Act V Sc. 1
“Yea, bloody cloth, I’ll keep thee; for I am wish’d
Thou shouldest be coloured thus.”
Pope omitted ‘am,’ and so his successors; but it must have been a mistake for ‘ve; unless there be an error in ‘wish’d.’
“Gods, if you
Should have ta’en vengeance on my faults, I never.”
Possibly the poet wrote more correctly Had taken.
“You some permit
To second ills with ills, each elder worse;
And make them dread it, to the doer’s thrift.”
A line must have been lost between the two last. ‘Elder’ is later.
Sc. 3
“Sweet words; or hath more ministers than we
That draw his knives in the war.”
This would seem an instance of the usual change of or for and.
Sc. 4
“Thy crystal window ope; [look], look out.”
“Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment.”
As ‘fangled’ never occurs without new, it is but reasonable to suppose it was omitted here; and ‘is,’ which is not wanted, was probably inserted for metre’s sake.
“No more tavern-bills, which are as often the sadness.”
Sc. 5
“O’ercome you with her show, and in due time.”
The 2nd folio has ‘yes, and in time.’
“Mine own.—I know not why, nor whërefore.”
Nor is the necessary addition of Rowe.
“One sand
Another not more resembles... That sweet rosy lad.”
This punctuation, I think, removes all difficulty. In the perturbation of astonishment he stops short, and then tells whom he meant.
“This man is better than the man he slew.”
For the first ‘man’ we had better read youth.
“Your pleasure was my meer offence.”
So Tyrwhitt; the folio reads neere.
“Beaten for loyalty
Excited me to treason.”
It would seem that beating would be the proper word.
“Rejoiced at deliverance more. Blest may you be.”
For ‘may’ the folio reads pray.
“This fierce abridgement
Hath to it circumstantial branches.”
For ‘fierce,’ which yields no good sense, I read first. ‘Abridgement’ is summary: “This brief abridgement of my will I make” (Lucrece).
“Is this most constant wife [To Post.] who even now.”
For ‘this’ we might read thy, or, as I have done, ‘this thy.’ Without the stage-direction the place has no sense.
“My peace we will begin.”
For ‘My’ Capell read By; others This.
“Have laid most heavy hand on.”