But it becomes him to be wary with a woman like Isabella, and to let her know, as they are arguing the matter, that he puts this case but for the sake of question, i. e., argument; and so the third line becomes, "But (in the case of question) that you his sister," &c. Yet again, it suits his purpose to say to her that he not only puts such a case merely for the sake of argument, but that he wishes to state explicitly that, even if it should actually occur, he cannot subscribe to its success, or to that of any other supposable case; and so the second line makes its appearance, and the speech becomes, according to modern punctuation, "Admit no other way to save his life, (As I subscribe not that, nor any other) But,-in the case of question,-that you, his sister Finding yourself desir'd, &c. * * * What would you do?" * * * * That Angelo and Isabella are arguing the case, is evident, from his taking his positions in the two immediately preceding speeches, and her brief admissions of their correctness. "So," she says, and "True." was not quite clear to me; but upon reading it in the original, it became as comprehensible as any passage in Shakespeare's works, although it contains three words not used in their common, modern acceptation. The speech being obscure to the editors, they sought to elucidate it by the change of a word; they substituted by for "thy" of the original, where the lines stand thus: "Else let my brother die If not a fedarie but only he Angelo has just said to Isabella "We are all frail;" and this reply of her's to his general assertion, draws from him the prompt rejoinder, "Nay, women are frail too." He does not simply say, "women are frail," but "Nay, women are frail too;" which plainly shows that Isabella's answer had confined this frailty to men; and in the original, she does, by implication, limit it to Claudio, Angelo, and their fellows. Speaking to the latter of his frailty, she says, "thy weakness;" and the change to "by weakness," has only made confusion worse confounded in the heads of those who were confused before. The word which is looked upon as the cause of the difficulty is "fedary." But this, as Dr. Richardson's Dictionary assures us, and as a line in Cymbeline plainly shows, means simply an associate,' 'a fellow'-in crime, or in frailty, or in anything else, "Pisanio. O damn'd paper! Black as the ink that's on thee. Senseless bauble, Art thou a feodary for this act, and look'st So virgin like without ?" Cymbeline, Act III., Scene 2. These remarks, it should be remembered, are not by way of argument; but for the purpose of analyzing a very interesting passage. The changes a mere correction of the punctuation in the most carelessly pointed book ever printed, Again in the Winter's Tale: and the rectification of a palpable error of the press, surely sustain themselves without argument. "Isab. Else let my brother die, This passage is generally confessed to be the most obscure of the very obscure passages which are found in the original text and nearly all of the reprints of this noble play. The commentators and editors, from Warburton to Knight, confess its great difficulty; and when I have claimed a comparative freedom from obscurity for Shakespeare's style, this passage, oftener than any other, has been pointed out to me as a stumbling-block by those unread in the earlier English literature. There was a time when it "She is a traitor, and Camillo is A federary with her." Winter's Tale, Act II., Scene 1. "Owe," as every reader of Shakespeare knows, signifies have,' 'possess.' As for instance, in this very play: "Lucio. When maidens sue Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel, But the principal difficulty with those who fail to understand the passage, I have found to be the result of a very easy misapprehension of the sense in which a word in every-day use,'succeed,' is used here. On account of the substitution of by for "thy," it has been very naturally, in fact unavoidably supposed, that "succeed" means 'have success.' This makes the line in effect,-'owe, and have success by weakness: a very foggy statement, which is not much cleared by inserting the original word, which makes it "owe and have success thy weakness." All this difficulty is removed by observing that "succeed" is here used in its more primitive sense, to follow.' "Succeed thy weakness" is, in other words, 'follow thee in thy weakness,' 'take after thy weakness.' Another of Shakespeare's plays furnishes us with a use of this word exactly in point. "Countess. Be thou blest, Bertram; and succeed thy father In manners, as in shape." All's Well, &c.. Act I., Scene 1. There is therefore not the least obscurity or difficulty in the original text, which paraphrased in prose, is simply this: Ang. We are all frail. Isab. Yes; otherwise let my brother die, if no companion in frailty, but he alone, be possessed of and take after thy weakness. The propriety of Angelo's instant reply, including women in the charge of frailty, is then obvious. Retain the words of the original, omit one of the two commas usually inserted, and read thus, the emphatic word in the last two lines being "he:" "Ang. We are all frail, Isab. Else let my brother die, If not a feodary, but only he, Owe and succeed thy weakness." "Isab. The poor beetle, that we tread upon In corporal suffrance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies."-Act III., Scene 1. The almost universal perversion of these lines to a plea for long life to beetles, justifies a repetition of the explanation of the passage previously made by others. Isabella is not reading Claudio a lecture upon cruelty to animals. She wishes to impress upon him that the pang of death is chiefly in the dread of death; and that the giant feels no more of that in dissolution, than the beetle, which a thoughtless heel crushes out of existence. This would seem sufficiently obvious to make mistake impossible; for she says: "The sense of death is most in apprehension;" And the poor beetle," &c. "Duke. Her combinate husband, this well seeming Angelo." Here, "combinate" stands for 'clect.' The idiom is old, and has affinity with the Italian use of the same word, as Mr. W. S. Rose has shown. He says: "at this hour there is nothing more common in an Italian's mouth than se si puo combinarla' (if we can bring it to bear) when speaking with reference to any future arrangement." "Lucio. What, is there none of Pygmalion's images, newly-made woman, to be had now for putting the hand in the pocket and extracting it clutched?"-Act III., Scene 2. Mr. Douce says, "It is probable, after all, that Lucio simply means to ask the clown if he has no newly-coined money, wherewith to bribe the officers of justice; alluding to the portrait of the queen." It is strange that the remote and recondite explanation should be continually sought, instead of the present and the obvious. Lucio, speaking to a bawd, merely asks him if there be no young women [Pygmalion's images] to be had for money; or, as he phrases it, "for putting the hand in the pocket, and extracting it clutched." "Mariana discovered sitting; a Boy singing. SONG. Take, oh take those lips away, bring again, Seals of love, but seal'd in vain, seal'd in vain. Mari. Break off thy song, and haste thee quick away;" &c.-Act IV., Scene 1. This exquisite song reappears in Beaumont and Fletcher's Bloody Brother; where, however, it is accompanied by another stanza of almost equal beauty, which begins, as all will remember, "Hide, oh hide those hills of snow." Both stanzas are generally printed and quoted, as Shakespeare's; but there has been for nearly a hundred years a grave discussion among the critics as to the authorship of the song; and the point is not considered as decided yet. Some think that Shakespeare wrote both stanzas; others that only the first is his; and a few that he has no part in it. What is denied to him is given to Fletcher [or some forgotten lyric writer of Shakespeare's day]. Mr. Charles Knight, after stating the question as to who wrote the song, Shakespeare or Fletcher, and Malone's opinion that "all the songs in our author's plays appear to have been of his own composition," with Weber's conjecture that Shakespeare wrote the first stanza and Fletcher the second, says: "There is no evidence, we apprehend, external or internal, by which the question can be settled." The Rev. Alexander Dyce concludes a note upon the song, in his careful and scholarlike edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (Vol. X., p. 459,) by saying, "I am inclined to believe that it was from the pen of the great dramatist." Bishop Percy, on the contrary, sneers at Sewel and Gildon for attributing it to Shakespeare ; and Mr. Collier says: "It may be doubted whether either stanza was the authorship of Shakespeare but his claim may perhaps be admitted until better evidence is adduced to disprove it." In spite of all this learned uncertainty and disagreement, the problem appears to me to be of easy solution by internal evidence. The song has such a peculiar and subduing beauty, that an examination of its structure can hardly fail to afford a greater and more æsthetic pleasure than the mere settlement of a point in criticism. It would seem either that the learned and lynx-eyed critics already mentioned, forgot that it was a song about which they were disputing, and a song, too, which was sung upon the stage, or else that there was no singer or musician among them. These verses were written for music; and the author of the stanza which appears in Measure for Measure so constructed his lines that the last phrase of the last two strains of the air to which it was sung, might be repeated. They are thus printed in the original folio, and in all subsequent editions of the play: "But my kisses bring again, bring again, Seals of love but seal'd in vain, How touching, how full of pathos, the repetition! How skilfully adapted for musical effect! It gives a tender, yearning sadness to the strain, without which the expression of deserted, heart-broken love would lack the last and most subtle expression of its pang. Now, if the writer of this stanza had written another, which Mariana is supposed to tell the boy not *As an example of the incomprehensible way in which absurd and inexplicable typographical errors creep into the text, it may interest the reader to know, that in the first edited edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's Works (8 vols., 8vo, 1711), this line is printed, "Which thy frozen blossom bears." In the copy of the song set to Dr. Wilson's music, which will be referred to hereafter, and which was published more than half a century before, (1652), this same strange error also occurs; the line there being printed, "That thy frozen Blossome bears;" and yet there are several variations in other lines which show that the song published in the text of the edition of 1711 was not taken from this; and, consequently, that one error is not a mere perpetua to sing, he must necessarily have constructed the last two lines of the second in a similar manner; as every musician, or song writer, or singer knows. But the second stanza in the Blooly Brother is not so constructed. Here it is: "Hide, oh hide those hills of snow, Now we cannot say or sing: "But first set my poor heart free, poor heart free, Bound in those icy chains by thee, And even if we allow that musical license will admit the repetition of "my poor heart free," which the sense would require, we still find that the sense will not admit the division of "icy," and the repetition of "-y chains by thee" which the music would then require. Indeed there is no possible mode of singing the first stanza of this song, as it appears in Measure for Measure, to an air adapted to the second stanza; and, rice versa. Although, perhaps, only those who know something of the manner in which the music and words of songs are adapted to each other, can feel the full force of-this argument, to them it must be conclusive; and the point is one upon which there is no appeal from their decision. Shakespeare evidently wrote the first stanza, and some one else,-probably Fletcher, the second. To this demonstration, not the less conclusive because it does not address itself to all the readers of Shakespeare, there is to be added a moral certainty which can hardly fail of universal apprehension. Having been accustomed to see the two stanzas printed together, I had, in very early youth, thoughtlessly taken it for granted that both were addressed by a lover to his false mistress; and that impression was of tion of the other. It also occurs in the folio of 1679; where, by the way, the last line is printed, "Bound in those Ivy chains by thee." In a copy of this folio once in my possession, this line was corrected in a handwriting contemporaneous with the volume, "Bound in those Ivory chains by thee," a reading which has as much of authority to support it as any one of these in Mr. Collier's second folio of Shakespeare. The frequently repeated error, blossom for "bosom," does not occur in the original quarto, as I find by examination of a copy of that edition in Mr. Burton's rich collection of early dramatic literature. It seems strange that such a mistake should have crept into the folio edition of the play from a copy of the song set to music. course deepened by all that I ever heard or read about it. Such is the universal opinion as far as I know: but while musing over it one day, the conviction flashed upon me that though the second verse was written to a woman, the first was as unquestionably addressed by a woman to a man. Reflection upon the following italicised phrases must produce the same conviction in every mind. "Take, oh take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn; bring again, Seals of love, but seal'd in vain, The tone of this entire stanza is that of a woman whose love has been betrayed, and who still loves, as the Duke says of Mariana, who "hath still in her the continuance of her first affection." There is, with all the accusation of deliberate falsehood, a manifest upward looking, which is a peculiarity of woman's love, and which she does not entirely lose, even if she be deserted by him who awakened it. Man, even supposing that he has this feeling under any circumstances, never has it for a woman who has been false to him. The beautiful likening of the eyes to "the break of day," is better suited to the light which beams from a countenance of manly beauty than to the softer and more tender, though not less brilliant glance of a woman. A woman would be very likely to say that her lover's eyes "mislead the morn:" but the figure is rather grand for a lover's address to his mistress. But this, however, is mere opinion upon generalities; let us reason from particulars. The person into whose mouth the lines are put, first entreats the person to whom they are addressed, to take away those lips that were forsworn. Plainly, those lips were masculine; for women do not swear love, they confess it; men swear their devotion. Besides, the lips are to be taken away: the kiss then was offered, not simply yielded or returned. But again: the singer next says, bring again my kisses which were seals of love. Plainly, again, the kisses to be restored were feminine; for it is woman who gives a kiss as a seal of love. The process has formality and signification to her; while to man it is a dear delight, a ceremony, or a recreation, as the case may be: the light in which he regards it being determined entirely by the sentiment which the woman has been able to inspire. To this proof that the two stanzas were written by different persons and with different motives, there is to be added a radical, though not very wide, difference in spirit between the stanzas. The first is animated purely by sentiment; the second, delicately beautiful as it is, is the expression of a man carried captive solely through his sense of beauty. The reproaches in the first, tell of regret for the love uttered by those "lips that so sweetly were forsworn," of a spell that yet lingers in "those eyes, the break of day," of a sad, yet sweet and tender memory of those "seals of love" that were "sealed in vain:" the second sings of "hills of snow," "pinks," and a heart bound in the "icy chains" of a "frozen bosom." The first breathes woman's wasted love; the second, man's disappointed passion. The first could not have been written by Fletcher; the second would not have been written by Shakespeare, as a companion to the first. The fitness of the stanza which appears in Measure for Measure is one of its charms. It announces, like an overture, the pathetic theme of the sad Act into which it leads. It introduces us to the "dejected Mariana" of the "moated grange," and she herself tells us that it "pleased her woe." She would not ask for a song, the second stanza of which was that which appears in the Bloody Brother. Her command to the boy to break off his song, is no evidence that Shakespeare had written more than one stanza. It is but a dramatic contrivance to produce the effect of an intrusion upon her solitude. [More than a year after having written out the foregoing deductions from the internal evidence of this song, I afterwards discovered (April 24th, 1852) external evidence which confirms those conclusions. In Playford's Ayres and Dialogues for One, Two, or Three Voyces; to the Theorbo-Lute or Basse- Viol,-folio, London, 1659, p. 1, is this very song set to music by Dr. Wilson. It is called Lore's Ingratitude; and both stanzas are given. The last three syllables of the last two lines are not repeated in either stanza. The Musical Biographies inform us that Dr. Wilson died in 1673, at the age of seventy-nine years. He was therefore but about nine years old when Measure for Measure was produced,-1603; and of course could not have composed the music for this song as it was originally sung in that play; but of the music to which the song in the Bloody Brother,produced about 1625, was sung, he might well have been the composer, as ne doubtless was. He of course would have been obliged to write it according to the requisitions of the second stanza; that is, without a repetition of the last phrase of the last two strains of the air; and so we find he did write it. [It was not until after the above was written that I possessed, or had access to, a copy of the Variorum Shakespeare of 1821, and in that there is a note by Mr. Boswell upon this song, in which he says:-"The first stanza of this poem, it is true, appears in Measure for Measure; but as it is there supposed to be sung by a boy, in reference to the misfortune of a deserted female, the second stanza could not have been written for that occasion, as being evidently addressed by a male lover to his mistress." Variorum Shakespeare, Vol. XXI., p. 419. This is on the right scent, but Mr. Boswell yet failed to see that it led to the all-important conclusion that the first stanza is actually addressed by a woman to a man, and could not be addressed by a man to a woman. He, strangely enough, thinks, that if it must be ascribed to Shakespeare or Fletcher, "the latter has a better claim;" but is inclined to the supposition that this delicate little poem, "from its popularity at the time, was introduced by the printer to fill up the gap [made by a stage direction, Here a song, which frequently occurs in old plays], and gratify his readers, from some now forgotten author,"-evidently showing that he still supposed the song to be the homogeneous production of one hand. He rightly concludes that because the second stanza is obviously addressed to a woman, it could not have been written for this Scene in Measure for Measure; and not noticing, what we have seen is undeniable, that the first stanza is addressed to a man, he confirms himself in the old belief, that both were addressed to a woman, and determines that Shakespeare wrote neither. It seems strange that Mr. Boswell, having got the glimpse he evidently had of the incongruity of the two stanzas, failed to discover the radical difference between their motives, and the impossibility of the supposition that they were written by the same poet. With my Variorum, or soon after it, I received a copy of a very interesting tract from the pen of Edward F. Rimbault, LL.D., F.S.A., entitled Who was "Jack Wilson," the singer of Shakespeare's stage? Mr. Rimbault puts forth, and ably sustains, the conjecture, that John Wilson, Doctor of Music in the University of Oxford, the composer of the music to which the song in the Bloody Brother was sung, was the very Jack Wilson who we know was the original singer of many of Shakespeare's songs; and that he was the very "Boy" who sung this song as it appears in Measure for Measure, where the stage direction in the original is, as we have seen,-Mariana discovered sitting: a Boy singing. Dr. Rimbault also points out that the date of his birth renders it impossible that Dr. Wilson could have been the composer of the air to which this song was sung in Measure for Measure. "Mariana. Here comes a man of comfort, whose advice Hath often still'd my brawling discontent." Mr. Hallam, in his criticism on this play, has the following passage:-"There is great skill in the invention of Mariana, and without this the story could not have had anything like a satis factory termination: yet it is never explained how the Duke had become acquainted with this secret, and, being acquainted with it, how he had preserved his esteem and confidence in Angelo,” Introd. to Lit. of Europe, Vol. III., p. 83. When a critic's eye takes so wide a range as that taken by the accomplished author of the Introduction to the Literature of Europe, it is, perhaps, unreasonable to expect him to examine every particular spot in the vast field which he examines; but may we not reasonably ask that he shall not find fault for the absence of any thing, merely because he does not see it? Mariana gives ample evidence, in these lines, of the manner in which the Duke became acquainted with her story. It is the first we see of her: the Duke enters as a Friar; and she speaks of him as a man of comfort who has " often stilled her discontent. The Duke, since he assumed his disguise, has evidently seen her frequently in the discharge of the duties of his pretended calling; and thus has learned Angelo's secret and the woes of his victim. This also shows that a long time is supposed to elapse between the first Scene of the play and the beginning of the fourth Act. If we follow the events closely, however, we shall find that only two days elapse between the arrest of Claudio and the opening of this Act. But a month may have elapsed between the first Scene of the first Act and the arrest of Claudio. It is in the first Scene of the play that the Duke shows his confidence in Angelo, and retires, leaving the government in his hands; and it is not until after his assumption of the Friar's habit, in the fourth, or more properly, the third Scene of the same Act, that he learns, from Mariana, his deputy's base treatment of her. It was necessary to throw a Scene between the retirement of the Duke and his appearance in the monastery to assume the Friar's habit; and in that Scene |