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)
“Th’ _untented_ woundings of a Father’s curse Pierce every sense about thee.”
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,
Some men there are, love not a gaping pig; Some that are mad, if they behold a cat; And others, when the bag-pipe sings in the nose, Cannot contain, &c.——for _affection_.
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.