ACT IV.
Scene 2. Page 154.
Gui. But his neat cookery.
This speech has exercised the talents of a certain ingenious female illustrator of Shakspeare, who has endeavoured to ridicule the character of Imogen, and indeed the whole of the play. She degrades our heroine into a mere kitchen wench, and adverts to what she calls her œconomical education. Now what is this but to expose her own ignorance of ancient manners? If she had missed the advantage of qualifying herself as a commentator on Shakspeare's plots by a perusal of our old romances, she ought at least to have remembered, what every well informed woman of the present age is acquainted with, the education of the princesses in Homer's Odyssey. It is idle to attempt to judge of ancient simplicity by a mere knowledge of modern manners; and such fastidious critics had better close the book of Shakspeare for ever. In another part of her critique on this play, she condemns the giving of the drug to Imogen which Pisanio had received from the queen, from an idea that he was sufficiently warned of its soporific quality; and she positively states that the physician had, by a whisper, informed Pisanio of its property; not one word of which is to be found in Shakspeare. So much for the criticism and accuracy of a work to which Dr. Johnson condescended to write a dedication. He has likewise too often confided in its opinions in the course of several of his remarks on Shakspeare's plays.
Scene 2. Page 156.
Clo. Know'st me not by my clothes?
Gui. No, nor thy tailor, rascal.
Mr. Steevens's correct ear has on this, perhaps single, occasion been deceived. He objects to the negation no, as "at once superfluous and injurious to the metre;" yet it is impossible to read the line harmoniously without it. Nor does it constitute the superfluity of the metre, which has, exclusively, two redundant syllables. If any alteration were allowable, it might be the following:—
"Know'st not my clothes? No, nor thy tailor, rascal."
Scene 2. Page 164.
Bel. O thou goddess,
Thou divine nature, how thyself thou blazon'st——
This judicious emendation from thou thyself, &c., claimed by one learned gentleman and adopted by another, is the original property of Sir Thomas Hanmer.
Scene 2. Page 168.
Gui. With female fairies will his tomb be haunted.
i. e. harmless and protecting spirits, not fairies of a mischievous nature.
Scene 2. Page 169.
Gui. And worms will not come to thee.
Mr. Steevens imputes great violence to this change of person, and would read "come to him;" but there is no impropriety in Guiderius's sudden address to the body itself. It might indeed be ascribed to our author's careless manner, of which an instance like the present occurs at the beginning of the next act, where Posthumus says,
"... you married ones,
If each of you would take this course, how many
Must murder wives much better than themselves."
Scene 2. Page 169.
Arv. ... the ruddock would,
With charitable bill,—bring thee all this;
Yea and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none
To winter-ground thy corse.
The question made by Dr. Percy, whether the notion of the redbreast covering dead bodies be older than the celebrated ballad of the babes of the wood, has been satisfactorily answered in the affirmative by Mr. Reed's note. In Dekker's Villanies discovered by lanthorn and candle light, 1616, 4to, it is said, "They that cheere up a prisoner but with their sight, are Robin red breasts that bring strawes in their bils to cover a dead man in extremitie." See chap. xv.
With respect to winter-ground; until some other example of the use of this word be produced, there will be no impropriety in offering a substitute in winter-green, that is, "to preserve thy tomb green with moss in the winter season, when there will be no flowers wherewith to deck it." Such a verb might have been suggested to Shakspeare, who often coins in this way, by the plant winter-green, the pyrola.
Ruddock was the Saxon name ꞃuꝺꝺuc, for the redbreast, and long continued to be so. In Bullokar's Æsop, 1585, 12mo, there is a fable "Of a fowlor and the bird cale'd Robin-red-brest," which concludes in these words: "Then the fowlor, hop of-taking many being lost, when it waz now tym too-rest, drawing the netz, he cauht only on Robin-ruddok, which being unhappy [unlucky] had abydd stil in the shrap."
Scene 2. Page 175.
Imo. 'Od's pittikins!
Mr. Steevens's derivation from God's my pity, is not quite correct. It is rather from God's pity, diminutively used by the addition of kin. In this manner we have 'od's bodikins.