The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1853-05-04

1
that day were not exactly as skiiful as their
successors Of the present. Yet it would be q
dangerous risk for an author TO leave his repu-
tation entirely at the mercy even of these lat
ter. Such seems TO have been, under Tar
worse auspices, the fate of Shakespeare, for
nobody appears to have corrected the press
even by the second hand MS. placed IN the
; hands Of the composi;or. Between this iasI
and the transcriber, sad havoc was made OF
the great roet. The transcriber, catching 'he
sound by the ear, seems frequently " h"o
pat down one word for another, when the Two
sounded alike, and the printer irequen'y '"l'
took one word or one letter tor ano'nea, ,, "'
not seldom omitted whole lines. III i0'" 81"
other folio edition was published. IL appears
n have been no improvement upon that OF
1so3. Mr.. Collier, coming into possession OF
an old copy of the edition OF 1867, found that
!, had been the property of person who -four
;sbed about the time it was published, and
that il was filed with all manner of emenda-
,;o,s and changes. From the fact that whole
n.ssapes. sometimes whole scenes, were
marked out, as if not designed for representa-
tion. he concluded that the owner must have
been an actor, and from the extreme Apostle
ness of nearly all the corrections, he inferred
that he had access to the original MS. Both
these suppositions we regard as extremely
probable, because the corrections are palpa-
bly, just, and because, before the discovery of
this book, they had escaped the vigilance OF
the most acute and laborious critics. The
substitution of single word, sometimes Of
single letter, often renders perfectly intelligi.
bic passages that have defed the ingenuity of
| all the commentators. We proceed to give a
few examples, taking the tragedy of Macbeth
| for our text.
The wounded soldier speaking to Duncan
of the rebellion of Macdonald, uses the fol.
lowing line
| sand fortune on his damned QUARRY smiling"
| The word quarry puzzled the commenta-
tors for two centuries, and though Johnson
suggested quarrel, his successors insisted that
quarry was right, maintaining that it was the
squadron (escarde) or square into which Mac
donwald formed his troops. The old corrector
writes quarrel in the margin, and common
| sense JuStihes the change.
When Ross enters suddenly, bringing IT,
dings of the victory, Lennox exelaims
''What haste looks through his eyes!
So should he look that seems to speak strange things
To say that a man seems to speak strange
things before he has spoken at all, is to per-
petrate nonsense. The old corrector chan
ges seems to comes, and thus makes sense out
of nonsense.
Lady Macbeth is made to say:
| 'Come thick night
And pail me in the dunnest smoke of hell
| That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor Heaven press through the BLANKET of the dark,
To cry Hold! hold!"
Malone suggested that the idea of the blan-
ket came from the thick wooden curtain let
down before the audience, and nearly all the
other commentators offered explanations not a
bit more wise or opposite. The old corrector
sets them right by writing darkness ia just
and poetical expression) for the prosaic and
unmeaning blanket of the folio.
The alteration of single letter makes a
vast difference in the meaning of the following
celebrated passage:
| MACB.-"Prythee peace.
dare do all that may become man,
| Who dares do more is
LADY MAcB-What beast vast then
That made you break this enterprise to me
| When you burst do it, then you were man. &c.
Beast, as here used, is gross yulgarism.-
The old corrector writes boast, and it is con.
sistent with what goes before. Lady Macbeth
had been haunting him with Boosting at a dis
lance, and failing when the time came.
Let your Highness
Command upon me"
is nonsense. The old corrector says:
Clay your Highness'
Command upon me-
which is good English and good sense.
Through pyramids and palaces do SLOPE
/ Their heads to their foundation.p
Ha pyramid or palace slope its head, it will
be very apt never to recover its perpendic ular.
The old corrector writes Stoop.
This push
Will CHEER me ever or disseat me now.
| have lived long enough my WAY of life
Is talPn into the scar and yellow leaf" &C.
The old corrector has chair me THAT is en-.
throne mel for cheer, and May oflite for way
Of life. Both corrections are obvious.
There are few readers who are not familiar
with this memorable passage
| "Canst thou not minister to mind diseased,
| Pluck from the memory rooted sorrow,
Rae out the written troubles Of the brain,
| And with some sweet, obvlous antldote,
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perlIous STUFF
| That weighs upon the hearth
"Stuffed" and "stuff' in the same line, sadly
mar the beauty of this almost inspired pas.
sage. The old corrector reads grief for stuff
which is certainly right.
: There are two noted passages, in two other
l plays, upon which much romantic nonsense
has been written, but which the old correctol
3 demolshes with a dash of his pen. In the
3 play of Henry ", Mrs. Quickly, describing
D the death OF Falstaff, says, according to tn,
: old folio, "for his nose was as sharp as per
D and table Of green fields" Theobold fanci
D fully corrected this passage into the wei
b. known land a. babbled of green felds."-
Abundance of nonsense about the "ruling pas
: sion strong in DEATH has been predicated up
4 on this fanciful alteration. The old correcto
J, brings it down to plain every day sense "Hi
l nose was as sharp as pen on table of greer
r frieZer