Act II Sc. 1
“How in my strength you please. For you, good Edmund.”
“Corn. You know not why we came to visit you.
Reg. Thus out of season threading dark-eyed night.
Occasions, noble Gloster, of some poise,
Wherein we must have use of your advice.”
It is strange that the editors have not seen that Reg. is out of place. It belongs to the third line. (See on Hen. V. i. 1.) In her usual forward impatient manner she takes, as we say, the words out of Cornwall’s mouth. There is evidently a line lost after the fourth. We might read “Have been the cause of this our sudden visit.”
Sc. 2
“Knowing nought else, like dogs, but following.”
“Smile you at my speeches, as I were a fool?”
Sc. 4
“They have travell’d hard to-night. Mere fetches these.”
“For the sound man.—Death on my state!
Wherefore should he sit here? This act persuades me.”
This is the proper arrangement.
“Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give
Thee o’er to harshness.”
Neither hefted nor hested, the other reading, makes sense; the conjecture hearted may, then, be right.
“To wage war against the enmity of the air.”
“You heavens, give me that patience [patience] I need.”
Malone made the same omission.
“He hath put himself from rest, and must needs taste his folly.”