170 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 121. 



and we are ' assured by metallurgists, that if lead 

 be added to gold, even in the small jiroportion of 

 one part in two thousand, the whole mass is ren- 

 dered completely brittle. 



The questioi\ then is, in what way " the dram 

 of base" affects " all the noble substance ?" Sliak- 

 speare says it renders it doubtful or suspicious ; 

 bis commentators mahe him say that it douts or 

 extinguishes it altogether! And this they do 

 without even the excuse of an originally in)perfect 

 word to exercise conjecture upon. The original 

 word is doubt, the amended one dout; and yet the 

 first has been rejected, and the latter adopted, in 

 editions whose peculiar boast it is to have restored, 

 in every practicable instance, the original text. 



Now, in my opinion, Shakspeare did not intend 

 doubt in this place, to be a verb at all, but a noun 

 substantive : and it is the more necessary that this 

 point sliould be discussed, because the amended 

 passage has already crept into our dictionaries as 

 authority for the verb dout; thus giving to a very 

 questionable emendation the weight of an acknow- 

 ledged text. (Vide Todd's Johnson.') 



Any person who takes the amended passage, as 

 quoted at the head of this article, and restores 

 " dout," to its oi-iginal spelling, will find that the 

 chief hindrance to a perfect meaning consists in the 

 restriction of doth to tlie value of a mere expletive. 

 Let this restriction be removed, by conferring 

 upon doth the value of an effective verb, and it will 

 be seen that the difficulty no longer remains. The 

 sense then becomes, " the base doth doubt to the 

 noble," i. e. imparts doubt to it, or renders it 

 doubtful. We say, a man's good actions do him 

 credit ; why not also, his bad ones do him dotibt ? 

 One phrase may be less familiar than the other, 

 but they are in strict analogy as well with them- 

 selves as with the following example from the 

 Twelfth Night, which is exactly in point : 



" Thou bast, Sebastian, done good feature shame." 



Hence, since the original word is capable of 

 giving a clear and distinct meaning, there can be 

 no possible excuse for displacing it, even if the 

 word to be substituted were as faultless as it is 

 certainly the reverse. 



For not only is dout an apocryphal word, but 

 it is inelegant wlien placed, as it must be in this 

 instance, in connexion with the expletive doth, 

 being at the same time in itself a verb compounded 

 oi do. Neither is the meaning it confers so clear 

 and unobjectionable as to render it desirable ; for 

 in what way can a very small quantity be said to 

 diyut, or expel, a very large quantity ? To justify 

 such an expression, the entire identity of the 

 larger must be extinguished, leaving no part of it 

 to which the scandal mentioned in the third line 

 could apply. 



But an examination of the various places wherein 

 scandal is mentioned by Shakspeare, shows that 



the meaning attached by him to that word was 

 false imputation, or loss of character : therefore, 

 in the contact of the base and the noble, the scan- 

 dal must apply ^0 the noble substance — a consi- 

 deration that must not be lost sight of in any 

 attempt to arrive at the true meaning of the 

 whole passage. 



So far, I have assumed that " often " (the third 

 substitution in the amended quotation) is the best 

 representative that can be found for the " of a" of 

 the original ; and inasmuch as it is confirmed by 

 general consent, and is moreover so redundant, in 

 this place, that its absence or presence scarcely 

 makes any difference in the sense, it is not easily 

 assailable. 



The best way, perhaps, to attempt to supplant it 

 is to suggest a better word — one that shall still 

 more closely resemble the original letters in sound 

 and formation, and that shall, in addition, confer 

 upon the sense not a redundant but an effective 

 assistance. Such a word is offer : it is almost 

 identical (in sound at least) wiih the original, and 

 it materially assists in giving a much clearer appli- 

 cation to the last line. 



For these reasons, but especially for the last, I 

 adopt offer, as a verb in the infinitive ruled by 

 doth, in the sense of causing or compelling ; a sense 

 that must have been in familiar use in Shakspeare's 

 time, or it would not have been introduced into 

 the translation of Scripture. 



In this view the meaning of the passage becomes, 

 " The base doth the noble offer doubt, to his own 

 scandal " — that is, causes the noble to excite sus- 

 picion, to the injury of its own character. 



Examples of do in this sense are very numerous 

 in Spenser ; of which one is (F. Q., iii. 2. 34.) : 

 " To doe the frozen cold away to fly." 



And in Chaucer {Story of Ugolino) : 



" That they for hunger wolden do bim rf/en." 



And in Scri[)ture (2 Cor. viii. 1.) : 



" We do you to wit of the grace of God." 



By this reading a very perfect and intelligible 

 meaning is obtained, and that too by the slightest 

 deviation from the original yet proposed. 



By throwing the action of offering doubt upon 

 " the noble substance," it becomes the natural refer- 

 ence to " his own scandal" in the third line. 



Hamlet is moralising upon the tendency of the 

 " noblest virtues," " be they as pure as grace, as 

 infinite as man may undergo," to take, from " the 

 stamp of one defect," '■'•corruption in the general 

 censure" (a very close definition of scandal) ; and 

 he illustrates it by the metaphor : 



" The dram of base 

 Doth all the noble substance offer doubt, 

 To his own scandal." 



A. E. B. 

 Leeds. 



