Act IV Sc. 1
“Who having, by their own importunate suit
Or voluntary dotage of some mistress,
Convinced or supplied them cannot choose
But they must blab.”
In the third line I think that for ‘convinced or’ we should read ‘convinc’d her and’; the confusion of ‘or’ and her was easy: and must of course be added to get sense. See Introd. p. 6
“I never knew a woman love a man so.”
Sc. 2
“Nor send you out of the way?—Never, my lord.”
“Had it pleased Heavens
To try me with afflictions, had they rained.”
The 4to reads ‘had he ruin’d.’ ‘Heavens’ is frequently used instead of Heaven.
“A fixed figure for the Time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at.”
This is the reading of the 4to; the folio has ‘The’ for ‘A,’ and ‘and moving’ for ‘unmoving.’ For ‘Time’ Rowe, who is generally followed, read hand; for ‘slow unmoving’ Mason read ‘slowly moving’; Hunter read ‘of the Time for scorn.’ I, however, see no need of change. ‘The Time of scorn’ is the scornful age or world, a frequent sense of ‘time’; and we should print “To point his slow—unmoving finger at,” the latter term being a correction of the former.
“Made to write whore upon? What sin committed?”
So also in two succeeding lines of this speech, and in all a syllable is wanting. It is really amazing how such an omission—destructive alike of energy and of metre—could not only have been made by the printer, but remain unnoticed by all the editors. As sin is wanting in both 4to and folio, it is clear that the former was printed from the latter, and not from a MS. In the last line I read ‘hear of it.’
Sc. 3
“And bade me to dismiss you.—To dismiss me!”
“She was in love, and he she lov’d prov’d mad
And did forsake her.”
For ‘mad,’ which is certainly wrong, Theobald read bad, and I think he was right. ‘Proved bad’ answers to our present turned out bad. Regarding bad as rather low and trivial, I read in my Edition false, as that is the term in the ballad. I thought ‘mad’ might have been suggested by ‘maid’ in the preceding line.