Winter’s Tale
Act I Sc. 1
“Their encounters, though not personal, have been so royally attornied.”
Both sense and metre require so, given in Collier’s folio.
Sc. 2
“When in Bohemia
You take my lord, I’ll give him my commission
To let him there a month behind the gest
Prefix’d for his parting.”
The third line has apparently no sense. The critics say ‘let’ is detain; but no instance of its use in that sense is to be found. We might read sit, which occurs in the sense of stay, dwell, live, as “I sit at ten pounds a week” (Mer. Wives, i. 3); and we have “and sit him down and die” (2 Hen. IV. iii. 1). We might also, and still better, read set, which has nearly the same sense, settled, seated: “Being unarm’d and set in secret shade” (F. Q. vi. 3, 8). “Whoever shoots at him, I set him there” (All’s Well, iii. 2). In Fletcher’s Nice Valour (iv. 1) Heath, followed by Dyce, reads sets for ‘lets’ in “That lets it out, only for show or profit.” ‘Gest’ (from giste, gîte, Fr.?) is used of the halting-places on a royal progress. Singer quotes from Strype a request from Cranmer to Cecil, “to let him have the new-resolved upon gests from that time to the end, that he might know from time to time where the king was.” Hence it would appear that there was a program of the gests, stating the time of arrival at and departure from each of them. I have therefore read ‘gest-day,’ supposing the last word, as usual, to have been effaced. See Introd. p. 58.
“What lady she her lord.”
I read soe’er for ‘she.’ “What bloody work soe’er” (Othel. iii. 3).
“The doctrine of ill-doing nor dream’d we even.”
The usual reading is ‘no nor,’ that of the 2nd folio.
“Of my young play-fellow.—Good grace to boot!”
“You may ride us
With a soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere
With spur we heat an acre.”
The phraseology here is evidently that of the race-course, where a heat is a race. I read ‘we heat us.’ The phrase is elliptic, the full phrase being ‘We heat us by running over an acre of ground.’
“May it be?—
Affection! thy intention stabs the centre.”
So I would point, with Steevens; in the folio it is “May it be affection?” The whole passage is rather obscure. ‘Affection’ is imagination, fancy (see Index s. v.); and the meaning seems to be that it stretches to (expressed by intention), and stabs, or pierces, even the centre of the earth.
“Looking on the lines
Of my boy’s face methought I did recoil
Twenty-three years.”
The folio reads ‘methoughts,’ and a MS. correction, followed by Mr. Collier, my thoughts; but ‘recoil’ is always a neuter verb in Shakespeare.
“He makes a July’s day short as December’s.”
“With all the nearest things to my heart as well as.”
“Resides not in that man that does not think it.”
This is the reading of the 2nd folio also.
“Why he that wears her like her medal hanging
About his neck.”
“That like a jewel has hung twenty years
About his neck.”
Hen. VIII. ii. 2.
With Collier’s folio, I read a for ‘her.’ The error, suggested by the preceding ‘her,’ is an ordinary one with printers.
“With the pin and the web, but theirs, theirs only.”
In Florio a cataract in the eye is termed “a pin and a web.”
“Is goads, is thorns, is nettles, tails of wasps.”
“I am appointed by him to murder you.”
The ‘appointed him’ of the folio is a strange expression.
“That e’er was heard or read of. Swear his thought over
By each particular star.”
This, if correct, would seem to mean exorcise his thought, try to banish it.
“Profess’d love to him, why his revenges must
In that be made more bitter. Fear o’ershades me.
Good expedition be my friend, and comfort
The gracious queen.”
How could his expedition or haste to depart comfort the queen? It would seem to have the contrary effect, as tending to prove her guilt. For ‘and’ in the third line we might, with Singer, read God, or, as I have done, with Hanmer, Heaven. The insertion of love in the first line seems necessary.