THE TRAGEDIE OF CYMBELINE. Actus Primus. Scana Prima. Enter two Gentlemen. I. Gent. Ou do not meet a man but Frownes. Our bloods no more obey the Heauens Still feeme, as do's the Kings. 1. TRAGEDIE] TRAGEDY Ff. 3. Scœna] Scæna F2. Scena F3F4. 6-8. You...Courtiers] Two lines, end- man] man, Warb. Johns. Cap. Varr. Mal. Ran. Steev. Varr. Coll. Frownes.] frownes. F2. frowns. F3F4, Rowe, Pope, Han. frowns: Theob. et seq. 7. Our bloods] Our blouds F3F4. than our looks Herr (p. 135). 5 9 7. no more] Not more Walker, Huds. Heauens] heavens F.F3. Heavens F4. Heav'ns Rowe. 8. Then] Than F4. Courtiers:] courtiers' Var. '73, Sta. courtiers', Var. 78, '85, Ran. Courtiers Tyrwhitt, Var. '21, Knt, Coll. Sing. Dyce, Cam. Wh. ii, Ingl. Dtn. 9. Still] But Rowe, Pope, Warb. Han. feeme,] feeme Ff, Pope, Han. Knt, et seq. do's the Kings.] do the King's. Han. Sta. does the king. Tyrwhitt, Knt, Coll. Coll. (MS), Sing. Dyce, White, Del. Cam. Glo. Clarke, Huds. Dtn, Dowden, Herford, Rlfe, Gollancz, Wyatt. 2. Cymbeline] COLERIDGE (p. 345): There is a great significancy in the names of Shakespeare's plays. In Twelfth Night, Mid. N. D., As You Like It, and Wint. Tale the total effect is produced by a co-ordination of the characters as in a wreath of flowers. But in Coriol., Lear, Rom. & Jul., Hamlet, Othello, &c., the effect arises from the subordination of all to one, either as the prominent person or the principal object. Cymbeline is the only exception; and even that has its advantages in preparing the audience for the chaos of time, place, and costume by throwing the date back into a fabulous King's reign.—OHLE (p. 62): [Inasmuch as all critics are generally agreed in discerning a welding together, unusually artistic and skilful, of heterogeneous elements in this play] it seems to me that, in these circumstances, it is not out of place to ask, as a preliminary question, what is the [2. Cymbeline] connecting thread, the woof, of it? The answer is not easy; it is clear enough that he who gives the title to the play is cast completely into the shade by Posthumus and Imogen. We must not, however, allow the hint to pass unheeded which is supplied us even by the wrongful naming of the play by the poet. It is extremely probable that the bearer of the title rôle constituted the oldest and chiefest constituent of the piece; possibly, in the course of time he gradually lapsed into his present secondary position. Accordingly, it would follow readily enough from this sufficing reason that King Cymbeline and his fate represent,-to use our former simile, the thread of the original treatment and the other characters the woof, that is, that they were subsequently added and became connected and interwoven with Cymbeline, until finally they overtopped and obscured him,-the new and young gods have always suppressed the old.-WHITE (p. 281): We pronounce the name of this play Sim-be-leen; but its proper pronunciation is Kim-bè-line. [Forman who heard the play 'at the glob' in Shakespeare's day evidently did not there hear its 'proper pronunciation,' else, with his phonetic spelling, he would not have spelled it Cymbalin or Cimbalin, and, in one instance, Cambalin.—ED.] 3. Scœna Prima] ECCLES: No circumstance appears which can be supposed to mark the particular time of the day when the action of this play commences. 4. Enter...] BULLOCH (p. 267): One of these gentlemen must have been as ignorant of matters as if he had come from another country. The facts related must have been known to the poorest peasant, for they concerned the King's own family, and incidents that had lately taken place and with which people's ears were still tingling. In the play we have two Italians, a Roman, a Frenchman, etc. Why not have named the speakers a British Gentleman and a Foreigner? [See ECCLES, line 73, post.] 5. 1. Gent] DELIUS (Sh. Soc. Trans., '75-'76, p. 213), in an Essay on Shakespeare's Use of Narration, remarks that 'if Shakespeare had dramatised all the circumstances narrated by the First Gentleman he would have doubled the length of the play [which is true], but hardly have made it more interesting or artistic [which is doubtful].' 7-9. our bloods... Kings] In hearing these lines on the stage, we find no difficulty; we at once gather from them that our moods are no more dependent on the state of the weather than courtiers are dependent on the state of the King's moods, as the Heavens affect us so the King affects his courtiers; the King frowns and immediately all his courtiers frown. It is almost a commonplace, and parallels may be found throughout literature ancient and modern. But when, in the closet, we analyse the lines as they stand in the Folio, the case is altered, and the passage, even to Dr Johnson, becomes 'so difficult that commentators may differ concerning it without animosity or shame.' The earliest editor to change the text was Sir Thomas Hanmer, who, as speaker of the House of Commons, may have acquired the art of reducing verbiage to conciseness, and, undeterred by the scholastic ductus literarum, or the durior lectio, boldly, without comment, gave as the true text: 'Our looks No more obey the heart ev'n than our courtiers, But seem as do the King's.' This reading Dr Johnson befittingly pronounced "licentious,' and added, 'but it makes the sense clear, and leaves the reader an easy passage.'-WARBURTON sneered at it, however, by saying that it 'ventured too far' [this, from Warburton!]. He then proceeds to retain and improve the thought and sentiment by reading 'our brows No more obey the heavens,' etc., because it as do's the Kings] [7-9. Our bloods. had just been asserted that everybody was frowning, and because 'though the blood may be affected with the weather, yet that affection is discovered not by change of colour, but by change of countenance.' This reason is so 'obscure and perplexed' that we may well agree with Dr Johnson in 'suspecting some injury of the press.' It may be worth while to note that the sagacious THEOBALD (Nichol's Illust., ii, 264) accepted Warburton's 'brows,' in his private correspondence with Warburton, and even suggested as an addition to the text 'they are courtiers,' because 'to say their brows were courtiers, in conformity with the King's, I think is not very hard; and may seem grounded on Alexander's courtiers affecting to be wry-necked.' He did not, however, adopt his friend's emendation in his edition, or even allude to it; we may, therefore, conclude that his added emendation was withdrawn.-Dr JOHNSON, having criticised his predecessors, 'tells his own opinion,' which is, that the lines stand as they were originally written, and that a paraphrase, such as the licentious and abrupt expressions of our author too frequently require, will make emendation unnecessary. 'We do not meet a man but frowns; our bloods'-our countenances, which, in popular speech, are said to be regulated by the temper of the blood,-'no more obey the laws of heav'n,' which direct us to appear what we really are,-'than our courtiers'; that is, than the 'bloods of our courtiers'; but our bloods, like theirs,-'still seem, as doth the King's.' This paraphrase seems well nigh as 'obscure and perplexed' as that of Warburton. With both critics the main difficulty seems to lie in the interpretation of 'bloods.' In the meantime, or rather, in the same year with Johnson, HEATH, whose opinions are always respectable, put forth his paraphrase (p. 469), and for the first time interprets 'bloods' correctly, as it seems to me. He thus paraphrases: 'Every one you meet appears to be displeased and out of humour; the heavens have no more influence on our dispositions than they have on the courtiers. Both seem to be equally determined by the humour the King happens to be in. If he is cloudy, all are instantly cloudy too.' The punctuation seems to have misled Heath; the colon after 'courtiers' kept him apparently from seeing what I think is correct, that 'courtiers' is the nominative to 'seeme.'-CAPELL accepted Heath's interpretation of 'bloods,' as referring to our dispositions, which are influenced by the blood and this in turn by 'the heavens,'—thus understood, and with making 'courtiers' a genitive, and an emphasis on 'our,' thereby importing 'of us who have no dependence on court,' 'the passage will be,' he says, 'sufficiently clear without further explaining.' In the following year, TYRWHITT proposed a reading, which by the omission of the s after 'Kings,' has been accepted more widely than any other. His reading is as follows: 'Our bloods No more obey the heavens than our courtiers Still seem, as does the King.' 'That is,' he adds, 'Still look as the King does'; or, as he expresses it a little differently afterwards, -wear their faces to the bent of the King's looks.'-The Text. Notes reveal how widely this reading has been followed. As for the omission of the final s in 'Kings,' all, who are familiar with the First Folio text, know how extremely common this intrusive letter is at the end of a word. SIDNEY WALKER (Crit., i, 233) has devoted a long article to this interpolation, and goes so far as to surmise that it may have arisen from some peculiarity of Shakespeare's handwriting. The chiefest difficulty in this passage has been solved, I think, by the conversion of 'Kings' into King; there are, however, other minor difficulties connected with several other words, as well as sundry emendations which must not be overlooked.-COLERIDGE (p. 302) [7-9. Our bloods . . . as do's the Kings] in his Lecture, delivered in 1818, says: 'I have sometimes thought that the word, "courtiers," was a misprint for countenances, arising from an anticipation, by foreglance of the compositor's eye, of the word "courtier" a few lines below. The written is easily and often confounded with the written n. The compositor read the first syllable court, and—his eye at the same time catching the word "courtier" lower down-he completed the word without reconsulting the copy. It is not unlikely that Shakespeare intended first to express generally the same thought, which a little afterwards he repeats with a particular application to the persons meant;—a common usage of the pronominal "our," where the speaker does not really mean to include himself; and the word "you" is an additional confirmation of the "our" being used, in this place, for men generally and indefinitely, just as "you do not meet" is the same as one does not meet.' [In proposing countenances, can it be that Coleridge overlooked the metre?]-JOSEPH HUNTER (ii, 292) remarks that the punctuation of neither the old nor the modern editions can be right. "The following regulation,' he adds, 'was suggested to me by Mr Bright: "our bloods No more obey the heavens then: our courtiers Still seem as does the King."'-BULLOCH (p. 266), to whom a little knowledge was apparently a dangerous thing, proposed to substitute for Shakespeare's text, the following of his own: 'You do not meet a "manly hail!" but frowns. Our bloods no more obey the heaven's call Than do our courtiers; they Still seem as does the King.'— STAUNTON,-admirable as was his fertility of invention,-at times, sufflaminandus erat, offers the following,—can it be termed an emendation? "Tyrwhitt's reading is now generally followed, though no one perhaps ever believed or believes that this was what the poet wrote. It has been accepted because the editors had nothing better to offer. The real blot lies, we apprehend, in the words "Still seem as,' which were probably misheard or misread by the compositor for still-seemers, i. e., ever dissemblers; and the meaning appears to be "our complexions do not more sympathise with the changes of the sky, than the looks of our courtiers (those perpetual simulators) do with the aspect of the King." The expression "seemers" occurs again in the same sense here attributed to it, in Meas. for Meas., I, iii, 53, 54.' There seems to be here a return to the spherical predominance that overshadowed Warburton and Johnson. Do our 'complexions sympathise with the changes of the sky'? Almost the last trace of this belief is discerned in a note by BOSWELL in the Variorum of 1821, as follows: 'This passage means, I think, "our bloods, or our constitutions, are not more regulated by the heavens, by every skyey influence, than our courtiers apparently are by the looks or disposition of the King; when he frowns, every man frowns."-WALKER (Crit., i, 72) thus criticises this note of Boswell: "This explanation, to say nothing more, is irreconcilable with the words of the passage, which, to admit of it, ought to be "Not more obey," etc. But it suggested to me the former part of a conjectural emendation. I suspect that a line is wanting; e. g. (to illustrate my meaning),-"-our bloods Not more obey the heavens, than our courtiers [Mirror their master's looks: their countenances] Still seem, as doth the King's." There are, as it seems to me, several instances in the Folio (several, considered collectively, though few compared with the number of lines) of single verses having dropt out; and the Folio is the only authority for Cymbeline. The similarity of termination, courtiers—countenances, was the cause of the omission. This conjecture is merely thrown out as a may-be.' It may seem strange that Walker was not aware how closely he was anticipated by 2. Gent. But what's the matter? 1. His daughter, and the heire of's kingdome (whom ΙΟ hath] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Theob. Warb. Han. kingdom, whom...(a widow...marri'd) hath Cap. et seq. (subs.) Coleridge, but we know that his library was scanty and he probably had never heard of Coleridge's criticism. What is, perhaps, a little more strange is that he refused to accept Boswell's 'No more' as 'Not more,' when later on (Crit., ii, 123) he has an article on 'No more apparently misprinted for not more,' and, among other examples, cites this present passage and even refers, without comment, to his previous note; but aliquando dormitat, etc.-DYCE in his first edition adopted Tyrwhitt's emendation, without demur; but, in his second edition, having read, in the meantime, Walker's valuable criticisms, and finding that Walker suggested the loss of a line, that honest but vacillating editor asks, 'But does the emendation [Tyrwhitt's] now adopted set all right in this much-disputed passage?'-WELLESLEY (p. 31) thinks that the chief difficulty lies in the word 'Heavens,' a misreading by the compositor for Queens, with the consequent false idea of obeying the heavens; taking into consideration the next two speeches of this First Gentleman, wherein 'the frowns, faces, looks, and outward sorrow of all, King, Queen, Courtiers, and Gentlemen,' are contrasted 'with their bloods, or inward heart,' Dr Wellesley believes that we shall arrive at a consistent meaning in this first speech if 'Heavens' be changed to Queens; that is, 'our bloods no more obey the Queens Than our courtiers; Still seem as does the Kings.'-To Vaughan (iii, 327) the difficulty is centred in 'Courtiers,' which, by conversion into court eyes, gives 'a quite satisfactory sense,' and is withal, so he asserts, 'the slightest change that has been proposed, involving neither omission nor addition of the number of letters.'KEIGHTLEY takes a broader and more liberal view than Vaughan and believes that what the Courtiers lack is not 'eyes' but 'faces,' and his text accordingly reads 'our courtiers' faces'; in other respects retaining the Folio text. There remains the jejune task of citing, for I shall not quote them,-passages which have been detected in various authors parallel in sentiment with the present passage. At best they show that Shakespeare was merely the child of his age and shared thoughts with many a fellow writer,—a very needless revelation, and at worst it is a vain parade of reading on the part of the critic and half insinuates plagiarism on the part of Shakespeare. Of course I refer to sheer parallelisms from other writers. Passages identical in sentiment or similar in expression from Shakespeare's own writings, especially from the Sonnets, are always profitable.-STEEVENS quotes from Greene's Never too Late, 1590, p. 22, ed. Grosart; MALONE, from Ant. & Cleop., I, v, 64, ed. Var.; INGLEBY, from the Com. of Err., II, ii, 30-34; Greene's Menaphon, 1589, pages. 23, 24, ed. Pearson; Chapman's Tragedie of Byron, p. 279, ed. Pearson.-LAROCHE, in his French Trans., 1842, quotes from Racine's Britannicus, V, v. To the citations from Shakespeare, may be added, 2 Hen. IV: V, i, 73, and Tempest, II, i, 142.-ED. 11. of's] This contraction should be of course retained, as it has been, I believe, by every editor since Collier, except Keightley. The same is emphatically true of 'shall's' (III, ii, 303) instead of shall we, which, the Cowden-Clarkes say, is to be found only in the group of plays consisting of the present play, The Winters Tale, Coriolanus, and Timon.-ED. |