Ang. Stay a little while: y' are welcome: what's your will? Isab. I am a wofull Sutor to your Honor." And so the Var. 1821 reads and arranges, only altering for 't to for it. Did the editor mean the words 'Save your honour to be the complement of the supposed former part of the verse, "There shall be order for it"? 71 Read and arrange, Ang. "God save your honour. Stay a little while. Isab. I am," &c.; the name of God having been omitted by the editor of the folio in deference to the well-known act of parliament against profaneness; or having been, perhaps, struck out by the licensers of the press. For the same reason the word God has been in various places altered to Heaven, Jove, or the like. Ib., below, read, Ang. From thee; even from thy virtue." Also ii. 3, near the end, "God's grace go with you! Benedicite!" Herm. "Your precious self had then not crost the eyes God's grace to boot!" 71 Perhaps ; but he and other editors followed the lead of Pope in printing for it at length. As to 'Save, all the folios prefix the apostrophe, and so Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, Warburton, and Johnson; Capell and most recent editors omit it.-Ed. Tempest, ii. 1, perhaps verse, Ant. "God save his majesty! Long live Gonzalo!" In all these passages the metre requires the supplement. Othello, ii. 2, ad fin. fol. p. 319, col. 1, 1. 2,-"Blesse the Isle of Cyprus, and our Noble Generall Othello;" and so Knight. Vulg., "Heaven bless," &c. Read God. And so I imagine in numberless other prose passages, where the word has been expunged; e.g., Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 1, "O'give ye good ev'n! here's a million of manners." Merry Wives of Windsor, ii. 3,-"Bless thee, bully doctor. Shallow. 'Save you, master doctor Caius. Slender. 'Give you good morrow, sir." iii. 1,-"'Save you, good sir Hugh! Evans. 'Pless you from his mercy sake, all of you." 2 King Henry IV. v. 5, "Save thy grace, king Hal! my royal Hal! Save thee, my sweet boy!" Romeo and Juliet, ii. 2, "Lady, by yonder blessed moon, I swear," &c. The folio (page 60, col. 1) omits blessed, and has vow for swear. Act? Can this also have originated in the Profanation Instances of substitution. Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2,— "This fellow picks up wit as pigeons pease, King John, v. 7, "The Dauphin is preparing hitherward, Where, heaven he knows, how we shall answer him.' Read "God he knows," as Comedy of Errors, v. 1,— (Compare too King Richard III. i. 3,— "Small joy have I in being England's queen. Q. Mary. And lessen'd be that small, God I beseech him.") "Yet I will woo for him; but yet so coldly, As, heaven it knows, I would not have him speed." (In King Richard II. ii. 2, iii. 2, and v. 2,72— "God for his mercy! what a tide of woes Comes rushing on this woful land at once!" "God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay "God for his mercy! what treachery is here!" (Print? after here, I think ;) the folio has Heaven for God; whence in the second passage the most un-Shakespearian antithesis of Heaven and heavenly.) Instances of unnoticed or noteworthy omission and substitution in other Writers. Omission.-Fletcher, &c., Love's Pilgrimage, iv. 1, Moxon, vol. ii. p. 625, col. 1,— 669 "Slight, sir!" yonder is a lady veil'd." "God's light." Even Fletcher-still more Massinger, to whom I imagine this scene belongs—would not have tole 72 The quartos have God in all the three passages. Mr. Collier's Old Corrector does not seem to have noticed this sophistication. All the old copies, I fancy, place a note of interrogation after here.-Ed. rated an acephalous line like this. Jonson, Sad Shepherd, ii. 2, Gifford, vol. vi. p. 288, "Slid, I thought the swineherd would have beat me, He look'd so big." Massinger, Fatal Dowry, ii. 1, Moxon, p. 271, col. 1 ; see context, "For me, my portion provide in heaven!" Read "my portion, God provide" (Ibid., iii. 1, Moxon, p. 276, col. 2, insert, I think, of [ ] devils has possest this woman.") Marston, Antonio and Mellida, P. i. i. 1, Old English Plays, 1814, vol. ii. p. 122,— "Precious, what a slender waist he hath !" Here perhaps we should write "'Ods or 'Uds precious ;" though this, one would think, would hardly have offended against the profaneness act. iii. 2, p. 151, v. 2, "Sfoot, methinks I am as like a man." p. 179, "Sfoot, a sits like Lucifer himself." Beaumont and Fletcher, Love's Cure, ii. 2, Moxon, vol. ii. p. 161, col. 2, Lucio. "And seen poor rogues retire, all gore, and gash'd Bless us, sister Clara, How desperately you talk!" "God bless us.' "" May, Old Couple, iii. 2 (not 1, as in Dodsley), vol. x. p. 414, "They are [Th' are] the last couple in hell. Dotterel. Save you, gallants!" Read "God save you," &c. Substitutions. Play of Ram Alley, iii. Dodsley, vol. v. p. 415, "For Jove's love, speak." Massinger, City Madam, iv. 4, Moxon, p. 334, col. 2,— you were tickled when the beggars cried Heaven save your honour!" Such omissions, &c., are common in the old plays. XXXV. Terminations attached to one Adjective, affecting others. Measure for Measure, iv. 6, "The generous and gravest citizens Have hent the gates." i.e., "the most generous (i.e., noble) and grave." (Compare, for this sense of generous, Chapman, Il. xiv. Taylor, vol. ii. p. 40,— Il. xv. vol. ii. p. 56,all the generous i.e., her noble or princely graces. They call'd t' encounter Hector's charge." Jonson, Poetaster, v. 1, Gifford, vol. ii. p. 524, generous," i.e., as I am a gentleman by birth.) as I am This idiom is not unfrequent in the Elizabethan poets. Heywood, Rape of Lucrece, i. 2, init., "This place is not for fools: this parliament Assembles not the strains of idiotism, Only the grave and wisest of the land." |