Chapter XXV: Act I: Valentine's speech

One without substance, &c.

The present text, and that proposed by Seward, are equally vile. I have endeavoured to make the lines sense, though the whole is, I suspect, incurable except by bold conjectural reformation. I would read thus:--

One without substance of herself, that's woman;
Without the pleasure of her life, that's wanton;
Tho' she be young, forgetting it; tho' fair,
Making her glass the eyes of honest men,
Not her own admiration.

'That's wanton,' or, 'that is to say, wantonness.'

Act ii. Valentine's speech:--

Of half-a-crown a week for pins and puppets--

As there is a syllable wanting in the measure here. (Seward.)

A syllable wanting! Had this Seward neither ears nor fingers? The line is a more than usually regular iambic hendecasyllable.

Ib.

With one man satisfied, with one rein guided;
With one faith, one content, one bed;
_Aged_, she makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue;
A widow is, &c.

Is 'apaid'--contented--too obsolete for B. and F.? If not, we might read it thus:--

Content with one faith, with one bed apaid,
She makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue;--

Or it may be--

--with one breed apaid--

that is, satisfied with one set of children, in opposition to--

A widow is a Christmas-box, &c.

Colman's note on Seward's attempt to put this play into metre.

The editors, and their contemporaries in general, were ignorant of any but the regular iambic verse. A study of the Aristophanic and Plautine metres would have enabled them to reduce B. and F. throughout into metre, except where prose is really intended.

THE HUMOROUS LIEUTENANT.

Act I. sc. 1. Second Ambassador's speech:--

--When your angers, _Like_ so many brother billows, rose together,
And, curling up _your_ foaming crests, defied, &c.

This worse than superfluous 'like' is very like an interpolation of some matter of fact critic--all 'pus, prose atque venenum'. The 'your' in the next line, instead of 'their,' is likewise yours, Mr. Critic!

Act ii: sc. 1. Timon's speech:--

Another of a new _way_ will be look'd at.--

We much suspect the poets wrote, 'of a new _day_.' So, immediately after,

--Time may For all his wisdom, yet give us a day.

(SEWARD'S NOTE.)

For this very reason I more than suspect the contrary.

Ib. sc. 3. Speech of Leucippe:--

I'll put her into action for a _wastcoat_.--

What we call a riding-habit,--some mannish dress.

THE MAD LOVER.