Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 303 pages of information about Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III.

Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 303 pages of information about Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III.

The sense is, When Fortune strikes her hardest blows, to be wounded, and yet continue calm, requires a generous policy.  He calls this calmness cunning, because it is the effect of reflection and philosophy.  Perhaps the first emotions of nature are nearly uniform, and one man differs from another in the power of endurance, as he is better regulated by precept and instruction.

  They bore as heroes, but they felt as men.

(see 1765, VI, 577, 9)

IV.i.33 (391,3) cautelous baits and practice] By artful and false tricks, and treason.

IV.ii.15 (393,6)

  Sic. Are you mankind?
  Vol. Ay, fool; Is that a shame?  Note but this fool. 
  Was not a man my father?]

The word mankind is used maliciously by the first speaker, and taken perversely by the second.  A mankind woman is a woman with the roughness of a man, and, in an aggravated sense, a woman ferocious, violent, and eager to shed blood.  In this sense Sicinius asks Volumnia, if she be mankind.  She takes mankind for a human creature, and accordingly cries out,

  —­Note but this, fool. 
  Was not a man my father?

IV.ii.18 (394,7) Hadst thou foxship] Hadst thou, fool as thou art, mean cunning enough to banish Coriolanus?

IV.iii.9 (395,7) but your favour is well appear’d by your tongue] [W:  well appeal’d] I should read,

  —­is well affear’d,

That is, strengthened, attested, a word used by our authour.

  My title is affear’d.  Macbeth.

To repeal may be to bring to remembrance, but appeal has another meaning.

IV.iii.48 (397,8) already in the entertainment] That is, tho’ not actually encamped, yet already in pay.  To entertain an army is to take them into pay.

IV.iv.22 (398,1)

        So, with me:—­
  My birth-place hate I, and my love’s upon
  This enemy’s town:—­I’ll enter:  if he slay me]

He who reads this [My country have I and my lovers left;/This enemy’s town I’ll enter] would think that he was reading the lines of Shakespeare:  except that Coriolanus, being already in the town, says, he will enter it.  Yet the old edition exhibits it thus

  —­So with me. 
  My birth-place have I; and my loves upon
  This enemic towne; I’ll enter if he slay me
, &c.

The intermediate line seems to be lost, in which, conformably to his former observation, he says, that he has lost his birth-place, and his loves upon a petty dispute, and is trying his chance in this enemy town, he then cries, turning to the house of Anfidius, I’ll enter if he slay me.

I have preferred the common reading, because it is, though faulty, yet intelligible, and the original passage, for want of copies, cannot be restored.

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Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.