Act IV Sc. 1
“You were used
To say extremities was the trier of spirits.”
The 2nd folio reads ‘extremity,’ and it is usually followed, and is perhaps right; yet the text is not wrong. See Introd. p. 72.
“That Fortune’s blows,
When most struck home, being gentle wounded, craves
A noble cunning.”
Though this may seem devoid of sense, it is, I think, what the poet wrote. If so, we must take ‘wounded’ actively, like “Under my burden groan’d” (Temp. i. 2). “It is twice blessed” (M. of Ven. v. 1) etc.; and then ‘gentle’ will denote that the blows were open and honourable ones. (See the parallel passage in Tr. and Cress, i. 3.) If this should not satisfy, we might perhaps read in the gentle-minded. Pope read ‘gentle-warded.’ ‘Cunning’ here is skill taken in a good sense, as in “May my right-hand forget her cunning” (Ps. cxxxvii).
“Like to a lonely dragon that his fen
Makes feared.”
Perhaps the right reading would be den.
“Will or not exceed the common, or be caught.”
The negative seems required to make sense.
“My first son,
Whither wilt thou go?”
She had, according to herself, no other son (see i. 3); and again she says of herself (v. 3), “While she, poor hen, fond of no second brood.” I have never met with ‘first’ in the sense of noblest, that given it here by the critics. I would therefore read fairest. In Tr. and Cr. we have “fair Lord Æneas”(i. 3); “fair Prince” (iii. 1, v. 1); “fair Diomed” (iv. 1); fair beholders (Prol.).
“More than a wild exposture to each chance.”
Southern read exposure, which probably the poet wrote.
Cor. “Oh, the gods!”
I give this speech to Vir., to whom it is better suited. Her only other speech in this scene is “O Heavens! O Heavens!”
Sc. 3
“But your favour is well appeared by your tongue.”
Steevens read approved, Singer appayed. The poet probably wrote has, pronounced as, of which the printer made ‘is.’
Sc. 4
“My birth-place have I, and my love’s upon.”
With Steevens, I read hate for ‘have.’ This change of adjacent letters is a common error with printers.
Sc. 5
“All-noble Marcius. Let me entwine
Mine arms about that body.”
“Unbuckling helms, fisting each other’s throat,
And waked half-dead with nothing.”
A line is apparently lost here; or there is an aposiopesis.
“Like a bold flood o’erbear her. O! come, go in.”
“To fright ’em ere destroy ’em. But come in.”
“This peace is good for nothing but to rust iron.”
Steevens, without being aware of the metric requirement, made the same addition.
“than War’s a destroyer of men.—’Tis so, and as
War[s] in some sort may be said to be a ravisher,” etc.
Sc. 6
“If he had gone forth Consul, have found it so.”
“And who resist
Are mocked for their valiant ignorance.”
Sc. 7
“Which he was lord of; or whether nature in him.”
“And Power, unto itself most commendable,
Hath not a tomb so evident as a chair
To extol what it hath done.”
I agree with Steevens in regarding this passage and the comments on it as being equally unintelligible. The meaning seems to be one which Shakespeare frequently expresses (see Tr. and Cr. i. 3, ii. 3, iii. 3)—self-praise is no praise. ‘Unto itself commendable’ is, then, standing high in the possessor’s estimation. The sense yielded by ‘tomb’ and ‘chair’ is most trivial, and I would therefore venture to propose
“Hath not a tongue so evident as a charmer’s.”
Charms and spells, we know, were murmured or muttered in a low tone (“wizards that peep and that mutter” Is. viii. 19); and if the final letters of charmer’s had been effaced—like in him a few lines higher—and only char left, the printer might easily have taken it for ‘chair,’ and so have made ‘tomb’ to correspond. For ‘chair’ Singer reads hair; Collier’s folio cheer. Charmer occurs in Oth. iii. 4, and the poet had met with it in his Bible. I have introduced it again in Ant. and Cl. iv. 8.
“One fire drives out one fire; one nail one nail;
Rights by rights fouler, strengths by strengths do fail.”
For ‘fouler’ Dyce reads faulter, Singer foil’d are. We might also conjecture fall, and; the final d in this last not being sounded. Fall and fail come thus together in “Fall Greeks, fail fame; honour or go or stay” (Tr. and Cr. v. 1). It seems, however, safest to read, with Malone, as I have done, founder. We have “All his tricks founder” (H. VIII. iii. 2). What is said of fire in the first line is a favourite idea with our poet. We have it again in Two Gent. ii. 4, K. John, iii. 1. It is an allusion to the homœopathic mode of curing a burn by holding it to the fire. By the fires, etc., he means Coriolanus and himself.