SC. II. see: Come, if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles. EDM. I beseech you, sir, pardon me : it is a letter from my brother, that I have not all o'er-read; for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your over-looking. GLO. Give me the letter, sir. EDM. I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame. GLO. Let's see, let's see. EDM. I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue 9. GLO. [Reads.] This policy, and reverence of age', makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us, till our oldness cannot relish 9 TASTE OF my virtue.] Though taste may stand in this place, yet I believe we should read-assay or test of my virtue: they are both metallurgical terms, and properly joined. So, in Hamlet: 66 Bring me to the test." JOHNSON. Both the quartos and folio have essay, which may have been merely a mis-spelling of the word assay, which in Cawdrey's Alphabetical Table, 1604, is defined-"a proof or trial." But as essay is likewise defined by Bullokar in his English Expositor, 1616, a trial," I have made no change. 66 To assay not only signified to make trial of coin, but to taste before another; prælibo. In either sense the word might be used here. MALONE. sense. Essay and Taste, are both terms from royal tables. See note on Act V. Sc. III. Mr. Henley observes, that in the eastern parts of this kingdom the word say is still retained in the same So, in Chapman's version of the nineteenth Iliad: "Atrides with his knife took say, upon the part before-." STEEVENS. This policy, and reverence of age,] Butter's quarto has, this policy of age; the folio, this policy and reverence of age. JOHNSON. The two [three] quartos published by Butter, concur with the folio in reading age. Mr. Pope's duodecimo is the only copy that has ages. STEEVENS. them. I begin to find an idle and fond' bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny; who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffered. Come to me, that of this I may speak more. If our father would sleep till I waked him, you should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother, EDGAR.-Humph-Conspiracy!-Sleep till I waked him,-you should enjoy half his revenue,-My son Edgar! Had he a hand to write this? a heart and brain to breed it in ?-When came this to you? Who brought it? EDM. It was not brought me, my lord, there's the cunning of it; I found it thrown in at the casement of my closet. GLO. You know the character to be your brother's ? EDM. If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swear it were his; but, in respect of that, I would fain think it were not. GLO. It is his. EDM. It is his hand, my lord; but, I hope, his heart is not in the contents. GLO. Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business? EDм. Never, my lord: But I have often heard him maintain it to be fit, that, sons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the father should be as ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue. GLO. O villain, villain !-His very opinion in the letter! Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain! worse than brutish!-Go, sirrah, seek him; I'll apprehend him:-Abominable villain! Where is he? EDM. I do not well know, my lord. If it shall please you to suspend your indignation against my 2 — idle and fond-] Weak and foolish. JOHNSON. brother, till you can derive from him better testimony of his intent, you shall run a certain course; where, if you3 violently proceed against him, mistaking his purpose, it would make a great gap in your own honour, and shake in pieces the heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life for 7 him, that he hath writ this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no other pretence 5 of danger. GLO. Think you so? EDм. If your honour judge it meet, I will place you where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an auricular assurance have your satisfaction; and that without any further delay than this very evening. GLO. He cannot be such a monster. [EDM. Nor is not, sure. GLO. To his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him.-Heaven and earth!]-Edmund, seek 3 WHERE, if you-] Where was formerly often used in the sense of whereas. MALONE. So, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act I. Sc. I. : "Where now you're both a father and a son." See also Act II. Sc. III. STEEVENS. 4 to your HONOUR,] It has been already observed that this was the usual mode of address to a Lord in Shakspeare's time. MALONE. See Richard III. Act III. Sc. II. where the Pursuivant uses this address to Lord Hastings. STEEVENS. 5-pretence-] Pretence is design, purpose. So, afterwards in this play : "Pretence and purpose of unkindness." JOHNSON. But of this, numberless examples can be shown; and I can venture to assert, with some degree of confidence, that Shakspeare never uses the word pretence, or pretend, in any other sense. STEEVENS. 6 Edm.] The words between brackets are omitted in the folio. STEEVENS. him out; wind me into him, I pray you: frame the business after your own wisdom: I would unstate myself, to be in a due resolution. 7-wind ME into him,] I once thought it should be read, you into him; but, perhaps, it is a familiar phrase, like “do me this." JOHNSON. So, in Twelfth-Night: "-challenge me the duke's youth to fight with him." Instances of this phraseology occur in The Merchant of Venice, King Henry IV. Part I. and in Othello. STEEVENS. 8 I would UNSTATE myself, to be in a due resolution.] i. e. I will throw aside all consideration of my relation to him, that I may act as justice requires. WARBURTON. Such is this learned man's explanation. I take the meaning to be rather this, Do you frame the business, who can act with less emotion; I would unstate myself; it would in me be a departure from the paternal character, to be in a due resolution, to be settled and composed on such an occasion. The words would and should are in old language often confounded. JOHNSON. The same word occurs in Antony and Cleopatra : "Yes, like enough, high-battled Cæsar will "Unstate his happiness, and be stag'd to show 66 To unstate, in both these instances, seems to have the same meaning. Edgar has been represented as wishing to possess his father's fortune, i. e. to unstate him; and therefore his father says he would unstate himself to be sufficiently resolved to punish him. To enstate is to confer a fortune. So, in Measure for Measure: his possessions 66 "We do enstate and widow you withal." STEEVENS. It seems to me, that I would unstate myself, in this passage, means simply I would give my estate (including rank as well as fortune). TYRWHITT. Both Warburton and Johnson have mistaken the sense of this passage, and their explanations are such as the words cannot possibly imply. Gloster cannot bring himself thoroughly to believe what Edmund told him of Edgar. He says, 66 Can he be such a monster?" He afterwards desires Edmund to sound his intentions, and then says, he would give all he possessed to be certain of the truth; for that is the meaning of the words to be in a due resolution. Othello uses the word resolved in the same sense more than once : 66 to be once in doubt, 9 EDM. I will seek him, sir, presently; convey the business 9 as I shall find means, and acquaint you withal. GLO. These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects: love 1 In both which places, to be resolved means, to be certain of the fact. In Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid's Tragedy, Amintor says to Evadne : ""Tis not his crown "Shall buy me to thy bed, now I resolve And afterwards, in the same play, the King says: Well I am resolv'd You lay not with her." But in the fifth scene of the third Act of Massinger's Picture, Sophia says 66 I have practis'd "For my certain resolution, with these courtiers." And, in the last Act, she says to Baptista 66 what should work on my lord "To doubt my loyalty? Nay, more, to take "That is, by holy writ, denied a Christian." M. MASON. Mr. Ritson's explanation of the word-resolution, concurs with that of Mr. M. Mason. STEEVENS. 9 CONVEY the business-] To convey is to carry through; in this place it is to manage artfully: we say of a juggler, that he has a clean conveyance. JOHNSON. So, in Mother Bombie, by Lyly, 1599: " Two, they say, may keep counsel if one be away; but to convey knavery two are too few, and four are too many." Again, in A Mad World, My Masters, by Middleton, 1608: 66 thus I've convey'd it; "I'll counterfeit a fit of violent sickness." STEEVENS. So, in Lord Sterline's Julius Cæsar, 1607: I "A circumstance, or an indifferent thing, " Doth oft mar all, when not with care convey'd." MALONE. the wisdom of nature] That is, though natural philosophy can give account of eclipses, yet we feel their consequences. JOHNSON. า |