Act II Sc. 1
“And leave eighteen. Alas, poor princess! Alas!”
Sc. 2
“Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawning
May bear the raven’s eye.”
This is the reading of the folio; but Theobald read bare, and he is generally followed. Collier’s folio has blear which I have adopted; for nothing was more common than an omission, by the printer, of a letter or even a syllable in a word. By ‘raven,’ the poet probably meant the night-raven, of which he had already spoken in Much Ado, ii. 3, and for his knowledge of which he was probably indebted to Spenser, in “Here no night-ravens lodge, more black than pitch” (Shep. Cal. June, v. 23).
“The ill-fac’d owl, death’s dreadful messenger,
The hoarse night-raven, trump of doleful drear.”
F. Q. ii. 12. 36.
Sc. 3
“With everything that pretty is.”
As the riming line ends in ‘begin,’ and as ‘every’ is very generally plural in our poet, and he uses obsolete terms at the end, though not in the body, of lines for rime-sake, it is the merest printer-worship to reject bin for ‘is,’ the correction of Hanmer.
“It is a vice in her ear, which horse-hairs and calves-guts, nor the voice,” etc.
The folio for ‘vice’ has voice. ‘Calves-guts’ should be ‘cats-guts.’
“Last night ’twas on my arm; for I kiss’d it.”
Sc. 4
“In these fear’d hopes
I barely gratify your love.”
Tyrwhitt, whom some late critics follow, proposed sear’d for ‘fear’d.’ The text is, in my opinion, right, ‘fear’d’ being one of the numerous instances of the past part. for the present; ‘fear’d hopes’ are hopes that are mingled with fear. See on As You Like it, v. 4.
“Now mingled with their courage[s], will make known.”
The 1st folio has ‘wingled’; the correction was made in the 2nd.
“If I had lost it.”
The folio has have; but the correction is certain.
“Who knows if one of her women, being corrupted.”
The correction was made in the 2nd folio.
Sc. 5
“Must be half-workers? We are all of us bastards.”
“All faults that men do name; nay, that hell knows.”
“For even to vice.” * * *
We might add to which they are so prone.