Actus Quartus. Scena Prima. Enter Rofalind, and Celia, and Iaques. Iaq. I prethee, pretty youth, let me better acquainted with thee. Rof They say you are a melancholly fellow. Iaq. I am fo: I doe loue it better then laughing. Rof. Those that are in extremity of either, are abhominable fellowes, and betray themfelues to euery moderne cenfure, worse then drunkards. The Forest. Rowe. 2. me] me be Ff et seq. 6, 7. abhominable] abominable F 8 5. I do loue it] MOBERLY: You are always complaining of melancholy,' says Johnson to Boswell (iv, 301), ' and I conclude from those complaints that you are fond of it. Do not pretend to deny it; manifestum habemus furem. Make it an invariable and obligatory law on yourself never to mention your own mental diseases. If you are never to speak of them you will think of them but little; and if you think little of them they will molest you rarely.' 7, 8. moderne . . . drunkards] The drift of Rosalind's whole speech appears to be that both classes of men, those who are profound in their melancholy and those who are boisterous in their mirth, expose themselves even more openly than drunkards to every commonplace, hackneyed criticism. She had taken down Phebe's conceit by asserting that her beauty was no more than a fair average of Nature's ready-made goods; she is now about to do the same to Jaques by saying that he was no more interesting in his sentimental melancholy than a common drunkard. But MOBERLY interprets it somewhat differently; and as his interpretation of the whole comedy, with which I cannot altogether agree, is charming and attractive, every word he utters in support of it deserves to be well weighed. To Moberly, this encounter between Jaques and Rosalind is one of the passages where the great moral lesson of cheerfulness is conveyed, a lesson which Shakespeare happened to need in his own life at that time, and the need whereof he saw in the anxious thought of eminent men around him: Thus,' says Moberly, 'Sir H. Sidney writes to his son Sir Philip, "Let your first action be the lifting up of your mind to Almighty God by hearty prayer; . . . . then give yourself to be merry; for you degenerate from your father, if you find not yourself most able in wit and body to do anything when you are most merry."' This present speech of Rosalind is one of the happy hits, and is thus paraphrased by Moberly (Introd. p. 9): 'And what is this melancholy of which Jaques boasts? [asks Rosalind sarcastically]. Something as bad or worse than the most giddy merriment: something that incapacitates him from action as completely and more permanently than drunkenness.' Again, his note ad loc. is: 'Worse than drunkards. For both alike are as incapable of action as drunkards, and their state is more permanent.' Iaq. Why, 'tis good to be fad and say nothing. Iaq. I haue neither the Schollers melancholy, which is emulation: nor the Mufitians, which is fantasticall; nor the Courtiers, which is proud: nor the Souldiers, which is ambitious nor the Lawiers, which is politick: nor the Ladies, which is nice: nor the Louers, which is all these but it is a melancholy of mine owne, compounded of many fimples, extracted from many obiects, and indeed the fundrie contemplation of my trauells, in : 14. politick] political Rowe i. 18. fundrie] fundty F contemplation of my] contempla tions of FF, Rowe i. 3 18, 19. in which] which Var '21 which Seymour. 10 15 18 on Here Moberly seems to take 'worse' as qualifying the subject; I think it qualifies the verb 'betray.'-ED. 11-20. MAGINN: This is printed as prose, but assuredly it is blank verse. The alteration of a syllable or two, which in the corrupt state of the text of these plays is the slightest of all possible critical licenses, would make it run perfectly smooth. At all events, emulation' should be emulative, to make it agree with the other clauses of the sentence. The courtier's melancholy is not pride, nor the soldier's ambition, &c. The adjective is used throughout: 'fantastical,' 'proud,' ' ambitious,' 'politic,' 'nice.' [Maginn thus divides the lines: Neither the scholar's melancholy, which || Is emulation; nor the musician's, which is || Fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; || Nor the soldier's, || Which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which || Is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; || Nor the lover's, which is all these; but it is || A melancholy of mine own, compounded || Of many simples, extracted from many objects || And indeed || The sundry contemplation of my travels, || In which my often rumination wraps me | In a most humorous sadness.' [Rather ragged verse, it must be owned. I should prefer to call it metric prose, or measurably like the semi-metric prose of Walt Whitman at the present day. There would be a lack of harmony in giving Jaques a single speech in regular blank verse in a scene where every other speech is in prose.-ED.] 14. MOBERLY: The scholar's melancholy springs from envy of other men's superior mental powers, which his diligence may be unable to cope with; the courtier's is from pride, which puts him out of sympathy with his kind; the lady's is from fastidiousness; the soldier's from disappointed ambition; the lawyer's from professionally assumed or half-real sympathy with his client. [To understand the musician's melancholy, I think we must take 'fantastical' as referring to love-sick music; and may we not take both 'politic' and 'lawyer' in a somewhat wider sense than that just given? May not lawyers' be lawgivers, and 'politic' denote that which is connected with the science of government?-ED.] 15. nice] STEEVENS: Silly, trifling. CALDECOTT: Affected, over-curious in trifles. NARES: Foolish, trifling. HALLIWELL: Delicate, affected, effeminate. DYCE: Scrupulous, precise, squeamish. HUDSON: Fastidious, dainty, or squeamish. VERITY: Squeamish, super-subtle, finicking. [An object-lesson, to teach the student to make his own definitions,—especially where none is required.—ED.] which by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadnesse. Rof. A Traueller: by my faith you haue great reafon to be fad: I feare you haue fold your owne Lands, to see other mens; then to haue feene much, and to haue nothing, is to haue rich eyes and poore hands. Iaq. Yes, I haue gain'd my experience. Enter Orlando. Rof. And your experience makes you fad: I had rather haue a foole to make me merrie, then experience to make me fad, and to trauaile for it too. Orl. Good day, and happinesse, deere Rofalind. Iaq. Nay then God buy you, and you talke in blanke verse. 20 25 30 32 buy] Ff, Cam. b'w'y Rowe+. b' wi' Wh. Dyce. be wi' Cap. et cet. and] Ff, Rowe, Cald. an Pope 32. verse] verse. Exit. Ff, Rowe et et cet. seq. Scene II. Pope, Han. Warb. 18-20. in ... sadnesse] MALONE, reading 'by often,' omitted the first 'in,' in line 18; STEEVENS, reading 'my often,' changed the second 'in,' in line 19, to is, adding: 'Jaques first informs Rosalind what his melancholy was not; and naturally concluded by telling her what the quality of it is.' CALDECOTT, reading 'my often,' thus paraphrases: It is the diversified consideration or view of my travels, in which process my frequent reflection, and continued interest that I take, wraps me in a whimsical sadness. KNIGHT, reading my: His melancholy is the contemplation of his travels, the rumination upon which wraps him in a most humorous sadness. WHITE: 'By' is clearly a corruption, as it leaves 'wraps' without a nominative expressed or understood. The point of the speech is that the satirical Jaques finds in the contemplation of his travels his cause for melancholy. He means to sneer, more suo, at the whole world; and this he is made to do by the substitution of my for 'by,' and of a semicolon for a comma after 'travels.' The pleonastic use of 'in' is quite in conformity to the custom of the time. 19. humorous] CALDECOTT: In his Apology for Smectymnus, Milton says of his own ear for numbers, that it was rather nice and humorous in what was tolerable than patient to read every drawling versifier.'-Warton's Milton, p. 207 [See humorous.'-I, ii, 265.] 31. and] That is, an. See Abbott, § 101, if necessary. WRIGHT: In this form it occurs where it is little suspected in the Authorised Version of Genesis, xliv, 30: 'Now therefore when I come to thy servant my father, and the lad be not with us.' 31, 32. blanke verse] What are we to understand by this? It is Orlando who Rof. Farewell Mounfieur Trauellor: looke you lifpe, and weare ftrange fuites; difable all the benefits 33 has just uttered the only line of blank verse.. Jaques, therefore, hears Orlando, even if Rosalind does not, or pretends that she does not; see Grant White's interpretation, in the next note.-ED. 32. Nearly every modern edition follows the Ff in putting Exit at the end of this line. Dyce placed it after 'gondola' in line 38, and is followed by Cowden-Clarke, Hudson, and the Irving. DYCE (Remarks, p. 63) quotes Rosalind's speech from line 33 down to her address to Orlando in line 38, and asks: Does Rosalind say all this to Jaques after he has left the stage?' He then goes on to say, in regard to the Exit of the Ff, that 'Exits as well as Entrances were very frequently marked much earlier than they were really intended to take place; and nothing can be more evident than that here the exit of Jaques ought to follow "gondola." WHITE (ed. i): The question has been raised, whether Jaques should go out when he takes leave, or just before Rosalind addresses Orlando. It seems plain that in the latter case a charming and characteristic incident would be lost. Rosalind is a little vexed with Orlando for not keeping tryst. She sees him when he comes in, but purposely does not look at him, no woman needs be told why. He speaks, but she, with her little heart thumping at her breast all the while, refuses to notice her lover, and pretends to be absorbed in Jaques; and as he retires, driven off by the coming scene of sentiment, the approach of which he detects, she still ignores the presence of the poor delinquent, and continues to talk to Jaques till a curve in the path takes him out of sight; then turning, she seems to see Orlando for the first time, and breaks upon him with, 'Why, how now?' &c. Well might the old printer in Promos and Cassandra say that there are some speeches 'which in reading wil seeme hard, and in action appeare plaine.' DYCE quotes this note of White's, and adds: 'All this is, no doubt, very ingenious; but I cannot help thinking that it shows little knowledge of stage-business. The modern acting-copies of As You Like It do not allow Jaques to take any part in the present scene.' WHITE, however, did not lay to heart this criticism and improve his 'knowledge of stage-business.' In his second edition he says: 'Rosalind's speech, until she chooses to notice the tardy Orlando, is addressed to the retiring Jaques.' [I cannot avoid thinking that Dyce is entirely right. There is something humiliating in the idea of Rosalind talking to Jaques's back, and if he walked away at even a leisurely pace Rosalind's final words must have been pitched, if he is to hear them, almost in the scream of a virago. We must note the effect on Jaques of these final thrusts, we must count the wounds, or else Rosalind's victory is small. If Jaques's back is turned, his ears are deaf, and the victory is his rather than Rosalind's. At the same time that I give in my adhesion to Dyce, I must confess that he does not explain Orlando's address to Rosalind, nor her disregard of it. It may be that he would accept that much of Grant White's interpretation which attributes her silence to a punishment for his tardiness, but then one of Dyce's strong points is that the entrances are marked (for stage purposes) many lines in advance. Here the entrance is marked, and Orlando speaks, many lines before he is addressed by Rosalind.-ED.] 34. lispe] See Mercutio's invective against Tybalt.—Rom. & Jul. II, iv, 26. WRIGHT: See Overbury's Characters (Works, p. 58, ed. Fairholt), where 'An Affectate Traueller' is described: 'He censures all things by countenances, and shrugs, and speakes his owne language with shame and lisping.' [Sig. F, ed. 1627. Over of your owne Countrie: be out of loue with your natiuitie, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce thinke you haue fwam in a Gundello. Why how now Orlando, where haue you bin all this while? you a louer? and you ferue me fuch another tricke, neuer come in my fight more. Orl. My faire Rofalind, I come within an houre of my promise. Rof. Breake an houres promise in loue? hee that will diuide a minute into a thousand parts, and breake but a part of the thousand part of a minute in the affairs et cet. 35 40 45 46. thousand] thousandth Rowe et seq. 38. Gundello] Gondallo Rowe. Gondola Pope. gondola. [Exit Jaques] Dyce. 39, 50. and] Ff, Rowe, Cald. an Pope. bury's Characters were published in 1614; after his death.] MOBERLY quotes a passage from The Scholemaster [p. 75, ed. Arber] where Ascham says: 'I know diverse, that went out of England, men of innocent life, men of excellent learnyng, who returned out of Italie, not onely with worse manners, but also with lesse learnyng; neither so willing to liue orderly, nor yet so hable [Lat. habilis] to speake learnedlie, as they were at home, before they went abroad.' But this is only one sentence where whole paragraphs might be quoted from these closing ten pages of Ascham's First booke. His denunciation of the life led by Englishmen in Italy, and of their manners when they return, is unmeasured. ‘And so,' he says, 'beyng Mules and Horses before they went, returned verie Swyne and Asses home agayne'; and further on, they should carie at once in one bodie, the belie of a Swyne, the head of an Asse, the brayne of a Foxe, and the wombe of wolfe'; and that even the Italians have a proverb which says: Englese Italianato, e vn diabolo incarnato.' It is from these pages that in the Mer. of Ven. p. 297, I quoted Ascham's indignation at the translations of Italian novels then 'sold in euery shop in London.' -ED.] 34. disable] That is, undervalue, disparage. See V, iv, 79. 38. Gundello] JOHNSON: That is, been at Venice, the seat at that time of all licentiousness, where the young English gentlemen wasted their fortunes, debased their morals, and sometimes lost their religion. MRS Griffith (p. 87): Venice was then the polite goal, as Paris is now: so that to 'swim in a Gondola' is as if we should say, 'ride in a vis-à-vis,' at present. [A Mrs Griffith to date is needed to give us a note on a 'vis-à-vis.-ED.] WHITE (ed. i): Ladies say that their shoes are 'as big as a gundalow' (what lady's shoes are ever otherwise?), without any notion that they are comparing them to the coaches of Venice. But it is so. [For the spelling see 'Gundelier.'—Oth. I, i, 138. Walker (Vers. 218) gives 'gondelay,' from Spenser, F. Q. II, c. vi, st. ii; and "gundelet," i. e. a gondoletta,' from Marston's Ant. & Mellida, III, ii.] 46. thousand] This is merely phonetic spelling, like 'sixt' for sixth.-ED. |