Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

unconscious prophet and the blinded victim? Compare 407.

Johnson takes both tinctures and cognizance in the heraldic sense as meaning distinctive marks of honor and armorial bearings (in part denoted by colors). But the stains and relics are not so easily to be accounted for on this supposition; neither would it be very natural to say that men should press to secure such distinctions. The speech altogether Johnson characterizes as "intentionally pompous" and " somewhat confused."

248. Apt to be rendered.-Easy and likely to be thrown out in return or retaliation for your refusing to come. [Compare 344.]

248. Shall they not whisper?-We should now say "Will they not?" See 238.

248. To your proceeding. To your advanceSo in Gloster's protestation, in Rich. III.

ment.

iv. 4,

Be opposite all planets of good luck

To my proceeding! if with dear heart's love,
Immaculate devotion, holy thoughts,

[ocr errors]

I tender not thy beauteous princely daughter, that is, to my prospering, as we should now say. 248. And reason to my love is liable. As if he had said, And, if I have acted wrong in telling you, my excuse is, that my reason where you are concerned is subject to and is overborne by my affection. See 67.

249. In the original stage direction the name of Publius stands last, instead of first.

251. Are you stirred. - We have lost this application of stirred (for out of bed). The word now commonly used, astir, does not occur in Shakespeare; and, what is remarkable, it has hitherto,

although we have long been in the habit of applying it freely in various other ways as well as in this sense, escaped all or most of our standard lexicographers. I do not find it either in Todd's Johnson, or in Webster, or in Richardson, or in Walker, or in Smart. [It is given by Worcester, but is not to be found in the last revision of Webster.] Of course, the emphasis is on you.

252. 'Tis strucken eight.- Shakespeare uses all the three forms, struck, strucken, and stricken, of which the existing language has preserved only the first. See 192. Mr. Collier has here stricken. Strictly speaking, of course, the mention by an old Roman of the striking of an hour involves an anachronism. Nor is the mode of expression that of the time when here, and in 271, what we now call eight and nine o'clock in the morning are spoken of as the eighth and ninth hours.

253. That revels long o' nights. See 65. Here again it is a-nights in the original text.

255. Bid them prepare. - The use of prepare thus absolutely (for to make preparation) is hardly now the current language, although it might not seem unnatural in verse, to which some assumption or imitation of the phraseology of the past is not forbidden..

[ocr errors]

255. I have an hour's talk, etc. Hour is here a dissyllable, as such words often are.

258. That every like is not the same. That to be like a thing is not always to be that thing, — said in reference to Cæsar's "We, like friends." So the old Scottish proverb, “Like's an ill mark ;" and the common French saying, as it has been sometimes converted, "Le vraisemblable n'est pas toujours le vrai." The remark is surely to be supposed to be

[ocr errors]

made aside, as well as that of Trebonius in 256, although neither is so noted in the old copies, and the modern editors, while they retain the direction to that effect inserted by Rowe at 256, have generally struck out the similar one inserted by Pope here. Mr. Collier, I see, gives both; but whether on the authority of his MS. annotator does not appear. In the same manner as here, in Measure for Measure, v. 2, to the Duke's remark, “This is most likely," Isabella replies, "O that it were as like as it is true."

258. The heart of Brutus yearns to think upon. Yearns is earnes in the original text. It has been generally assumed that yearn and earn are radically the same; the progress of the meaning probably being, it has been supposed, to feel strongly - to desire or long for-to endeavor after-to attain or acquire. But Mr. Wedgwood has lately, in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Philological Society, v. 33 (No. 105, read 21 Feb., 1851), stated strong reasons for doubting whether there be really any connection between earn and either yearn or earnest. The fundamental notion involved in earn, according to the view taken by Mr. Wedgwood, is that of harvest or reaping. The primary and essential meaning of yearn and earnest, again (which are unquestionably of the same stock), may be gathered from the modern German gern, willingly, readily, eagerly, which in Anglo-Saxon was georn, and was used as an adjective, signifying desirous, eager, intent. We now commonly employ the verb to yearn only in construction with for or after, and in the sense of to long for or desire strongly. Perhaps the radical meaning may not be more special than to be strongly affected. In the present passage it evidently

means to be stung or wrung with sorrow and regret. Shakespeare's construction of the word yearn, in so far as it differs from that now in use, may be illustrated by the following examples:

It yearns me not if men my garments wear.

Hen. V. iv. 3.

O, how it yearned my heart when I beheld.

Rich. II. v. 5.

This is the exclamation of the groom. So Mrs. Quickly, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 5 (speaking also, perhaps, in the style of an uneducated person), "Well, she laments, sir, for it, that it would yearn your heart to see it."

"To think upon that every like is" would not have been said in Shakespeare's day, any more than it would be in ours, except under cover of the inversion.

SCENE III. 259. Security gives way to. - In this sense (of leaving a passage open) we should now rather say to make way for. To give way has come to mean to yield and break under pressure. [Compare Milton, P. L. i. 638 foll. In Troil. and Cress. ii. 2, Hector says,

The wound of peace is surety,

Surety secure.]

The heading of this scene in the original text is merely Enter Artemidorus.

Artemidorus, who was a lecturer on the Greek rhetoric at Rome, had, according to Plutarch, obtained his knowledge of the conspiracy from some of his hearers, who were friends of Brutus, that is, probably, through expressions unintentionally dropped by them.

[ocr errors]

259. Thy lover. As we might still say, "One who loves thee." It is nearly equivalent to friend,

and was formerly in common use in that sense. Thus, in Psalm xxxviii. 11, we have in the old version, "My lovers and my neighbours did stand looking upon my trouble," and also in the common version, "My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore." - So afterwards in 374 Brutus begins his address to the people, "Romans, countrymen, and lovers." See other instances from private letters in Chalmers's Apology, 165. Another change, which has been undergone by this and some other words is that they are now usually applied only to men, whereas formerly they were common to both sexes. This has happened, for instance, to paramour and villain, as well as to lover. But villain, as already noticed (186), is still a term of reproach for a woman, as well as for a man, in some of the provincial dialects. And, although we no longer call a woman a lover, we still say of a man and woman that they are lovers, or a pair of lovers. I find the term lover distinctly applied to a woman in so late a work as Smollett's Count Fathom, published in 1754: "These were alarming symptoms to a lover of her delicacy and pride." Vol. i. ch. 10.

-As envy

259. Out of the teeth of emulation. (see 187) is commonly used by Shakespeare in the sense of hatred or malice, so emulation, as here, is with him often envy or malicious rivalry. There are instances, however, of his employing the word, and also the cognate terms emulator, emulate, and emulous, not in an unfavorable sense.

259. With traitors do contrive. The word contrive in the common acceptation is a very irregular derivative from the French controuver, an obsolete compound of trouver (to find). The English word appears to have been anciently written both controve

« ПредишнаНапред »