"I profess
Myself an enemy to all other joys
That the most precious square of sense possesses."
The MS. corrector reads "precious sphere," which Mr Singer trumps by playing out "spacious sphere." Both of these new readings are good, considered as modernisations of Shakespeare. But the old text is not to be doubted: it is quite intelligible, and therefore ought not to be disturbed. "Square" means compass, area.
In the following passage, too, we advocate the retention of the old text, though the MS. correction is plausible—is one of the best we have been favoured with. Cordelia entreats her father to
"Make known
It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness—
No unchaste action, or dishonoured step,
That hath deprived me of your grace and favour."
Mr Collier remarks: "Murder (spelt murther in the folios) seems here entirely out of place; Cordelia could never contemplate that anybody would suspect her of murder; she is referring to 'vicious blots' and 'foulness' in respect to virtue, and there cannot, we apprehend, be a doubt that the old corrector has given us the real language of Shakespeare when he puts the passage thus—
"Make known
It is no vicious blot, nor other foulness.'"
But the King of France has just before said—
"Sure her offence
Must be of such unnatural degree
That monsters it;"
that is, that makes a monster of it—it can be nothing short of some crime of the deepest dye—and therefore "murder" does not seem to be so much out of place in the mouth of Cordelia. Stoop for "step," as proposed by the corrector, is still less to be accepted. Had he never heard of a faux pas?
Act II. Scene 4.—The fool, declaring that he will not desert his master, sings—
"But I will stay; the fool will stay,
And let the wise man fly.
The knave turns fool that runs away,
The fool no knave, perdy."
Dr Johnson proposed to correct the two last lines thus—
"The fool turns knave that runs any,
The knave no fool, perdy."
And the MS. corrector does the same. Mr Singer, however, declares "that the words knave and fool are in their right places in the old text." We wish that he had explained his view; for, to our apprehension, the new reading is the only one which makes sense.
One or two very small amendments here present themselves, which on the score of taste are not altogether objectionable, but the superiority of which is by no means so undoubted as to entitle them to a place in the text. The following is one of them—probably the best—Act IV. Scene 1, Edgar, in disguise, says—
"Yet better thus, and known to be contemned,
Than still contemned and flattered."
The meaning is—'tis better to be thus contemned and known to one's-self to be contemned—than contemned, and at the same time so flattered as not to know that you are contemned. The old corrector proposes—
"Yes, better thus unknown to be contemned," &c.,
a reading (all but the yes) suggested long ago by Dr Johnson—but one in no respect superior in merit to the common text. The common reading "our mean (i.e. our mediocrity) secures us," is greatly to be preferred to the MS. correction "our wants secure us." We confess, however, a predilection for the "lust-dieted man that braves your ordinance" (the ordinance of heaven), instead of the common reading, "slaves your ordinance," although this is defended by Dr Johnson against Warburton, who long ago proposed the word (braves) which appears on the margins of the folio.
Scene 6.—
"Behold yond' simpering dame
Whose face between her forks presageth snow,
Who minces virtue, and does shake the head
To hear of pleasure's name.
"Who mimics virtue" say the margins, accommodating Shakespeare to the taste and understanding of a degenerate period. But, "who minces virtue" is far finer: it means, who affects a nicety of virtue. We think
