SOME NEW EMENDATIONS IN SHAKESPEARE. 385 



In Richard II. thei-e are two or three of the finest passages in 

 the play in which I venture to suggest emendations. The first 

 •occurs in the splendid and patriotic speech which Shakespeai-e puts 

 into the mouth of old John of Gaunt, when on his deathbed, he 

 utters his last warning counsel to the weak young king, Richard 

 II. (Act II. s. 1.) It is the oft-quoted speech beginning, " Methinks 

 I am a prophet, new inspired," then follows his magnificent descrip- 

 tion of England : 



' ' This sceptred Isle, 



This fortress built by nature for herself 

 Against infection and. the hand of war." 



Staunton objects, rightly I think, to the word " infection," 

 "because, as a matter of fact, England in Shakespeare's time was not 

 preserved by her insular position from pestilential contagion. But 

 apart altogether from this very matter of fact argument I cannot 

 bring myself to believe that Shakespeare ever thought of regarding 

 the " silver sea" in which England was set, the " triumphant sea " 

 as it is called in the same speech, as a " cordon sanitaire" to protect 

 the country from the plague ! This were on a par with using 

 " Imperious Caesar dead and turned to clay, to stop a hole to keep the 

 wind away." Farmer, feeling the necessity of an emendation here, 

 proposed the word infestion — a word not found, so far as I know, 

 anywhere else either in Shakespeare or any other English writer. 

 " Invasion " was, I believe, the word written by Shakespeare. 

 " Against invasion and the hand of war" brings the line into har- 

 mony with the whole speech. 



In King Richard's speech, in the same scene, he is made to say : 



" Now for our Irish wars ; 

 We must supplant these rough rug-headed kernes, 

 Which live like venom where no venom else 

 Hath privilege to live." 



" Living like venom " appears to me harsh and forced, if not 

 obscure. I suspect Shakespeare wrote ''vermin" not " venom," 

 alluding to the legend, popular then as now, that St. Patrick had 

 " banished all the vermin " from the Island of Saints. It may be 

 noted too that Richard proposes to deal with the " Irish kernes " 

 very much as the Saint had done with the Irish vermin, namely, 

 4e supplant them," or, in other words, exterminate them — a mode of 

 dealing with the Irish which has probably suggested itself to the 



