But shall be rendered, to your public laws, At heaviest answer. Вотн. "T is most nobly spoken. ALCIB. Descend, and keep your words. The Senators descend, and open the gates. Enter a Soldier. SOLD. My noble general, Timon is dead; ALCIB. [Reads.] Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft: Seek not my name: A plague consume you wicked caitiffs left! Here lie I, Timon; who, alive, all living men did hate: Pass by, and curse thy fill; but pass, and stay not here thy gait. These well express in thee thy latter spirits: Though thou abhorr'dst in us our human griefs, Scorn'dst our brain's flow, and those our droplets which From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Is noble Timon; of whose memory Dead Hereafter more.-Bring me into your city, And I will use the olive with my sword: Make war breed peace; make peace stint war; make each Prescribe to other, as each other's leech. Let our drums strike. [Exeunt VARIOUS READINGS. "My free drift Halts not particularly, but moves itself The original has "in a wide sea of wax." The Greek poet is describing the panegyric which he has prepared. Mr. Collier's corrected folio substitutes verse for wax. The commentators very properly explain that not only the ancients wrote with a style upon a tablet of wax, but that the practice was not discontinued in England till the beginning of the fourteenth century. Mr. Collier calls the explanation "forced," and holds that Shakspere would not be guilty of what he calls "pedantry." ACT I., Sc. 1. Mr. Collier has given us the real solution of the alteration of the passage "It would scarcely be understood by popular audiences before whom this drama was originally acted." Probably not. But this is no reason why we should reject, as not written by Shakspere, a very happy reference to the customs of "the time and country in which he laid his scene." do not hold the poet so indifferent to these matters as some have assumed. "It is the pasture lards the rother's sides." The original has "brother's sides." This valuable and undoubted correction is found in Mr. Collier's corrected folio. ACT IV., Sc. 3. We In our Glossary to this play will be found the explanation of the term "rother." APPERIL. Act I., Sc. 2. GLOSSARY. "Let me stay at thine apperil.' Apperil is risk, danger. It is the same word as our modern peril. Apperil is often used by Ben Jonson "As you will answer it at your apperil," occurs in his Tale of a Tub.' APRIL-DAY. Act IV., Sc. 3. "To the April-day again." The April-day is not, as Johnson supposed, the fool's-day, but the spring-time of life; in one of his Sonnets Shakspere has the same phrase 66 'Calls back the lovely April of her prime." ARTIFICIAL. Act I., Sc. 1. "Artificial strife Lives in these touches." Artificial is used for art in contest with nature. BILLS. Act III., Sc. 4. "PHI. All our bills." TIM. Knock me down with 'em." This is a quibble on bills, accounts, and bills, the weapons so called. Shakspere has the same play upon the word in Henry VI., Part II.' (Act IV., Sc. 7)— "Take up commodities upon our bills;" and Dekker, in his 'Gull's Horn Book,' also has, "they durst not strike down customers with large bills." BLOOD. Act IV., Sc. 2. 66 Strange, unusual blood." Blood is here used for the natural disposition. BREATH'D. Act I., Sc. 1. "Breath'd as it were." Breath'd is exercised, so as to fit the animal strength, for "untirable and continuate goodness." Hamlet uses it thus when he says— "It is the breathing time of day with me." The analogy between this and the habitual exercise in the moral sense of "goodness" is obvious. CONDITION. Act I., Sc. 1. "In our condition." Our condition is here used for our arts, our professions; the painter would say that Timon was a subject on which they might each exercise their skill. CONVERT. Act IV., Sc. 1. Convert, o' the instant, green Virginity." Convert is here used in the sense of turn-turn thyself, green Virginity. In 'Cynthia's Revels' Ben Jonson uses the word in like manner : "O which way shall I first convert myself." Gifford has pointed out also a passage in the old translation of the Bible (edit. 1589, 1 Kings, chap. 13, v. 33) where it occurs in a like sense, "Howbeit, after this, Jeroboam converted not from his wicked way." CUNNING. Act V., Sc. 5. 66 Shame that they wanted cunning." Cunning is skill. It is not here used in the sense of deception. CURIOSITY. Act IV., Sc. 3. "They mocked thee for too much curiosity." Curiosity is particularity, niceness, delicacy. DICH. Act I., Sc. 2. "Much good dich thy good heart." Dr. Johnson considers dich to be a corruption of do it, used here in the sense of may it do. Archdeacon Nares says that there is no other instance of its use. DRINK. Act I., Sc. 1. "Drink the free air." That is they lived, breathed, only through him. FIERCE. Act IV., Sc. 2. "O, the fierce wretchedness." Fierce is violent, excessive; "fierce credulity" occurs in Ben GRAVE. Act IV., Sc. 3. To grave is to tion of the "And ditches grave you all." receive as in a grave. Chapman, in his translaIliad,' has— "The throats of dogs shall grave His manly limbs." GRIZE. Act IV., Sc. 3. "For every grize of fortune." Grize is degree, step. The word appears as greese, gree, griece. See 'Twelfth Night.' HONESTY. Act III., Sc. 1. "Every man has his fault, and honesty is his." Honesty here means liberality. KNIVES. Act I., Sc. 2. 66 'Methinks, they should invite them without knives." In Shakspere's time the guests brought their own knives. LIMITED. Act IV., Sc. 3. "In limited professions." Limited is legalised, professions to which bounds are set. OFFICES. Act II., Sc. 2. "When all our offices have been oppress'd." Offices is not here used in the modern sense of apartments for servants, but for rooms of entertainment, in the same way as it is used by Shirley : "Let all the offices of entertainment Be free and open." RESPECTIVELY. Act III., Sc. 1. "You are very respectively welcome." Respectively is here respectfully. ROTHER. Act IV., Sc. 3. "It is the pasture lards the rother's sides." Phillips, in his 'World of Words' (1696) says,-" Rother beasts, a word used in old statutes, and still in the northern parts of England for horned beasts, as cows, oxen, steers, heifers, &c." The usual reading is brother's, and the passage has given rise to many emendations; among the best was Warburton's, who proposed to read wether's. Mr. Collier's MS. Corrector has made the change to rother. STOUT. Act IV., Sc. 3. "Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads." Stout is here used in the sense of being in health. There was, and indeed is, a notion that the pangs of death were rendered more easy by taking away the pillow "from below" the head. STRAIGHT. Act II., Sc. 1. "It folds me, straight." Straight is immediately, the modern straightway. TOUCH. Act IV., Sc. 3. "O thou touch of hearts." Touch is a contraction of touchstone. UNBOLT. Act I., Sc. I. "I'll unbolt to you." Unbolt is to open, to disclose. WAX. Act I., Sc. 1. "In a wide sea of wax." This is an allusion to the waxen tablets which were written on with a style. |