Jan. 1. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



The peroration certainly exhibits what Mrs. 

 Malaprop calls "a nice derangement of epitaphs :" 

 and, as for the rest, surely "the force of" bathos 

 " could no further go." Cuthbeet Bede, B.A. 



ON A PASSAGE IN "KING HENET VIII.," ACT III. 



sc. 2. 



One of the most desperately unintelligible pas- 

 sages in Shakspeare occurs in this play, in the scene 

 between the King and the Cardinal, when the latter 



Professes his devoted attachment to his service. 

 t stands thus in the first folio : 



Car. " I do professe 

 That for your Flighnesse good, I euer labour'd 

 More then mine owns : that am, haue, and will be 

 (Though all the world should cracke their duty to you, 

 And throw it from their Soule, though perils did 

 Abound, as thicke as thought could make 'em, and 

 Appeare in formes more horrid) yet my Duty, 

 As doth a Rocke against the chiding Flood, 

 Should the approach of this wilde Riuer breake, 

 And stand vnsha':on yours." 



Upon this Mason observes : 



" I can find no meaning in these words (that am, 

 have, and will be), or see how they are connected with 

 the rest of the sentence ; and should therefore strike 

 them out." 



Malone says : 



" I suppose the meaning is, ' that or such a man, I 

 am, have been, and will ever be.' Our author has many 

 hard and forced expressions in his plays ; but many of 

 the hardnesses in the piece before us appear to me of a 

 different colour from those of Shakspeare. Perhaps, 

 however, a line following has been lost ; for in the old 

 copy there is no stop at the end of this line ; and, in- 

 deed, I have some doubt whether a comma ought not 

 to be placed at it, rather than a fullpoint." 



Mr. Knight, however, places a fullpoint at will 

 be, and says : 



" There is certainly some corruption in this passage ; 

 for no ellipsis can have taken this very obscure form. 

 Z. Jackson suggests ' that aiin has and will be.' This 

 is very harsh. We might read ' Tliat aim I have and 

 will,' will being a noun." 



Mr. Collier has the following note : 



" In this place we can do no more than reprint ex- 

 actly the old text, with the old punctuation ; as if 

 Wolsey, following 'that am, have, and will be' by a 

 long parenthesis, had forgotten how he commenced his 

 sentence. Something may have been lost, which would 

 have completed the meaning ; and the instances have 

 not been unfrequent where lines, necessary to the sense, 

 have been recovered from the quarto impressions. 

 Here we have no quarto impressions to resort to, and 

 the later folios afford us no assistance, as they reprint 

 the passage as it stands in the folio 1623, excepting 

 that the two latest end the parenthesis at 'break.'" 



I cannot think that the poet would have put a 

 short speech into Wolsey's mouth, making him 

 forget how he commenced it ! Nor do I believe 

 that anything has been lost, except the slender 

 letter / preceding am. The printer or transcriber 

 made the easy mistake of taking the word t7-ue for 

 haue, which as written of old would readily occur, 

 and having thus confused the passage, had recourse 

 to the unconscionable long mark of a parenthesis. 

 The passage undoubtedly should stand thus : 



Car. " I do profess 

 That for your highness' good I ever labour'd 

 More than mine own ; that f aiu true, and will be 

 Though all the world should lack their duty to you, 

 And throw it from their soul : though perils did 

 Abound, as thick as thought could make them, and 

 Appear in forms more horrid ; yet my duty 

 (As doth a rock against the chiding flood,) 

 Should the approach of this wild river break, 

 And stand unshaken yours." 



Here all is congruous and clear. This slight 

 correction of a palpable printer's error redeems a 

 fine passage hitherto entirely unintelligible. I do 

 not insist upon the correction in the fourth line of 

 lack for crack, yet what can be meant by cracking 

 a dull/? The duke, in the Two Gentlemen of 

 Verona, speaks of his daughter as " lacking duty ; " 

 and seeing how very negligently the whole passage 

 has been given in the folio, I think there is good 

 ground for its reception. With regard to the cor- 

 rection in the second line, I feel confident, and 

 doubt not that it will have the approbation of all 

 who, like myself, feel assured that most of the 

 difficulties in the text of our great poet are at- 

 tributable to a careless printer or transcriber. 



When I proposed (Vol. vi., p. 468.) to read 

 "rai7 at once," instead of "aZZ at once," in As You 

 Like It, Act III. Sc. 5., I thought the conjecture 

 ray own, having then only a,ccess to the editions of 

 Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight ; I consequently said, 

 " It is somewhat singular that the passage should 

 hitherto have passed unquestioned." My surprise 

 was therefore great, on turning to the passage in 

 the Variorum Shakspeare, to find the following 

 note by Warburton, which had escaped my notice: 



" If the speaker intended to accuse the person spoken 

 to only for insulting and exulting, then, instead of ' all 

 at once,' it ought to have been both at once. But, ex- 

 amining the crime of the person accused, we shall dis- 

 cover that the line is to be read thus : 



' That you insult, exult, and rail at once,' 

 for these three things Phoebe was guilty of. But the 

 Oxford editor improves it, and, for rail at once, reads 

 domineer." 



I have no recollection of having ever read the 

 note before, and certainly was not conscious of it. 

 The coincidence, therefore, may be considered (as 

 Mr. Collier observed in respect to the reading of 

 palpable for capable^ as much in favour of this 

 conjecture. 



