Page images
PDF
EPUB

The name and not the thing.

Ber.

Both, both. O, pardon!

Hel. O my
O my good lord, when I was like this maid,
I found you wondrous kind. There is your ring;
And, look you, here's your letter; this it says:
'When from my finger you can get this ring
And are by me with child,' &c. This is done:
Will you be mine, now you are doubly won?

305

Ber. If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly, I'll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly.

Hel. If it appear not plain and prove untrue,

Deadly divorce step between me and you!

O my dear mother, do I see you living?

310

Laf. Mine eyes smell onions; I shall weep anon: 314 [To Parolles] Good Tom Drum, lend me a handkercher: so, I thank thee wait on me home, I'll make sport with thee: let thy courtesies alone, they are scurvy ones.

King. Let us from point to point this story know, To make the even truth in pleasure flow.

[To Diana] If thou be'st yet a fresh uncropped flower, 320
Choose thou thy husband, and I'll pay thy dower;
For I can guess that by thy honest aid

Thou kept'st a wife herself, thyself a maid.
Of that and all the progress, more and less,

[blocks in formation]

325

Resolvedly more leisure shall express :
All yet seems well; and if it end so meet,
The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.

[Flourish.

EPILOGUE.

King. The king's a beggar, now the play is done: All is well ended, if this suit be won,

That you express content; which we will pay,
With strife to please you, day exceeding day:

Ours be your patience then, and yours our parts;

5

Your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts. [Exeunt.

[blocks in formation]

NOTES.

[ocr errors]

NOTE I.

DRAMATIS PERSONA. In the Folios Rousillon is spelt, almost without exception, Rossillion,' and Helena in the stage directions 'Hellen.' As the Clown's name occurs in the play we have introduced it among the 'Dramatis Personæ,' changing however the spelling from 'Lavatch' to 'Lavache.'

Violenta, whose name occurs in the stage direction at the beginning of Act III. Sc. 5, is a mute personage, but as it is possible that Diana's first speech in that scene should be given to her, we have retained the name in the list.

NOTE II.

I. 1. 153. It cannot be doubted that there is some omission here. The editors, except Steevens, who is satisfied with the text as it stands, substantially agree either with Hanmer's emendation or Malone's. Mr Grant White, however, thinks that in either case the transition would be too abrupt and that the passage omitted was longer and more important.

If it were not for the

'Pretty fond adoptious christendoms That blinking Cupid gossips,'

we should be inclined to suppose that the whole passage was by another hand. Indeed all the foregoing dialogue between Helena and Parolles is a blot on the play. Mr Badham (Cambridge Essays, 1856, p. 256) would strike out the whole passage (105-152) from Ay, you have &c.' to Will you any thing with it?' as an interpolation.

[ocr errors]

NOTE III.

1. 3. 50. No one has been able to discover the origin of the names 'Charbon' and 'Poysam,' or to guess at any probable meaning for them. Yet it is not likely that they should have been given at random. Is it possible that Shakespeare may have written 'Chairbonne' and 'Poisson,' alluding to the respective lenten fare of the Puritan and the Papist?

The same suggestion was made independently by Mr Easy [Dr Nicholson] (Notes and Queries, 3rd S. Iv. 106) after the present note was in the printers' hand (Ibid. p. 203).

NOTE IV.

1. 3. 106.

We have not inserted Theobald's admirable emendation in the text, because it is probable that something more has been omitted, perhaps a whole line of the MS.

Becket would transpose the sentences and read thus:

"......level. This she delivered......exclaim in.-Queen of Virgins! that......afterward. This I held................'

We take this opportunity of saying that many of Becket's proposed changes are so sweeping that we found it impossible to record them in the compass of a foot-note, and at the same time so improbable, that we did not think it worth while to record them separately at the end.

NOTE V.

1. 3. 118. We have followed the Folios in placing Helena's entry after line 118, rather than after 126, as most recent editors have done. The Countess may be supposed to be observing Helena earnestly as she enters with slow step and downcast eyes. Her words have thus more force and point.

NOTE VI.

II. 1. 1, 2. The editors have for the most part followed Hanmer's correction lord......lord' for 'lords......lords,' the reading of the Folios, on the ground that there is no reason why the lords who are taking leave should be divided into two sections. But from the stage direction 'divers young Lords,' it is clear that there are more than two. Mr Staunton thinks that the king first addresses himself to the young lords in general, and then turns to the two who are spokesmen in the scene and bids them share in the advice just given to their companions.

We rather incline to think that the young lords are divided into two sections according as they intended to take service with the 'Florentines' or the 'Senoys.' The king had said, 1. 2. 13-15:

Yet, for our gentlemen that mean to see

The Tuscan service, freely have they leave
To stand on either part.

[ocr errors]

Throughout this scene the two speakers whom Rowe and all subsequent editors have called First' and 'Second Lord' are called in the Folios Lord G.' and 'Lord E.' 6 In all likelihood, as Capell has suggested, the parts were originally played by two actors whose names began respectively with G and E; and, in fact, in the list of Principall Actors' prefixed to the first Folio we find the names Gilburne,' 'Goughe' and Ecclestone.' The same actors doubtless took the parts of the two gentlemen who bring the letter to Helena in the 2nd scene of Act III., and who in the stage directions of the Folio are termed 'Fren. G.' and 'Fren. E. Mr Collier indeed interprets these words to mean 'French Envoy' and 'French Gentleman,' but they are spoken of as 'two gentlemen' in the stage direction at line 43, and one was as much an 'envoy' as the other. This interpretation moreover leaves the 'G.' and 'E.' of the former scene and of subsequent scenes quite unexplained. Some have supposed the 'two gentlemen' of III. 2, to be the same as the 'two lords' of II. 1, and as far as the action of the Drama is concerned, there is no reason why they should not be, but when the two lords reappear in 1. 6 they are introduced thus; Enter Count Rossillion and the Frenchmen, as at first:' which seems to prove that the two gentlemen were different persons though played by the same actors. In this latter scene the two lords are called Cap. G. and Cap. E. according to their rank in the Florentine service. The confusion of speakers in the dialogue at the close of this scene will be remedied if we suppose the Folio to have printed Cap. G. by mistake for Cap. E. in line 99 and Cap. E. for Cap. G. in lines 101, 107. 'Lord E.' appears again in Iv. 1, and 'Cap. G.' and 'Cap. E.' in Iv. 3.

11. 1. 3.

[ocr errors]

NOTE VII.

Johnson in his note to this passage says that all the latter copies have ...if both again,' and that Sir T. Hanmer reads 'if both gain all.' The statement as to Hanmer's reading was corrected in the 'Steevens and Johnson' of 1793, but that as to all the latter copies, though equally erroneous, was allowed to remain.

« PreviousContinue »