ON A PASSAGE IN THE "MERCHANT OF VENICE," ACT III. SC. 2.
The passage in which I am about to propose some verbal corrections has already been in part examined by your correspondent A. E. B. in p. 483. of this volume; but the points, except one, to which I advert, have not been touched by that gentleman. The first folio reads thus:
"Thus ornament is but the guiled shore
To a most dangerous sea, the beauteous scarfe
Vailing an Indian beautie; In a word,
The seeming truth which cunning times put on
To intrap the wisest. Therefore then, thou gaudie gold,
Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee,
Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge
Tweene man and man; but thou, thou meager lead,
Which rather threatnest than doth promise ought,
Thy palenesse moves me more than eloquence,
And here choose I, joy be the consequence."
The word guiled in the first line is printed guilded in the second folio, the form in which gilded appears often in the old copies. I have no doubt that this is the true reading, and it would obviate the difficulty of supposing that Shakspeare wrote guiled for guiling.
In Henry Peacham's Minerva Britanna, 1612, p. 207., of deceitful "court favour" it is said:
"She beares about a holy-water brush,
Wherewith her bountie round about she throwes
Fair promises, good wordes, and gallant showes:
Herewith a knot of guilded hookes she beares," &c.
Notwithstanding your correspondent's ingenious argument to show that beautie in the third line may be the true reading, I cannot but think that it is a mistake of the compositor caught from beauteous in the preceding line; and that gypsie was the word used by the poet, who thus designates Cleopatra. The words in their old form might well be confused. For "thou pale and common drudge," in the seventh line, I unhesitatingly read "thou stale and common drudge;" and, by so doing, avoid the repetition of the same epithet to silver and lead. It is evident that the epithet applied to silver should be a depreciating one; while paleness is said to move more than eloquence. The following passage in King Henry IV., Part I. Act III. Sc. 2. confirms this reading:
"So common hackney'd in the eyes of men,
So stale and cheap."
To obviate the repetition, Warburton altered paleness to plainness, but paleness was the appropriate epithet for lead. Thus, Baret has, "Palenesse or wannesse like lead. Ternissure."
And in Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 5., we have:
"Unwieldly, slow, heavy and pale as lead."
With these simple and, most of them, obvious corrections, I submit the passage to the impartial consideration of those who with me think that our immortal poet, so consummate a master of English, has been here, as elsewhere, rendered obscure, if not absurd, by the blunders of the printer. It will then run thus:
"Thus ornament is but the gilded shore
To a most dangerous sea: the beauteous scarf
Veiling an Indian gipsy; in a word,
The seeming truth which cunning times put on
To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold
Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee:
Nor none of thee, thou stale and common drudge
'Tween man and man: but thou, thou meagre lead,
Which rather threat'nest than doth promise aught,
Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence,
And here choose I; joy be the consequence!"
I may just observe, that in Troilus and Cressida, Act II. Sc. 2., the quarto copies have printed pale for stale, which is corrected in the folio.
S. W. Singer.