SELECTED NOTES FROM SOME OF THE PLAYS

MEASURE FOR MEASURE

There is perhaps not one of Shakespeare’s plays more darkened than this by the peculiarities of its Authour, and the unskilfulness of its Editors, by distortions of phrase, or negligence of transcription.

Act I. Scene i. (I. i. 7-9.)

                  Then no more remains: 
     But that to your sufficiency, as your worth is able,
     And let them work.

This is a passage which has exercised the sagacity of the Editors, and is now to employ mine.

Sir Tho.  Hanmer having caught from Mr. Theobald a hint that a line was lost, endeavours to supply it thus.

—­Then no more remains,
But that to your sufficiency you join
A will to serve us, as your worth is able.

He has by this bold conjecture undoubtedly obtained a meaning, but, perhaps not, even in his own opinion, the meaning of Shakespeare.

That the passage is more or less corrupt, I believe every reader will agree with the Editors.  I am not convinced that a line is lost, as Mr. Theobald conjectures, nor that the change of “but” to “put”, which Dr. Warburton has admitted after some other Editor, will amend the fault.  There was probably some original obscurity in the expression, which gave occasion to mistake in repetition or transcription.  I therefore suspect that the Authour wrote thus,

     —­Then no more remains,
     But that to your sufficiencies your worth is abled,
     And let them work.

Then nothing remains more than to tell you that your virtue is now invested with power equal to your knowledge and wisdom.  Let therefore your knowledge and your virtue now work together.  It may easily be conceived how “sufficiencies” was, by an inarticulate speaker, or inattentive hearer, confounded with “sufficiency as”, and how “abled”, a word very unusual, was changed into “able”.  For “abled”, however, an authority is not wanting.  Lear uses it in the same sense, or nearly the same, with the Duke.  As for “sufficiencies”, D. Hamilton, in his dying speech, prays that “Charles ii. may exceed both the virtues and sufficiencies of his father.”

Act I. Scene ii. (I. i. 51.)

     We have with a leaven’d and prepared choice.

“Leaven’d” has no sense in this place:  we should read “Level’d choice”.  The allusion is to archery, when a man has fixed upon his object, after taking good aim.—­Warburton.

No emendation is necessary. “leaven’d choice” is one of Shakespeare’s harsh metaphors.  His train of ideas seems to be this.  “I have proceeded to you with choice mature, concocted, fermented, leaven’d.”  When Bread is “leaven’d”, it is left to ferment:  a “leavn’d” choice is therefore a choice not hasty, but considerate, not declared as soon as it fell into the imagination, but suffered to work long in the mind.  Thus explained, it suits better with “prepared” than “levelled”.