BOOKS.

SHAKESPEARIANA.*

THE Shakespeare temptation remains as strong as ever with the dilettanting world. If all cannot rise to the Baconian theory at once, they can still find, with Mr. Orger, that Shakespeare's text "is like a quarry where every one may hew, a sea where every one may dip his oar." When Mr. Frank Marshall, a classic student, and a great favourite with a large circle of friends, took, before his recent death, to bringing out a new edition of Shakespeare, he was con- doled with or congratulated by his allies, as one who had found his path for the rest of his life, and would plough in other fields no more. His co-editor of The Irving Shakespeare showed no little of the subtle tact and wisdom which have made of him so marked a personality—as much and more than Garrick was in his day—in presiding chiefly at the christening of the new infant. But, indeed, the present writer, somewhat of a heretic, or at least a doubter, until lately, about Mr. Irving's Shakespearian mission, allows himself to be an entire convert since the last production of Macbeth. It is too late now to enter into any elaborate criticism of that ; but nothing surprised us more at the time than the commonplace tone of all the Press com- ments on the subject. As a rule, they seem to have proceeded on the theory that Macbeth was not in Irving's line. But even where they praised, they seemed to miss the peculiar point of the performance,—its singular " thought-outedness," to coin a word. From first to last, it was the most consistent "study of guilt" ever brought out. And nothing about it was more remarkable than the way in which the actor had trained his brilliant companion to found the ladye, as it were, upon her lord, for and in whom she lived. Miss Terry's Lady Macbeth shone through Irving's completeness ; and the actor as completely converted us from a theory that Macbeth must have been a rough, physical savage, as a lithe and small Orlando once did from a steady belief in the height and sinews of that amateur wrestler of As You Like It. Nobody ever christened Macbeth better than Irving.

We apologise to Mr. Orger for this opening, by entering at once upon the conjectural emendations of the two plays quoted which he submits to his readers in proof of his industry :—

'. According to the fool's bolt, Sir, and such dulcet diseases.'

Touchstone's language is pedantic, but never incorrect. 'Dis- eases,' as it is unintelligible, cannot therefore be attributed to him as a mistake for some other word, but must be an error of the text. The error will be removed, I think, by the reading dis- graces,' i.e., reproaches,' or depreciatory observations, in which senses it is used in 2 Henry IV., Act I., scene 1, line 88 :-

Tell thou thy Earl his divination lies, And I will take it as a sweet disgrace.'

Sonnet lxxxix Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt. Against thy reasons making no defence. Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill To set a form upon desired change, As Ill myself disgrace.'

In Bishop Hall's Contemplation, Simon called: '0 my soul ! be not weary of complaining of thine own wretchedness. Disgrace thy- self to him that knows thy vileness.' I would therefore propose

According to the fool's bolt, and such dulcet disgraces.'"

Now, what we would venture to point out to Mr. Orger, with all respect, is the prosiness, if we may so put it, which lies at the door of his conjectures,—a great danger in dealing with a bard, even when such common national property as Shake- speare. If "fool's bolt," why not "dulcet disease "? To us there is something as comprehensible as it is quaint about the combination, even if it bear no very conspicuous meaning or con- sistency, which is not to be expected from the poet who sought a bubble in the mouth of a cannon, in the same play, without even a commentator venturing to find fault with him. But even if a disease be an impossible form of bolt, we fail altogether to see why a disgrace should be more congruous, because Bishop 'Flail disgraced himself in the sense of humiliation, in no con- • Critical Notes on Shakespeare's Comedies. By Rev. Orger, HA., English Chaplain at Dinan. London: Harrison and Sons.

nection with any bolt at all. And why should so simple a description of an executioner as one "that dies and lives by bloody drops," offend the commentator into substituting one that "drains out lives by bloody drops," because Mowbray in another play "sluiced out the innocent soul" of Gloucester?

Surely the phrase as it commonly stands is a much more telling and better description of the office as a calling than a casual expression applied to a single homicide, upon the very face of it, leaving out of sight altogether Shakespeare's dashing way of throwing his colours on. Change for change's sake seems to us the key of half these critical divagations, upon which any man, especially a grammarian, may dispend his odd energies for hour by hour.

Now for Macbeth, which is very much let alone in this little volume. "Hail, King ! for so thou art," says Macduff to Banquo at the end :—

" I see thee compassed with thy kingdom's pearl, That speak my salutation in their minds."

Now, what in the world is there to object to in this ? "The word [pearl]," says Mr. Orger, with obvious truth, "refers to the noblemen and soldiers whO surrounded Macduff." Well,

of course it does, and a very graceful little flower of poesy too, if not ambitious. But Mr. Orger's comment on it is this : "It is difficult to conceive how a pearl can compass any- thing." And failing to conceive it, he proceeds to say of these nobles that as "by saluting Banquo as King, they acknow- ledged themselves his kingdom, it seems much more natural to read 'pale.'" Does not somebody in Henry V. say that "the English beach pales in the flood with men " ? And is it not written in Richard II., "Why should we in the compass of a pale keep law and order " ? Therefore would Mr. Orger rather hear Macduff say,— " I see thee compassed with thy kingdom's pale."

Well, why not should he, in fancy? And after his big fight with Macduff, what would the namer of The Irving Shakespeare

say to it ?

The Midsummer Night and the Merchant, as being two of the most purely poetical of the famous plays, supply our critic with two of his most remarkable inspirations. We venture to think that there exists in Shakespeare no better-loved piece than Puck's fairy blessing on the Athenian nuptials :—

"Through the house give glimmering light, By the dead and drowsy fire,— Every elf and fairy spright

Hop as light as bird from brier."

And we venture likewise to doubt if anybody in the world ever quarrelled with it before, on the ground that there was no " and " to connect the second and third lines. But Mr. Orger does, on the ground, save his grammatic soul, that it is an eiyesx.exaoy ! We spell it in Greek for him, in return for his underlining the give, and by "correcting the punctuation" —the orthodox phrase—into this :—

"Through the house—(giv'n glimmering light By the dead and drowsy fire),— Every elf and fairy sprite," he.

Given X Y Z2! Did anybody ever ? And, before embarking on these troublous seas, let all men consult "Nicholas Nickleby." And now- " Mrs. Curdle was supposed, by those who were best informed on such points, to possess quite the London taste in matters relating to literature and the drama : and as to Mr. Curdle, he had written a pamphlet of 64 pages, post octavo, on the character of the Nurse's deceased husband in Romeo and Juliet, with an inquiry whether he really had been merry man' in his life- time, or whether it was merely his widow's affectionate partiality that induced her so to report him. He had likewise proved that, by altering the received mode of punctuation, any one of Shake- speare's plays could be made quite different, and the sense com- pletely changed."

Mr. Orger is very like Mr. Curdle indeed in this, that he too inquires whether Charles, in As You Like It, was really the "bonny priser of the humorous Duke," even as his proto- type doubted the nterriness of the Nurse's nusband. Mr. Orger thinks he could not have been, and that be was either bony or brawny. He shows, too, chapter and verse, because " bone " is used in Troilus and Cressida, and the " brawns

of Hercules" in Cymbeline ; while he appeals again to his favourite ecclesiastic, Dr. Hall, for the "stern face and brawny arm" expected of David when he met Goliath. The connection beats us completely, we confess, but there it is. In The Merchant of Venice, Mr. Orger takes exception, of all passages in the world, to the sweet- " Beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian beauty " !

as a palpably "gross error" (!) simply, we suppose, on the ground of the identity of the adjective and substantive. one of the most gracious of poetic solecisms when graciously employed. And because Falstaff calls himself and his mates "squires of the Night's body," he is satisfied that Shakespeare

meant to write— "The beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian's body !"

Such conjectures are really a little too ill-advised for print, particularly as it will occur to some that the "night's body," in this Falstaffian connection, means simply a body of men in the sense of a gang. Once start this kind of research, and it is indefinite. But "an Indian's body"! It is quite too terribly prosaic. And for Portia's magnificent lover! After that, even the suggestion that Lorenzo, in another sweet love-passage, really employed the remarkable simile,—

" Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with pavements of bright gold,"

becomes gentle in comparison ! And on Mr. Orger's accepted principle, we must not object to his emendation of the Hamlet lines about that "monster, Custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits devil is angel yet in this :"—" who ill deeds doth coat in devil's habit." That much is certainly ingenious; and we may fairly say the same of the substitution in The Comedy of Errors (the Antipholi), for,—

" The one so like the other,

As could not be distinguished but by names,"

of this,— " As could not be distinguished by names."

That is useful and musical; and we admit of no suggestion even, that is not both. For the same reason we do not disapprove of,— " Mine honour keeps the vaward of my fate," instead of "weather of my fate," in Troilus and Cressida, particularly as that drama is sufficiently suspect to allow elbow-room for much of this amateur gallivanting. But it is unforgivable to tackle the famous Hamlet passage about the readiness which is all, and turn it into this : "That no man knows aught of when he leaves " ! while in Othello the equally

celebrate- " Green-eyed monster, which doth mock The meat it feeds on," is to give up such a practice as " low " (Mr. Orger's own description of it), and mildly " seek " its meat, because the singer in As You Like It is described as— "Seeking the food he eats,"—

which, of course, is exactly as appropriate in its place as in Othello it is not. But to Mr. Orger, the idea of a monster mocking his food is "incongruous." We confess that we cannot argue on such points of feeling, but only wonder— even though Theobald thought that the monster must have made his food. Well, e'en let him make or seek it. It is much the same, but not poetry. Now, when he mocks it, it is. However, like Touchstone, one may amend in this way for any number of moons. "If her breath were as terrible as terminations, there were no living near her," as Benedick says of Beatrice, is undoubtedly a crux,—so much so, that Mr. Orger somewhat surprises us by finding "the sense so clear."

Under these circumstances, we should be disposed to let it alone ; but our amender readeth :—

"If her breath were as contagious as terrible, There were no living near her."

His own description of how he "arrives at this" is worth reading. "We must," he says, "suppose minations ' is a corruption of contagious ;' and that the copies of the manu-

script, after putting terrible 'in its wrong, began to put it in its right place by repeating the initial syllable ter, and left a mixture of the two in the strange word terminations." Well, there is no saying what that copyist did. We our- selves remember one who made a passionate lover exclaim to his mistress :—

"I adore you, offering a richly jewelled box "! The last clause had been intended by the author as a stage direction, and he embodied it in the speech. And, again :— "For nights the fairies have been giving me Wax rings!"

which on examination turned out to be "warnings." But when this Shakespearian copyist suggested that the fair Beatrice was possessed of a breath terrible in the sense of contagiousness, he was, to say the least of it, rude. But Mr.

Orger is avowedly of that opinion, though to us it appears to refer to the sharpness of her words. But Mr. Orger is always being "so very obvious," even where his points have so far "escaped observation." Is it so obvious that there is anything wrong in such a line as this, in the sonnets :— " Where, alack,

Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid"?

To us, nothing seems simpler than that a jewel should be missing from a chest—and we fear that the experience is any- thing but uncommon amongst men—while, on the other hand, Mr. Orger's amendment "from Time's theft lie hid," would

appear to be as unobvious to the unamending mind as need be. Why should people, Time included, steal their own jewels P Yet these be terrible terminations, and lead to little. We

are suspicious of all these experiments, and something weary. They are good enough pastime for note-books, but scarcely for publication. No manuscript alterations have ever approached in value those of Collier, so generally discredited, and no doubt disproved, by overwhelming evidence; so despised and rejected of scholars, and finally set aside as presumptuous almost as Ireland's forgeries, that they can no longer make a serious claim. Yet we know of shrewd Shakespearians who, from

certain appearances, have steadily believed in them. They really do attain, in many cases strikingly, to successful change where change does not seem absolutely requisite. We have no space to give many instances, but have not forgotten the effect made upon ourselves by an examination of the manuscript, BO obviously used by the copyist for acting pur- poses, out of which, looking at the written length of the dramas, so many textual difficulties must have risen. We remember a crucial instance of this in Hamlet, where Horatio's couplet,—

" Good-night, sweet Prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest," is, by the excision of the last entrance of Fortinbras, made to end the acting play, but at the same time, to suit the enduring taste for a rhymed " tag " or ending, altered in pen and ink thus :— " Good-night, be blest,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

Two rather unnecessary alterations of the kind to which we object as what may be called voluntary, were to be found in Macbeth,—where heaven was made to "peep through the blankness of the dark," instead of the blanket ; and Lady Macbeth answered her husband's "dare do all that may become a man," with "what boast wast then, that made you break this enterprise to me "—instead of "what beast " P We hold that both blanket and beast, in its instant but irregu- lar antithesis, are true Shakespeare,—but the changes are

striking, and we remember that the last was followed by Charles Kean. The Winter's Tale contained a striking addi- tion of a whole line. When Leontes, gazing on Hermione's statue, says: "Would I were dead, but that, methinks, alreacty ! " he speaks very broken sense indeed, but that sense being clear, had not suggested alteration till the Collier manuscript, alter- ing the purpose of "that," introduced the further line,

"But that, methinks, already / am but dead, stone looking upon stone."

This is good and strong, and rather defeats the argument that Collier was too weak a man to have been capable of success in the Shakespearian field.

One more striking instance of the unexpected from Tinton of Athens, and our little vindication of Collier is done. Says, the misanthrope, in a noble passage :—

"I have a tree which grows here in my close, Which mine own use invites me to cut down, And shortly I must fell it. Tell my friends, Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree, From high to low throughout, that whoso please To stop affliction, let him take his haste, Come hither ere my tree hath felt the axe, And hang himself."

Now, "take his haste" is a very slipshod but a possible ex-

pression which passes muster—just. In the Collier manuscript, the following curious but, to ourselves, convincing change is found :—

"To stop affliction, let him take his hafIte.2" 2rj

So the long " s " of " haste " being excised, and the final " r " added, the closing word at once becomes " halter :"— " Let him take his halter, And hang himself."

Expressive and natural, and quite in the manner of the part, but still not unsuggestive of Mr. Curdle. Better let well alone, it may be.

For the critic, as for the student, it is tempting to run on about Shakespearian readings, and very amusing might a book upon the subject be. Outsiders know little how fond actors are of making new " points " by inventing them, especially in famous parts like the "moody Dane," where the greatest success on record was probably achieved by the man who turned the line,— " Out of my weakness and ignorance • Abuses me to damn me,' into a pathetic complaint,— " Out of my weakness and my ignorance Abuses me, too, d— me !"

The writer of the present article has his favourite reading too, or rather emphasis, which he would commend to Mr. Orger, or even to Mr. Irving. He has long been convinced that Hamlet, in his appeal to his father's spirit, would strengthen the force of it by saying :—

" Tell Why thy canonised bones, hearsed in death, Have burst their cerements, and the sepulchre Wherein we saw thee quietly inurned, Hath oped its ponderous and marble jaws," &c.

An added emphasis on the word "saw," usually passed over as unimportant, would surely give forcible meaning to the witness of the eyes.