SHAKESPEARE EMENDATIONS.
(Vol. vi., p. 312.)
I cannot receive Mr. Cornish's substitution (p. 312.) of "chommer" for clamour in the Winter's Tale, Act IV. Sc. 3. In my opinion, clamour is nearly or altogether the right word, but wrongly spelt. We have a verb to clam, which, as connected with clammy, we use for sticking with glutinous matter; but which originally must, like the kindred German klemmen, have signified to press, to squeeze; for the kind of wooden vice used by harness-makers is, at least in some places, called a clams. I therefore suppose the clown to have said clam, or perhaps clammer (i.e. hold) your tongues.
Highly plausible as is Mr. C.'s other emendation in the same place of 2 Henry IV., Act III. Sc. 1., I cannot receive it either. In Shakspeare the word clown is almost always nearly equivalent to the Spanish gracioso, and denotes humour; and surely we cannot suppose it to be used of the ship-boy. Besides, a verb is wanted, as the causal particle for is as usual to be understood before "Uneasy lies," &c. I see no objection whatever to the common reading, though possibly the poet wrote:
"Then, happy boy, lie down."
There never, in my opinion, was a happier emendation than that of guidon for guard; On, in Henry V., Act IV. Sc. 2.; and its being made by two persons independently, gives it—as Mr. Collier justly observes of palpable for capable in As You Like It—additional weight. We are to recollect that a Frenchman is the speaker. I find guidon used for banner in the following lines of Clément Marot (Elégie III.):
"De Fermeté le grand guidon suivrons,"
and—
"Cestuy guidon et triomphante enseigne,
Nous devons suyvre: Amour le nous enseigne."
The change of a sea of troubles to assay of troubles in Hamlet is very plausible, and ought perhaps to be received. So also is Sir F. Madden's of face for case (which last is downright nonsense) in Twelfth Night, Act V. Sc. 1. But I would just hint that as all the rest of the Duke's speech is in rhyme, it is not impossible that the poet may have written—
"O thou dissembling cub! what wilt thou be
When time hath sow'd a grizzle upon thee?"
Allow me now to put a question to the critics. In the two concluding lines of the Merchant of Venice (the speaker, observe, is the jesting Gratiano):
"Well, while I live, I'll fear no other thing
So sore, as keeping safe Nerissa's ring."
May there not be a covert allusion to the story first told by Poggio in his Facetiæ, then by Ariosto, then by Rabelais, then by La Fontaine, and, finally, by Prior, in his Hans Carvel? Rabelais was greatly read at the time.
Thomas Keightley.