Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/12

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [i*s.vi. j A x.,i92o.

' 1 Henry IV.,' II. iv. 201. Dyce says the editions prior to 1639 have " and unbound the rest, and then come in the other," instead of " came in," which makes good English, and does not seemingly call for correction. N. W.

'Measure for Measure,' II. ii. The emenda- tion " glassy semblance " for " glassy essence" proposed by MB. H. DAVEY does not agree with the context. It would read thus:

But man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority ; Most ignorant of what he's most; assur'd, His glassy semblance.

MB. DAVEY, however, connects it with the following context, and suggests there is a reference to an ape looking in a glass. The above reason, and the idea of com- paring " high heaven " to a looking-glass, while leaving the angels altogether out of it, shows the emendation to be wrong.

The semblance to an ape is to cast ridicule upon the part Angelo is playing, assuming to be good, and being wicked at the same time. This " glassy essence " is his frailty. This essence is as brittle and as frail as glass. Compare Act II. scene iv. on the same subject, where Angelo observes : " Women are frail too." To which Isabella promptly replies : " Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves ; which are as easy broke as they make forms."

TOM JONES.

His glassy essence, like an angry ape. A good deal has already been said in ' N. & Q.' on this head, particularly at 10 S. v. 465, where I myself gave grounds for interpreting the crux as image, em- bodiment, or likeness seen in a glass. The substantive by itself is used in another somewhat enigmatic passage in ' Two Gentle- men of Verona,' III. i. 182 :

She is my essence, and I leave to be, where, however, the word may be identical with " essential."

While not prepared to prefer the alteration of essence to MR. DAVEY'S reading semblance, the latter word, I may observe, occurs in two other passages that show important .points of contact with the present one :

Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost,

Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless,

Being all descended to the labouring heart ......

(2 Henry VI. III. ii.)

This is a similar instance of ellipsis to the one in Isabella's speech, bloodless being made to do duty for an implied substantive

blood, which is needed for the construing of " he line which follows; and a speech of the Duchess of York, ' Richard III.,' II. ii. 54, may be cited as throwing light on the pithet, glassy or glassed, as MB. DAVEY prefers to call it :

I have bewept a worthy husband's death, And liv'd with looking on his images ; But now two mirrors of his princely semblance Are crack'd in pieces by malignant death, And I for comfort have but one false glass.*

I would merely add that I consider MB.

DAVEY'S readings signiors for oneyerf 1 Henry IV.), and contracts for cohorts King Lear '), well justified, and to the

point. N. W. HELL.

" His glassy essence " has nothing to do with " an angry ape." It is the subject of " the previous line, " Most ignorant of what he's most assured." "Glassy" means glass -like, brittle, frail, easily broken.

W. H. PINCHBECK.

and iii. There is na- Fair is foul, and foul is

' Macbeth,' I. i. obscurity to me in ' fair." It is the witches' motto. What is fair to ordinary mortals is foul to them, and what is foul is fair. Evil is their good. Macbeth' s " So foul and fair a day I have not seen " is quite within the truth of things. It is possible for the weather of a day to be, . as it were, in layers of foul and fair : thunder- storms with bright intervals, bright intervals which make the weather-wise say : " Ah ! it has cleared too quick ; it's too bright ; we shall have another storm." The bleeding sergeant in sc. ii. seems to refer indirectly to the battle-day weather, when, in his description of the fight, he says to Duncan :

As whence the sun 'gins his reflection Ship-wrecking storms and direful thunders break, So from that spring whence comfort seemed to

come

Discomfort swells.

Perhaps the fair and foul day symbolizes the mixture of fair and foul in the person of Macbeth. W. H. PINCHBECK.

78 Brierly Street, Fishpool, Bury.

' Romeo and Juliet,' III. ii. 6 : That runaways' eyes may wink. Though runagate is a very obvious sub- stitute, being a word that at that time was synonymous with "runaway," the smooth- ness of the verse is not improved thereby ; and this is always a matter of first import- ance in dealing with Shakespeare's text. The same remark applies to other readings, such


 * Her son Gloster.