So I've often quoted a line from Shakespeare thus (even once in a play of mine, as an actor's allusion:
“Excellent, i' faith, of the chameleon's dish. I eat the empyrean air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so.” but just now I've consulted two texts of Hamlet (a director who does one or two productions a year and was considering a script of mine is doing a Variorum Hamlet, thought I'd have another look) and in both versions there is not a trace of 'empyrean' (which would be rare air indeed for a chameleon, even up a high tree: empyrean. noun. Definition of empyrean (Entry 2 of 2) 1a : the highest heaven or heavenly sphere in ancient and medieval cosmology usually consisting of fire or light. b : the true and ultimate heavenly paradise. Not sure how the tongue of a chameleon would handle mouthfuls and mouthfuls of fire and light, maybe they're insulated; I don't think Y-hw-h would tolerate 'em chomping up acres and acres of the true and ultimate heavenly paradise (unless in sections where it's overgrown and could use a little culling). So I naturally wondered--apart from the obvious fact that 'empyrean air' is considerably richer than mere 'air'--whether I was remembering this from somewhere else entirely, so I Googled Shakespeare empyrean and made a discovery I wouldn't have stumbled on in a million years by mere chance: https://www.apollo.io/people/Brock/Shakespeare/54a22b757468692e71182a13
Don't think he's any relation (I'm not related to the fellow who discovered the Heaviside layer in the stratosphere or dare I say it? lower empyrean): except in the sense that we're all God's children, eager for our own particular taste of Paradise. But why did I remember the line wrong all these years? I'd make the insertion if I ever directed the play myself.
