Act IV
“You’re well met once again, sir.—So are you.”
“A bold brave gentleman. And that should be.”
Sc. 2
“One that by suggestion
Tied all the kingdom.”
I do not understand ‘Tied’ here. Hanmer proposed Tith’d; the word might also be Tir’d; or perhaps task’d. “And in the neck of that task’d the whole state” (1 Hen. IV. iv. 3). We, however, meet in B. and F.’s Four Plays in One, Triumph of Time, Sc. 1:—
“And greedy Lucre at a serious conference
Which way to tie the world within their statutes.”
Holingshed’s words are, “By crafty suggestion got into his hands innumerable treasure.”
“Unwilling to outlive the good that did it.”
We must either read he for ‘that,’ or, what is more likely, suppose a word lost at the end of the line. We might read cherish, as we have. “This juggling witchcraft with reverence cherish” (King John, iii. 1). I have, however, read nourish, though I see no advantage in it. “Kings shall be thy nursing-fathers” may have been in the poet’s mind. ‘Good’ is goodness, as fair is fairness.
“How pale she looks,
And of an earthly coldness! Mark her eyes!”
So Collier’s folio also reads. Mr. Staunton proposes Her hand for ‘And,’ or ‘And feels.’
“Say to him his long trouble now is passing
Out of the world.”