Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1889 — Shakspeare’s Punctuation. [ARTICLE]

Shakspeare’s Punctuation.

Shakspeare, as I have all but verified to my own satisfaction, at least, punctuated with the decision which we now look for—not vainly—in a Tennyson, a Ruskin, or a Kinglake. I have here named three perfect punctuators. My verification, or almost verification, of Shakspeare’s own decisive pointing has been attained through the careful study of many passages in a no less authentic edition than “the famous folio of 1623.” Here we get back near enough to the original hand and the mastermind to form a fair judgment on the subject. It is a firmly pronounced, articulate punctuation, such as no editor, however “judicious,” could easily have supplied. For let no one imagine a printer’s law of punctuation that is adequate to the demands of a poet. He surely must know his own meaning best, and he alone feels, as well as means, what he says. It is this feeling and this true significance which he who makes the language can best impart by modulations of his own. My view is that the various forms of punctuation accompanying rhetorical composition are like the notes of music, which none so well as the composer himself can properly value. He hears, as he pens, every point. So it must seem to every appreciative reader, say, of “The Life of Henry V.” Take especially three speeches of the King. First, the warmly pulsating address to his friends: “Once more unto the breach,” concluding with the line, “Cry, God for Harry, England, and St. George!” Next, the rebuke to Westmoreland, who had wished for 10,009 idle men from England, with the spirited continuation of the speech, “This dav is called the feast of Crispianand thirdly, the passionate outburst: I was not angry since I came to France Vntil this instant. Take a Trumpet, Herald; Bide thou vnto the Horsemen on yond hill; If they will fight with us, bid them come downe, Or voyde the field; they do offend our sight. If they’ll do neither, we will come to them, And make them sker away as swift as stones Enforced from the old Assyrian slings. Not only is every point in those speeches adjusted to the maintenance of a true balance, being in no one instance too strong or too weak, but the actual breaks and pauses of the voice are so nicely indicated—especially in the “Crispian” speech, though scarcely less in the*compelling earnestness of the invocation, “Once more unto the breach!”—that he must indeed be dull of ear who fails to catch the poet’s own inspiration.— Cassell’s Mag azine.