Page:Some Textual Difficulties in Shakespeare.djvu/49

Rh think that when we view this line in the light of what it is saying, the present emendation will be found as authoritative as any of them.

In fact this very mischance (the throwing of a p into the b box) has been known to change the text of Shakespeare in comparatively recent times. For generations, up to the time of Knight, a certain line in "Troilus and Cressida" was printed, "thou art here put to thrash Trojans" (ii, 2, 50). This however was incorrect, for the First Folio had it, "thou art here but to thrash Trojans." For years, through edition after edition, the alteration in the text was not noticed. This is a thing which frequently happens in typesetting; and it probably accounts for the "But" in the place where, as I believe, Shakespeare wrote Put.

This emendation, which I merely suggest, may be adopted and it may not; it is not the important point. The point is that we should understand what is being said here and grasp it in its larger aspect as related to the play as a whole. If we do this we cannot allow this line to be disrupted by a row of dots upon the supposition that it is the meaningless remainder of a lost passage.

There can be no doubt as to the sense in which each word is intended to be taken. The meaning which we are to gather from Escalus' "sufficiency" is carefully tended to in the two preceding lines. It consists of Escalus' profound "science" of government, his mental