Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/433

 2nd s. N 22., MAY. 31. '56.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

425

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 31, 1856. .

"HACKE" OR "WRACK:" SHAKSPEARE, "TEM- PEST," ACT iv. sc. 1.

May I be allowed one word more to save Hack from Ruin ?

First, as to the authority on which the reading itself rests :

" This comedy," says ^fr. Knight, "stands the first in the folio collection of 1623, in which edition it was ori- ginally printed. The original text is printed with sin- gular correctness ; and, if with the exception of one or two typographical errours, it had continued to be reprinted without change, the world would have possessed a copy with the mint-mark of the poet upon it."

Most ably, and, to my mind, satisfactorily does Mr. Knight, in his little tract entitled Old Lamps or New, establish the opinion of Home Tooke :in<l his friends (and among them may be distinguished Dr. Raine of the Charter House, under whom " the two eminent historians of Greece, Bishop Thirlwall and G. Grote, Esq., were together in the same form"), that this first folio of the Works of Shakspeare, " notwithstanding some palpable mis- prints, requires none of their (the commentators') alterations."*

There can be no dispute, then, as to the various readings; there is but this one text, so approved by such judges, to rely upon. But the first question started is : May not this rending be one of the misprints acknowledged to exist, in this applauded text? Such as are found in the old editions of Paradise Lost, where rack is twice written for wrach.^

" . . . . The starrie cope Of Heav'n perhaps, and all the elements At least had gone to rack, disturbed and torne With violence of this conflict."

Book iv. v. 994.

" To save himself and houshold from amidst A world devote to universal rack."

Book xi. v. 821.

Once we meet in the same edition with ivrach :

" . . . . And. now all Heav'n Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspread."

Book vi. v. 670.

In this predicament, the only question that remains is : How is this word racke to be inter- preted ?

Mr. Knight, in his Stratford Shakspere, admits that " there is a doubt, whether a rack, as here used, is not a misprint for wrack, or wreck." Mr. Singer too, I regret to find, has, in his new edition of Shakespeare, adopted this latter reading. In his former edition, influenced by Tooke's " admirable

edition.
 * Tooke's Diversions of Parley, vol. ii. p. 388., 4to.

t It is wrong to call rack a misprint for wrack. It is only a different way of writing the same word.

observations," he reads, " Rack, a vapour, an ex- halation."

It is, I must confess, this doubt of Mr. Knight, and this reversal of his own judgment by Mr. Singer, that invests this question with a degree of interest, which (with me at least) it would not otherwise possess.*

Though your correspondents refer to Home Tooke, not one lias quoted the " admirable ob- servations," referred to by Mr. Singer. They are these :

"Rack means merely that which is recited: and is surely the most appropriate term that could be employed by Shakespear in this passage of The Tempest : to repre- sent to us, that the dissolution and annihilation of the globe, and all which it inherits, should be so total and compleat; they should so melt into ayre, into thin ayre, as not to leave behind them even a vapour, a steam, or an exhalation, to give the slightest notice that such things had ever been."

What, then, is the value of the objection urged by Malone, and fairly stated by Mr. Singer, that the words (" leave not," &c.) relate, not to " the baseless fabric of this vision," but to the final destruction of the world, of which " the towers, temples, and palaces, shall (like a vision or a pageant) be dissolved, and leave no vestige be- hind." It is precisely to this not destruction, but dissolution (for dissolve is the poet's word) this melting into thin ayre, of the world itself, that Tooke maintains the word rack, i. e. reek, to be most appropriate. And I think he was right in ?o doing. Nor have I met with a single reason, urged from any quarter, that in the least affects this boldly poetical interpretation of the language of the great magician.

I have called attention to the poet's word dis- solve. His comparative like is not unworthy of notice.

Prospero, the magician, had presented to his shipwrecked countrymen a baseless fabric, and the actors and agencies of it are melted (dissolved) into thin air, and he pronounces, that, like this baseless fabric, the fabric of the great globe shall dissolve, that is, melt away, and, like this faded, evanished, insubstantial pageant, shall, by this dis- solution (not disruption, not destruction), leave not even (the only possible relict, " remain, vestige, or trace," either of such pageant dissolved, or of the fabric of the great globe dissolved,) a racke he- hind : shall leave not even "a tenuious rceh" to "use the expression of Henry Moref, the " tenuis Nebula'' of Virgil. J

have reason to believe, appear when Mr. Dyce's edition of the poet is published.
 * A more determined opponent to Home Tooke will, I

f See in Kiehurdson's Dictionary, sub. v. KKEK.

J I have been asked, " Who ever saw, in any old writer, the expression, n r/n-h :'" Why the very question is, do we not see it in this very passage? Does not Henry More present us with it, though with an epithet? Suppose