POL. Ay, and make 't manifest where she has liv'd, Or, how stol'n from the dead! PAUL. That she is living, Were it but told you, should be hooted at Like an old tale; but it appears she lives, Though yet she speak not. Mark a little while.Please you to interpose, fair madam; kneel, And pray your mother's blessing.—Turn, good lady; Our Perdita is found. [Presenting PER., who kneels to HER. HER. You gods, look down, And from your sacred vials pour your graces Upon my daughter's head!-Tell me, mine own, Where hast thou been preserv'd? where liv'd? how found Gave hope thou wast in being,-have preserv'd There's time enough for that; PAUL. Partake to every one. I, an old turtle, Will wing me to some wither'd bough, and there Lament till I am lost. LEON. O peace, Paulina; Thou shouldst a husband take by my consent, As I by thine, a wife: this is a match, And made between 's by vows. Thou hast found mine; But how, is to be question'd: for I saw her, As I thought, dead; and have, in vain, said many A prayer upon her grave: I'll not seek far (For him, I partly know his mind) to find thee An honourable husband:-Come, Camillo, And take her by the hand: whose worth, and honesty, By us, a pair of kings.-Let's from this place.- My ill suspicion. This your son-in-law, And son unto the king, (whom heavens directing,) [Exeunt. VARIOUS READINGS. "May there blow No sneaping winds at home, to make us say, This is the alteration of the MS. Corrector; and Mr. Collier sees some mysterious allusion to sneaping winds cutting off blossoms too early. The original (ACT I., Sc. 2.) "That may blow 'This is put forth too truly!""_ "I love thee not a jar of the clock behind This correction of "What lady she her lord was made in a folio copy of the first edition belonging to Lord Ellesmere; and it is also found in Mr. Collier's corrected folio of 1632. VOL. V. (ACT I., Sc. 2.) Mr. Richard Grant White, in his valuable volume, 'Shakspeare's Scholar' (New York, 1854), says—. "I confess that the old reading is far more pleasing to me. The elision is great, but it seems to me to make the sentence neither obscure nor inelegant." Mr. White reads the sentence thus: "I love thee not a jar of the clock behind what [ever] lady she [may be who loves] her lord." Q Q "You may ride us, But to the good." (ACT I., Sc. 2.) With one soft kiss, a thousand furlongs, ere 'With spur we heat an acre. But These are the changes made by the Corrector of the folio, 1632, which are called "singularly to the purpose." Singularly to the purpose of the Corrector, which was as far as he could, to substitute the literal for the figurative; and to produce a Shaksperean "Reading made easy." "Let be, let be! Would I were dead, but that, methinks, already This is one of the eight additional lines supplied to the text of Shakspere by the MS. Corrector of the folio, 1632. (ACT V., Sc. 3.) This new line is held to look decidedly Shaksperean; and we agree in the opinion, as the line stands apart: "I am but dead, stone looking upon stone." The line, Mr. Collier admits, is not necessary to make the sense complete. But the original sentence of one line has an elliptical obscurity. "Would I were dead-but that methinks already." Had the idea of "stone looking upon stone" not occurred before, and in the mouth of the same character, we should not have hesitated to receive it as Shakspere's, besides being a happy correction of the obscurity. But how, when only twenty-five lines preceding, we find the same Le ontes thus expressing himself?— "Does not the stone rebuke me For being more stone than it?" After this, it would scarcely require the genius of Shakspere to repeat the idea. GLOSSARY. ABIDE. Act IV., Sc. 2. "Yet it will no more but abide." That is, it will merely sojourn, not remain. "He who shall speak for her is afar off guilty." He is guilty in a removed, remote degree. AFFECTION. Act I., Sc. 2. "Affection! thy intention stabs the centre." Affection is here imagination. Intention is intentness, eager ness of attention. "Mercy on 's, a barne." The Scottish bairn: a child baren or born. BAWCOCK. Act I., Sc. 2. "Why, that's my bawcock." Bawcock, probably from the French beau coq, was a familiar term for a jolly fellow. The word is used also in 'Twelfth Night,' Act III., Sc. 4, and twice in 'Henry V.' BEARING-CLOTH. Act III., Sc. 3. "A bearing cloth for a squire's child!" Percy explains the bearing-cloth to be "the fine mantle with which a child is usually covered when it is carried to the church to be baptised." BEST. Act I., Sc. 2. "Be yok'd with his that did betray the Best!" The allusion is to Judas. |