Complete Works of Samuel Johnson

by Samuel Johnson

  V.i.388 (136,9) [Advertising, and holy] Attentive and faithful.

  V.i.393 (136,l) [be you as free to us] Be as generous to us, pardon us as we have pardoned you.

  V.i.401 (136,2) [That brain’d my purpose] We now use in conversation a like phrase. This it was that knocked my design on the head. Dr. Warburton reads,

  — baned my purpose.

  V.i.413 (137,3) [even from his proper tongue] Even from Angelo’s own tongue. So above.

  In the witness of his proper ear

  To call him villain.

  V.i.438 (138,5) [Against all sense you do importune her] The meaning required is, against all reason and natural affection; Shakespeare, therefore, judiciously uses a single word that implies both; sense signifying both reason and affection.

  V.i.452 (139,6) [‘Till he did look on me] The duke has justly observed that Isabel is importuned against all sense to solicit for Angelo, yet here against all sense she solicits for him. Her argument is extraordinary.

  A due sincerity govern’d his deeds, ‘Till he did look on me; since it is so. Let him not die.

  That Angelo had committed all the crimes charged against him, as far as he could commit them, is evident. The only intent which his act did not overtake, was the defilement of Isabel. Of this Angelo was only intentionally guilty.

  Angela’s crimes were such, as must sufficiently justify punishment, whether its end be to secure the innocent from wrong, or to deter guilt by example; and I believe every reader feels some indignation when he finds him spared. From what extenuation of his crime, can Isabel, who yet supposes her brother dead, form any plea in his favour. Since he was good ‘till he looked on me, let him not die. I am afraid our varlet poet intended to inculcate, that women think ill of nothing that raises the credit of their beauty, and are ready, however virtuous, to pardon any act which they think incited by their own charms.

  V.i.488 (140,7) [But, for those earthly faults, I quit them all] Thy faults, so far as they are punishable on earth, so far as they are cognisable by temporal power, I forgive.

  V.i.499 (141,8) [By this, lord Angelo perceives he’s safe] It is somewhat strange, that Isabel is not made to express either gratitude, wonder or joy at the sight of her brother.

  V.i.501 (141,9) [your evil quits you well] Quits you, recompenses, requites you.

  V.i.502 (141,1) [Look, that you love your wife; her worth, worth yours] Sir T. Hammer reads,

  Her worth works yours.

  This reading is adopted by Dr. Warburton, but for what reason? How does her worth work Angelo’s worth? it has only contributed to work his pardon. The words are, as they are too frequently, an affected gingle, but the sense is plain. Her worth, worth yours; that is, her value is equal to your value, the match is not unworthy of you.

  V.i.504 (141,2) [And yet here’s one in place I cannot pardon] After the pardon of two murderers, Lucio might be treated by the good duke with less harshness; but perhaps the poet intended to show, what is too often seen, that men easily forgive wrongs which are not committed against themselves.

  V.i.509 (142,3) [according to the trick] To my custom, my habitual practice.

  V.i.526 (142,4) [thy other forfeits] Thy other punishments.

  V.i.534 (142,5) [Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness] I have always thought that there is great confusion in this concluding speech. If my criticism would not be censured as too licentious, I should regulate it thus,

  Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness.

  Thanks. Provost, for thy care and secrecy;

  We shall employ thee in a worthier place.

  Forgive him, Angelo, that brought you home

  The head of Ragozine for Claudio’s.

  Ang. Th’ offence pardons itself.

  Duke, There’s more behind

  That is more gratulate. Dear Isabel,

  I have a motion,&c,

  V.i.545 (143,6) General Observation The novel of Cynthio Giraldi, from which Shakespeare is supposed to have borrowed this fable, may be read in Shakespeare illustrated, elegantly translated, with remarks which will assist the enquirer to discover how much absurdity Shakespeare has admitted or avoided. I cannot but suspect that some other had new-modelled the novel of Cynthio, or written a story which in some particulars resembled it, and that Cynthio was not the authour whom Shakespeare immediately followed. The emperour in Cynthio is named Maximine; the duke, in Shakespeare’s enumeration of the persons of the drama, is called Vincentio. This appears a very slight remark; but since the duke has no name in the play, nor is ever mentioned but by his title, why should he be called Vincentio among the persons, but because the name was copied from the story, and placed superfluously at the head of the list by the mere habit of transcription? It is therefore likely that there was then a story of Vincentio duke of Vienna, different from that of Maximine emperour of the Romans.

  Of this play the light or comick part is very natural and pleasing, but the grave scenes, if a few passages be excepted, have more labour than elegance. The plot is rather intricate than artful. The time of the action is indefinite; some time, we know not how much, must have elapsed between the recess of the duke and the imprisonment of Claudio; for he must have learned the story of Mariana in his disguise, or he delegated his power to a man already known to be corrupted. The unities of action and place are sufficiently preserved.

  THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

  I.ii.96 (155,3) [o’er-raught] That is, over-reached.

  I.ii.98 (156,5)

  [As, nimble jugglers, that deceive the eye,

  Dark-working sorcerers, that change the mind,

  Soul-killing witches, that deform the body]

  [W: Drug-working] The learned commentator has endeavoured with much earnestness to recommend his alteration; but, if I may judge of other apprehensions by my own, without great success. This interpretation of soul-killing is forced and harsh. Sir T. Hammer reads soul-selling, agreeable enough to the common opinion, but without such improvement as may justify the change. Perhaps the epithets have only been misplaced, and the lines should be read thus,

  Soul-killing sorcerers, that change the mind;

  Dark-working witches that deform the body.

  This change seems to remove all difficulties.

  By soul-killing I understand destroying the rational faculties by such means as make men fancy themselves beasts.

  I.ii.102 (157,6) [liberties of sin] Sir T. Hammer reads, libertines, which, as the author has been enumerating not acts but persons, seems right.

  II.i.30 (158,8) [How if your husband start some other where?] I cannot but think, that our authour wrote,

  — start some other hare?

  So in Much ado about Nothing, Cupid is said to be a good hare-finder. II.i.32 (159,9) [tho’ she pause] To pause is to rest, to be in quiet.

  II.i.41 (159,1) [fool-begg’d] She seems to mean, by fool-begg’d patience, that patience which is so near to idiotical simplicity, that your next relation would take advantage from it to represent you as a fool, and beg the guardianship of your fortune.

  II.i.82 (161,3) [Am I so round with you, as you with me] He plays upon the word round, which signified spherical applied to himself, and unrestrained, or free in speech or action, spoken of his mistress. So the king, in Hamlet, bids the queen be round with her son.

  II.i.100 (161,5) [too unruly deer] The ambiguity of deer and dear is borrowed, poor as it is, by Waller, in his poem on the Ladies Girdle.

  ”This was my heav’n’s extremest sphere,

  ”This pale that held my lovely deer.”

  II.i.101 (161,6) [poor I am but his stale] The word stale, in our authour, used as a substantive, means, not something offered to allure or attract, but something vitiated with use, something of which the best part has been enjoyed and consumed.

  II.ii.86 (166,4) [Not a man of those, but he hath the wit to lose his hair] That is, Those who have more hair than wit, are easily entrapped by loose women, and suffer the consequences of lew
dness, one of which, in the first appearance of the disease in Europe, was the loss of hair.

  II.ii.173 (169,6) [Be it my wrong, you are from me exempt] Exempt, separated, parted. The sense is, If I am doomed to suffer the wrong of separation, yet injure not with contempt me who am already injured.

  II.ii.210 (171,1) [And shrive you] That is, I will call you to confession, and make you tell your tricks.

  III.i.4 (172,2) [carkanet] seems to have been a necklace or rather chain, perhaps hanging down double from the neck. So Lovelace in his poem,

  The empress spreads her carcanets.

  III.i.15 (173,3) [Marry, so it doth appear By the wrongs I suffer, and the blows I bear] [T: don’t appear] I do not think this emendation necessary. He first says, that his wrongs and blows prove him an ass; but immediately, with a correction of his former sentiment, such as may be hourly observed in conversation, he observes that, if he had been an ass, he should, when he was kicked, have kicked again.

  III.i.101 (177,7) [supposed by the common rout] For suppose I once thought it might be more commodious to substitute supported; but there is no need of change: supposed is founded on supposition, made by conjecture.

  III.i.105 (178,8) [For slander lives upon succession] The line apparently wants two syllables: what they were, cannot now be known. The line may be filled up according to the reader’s fancy, as thus:

  For lasting slander lives upon succession.

  III.ii.27 (180,3) [’Tis holy sport to be a little vain] is light of tongue, not veracious.

  III.ii.64 (181,2) [My sole earth’s heaven, and my heaven’s claim] When be calls the girl his only heaven on the earth, he utters the common cant of lovers. When he calls her his heaven’s claim, I cannot understand him. Perhaps he means that which he asks of heaven.

  III.ii.125 (184,5)

  [S. Ant. Where France? S. Dro. In her forehead; arm’d and reverted, making war against her hair]

  [T, from the first Folio: heir] With this correction and explication Dr. Warburton concurs, and sir T. Hammer thinks an equivocation intended, though he retains hair in the text. Yet surely they have all lost the sense by looking beyond it. Our authour, in my opinion, only sports with an allusion, in which he takes too much delight, and means that his mistress had the French disease. The ideas are rather too offensive to be dilated. By a forehead armed, he means covered with incrusted eruptions: by reverted, he means having the hair turning backwards. An equivocal word must have senses applicable to both the subjects to which it is applied. Both forehead and France might in some sort make war against their hair, but how did the forehead make war against its heir? The sense which I have given immediately occurred to me, and will, I believe, arise to every reader who is contented with the meaning that lies before him, without sending out conjecture in search of refinements.

  IV.ii.19 (192,9) [sere] that is, dry, withered.

  IV.ii.22 (192,1) [Stigmatical in making] This is, marked or stigmatized by nature with deformity, as a token of his vicious disposition.

  IV.ii.35 (193,3) [A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough] [T: A fiend, a fury] There were fairies like hobgoblins, pitiless and rough, and described as malevolent and mischievous, (see 1765, III,143,3)

  IV.ii.39 (193,5) [A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry-foot well] To run counter is to run backward, by mistaking the course of the animal pursued; to draw dry-foot is, I believe, to pursue by the track or prick of the foot; to run counter and draw dry-foot well are, therefore, inconsistent. The jest consists in the ambiguity of the word counter, which means the wrong way in* the chase. and a prison in London. The officer that arrested him was a serjeant of the counter. For the congruity of this jest with the scene of action, let our authour answer.

  IV.iii.13 (196,9) [what, have you got the picture of old Adam new apparel’d] [T: got rid of the picture] The explanation is very good, but the text does not require to be amended.

  IV.iii.27 (`is rest to do more exploits with his mace than a morris pike] [W: a Maurice-pike] This conjecture is very ingenious, yet the commentator talks unnecessarily of the rest of a musket. by which he makes the hero of the speech set up the rest of a musket, to do exploits with a pike. The rest of a pike was a common term, and signified, I believe, the manner in which it was fixed to receive the rush of the enemy. A morris-pike was a pike used in a morris or a military dance, and with which great exploits were done, that is, great feats of dexterity were shewn. There is no need of change.

  IV.iv.78 (202,3) [kitchen-vestal] Her charge being like that of the vestal virgins, to keep the fire burning.

  V.1.137 (210,6) [important letters]Important seems to be for importunate. (1773)

  V.i.298 (216,2) [time’s deformed hand Have written strange defeatures in my face] Defeature is the privative of feature. The meaning is, time hath cancelled my features.

  V.i.406 (220,7) [After so long grief such nativity!] We should surely read. After so long grief, such festivity.

  Nativity lying so near, and the termination being the same of both words, the mistake was easy.

  MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

  I.i.27 (226,3) [no faces truer] That is, none honester, none more sincere.

  I.i.40 (227,7) [challenged Cupid at the flight] The disuse of the bow makes this passage obscure. Benedick is represented as challenging Cupid at archery. To challenge at the flight is, I believe, to wager who shall shoot the arrow furthest without any particular mark. To challenge at the bird-bolt, seems to mean the same as to challenge at children’s archery, with snail arrows such as are discharged at birds. In Twelfth Night Lady Olivia opposes a bird-bolt to a cannon-bullet, the lightest to the heaviest of missive weapons.

  I.i.66 (228,9) [four of his five wits] In our author’s time wit was the general term for intellectual powers. So Davies on the Soul.

  Wit, seeking truth from cause to cause ascends.

  And never rests till it the first attain;

  Will, seeking good, finds many middle ends,

  But never stays till it the last do gain.

  And in another part,

  But if a phrenzy do possess the brain,

  It so disturbs and blots the form of things,

  As fantasy proves altogether vain,

  And to the wit, no true relation brings.

  Then doth the wit, admitting all for true,

  Build fond conclusions on those idle grounds; —

  The wits seem to have reckoned five, by analogy to the five senses, or the five inlets of ideas.

  I.i.79 (229,4) [the gentleman is not in your books] This is a phrase used, I believe, by more than understand it. To be in one’s books is to be in one’s codicils or will, to be among friends set down for legacies.

  I.i.82 (230,5) [young squarer] A squarer I take to be a cholerick, quarrelsome fellow, for in this sense Shakespeare uses the word to square. So in Midsummer Night’s Dream it is said of Oberon and Titalia, that they never meet but they square. So the sense may be, Is there no hot-blooded youth that will keep him company through all his mad pranks?

  I.i.103 (231,6) [You embrace your charge] That is your burthen, your incumbrunce.

  I.i.185 (233,7) [to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder] I know not whether I conceive the jest here intended. Claudio hints his love of Hero. Benedick asks whether he is serious, or whether he only means to jest, and tell them that Cupid is a good hare-finder, and Vulcan a rare carpenter. A man praising a pretty lady in jest, may shew the quick sight of Cupid, but what has it to do with the carpentry of Vulcan? Perhaps the thought lies no deeper than this, Do you mean to tell us as new what we all know already?

  I.i.200 (234,8) [wear his cap with suspicion?] That is, subject his head to the disquiet of jealousy.

  I.i.217 (235,1) [Claud. If this were so, so were it uttered] This and the three next speeches I do not well understand; there seems something omitted relating to Hero’s consent, or to Claudio’s marriage, else I know not what Claudio can wish not to be otherwise. The copies all read alike. Perhaps it may be be
tter thus,

  Claud. If this were so, so were it.

  Bene. Uttered like the old tale, &c.

  Claudio gives a sullen answer, if it is so, so it is. Still there seems something omitted which Claudio and Pedro concur in wishing.

  I.i.243 (236,3) [but that I will have a recheate winded in my forehead] That is, I will wear a horn on my forehead which the huntsman may blow. A recheate is the sound by which dogs are called back. Shakespeare had no mercy upon the poor cuckold, his horn is an inexhaustible subject of merriment.

  1.1.258 (236,4) [notable argument] An eminent subject for satire.

  1.1.259 (237,5) [Adam] Adam Bell was a companion of Robin Hood, as may be seen in Robin Hood’s Garland; in which, if I do not mistake, are these lines,

  For he brought Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough,

  And William of Cloudeslea,

  To shoot with this forester for forty marks,

  And the forester beat them all three.

  (see 1765, III,182,2)

  I.i.290 (238,4) [ere you flout old ends any further, examine your conscience] Before you endeavour to distinguish yourself any more by antiquated allusions, examine whether you can fairly claim them for your own. This, I think is the meaning; or it may be understood in another sense, examine, if your sarcasms do not touch yourself.

  I.iii.14 (241,6) [I cannot hide what I am] This is one of our authour’s natural touches. An envious and unsocial mind, too proud to give pleasure, and too sullen to receive it, always endeavours to hide its malignity from the world and from itself, under the plainness of simple honesty, or the dignity of haughty independence.

  I.iii.19 (241,7) [claw no man in his humour] To claw is to flatter.

  So the pope’s claw-backs, in bishop Jewel, are the pope’s flatterers.