So the fourth folio ("1 Pet.").-The first and second folios have "Peter;" the third folio has "1 Peter."

So Capell.-The folio has "To." (The absurdity of attempting to support the old lection, “To my lord protector,” by inserting after it the stage-direction, “Reading" (or "Reading the superscription"), or by printing these words between inverted commas, as if read by the queen, is manifest from what immediately follows.)

P. 120. (23)

"That my master was? no, forsooth :"

The folio has "That my Mistresse was ?" &c.· "Is there not something wrong here? The context seems to require The duke say that my master was? no, forsooth.'" W. N. LETTSOM.

The first three folios have "Fashions in."-The fourth folio has "fashion of."

Walker (Shakespeare's Versification, &c. p. 255) proposes to read "image"," marked as a plural.

So the second folio.-The first folio has "haughtie."

So The First Part of the Contention, &c.—The folio has "I could set.”

The folio has "Fume,"-a misprint for "Furie." (This emendation was proposed by me in my former edition, before the appearance of Walker's Crit. Exam. &c., where (vol. iii. p. 156) it may now be found.)

So Pope (and Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector).-The folio has "farre."

P. 124. (31)

"This is my doom, my lord," &c.

The folio has merely "This doome, my Lord," &c. (Compare the corre sponding passage of The First Part of the Contention, &c., "My gratious Lord, then this is my resolue.")

P. 124. (32)

"K. Hen. Then be it so.-My Lord of Somerset, We make your grace regent over the French."

These two lines were inserted by Theobald from The First Part of the Contention, &c., because "without them, the king has not declared his assent to Gloucester's opinion; and the Duke of Somerset is made to thank him for the regency before the king has deputed him to it."—Malone rejects the lines, drawing a most inconsequential conclusion from the variations in this scene between the old and the amended play, and supposing that "Shakespeare thought Henry's assent might be expressed by a nod"!-Capell omits them; and asks (with an ignorance of stage-business even greater than Malone's), "may not the king's acquiescence be conveyed by a look?"!- Mr. Collier throws them out, content with the old hypothesis of the nod.-Mr. Knight excludes them, for "Henry, having given the power of deciding to Gloster, both in the case of the armourer and of the regency, might be intended by the poet, on his revisal of the play, to speak by the mouth of the protector." But Henry has not "given the power of deciding to Gloster;" he has merely put to him the question,

"Uncle, what shall we say to this in law?”

Now, why should Malone, Capell, Mr. Collier, and Mr. Knight so obstinately refuse to be indebted to the older play here, when afterwards they are compelled to borrow from it twice, in order to render the text intelligible? In a note on act iv. sc. 1, Mr. Collier writes, "This line, necessary to the congruity of the dialogue, is derived from the quarto," &c.: and Mr. Knight, ibid., observes, "The passage in brackets is not found in the folio. Without it the point of the dialogue is lost. There can be no doubt that it was omitted by a typographical error," &c.-What is more; in act ii. sc. 3, where Horner says, "and therefore, Peter, have at thee with a downright blow," Malone and Mr. Knight add from the quarto, without the slightest necessity, “as Bevis of Southampton fell upon Ascapart."

1864. Mr. Staunton inserts the above lines as "essential."-Mr. Grant White and the Cambridge Editors reject them.-I continue to think it absolutely necessary that the King should say something here; and I believe that his words, whatever they may have been according to the revised text, are omitted in the folio by mistake.—The Cambridge Editors remark that Shakespeare would hardly have left so lame a line as the second unaltered:" but they certainly ought not to have been offended at the metre of that line, since afterwards in this play, act ii. sc. 4, they deliberately (see their note ad l.) make the Herald speak the following verses;

66

"I summon your grace to his majesty's parliament,
Holden at Bury the first of this next month."

"So reads the folio 1623; but Steevens and Mason, as well as Mr. Collier's annotator, prefer the lection of the earlier version of the play, '—the silence of the night."" STAUNTON. With respect to Steevens and Mason at least, Mr. Staunton is mistaken: their notes are to show that here "silent" is used as a substantive.

P. 126. (34)

66

'Boling. [reading out of a paper] First of the king: what shall of

him become?" "

Here Mr. Collier omits the modern stage-direction, "reading out of a paper," and observes, "We need not suppose that Bolingbroke's questions were written in the first instance," &c. But he appears to have forgotten that at the commencement of this scene, as given in The First Part of the Contention, &c., the Duchess says,

P. 126. (35)

"Here sir Iohn, take this scrole of paper here,

Wherein is writ the questions you shall aske," &c.

"False"

Altered (and perhaps rightly) to "Foul" by Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector.

The folio has "deepely indebted." (Compare, in the preceding play, p. 36, "Com'st thou with deep-premeditated lines," &c.)

P. 126. (37)

The folio has

P. 127. (38)

“We'll see your trinkets here forthcoming all.—
Away!"

"Wee'le see your Trinkets here all forth-comming.
All away."

What shall betide the Duke of Somerset ?""

But at p. 126, where Bolingbroke reads the very paper which York is now reading, we find

See note 4.

"What fates await the Duke of Suffolk?

What shall befall the Duke of Somerset ?'

P. 127. (39)

"lord;"

The folio has "Lords:" but York is addressing Buckingham: compare the penultimate line of the preceding page. Here the text is manifestly corrupted and mutilated.

P. 127. (40)

"These oracles are hardly attain'd,
And hardly understood."

"Not only the lameness of the versification, but the imperfection of the sense too, made me suspect this passage to be corrupt. York, seizing the

parties and their papers, says, he'll see the devil's writ; and finding the wizard's answers intricate and ambiguous, he makes this general comment upon such sort of intelligence, as I have restored the text;

'These oracles are hardily attain'd

And hardly understood.'

i.e. A great risque and hazard is run to obtain them; and yet, after these hardy steps taken, the informations are so perplexed, that they are hardly to be understood." THEOBALD.-In my former edition I adopted Theobald's alteration but I now think, with Mr. Collier, that "the poet would scarcely have written 'hardily' in one line and ‘hardly' in the next;” though possibly he might have intended the first "hardly" to be pronounced "hardily.”

"carry them,”

P. 127. (41) "Write 'carry 'em,' and pronounce rapidly, to avoid the trisyllabic ending, which is out of place in these dramas, as it is also, though not altogether unknown, in those which are entirely and undisputedly Shakespeare's." Walker's Shakespeare's Versification, &c. p. 99.

P. 128. (42)

"For with such holiness well can you do it."

The folio has "With such Holynesse can you doe it?" What is the true reading here, will probably be always a matter of doubt. (The corresponding passage in The First Part of the Contention, &c. is "Church-men so hote. Good vnckle can you doate" [in 4to 1619 "- can you do't"].)-" Spoken

ironically. By holiness' he means hypocrisy." WARBURTON.

P. 129. (43)

"Glo. True, uncle.

Car. [aside to Glo.] Are ye adris'd?—the east side of the grove?
Glo. [aside to Car.] Cardinal, I am with you."

In the folio the whole of this is assigned to "Glost."-Theobald made the proper distribution.

P. 130. (44)

"Here come the townsmen on procession,
To present your highness with the man."

I know not how to treat the second line, which is unmetrical, and hardly gives the sense required by the context. The earlier editors altered this speech in two ways, and very violently: Pope read

"Here come the townsmen on procession,
Before your highness to present the man;"

“Surely, and I will heal thee."" Walker's Crit. Exam. &c. vol. i. p. 278.

So The First Part of the Contention, &c.-The folio has "thinke it, Cunning;" but in the rest of the speech it agrees verbatim with the quarto.—The whole is printed as prose in the older play. The folio divides it into lines of unequal length (which, by the by, does not prove that the editor of the folio took the speech for verse, since he afterwards allows several prose-speeches of Cade to stand so divided). Boswell apprehends that "no metre was intended" here but I see every reason to believe that the present speech was written by the original author in verse, and that his verse has been corrupted into prose. I think, however, with Mr. Knight, that prose is preferable to such verse as an attempt at metrical arrangement, without alterations of the text, produces here.

"I believe the author wrote languish'd all my powers.' I am pretty sure that I have met with instances of to languish as an active verb in this sense, though I do not at present recollect the passages." Walker's Crit. Exam, &c. vol. i. p. 309.

Qy. is "hear" to be considered as a dissyllable?-Pope printed "hear it thus at full.”—Capell and Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector give "hear it at the full."

P. 134. (51) "Who, after Edward the Third's death, reign'd as king ;” Walker (Crit. Exam. &c. vol. iii. p. 140) would expunge "the." But see

note 2.

P. 134. (52)

"where, as all you know,

Harmless Richard was murder'd traitorously."

In the corresponding passage of The First Part of the Contention, &c. we find "both you," instead of "all you:" but see note 47 on The Second Part of King Henry IV. vol. iv. p. 408.-As to the second line, I once conjectured "Was harmless Richard murder'd traitorously.”

Added by Hanmer. (Capell prints "Father, the duke hath surely told the truth.")