Sonnets (continued)— very' for 'a very' ['proud,' i.e. 'proved,' must not be counted as a misprint]; cxliv. 6, 'sight' for 'side.' Mr. Lee adds xxiii. 14, 'wit . . wiht' for 'with . . wit'; xxvi, II, 'tottered' for 'tattered' [not a misprint]; xxviii. 14, 'length' for 'strength'; xlvii. II, 'nor' for 'not' or 'no'; li. 10, 'perfects' [possibly Shakespeare's own spelling] for 'perfect'st'; lxiii. 2, 'chrusht' for 'crush'd' [why not 'crusht'?]; lxxvii. 10, 'blacks' for 'blanks'; lxxxviii. I, 'dispode' for 'disposed'; xc. II, 'stall' for 'shall'; xciv. 4, 'could' for 'cold' ['could' is a common Elizabethan spelling for 'cold']; xcvi. 11, 'mighst' for 'mightst'; cxii. 14, ‘me thinkes y'are dead' for 'methinks are dead'; cxxxii. 2, 'torment' for 'torments,' 9, 'morning' for 'mourning'; cxl. 13, 'be lyde' for 'belied'; cxliv. 2, 'sugiest' for 'suggest'; clii. 13, 'eye' for 'I'; cliii. 14, 'eye' for 'eyes.' Some of these are merely eccentricities of spelling. A difficult passage is xxxv. 8. The Quarto gives 'Excusing their sins more then [than] their sins are.' Malone, following Capell, changed 'their . . their' to 'thy thy'; Mr. Wyndham prints 'thy. . their,' but I have ventured to read "Excusing "their sins more than thy sins are."' In lxxxv. 2-3, 'While comments. . Reserve their character' it is difficult to find any meaning in the ordinary reading (which Mr. Wyndham defends); but if we regard 'their' as a misprint for 'thy' we must change 'Reserve' to some such word as 'Rehearse' or 'Record.' cxlvi. 2 presents great difficulty. It would seem that the repetition of My sinfull earth' is a compositor's blunder; but, as none of the emendations proposed is satisfactory, I have followed Gerald Massey, who retains My sinfull earth' in 1. 2 and deletes the words 'that thee.' In xx. 7, ‘A man in hew all Hews,' I keep the spelling and italics of the Quarto. Tyrwhitt surmised from this passage that the 'Mr. W. H.' of the Dedication may have been a Mr. William Hughes. Again, in cxxxv-vi and cxliii I spell 'Will' with a capital 'W' wherever that spelling is found in the Quarto,-leaving the reader to decide for himself (the choice is not always easy) whether in particular passages he will adopt 'Will' or 'will.' In ii. 4 and xxvi. III keep 'totter'd,' the old form of 'tatter'd'; and in cxxxviii. 12 I revert to the Quarto's 't' have years told' ('years' having there, as in many passages, the value of a dissyllable). X. MM M Sonnets (continued)— In xxiii. 9 I keep the Quarto's reading 'books,' though I admit that Sewell's 'looks' is a highly probable emendation; in xxiv. 1 I read 'stell'd' (cf. King Lear, III. vii. 60) for 'steeld'; in xxv. 9 I adopt Theobald's correction 'fight' for 'worth'; in xxxiv. 12 I follow Malone in reading 'cross' for 'losse'; and in lxix. 14 I read with the Cambridge editors' soil' (solution) for the Quarto's 'solye' (ed. 1640'soyle'), which Malone corrected to 'solve.' A LOVER'S COMPLAINT. 1. 241, 'paling.'-Malone's correction of 'playing.' 1. 271, 'Love's arms are peace.'-Malone conjectured 'Love's arms are proof. For other emendations see Cambridge Shakespeare. 1. 293, 'Ö.'-Gildon's correction of 'Or.' 11. 305-8, ‘swounding... swound.'-The Quarto reads 'sounding sound,' which Mr. Lee calls 'confusing misprints.' As a matter of fact 'sound' is a very common Elizabethan form (occurring hundreds of times) for 'swound' or 'swoon.' Turning for an instance of 'sound' to the 1623 Folio, I lighted on Romeo and Juliet, III. ii. 56, 'All in gore blood, I sounded at the sight.' I then referred to Midsummer Night's Dream, II. ii. 154, 'Speake of all loues; I sound almost with feare.' But the word is found passim. (I do not retain the form 'sound,' as it sometimes confuses unwary readers.) THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM. Mr. Sidney Lee's admirable essay before the Facsimile Reproduction (Oxford 1905) of The Passionate Pilgrime gives a wealth of information on the subject of this curious miscellany, which William Jaggard impudently fathered on Shakespeare. I have no space to discuss the collection, but refer the reader to Mr. Lee's pages. The authentic Shakespearean pieces are nos. I. 'When my love swears' (Sonnet cxxxviii.); II. 'Two loves I have' (Sonnet cxliv.); III. 'Did not the heavenly rhetoric' (from Love's Labour's Lost, IV. iii.); V. 'If love make me forsworn' (from Love's Labour's Lost, IV. ii). Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music, II. 'On a day, alack the day!' (from Love's Labour's Lost, IV. iii). In Sonnets cxxxviii. and cxliv. there are interesting and important differences between Jaggard's text and that of the 1609 Sonnets; and the extracts from Love's Labour's Lost have variations-but of slight moment-from the printed text of the play. THE PHOENIX AND THE TURTLE. This deep and subtle poem was published, with Shakespeare's name appended, in Sir Robert Chester's Loves Martyr: or, Rosalins Complaint, 1601. Its authenticity is unquestionable. In the Notes on Coriolanus I should have mentioned that I retain in III. i. 65 the Folio's 'meiny' ('Meynie')-i.e., company, throng-where modern editions read many.' A correspondent Mr. Henry Lorimer of Arbroath has kindly drawn my attention to a misprint in The Merry Wives of Windsor, where V. v. 156 ('Old, cold, wither'd,' &c.)-which belongs to 'Page.'-has been inadvertently given to 'Ford.' He has also noted some instances of dropped letters; but these blemishes only occur in certain copies. In the note on Twelfth Night, II. v. 37, 'the lady of the Strachy' (correctly given in the text) appears as 'the lady of Strachy'; and in the note on Troilus and Cressida, III. iii. 197, Ae. Pl.' is a misprint for 'Ar. Pl.' (Aristophanis Plutus). I have generally adhered more closely to the old spelling than is usual in modern editions, and I have frequently restored interesting old stage-directions. There are two books to which all Shakespearean students owe everlasting gratitude, the 1821 Variorum and the Cambridge Shakespeare; and it is needless to say that the new Variorum of Furness, so far as it goes, is a monument of industry and whole-hearted devotion. HERE ENDS THE STRATFORD TOWN EDITION OF THE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IN TEN VOLUMES PRINTED FOR A. H. BULLEN & F. SIDGWICK AT THE SHAKESPEARE HEAD PRESS, STRATFORD-ON-AVON, IN THE HOUSE OF JULIUS SHAW THE POET'S FRIEND & ONE OF THE WITNESSES TO HIS WILL. THE TEXT REVISED BY A. H. BULLEN. WITH ESSAYS BY H. C. BEECHING, ROBERT BRIDGES, HENRY DAVEY, E. K. CHAMBERS, J. J. JUSSERAND & M. H. SPIELMANN TYPE COMPOSED UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF T. E. SUMMERTON BY J. H. PICK WORTH, W. H. WESSON & E. EBORALL, NATIVES OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON; THE WHOLE PRINTED BY F. S. COOPER. THE PROOFS THROUGHOUT READ BY C. T. WHITE & THE EDITOR; IN PART BY F. SIDGWICK, A. F. WALLIS, & C. G. TENNANT. THE WORK BEGUN IN JULY, M.CM.IV AND FINISHED IN JANUARY M.CM.VII |