Than their bare hands. Bra. I pray you, hear her speak; If she confess, that she was half the wooer, Destruction on my head, if my bad blame Light on the man!-Come hither, gentle mistress; Do you perceive in all this noble company, Where most you owe obedience? Des. I do perceive here a divided duty: My noble father, To you I am bound for life, and education; How to respect you; you are the lord of duty," Bra. I here do give thee that with all my heart, For thy escape would teach me tyranny, To hang clogs on them.-I have done, my lord. • Destruction &c.] The quartos reads-Destruction light on me. Steevens. 7 you are the lord of duty,] The first quarto reads-you are lord of all my duty. Steevens. 8 And so much duty as my mother show'd To you, preferring you before her father, &c.] Perhaps Shakspeare had here in his thoughts the answer of the youngest daughter of Ina, King of the West Saxons, to her father, which he seems to have copied in King Lear. See Dr. Percy's introductory note to King Lear, Vol. XIV. Malone. 9 Which, &c.] This line is omitted in the first quarto. Steevens. 1 Let me speak like yourself;] The Duke seems to mean, when he says he will speak like Brabantio, that he will speak sententiously. Johnson. Let me speak like yourself;] i. e. let me speak as yourself would speak, were you not too much heated with passion. Sir F. Reynolds. Which, as a grise, or step, may help these lovers When remedies, are past, the griefs are ended,* The robb'd, that smiles, ste als something from the thief; He robs himself, that spends a bootless grief. Bra. So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile: We lose it not, so long as we can smile. He bears the sentence well, that nothing bears Being strong on both sides are equivocal: But words are words; I never yet did hear, 2 as a grise,] Grize from degrees. A grize is a step. So, in Timon: 66 for every grize of fortune "Is smooth'd by that below." Ben Jonson, in his Sejanus, gives the original word: "Whom when he saw lie spread on the degrees." In the will of King Henry VI, where the dimensions of King's College chapel at Cambridge are set down, the word occurs, as spelt in some of the old editions of Shakspeare: ". from the provost's stall, unto the greece called Gradus Chori, 90 feet.” Steevens. 3 Into your favour.] This is wanting in the folio, but found in the quarto. Johnson. 4 When remedies are past, the griefs are ended,] This our poet has elsewhere expressed [In Love's Labour's Lost, Act V, 9c. ii,] by a common proverbial sentence, Past cure is still past care. Malone. 5 new mischief on.] The quartos read-more mischief. Steevens. 6 But the free comfort which from thence he hears:] But the moral precepts of consolation, which are liberally bestowed on occasion of the sentence. Johnson. 7 But words are words; I never yet did hear That the bruis'd heart was pierced through the ear.] The Duke had by sage sentences been exhorting Brabantio to patience, and VOL. XVI. Y I humbly beseech you, proceed to the affairs of state. to forget the grief of his daughter's stolen marriage, to which Brabantio is made very pertinently to reply to this effect: " "My lord, I apprehend very well the wisdom of your advice; but though you would comfort me, words are but words; and the heart, already bruised, was never pierced, or wounded, through the ear." It is obvious that the text must be restored thus: That the bruis'd heart was pieced through the ear. i. e. that the wounds of sorrow were ever cured, or a man made heart-whole merely by the words of consolation. Warburton. Shakspeare was continually changing his first expression for another, either stronger or more uncommon; so that very often the reader, who has not the same continuity or succession of ideas, is at a loss for its meaning Many of Shakspeare's uncouth strained epithets may be explained, by going back to the obvious and simple expression, which is most likely to occur to the mind in that state I can imagine the first mode of expression that occurred to the poet was this: "The troubled heart was never cured by words." To give it poetical force, he altered the phrasė: "The wounded heart was never reached through the ear." Wounded heart he changed to broken, and that to bruised, as a more common expression. Reached he altered to touched, and the transition is then easy to pierced, i e. thoroughly touched. When the sentiment is brought to this state, the commentator, without this unravelling clue, expounds piercing the heart in its common acceptation wounding the heart, which making in this place nonsense, is corrected to pieced the heart, which is very stiff, and, as Polonius says, is a vile phrase. Sir F. Reynolds. Pierced may be right. The consequence of a bruise is sometimes matter collected, and this can no way be cured without piercing or letting it out. Thus, in Hamlet: Again: "It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, "This is th' imposthume of much wealth and peace, Our author might have had in his memory the following quaint title of an old book: i. e." A lytell treatyse called the dysputacyon, or the complavnte of the herte through perced with the lokynge of the eye. Imprynted at Londō in Fletestrete at ye sygne of the sonne by Wynkyn de Worde." Again, in Anewe and a mery Interlude concernyng Pleasure and Payne in Love, made by Ihon. Heywood: Fol. Rastal, 1534: "Thorough myne erys dyrectly to myne harte "Percyth his wordys even lyke as many sperys." Steevens. But words are words; I never yet did hear, That the bruis'd heart was pierced through the ear.] These mo Duke. The Turk with a most mighty preparation makes for Cyprus :-Othello, the fortitude of the place ral precepts, says Brabantio, may perhaps be founded in wisdom, but they are of no avail. Words after all are but words; and I never yet heard that consolatory speeches could reach and penetrate the afflicted heart, through the medium of the ear. Brabantio here expresses the same sentiment as the father of Hero in Much Ado about Nothing, when he derides the attempts of those comforters who in vain endeavour to- "Charm ache with air, and agony with words." Our author has in various places shown a fondness for this antithesis between the heart and ear. Thus, in his Venus and Adonis: "This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear, "Through which it enters, to surprise her heart." Again, in Much Ado about Nothing: "My cousin tells him in his ear, that he is in her heart.” Again, in Cymbeline: 66 I have such a heart as both mine ears "Must not in haste abuse." Again, in his Rape of Lucrece: "His ear her prayers admits, but his heart granteth A doubt has been entertained concerning the word pierced, which Dr. Warburton supposed to mean wounded, and therefore substituted pieced in its room. But pierced is merely a figurative expression, and means not wounded, but penetrated, in a metaphorical sense thoroughly affected; as in the following passage in Shakspeare's 46th Sonnet: "My heart doth plead, that thou in him dost lie; So also, in Love's Labour's Lost: "Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief." Again, in his Rape of Lucrece: "With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear." In a word, a heart pierced through the ear, is a heart which (to use our poet's words elsewhere) has granted a penetrable entrance to the language of consolation. So, in The Mirrour for Magistrates, 1575: "My piteous plaint-the hardest heart may pierce." Spenser has used the word exactly in the same figurative sense in which it is here employed; Fairy Queen, B. VI, c. ix: "Whylest thus he talkt, the knight with greedy eare "Whose sensefull words empierst his hart so neare, And, in his fourth Book, c. viii, we have the very words of the text: "Her words "Which passing through the eares, would pierce the heart." Some persons have supposed that pierced when applied meta is best known to you: And though we have there a sub- Oth. The tyrant custom, most grave senators, I find in hardness; and do undertake phorically to the heart, can only be used to express pain; that the poet might have said, pierced with grief, or pierced with plaints, &c. but that to talk of piercing a heart with consolatory speeches, is a catachresis: but the passage above quoted from Spenser's sixth Book shows that there is no ground for the objection. So also, in Marlowe's Tamburlaine, 1590, we find— "Nor thee nor them, thrice noble Tamburlaine, "Shall want my heart to be with gladness pierc'd.” Malone. 8 -to slubber the gloss of your new fortunes-] To slubber, on this occasion, is to obscure. So, in the First Part of Jeronimo, &c. 1605: "The evening too begins to slubber day." The latter part of this metaphor has already occurred in Macbeth: golden opinions "Which should be worn now in their newest gloss." Steevens. thrice driven bed of down:] A driven bed, is a bed for which the feathers are selected, by driving with a fan, which separates the light from the heavy. Johnson. 1 I do agnize] i. e. acknowledge, confess, avow. So, in A Summarie Report, &c. of the speaker relative to Mary Queen of Scots, 4to. 1586: " -a repentant convert, agnising her Maiesties great mercie" &c. Again, in the old play of Cambyses: "The tenor of your princely will, from you for to agnize." In this instance, however, it signifies to know; as likewise in the following, from the same piece : "Why so? I pray you let me agnize." Steevens. It is so defined [i. e. to acknowledge] in Bullokar's English Expositor, 8vo. 1616. Malone. 2. These present wars-] The quarto, 1622, and the folio, by an error of the press, have-this present wars. For the emendation I am responsible. Malone. |