TITUS ANDRONICUS.

ACT I. SCENE 2.

"Mar. My lord,—to step out of these dreary dumps— How comes it," &c.

The first folio has "sudden dumps" which is evidently an error for "sullen dumps," as Mr. Dyce suggests.

It is more than probable that "drive" is a misprint for dine, as Mr. Collier's folio suggests.

"Lav. When did the tiger's young ones teach the dam?

O, do not learn her wrath: she taught it thee:

The milk, thou suck'dst from her, did turn to marble;
Even at thy teat thou hadst thy tyranny.—

Yet every mother breeds not sons alike;

Do thou entreat her show a woman pity.

[To Chiron.

"Chi. What! would'st thou have me prove myself a bastard?

Lavinia says nothing about Chiron's father; but his reply would justify the belief that Tamora had played false with a true Milesian. How was he to prove himself

a bastard," by being unlike his mother? Can any one believe that Shakespeare could have been guilty of such a bull as this? However, there are but few passages in this horrid play which were touched by his pen.

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And in strong proof of chastity well arm'd,

From love's weak childish bow she lives uncharm'd."

The last word is evidently corrupted. Rowe changed it to unharmed, which is the received text, and which gives the sense of the passage; but Mr. Collier's folio provides for us another word, "encharmed," which is much nearer the original text, and much better in every way. It will hereafter take a place in the text without a question.

SCENE 5.

I have never seen a Juliet upon the stage who appeared to appreciate the archness of the dialogue with Romeo in this Scene. They go through it solemnly, or, at best, with staid propriety. They reply literally to all Romeo's speeches about saints and palmers. But it should be noticed that though this is the first interview of the lovers, we do not hear them speak until the close of their dialogue, in which they have arrived at a pretty thorough understanding of their mutual feeling. Juliet makes a feint

of parrying Romeo's advances; but does it knows that he is to have the kiss he sues for.

archly, and He asks,

"Have not saints lips, and holy palmers, too?"

The stage Juliet answers with literal solemnity.

But it

was not a conventicle at old Capulet's. Juliet was not holding forth. How demure is her real answer:

"Ay pilgrim, lips that they must use—in prayer.”

And when Romeo fairly gets her into the corner, towards which she has been contriving to be driven, and he says,

"Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purg'd,"

and does put them to that purgation, how slyly the pretty puss gives him the opportunity to repeat the penance, by replying,

"Then have my lips the sin that they have took."

ACT II. SCENE 1.

"Merc. Young Abraham Cupid, he that shot so trim."

Upton gave us the Adam, which takes the place of "Abraham" in all the current editions, except Mr. Knight's. But, as Mr. Dyce says, there is not the slightest authority for the change. The last named gentleman conjectures that "Abraham" in this line is a corruption of Auburn, as it unquestionably is in the following passages, which he quotes :

"When is the eldest sonne of Bryam,

That abraham coloured Troian? dead"

Soliman & Perseda, 1599, Sig. H3.

"A goodlie, long thicke, Abram coloured beard."

Middleton's Blurt, Master Constable, 1602, Sig. D.

and in Coriolanus, Act II. Scene 3,

"not that our heads are some browne, some blacke, som Abram,"

as we read in the first three folios.

The suggestion is more than plausible; and we at least owe to Mr. Dyce the efficient protection which it must give to the original text. Cupid is always represented by the old painters as auburn-haired.

SCENE 2.

"Rom. When he bestrides the lazie puffing Cloudes

And sailes vpon the bosome of the ayre."

This is the text as it stands in the original. "Lazie puffing" is evidently a misprint. It was changed to "lazy pacing" by Pope, which has been the received reading since his time. But, however much we may have become attached to it, it must be abandoned for "lazy passing,” which is supplied by the margins of Mr. Collier's folio; and which (passing having been written with two long s's), is evidently the word which the compositor mistook.

ACT III. SCENE 2.

"Jul. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,

That runaway's eyes may wink, and Romeo

Leap to these arms, untalked of and unseen."