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MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

ACT I. SCENE 1.

"Leon. How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?
Mess. But few of any sort, and none of name."

Upon this passage Mr. Dyce remarks:

According to Monk Mason, of any sort' means of any kind whatsoever; an interpretation which, though manifestly wrong, has found approvers. The reply of the Messenger is equivalent to-But few gentlemen of any rank, and none of celebrity. So presently he says to Beatrice, 'I know none of that name, lady; there was none such in the army of any sort.' So, too, in Midsummer-Night's Dream, act iii. sc. 2;

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and in Jonson's Every Man in his Humour,-Works, i. 24, ed. Gifford; "A gentleman of your sort, parts," &c. and in A Warning for Faire Women, 1599;

"The Queene our mistris

:

Allowes this bounty to all commers, much more

To gentlemen of your sort."

A Few Notes, &c., p. 38.

I cannot see the force of Mr. Dyce's reasons. The Messenger means, according to my understanding of his words, 'But few gentlemen of any description, and none of distinction,'

Mr. Dyce's quotations do not aid him; because either of the synonymous words 'description,' 'condition,' 'position,' ‘kind,' fills the place of "sort" in all the passages cited by him. Thus :

"I know none of that name, lady; there was none such in the army of any description."

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If ́sort' mean ‘rank,' par excellence, i.e. noble rank, -to say 'noble sort' would be to be guilty of the worst sort of tautology. 'Sort' would, in that case, need,--in fact, admit, no such adjective before it; and the lines from A Midsummer-Night's Dream furnish proof positive that 'sort,' when thus used, means merely 'kind.' The word is applied to persons, in this sense, and with various adjectives before it, throughout Shakespeare's works; as,-"spirits of vile sort," "the vulgar sort of market-men;" and even, "the poor men of your sort," and "the younger sort," as well as "gentlemen of good sort" and "prisoners of good sort;" and we have also " a sort of men," and "all sorts of men." There is only one passage in all Shakespeare's works which would seem to sustain Mr. Dyce, and which, strange to say, so accomplished a Shakesperian scholar as he has failed to quote. In Measure for Measure 'sort' is used, without

an adjective, evidently to mean, high rank or station. The Duke is about to return to Vienna, and Angelo says to Escalus:

"Well, I beseech you, let it be proclaim'd:

Betimes i' the morn, I'll call you at your house.
Give notice to such men of sort and suit,

As are to meet him."

But here it is used as we sometimes use 'character;' saying, a man of character,' i. e. a man of excellent character. Such cannot be the use of 'sort' in the instances previously quoted by Mr. Dyce; for unless circumstances evidently point to such a signification, and a word is used absolutely and without an adjective, it cannot be thus arbitrarily raised from its inferior and general sense to one higher and particular.

ACT II. SCENE 3.

"Claud. Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses,-"O sweet Benedick! God give me patience!"

Here "curses" is, almost without a doubt, an error of the press for cries, to which it is changed by the corrector of Mr. Collier's folio.

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ACT III. SCENE 1.

Hero being asked when she is to be married, replies, Why, evrie day, to-morrow." The answer is incomprehensible, on account of a misprint which is thus corrected in Mr. Collier's folio, "Why, in a day,-to-morrow." There can be no doubt that this restores the author's words.

SCENE 2.

"D. Pedro. —he hath twice or thrice cut Cupid's bowstring, and the little hangman dare not shoot at him."

Mr. Dyce conjectures that "hangman" here is equivalent to 'rascal,' 'rogue,' and quotes passages from writers contemporaneous with Shakespeare, in which 'hangman' is used as a general term of reproach. There can be no doubt of the correctness of Mr. Dyce's supposition, which seems, in fact, almost too obvious to need support or bear statement. Shakespeare unquestionably used the word in the same sense in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, as one of the correctors of Mr. Collier's folio happily conjectured.

"Launce. Ay, sir; the other squirrel was stolen from me by a hangman boy in the market place." Act IV. Sc. 4.

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"Leon. Thought I thy spirits stronger than thy shames, Myself would, on the rearward of reproaches,

Strike at thy life."

"Rearward" is misprinted reward in the first folio; but the error of the press is corrected in the second. Mr. Collier's MS. corrector, however, changes "rearward" for the tame word hazard; and Mr. Collier calls it "the true reading."

In Shakespeare's plays 'rearward,' it is true, does not elsewhere occur with this signification, a fact which, how

ever, is of little consequence; but had Mr. Collier or his MS. protégé ever read, marked, or understood those lines of noble sorrow in the 90th Sonnet ?

"Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;

Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow;
And do not drop in for an after-loss.

Ah! do not, when my heart hath scaped this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquered woe:

Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,

To linger out a purposed overthrow."

" Leon.

O she is fallen

Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea

Hath drops too few to wash her clean again,
And salt too little, which may season give
To her foul tainted flesh."

Mr. Collier's folio changes the hemistich to,

"To her soul-tainted flesh."

It were well for Mr. Collier's reputation had he merely set this forth as a happy conjecture, or even as the true reading. But he must give for it this extraordinary, this preposterous reason-" Hero's flesh was tainted to the soul by the accusation brought against her." What a focus of blunders there is in that unfortunate sentence! It is hardly necessary to point out, that Leonato supposed his daughter's soul, and, figuratively, her flesh, to be tainted by her moral crime. Indeed, it is noteworthy that one consequence of the publication of Mr. Collier's Notes and Emendations is the self-exposure of the astounding fact, that this veteran in the field of Shakesperian literature has not a nice and true appreciation of Shakespeare. His learning no one can

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