scarcely be as Shakespeare wrote it:

"And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony."

Act iv. sc. 3.

Here the commencement of the sentence leads you to expect that love by speaking will produce some musical or magical effect, but nothing comes of it. The accents of love are uttered, but it is the voices of the gods that thereupon make heaven drowsy with their harmony; and since "all the gods" must constitute the "heaven," which is rendered thus lethargic, it seems pretty much the same thing as singing themselves to sleep.

Two pages of notes have been expended `in the discussion of the two lines, but no one has succeeded in setting them right. The best proposal perhaps is Dr. Farmer's, who supposes there may have been an accidental tranposition of make in one line and of in the other, and would read:

And when love speaks, the voice makes all the gods
Of heaven drowsy with the harmony.

This is somewhat tame, and I do not recollect that Shakespeare ever designates the deities of Olympus as the gods of heaven; but the emendation transmutes the passage into clearness and

And when love speaks, the voice enthralls the gods,
Making heaven drowsy with the harmony.

Enthrall is once or twice used by Shakespeare in reference to the influence of love.

A similar effect is described, although in different terms, by Ferdinand in the "Tempest":

The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
Brought my too diligent ear."

Act iii. sc. 1.

And as to the somniferous influence, Caliban, in

the same play, says:

"sometimes voices,

That if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Would make me sleep again."

Act iii. sc. 2.

Divers interpretations and emendations have been given of some lines spoken by the Princess which are exceedingly obscure, and consequently not such, in their present state, as could have proceeded from Shakespeare:

66

Nay, my good lord, let me o'errule you now;

That sport best pleases that doth least know how:
Where zeal strives to content, and the contents
Dies in the zeal of that which it presents."

Act v. sc. 2.

This is the reading of the old copies. Variorum Edition reads:

"Die in the zeal of them which it presents:"

The

and suggestions offered in the edition last cited, but proceed at once to propose my own reading, namely:

Where will strives to content, and discontents

Die in the zeal of that which it presents.

The pronoun it in the last line refers of course to will in the preceding one. This being observed, the meaning is plain enough: "where there is the desire to give content, any dissatisfaction felt by the spectators must be dissipated on witnessing the zeal to please manifested in the performance." The will, according to the old saying, is taken for the deed.

The context seems absolutely to require the substitution of discontents for contents. Discontents, moreover, frequently occurs in the plural with the meaning of dissatisfaction, while contents is seldom if ever found in these dramas, except to denote that which is contained.

Examples of the former may be readily cited. In "Timon of Athens " we have:

"His discontents are unremoveably
Coupled to nature."

And in "Titus Andronicus":

Act v. sc. 2.

"Dissemble with your griefs and discontents."

Act i. sc. 1.

the zeals must be discarded for the sake of both good sense and good taste, and there are reasons why it should be the first. Will in its place yields as an appropriate meaning as can be desired, and this reading is in some measure countenanced by a passage in "Antony and Cleopatra," where a similar sentiment is expressed:

"And when good will is show'd, though it come too short, The actor may plead pardon." Act ii. sc. 5.

The only other instance of apparent corruption I have to notice in the same comedy is also one of repetition. The Princess says to the King, her lover, in pronouncing a sentence of twelve months' absence and austerity:

"If frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin weeds,

Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,

But that it bear this trial and last love;

Then at the expiration of the year,

*

*

I will be thine."

*

Act v. sc. 2.

Steevens says on this, "Last is a verb. If it last love means if it continue to be love."

The interpretation here given can scarcely be the true one. Surely it is harsh diction to say if love last love. In reading the passage for the first time, every one would take last to be an adjective.