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Giuen Hidra heere Singer (Sh. Vindicated, p. 218): Leave [the reading of Collier's MS. Corrector) is not wanted in this line. To ‘give’ is to concede, to permit, and ‘given’ stands for permitted.—Dyce (ed. i.): Mr Collier's MS. Corrector reads leave, and rightly perhaps; for in this passage there is a harshness in understanding ‘Given’ as equivalent to permitted—Leo (Coriolanus): In 2 Henry VI: IV, iv, 34, we find, ‘Sir Humphrey Stafford and his brother's death Hath given them heart and courage to proceed.’ I propose, therefore, the reading ‘Given Hydra heart,’ etc. [Dyce (ed. ii.), discarding even his half-hearted com mendation of the MS. correction, accepts the foregoing suggestion as the true reading. Wright's objection to Leo's change is, I think, well taken, that ‘what the people wanted was not courage but power to choose’; thus taking ‘Given’ in the sense of ‘allowed the choice,’ as suggested by Singer.—Ed.]—Hudson (ed. ii.): Dyce substitutes heart for ‘here’; very infelicitously as I cannot but think. For the patricians have not given the people the heart, that is, the disposition or spirit, to choose Tribunes; the people had that before; but they have granted to them the legal power or right; have given their consent to such a law. Coriolanus regards the common people everywhere as a many-headed monster, like the Hydra; and what he is now complaining of is that here, in Rome, this monster is allowed to choose a special officer who can do such and such things.
William Shakespeare. Horace Howard Furness, Jr., A. B.; Litt. D. The Tragedie of Coriolanus. Philadelphia and London. J. B. Lippincott Company.
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