Act II Sc. 1
“The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,
Writ in remembrance more than things long past.”
So this place is pointed in the original and subsequent editions, making little or no sense. I punctuate—‘As the last taste of sweets is sweetest—last’; in which I find I had been anticipated by Mason. The passage is one of the poet’s obscurest. His meaning is that the concluding part of any impression on the senses is the most permanent in its effect on the mind; but how strangely expressed!
“As praises of his state. Then there are found
Lascivious metres,” etc.
The two earliest 4tos read: “As praises, of whose taste the wise are found;” and by reading, as we should, fond, this also gives us very good sense.
“Against the envy of less happier lands.”
Pope read happy, which is doubtless more grammatical, according to the language of later times; but the text is probably as the poet wrote it. See on As You Like it, i. 2.
“For young hot colts being rag’d do rage the more.”
There seems hardly to be any doubt that ‘rag’d,’ to which it is impossible to give any tolerable meaning, was suggested by ‘rage.’ We might read curb’d or, with Ritson, rein’d, as in Cor. iii. 3.
“I do beseech your majesty, impute
His words to wayward sickliness and age.”
So I read, omitting ‘in him,’ introduced by the printer, at the end of the second line.
“What says he now?—Nay, nothing; all is said.”
“Or else he never would compare between you.”
“Tends that that thou would’st speak to the Duke of Hereford?”
“And quite lost their hearts; the nobles hath he fin’d,
For ancient quarrels, and quite lost their hearts too.”
“Thy words are but as thoughts; therefore be bold.”
Collier’s folio needlessly reads Our for ‘Thy.’
“That Harry Duke of Hereford, Reginald lord Cobham,
That late broke from the Duke of Exeter,
His brother, late Archbishop of Canterbury.”
From Malone’s note it would seem quite plain that a line has been lost after the first; yet the poet may have fallen into error. The person who escaped was Thomas Arundel, the nephew, not the brother, of the ‘late archbishop.’ I transpose here in agreement with the text of Holinshed and the laws of metre.
Sc. 2
“Thus thrust disorderly into my hands.”
The 4tos and folio read ‘Thus disorderly thrust.’
“Is my near kinsman, whom the king hath wronged.”
“The hateful commons will perform for us.”
The 4tos and folio read “Will the hateful,” etc.
Sc. 3
“To take advantage of the absent time.”
It means probably of the time of absence; but it is very awkwardly expressed. Perhaps for ‘time’ we should read king, which Theobald also proposed. We have “the absent King” (i.e. Rich. II.) in 1 Hen. IV. iv. 3.
“And ostentation of despised arms.”
I can see no sense in ‘despised’ here; Singer reads disposed. I prefer displayed, which he also had conjectured.
Sc. 4
“The other in hope to enjoy by rage and war.”
So also Theobald completed sense and metre.