Some Textual Difficulties in Shakespeare/Runaway's Eyes
RUNAWAY'S EYES
Juliet. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a waggoner
As Phaeton would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaways' eyes may wink, and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen. . . .
More time and effort seem to have been spent on this crux than upon any other line in Shakespeare. In Furness' Variorum edition of the play, a crown octavo volume, twenty-eight pages of fine print are devoted to a review of the attempts that have been made to clear up the meaning; it occupies, in fact, the whole index to the play. The question which has been so long argued is—What does the "runaways" of the First Folio mean? And should it be printed runaway's or runaways'? In what sense also, or in what connection, is this winking to be understood?
Gollancz says that runaways' eyes is "the main difficulty of the passage, which has been, perhaps, the greatest crux or puzzle in Shakespeare." R. Grant White, in his Shakespeare's Scholar, p. 373, says: "The error will probably remain forever uncorrected unless a word which I venture to suggest seems as unexceptionable to others as it does to me." He then suggests rumour's eyes. Professor Charles F. Johnson, in his Shakespeare and his critics (1909) says: "In some cases, like 'that runaways eyes may wink,' in "Romeo and Juliet," it is impossible to hit upon a satisfactory reading, though we should like exceedingly to know who 'runaway' was. The conjecture 'rumour's eyes' is not altogether satisfactory, and the question is insoluble."
White, who at first felt certain that it should be edited rumour's, later changed his view to noonday's, while Hudson, on the other hand, printed it rumour's (1880). Thus the struggle with the passage has veered back and forth from the time of Theobald (1733) up to the present day. Our ancestors have seen this puzzling word of the Folio altered by editors in all sorts of ways. Knight's note in his pictorial edition will give a slight idea of the trouble:
"This passage has been a perpetual source of contention to the commentators. Their difficulties are well represented by Warburton's question: 'What run-aways are these whose eyes Juliet is wishing to be stopped?' Warburton says Phoebus is the runaway, Steevens proves that Night is the runaway. Douce thinks that Juliet is the runaway. Monck Mason is confident that the passage ought to be, 'that Renomy's eyes may wink,' Renomy being a new personage created out of the French Renommée, and answering, we suppose, to the 'Rumour' of Spenser." Knight then adopts unawares, the suggestion of a compositor named Jackson. Others, of the present day, think that "runaways" are prying spectators on the street but yet wonder whether, after all, the word may not mean the steeds of the sun whose eyes will wink at sunset.
More serious than this change in the interpretation of the word itself is the fact that, in the hope of wresting sense out of the passage as a whole, the words are cut up into quite different sentences in various editions, the editor ignoring the punctuation of the First Folio entirely and putting a period here and a semicolon there as he sees a chance to make something else out of it; and this effort is still going on. Neilson's edition, for instance (1909), has gone back to a sentence division quite different from that of the Globe text of 1895 long considered standard by Shakespeare scholars generally. It must be evident however that any ingenious effort with exclamation points, periods and commas must be vain so long as we remain in the dark as to the sense of the one word which gives the point of view of the whole passage. As so much of the text is involved, and that in the eloquent climactic passage where Juliet expectantly awaits the coming of the husband she has just married, it is a point that will be well worth settling permanently.
In starting out, let us keep one fact to the fore: Shakespeare was always true to human nature in any set of circumstances. He did not deal in elaborate mythological allusions and ingenious figures of speech in and for themselves; his expressions are such as will throw the deepest and most searching light upon the human heart, and that with an especial regard for the character speaking. Second: he does not jump quickly from one figure of speech to another with such mere liveliness of fancy as many critics think. He did this advisedly according to what might be accomplished by it; and in other cases he shows a remarkable faculty for sticking to the subject, so to speak, in long comparisons which are especially calculated to throw complete and dwelling light on the spirit of the speaker. He did this especially at those places where he wished to engage our minds for a longer space upon some point important in the action or in our conception of the character. The present is a case in point. Shakespeare fully expected, when he wrote this passage, that because he had paved the way and thrown about the word so many figurative expressions, all tending to the same point of view, we would understand the sense of "runaway's" at once and gather the beauty of this way of saying it. Being of this nature, it is a passage which I might explain quickly by internal evidence alone; but as it is a case where scholarship has been at work, almost two hundred years, any seeming solution of mine would naturally be received with skepticism even though it were plausible. I must therefore not only prove it internally but prove it again by reference to other passages in the plays which show Shakespeare's natural point of view in just such cases as Juliet's.
As all lovers of Shakespeare are not supposed to be perfect in Elizabethan English, we shall set "runaway's" aside a moment while we dispose of the word "wink." This word, in Shakespeare's time, was not confined to its present usual meaning of shutting the eyes momentarily. It meant also the shutting of the eyes with the intention of keeping them closed, in which sense it is used repeatedly by Shakespeare. This is well enough understood by Shakespeare scholars, and was known to all those editors who have made an attempt to read the passage.
Let us now turn our attention to "Henry V," v, 2, 327. We here see Shakespeare dealing with the subject of woman's modesty. Henry is trying to win the hand of Katherine the French princess. He is now conversing with Burgundy upon her reticence. Burgundy describes the princess as "a maid yet rosed over with the virgin crimson of modesty." Her maiden modesty and backwardness to consent to marriage he explains as due to "her naked seeing self." To which Henry replies, "Yet they do wink and yield, as love is blind and enforces."
There cannot, of course, be any doubt as to the meaning of wink as used in this connection. We see then that Shakespeare, wishing to put stress on maiden modesty, takes the standpoint that it will only yield under conditions of darkness. Now Juliet is in a like position in regard to what she calls love's amorous rites. She is waiting secretly in the shadows of her father's orchard for the appearance of the husband whom she has married but a few hours before and whom she is to receive in her own chamber for the first time that night. She was scarce acquainted with him when she married him; she is a maid like Katherine though married. We find her modesty accentuated by having her look forward to the time when "strange love, grown bold, think true love acted simple modesty." At present, as she waits anxiously in the orchard, she has neither grown bold nor does the act of love seem modest to her. Here then we find two parallel cases as regards ante-nuptial modesty, and in both cases we see the word "wink" chosen. In Katherine's case there is no question as to its referring to darkness, and the wink refers to her own eyes. We shall therefore conclude, tentatively, that in Juliet's case it is the same. It is her own eyes that are supposed to wink; but as darkness is just falling it allows of this winking, or blinding, being accomplished in a different way.
But if it is her own sight she is referring to, we now have to find a fit meaning for runaway's, because the text reads, "that runaway's eyes may wink." If we are going to assume that it is her eyes that are referred to, then she is the runaway; and now the question arises: In what sense may she be considered a runaway? That she has simply run away from home, being out in her father's orchard, is hardly satisfactory; it does not fit the elaborate figure of speech. To regard her as a runaway merely because she went secretly to Friar Laurence to be married proves equally futile when put to the test. For we are still left with the problem of finding out how or why, in that sense of running away, she should wish her eyes to close or wink? She is contemplating actual darkness in the oncoming of night, from which it will be seen that her having merely run away from home for a while that day does not apply with any sense to her present vein of thought. Even the poorest of critics, with few exceptions, have seen that the solution here is not to come from a very literal point of view. Whatever Shakespeare's meaning may be, the word has some figurative application which is more illuminating.
Let us turn next to "All's Well that Ends Well." The chaste Diana, whose Italian upbringing, like Juliet's, has made womanly modesty the one great meaning of life to her, finds herself contemplating a crucial moment. She is dealing with Bertram under circumstances of secrecy; their relations, if Bertram has his way, are to be by stealth. Certain words rise to her lips as she contemplates the step of deserting her colors and leaving her girlhood forever behind her. As she expresses it, she is in a pass where "we" (meaning women generally) "forsake ourselves." Now forsake certainly means to desert or give up what we feel ought to be clung to; and so, reading this "All's Well" passage in the strict light of the context we find one of Shakespeare's women regarding herself, in connection with the giving up of her principles of maidenhood, as a deserter or runaway. It is very apt and luminous of her inner life. In "Romeo and Juliet" we see Shakespeare dealing with a young Italian girl of the same type of womanhood. She and Romeo have been secretly married, and in the evening of that same day we see her waiting, in a transport of anticipation, among the orchard trees. The blood has mounted to her cheeks as she sees her girlhood about to be relinquished; she has a lively sense of the too garish day; and being so modest she wishes night to fall speedily so that her own eyes may wink, or be blinded; for, as she says:
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites,
And by their own beauties;
Which is to say, without eyes or the help of light. But deeper in her consciousness than this natural reticence, is the feeling that she is deserting that which has been the standard of her whole life—a standard of Madonna-like maidenhood which has been her whole mode of existence and which has been instilled into Italian womanhood especially for generations. It is quite a step to take, in her case as in Diana's. She is a runaway; and may not the meaning be as luminous in one place as the other? The wording is essentially the same and the cases are parallel.
We have now found two passages, each of which throws light on this one line, and which, considered in combination, give this line complete and consistent sense so far as it may be considered separately. Accepting this meaning theoretically we must now put it to the actual and conclusive test. It must fit the whole context. If we have found the meaning, then that meaning, being Shakespeare's, will fall in with and illuminate the whole passage.
Not only this, but every word of the passage, having that unity and continual reference to the central idea which is characteristic of Shakespeare's longer and more elaborate comparisons, will focus its light on this one word and show it as having the very idea we have conjectured.
Upon examination we find that it does so.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway's eyes may wink—
It is characteristic of Shakespeare that his characters, in moments of high feeling, draw the whole universe into their own point of view. They see the world, as we all do, in the light of self. This is very strongly brought out in Lear when he addresses the storm as being concerned wholly with his own interests; but it is the same in all of Shakespeare's work. He brings out always that we see the world through our own eyes; the universe takes on the immediate hue of the speaker's thoughts in regard to self. In the above passage we see suddenly that Juliet is regarding the universe in the light of a bed! The curtains, which have been gathered together and drawn back in the daytime, after the manner of beds in those days, will now spread out and come close together. What will be the result? Darkness in the bed. The occupant's eyes will then wink, or be in darkness, even when they are open; nothing need be seen;—which exactly suits the desires of the modesty to which this passage refers. If Juliet is seeing night from her own standpoint, then there is no doubt as to whose eyes will be shut or blinded; and in that case there can be no question as to who "runaway" is or in what sense she is a deserter.
The whole passage insists upon being understood in that sense.
Hood my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks
With thy black mantle.
In the days when falconry was a pastime, the falcon or hunting hawk, which was very shy and difficult to tame, was carried about with a black hood slipped over its head so that it could not see. This alone ought to be sufficient to settle the question as to whose eyes it is that are supposed to wink. Juliet, speaking from her own point of view, makes it plain what her attitude toward the oncoming darkness is. It is not simply that her blushes may not be seen but that she may not see. In fact, Shakespeare speaks of the blushes to make all the more vivid the image of the hood going down over her own head. And once it is proved who it was that was to wink, it is inevitable, by the sentence itself, who runaway is supposed to be. That point I believe we have now taken up and proved in all possible ways: we have seen like usage and a like point of view in two other cases in the plays; we have seen that our interpretation is in keeping with Shakespeare's conception of his ideal women; we have found also that it is harmonious with Shakespeare's way of making his characters speak in moments of deep feeling; and we have found that the line so interpreted and read in connection with its own immediate context illumines the whole passage, the words of which in turn converge all their light upon it as upon a central idea. As all hope of solving any of the remaining Shakespearean cruxes has been practically, and I might say confidently, given up in the last ten or twenty years, this passage has been marked "hopelessly corrupt," as in Neilson's recent edition, on the theory that a passage which no one could ever solve could not possibly be as Shakespeare wrote it. The Globe accordingly places the obolus against it. And Professor Johnson, whose recent book I have mentioned in the beginning, voices the generally accepted opinion that what has not been solved by this time will never be solved. This state of affairs is rather embarrassing to one who would fain come forth and invite the world to re-study Shakespeare with him. It is difficult enough to state the cruxes, with which the human mind seems to have gone completely astray, in a way that will make them simple, without having to struggle against the preconception that one is simply working in ambitious ignorance. It creates a state of mind which is unsympathetic and therefore hard to help. But yet what beauty is hidden away in them! When you consider the feelings of Juliet in the light not merely of her modesty but of her whole previous state of being as a woman whose one ideal was chastity, such a step as marriage was like deserting the very world of maidenhood. What a stroke of truth then to simply have her say the word runaway! So much in so little.
Dowden's explanation is: "The central motive of the speech is 'Come night, come Romeo.' Having invoked night to spread the curtain, Juliet says, with a thought of her own joyful wakefulness, 'Yonder sun may sleep' (wink having commonly this sense); and then she calls on Romeo to leap to her arms." He agreed with Warburton that "runaway's" means Phoebus or the sun. With the rest of them however he found difficulty in proving that it was well to call the sun a runaway when Juliet was complaining of its being slow. He tried however—with results remarkably hard to understand.
The result of trying a different sentence division, as instanced in Neilson's edition (1906) is that it has left on hand the following statement as a separate sentence.
Untalked of and unseen
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites,
And by their own beauties; etc.
Can anyone imagine Shakespeare tendering the piece of valuable information conveyed in these first two lines!
The sentence division of the First Folio is correct. It is from this standpoint that I have explained the passage. The Globe text is quite acceptable in this regard; but the "runaways'" of this edition should be changed to "runaway's."