Far from the purpose of his coming thither, For then is Tarquin brought unto his bed, With modest Lucrece, and wore out the night : And every one to rest himself betakes, Save thieves, and cares, and troubled minds, that wakes. As one of which doth Tarquin lie revolving Though weak-built hopes persuade him to abstaining; And when great treasure is the meed proposed, Though death be adjunct, there's no death supposed. Those that much covet are with gain so fond, 1 Intending, pretending. 2 Questioned, conversed. 3 3 This is the reading of the original edition of 1594. That of 1616 reads, are with gain so fond, That oft they have not that which they possess ; They scatter and unloose it.” Malone adopts the reading of the original, and he thus explains it: And so, by hoping more, they have but less; Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain, That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain. The aim of all is but to nurse the life As life for honor in fell battles' rage; Honor for wealth; and oft that wealth doth cost The death of all, and all together lost. So that in venturing ill we leave to be The things we are, for that which we expect ; In having much, torments us with defect The thing we have, and, all for want of wit, Such hazard now must doting Tarquin make, "Poetically speaking, they may be said to scatter what they have not, i. e. what they cannot be truly said to have; what they do not enjoy, though possessed of it." This is clearly a misinterpretation. The reasoning of the two following stanzas is directed against the folly of venturing a certainty for an expectation, by which we "make something nothing." The meaning, then, though obscurely expressed, is, that the covetous are so fond of gaining what they have not, that they scatter and unloose from their bond (safe hold) that which they possess. When he himself himself confounds,1 betrays To slanderous tongues, and wretched, hateful days? Now stole upon the time the dead of night, No noise but owls' and wolves' death-boding cries; The silly lambs; pure thoughts are dead and still, While lust and murder wake to stain and kill. And now this lustful lord leaped from his bed, Beaten away by brain-sick, rude Desire. His falchion on a flint he softly smiteth, "As from this cold flint I enforced this fire, Here pale with fear he doth premeditate 1 Confounds. Malone interprets this as destroys; but the meaning is sufficiently clear if we accept confounds in its usual sense. What following sorrow may on this arise; His naked armor of still-slaughtered lust, "Fair torch, burn out thy light, and lend it not Let fair humanity abhor the deed That spots and stains love's modest snow-white weed.1 "O, shame to knighthood and to shining arms! "Yea, though I die, the scandal will survive, And be an eyesore in my golden coat; Some loathsome dash the herald will contrive, 4 1 Weed, garment. The word is more commonly used in the plural, as in Milton's "Paradise Regained: "But now an aged man in rural weeds." II. But in the same scene of Coriolanus (Act II. Sc. 11.) we have both weed and weeds. 2 Fancy's slave, love's slave. 3 Digression is here used in the sense of transgression. 4 Here is one of the frequent examples with which the works of Shakspeare and his contemporaries abound, of applying the usages of chivalry to the more remote antiquity of Greece and To cipher me how fondly I did dote; "What win I if I gain the thing I seek? For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy? Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown, Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down? "If Collatinus dream of my intent, Will he not wake, and in a desperate rage This siege that hath engirt his marriage, "O, what excuse can my invention make, Rome. The poem of Lucrece contains many such allusions. In particular, towards the close we have this line: Knights by their oaths should right poor ladies' harms.” This was indeed an anticipation of chivalry; but the poet could in no way so forcibly express the spirit which animated the avengers of Lucrece, and which the injured lady here invokes, as by employing the language of chivalry. The use of the word ladies in this line is as much an anachronism as that of knights; but what other words will express the meaning intended ? |