Act V Sc. 1
“Destroyed the sweetest companion that e’er man
Bred his hopes out of.—True, too true, my lord.”
The folio gives ‘True’ to the King. See on As You Like It, ii. 1. Ant. and Cleop. ii. 2.
“Was like to be the best.—My good Paulina.”
“Would make her sainted spirit
Again possess her corpse, and on this stage,
Where we offenders now appear, soul-vex’d,
And begin, Why to me?...—Had she such power
She had just such cause.”
In the third line I adopt, with Mr. Dyce, the certain, as I think, emendation of Mr. Spedding, ‘Where we offend her,’ and I join ‘now’ with it. Offender and offend her are pronounced exactly alike, and ‘we’ caused the printer to add s. In the last line ‘such,’ caused by that in the preceding line, is superfluous, and should be omitted.
“Will have your tongue too. This is a creature who.”
“Whose daughter
His tears proclaim’d his, parting with her.”
I would read, as I find Thirlby read, her for the second ‘his,’ caused probably by the first.
“Give you all greetings that a king at friend.”
The 2nd folio reads needlessly ‘as friend.’
“Which lames Report to follow it, and undoes Description to do it justice.”
This last word, added by Singer, is required both by sense and metre.
“That she might no more be in danger of losing her.”
“And caught the water, though not the fish.”
“And himself little better, and extremity of weather continuing.”
Sc. 3
“On those that think it is unlawful business.”
Hanmer properly read Or for ‘On.’
“Strike all that look upon you with marvel. Come.”
“This is your son-in-law,
And son unto the king, who, heavens directing,
Is troth-plight to your daughter.”
So it should be punctuated. The folio reads ‘whom,’ confounding, as usual, who and whom; of which there are other instances in this play. See Introd. p. 59.