Act III Sc. 1
“And hindered me of half a million.”
So also Warburton.
“Where? in Genoa?”
‘Where’ is Rowe’s correction; the original editions read Here, which may be right.
Sc. 2
“I speak too long, but ’tis to piece the time,
To eke it, and to draw it out.”
‘Piece’ is Rowe’s correction for peize, and is, I think, right.
“There is no vice so simple but assumes.”
The originals all have voice; ‘vice’ is a correction, and a true one, of the 2nd folio.
“Thus ornament is but the guiled shore
To a most dangerous sea, the beautious scarf
Veiling an Indian beauty.”
Unless we take it ironically—which is unworthy of the poet—‘beauty’ here is nonsense. It plainly owes its origin to the preceding ‘beautious.’ Hanmer read dowdy; Sidney Walker gipsy—both bad. I read, with the utmost confidence, feature as the only word suited to the place. (See Index s. v.) Mr. Spedding, I find, conjectured visage or feature, apparently taking them to be synonymous.
“Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge.”
For ‘pale’ Farmer read stale, perhaps needlessly.
“Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence.”
Warburton read plainness, of which Mr. Dyce approves, and perhaps with reason. I have, however, made no change. Lead in fact never is pale; for its surface is always oxydized. Shakespeare, moreover, would hardly use the same term of two distinct substances. (See, however, on Rom. and Jul. ii. 5.)
Sc. 3
“The Duke cannot deny the course of law,
For the commodity that strangers have
With us in Venice. If it be denied
‘Twill much impeach the justice of the state.”
I thus point and amend the passage, as Capell had done, followed only, I believe, by Knight. I am rather dubious of ‘justice,’ and should prefer interest or traffic.
Sc. 4
“From out the state of hellish misery.”
I prefer ‘misery,’ the reading of the first 4to, to cruelty, that of the others and the folio.
“As I have ever found thee honest-true.”
These compounds of two adjectives—the first being used adverbially—are not by any means uncommon. They are frequent in Shakespeare; in Fletcher’s Hum. Lieut. (iii. 2) we have “serious-true,” and in his Chances (ii. 1) “glorious-foolish.” (See on 1 Hen. IV. iii. 1.)
“In speed to Padua; see thou render this.”
All the old editions read Mantua, but it is so certain that it must have been a mere slip of the poet or the printer that Theobald’s correction has been universally and properly adopted. (See on Hen. V. iii. Chor.)
“Unto the Tranect, to the common ferry.”
Rowe, I think properly, read Traject (tragetto It.).
Sc. 5
“And if on earth he do not mean it, then.”
Here ‘it’ seems to mean ‘to live an upright life’; rather a harsh construction. It is not likely that the poet used ‘mean’ in the sense of mener Fr., yet it seems to be used so sometimes in Piers Ploughman.