Page:Love's Labour's Lost (1925) Yale.djvu/130

118 both in metre and in sense as printed in the early editions: 'With men like men of inconstancie.' The reading here accepted, which appears to be original with Craig, makes the line mean 'with ordinary, inconstant men.'

sirs. Costard and Jaquenetta are addressed. Shakespeare uses 'sirs' of women alone in Antony and Cleopatra IV. xiii. 85.

the school of night. Perhaps 'that which teaches night to be what it is: dark and sinister.' Most editors have preferred to adopt an emendation that originated with Theobald and Warburton: the scowl of night. The recent Cambridge editors lend their support to a fantastic notion of Mr. Acheson to the effect that 'the school of night' is a topical allusion to a society composed of Sir Walter Raleigh, the poet Chapman, Marlowe, etc., whom it is supposed Shakespeare was ridiculing in this play.

And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well. An obscure line. The most obvious meaning is rather flat: 'And beauty's distinguishing mark (or perfection) well becomes the regions of light.'

Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light. Perhaps an allusion to 2 Corinthians 11. 14: 'And no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.' The idea recurs in Hamlet II. ii. 686, 637, and in Measure for Measure II. iv. 16, 17.

The wording and argument of these lines are repeated in more extended form later in the speech. Compare especially lines 320–323 and 350–354. It is generally recognized that an earlier and a later, expanded and improved, version of the same speech have been accidentally amalgamated in the text which reached the printers. Mr. Dover Wilson argues that the opening lines of Berowne