Forgive him, Angelo, that brought you home What's mine is yours, and what is yours is mine. [Exeunt. CRITICAL NOTES. Page 132. ACT I., SCENE I. Then no more remains But t' add sufficiency, as your worth is able, The original reads "then no more remains But that, to your sufficiency," &c. All the modern editors, I believe, except Mr. White, agree that there is some textual corruption here; and several have supposed two half-lines to have dropped out in the transcribing or the printing. Various attempts have been made, to supply the missing words; but no two are of the same mind as to what they should be; and, as Dyce remarks, "it would require no great effort of conjecture to produce half-a-dozen 'fire-new' restorations of the passage quite as satisfactory as any yet proposed." Mr. White not only thinks the text perfectly sound, but that, if we put a comma after that, and a dash on each side of "as your worth is able," and take that as a demonstrative pronoun, and as referring to what precedes, the meaning becomes abundantly clear; yet I have to confess that his explanation made the passage darker to me than it was before. Reasons of logic, of grammar, and of prosody, have concurred in pressing upon me the reading given in the text. The construction, I think, naturally requires a verb after But; and the context seems also to require that sufficiency be taken in the sense of authority, that is, legal sufficiency; otherwise it is plainly tautological with worth and able. It would be quite in the Poet's manner to omit to altogether, instead of eliding it, -"But add," &c. So I suspect that ť add or add was mistaken for that, and then the rest of the line sophisticated into some sort of verbal conformity, without much attention to the sense of the whole. It is hardly needful to observe how much the verse is redressed by thus getting two syllables out of it. - Able used as an epithet or predicate of worth seems hardly English. I more than suspect it should be ample; but, as a possible sense may be got from it, I do not venture to disturb it. See foot-note 3. P. 133. Thyself and thy belongings Are not thine own so proper, as to waste Thyself upon thy virtues, them on thee. -The original has they instead of them. Corrected by Hanmer. P. 134. To th' hopeful execution do I leave you Of your commission. · So the second folio. The first has commissions. As the Duke seems to have finished his discourse to Escalus before Angelo came in, and as this speech seems wholly addressed to the latter, I think the singular is fairly required. ACT I., SCENE 2. P. 137. I have purchased as many diseases under her roof as come The original runs this speech in with the preceding. Corrected by Pope. to - P. 137. I Gent. Judge. - Assigned to Lucio in the original. Corrected by Dyce. P. 138. Within these three days his head's to be chopp'd off. So Capell. The old text has head instead of head's. P. 140. Enter the Provost, CLAUDIO, and Officers.-The original brings in Juliet among the others, and keeps her on the stage, apparently, to the end of the scene. I cannot persuade myself that Juliet was meant to be present during what follows. It is true, as Dyce urges, that Pompey has just said, "Here comes Signior Claudio; and there's Madam Juliet"; but still I think the difference of here and there may be fairly taken as reason enough for leaving Juliet off the stage. Pompey may be supposed to see her just as the others are entering and she is parting from them. Collier's second folio strikes out the name. The original also begins a new scene here," Scena Tertia"; though there is really no change of place, but only a change of persons. P. 140. The sword of Heaven,· on whom it will, it will. — The old copies read "The words of Heaven." The correction is by Roberts, Provost of Eton, and is approved by Walker, and adopted by Dyce and Staunton. P. 140. I had as lief have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment. — The original has mortality instead of morality. Corrected by Davenant in his Law against Lovers. P. 141. This we came not to, It has been much Only for propagation of a dower doubted whether propagation could have been the Poet's word in this place. Mr. Grant White substitutes preservation. Others have proposed procuration, prorogation, and propugnation. But none of these changes, it seems to me, gives the proper meaning so well as propagation; which is that of increase or continuance. We may suppose that Julietta's dower was on interest in the keeping of her friends till an authorized marriage should give her a legal right to the use of it; or that the continuance or the increase of it was left dependent on the good-will of her relatives. Staunton suggests that, in the case of unmarried women, such guardianship may have been a great protection of their property against the feudal claims of wardship. See footnote 17. P. 143. As well for the encouragement of the like, which else would stand under grievous imposition, as for the enjoying of thy life, which I would be sorry should be thus foolishly lost. - The old copies read "who I would be sorry," &c. Hanmer made the change, and is followed by White; the latter remarking, "Shakespeare would not write 'the like which' and 'the life who' in the same sentence." ACT I., SCENE 3. P. 144. Where youth and cost and witless bravery keep. — The last and is wanting in the first folio. Supplied in the second. The old P. 144. We have strict statutes and most biting laws, – The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds, Which for this fourteen years we have let sleep. copies have weedes instead of steeds, and slip instead of sleep. Steeds is Theobald's correction. Walker would read "headstrong wills." Theobald also substituted nineteen for fourteen; so as to make the passage accord with the "nineteen zodiacs " mentioned before. The change of slip to sleep was made by Sir William Davenant in his Law against Lovers, which was composed partly from this play and partly from Much Ado about Nothing. Davenant, in his boyhood, had known Shakespeare, and was very prominent in dramatic business and workmanship after the Restoration. We shall meet with him in connection with other of the Poet's plays. P. 144. Now, as fond fathers, Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch, For terror, not to use, do find in time The rod more mock'd than fear'd; &c.—I here adopt, substantially, a reading proposed by Dr. Badham in Cambridge Essays, 1856. Instead of the words do find, Pope supplied Becomes at the beginning of the next line, and his reading has been commonly adopted. So Dr. Badham proposes to insert will find where I read do find. And he justly observes that Pope's reading "introduces the awkwardness of a nominative without any verb." P. 145. When evil deeds have their permissive pass, And not their punishment. not the punishment." So Dyce. The old text has "And Pope changed fight to Dyce, who, with some P. 145. Who may, in th' ambush of my name, strike home, And yet my nature never in the fight, To do in slander. — So the old copies. sight, and Hanmer reads “do it slander." others, accepts both changes, pronounces the old reading “manifestly corrupt." But I can by no means see it so; and whatever difficulties the original text may have, they do not seem to me at all removed by the changes. And though, as Dyce says, "strictly speaking, no fight is in question," still I cannot quite put off the feeling, that the words ambush and strike home do smack somewhat in favour of fight, as marking a certain sympathy and harmony of language and imagery. For the rest, see foot-note 5. P. 145. How I may formally in person bear me Like a true friar.— The old copies omit me. Capell, and plainly needful to the sense. Added by |