Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

But with my heart the other eye doth fee."-
Ah! poor our fex! this fault in us I find,
The error of our eye directs our mind:
What error leads, must err; O then conclude,
Minds, fway'd by eyes, are full of turpitude.
[Exit CRESSIDA.

THER. A proof of strength she could not publish

8 more,

Unless she said, My mind is now turn'd whore. ULYSS. All's done, my lord.

TRO.

ULYSS.

It is.

Why stay we then?

TRO. To make a recordation to my foul
Of every fyllable that here was spoke.
But, if I tell how these two did co-act,
Shall I not lie in publishing a truth?
Sith yet there is a credence in my heart,
An esperance fo obftinately strong,

That doth invert the atteft of eyes and ears;
As if those organs had deceptious functions,
Created only to calumniate.

Was Creffid here?

ULYSS.

I cannot conjure, Trojan.

1 But with my heart &c.] I think it should be read thus: But my heart with the ather eye doth fee. JOHNSON. Perhaps, rather:

But with the other eye my heart doth fee. TYRWHITT. The prefent reading is right. She means to fay," one eye yet looks on thee, Troilus, but the other correfponds with my heart, and looks after Diomede." M. MASON.

8 A proof of ftrength she could not publish more,] She could not publish a stronger proof. JOHNSON.

9 That doth invert the atteft of eyes and ears ;] i. e. that turns the very teftimony of feeing and hearing against themselves.

THEOBALD.

2 I cannot conjure, Trojan.] That is, I cannot raife fpirits in the form of Creffida. JOHNSON.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

TRO. Why, my negation hath no taste of madness. ULYSS. Nor mine, my lord: Creffid was here but

now.

TRO. Let it not be believ'd for womanhood! * Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage To ftubborn criticks-apt, without a theme, For depravation,3'-to fquare the general fex By Creffid's rule: rather think this not Creffid. ULYSS. What hath fhe done, prince, that can foil our mothers?

TRO. Nothing at all, unless that this were fhe. THER. Will he fwagger himfelf out on's own eyes?

TRO. This he? no, this is Diomed's Creffida: If beauty have a foul, this is not fhe;

If fouls guide vows, if vows be fanctimony,
If fanctimony be the gods' delight,

If there be rule in unity itself,+

9 Moft fure he was.] The prefent deficiency in the measure induces me to fuppofe our author wrote:

2

3

It is most fure he was. STEEVENS.

for womanhood!] i. e. for the fake of womanhood.

[blocks in formation]

STEEVENS.

For depravation,] Critick has here, I think, the fignification. of Cynick. So, in Love's Labour's Loft:

“And critick Timon laugh at idle toys." MALONE. If there be rule in unity itself,] may mean,-If there be certainty in unity, if it be a rule that one is one. JOHNSON.

If it be true that one individual cannot be two diftinct perfons. M. MASON..

The rule alluded to is a very fimple one; that one cannot be two. This woman therefore, fays Troilus, this falfe one, cannot be that Creffida that formerly plighted her faith to me. MALONE.

7

This was not fhe. O madness of discourse,
That caufe fets up with and against itself!'
Bi-fold authority!" where reafon can revolt
Without perdition, and lofs affume all reason
Without revolt; this is, and is not, Creffid!
Within my foul there doth commence a fight
Of this strange nature, that a thing infeparate
Divides more wider than the sky and earth;
And yet the spacious breadth of this divifion
Admits no orifice for a point, as fubtle

2

against itself!] Thus the quarto. The folio readsagainst thyself. In the preceding line alfo I have followed the quarto. The folio reads-This is not the. MALONE.

6 Bi-fold authority!] This is the reading of the quarto. The folio gives us :

By foul authority!

There is madness in that difquifition in which a man reasons at once for and against himself upon authority which he knows not to be valid. The quarto is right. JOHNSON.

This is one of the paffages in which the editor of the folio changed words that he found in the quartos, merely because he did not understand them. MALONE.

7 — where reafon can revolt

Without perdition, and lofs affume all reafon

Without revolt;] The words lofs and perdition are used in their common fenfe, but they mean the loss or perdition of reason.

JOHNSON.

• Within my foul there doth commence a fight-] So, in Hamlet: "Sir, in my heart, there was a kind of fighting." MALONE. 9a thing infeparate-] i. e. the plighted troth of lovers. Troilus confiders it infeparable, or at leaft that it ought never to be broken, though he has unfortunately found that it fometimes is. MALONE.

2

more wider-] Thus the old copies. The modern editions, following Mr. Pope, read-far wider; though we have a fimilar phrafeology with the present in almost every one of these plays. MALONE.

[blocks in formation]

As is Arachne's broken woof, to enter.3
Instance, O inftance! ftrong as Pluto's gates;
Creffid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven:
Instance, O inftance! ftrong as heaven itself;
The bonds of heaven are flipp'd, diffolv'd, and
loos'd;

And with another knot, five-finger-tied,*

3 As is Arachne's broken woof, to enter.] Is,-the fyllable wanting in this verfe, the modern editors have fupplied. I hope the mistake was not originally the poet's own; yet one of the quartos reads with the folio, Ariachna's broken woof, and the other Ariathna's. It is not impoffible that Shakspeare might have written Ariadne's broken woof, having confounded the two names or the ftories, in his imagination; or alluding to the clue of thread, by the affiftance of which Thefeus escaped from the Cretan labyrinth. I do not remember that Ariadne's loom is mentioned by any of the Greek or Roman poets, though I find an allufion to it in Humour out of Breath, a comedy, 1607:

[ocr errors]

inftead of these poor weeds, in robes "Richer than that which Ariadne wrought, "Or Cytherea's airy-moving veft."

Again in The Spanish Tragedy:

66

thy treffes, Ariadne's twines,

"Wherewith my liberty thou haft surpriz'd,"

Again, in Muleaffes the Turk, 1610:

"Leads the defpairing wretch into a maze;

"But not an Ariadne in the world

"To lend a clew to lead us out of it,

"The very maze of horror."

Shakspeare, however, might have written-Arachnea; great liberties being taken in fpelling proper names, and efpecially by ancient English writers. Thus we have both Alcmene and Alcumene, Alcmena and Alcumena. STEEVENS.

My quarto, which is printed for R. Bonian, 1609, readsAriachna's broken woof; the other, which is faid to be undated, reads, as Mr. Steevens fays-Ariathna's. The folio-Ariachne's. Mr. Steevens hopes the mistake was not originally the author's, but I think it extremely probable that he pronounced the word as a word of four fyllables. MALONE.

4knot, five-finger-tied,] A knot. tied by giving her hand to Diomed. JOHNSON.

The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,
The fragments, fcraps, the bits, and greafy reliques
Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.

ULrss. May worthy Troilus' be half attach'd With that which here his paffion doth exprefs? TRO. Ay, Greek; and that fhall be divulged well

In characters as red as Mars his heart

Inflam'd with Venus: never did young man fancy
With fo eternal and fo fix'd a foul.

Hark, Greek ;-As much as I do Creffid love,
So much by weight hate I her Diomed:

So, in The Fatal Dowry, by Maffinger, 1632:

"Your fingers tie my heart-ftrings with this touch,
"In true-love knots, which nought but death shall loose."

The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,

The fragments, fcraps, the bits, and greafy reliques

MALONE.

Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.] Vows which fhe has already fwallowed once over. We still say of a faithless man, that he has eaten his words. JOHNSON.

"Her o'er-eaten

The image is not of the most delicate kind. faith" means, I think, her troth plighted to Troilus, of which the was furfeited, and, like one who has over-eaten himself, had thrown ff. All the preceding words, the fragments, feraps, &c. show that this was Shakspeare's meaning. So, in Twelfth Night:

"Give me excess of it [mufick]; that furfeiting
"The appetite may ficken, and fo die."
Again, more appofitely, in King Henry IV. Part II:
"The commonwealth is fick of their own choice;
"Their over-greedy LOVE hath furfeited.-

"O thou fond many! with what loud applaufe
"Did'st thou beat heaven with bleffing Bolingbroke,
"Before he was what thou would'st have him be!
"And being now trimm'd in thine own defires,
"Thou, beaftly feeder, art fo full of him,

"That thou provok'ft thyself to caft him up." MALONE.

6 May worthy Troilus-] Can Troilus really feel on this occafion half of what he utters? A question fuitable to the calm Ulyffes. JOHNSON.

« AnteriorContinuar »