Scene 9.—The punctuation of the following passage requires to be put right. Coriolanus is declaring how much disgusted he is with the flatteries, the flourish of trumpets, and other demonstrations of applause with which he is saluted—
"May these same instruments which you profane
Never sound more! When drums and trumpets shall
I' the field prove flatterers, let courts and cities be
Made all of false-faced soothing. When steel grows
Soft as the parasite's silk, let him be made
A coverture for the wars!"
But what is the sense of saying—let courts and cities be made up of hypocrisy, when drums and trumpets in the field shall prove flatterers? This has no meaning. We should punctuate the lines thus—
"May these same instruments which you profane,
Never sound more, when drums and trumpets shall
I' the field prove flatterers. Let courts and cities be
Made all of false-faced soothing," &c.
The meaning is—When drums and trumpets in the field shall prove flatterers (as they are doing at present), may they never sound more! Let courts and cities be as hollow-hearted as they please; but let the camp enjoy an immunity from these fulsome observances. When steel grows soft as the parasite's silk (that is, when the warrior loses his stubborn and unbending character), let silk be made a coverture for the wars, for it will then be quite as useful as steel. The only alteration which the MS. corrector proposes in this passage, is the substitution of coverture for the original reading "overture"—a change which was long ago made.
Act II. Scene 1.—The margins make an uncommonly good hit in the speech of Menenius, who says, "I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in't: said to be something imperfect in favouring the first complaint." No sense can be extracted from this by any process of distillation. The old corrector, brightening up for an instant, writes "thirst complaint;" on which Mr Singer remarks, "The alteration of 'first' into thirst is not necessary, for it seems that thirst was sometimes provincially pronounced and spelt first and furst." Come, come, Mr Singer, that is hardly fair. Let us give the devil his due. What one reader of Shakespeare out of every million was to know that "first" was a provincialism for thirst? We ourselves, at least, had not a suspicion of it till the old corrector opened our eyes to the right reading—the meaning of which is, "I am said to have a failing in yielding rather too readily to the thirst complaint." This emendation covers a multitude of sins, and ought, beyond a doubt, to be promoted into the text.
We also willingly accept empirick physic for "empirick qutique," the ordinary, but unintelligible reading.
A difficulty occurs in the admirable verses in which the whole city is described as turning out in order to get a sight of the triumphant Coriolanus.
"All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights
Are spectacled to see him. Your prattling nurse
Into a rapture lets her baby cry
While she chats him. The kitchen malkin pins
Her richest lockram 'bout her reechy neck,
Clambering the walls to eye him."
Cheers instead of "chats" is proposed by the old corrector. Mr Singer says that cheers "savours too much of modern times," and suggests claps; but a woman with an infant in her arms would find some difficulty, we fancy, in clapping her hands; though, perhaps, this very difficulty and her attempt to overcome it may have been the cause of her baby crying himself "into a rapture." We are disposed, however, to adhere to the old lection—"while she chats him"—that is, while she makes Coriolanus the subject of her gabble. For it ought to be borne in mind that Coriolanus has not, as yet, made his appearance: and, therefore, both cheering and clapping would be premature. We observe that, instead of a "rapture"—i.e., a fit—one of the wiseacres of the variorum proposes to read a rupture! The nurse lets the baby cry himself into a rupture! This outflanks even the margins. The annotator subscribes himself " S. W."—which means, we pre-
