Act V Sc. 1
“Just as you left them. All are prisoners, sir.”
“A solemn air and the best comforter
To an unsettled fancy cure thy brains, that,
Now useless, boil within thy skull.”
It is better, I think, to correct thus than, with the editors, to read ‘boil’d.’
“My true preserver, and a loyal sir
To him thou followest.”
“That sir that serves and seeks for gain.”
Lear, ii. 4.
“A lady to the worthiest sir that ever
Country call’d his.”
Cymb. i. 7.
Still I think that the final syllable of servant may have been effaced.
“You, brother mine that entertain ambition.”
This is the reading of the folio, and I see no need of reading with editors ‘entertain’d.’
“That yet looks on me, or would know me.”
With Collier’s folio I read e’er for ‘or.’
“How thou hast met us here, whom three hours since
Were wrack’d upon this shore.”
This is a remarkable instance of the use of whom for who in the nominative. See W. Tale, ad fin.
“Where we in all our trim freshly beheld
Our royal, good, and gallant ship.”
For ‘our’ in the first line we must of course read her with Thirlby and Theobald. It was probably caused by the ‘Our’ of the next line; but from similarity of pronunciation our is sometimes confounded with her and a.
“Ever in a dream were we divided from them.”
For ‘them’ we should perhaps read her.
“This is a strange thing as e’er I look’d on.”
With Capell I read ‘as strange a.’ We have just had
“This is as strange a maze as e’er men trod.”
“That is thy charge; then to the elements.”
I confidently read ‘element,’ that is air, his return to which had been already promised him.