P. 151. What safe and nicely I might well delay

By rule of knighthood, I disdain and spurn. — Unless we here suppose a pretty bold ellipsis, the speaker says just the reverse of what he means. The language would come right by substituting demand for delay, or some similar word. The speaker begins by saying "In wisdom I should ask thy name." So, with demand, the meaning would be, "The knowledge which I might safe and nicely," &c. But possibly the text may be right as it is. See foot-note 23.

66

P. 151. Gon. O, save him, save him! — This is practice, Gloster: &c. So Theobald. The old copies are without O, and assign "Save him, save him!" to Albany. Theobald notes, “"Tis absurd that Albany, who knows of Edmund's treason, and of his own wife's passion for him, should be solicitous to have his life saved." I may add that Albany has most evidently been wishing that Edmund might fall in the combat. Walker says, "Theobald was right in giving the words 'O, save him, save him,' (as he properly read) to Goneril."

P. 151. Alb.

Shut your mouth, dame,

[To EDGAR.] Hold, sir!

Or with this paper shall I stop it.

-[To GON.] Thou worse than any name, read thine own

evil:

No tearing, lady; I perceive you know it.

Gon. Say, if I do, the laws are mine, not thine:

Who can arraign me for't?

Alb.

Know'st thou this paper?

[Exit.

Most monstrous! O!

[Offers the letter to EDMUND.

Edm. Ask me not what I know.

Alb. Go after her: she's desperate; govern her.

[To an Officer, who goes out.

Edm. [To EDGAR.] What you have charged me with, &c.I here follow the order and distribution of the speeches as given in the folio. The quartos keep Goneril on the stage till after the speech, "Ask me not what I know," which they assign to her. According to this arrangement, the words, "Thou worse than any name," &c., are addressed to Edmund : but I hardly think Albany would say to him "read thine own evil," when that evil was properly Goneril's. Moreover, this arrangement supposes the words, "Know'st thou this paper?" to be addressed to Goneril. But it does not seem likely that Albany

would ask her such a question; for he knows the letter to be her writ ing besides, he has just said to her, "I perceive you know it." Of course I take the words "Hold, sir," as a request or an order to Edgar to abstain from further action against Edmund; and such, I think, is the natural sense of them. Hold! was indeed the common exclamation for arresting a combat in such cases, when it was thought to have proceeded far enough. So in Macbeth, v. 8.: " Lay on, Macduff; and damn'd be he that first cries Hold, enough!" And again in i. 5: "Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, to cry Hold, hold!" See foot-note 26.

152. Edg.

Let's exchange charity.

I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund;

If more, the more thou'st wrongèd me. The old text prints the last of these lines thus: "If more, the more th' hast wrong'd me." Here th' hast is the old contraction of thou hast. The line is commonly printed "If more, the more thou hast wrong`d me." Here the line, besides being short by one foot, is utterly unrhythmical, insomuch that it cannot be pronounced as metre at all. In the text, the line is made rhythmical, though still one foot short. Perhaps it should be "If more, the more, then, thou hast wrongèd me." Or, possibly, "the worser thou hast wrongèd me."

P. 153.

O, our lives' sweetness! That with the pain of death we'd hourly die, Rather than die at once! pain of death would hourly die would hourly dye." The reading

P. 154.

The quartos read "That with the the folio, "That we the pain of death in the text is Malone's.

Whilst I was big in clamour, came there a man

Who, having seen me in my worst estate, &c.—This speech is not in the folio; and the quartos read "came there in a man"; in being probably repeated by mistake.

P. 154. He fasten'd on my neck, and bellow'd out,

As he'd burst heaven; threw him on my father. - The quartos have "threw me on my father." An obvious error, corrected by Theobald.

P. 156. Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stone: &c. The old editions have "men of stones." Pope's correction. We have the same misprint again in King Richard the Third, iii. 7: "I am not made of Stones, but penetrable to your kind entreats." Here all modern editions, so far as I know, print stone; though some still cling to the reading, "you are men of stones."

P. 157. If Fortune brag of two she loved and hated,

One of them ye behold. — The old text has "One of them we behold." This of course makes one refer to the King, whereas it should probably refer to the speaker himself. Jennens reads "One of them you behold." But, as Mr. Furness notes, ye seems better, "as more in accordance with the ductus literarum.” Mr. Crosby explains the old text as follows: "I doubt whether the world can produce two such instances of Fortune's favours and reverses as we see before us in the King whether or not she can brag of two such, one at least we now behold, which must be regarded as supreme until we find it mated by another."

:

P. 157. 'Tis a dull light. Are you not Kent? - The folio reads "This is a dull sight." The words are not in the quartos. It does not well appear what sight can refer to here. And the question, "are you not Kent?" naturally infers that Lear thinks the light is growing dim. The long s and were apt to be confounded. The change is from Collier's second folio. Both sense and metre are against the reading This is. - See foot-note 36.

TIMON OF ATHENS.

FIRS

IRST published in the folio of 1623, and certainly one of the worst-printed, perhaps the very worst, of all the plays in that volume; the text being, in many places, so shockingly disfigured, so full of gaps and refractory errors, as to try an editor's judgment and patience to the uttermost. The original is without any marking of the Acts and scenes, save that at the beginning we have " Actus Primus, Scana Prima"; and at the end is given a list, incomplete however, of the persons represented, under the heading "The Actors' Names." In the same year with the publishing of the folio, the play was entered at the Stationers' by Blount and Jaggard as one of "the plays not formerly entered to other men"; which naturally infers that it was then first enrolled for publication.

Some

The folio copy is in certain respects very remarkable. parts are set forth in a most irregular manner, being full of short and seemingly-broken lines, with many passages printed as verse, which cannot possibly be read as such; yet the sense is generally so complete as to infer that the irregularity came from the writer, not from the transcriber or the printer. In these parts, moreover, along with Shakespeare's rhythm and harmony, we miss also, and in an equal degree, his characteristic diction and imagery: the ruggedness and irregularity are not those of one who, having mastered the resources of harmony, knew how to heighten and enrich it with discords, but of one who was ignorant of its laws and incapable of its powers. Other parts, again, exhibit the sustained grandeur of the Poet's largest and most varied music. And in these parts the true Shakespearian cast of thought and imagery comes upon us in all its richness, welling up from the deepest fountains of his genius, and steeped in its most idiomatic potencies. These several parts I propose