Chapter XLIV: Act V

SC. 2. "_Her_ sudden consenting, but say with me."

Rowe supplied _Her_.

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"All purity, all trial, all observance."

As 'observance' is the word in the riming line, Collier's folio and Malone read _obedience_; Heath _perseverance_; Harness and Singer, whom I find I have followed, _endurance_.

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"Why do you speak too?"

I quite agree with those who read, with Rowe, _Who_ and _to_.

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SC. 3. "Yet the note was very untuneable."

Theobald read _untimeable_, as the reply is "we kept time;" but, as _time_ and _tune_ were synonymous, there seems to be no need of change.

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SC. 4. "As those that fear they hope and know they fear."

To give sense here, I read 'the_ir_ hope' and 'the_ir_ fear,' and for 'know' _hope_. In the change of 'they' to _their_ I find I had been anticipated by Heath. The thought is the same as in "In these feared hopes." (Cymb. ii. 4). The printer having made 'they hope,' in order to get some sense, changed the following 'hope' to _know_, no unusual practice. Yet Mr. Dyce says, "I believe that the line now stands as Shakespeare wrote it." Coleridge thus expresses the same thought:

"And Fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of Hope;
And Hope that scarce would know itself from Fear."

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"That thou mightest join his hand in his
Whose heart within his bosom is."

Editors read _her_ for 'his' in both lines. The first change, made in the 3rd folio, is necessary; the second, made by Malone, not so.

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"And all their lands restored to him again."

For 'him' editors very properly, following Rowe, read _them_; in MS. probably _'em_.

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