Act III Sc. 1
“Thanks, gentle uncle. Come, my lords, away,
To fight with Glendower and his complices.”
With Theobald, I am dubious of the last line. The scene would end better with the couplet, and Glendower is not mentioned anywhere else in the play. A little higher up in the scene, however, a line intervenes between two rimes.
Sc. 2
“Barloughly Castle call they this at hand?—
Yea, my lord. How brooks your grace the air.”
For ‘Yea,’ we should read Even so. Introd. p. 68.
“In murders and in outrage bloody here.”
As 4to 1597 reads bouldy for ‘bloody’, the reading of the other 4tos and the folio, the right reading would seem to be boldly.
“Strive to speak big and clap their female joints
In stiff unwieldy arms.”
Pope reads clasp and Collier’s folio feeble, which seem to be better.
Sc. 3
“Your Grace mistakes me; only to be brief,
Left I his title out.”
“Had been so brief with you to shorten you,
For taking so the head, your whole head’s length.”
We should read off for ‘so’ suggested by that in the preceding line.
“That any harm should stain so fair a show.”
The folios of both Collier and Singer read storm for ‘harm.’
Sc. 4
“And I could sing, would weeping do me good,
And never borrow any tear of thee.”
We should either read weep for ‘sing’ or singing for ‘weeping.’ Pope, who is generally followed, read weep. I prefer singing; so also does Staunton.
“But stay, girl, hëre come the gardeners.”
She had already called her ‘girl’ twice.
“As we this garden. At time of year we cut
And wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees.”
In the first line something is wanting at the end in both 4tos and folio; in the second the 4tos read ‘Do wound,’ and those who follow them read ‘We at time of year.’ I prefer the reading of the folio, adding we cut. If we follow the 4tos, we should read perhaps ‘year we still.’ The expression ‘time of year,’ i.e. spring (?) occurs in one of the Sonnets of Thomas Watson (1581?): “And time of year reviveth everything.”
“Their fruits of duty. The superfluous branches.”
So also S. Walker; 2nd folio reads All.