P. 185. (122) "I must commune with your grief," So the quartos, 1604, &c.-The folio has "I must common with your greefe;" which Boswell would understand as, "I must be allowed to participate in your grief, to feel in common with you ;" and, much to my surprise, Mr. Grant White (Shakespeare's Scholar, &c. p. 421) approves of that most erroneous reading and interpretation.-The "common" of the folio is merely an old spelling of "commune:" see Richardson's Dict. in "Common" and "Commune."-1865. Mr. Grant White in his edition of Shakespeare prints commune." 66 See note 87 on The Second Part of King Henry IV. vol. iv. p. 414; and compare Phaer's Virgil's Eneidos, Book ii. ; "The towne inuade they do forthwith, in sleepes [the original somno] and drinking drownd." Sig. C vii, ed. 1584. Walker (Crit. Exam. &c. vol. iii. p. 208) suspects, and, it would seem, with good reason, that we ought to read "Of them that brought them." "Perhaps 'Ay, my good lord'." Walker's Crit. Exam, &c. vol. iii. p. 270. P. 188. (126) "As checking at his voyage," Mr. Collier prints "As liking not his voyage ;" and observes, "This is the clear and correct reading of the undated quarto, that of 1611, &c. Malone seems to have referred here to no other quarto than that of 1604, and finding it read corruptly As the king at his voyage,' he adopted the text of the folio, 'As checking at his voyage,' which, no doubt, was there introduced as a conjectural emendation." Here I altogether differ from Mr. Collier : "the King at," of the quarto 1604, is obviously a mistake for "checking at ;" a reading much more in Shakespeare's manner than "liking not." So the quartos, 1604, &c.-"The folio has ran for 'can.' It was a mere printer's error." COLLIER.-Assuredly it was: yet Caldecott and Mr. Knight retain it. The quartos, 1604, &c. have "Lamord."-The folio has "Lamound."— "Shakespeare, I suspect, wrote Lamode. See the next speech but one; 6 'he is the brooch, indeed, And gem of all the nation'." MALONE. Mr. Grant White prints "Lamont." This passage (from "There lives within the very flame" to "the quick o' th' ulcer" inclusive) is only in the quartos, 1604, &c.; all which, except that of 1637, have “a spend-thrifts sigh,"-quite wrongly, I conceive; though Capell, Mr. Collier, and Mr. Knight think otherwise. So the quartos, 1604, &c.-The folio has "commings;" which Caldecott and Mr. Knight retain (old spelling and all) in the sense of-venues, bouts. Here the "non," which had been accidentally omitted in the first folio, was inserted by the editor of the second folio. - Instead of these words, the quartos, 1604, &c. have "but stay, what noyse:" but the corresponding passage of the quarto 1603 is," How now Gertred, why looke you heauily?" "I would read had I." Walker's Crit. Exam, &c. vol. ii. p. 246. And so some of the earlier editors. Walker (Crit. Exam. &c. vol. iii. p. 270) would add "true" to these words: but the expression is elliptical. So the folio. The quartos, 1604, &c. have "Goe get thee in."-Mr. Collier ad l. oddly conjectures that "Yaughan" may be "a mis-spelt stage-direction to inform the player that he was to yann at this point;" and his Ms. Corrector, oddly too, substitutes "get thee to yon'."-1865. Mr. Collier in the second edition of his Shakespeare adopts his Corrector's "yon :" and certainly the Corrector is fortunate in such an expositor as Mr. Collier; without whom we never should have guessed that "yon" is equivalent to "yon alehouse."-Mr. Grant White, not happier than others in his note on this passage," suspects that Yaughan' is a misprint for 'Tavern'." P. 194. (135) "which this ass now o'er-reaches;" So the quartos, 1604, &c.-The folio has "which this Asse o're offices;" the less proper reading undoubtedly. P. 195. (136) "For and a shrouding-sheet :" Is generally printed "For and a," &c. But "For and" in the present version of the stanza answers to "And eke" in that given by Percy (Rel, of A. E. Poetry, vol. i. p. 188, ed. 1794); "And eke a shrowding shete." Compare the following passages (to which many others might be added); "Syr Gy, Syr Gawen, Syr Cayus, for and Syr Olyuere." Skelton's Sec. Poem Against Garnesche,-Works, vol. i. "Your squire doth come, and with him comes the lady, Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, "A hippocrene, a tweak, for and a fucus." P. 195. (137) Middleton and W. Rowley's Fair Quarrel, act v. sc. 1, "of fine dirt ?" Walker (Crit. Exam. &c. vol. i. p. 316) proposes "of foul dirt?" But I believe the old text is right here. P. 197. (138) "This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull," So the quartos, 1604, &c. (except that they have "sir Yoricks").—The folio has "This same Scull Sir, this same Scull sir, was Yoricks Scull;" which is given by Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight. (Mr. Collier observes that the folio "characteristically repeats" the words; which is very true, it being a marked characteristic of the folio to blunder in that way.)-1865. Here both Mr. Staunton and Mr. Grant White give the reading of the folio; Mr. Grant White observing, that "if the repetition of the words were accidental, the chance must be reckoned among gli inganni felici." I wish he had told us what force is added to the dialogue by the repetition. P. 197. (139) "and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!" So the quartos, 1604, &c.-Mr. Grant White-who confines the meaning of "it" in that reading to the skull-prefers the lection of the folio, "and how abhorred my Imagination is." 66 P. 197. (140) "To what base uses we may return, Horatio !” Surely the old syntax requires may we'." Walker's Crit. Exam. &c. vol. ii. p. 249. "Thus the quarto 1604 [and the other quartos]. The editor of the folio substituted 'imperial,' not knowing that imperious' was used in the same sense." MALONE.-Compare "The scepters promis'd of imperious Rome." The Tragedie of Antonie (translated by the Countess of "'tis imperious Rome, Rome, the great mistress of the conquer'd world." Fletcher's Prophetess, act ii. sc. 3. We find, indeed, "imperial Cæsar" in Cymbeline, act v. sc. 5: but then that play comes to us only through the folio.-Qy. are these four lines a quotation? I believe not. So the quartos, 1604, &c. down to the quarto of 1637, which, like the folio, has "her Virgin Rites."-"For this unusual word ['crants'] the editor of the first folio substituted 'rites.' By a more attentive examination and comparison of the quarto copies and the folio, Dr. Johnson, I have no doubt, would have been convinced that this and many other changes in the folio were not made by Shakespeare." MALONE. 6 "Most of the editors explain crants' by garlands; but the German kranz is singular, and the singular seems indispensable here. From a note to Prior's Danish Ballads it would seem that young unmarried Danish ladies wear, or wore, chaplets of pearl; at least, 'fair Elsey' is described as wearing one, and the translator (vol. iii. p. 111) says that this is the same as the 'virgin crant' (sic) of Ophelia." W. N. LETTSOM. P. 198. (143) "To sing a requiem, and such rest to her" So the quartos, 1604, &c.-The folio has " To sing sage Requiem," &c.; an error of the transcriber or printer, which Caldecott and Mr. Knight adopt. (Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector alters the "sage" of the folio to "sad :" but is it not a mistake for "such" ?) "Fol. 'woer.' 'Woes,' I conjecture." Walker's Crit. Exam. &c. vol. iii. p. 271. The quarto 1603 has "Wilt drinke rp vessels."-The later quartos have "Woo't drinke vp Esill."-The folio has "Woo't drinke vp Esile."-A great dispute has arisen about the "Esill" or "Esile" of this line; whether we are to understand by it "the river Yssell, Issell, or Izel, the most northern branch of the Rhine," or else eisel (i.e. vinegar). It is at least certain that eisel in the sense of vinegar was formerly common enough; and is used by our author in his exith Sonnet, "I will drink Potions of eisel [old ed. Eysell] 'gainst my strong infection," &c. Nor is the expression "drink up" at all opposed to that interpretation; for Shakespeare has various passages where "up" is what we should now consider as redundant: e.g.; "prisons up Love's Labour's lost, act iv. sc. 3. The nimble spirits in the arteries," &c. "devours up all the fry it finds." All's well that ends well, act iv. sc. 3. "Enough to stifle such a villain up." "To fright the animals, and to kill them up," &c. King John, act iv. sc. 3. As you like it, act ii. sc. 1. Troilus and Cressida, act iii. sc. 2. "As true as Troilus' shall crown up the verse," &c. So too other early writers; "Jove, that thou shouldst not haste, but wait his leisure, Made two nights one, to finish up his pleasure." Marlowe's Ovid's Elegies, B. i. El. xiii.,— "Wretched Iëmpsar, having quaffed up The brim and bottome of the Stygian cup," &c. Sylvester's transl. of Fracastorius's Joseph, apud Du Bartas's Works, &c. p. 417, ed. 1641. To seek them up, wheres'euer they be shed." Scot's Philomythie, Part Sec., 1616, sig. C.— On the phrase "kills them all up," in Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, Gifford observes; "Off, out, and up, are continually used by the purest and most excellent of our old writers after verbs of destroying, consuming, eating, drinking, &c.: to us, who are less conversant with the power of language, they appear, indeed, somewhat like expletives; but they undoubtedly contributed something to the force, and something to the roundness of the sentence. There is much wretched criticism on a similar expression in Shakespeare, 'Woo't drink up eisel?' Theobald gives the sense of the passage in a clumsy note [deciding that vinegar is meant]; Hanmer, who had more taste than judgment, and more judgment than knowledge, corrupts the language as usual [reading 'Wilt drink up Nile ?']; Steevens gaily perverts the sense [declaring himself for a river]; and Malone, with great effort, brings the reader back to the meaning which poor Theobald had long before excogitated." Jonson's Works, i. 122.-Malone, however, afterwards changed his mind, and was convinced that Steevens had rightly explained the word to mean a river, because "this sort of hyperbole was common among our ancient poets." But, in the "hyperbolical" passages cited by Malone, what rivers do those poets mention? The Rhine, the Thames, the Meander, the Euphrates, and not such obscure streams as the Yssell, the existence of which the commentators had some difficulty in detecting. P. 200. (146) "When our deep plots do fail :" The quarto 1604 has "When our deepe plots doe pall."-The later quartos have "When our deepe plots doe fall."-The folio has "When our deare plots do paule." (Compare "And, if I fail not in my deep intent," &c. Richard III, act i. sc. 1.)—1865. Dr. Ingleby would read here "fall;" not |