ACT II. SCENE I.-"No kind of traffic," &c. OUR readers are aware that there is in the British Museum a copy of the Essays of Montaigne' translated by Florio, having the autograph WILLM SHAKSPERE. We subjoin a passage from that volume which shows how familiar Shakspere was with its contents. It is an extract from the thirtieth chapter of the first book, describing an imaginary nation of canni bals: "Me seemeth that what in those nations we see by experience doth not only exceed all the pictures wherewith licentious poesy hath proudly embellished the golden age, and all her quaint inventions to fain a happy condition of man, but also the conception and desire of philosophy. They could not imagine a genuitie so pure and simple as we see it by experience; nor ever believe our society might be maintained with so little art and human combination. It is a nation, would I answer Plato, that hath no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politic superiority; no use of service, of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, no successions, no dividences; no occupation, but idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands; no use of wine, corn, or metal. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, and pardon, were never heard amongst them. How dissonant would he find his imaginary commonwealth from this perfection!" 5 SCENE II.-" Were I in England now," &c. It was usual for the Master of the Revels to license all public shows; and in 1632 there is an entry in the office-book of Sir Henry Herbert, "to James Seale to show a strange fish for half a year." The engraving below represents a show of the same period. ACT IV. 10 SCENE I.-"Come, hang them on this line.” MR. HUNTER, in his 'Disquisition on The Tempest,' has a special heading, "the linegrove." He invites the friend to whom he addresses the Disquisition to accompany him to the "cell of Prospero, and to the grove or berry of line-trees by which it was enclosed or protected from the weather." He adds, "if you look for the very word line-grove in any verbal index to Shakespeare you will not find it: for the modern editors, in their discretion, have chosen to alter the line in which it occurs, and we now read " In the lime-grove which weather-fends your cell.'' The editors, then, have substituted the more recent name of the tree for the more ancient: but the change had taken place earlier than the days of the commentators. In Dryden's altera tion of 'The Tempest' (edit. of 1676) we have the above passage, with lime-grove. The effect of the change, Mr. Hunter says, is this: italics. On the contrary, the tree, in connection with a grove, is printed thus,-Line-grove. 2nd. Mr. Hunter furnishes no example of the word line, as applied to a tree, being used without the adjunct of tree or grove-line-tree, linegrove. The quotation which he gives from Elisha Cole is clear in this matter:-" Linetree (tilia), a tall tree, with broad leaves and fine flowers." The other quotation which he gives from Gerard would, if correctly printed, exhibit the same thing:-"The female line,' says Gerard, ' or linden-tree, waxeth very great,'' &c. But Gerard wrote, "The female line or linden tree waxeth," &c.; and the word tree as much belongs to line as to linden. about the line, among the clowns as they steal 3rd. Mr. Hunter quotes "some clumsy joking through the line-grove with the murderous intent;" and he quotes as follows, omitting certain words, which we shall presently give :"Ste. Mistress line, is not this my jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line. Trin. We steal by line and level," &c. "When Prospero says to Ariel, who comes in "Ste. Mistress line, is not this my jerkin? Now is the This, we admit, is exceedingly ingenious; and we were at first disposed, with many others, to receive the theory with an implicit belief. A careful examination of the matter has, however, convinced us that the poet had no such intention of hanging the clothes on a line-tree; that a clothes-line was destined to this office; and that the players are right in stretching up a clothes line. Our reasons are as follow: 1st. When Prospero says "hang them on this line," when Stephano gives his jokes of "mistress line," and "now is the jerkin under the line," the word "line" has no characteristic mode of printing, neither with a capital, nor in Is not the "clumsy joking" about lose your hair, and bald jerkin, of some importance in getting at the meaning? Steevens has observed that "the lines on which clothes are hung are usually made of twisted horse-hair." But they were especially so made in Shakspere's day. In a woodcut of twelve distinct figures of trades and callings of the time of James I. (see Smith's Cries of London,' p. 15), and of which there is a copy in the British Museum, we have the cry of "Buy a hair-line!" The "clumsy joking" would be intelligible to an audience accustomed to a hair-line. It is not intelligible according to Mr. Hunter's assertion that the word suggested a "cord-line." 4th. Is it likely that Shakspere would have made these drunken fellows so knowing in the peculiarities of trees as to distinguish a line-tree from an elm-tree, or a plane-tree? Is it conceivable that the trees in Prospero's island were so young that clothes could be hung upon their lower branches? Are the branches of a line 600 tree of such a form as to hang clothes upon them, and to remove them easily? Had not the clowns a distinct image in their minds of an old-clothes shop? "We know what belongs to a frippery." Here is a picture of "a frippery," from a print dated 1587, with its clothes hung in "line and level." Is not the joke "we steal by line and level" applicable only to a stretched line?—or is it meaningless? It has the highest approbation of King Stephano. Lastly, with reference to the clothes-line, when Mr. Hunter says "Anything more remote from poetry than this can scarcely be imagined," we answer that the entire scene was intended to be the antagonist of poetry. All the scenes in which Trinculo and Stephano are tricked by Ariel are essentially ludicrous, and, to a certain extent, gross. The "pool" through which they were hunted had none of the poetical attributes about it. It was, compared with a fountain or a lake, as the hair-line to the line-tree. Hunter contends that, "if the word of the original, line-grove, had been allowed to keep Mr. ACT V. 11 SCENE I.-" Ye elves of hills." THE invocation of Medea, in Ovid's Metamorphoses,' was no doubt familiar to Shakspere when he wrote this passage, and he has used several expressions which we find in Golding's translation. We subjoin the passage from that translation, which Farmer quotes as one of his proofs that Shakspere did not know the original. The evidence in this as in every other case only goes to show that he knew the translation: "Ye airs and winds, ye elves of hills, of brooks, of woods alone, Of standing lakes, and of the night, approach ye every one. Through help of whom (the crooked banks much wondering at the thing) I have compelled streams to run clear backward to their spring. By charms I make the calm sea rough, and make the rough sea plain, And cover all the sky with clouds, and chase them thence again. By charms I raise and lay the winds, and burst the viper's jaw; And from the bowels of the earth both stones and trees do draw. Whole woods and forests I remove, I make the mountains shake, And even the earth itself to groan and fearfully to quake. I call up dead men from their graves, and thee, O light- I darken oft, though beaten brass abate thy peril soon. noon. The flaming breath of fiery bulls ye quenched for my sake, And caused their unwieldy necks the bended yoke to take. Among the earth-bred brothers you a mortal war did set, And brought asleep the dragon fell, whose eyes were never shut." 12 SCENE I." Where the bee sucks," &c. There are probably more persons familiar with this song in association with the music of Dr. Arne than as readers of Shakspere. first line is invariably sung, "Where the bee sucks, there lurk 1." The It is perfectly clear that lurk is not the word which Ariel would have used; and it is equally clear that the poet meant to convey the notion of a being not wholly ethereal; who required |