtopping. So Lucetta, in the second scene of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, says:

" I was taken up for laying them down, "Yet here they shall not lie, for catching cold." That is, left they should catch cold. See Mr. M. Mafon's note on this paffage.

In another place (a note on Othello) Mr. M. Mason observes, that Shakspeare had probably in view, when he wrote the passage before us, "the manner in which Tarquin conveyed to Sextus his advice to destroy the principal citizens of Gabii, by striking off, in the prefence of his messengers, the heads of all the tallest poppies, as he walked with them in his garden." STEEVENS.

I think this phrafe means "to correct for too much haughtiness or overbearing." It is used by sportsmen in the North when they correct a dog for misbehaviour in pursuing the game. This explanation is warranted by the following passage in Othello, Act II. fc. i:

"If this poor trash of Venice, whom I trash
"For his quick hunting."

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