As You Like It
Act I Sc. 1
“As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion.
He bequeathed me, by will, but poor a thousand crowns, and as thou sayest,” etc.
The 2nd folio reads ‘a poor thousand,’ but the metre is in favour of the original reading, and we meet “What poor an instrument” (Ant. and Cleop. v. 2). It is really surprising to see with what pertinacity editors reject the necessary word He, first supplied by Blackstone.
“Or to speak more properly stays me here at home.”
Warburton read stys, as in Temp. i. 2, which is certainly more forcible; but Orlando could not be said to be ‘sty’d,’ like Caliban.
“If Rosalind, the Duke’s daughter, be banished.”
Hanmer added old to ‘Duke,’ which, however, is not necessary.
Sc. 2
“Ros. My father’s love is enough to honour him enough.”
Ros. should probably be Cel. (so also Theobald), and the second ‘enough’ be rejected.
“Sport? Of what colour?”
The princess here plays on the similarity of sound between spot and sport, pronounced with the r nearly effaced.
“There is such odds in the man.”
Hanmer properly read men.
“Mounsieur the challenger, the princess calls for you.—
I attend them,” etc.
Celia had desired Le Beau to call him; Orlando, seeing two princesses, says ‘them’; so the corrections of the critics are needless.
“If you saw yourself with your eyes, or knew yourself with your judgement.”
Warburton ingeniously, but perhaps needlessly, read our for ‘your.’
“But justly, as you have exceeded all promise here.”
Hanmer read ‘here exceeded.’
“But yet indeed the taller, is his daughter.”
For ‘taller’ Pope read shorter, Malone smaller, which is the usual reading, as Rosalind was ‘the taller.’ I feel, however, almost certain that the poet wrote ‘less taller,’ and have so printed it. We have, “Against the envy of less happier lands” (Rich. II. ii. 1), and no one would object to more taller.
Sc. 3
“Not a word!—No, not one to throw at a dog.”
The ‘No,’ it will be seen, was transferred to the beginning of the next speech, where it was not wanted; while both sense and metre require it here.
“No, some of it for my child’s father.”
Rowe properly read ‘father’s child.’ Sense, taste, and delicacy, alike commend this simple and natural transposition. Some editors, however, think otherwise.
“Mistress, dispatch you with your safest haste.”
For ‘safest’ Collier’s folio reads fastest; we might also read, with Singer, swiftest, like “swiftest expedition” (Two Gent. iii. 1); “in all swift haste” (Tr. and Cr. i. 1). But it is not necessary to alter the text; for safe is, sure, certain, a sense which it retains in the Midland counties. “To take the safest occasion by the front” (Oth. iii. 2).
“Which teacheth thee, that thou and I am one.”
Such was the structure of the time. “My thoughts and I am for this other element” (Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels, i. 1). It was the same in French:
“Ni la mort ni vous-même
Ne me ferez jamais prononcer que je l’aime.”
Racine, Bajazet, iv. 1.