Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/352

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. VIL MAY 4, 1901.

Theatre and Art), in which he demonstrates at length that the scene where Hamlet and his companions encounter Fortinbras and his army (Act IV. sc. iv.) is spurious. It is argued that Hamlet, bound then for England, could not possibly have met Fortinbras on any Danish plain. Again, the Danish ambas- sadors had scarcely two days before returned to King Claudius with assurances of peace from Fortinbras's uncle, the aged King of Norway, and in that time the nephew could not haVe so far advanced his expedition against the Poles. Discussing Hamlet's soliloquy, Mr. Moskalenko quotes the lines

While, to my shame, I see

The imminent death of twenty thousand men, &c., and asks, " What is shameful for Hamlet in this?"

It is not possible, nor would it be fair, to reproduce all the arguments in Mr. Mos- kalenko's work. It is worth observing that the following foot-note occurs in the Oxford and Cambridge edition of ' Hamlet ' :

" Enter Hamlet, Boxencrantz, cfe-c. The whole of this portion of the scene is wanting in the Folio. It was probably omitted on account of the extreme length of the play, and as not helping on the action."

FEANCIS P. MARCHANT.

Brixton Hill.

' As You LIKE IT/ III. ii. 204-7. " Good my complexion ! dost thou think, though I am caparisoned like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition ? " The explanation commonly given of " Good my complexion ! " that Rosalind appeals to her complexion not to betray her is not in keeping with the situation. What was Rosalind afraid of betraying 1 Not her love for Orlando. No one could read the play and suppose Celia to be in ignorance of this. At the mention of the chain about the unknown lover's neck (1. 190), the thought comes to Rosalind that he may be Orlando. That she could not hope to control her colour, note Celia's remark (1. 191), " Change you colour?" This in itself should be enough to lose the case for the usual ex- planation of this crux. After the change of colour had once betrayed her supposing anything could thereby be revealed to Celia not known to her before is it reasonable to assert that she would then make an appeal to her complexion riot to betray her 1

Rosalind, in a perfect fever of impatience, is coaxing Celia to divulge the name of the unknown lover. This speech is addressed to Celia. Rosalind has no thought of her- self or of caution with her dearest friend ; her mind is fixed entirely upon the infor-

mation she is trying to gain, and in this light we must interpret the speech. " Good my complexion ! " is a hurried expression and very much condensed. " Good " (as often in Shakespeare) is here used without the name of the person addressed " Good (Celia, who art of) my complexion (a woman, and there- fore of like impatience), dost thou think," &c. " My complexion " virtually takes the place of " Celia " understood, so that "Good my complexion ! " is the address. As elsewhere, " complexion " here means temperament, or "disposition" (a woman's disposition), which Rosalind uses as a synonymous term. Rosa- lind's argument is that the mere fact of her being dressed like a man cannot change her woman's disposition, and she appeals to the woman in Celia to sympathize with her im- patience. E. MERTON DEY. St. Louis.

' ROMEO AND JULIET,' I. i. 234-5.

'Tis the way to cal hers (exquisit) in question more.

First Folio.

The multitudinous comments of editors of the text of Shakespeare's plays often make a considerable effort necessary in order to regard absolutely denovo a passage which has been the subject of their operations or dis- cussions. Yet this is probably what textual criticism at the present day most calls for. Prof. Dowden, in his excellent edition of this play, has adequately responded to the call in the case of " with beautie dies her store " (I. i. 222) by explaining " her store " to mean "beauty's store," and has thus at one stroke dispelled a cloud of conjecture which ought never to have been allowed to gather. He seems to me, however, to have failed to give the true interpretation of the sentence at the head of this note, from resting content with a slight variation of previous renderings. Though he sees that the parentheses require explanation, to treat them merely as " marks of parenthesis " scarcely advances the matter. Now, here and there in old literature we come across a peculiar use of parentheses, of which as good an example as any may be found in 'All's Well that Ends Well,' III. ii. 62-3, "but in such a (then) I write a Never," where the parentheses evidently stand for quotation marks. So, if we modernize the passage under consideration, we should read, "'Tis the way to call hers 'exquisite' in question more " ; that is, " If I follow your advice and examine other beauties, the result will be that it will not suffice to say that she is ' rich in beauty ' : ' exquisite ' will be the only appropriate epithet for her beauty, which the examination you recommend will