Chapter XCIX: Act I

SC. 1. "Antony Woodeville, her brother there."

Here we must read 'Woodeville' as a trisyllable, like Catesby sometimes in this play, and Colleville in 2 Hen. IV. iv. 3.

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"Even so, an'_t_ please your worship, Brackenbury."

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"Well struck in years, fair, and not jealous."

The folio has _jealious_, which may be read as a trisyllable, of which Sidney Walker has given examples, though none from Shakespeare. I, however, prefer reading 'yeärs' and 'faïr,' as more suited to the slow _chaffing_ tone of Gloster: "Of foür hoürs long. I must endure all." Fletch. Chances, i. 6.

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"Which I must reach unto by marrying her."

This transposition seems necessary; for he is speaking simply and without involution.

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SC. 2. "The bleeding witness of her hatred by."

This is the reading of the 4tos; the folio has _my_, but _her_ hatred had been mentioned only two lines before. Still the point is doubtful.

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SC. 3. "The slave of nature and the son of hell."

So in The Honest Whore (Part I. i. 6) we have,

"You [harlots] are the miserablest creatures breathing,
The very _slaves of nature_."

But that expression may have been taken from this very place.

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"Why strewest thou sugar on that bottel'd spider?"

This is the orthography of the folio; the 4tos read here _botled_, but in iv. 4 as the folio. Now as _bottled_ has, as far as my knowledge extends, but one sense, and one which would give no meaning here, it may be intended to show that the verb comes from _bottel_ or _bottle_ in the sense of truss, bundle, as a bottle of hay or straw, a sense which it retains in various compounds in the provincial dialects. 'Bottel'd spider' would then answer to 'bunch-back'd toad' a few lines further on. If this should not satisfy, we might read _bloated spider_, as in Cowper, Task. v. 442.

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SC. 4. "Nay, I pr'ythee, stay a little; I hope my holy humour will
change."

This is the reading of the 4tos, which I prefer. The folio has 'passionate humour of _mine_.' The change, as Mr. Dyce says, was made by the editors on account of the statute 3 Jac. I. 21.

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"If two such murderers as yourselves came to you
Would not entreat for life? As you would beg
Were you in my distress...--
Relent! no, _no_; 'tis cowardly and womanish."

This punctuation gives, I think, the sense of the poet; and I am happy to find I had been anticipated in it by Singer.

ACT II.

SC. 1. "And more to peace my soul shall part to heaven."

It might be better, though the meaning is the same, to read '_at_ peace,' as in the following line. The second 'to' was probably in the printer's mind. The usual reading is '_in_ peace' which may be right.

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SC. 2. "To his new kingdom of ne'er-changing night."

The more appropriate term, I think, would be _light_. Editors follow the reading of the 4tos, 'of perpetual rest.'

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"And may direct his course as _it_ please himself."