Immagini della pagina
PDF
ePub
[graphic]

Unless I spake, looked, touched, o
How comes it now, my husband, C
That thou art then estranged from
Thyself I call it, being strange to
That, undividable, incorporate,
Am better than thy dear self's bet
Ah, do not tear away thyself from

118. look'd, touch'd,] Steevens (1793); or look'd, omitted by Pope; thee S. Walker conj.

120. the cannot slee bedde." G Very Wom published w wife: Her at the top o little finger neighbours they are w pose she qu 1632). See Countess, 1. "Well, Th carver" (i.e. and also C the Merry 49 (Arden S 123. bette expression i think, the mind or me body or c III. ii. 61:

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

d, or touch'd, Ff. hen] F 1; thus Rowe.

to thee]

:

!

epe for dreaming of thee in
Grant White says: "In A
man, among the Characters
with Sir Thomas Overbury's
er lightnesse gets her to swim
of the table where her wrie
ger bewraies carving; her
rs at the latter end know
welcome, and for that pur-
"(ed.
quencheth her thirst""
See also Marston's Insatiate
1. i. 211 (Bullen, iii. 141):
Thais, O you're a cunning
i.e. you 're a clever schemer);
Chichester Hart's note on
y Wives of Windsor, 1. iii.
Shakespeare, 1904).
tter part] A not uncommon
n in Shakespeare, meaning,
he soul, spirit; or simply the
nental part as opposed to the
corporeal part. Compare
1: "mine own self's better
Is You Like It, 1. ii. 261:
tter parts are all thrown
ib. I. ii. 155: "Atalanta's
rt"; and Macbeth, v. viii. 18:
I cowed my better part of
Peele, in his Arraignment of
i. 76 (Bullen, 1888), exactly
it when he makes Pallas say

look how much the mind,
e better part,

h overpass the body in de-
rt."

For know, my love, as easy may'st thou fall
A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
And take unmingled thence that drop again,
Without addition or diminishing,

As take from me thyself and not me too.
How dearly would it touch thee to the quick,
Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious,
And that this body, consecrate to thee,
By ruffian lust should be contaminate!
Wouldst thou not spit at me and spurn at me,
And hurl the name of husband in my face,
And tear the stain'd skin off my harlot-brow,
And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring,
And break it with a deep-divorcing vow?

131. but] F1; omitted in Ff 2, 3, 4.

125. fall] i.e. let fall, in the active sense. Shakespeare has at least ten illustrations of this; e.g. MidsummerNight's Dream, v. i. 143: “And as she fled her mantle she did fall"; As You Like It, III. v. 5: 66 The common executioner Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck "; and Othello, IV. i. 257: "Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile."

130. dearly] seriously, grievously, etc. On Shakespeare's use of this word, Craik, English of Shakespeare, 4th ed. p. 238, remarks: "But perhaps we may get most easily and naturally at this sense which dear sometimes assumes by supposing that the notion properly involved in it of love, having first become generalised into that of a strong affection of any kind, had thence passed on into that of such an emotion the very reverse of love. We seem to have it in this intermediate sense in such instances as the following:

136. off] Hanmer; of Ff.

12

13

13

[blocks in formation]

In dear employment'

(Romeo and Juliet, v. 3 And even when Hamlet speaks of h ' dearest foe,' or when Celia remarl to Rosalind, in As You Like It, i. 'My father hated his [Orlando' father dearly,' the word need not b understood as implying more tha strong or passionate emotion." 136. stain❜d skin] Compare Hamle IV. V. 118:

"brands the harlot Even here, between the chast unsmiched brow

Of my true mother";

and III. iv. 42 :—

"takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an inno cent love

And sets a blister there."

I know thou canst; and therefore, s
I am possess'd with an adulterate b
My blood is mingled with the grime
For, if we two be one, and thou pla
I do digest the poison of thy flesh,
Being strumpeted by thy contagion
Keep, then, fair league and truce wit
I live unstain'd, thou undishonoured

141. grime] War
139. canst] would'st Hanmer.
146. unstain'd] Hanme
thy] F1; my Ff 2, 3, 4.
tain'd F 1; dis-stain'd Theobald; distained H
Keightley. undishonoured] dishonoured Heath co

141. grime of lust] "Of," i.e. as the result or consequence of lust. Warburton read " grime" on the ground of the integrity of the metaphor and the word "blot" in the preceding line. Malone compares III. ii. 104, 105: "A man may go over shoes in "Grime would the grime of it." seem more appropriate," remarks Marshall, "were Adriana talking of an external stain, not of a defilement of her blood." But, judging from lines 143, 144, she is undoubtedly referring "blot to an external physical "poison" (compare line 132). Dyce and Staunton adopt Warburton's reading, the latter aptly quoting Hall's Satires, bk. iv. Sat. i. :— "Besmeared all with loathsome smoake of lust."

or

Besides, can lust, strictly speaking,
be called a crime? At least, Shake-
speare never refers to it as such.
144. strumpeted] Compare Sonnet
lxvi. 6: “And maiden virtue rudely
strumpeted." Steevens quotes Hey-
wood's Iron Age (1632) [Second
Part, IV. i. (Pearson, 1874, vol. iii.
p. 398)]: "By this adultresse basely
strumpetted."

146. unstain'd] I think we are com-
pelled to read unstain'd, as, indeed,
the Globe editors do.

been attract
from some
in undishon
Shakespeare
Richard III
in Troilus a
both in the
ciple does n
plays. On
is used in fo
and Juliet,
unstain'd w
16: "unstai
v. ii. 114:
and Winter
unstain'd sh
plains his
undefiled, t
being "free
Delius inter

follows: " stain of you you, as hu honour"; marks: "T less to our i change to make Adrian hopes for in loathes." ments for u who, readin

The dis- in

the MS. ha

the original

distain'd of the Folio seems to have

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

arburton; crime F 1. 143. mer (Theobald conj.); disHeath conj.; undistain'd conj.

acted by or to have arisen e confusion with the disonoured. Further, though are uses distain, viz. in II. v. iii. 322, and distains s and Cressida, 1. iii. 241, e sense of stain, the partinot occur elsewhere in the On the other hand, unstained four passages, viz., Romeo et, IV. i. 88: "To live an wife"; King John, II. i. tained love "; 2 Henry IV. =:"the unstain'd sword"; er's Tale, Iv. iv. 149:“an shepherd." Theobald exs dis-stain'd as unstained, the meaning apparently ree or apart from stain." terprets the Folio text as "I, as wife, receive the our present conduct, while husband, suffer no loss of Cand Herford on this reThis certainly appeals far instinct of style than the o unstain'd which would iana refer to the future she instead of the actuality she One of the strongest arguunstained is that of Dyce, ding unstain'd, remarks on having had vnstain'd, and mal compositor having mis

Ant. S. Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not: In Ephesus I am but two hours old,

As strange unto your town as to your talk; Who, every word by all my wit being scanned, Wants wit in all one word to understand. Luc. Fie, brother! how the world is changed with you! When were you wont to use my sister thus ? She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.

Ant. S. By Dromio?

Dro. S. By me?

Adr. By thee; and this thou didst return from him, That he did buffet thee, and, in his blows,

Denied my house for his, me for his wife.

150

155

Ant. S. Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman? 160 What is the course and drift of your compact?

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[ocr errors]
[graphic]

Adr. How ill agrees it with your gravit
To counterfeit thus grossly with y
Abetting him to thwart me in my
Be it my wrong you are from me
But wrong not that wrong with a
Come, I will fasten on this sleeve
Thou art an elm, my husband, I a
Whose weakness, married to thy s
Makes me with thy strength to co
If aught possess thee from me, it i
Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss;
Who, all for want of pruning, with
Infect thy sap, and live on thy co
Ant. S. To me she speaks; she moves
What, was I married to her in my
Or sleep I now, and think I hear

177

[ocr errors]

si no

ata

Malone
famous E

"Lent
Vitis

Impl

Com

and Milt sqq.]:

ab

178. id

66 moss being un

quotes O

« IndietroContinua »