Qnd S, No 22., May. 31. ’56.] 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
425 
LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 31, 1856. , 
9 
“RACKE” OR “WRACK:” SHAKSPEARE, “TEM- 
PES,” Act Iv. sc. 1. 
May I be allowed one word more to save Rack 
from Ruin ? 
First, as to the authority on which the reading 
itself rests : — 
“ This comedy,” says Mr. Knight, “stands the first in 
the folio collection of 1623, in which edition it was ori- 
ginally printed. The original text is printed with sin- 
gular correctness; and, if with the exception of one or 
two typographical errours, it had continued to be reprinted 
without change, the world would have possessed a COPY 
with the mint-mark of the poet upon it.” 
Most ably, and, to my mind, satisfactorily does 
Mr. Knight, in his little tract entitled Old Lamps 
or New, establish the opinion of Horne Tooke and 
his friends (and among them may be distinguished 
~ Dr. Raine of the Charter House, under whom 
“the two eminent historians of Greece, Bishop 
Thirlwall and G. Grote, Esq., were together in the 
same form”), that this first folio of the Works of 
Shakspeare, “ notwithstanding some palpable mis- 
prints, requires none of their (the commentators’) 
alterations.” * 
There can be no dispute, then, as to the various 
readings; there is but this one text, so approved 
by such judges, to rely upon. But the first 
question started is: May not this reading be one 
of the misprints acknowledged to exist in this 
applauded text? Such as are found in the old 
editions of Paradise Lost, where rack is twice 
written for wrack.t 
A : - 5 The starrie cope 
Of Heay’n perhaps, and all the elements 
At least had gone to rack, disturbed and torne 
With violence of this conflict.” 
Book iv. v. 994, 
“ To save himself and houshold from amidst 
A world devote to universal rack.” 
Book xi. v. 821. 
Once we meet in the same edition with wrack : 
iA » b : And now all Heav’n 
Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspread.” 
Book vi. y. 670. 
In this predicament, the only question that 
remains is: How is thts word racke to be inter- 
preted ? 
Mr. Knight, in his Stratford Shakspere, admits 
that ‘‘there is a doubt, whether a rack, as bere 
used, is not a misprint for wrack, or wreck.” Mr. 
Singer too, I regret to find, has, in his new edition 
of Shakespeare, adopted this latter reading. In his 
former edition, influenced by Tooke’s “ admirable 
* Tooke’s Diversions of Purley, vol. ii. p. 388., 4to. 
edition. 
It is wrong to call rack a misprint for wrack. It is 
only a different way of writing the same word. 
observations,” he reads, “ Rack, a vapour, an ex- 
halation.” 
It is, I must confess, this doubt of Mr. Knight, 
and this reversal of his own judgment by Mr. 
Singer, that invests this question with a degree of 
interest, which (with me at least) it would not 
otherwise possess.* 
Though your correspondents refer to Horne 
Tooke, not one has quoted the “ admirable ob- 
servations,” referred to by Mr. Singer. They are 
these : 
“ Rack means merely that which is recked: and is 
surely the most appropriate term that could be employed 
by Shakespear in this passage of The Tempest : to repre- 
sent to us, that the dissolution and annihilation of the 
globe, and all which it inherits, should be so total and 
compleat; they should so mel¢t into ayre, into thin ayre, 
as not to leave behind them even a vapour, a steam, or 
an exhalation, to give the slightest notice that such 
things had ever been.” 
What, then, is the value of the objection urged 
by Malone, and fairly stated by Mr. Singer, that 
the words (“leave not,” &c.) relate, not to “ the 
baseless fabric of this vision,’ but to the final 
destruction of the world, of which “the towers, 
temples, and palaces, shall (dike a vision or a 
pageant) be dissolved, and leave no vestige be- 
hind.” It is precisely to this—not destruction, 
but dissolution—(for dissolve is the poet’s word) 
this melting into thin ayre, of the world itself, 
that Tooke maintains the word rack, i. e. reek, to 
be most appropriate. And I think he was right 
in so doing. Nor have I met with a single reason, 
urged from any quarter, that in the least affects 
this boldly poetical interpretation of the language 
of the great. magician. 
I have called attention to the poet’s word dis- 
solve. His comparative like is not unworthy of 
notice. ire 
Prospero, the magician, had presented to his 
shipwrecked countrymen a baseless fabric, and 
the actors and agencies of it are melted (dissolved) 
into thin air, and he pronounces, that, like this 
baseless fabric, the fabric of the great globe shall 
dissolve, that is, melt away, and, like this faded, 
evanished, insubstantial pageant, shall, by this dis- 
solution (not disruption, not destruction), leave not 
even (the only possible relict, “ remain, vestige, or 
trace,” either of such pageant dissolved, or of the 
fabric of the great globe dissolved,) a rucke be- 
hind: shall leave not even “a tenuious reek,” to 
“use the expression of Henry Moref, the “ tenuis 
Nebula” of Virgil.t 
* A more determined opponent to Horne Tooke will, I 
have reason to believe, appear when Mr. Dyce’s edition of 
the poet is published. 
+ See in Richardson’s Dictionary, sub. v. Rexx. 
~ Ihave been asked, “ Who ever saw, in any old writer, 
the expression, a rack?” Why the very question is, do we 
not see it in this very passage? Does not Henry More 
present us with it, though with an epithet? Suppose 
