Act IV Sc. 1
“Out, out you rogue! you pluck my foot awry.”
“’Tis burnt, and so is all the meat that’s here.”
I had also conjectured, like Capell, ‘all the rest of.’
Sc. 2
“Is it possible, friend Licio, that [mistress] Bianca.”
Pope also made this metric correction. Master and Mistress do not occur in this play as titles.
“Never to marry with her, though she would entreat me.”
“Would all the world but he had quite foresworn her.”
Rowe also added her.
“An ancient angel coming down the hill.”
If ‘angel’ be right, it must mean that he was an angel of deliverance to them. Singer and Dyce quote from Cotgrave’s Dictionary “Angelot à la grosse escaille. An old Angel, and by metaphor a fellow of the old, sound, honest, and worthy stamp.” But how could Biondello know his character? Some read engle, properly ingle; but this is rather, comrade, bosom-friend. In Gascoigne’s Supposes, from which this part of the play is taken, he is termed “good soul,” and it may be that the poet’s word here was uncle—the conjecture also of a Mr. Bubier, in the Cambridge Edition—a term used of elderly persons. (See Index s. v. Nuncle.) Just afterwards he is said to be “surely like a father” and (iv. 5) Katherine says to the real Vincentio “Now I perceive thou art a reverend father.”
“Master he is a marcantant or a pedant.”
‘Marcantant’ is the Italian mercante, mercatante, or mercadante. It may be corrupt.
“And what of him, Tranio?”
As this is so very abrupt and not very clear, we might conjecture an effacement of will you make or something similar.
“That you are like to Sir Vincentio.”
Here, again, the printer has put ‘Sir’ for Signior, and probably added the ‘to’ to make up the metre.
“Come, go with me to clothe you as becomes you.”
The 2nd folio reads ‘Go with me, sir.’
Sc. 3
“Why then the mustard; and without the beef.”
“I gave him no order; I gave him the stuff only.”
Sc. 4
“Ay, ay, what else? and but I be deceiv’d.”
“’Twere good that he were school’d—Fear you not him.”
“To have him match’d; and if you please to like it
No worse than I, upon some agreement, sir,
Me shall you find ready and willing both
With one consent to have her so bestow’d.”
Here is what seems to be a convincing proof of the effacement of the ends of lines in the MS. In the second line the 2nd folio inserted sir in the middle, and in the third it read ‘most ready and most willing.’ Lower down the ends of two lines more have been also effaced.
“The match is made and all is done;
Your son shall have my daughter, with consent.—
I thank you, sir, where then do you know best.”
‘Your son’ belongs to first line; and as we have had (iii. 2) “And marry sweet Bianca with consent,” we might complete the metre by reading ‘with my full consent’; but it is more probable, as this page of the MS. appears to have been injured, that the loss was at the end. I read of me, Baptista, as (v. 1) we have “mine only son and heir to the lands of me, signior Vincentio.” In the next line ‘know’ is most probably a mere printer’s error. I have in my Edition, given hold, the reading of Collier’s folio; but I think now that the right word is trow, which occurs more than once in Shakespeare in the sense of think, and which I find was also the conjecture of Hanmer.
“I cannot tell; except while they are busied about.”
The 1st folio has expect, which was rightly corrected in the 2nd. While was properly supplied by Capell.
“The priest be ready [to come] against you come with your appendix.”
Both sense and metre counsel the ejection of ‘to come’ caused by the following ‘you come.’
“She will be pleased, then wherefore should I doubt her?”
The rime evidently requires this addition, made also by Pope.
Sc. 5
“And so it shall be still for Katherine.”
‘Still’ is Ritson’s correction of so in the folio.
“But soft you! company is coming here.”