VARIOUS. READINGS.

"Then no more remains

But your sufficiency as your worth is able,

(ACT I., Sc. 1.) STEEVENS.

And let them work."

"Then no more remains

But that to your sufficiencies your worth is abled,
And let them work."

"Then no more remains,

But add to your sufficiency your worth,
And let them work."

We have given above three readings, either of which may remove the obscurity of the original:

then, no more remains,

But that, to your sufficiency, as

your worth is able, And let them work."

JOHNSON.

COLLIER, MS. Corrector. We have retained the original text, not from any belief that it is right, but from the difficulty of substituting a better. The change proposed by Steevens appears to us the best, and the least violent.

"She is fast my wife,

Save that we do the pronunciation lack
Of outward order: this we came not to,
Only for procuration of a dower."

(ACT I., Sc. 3.) COLLIER, MS. Corrector.

Mr. Collier says, "two rather important words are altered in the corrected folio of 1632. Denunciation is changed to pronunciation; and propagation to procuration, meaning, of course, the procuring of the dower."

Why is denunciation changed to pronunciation? Because the corrector was modernizing. Let the reader turn to Mr. Richardson's excellent Dictionary, and he will find that Drayton uses denounce in the sense of announce; Holinshed denouncing in the sense of announcing; and Raleigh denunciation in the sense of annunciation. Why should we obliterate these traces of our language to make Shakspere easy? Again, propagation is obscure, but procuration is mean

"I have on Angelo impos'd the office,

Who may, in th' ambush of my name, strike home,
And yet my nature never in the sight

"Isab. Sir, make me not your scorn. Lucio. 'T is true."

"Some run from brakes of vic e, and answer none."

The old reading has brakes of ice-Ice being given thus, with a capital. Mr. Dyce holds that vice is the true reading; and that brakes means instruments of torture.

(ACT II., Sc. 1.) Rowe.
A note which we find in' Mr.
Dyce's own edition of Skelton gives
a better countenance to the read-
ing of vice than Mr. Dyce's note
on the passage in Shakspere.
Brake was used for trap; as in
Cavendish's 'Life of Wolsey' :-"to
espy a convenient time and occa-
sion to take the Cardinal in a brake."
See Poetical Works of Skelton,
vol. ii. p. 169.

"I'll rent the fairest house in it after three-pence a day."
(ACT II., Sc. 1.) COLLIER, MS. Corrector.

The original has "bay." "It is

a mere error of the press," says

Mr. Collier.

We agree with the corrector, and alter the text accordingly.

"How would you be,

If he, which is the God of judgment, should
But judge you as you are?"
(ACT II., Sc. 2.)

Mr. Collier calls the substitution of "God" for " top" a bold and striking emendation, adding to the power and grandeur of the passage.

COLLIER, MS. Corrector. Mr. Dyce says, in his Few Notes on Shakespeare,-" What Mr. Collier calls 'a bold and striking emendation,' deserves rather to be characterised as rash and wanton in the extreme." Mr. Dyce points out that Dante uses the very same expression, as applied to the Almighty:

"Chè cima di giudicio."

We add, that Mr. Cary, who translates this "the sacred height of judgment," says in a note, — "so Shakspeare, 'If he, which is the top of judgment.'"

""T is meet so, daughter: but lest you do repent,
As that the sin hath brought you to this shame;
Which sorrow is always towards ourselves, not heaven,
Showing, we would not serve heaven, as we love it,
But as we stand in fear."

(ACT II., Sc. 3.)

Mr. Collier says, "The old cor

COLLIER, MS. Corrector.

Davenant, who modernised with

seems little better than nonsense

-the emendation indisputable."

rupt reading of "spare heaven out scruple, has, in his paraphrase of this passage, "Not sparing heaven for love but fear." To serve heaven is a vague generality. The Duke warns Juliet lest she repent only of the shame; that species of sorrow is towards ourselves, not towards heaven; we do not spare heaven,- spare to invoke heaven, in our grief because we love heaven, but because we fear it.

"Claud.

The priestly Angelo?

Isab. O, 't is the cunning livery of hell,
The damned'st body to invest and cover

In priestly garb."

"Claud.

(ACT III., Sc. 1.) COLLIER, MS. Corrector. The precise Angelo."

The corrector's double use of the epithet priestly was suggested by Warburton; the substitution of garb for guards is new.

TIECK.

Guards were the ornaments of a robe, and therefore the change to garb is weak as well as needless. But some change must be made in the first folio, which reads thus, "Cla. The prenzie, Angelo?

Isa. Oh 't is the cunning Liuerie

of hell,

The damnest bodie to inuest, and

couer

In prenzie gardes."

We copy the spelling and punctuation of the original folio. There is a comma after the first "prenzie," which dissociates the word as an adjective from Angelo.

In former editions we have adopted the suggestion of Tieck, precise. The second folio, untouched by the manuscript corrector, gives us princely in both instances. As a change must be guessed at, we will venture upon a new reading, formed upon a careful consideration of the first and second editions. In 'Twelfth

Night' (Act V. Sc. 1) a line stands thus in the first folio:

"A most extracting frensie of mine owne."

In 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' (Act V., Sc. 1,) a line is thus printed in the same folio:

"The Poet's eye in a fine frenzy

rolling."

In the passage before us we would
substitute f for p. We would first
make Claudio say, after listening
to Isabella's furious denunciation
of the outward-sainted deputy,
"The frenzy! Angelo?"

Claudio thinks his sister wandering in her intellect to make such a charge. This is one of the foreshadowings so common in Shakspere. In the last Act, Angelo insinuates that Isabella is mad. If the mis-spelt word were not repeated in the folio, there would be no doubt, we think, of this reading; but the erroneous repetition of a word is one of the commonest blunders of printers, and we therefore adopt "princely guards"

from the second folio.

"That spirit's possess'd with haste,

That wounds the resisting postern with these strokes."
(ACT IV., Sc. 2.)

The original "unsisting" Mr.
Collier calls an error of the press.
The postern, he says, resisted the
entrance of the messenger.

COLLIER, MS. Corrector. It is scarcely necessary to show, by an epithet, that the door of a jail resisted the entrance of those without. Unsisting, according to Blackstone, means, never at rest. The Duke has himself come through the postern; and after he has spoken a few lines, comes another, knocking. Well may the Duke, interrupted in his speech, exclaim, that the door never stands still. Shakspere's Latinism, from sisto, ought not to be lightly rejected.