Enter PROTEUS, SILVIA, and JULIA. PRO. Madam, this service I have done for you, (Though you respect not aught your servant doth,) To hazard life, and rescue you from him, That would have forc'd your honour and your love. And less than this, I am sure you cannot give. VAL. How like a dream is this, I see, and hear! Love, lend me patience to forbear a while. [Aside. SIL. O miserable, unhappy that I am! PRO. Unhappy were you, madam, ere I came; But, by my coming, I have made you happy. SIL. By thy approach thou mak'st me most unhappy. JUL. And me, when he approacheth to your pre[Aside. sence. SIL. Had I been seized by a hungry lion, my MEED,] i. e. reward. So, in Titus Andronicus: "Of noble minds, is honourable meed." STEEVENS. Again, in Gammer Gurton's Needle, 1575: "O Christ! that I were sure of it! in faith he should have his mede." So also Spencer, and almost every writer of the time. REED. 1 Whose life's as TENDER to me-] As dear, as much the object of tenderness and care. To tender signifies to take care of; to regard with kindness. So, in the present play, Act IV. Sc. IV. tender her; "I thank you, madam, that you "Poor gentlewoman, my master wrongs her much." MALONE. PRO. What dangerous action, stood it next to death, Would I not undergo for one calm look ? O, 'tis the curse in love, and still approv'd 2, Read over Julia's heart, thy first best love, For whose dear sake thou didst then rend thy faith Thou hast no faith left now, unless thou had'st two, PRO. In love, Who respects friend? SIL. All men but Proteus. PRO. Nay, if the gentle spirit of moving words Can no way change you to a milder form, I'll woo you like a soldier at arms' end; And love you 'gainst the nature of love: force you. SIL. O heaven! PRO. I'll force thee yield to my desire. VAL. Ruffian, let go that rude uncivil touch; Thou friend of an ill fashion! PRO. Valentine ! VAL. Thou common friend, that's without faith or love 3 ; (For such is a friend now,) treacherous man! Thou has beguil'd my hopes; nought but mine eye Could have persuaded me: Now I dare not say, I have one friend alive; thou would'st disprove me. 2 ― and still APPROV'D,] Approv'd is felt, experienced. MALONE. 3 - THAT'S without faith or love;] That's is perhaps here used, not for who is, but for id est, that is to say. MALONE. Who should be trusted, when one's own right hand I am sorry, I must never trust thee more, 4 Who should be trusted, when one's own right hand —] The old copy has not own; which was introduced into the text by Sir T. Hanmer. The second folio, to complete the metre, reads: "Who should be trusted now, when one's right hand —” The addition, like all those made in that copy, appears to have been merely arbitrary; and the modern word is, in my opinion, more likely to have been the author's than the other. MALONE. What!" all at one fell swoop!" are they all arbitrary, when Mr. Malone has honoured so many of them with a place in his text? Being completely satisfied with the reading of the second folio, I have followed it. STEEVENS. Mr. Steevens has more than once endeavoured to show that I have been inconsistent in speaking of the second folio as a book of no authority, and yet adopting certain corrections from that copy. Where is the inconsistency? By arbitrary emendations, I mean conjectures made at the will and pleasure of the conjecturer, and without any authority. Such are Rowe's, Pope's, Theobald's, Hanmer's, &c.; and my assertion is, that all emendations not authorized by authentick copies, printed or manuscript, stand on the same footing, and are to be judged of by their reasonableness and probability; and, therefore, if Sir Thomas Hanmer or Dr. Warburton had proposed an hundred false conjectural emendations, and two evidently just, I should have admitted these two, and rejected all the rest. Mr. Steevens seems to have understood the word arbitrary in the sense of erroneous, a meaning which I believe no other person ever attached to it. Of the conjectural emendations made in that adulterated copy, I admitted many in my former edition, which were unquestionably made in consequence of the conjecturer's ignorance of Shakspeare's phraseology, which have been rejected in the present edition, and the readings of the authentick copy restored. MALONE. 5 The private wound, &c.] I have a little mended the measure. The old edition, and all but Sir Thomas Hanmer's, read: "The private wound is deepest: O time most accurs'd.". JOHNSON. Dr. Johnson, with a view of mending the metre, reads: The VOL. IV. K PRO. My shame and guilt confounds me.— I. tender it here; I do as truly suffer, VAL. Then I am paid; And once again I do receive thee honest :- Is nor of heaven, nor earth; for these are pleas'd; private wound is deepest: O time most curst! a reading which has been adopted by Mr. Steevens. I have adhered to the old copy, because our author has in many other places given us lines of twelve syllables, as I have shewn in the essay on his metre. MALONE. 6 All, that was mine in Silvia, I give thee.] It is, I think, very odd, to give up his mistress thus at once, without any reason alledged. But our author probably followed the stories just as he found them in his novels as well as histories. POPE. This passage either hath been much sophisticated, or is one great proof that the main parts of this play did not proceed from Shakspeare; for it is impossible he could make Valentine act and speak so much out of character, or give to Silvia so unnatural a behaviour, as to take no notice of this strange concession, if it had been made. HANMER. Valentine, from seeing Silvia in the company of Proteus, might conceive she had escaped with him, from her father's court, for the purposes of love, though she could not foresee the violence which his villainy might offer, after he had seduced her under the pretence of an honest passion. If Valentine, however, be supposed to hear all that passed between them in this scene, I am afraid I have only to subscribe to the opinion of my predecessors. STEEVENS. "And, that my love, &c." Transfer these two lines to the end of Thurio's speech in page 135, and all is right. Why then should Julia faint? It is only an artifice, seeing Silvia given up to Valentine, to discover herself to Proteus, by a pretended mistake of the rings. One great fault of this play is the hastening too abruptly, and without due preparation, to the denouement, which JUL. O me unhappy! PRO. Look to the boy. [Faints. VAL. Why, boy! why, wag'! how now? what's the matter? look up; speak. JUL. O good sir, my master charg'd me to deliver a ring to madam Silvia; which, out of my neglect, was never done. PRO. Where is that ring, boy? JUL. Here 'tis : this is it. [Gives a ring. PRO. How! let me see: why this is the ring I gave to Julia. shews that, if it be Shakspeare's, (which I cannot doubt,) it was one of his very early performances. BLACKSTONE. Sir William Blackstone's proposal of transposing these two lines, and giving them in another distinct page, (to say nothing of the hardiness of such a mode of emendation,) is inadmissible; for the word love, which is peculiarly applicable to Valentine, who was the friend of Proteus, would in the mouth of Thurio have no meaning. Surely our author's youth is a sufficient excuse for the hasty and improbable conclusion of this comedy, without looking for any other cause whatsoever. To suppose that, because it is defective in this particular, it therefore was not the production of Shakspeare, shews but little knowledge either of our poet or the human mind. MALONE. 7 Why, boy! why, wag! &c.] Our author, throughout his plays, frequently introduces short prose speeches in the midst of blank verse. So here from the words "O me, unhappy," down to "How! let me see," (inclusive) was evidently intended by him as prose, and exhibited in that form in the old copy. But Mr. Steevens, who throughout his later editions, by arbitrary changes, omissions, and interpolations, whenever it was possible, has forced every thing into blank verse, here reads "what is" for " what's," and in 1793, proposed to substitute the word give for deliverer, though he was not hardy enough to make that violent change. Afterwards he suggested a different emendation, but equally unnecessary. MALONE. 8 - to DELIVER a ring to madam Silvia ;] Surely our author wrote-" Deliver a ring," &c. A verse so rugged as that in the text must be one of those corrupted by the players, or their transcriber. STEEVENS. 9 Pro. How! let me see: &c.] I suspect that this unmetrical passage should be regulated as follows: |
