sume, Something Wanting in the upper story.
We accept touch for "reach" in the sentence where it is said, "his soaring insolence shall reach (the oldest reading is "teach") the people. This correction had been already proposed by Mr Knight. But we cannot approve of the following change (prest for "blest," Scene 2) which has obtained the sanction of Mr Singer. Sicinia has just remarked that the senate has assembled to do honour to Coriolanus, on which Brutus says—
"Which the rather
We shall be blest to do, if he remember
A kinder value of the people, than
He hath hereto prized them at."
Does not this mean—which honour we shall be most happy to do to Coriolanus, if &c.? Why then change "blest" into prest? a very unnatural mode of speech.
Scene 3.—In the next instance, however, we side most cordially with the margins and Mr Collier, against Mr Singer and the ordinary text. The haughty Coriolanus, who is a candidate for the consulship, says—
"Why in this wolvish gown should I stand here,
To beg of Hob and Dick?" &c.
Now Shakespeare, in a previous part of the play, has described the candidate's toga as "the napless vesture or humility;" and it is well known that this toga was of a different texture from that usually worn. Is it not probable, therefore—nay certain—that Coriolanus should speak of it as woolless, the word wolvish being altogether unintelligible? Accordingly, the MS. corrector reads—
"Why in this woolless gown should I stand here."
Mr Singer, defending the old reading, says, it is sufficient that his investiture in this gown "was simulating humility not in his nature, to bring to mind the fable of the wolf" Oh, Mr Singer! but must not the epithet in that case have been sheepish? Surely, if Coriolanus had felt himself to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, he never would have said that he was a sheep in wolves' clothing! [1]
Act III. Scene 1.—In the following speech of Coriolanus several corrections are proposed, one of which, and perhaps two, might be admitted into the text:—
"O, good but most unwise patricians! why,
You grave but reckless senators, have you thus
Given Hydra here to choose an officer
That with his peremptory 'shall' (being but
The horn and noise of the monsters), wants not spirit
To say he'll turn your current in a ditch,
And make your channel his? If he have power,
Then vail your ignorance: if none, awake
Your dangerous lenity."
Leave for "here" is, we think, a good exchange; and revoke for "awake" an improvement which can scarcely be resisted. Further on, Coriolanus asks—
"Well, what then,
How shall this bosom multiplied digest
The senate's courtesy?"
There is, it seems, an old word bisson, signifying blind; and therefore we see no good reason (although such may exist) against accepting, as entitled to textual advancement, the old corrector's substitution of bisson multitude for "bosom multiplied." The latter, however, is defended, as we learn from Mr Singer, "by one strenuous dissentient voice." Why did he not tell us by whom and where? One excellent emendation by Mr Singer himself we must here notice. Coriolanus speaks of those who wish
"To jump a body with a dangerous physic
That's sure of death without it."
- ↑ The German translators Tieck and Schlegel adopt the reading of the first folio, tongue, for "gown,” and translate,
“Warum soll hier mit Wolfsgeheul ich stehen.”
Dr Delius concurs with his countrymen, and remarks that the boldness of Shakespeare's constructions readily admits of our connecting the words "in this wolfish tongue" with the words "to beg." Now, admirable as we believe Dr Delius' English scholarship to be, he must permit us to say that this is a point which can be determined only by a native of this country, and that the construction which he proposes is not consistent with the idiom of our language. Even the German idiom requires with (mit), and not in, a wolf's cry. We cannot recommend him to introduce tongue into his text of our poet.
