Collier's folio substitutes,--
"They all have met again,
And all upon the Mediterranean _float_,
Bound sadly back to Naples."
Mr. Collier notices, that the improvement of giving the lines,
"Which any print of goodness will not take,"
to Prospero, instead of Miranda, dates as far back as Dryden and
Davenant's alteration of "The Tempest," from which he says Theobald and
others copied it.
The corrected folio gives its authority to the lines of the song,--
"Foot it featly here and there,
And, sweet sprites, the burden bear,"--
which stands so in Hanmer, and, indeed is the usually received
arrangement of the song.
This is the last corrected passage in the first act, in the course of
which Mr. Collier gives us no fewer than sixteen, altered, emended, and
commented upon in his folio. Many of the emendations are to be found
_verbatim_ in the Oxford and subsequent editions, and three only appear
to us to be of any special value, tried by the standard of common sense,
to which we agreed, on Mr. Collier's invitation, to refer them.
The line in Prospero's threat to Caliban,--
"I'll rack thee with old cramps,
Fill all thy bones with _aches_, make thee roar,"--
occasioned one of Mr. John Kemble's characteristic differences with the
public, who objected, perhaps not without reason, to hearing the word
"aches" pronounced as a dissyllable, although the line imperatively
demands it; and Shakspeare shows that the word was not unusually so
pronounced, as he introduces it with the same quantity in the prose
dialogue of "Much Ado about Nothing," and makes it the vehicle of a pun
which certainly argues that it was familiar to the public ear as _ache_
and not _ake_.
Pages:
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100