Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies

—but his own disorders
Deserv'd much more advancement.

II.iv.204 (388,1) I pray you, father, being weak, seem so] [W: deem't so] The meaning is, since you are weak, be content to think yourself weak. No change is needed.

II.iv.218 (389,3) base life] i.e. In a servile state.

II.iv.227 (390,5) embossed carbuncle] Embossed is swelling, protuberant.

II.iv.259 (391,6) Those wicked creatures yet do look well-favour'd:/ When others are more wicked] Dr. Warburton would exchange the repeated epithet wicked into wrinkled in both places. The commentator's only objection to the lines as they now stand, is the discrepancy of the metaphor, the want of opposition between wicked and well-favoured. But he might have remembered what he says in his own preface concerning mixed modes. Shakespeare, whose mind was more intent upon notions than words, had in his thoughts the pulchritude of virtue, and the deformity of wickedness; and though he had mentioned wickedness, made the correlative answer to deformity.

III.i.7 (394,1) That things might change, or cease: tears his white hair] The first folio ends the speech at change, or cease, and begins again with Kent's question, But who is with him? The whole speech is forcible, but too long for the occasion, and properly retrenched.

III.i.18 (395,3) my note] My observation of your character.

III.i.29 (395,6) are but furnishings] Furnishings are what we now call colours, external pretences. (1773)

III.i.19 (395,8)

There is division,
Although as yet the face of it is cover'd
with mutual cunning, 'twixt Albany and Cornwall;
Who have (as who have not, whom their great stars
Throne and set high?) servants, who seem no less;
Which are to France the spies and speculations
Intelligent of our state. What hath been seen,
Either in snuffs and packings of the dukes;
Or the hard rein, which both of them have borne
Against the old kind king; or something deeper,
Whereof, perchance, these are but furnishings.
[But, true it is, from France there comes a power
Into this scatter'd kingdom; who already,
Wise in our negligence, have secret fee
In some of our best ports, and are at point
To shew their open banner.—Now to you:]]

The true state of this speech cannot from all these notes be discovered. As it now stands it is collected from two editions: the lines which I have distinguished by Italics are found in the folio, not in the quarto; the following lines inclosed in crotchets are in the quarto, not in the folio. So that if the speech be read with omissions of the Italics, it will stand according to the first edition; and if the Italics are read, and the lines that follow them omitted, it will then stand according to the second. The speech is now tedious, because it is formed by a coalition of both. The second edition is generally best, and was probably nearest to Shakespeare's last copy, but in this passage the first is preferable; for in the folio, the messenger is sent, he knows not why, he knows not whither. I suppose Shakespeare thought his plot opened rather too early, and made the alteration to veil the event from the audience; but trusting too much to himself, and full of a single purpose, he did not accommodate his new lines to the rest of the scene.—The learned critic's [Warburton] emendations are now to be examined. Scattered he has changed to scathed; for scattered, he says, gives the idea of an anarchy, which was not the case. It may be replied that scathed gives the idea of ruin, waste, and desolation, which was not the case. It is unworthy a lover of truth, in questions of great or little moment, to exaggerate or extenuate for mere convenience, or for vanity yet less than convenience. Scattered naturally means divided, unsettled, disunited.—Next is offered with great pomp a change of sea to seize; but in the first edition the word is fee, for hire, in the sense of having any one in fee, that is, at devotion for money. Fee is in the second quarto changed to see, from which one made sea and another seize.

III.ii.4 (398,1) thought-executing] Doing execution with rapidity equal to thought.

III.ii.19 (399,4) Here I stand, your slave] [W: brave] The meaning is plain enough, he was not their slave by right or compact, but by necessity and compulsion. Why should a passage be darkened for the sake of changing it? Besides, of brave in that sense I remember no example.

III.ii.24 (399,5) 'tis foul] Shameful; dishonourable.

III.ii.30 (399,6) So beggars marry many] i.e. A beggar marries a wife and lice.

III.ii.46 (400,1) Man's nature cannot carry/The affliction, nor the fear] So the folio: the later editions read, with the quarto, force for fear, less elegantly.

III.ii.56 (401,3) That under covert and convenient seeming] Convenient needs not be understood in any other than its usual and proper sense; accommodate to the present purpose; suitable to a design. Convenient seeming is appearance such as may promote his purpose to destroy.

III.ii.53 (401,4) concealing continents] Continent stands for that which contains or incloses.

III.ii.72 (401,(5) Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart,/ That's sorry yet for thee] Some editions read,

—thing in my heart;

from which Hanmer, and Dr. Warburton after him, have made string, very unnecessarily; both the copies have part.

III.ii.74 (402,7)

He that has a little tiny wit,—
With heigh ho, the wind and the rain;
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
Though the rain it raineth every day]

I fancy that the second line of this stanza had once a termination that rhymed with the fourth; but I can only fancy it; for both the copies agree. It was once perhaps written,

With heigh ho, the wind and the rain in his way.

The meaning seems likewise to require this insertion. "He that has wit, however small, and finds wind and rain in his way, must content himself by thinking, that somewhere or other it raineth every day, and others are therefore suffering like himself." Yet I am afraid that all this is chimerical, for the burthen appears again in the song at the end of Twelfth Night, and seems to have been an arbitrary supplement, without any reference to the sense of the song. (see 1765, VI, 84, 6)

III.ii.80 (402,8) I'll speak a prophecy ere I go] [W: or two ere] The sagacity and acuteness of Dr. Warburton are very conspicuous in this note. He has disentangled the confusion of the passage, and I have inserted his emendation in the text. Or e'er is proved by Mr. Upton to be good English, but the controversy was not necessary, for or is not in the old copies. [Steevens retained "ere"]

III.ii.84 (403,1) No heretics burnt, but wenches' suitors] The disease to which wenches' suitors are particularly exposed, was called in Shakespeare's time the brenning or burning.

III.iv.26 (406,1)

In, boy; go first. [To the Fool.] You houseless poverty—
Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep]

These two lines were added in the author's revision, and are only in the folio. They are very judiciously intended to represent that humility, or tenderness, or neglect of forms, which affliction forces on the mind.

III.iv.52 (407,3) led through fire and through flame] Alluding to the ignis fatuus, supposed to be lights kindled by mischievous beings to lead travellers into destruction.

III.iv.54 (407,4) laid knives under his pillow] He recounts the temptations by which he was prompted to suicide; the opportunities of destroying himself, which often occurred to him in his melancholy moods.

III.iv.60 (407,5) Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking!] To take is to blast, or strike with malignant influence:

—strike her young limbs,
Ye taking airs, with lameness.

III.iv.77 (408,6) pelican daughters] The young pelican is fabled to suck the mother's blood.

III.iv.95 (408,8) light of ear] [i.e. Credulous. WARBURTON.] Not merely credulous, but credulous of evil, ready to receive malicious reports. (1773)

III.iv.103 (409,1) says suum, mun, ha no nonny, dolphin my boy, boy, Sessy: let him trot by] Of this passage I can make nothing. I believe it corrupt: for wildness, not nonsense, is the effect of a disordered imagination. The quarto reads, hay no on ny, dolphins, my boy, cease, let him trot by. Of interpreting this there is not much hope or much need. But any thing may be tried. The madman, now counterfeiting a proud fit, supposes himself met on the road by some one that disputes the way, and cries Hey!—No—but altering his mind, condescends to let him pass, and calls to his boy Dolphin (Rodolph) not to contend with him. On—Dolphin, my boy, cease. Let him trot by.

III.iv.122 (410,3) web and the pin] Diseases of the eye.