ON A PASSAGE IN "KING HENRY VIII.," ACT III. SC. 2.
One of the most desperately unintelligible passages in Shakspeare occurs in this play, in the scene between the King and the Cardinal, when the latter professes his devoted attachment to his service. It stands thus in the first folio:
Car. "I do professe
That for your Highnesse good, I euer labour'd
More then mine owne: that am, haue, and will be
(Though all the world should cracke their duty to you,
And throw it from their Soule, though perils did
Abound, as thicke as thought could make 'em, and
Appeare in formes more horrid) yet my Duty,
As doth a Rocke against the chiding Flood,
Should the approach of this wilde Riuer breake,
And stand vnshaken yours."
Upon this Mason observes:
"I can find no meaning in these words (that am, have, and will be), or see how they are connected with the rest of the sentence; and should therefore strike them out."
Malone says:
"I suppose the meaning is, 'that or such a man, I am, have been, and will ever be.' Our author has many hard and forced expressions in his plays; but many of the hardnesses in the piece before us appear to me of a different colour from those of Shakspeare. Perhaps however, a line following has been lost; for in the old copy there is no stop at the end of this line; and, indeed, I have some doubt whether a comma ought not to be placed at it, rather than a fullpoint."
Mr. Knight, however, places a fullpoint at will be, and says:
"There is certainly some corruption in this passage; for no ellipsis can have taken this very obscure form. Z. Jackson suggests 'that aim has and will be.' This is very harsh. We might read 'That aim I have and will,' will being a noun."
Mr. Collier has the following note:
"In this place we can do no more than reprint exactly the old text, with the old punctuation; as if Wolsey, following 'that am, have, and will be' by a long parenthesis, had forgotten how he commenced his sentence. Something may have been lost, which would have completed the meaning and the instances have not been infrequent where lines, necessary to the sense, have been recovered from the quarto impressions. Here we have no quarto impressions to resort to, and the later folios afford us no assistance, as they reprint the passage as it stands in the folio 1628, excepting that the two latest end the parenthesis at 'break.'"
I cannot think that the poet would have put a short speech into Wolsey's mouth, making him forget how he commenced it! Nor do I believe that anything has been lost, except the slender letter I preceding am. The printer or transcriber made the easy mistake of taking the word true for haue, which as written of old would readily occur, and having thus confused the passage, had recourse to the unconscionable long mark of a parenthesis. The passage undoubtedly should stand thus:
Car. "I do profess
That for your highness' good I ever labour'd
More than mine own; that I am true, and will be
Though all the world should lack their duty to you,
And throw it from their soul: though perils did
Abound, as thick as thought could make them, and
Appear in forms more horrid; yet my duty
(As doth a rock against the chiding flood,)
Should the approach of this wild river break,
And stand unshaken yours."
Here all is congruous and clear. This slight correction of a palpable printer's error redeems a fine passage hitherto entirely unintelligible. I do not insist upon the correction in the fourth line of lack for crack, yet what can be meant by cracking a duty? The duke, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, speaks of his daughter as "lacking duty;" and seeing how very negligently the whole passage has been given in the folio, I think there is good ground for its reception. With regard to the correction in the second line, I feel confident, and doubt not that it will have the approbation of all who, like myself, feel assured that most of the difficulties in the text of our great poet are attributable to careless printer or transcriber.
When I proposed (Vol. vi., p. 468.) to read "rail at once," instead of "all at once," in As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 5., I thought the conjecture my own, having then only access to the editions of Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight; I consequently said, "It is somewhat singular that the passage should hitherto have passed unquestioned." My surprise was therefore great, on turning to the passage in the Variorum Shakspeare, to find the following note by Warburton, which had escaped my notice:
"If the speaker intended to accuse the person spoken to only for insulting and exulting, then, instead of 'all at once,' it ought to have been both at once. But, examining the crime of the person accused, we shall discover that the line is to be read thus:
'That you insult, exult, and rail at once,'
for these three things Phœbe was guilty of. But the Oxford editor improves it, and, for rail at once, reads domineer."
I have no recollection of having ever read the note before, and certainly was not conscious of it. The coincidence, therefore, may be considered (as Mr. Collier observed in respect to the reading of palpable for capable) as much in favour of this conjecture.
That the most careful printers can misread, and consequently misprint, copy, is evident from the following error in my last Note:—Vol. vi., p. 584., col. 1, for "in the edition which I gave of the part," read "poet." This mistake, like most of those I have indicated in the first folio Shakspeare, might easily occur if the word was indistinctly written.
S. W. Singer.
Mickleham.