Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/354

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350 Mason more sure." But aside from the nine "Emendations Adopted in the Text of the Cambridge Edition," given on page 281 (a typically inaccurate and incomplete list, incidentally), there are of course many other much-mooted cruces, such as "He should not humour me" (p. 55), "Who glaz'd upon me (p. 59), "The Genius, and the mortall instruments" (p. 81), "For if thou path" (p. 85), "if not the Face of men" (p. 90), and so on at similarly brief intervals throughout, as well as the larger problems raised by Brutus' soliloquy (p. 73), the two reports of Portia's death in the quarrel scene (Act IV, Scene iii), the conflicting statements of Brutus about suicide (Act V, Scene i), and the peculiar omission of the names of the speakers of certain lines on pages 199 and 268. Leo, in "Shakespeare-Notes," gives more space to conjectural emendations in the text of Julius CcEsar than to those in eleven others of the twenty plays considered; and Leo's work is listed in Mr. Furness' bibliogra- phy. So after a careful consideration of these facts, the student will probably dissent from Mr. Furness' undiscerning repetition of the traditional verdict on the purity of the text and will rather prefer to accept Professor C. F. T. Brooke's more judicious appraisal ("Shakespeare's Principal Plays," Century Co., N. Y., 1914, p. 443): "The first printed version of Julius Ccesar is that found in the 1623 Folio, which is the only basis for the modern editions. In such cases it is usual for editors to remark that the text is particularly free from error, since there are comparatively few Folio readings which cannot be given some sensible interpretation when no conflicting version exists. Only when there are several divergent texts is it possible to guess how far the Folio misrepresents the poet's manuscript. " Sometimes difficulties are ignored which so elaborate an edition should remove by adequate interpretation; e.g., "and leave you so" (p. 215), "They could be content To visit other places, and come down" (pp. 239, 240), "And may'st be honour'd, being Cato's Sonne" (p. 268), etc. Again, why is not the modern location given for every scene, instead of only part of the time (cf. Ill, iii, e.g.)? And why are we not told what the symbols "Cam.+ " (p. 8, et pas.) and "Glo.+ " (pp. 69, 179, 206, etc.) signify? And why should not the correction,

"Calpurnia" for " Calphurnia, " be made once for all in the