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Page 22
ACT III. SCENE i. (III. i. 13-15.)
Thou art not noble:
For all th' accommodations, that thou bear'st
Are nurs'd by baseness.
Dr. Warburton is undoubtedly mistaken in supposing that by "baseness"
is meant "self-love" here assigned as the motive of all human
actions. Shakespeare meant only to observe, that a minute analysis of
life at once destroys that splendour which dazzles the imagination.
Whatever grandeur can display, or luxury enjoy, is procured by "baseness",
by offices of which the mind shrinks from the contemplation. All
the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the shambles
and the dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the
quarry, and all the pomp of ornaments, dug from among the damps
and darkness of the mine.
ACT III. SCENE i. (III. i. 16-17.)
The soft and tender fork
of a poor worm.
"Worm" is put for any creeping thing or "serpent". Shakespeare supposes
falsely, but according to the vulgar notion, that a serpent wounds
with his tongue, and that his tongue is "forked". He confounds reality
and fiction, a serpent's tongue is "soft" but not "forked" nor
hurtful. If it could hurt, it could not be soft. In Midsummer-night's
Dream he has the same notion.
--With doubler tongue
Then thine, O serpent, never adder stung.
ACT III. SCENE i. (III. i. 32-4.)
Thou hast nor youth, nor age:
But as it were an after dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both.
This is exquisitely imagined. When we are young we busy ourselves
in forming schemes for succeeding time, and miss the gratifications
that are before us; when we are old we amuse the languour of age
with the recollection of youthful pleasures or performances; so
that our life, of which no part is filled with the business of the
present time, resembles our dreams after dinner, when the events
of the morning are mingled with the designs of the evening.
ACT III. SCENE i. (III. i. 36-8.)
When thou'rt old and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty
To make thy riches pleasant.
But how does beauty make "riches pleasant"? We should read "bounty",
which compleats the sense, and is this; Thou hast neither the
pleasure of enjoying riches thy self, for thou wantest vigour: nor
of seeing it enjoyed by others, for thou wantest "bounty". Where
the making the want of "bounty" as inseparable from old age as
the want of "health", is extremely satyrical tho' not altogether
just. --Warburton.
I am inclined to believe that neither man nor woman will have much
difficulty to tell how "beauty makes riches pleasant". Surely this
emendation, though it is elegant and ingenious, is not such as that
an opportunity of inserting it should be purchased by declaring
ignorance of what every one knows, by confessing insensibility of
what every one feels.
ACT III. SCENE ii. (III. i. 137-8.)
Is't not a kind of incest, to take life
From thine own sister's shame?
In Isabella's declamation there is something harsh, and something
forced and far-fetched. But her indignation cannot be thought
violent when we consider her not only as a virgin but as a nun.
ACT IV. SCENE viii. (iv. iii. 4-5.)
First here's young Mr. Rash, &c.
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