226 



♦ KNOVS^LEDGE 



[August 1, 1887. 



IMPROVING SHAKESPEARE. 



Bv Benvolio. 

 WAS ti very small boy when I made my first 

 emendation on Shakespeare, and, though it was 

 quite wrong, I think it was not much more 

 faulty than some of those which the learned 

 Bentley made on IMilton's text, and which the 

 most profound Shakespeareans have ventured 

 on the text of Shakespeare. My emendation 

 was made on the text of " Twelfth Night." A passage in 

 that most charming comedy perplexed my young mind, viz., 

 where Ophelia says, " Paiclesby, begone 1 " I wondered who 

 Rudesby was. Might it not be Fabian's other name? But 

 the list of dranuais persona: said simply Fabian. Then the 

 idea presented itself that Shakespeare had probably written 

 " Rude spy, begone 1 " This made everything clear. Olivia 

 is still addressing Sir Toby. She has already told him to be 

 off, as " fit only for the mountains and the barbarous caves, 

 where manners ne'er were preached ; " but manifestly he has 

 lingered, so she turns from Cesario (i.e. Sebastian), and, 

 seeing Sir Toby still contemplating them, calls her kinsman 

 very naturally a rude spy. 



It were to be wished that all Shakespearean emendations 

 were as natural and as little forced. The change of one 

 letter is slight comijared with some of the changes they 

 have asked for. Even when " a table of green fields " 

 was altered into " a' babbled of green fields," beautiful 

 though this emendation undoubtedly was, a certain daring 

 was shown. 



My emendation was quite wrong, however, though I held 

 to it for many years. 'The real interpretation of the line is 

 curious. The word " rudesby " is still in use in the part of 

 England where Shakesfjeare was born. I cannot say I have 

 heard it myself, but, talking a few years ago with Mr. 

 Christie Murray, who is a Warwickshire man, I learnt 

 from him that the expression is quite commonly used in 

 Shakespeare's county for a lout, a coarse, rude fellow. How 

 widely the use of the expression extended in Shakespeai-e's 

 time, I do not know ; but quite probably the word was as 

 distinctly provincial in his day as now, though he may not 

 have suspected it. 



I have learnt since those early Shakespearean days of 

 mine to look with much doubt on attempts to remove difli- 

 culties in Shakespeare's plays Ijy verbal, or even by literal 

 changes — at least until a very resolute effort has been made 

 to find an interpretation for the words as they stand. The 

 edition of Shakespeare I read when nine years old certainly 

 encouraged attempts at vei'bal and literal emendation. The 

 plays came out in penny numbers — not so cheap as the 

 wonderful ninepenny (nominally shilling) Shakespeares now 

 obtainable in England, but in those days a daring experi- 

 ment. The penny plays did not exactly form an a/it ion de 

 luxe. How well I remember the varied tints of the paper 

 covers I I had a notion that in some way they indicated 

 the nature of the play, till a re-issue abruptly shook my 

 faith by offering " Othello " in the lilac-tinted cover which I 

 had thought appropriate (goodness knows why I) for the 

 " Taming of a Shrew " ; while " A Comedy of Errors " ap- 

 peared in the dark blue cover in which the anguish of the 

 " Moor of Venice " had been before enwrapped. The text 

 was not by any means pure. I remember that I learnt 

 the j)art of Aufidius for parlour recitation, my elder brother 

 being Coriolanus (awful nuisances we must both have been, 

 I imagine), and I brought the house down (very likely they 

 were only waiting a decent excuse for laughing) by de- 

 nouncing the fraternal Coriolanus as " insolvent villain 1 " — 

 so my text, however, had it. Only five lines before, the 

 Secouil Lord, represented for the occasion by a sister. 



had perplexed the auditors by remarking, equally' with 

 the authority of our penny Shakespeare, that Coriolanus 

 " is noble, and his fame folds in this orb : the earth " — a 

 statement which I imagine no one on " this orb o' the 

 earth " could interpret as our Second Lord announced it. 



The emendation mentioned above, by which Mrs. Quickly 

 is made to say that Falstaff's " nose was as sharp as a pen, 

 and a' babbled of green fields," has justly been regarded as 

 very happy, yet (perhaps because I am prejudiced against 

 such emendations) I doubt if Shakespeare ever wrote that. 

 Somehow that heavy' spondaic ending " green fields " sounds 

 unlike Shakespeare, at least in such a poetic passage. Then, 

 is not the touch too fine for such a woman as Mrs. Quickly? 

 Shakespeare might have put such a saying in the mouth of 

 a Kent talking of Lear's last thoughts. He might even 

 have pictured a worthier person than Mrs. Quickly recalling 

 such thoughts of the dying Falstaff, unlike though they 

 were to anything lie had spoken about while before us in the 

 fulness of his jolly wickedness; for many a man of similar 

 life has wandered back in that way in his dying moments to 

 his boyhood's purer thoughts. But if Falstaff had had such 

 thoughts old Quickly would not have talked of them. She 

 recalled his remark that " women were devils incarnate " 

 with the appropriate explanation (for her) that " a' could 

 never abide carnation ; 'twas a colour he never liked," and, 

 moreover, that " he was rheumatic " (a line in " Venus and 

 Adonis " shows we must accent the first syllable), and so 

 knew not what he was saying. But nowhere does Mrs. 

 Quickly say anything to match with the tender thought, "he 

 babbled of green fields." She would have put such thoughts 

 from him, and afterwards from her own mind, just as when 

 he called on God she told him, " To comfort him, a' should 

 not think of God ; there was no need to trouble himself with 

 any such thoughts yet." [Here, by the way, seems further 

 reason for thinking that he had not begun to babble.] In the 

 folio, which contains the first complete edition of the play 

 (" Henry V."), we have the apparently unintelligible words, 

 "His nose was as sharj^ as a pen, and a table of greene 

 fields." It has been suggested that the true reading is " on 

 a table of greene frieze," but the frieze is objectionable. 

 Why not simply " on a table of greene fields " 1 The word 

 " field " for a blank coloured space, was in much more 

 common use formerly than now. The reader will remember 

 the Black Knight's shield in " Ivanhoe," bearing a sh.ackle- 

 bolt on an azure field ; and it is known that heraldic terms 

 were once in very common use. The emendator who sug- 

 gested " on " for " and " said, very justly, that it would be 

 quite in Mrs. Quickly's way, having been reminded of a pen 

 as sharp-looking, to recall the occasion when the pen 

 had been seen by her which suggested the comparison, 

 the greenish table, perhaps, being called to her recollection 

 by Falstafl"s pallor. Her remark would then simply mean, 

 his nose looked as sharp as a pen such as I once saw lying 

 on a table of green field-tints— that is, of green back- 

 ground. 



That this would be in Mrs. Quickly's manner, and, 

 therefore, more Shakespearean than the other reading, 

 though not so poetical, cannot be doubted. Consider the 

 way in which, whenever she tells of anything, she runs off 

 into all sorts of side-recollections ; as, for example, " Marry, 

 thou did.st swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet — sitting in 

 my dolphin chamber — at the round table— by a sea-coal 

 fii-e — upon Wednesd.ay in Whitsun week — when the Prince 

 broke thy head for liking his father to a singing man of 

 Windsor." And, ag:iin, "Did not Goodnife Keech, the 

 butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? 

 coming in to borrow a mess of vmegar — telling us she had a 

 good dish of prawns — whereby thou didst desire to eat some 

 ■ — whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound." 



