Page:Some Textual Difficulties in Shakespeare.djvu/35

Rh able to suppose that if he wished to depict the lightsome breezes he would say the "airy air."

Then too, as to the art of contrast in the line,—ideal, phonetic and dramatic,—we find that he has a particular penchant for the abrupt poetic uses of shook, and this especially in contrast with flowing r's and the open vowel sounds. In Antony and Cleopatra he describes an earthquake in two lines. You can feel the very shock and jolt of it.

the round world

Should have shook

Open the ear to the complete fullness of the round world (note the two r's working with vowels) and then the sudden oscillating effect of should-have-shook. There is no ro-o-o-u-u-und wor-r-r-ld about that; the actor would give his fist a motion calculated to jar creation. Shakespeare is doing the same thing here that he is in the passage from "Troilus and Cressida"—or would be if we printed what he wrote.

I might remark in passing that the lines from Antony and Cleopatra are marked with the obolus signifying that there is editorial doubt as to whether their present form is a typographical error or not (Globe edition). The reason it is suspected of loss or error is that the words do not smoothly fill out the regular pentameter measure that Shakespeare was supposed to write in; and the obolus is placed before "round