Notes and emendations to the text of Shakespeare's plays; from early manuscript corrections in a copy of the folio, 1632 - Paperback

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: KING JOHN. ACT I. SCENE I. Vol. iv. P. 8. We cannot but approve of a change made in an important epithet in the reply of King John, where he despatches Chatillon with all haste, and tells him that the English forees will be in France before the ambassador can even report their intention to come. The reading has always been:? " Be thou the trumpet of our wrath, And sullen presage of your own decay." In the first place, the sound of a trumpet could not, with any fitness, be called a " sullen presage;" and, secondly, as Chatillon was instantly to proceed on his return, it is much more probable that Shakespeare wrote,? " Be thou the trumpet of our wrath, And sudden presnge of your own decay." The old corrector says that sudden was the word of our great dramatist, and a scribe or a printer might easily mistake sudden and "sullen." P. 9. The folio, 1632, omits " Robert" before Faulconbridge, in the Bastard's first speech, but the corrector restored it in the margin. It is found in the folio, 1G23, and must have accidentally dropped out of that of 1G32. P. 14. Besides a misprint, there appears to be an error in punctuation in this part of the Bastard's soliloquy, as given in modern editions:? " For new-made honour doth forget men's names: 'Tis too respective, and too socialile, For your conversion. Now your traveller, lie and his tooth-pick at my worship's mess," Ac. The corrector of the folio, 1632, informs us that we should point and read as follows :? " For new-made honour doth forget men's names: 'Tis too respective, and too sociable. For your divcrition, now, your traveller, He and his tooth-pick at my worship's mess," Ac. It was common to entertain " picked men of countries," for the diversion of the company at the tables of the higher or...