Page:Some Textual Difficulties in Shakespeare.djvu/66

48 figures of speech as pictorially as our imagina- tion will allow, I do not mean to insist that the reader shall confine himself to the exact details I have used to bring forth the meaning. Shakespeare does not need to go into details; he touches off the imagination with the few vital words which will enforce the idea in its principal aspects. We should at least catch the spirit of the comparison and remember that woman is bound and circumscribed by the strongest barriers of custom and education and the very instincts of her finer nature to regard her womanhood as a trust, a thing to which she is bound as a nun to her convent or a sailor to his ship. I have said that the scar, being secluded, implies secrecy. It also de- picts a barrier, a place to be gotten out of; and Bertram, by his fine-spun arguments and logical ropes, is showing her the way out. When she says, therefore,

I see that men make ropes in such a scar

That we'll forsake ourselves

she means that men contrive such opportune and secret places, and offer such specious argu- ments and easy ways to sin, that women are tempted to overcome the barriers of their na- ture and forsake their womanhood. The figure of speech is useful because it says so much in little. It has never been explained in this way before.