WIT WITHOUT MONEY. ACT I. Valentine's speech : : One without substance, &c. HE present text, and that proposed by Seward, THE are equally vile. I have endeavoured to make the lines sense, though the whole is, I suspect, incurable except by bold conjectural reforma-` tion. I would read thus: One without substance of herself, that's woman; 'That's wanton,' or, that is to say, wantonness.' Act ii. Valentine's speech : : Of half-a-crown a week for pins and puppetsAs 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; Aged, she makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue ; 303 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. Is 'apaid'-contented-too obsolete for B. and F.? 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. : HIS worse than superfluous 'like' is like THIS all very an interpolation of some matter of fact critic 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 must 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. ACT IV. Masque of beasts : -This goodly tree, An usher that still grew before his lady, Wither'd at root: this, for he could not woo, H ERE must have been omitted a line rhyming 6 to tree' and the words of the next line have been transposed :— -This goodly tree, Which leafless, and obscur'd with moss you see, Wither'd at root: this, for he could not woo, &c. I THE LOYAL SUBJECT. T is well worthy of notice, and yet has not been, I believe, noticed hitherto, what a marked difference there exists in the dramatic writers of the Elizabetho-Jacobæan age (Mercy on me! what a phrase for the writers during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.!')-in respect of their political opinions. Shakspeare, in this as in all other things, himself and alone, gives the perma nent politics of human nature, and the only predilection, which appears, shews itself in his contempt of mobs and the populacy. Massinger is a decided Whig-Beaumont and Fletcher high-flying, passive-obedience, Tories. The Spanish dramatists furnished them with this, as with many other ingredients. By the by, an accurate and familiar acquaintance with all the productions of the Spanish stage previously to 1620, is an indispensable qualification for an editor of B. and F.;—and with this qualification a most interesting and instructive edition might be given. This edition of Colman's (Stockdale 1811,) is below criticism. In metre, B. and F. are inferior to Shakspeare, on the one hand, as expressing the poetic part of the drama, and to Massinger, on the other, in the art of reconciling metre with the natural rhythm of conversation,-in which, indeed, Massinger is un B JAC A. rivalled. Read him aright, and measure by time, not syllables, and no lines can be more legitimate, -none in which the substitution of equipollent feet, and the modifications by emphasis, are managed with such exquisite judgment. B. and F. are fond of the twelve syllable (not Alexandrine) line, as Too many fears 'tis thought too: and to nourish those This has, often, a good effect, and is one of the varieties most common in Shakspeare. RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE. ACT III. Old Woman's speech : -I fear he will knock my Brains out for lying. R. Seward discards the words 'for lying,' be MR. cause most of the things spoke of Estifania are true, with only a little exaggeration, and because they destroy all appearance of measure.' Colman's note. Mr. Seward had his brains out. The humour lies in Estifania's having ordered the Old Woman to tell these tales of her; for though an intriguer, she is not represented as other than chaste; and as to the metre, it is perfectly correct. |