Page images
PDF
EPUB

So are they all; for every grize of fortune'
Is fmooth'd by that below: the learned pate
Ducks to the golden fool: All is oblique;
There's nothing level in our cursed natures,
But direct villainy. Therefore, be abhorr'd
All feafts, focieties, and throngs of men!
His femblable, yea, himself, Timon difdains:
Destruction fang mankind! +-Earth, yield me roots!

[Digging. Who feeks for better of thee, fauce his palate With thy moft operant poifon! What is here? Gold? yellow, glittering, precious gold? No, gods, I am no idle votarift.' Roots, you clear heavens! Thus much of this, will make black, white; foul,

fair;

but to fome fuppofed individual. Who, fays Timon, can with propriety lay his hand on this or that individual, and pronounce him a peculiar flatterer? All mankind are equally flatterers. So, in As you like it:

"Who can come in, and fay, that I mean her,
"When such a one as fhe, fuch is her neighbour?"

MALONE.

3 -for every grize of fortune-] Grize for ftep or degree.

See Vol. IV. p. 105, n. 4. MALONE.

4

POPE.

fang mankind!] i. e. feize, gripe. This verb is ufed by Decker in his Match me at London, 1631: "bite any catchpole that fangs for you."

STEEVENS.

S — no idle votarift.] No infincere or inconftant fupplicant. Gold will not ferve me instead of roots. JOHNSON.

6 -you clear heavens!] This may mean either ye cloudless fkies, or ye deities exempt from guilt. Shakspeare mentions the cleareft gods in King Lear; and in Acolaftus, a comedy, 1540, a ftranger is thus addressed: "Good stranger or alyen, clere gest," &c. Again, in The Rape of Lucrece:

"Then Collatine again by Lucrece' fide, "In his clear bed might have reposed still." i. e. his uncontaminated bed. STEEVENS.

See

P. 547. MALONE.

Wrong, right; bafe, noble; old, young; coward, valiant.

Ha, you gods! why this? What this, you gods? Why this

Will lug your priests and fervants from your fides;1
Pluck ftout men's pillows from below their heads: "
This yellow flave

Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs'd;
Make the hoar leprofy' ador'd; place thieves,
And give them title, knee, and approbation,
With fenators on the bench; this is it,"

That makes the wappen'd widow wed again;'

[blocks in formation]

Will lug your priefts and fervants from your fides;] Aristophanes, in his Plutus, Act V. fc. ii. makes the priest of Jupiter defert his fervice to live with Plutus. WARBURTON.

8 Pluck ftout men's pillows from below their heads:] i. e. men who have ftrength yet remaining to ftruggle with their diftemper. This alludes to an old cuftom of drawing away the pillow from under the heads of men in their laft agonies, to make their departure the easier. But the Oxford editor, fuppofing fout to fignify healthy, alters it to sick, and this he calls emending.

WARBURTON.

9 the boar leprofy-] So, in P. Holland's Tranflation of Pliny's Natural Hiftory, Book XXVIII. ch. xii: “ white leprie called elephantiafis." STEEVENS.

2

the foul

this is it,] Some word is here wanting to the metre. We might either repeat the pronoun-this; or avail ourselves of our author's common introductory adverb, emphatically used,

why, this it is. STEEVENS.

3 That makes the wappen'd widow wed again;] Waped or wappen'd fignifies both forrowful and terrified, either for the lofs of a good hufband, or by the treatment of a bad. But gold, he says, can overcome both her affection and her fears. WARBURTON.

Of wappened I have found no example, nor know any meaning. To awhape is used by Spenfer in his Hubberd's Tale, but I think not in either of the fenfes mentioned. I would read wained, for decayed by time. So, our author, in King Richard III:

"A beauty-waining, and diftreffed widow." JOHNSON. In the comedy of The Roaring Girl, by Middleton and Decker,

She, whom the spital-house, and ulcerous fores

1611, I meet with a word very like this, which the reader will cafily explain for himself, when he has feen the following paffage: "Moll. And there fhall wap with me.

you

Sir B. Nay, Moll, what's that wap?

"Moll. Wappening and niggling is all one, the rogue my man can tell you.'

"

Again, in Ben Jonfon's Mafque of Gypfies Metamorphosed: "Boarded at Tappington,

"Bedded at Wappington.'

[ocr errors]

Again, in Martin Mark-all's Apologie to the Bel-man of London, 1610: " Niggling is company-keeping with a woman: this word is not used now, but wapping, and thereof comes the name wapping-morts for whores." Again, in one of the Pafton Letters, Vol. IV. p. 417: "Deal courteously with the Queen, &c. and with Miftrefs Anne Hawte for wappys" &c.

Mr. Amner obferves, that "the editor of these fame Letters, to wit, Sir John Fenn, (as perhaps becometh a grave man and a magiftrate,) profeffeth not to understand this paffage."

It muft not, however, be concealed, that Chaucer, in The Complaint of Annelida, line 217, ufes the word with the fenfe in which Dr. Warburton explains it:

[ocr errors]

My fewertye in waped countenance."

Wappened, according to the quotations I have already given, would mean-The widow whofe curiofity and passions had been already gratified. So, in Hamlet:

"The inftances that second marriage move,

"Are base respects of thrift, but none of love." And if the word defunct, in Othello, be explained according to its primitive meaning, the fame fentiment may be discovered there. There may, however, be fome corruption in the text. After all, I had rather read-weeping widow. So, in the ancient bl. 1. ballad entitled, The little Barley Corne:

"Twill make a weeping widow laugh,

"And foon incline to pleasure." STEEVENS.

The inftances produced by Mr. Steevens fully fupport the text in my apprehenfion, nor do I fufpect any corruption. Un-wapper'd is ufed by Fletcher in The Two Noble Kinfmen, for fresh, the oppofite of tale; and perhaps we should read there unwappen'd.

Mr. Steevens's interpretation however, is, I think, not quite exact, because it appears to me likely to mislead the reader with respect to the general import of the paffage. Shakspeare means not to account for the wappen'd widow's feeking a hufband, (though "her curiofity has been gratified,") but for her finding one. It is

[ocr errors]

Would caft the gorge at,3 this embalms and spices

her gold, fays he, that induces fome one (more attentive to thrift than love) to accept in marriage the hand of the experienced and o'er-worn widow.-Wed is here used for wedded. So, in The Comedy of Errors, A&t I. fc. i:

"In Syracufa was I born, and wed

"Unto a woman, happy but for me."

If wed is used as a verb, the words mean, that effects or produces her fecond marriage. MALONE.

I believe, unwapper'd means undebilitated by venery, i. e. not balting under crimes many and ftale. STEEVENS.

Mr. Tyrwhitt explains vap'd, in the line cited from Chaucer, by ftupified; a fenfe which accords with the other inftances adduced by Mr. Steevens, as well as with Shakspeare. The wappen'd widow, is one who is no longer alive to those pleasures, the defire of which was her firft inducement to marry. HENLEY.

I fufpect that there is another error in this paffage, which has efcaped the notice of the editors, and that we fhould read"woo'd again," inftead of "wed again." That a woman fhould wed again, however wapper'd, [or wappen'd] is nothing extraordinary. The extraordinary circumftance is, that fhe fhould be woo'd again, and become an object of defire. M. MASON. 3 She, whom the fpital-houfe, and ulcerous fores Would caft the gorge at,] Surely we ought to read: She, whofe ulcerous fores the fpital-boufe

Would caft the gorge at:

or, fhould the firft line be thought deficient in harmony,-
She at whofe ulcerous fores the fpital-house

Would caft the gorge up,

So, in Spenfer's Fairy Queen:

"And all the way, most like a brutish beast,
"He fpewed up his gorge."

The old reading is nonfenfe.

I must add, that Dr. Farmer joins with me in fufpecting this paffage to be corrupt, and is fatisfied with the emendation I have propofed. STEEVENS.

In Antony and Cleopatra, we have honour and death, for honourable death. "The fpital-house and ulcerous fores," therefore may be ufed for the contaminated fpital-house; the fpital-house replete with ulcerous fores. If it be afked, how can the fpital-houfe, or how can ulcerous fores, caft the gorge at the female here defcribed, let the following paffages anfwer the question:

"Heaven tops the nose at it, and the moon winks.”

Othello.

To the April day again.4 Come, damned earth,

Again, in Hamlet:

"Whofe fpirit, with divine ambition puff'd,
"Makes mouths at the invifible event."

Again, ibidem:

66

[ocr errors]

-till our ground,

Singing his pate against the burning zone," &c.

Again, in Julius Cæfar:

"Over thy wounds now do I prophecy,

-

"Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,—."

Again, in The Merchant of Venice:

"when the bag-pipe fings i'the nose,—.”

Again, in the play before us:

66

when our vaults have wept

"With drunken fpilth of wine.

In the preceding page, all fores are faid to lay fiege to nature; which they can no more do, if the paffage is to be understood literally, than they can caft the gorge at the fight of the perfon here. defcribed. In a word, the diction of the text is fo very Shakfpearian, that I cannot but wonder it should be fufpected of corruption.

The meaning is,-Her whom the fpital-houfe, however polluted, would not admit, but reject with abhorrence, this embalms, &c. or, (in a loofer paraphrafe) Her, at the fight of whom all the patients in the fpital-houfe, however contaminated, would ficken and turn away with loathing and abhorrence, difgufted by the view of still greater pollution, than any they had yet experience of, this embalms and fpices, &c.

To" caft the gorge at," was Shakspeare's phrafeology. So, in Hamlet, Act V. fc. i: "How abhorr'd in my imagination it is! my gorge rifes at it.”

To the various examples which I have produced in fupport of the reading of the old copy, may be added thefe:

"Our fortune on the fea is out of breath,
"And finks moft lamentably."

Again, ibidem:

"Mine eyes did ficken at the fight."

Again, in Hamlet:

Antony and Cleopatra.

"Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults."

Again, ibidem:

66

we will fetters put upon this fear,

"Which now goes too free-footed."

Again, in Troilus and Creffida:

"His evafions have ears thus long." MALONE,

« PreviousContinue »