is no doubt.

to the folio:

In this passage Prospero says, according

When thou didst not (sauage)

Know thine owne meaning; but wouldst gabble, like
A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes

With words that made them knowne: But thy vild race
(Tho thou didst learn) had that in't, which good natures
Could not abide to be with,' &c.

Vild is rendered vile, without the Cambridge editors
thinking it necessary to note the change.
It agrees
with the abhorred slave,' &c., of the opening part of
the sentence, but wild would accord as well, in some
respects, with the immediate context. It may be worth
noting here a similar misprint in A Midsummer
Night's Dream,' Act i. Sc. 1, where, according to the
second folio, Helena, speaking of Demetrius, says—

So I, admiring of his qualities:

Things base and vilde, holding no quantity,

Love can transpose to forme and dignity.'

Here Knight reads 'base and vild,' explaining the word in a foot-note as vile. No commentator, so far as I am aware, has suggested another change, which appears to me worthy of consideration, and may as well be noted now as later, viz. quality for quantity. I may notice here also an example of the way in which the blunders of one edition are liable to be made the basis of false emendations in another. In Act i. Sc. 2, where Prospero suddenly changes his manner towards Ferdinand, lest too light winning make the prize light,' Miranda demands, appealingly, 'Why speaks my father so ungently?' but this, by a misprint in the second folio, becomes urgently; and some former possessor of my copy has drawn his pen through it, and written in the margin grudgingly. The paucity of stage directions is another evidence of the absence of proper editorial

6

oversight in the folios, as where, in Act i. Sc. 1, Prospero says

It works come on,

Thou hast done well, fine Ariel: follow me.
Hark what thou else shalt do me.'

So it is printed in the folio, whereas the context clearly shews that the first two words are an aside,-Prospero's thought uttered audibly. The two commands, 'come on,' and 'follow me,' are addressed to Ferdinand, the rest is for Ariel. Two alterations on Ariel's song were made by Theobald, and have taken their place in the current text, though neither is justified by any obscurity in the original. He reads, 'Where the bee sucks there lurk I,' instead of suck I,' and 'After sunset merrily,' instead of summer, or, as it is in the folio sommer. The associations with the fine music of Dr. Arne have so familiarised all with the altered version; and both in sound, and in association with the bat's wing, there is such an aptness in the latter change, that the restored text is apt to be felt unacceptable at first. But on any principle of sound criticism this seems an attempt to change, so far as we know, what Shakespeare did write, into what he ought to have written.

The following are the results of the author's own reading and annotation of the two plays specially referred to. They are by no means produced as undoubted emendations of the text, but merely as the conjectures of a Shakespeare student, on points which are for the most part admittedly doubtful or obscure.

CHAPTER XIII.

NOTES ON THE TEMPEST.'

The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them.'—A Midsummer Night's Dream.

THE

HE sole authority for the text of 'The Tempest' is the 1623 folio, with whatever editorial supervision or appeal to an original manuscript may be supposed to have guided the revisers of the second and subsequent folios. The text is, on the whole, free from gross blunders, and much more correct than other plays in the volume; but obscurities and undoubted errors do exist, with some of which the following notes attempt to deal conjecturally.

ACT I. SCENE I.

The rough dialogue of the first scene is purposely constructed in striking contrast to what follows, and is less open to rigid criticism. But Mr. Richard Grant White has not thought even the 'Boson,' or 'Boatswain,' undeserving of note in his 'Shakespeare's Scholar.' Following his example, a trifling change may be noted as perhaps admissible in the Boatswain's words: 'Bring her to try with main-course.' In the folio it is printed 'bring her to Try with Maine-course.' The capital suggests this as possibly the true reading: 'Bring her too. Try with main course.'

SCENE II.

Pros. Being once perfected how to grant suits,
How to deny them; whom to advance, and whom

To trash for overtopping.'

Knight explains trash as 'a term still in use among hunters, to denote a piece of leather, couples, or any other weight, fastened round the neck of a dog, when his speed is superior to the rest of the pack; i. e. when he overtops them, when he hunts too quick.' This interpretation seems more like an afterthought, devised to make the explanation fit on to the text. The meaning seems rather that the crafty deputy had learned how to grant and how to deny suits; whom to promote and whom to overtop, i. e. over whom to promote others, his own creatures. The only other example of the use of the latter word is where, in 'Antony and Cleopatra,' Antony exclaims, 'All is lost,' and then adds, 'this pine is barked that overtopped them all.' This is in accordance with the use ascribed to it in Prospero's allusion. As to the doubtful word trash, it is repeatedly used by Shakespeare in its ordinary sense of worthless. But in one passage in which, as usually rendered, Knight's interpretation of its special significance in 'The Tempest' seems borne out, he finds an entirely new meaning for it. In Othello,' Act ii. Sc. 1, where Iago is meditating his purposed use of Cassio's name to awaken in the Moor his fatal jealousy, he exclaims, according to the Cambridge, as well as earlier texts:

Which thing to do,

If this poor trash of Venice, whom I trash
For his quick hunting, stand the putting on,
I'll have our Michael Cassio on the hip.'

In reality, however, the use of the same word in two

totally different senses is the work of the commentators. The first quarto has crush in place of the latter trash; while the second and third quartos and the folios have trace. Knight accordingly, adopting the latter reading, adds this note: The noun trash, and the verb trace, are used with perfect propriety. The trash is the thing traced, put in traces, confined as an untrained worthless dog is held; and hence the present meaning of trash.' This is not the only case where Knight seems to fit a meaning for the occasion. The commentators, dissatisfied with either of the old readings, have variously suggested leash, train, trash, cherish; the last, and most unsuitable one, being Warburton's. It is in its ordinary sense, as where Iago speaks of 'this poor trash of Venice,' that the word is everywhere else used by Shakespeare, unless in the reference by Prospero to his brother's perfidious policy. When, in a later scene (Act iv. Sc. 1.), Stephano and Trinculo yield to the temptation of the 'glistering apparel' purposely hung up by Ariel 'for stale to catch these thieves,' Caliban exclaims, 'Let it alone; it is but trash.' But the passage in Prospero's speech appears to have been recognised as obscure or faulty by the first editors; and it is accordingly changed conjecturally in the second folio. As printed in the 1623 folio, the text reads 'who t'advance, and who to trash,' which suggests to me a very possible misprint for

Being once perfected how to grant suits,

How to deny them; who to advance, and who
Too rash for overtopping.'

That is to say, who were fit to be promoted, and who were too rash to be advanced over old servitors. Prospero accordingly goes on to say that he new created the creatures that were mine;' either changed them, or else new formed them.' In this way the original text