Page:Some Textual Difficulties in Shakespeare.djvu/20

2 perhaps, the greatest crux or puzzle in Shakespeare." R. Grant White, in his Shakespeare's Scholar, p. 373, says: "The error will probably remain forever uncorrected unless a word which I venture to suggest seems as unexceptionable to others as it does to me." He then suggests rumour's eyes. Professor Charles F. Johnson, in his Shakespeare and his critics (1909) says: "In some cases, like 'that runaways eyes may wink,' in "Romeo and Juliet," it is impossible to hit upon a satisfactory reading, though we should like exceedingly to know who 'runaway' was. The conjecture 'rumour's eyes' is not altogether satisfactory, and the question is insoluble."

White, who at first felt certain that it should be edited rumour's, later changed his view to noonday's, while Hudson, on the other hand, printed it rumour's (1880). Thus the struggle with the passage has veered back and forth from the time of Theobald (1733) up to the present day. Our ancestors have seen this puzzling word of the Folio altered by editors in all sorts of ways. Knight's note in his pictorial edition will give a slight idea of the trouble:

"This passage has been a perpetual source of contention to the commentators. Their difficulties are well represented by Warburton's question: 'What run-aways are these whose eyes Juliet is wishing to be stopped?' Warburton says Phoebus is the runaway, Steevens