Page:Some Textual Difficulties in Shakespeare.djvu/65

Rh in its depths and quite shut off from view, he comes across temptation itself. A rope shows him the way to desert his ship. Here is a se- cret place where he will be unseen; and some man has prepared the rope for him. In the preparedness of the thing he is tempted, forgets his articles to the ship and his duties of sailor- hood, and deserts.

The only difference between such a one and Diana is that she is forsaking her maidenhood, her self—the thing that she is vowed to as a sailor to his ship. The importunate Bertram has been laboring by argument to overcome the difficulties of her own mind; he has been trying to assist her out of the barriers of her character. The arguments he weaves are the "ropes." Her relations with Bertram are secret; she is to deal with him by stealth. Secretly, away from the eyes of the world, she is to desert, or as she says, to "forsake" her maidenhood. In this pictorial passage the "scar" implies secrecy—a scar being a secluded place.

Commentators have spent their utmost learn- ing and ingenuity arguing what a scar might be and what it is that Diana is supposed to forsake. When we see the word scar in con- nection with a rope it would seem that there could be little doubt as what sort of a scar it was; and still less as to what the rope was there for.

While we should conceive Shakespeare's