THE commentators of Shakspeare think themselves obliged to find some meaning in his nonsense; and to come at it, twist and turn his words without mercy: never considering, that in his scenes, as in common life, some part must be necessarily unimportant.

Many a passage has been criticised into consequence. The meaning, to use Shakspeare’s words on a like occasion, “is like a grain of wheat hid in a bushel of chaff; you shall seek all day e’er you find it, and when you have it, it is not worth the search.”

An expression of Shallow’s in the second part of Henry the fourth has been the subject of much criticism and hypercriticism. “We will eat a last year’s pippin with a dish of carraways;” and it is certain that there was such a dish, but if Shakspeare had meant it, he would have said, “A dish of last year’s pippins with carraways”—“with a dish, &c.” clearly means something distinct from the pippins. Roasted pippins stuck full of carraways, says one—carraway confect, or comfit well known to children, says another—as if every one did not know what carraway comfits were, says a third, laughing at the second. Dine with any of the natural inhabitants of Bath about Christmas, and they probably will give you after dinner a dish of pippins and carraways—which last is the name of an apple as well known in that country as nonpareil is in London, and as generally associated with golden pippins.

“Then am I a sous’d gurnet,” lays Falstaff. This fish has puzzled the commentators as much as the apple did before.—What can it be?—I never heard of such a fish.—There is no such fish. A magazine critic, assured of its non-existence, proposed reading grunt, gurnet, quasi grunet, quasi grunt——well, and what do we get by that? Why, because hogs grunt, and pork is the flesh of hogs, sous’d gurnet means pickled pork! Very lately a commentator, who once denied its existence, has discovered in consequence of his great learning, that there is really such a fish——he is really in the right—if he will go to the South coast of Devonshire, he may see plenty of them—but not sous’d.

And now I mention Falstaff, let me explain his copper ring. He complains of being robbed when he was asleep, and “losing a seal-ring of his grandfather’s worth forty marks.” “O Jesu,” says the hostess, “I have heard the prince tell him I know not how oft, that the ring was copper.” Is the appearance of copper so much like gold, that one may be mistaken for the other? Formerly, (about the time of Falstaff’s grandfather) gold was a scarce commodity in England, so scarce that they frequently made rings of copper and plated them thinly with gold; I have seen two or three of them. As the look of both was alike, Falstaff might insist upon its being gold; on the contrary, the prince, from the quality of the wearer and lightness of the ring, might with equal fairness maintain that it was only plated.

Though it is not my intention to make one of the number of Shakspeare’s commentators, I will take this opportunity of restoring a passage in King Lear. In the agony of his passion with his daughter, he says (in the modern editions)

In the old editions it is printed exceeding plainly, “Th’ untender woundings, &c.” that is, not tender, or cruel. It would be waste of time to shew its propriety, and that there is no such word as untented. Who first threw out the true reading and substituted the false, I know not. Is it worth while to say, that the word is often used by Shakspeare, and once at least besides in the same play, “so young and so untender?”

One more and I will release you.—Shylock says,

that is, because they are so affected. These poor lines have been new-worded, new stopped, and all to find the meaning of as plain a passage as can be written. “Some men cannot abide this thing, others have an aversion to another, which sometimes produces strange effects on their bodies, because their imagination is so strongly affected. Masterless passion, suffering, or feeling, compels them to follow the impulse.” The not understanding affection and passion in Shakspeare’s quaint sense has occasioned the difficulty.

There are many other corrupted and misunderstood passages that require as little attention, to set them right, as what has been exerted on this occasion, by

Yours sincerely, &c.