Some Textual Difficulties in Shakespeare (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SOUL AND DUTY King. Thou still hast been the father of good news. Polonius. Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good liege, I hold my duty as I hold my soul, Both to my God, and to my gracious king. (Hamlet, ii, 2, 45, Modern editions) I hold my dutie, as I hold my Soule, Both to my God, one to my gracious king. (Folios) The one of this last line, because it has proved impossible to construe it into any evident sense, has long been considered an error. Modern editions have substituted and for the original one of the Folios. Furness, acceding to the general opinion that one was an error of the early printers, makes the following comment in his Variorum: "Dyce (Strictures, etc., 187) truly says that the attempts to explain the error, one, of the Ff have proved unsuccessful." If we will only have regard for what Polonius naturally would say, both in respect of his character and the common sense of the case, it is not difficult to see that Shakespeare wrote the word one in this place. Polonius, with his usual way of making fine distinctions, comes before the king and says: ? "I hold my duty as I hold my soul; both to my God, one to my gracious king." In other words, Polonius holds or owes both his soul and his duty to hisGod, whereas he holds but one of them, his duty, to his king. For it would be manifestly absurd to tell a king that you owe your soul to him in the same sense that you owe it to the Creator. The king would not be very strongly convinced of your sincerity. The flattery would be too rank. Therefore Polonius' one, which makes this exception, would seem to be dictated by mere common sense. Polonius, who is not entirely a fool and is not intended as such, has assiduously built up for himself a character of wisdom, of weighty mentality and acute and...