Mojo, The Bard, & Me

How may likeness made in crimes,

Making practise on the times,

To draw with idle spiders’ strings

Most ponderous and substantial things!

 

-Duke

 

Measure For Measure                                    Act III, Scene ii, Line 279

 

Okay, hopefully you’re ready for a bit of a lengthy post today. But ready or not…

 There’s a little bit of an issue of clarity in the syntax of today’s four lines. They’re part of a soliloquy. The Duke is talking about Angelo. By now in the play we realize that Angelo is passing judgement on people when he himself is very much at fault. And that’s the gist of the Duke’s short soliloquy. Here’s the whole thing.

He who the sword of heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe;
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go;
More nor less to others paying
Than by self-offences weighing.
Shame to him whose cruel striking
Kills for faults of his own liking!
Twice treble shame on Angelo,
To weed my vice and let his grow!
O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!
How may likeness made in crimes,
Making practise on the times,
To draw with idle spiders' strings
Most ponderous and substantial things!
Craft against vice I must apply:
With Angelo to-night shall lie
His old betrothed but despised;
So disguise shall, by the disguised,
Pay with falsehood false exacting,
And perform an old contracting.

I added the bold and italics to highlight today’s Totally Random lines.

At first I thought it was just me. But I did a little Googling on this and found out that it’s not, and I came up with a very interesting conclusion. A gentleman named Carl D. Atkins wrote a scholarly article on today’s lines. How about that? And Dr. Atkins points out not only the issue with the syntax, and the possible solutions proposed by a few other Shakespearean scholars, but also his own conclusion which I tend to favor. In his article Dr. Atkins talks about several other’s ideas and possible solutions for the confusion in the syntax before he proposes his own solution.

Here’s three versions: Starting with what I have above, drawn from my compilation of Shakespeare’s works, moving on to Dr. Atkins amended version, and ending with the punctuation found in the online text of the Bodliean First Folio. I like going to the First Folio whenever these questions come up.

Above

O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!
How may likeness made in crimes,
Making practise on the times,
To draw with idle spiders' strings
Most ponderous and substantial things!
Craft against vice I must apply:

Atkins

O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side?
How many likeness made in crimes,
Making practise on the times?
To draw with idle spiders' strings
Most ponderous and substantial things,
Craft against vice I must apply.

Bodleian

O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side?
How may likeness made in crimes,
Making practise on the Times,
To draw with idle spiders' strings
Most ponderous and substantial things?
Craft against vice I must apply.

So the text above, and in the First Folio, starts the sentence with ‘How may likeness…’ and ends that sentence four lines later making it very difficult to understand the meaning. It just doesn’t seem to make sense. In fact, the sentence doesn’t appear to have verb. ‘To draw’, as is pointed out in Dr. Atkin’s article (and not just by him), is an infinitive and not a proper predicate. So what is the ‘likeness’ doing? Well Dr. Atkins is suggesting that there are a couple of typos in the original First Folio and that the first two lines are one thought, really a continuation of the thought that’s in the two lines before that, and also that ‘may’ should be ‘many.’ And it does make very good sense.

O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side?
How many likeness made in crimes,
Making practise on the times?

The likeness in crimes making practice is referring to what a man may hide.

Then he takes it a step further in tying the last three lines together as one sentence, and that makes really good sense too.

To draw with idle spiders' strings
Most ponderous and substantial things,
Craft against vice I must apply.

The Duke is saying that he’s going to have to be sly to come up with a plan to deal with Angelo. And then in the final lines of the soliloquy the Duke explains what that plan is.

It all works very well and Dr. Atkins pretense is that the standard text is the result of a mistake in the typesetting of the First Folio. And we are certain that there were many mistakes in the typesetting as evidenced by the differences between different First Folios. Now I guess I’ll have to go back to some other online First Folios (because there are more than one) and see if thes lines are different in any of those. But for now I’m going with Dr. Atkins solution.

Now after going through all that, I’m thinking that you must agree with me that, regardless of what’s right or wrong with the typesetting and the syntax, these two lines are fabulous and can be utilized in any number of situations.

To draw with idle spiders' strings
Most ponderous and substantial things!

Honestly, that can be the reply to almost anything. In fact, I just used it in a texting conversation. Oh Shakespeare is just fabulous.

These are some idle spider strings on the cellar window above my desk. Or are they cobwebs? Or is that the same thing? O, most ponderous and substantial things!