Notes and Queries, Number 47, September 21, 1850 | Page 4

OF A PASSAGE IN THE "TEMPEST."
Premising that I should approach the text of our great poet with an almost equal degree of awful reverence with that which characterises his two latest editors, I must confess that I should not have the same respect for evident errors of the printers of the early editions, which they have occasionally shown. In the following passage in the _Tempest_, Act i., Scene 1., this forbearance has not, however, been the cause of the very unsatisfactory state in which they have both left it. I {260} must be indulged in citing at length, that the context may the more clearly show what was really the poet's meaning:--
"Enter FERDINAND bearing a Log.
"_Fer._ There be some sports are painful; and their labour Delight in them sets off; some kinds of baseness Are nobly undergone; and most poor matters Point to rich ends. This my mean task Would be as heavy to me, as odious; but The mistress, which I serve, quickens what's dead, And makes my labours pleasures: O! she is Ten times more gentle than her father's crabbed; And he's composed of harshness. I must remove Some thousands of these logs, and pile them up, Upon a sore injunction: My sweet mistress Weeps when she sees me work; and says such business Had never like executor. I forget: But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours; Most busy lest when I do it."
Mr. Collier reads these last two lines thus--
"But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours; Most busy, least when I do it."
with the following note--
"The meaning of this passage seems to have been misunderstood by all the commentators. Ferdinand says that the thoughts of Miranda so refresh his labours, that when he is most busy he seems to feel his toil least. It is printed in the folio 1623,--
'Most busy lest when I do it,'
--a trifling error of the press corrected in the folio 1632, although Theobald tells us that both the oldest editions read lest. Not catching the poet's meaning, he printed,--
'Most busy-less when I do it,'
and his supposed emendation has ever since been taken as the text; even Capell adopted it. I am happy in having Mr. Amyot's concurrence in this restoration."
Mr. Knight adopts Theobald's reading, and Mr. Dyce approves it in the following words:--
"When Theobald made the emendation, 'Most busy-_less_,' he observed that 'the corruption was so very little removed from the truth of the text, that he could not afford to think well of his own sagacity for having discovered it.' The correction is, indeed, so obvious that we may well wonder that it had escaped his predecessors; but we must wonder ten times more that one of his successors, in a blind reverence for the old copy, should re-vitiate the text, and defend a corruption which outrages language, taste, and common sense."
Although at an earlier period of life I too adopted Theobald's supposed emendation, it never satisfied me. I have my doubts whether the word busyless existed in the poet's time; and if it did, whether he could possibly have used it here. Now it is clear that labours is a misprint for _labour_; else, to what does "when I do _it_" refer? Busy lest is only a typographical error for _busyest_: the double superlative was commonly used, being considered as more emphatic, by the poet and his contemporaries.
Thus in Hamlet's letter, Act ii. Sc. 2.:
"I love thee best, O most best."
and in _King Lear_, Act ii. Sc. 3.:
"To take the basest and most poorest shape."
The passage will then stand thus:--
"But these sweet thoughts, do even refresh my labour, Most busiest when I do it."
The sense will be perhaps more evident by a mere transposition, preserving every word:
"But these sweet thoughts, most busiest when I do My labour, do even refresh it."
Here we have a clear sense, devoid of all ambiguity, and confirmed by what precedes; that his labours are made pleasures, being beguiled by these sweet thoughts of his mistress, which are busiest when he labours, because it excites in his mind the memory of her "weeping to see him work." The correction has also the recommendation of being effected in so simple a manner as by merely taking away two superfluous letters. I trust I need say no more; secure of the approbation of those who (to use the words of an esteemed friend on another occasion) feel "that making an opaque spot in a great work transparent is not a labour to be scorned, and that there is a pleasant sympathy between the critic and bard--dead though he be--on such occasions, which is an ample reward."
S.W. SINGER
Mickleham, Aug 30. 1850.
* * * * *
PUNISHMENT OF DEATH BY BURNING.
(Vol. ii., pp. 6. 50. 90. 165.)
In the "NOTES AND QUERIES" of Saturday, the 10th of August,