CRITICAL NOTES.

ACT I., SCENE 1.

Page 140. The Heavens continue their love! - The original has Loves instead of love. The latter is shown to be right by the next speech: "I think there is not in the world either malice or matter to alter it."

ACT I., SCENE 2.

P. 142. I'm question'd by my fear of what may chance
Or breed upon our absence: may there blow

No sneaping winds at home, to make us say,

This is put forth too truly! In the first of these lines, the original has fears instead of fear, and, in the second, that may instead of may there. The latter is Warburton's reading, as it is also that of Collier's second folio. I do not see how the last clause can be understood otherwise than as referring to fear; so that either the antecedent ought evidently to be in the singular, or else we ought to read These are instead of This is. The passage has troubled the editors a good deal, and various other changes have been made or proposed.

P. 143.

I'll give you my commission,

To let him there a month behind the gest, &c. · So Hanmer. The original has “I'll give him my commission." Mr. Joseph Crosby sustains the old reading, as in accordance with the usage of the North of England. His comment at least throws light on the question: “Of the two directly opposite meanings of the word let, viz., to detain or hinder, and to allow or permit, the latter is, I believe, the only meaning used in the North. I'll let you do so and so,' is an every-day

· idiom for 'you have my permission to do so and so.' I have heard a thousand times such expressions as these: 'I'll let my boy at school another year'; that is, 'I'll let him remain,' &c.: 'John is making a

good job, and I think I had better let him at it awhile longer.' In the present instance, I'll give him my commission, to let him there a month behind the gest,' &c., a Westmoreland Hermione would be instantly recognized as meaning to say, 'I'll give him [his Majesty my husband] my permit to stay or remain at your Court a month after the day named on the royal scroll for his departure.'”

P. 143. I love thee not a jar o' the clock behind

What lady e'er her lord. — The old text reads "What lady she her lord.” The word she seems very odd here; editors have naturally questioned it; and some read "What lady should her lord"; adopting a change written in the margin of Lord Ellesmere's copy of the first folio. The abbreviation of should might indeed be easily misprinted she; but I think should misses the right sense. Not how any lady ought to love, but how any lady does love, her husband, seems to be the speaker's thought. See foot-note 7.

P. 144.

We knew not

The doctrine of ill-doing, no, nor dream'd

That any did. So the second folio. The first lacks no.

P. 145. God's grace to boot! - So Walker. The original omits God's. See notes on "God save his Majesty," page 117; also on “God save your Honour,” vol. vi. page 253.

P. 145.

You may ride's

With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs, ere

With spur we heat an acre.

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I at one time thought we ought to read, with Collier's second folio, we clear an acre." But further consideration and the judicious help of Mr. Joseph Crosby have convinced me that the old text is right. See foot-note II.

P. 146. From heartiness, from bounty's fertile bosom. — So Hanmer and Collier's second folio. The old text, "from Bountie, fertile Bosome."

P. 148. Affection, thy intention stabs the centre!

Thou dost make possible, things not so held;

Communicatest with dreams,—how can this be? —
With what's unreal thou coactive art,

And fellow'st nothing: then 'tis very credent

Thou mayst cojoin with something; and thou dost,

And that beyond commission, (as I find it,)

Ay, even to the infection of my brains

And hardening of my brows. It would be something strange if a transcriber or compositor or proof-reader found his way rightly through such a tangled puzzle, or rather bramble-bush, as we have here. Accordingly, the original has, in the seventh line, "and I find it," and, in the eighth, "And that to the infection." I have little doubt that, amidst so many ands, that word got repeated out of place in the seventh line, and that, in the eighth, And that crept in, for the same cause, from the line before. In other respects, I give the nine lines, verbatim, just as they stand in the original: the punctuation is there so disordered, that no one now thinks of adhering to it.

The commentators differ widely in their interpretation of this hard passage. In fact, the passage has been a standing poser to editors from Rowe downwards: to Rowe it was so much so, that he boldly changed the first line to "Imagination, thou dost stab to centre." And some others understand affection as equivalent to imagination: but I more than doubt whether the word ever bears that sense in Shakespeare; though he certainly uses it with considerable latitude, not to say looseness, of meaning. I reproduce what seem to me the two best explanations I have met with :

"In this place, affection seems to be taken in its usual acceptation, and means the passion of love, which, from its possessing the powers which Leontes here describes, is often called in Shakespeare by the name of Fancy. Leontes addresses part of this speech to his son; but his wife and Polixenes, who are supposed to be in sight, are the principal objects of his attention; and, as he utters it in the utmost perturbation of mind, we are not to expect from him a connected discourse, but a kind of rhapsody, interrupted by frequent breaks and starts of passion; as thus: 'Sweet villain! - Most dearest! - My collop! Can thy dam? May it be?' In answer to this last question, may it be? and to show the possibility of Hermione's falsehood, he begins to descant upon the power of love; but has no sooner pronounced the word affection than, casting his eyes on Hermione, he says to her, rather of her, in a low voice, 'thy intention stabs the centre !' And if we suppose that in speaking these words the actor strikes his breast, it would be a further explanation of his meaning. After that, he proceeds again in his argument for a line and a half, when we have another break, How can this be? He then proceeds with more connection, and says, 'If love can be coactive with what is unreal, and

have communication with non-entities, it is probable that it may cojoin with something real in the case of Hermione'; and, having proved it possible, he concludes that it certainly must be so. The words beyond commission allude to the commission he had given Hermione to prevail on Polixenes to defer his departure. This is the light in which this passage strikes me; but I am by no means confident that my idea of it is just. — Intention in this passage means eagerness of attention, or of desire; and is used in the same sense as in The Merry Wives of Windsor, where Falstaff says, 'She did course over my exteriors with such a greedy intention, that the appetite of her eye did seem to scorch me up like a burning-glass.” ” — - MASON.

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Affection here means sympathy. Intention is intenseness. The centre is the solid globe conceived as the centre of the Universe. The allusion is to the powers ascribed to sympathy between the human system and all Nature, however remote or occult. Hence Leontes, like Othello, finds in his very agitation a proof that it corresponds not with a fancy but a reality. And that beyond commission, that is, it is very credent that sympathy shall betray a crime to the injured person, not only at the time of commission, but even after, — beyond the time of commission."— SINGER.

I should be not unwilling to accept this explanation, if I could see how to reconcile it with the latter part of the passage in question. Here I cannot but think that Leontes refers to something, not as acting in his own mind, and revealing to him what others have done in secret, but as acting in the person of his wife, and impelling her to crime, or causing her to do that which makes him "a horned monster." Nor can I understand the words beyond commission as having any reference to time. It seems to me that commission bears the same sense here as a little before, "I give you my commission to let him there a month," &c.; that is, authority or permission: beyond what is allowed or warranted by the bond of wedlock. So that the meaning, as I take it, is, that this something, whatever it may be, which holds intercourse with dreams, and co-operates with things that are not, has so infected Hermione, as to make her transcend the lawful freedom of a wife, or pass beyond the limits prescribed by her marriage-vows. See foot-notes 21 and 23.

But perhaps the most indigestible part of my explanation lies in the meaning attached to centre. Yet I do not see how the word can well bear any other sense here than it does in the next scene, where, in accordance with the old astronomy, it clearly means the Earth : “If I

mistake in those foundations which I build upon, the centre is not big enough to bear a schoolboy's top." So, again, in Troilus and Cressida, i. 3: "The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, observe degree, priority, and place," &c. Also in Hamlet, ii. 2 : “I will find where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed within the centre."

Perhaps, after all, the passage in hand was not meant to be very intelligible; and so it may be an apt instance of a man losing his wits in a rapture of jealousy. For how can a man be expected to discourse in orderly sort, when his mind is thus all in a spasm?

I am moved to add Staunton's strange note, though I have to confess myself unable to see much fitness in it. Staunton punctuates most of the passage interrogatively, and connects the first line with what precedes, thus: "May't be, affection, thy intention stabs the centre ? ?" He explains as follows: Affection here means imagination; intention signifies intencion or intensity; and the allusion, though the commentators have all missed it, is plainly to that mysterious principle of Nature by which a parent's features are transmitted to the offspring. Pursuing the train of thought induced by the acknowledged likeness between the boy and himself, Leontes asks, 'Can it be possible a mother's vehement imagination should penetrate even to the womb, and there imprint upon the embryo what stamp she chooses? Such apprehensive fantasy, then,' he goes on to say, we may believe will readily cojoin with something tangible, and it does,' &c., &c."

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Since writing the above, I have received the following well-considered note from Mr. Joseph Crosby :

“The King, already by nature predisposed to jealousy, while talking to his boy, sees the purely-gracious courtesies of Hermione towards her guest; and his abrupt interrogatories, 'Can thy dam? — May't be?' show the course his thoughts are leading him. Here the hiatus after his fragmentary musings is easily supplied; but his mind seeks some reconciling cause, some motive-agent, -to account for the dreadful suspicion. He grasps it in the thought of that all-pervading carnal propensity which we name lust. The whole of the rest of the passage, commencing, 'Affection,' &c., is simply an apostrophe to the intencion of that cause. Affection may be defined as a term for any passion that violently affects the mind: and what more common or powerful passion is there than this of concupiscence or lust? It stabs the centre'; it pervades the whole globe; kings and queens, no less than peasants, are its subjects: ''tis powerful, think it, from east, west, north, and south': all barriers to its gratification it sweeps