reading is laughter; and the necessity or propriety of the change is perhaps not so unquestionable as it has been generally thought. Neither word seems to be perfectly satisfactory. "Were I a common laughter" might seem to derive some support from the expression of the same speaker in 561: "Hath Cassius lived to be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus?" 50. To stale with ordinary oaths my love.-Johnson, the only commentator who notices this expression, interprets it as meaning, "to invite every new protester to my affection by the stale, or allurement, of customary oaths." But surely the more common sense of the word stale, both the verb and the noun, involving the notion of insipid or of little worth o estimation, is far more natural here. Who forgets Enobarbus's phrase in his enthusiastic description of Cleopatra (Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 3), “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety"? So in 497, "Staled by other men." [White follows Johnson. Hudson has anticipated Craik in the explanation here given.] 50. And after scandal them. We have lost the verb scandal altogether, and we scarcely use the other form, to scandalize, except in the sense of the Hellenistic axavdaλiw, to shock, to give offence. Both had formerly also the sense of to defame or traduce. 51. What means this shouting? etc. Here is the manner in which this passage is given in the original edition: Bru. What means this Showting? Cassi. I, do you feare it? 53. If it be aught toward. All that the prosody demands here is that the word toward be pronounced in two syllables; the accent may be either on the first or the second. Toward when an adjective has, I believe, always the accent on the first syllable in Shakespeare; but its customary pronunciation may have been otherwise in his day when it was a preposition, as it is here. Milton, however, in the few cases in which he does not run the two syllables into one, always accents the first. And he uses both toward and towards. This passage 53. Set Honor in one eye, etc. has occasioned some discussion. Johnson's explanation is, "When Brutus first names Honour and Death, he calmly declares them indifferent; but, as the image kindles in his mind, he sets Honour above life." [Coleridge says, "Warburton would read death for both; but I prefer the old text. There are here three things - the public good, the individual Brutus' honour, and his death. The latter two so balanced each other, that he could decide for the first by equipoise; nay, the thought growing,that honour had more weight than death. That Cassius understood it as Warburton, is the beauty of Cassius as contrasted with Brutus."] It does not seem to be necessary to suppose any such change or growth either of the image or the sentiment. What Brutus means by saying that he will look upon Honor and Death indifferently, if they present themselves together, is merely that, for the sake of the honor, he will not mind the death, or the risk of death, by which it may be accompanied; he will look as fearlessly and steadily upon the one as upon the other. He will think the honor to be cheaply purchased even by the loss of life; that price will never make him falter or hesitate in clutching at such a prize. He must be understood to set honor above life from the first; that he should ever have felt otherwise for a moment would have been the height of the unheroic. The convenient elisions "the and o' the have been almost lost to our modern English verse, at least in composition of the ordinary regularity and dignity. Byron, however, has in a well-known passage ventured upon "Hived in our bosoms like the bag o' the bee." [Compare Tennyson (Mariana): "The blue fly sung i' the pane."] 54. Your outward favour.—A man's favor is his aspect or appearance. "In beauty," says Bacon, in his 43d Essay," that of favour is more than that of colour; and that of decent and gracious motion more than that of favour." [Compare Proverbs, xxxi. 30.] The word is now lost to us in that sense; but we still use favored with well, ill, and perhaps other qualifying terms, for featured or looking; as in Gen. xli. 4, "The ill-favoured and lean-fleshed kine did eat up the seven well-favoured and fat kine." Favor seems to be used for face from the same confusion or natural transference of meaning between the expressions for the feeling in the mind and the outward indication of it in the look that has led to the word countenance, which commonly denotes the latter, being sometimes employed, by a process the reverse of what we have in the case of favor, in the sense of at least one modification of the former; as when we speak of any one giving something his countenance, or countenancing it. In this case, however, it ought to be observed that countenance has the meaning, not simply of favorable feeling or approbation, but of its expression or avowal. The French terms from which we have borrowed our favor and countenance do not appear to have either of them undergone the transference of meaning which has befallen the English forms. But contenance, which is still also used by the French in the sense of material capacity, has drifted far away from its original import in coming to signify one's aspect or physiognomy. It is really also the same word with the French and English continence and the Latin continentia. 54. For my single self.- Here is a case in which we are still obliged to adhere to the old way of writing and printing my self. See 56. - 54. I had as lief.— Lief (sometimes written leef, or leve), in the comparative liefer or lever, in the superlative liefest, is the Saxon leof, of the same meaning with our modern dear. The common modern substitute for lief is soon, and for liefer, sooner or rather, which last is properly the comparative of rath, or rathe, signifying early, not found in Shakespeare, but used in one expression "the rathe primrose" (Lycidas, 142) — by Milton, who altogether ignores lief. Lief, liefer, and liefest, are all common in Spenser. Shakespeare has lief pretty frequently, but never liefer; and liefest occurs only in the Second Part of King Henry VI., where, in iii. I, we have "My liefest liege." In the same Play, too (i. 1), we have "Mine alderlief est sovereign," meaning dearest of all. "This beautiful word," says Mr. Knight, " is a Saxon compound. Alder, of all, is thus frequently joined with an adjective of the superlative degree, as alderfirst, alderlast." But it cannot be meant that such combinations are frequent in the English of Shakespeare's day. They do occur, indeed, in a preceding stage of the language. Alder is a corrupted or at least - modified form of the Saxon genitive plural aller, or allre; it is that strengthened by the interposition of a supporting d (a common expedient). Aller, with the same signification, is still familiar in German compounds. The effect and construction of lief in Middle English may be seen in the following examples from Chaucer : "For him was lever han at his beddes head" (C. T. Pro. 295), that is, To him it was dearer to have (lever a monosyllable, beddes a dissyllable); "Ne, though I say it, I n' am not lefe to gabbe" (C. T. 3510), that is, I am not given to prate; "I hadde lever dien," that is, I should hold it preferable to die. And Chaucer has also "Al be him loth or lefe" (C. T. 1839), that is, Whether it be to him agreeable or disagreeable; and "For lefe ne loth" (C. T. 13062), that is, For love nor loathing. We may remark the evidently intended connection in sound between the lief and the live, or rather the attraction by which the one word has naturally produced or evoked the other. [Had lever is rightly explained here, but had rather (see 57) is a very different phrase, whose origin is not well made Had came to be regarded as a sort of auxiliary for such phrases. Had rather and had better have the sanction of good English usage, though many of the writers of grammars tell us that we should say would rather, etc., instead. The latter makes sense, of course, but the more idiomatic expression is not to be condemned. See on 468. Tennyson uses rathe: "The men of rathe and riper years." The following are examples of rather in the sense of earlier, sooner: out. Wolde God this relyke had come rather! Heywood. And it arose ester and ester, till it arose full este; and rather and rather. Warkworth. |