Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies

II.ii.88 (49,9)

why do you now
The issue of your proper wisdoms rate;
And do a deed that fortune never did,
Beggar that estimation which you priz'd
Richer than sea and land?]

If I understand this passage, the meaning is, "Why do you, by censuring the determination of your own wisdoms, degrade Helen, whom fortune has not yet deprived of her value, or against whom, as the wife of Paris, fortune has not in this war so declared, as to make us value her less?" This is very harsh, and much strained.

II.ii.122 (50,2) her brain-sick raptures/Cannot distaste the goodness of a quarrel] Corrupt; change to a worse state.

II.ii.179 (52,3) benummed wills] That is, inflexible, inmoveable, no longer obedient to superior direction.

II.ii.180 (52,4) There is a law in each well-ordered nation] What the law does in every nation between individuals, justice ought to do between nations.

II.ii.188 (52,5) Hector's opinion/Is this in way of truth] Though considering truth and justice in this question, this is my opinion; yet as a question of honour, I think on it as you.

II.ii.196 (53,6) the performance of our heaving spleens] The execution of spite and resentment.

II.ii.212 (53,7) emulation] That is, envy, factious contention.

II.iii.18 (54,8) without drawing the massy iron and cutting the web] That is, without drawing their swords to cut the web. They use no means but those of violence.

II.iii.55 (55,1) decline the whole question] Deduce the question from the first case to the last.

II.iii.108 (57,6) but it was a strong composure, a fool could disunite] So reads the quarto very properly; but the folio, which the moderns have followed, has, it was a strong COUNSEL.

II.iii.118 (57,7) noble state] Person of high dignity; spoken of Agamemnon.

II.iii.137 (58,8) under-write] To subscribe, in Shakespeare, is to obey.

II.iii.215 (60,2) pheese his pride] To pheese is to comb or curry.

II.iii.217 (60,3) Not for the worth that hangs upon our quarrel] Not for the value of all for which we are fighting.

II.iii.267 (62,6)

Ajax. Shall I call you father?
Nest. Ay, my good son]

In the folio and in the nodern editions Ajax desires to give the title of father to Ulysses; in the quarto, more naturally, to Nestor.

III.i.35 (64,1) love's invisible soul] love's visible soul.] So HANMER. The other editions have invisible, which perhaps may be right, and may mean the soul of love invisible every where else.

III.i.83 (65,3) And, my lord, he desires you] Here I think the speech of Pandarus should begin, and the rest of it should be added to that of Helen, but I have followed the copies.

III.i.96 (65,4) with my disposer Cressida] [W: dispouser] I do not understand the word disposer, nor know what to substitute in its place. There is no variation in the copies.

III.i.132 (67,6) Yet that which seems the wound to kill] To kill the wound is no very intelligible expression, nor is the measure preserved. We might read,

These lovers cry,
Oh! oh! they die!
But that which seems to kill,
Doth turn, &c.
So dying love lives still.

Yet as the wound to kill may mean the wound that seems mortal, I alter nothing.

III.ii.25 (69,1) tun'd too sharp in sweetness]—and too sharp in sweetness,] So the folio and all modern editions; but the quarto more accurately,

—tun'd too sharp in sweetness.

III.ii.99 (71,4) our head shall go bare, 'till merit crown it] I cannot forbear to observe, that the quarto reads thus: Our head shall go bare, 'till merit lower part no affection, in reversion, &c. Had there been no other copy, hov could this have been corrected? The true reading is in the folio.

III.ii.102 (72,5) his addition shall be humble] We will give him no high or pompous titles.

III.ii.162 (74,6)

but you are wise,
Or else you love not; to be wise and love,
Exceeds man's might]

I read,

—but we're not wise,
Or else we love not; to be wise and love,
Exceeds man's might;—

Cressida, in return to the praise given by Troilus to her wisdom, replies, "That lovers are never wise; that it is beyond the power of man to bring love and wisdom to an union."

III.ii.173 (74,8) Might be affronted with the match] I wish "my integrity might be met and matched with such equality and force of pure unmingled love."

III.ii.184 (75,2) As true as steel, as plantage to the moon] Plantage is not, I believe, a general term, but the herb which we now call plantain, in Latin, plantago, which was, I suppose, imagined to be under the peculiar influence of the moon.

III.ii.187 (76,3)

Yet after all comparisons of truth,
As truth's authentic author to be cited
As true as Troilus, shall crown up the verse]

Troilus shall crown the verse, as a man to be cited as the authentic author of truth; as one whose protestations were true to a proverb.

III.iii.1-16 (77,5) Now, princes, for the service I have done you] I am afraid, that after all the learned commentator's [Warburton's] efforts to clear the argument of Calchas, it will still appear liable to objection; nor do I discover more to be urged in his defence, than that though his skill in divination determined him to leave Troy, jet that he joined himself to Agamemnon and his army by unconstrained good-will; and though he came as a fugitive escaping from destruction, yet his services after his reception, being voluntary and important, deserved reward. This argument is not regularly and distinctly deduced, but this is, I think, the best explication that it will yet admit.

III.iii.4 (78,6) through the sight I bear in things, to Jove] This passage in all the modern editions is silently depraved, and printed thus:

—through the sight I bear in things to come.