This has, often, a good effect, and is one of the varieties most common in Shakspeare.
RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE.
Act III. Old Woman"s speech:--
--I fear he will knock my Brains out for lying.
Mr. Seward discards the words "for lying", because "most of the things spoke of Estifania are true, with only a little exaggeration, and because they destroy all appearance of measure." (Colman"s note.)
Mr. Seward had his brains out. The humor lies in Estifania"s having ordered the Old Woman to tell these tales of her; for though an intriguer, she is not represented as other than chaste; and as to the metre, it is perfectly correct.
Ib.
"Marg". As you love me, give way.
"Leon". It shall be better, I will give none, madam, &c.
The meaning is: "It shall be a better way, first;--as it is, I will not give it, or any that you in your present mood would wish."
THE LAWS OF CANDY.
Act I. Speech of Melitus:--
Whose insolence and never yet match"d pride Can by no character be well express"d, But in her only name, the proud Erota.
Colman"s note.
The poet intended no allusion to the word "Erota" itself; but says that her very name, "the proud Erota," became a character and adage; as we say, a Quixote or a Brutus: so to say an "Erota," expressed female pride and insolence of beauty.
Ib. Speech of Antinous:-
Of my peculiar honors, not deriv"d From "successary", but purchas"d with my blood.--
The poet doubtless wrote "successry," which, though not adopted in our language, would be, on many occasions, as here, a much more significant phrase than ancestry.
THE LITTLE FRENCH LAWYER.
Act I. sc. 1. Dinant"s speech:--
Are you become a patron too? "Tis a new one, No more on"t, &c.
Seward reads:--
Are you become a patron too?
_How long Have you been conning this speech?_ "Tis a new one, &c.
If conjectural emendation, like this, be allowed, we might venture to read:--
Are you become a patron _to a new tune_?
or,
Are you become a patron? "Tis a new _tune_.
Ib.
"Din". Thou wouldst not willingly Live a protested coward, or be call"d one?
"Cler". Words are but words.
"Din". Nor wouldst thou take a blow?
Seward"s note.
O miserable! Dinant sees through Cleremont"s gravity, and the actor is to explain it. "Words are but words," is the last struggle of affected morality.
VALENTINIAN.
Act I. sc. 3. It is a real trial of charity to read this scene with tolerable temper towards Fletcher. So very slavish--so reptile--are the feelings and sentiments represented as duties. And yet remember he was a bishop"s son, and the duty to G.o.d was the supposed basis.
Personals, including body, house, home, and religion;--property, subordination, and inter-community;--these are the fundamentals of society. I mean here, religion negatively taken,--so that the person be not compelled to do or utter, in relation of the soul to G.o.d, what would be, in that person, a lie;--such as to force a man to go to church, or to swear that he believes what he does not believe. Religion, positively taken, may be a great and useful privilege, but cannot be a right,--were it for this only that it cannot be pre-defined. The ground of this distinction between negative and positive religion, as a social right, is plain. No one of my fellow-citizens is encroached on by my not declaring to him what I believe respecting the super-sensual; but should every man be ent.i.tled to preach against the preacher, who could hear any preacher? Now it is different in respect of loyalty. There we have positive rights, but not negative rights;--for every pretended negative would be in effect a positive;--as if a soldier had a right to keep to himself, whether he would, or would not, fight. Now, no one of these fundamentals can be rightfully attacked, except when the guardian of it has abused it to subvert one or more of the rest. The reason is, that the guardian, as a fluent, is less than the permanent which he is to guard. He is the temporary and mutable mean, and derives his whole value from the end. In short, as robbery is not high treason, so neither is every unjust act of a king the converse. All must be attacked and endangered. Why? Because the king, as "a" to A., is a mean to A. or subordination, in a far higher sense than a proprietor, as "b". to B. is a mean to B. or property.
Act ii. sc. 2. Claudia"s speech:-
Chimney-pieces! &c.
The whole of this speech seems corrupt; and if accurately printed,--that is, if the same in all the prior editions, irremediable but by bold conjecture. ""Till" my tackle," should be, I think, "while," &c.
Act iii. sc. 1. B. and F. always write as if virtue or goodness were a sort of talisman, or strange something, that might be lost without the least fault on the part of the owner. In short, their chaste ladies value their chast.i.ty as a material thing--not as an act or state of being; and this mere thing being imaginary, no wonder that all their women are represented with the minds of strumpets, except a few irrational humorists, far less capable of exciting our sympathy than a Hindoo, who has had a bason of cow-broth thrown over him;--for this, though a debasing superst.i.tion, is still real, and we might pity the poor wretch, though we cannot help despising him. But B. and F."s Lucinas are clumsy fictions. It is too plain that the authors had no one idea of chast.i.ty as a virtue, but only such a conception as a blind man might have of the power of seeing, by handling an ox"s eye. In The Queen of Corinth, indeed, they talk differently; but it is all talk, and nothing is real in it but the dread of losing a reputation. Hence the frightful contrast between their women (even those who are meant for virtuous) and Shakspeare"s. So, for instance, The Maid in the Mill:--a woman must not merely have grown old in brothels, but have chuckled over every abomination committed in them with a rampant sympathy of imagination, to have had her fancy so drunk with the "minutiae" of lechery as this icy chaste virgin evinces hers to have been.