King Lear
Act I Sc. 1
“What shall Cordelia do? love and be silent.”
For ‘do’ the folio reads speak.
“Only she comes too short in that I profess.”
“Although the last not least.”
The folio reads ‘our last and least.’
“I crave no more than what your highness offer’d.”
So the 4tos; the folio reads ‘than hath.’
“It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,
No unchaste action, or dishonour’d step.”
How could the pure and gentle Cordelia suppose herself to be suspected of murder? which, moreover, accords not with the other charges she enumerates. Collier’s folio reads or other for ‘murder or.’ I feel strongly persuaded that the poet’s word was misdeed, which, if a little effaced, might easily be taken for ‘murder.’
Sc. 2
“Shall to the legitimate... I grow, I prosper.”
By pointing thus, as Rowe also did, we obviate the necessity of adopting Edwards’ ingenious reading of top for ‘to.’
“Though the wisdom of Nature can reason it thus and thus.”
We should surely read man. ‘Nature’ is in the following line, and hence the error.
“Banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts.”
Johnson read courts. ‘Cohorts’ is not a Shakespearian term.
Sc. 3
“With checks; as flatteries, when they are seen, are abused.”
It is only thus I can make sense.
“Remember what I have said to you.—Well, madam.”
“To hold my course.—Prepare for dinner now.”
The usual reading is, To hold my very course.
Sc. 4
“How now our daughter! What makes that frontlet on?”
“As you are old and reverend you should be wise.”
“Woe’s him that too late repents...—O sir, are you come?”
So perhaps the poet wrote.
“To the great love I bear you.—Pray you be content.”
“Though I condemn it not... yet under pardon.”