[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sm,—In your review of Singer's "Shakespeare" (Saturday, January 29), you mention the reading of "Macbeth," i., 7, 1-2, given by Mr. Irving,—
" If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well;
It were done quickly if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence," &a.
The hardness of the common reading had been felt before, and the same change in pointing was suggested by "X.," in a letter in the Boston Courier, of April 25, 1857. This letter is given in Furness's Variorum Edition of Shakespeare's "Macbeth."
In line 6 of the same scene, the First Folio has,—
" This Banks and Schoole of Time," which most editors print "shoal," the same word differently spelt, Clarke and Wright say, Tieck dissenting. Is it possible that the puzzling phrase, "a school of whales," has arisen from a misreading of this same sehoole? The phrase, "shoal of herring," is common ; indeed, whales alone of all the fish get schooling.—
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