Act III Sc. 1
“By the wrongs that I suffer, and the blows that I bear.”
“Ay, to a niggardly host, and a more sparing guest.”
“I thought to have ask’d you * * * *
* * * * * and you said, No.”
Malone also saw that something was lost. We might read—
“I thought to have ask’d you, had you brought a rope.—
I ask’d you to let us in, and you said, No.”
“Once this. Your long experience of her wisdom.”
‘Her’ is Rowe’s correction of your of the folio.
“And in despite of mirth mean to be merry.”
To be merry in spite of mirth is like laughing in spite of laughter, dying in spite of death, living in spite of life—pure nonsense. With great confidence I therefore made the correction my wife, and so gave it in my Edition. Meeting, however, in the Cambridge Edition with Theobald’s correction wrath—for Editors had ignored it—I saw at once that the poet must have written my wrath (see Introd. p. 67), which resembles ‘mirth’ both in form and sound, and I have therefore adopted it without hesitation. Like a similar correction in Twelfth Night, i. 1, I regard it as absolutely certain.
Sc. 2
“Shall love in building grow so ruinous?”
So Theobald, in accordance with the rime, read for ruinate of the folio.
“Alas, poor women! make us but believe.”
Here again we have Theobald’s correction of ‘but’ for not.
“Spread o’er the silver-waves thy golden hears,
And as a bed I’ll take them and there lie.”
I have printed ‘hears’ for the ‘hairs’ of the folio, as it rimes with ‘tears,’ and was the constant pronunciation of Chaucer, and frequently of Spenser; and in his early plays Shakespeare indulged in riming archaisms of this kind occasionally. We are to recollect that this play was not printed till thirty years after it had been written, and by that time hair had been established as the sole orthography. The matter is, however, put out of dispute by the Poems, in which Shakespeare himself spells it hear when riming with tear and ear. ‘Bed’ is the correction of 2nd folio for bud. Mr. Dyce proposed bride.
“Call thyself sister, sweet, for I am thee.”
For ‘am’ Capell read, I think rightly, aim, and Singer quotes “I make my changes aim one certain end.”—Drayton Leg. of Rob. Duke of Normandy.
“Well, sir, but her name and three quarters.”
The folio has is for ‘and’; the correction is Thirlby’s.