Act V Sc. 2
“Her sudden consenting, but say with me.”
Rowe supplied Her.
“All purity, all trial, all observance.”
As ‘observance’ is the word in the riming line, Collier’s folio and Malone read obedience; Heath perseverance; Harness and Singer, whom I find I have followed, endurance.
“Why do you speak too?”
I quite agree with those who read, with Rowe, Who and to.
Sc. 3
“Yet the note was very untuneable.”
Theobald read untimeable, as the reply is “we kept time;” but, as time and tune were synonymous, there seems to be no need of change.
Sc. 4
“As those that fear they hope and know they fear.”
To give sense here, I read ‘their hope’ and ‘their fear,’ and for ‘know’ hope. In the change of ‘they’ to their I find I had been anticipated by Heath. The thought is the same as in “In these feared hopes.” (Cymb. ii. 4). The printer having made ‘they hope,’ in order to get some sense, changed the following ‘hope’ to know, no unusual practice. Yet Mr. Dyce says, “I believe that the line now stands as Shakespeare wrote it.” Coleridge thus expresses the same thought:
“And Fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of Hope;
And Hope that scarce would know itself from Fear.”
“That thou mightest join his hand in his
Whose heart within his bosom is.”
Editors read her for ‘his’ in both lines. The first change, made in the 3rd folio, is necessary; the second, made by Malone, not so.
“And all their lands restored to him again.”
For ‘him’ editors very properly, following Rowe, read them; in MS. probably ’em.