HARD KNOTS IN SHAKESPEARE BY SIR PHILIP PERRING, BART., = FORMERLY SCHOLAR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. All difficulties are but easy, when they are known. 'Measure For Measure,' Act IV, 2, 221. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 1885. This little work, which I have ventured to commit to the press, treats of a very small portion of a very large subject. It cannot pretend to be much more than a supplement, or appendix, to the numerous publications which have been issued from time to time on the text, the sense, the language, the style, the spirit, the whole life and character of Shakespeare. My object has been not to do over again work which has already been sufficiently well done, but to endeavour to throw new light on what I conceive to have been misunderstood by previous expositors, and to explain, or emend, certain passages, where, according to the Cambridge editors, 'the original text had been corrupted in such a way as to affect the sense, no admissible emendation having been proposed,' or where 'a lacuna occurs too great to be filled up with any approach to certainty.' Whether I have succeeded in reclaiming any of these waste patches, abandoned by others as uncultivable, can only be ascertained by ocular observation. It is true that I have not examined a single impression of either Folio or Quarto, but I have followed the trustworthy guidance of the editors of the 'Cambridge Shakespeare,' in the footnotes of which the various readings of the original copies are set down with conscientious accuracy. To this extent, then, I have been a borrower; but I have not borrowed my ideas, my interpretations, my arguments, my matter generally. If, as has some times happened, I have occupied ground which some one else had occupied before me, I can truly say that, at the time that I appropriated it, I was not aware that another possessed it. Even my quotations and references I have not fetched from a Concordance, but have myself culled them after carefully considering them. The 'Globe' Shakespeare has been my text-book, partly because, coming from Cambridge, it would seem to carry with it a Collegiate, not to say, a University recommendation, partly because it was convenient for reference, the lines in it being numbered. I have taken, as I was bound to do, the utmost pains with every one of my papers, caring less for form than for substance, and aiming not so much at fine writing, as at fair argument and the discovery of the truth-not but that I have endeavoured, where I could, and as far as I could, to give some sort of shape and polish to my rough and unattractive materials. I have been encouraged and assisted in my labours by two of my friends, who have taken an interest in the progress of my work, and to whom I now record my heart-felt thanks; they must not be held responsible for any of my opinions, yet their sound judgment and kind counsel have saved me from many doubtful, and from some dangerous positions. EXMOUTH, P. P. March, 1885. |