“Then am I a sous’d gurnet,” lays Falstaff. This fish has puzzled the commentators as much as the apple did before.—What can it be?—I never heard of such a fish.—There is no such fish. A magazine critic, assured of its non-existence, proposed reading grunt, gurnet, quasi grunet, quasi grunt——well, and what do we get by that? Why, because hogs grunt, and pork is the flesh of hogs, sous’d gurnet means pickled pork! Very lately a commentator, who once denied its existence, has discovered in consequence of his great learning, that there is really such a fish——he is really in the right—if he will go to the South coast of Devonshire, he may see plenty of them—but not sous’d.
And now I mention Falstaff, let me explain his copper ring. He complains of being robbed when he was asleep, and “losing a seal-ring of his grandfather’s worth forty marks.” “O Jesu,” says the hostess, “I have heard the prince tell him I know not how oft, that the ring was copper.” Is the appearance of copper so much like gold, that one may be mistaken for the other? Formerly, (about the time of Falstaff’s grandfather) gold was a scarce commodity in England, so scarce that they frequently made rings of copper and plated them thinly with gold; I have seen two or three of them. As the look of both was alike, Falstaff might insist upon its being gold; on the contrary, the prince, from the quality of the wearer and lightness of the ring, might with equal fairness maintain that it was only plated.
Though it is not my intention to make one of the number of Shakspeare’s commentators, I will take this opportunity of restoring a passage in King Lear. In the agony of his passion with his daughter, he says (in the modern editions)
“Th’ untented woundings of a Father’s curse
Pierce every sense about thee.”
In the old editions it is printed exceeding plainly, “Th’ untender woundings, &c.” that is, not tender, or cruel. It would be waste of time to shew its propriety, and that there is no such word as untented. Who first threw out the true reading and substituted the false, I know not. Is it worth while to say, that the word is often used by Shakspeare, and once at least besides in the same play, “so young and so untender?”
One more and I will release you.—Shylock says,
Some men there are, love not a gaping pig;
Some that are mad, if they behold a cat;
And others, when the bag-pipe sings in the nose,