APPENDIX ON SHAKSPERE'S NEGATIONS. MACBETH, Act iii. Scene 6-8. Who cannot want the thought. The explanation given above of this much-vexed passage appears simple and adequate, and only requires the removal of the stop at 'too late' and of the note of interrogation after 'father,' the insertion of which by the printers has obscured the sense. This makes it mean 'People must not walk too late, who, like you and me, cannot do away with the thought that it was, as Macbeth said, monstrous for the king's sons to kill their father.' The tone of the actor's voice would give an ironical turn to the word 'monstrous,' so as to make it mean 'too monstrous for belief.' The maximum of confusion on the passage appears to be attained by a writer in the Edinburgh Review (July 1869), who points out, truly enough, that in Lowland Scotch, and therefore in old English, to 'want the thought' means 'to dispense with it.' He however forgets that the negative rhetorical question 'who cannot want?' is equivalent, not to the universal negative 'no one can dispense with,' but to the affirmative 'every one can dispense with '; put as 'who cannot see that the tree is tottering?' means 'every one can see that it is tottering.' The Cambridge editors admit that the passage, as generally punctuated, gives a sense opposite to that which is required, but consider that this arises from a confusion like that which leads to the use of the pleonastic negatives in Greek, and to such expres sions in Shakspere as 'he denied that you had in him no right.' They quote as parallel instances Winter's Tale, iii. 2, 55— "I ne'er heard yet That any of these bolder vices wanted Less impudence to gainsay what they did, Ib. i. 2, 260 "Whereof the execution did cry out Against the non-performance." King Lear, ii. 4, 140— "I have hope You less know how to value her desert In the first passage the parallel appears close; as ' wanted' seems to stand for 'had.' But is not the expression modified by an idea also present in the writer's mind, 'I never heard that these bolder vices wanted the less degree of impudence which is required to deny a crime, when they had had the greater impudence to do it?' So in the third passage, the idea implied in the words 'you less know' is, 'it is rather you who do not know how to value her desert, than she who thinks of scanting her duty.' Lastly, in Winter's Tale, i. 2, 260, ‘the execution seems to be used in a legal sense for the warrant for 'fiat, or execution' the meaning therefore being, 'If I have ever delayed to do a thing because I doubted as to its issue, so that the full legal warrant which you gave me to complete it should cry out against my slackness in not doing so.' The conclusion to which these passages thus viewed appear to ead us is, that the supposed illogical negatives in Shakspere have not this character really, but originate in the wish to express a subordinate idea, as well as the principal one, without making a second sentence for the purpose of conveying it. SHAKSPERE Rugby Edition THE TEMPEST MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING MACBETH KING LEAR HAMLET As You Like It CORIOLANUS |